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Showing posts from August 27, 2017
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An example of how we do business in Britain A BBC Panorama undercover investigation , has just reported that  abuses and assaults on asylum seekers by G4S staff in a detention centre near Gatwick Airport. Many have heard of the Olympics 2012 scandal by the same security firm. However, the trail of crimes of G4S is long and that has not prevented the British government from encouraging crime.  What other examples do we have: the crimes of the banks (triggering the 2008-09 crisis and austerity), HSBC banks money laundering, Panama Files, a court ruling that selling arms to the Saudi monarchy is legal (although we know it used in killing Yemenis), most aggressive neoliberal regime and the second least regulated product market in the EU 
I have just finished reading The Mosaic of Islam  (the ebook version) I have some comments and a couple of corrections. 
P. 38: "most Muslims do not understand Islam correctly." I find this shocking. It assumes that there is a correct Islam. There is a historical Islam not a correct or a wrong one. As Ahmad Shahab put it beautifully there are contradictions and coherence of what Islam is in most Muslims. It has been the case in most of Islam's history. And the spectrum is so wide from Mauritania to Indonesia.. 
 P. 58: There is no socio-political explanation of the reason(s)/background behind the emergence of Muhammaed and Islam. There is no mention at all of the state and the character of the new society as if the changes in the juriprudence just sprung from a Caliph's brain with no connection to the material life. 
P. 66: "Part of the reasons where there is so much chaos ..." How does the beginning of the chaos in Libya (an uprising and NATO inte
Criminal and barbaric, but we have accepted it and we keep cheering How long would it take you to earn a star player's salary?
Amartya Sen "On the issue of liberalisation and the opening up of economies, Amartya has been rather mainstream. He hasn't raised very deep questions about the whole process and of globalisation in general. He's more of a mainstream economist than many people realise." More substantial criticisms revolve round his role in the current globalisation debate. Richard Jolly, while being an enormous admirer, says: "On the issue of liberalisation and the opening up of economies, Amartya has been rather mainstream. He hasn't raised very deep questions about the whole process and of globalisation in general. He's more of a mainstream economist than many people realise." Food for thought
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Balfour Declaration

Another crime of the British ruling class, whose legacy continues to this day. "It's been nearly 100 years since the document changed the course of history, yet Britain still fails to acknowledge Israel's denial of the Palestinian right to national self-determination - and its own complicity." Balfour Declaration: a study in British duplicity
There are some similarities here with those Western leftists and liberals defending or appeasing Al-assad regime in Syria. Western leftists and China