NM's blog

Israel was forged out of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. The Greens have very belatedly recognised what should have been obvious all along.

Stefan Zweig , reflecting on his deep anti-nationalist, cosmopolitan, and pan-European ideals: “I regard the national idea as dangerous. I know and love individual human beings, I love languages and their diverse spirits. But in states I see only contingent forms. What am I, for example? German, if we are attached to Germany; Austrian, if the Entente forces us to be independent; Czechoslovak, because my father is a German from Bohemia and we might perhaps be annexed tomorrow; Jewish, if the Jews become a national minority. Like me, millions of people do not know what they are.” Context of the Quote Zweig wrote this during the turbulent geopolitical shifts in Central Europe following World War I and leading up to World War II. As an Austrian-born Jewish writer who wrote in German, his legal identity kept changing at the whim of shifting borders, treaties, and annexations. This quote beautifully encapsulates his lifelong philosophy: he refused to align his identity with arbitrary politic...

China’s spectacular economic development has brought up the price of its labour and undermined Western corporate profits .

The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation – Facebook page “Three years ago today, the Islamist terrorist organisation Hamas launched a coordinated large-scale attack on southern Israel. “More than 1,200 people were killed, including around 800 civilians and 36 children. More than 4,000 people were injured, and 251 were taken hostage and abducted to the Gaza Strip. “The attack also marked the beginning of the genocide in Gaza carried out by the Israeli government and military.” Paradoxically, the word 'terrorist' does not occur even once in the interview. “ Gil Shohat, West Asia Programme Manager at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin, headed the Foundation’s Israel Office in Tel Aviv from March 2023 to August 2026. “In an interview with Neues Deutschland , he reflects on his time in Israel, October 7 and the trauma it caused, as well as the brutalisation and militarisation of Israeli society, the dehumanisation of Palestinians, the role of the media, the upcoming parliamentary electio...

Zionism is not a redeemable movement gone awry; it did not become an occupying power only in 1967 but is so inherently and inescapably. Its appetite for extreme violence and expansion is insatiable and facilitated without limits or red lines by what Sayegh calls its “vital and continuing association” with imperialism. Netanyahu is not an outlier or unrepresentative of the whole, but in fact the perfect embodiment of the racism, violence and expansionism that [Fayez] Sayegh understood was inherent to Zionism over half a century ago, traits that are supported by the overwhelming majority of the settler population.

By Michael Roberts Anwar Shaikh has died at the age of 80 after a period of illness. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Anwar was THE figure in classical and Marxist economics of the last 40 years or more. He was an educator of many radical economists over decades as Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research in New York. He wrote many seminal and important works, which were eventually compiled and added to in his magisterial book (always on my bookshelf ready to consult): Capitalism: competition, conflict, crises. Please read this article on Anwar's work that I wrote for the New School Economic Review in 2023, a special issue to celebrate his work and that of Duncan Foley. "Anwar Shaikh’s contribution to the economics of reality—i.e. the political economy of capitalism— is immeasurable." "Shaikh has covered just about every area of the macro (and the micro) and has delivered new theoretical insights backed up by empirical evidence—a combination sadly lac...

The left-wing economist Anwar Shaikh has passed away

Far-right figures fuel Islamophobic claims with false student protest videos

 Jean-Luc Mélenchon

I keep on thinking: If one attack—as barbaric as it was, and it was barbaric—if one attack pushes so many Israelis to become inhuman... imagine yourself what it does to Palestinians who live under those attacks for decades. — Gideo Levy