Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A very good piece “To understand the flammable situation at which the pyromaniac far right has taken aim,  we need less mass psychology and more political economy .”

“The violence of the last week has been unusually vicious and frightening, but it does not exist in a vacuum. Fourteen years of Conservative rule have seen minority communities used as a scapegoat for worsening inequality time and time again. The history of institutional racism in Britain goes back much further, but you could begin the most recent version of this story at the introduction of the Hostile Environment, a set of policies that aimed to make Britain feel inhospitable… Labour right must also take its share of responsibility. New Labour helped to embed the Islamophobia of the post-9/11 years, with new, stronger powers of policing and surveillance and campaign literature that demonized asylum seekers. Keir Starmer appears to be taking up this mantle… Just this week, Sarah Edwards, the Labour MP for Tamworth, referred to the town’s Holiday Inn as an “asylum hotel” and said that the town’s people wanted “their hotel back.” Days later it was set alight by the far rig...

For Martin Wolf the only possible world system is the neoliberal model

Protests come as resistance to austerity is growing internationally

“ It seems that today’s Tories – even (or perhaps especially) their most committed ideologues – are once again prepared to ‘pay up’ if it allows them to win a class fight. And let’s not delude ourselves: Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget … shows that a class fight is underway.” Sound money? “Class war is traditionally a term levelled at the left – typically when arguing for radical things such as housing or food – but it is clearer than ever that it is the Tories who wage it.” The class war is upon us

The new frontiers of control Related UK prison population third highest in Europe

 The riots are the death spasms of a broken Britain Related Unrest in Northern Ireland

A new world won't emerge as if by magic

"Spain has a magnificent primary care system, but its hospitals have been hit by a decade of austerity since the financial crisis. It has  only a third of the hospital beds per capita  that are provided by Austria or Germany. Yet that is still more than the UK, New Zealand or the US." How did Spain get its response so wrong?

Britain as Conservative and imperialist country, and a pioneer of an aggressive form of capitalism. Even Le Monde Diplomatique doesn't include Britain's foreign policy of the contending parties! UK's austerity elections

The oppressive state is a macho rapist

In 1998 the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial that said that the IMF ‘has not been fighting financial fires but dousing them with gasoline’. The IMF pours the first tranche of gasoline. Vijay Prashad has an update The IMF does not fight financial fires but douses them with gasoline

"The global press have been equally delighted, but with some of the warmest praise gushing from those bastions of “enlightened capitalism”  The Economist  and  The Financial Times , radical progressives may wish to zoom in yet closer on what has been happening on the ground in Portugal." Not different from other European "socialist" parties. When the bastions of "enlightened capitalism" praise such parties, it doesn't mean they are wrong; it means there is something really wrong with those parties which are trying to satisfy both the EU capital and their rank and file whereas in fact neglecting the latter. Europe's magician of the left?

Britain The Labour council, faced with opposition, is cleaving to its “blame Tory cuts” line, sending out self-congratulatory emails about its successful budgets that don’t even mention these closures, and only talk about the services they’ve managed to protect. In a dynamic that has been replicated all over the country, the Labour council has become the hand-wringing instrument of Conservative austerity. "Left-wing" councils enact Tory cuts

"Bolsonaro won mainly because of the disillusionment of the working class with the Workers Party.  After the collapse of commodity prices in resources and agriculture, the economy went into recession. The blame for this and corruption has been laid at the door of the Workers Party." Brazil's Tropical Trump

We are all in it together! Council cuts in England

Centrists won't save Britain

Portugal "Voters ushered Mr. Costa, a center-left leader,  into power  in late 2015 after he promised to reverse cuts to their income, which the previous government had approved to reduce Portugal’s high deficit under the terms of an international bailout of 78 billion euros, or $90 billion. Mr. Costa formed an unusual alliance with Communist and radical-left parties, which had been shut out of power since the end of Portugal’s dictatorship in 1974. They united with the goal of beating back austerity, while balancing the books to meet eurozone rules. The government raised public sector salaries, the minimum wage and pensions and even restored the amount of vacation days to prebailout levels over objections from creditors like Germany and the International Monetary Fund. Incentives to stimulate business included development subsidies, tax credits and funding for small and midsize companies." Portugal dared to cast aside austerity  ...

Britain How austerity is hollowing out heart Tory Somerset

Britain The Violence of Austerity