Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The Right to the City

Gramsci and the Russian Revolution

"The regime's parties, in the hands of the EU"  have dismantled "social rights, through labour reforms, gag laws, attacks on the Catalan language". Independence of Catalonia would provide a chance to cope with "unfettered capitalism". However, independence alone would not be enough. A struggle would revolve around the "constitutional process". A struggle for a Catalan constitution in the interest of the working class. A struggle against "certain Catalan economic elites who intend to implement a constitutional process from a conservative base". And a struggle against the European Union itself. Catalonia: A Democratic Opportunity

The so-called impartiality of a liberal. "Churchill held opinions that would disbar him f rom political office today - despicable yes, but surely massively outweighed by the scale of his accomplishments." Seeing the dismantling of the empire against his will, killing of the Greek resistance, advocating the use of poison gas against recalcitrant tribes, praising Mussolini for being the greatest legislator in Europe, his racism, etc were just opinions and very small things compared to his "accomplishments". " If we were to denude Britain of all the statues of dead politicians and soldiers who held a few views we now find problematic, the country would be littered with unoccupied plinths." Does that mean there is a lack of people who could have statues, people who were progressives? There are only representative of a bloody and colonial past. "Pity the country that needs heroes." Statues like those of Churchill, Rhodes and Havelock celebr...

Caliban and the Witch

Dictatorship dies in darkness

Scathing! Steven Pinker's Apologetics for Western-Imperial Violence

Labour movements and popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt Joel Beinin explains what happened. He begins with the dire situation in Egypt today.

Celebrating empire: that woman on the ten-pound note. Jane Austen

W.E.B DuBois on Robert E. Lee

"Unfortunately, the revolution in the West did not materialise.  While the planned economy succeeded in transforming the lives of millions, Russia was isolated, surrounded and very quickly the regime itself degenerated into a totalitarian dictatorship and finally into a corrupt capitalist autocracy far from the aims of the revolution of 1917." The Russian Revolution — some economic notes and The Russian Revolution of October 1917 Should we regret the Russian Revolution?

When the celebrated Saudi-Jordanian novelist Abdel-Rahman Munif was asked why he named his literary masterpiece on the rise of the petro-modernist cities of the Gulf  Cities of Salt , he replied: By Cities of Salt, I meant cities that grew suddenly in an unnatural and extraordinary way, not as a result of a long historical accumulation that led to their expansion, but more as a kind of explosion due to sudden wealth. This wealth (oil) has led to inflated cities that have become like balloons that can explode and end once they touch something sharp. The same applies to salt. Although it is necessary for life, humans, and all creatures, any increase in its quantity  . . . life becomes unsustainable. This is what is expected of the cities of salt.  . . . When floods come to them, when electricity is cut off, or when you experience real difficulties of one kind or another, we will discover that these cities are fragile places ill fit to be modern...

" Les classes moyennes sont donc structurellement destinées à vivre entre espérance et déception, entre enthousiasme et désenchantement, dans un système qui par nature ne peut qu’engendrer et exacerber des revendications qu’il ne peut satisfaire totalement. La logique objective de leur condition conduit les petits-bourgeois à développer deux sortes d’attentes. Les unes, proportionnées aux capitaux dont ils disposent réellement, les aspirations orthodoxes si l’on peut dire, ont toute chance de recevoir satisfaction, ce qui a pour effet de renforcer l’adhésion et d’alimenter le consensus. Les autres, les aspirations hérétiques, exorbitantes par rapport aux capitaux réels, ont toute probabilité d’être rejetées comme d’irrecevables prétentions, ce qui a pour effet d’attiser la frustration et d’alimenter la contestation." Le double jeu des classes moyennes

Iraqi feminists mobilize against sectarian laws

Revolution, Counter-revolution, and Imperialism in Syria