Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

  نظرية في الإخضاع

Webinar: a conversation with the authors of the dossier The Arab Uprisings - A Decade of Struggle

“The UN has forecast that Afghanistan’s gross domestic product will contract 20 per cent within a year following the Taliban’s takeover of the country, representing one of the worst economic meltdowns in history. Such a contraction took five years of civil war in Syria to achieve, and was expected to worsen to 30 per cent next year. The UNDP said aid accounted for as much as 80 per cent of budget expenditure. The UNDP estimates that the loss of female employment could cost up to $1bn, or 5 per cent, of GDP, and slash productivity.” Source: the Financial  Times

Can a poor country establish democratic socialism? Would imperialism, especially American imperialism, tolerate it at its backyard? Is Honduras an alternative to the Latin America’s ‘pink tide’ or is it just a continuation of changing horses between the right and the left? One of the good outcomes in Honduras is a confirmation that the question is not about more ‘women’ occupying high positions in state and government, but about the colour, the ideology and socio-economic programme of the ‘woman’. “I believe firmly that the democratic socialism I propose is the solution to pull Honduras out of the abyss we have been buried in by neoliberalism, a narco-dictator and corruption.”  – Xiomara Castro

‘What the Belarus regime is doing is basically human trafficking,’ a French government spokesman said on 10 November. A few days later, interior minister Gérald Darmanin ordered French police to dismantle the migrant camps outside Calais and Grande-Synthe; they slashed the tents with knives. And on 24 November, 27 migrants drowned trying to cross the Channel. Is that a crime difficult to solve?

A very good piece! UK Brexiteers’ libertarian goal

Bring class struggle back in

Dunkirk’s camps

Caution: This is not to say that blowbacks are exclusively consequences of external forces – Israel and Western powers. Local socio-economic context as well as political factors and balance of forces also played a role, converged or intersected with external players. How Israel went from creating Hamas to bombing it Related My interview with Khaled Hrub , author of  A Beginner’s Guide to Hamas

What might he say about today’s pandemic?

Views on China

“ We must ask ourselves … equality with what? Do men have such idyllic lives that we want the same for ourselves? In a world where people are valued as economic units rather than as people, to be an equal economic unit must not be the height of our ambition.” – Sheila Rowbotham