Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Some good arguments, but "liberalism in theory" itself has to be questioned. "In theory, modern liberalism is a set of ideas about human freedom, markets, and representative government. In practice, or so it now seems to me, it has largely become a political affect, and a quintessentially conservative one at that: a set of reflexes common to those with a Panglossian faith in capitalist markets and the institutions that attempt to sustain them amid our flailing global order. In theory, it is an ideology of progress. In practice, it has become the secular theology of the status quo; the mechanism through which the gilded buccaneers of  Silicon Valley , Wall Street, and multinational capital rationalize hierarchy and exploitation while fostering resignation and polite deference among those they seek to rule." Liberalism in Theory and Practice

Gandhi's racism in Shashi Thahroor's book Inglorious Empire . What did Mahatma Gandhi think of black people?

The Political Economic Context of Syria's Reconstruction

Hungary: Stop "the slave law"

Israel's thriving war business in Europe

السودان: لما يطل في فجرنا ظالم

Mike Davis on  "The crimes of capitalism and socialism" I have read Davis' book Late Victorian Holocausts. It is  monumental, and great scholarship.

There is nothing strange or shocking here (it is on wikipedia), but confirms the hypocrisy of "democracy", and capitalist realism. We don't see such reports about The World Bank and the IMF as institutions which prolongue the lives of authoritarian regimes and maintain the interests of the major powers. After all, attacking a well-known and established firm like McKinsey is not good. Shouldn't we have concerns about jobs that might be lost if the firm stop working with some regimes? Wasn't the same concern expressed by the British arms industry when it was told by some activists to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia because the weapons are being used against Yemenis? The High Court ruled in favour of the arms industry and thus saved thousands of jobs! Capitalism realism means both hypocrisy and making fuss out of nothing to sell it to the public. "Mckinsey work in Russia is extensive. Its Moscow office, the largest of the Western consulting firms worki...

"There are two dimensions of politics.   There is the dimension in which, because of living pressures, men try to understand their world and improve it. This dimension is persistently human. But besides it, always, is that parading robot of polemic, which resembles human thinking in everything but its capacity for experience. If you step into the robot’s world, you get your fuel free, and you can immediately grind into action, on one of the paper fronts, where the air stinks of pride, destruction, malice and exhaustion. Men need a good society and they need food, and further, in our own time, we know that we are living on the edge of destruction. But the slip into the robot world, so easy to make, is against these needs even when it claims to satisfy them. As I look, now, at the greater part of our political campaigns and periodicals, I recognize, reluctantly, the cancer of violence in them, which is our actual danger. And it is no use, after that, turning away. We have to fight ...

"Can it be realistic to assume that there will be no major slump in the major capitalist economies over the next ten to 15 years? A slump as the UK economy experienced in 2008-9 would deliver much more long-lasting damage to national income than even a ‘bad Brexit’ deal.  I calculate that the UK economy, like all the other major economies in the Long Depression that has taken place in the last ten years, has experienced a permanent relative loss in GDP – in the UK’s case of over 25%.  In other words, the UK economy has had average growth some one-quarter slower since 2008 than it did before.  Even if it continued to grow at around 2% over the next ten years with no impact from Brexit, that relative loss from the Great Recession would reach 40% by 2030.  That would be four times as much as the worst outcome from Brexit." Brexit: 100 days and after

"Throughout the book — whether on privatisation, “modernisation” of public services, university tuition fees, de-industrialisation and financialisation, Scottish independence, the British Labour Party or “enduring British values” — Brown’s efforts to portray himself as an opponent of neoliberalism are as unconvincing as his attempt to exonerate himself over Iraq. He’s too clumsy not to reveal his true colours. Benjamin Netanyahu is “an old friend and colleague”. British business magnate and billionaire Alan Sugar is “brilliant and inspirational”. The Malvinas/Falklands conflict was a “triumph” worth celebrating. And in the closing pages he approvingly quotes not Thomas Paine or Mary Wollstonecraft, but Edmund Burke, the conservative critic of the French Revolution whose writings spurred Paine and Wollstonecraft to produce their greatest works in reply." Review of Gordon Brown's autobiography

A country with the size of Western Europe,  centuries of exploitation, a Belgian-led Genocide, a CIA-backed coup, plunder by multinationals, 5 million killed in the last 20 years ... Congo An analysis Africa's Leaky Giant

Holding another referendum on the EU would "break faith with the British people", Theresa May will warn MPs. I think it is accurate to use the word "faith".

The top 1% own 48% of global personal wealth Inequality and exploitation? "It's been always like that." "We can't do anything about it." "These people are wealth creators." "There is still progress. We live better today than 50 or 60 years ago." "After all, liberal democracy is spreading all over the world." "What's the alternative?"

At least it is better than Le Monde's and France Info's gutter press of the existing order The gilets jaunes

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