NM's blog

" Au fond, Piketty est un économiste bien plus conventionnel qu’il ne le croit. Son élément naturel, ce sont les statistiques relatives aux niveaux de revenus, les projets de taxation, les commissions chargées d’examiner ces questions. Ses recommandations pour réduire les inégalités se résument à des politiques fiscales imposées d’en haut. Il se montre parfaitement indifférent aux mouvements sociaux qui, par le passé, ont pu remettre en cause les inégalités et pourraient à nouveau jouer un tel rôle. Il semble même plus préoccupé par l’échec de l’Etat à atténuer les inégalités que par les inégalités proprement dites. Et, bien qu’il convoque souvent, à bon escient, des romanciers du XIXe siècle comme Honoré de Balzac et Jane Austen, sa définition du capital reste trop économique et réductrice. Il ne tient aucun compte du capital social, des ressources culturelles et du savoir-faire accumulés dont bénéficient les plus aisés et qui facilitent la réussite de leur progéniture. Un capit...

The bombing was for domestic consumption

Trump is just being true to the unclear American imperialist strategy to the Syrian regime: “I really believe that we should have and still should take out his airfields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them.”  — Hilary Clinton See also  American foreign policy under Obama

As long as the Assad regime remains in place, and millions of Syrians remain at its mercy , Isis and al-Qaeda will have a lot going for them.

The Young Marx: film by Raul Peck The first film ever about Karl Marx

Richard Seymour : "A few things to bear in mind. First, this bombing in Syria is not a departure from the existing policy. That is because the policy is the one left by the Obama administration, which included a number of lines of escalation and expansion within the terms of the existing strategy: medium footprint, bombing & auxiliary forces. The only major difference is that Trump has relaxed the political oversight exercised by the Obama administration on the military's actions: hence, the major bloodshed in Mosul and Raqqa recently. He has expanded the war along lines indicated by his predecessor, in Somalia and Yemen, and has changed the rules of engagement so that parts of these countries are deemed 'war zones' which can be targeted under the laws of war. Second, this bombing in Syria is not worse than the bombings in Mosul or Raqqa in terms of its death toll. The major significance is that, by punishing Assad, it is a slap in the face to Russia. But thi...

The left's hollow anti-imperialism over Syria

No, wealth isn't created at the top

The writer, from the London School of Economics, is questioning the existent profit-based economic system. I wonder whether we can have capitalism without profit. I am curious to know if that is possible. Clean energy won't save us

This is intetesting. A "lone-wolf" doesn't emerge from a vacuum. Yes. What about the terrorist machine of the imperialist states? Is it manned by "lone-wolves"? Were Clinton, Bush, Blair, and Obama, for example, "lone-wolves" or part of a machine, a network? The myth of the "lone-wolf" terrorist

An animated introduction to Said's Orientalism  and beyond Said's Orientalism Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse

Neither Mélenchon nor Macron know what laïcité [secularism] is

An event at King's College, London: Capital.150

"... Look at  Moonlight  — it’s about being stigmatised, being gay and black and poor. Fassbinder was always interested in the lives of outsiders and immigrants from the very beginning. He showed how we are all under the tyranny of values that are not even our own.” The muse and the monster: Fassbinder's favourite star on surviving his abuse

One should add the folowing: even if we don't talk about the responsibility of the Western imperialist states in laying the foundation/condition of what is happing now in parts of the Arab world, one should at least mention the responsibility of those very same states in selling instruments of death right now to states like Saudi Arabia and Israel.  One also should mention the complicity of the people in the US, Britain, France, Germany, etc for allowing the sale of arms.  Disavowal

The future of universities

"How the Syrian civil war has transformed Hezbollah"

The mysterious masked women of Iran

Sullenly clenching His embalmed fists, He peered through a crack, Just pretending to be dead. He wanted to remember all those Who carried him out. I turn to our government with a plea: To double, And triple the guard at the grave site So Stalin does not rise again, And with Stalin, the past. And later, the main point of the poem: We removed Him From the mausoleum. But how do we remove Stalin From Stalin’s heirs? — Yevgeny Yevtushenko

China and the US: Destined for war?