Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

18 Incredible Photographs of Time Standing Still

Refugees buying one-way tickets home after finding Germany intolerable

British Imperialism, the City of London and Brexit

The Clinton-Backed Honduran Regime Is Picking Off Indigenous Leaders See also "The War on Democracy" documentary

We’re mugs: being gassed in the Calais Jungle is an easy life in Europe

Academic Critique of Neoliberal Academia (A free registration is required to access the pdf file)

"Even among elite PMC careers, workers are seeing much of their professional autonomy removed. Forty years ago, most lawyers worked in individual practice or small firms. Now, young lawyers are more likely to work for huge corporate law firms for very long hours doing  depressing work  like “document review,” all because they have no other choice if they want to pay back their mortgage-sized student loans. For the first seven years of a career as an  investment banker , a young associate may work 90 hours a week—to support a Boomer managing director, who may only work 60. Young college professors are  much more likely  to be part-time and non-tenure track than Boomer professors were at the same points in their careers, leading to  increased militancy  among adjunct professors."  — Bryan Williams, Newrepublic

Changing the rules or changing the game?

Academic Waste

Why aren't the British middle-classes staging a revolution? An unusual article on The Telegraph on the ongoing plunder (" privatising the profits and socialising the losses).  Even Trotsky is quoted. It says something about the ruling class and what it fears: a section of the middle class sinks to the bottom. It fears cracks in the buffer.

British and Israeli assistance to U.S. Torture- and  Counter-insurgency strategies in Latin America  1963-1997

Amazon 'used neo-Nazi guards to keep immigrant workforce under control' in Germany

“Political Economy and Social Movement Theory Perspectives on the Tunisian and Egyptian Popular Uprisings of 2011”

Osama Bin Laden in a secret letter in 2009 "I  direct my talk specifically to those who support real change, especially the youth," it begins, before declaiming "the tyranny of the control of capital by large companies" that has evidently harmed the American economy."

What would you call a "liberal" state that supports a terrorist, colonial state? Canada's Liberals Condemn Palestine Solidarity Imperialists in need, imperialists indeed. Obama Signs Trade Law protecting Israeli Squatters from Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Britain:  Shunning Israeli goods to become criminal offence for public bodies and student unions "Evidently state involvement in economic decision making is acceptable for an ostensible "free market", provided of course such involvement goes some way to shoring up British relations with a colonial, criminal entity called Israel. The latter also being an important customer for British weapons exports." — Daniel Read

Robert J. Gordon y el ascenso y declive del capitalismo estadounidense

Why the rise of fascism is again the issue Good, but is Pilger part of that "left" which supports Putin or refuse to include the Russian regime in the barbaric  camp? No word against other Western powers, either.

What main limitations do you see in Sanders’ campaign? "The Sanders’ campaign, of course, is easily disparaged as one-dimensional: his foreign policy positions, for example, are disappointingly unclear and in many respects little different from Clinton’s. His specific economic reforms are also less radical than they seem. Breaking up the Big Banks, for example, is the Progressivism of La Follette and George Norris (great 1930s liberal Republicans) redux; socialists would propose instead to nationalize them as public utilities. He would tax the superwealthy at the same levels as LBJ but less than Eisenhower. Moreover, he has carefully sidestepped traditional left demands for reductions in military spending and abolition of the surveillance state. And his employment strategy (the right to a decent job was the cornerstone of FDR’s program) is timid and unoriginal: all recent Democrats have routinely and without conviction advocated job creation through infrastructure investment. ...

Samo Tomšič,  The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan (Verso 2015) "Building on this argument, Tomšič argues that the unconscious is not the realm of the irrational or the private, as we so often think, a place where social reality is suspended. On the contrary, it is a terrain where the political system is most effectively reproduced, a space which is territorialized and organized by social and political reality. Tomšič then shows that the idea of homology between political and libidinal economy implies that the same discursive structures operate in the subjective and social realities. The effect of this is that we are made to feel that the structure of our desires and the structure of our society mirror each other. Consequently, the grip of capitalism intensifies on an unconscious level, making capitalism seem inevitable and unavoidable. In other words, Tomšič shows that whilst capitalism appears to be the effect or our desires, we are better off seeing our desires as the ...

Disney ‘sanitises poverty Britain: More than 85% of public tips on benefit 'frauds' are false Meanwhile, the big thieves in the country are not only walking freely on the street, but they are also rewarded for their ongoing robbery. 

Britain:  Asian sex abusers to be stripped of UK citizenship. White ones to be knighted

" Attempting to ‘save’ the national economy to make things better for its inhabitants, for example, by calling for import controls or other forms of government regulation, is a reactionary policy. Firstly, it endorses the existing power of the national capitalist state to determine what will happen. Secondly, it raises national salvation above solidarity with people in other countries who are facing similar problems. This is particularly an issue for progressive people in the imperialist countries that have a dominant position in the world economy. If radicals make any concessions to those who are seeking to defend their privileges in a bankrupt system, rather than to show how the system is indeed bankrupt and must be overthrown, then they have only a short step from this to supporting imperialist aggression. The records of many wars stand in evidence." — Tony Norfield, author of The City: London and the Power of Global Financ e . (Verso 2016)

'Deschooling Society'

'Democratic Confederalism' or 'Counter-revolution'?

Chomsky and his Critics " I have read Noam Chomsky for years and translated a book of his after my release from prison. I also helped translate a book about him. Not once have I seen in all his abundant work anything in reference to the Syrian people’s feelings about the Assads’ colonialism. He may have mentioned in passing something about the brutality and tyranny of the Assad regime, but that was it. All his views revolved around the United States and Israel. He doesn’t see us. He sees the Palestinians to some extent. Three years ago a few Syrian and Lebanese friends met with him in Beirut. The man knows very little and didn’t seem compelled to listen to his mostly young interlocutors. And it looked like he was irritated with them after the meeting because, instead of them listening to his views, they expressed theirs. I am talking here about a man with indisputable courage and morals, but the traditional Western left is incomparably less courageous and ethical than that in t...

Aleppo is our Guernica — and some are cheering on the Luftwaffe

Meet the volunteer taking care of hundreds of lost children in the Calais Jungle