Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Why most Syrian men are not joining ISIS

Syria's Secret Library

Globalisation and whose recovery? Yes, some of the so-called recovery is based on low-paid jobs. Some of it is based on precarious jobs.  A Bogus Concept?

Thousands of Turkey coup prisoners "raped, starved and hogtied"

The long depression Via Michael Roberts " Back in work, still out of pocket : Labour market recovery since the Great Recession - the jobs gap will not be closed until 2017 at the earliest AND the wages gap may never be closed. Some countries have real wages over 20% below where they would have been without the Great Recession and subsequent weak recovery. The UK scores worse than Greece on this relative measure . According to a study by the OECD, the labour market recovery in OECD countries has been steady but slow s ince the Great Recession. More worrying is the fate of wage growth over the same period.  The jobs recovery has been underway since the first quarter of 2010, when the OECD average employment rate reached its post-crisis trough, with only 58.6% of the population (ages 15-74 years) employed. This was 2.2% lower than the employment rate in 2007, corresponding to 20.3 million missing jobs. Despite the slow and uneven nature of the economic recovery, the jobs de...

"Marx the Moor" There is an interesting reading of Marx on Islam and Muslims in History of Islam in German Thought by Ian Almond “And without total abandonment of the law of the Koran [argues opposition MP Cobden], it was impossible to put the Christians of Turkey upon an equality with the Turks.” We may as well ask Mr Cobden whether, with the existing State Church and laws of England, it is possible to put her working-men upon an equality with the Cobdens and the Brights? —Marx, The Eastern Question , p. 260 

In 1993 Halim Barakat wrote:  "One may also suggest that the greater the socioeconomic inequalities in mosaic societies, the more the likelihood of uprisings. However, such uprisings are more likely to result in civil wars (in which one controlling elite is substituted for another), rather than popular revolutions (in which society is transformed, and the dominant order is replaced by a new order). The reverse pattern is more likely to emerge in relatively homogeneous societies. In the latter, the greater the inequalities, the greater the class solidarity, mobilization, and prospect of revolution. If these assumptions are correct, one should expect the first Arab popular revolution to take place in Egypt or Tunisia. This does not, however, exclude the possibility that revolutions may occur in more pluralistic societies as well."  — Halim Barakat, The Arab World: Societ, Culture and State , pp. 15-17, 1993.

Why Corbyn so terrifies the Guardian and A free ebook by Richard Seymour

"Regardless of whether Erdogan is at its helm, Turkey will continue down its expansionist path, a path that was unlikely to be short-circuited by a haphazard coup led by a motley group of Islamists and nationalists. Turkey is on this course, at this stage in history, because geopolitics wills it. But nobody said it would be a smooth ride... Thus [Turkey's policy]  contradictions will "become more frequent, and  Turkey's actions may appear almost schizophrenic . A Coup as Audacious as Turkey's Future

Tunisie Lear, une tragédie ouvrière contemporaine

"What does it mean that Trump has done well among middle-income and higher-income voters but not the most-educated? This suggests that his real base of support is small-business owners, supervisory and middle-management employees, franchisees, landlords, real estate agents, propertied farmers, and so on: those who are not at the executive pinnacle of corporate America (who largely have MBAs and other similar degrees) and those who are not credentialed professionals (doctors, lawyers, and the like), but the much wider swath of those people whose livelihood is derived from independent business activity or middle-band positions in the corporate hierarchy." From Slump to Trump

The persistence of communal cleavages "complicates rather than nullifies social class consciousness and struggle. This persistence of communal cleavages and vertical loyalties in some Arab countries is owing to the perpetuation of traditional systems in which communities are linked to their local za'ims (traditional leaders) through patron-client relationships. To the extent that constructive change can be introduced in these areas, such traditional systems will give way, increasingly, to other social and class relationships.  "... Western functionalists ... view these communal cleavages as 'a premodern phenomenon, a residue of particularism and ascription incompatible with the trend toward achievement, universalism and rationality supposedly exhibited by industrial societies.' Western sociologists whose point of departure is a sociobiological paradigm have argued that ethnic and racial solidarity are extensions of kinship sentiments. For instance, Pierre van d...

The report is written by a liberal institution. Contrary to the report, in my opinion the Guardian and the Daily Mirror , are not left-wing (itself a loose term). The Guardian , for example, gives voice to some left-wingers, but it is generally liberal. The last few decades has made anyone who is not (neo)liberal, a left-winger. The dominant press of the 5 families have redefined what a left-winger is.  Journalistic Representation of Jeremy Corbyn in the British Press

That Far Left Entryist Takeover of the Labour Party

The Revolutionary Projects of Two Lebanese Communists Note: you may need a free subscription to download the PDFs file.

When Martin Wolf and the FT say this , it means the ruling class is worried.

“We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.” — Bertolt Brecht The 'war on terror' (i.e, state terrorism) goes on. Now it's almost draw*. Nice attack will definitely be the last attack in France and in the West in general. *The French pilots are not using smart enough weapons to kill only 84 civilians.  Obviously, you do not have to be with ISIS or a similar organization to carry out such attacks**. Personally, I have grievances and been angry since 1991. Life in a Western country has made me more radical.  **According to what we know about the Orlando and Nice attacks that the perpetrators did not have a record of being Islamic activists.  Update:  no word on the bbc yet .

Erdogan is not Chavez, but one should remember how a few of the Guardian columnists vilified Chavez using the same jargon of populism and authoritarianism .

It has been entertaining to see the liberals reactions to Trump . The  liberals preach capitalist democracy, but they would oppose it if people elected the wrong person. 

London housing: the collusion between councils and capital Aysen  Dennis loves her flat. Two bedrooms, a neat kitchen-diner, a cosy living room, lots of light, a separate toilet and bathroom, and a much broader hallway than in the poky million-pound Victorian houses that surround her in south London – all for £110 a week, plus £30 heating and service charge. Her flat is warm, and no one can see into it. “I feel free in my home,” she told me recently. “I can take off my clothes without worrying about curtains.” She still has the original 1960s kitchen cupboards, miracles of space-saving and clever joinery. South  London  hipsters would love them. Dennis is not a hipster. She is 57, single, and has been unemployed for four years. She used to work in a women’s refuge.  Before that, three decades ago, she came to London from Turkey: a leftwing activist fleeing the aftermath of a military coup, during which she had been shot at and imprisoned, and some of her friend...