NM's blog

If the arrangement of society is bad (and ours is), and a small number of people have power over the majority and oppress it, every victory over Nature will inevitably serve only to increase that power and that oppression. This is what is actually happening.  — Leo Tolstoy, On Life and Essays on Religion , 1898

From the Financial Times 22 March 2026 The populist, anti-immigration party is surging in the polls thanks to the support of  young Spanish men, Vox leaders have found that old-school conservative preoccupations such as  bullfighting have lost much of their importance. Instead, Vox has learnt to exploit men’s deep-seated economic and social grievances, which have  become the defining feature of a new strain of Spanish populism. Young women still lean to the left, but there has been a striking shift among males: they identify as  being more rightwing than any other cohort of young men in the past 40 years. Many see themselves as victims of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his policies on the economy and immigration. While Sánchez celebrates Spain growing faster than any other major advanced economy in the past two years, young men complain that their personal hopes have been frustrated. Stoking their discontent are a band of populist rap artists and fa...

The Forsyte family is the lens through which we observe the state of the nation," playwright and screenwriter Lin Coghlan tells the BBC. "It was a moment in history where imperialism and profit built families and institutions – but at an extraordinary cost. A theme which never becomes irrelevant.” “Pivotal to the entire story is an episode in which he rapes his wife – although marital rape was not illegal when Galsworthy was writing: it was not outlawed in the UK until 1991. “Another of the books' themes is imperialism – dominion over other nations, as well as the dominion of one generation over another, and of one person over another. The family is the empire in miniature .”

Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power. — Theodore Roosevelt , 1904

From the Frankfurt School and radical social criticism to silence on war crimes. How Germany’s remembrance culture ignores [is complicit in] war crimes German publisher tells Palestinian staff to quit The hypocrisy of Jürgen Habermas At issue is not an accidental, negligible or ‘unfortunate’ streak of racism  in the works of a stellar European philosopher.

Western Hemisphere

“Do not dare challenge Israel’s bid for regional hegemony or ethnic cleansing of Palestine . Achieving the first would give Israel the immunity it needs for the second: rectifying the mistake the historian Benny Morris lamented when he criticized Ben Gurion for not expelling all the Palestinians in 1948.”

Challenges of overcoming both Arab chauvinism and Kurdish nationalism in building a political movement capable of winning self-determination for the Kurds and challenging the hold of both the imperialist powers and the local predatory and reactionary capitalists who rule in Syria. A long analysis with a historical background The disastrous Arab nationalism carries on

“Iran’s current economic and political crisis is often narrated as the cumulative outcome of international sanctions or authoritarian governance alone.  Such accounts, however, obscure the deeper political-economic transformations that have unfolded since the early 1990s.”

Renowned Palestinian historian and co-founder of the Institute of Palestine Studies

No collapse of the Soviet union, no China, no capitalism and American nationalism. All what has happened since 1991 happened without a global context and international and regional power relations, or class realignment.  A liberal analysis by Patrick Wintour Related America's long war in the Middle East

With the support of leftists. “The involvement of female fighter pilots in the ongoing operation has been a cause for self-congratulation for Israel’s military, and a point of pride and vindication for many Israelis. “In street interviews, social media posts and television debates, Israeli women reiterate the same point: they are willing to live under bombardment if it means helping Iranians - and particularly Iranian women - achieve freedom .”

Knowledge, in the sense of theoretical knowledge, refers to ideas that reveal mechanisms underlying empirical/observable events/processes. Theory tells us how to connect the different bits of information to produce the bigger picture about reality. It tells us how an apparently isolated thing or process represents wider processes. It provides knowledge that is explanatory (as well as critical).  —Raju Das, The Age of Unreason , 2018

Lord Paul Boateng said the findings exposed UK museums and universities as “imperial charnel houses where the bones of Indigenous peoples torn from Britain’s empire in the past, with little or no regard to the spiritual sensibilities of its people, continue to be retained to this day in circumstances that beggar belief”.

and the crisis of international solidarity

A very good analysis and approach. The big picture and the continuum.  “There is no consensus among liberals that war against Iran is undesirable. “American wars in the Middle East, including its role in the genocide in Gaza and the campaigns against Lebanon, are also not just projections of power or solely a reflection of long-standing strategic interests that merge with cultural zeitgeist. They are also generative and reproductive of American political power  and  capital .”

A very brief summary as a reply to one of the common comments. Comment: “you get what you vote for. can't recall a single example in trump's long fat life where he ever cleaned up one of his many messes.” Harperium My reply: Does that mean had more Americans voted for a different contender, Biden or Harris, things would have been different? You are ignoring Israel's influence and that both Biden and Harris supported a genocidal war on the Palestinians. You ignore that the situation has to be contextualised within the political-economy of the US vis-a-vis China and how the US is trying to regain its capitalist hegemony by weakening China. Both Venezuela and Iran are two proxies. And the more the US declines, the more violent it becomes.

'Changing regime behaviour rather than the regime itself', writes Gilbert Achcar .

Thus from a Mixture of all kinds began, That Het’rogeneous Thing, An Englishman: In eager Rapes, and furious Lust begot, Betwixt a Painted Britton and a Scot: Whose gend’ring Offspring quickly learnt to bow, And yoke their Heifers to the Roman Plough: From whence a Mongrel half-bred Race there came, With neither Name nor Nation, Speech or Fame. In whose hot Veins now Mixtures quickly ran,  Infus’d betwixt a Saxon and a Dane. While their Rank Daughters, to their Parents just, Receiv’d all Nations with Promiscuous Lust. This Nauseous Brood directly did contain The well-extracted Blood of Englishmen . . . —From Daniel Defoe, The True-Born Englishman