Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“Israel’s war on Gaza has had an immense human cost, with nearly 20,000 Palestinians killed, 70% of them women and children. But it has also destroyed  numerous historic and cultural buildings  such as archaeological sites, museums, cultural centres, markets, ancient churches, and mosques.”

Shutdown Related Pro-market thinking: ministers want it to survive Covid

The Other and the Ordeal of the World Can the Other, in light of all that is happening, still be regarded as my fellow creature? The Other’s burden having become too overwhelming, would it not be better for my life to stop being linked to its presence, as much as its to mine? Why must I, despite all opposition, nonetheless look after the other, stand as close as possible to his life if, in return, his only aim is my ruin? If, ultimately, humanity exists only through being in and of the world, can we found a relation with others based on the reciprocal recognition of our common vulnerability and finitude? In a world characterized more than ever by an unequal redistribu- tion of capacities for mobility, and in which the only chance of survival, for many, is to move and to keep on moving, the brutality of borders is now a fundamental given of our time. Today we see the principle of equality being undone by the laws of autochthony and common origin, as well as by divisions within citizensh

“The Tyranny of Merit  [by Michael Sandel] is infused with moral urgency, elegantly written and cogently argued, with a core conclusion both succinct and indisputable: meritocracy does not counter inequality, it justifies it.” Why the ideal of meritocracy only deepens inequality

Some good arguments, but "liberalism in theory" itself has to be questioned. "In theory, modern liberalism is a set of ideas about human freedom, markets, and representative government. In practice, or so it now seems to me, it has largely become a political affect, and a quintessentially conservative one at that: a set of reflexes common to those with a Panglossian faith in capitalist markets and the institutions that attempt to sustain them amid our flailing global order. In theory, it is an ideology of progress. In practice, it has become the secular theology of the status quo; the mechanism through which the gilded buccaneers of  Silicon Valley , Wall Street, and multinational capital rationalize hierarchy and exploitation while fostering resignation and polite deference among those they seek to rule." Liberalism in Theory and Practice

"All colonial wars for the last twenty-five years have been fought in the interest of capital; fought to ensure markets that would guarantee more profits for European capital. Capital has become very powerful, all-powerful. Capital decides the fate of humanity." — Jean Marais in This Earth of Mankind , a novel by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

"Neoliberalism" according to the BBC

The Market is God, say the "free market" fundamentalists "I am determined to pursue an aggressive strategy of opening up the markets in all the regions of the world."* — Bill Clinton, firmer U.S. president, address to the WTO, May 18, 1998.  Quoted in  Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank  by Éric Toussaint and Damien Millet, 2010 One can scratch her head and thinks about what effects that has had in the U.S. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Egypt, South Africa, Argentina, and other countries. Clinton in fact was not pursuing something new, the "shock doctrine" was already apace, and it would be soon complemented by "shock and awe".