Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

It’s time to ask questions and learn lessons? Related Covid-19 is not a pandemic

Related In England and the United States, the police were invented within the space of just a few decades — roughly from 1825 to 1855. The new institution was not a response to an increase in crime, and it really didn’t lead to new methods for dealing with crime. The most common way for authorities to solve a crime, before and since the invention of police, has been for someone to tell them who did it. Besides, crime has to do with the acts of individuals, and the ruling elites who invented the police were responding to challenges posed by collective action. To put it in a nutshell: The authorities created the police in response to large, defiant crowds. That’s — strikes in England, — riots in the Northern US, — and the threat of slave insurrections in the South.

 Islands of deterrence

“ The report minimises and at times denies the existence of institutional racism in Britain, despite the fact that, as the government now acknowledges, several witnesses  gave detailed evidence  of the forms of institutional and structural racism that they feel do operate within the UK. It was produced by a commission led by figures who had rejected the concept of institutional racism years before they began work. Arguably it has achieved exactly what the government wanted, adding credence to the false binary that underpins  their culture war agenda : that the nation faces a choice between addressing racial inequalities or class disadvantage.” A poisonous patronising report

Another product of ‘neoliberalism” Another national scandal

In one of the richest cities on earth. This was already going on a few years before the pandemic. “In recent years, food bank usage in the UK has risen sharply following 10 years of government austerity measures, welfare reforms and a widening gulf between earnings and living costs. With the economic downturn brought on by the pandemic, which has further exacerbated existing inequalities, food banks across the UK are struggling to meet demand.” A day in the life of a London food bank

 Students plan the largest rent strike in 40 years

India, the EU, the US, Canada and the UK are among the countries which have reserved the most doses of the vaccine, according to the latest data. It would be insane if the vaccines were to be put under a democratic health organisation that distributes the doses worldwide according to those who need them first, i.e. the frontline workers, the aged and the vulnerables. But we live in a world of nation states, capitalist competition and profit and intellectual property. And that’s the ‘rational’ and ‘natural’ order of things.

 Schools should not teach about corruption. If you think the UK isn’t corrupt, you haven’t looked hard enough

More than 1,000 UK doctors want to quit NHS

Andrew Smith of  Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT)  said: "By training and collaborating with despots, dictatorships and human rights abusers, the UK risks making itself complicit in the abuses that are being inflicted." “Risks making itself complicit”? Andrew Smith is either naive or a liberal idiot. UK ‘providing training for repressive regimes’

Maesteg-based Sian Summers-Rees, chief officer of City of Sanctuary, said: "The asylum system itself is dehumanising. Sometimes the system can take years and the quality of the decision-making by the Home Office is not good." Asylum seekers ‘in limbo’ and unable [not allowed] to work

How just one country and 9 products contribute to deforestation

Historian Raj Pal to the BBC: We have a myth of ‘Britannia rules the waves’ and making Britain ‘Great’, but we don’t want to address the fact that Britannia ruling the waves is to do with the slave trade, colonialism, empire and massacre, as well as trade in tobacco, sugar and salt. Almost a third of stately homes owned by the National Trust have links to slavery or colonialism...

This is a good summary, but lacks a political economy perspective. “The cycle will continue for as long as politicians refuse to address the reasons why people come to Britain to seek asylum. To take an example, the 120 people who were  intercepted in the Channel  on 4 August came from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan, Palestine, Sudan and Yemen. Of these countries, two were invaded in recent history by a coalition that included the UK; one has been pushed into famine by a Saudi-led bombardment using British weapons and military expertise; one is in a prolonged conflict with Israel, which like Saudi Arabia is a UK ally; and the others, most of which are former British colonies, are places where there is long-term, well-documented persecution of particular ethnic and social groups.” The more fundamental question of [failure of] economic development, the political economic policies pursued by the ruling classes in the aforementioned countries is missing. People become migra

The “civilised” UK’s Home Secretary plans to use the navy against migrants A threat to Britain, to “our way of life” and to the economy: lone migrant children

Wealth or Income?

Surprise! Surprise! Ethnic minorities: those who do not work hard enough, don’t speak our language, lack the skills, don’t want to integrate, don’t climb the property ladder, live on benefits, etc, etc. Covid-19 impact on ethnic minorities linked to housing and air pollution

“[ P]rogressives remain fixated on how to revive the world that engendered the present disorder. They constructed and managed that world, and it flattered their self-image as the rational vanguard of the species. It is only to be expected that they should yearn for the return of their now bankrupt authority. Yet few aspects of the contemporary scene are more laughably grotesque than defunct politicians and advisers demanding a return to the politics of competence and expertise that produced the dysfunctional euro, the ruinous Iraq War, the financial crisis, anarchy in Libya and the regime of globalisation that is currently collapsing.” State of the nation - we are entering a new age of disorder

“ So, Russian "actors" (why actors?) sought to influence the outcome of the UK general election by amplifying (not leaking, but amplifying) a dossier about US - UK trade talks which showed that the NHS was being put on the table by the Tory government.  I mean, only someone really stupid would think that the serious thing here was the Russian actors amplifying, and not the actual report showing the Tories were selling off the NHS to Trump! Did the British public not have the ri ght to know? I would say that, if anything, these Russian "actors" should be thanked for having acted in the interest of democracy in revealing these scandalous secret deals being hatched behind the backs of the British electorate. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why this report on Russian meddling has not seen the light of day while the Tories had control of the intelligence and security committee.  This is also likely to be the reason why on the same day that the rep