NM's blog

Excerpts The coup in August 2020 was welcomed by a population tired of the corruption and incompetence of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s government.  But the new regime grew increasingly hardline and eventually banned political parties in May 2025. Most opposition figures are now in exile, notably the imam Mahmoud Dicko, who leads from Algiers the Coalition of Forces for the Republic, set up in December 2025, and the communist Oumar Mariko, president of the now dissolved African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence party, who tried unsuccessfully to mediate with JNIM to secure the release of 17 hostages in March 2026. Even so, the regime still retains some popular support. ‘The jihadists have failed to stir up the population as they’d hoped,’ says Senegalese journalist Abdou Khadre Cissé. Spending on military equipment and security is draining state finances, prompting new taxes on mobile phone top-ups and money transfers via phone. In jihadist-dominated areas, people endure rackete...

 Briefly… In the last 30 years (since June 1996),   eight   UK Prime Ministers have resigned from office. “While it is historically rare for a major political party to lose power without a resignation, the UK has experienced a highly volatile period of leadership turnover, particularly over the last decade. “The high number of UK Prime Minister resignations over the last 30 years—particularly the rapid succession of six departures over the last decade—is rooted in  chronic economic stagnation, deep societal divisions triggered by Brexit, and the collapsing quality of public services.” (Google AI search results)

“The ‘last wave’ of nationalisms, most of them in the colonial territories of Asia and Africa, was in its origins a response to the new-style global imperialism made possible by the achievements of industrial capitalism. As Marx put it in his inimitable way: ‘The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole face of the globe.’ But capitalism had also, not least by its dissemination of print, helped to create popular, vernacular-based nationalisms in Europe, which to different degrees undermined the age-old dynastic principle, and egged into self-naturalization every dynasty positioned to do so. Official nationalism – weld of the new national and old dynastic principles (the British Empire) – led in turn to what, for convenience, one can call ‘Russification’ in the extra-European colonies. This ideological tendency meshed neatly with practical exigencies. The late-nineteenth-century empires were too large and too far-flung to be ruled by a...

Richard Seymour  pictures what the  BBC cannot picture . – Once again, Ulster’s peace-loving bampots determined that such violence could only have been brought to Northern Ireland by brown-skinned interlopers. Never mind that the province has its own gory history of  knife violence . Never mind that Ogilvie himself had previously been  tortured  by a gang linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force, the loyalist paramilitaries that murdered Catholics with the  collusion  of the British state during the “Troubles.” – To an extent, as Séamas O’Reilly  argues  in the  New Statesman , this is a new expression of old violence: loyalists in Northern Ireland have decades of experience in burning people out of their homes and violently policing community purity. – Among all demographics in Northern Ireland, Catholic or Protestant, young or old, anti-immigrant racism is  pervasive . – Far from “two tier policing” disadvantaging whites, the evidence...

  Palestinian “struggle today continues to be one between a collaborationist PA and a pro-liberation resistance intent on ending settler-colonialism.” Related Google AI summary of the number killed, wounded or sent into exile. The figure of 8,000 Palestinians killed in 1939 alone [ as mentioned by Massad ] is  not historically accurate , but it closely mirrors the total estimated casualties suffered by the Palestinian Arab population across the entirety of the  Great Arab Revolt (1936–1939) .  [1]  Historical data from British archives, Palestinian historians, and independent researchers outline a more precise breakdown of the casualties and dynamics of this period. Total Casualties of the Arab Revolt (1936–1939) The Great Arab Revolt was a nationalist uprising against British colonial rule and its support for Zionist immigration. The cumulative death toll for Palestinians over the three-year uprising is generally accepted by historians to be around  5,000...

Russian operatives ran their sabotage and provocation campaign remotely through social media and the messaging app Telegram, we found, creating fake online far-right and Muslim groups, which were used to organise acts of vandalism in the UK and stir up division and fear . Accounts based in Russia posted lies about the motive for the arson attacks targeting Starmer, which were spread by figures such as far-right anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson.

It is nice that what eventually became the late British Empire has not been ruled by an ‘English’ dynasty since the early eleventh century: since then a motley parade of Normans (Plantagenets), Welsh (Tudors), Scots (Stuarts), Dutch (House of Orange) and Germans (Hanoverians) have squatted on the imperial throne. No one much cared until the philological revolution and a paroxysm of English nationalism in World War I. House of Windsor rhymes with House of Schöonbrunn or House of Versailles. —Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities – Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2016 ed. , p. 83

What is rational and irrational about someone saying 'my country'? Saying "my country" reflects a mix of logical human organization and emotional, instinctual behavior. Here is what makes this statement both rational and irrational: 👤 The Rational Aspects Using the phrase "my country" is a practical way to describe your legal, social, and physical reality. Legal citizenship:  You possess passport, voting, and residency rights in a specific nation. Tax obligations:  You financially support that specific government's infrastructure and services. Shared culture:  You understand the local language, social norms, laws, and history. Geographic reality:  It defines the physical borders where you sleep, work, and live. Administrative shortcut:  It is an efficient linguistic shorthand to tell others where you are from. [ 1 ] 🧠 The Irrational Aspects Using "my country" becomes irrational when it implies literal ownership, moral superiority, or biologic...