Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Who did what to defeat the Islamic State group

As Trump raises tariffs on Chinese goods (again) , a big picture of world trade since mid-19th-century is very useful. After a historical level of a 'globalisation' wave/openess, the U.S. sees its hegemony threatened and its power in relative decline vis-a-vis the rising of new powers like China. Thus it wants reassert itself. That makes the possiblities of conflicts in the coming decade higher. World trade and capitalism

Britain, Britons, Brexit, Bonkers ... The conditions are ripe for the biggest backlash imaginable One decline is related to another Why Britain doesn't have a Huawei of its own

Class struggle (at a low ebb) Silicon Valley nonsense: Uber and exploitation

The other criminals The assault on Idlib, Syria

Muslims, like those of 2011 uprisings before the counter-revolution, and like those in Algeria, are not led by Islamists and are not demanding an Islamic state. Weird, isn't it? Sudan's military rulers  "responded to a draft constitutional document presented to it by a coalition of protest groups and political parties." The Transitional Military Council's leaders said " the document omitted Islamic law , which they said remained the bedrock of all laws."    David Pilling from the Financial Times  wrote: "there is a retro-revolutionary feel to a movement that has both a secular and a syndicalist tinge." I am not opitmistic though when it comes to toppling the regime. There is no strategy to either take over state institutions or build a dual power. The army is still intact and there is no organisation to carry pit an insurrection. Putting pressure would at most achieve modest reforms (see Tunisia). Genuine change requires a radical mo...

"Rights groups have accused Paris of being complicit in alleged war crimes against civilians in Yemen, where around 10,000 people have died and millions been forced to the brink of starvation." Who are these (leftist, ignorant) "rights groups" who do not know that we need strategic partners to preserve the values of "the free world" and of "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité". Haven't you seen the French chanting "Je suis Yéménite", "Je suis Sudanais(e)", "Je suis Algérien(ne)? France ships (more) arms to Saudi Arabia

Universal Basic Income doesn't work

This is the kind of analysis we need: a well-established journalist at the Financial Times argues that there is a risk of "accidental" war in the Middle East. History, and the history of the region in particular, following Gardner's logic, tells us that wars happen by "accident", not by a cumulative process within a historical juncture and with a backgroound at home and abroad of the social-political forces at play. What might be called an "accident" could be a trigger, but not the mechanism. Necessity is the main/fundamental factor, i.e. the cumulative process(es) of drives and contradictions  make war a necessity. I am curious to find how many historians and analysts have found that 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars, the Iraq-Iran war (1982-1988), 1991 and 2003 wars/invasions happened "accidentally". That's apart from the simplistic but convenient mainstream description of the "sectarian" nature of the conflicts. Risks rise o...

Egyptian drama production (a report in Arabic) How the military dictatorship is destroying the margin of variety and freedom that existed for decades.  One company, with links to the state, now has a monopoly on the production of drama and owns/controls most of the network channels. There has been a significant drop in production, actors and actresses have withrawn from the art's scene, and 1 million people working in the industry have been/will be affected in one way or another . هل بات الإنتاج الدرامي في مصر تحت سيطرة الدولة؟ Erotic scenes and wearing revealing dresses used to be common in  Egyptian movies. New rules/codes after 2013 coup have been put in place. Example:  Rania Youssef threatened with prison sentence for wearing a revealing dress

" South Africa has a general election tomorrow, 25 years since the end of apartheid and six years since the death of Nelson Mandela. In those 25 years, the aspirations and hopes of most black South Africans (90% of the 58m South Africans) and, for that matter, many white South Africans, have been disappointed. In those 25 years, the majority have not seen any startling improvement in their living standards, education, health and public services." The dashing of a dream

Good, but I expected more on the geo-political economy. Trump's America, Netanyahu's Israel

"Capitalism has a moral basis, to be free, you have to be capitalist”.  God bless M. T.

Social structuring in pre-capitalism "may look as an anomaly to a contemporary eye. But it is an anomaly only because we tend to take such notions as national space, nation, class and citizen as given, as the 'natural' way of social existence. Once one poses the question on the conditions and prerequisites that made these notions come to existence, i.e. once one poses the historicity of such notions, the pre-capitalist categories cease to be anomalies. The coming into age of an enlarged identity: the nation, has not done away with the need to exclude others, it only redefined otherness on grounds that look "natural to contemporary eyes, belonging to a common culture or speaking a common language, thus excluding 'others' from the right to compete for jobs and opportunities within the national space. The non-dominance of capitalism on social formations imposes severe restrictions that prevent carrying a final assault on many forms of pre-capitalist social org...

I am a police officer in London

Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism’s history and presents a realistic vision for its future

Venezuela "While the official line was that the uprising was the work of the Venezuelan masses, everything the Trump administration did reinforced the message that it had been made in Washington." Note that the liberals who wrote the article did not put the words "uprising" and "liberation" in inverted commas., and they don't seem to condemn the attempted coup. After all, Western regimes and some others have supported the interim president. That would enough to make a successful coup a "liberation".  1. An "uprising/revolution", if it exists, should be judged by its class or social groupings character. It should be decided by the balance of forces inside a country. 2. An imperialist state is reactionary by its nature. And the American one nowadays is even more reactionary that 5 years ago. A reactionary force cannot by its nature support a radical progressive change. It would an anomaly if it does. 3. The support of Russia ...

"Revolutionary Cycles Are Contagious"

Reading Hannah Arendt Is Not Enough

Heresy There is a glimpse of hope, sometimes. German SPD youth chief leader lambasted for proposing collective ownership of big firms