Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Turkey Context of a failed coup "This analytical framework is then used to examine the outcomes in four countries where modernizing, nationalist projects took shape under the direction of secular elites: Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Tunisia. By the closing decades of the twentieth century, all four had reached an impasse. The Egyptian and Tunisian regimes had largely discarded their nationalist trappings and become Western client states, in thrall to the Washington Consensus—especially Tunisia, which was, in Tuğal’s words, ‘the most orthodox neoliberal regime in the Arab world’ and something of a poster-child for the  IMF ." See book review here Note: It is likely that the failed coup in Turkey going to strengthen the AKP project: Islamism, 'neoliberalism' and more authoritarian rule. Reactions: " Portraying Erdoğan and the fascist AKP dictatorship as if they were democratic after this coup attempt is an approach even more dangerous than the coup atte

لنفترض أن العملية البشعة التي وقعت في فرنسا حدثت في اسرائيل.....لا شك أن الفيسبوك كان سيشتعل بالتهليل، وكان منفذ العملية سيسمى "استشهاديا"، والضحايا كانوا سيسمون "قطعان اليهود الصهاينة"، والعملية نفسها ستسمى "عملية فدائية"....وما الى ذلك.... هذا علما وأن مثل هذه العمليات التي تستهدف أناسا أبرياء سيكون من ضمنهم لا شك أغلبية من المسحوقين والفقراء، أي ضحايا النظام المستهدف، لا تؤدي إلا لتعزيز هذا النظام وتفتح له الباب لمزيد العسكرة والقمع والاحتماء بأكثر القوانين زجرية وكتم الأن فاس، وتعزز ما يسمى "بالوحدة الوطنية"، أي التوحد في حضن النظام، وتأجيج النزعات العنصرية والشوفينية سواء حدثت هذه العمليات في فرنسا أو اسرائيل أو في دولة على كوكب المريخ.... في فرنسا أو في اسرائيل، في أمريكا أو في تونس، المجموعات الارهابية لا يمكن أن تمثل عنصر تحرر، ولا تحمل في برامجها أي بديل تحرري للبشر من الاستغلال والطبقية، لذلك فعملياتها، أينما كانت، تصب حتما في خانة النظام السائد فتشد أزره بقدر ما تحطم معنويات الشغيلة وعموم الكادحين، وتفرض صراعا جانبيا يهمش مح

The Long Depression: Marxism and the Long Crisis of Capitalism by Michael Roberts (Haymarket Books, 19 July 2016)

Britain Peter Taaffe: "It would be better if the Right resigned and formed their own full capitalist party, but failing that it would be much more preferable to have a Labour party which goes back to its socialist roots." ( an article published by the Express , a supporter of the Ukip and owned by the 48th richest person in Britain)

سيظل الفقراء والمسحوقين وقودا للحروب البورجوازية طالما أنهم لا يصارعون لحساب تحررهم الخاص والحركة القومية العربية بيسارها ويمينها هي الوجه الآخر للحركة القومية الصهيونية كلاهما يضع الشغيلة وعموم الكادحين رهينة نزاعاتهم التي هي ليست سوى نزاعات المنافسة الرأسمالية.....لنتذكر كيف أن دولة اسرائيل والبورجوازية الفلسطينية قد سارعا الى عقد اتفاقات بينهما للحيلولة دون تطور الانتفاضة الأولى والثانية (اتفاقات  أوسلو) ولقطع الطريق أمام أي تضامن بين الشغيلة الفلسطينيين واخوانهم في اسرائيل الذين بدأت تظهر احتجاجاتهم وتنامت في صفوفهم موجة رفض الانخراط في الجيش ورفض القتال، وذلك بتغذية النزعات الأكثر شوفينية وعنصرية، علما وأن دولة اسرائيل هي من درب أولى دفعات الحرس الخاص بدولة فلسطين، وهي من يدفع لها شهريا جزء من ميزانيتها. الحرب الحالية هي من جهة اسرائيل تأتي كرد على تنامي الحركة الاجتماعية من اضرابات واسعة وحتى مظاهرات ضد آثار الأزمة الاقتصادية التي تضرب بقوة منذ 2011، وهذا يهدف خلق حالة "وحدة وطنية" تسمح لآلة القمع بكتم كل نفس احتجاجي باسم الدفاع عن "الدولة المهددة بالعصابات

"nine truths about terrorism that nobody wants to hear" Note: this does not include state terrorism .

مقتطف من قصيدة تل الزعتر لمظفر النواب

Sanders' has officially endorsed Clinton? Well, what about those who had illusions in him? Being selective and picking up this or that point in his social democratic programme is not seeking real change, but it is trying to manage what you have in a slightly better way. I've never trusted him since the day I read about his would-be Middle East policy.

The Brexit crisis (a free ebook)

Viva La Revolución by Eric Hobsbawm review – Latin America from leftwing hopes to bloody dictatorships

Yes, not only in Greece and not only minimum wages.   In the time of the fall in the rate of profit, wages in general and everywhere, have to stay as they are or decrease in relative terms. "Destructive creation" in general has to accelerate if we want investment to resume and capitalist growth to follow suit. That's the recipe. Take it or leave it.

" All human societies, whether tacitly or overtly, assume that nature has ordained their social arrangements. Or, to put it another way, part of what human beings understand by the word ‘nature’ is the sense of inevitability that gradually becomes attached to a predictable, repetitive social routine." Those who create and re-create race today are not just the mob that killed a young Afro-American man on a street in Brooklyn or the people who join the Klan and the White Order. They are also those academic writers whose invocation of self-propelling ‘attitudes’ and tragic flaws assigns Africans and their descendants to a special category, placing them in a world exclusively theirs and outside history—a form of intellectual apartheid no less ugly or oppressive, despite its righteous (not to say self-righteous) trappings, than that practised by the bioand theo-racists; and for which the victims, like slaves of old, are expected to be grateful. They are the academic ‘libera

Capitalist democracy Around  70 percent  of Britain’s newspapers are owned by just three companies: Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, the Daily Mail’s General Trust, and Trinity Mirror. A university professor told me the other that we had a "participatory democracy". He didn't at least say "a representative democracy" as the dominant version goes. These people who believe in the system are in denial. It is no about reality or facts anymore; it is about belief and having faith in the system.  The Media Against Jeremy Corbyn

Latin America "The End of Post-neoliberalism"

The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between  by  Hisham Matar

Here is another one-dimensional way of thinking : A piece that never mentions the why (i.e. the geo-politics, the global and regional context, the so-called 'national-interest' cover or motive, etc) behind the belief, but focuses on the individual's neurons and the way that belief is held. Note also that Blair is a trained barrister by profession. His main skill is to know how to plead in court, using arguments and rhetoric not just knowledge of the legal system. Lawyers in general work within the system and they rarely challenge it. In fact they work to justify it most of the time.