Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Britain This would be my title: A bit-of-social-democracy vs neoliberal capitalism?

Classical Egyptian cinema Cairo Station by Youssef Shahine

Dubai's Labor Camps from 1950 to 2008

"Onur Ulas Ince combines an analysis of political economy and political theory to examine the impact of colonial economic relations on the development of liberal thought in Britain. He shows how a liberal self-image for the British Empire was constructed in the face of the systematic expropriation, exploitation, and servitude that built its transoceanic capitalist economy. The resilience of Britain's self-image was due in large part to the liberal intellectuals of empire, such as John Locke, Edmund Burke, and Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and their efforts to disavow the violent transformations that propelled British colonial capitalism. Ince forcefully demonstrates that liberalism as a language of politics was elaborated in and through the political economic debates around the contested meanings of private property, market exchange, and free labor." Forthcoming Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism

The Disappeared of Syria

Some good news at last The U.K. Faces Longest Fall in Living Standards on Record

Corpus Separatum?

"Virtually all existing countries have to face difficult questions over how to relate to past instances of violence, injustice and oppression – often publicly sanctioned." I still think that moving statues to museums is a much better way. How to diffuse controversial   monuments So, a statue of Mussolini is considered controversial?

The latest from the book of hypocrisy The so-called international community, world leaders and others talk about "peace" and condemn Trump. Orwellian. Imperialist criminal states that supported a settler-colonial states for decades with different means, in collaboration with so-called Arab leaders who have been complicit and sanctioned one betrayal after another from Camp David to Oslo, disagree with Trump!

"The vulgar economists of capitalism have tried to deny this contradiction of capitalist production ever since it was hinted at by the likes of Sismondi, and logically suggested by the law of value based on labour, first proposed by Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The apologists dropped classical theory and turned to a marginal utility theory of value to replace the dangerous labour theory.  They turned to equilibrium as the main tendency of modern economies and they ignored the effect of time and change.  Only the market and exchange became matters of economic analysis, not the production and exploitation of labour." Grossman on capitalism's contradictions

Obama says Libya was 'worst mistake' of his presidency Fuck you and your 'international community'

University of Cambridge: Modern Day Slavery Mastermind. Public issue Draft A 311-page report!

Iran Four months without wages! Sugar workers go on strike

This is excellent. Lessons of Zimbabwe

A letter by James Baldwin to Angela Davis (1970)

Syria UK money 'diverted to extremists',says the BBC Well, it must be an exception not a pattern :)

A student of Arabic thought that the word "madrasa" in the Arab countries was like the Afghan "madrasa". No. The Washington Post  reported  in 2002: The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings …. The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books …. The Council on Foreign Relations  notes : The 9/11 Commission  report (PDF)  released in 2004 said some of Pakistan’s religious schools or madrassas served as “incubators for violent extremism.” Since then, there has been much debate over madrassas and their connection to militancy. Promoting violence — in the form of jihad against the Soviet invaders and their local proxies — was the goal of the U.S.-funded education effor...

After nearly a year of the Trump presidency, do you regret your criticisms of Barack Obama?  "Oh, no. I told the truth. When I said drone strikes are crimes against humanity, when I said Obama bailed out Wall Street rather than Main Street — I shall forever support that. I was just speaking to the reality that people are hurting, and we have to do the same thing under Trump as we did under Obama. They tried to make me the darling of the liberal establishment. I refused it. "  — Cornel West, in an interview with The New York Times

Despite "having adopted a philosophical worldview predicated on the sanctity of individual autonomy and a constraint on sovereign power, Egyptian liberalism has from its inception been a project inextricably reliant on a dictatorial state apparatus to do its bidding." It seems that the author hopes that one day the Liberals in Egypt overcome their contradictions and become a progressive national bourgeoisie. I think not. Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism

Terrorists of feather flock together. How Britain did Gaddafi's dirty work Ian Cobain is the author of