NM's blog

“While America’s kaleidoscopic metaphor captured the beauty and propulsive force of the country’s energy revolution, it obscured its dark consequences. In the kaleidoscopic viewfinder, there was no hierarchy, no center, no dominant or subservient parts, and no explicit narrative other than the assumption of progress. Further, there seemed to be no exploitation of labor or resources, no class tensions, and no entropic losses. The disquieting instabilities of unemployment, industrial mergers, and frantic urban growth went unnoticed. “Even James Truslow Adams, the historian who gave the 'American Dream' its name — which cast the U.S. as a land of economic and social opportunity — condemned this rampage of development. 'It was not a question of preparing a continent for habitation,'  he proclaimed in 1929 . 'It was one of money-maddened men furiously wrenching wealth from it in every way their ingenuity and greed could devise, from the land, from the forests above it, f...

A selection from a long interview The most productive way to understand fascism —an approach that allows us to think about both historical fascisms and twenty-first-century neo-fascisms — is to start with fascism’s social and political project, which stems from its worldview (rather than a doctrine  per se ). This ideological core is what endures, despite the different strategies used, which represent forms of adaptation to the particular and changing political circumstances and cultural contexts.  This worldview can be encapsulated in a set of elements which are in ways also articulated with each other: An obsession with decline, decadence and the decomposition of a community considered to be organic and fixed … A civilisational and/or racial paranoia that makes it possible to connect this decline to the presence on ‘our’ soil of immigrants, minorities and groups considered fundamentally alien… Hatred of equality and of all movements that push for it… The idea that a national...

“[T]he problem begins the moment we assume that a person’s political behavior can be predicted from their religion or culture. He calls this habit of thinking culture talk : the assumption that if someone is Muslim, their politics, morality, and whether they are dangerous or harmless must somehow come from Islam. In this framework, people are no longer judged by what they actually do, but by a label placed on them in advance.”

The essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common, and also that they have forgotten many things The original text: L'essence d'une nation est que tous les individus aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous aient oublié bien des choses. —Ernest Renan French philosopher and historian Ernest Renan in  his famous 1882 Sorbonne lecture,  Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?  (What is a Nation?),

“ How can one of the most resource-rich countries on earth remain trapped in poverty, instability, and hunger? “Too often, the focus falls exclusively on local militias, corruption, or insecurity, while much less attention is paid to the broader economic system that profits from Congolese resources.” I sent a comment to the editor. There is a crucial factor missing. Were  there classes after for al independence. If the structures of powers largely remained, what was/were the social/class(es) that perpetuated those power structures? Why did the nationalisations (not mentioned once in the article) of the 1960d and 1970s fail?  Related “The central question at stake here may be posed like this: why have the processes of accumulation failed to produce a consolidation of capital, an economically powerful ruling class and sustained patterns of national investment? The standard explanations—low demographic pressure, reliance on primary commodities, deterioration in the terms of trad...

What was Iraq before 2003? Related Arguing that Iraq experienced a half-century of democratic rule before Saddam Hussein rests primarily on the political framework established under the  Kingdom of Iraq   from 1921 to 1958. During this era, the nation operated under a constitutional monarchy featuring an elected legislature and a relatively free press, laying the groundwork for multiparty political competition.  [1, 2]  The basis for this argument relies on several key historical and political elements: Constitutional Framework:  The Iraqi Constitution of 1925 established Iraq as a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, consisting of an appointed Senate and an elected House of Representatives.  [3]  Multiparty Elections:  Between 1925 and the fall of the monarchy in 1958, Iraq held ten general parliamentary elections. These elections facilitated a multi-party system with competing factions, political parties, and independe...

Question to Google AI: Why do Desert Warrior characters speak English in the movie although Saudi Arabia has heavily funded it? Is that the alternative SA is proposing? Is it not mainly a drive and an attempt to rival Egypt that has produced so many history dramas and movies in Arabic? The choice to film  Desert Warrior  in English—despite its heavy Saudi funding—is not an "alternative"  Saudi Arabia  is proposing to Arabic cinema, but a  deliberate Trojan Horse strategy to break into the global mainstream .  [1, 2]  Your observation about the regional rivalry is spot on. For decades,  Egypt  has been the undisputed "Hollywood of the Middle East," holding an absolute monopoly on Arabic-language historical epics and pop culture. Saudi Arabia's decision to bypass the Arabic language entirely with its flagship movie is a direct attempt to leapfrog  Egypt's  domestic dominance by playing on a completely different, global chessboard. ...