Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Scrap art schools, privatise cities, and bin social housing

There is no such a thing as Western civilisation

The imperialist criminal blockade against Cuba will continue

Understanding Climate Justice in Morocco's Perepheries

'Extreme surveillance' becomes UK law with barely a whimper

"As we know, Trump supporters tend to be white, tend to be older, tend to be male, tend to live in households with slightly higher income, and tend to have less education. Interestingly, his base is also significantly more likely to be self-employed overall, among other whites, and among other Republicans. In key respects, Trump represents the revenge of Joe the Plumber — and indeed Joe supports him. Many feel more comfortable casting his bid as some abhorrent anomaly. But Trumpism is no oddity. Instead it’s the expression of the anxieties of the petit bourgeoisie and a result of a break between two wings of the capitalist class in the Republican Party that began with the emergence of the Tea Party." The Revenge of Joe the Plumber

Neo-Liberalism and the Far-Right: a Contradictory Embrace

"Before Donald Trump was elected, stock markets went down every time he improved in the public opinion polls.  Finance capital did not want him to win.  But since his surprise election, stock markets have not slumped.  On the contrary, they have risen substantially along with a strengthening dollar.  It seems that ‘the Donald’ could be a good thing for Capital after all." Testing Trumponomics

" Trump and Berlusconi are both men who came to power from business rather than politics, and both have presented their inexperience with the political establishment as a mark of purity. They have both insisted on their entrepreneurial success as the most evident proof of their qualification to rule the country. Like Plato’s tyrant, they both exhibit an ethos based on a dream of continuous and unlimited jouissance and an aggressive and hubristic eros (though Berlusconi prefers to think of himself as an irresistible seducer rather than a rapist). They both indulge in gross misogynistic and racist jokes and have reshaped public language by legitimizing insult and political incorrectness as acceptable forms of political communication and by embodying an exhilarating return of the repressed. They both revel in kitschy aesthetics and don the orange hue of artificial tanning. And they both allied with the far right in order to advance a political project of authoritarian neoliberal

Education in Britain (source:  bbc ) But researchers highlight some other questions muddying the waters. Students do not enter university unshaped by what went before.  How much of higher earnings in later life might be linked to coming from high-income parents, rather than anything to do with higher education? A key finding of the income research was that graduates from wealthy families ended up earning more than than those from poorer families, even if they studied the same course at the same university. But there is no escaping the growing sense of stratification in the university sector and differences in status. Belonging to the Russell Group [i.e. elite universities] has become a kind of self-conferred status symbol for its membership.

"Here is the biggest problem with elevating sexism to the defining explanation of Mrs. Clinton’s loss: It lets her machine and her failed policies off the hook. It erases the role played by the appetite for endless war and the comfort with market-friendly incremental change, no matter the urgency of the crisis (from climate change to police violence to raging inequality). It erases the disgust over Mrs. Clinton’s coziness with Wall Street and with the wreckage left behind by trade deals that benefited corporations at the expense of workers." — Naomi Klein

Trump and Fascism. A View from the Past A historian's analysis

Fanon as Example and Figure: A Conversation Between Oscar Guardiola-Rivera and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Tunisia Relatives, torture victims give first public testimony to Tunisia truth commission If I manage to give my own testimony, I will also expose the French, British and American complicity "The real test facing Tunisia's transitional justice process, however, is whether it will ultimately lead to criminal prosecutions for the crimes of the past decades, which have thus far gone without adequate investigation or punishment," Amnesty said. تونس: شهادات ضحايا انتهاكات حقوق الإنسان على مدى   خمسة عقود تُبَث علانية

Neo-liberalism's far-right across Europe in figures

Britain Part-time Lecturers on Precarious Work

The Liberal Defense of Murder

"This process of appropriation includes many others: framing the Law of Value as something morally and politically valuable; mapping natural resources, translating Cheap Nature into a portable, readable format; codifying the limits of nature and society in laws and bills, so as the first remains cheap, and creating new institutional arrangements, which  allow the market and the state to produce this logic through space and time . Appropriating Cheap Nature is not only a process of violent material dispossession. It is also a way to see the world which naturalises – and makes desirable – this process, upon which capitalist accumulation depends." Capitalism as Ecology: Mexican Resistance at the Frontier

Law says, “Go to the Mullā and learn the rules and regulations!”  Love says, “A single word is enough: shut and put away all other  books!” . . . Law says, “Have some shame and decency: put out this light!” Love says, “What is this veil for? Let the visions be open!” Law says, “Come into the mosque and perform the obligatory prayer!”  Love says, “Go to the wine-tavern, and having drunk, peform the  superogatory prayer!” . . . Law says, “O, Believer! go for Ḥajj—for you will have to cross the Ṣirāt  Bridge!” Love says, “ The door of the Beloved is the Kaʿbah, don’t move from  there!” Law says, “We strung Shāh Manṣūr up on the cross!” Love says, “ Ten, you did well; for you sacrificed him at the Beloved’s  door!”  — ( probably not actually authored by) the most widely sung Su poet of the Panjāb, Bullhē Shāh of Ḳaṣūr (1680–1758). Quoted in Shahab Ahmed's What is Islam?