Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Plan to publish full works of Marx A German academic is leading the project in Berlin (An FT article for subscribers)

Parasitism Housing:  "No region in England and Wales is affordable for workers on median salary." — Financial Times , 15 June 2018

Documenting crimes The First Gulf War, the chemical attack on the Iraqi village of Halabja in 1988 and the role played by foreign companies in the build-up of chemical weapons in the region were the main topics at the most recent "Visions of Iran" film festival in Cologne.  Halabja – casting a long shadow

Mazzucato draws inspiration for her activism from two sources: on the one hand the heterodox economics of Karl Polanyi and on the other hand the democratic ambition of John F Kennedy. JFK inspires Mazzucato to call for the economy to be given a “new mission”. Polanyi’s analysis of the economy as a constructed social artefact makes this seem possible. If the market was made by the state then it can presumably be remade. The question, of course, is how. Unfortunately, the boldness of Mazzucato’s vision and the brashness of her rhetoric are not matched by the depth or coherence of her answer to this basic question. "Mariana Mazzucato's bold mission to reform the global economy"

Someone has advised me not to feel guilty by living in Britain. Here is an answer: "I was in the Indian Police five years, and by the end of that time I hated the imperialism I was serving with bitterness which I probably cannot make clear. In the free air of England that kind of thing is not fully intelligible. In order to hate imperialism you have got to be part of it." — George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier Orwell had his reasons at the time. I have my different reasons today. The fundamental remains: Britain is an imperialist state and I am part of it.

Science and Islam (all episodes)

Liberals are criticizing the Korean summit from the Right See also A Murderous History of Korea

Britain McGarvey is withering about “the poverty industry”, run by the middle classes, for doing things not “ with  the community but  to  it”. Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey

Abortion Bahrain vs. Ireland Bahrain vs. Poland Bahrain and Tunisia vs. Spain Turkey // Sweden, Greece, Italy Turkey vs. Argentina Egypt // Ireland

"The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that global food production is more than adequate to feed the world. For instance,  2,577 million tons of cereal  were forecasted to be produced in 2016, with 13 million tons leftover after demand is met. Worldwide we already  produce  over two thousand kilocalories (kcal) per person on average, the minimum level of energy humans require according to  USDA dietary guidelines . Still, with all this production,  780 million people are living with chronic hunger , many of them living in rural areas dependent upon agriculture for their livelihoods." Capital's hunger in abundance

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul " As anti-foreigner sentiment, particularly during the migrant crisis, continues to plague Germany and the rest of Europe, Fear Eats the Soul has never seemed more relevant. Made around the midpoint of his career, Fear Eats the Soul is a powerful and accessible introduction to Fassbinder’s work. It’s one of his very best films. It stars  Brigitte Mira  as Emmi, an elderly cleaner who falls in love with Ali ( El Hedi ben Salem , Fassbinder’s lover), a much younger Moroccan immigrant. The couple face prejudice from their neighbours, and the strain threatens their relationship. Racism and xenophobia were fiercely damned by Fassbinder previously in  Katzelmacher  (1969) and  Whity  (1971), but the use of melodrama to tell this very moving love story adds a painfully human dimension to the tale." — BFI

Coca-Cola as a serial human rights offender

Class struggle in Turkey "Picture yourself in this situation: You have managed to form a trade union in your workplace.  You've gotten formal recognition from the government.  Under the law, your employer is obligated to open negotiations with you.  But the employer refuses.  So you go out on the picket line.  A year goes by, and the situation doesn't change.  What do you do? This is what happened to workers at DHL Express in Turkey.  They have been on the picket line since 17 July 2017 -- over 300 days.  They have now turned to the international labour movement for help.  We need to send thousands of messages to the management of DHL Express to tell them to recognise the union, to open negotiations, and to play fair with their employees." DHL vs. the trade union

Tales of Two Londons

" Russophobe, champion of mass violence, admirer of antisemitic thugs, more dangerous a nuclear crackpot than the original Dr. Strangelove, and advocate for economic disintegration in Russia — this is how we should remember Richard Pipes."  — Jacobin magazine

Genealogy of an era One should add a list of add-ons which helped gain the consent of the majority: Credit cards Low budget airlines Gadgets and consumerism Threat of an internal-external enemy vs. "our values" "There is no alternative" (after the collpase of the Soviet Union) A massive pile of TV series and movies Promoting individual advancement (underming solidarity and trade unions) Etc. The Third Way International

Although global media outlets like the  Economist  have made the case that the Rohingya of Burma are the “ most persecuted people in the world ” for several years at this point, their plight has yet to fully register around the world. Does that mean that what's been happening to the millions of Syrians is not persecution? The assertion above does not say "the most persecuted ethnic group." I don't understand the criteria used here and not questioned or at least qualified by the Economist and Jacobin editors. The Catasrophe of the Rohingya

What do the Iranian people want?

He was an antidote to the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver Bourdain’s political transformation happened on the road to Beirut. He landed there in 2006, days before Israel bombarded the city. The episode is a verite documentary of a society upended in an instant. Lebanese journalist  Kim Ghattas  says that as a result, “Bourdain developed a new approach that used conversations about food to tell the story and politics of the countries he visited in ways that hard news couldn’t.” Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018)

[C]limatic facts are not facts in themselves; they assume importance only in relation to the restructuring of the environment within different systems of production. Rolando Garcia, Nature Pleads Not Guilty , Oxford, 1981, p. 157

Global capitalism Why is it that only two large developing capitalist economies* have succeeded in becoming part of the rich capitalist club in the last 50 years ?  Measured in GDP per capita and starting at $3000 per head (PPP real) 40 years ago, Taiwan and Korea now have per capita GDPs over $25,000. In the same period, no other Asian tiger or Latin American economy has risen above $13,000, still within the World B ank‘s middle income range.  Note that both Taiwan and South Korea were American-supported military regimes at the peak of their economic development. *United Arab Emirates or Singapore, for example, cannot be called "large capitalist economies" although they have a very high per capita GDP. 

India then and today In 1750 India and China accounted for almost 75 per cent of world industrial output. "In 1600 when East India Company was established, Britain was producing just 1.8 per cent of world's GDP, while India was generating some 23 per cent. By 1940, after nearly two centuries of the Raj, Britain accounted for nearly 10 per cent of world GDP, while India has been reduced to a poor 'third world' country, destitute and starving, a global poster child of poverty and famine. [Niall] Ferguson [an apologist historian for Imperialism] admits that 'between 1757 and 1900 British per capita gross domestic product increased in real terms by 347 per cent, Indian by a mere 14 per cent'. Even that figure masks a steadily worsening performance by the Raj: from 1900 to 1947 the rate of growth of the Indian economy was below 1 per cent, while population grew steadily at well over 3.5 per cent, leavened only by high levels of infant and child mortality that s...