Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A fascinating story that could make a plot of a novel British soldiers, fresh from fighting Argentina’s fascist junta in the Falklands, were now being asked to help another Latin American military dictatorship eliminate its own opposition activists, by cutting off their arms supply. And incredibly, at some point on the afternoon of Monday 11 April 1983, the British and Belizean authorities agreed to do it. Death of a double agent: British torture and betrayal in 1980s Belize

" The new wave of protests that erupted early this week in Baghdad, in which protesters are demanding dignity, jobs and services, has spread to other southern cities including Basra, Najaf, Karbala, Diwaniyah and Nasiriyah. It has escalated quickly and now includes calls for the 'fall of the regime'." It is interesting to notice another counter-sectarianism evidence. The majority of Iraq's population is Shi'a and the protests are taking place in Shi'a-dominated cities, with anti-Iranian slogans raised and the Iranian flag burnt. When the first Arab uprising erupted in Tunisia in December 2010, one the dominant slogans was: "Jobs are a right you band of thieves." Then came "the people want the overthrow of the regime." The socio-economic revolution in the MENA region is yet to come. And in the absence of radicalism, leadership and strategy, it is going to a be a long and protracted process that the counter-revolutionary forces, i

Fake tolerance, repression of individual freedoms in the name of a new definition of secularism What makes someone –a white person– in a country originally founded as a settler colonial state identify themselves as "Canadian" and regards a Sikh or a Muslim citizen not "Canadian" ? Canada became a sovereign state less than 100 years ago. Its name is indigenous to some of the people who had inhabited the land.

iPhone workers today are 25 times more exploited than textile workers of 19th century England I do not agree with the authors, who are using a Marxist analysis, on calling Eeastern European countries before 1990 'socialist'. Their labbelling throws dust in readers' eyes.  If those countries were socialist, what do today's socialists are fighting for then? And if those countries were socialist, it is more of an argument for the defenders of capitalism: "if that was socialism, we don't want it." The Rate of Exploitation (The Case of the iPhone) Related: "Sucking up"  (Apple's app and Hong Kong protests)

I would say Political Economy + [International] Sociology. Economic Crisis and the Crisis of Economics

An event in London

The Hirak movement in Algeria: its achievements, predicament and limitations

Worst after the U.S. Sociologically speaking, I wonder whether this has something to do with the England and the U.S.  being the pioneers in implementing an agressive form of capitalism, also known as neoliberalism, that has championed and glorified individualism, narcicism, self-centrism through privatising everytging in the name of "freedom."  The phenomenon is by no means restricted to kids. Mark Fisher's diagnosis is really accurate. England's schools 'worst for cyber-bullying', according to the OECD Related: Life expectancy in the UK

According to this BBC clip, China became communist in 1949 . And we know through schooling, the "cold war", the media, the common people we meet everyday and the experts that China was "communist" until very recently. According to the man in the interview, "there's a long way to go to reach the final goal of building a communist society." Now who should I believe the BBC's journalist or a Chinese 'illiterate', who has never been educated in how to describe socio-economic formations and did not know that "communism" existed in many countries and failed. Could it be that he is just brainwahsed and still believes in an ideal? Here is what the British Academy wrote in an introduction to a conference last year: "2019 will mark the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, which aimed to create the world's largest socialist society. " (my emphasis) However, a few lines down we read, "This confe

Unlike the previous economic recession (the long depression), today almost everyone is predicting a recession in a few months. In 2010 the following question was put to a Nobel Prize winner. – "So what caused the recession if it wasn’t the financial crisis?" – "(Laughs) That’s where economics has always broken down. We don’t know what causes recessions. Now, I’m not a macroeconomist so I don’t feel bad about that. (Laughs again.) We’ve never known. Debates go on to this day about what caused the Great Depression. Economics is not very good at explaining swings in economic activity." —Eugene Fama