Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

From Iran to Chile, from Honduras to Venezuela (2002 and 2019), the U.S. has a tradition in supporting coups and coup attempts.

Jocelyne Saab: A Just Life

This is from 2017. The motives behind the backing of certain regimes are scantly mentioned though. The article does not go beyond description. The projection of power and support of authoritarian regimes for what reaons?  There is not mention of domestic power structures and power relations in the U.S. itself. No mention at all of the ideological (cultural) hegemony: the Americanisation of the globe require military power to back it up. Primacy is a preponderance vis-a-vis other powers whether they are subordinate allies or rivals. And economic expansion (investing surplus capital) requires stable and predictable world order. Thus the presence of military bases. The article has more of a moralistic tone than an analytical one. How can one talk about military hegemony without situating it the capitalist context? How U.S. Military Bases Back Dictators, Autocrats, and Military Regimes

Liberal Ghandi Fetishism and the Problem with Pop Notions of 'Violence'

How to stop climate change?

Is Bourgeois representative democracy democratic? An example from 2010-2014 Is it a democracy when none of its representatives were endorsed by even half of their constituents? There are 650 MPs. If we rank them all by this measure of legitimacy, the median MP won 30.1 per cent of their votes, which is very similar to the mean winning margin (30.6 per cent). 14 sitting MPs were backed by less than a fifth of their constituents. In other words, most MPs are endorsed by less a third of their constituency.

"This topic [the importance of individuality] brings me to that worst out-crop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the press." — Albert Einstein , (1879 - 1955) Physicist & Nobel L

While other writings on the Kampuchea period have blamed its violence on the supposed “totalitarian aspects” of attempts to create a more equal society — or on either the personalities of CPK leaders or Cambodian and Buddhist culture — Tyner situates the CPK regime in its social and economic context.  Rice Fields to Killings Fields  aims to critically apply Marxist concepts to a regime that claimed to be Marxist. Tyner focuses on the CPK’s economic policy as providing the “base” for the DK regime, allowing him to dispel several myths about the Khmer Rouge. But in the end, the book is unable to fully explain the exceptional violence of the regime.  (My emphasis, N. M.) Inside the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields

Progressive capitalism — an oxymoron

“At this time, we are seeing a regression in the humanitarian dimension of those civilisations, as countries protect themselves by closing their doors. I hope that this novel, somehow or other, will have given voice to brittle lives, which are judged by others without understanding them or investigating what brought them to their current state." Lebanese author Hoda Barakat wins international prize for The Night Fall But the awarding body is funded by the UAE!!!

Radcliffe  [who drew the borders of what would be India and Pakistan] was remarkable for his lack of knowledge about the region’s history or present, not to mention lack of personal stake in its future. But as an arbiter of international boundaries, he was hardly an anomaly. As a rule to which there are few exceptions, our current borders are the result of imperial horse-trading, wars of expansion and conquest, and ragged lines cutting clumsily through ethnic areas, as statesmen have deftly minced up the globe seeking to settle scores and extract maximum gain. Whether carved up willy-nilly by colonialist patricians trying to cram notions into nation-states, or the outcome of aggressive land-grabbing, our current system of borders is neither rational nor historical. In a time of mass migration and displacement—with growing diasporas and asylum-seekers finding safety in caravans on their journey to the US-Mexico border, with refugees braving and often drowning the waters of the Mediterr

"Liberal democracy"  Workers at Amazon warehouses who fail to pack goods for delivery quickly enough are being automatically fired by a computer programme which measures their performance, according to new research.

An interesting report by Reuters How China is replacing America as Asia's military titan

Good! Marx deserves better critics

Turkish Voters Upset Erdogan Competitive Authoritarianism Note: " Erdogan refused to take an IMF loan to bolster finances because it would mean severe austerity measures being imposed.  The net foreign assets figure, a proxy for the country’s financial defences, slumped by $9.4bn between March 6 and March 22 to $19.5bn, the lowest level on a US dollar basis since 2007. Excluding swaps, net foreign assets have stood at less than $11.5bn during the entire month of April, down from $28.7bn at the start of March on the same basis." —Michael Roberts blog

Walter Rodney's legacy By Angela Davis See also The Persisting Relevance of Walter Rodney's "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa"

"Half of England is owned by less than 1% of its population, according to new data shared with the Guardian that seeks to penetrate the secrecy that has traditionally surrounded land ownership. The findings, described as “astonishingly unequal”, suggest that about 25,000 landowners – typically members of the aristocracy and corporations – have control of half of the country."  Who owns England? See also a long read here

"Now that the Algerian masses have gained their streets back, many obstacles lay ahead. This regime is perhaps one of the most entrenched in the region that, with a small fix, could again fill its pockets and co-opt large swaths of the population, oppositional forces, and maintain discipline within its own ranks. If oil prices don’t bounce back soon, Algerian elites could still attract new investments in the oil sector that could fill state coffers with enough cash to reinstate the whole chain again to its pre-2014 levels. Like most people around them, Algerians have very little organizational power. This has shown people across the region that  sudden outbursts  could carry a protest this far at best. That Algerians have still poured into the streets in larger numbers every Friday since February 22 is impressive. However, it would be a mistake to expect hundreds of thousands of people to show up to protest indefinitely. Some popular organization has to emerge now and presen

A critical review of UK's Labour Party economic policies Bill Jefferies' conclusion is that "What seems very radical and alternative now is firmly predicated on the existence of the market and will prevent measures that challenge or threaten that market in the future. The fact that socialism, a real alternative society and different world, plays no part at all in these alternatives is telling. Economics for the Many, in the words of McDonnell, aims to ‘inspire people with an alternative’ to neoliberalism by showing that another world is possible. Another world is possible but the arguments for it remain to be made." Economics for the Many

Stone Men The Palestinians Who Built Israel

Algeria An interview with Hamza Hamouchene

“There was this vagueness about the word that just seemed to be not just corruptible but almost inherently corrupt,” says the writer, film-maker and activist. “I was attracted to words like liberation, emancipation, equality, revolution, socialism. Any other word would get my pulse going more than democracy.” For her, democracy was a word imperial America used to sell free markets and push its agenda. Writer and film maker  Astra Taylor on US democracy, socialism and revolution

French police brutality

A liberal analysis on the "counter-revolution" in Sudan with emphasis on regional geo-politics "The counter-revolution will not be televised"

The banks in "liberal democracies" They are fined and they carry on with business as usual until they commit another crime. Then we fine them and they carry on with business as usual. What else could be done? It is not "human nature" and some "rogue agents"?  Obviously, founding a bank has not ever been better than robbing one as it is today. "Deutsche Bank was embroiled in a vast money-laundering operation, dubbed the  Global Laundromat . Russian criminals with links to the Kremlin, the old KGB and its main successor, the FSB, used the scheme between 2010 and 2014 to move money into the western financial system. The cash involved could total $80bn, detectives believe." Deutsche Banks and other banks in Russian money-laundering schemes

Yemen: Death from above

Indonesia Jokowi's challenges

The Last Note A movies by Pantelis Voulgaris (It will play after closing two or three pop up windows)

UK housing Crisis? Well, imagine  what would have happened  if we let those refugees and migrants who drowned in the sea in our tiny country. Unaffordable? Why cannot you work more and harder? Few new houses being built? Why should developers build affordable houses and banks give you a mortgage if there is no profit to make? Where is the incentive? How is our economy supposed to grow?  Jack lives in a cupboard and says that  some people "might find sleeping in such a small space would make them feel claustrophobic but Jack insists he doesn’t mind it." That's the great British patriotic attitude and spirit we need, espcially in times like these (Brexit, etc).  Inside the housing crisis

AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain

The recent events in Algeria and Sudan are more or less similar to what happened in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen.  How do we account for the dynamics of transition... that lie somewhere in between, where powerful revolutionary mobilisation forced dictators to abdicate [or removed] but fail[ed] to capture the governmental [state] power, thus leaving the interests and institutions of the old order largely unaltered? How should we read the logic of transition in such political upheavals that were both revolutionary and nonrevolutionary, reflecting both transition to democracy and revolutionary desires for economic distribution, social inclusion and cultural recognition? —Asef Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring , 2017, p. 209 I do not believe, as so many disillusioned or broken by actual revolution have come to believe, that the suffering can be laid to the charge of the revolution alone, and that we must avoid revolution if we are to avoid sufferin

The contours of the geography of the crisis I am proposing here are written down  by names and places: Lesvos, Calais, Ventimiglia, Lampedusa, Paris, Molenbeek ( Belgium), Nice, but also Brexit, Syria, Turkey and Libya. I believe there is an important  historical matter at work beneath this “imaginary geography”. This geography  interpellates us a “geography of war”: war against migrants and asylum seekers and to  their desire of mobility and welfare; but also, and usually forgotten, war against “post- migrants” or postcolonial Europeans, that is against European sons of decades of a  racist state management of European territories and populations. This specific geography is showing a Europe gripped into what can be called a “manichean securitarian delirium." Policing the Refugee Crisis: Neoliberalism between Biopolitics and Necropolitics (You might need only a free account to access this analysis)

The writer here has attempted to refute the Conservative's arguments. However, as I mentioned in my comment below the article I don't understand why he singles out the Conservatives and the Libertarians but does not include the liberals of "free market liberal democracy" and their defence of the system nationally and internationally with its implications from wars to exploitation and preserving the status quo albeit with what they call "reforms" . "Can democratic socialism set us free?"

Britain Typical of a liberal approach, there is no link between inequality and exploitation.  Where does inequality come from? Fear, Lies and Distraction

Gary Stephen Webb Kill the Messenger a movie by Michael Cuesta

UK An account of a worker's experience Joe Attard, 11 April 2019: Debenhams is biting the dust: the capitalist crisis claims another high street staple. My first paid job was at Debenhams, I was there for two years, and I'll be lying if I said I'll be sad to see the back of it.  They ran the restaurant on the cheap, mostly with casual labour, much of it made up of under-18s, and we were always understaffed. I remember double-dosing over-the-counter stress relievers to get through my shifts, where I and one other person had to cover a 200-se at dining area between us, for eight-hours, with a half-hour break.  We were always moving, always covered in crap, stinking, and totally exhausted. Both of us were 16, working a child's minimum wage (about 4.00-an-hour) but an adult's hours (half the lunch-break, earlier starts etc.) Once, my manager came up to me, beaming, and told me that I should be proud because "in light of my good work, I was getting

An analysis with good insights, but like a typical revolutionary socialist approach it tends to be too optimistic. The Algerian movement against the regime tends to tilt towards reforms, reforms to be granted by the regime under pressure from the street. It reminds me of the Tunisians' demands after the flight of Ben Ali. Given the decades long of entrenched "civil society", NGOs, and the hegemony of international "liberal" order, with focus on entreprenurship, "human rights", etc. and the interests of the major imperialist states in preserving stability with focus on "development" within domination, the project of revolution against an authoritarian unjust system has been depicted as an out-of-date prospect. This has been exasperated by the wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen and the defeat in Egypt. Thus the fear of radicalism to carry out a meaningful real change. There is no intention to challenge the existing institutions and bui

"In the Middle East of the new millennium ...few Arab activists had really strategized for a revolution, even though they might have dreamed about it. The postsocialist neoliberal ideas and practices had structured the conduct of and deradicalized much of the political class. At the same time that marketization caused social exclusion and dissent among the grassroots, it conditioned the activism of groups like yoith, women, and political opposition, including the Islamists. In pre-uprising Yemen, for instance, activism largely meant 'civil society work' in NGOs concerned with human rights, empowerment of women, charity, and development (up from five thousand in 2008 to more than thirteen thousand by 2013). The effect of which has been "depoliticizing activism and deradicalizing the idea of change." —Asef Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries , 2017, p. 174 The NGO-zation of resistance By Arundhati Roy

Stephen Smith's Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis 1890-1928 (Oxford University 2017) An excellent critical review of the Russian Revolution. He [Smith] sees this revolution as having raised fundamental questions regarding the reconciliation of justice, equality, and freedom even though he thinks that Bolshevik answers were flawed. In today’s world, he writes, where everything conspires for people to accept things as they are, the Bolshevik Revolution upholds the idea that the world can be organized in a more just and rational fashion. For all their many faults, he goes on, “the Bolsheviks were fired by outrage at the exploitation that lay at the heart of capitalism and at the raging nationalism that led Europe into the carnage of the First World War.” Millions across the world, who could not anticipate the horrors of Stalinism, “embraced the 1917 Revolution as a chance to create a new world of justice, equality and freedom.” This entails, for example, an outright op

"This is exactly how processes of disruption might affect you, if you live somewhere else that is. Not in the sense that you will necessarily be expropriated, displaced or worse. This might happen or not, depending on where (and who) you are. But you too might get trapped in your own singular hell of a future repeating invented pasts, with one part of the population hell-bent on getting rid of another. People will peer in from afar, conclude they can’t understand what’s going on, and keep watching cat videos." Free Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War

A disaster has hit Jeff Bezos

Mexico's labour movement

France was a close ally of the Hutu-led government prior to the massacres and has been accused of ignoring warning signs and training the militias who carried out the attacks. Little was done internationally to stop the killings. The UN and Belgium had forces in Rwanda but the UN mission was not given a mandate to act. The Belgians and most UN peacekeepers pulled out." — The BBC Even John Mearsheimer, a scholar of the now defunct but still predominant neorealist-International Relations theory, acknowledged this in 2002: "Despite claims that American policy is infused with moralism, Somalia is the only instance during the past hundred years in which US soldiers were killed in action on a humanitarian mission’—and ‘in that case, the loss of a mere eighteen soldiers so traumatized American policymakers’ that ‘they refused to intervene in Rwanda in the spring of 1994’, although ‘stopping that genocide would have been relatively easy and would have had virtually no effect on

"Twilight of capitalism"? I don't agree with that. It sounds a good book though. Invisible Leviathan by Murray Smith Marx's law of value

From the archive "Islamist violence" An interview with Karen Armstrong Religion Fights Back Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (Armstrong's book e-book)

Theoretical laziness

Rome, Italy Neo-fascist violent against Roma

London Viral video shows violence not in 'Sharia Law Zone'

New soil study confirms 1943 Bengal famine was caused by Winston Churchill’s policies, not drought

Britain needs new council houses–not musicals about them

Britain Leftists consider it "capitualtion" and "disappointment". They forgot that it was in 2017 Labour Manifesto. Labour wants to end free movement

Kremlin doubts figures showing Russians too poor to buy shoes

‘Why this race? Running forever behind development? Why don’t we think more about the very notion of developing? For whom, for what? For growth rates? What is development? What does it mean to develop a country by increasing the number of poor people?’  A very interesting interview with geographer Habib Ayeb. I cannot digest though his assertion that the solution would be a return to the agricultural economy and that small farmers could feed humanity. I find it weird. Food Sovereignty and the Environment

Imperialist values "Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, through the crucial decades of state formation as the Gulf monarchs entrenched their rule, Washington and London provided the regimes with security guarantees, arms and training for their security forces. This empowered the Saudis and their fellow royals to jail and torture dissidents, crush all challengers and shut down any possibility of political change, most recently in  Bahrain in 2011 . Such violence has always been central to western power in the world. The Gulf monarchs have merely acted as our subcontractors."  —David Wearing Support from the UK has enabled the world's worst humanitarian disaster

Protesting Politics in Algeria

Bourgeois values In "normal" times they justify exploitation, plunder, murder and complicity in murder, austerity, Islamophobia and xenophobia. They propagate mediocrity, commodification, celebrity culture and miseducation. When the shit hits the fan, they call for "national unity".

Off-the-record Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

"When you see how quickly anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-foreigner stereotypes can reappear, there is a colonial impregnation that goes back a long way and is still very strong. It remains in the collective unconscious. It takes the form of a certainty, incredible to me, that our world is superior to any other. It is clear that the West, i.e. the last expansionist powers, considers itself – and is considered by the majority of its population – as the panacea of modern civilization. In reality, it is an imperialist and unequal construction, creating irreparable disparities. There is a blind violence in equating the ne plus ultra of civilization with something that in certain respects is monstrous. 
When we talk about violence, we must keep two criteria in mind. First, that violence is rarely good and should be avoided. That’s a moral judgment, which I accept. If objectives can be achieved without resort to violence, that’s much better. I’m definite that violence is not something I

"And as polling shows, public attitudes on migration are softening markedly." Are they? Labour must make a principled case for free movement

Show us the truth about Vietnam

Germany's relentless campaign to silence pro-Palestinian voices See also “Germany is a big supporter of denying Palestinians their right of return