Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Let's remember that "What occurred is the rejection of the political establishment through mass abstention and a protest vote captured by a populist demagogue in a few key states. In other words, Trump signifies an upheaval at the political level, not a sudden, dramatic change in American society (as the Nazi party did in Germany, shifting from 2.6 percent to 37.27 percent of the popular vote between the elections of 1928 and 1932)."  The nightmare is real

Missing is the role of the economic growth or lack of it in South Africa Zuma is not the only problem

Germany's demographic

"[T]his  reactionary isolationism represents "a national-selfish attitude that doesn't care about what happens to the rest of the world as long as 'we' are not directly concerned and our well-being is not affected - or (the leftwing version) as long as our 'anti-imperialist' conscience is not troubled by any of the complexities of the real world."

I am crying for these middle class people

Top 10 books about the Russian Revolution I have read John Reed's book and it's good.

"My friend is an  adjunct . She has a PhD in anthropology and teaches at a university, where she is paid $2100 per course. While she is a professor, she is not a Professor. She is, like  67 per cent of American university faculty , a part-time employee on a contract that may or may not be renewed each semester. She receives no benefits or health care. In a  searing commentary , political analyst Joshua Foust notes that the unpaid internships that were once limited to show business have now spread to nearly every industry." Written in 2012 The closing of the American academia

"An  economic system is a set of dependent, interconnected economic relationships which, precisely because they are interconnected, arise more or less contemporaneously and disappear more or less contemporaneously, giving way to other relationships. The empirical dating of their emergence and dissolution enables us to fix the limits of a specific economic system in time. To construct the theory of a determinate economic system means to establish (always empirically) the fullest possible totality of dependent relationships present within the system, and to explain the connections between these relationships." — Wiltold Kula

"[I]f  grievance led explanations for the timing of the 2011 Arab Spring are correct, then the scope conditions for another mass uprising are seemingly in place." On the breadline in Sisi's Egypt

Israel's secret nuclear arsenal

African migrants sold in Libya 'slave markets' — BBC: "How do you stop this?" — Me: By more aid, more celebrities showing the way, more NATO interventions ... 

Bill Gates and 4bn in poverty

The end of the past

"Placing faith in either Putin or Trump as champions of humanity is seen by many in Syria as a losing bet." And those Arabs and Muslims, and Westerners, who placed faith in Obama and Hilary Clinton? Why Vladimir Putin won't back out of Syria?

Where are Syrian refugees registered?

Rather than bombing the Assad regime, Gourevitch says, let the  Syrian refugees  into the United States. What’s being advocated here is clear: no to empire, yes to refugees. Needless to say, I too subscribe to that notion and am against US imperial intervention. But I fear that these two positions are just  not enough . On their own, they constitute an impoverished politics. In order to explain why, let’s briefly apply the same principles to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. When Israel brutally  kills Palestinians , as it regularly does, do progressives in America  only  say “let those Palestinian refugees who manage to escape come to the US”? Absolutely not. Because they know that this would just aid Israel’s  colonial designs  and invite Israel to continue behaving with impunity in the region. Progressives stand in  solidarity  with the Palestinians, call for an end to Israel’s bombings, and demand that Israel be prosecu...

What was Lenin thinking? Tariq Ali in the New York Times

Surprise! Surprise! German soldiers performing Nazi salutes

Every word in this article could be mine. Violence: theirs and ours See also this letter by Vijay to a Syrian written in Sep 2013 "The light that shines alone in palaces, Steals away the people’s happiness. Feigns its strength from other’s weakness. That kind of system, Dawn without light, I refuse. I deny."

The victorian view of same-sex desire