Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Petition Stand against the destruction of Georg Lukács archives

Spain The new government have little room to maneuver economically as they have agreed to carry over the existing PP budget for the next year as well as to respect the European Union’s fiscal rules. It is also highly unlikely they can repeal the PP’s labor reforms as this would require the support of right-wing regional nationalists. And so in terms of improving the material conditions of the working class, it will be complicated to pass any substantive measures. In reality Sánchez is a social liberal, a descendant of Tony Blair and Gerhard Schoeder’s  Third Way . He did win back the PSOE leadership [after a palace coup against him eighteen months ago] by appealing to the desire of his party’s members for a more left-wing line, but he never really believed in it himself. He should not be underestimated politically. He is extremely ambitious and determined but is more like a Macron or Albert Rivera — an empty vessel onto which you can project various ideological elements. ...

Palestine In February and March 2016, nearly 35,000 Palestinian teachers initiated a series of strike actions across the West Bank. Classes were dismissed and students sent home as teachers marched through Ramallah’s streets and organized sit-ins in front of Ministry of Education field offices. Though short-lived, the strike had wide resonance as teachers utilized their waning social capital in ways they had not done since the second intifada, and encouraged members of other unions to organize industrial actions, particularly after the  March 9, 2016 ratification of Social Security Law 6 .  This was the largest teachers’ strike in Palestinian history, and yet it was not organized by their union, the General Union of Palestinian Teachers (GUPT). It was organized despite it. A brief history of a teachers' strike

A book review "From 1965 to 1966, the Indonesian military and its allies massacred hundreds of thousands of Communists — often with the active aid of Western, democratic governments." Indonesia's Red Slaughter

Madeleine Albright's nostalgia to  The Good Old Days

I have always doubted the premises of the "Big Bang" theory since the beginning of 2001 when I read from Eric Lerner's book ( The Big Bang Never Happened , 1993). But, like the dominant ideology in society, the theory has been propagated like a religion. Here is a recent piece on the New Scientist. Unfortunately, it is for subscribers only. Why the big bang was not the beginning

"Millions of tonnes of explosives were used during the mining boom to build more than 100 new mines, but it wasn’t just prime farmland that was blasted away in the boom, it was access to the middle class. At the same time that Gina Rinehart was becoming the world’s richest woman on the back of rising iron ore prices, those on the minimum wage were falling further and further behind their fellow Australians." How the neoliberals convinced us there wasn't enough to go around Related Gina Rinehart

In a recent article, former World Bank chief economist, Branko Milanovic reckoned there were two curses for European capital: immigration and rising inequality.   “The fact that the European Union is so prosperous and peaceful, compared both to its Eastern neighbors (Ukraine, Moldova, the Balkans, Turkey) and more importantly compared to the Middle East and Africa means that it is an excellent emigration destination. Not only is the income gap between the “core” Europe of the former EU15 and the Middle East and Africa huge, it has grown. Today, West European GDP per capita is just shy of $40,000 international dollars; sub-Saharan’s GDP per capita is $3,500 (the gap of about 11 to 1). In 1970, Western Europe’s GDP per capita was $18,000, sub-Saharan, $2,600 (the gap of 7 to 1). Since people in Africa can multiply their incomes by ten times by migrating to Europe, it is hardly surprising that, despite all the obstacles that Europe has recently began placing in the way of the mi...

A big disaster for the Western civilisation: more Muslims will be migrating to Europe in the coming decades. Climate-exodus is expected in the Middle East and North Africa

Abu 'I-Alaa Al-Ma'arri (973-1057), a poet born near Aleppo, Syria We laugh, but inept is our laughter; We should weep and weep sore, Who are shattered like glass, and thereafter Re-molded no more. --- Religion is a "fable invented by the ancients".  So, too, the creeds of man: the one prevails Until the other comes; and this one fails When that one triumphs; ay, the lonesome world Will always want the latest fairy-tales. --- Among the crumbling ruins of the creeds The Scout upon his camel played his reeds And called out to his people —"Let us hence! The pasture here is full of noxious weeds. --- Hanifs are stumbling, Christians all astray Jews wildered, Magians far on error's way. We mortals are composed of two great schools Enlightened knaves or else religious fools. --- What is religion? A maid kept close that no eye view her; The price of her wedding-gifts and dowry baffles the wooer. Of all the goodly doctrine that I f...

Syria The US dropped nuclear bombs on Japan when the war had already been won. The ‘rape of Germany’ by both allied and Soviet forces after the Second World War is indicative of this ‘victorious’ sense of impunity. The effective questioning of why a party would use disproportionate violence against another party betrays an implicit notion that the accused has an interest in not alienating the local population. Ironically, such arguments denying the ‘rape of Germany’ by supporters of the allies would have undoubtedly been repeated in the same terms: “why would our forces do this when we had already won?” Chemical attacks: why would the regime do it since it was "winning the war?"

Nancy Fraser: Marxism and feminism

Jalal Khoury "While the Lebanese theater traces back to the 1800s, specifically to 1848 and to Maroun Nakash, it has evolved in stages. Jalal Khoury helped to pioneer the realist, or modernist, movement from the mid-1960s until his death last December at the age of 84. Considered a trailblazer of modern Lebanese political theater, and banner carrier of the realist school, Jalal Khoury, a playwright, theater director, academic and artistic editor, remained a loyal disciple of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht." Brechtian realist forget by 1967 war, and the birth of modern Lebeanse theater

"The issue is not Sanders' own personal anti-imperialist credentials, nor is critiquing a worthy effort to end a war a holistic condemnation. The issue is the normalisation, without debate, of a "war on terror" that has produced a body count higher than that of the evil it is supposed to counter. Sanders' resolution, excluding this US war from debate on a US-backed war in the same theatre, reflects this." How a Bernie Sanders resolution is normalising "the war on terror"

Remembering Pier Paolo Pasolini

Jordan A strike and protests against reforms imposed by the IMF, an international criminal institution, causing the rise in taxes on revenues, the prices of bread, oil and other commodities. The role of the US, the UAE, Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia in exasperating the crisis because of Jordan's stance on Jerusalem. The unions and the protests are calling for the fall of the government if their demands are not met.

At least 48 migrants died after their boat capsized off the eastern coast of Tunisia Kylie Minogue and Taylor Swift have expressed their sadness and love, and urged "a radical solution against the trafficking of people and a change in the socio-economic global system that kills people looking for a better life."

Very good! "It is fair to say that what these essays achieve is the denigration of the very concept of agency, something at the very heart of the postcolonial project. In obscuring the effects of social circumstances, in denying — implicitly or explicitly — the role of structure, the theorists under consideration whisk away what makes political praxis distinctive as a volitional act. For what is political agency if not a form of practice aimed at the structures of power within which it is embedded? Whether it aims to reproduce them, as in ruling-class strategies, or seeks to transform and undermine them, as is the case with subaltern classes, political agency is defined by its relation to these fields of power. But with Spivak and, in particular, Guha, it seems that it is the simple exercise of will that enables the actions of their protagonists to serve as political agency — even those actions are an acquiescence to their subjugation. Our reading confirms the observation made...

Britain "A new political climate, perhaps less fearful of nationalisation and more suspicious of the notion that the private sector does everything better, may sow the seeds of change." A clever conclusion: one of the mouthpieces of the system is quite aware that some sort of a change is required/has to come to avoid a bigger crisis/to save the system from any potential threat. Thus even conservative governments, "neoliberals", might resort to "nationalisation" of some sectors of the economy.  How Thatcherism laid the foundations of the housing crisis A book review

by Khaled El-Rouayheb, University of Chicago Press 2005 Excerpts "My central contention is that Arab-Islamic culture on the eve of modernity lacked the concept of 'homosexuality,' and that writings from the period [1500-1800] do not evince the same attitude toward all aspects of what we might be inclined to call homosexuality today. The Arab literature of the early Ottoman period (1516-1798) is replete with casual and sometimes sympathetic references to homosexual love." p. 1 "Homosexuality is condemned and forbidden by the holy law of Islam, but there are times and places in Islamic history when the ban on homosexual love seems no stronger than the ban on adultery in, say, Renaissance Italy or seventeenth-century France. Some [classical Arabic, Persian, and Turkish] poems are openly homosexual; some poets, in their collected poems, even have separate sections for love poems addressed to males and females." — Bernard Lewis, Music from a Distant Drum,...