Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

July 4th  marks the 249th anniversary of the declaration of America's independence. This is no reason to celebrate. Let it instead serve as an opportunity to remind ourselves that the most pressing threat to humanity is a bloodthirsty pack of private interests hellbent on resource extraction and willing to use the full extent of its military might to destroy every living thing between it and capital accumulation.

Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate. — Edward Saïd

Tehila Sasson’s “argument is, roughly, that international aid organisations – influenced by a long tradition of voluntary service, a desire to find a role after empire and a dislike of the supposed soullessness and impersonality of postwar state-led development and planning – devised programmes and campaigns that relied on and promoted entrepreneurialism, consumerism, individualism and anti-statism. Non-profits weren’t simply too weak to defend against those forces of financialisation, marketisation and privatisation that we lump together under the term ‘neoliberalism’, but embraced them. This is the sense in which they were part of the ‘making’ of neoliberalism after empire, with damaging results. As Sasson puts it most strongly in her conclusion, the non-profit sector ‘helped cement post-imperial inequalities and new divisions of labour between Third World producers and British consumers. In a period marked by deindustrialisation and a crisis of unemployment, the solidarity economy ...

In Defence of Barbarism:  Non-Whites Against the Empire

‘ The decaying American empire ’ argument is disputable. The comparison with the collapse of the Soviet Union misses the different economic structures of the two countries. The US economic power has not been experiencing a long term stagnation, for example.  Actually, the argument should be the way around: in 1980s there was no ‘whip of external necessity’ compelling the US to outcompete the Soviet Union. The latter was not an economic threat to the US. Today China is the ‘external whip’ but to an already more powerful American economy – a dynamic one in terms of capital-intensive industries, productivity and an array of industrially-advanced allies and subordinates.

A very good article Capital’s Emirates

“In The New Age of Empire: How Colonialism and Racism Still Rule the World , Kehinde Andrews explores how the intellectual, political and economic frameworks inherited from colonialism are still governing today’s world, resulting in a new age of empire that perpetuates racism, white supremacy and global economic inequalities.”

A communist life

Dogs life is long. —a Tunisian proverb “If the American foreign policy establishment is a grand citadel, then Henry Kissinger is the ghoul haunting its hallways. Today, global capitalism and United States hegemony are underwritten by the most powerful military ever devised. Any political vision worth fighting for must promise an end to the cycle of never-ending wars afflicting the world in the twenty-first century. And breaking that cycle means placing the twin evils of capitalism and imperialism in our crosshairs. This newly-released book , published in partnership with  Jacobin , follows Kissinger’s fiery trajectory around the world—not because he was evil incarnate, but because he, more than any other public figure, illustrates the links between capitalism, empire, and the feedback loop of endless war-making that still plagues us today.”

“It is fair to assume that the different fractions of the ruling class in a country sometimes have diverging, even opposing interests. But if the country is the empire that dominates the world, on one point at least the ruling classes will agree: they do not want to see the basis of their power (i.e., the nation-empire) weakened. Those who have power intend, at a minimum, to maintain it, if not consolidate or expand it. So it is reasonable to infer that the conflicting interests between the various fractions manifest themselves in different strategies for ruling the world, in different conceptions of empire. “ Despite all his bombastic proclamations, Trump has not started any wars. Under Biden we are already on the second.” Elective affinities

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.  The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.  Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.  Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”  ― Arundhati Roy ,  War Talk

Another of the BBC’s failures I would say. 20 years on and the Corporation feels it must repeat a lie. The intelligence argument is an argument that reinforces the belief among many that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. The BBC is actually reinforces a lie. It is an argument to justify past and present British involvements in wars and conflicts: “our intention has always been the intention of a good player that supports ‘democracy’ and ‘freedoms’ all over the world.” Removing geopolitics, the political economy and American hegemony and ‘imperial’ functioning , help provide a narrow picture that reinforces the belief in the government and the ideology behind  interventions, ‘regime change’, aid, etc. The fact is that Britain is a junior player and has material and geopolitical interests with the US, the decisive power. A criminal needs an alibi . That is what happened prior the invasion of Iraq. Previous criminal actions also required alibis. Think of British support of Saddam i...

A review of Helen Thompson’s Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century

Review of  The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance  

  If the queen had apologized for slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism and urged the crown to offer reparations for the millions of lives taken in her/their names, then perhaps I would do the human thing and feel bad. As a Kenyan , I feel nothing. This theater is absurd. Criticism of British empire intensifies Related Dozens of staff at King Charles’s former residence told they could lose jobs

The role the monarchy played in the service of UK’s imperial interests

Retour sur une légende du désert

The ‘same’ headlines, attacks and vilifications uttered and published when I first arrived in England 20 years ago. The difference today is that white Ukrainians are welcome as it was with Polish labour. Johnson warns of the ‘healthy young men’ or ‘economic migrants’ who come here under false pretences, sometimes posing as minors, in place of the truly vulnerable.  Fables of migration

Serving the global elite

Note: A British nation has never existed. A sharp critique of David Edgerton’s Britain