Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Complicity by the right and the left Deciphering Germany's pro-Israel's Consensus

Summary: An argument for better taxation to reduce inequality. A couple of arguments refuting myths. However, there is no word about exploitation, the real source of inequality, which is also, paradoxically, the source of human advance. The argument that huge inequality is a consequence of bad taxation is a myth that the author reiterates. Inequality already takes place and is reproduced through property ownership and during the relations of production, i.e. before taxation itself. Consent and acquiescence play a role in accepting inequality. Agreed. And that is the power of ideology to legitimate inequality and gloss over exploitation. "The idea that rising inequality is inevitable begins to look like a convenient myth, one that allows us to avoid thinking about another possibility: that through our electoral choices and decisions in daily life we have supported rising inequality, or at least acquiesced in it. Admittedly, that assumes we know about it. Surveys in the UK an...

"Previous industrial revolutions brought about huge leaps in GDP  but  real wages stagnated for around 50 years during the first . This is known as the Engels’ pause , which describes the gap between technology improving and people benefitting personally." What is the fifth industrial revolution?

The new political cleavage doesn’t, as many suggest, reflect the distinction between the “elite” and the “masses”. It obscures it, helping conceal the fact that the political interests of the cleaner and the steelworker are far more similar than of either to Cleese or Bilimoria. Whether in south Wales or south London, workers suffer from the casualisation of work, the stagnation of wages, the imposition of austerity. Class is still the defining force shaping British lives The Frost Report

Why is there more remembrance by the BBC and similar news outlets of the Chinese regime's crimes in Tiananmen Square than of the Egyptian regime's crimes in Rabaa Square, although, according to HRW, the latter too was "one of the biggest single day massacre in recent history"? The world has forgotten Egypt's Rabaa massacre One of the largest killings in a single day War Crimes in North Sinai: HRW

"This is the Orientalism of an era in which Western liberalism has plunged into deep crisis, exacerbated by anxieties over Syrian refugees, borders, terrorism and, of course, economic decline. It is an Orientalism in crisis, incurious, vindictive, and often cruel, driven by hatred rather than fascination, an Orientalism of walls rather than border-crossing. The anti-integrationist, Islamophobic form of contemporary Orientalism is enough to make one nostalgic for the lyrical, romantic Orientalism that Mathias Énard elegizes, somewhat wishfully, as a bridge between East and West in his 2015 Goncourt Prize-winning novel,  Compass .  If Orientalism has assumed an increasingly hostile, Muslim-hating tone, this is because the “East” is increasingly inside the “West.” This is a clash not of civilizations, but rather a collision of two overlapping phenomena: the crisis of Western neoliberal capitalism, which has aggravated tensions over identity and citizenship, and the collapse o...

America's Allies in the Middle East : The Real "Troika of Tyranny"

Eleven Theses on Venezuela There should be at least one additional thesis: class configuration, the inablity of carrying out industrialisation and radical changes.

"It is thus a combination of economics, culture, religion, resources, and strategic location that drive the current repression of the Uyghur; the economic interests of Middle East countries prevent them from raising this issue with China." The Ongoing Persecutions of China's Uyghurs

The seasons after the 'Arab Spring' Related The most dangerous man in Sudan I n socio-economic terms, the 1950s coups/revolutions, especially in Egypt, Iraq and Syria, brought radical changes. The current revolutions have been unable to even articultae similar ones. The Arab uprisings: an appraisal

How Britain tried to erase India's third gender

Enzo Traverso says, "the Stalinist legacy, made up of a mountain of ruins and dead, did not erase the origins of communism in the tradition of the Enlightenment and eighteenth-century rationalist humanism. 
By contrast,  "[N]ationalism and imperialism, Pan-Germanism and the idea of `living space', `redemptive' anti-Semitism and racism, eugenics and extermination of the `lower races', hatred of the left and charismatic dictatorship are tendencies that had appeared, in more or less developed forms, from the end of the nineteenth century on. Nazism did not create them, it simply radicalized them. 
If Nazism achieved a fusion of three different struggles - a colonial assault on the Slavic world, a political struggle against communism and the Soviet Union, and a racial fight against the Jews - into a unique war of conquest and extermination, this means that its model could not be Bolshevism. It would be more relevant and coherent to find its `model' in the col...

This was written in 1984:  The extent of criticism varies greatly from one part of the Left to another, but there is at least no disposition now to take the Soviet regime as a “model” of socialism: indeed, there is now a widespread disposition on the Left to think of the Soviet regime as an “anti-model.” How could it be otherwise, given some of the most pronounced features of that regime? The socialist project means, and certainly meant for Marx, the subordination of the state to society. Precisely the reverse characterizes the Soviet system. Moreover, the domination of the state in that system is assured by an extremely hierarchical, tightly controlled, and fiercely monopolistic party aided by a formidable police apparatus. Outside the party, there is no political life; and inside the party, such political life as there exists is narrowly circumscribed by what the party leadership permits or ordains — which means that there is not much political life in the party either. ...

Why I stopped contributing to wikipedia I have edited some sections on wikipedia, but I have particularly created new ones, especially sections related to the Arab uprisings: added the last part that begins with "contrary to ..." in  this section . and the last two sections : "The Arab Spring: reform or revolution" and "Space and the city in the Arab uprisings". added more info to "Symbols, slogans and songs" section and created " Commentary " section for Algeria 2019 protests page. On "Humna rights in Egypt" page I created " International complicity " section. When I edited the war in Yugoslavia page and there was a copyright issue, my editing was removed, but I was informed and an explanation was given. But it seemed that I touched a taboo when I edited Gadi Eizenkot's page , using only two mainstream sources: Haaretz newspaper and the Goldstone report , a United Nations Human Rights Council well-...

Beyond Brexit: an existential crisis I don't know though who the author refers to when he uses "we" and "our".

England: corruption "But the fact is that the cases so far brought by the NCA are probably the tip of an iceberg of suspected corruption. Of the properties owned by overseas companies in England and Wales, two-thirds are registered to firms in the British Virgin Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man - which means it can be difficult to work out who ultimately benefits from the asset  The government is supposedly committed to banning the ownership of British property through shadowy companies - but nothing has been done.  Until there is more clarity on who owns what, already-stretched financial crime investigators will struggle to seize the suspected billions of stolen loot washing around the British property market ."

Brexit New model party Politically parallels: Weimar Republic and Britain

More propaganda against Britain. This time is by Amnesty against the "amazing professionalism of our Royal Air Force." "Precision bombing" Raqqa is in ruins like Dresden

How One Palestinian University is Remaking "Israel Studies"

Stephen Rosen: “[W]hat is nationalism? And what nationalism is actually Western invention. Imperial China had no nationalism. Where do they get their ideas of nationalism? Well, they got their ideas of nationalism from the Japanese, which emerged as a national state in the 19 [century].  Well, where did the Japanese get their ideas about nationalism, which were then translated into Chinese? They got it from the Germans. So what they imported was a 19th-century version of social Darwinism in which race  is of the fundamental basis of nationality and there are very – when you hear Xi Jinping [a communist/Marxist?] and other Chinese leaders talking about cultural pollution, when you talk about the natural affinity of all Chinese people wherever they are, you begin to worry that there is this submerged, and sometimes not even so, some racialist component.” — The historian Lord Acton put  the case against "nationalism as insanity" in 1862. Bertrand Russell  criticizes n...