Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"Opposition Labour Party plots overthrow of Capitalism" —Reuters Note the use of the verb "to plot", which is defined by Oxford Dictionary as "a plan made in secret by a group of people to do something illegal or harmful." It is scary: we have just discovered that there is "a plot", "a secret plan", that Corbyn, McDonnell and their guerrillas have been organising a parallel underground organisation and an armed wing of the Labour Party in order to overthrow the system, possibly with the support of Cuba and China, with promises from North Korea that she will send advisors once the new regime is estabilshed.

"There is a basic level of ignorance in British society - partly wilful ignorance, partly genuine misinformation, partly flat-out denial - about how the Israeli state actually came to be. There seems to be in Britain - in TV commentators, in mainstream academics, in ordinary public opinion - a deep reluctance to acknowledge how, in 1948, three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs were forcibly evicted, with British backing, off their own land. To recognise this as racist, in the words of the IHRA code, would be "anti-semitic". A large part of the mainstream media anger towards the Labour Party for refusing the "internationally recognised" code is an establishment anger against a political party for refusing to accept the post-war narrative - a narrative, moreover, which has been successfully disseminated and internalised among many people in the UK since 1948. This is the scale of the British Labour Party's problem - if it is to go through with this, it

"Such “dialogue” is promoted to deflect pressure from Israel and leave the status quo that the BDS movement seeks to change – Israeli occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid – intact." How the Israel lobby is using Own Jones

"The Jews have proved to be first class colonisers, to have the real good, old empire qualities, to be really first class pioneers."  — Herbert Morrison (1888-1965), a British Labour Party leader*. Labour support for Zionism was to continue into the Second World War. In 1944 the party was actually to propsoe the removal of the Arab population from Palestine "on human grounds ...  Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out, as the Jews move in." Quoted in The Blood Never Dried by John Newsinger, 2006, p. 135 *Morrison also   took an aggressive stance against  Iran 's nationalist Prime Minister  Mohammed Mosaddeq  and approved his overthrow.

There have always been Marxists in Labour but it has never been a Marxist party (or even, by some definitions, a socialist one). Its 2017 general election manifesto was social democratic in nature, vowing to reform rather than replace capitalism. But in his speech, McDonnell couched the party’s pledge to renationalise “water, rail, Royal Mail and energy” in more radical terms: “It’s a significant development as a result of the new exploration of the ideas of Marx.” John Mcdonnell and the rebirth of British marxism?

The end of May?

"The British establishment is trying to destroy Labour," writes Paul Mason. "[We must] build a vibrant political culture where anti-Semitism is combated, where any illusions about Vladimir Putin’s Russia are punctured and the truth is told about the crimes of Stalinism; a culture where people are educated in the values of the Labour movement and its diverse traditions – social democracy, syndicalism and democratic Marxism – not just given a manifesto, a rulebook and a list of doors to knock. "We need a movement that helps people develop a belief in their own agency - not the agency of states, religions, autocrats or, for that matter, iconic Labour leaders. That part is up to us." Actually, it is not in the interest of the "British establishment" to destroy Labour. What the "establishment" wants is a resurrection of New Labour, a shift in the balance of forces within Labour so that the right-wing takes over. Ultimately, what is ai

Anti-semitism This is probably the first time I remove a post from the blog. Enough is enough and The Labour Party, Israel, and anti-semitism So not to confuse a crude depiction with serious opposition to the crimes of the Israeli state as a settler, colonial, apartheid and imperialist state. And not to use the anti-semitism exploited by the Western imperialist state to silence any oppsition to the Israeli state or deflect attention from an alternative,  small as it is, to the status quo, exploitation, austerity, plunder, wars, oligarchy, corruption, stduents debt, neoliberalism, obscene inequality, cuts in social services, xenophobia, hypocrisy, double standard, attacks on pensions, teaming with autocrats for financial and geopolitical interests, etc.

Britain In December 1989,  Corbyn was one of only four MPs to sign a parliamentary motion  congratulating the “magnificent outburst” by striking workers in Czechoslovakia “against the corruption and mismanagement of the Stalinist bureaucracy”. “Even though Russia is no longer communist, there is still this assumption on many parts of the left that it is anti-imperialist, and they’re willing to turn a blind eye to things Russia does in other countries,” Greenberg said. “There’s a continuity between that part of the left’s attitudes back then to Czechoslovakia and its dissidents and its attitudes now to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its involvement in Syria. Those old attitudes are still there.” "Corbyn, the spy, and the cold war long shadow"

Germany "The neoliberal bourgeoisie no longer acts according to the rules of classical Marxism. The CEOs of the DAX 30 companies will not suddenly arrive like Batman to save centrist politics. The economic elite is, after all, the client of the state – always dependent on handouts, outsourcing, deregulation and implicit subsidies. Both Trump and Brexit show: the corporate elite will take what it they are given – and they usually learn to like it. So the German left must outline a new long-term strategy . The first question is: what does it mean to be progressive in 21st century Germany? At a micro-level this is answered every day by the altruistic actions of young people and trade unionists: to do volunteer work with migrants and refugees; to attend democratic political and cultural events; to cycle and to recycle; to uphold the rights of women, ethnic minorities and gay people. To confront unflinchingly the memory of the Holocaust. To trace, as the Marxist philosopher Geo

Britain Michael Roberts reporting from a Labour Party conference Models of public ownership and   Why did Labour lose in 1983? "In a way, the myth that it was the 'hard Left' that cost Labour the election is an inverted form of Bennite optimism. It lays all the emphasis upon ideology, agency and leadership, albeit in a thin, polemical way that asks no searching questions of the Labour Right and Centre, long its dominant forces. But, then as now, agency and leadership turn out to depend on far bigger historical processes. And it's their obliviousness to those larger processes that leaves Corbyn's right-wing critics out in the cold, fantasising about re-staging the battles of the 1980s."

The youthquake that wasn't

"Bew is entirely justified in arguing that many of the political stances associated with Blair have deep roots in the party’s tradition. But his belief that this tradition is something to be celebrated and preserved requires him to engage in suppression of inconvenient facts and mealy-mouthed equivocation about the crimes of British imperialism. Citizen Clem was intended to supply Labour’s Atlanticist right with historical ballast. A clear-eyed study of Attlee’s career is all the more important for the Corbynite left as an antidote to rosy-spectacled Labourist sentimentalism for him." Much to be modest about

Jeremy Corbyn's silence on Syria is hypocritical

" I would like to use this opportunity in the run-up to International Human Rights Day to focus on the greatest threats to our common humanity, and why states need to throw their weight behind genuine international cooperation and human rights..." " That’s why we must ensure that the powerful uphold and respect international rules and international law." "Genuine corporate accountability must apply to all of the activities of their subsidiaries and suppliers. Impunity for corporations that violate human rights or wreck our environment, as in the mineral-driven conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, must be brought to an end." " There are now more refugees and displaced people around the world than at any time since the Second World War." No mention of the biggest human disaster since the genocide in Rawanda; the killing machine Al-Assad regime. One can list Brexit, Trump, climate change, etc, but fails to mention a brutal murder

Britain This would be my title: A bit-of-social-democracy vs neoliberal capitalism?

Some interesting arguments, examples and proposals by George Monbiot. However, I don't think they are enough because first, and as he himslef doubts it, the Labour Party is not the radical agency that can carry out the change. Furthermore, Monbiot is not addressing the entrenched power of the capitalists and the elite, ownership and the state, and the reaction of these three. It seems that Monbiot hopes for a peaceful change, excluding any conflict. Also, he has taken examples from small wealthy countries where neolobiralism has not taken root as in the big Western European ones, especially Britain. These big countries have another important characteristic which effects their socio-economic policies; they are imperialist states. Article 1 Article 2

Labour and migration

Labour and immigration

"As a reporter on British politics and economics, I haven’t seen the ruling class of England in a panic like this for a long time." The British ruling class is in full panic mode