Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Nicos Poulantzas: State, Power, Socialism

Is Social Revolution Still Possible in the Twenty-First Century?

UK There are two kinds of 'generation rent'

UK Understanding the British election

"It's a weird time. This week I'm noticing two rather disturbing bandwagons rolling, both arising from Manchester. One is about UK domestic politics and the other international politics but they are linked by an understandable desire not to see the attack as being used to advance the agenda of the Tories and specifically, to help their election campaign. Both though are ultimately very unhelpful. One is about the need for soldiers on the streets because Theresa May  cut police budgets as Home Secretary. I've seen unlikely people sharing tweets from redundant cops. Tempting to undercut May this way, but wrong - more armed cops do not equal fewer attacks like Manchester. The other is pinning the blame for Manchester on the UK intervention in Libya.  Again, understandable.  But it's important to see that the problem in Libya was not the attempted regime change as such but the regime that people tried to change i.e. Gaddafi's tyranny. It was a regime that - like...

On deploying British troops , Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, said he would tell them: "Under my leadership, you will only be deployed abroad when there is a clear need and only when there is a plan that you have the resources to do your job and secure an outcome that delivers lasting peace". So, in principle, and fundamentally, he would not break with the imperialist interventions of the British regime. He would deploy troops in a better and organised way, probably with popular support. Although Corbyn opposed the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, he sees that Britain has a mission to deploy troops and intervene to "secure peace". Since when an imperialist power intervenes and wages wars for peace? How ironic from a socialist? A socialist who would use the state apparatus of an imperialist state. 

A great scientist. I recommend The Richness of Life . When I started reading it I couldn't put it down. " Homo sapiens, I fear, is a “thing so small” in a vast universe, a wildly improbable evolutionary event well within the realm of contingency. Make of such a conclusion what you will. Some find it depressing; I have always regarded it as exhilarating, and a source of both freedom and consequent moral responsibility." Remeasuring Stephen Jay Gould

" The United States has admitted that at least 105 Iraqi civilians were killed in an air strike it carried out in Mosul in March." (The BBC) Another "collateral damage".  Those killed are Iraqis not Mancunians and those injured do not have a Queen to visit them.

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Terrorism: a history of violence

A couple of days ago someone asked me a mainstream question: "when will the war between Sunnis and Shiite end?" Briefly, — Some Alawite (Shi'a) generals and officers defected from the Syrian army at the beggining of the uprising and joined the Free Syrian Army. — The Sunni bourgeoisie in Damascus is not fightng Assad. — The main force which has been fighting ISIS on the ground is a Kurdish one. The Kurds are Sunnis and ISIS fighters are Sunnis, too. — Many Syrian Sunnis who have been displaced because of the war have fled to "Shiite" areas. They haven't been killing each other. — The rest is geopolitics. Example: The Northern Alliance in Afghanista,  although it included some Shiites, was mainly led by a Sunni-Tajik, Ahmed Shah Masoud. The Aliance was supported by Iran, among others such as Pakistan and the US. Masoud was assassinated by Taliban, a Sunni organisation.

The liberals of the Guardian are in arms defending "democracy" and "liberties" against the state reaction. Simon Jenkins, for example, is right that deployment of tanks and soldiers will not prevent "terrorism", but he is, like most of the liberals, not to speak of the right-wing media in general, fails, intentionally or unintentionally, to tackle the real sources of acts of violence like the one which took place in Manchester a couple of days ago. Jenkins : " Terror bombing is the one foolproof weapon of the weak against the strong. We cannot screen every public space or search every pedestrian. There is nothing new to this. The car bomb and the terror grenade are as old as  Conrad’s secret agent , and his “pestilence” which stalks the street with death in its pocket." Agreed. Jenkins: "All we can hope to do is enter into the minds of the bombers and their associates to prevent them at source. That is essentially a covert activity, an...

"Farsad leaves us with only one conclusion: that Muslims who are fully assimilated into the habits and customs of mainstream liberal culture are the “normal” ones." The liberal fascination with "Islam-lite" and the humanizing Muslim industry

Although I don't like Owen Jones, the plight of the cleaners at one of the most prestigious university in the world is a disgrace. LSE cleaners

Not heroes, but monsters

Terror news cycle

France Les patrons ont-ils lu Marx

"Syrians roll back extremism in Idlib"

China Miéville's book October "is  very deliberate in what it covers and, more importantly, doesn’t cover." John Medherst: " As someone with a book on the Russian Revolution out later this year (August 17th) with a different and more critical take on Lenin and the Bolsheviks, I had to buy and read China Mieville’s October. It is, as you would expect, a great read. Vivid and immersive, it skilfully recreates how kinetic, stressful, confusing and exciting February-October 1917 in Russia must have been. But it is very deliberate in what it covers and, more importantly, doesn’t cover. Although it has a brief prologue and epilogue, 95% of the book sticks tightly to the nine months of February-October. As such it is, surprisingly for a Marxist writer, a rather old-fashioned narrative history. Considering that nearly all the main issues and controversies of the Bolshevik revolution arise from events post-October, the decision to barely address that period prevents wide...

— " I think [Olivier] Roy underplays the historical context within which forms of modern jihadism find expression. Not all jihadis have the same background, but I’ve found — certainly in France — a fertile ground to radicalisation is produced when you have a disaffected immigrant population whose ideas and concerns are not taken seriously, who do not enjoy access to the power and wealth they see around them, and who remember a background of colonisation in Algeria or elsewhere in north Africa that fuels a historical sense of grievance. I think it’s a mistake to downplay that context."  — " Liberalism was associated with the western powers. Within the west there was a contest between liberalism and other forms of political thought. But in the Middle East liberal thought — ideas about democracy, empowerment, emancipation, the privileging of the individual over the collective — was linked to the European powers that carved up the Ottoman Empire and subjugated the Middle ...