Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"Opposition Labour Party plots overthrow of Capitalism" —Reuters Note the use of the verb "to plot", which is defined by Oxford Dictionary as "a plan made in secret by a group of people to do something illegal or harmful." It is scary: we have just discovered that there is "a plot", "a secret plan", that Corbyn, McDonnell and their guerrillas have been organising a parallel underground organisation and an armed wing of the Labour Party in order to overthrow the system, possibly with the support of Cuba and China, with promises from North Korea that she will send advisors once the new regime is estabilshed.

CLR James, critical theory, and the dialectic

Condemn one and absolve the rest Related: Are We ISIS?

"Nine in 10 UK adults (91%) said that having sex with someone other than their partner was cheating," The following survey might not be accurate, but there is some truth in it:  Deep conservatism in the so-called liberal society. "Street and sexual life in the UK"

Enlightenment! The London School of Economics has just named a building after Emmeline Pankhurst. From John Stuart Mill to Emmeline Pankhurst. J. S. Mill: The gigantic "federation" albeit "unequal", that was the British empire "has the advantage, especially valuable at the present time, of adding to the moral influence, and weight in the councils of the world, of the Power which, of all in existence, best understands liberty—and whatever may have been its errors in the past, has attained the more of conscience and moral principle in its dealings with foreigners than any other great nation seems either to conceive as possible or recognise as desirable." —Mill, Utilitarianism , London 1972 ed. p. 380 E. Pankhurst: "Some talk about the Empire and  Imperialism  as if  it were something to decry and something to be ashamed of. [I]t is a great thing to be the inheritors of  an Empire like ours ... great in territory, great in potential wealth...If w...

Just finished this interesting novel

Social progress in England Health and social care spending cuts since 2010 are linked to nearly 120,000 excess deaths in England, with the over 60s and care home residents most affected, finds new University College London research. Collateral damage?

"Such terms as “proletarian literature” and “proletarian culture” are dangerous, because they erroneously compress the Culture of the future into the narrow limits of the present day. They falsify perspectives, they violate proportions, they distort standards and they cultivate the arrogance of small circles which is most dangerous." — Leon Trotsky, Revolution and Literature , 1924

Silencing the Past by Al-Jazeera Network

In post 9-11 the U.S. spent $6 trillion, killing half a million people The price was worth it! I live in a town with a statue of Richard Cobden, an English capitalist and "liberal. In the mid-nineteenth century, Cobden exclaimed, "We have been the most combative and aggressive community that has existed since the days of the Roman dominion. Since the Revolution of 1688 we have expended more than fiften hundered millions of money upon wars, not one of which has been upon our own shores, or in defense of our hearths and homes ... this pugnacious propensity has been invariably recognized by those who have studied our national charcter."  Quoted in Daniel Pick, War Machine , 1993, p. 21

"Because we cannot save ourselves without contesting oligarchic control, the fight for democracy and justice and the fight against environmental breakdown are  one and the same . Do not allow those who have caused this crisis to define the limits of political action. Do not allow those whose magical thinking got us into this mess to tell us what can and cannot be done." "The earth is in a death spiral" See also how Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals

The Brexiteers assert that the myth has been enacted (‘We killed the dragon!’). The Remainers deny the myth (‘You lied, there was no dragon!’). This makes it an argument about myth, and here the Brexiteers are on stronger ground. Every myth has two facets, the story that is told to make events or states of being comprehensible to people, and the underlying events or states that provide the material for the myth; a stylised, simplified dramatisation of change, and the change that demands dramatisation. Reckless, hypocritical, deluded, mendacious and chauvinist as they are, the Brexiteers found a real set of circumstances, and misapplied a popular, off-the-shelf folk myth to it. By simply rejecting the Brexiteer myth, without offering another, better one, the Remainers appear to deny the underlying changes. ‘Look,’ the Leave voter says to the Remainer. ‘Look at the abandoned coal mines, the demolished factories, the empty fishing harbours. Look at the old people lying sick on trolleys i...

Social progress! Homeless teens in England

Language oppression in France

 "The British bourgeoisie do not spare any money as far as this institution is concerned, and that is as it should be." — Lenin,  impressed by the British state's commitment to the British Museum library. London's role in the Russian revolution

By 1900 the Victorian empire upon which the sun never set included 11 million square miles and 390 million people. In the course of European expansion, the Andean and Mesoamerican civilizations were effectively eliminated, Indian and Islamic civilizations along with Africa were subjugated, and China was penetrated and subordinated to Western influence. Only Russian, Japanese, and Ethiopian civilizations, all three governed by highly centralized imperial authorities, were able to resist the onslaught of the West and maintain meaning­ful independent existence. For four hundred years intercivilizational relations consisted of the subordination of other societies to Western civilization. The causes of this unique and dramatic development included the social structure and class relations of the West, the rise of cities and commerce, the relative dispersion of power in Western societies between estates and monarchs and secular and religious authorities, the emerging sense of national cons...

Biographies and introductions to Marx Free to download

What imeprialism reproduces while dominating a local uncivilized population " Max Ginsburg painted Torture Abu Ghraib (oil, 46×32) from life, except for the dog, which came from one of the photographs of prisoners tortured by American soldiers. The models for the figures are wearing costumes from an Army-Navy store. Ginsburg was influenced, while he was working, by Caravaggio’s Flagellation of Christ. 2007. Iraqis will never forget. My students have no idea about this." — T. Swedenburg, November 2018

The limits of anti-racism

IS fighters in Iraqi prisons