Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Scotland It’ll be entirely dependent on the stock exchange, and various investments that go into our pension, so you could retire at the age of 66 and find that your pension is several tens of thousands less than you’d been anticipating. What you’ve got up to now is preserved; what you earn from now on will be subject essentially to the vagaries of the stock market, and that’s obviously going to hit younger academics, with more of their career ahead of them, more than it does older ones like me. University College Union strike An interview with Neil Davidson

The Robotic Future

"دور المجتمع الدولي في تدمير سوريا"

In a world ridden with a crisis This is not the first time the Financial Times , a leading paper in denfence of the system, writes about Marxist ideas. In order to save the system a few things have to be done, including a warning on inequality and the "excesses of the free market", and co-opting any potential movement that might threaten the existing power relations. In fact, what the bourgeoisie fear most not the "Activism", or even socialism, but the slipping away of their power to the far-right, or worse, to barabrism. Thus comes this reading of the Communist Manifesto Note: You can read the article only once if you don't have a subscription.

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"Neoliberal globalisation signifies, above all, a new stage in the globalisation of the capital labour-relation. It pitches the workers of the dominant nations and the workers of the global South together, in competition with each other and yet bound together in mutual interdependence, connected by globalised production processes, exploited with different intensities by the same capitalists. But this qualitative, new stage in the evolution of the capital/labour relation possesses a very specific quality: the imperialist division of the world was inherited by capitalism; it is now inherent. In other words, the globalisation of the capital/labour relation, in the context of and on the foundation of a pre-existing division of the world into oppressed and oppressor nations, entails the internalisation of this division. Neoliberal globalisation is, therefore, the unfolding of the imperialist form of the capital relation. As a result, this latest stage of capitalist development ...

Class struggle in Algeria Cranking up the pressure

Iran This time around, protesters chant against all factions and cliques: reformists, conservatives, middle classes and the whole governing class have been called into question. It's the economy, stupid!

"Je pense que le monde est devenu un petit village. Dans le monde musulman, une nouvelle génération a vu le jour, depuis presque 4 décennies. Cette génération a compris que le monde musulman a connu, depuis le XIXe siècle, une chute suite à la domination de l'Occident. Les colonisateurs sont retournés chez eux, mais n'ont pas cessé d'intervenir sur les affaires des pays musulmans. Cette génération de musulmans croit que les pays musulmans sont dépourvus de la civilisation et de la force militaire." Entretien avec Hichem Djaït

The IMF and the World Bank The myth of "helping the poor" and "development" "The joint IMF–World Bank comprehensive approach to debt reduction is designed to ensure that no poor country faces a debt burden it cannot manage. To date, debt reduction packages under the HIPC Initiative have been approved for 36 countries, 30 of them in Africa, providing $76 billion in debt-service relief over time. Three additional countries are eligible for HIPC Initiative assistance." 
 Back in 2008, some analysts showed that the HIPC initiative had failed, and failed miserably. 
Let's take just one aspect behind the failure. "The creteria used for country selection excluded the mostly highly populated developing countries (for example, Nigeria — 120 million inhabitants — which was on the very first list in 1996) and kep only small countries that are both very por and heavily indebted... The countries where the majority of the world's poor people live are...

Spain and beyond The BBC reporting on "the feminist strike in Spain": The 8 March Commission is behind the strike. Its manifesto calls for "a society free of sexist oppression, exploitation and violence" and says: "We do not accept worse working conditions, nor being paid less than men for the same work. Yes, this opens possibilities, but  1. The socialist origins of Women's Day (Luise Zietz and Clara Zetkin) have be rediscovered. 2. The neoliberal capitalism has coopted and contained the emanciptaory movement. 3. Even adjectives like "radical" and "revolutionary" have been emptied of their meanings. 4. There should be no illusion that the Beyonces , the Jolies, the Obamas , the Clintons, the Mays, and the marketing of Malala, or the colouring of the elite, could be part of a real change to "end sexist oppression, exploitation and violence". They have been perpetuating the commodification of women. 5. The fundamental...

"David Harvey denies imperialism"

"The financial crises that affected the developing countries between 1994 and 2002, resulting from the deregulation of the market and the private financial sector as recommended by the World Bank and the IMF, led to an enormous increase in internal public debt. In short, by following the Washington Consensus, governments of developing countries had to give up their currency and capital controls. This was combined with the deregulation of the banking sector in different countries. Private banks had to take more and more risks, which led to numerous crises, beginning with Mexico in December 1994. Capital was massively withdrawn from Mexico, sparking off a chain reaction of bank failures. The Mexican government supported by the World Bank an dthe IMF, transformed the banks' private debt into internal public debt. This took place in extactly the same way in countries as different as Indonesia ((in 1998) and Ecuador (1999/2000).  In addition, even in those countries whose bank...

The healthy French society Have we seen titles like " The Harvey Weinteins of France "?

Iran 1980 The Women's Liberation Movement aimed at opening up a new chapter for the revolution. They were involved for five days, beginning on International Women's Day, March 8, 1979, in continuous marches under the slogan, "We made the revolution for freedom and got unfreedom."  Women and Revolution in Iran

Italy's Ides of March

Any discussion of #MeToo must first acknowledge the fact that the deeply autobiographical testimonies of sexual violence by women actually trace the biography of something else: the workplace. Nested within the accounts of personal violations lies yet another secret, the stunningly dictatorial nature of the workplace, that is, perhaps for the first time, being discussed openly. #MeToo shows the normative nature of the boss’s control over worker’s lives, reproduced each day through the power he holds over employment and enforced each day through intimidation, bullying, and outright violence. #MeToo as our moment to explore possibilities

A Crown Prince in the UK Saudi Crown Prince visit to the UK is hailed as a partnership between the two countries in "fighting terrorism". The state terrorism of the Saudi, the US, the UK, and other states over the last 50 years?  Hang on. There is $100 billion of deals on the table during this visit.  "Human rights"? Bin Slaman is making "a progress in granting Saudi women some rights". In the meantime,  UK should sell more weapons to the Saudis to kill more Yemeni women and children, with a sanction by the High Court. We are "civilised" and "democratic", the British consumers and subjects say. For that reason we exercise pur democratic rights and feeedoms in not questioning a visit of an autocratic (or an Egyptian dictator). Business as usual.

From the archive You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to. — Humbert Wolfe Robert Fisk's crimes against journalism

This is good. What it is about capitalism that makes Keynesianism a horizon even would-be revolutionaries — including Mann himself, he admits — have trouble seeing past. It is not so much an ideological block as a strategic one. ... to the extent that Keynesianism saved capitalism, it was from barbarism rather than socialism. And leftists are pulled to Keynesianism because, deep down, they believe that too. Most have lost confidence that there is a viable political path to socialism, while threats from various shades of the Right have followed one after another. For all the antidemocratic tendencies of Keynesianism, socialists today can hardly see themselves articulating the views of the masses either. The Keynesian counter-revolution

"According to a  Political Instability Task Force  estimate that between 1956 and 2016 a total of forty-three genocides took place, causing the death of about 50 million people. The  UNHCR  estimated that a further 50 million had been displaced by such episodes of violence up to 2008."  " Next to the Jews in Europe," wrote  Alexander Werth ', "the biggest single German crime was undoubtedly the extermination by hunger, exposure and in other ways of . . . Russian war prisoners." Yet the murder of at least 3.3 million Soviet POWs is one of the least-known of modern genocides; there is still no full-length book on the subject in English. It also stands as one of the most intensive genocides of all time: "a holocaust that devoured millions," as  Catherine Merridale  acknowledges. The large majority of POWs, some 2.8 million, were killed in just eight months of 1941–42, a rate of slaughter matched (to my knowledge) only by the 1994 Rwanda genoc...

Religion "I cannot imagine life without neoliberalism." — a student at the London School of Economics, March 2018

Election in Iraq Under the current system, installed by the US following the 2003 invasion, ministers are appointed to different ministries on the basis of ethnicity and sect, in a fashion similar to Lebanon. Although this system was never written into the Iraqi constitution, it has remained in place and has angered those who claim appointments should be overseen by the prime minister. But abolishing the system will prove difficult without enraging the highly influential political actors who currently benefit from the system. "Iraqi Communists and Shia Sadrists unite" This has raised my eyebrows, too.

In  The Road to Serfdom , there is a rather chilling passage in which Hayek writes that “the manager of any plant” needs to be given “considerable” power, and approvingly quotes an engineer on the importance of economic spontaneity versus planning: “there ought to be surrounding the work a comparatively large area of unplanned economic action. There should be a place from which workers can be drawn, and when a worker is fired he should vanish from the job and from the pay-roll. In the absence of such a free reservoir[,] discipline cannot be maintained without corporal punishment, as with slave labour Freedom for whom?

Turkey German firm, sponsor of Bundesliga, fires union members

La russie expliquée par son chauffage

The Muslim Brotherhood's women activists

Complicity in crimes The Royal Family visit to Israel

Even before the advent of neoliberalism, the capitalist economy had thrived on people believing that being afflicted by the structural problems of an exploitative system – poverty, joblessness, poor health, lack of fulfillment – was in fact a personal deficiency. Neoliberalism has taken this internalized self-blame and turbocharged it. It tells you that you should not merely feel guilt and shame if you can’t secure a good job, are deep in debt, and are too stressed or overworked for time with friends. You are now also responsible for bearing the burden of potential ecological collapse. Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals

Akufo-Addo is no radical: he has more in common with French presidents than Ghanaian farmers. What the West wants to hear