Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Hasan Al-Turabi "Turabi’s concepts of an Islamic state have aroused significant criticism, not because of  his concepts but rather, because of his practices as a political activist working with military dictators. When he described the nature of an Islamic State, he argued that such a state could take different forms, depending on the specific conditions of particular time and place. However, in accord with the principle of  tawhid , the state would not be secular – separating religion from public life. In whatever form the Islamic state took, it would emphasize justice and avoid oppression. The criticism of Turabi comes from the fact that, in practice, he supported oppressive military dictatorships that claimed to be implementing Shariʻa."

"Reconciliation no longer a taboo?" Sooner or later, and this did happen before, the two reactionary forces, will sit and work together to maintain the status quo, to absorb parts of the crisis.

"... Capitalism for the 150 or so years [sic] of it's existence was based on production of material goods from which surplus value derives that in turn was divided between industry profits, interest payments and rent...The  heyday of this economy in terms of its employment of labor forces in manufacturing (production centered) activities was between 1940 and 1980. Today production centered economies have been dissembled with manufacturing in the US employing at best 10 percent of the workforce...Japan and Germany around 20 percent...top Asian tigers like South Korea about the same...even China overall has never seen manufacturing employment rise above 25 percent of employment. And the rest of the world is experiencing what has been dubbed "premature deindustrialization".  The current economy, if you want to call it that, is based on money games, Himalayan sized debt, leverage, and extraction of "pounds of flesh" from the bones of humanity. It operates ...

Brazil on Edge "In spite of a founding platform that emphasizes ethics in politics, the party has engaged in the same appalling behavior as the country’s other capitalist parties. From phony contracts and mob connections in PT-ruled cities in the 1990s to bribes for votes at the federal level in the 2000s, the party has been transformed into a business-as-usual operation... However, " the treatment the PT has received is hypocritical and unfair, even by capitalist democracy’s shallow standards."

Class and Politics in Post Revolutionary  Iran:  A Brief Introduction

Israel squeezes lifeline of Jerusalem’s Afro-Palestinians

" Europe’s silence in the face of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hostile takeover of two of his country’s independent newspapers over the last weeks is being chalked up to the need to avoid jeopardizing Ankara’s finger in the dike of even more massive waves of Middle Eastern migration into the continent. But Europe’s cavalier attitude toward this kind of rising authoritarianism on its eastern border is more than just strategic indifference — it’s symptomatic of a steady erosion of core civil liberties within the EU itself. Government encroachments on free speech are an attempt to tighten control and consolidate power in the face of political stress and rising dissent . Absent an underlying sense of threat or insecurity in the system, even the most revolutionary speech is only words, scarcely menacing and unworthy of a reaction that would attest to its significance. Restrictions on speech meet with least resistance when populations at large feel buffeted by the sam...

Amilcar Cabral, Imperialism and Neo-colonialism "The postcolony is an illusion, reinforced and spurred by native elements controlling political or state power. The postcolony is an illusion because this class is subjected to the whims and impulse of imperialists (Fanon 1961; Cabral 1979). This pseudo bourgeoisie, however, strongly nationalist, cannot fulfil a historical function; ‘it cannot freely guide the development of productive forces, and in short cannot be a national bourgeoisie’. (Cabral 1979:129)."

The birth of Baghdad was a landmark for world civilisation

George Tarabishi (Aleppo 1939 - Paris 2016) The Syrian thinker George Tarabishi passes away today.

We want their parking spaces too, say middle classes

Crisis in Brazil - centre left government could fall "Brazil was teetering on the brink of a constitutional crisis on Thursday after a judge blocked President Dilma Rousseff’s appointment of her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to her cabinet, prompting clashes in Congress and on the streets. Just as Mr Lula da Silva’s swearing-in ceremony drew to a close, a federal judge issued an injunction, suspending the ex-president’s appointment on the grounds that it prevented "t he free exercise of justice" in corruption investigations. Opposition politicians hailed the decision as a triumph for Brazilian democracy, while the government vowed to appeal, lambasting the order as part of a “coup” by the country’s elite, reminiscent of Brazil’s period of military rule. Brazilian assets rallied as investors bet on the government’s collapse. “Since the end of the dictatorship and the transition to democracy over recent years, this is our most dramatic political mo...

Optimism about a revolution aside ... Speakers' Corner, London

Surnames and Social Mobility: England 1230-2012 "The relative constancy of the intergenerational correlation of underlying social status across very different social environments in England from 1800 to 2012 suggests that it stems from the nature of inheritance of characteristics within families. Strong forces of familial culture, social connections, and genetics must connect the generations. There really are quasi-physical “Laws of Inheritance.” This interpretation is reinforced by the finding of Clark in work with other co-authors that all societies observed – including the USA, Sweden, India, China and Japan - have similar low rates of social mobility when surnames are used to identify elites and underclasses, despite an even wider range of social institutions (Clark et al. 2014)."

Workers and Thieves: Labour Movemets and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt

The Egyptian Counterrevolution Despite the best efforts of Egypt’s elite, the struggle for democracy has not been extinguished. "It’s important when discussing counterrevolution to understand what exactly we are talking about. The role played by the Muslim Brotherhood towards the Egyptian Revolution was one of betrayal, was a classical betrayal by a reformist, non-revolutionary movement. It attempted to broker a deal with the old regime to get a place at the table and to share power with the old regime. Yet it failed to do so. The Muslim Brotherhood was not a central part of the counterrevolution. You could say that it was understandably the first beneficiary of the revolution, in the sense that it was the first freely elected political force that came to power — in formal terms, at least — in the wake of the revolution. But it was also  the first victim  of the counterrevolution. It’s important to understand this because some people blithely talk about “two wings” o...

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”  –Assata Shakur

On the Violence of Politics "'Violence has no place in politics.’ People might have legitimate grievances, but they can only be resolved by legitimate means. It is never acceptable to start attacking other people. I want to suggest something different: that in the end, it’s precisely  this  impulse, the horrified rejection of any violence within politics, the keening appeal to legitimacy in all things, which is ultimately capable of bringing about the most horrific forms of repression."

Greece: Syriza's Rise and Fall

Labor Protests Multiply in China as Economy Slows, Worrying Leaders China opens a new university every week

Riddles of Yellow and Red

US millennials feel more working class than any other generation

Foreign Policy, foreignpolicy.com, sometimes publishes good analyses, but they can be funny as well:  " Obama is right to engage with Cuba — as long as he doesn't leave human rights behind, Christopher Sabatini writes." (14 March 2016)  The biggest violator of "human rights" at home and abroad should lecture poor, little Cuba about "human rights".

تونس لاشك أن الأمر لا علاقة له بالوعي أو الفهم لكنني كنت منذ طفولتي لا أحب "تحية العلم" أو ما يسمونه "النشيد الوطني" باستثناء ذلك البيت الشهير (اذا الشعب أراد الحياة....) حين كان يخرج من حناجرنا زمن المظاهرات والمصادمات مع البوليس. كما أنني بصراحة لا أحب الوطن (وطني) إلا بالقدر الذي يرتبط فيه هذا المكان أو ذاك بذكريات وأشخاص أعزاء. ومنذ نعومة أظافري ،كما يقولون ،كنت أشعر أن كلمات مثل الوطنية وحب الوطن ليست سوى كذب ونفاق (أو بلهجة "شعبية" حشوات). والعلم ، الوطني هو أيضا، لم يكن ي عني لي سوى رمز لمؤسسات السلطة، المتسلطة كما هو اسمها.... وهكذا فالتشوه الأخلاقي الذي أعانيه في علاقة بالوطن والوطنية لا علاقة له بطبيعة الوعي الذي راكمته خلال كل هذه السنوات بل أظنه تشوه يتعلق بالجينات والكروموزومات التي تتجول في أعماق جسدي، أو ربما الأمر يتعلق بما يسميه فرويد اللاوعي الذي يخضني بدون حتى أن أعلم بوجوده...... لذلك ليس غريبا أن كل العقارات التلفزيونية لم تعالج تشوهي الأخلاقي ذاك. فقط أصبح الأمر يتعلق بقناعة: الوطنية هي العبودية الطوعية والتحرر الفعلي ليس تحر...

Ces gents là ...

"There is no such thing as imperialism-lite" A soft take by Jenkins

" It was remarked that of the $150bn (£105bn) spent in aid globally,  still only 1%  directly reaches southern civil society organisations. I know from experience how frustrating southern NGOs find it when there’s always money to write a report or host a workshop; but never enough for more local staff. If poverty could be overcome from report writing, then we would have solved it long ago."  — Deborah Doane, the Guardian, 13 March 2016 The Anti-Poverty Swindle The Power of a Dollar NGOs: In the service of imperialism

The ruling class has to reproduce its kind and its ideas: the dominant ideology of every society is the ideology of the ruling class. The students of elite institutions are part of that repoduction. They defend the system and justify its functions. " The type of institutions attended by the global mega rich are also much more likely to be elite institutions, rather than local colleges. Harvard in the US is the single most likely name to be found on the CV of a billionaire, with Harvard Business School also popular. Reflecting the rise in Russian wealth, Moscow is among the most popular university cities for these billionaires, including Moscow State University and a range of Moscow specialist institutes. Stanford University in California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have become the launchpads for a rising number of tech billionaires. Google's Sergey Brin was a postgraduate at Stanford. Among UK universities, the London School of Economics and Cambri...

Joseph Messad in 2011:   " The US-British-Saudi-Israeli alliance in the region today is following the same strategies they followed in late 1960s and early 1970s and continuing the strategy they followed with the PLO in the early 1990s. They are crushing those uprisings they can crush and are co-opting those they cannot. The efforts to fully co-opt the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have made great strides over the last few months, though they have not been successful in silencing or demobilising the populations. On the other side, Bahrain's uprising was the first to be crushed with the efforts to crush the Yemenis continuing afoot without respite. It was in Libya and in Syria where the axis fully hijacked the revolts and took them over completely. While Syrians, like Libyans before them, continue their valiant uprising against their brutal regime demanding democracy and social justice, their quest is already doomed unless they are able to dislodge the US-British-Saudi-Qat...

How Greeks Opened Their Hearts to Strangers

Of course Hillary Clinton "is against people fighting bigots collectively. She knows that if they carry on, it's only a matter of time before the protests start showing up at her venues. In other news, it would be good if the protests started showing up at her venues as well. There are few things she and Trump disagree with, but on those things she manages to be the more reactionary one. And being more reactionary than Trump is actually not easy. You'd have to be the sort of person who isn't embarrassed to have campaigned for Goldwater to manage that." —  Elise Hendrick

Apple isn't your friend

Neil Faulkner’s new book, Lawrence of Arabia’s War: the Arabs, the British, and the remaking of the Middle East will be published on 21 April by Yale University Press.

Cairo: A Museum of Ghosts

Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why

Is the World Living or Dead? "[T]ere's considerable evidence that human social behaviors, even in the most specialized and highly technologically mediated societies, have not really evolved much in sophistication and may even be said to have regressed in some ways, compared with the prior understandings of peoples living at a much lower level of specialization and technological intervention. For we have accepted monstrous imbalances of power and seem to have lost the determinative notion of reciprocity that gave some earlier forms of social organization their stability. And sadly, it is science, aiding and aided by capital, which has actually been key in dismantling the idea of social and environmental reciprocity and instead justifying a profoundly anti-social and anti-ecological set of behaviors."

The very same media that participated in the counter-revolution and supported the reactionary forces from day one: they chose the name ("Arab Spring"), they beat the drums of "democractic elections" and shouted "transitional justice", they supported the powerful and the more financed who was able to perpetuate the status quo, but offering some concessions such as some liberties and clownish parliament, they have re-defined the slogans raised by those who rose up on 10 December 2011... The terrorism of today is the creation of your Terrorism of yesterday: the invasion of Iraq, and in the case of Tunisia it is the destruction of Libya, and it goes back decades ago when imperialist economic policies (through the IMF, the World Bank, and other institutions), support of dictatoship, uneven development, made all type of diseases possible. Terrorism in Tunisia

Syria: "The revolution continues" Life and Death in Syria (in figures)

" The Evil Empire Has the World in a Death Grip " Western banks backed up by the World Bank are even worse looters than the oil and timber companies. Perkins writes: “Over the past three decades, sixty of the world’s poorest countries have paid $550 billion in principal and interest on loans of $540 billion, yet they still owe a whopping $523 billion on those same loans. The cost of servicing that debt is more than these countries spend on health or education and is twenty times the amount they receive annually in foreign aid. In addition, World Bank projects have brought untold suffering to some of the planet’s poorest people. In the past ten years alone, such projects have forced an estimated 3.4 million people out of their homes; the governments in these countries have beaten, tortured, and killed opponents of World Bank projects.”

Imperialism and super exploitation  (Part 1) Thoughts on the debate on imperialism  (Part 2) Can we be so clear about the division between ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ nations?

Palestinian teachers' strike marks major rift between public and PA

"هل قرأنا القرآن" أو النقد المزيف الأساس الذي يقوم عليه نقد يوسف الصديق لما يسميه "المؤسسة التفسيرية" هو التأويل، أو مثلما جاء عليه عنوان كتابه: القراءة. فهو يحاول، بأساليب فيها الكثير من الاستعراض المعرفي (المجاني أحيانا)، أن يصور تلك المؤسسة التفسيرية كنوع من المؤامرة الشاملة لقولبة النص القرآني وتحنيطه في تأويل (قراءة) أحادي يسلبه طابعه "الكوني" و"العقلاني" الأصلي الذي يميزه، بحسب الصديق، حين كان يتخذ شكل "الشذرات الشفوية"، قبل أن يتم تجميده في مصحف مكتوب موحد ورسمي (مصحف عثمان). عمل يوسف الصديق إذا يستهدف استعادة النص الضائع قبل أن تطاله يد المؤسسة التفسيرية، واستعادة طابعه "العقلاني" وأسلوبه الذي يجعله بحسب الصديق "نشيدا كونيا" لا مجرد أحكام شرعية وحكايات خرافية كتلك التي تمتلئ بها كتب التفسير والسيرة. وهكذا فإن ميدان نقد الصديق للتراث التفسيري ليس التاريخ بل التأويل (القراءة). والمؤسسة التفسيرية المنقودة في الكتاب المذكور لا تقع ضمن التاريخ، بل ضمن مؤامرة (تتقصد تآمرها ذاك وواعية به) لطمس الروح ...