Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Insecurity and the New World of Work " Since 2007*, almost all the aggregate increase in employment in the UK is accounted for by ‘ non-standard jobs’ , according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). These included low-pay self-employment, ‘flexible’ and zero-hours contracts and part-time work."

Apparently, Tunisia is the only Arab country where women have the legal right to abortion.

Just another news item "As the rescuers approached, they found overloaded wooden vessels and rafts that evoked scenes of the slave trade."

The Wikileaks Files: The World According to U.S. Empire

A new YouGov poll  has found the British public are generally proud of the British Empire and its colonial past.

The Great Libya War Fraud

The Secret History of Colombia’s Paramilitaries and the U.S. War on Drugs

The Structure of Modern Imperialism

Did Human Rights Watch Sabotage Colombia’s Peace Agreement?

This is an  edited extract from Neil Davidson's forthcoming book  Peregrine Worsthorne, then associate editor and columnist with the ultraconservative London Daily Telegraph wrote in response to a survey conducted on the centenary of Marx’s death: “Being very conscious of the existence of the class-war, I have to admit to being very influenced by Marx without whose writings this idea would never have become so all pervasive. ... I am a Tory-Marxist, in the sense of accepting the need to take sides in the class war, even if, so to speak, on the other side.” More recently, Niall Ferguson has commented in an interview: “Something that’s seldom appreciated about me...is that I am in sympathy with a great deal of what Marx wrote, except that I’m on the side of the bourgeoisie.” However–and where conservatism becomes interesting–in so far as it supports the existence of capitalism, it embodies a contradiction which has from time to time produced intellectually fruitful result...

The return of Mao: a new threat to China's politics

From a defender of the system " The years ahead will be ones of economic dislocation and stagnation.  Britain has moved over the past 50 years from being one of the most equal countries in Europe to the most unequal."

Well, yes. The clinton's history is a history of crime at home and abroad. Davis on the Clintons

" [I]ntelligent philosophical Conservatism is actually closer to Marxist analysis than liberalism in any of its forms." — Neil Davidson On Corbyn and the Blairites

Global turbulence ahead

" My work as a historian has convinced me that ways of thinking about race are the most destructive legacy of Britain’s imperial past. In the wake of the Brexit vote we have witnessed a deeply disturbing   increase in the number of hate crimes  committed  against Poles, Muslims and racial minorities. Globalisation, with all the losses it has brought for so many, has clearly acted as a trigger for this upsurge of rage and resentment, the wish to “take back control” and “secure our borders”. The legacy of slavery is the dehumanisation of others and assumptions of white superiority, as well as terrible disparities of wealth and power. These could not be starker than they are today." The racist ideas of slave owners are still with us today

Dr Hickel (LSE) argues that through the MDGs, the UN has misrepresented the true extent for poverty and hunger. “By massaging the numbers, the UN has created a good news narrative that justifies the present economic order and its logic of growth, liberalisation, privatisation and corporate power." "Challenging the UN good story about poverty and hunger" See also "Neoliberalism ans the end of democracy"

In the so-called 4/5 economy in the world "Wealth of people in their 30s have halved in a decade"

A rare historical photo Congo, 1904

" Servicing warfare and neoliberalism is a terrific path to scholarly eminence. Those who condemn warfare and neoliberalism become uncivil goblins, impenitent radicals, sloppy polemicists, immature agitators, scourges on the good name of the profession. Ruling-class sycophants, meanwhile, don’t encounter trouble for their service to power. It’s the same around the world: dissenters are the ones to get fired, arrested, even murdered. It’s almost comically obvious, and yet plenty of academics persist in recycling the mythological virtues of tone and civility as criteria for fitness as an academic, as if those descriptors are detached from norms of power — as if using a civil tone means you can’t articulate ugly ideas." Six ways to unsettle colleagues and irritate administrators Six ways of resistance, but the eradication of corportae universities should be the solution.