Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Britain "The post-Brexit Tory vote is contradictory. The economically nationalist petty bourgeois voter has little in common with the affluent swing voters currently favoring May against Labour or the discredited Liberals. The business and financial class condensed in the Tory leadership is remote from the concerns of grassroots Conservatives. Such broad coalitions forged in these moments of crisis can last, but only if the political and economic situation begins to stabilize." That's a crucial "if". Back to the 1930s with Theresa May

The mediocrity of Chomsky's replies are shocking! A correspondence with Noam Chomsky

Attacks on "populism" seek to enshrine the idea that there is no alternative

Here we shall remain, a wall upon your chests, And in your throats A sliver of glass, a cactus thorn; In your eyes A fiery storm (…) We will guard the shade of our fig and olive trees, Implant thoughts that will grow like yeast in dough. (…) A burning hell rages in our hearts, The walls of the tank: on Palestinian resistance

France An X-ray of a shattered vote

When communism inspired Americans   (NYT)

Britain The Tories just dropped a privatization bombshell

The US military moves deeper into Africa

Does the FN has an economic strategy?

Afghanistan Surprise! Surprise! Recycling Hekmatyar, not mentioned here, but it is stated in the Arabic version of the article that he was supported by the U.S., including receiving money from the CIA through Pakistan.

The waste of treating homes as commodities (a UN report)

U.S. Chris Hedges explains why an uprising is coming

Islamism and the contemporary Arab world

To the Varoufakises and the Masons who are hell-bent on maintaining/saving international liberalism Capitalism's noisiest enemies are now on the right

What is to be done in Venezuela?

A book review The H-Word by Perry Anderson

The Arab world needs to admit it's racist

'Civilized' "Europe's dirty secret"

On current exchange rates, Britain is the world’s fifth-largest economy, but no one seriously believes it produces more goods and services than India, Brazil or Indonesia. The UK’s prosperity level is not even in the top 15 per cent of IMF members. The US, Germany and France are far ahead of Britain in the  productivity league table and output per head and per worker does not even match that of Italy. Spending on public services is severely strained: at 39 per cent of national income, it is 5 percentage points below that of Germany.  Britain's economy: how strong is it?

How Capitalism Endures

Why the labour theory of value is true

"To save the system, the gains of the 1930s had to be rolled back. They were rolled back. Of course, Keynesians and their supporters never fail to place the blame for this on Reagan, Thatcher, and neoliberalism, but th ey themselves bear most of the responsibility. The policies they advocated and implemented failed in the end and, because they failed, new people and new ideas naturally came along to replace them and fix the mess. Moreover, the Keynesianism that dominated the left helped to demobilize working people—by encouraging them to trust Keynesian politicians, policies, and doctrines as well the leaders of their unions, instead of trusting their own ability to run their lives themselves and re-establish society on new, human foundations. As a result, the new people and ideas that came along were reactionary ones." — Andrew Kliman

It is probably the best introduction I have read about understanding the modern English society   (written in 1988)

The European Economic Community "which made May Day into a public holiday was a body composed not, in spite of Mrs Thatcher's views on the subject, of socialist but of predominantly anti-socialist governments. Western official May Days were recognitions of the need to come to terms with the tradition of the unofficial May Days and to detach it from labour movements, class consciousness and class struggle. But how did it come about that this tradition was so strong that even its enemies thought they had to take it over, even when, like Hitler, Franco and Petain, they destroyed the socialist labour movement?" (My emphasis ) Birth of a holiday

European youth "ready to join mass revolt"

Abortion: how women break the taboo in Yemen

The world hasn't had this many people dying of famine and diseases since WWII "The international response? Essentially, a giant shrug of indifference." and Invasion of fall armyworms ravages crops in 20 African countries

"How  could Germany of all countries have become a paragon, politically stable and economically successful, of democratic capitalism in the 1970s – ‘Modell Deutschland’ – and later, in the 2000s, Europe’s uncontested economic and political superpower? Any explanation must have recourse to a Braudelian  longue durée , in which destruction can be progress – utter devastation turned into a lasting blessing – because capitalist progress  is  destruction, of a more or less creative sort. In 1945 unconditional surrender forced Germany, or what was left of its western part, into what Perry Anderson has called a ‘second round of capitalist transformation’ of the sort no other European country has ever had to undergo. Germany’s bout was a violent – sharp and short – push forward into social and economic ‘modernity’, driving it for ever from the halfway house of Weimar, in a painful dismantling of structures of political domination and social solidarity, feudal fetters which had held back

Note: there is no single word about media ownership in the country. For example, 80% of newspapers are owned by 5 families. Two papers, at least are owned by a Russian oligarch.  Freedom of speech! UK slips to 40th in press freedom ranking

The article implies that France, unlike Spain and Germany, has not carried out enough market reforms thus the clash will happen when  Macron will try to slash here and cut there. The Socialist Parti in France has been timid in implementing "neo-liberalism": "the public sectorbis still big, the unions are powerful, the social benefits are too good ..."  Despite of what has happened, the leading business and mainstream media defend the continuation of the "neo-liberal" project. For them the "centre" has to hold. In the case of France, Macron is their best candidate to save the Centre and implement the reforms the ruling class has been pushing for. " Social unrest is France's biggest risk "