Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

So long as we persist in our tendency to hive off the study of economics from politics, philosophy and journalism, Marx will remain the outstanding example of how to overcome the fragmentation of modern social thought and think about the world as a whole for the sake of its betterment. — Mark Mazower, FT, 05 August 2016

You sanctimonious philistines, who scoff at me! What has your politics fed on since you've been ruling the world? On butchery and murder! —Charles de Coster,  The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak

People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. The partisans of reform and betterment will always be fooled by the defenders of the old régime, until they understand that every old institution, no matter how savage and rotten it may seem, is sustained by the forces of this or that dominant class or classes. And there is only one way to break the resistance of these classes, namely, to find in the very society surrounding us, to find and educate and organize for the struggle, those forces which can – and owing to their social situation must – form a power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new.   — V. L Lenin, March 1913

In a nutshell, the climate  negotiations “are predicated on a contradiction: the task of agreeing a programme of radical global economic transformation is allocated to those – including, this year, a record 2,500 fossil fuel industry representatives – who stand to lose the most from disrupting the current economic model. For the most influential in these negotiations – the titans of finance, energy giants, and the wealthy states who protect their interests – the solution to this dilemma is to find a way to transform the foundations of global capitalism, from energy to agriculture and from transport to industry, while preserving everything else about its social relations and overarching dynamics. Theirs is necessarily a future in which the transition to a decarbonised and ecologically sustainable economy implies no trade-off with continued growth, profit maximisation, private ownership or accumulation: in short, from fossil capitalism to a green capitalism. For some, green capi...

Saudi Arabia is using culture to repackage monarchy

 From Roasted Beans to Social Revolution

A few years ago I was told not to talk politics in class. I left my job. In my current job I am very cautious. I had lived under a police state, and in a “free market democracy” you don’t fear the state, but you fear loosing your job. You may be even hated by others for expressing your non-conformist views. “Social activism could cost you valuable career currency”

"What Zylberman described in 2013 has now been duly confirmed. It is evident that, apart from the emergency situation, linked to a certain virus that may in the future be replaced by another, at issue is the design of a paradigm of governance whose efficacy will exceed that of all forms of government known thus far in the political history of the West." Biosecurity and Politics Related Agamben is "right and [drastically] wrong"

"So long as we persist in our tendency to hive off the study of economics from politics, philosophy and journalism, Marx, will remain the outstanding example of how to overcome the frangmentation of modern social thought and think about the world as a whole for the sake of its betterment."  — Mark Mazwoer, Columbia University,  reviewing Gareth Stedman Jones's book  Karl Marx, Greatness and Illusion , the Financial Times, 5 August 2016.

Algeria The political economy of regime survival

"There are two dimensions of politics.   There is the dimension in which, because of living pressures, men try to understand their world and improve it. This dimension is persistently human. But besides it, always, is that parading robot of polemic, which resembles human thinking in everything but its capacity for experience. If you step into the robot’s world, you get your fuel free, and you can immediately grind into action, on one of the paper fronts, where the air stinks of pride, destruction, malice and exhaustion. Men need a good society and they need food, and further, in our own time, we know that we are living on the edge of destruction. But the slip into the robot world, so easy to make, is against these needs even when it claims to satisfy them. As I look, now, at the greater part of our political campaigns and periodicals, I recognize, reluctantly, the cancer of violence in them, which is our actual danger. And it is no use, after that, turning away. We have to fight ...

Confessions of a foreigner Scratch beneath the surface... I am a person who engages only in matters of substance and matters which the British generally don't like to talk about or feel uncomfortable when they hear them. It disturbs their faith. Here are two examples:  1. I made a mistake the other day and has a chat with an English. A woman openly said to me: "a language teacher must not express his/her political/cultural views in class. "What about freedom of speech," I asked. She went silent then she said: "but you are a language teacher, why should you talk about other things?" I asked whether what she said had anything to do with the fact that students are considered customers and my views might annoy/upset them, unlike in other countries where students do not pay £9,000+ for their higher education. She agreed, but still opposed me expressing my views in class.  This is not an isolated case in my life in London. A couple of years agao I upset ...

He was an antidote to the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver Bourdain’s political transformation happened on the road to Beirut. He landed there in 2006, days before Israel bombarded the city. The episode is a verite documentary of a society upended in an instant. Lebanese journalist  Kim Ghattas  says that as a result, “Bourdain developed a new approach that used conversations about food to tell the story and politics of the countries he visited in ways that hard news couldn’t.” Anthony Bourdain (1956-2018)

This should be a novel in my reading list The Art of Critique in Victor Serge's Midnight in the Century

England It is easy to forget that in 2005 Theresa May was a shadow minister going into a general election with a Conservative manifesto promising to scrap all tuition fees, the BBC reminds us. "People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises." — L.

Pentecostalism "The attractiveness of this cosmology lies in its seductive promise: that demons — not politics — are to blame for the world’s troubles. And that they can be vanquished through prayer." The spirit of late capitalism

The value of Capital

 “PPE is seen as part of the apparatus of the state … privilege connected to public service” – at a time when fewer and fewer voters believe such a thing is possible. Once widely regarded as “highly qualified people with good intentions”, as Davies puts it, PPE graduates are now “bogeymen”. How did a mere undergraduate degree become so important? The Oxford degree that 'runs' Britain

The Egyptians: A Radical History of Egypt's Unfinished Revolution

" As [Walter] Benjamin pointed out, fascism gave the masses an opportunity to “express themselves,” but only by abdicating themselves. This is true not only of fascism, but is endemic in modern politics."