Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The United States, Russia and China, from Kosovo to Ukraine There is a preview here

Arguable, but very interesting. An interview with the author. Here are the main arguments in case you cannot access the article . “Constant emphasis on racial and ethnic disparities diverts public attention from the growing class divide in the West between the college-educated overclass and the working class. The nation-state is the only unit of government that has been able to mobilise extra-political popular sentiments and national identity to improve the condition of the majority of people, not just an oligarchy or aristocracy. The actual ruling class in the US and similar Western democracies is not a tiny number of freakishly rich individuals, or heirs and heiresses, but the top 10 or 15 per cent of the population – almost all of them with college diplomas and often graduate or professional degrees. I was criticised for arguing in  The New Class War  that education, not income, is the major dividing line between classes in the modern West.  There are two working classes, divided by

“The aggressive transmutation of ruling regimes into warring garrison states presiding over competitive military industrial complexes has degenerated all these states into alien powers treating entire nations as their military bases.” The rise of Iran’s military-industrial complex

Full access to the article requires subscription. Apart from what is already available , here are some more excerpts: “ The surveillance goes beyond keeping tabs on Islamist preachers and foreign workers. Because the government has majority holdings in telecoms operators Etisalat and Du (formerly the Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company), the security services are able to monitor all communications on their networks. The UAE buys the technology to do this from Western companies such as McAfee. Shires says it’s likely that ‘Abu Dhabi has passively collected the data and provided it to Washington’ as part of the ‘war on terror’. After 9/11, it was the Arab Spring that contributed the most to the government’s determination to monitor and repress those it considered ‘internal enemies’. ‘2011 was a turning point in security terms — a brutal one,’ one of the academics who had asked for anonymity recalled. Former US National Security Agency (NSA) officer Lori Stroud told Reuters tha

"Even though slavery was abolished, it truly was just a transfer of ownership from chattel slavery and private ownership to literally state-sanctioned slavery," says Savannah Eldrige from the Abolish Slavery National Network. "The United States of America has never had a day without codified slavery.”

In fact, America is two guns: one at home and a much bigger one abroad.

US chief executives are on track to reap record rewards this year, raising the prospect of fresh clashes with investors and employees as the gap between their earnings and those of their staff widens to a historic multiple in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.  For the 280 S&P 500 companies that have reported figures this year, the median chief executive’s pay has jumped to a record $14.2mn for 2021, up from $13.5mn in 2020, according to ISS Corporate Solutions, a data provider.  Equilar, another data company that tracks chief executive rewards at the biggest companies by revenue, said the median among 196 companies that have reported this year has rocketed 20 per cent to $14.3mn, after having dipped to $12mn in 2020. Among the largest executive pay packages to have been announced were David Zaslav’s $247mn at Discovery, Pat Gelsinger’s $178.6mn at Intel and Andy Jassy’s $212.7mn at Amazon — which was made public the same day workers in New York voted to form Amazon’s first US unio

Irish law maker speaks out

Whatever your stance on the Chinese regime, the words of the Foreign Ministry spokesperson should to be taken into account in a world rife of hypocrisy, power struggle and instability. “Certain countries should ask themselves: When the US drove five waves of NATO expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced offensive strategic weapons in breach of its assurances to Russia, did it ever think about the consequences of pushing a big country to the wall?“ “I  noted that many people believe that there should not be double standards on the issue of respecting other country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Some people in the US attempt to distort China’s position and even sling mud on China. Such moves with ill intentions are unacceptable. Many people are asking the US: Did the US respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia when US-led NATO bombed Belgrade? Did the US respect the sovereignty and territorial inte

“ Whoever controls the institutions that distribute wealth in the world economy controls who gets what.” The pandemic is very bad. Yes, but not for everybody.

“The question is: if humanity is to be defended, who must do the defending, how, and with which consequences? Beyond humanity, if life on earth is to thrive or survive, who or what must take responsibility for what appears to be an impending catastrophe?” The logic of humanitarian intervention

Historical responsibility for climate change is at the heart of debates over climate justice

“ Currently none of Starbucks' 8,000 US cafes is unionised, meaning the world's biggest coffee house chain is under no obligation to negotiate with staff over pay and conditions. But the baristas hope to change that at five cafes in Buffalo, setting a precedent that could disrupt the firm's business practices much more widely.” One Starbucks at a time Related

An interview with Ussama Makdisi

Using ‘imperial’ and avoiding imperialism and capitalism. America isn’t ‘back’. Here’s why Related “ About 42 percent of Americans are now either unaware of the fact that their country is still fighting wars in the Greater Middle East and Africa or think that the war on terror is over. Consider that for a moment. What does it mean to be fighting wars for a country in which a near majority of the population is unaware that you’re even doing so?” “I tell my son that people die in wars because so many of us turn our backs on what’s going on in the world we live in.” Andrea Mazzarino from Cost of War Project

A very good analysis. “ If the analysis of the skewed distribution of consumption, decision-making power, and financial capacity all lead us to the same place, it is not by accident. Where we have arrived is at the analysis of class identities, class relations and class power.” I don’t think one can separate the capitalist mode of production and how exploits and generates things and class. After all, upper classes existed before capitalism. It is what capital and capitalism endows that class today makes it a bigger consumer and destroyer of the environment. Climate, Carbon and Class Related “By far the most comprehensive catalogue ever assembled of how climate change is upending our world, the report reads like a 4,000-page indictment of humanity's stewardship of the planet. But the document, designed to influence critical policy decisions, is not scheduled for release until February 2022 - too late for crunch UN summits this year on climate, biodiversity and food systems, some sci

A nation that has often defined its identity against an Other. The US will prefer a China contest to the forever wars

Via Michael Roberts Notice that the two leading states of the neoliberal form of capitalism, US and UK, have the lowest corporate income tax.