Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Hypocrisy then, more hypocrisy now

Situating the Holocaust in a broader context of white racism, colonialism and imperialism 

A visual history

I am at the end of this book. I recommend it. You just need some updated figures while you are reading. The Globalisation of Production, Super-Exploitation and the Crisis of Capitalism Two major factors cause capitalist crisis: declining profitability and overproduction. I am not convinced that the latter is a major factor. The problem is not that capitalism produces too much, but that what it is produced is not provided to the global population. Half of the world population is unable to buy what is produced or buys too little of what is produced because it is too poor. That means that lack of investment in large swathes of the world–Latin America and South Africa, Africa, parts of the Middle East and Asia–unemployment, precarity, etc. deprives half of the world from getting access to what is produced. Those who produce get little or almost nothing from what they produce.  According to the WHO “around 45% of deaths among children under 5 years of age are linked to undernutrition. Thes

“[Frantz]  Fanon urged us to invent and make new discoveries and not blindly imitate Europe. The struggle of decolonisation, Fanon tells us, must challenge the dominance of European culture and its claims of universalism without being trapped in a romanticized and fixed past. It is these two alienations that colonised people must overcome in their cultural struggle. Decolonising the mind also means deconstructing Western notions of ‘development’, ‘civilisation’, ‘progress’, ‘universalism’ and ‘modernity’. Such concepts represent what is called a  coloniality of power and knowledge , which means that ideas of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ were conceived in Europe and North America and then implanted in our continents (Africa, Asia and Latin America) in a context of coloniality (Mignolo, 2012). These Eurocentric ideas and culture have reinforced the colonial heritage of land confiscations, resource plunder, as well as domination of ‘other’ peoples in order to ‘civilise’ them.” Generals to t

New Atheism, Old Empire

  Orientalism and Its Afterlives

By blending historical inquiry with theoretical critique, Whyte’s account clarifies that neoliberal human rights did not emerge “from nowhere” but, rather, flowed from a long-standing, self-conscious, neoliberal tradition of forging rhetorical links between market morals and human rights. The Morals of the Market

This is a very engaging paper. A must read. Capitalist Totality and Geopolitical Fragmentation

 Very good! Biden replaces Trump: A malignant ‘normalcy’ is restored

 A very engaging review of Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction Under Late Capitalism

  Marx’s debt to people of African descent Related The Africana paradigm in Capital

“ Even during the Obama years, the US was using its extraterritorial power with increasing enthusiasm.” Why ‘even’? Wasn’t Obama a president of the biggest imperialist power? Many of course believed that he could have been a benevolent imperialist. This law of imperialism is not then about a “rogue” state like Iran or “undemocratic” on like Venezuela.    Beware the long arms of American and Chinese law

مشهد الصبّي المتبجّح  # ماكرون  وهو يقلّد  # فيروز  (أحد آخر ما بقي لنا من ذكريات الزمن العربي "الجميل") بوسامه التافه، هو أعلى درجات الإهانة لسيادة وكرامة لا شعب لبنان وحده، بل كلّ شعوب المنطقة العربية.  ممثّل الامبريالية الفرنسية، ووكيل الامبريالية الأمريكية، لم يكتف باستباحة السيادة السياسية والاقتصادية للبنان عبر تدخّله الفجّ في تفاصيل تشكيل الحكومة ومطالبته الوقحة بـ"الاصلاحات" التي حدّدها صندوق النقد الدولي وأصحابه الامبرياليون. بل هو يستبيح كذلك حتّى عالم الرموز والمشاعر ويك رّس في المخيال الجمعي الشعبي حقيقة تبعيّة  # لبنان  لفرنسا في ذكرى مئة عام على تأسيسها لنظامه الطائفي.  لم أعتقد يومًا أنّ فيروز يمكن أن تتخّذ موقفا مغايرًا للترحيب بزيارة ماكرون ووسامه. فتلك هي حدود وعيها السياسي، المرتبطة حكما بموقعها الطبقي المريح، الذي يمكن أن يصل أقصاه إلى فهم التناقض الصارخ مع العدوّ الصهيوني لا إلى تمثّل التناقض العميق مع القوى الامبريالية التي تسند هذا العدوّ. فهذا يحتاج إلى وعي سياسي يساري وطني ثوري لا تملكه. لكنّي كنت آمُلُ أن يتخّذ ابنها "الرفيق زيا

    Hampton Institute

This falls in the underconsumption theory. It very insighful though, but it would be interesting to see a critique of it, especially that it apparently excludes the relationship between investment and the rate of profit. "Michael Pettis and Matthew Klein's new book  Trade Wars Are Class Wars  begins  with an epigraph from John A. Hobson: "The struggle for markets, the greater eagerness of producers to sell than of consumers to buy, is the crowning proof of a false economy of distribution. Imperialism is the fruit of this false economy." Pettis and Klein update the Hobsonian thesis for the twenty-first century, arguing that, while trade wars are often thought to be the result of atavistic leadership or the contrasting economic priorities of discrete nation states, they are best understood as the malign symptoms of domestic inequalities that harm workers the world over." Trade Wars Are Class Wars

Two weeks ago, an Italian student at an elite university told a language teacher: "immigrants are incompatible with the Italian society."  I immediately thought of how my iPad port is incompatible with my canon camera's lead.  Hostile Environment How Immigrants Became Scapegoats

Essays by Arundhati Roy

Walter Rodney's legacy By Angela Davis See also The Persisting Relevance of Walter Rodney's "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa"

Algeria The political economy of regime survival