Skip to main content

Posts

" We may not be able to live a wrong life rightly, but we can stop living wrongly altogether. To do that requires a depth of social imagination, the courage of collective struggle and a wellspring of political desire that seems all but evaporated in the present moment." The spurious scandal of "Communism for Kids" (NYT)
"The Lebanese institutions, its infrastructure, airport, power stations, traffic junctions, Lebanese army bases – they should all be legitimate targets if a war breaks out, "That's what we should already be saying to them and the world now. If Hezbollah fires missiles at the Israeli home front, this will mean  sending Lebanon back to the Middle Ages ." Israel, Lebanon and Hezbollah: a potential for another war

Britain Continues to Support General Haftar

" British interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan were disastrous and created resentment among many Arabs and Muslims - as does leaving Bashar al-Assad to drop barrel bombs and use chemical weapons against innocent civilians.   But Libya was different. It was a popular uprising. It was a civilian revolution and not a religious one. Britain was willing to support us because it was in line with their ‘foreign policy’ at the time. We also weren't linked to groups like al-Qaeda.  I say "at the time" because many of us who fought are upset that Britain continues to support General Haftar, who has been condemned by leading rights group, including Amnesty International, for committing a series of war crimes." And here is what the Telegraph reported in February :  " Gen Haftar, who  enjoys strong backing from Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's government in Egypt, is seen by some as a potential secular “strong man” ruler who could re-establish some degree of securit
Whether it is Thatcher or Reagan, Blair or Holland, Trump or Macron, Temer or May .. . "[I]n the name of a narrow and strict conception of rationality as individual rationality, it [neoliberallism] brackets the economic and social conditions of rational orientations and the economic and social structures that are the condition of their application ." The essence of neoliberalism  (Pierre Bourdieu, 1998)

Regime Change?

"It's a weird time. This week I'm noticing two rather disturbing bandwagons rolling, both arising from Manchester. One is about UK domestic politics and the other international politics but they are linked by an understandable desire not to see the attack as being used to advance the agenda of the Tories and specifically, to help their election campaign. Both though are ultimately very unhelpful. One is about the need for soldiers on the streets because Theresa May  cut police budgets as Home Secretary. I've seen unlikely people sharing tweets from redundant cops. Tempting to undercut May this way, but wrong - more armed cops do not equal fewer attacks like Manchester. The other is pinning the blame for Manchester on the UK intervention in Libya.  Again, understandable.  But it's important to see that the problem in Libya was not the attempted regime change as such but the regime that people tried to change i.e. Gaddafi's tyranny. It was a regime that - like