Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

I accessed this article by typing the title in google search How the US is weaponising the world economy

It has to be within the socio-economic transformation that produces industrialisation and modernity in Africa. And there has to be a social forces/social forces who have interests in such a change. Cultural, educational and intellectual life breaks away from neocolonial studies in parallel/following a break away from economic hegemony and backwardness. A white curricula in Western universities is a useful tool to foster superiority and ideological legitimation. Hence the dominant paradigms, the belief in NGOisation, international aid, etc. Including some "black/brown" scholars, journalists, feminists, etc in the curricula is like including a black man as president of the US or a woman/gay as a president of an international institution:  maintaining power relations by diversifying the agents of oppression. " How truly decolonise the study of Africa "

When social industry bans the people we hate

If you believe that "Communism" had already existed in the Soviet Union, for example, that capitalism goes with our "human nature", and that poverty exists because of laziness and cultural factors, do not read this article. "We Need Fully Automated Luxury Communism" (An opinion in The New York Times)

Royal Opera House Muscat (Oman) and Budapest Symphony Orchestra (Hungary) led by composer  Yasser Abdelrahman

An interesting part in this analysis is "democracy", especially the one that should make you question the constant drumming in the mainstream (Western media) that the Tiananmen Square movement was about "democracy" as the Western liberals define it, inflating the role of students in the movement, and devoiding it from any class content.  A part which sounds weak for me is the first one about the scope of workers' control, as the writer has not backed his argument by evidence. The part on the historical process from the 1960s until 1989 is illuminating. The last part, post-1989, also sounds weak, for it does not take into consideration the industrial revolution China has embarked on since 1978 and its ongoing "tormented birth" in the passage to "modernity". ***** Students constantly tried to exclude workers, seeing the movement as “their own,” and sought to maintain its “purity.” Walder and Gong pointed out that until the end of May...

Nation Estate is a 9-minute sci-fi short offering a clinically dystopian, yet humorous approach to the deadlock in the Middle East. With its glossy mixture of computer generated imagery, live actors and an arabesque electronica soundtrack, Nation Estate explores a vertical solution to Palestinian statehood. In Sansour’s film, Palestinians have their state in the form of a single skyscraper: the Nation Estate. One colossal high-rise houses the entire Palestinian population – now finally living the high life. Each city has its own floor: Jerusalem on the third floor, Ramallah on the fourth floor, Sansour’s native Bethlehem on the fifth and so on. Intercity trips previously marred by checkpoints are now made by elevator. Aiming for a sense of belonging, the lobby of each floor reenacts iconic squares and landmarks.  The story follows the female lead, played by Sansour herself, in a futuristic folklore suit returning home from a trip abroad and making her way through the lobby of ...

Reminding Europe of its responsibility is central to Hirzel’s work. “We should be ashamed. We’re hypocrites – talking about human rights, calling it ‘the boat of innocents’. But if they had survived we would have called it ‘the boat of illegal immigrants’. They’re just doing what people have done for all of humanity – when they need to, they move.  Sinking Without Trace

Hollywood's flirtation with 1001 Nights The Aladdin controversy

Sudan's generals launch renewed crackdown to defeat general strike

Another evidence that it is not about culture but about a capitalist sytem that does not work for the whole of humanity. "Will Artificial Intelligence kill developing world growth?"

Global 3G Internet: A Universal Basic Service?

Orwell's 1984 : why it still matters

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"