NM's blog

  Pat, who is 85, was detained in Manchester yesterday under section 13 of the Terrorism Act after standing with a sign that read “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine action.” She kept it on display as a matter of principle, which resulted in her arrest.

Our world is made up of lines, from comet tails to DNA. Every­ thing is  connected. Every­ thing is sequential. Every­ thing that moves, from a  snail to a lava flow leaves a line, a trace of passing. A line can be fate, a  commitment, a fact, a relationship, a place. Some lines are well trodden paths, some intersect, some pass at a distance, some return to their  origins. We all walk the line. We have an end and a beginning which  is joined to a much longer invisible line in the past and in the ­ future. —Anne Seymour in  Richard Long’s book Walking the Line , 2009, p. 9

 

Algo in the genocide  Okay I won't use the word Jewish  And I won't use the word Zionist  And I won't use the word genocide  And I won't use the word apartheid  And I won't use the word settler  And I won't use the word colony  And I won't use the word killed  And I won't use the word watermelon  And I won't use the word Palestine  And I won't use the word resistance  And I won't use the word law  And I won't use the word moral  And I won't use the word men  And I won't use the word God  And I won't use the word river  And I won't use the word sea  And I won't use the word free And I won't use the word children For the young of _____ are always _____ What are we left with at the end? A murdered dictionary and field After silent field of unmarked graves. — Omar Sakr

“Fromm’s story shows us that a critique of authoritarian culture — one that identifies the strong tendencies toward passivity and reaction in the general population — can retain its central thrust, while still maintaining some of the optimism of the original Marxian critique of capitalism, and its orientation toward political action here and now. “The Sane Society  was also notable for its criticism of aspects of the Marxist project, especially concerning the traditional concept of revolution. Fromm believed that there was a profound psychological error in the famous statement that concludes the  Communist Manifesto , suggesting that the workers had ‘nothing to lose but their chains’. As well as their chains, the workers also had something else to lose: all the irrational needs and satisfactions that had originated while they were wearing those chains. “Fromm argued that we need an expanded concept of revolution: in terms of not only external barriers, but of internal, subject...

In modern nation-states, the dominant patriotic narratives that valorise national identity, often as not born of war, can mask dark deeds, past and present. For that reason, even in the most seemingly liberal of modern nation states, authorities almost universally seek to sacralise national history to the degree where to challenge it not only confronts the ire of conservative politicians and public opinion, but it becomes taboo or even blasphemous to do so. Historical revisionism becomes fraught. — Roger D. Markwick , March 2025

Mill “arguing that a just liberal society must experiment with different types of socialist organization to better the situation of the least well off… [H]e  endorsed worker cooperatives as superior to capitalist-managed firms and insisted there was ‘nothing in principle in economic theory’ that spoke against experimenting with socialist principles and forms of organization. “[H]e  was one of the first major liberal and socialist writers to take seriously the problem of women’s equality and, in  The Subjection of Women. “But he was also trepidatious about the uneducated and unintelligent having too much of a say in politics, and supported British colonialism, viewing the non-European subjects of its empire with condescension. “He seemed doggedly uninterested in analyzing the power dynamics of the bourgeois liberal state, its history, and the way imperial powers like the United Kingdom worked to spread capitalism at the barrel of a gun.” The writer thinks that Mill's “idio...

Karl Marx in America – a book review by Robin Blackburn

When you have a good analysis , but you introduce illusion – illusion in 'a new Bandung', a ‘Bandung'/' South' where class, capital accumulation, repression and oppression and wealth are ignored . Related Dispelling the multipolar myth

“Get involved, get involved, get involved”

A political shift is in the offing Related An account and impressions

Nature is man’s  inorganic  body – nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human body. Man  lives  on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature. — Karl Marx, 1844

“The focus on ethnic or religious identity has surely undermined any prospect of a class-based politics developing . Civil society — once vibrant in the early days of the uprising — has been stifled by state violence, while political parties and trade unions have been dissolved in the name of national transition.” “ While the HTS leadership maintains strict control over many Sunni militias in Idlib, it must now negotiate with non-Sunni communities, such as the Druze and Kurds…” Here the writer is inaccurate. The Kurds are not a non-Sunni community; most if the Kurds are Sunni. According to some estimates,  Kurdish forces lost an estimated 11,000 fighters in the battle against ISIS (a Sunni too), with over 22,000 wounded. 

Recent reports of an Israeli campaign to win the social media war by granting millions of dollars to TikTok and social media influencers is only a fraction of a massive, coordinated campaign. Many pro-Palestine activists are now highlighting the direct complicity of the Western media, especially in the UK, in attempting to whitewash rape accusations against Israeli soldiers. Instead of using the unequivocal word “rape,” mainstream outlets refer to the horrific Sde Teiman prison episodes merely as “abuse.”

“[A] direct connection to the Munich massacre was no longer needed. Anybody found to be an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian armed struggle or actively involved in the preparation of terrorist events was a potential target of Mossad’s killing team.” Aviva Guttmann,  Operation Wrath of God: The Secret History of European Intelligence and Mossad’s Assassination Campaign,  Cambridge University Press, 2023 “ The book,” writes Alain Gresh, “will disappoint readers who expect revelations. The exchanges mostly confirm that the frame of reference (the “war on terror”) used to analyze the Middle East is utterly useless, that on the contrary it has a blinding effect, making the western services incapable of understanding the nature of Black September, its relationship with Fatah and quite simply the meaning of the Palestinian struggle.  For them “the war on terror” was a “technical” campaign with no political content. The author herself is not immune to this simplistic r...

Lucas was widely acclaimed because he furthered mainstream theory that markets could work without crises or distortions as long as individuals has sufficient information to make ‘rational decisions’ on their own interests.  So the reality of crises and inequalities was due not to capitalist markets but to ‘irrational’ decisions by authorities or unions interfering with markets. Lucas had succeeded in his critique in reducing Keynesian macro economics to a weak and feeble beast.   No wonder he got a Nobel prize at the height of the neoclassical, neoliberal ascendancy in 1995.

Total referrals reach record high , with 21% being due to ‘extreme rightwing concerns’ and 10% to Islamist ideology.

Bertrand Russell warns that racial pride can quickly become harmful racial supremacy (1946): “Another passion which gives rise to false beliefs that are politically harmful is pride - pride of nationality, race, sex, class, or creed. When I was young France was still regarded as the traditional enemy of England, and I gathered as an unquestionable truth that one Englishman could defeat three Frenchmen. When Germany became the enemy this belief was modified and English people ceased to mention derisively the French propensity for eating frogs. But in spite of governmental efforts, I think few Englishmen succeeded in genuinely regarding the French as their equals.  Americans and Englishmen, when they become acquainted with the Balkans, feel an astonished contempt when they study the mutual enmities of Bulgarians and Serbs, or Hungarians and Rumanians. It is evident to them that these enmities are absurd and that the belief of each little nation in its own superiority has no objective...