Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A book review  "In one of No Enough's most important insights, Moyn suggests that the gradual abandonment of equality in favour of a minimalist focus on securing a basic minimum has made human rights unthreatening in a neoliberal age. Moyn’s account of the compatibility of human rights and neoliberalism is powerful and astute. Human rights did little to alter the course of neoliberal reform, offered no real alternative to it, and did not demand egalitarian distribution either at the national or transnational level, he argues. Moreover, human rights and what he terms their “economic rival” shared the same moral individualism and the same suspicion of collectivist projects such as nationalism and socialism. Consequently, even social and economic rights became adjuncts to humanitarian philanthropy, which viewed global poverty through the lens of humanitarian suffering, not structural inequality.  
Moyn provides a strikingly original account of the ways in which demands for a...

Inside China's crackdown on young Marxists The Financial Times

Venezuela What Vice-President Pence could not say in public when he spoke about helping the Venezuelan "people" get their "freedom". "There is no room for any outside influence other than ours in this region [Latin America]. We could not tolerate auch a thing... Until now Central America has always understood that governments which we recognize and support stay in power, while those which we do not recognize and support fall."— Robert Olds Quoted in Peter Baofu's The Rise of Authoritarian Liberal Democracy , Cambridge 2007, p. 85 Recent interventions aside, Mark Rosenfelder (1996) counted, for instance, that between 1846 and 1996 alone, there were more than "79 U.S. military interventions in Latin America and Haiti..."

Iran 1979-2018 "The obvious difference between present-day populism in the United States and in Iran is that while the former is a threat to the whole planet, the latter is a detriment mostly to its own people." —Ervand Abrahamian, a historian Iran: Past and Present

Gender and Empire Essential readings

Egypt There is an impression that Egypt's authoritarianism under Sisi got worse with the U.S.-led support after Trump assumed the presidency. No mention that it goes back to Obama's administration. "The international community" is evoked as if it was not dominated by the same powers which the author finds complicit in Egypt's new authoritarianism. No single paragraph about the labour movement as if it had disappeared. "There is no other time in Egypt’s modern history when the widespread government assault on rights has been  more severe . The state’s attempt to dominate the social and political field indicates a significant change in the current regime’s view of authoritarian governance in the aftermath of the popular uprising that broke out on January 25, 2011. Eight years later, despite the regime’s tight control of the street and state institutions, Sisi’s public  pronouncements  about the 2011 uprising often  warn  of a determination to prevent ...

Here is another example of someone who does not know where the interests of "underdeveloped countries" are. Nor does she know that the major Western powers and Western-dominated international institutions have been helping poor countries through aid, loans, and advice on how to run their economies, "liberalise, restructure, plan, adjust, budget, and inject the spirit of entrepreneurship." This article is written by a graduate in economics from Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. An insignificant university in the world. The former student condemns the International Monetary Fund as an instrument of "domination, plunder and enslavement through debt", quoting a Western writer. She also gives the example of Malaysia under Mahathir Mohamad who refused to have the country indebted to the IMF and abide by the Fund's diktats. By contrast, in 'prestigious' Western universities a student believes that the IMF is a force of good in the world, with...

Ungrateful, ignorant Tunisians who do not know their interests For decades the IMF has been doing its best to help Tunisia, and other countries, develop a strong capitalist economy and "democracy". It has even had women like Nemat Shafi and Christine Lagarde, help restructring economies to achieve prosperity for all and liberate Tunisian women .... It seems that Tunisians do not get it. Taking on the IMF

From the archive (2016) A good overview on the MENA region. Making and Unmaking of the Greater Middle East

"And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first."  --Margaret Thatcher in 1987 Nine million Britons suffer from loneliness, according to the British Academy

Brexit One form of the fantasy is ‘CANZUK’ — a revival of a white, Christian, trading empire including Britain’s former settler colonies in Canada, New Zealand and Australia. In another form, Britain becomes an enlarged version of Singapore. For a Trump-supporting faction on the right, Britain would be a glorified airstrip for the US in a larger game of great power rivalry. None of it makes sense, but all of it can be pushed to the public, via rightwing media, as a new imperialist ideology. Behind all the hashtags, anger and parliamentary manoeuvring is the existential crisis of a ruling class. Britain is ruled by a super-rich elite with scant material interest in operations in the UK. If necessary it will form an alliance with people in poor, white, low-skilled communities to disrupt the multilateral order. It is an interesting read, but I don't like the silly t-shirt! Britain's impossible futures