NM's blog

When you have a good analysis , but you introduce illusion – illusion in 'a new Bandung', a ‘Bandung'/' South' where class, capital accumulation, repression and oppression and wealth are ignored . Related Dispelling the multipolar myth

“The focus on ethnic or religious identity has surely undermined any prospect of a class-based politics developing . Civil society — once vibrant in the early days of the uprising — has been stifled by state violence, while political parties and trade unions have been dissolved in the name of national transition.” “ While the HTS leadership maintains strict control over many Sunni militias in Idlib, it must now negotiate with non-Sunni communities, such as the Druze and Kurds…” Here the writer is inaccurate. The Kurds are not a non-Sunni community; most if the Kurds are Sunni. According to some estimates,  Kurdish forces lost an estimated 11,000 fighters in the battle against ISIS (a Sunni too), with over 22,000 wounded. 

Total referrals reach record high , with 21% being due to ‘extreme rightwing concerns’ and 10% to Islamist ideology.

“ In trying to solve the puzzle of why people vote in politicians that do little to improve their living standards, Seymour goes for a psychological explanation. “this dismissal of the primacy of the economic is not just surprising coming from one of the foremost Marxist intellectuals in Britain today, but rests upon empirically spurious claims. “Seymour only tangentially acknowledges the role of elites in the rise of disaster nationalism. While he does point out that its political economy is mainly about furthering the interests of domestic capitalists, that is never really explored. “To get a full picture  of the social forces driving the rise of the far right and likely to benefit from it, we need more systematic and comparative analysis of party elites, their donors and their actual economic policymaking when they enter office. This could help better explain the apparent contradiction of the far right as both a rejection and reinforcement of neoliberalism. We also need to bette...

See also article here 

'Not to weep or laugh, but understand'

  Graeme Harris Sajid Riasat  mate you still treat your women as third class citizens so shut up. Ned Ma Graeme Harris  Yes, many do, Harris. Right now the British, the Americans, the German… regimes have been treating Palestinian women (and children) as non-humans that must be sacrificed at the altar. Many women, east and West, north and south, are treated as commodities, highly sexualised and the gender pay gap is obscene even at the heart of Britain. One should have a bigger picture too otherwise we find ourselves complicit in oppression. The Saudis are ‘our’ friends, aren’t they? Graeme Harris Ned Ma  ide say it’s the Palestinians using their kids as shields for years is a problem. Hamas hiding in hospitals. Palestinians and Arabs world over celebrating when Hamas kidnapped and killed kids. I’ve yet to see an Arab state condemn it. Look at yourselves first then wonder why countries are fed up. Ned Ma Graeme Harris at least two prejudices here: 1. no basic knowled...

 On the Israeli pager attack on Hezbollah Gary Stodel One of the best anti terror strategies ever employed. The stuff of Hollywood films. Ned Ma Gary Stodel  It is called state terror by scholars of terrorism. There is state violence and non-state violence. Jamus Fundi Ned Ma  it's the best actors who invented today's technology playing and toying with the old technology, and the keepers thinking they are safe. Ned Ma Jamus Fundi  That's not related to my comment. I am speaking about 'terrorism' academically, i.e. sociologically, historically, politically, etc. The key word is scholars who have written about violence and forms of violence. Jim Braiden Ned Ma Terrorism is violence directed at civilians for political purposes. This was not terrorism. Ned Ma Jim Braiden  narrowed the definition and ignored who were killled in the attack. That suits his ideological stance towards a state that has used state terror for decades. “Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: '...

Not really news, but good to see it on the BBC “The Yoorrook Justice Commission found violence and disease reduced the local Indigenous population by three quarters in the 20 years after the state was colonised, in the early 1830s.”

“The reasons for this devastation lie in structural factors shaping the country’s economy and demography , as well as the accumulated harms caused by decades of intermittent war. “The extreme underdevelopment in peripheral regions has logically bred grievances among local populations that, when combined with the central state’s violent suppression of dissent, creates fertile ground for the rise of armed groups. The atrocities committed by the RSF, SAF, and allied militias on both sides merely continue long-established patterns of violence.”

I watched Papillon. A fantastic movie. “The penal colony was the setting of French writer Henri Charrière's book Papillon, which was later made into a Hollywood film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.” A high security prison in Amazon jungle

“If MSF [ Médecins Sans Frontières]  secured the neocolonial bridgehead, it was British academics, such as Randolph Kent and David Booth, and NGOs, like Oxfam and Save the Children, that explained how to understand a world where “capitalism” and “imperialism” had been magicked away. Causal narratives were deemed invalid because of the chaotic “complexity” of the interactions between people, things, and nature. General laws or determining relations were impossible. “What was, essentially, a celebratory rationalization of ignorance, served to render the outside world unknowable beyond immediate experience. Problems were tied to specific times and places, allowing no general historical connections to be drawn. If French political revanchism reached out to neoliberalism, British empiricism linked Western humanitarianism to quantification, cybernetics, and machine-learning. For Western humanitarianism, intercommunal warfare had no generalizable or overriding cause beyond the scarcity an...