Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

This was said before the most violent era in modern history and before the greatest inventions. "What a chimera then is man! What a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feebla earthworm, repository of truth, sewer of uncertainty and error, the glory and the scum of the universe." — Blaise Pascal

"Since Europeans didn’t always think of themselves as ‘white’, there is good reason to think that race is socially constructed, indeed arbitrary. If the idea of ‘white people’ (and thus every other ‘race’ as well) has a history – and a short one at that – then the concept itself is based less on any kind of biological reality than it is in the variable contingencies of social construction." How 'white people' were invented

The big powers and their imperialist institutions decide. [S]ome recognition means the state "enjoys some of the benefits of being a state such as access to the World Bank, the IMF, and the International Olympic Committee."  "It's essentially impossible for a group to become independent and claim its own statehood unless others, other powerful states, are willing to support it" The cases of Somaliland, Kosovo, and East Timor

What Killed the Promise of Muslim Communism?

Monje also recalls a conversation with Guevara from the pre-Bolivia period. Che had said: ‘Hey, Monje, why don’t you get a guerrilla war going in Bolivia?’ ‘What will it get us?’ Monje asked. Che accused him of cowardice. No, Monje said, you’ve just got ‘a machine-gun stuck in your brain, and you can’t imagine any other way to develop an anti-imperialist struggle.’ The nine (or so) lives of Che Guevera

"[I]f the condition for granting religious liberty is, in effect, conformity to secular public norms, what kind of liberty is this?" Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492-1900 A book review

"We live in an age that has simultaneously witnessed the breaking up of national and state order, and what appears to be the bolstering of such order. Beyond the domestic confines of revolution and counter-revolution, such as we've witnessed in Egypt, Syria and Bahrain to name but a few, the dynamic of popular revolt against centralised authority and the often-brutal reaction to such challenges is by no means confined to these localities. The Spanish state, an alleged liberal democracy, has reacted to the vote with  vicious violence , including allegations of torture and sexual assault against protesters." Similarity and seperation: Kurdistan to Catalonia

The forgotten war

The truth about capitalism is out as Marx's magic cap start to slip

Pentecostalism "The attractiveness of this cosmology lies in its seductive promise: that demons — not politics — are to blame for the world’s troubles. And that they can be vanquished through prayer." The spirit of late capitalism

"The question that emerges clearly and forcefully is one of justice. What does justice for Muslims mean in the face of US [led] state violence?  The answer, as you can imagine, is complex, but it is certain that endless wars, militarism, and intervention will not bring justice." 16 years into "the war on terror" and institutionalized Islamophobia lives on

The revolutionary bourgeoisie

The Spanish state / the state as an instrument of repression " The crime of sedition has been in every Spanish penal code since 1822 and carries a potential prison term of up to 15 years. It amounts to rebellion against state decisions or national security forces." (the BBC website)

Catalonia: From Referendum to Republic?

One of the main problems with the disciplinary quality of contemporary academia is the way in which the fragmentation of disciplines carries over into a fragmentation of analysis. Despite the best efforts of well-intentioned intellectual laborers everywhere, “interdisciplinarity” rarely succeeds in its aims, often remaining littlemore than the sum of its parts. Reading Social Reproduction into Reading Capital

"[L]ike many other brutal dictators all over the world, Franco partly owed his long, dark reign to powerful friends in Britain." Franco's Friends

US votes against  UN resolution condemning  gay  sex  death penalty , joining Iraq and Saudi Arabia

The return of fasicsm in Europe

The Catalan referendum "This concern with identity and recognition unites separatists, creating a coalition of conservatives, progressives and radical anti-capitalists with no common project beyond independence." Short Cuts

Accurate in describing today's mainstream economists " The nearer to our time the economists whom we have to judge, the more severe must our judgment become. For while Smith and Malthus found only scattered fragments, the modern economists had the whole system complete before them: the consequences had all been drawn; the contradictions came clearly enough to light, yet they did not come to examine the premises and still accepted the responsibility for the whole system. The nearer the economists come to the present time, the further they depart from honesty”. — F. E. 1843