Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

We need to sell submarines and other hardware to Israel. Yes, we don't recognise the Palestinians right of return. We have a sense of guilt. Enjoy Eurovision! Germany rules BDS movement "anti-Semitic"

Germany's relentless campaign to silence pro-Palestinian voices See also “Germany is a big supporter of denying Palestinians their right of return

'Neoliberalism': not so bad? See also Bill Gates poverty is decreasing How poor countries develop rich countries

What is better, robbing a bank or founding one? The Deutsche Bank

"Lady Rothschild wanted to persuade company chiefs that capitalism must go  “beyond financial performance only, in an effort to enhance the value of environmental, human, ethical and social capital”.   The idea was backed by luminaries like Bill Clinton; Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England; Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England; and, to cap it all, Prince Charles of the British monarchy! These eminences were out to tell the world that capitalism is a great and good thing and can be made even better if we can reduce inequality and poverty, end global warming and wars, and operate in a ‘moral’ way.  Like Warren, Lady Rothschild argued that  “the imbalance of capital and labour”  must be acted upon." "Accountable, inclusive or responsible capitalism?" I disagree with stating that "capitalism won't and can't deliver". I think it is more complicated than that. The system in fact has been delivering and not del

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  ...

Olivier Roy on "Islamic radicalism" Some good points, but the title of this interview smells bad. I think Roy dealt with some areas of the subject. "The root causes are still there". I don't think he has elaborated on these root causes. "Radicalism", it seems, does not apply to the "Western" states. There are a few  political, economic and cultural features which characterise some Western states as "radicals". I wonder what Roy thinks of the structural violence of the state (Karen Armstrong).  I am a "radicalised" person, but not for the reasons he thinks. Was it just that one day, I got up and wanted radicalism as Roy says? That's nonsense, I'm afraid, and he would make a very bad doctor.

Germany "Neo-Nazi terror was overlooked, or perhaps deliberately ignored," says the BBC. " Suddenly, it was revealed that a neo-Nazi cell of just three people had operated with impunity for 11 years, murdering 10 people - and had remained unknown to police." See also this long read Related stories German soldiers performing Nazi salutes Goebbels' secretary who "knew nothing about the murder of 6 million Jews"

Those who refuse to be homogenized by the global capitalist culture; those who are outside the fanum , the "sacred liberal order",  and ... If  we just make Muslims liberal, everything will be alright!  Islamophobia in Germany

Rana Plaza disaster – five years on Sweat and blood in our shirts and trousers. But  where are Bill and Angelina?

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

Germany When doves cry Note: there is no word about the selling of submarines, for example, to the settler colonial state of Israel.  Complicity in crimes for jobs and accumulation of capital.

The Troubling Origins of the Skeletons in a New York Museum

The return of fasicsm in Europe

Varoufakis "speaks of how great it was to have the support of Larry Summers, Norman Lamont, and other figures on the Right, but it was support for whom, for what, and in whose class interests? Class analysis is far from the foreground of the picture sketched out here. Closed rooms and class war

"In the world's best-run economy, house prices keep falling"

" The most cherished myths of American culture tell us that, while war is terrible,  our  wars are noble, fought only under duress, and in the service of freedom, human rights, and democracy. If we fail in our ventures, as we did in Vietnam and Iraq and probably will in Afghanistan and Syria, that failure was not in our intentions, which were righteous, but merely in our execution. Our worst sins, in these myths, are not ambition, cruelty, or greed, but hubris and lack of foresight. Against such myths, which can be found articulated in the latest Hollywood movies, in the editorial pages of  The New York Times , in Brookings Institution essays, and in Amazon’s “Hot New Releases in World War II History,” Brecht’s ideological critique, which is founded in its own mythology of good and evil, can do little or nothing. Indeed, it’s not clear what one can do about such myths at all, since the power they have is precisely that which deforms and obscures reality into something comprehensi

In the Philippines  ... Meanwhile in Germany  ...

Greedy German fast-food workers

"How  could Germany of all countries have become a paragon, politically stable and economically successful, of democratic capitalism in the 1970s – ‘Modell Deutschland’ – and later, in the 2000s, Europe’s uncontested economic and political superpower? Any explanation must have recourse to a Braudelian  longue durée , in which destruction can be progress – utter devastation turned into a lasting blessing – because capitalist progress  is  destruction, of a more or less creative sort. In 1945 unconditional surrender forced Germany, or what was left of its western part, into what Perry Anderson has called a ‘second round of capitalist transformation’ of the sort no other European country has ever had to undergo. Germany’s bout was a violent – sharp and short – push forward into social and economic ‘modernity’, driving it for ever from the halfway house of Weimar, in a painful dismantling of structures of political domination and social solidarity, feudal fetters which had held back