Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from March, 2021

On Passports and Other Things

From the Ottoman Empire to the Middle East

  Despite ongoing claims about “ungovernability,” transhistorical blood feuds, or the racialized nature of “the Arab” and “the Muslim,” there is, in fact, nothing exceptional about war and conflict in the Middle East. The region was left with the obscured but violent legacies of notions like the semi-civilized and extraterritoriality. The War on Terror brought these concepts back to center stage. Blowback from weaponized techniques of extraterritoriality impact the United States as well as the Middle East. One hundred and one years after Versailles, the twinned concepts of extraterritoriality and the semi-civilized continue to shape our world in ways that can no longer be overlooked. From Versailles to the War on Terror

When Leaders Kill

  Good points here. However, I don’t agree with this: Those who share love and admiration for a pluralizing world must unite across differences of race, class, gender and theology in their efforts to restore our democracy. The author believes in class collaboration. Class is central in the same system of imperialism he is condemning yet he advocate a unity across differences regardless of class. What sort of democracy is a one that maintains class opression? Biden’s characterisation of Putin applies to ‘Neoliberal Ideologies’, too.

Global Marxism Online Talks

 An event organised by SSK-GNU research team in South Korea.

Climate Change Responsibility: Who’s Flying?

In the UK , 70% of flights are made by a wealthy 15% of the population, with 57% not flying abroad at all. In the US , just 12% of people take two-thirds of flights.  Canada : 22% of the population takes 73% of flights. The Netherlands:  8% of people takes 42% of flights. China:  5% of households takes 40% of flights. India:  1% of households takes 45% of flights. Indonesia:  3% of households takes 56% of flights. Source: the climate campaign group Possible

Universalism and Identity Politics

This is good! “Most critics are hardly capable of identifying the major problems of identity politics: firstly, its widespread disregard for the importance of intersectionality, knowledge and expertise (that is independent of the respective identity) and secondly, the lack of a critique of capitalist structures and socio-economic inequalities (beyond specific identities), which, in turn, prevents a comprehensive understanding of discrimination, oppression, exploitation and emancipation.” The poverty of mainstream universalism and exclusive identity politics

The Terror Infamy

  A 2018 TV series “ Set during World War II, "The Terror: Infamy" centers on a series of bizarre deaths that haunt a Japanese American community, and a young man's journey to understand and combat the malevolent entity that is responsible. Chester Nakayama and his friends and family from Terminal Island, Calif., face p ersecution from the American government, and they battle the evil spirit that threatens their future. A look at the often overlooked time of Japanese American internment camps and what it truly means to be an American. From 1942 to 1945, more than 145,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians were forced from their homes and into internment camps by their respective governments, simply because of where they or their ancestors were born. Their story is one of perseverance in the face of injustice.”

Charity: “A Tax Dodge for the Rich”

Example: the U.S. “As a deduction, the value of the tax benefit increases with income. The higher the marginal rate of the donor, the larger the tax benefit, meaning that the wealthier the taxpayer, the less they must pay for each dollar of their charitable gifts. Thus, for a gift of $1,000, a taxpayer in the 37 percent bracket gets $370 in tax savings while a taxpayer in the 15 percent bracket gets just $150 — a $220 difference in the size of the tax benefit for the same gift. In addition, as an itemized deduction, only a small fraction of taxpayers actually have a tax incentive to give, further increasing unfairness. Thus, millionaires can get a return of 37 percent on their charitable contributions, while a middle-income taxpayer who claims the standard deduction gets no tax benefit at all for a contribution of the same amount. Such middle-income taxpayers thus have no incentive to give, and when they do, their gift is not acknowledged by the tax system even though their sacrifice i

“The Most Vicious Honest”

 

Britain: Wealth, Inequality, Meritocracy

The author has ignored exploitation of labour as a source of wealth. In fact, he ignored that even inherited wealth comes from past labour. Note that the word capitalism is not mention even once. As regarding why “ the belief that Britain is a meritocracy is ingrained in our collective psyche,” one has to include the role of ideology . Where does wealth comes from? Related The meritocrats shall inherit the earth What Does the Ruling Class Do When it Rules?

Italy

The turbulence within the main protagonists of Italian politics, and the paradoxical emergence of yet another government following a bourgeois bloc strategy, can each be connected to a unitary framework. The bourgeois bloc is not simply a social alliance that brings together the middle and upper classes, from both Left and Right, around a neoliberal reform of capitalism that draws its legitimacy from the European integration process. It is also an ideological project, which entails a complete restructuring of political cleavages. The electoral disasters faced by both the Renzi-era Democrats and Berlusconi's Forza Italia — the parties which carried this project — have not erased the effects that this experience has had on the structuring of social and political conflict. The Paradoxical Return of the Bourgeois Bloc

Migrant Workers in Britain

Some call it exploitation. Others call it meeting target and productivity. “We have borrowed a lot of money to come here, we passed long distance, left our relatives, not to get this. We came to work but we can’t work, earn money, we can’t save money and help our families. Sometimes there is a feeling that we can’t prove anything, that no one will help us.”   Low-paid migrant workers ‘trapped’ on Britain’s farms

Nawaal El-Saadawi (1931-2021)

The BBC , unsurprisingly, ignored that El-Saadawi was anti-capitalist and belonged to  the “historical socialist-feminists,” (her own words). Wikipedia admin deleted my edit when I added with a source that El-Saadawi was anti-capitalist and  socialist. I guess they want her to fit in the neoliberal feminism. But, “ after the military take-over, El Saadawi began to defend the regime of the former military chief and current president Abdul Fatah al-Sisi and his human rights violations, many of her former comrades-in-arms felt compelled to break with her. El Saadawi accused the Western media of running a smear campaign against Sisi.” Women, Egypt and Religion Life and times via her writings Meet Egypt’s most radical woman The many lives of Nawaal El-Saadaawi

International Women’s Day

 By Iranian filmmaker and photographer Mostafa Heravi

The Society of the Spectacle Today

“ Poverty and healthcare assume   the appearance   of individual responsibility, the state assumes   the appearance   of an obstruction to open market circulation flows, the commodity assumes   the appearance   of base survival, a satiated proletariat assumes   the appearance   of a good credit score, a redistribution of wealth assumes   the appearance   of socialism, a megalomaniac assumes t he appearance of fascism, culture assumes   the appearance   of a mechanism of empowerment, the struggle against racism assumes   the appearance   of democratic leaders taking the knee in kente cloth, a healthy economy assumes   the appearance   of a healthy population, ad nauseum. Whether in the aftermath of a Biden victory, riddled as it is with vacuous appeals for unity, or even in the more superficial 2019 pseudo-debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson, whose harmony of apparent disparities bespoke more about the spectacle than it did about political polarization—in all that surrounds

Massimo Campanini

 “ I remember that, when I taught history and institutions of the Islamic world at Urbino university in the late 1990s, sometimes my classes were literally empty. After 9/11 the classes were filled up of students (I was teaching in Milan at that time), but how much was their interest sincere? Actually, popular interest in Islam is strongly conditioned by contingent outward circumstances and today xenophobic  and Islamophobia propaganda does not help to develop the field.  Again: Italy is a parochial country. I believe to be a free-thinker, normally antagonist towards consolidate [sic] and mainstream positions, both in thinking and in politics. I am not comfortable with the Western society I live therein because I believe it is grounded on hypocrisy and false prejudices. The main one is the conviction that we Europeans and Americans (mostly white of course, WASP) are depositary of absolute and universal truths, eternal, out of history – we would be indeed the makers of the end of histor

Niqab Ban in Switzerland and Beyond

 A liberal argument. “ In Switzerland, population 8.5 million, that number is  estimated  between 21 and 37. These are fractions so small they barely register on a calculator.” In 2009, the French newspaper  Le Figaro  estimated that only 2,000 women in France–out of a total French population of 65 million–wear the burga in France. Targeting Muslims makes them even more visible, only contributing to an increase of racism and Islamophobia. The process is cyclical. Normalising anti-Muslim bigotry

Britain: A Master of the Universe

£1 million a day is OK since he gives a lot of it away. His salary is 11000 times the median UK full-time salary. The liberal Guardian is happy not to include a single criticism. After all, it is a paper sponsored by the like of Bill Gates, another philanthropist whose salary is $100 million a day. A hedge fund manager is obviously, and by the divine design of the ‘free market’, is more important than necessary for society than a nurse, a doctor, a teacher, a train driver, a road digger, or a cleaner. Without a hedge fund manger society would be thrown back into the stone age.  Tomorrow, when the next tube strike, for instance, is announced in defence of better working conditions and better salaries, the media and most of the public will denounce it as a work of the lunatic leftist trade union leaders. Sir Chris Hohn

China

A very interesting paper. Unfortunately, the author has done a disservice to socialism by calling China socialist. The Structural Roots of China’s Effectiveness Against Coronavirus Pandemic

Syria

“Murder turned into an act of self-defense, in which the regime and international community embarked on a selfish battle of describing the crime using terms such as  civil war , the two-party war and the conflict. Consequently, the main crime was cleared, not by prescription, but because of its description.” Murder, and the burden of proof

Climate Change

“ A new Oxfam report finds that the richest 1 percent of people alone are responsible for  double the emissions  of the poorest 50 percent of the global population. That means that even if the working class of the Global North took all the individual actions that are recommended or we forced poor people in the Global South to stop having kids, that still wouldn’t solve the problem.” The class aspect

England

Keep clapping. A corrupt incompetent regime insults health workers with a 1% pay rise Related A nurse fined £10,000 for protesting

U.S. Imperialism

From a magazine that supported the invasion of Iraq, supported Israel —and probably still does—and it is now ‘baptised’ as ‘progressive’. The question remains: it is not about individuals—individualising regimes is a prevalent narrative—but about an imperialist state that strives to maintain its hegemony through violence—among other means— in a changing world. In this particular case, I can do it and get away with it. An ally of mine, Israel, can do it and get away with it. New President, Same Old Forever War

Waste

"The 923 million tonnes of food being wasted each year would fill 23 million 40-tonne trucks. Bumper-to-bumper, enough to circle the Earth seven times."  "Wasted food is responsible for 8-10% of greenhouse gas emissions, so if food waste was a country, it would be the third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet." “While millions of tonnes of food was thrown away, an estimated 690 million people were affected by hunger in 2019. That number is expected to rise sharply in the wake of the pandemic.” Source: the bbc

TV Historical Drama: Ireland 1916

A good production. “The English have treated this country shamefully. And the rich—my father included have treated the poor worse. The worst slums in Europe, they say.” —Frances O’Flaherty - Frances: “My father says that socialism is the work of the devil.” - Elisabeth: “Sounds like mine. But if poverty is the work of God, I’m with the devil.” Rebellion  

France-Sahel

A defeat of an imperialist state is always a good news. Macron’s signals military pullback from Sahel Related: “When they attack us in France, we say it’s Islam.” The arrogance of French imperialism vs. the pragmatism of the local regimes

Morocco: Crisis of the ‘Makhzen’ state

Germany

Philanthropy, he insists, is not an adequate counterbalance to inequality, and can act as a “fig leaf”. “I also don’t believe in this idea that the rich will save us,” he says. “I think we need to reclaim our democracy; arguably we live in a plutocracy”. Like philanthropy, taxation, too, is another fig leaf to foster the idea that private ownership is sacred and capitalists have accumulated wealth legitimately, and that the rich, or at least some of them, think of the nation and give their share. The reclusive rich

Qatar 2022 World Cup

 While football fans will be next year lying on the sofas and cheering in pubs and in front of outdoors giant screens ... More than 6,500 migrant workers have died  in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup