Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A new book Spain's Moriscos

India Modi rules, Harvard doesn't Aristotle: “Even if they have no share in office, the poor, provided only that they are not outraged or deprived of their property, will be quiet enough.” … “prevent the lower from getting more; they must be kept down, but not ill-treated. … Friendship [among members of the ruling class] we believe to be the greatest good of states and the preservative of them against revolutions.” Jlowry: " We should avoid designating India or any other capitalist state as a democracy . They are oligarchies i.e. states where the rich rule as opposed to democracies where the poor or unpropertied rule. As Aristotle notes in his ”Politics” it is quite inadequate to define democracies as the rule of the majority and oligarchy as the rule of the few; it is rather that the poor are many and the rich few, which is why he notes that the mark of a democracy is selection by lot, that of an oligarchy election by ballot , which the rich will usually win. Wal B

" Ideas and words are often products of their time. That is certainly true of heterosexuality, which was borne out of a time when American life was becoming more regularised. As Blank argues, the invention of heterosexuality corresponds with the rise of the middle class." (BBC online) The invention of 'heterosexuality'

Why left-wing economics is not the answer to right-wing populism

"Do not believe these croakers but give the lie to their dismal croaking by showing by our actions that the vigour and vitality of our race is unimpaired and that our determination is to uphold the Empire that we have inherited from our fathers as Englishment". In his view, the British would "continue to pursue that course marked out for us by an all-wise hand and carry out mission of bearing peace, civilisation and good government to the uttermost ends of the earth".  That man on the five-pounds note. Bath, England,  Speech of 26 July 1897

England On Owen Jones' Doncaster day out

21st century slavery propping up in Sicily: rape, beating and exploitation

Europe Competition to outperform the other is good. To achieve a high enough rate of profit is good. To have weak or obsolete unions is good. To have a reserve army so the workers accept their conditions is good. If regulations undermine profit, they are not good.   Drivers living in trucks for months

Is France's Marine le Pen far-right? This is a good analysis.

"You can spew your visceral hatred for Trump, Farage, Le Pen, Gert Wilders or other far-right “populists” – whom I prefer to call racists –  all you want, but an abandonment of the Syrian people using the age-old adage of “it’s all America’s doing” and absolving the crimes of such people puts you in cahoots with these very same bigots." That father

U.S. 1.5 million missing black men

Egyptian union leaders acquitted of criminal charges face retrial

Capitalism's next crisis

"From isolated group of fighters to Caliphate"

Learning from the Great Depression

" Assange is a man of what I once called the Chomskyan left and what modern critics call the  regressive left . He is against the west, often for good reasons. Like so many of his kind, however, he will then ally with any force, however reactionary, which opposes the west as well." Nick Cohen, the Guardian Yes, I agree that allying oneself with Farage and Trump makes you reactionary. I also conclude from the above that anyone who opposes "the west" is reactionary. For Cohen assumes that "the west" is progressive. I think not.  I think that Cohen is a defender of "the west", which means he allies himself with a history of state imperialism' crimes of western regimes: wars, invasions, plunder of public wealth, huge inequality, tacit backing of theocracies and dictatorships, enslavement through debt, harbouring of oligarchs, exploitation, instituional racism (especially in the US) ...  What is Cohen's "west" if not that global

Who's killing civilians in Syria?

" What then, do human rights do in a context in which both state and subject are being transformed by neoliberal governmental ratio- nalities? The problem with human rights today is not so much that they conceal their own reliance on national rights, I suggest, but that they have become a discourse that is used to justify both state violence and forms of conversion, including economic conversion, on a global scale." Human rights and the collateral damage of neoliberalism