Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Avoidable Covid-19 deaths were significantly higher in the most deprived areas in England Age-standardised avoidable mortality rates (per 100,000 people) with an underlying cause of Covid-19 in England, 2020 Most deprived Males 95.1 Females  53.3 Least deprived Males  21.9 Females  9.4 Figures are for deaths registered in each calendar year and exclude deaths of non-residents.  Source:   ONS – Deaths registered in England Death rates expose health inequalities

  When people ranging from seasoned American idiot Thomas Friedman to Israeli best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari come together to argue Putin’s adventurism in Ukraine is unlike anything we have seen before and is a turning point in human history, it is hard not to bury your head in your pillow and wonder where have these people been over the last two decades of US military thuggery around the globe. Ceasing to follow the propaganda machinery of Russia and the US, the world would be much better off turning to Gogol, a Ukrainian master of Russian literature, and in the liminal space he crafts in his superior literary heritage, thinking where the real borders lie between civilisation and barbarities. Biden Putin or Gogol

A battlefield between workers and corporatisation

Irish law maker speaks out

 Ukrainian Jews, anti-Semitism, pogroms, nationalism and racism

 Excerpt from Geoff Mann’s Keynesianism, Political Economy, and Revolution

في نقد حُلم انكَسَر

Putin is a war criminal – and so was Albright

Russian oligarchs, banks and businesses could have sanctions against them lifted if Russia's President Vladimir Putin ends his invasion of Ukraine and commits to "no further aggression", UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said. You see in principle ‘we’ don’t really have a problem with the oligarchs. 

It was the very same Zelensky who   withdrew  U kraine's membership from the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People in 2020. As Israel was killing and bombing Palestinians in May 2021, Zelensky   depicted  it as the victim of the Palestinians and not as a predatory settler-colonial state which Ukrainian Jews helped establish. Ironically, that Zelensky thinks Israel’s neighbours "want to see us dead" may be no more than a psychological projection of what he and the Israelis want to see happen to Palestinians, not the other way around.  The Ukrainian Jewish role in the dispossession of Palestine

Neolights

17 أبريل 2022

 “What’s the point of having this superb military we’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

The culture war

Is it because of ‘bad ideas’?

A supporter of Israeli oppression

War time law removing labour rights

" The plan seemed to be: Sack 800 staff with immediate effect by three-minute video message ; manhandle those who refuse leave their posts (using handcuffs if necessary); leave customers stranded in various ports because there's no one to crew ships; and replace all staff with cheap labour in a few weeks. What could possibly go wrong?" says Kate Hartley, author of "How to Communicate in a Crisis".   Related “The Office for Budget Responsibility painted a bleak picture of the UK's immediate economic prospects, saying that living standards are set to take the biggest hit since records began in the 1950s .”

No tears to shed over a woman who was part and parcel of an imperialist criminal state. “[Madeleine]  Albright was also champion of Nato expansion , overseeing the addition of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1999 - a move whose repercussions are being keenly felt today.” On May 12, 1996, Albright defended  UN sanctions against Iraq  on a  60 Minutes  segment  in which  Lesley Stahl  asked her, "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied, "We think the price is worth it." In the context of the 1998 Iraq campaign, Albright expressed another justification , saying, "But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us."  In 2014, a released diplomatic cable  reveale...

The increasingly transparent weaknesses and contradictions in the capitalist system may eventually convince even some of its more uncritical supporters that an alternative needs to be found. But the conviction that there is and can be no alternative is very deeply rooted, especialyl in Western culture. That conviction is supported not only by the more blatant expressions of capitalist ideology but also by some of our most cherished and unques­tioned beliefs about history – not just the history of capitalism but history in general. –Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism , 2002, p. 2

You can put Marx back into the nineteenth century, but you can’t keep him there. He wasted a ridiculous amount of his time feuding with rivals and putting out sectarian brush fires, and he did not even come close to completing the work he intended as his magnum opus, “Capital.” But, for better or for worse, it just is not the case that his thought is obsolete. He saw that modern free-market economies, left to their own devices, produce gross inequalities, and he transformed a mode of analysis that goes all the way back to Socrates—turning concepts that we think we understand and take for granted inside out—into a resource for grasping the social and economic conditions of our own lives. with his compatriots in the nineteenth century, and that certainly does not wear well today, after the experience of the regimes conceived in his name. It therefore sounds perverse to say that Marx’s philosophy was dedicated to human freedom. But it was. Marx was an Enlightenment thinker: he wanted a wo...

The life of a great Marxist

Beginning in 2014 and 2015 respectively,  US and Russian interventions would in time lead to some 75,000 air strikes against Iraq and Syria. However much the coalition’s actions against ISIS (Daesh) and Russia’s support for Assad differ in intent and context, both have been disastrous for people on the ground; the bombing campaigns alone have killed between 20,000 and 55,000 Syrian and Iraqi civilians. The alliance’s figure of 1,417 civilian deaths has been widely contested. In December 2021 a  New York Times  investigation based on a review of 1,300 Pentagon reports concluded that ‘the air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children, a sharp contrast to the American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs. The coalition claims it values transparency and is willing ‘to work with anyone making allegations or providing new, credible i...

A good summary. “There is no contradiction between standing with the people of Ukraine and against Russia’s heinous invasion and being honest about the hypocrisy, war crimes, and militarism of the U.S. and NATO. We have an undeniable moral responsibility to prioritize holding our own government accountable for its crimes because they are being done in our names and with our tax dollars. That does not mean we should be silent in the face of the crimes of Russia or other nations, but we do bear a specific responsibility for the acts of war committed by our own nations.” On hypocrisy: “ How many of the people with Ukrainian flag avatars on their Twitter profiles have spent days or weeks pleading for the world to stand up for ordinary Yemenis living under the hell of American bombs and Saudi warplanes? The same question applies in the case of the Palestinians who live under an  apartheid state  imposed by Israel and backed up by a sustained campaign of annihilation  supported...

Between 1918 and 1998, US administrations restricted trade with sanctioned nations 115 times; 64 of these occasions were during the 1990s, and most of them were unilateral. By 1997, the equivalent of half the world’s population was living under some form of US sanction. Current debates within the EU over what to do about Russia have led to some rhetorical contortions. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen appeared to support the US position that ‘Nord Stream 2 could not be excluded a priori from the list of [preventive] sanctions’, adding, ‘We want to build the world of tomorrow as democracies with like-minded partners.’ But among the energy partners that might replace Russia, Von der Leyen cited an oil monarchy (Qatar), a dictatorship allied with authoritarian Turkey (Azerbaijan) and a country under military rule (Egypt)... Playing the white knight calls for spotlessly clean hands. You might think whistleblower Julian Assange, sought by the US and locked up in London, was a dream ...

Putin calls in Assad’s debt

How a Starbucks barista helped spark a unionisation revolution

“By the end of the day American forces had killed 347 to 504 unarmed Vietnamese women, children and old men, and raped 20 women and girls, some as young as 10 years old. The massacre at My Lai was not the only time American troops committed war crimes against Vietnamese civilians, but it was the single worst instance; its severity, its cover-up and the eventual trial of just a handful of the unit’s leaders became a synonym for the entire American war in Vietnam. Rape became such an endemic problem in Charlie Company that one member of its Second Platoon, Michael Bernhardt, assumed that every woman Lieutenant Calley’s platoon came across would be raped within moments. The events at My Lai became public a year later. Several officers were brought to trial in 1971, but only Lieutenant Calley was convicted. He was released from prison in 1974.” Source: The New York Times Wrath of the centurions

Inside Libya’s brutal detention centres sponsored by the EU Related Europe’s dirty secret

National Executive Council statement

1. Whites refugees are welcome; others less so. 2. You can invade Iraq but not Ukraine. 3. Sometimes neo-Nazism can be tolerated. 4. Hitting high-rises is only a war crime in Europe. The four lessons from Ukraine

‘Peace dividend’, ‘prosperity’ and ‘democracy’

 From Belgrade, Serbia, 18 March 2022

Corruption, bribery, safety violations, etc.

This also flies in the face of arrogant imperialists like Boris Johnson and John Biden. Oligarchs sowed division well before Putin invaded

It is not exhaustive, but a good piece nevertheless. Cold peace

The woman who wants to transform Hollywood Teamsters into a ‘fighting Union’

Macron says Putin wants to 'take us back to the age of empires'. The logic behind French military interventions in Africa France and its former colonies A neo-colonialist French foreign policy in Africa The French Military in Africa: Past and Present Mapping the Sahel

Published in 2019 Ukraine’s uneven incorporation into the global capitalist system after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Ukrainian capitalism’s internal contradictions and shifts of power between oligarchic blocs and their  unfolding in the context of neo-imperialist rivalry between the USA, the EU, and Russia.  Some of the major outcomes of that dialectic that facilitated a major multilevel crisis of 2013–2014 and led to the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, Russia’s annexation of the southern peninsula Crimea, and the war in eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas.  A critical review of the major narratives on the nature and role of Western and Russian imperialisms in Ukraine’s crisis.

Could ‘bioregions’ be the answer?

In reality, “there is a  striking discrepancy between the lack  of feeling aroused  by the deaths of tens of thousands of human beings—in their majority anonymous, unrecorded by the authorities and denied the dignity of a proper burial—with that excited by, say, the 1,000 lives lost in the crossing from East to West Germany during the Cold War. There is one obvious explanation: an African, an Arab or an Afghani who drowns in the Mediterranean, in flight from war, oppression or extreme poverty, is not seen as a human being in the same way as the Germans who were trying to flee ‘communism’ and were hailed as martyrs for liberty. In that sense, the border regime is an extension of the history of colonialism and domination that Europe and the West have exercised over the rest of the world, and to which ‘the construction  of Europe’ now adds a further chapter in the form of its poisoned fruit, the EU.”  —Stathis Kouvelakis,  Borderland, NLR March-April 2018

Only 11 UK Members of Parliament signed the motion

رسائل سياسية

Hunger and desperation

The tragedies and political realities of Aleppo’s old red district

Palestine vs. Ukraine

Serving the global elite

Not for the those who were born in the right place, for example. Boom time in Norway Related Turkey’s defence exports to Kyiv

Ukraine: complexity and war

From cats to Dostoevsky

Early Islamic description of Russia and Ukraine

An openly racist Europe defeats most of what we claim is at stake Related Suddenly UK homes are open to host refugees, a certain type of refugees

On the brink

How the experience of Syrian exiles can inform resistance to the invasion

Written after Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man and Huntington’s Class of Civilisations , but before the ‘war on terror’, the war in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the rise of China, the 2008/09 Great Recession, the Arab uprisings, the rise of the far right, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ————- Why then do the European states claim for themselves the right to spread civilization and manners to different continents? Why not to Europe itself? – Joseph Roth, 1937 “Modern democracy, like the nation-state it is so closely associated with, is basically the product of the protracted domestic and international experimentation which followed the collapse of the old European order in 1914. In the short run, both Wilson and Lenin failed to build the ‘better world’ they dreamed of. The communist revolution across Europe did not materialize, and the building of socialism was confined to the Soviet Union; the crisis of liberal democracy followed soon after as one country after an...

A good read. From the virtual office to the ‘Great Resignation’

From Marketisation to Armed Conflict

Nothing is more anarchical than power. Power does whatever it wants. And what power wants is completely arbitrary, or imposed by economic needs that escape common logic. –Pier Paolo Pasolini

More of the honest European politicians

Facing biggest fall since 1950s

Vladimir Putin’s savage attack on Ukraine has brutally brought to the fore the phenomenon known as “Londongrad”. Much excellent reporting in the past decade has revealed how corrupt elites from around the world launder looted money in the west. In  Butler to the World , [Oliver] Bullough takes the UK to task.  Butlering goes far beyond accepting deposits from the world’s corrupt: it extends to procuring (palatial) housing for them, educating their children, honouring them in every way from naming rights at Britain’s world-class universities to royal patronage, as well as catering to all the minor needs the super-rich might need. Bullough describes a postwar City of London determined to insulate itself from government regulation, ready to embrace innovations that would mean good business for financiers. He also highlights how in a world of hard currency shortage — withholding dollars was the means by which Washington made London give up Suez — there was a lot to like in allowin...

Europe’s Twentieth Century

 A very good analysis. From the Tsar to Today, via Stalin, the Imperialist Will Marks the History of Russia

Has the fear of a wider war made the BBC acknowledge the Western imperialism’s role?  “But the dark energy that drives Vladimir Putin is the other side of that coin. He saw Russia diminished, humiliated and stripped of what he saw as its right to a buffer zone of subordinate states.

Are Ukrainians more deserving of sympathy than Afghans and Iraqis?

A free ebook by Howard Zinn

Try to turn every disaster into an opportunity. –John D. Rockefeller

A memorandum

A lesson to all non-white, non-Europeans: get a pet. There is no guarantee it would help, but it might. They watched as Ukrainian pets crossed border to safety Related A long-lasting tradition: "There is a striking discrepancy between the lack of feeling aroused by the deaths of tens of thousands of human beings—in their majority anonymous, unrecorded by the authorities and denied the dignity of a proper burial—with that excited by, say, the 1,000 lives lost in the crossing from East to West Germany during the Cold War. There is one obvious explanation: an African, an Arab or an Afghani who drowns in the Mediterranean, in flight from war, oppression or extreme poverty, is not seen as a human being in the same way as the Germans who were trying to flee ‘communism’ and were hailed as martyrs for liberty." —Stathis Kouvelakis, New Left Review, March-April 2018

“These people are not people we are used to… these people are Europeans.”  – Kiril Petkov, Bulgarian Prime Minister,  Associated Press , March 1, 2022

Western support for Ukrainian armed resistance

The Russian regime refuses to call the invasion of Ukraine a war. It was not until 1999 that the French Assembly designated the Algerian War (1954-62) as a war . The American Congress never designated the war on Vietnam as a war . In October 2002 the American Congress adopted ‘Iraq Resolution’ that would be known as ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, and was not designated as a war. ….. 

Imagine this for a second: You want to buy a cat. They tell you that the cat is Russian. What would you do? 1. Ask the cat to show an ID. 2. Ask the cat a question in Russian. 3. Ask the cat whether she is for or against the invasion of Ukraine. 4. Do not buy the Russian cat and ask for a Ukrainian one. 5. Buy the Russian cat and bring her up with “Western values”. 6. Do not buy a cat at all. “For some Westerners, anything could be weaponized, including cats. Yes, CATS.  Amid the spiraling crisis in Ukraine, a ludicrous news story hit the headlines: Russian cats are sanctioned.  “The Fédération Internationale Féline, an NGO of cat registries founded in Belgium [sic], announced on Tuesday a ban on Russian-bred cats from its shows, and cat owners who live in Russia are also banned from the organization. This is the tip of the iceberg among a growing number of drama queens in Western countries who have jumped into a so-called anti-war campaign, with their moves going far beyond ...

Manifesto of the Socialists Against the War Coalition

It seems not equally so

Russia’s callousness towards its own soldiers

What made Russia and ‘the West’ engage in an unrelenting match on the dge of the abyss?

A degree proves that you are educated, but it does not prove that you understand.

We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians. –Bertolt Brecht The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.  When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!” When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.   – Bertolt Brecht,  Selected Poems General, Your Tank is a Powerful Vehicle It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men. But it has one defect: It needs a driver. General, your bomber is powerful. It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant. But it has one defect: It needs a mechan...

Central Banks as weapons

To the Russian anti-war movement

A review of the definition of wealth in the 2021 World Bank report

Saudi’s war on Yemen and the ‘West’. Refugees. Sanctions. Myanmar. International oil companies and boycotts. Israel and the Palestinians. Blatant racism

The racist character of Fortress Europe on display

Students to pay off loans into their 60s

  Statements on the BBC and other media outlets

The reemergence of civilizational thinking in the last two decades of the twentieth century and at the heart of capitalist modernity is a defense mechanism, a futile attempt to salvage an outdated mutation of capital and culture at the commencement of the project early in the eighteenth century. At a time when the rapid globalization of capital has dismantled the very viability of national economies, at a time when postmodernism destroyed the cultural production of national cultures, and at a time when poststructuralism has deconstructed the very metaphysics of presence at the heart of the Enlightenment and all its categorical (e.g., civilizational) constructs, retrograde forces like Samuel Huntington, Allan Bloom, or Francis Fukuyama have put up feeble resistance to moral and material forces beyond their, or anybody else’s, control. More than anything else these feckless attempts make for rather pathetic scenes to observe, when outdated good and evil no longer recognize that the chang...