NM's blog

“The focus on ethnic or religious identity has surely undermined any prospect of a class-based politics developing . Civil society — once vibrant in the early days of the uprising — has been stifled by state violence, while political parties and trade unions have been dissolved in the name of national transition.” “ While the HTS leadership maintains strict control over many Sunni militias in Idlib, it must now negotiate with non-Sunni communities, such as the Druze and Kurds…” Here the writer is inaccurate. The Kurds are not a non-Sunni community; most if the Kurds are Sunni. According to some estimates,  Kurdish forces lost an estimated 11,000 fighters in the battle against ISIS (a Sunni too), with over 22,000 wounded. 

Recent reports of an Israeli campaign to win the social media war by granting millions of dollars to TikTok and social media influencers is only a fraction of a massive, coordinated campaign. Many pro-Palestine activists are now highlighting the direct complicity of the Western media, especially in the UK, in attempting to whitewash rape accusations against Israeli soldiers. Instead of using the unequivocal word “rape,” mainstream outlets refer to the horrific Sde Teiman prison episodes merely as “abuse.”

“[A] direct connection to the Munich massacre was no longer needed. Anybody found to be an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian armed struggle or actively involved in the preparation of terrorist events was a potential target of Mossad’s killing team.” Aviva Guttmann,  Operation Wrath of God: The Secret History of European Intelligence and Mossad’s Assassination Campaign,  Cambridge University Press, 2023 “ The book,” writes Alain Gresh, “will disappoint readers who expect revelations. The exchanges mostly confirm that the frame of reference (the “war on terror”) used to analyze the Middle East is utterly useless, that on the contrary it has a blinding effect, making the western services incapable of understanding the nature of Black September, its relationship with Fatah and quite simply the meaning of the Palestinian struggle.  For them “the war on terror” was a “technical” campaign with no political content. The author herself is not immune to this simplistic r...

Lucas was widely acclaimed because he furthered mainstream theory that markets could work without crises or distortions as long as individuals has sufficient information to make ‘rational decisions’ on their own interests.  So the reality of crises and inequalities was due not to capitalist markets but to ‘irrational’ decisions by authorities or unions interfering with markets. Lucas had succeeded in his critique in reducing Keynesian macro economics to a weak and feeble beast.   No wonder he got a Nobel prize at the height of the neoclassical, neoliberal ascendancy in 1995.

Total referrals reach record high , with 21% being due to ‘extreme rightwing concerns’ and 10% to Islamist ideology.

Bertrand Russell warns that racial pride can quickly become harmful racial supremacy (1946): “Another passion which gives rise to false beliefs that are politically harmful is pride - pride of nationality, race, sex, class, or creed. When I was young France was still regarded as the traditional enemy of England, and I gathered as an unquestionable truth that one Englishman could defeat three Frenchmen. When Germany became the enemy this belief was modified and English people ceased to mention derisively the French propensity for eating frogs. But in spite of governmental efforts, I think few Englishmen succeeded in genuinely regarding the French as their equals.  Americans and Englishmen, when they become acquainted with the Balkans, feel an astonished contempt when they study the mutual enmities of Bulgarians and Serbs, or Hungarians and Rumanians. It is evident to them that these enmities are absurd and that the belief of each little nation in its own superiority has no objective...

The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles. — Eugene V. Debs