Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Education and beyond According to the Times Higher Education, Phil Baty,  THE ’s chief knowledge officer, said that, based on current trends and with Brexit looming, Germany was “poised to overtake the UK as Europe’s number one higher education nation”, thanks to its extra research spending, increased focus on internationalisation and successful excellence initiative.   Meanwhile, mainland China has continued its ascent of the rankings this year and is now home to the top two universities in Asia for the first time.  Tsinghua University  holds on to the number one spot in the region, despite dropping one place since last year to 23rd, while  Peking University  is now second in Asia and 24th overall, after rising seven places. The  National University of Singapore  drops two places to 25th. It should be born in mind that in both Germany and China public higher education is free. Another area that reflects the decline of Britain. ...

Egypt The Times , a revolutionary paper, is saying that our friends, who  wine and dine with revolutionaries like Cameron, Trump and Netanyahu in London and Washington, are building palace and villas corruptly . Tomorrow we will welcome them again, for they provide stability and help maintin geopolitical interests.

Palestinian workers in a West Bank settlement fight for the right to choose their union

Netanyahu's pledge to annex 30 percent of the West Bank The Arab League regards Netanyahu's statements as undermining the chance for peace, Arab ministers called it a dangerous development, Qatar criticised Israel, Turkey slammed the pledge as racist, Saudi Arabia called for an emergency meeting, the United Nations said the pledge had no legal effects... A few months ago student in London, an American, applauded the "normalisation process between some Gulf states and the Israeli state..." The Iraqi poet Mudhafar Al-Nawaab: Sons of a bitch A pigs' sty is cleaner than the cleanest among you Oh, subdued rulers And subdued people How dirty we are! How dirty we are! How dirty we are and we are proud of it! I exclude no one. Is a motherland ruled by royal thighs A motherland or a whorehouse? What is it called an Arab situation masturbating Before the peace processes And drinking with the villain? I scream at you Where is your pride? Are you Arabs...

Pakistan Karachi hotel workers' struggle for a trade union

Chile: 11 September 45 years ago "The contrast between the beauty and the brutality that people are capable of was inescapable. The social power people invest in music became a permanent part of my thinking. Notable for its absence in the time after the coup was the  nueva canción  (new song) folk music movement. Urban musicians had taken rural traditional music and transformed it into inspirational expressions calling for human dignity, equality and compassion. The military regime outlawed it, and it disappeared entirely from the public Chilean soundscape. Overnight,  peñas —gathering places for  nueva canción  musicians and fans—became a thing of the past. It was risky to play or even possess instruments such as the  quena  flute or the  charango  guitar because of their association with the socialist movement." An Eyewitness of Pinochet's Coup

"The Prince [of Edinburgh] is the repository of all the colonial past and all the class privileges of the present. His racist remarks should not be whitewashed or camouflaged. They need to be properly, accurately, and verbatim catalogued in the British Library and made available to future generations of scholars and critical thinkers, anthropologists of the racist foregrounding of European imperialism for careful and close analysis. They are the insignia of an entire semiology of colonial racism in full-blown aristocratic diction. From the rampant racism now dominant in  Israel  to pernicious xenophobia evident in Trump's  America , it's all there: rooted in these unhinged expletives in polite, aristocratic British English." The priceless racism of the Duke of Edinburgh

Financial crimes in a profit-maximising system

Rohingya's ethnic cleansing Villages destroyed for government facilities

The Beauty and the Beast "We are the villagers and the villagers are us, and we see these commands everywhere. Because you’re worth it. Be my baby. Like a virgin. i’m lovin’ it. Impossible is nothing. Quality never goes out of style. Just Do It. Make America Great Again. The Will of the People. Mut zur Warheit. Prima gli Italiani. Build the Wall. Kill the Beast." Seductive Fascist Style

The link between Brexit and death penalty

Germany "Male members have always outnumbered women in radical right terrorist groups in Germany. Yet a closer look reveals that women have regularly taken part in radical right terrorist activities but their role has been widely neglected so far." The role of women in radical right terrorism

British Airways strike "Balpa has rejected a pay rise of 11.9% over three years, arguing for a profit share for its members, who have accepted cuts to pay and pensions in previous years but now argue they should get more because the company is posting record profits." Greedy pilots!

No, There Isn't a White Genocide

  Via Edward Maltby How to explain Marxism to a Financial Times reader Similarly, take the idea/l of democracy, you wouldn't blame it for the 20th century horrors that wrecked Europe. Those were the consequences of the contradictions of capitalism and imperialism. Or, in a more subtle way, they were the "dark side" of capitalist democracy, not of the ideal of democracy per se. In wikepedia entries on the nature of former Eastern European regimes, pervasive and unhelpful conflation of "socialism", "communism" and "Stalinism" is abound. Poland, for example, according to wikipedia, was socialist before 1990. 

"Would you host a refugee in your home?" Why would/should I? Are refugees humans? They have a (very) different culture from mine, they don't know "Western values", hosting them would encourage more refugees to come and change our 'homogenous' society, take our jobs and live on benefits....We have worked hard to make our country propserous and rich, why should other people share our wealth with us? And one day some of them might blow us up...If you asked me whether I would host a stray cat or dog, that would be a reasonable question... If you agree with the above, I am sure you would relate to this  man and host him in your home than to the Syrian children, women and men who were made refugees.

Tapia points out that  “the evolution of CO2 emissions and the economy in the past half century leaves no room to doubt that emissions are directly connected with economic growth. The only periods in which the greenhouse emissions that are destroying the stability of the Earth climate have declined have been the years in which the world economy has ceased growing and has contracted, i.e., during economic crises. From the point of view of climate change, economic crises are a blessing, while economic prosperity is a scourge.” Climate change and mitigation Related: Climate change, uneven development and poverty, obscene inequality, comsumerism, destruction of the environment, exploitation, etc. Is there a solution? Instead of inventing ways to minimize resource consumption, our smartest companies like Apple and Google work only to invent “needs” we don’t really need: drones, robots, iPhones 5-6-7, 3D printers, hoverboards, the “Internet of Things,” self-driving cars, bi...

History of the British Empire How Britain's opium trade impoverished Indians A new research