Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The 2010s: the refugee 'crisis' showed Europe's worst side of the world

Government misses minimum wage target

I hate New Year's Day

"In this realm domestic and foreign policy cannot be cleanly separated; presenting an economically secure alternative to military service is the key to advancing the cause of justice both at home and abroad." A strong welfare state could be a blow against imperialism

"A recent “Letter Against US Imperialism” by leftist intellectuals such as Angela Davis, Vijay Prashad, Robin Kelley, and Hamid Dabashi denounces the latest Iranian mass uprising and continues the old pattern. It attributes the latest protests in Iran to “Iranian native informants and cheerleaders who serve as functionaries of US imperialism.” It argues that the Iranian masses only want “stability” and “reform” but not regime change. The claims in the letter simply do not match the reality on the ground." Shameful, to say the least.  Why the latest uprising in Iran matters

Writings on the column: "We want to burn your palaces" "Lebanon is ours" Heading for a meltdown?

The Iraqi oud player Naseer Shamma

رحيل محمد شحرور بعد خمسة عقود من نقد جدلي للتراث

Raine "never makes clear his explanation for where modern anti-Semitism originates, what structures give rise to it, and therefore – by extension – where one should focus energy to challenge it. The very movement between anti-Semitism and Jewophobia throughout the piece captures something of this lacuna. At times, Raine seems to describe a cultural phenomenon that he feels always already exists, and is not in fact constructed and imposed. As such he describes it variously as an ‘unconscious phobia of Jews’, ‘a structure of thinking’, a form of ‘anti-political pessimism’, and as a ‘discourse’, never rooting these in anything structurally identifiable.  This leaves the reader with the impression that anti-Semitism can be explained by means of mere ideas, or via culture, rather than requiring a material explanation and history." Recentering the state

Europe and the Class Divide

Those who search for dawn do mot fear the night; nor the hand that holds the dagger

Note that the word "democracy" is not even put in inverted commas because it is a given. "The rape of India's soul"

How the West made Arabs and Berbers into races

Non-agression pact between Israel amd Gulf states

The world the Economist made

NI is part of the 6th economy in the world . "Northern Ireland currently has the worst hospital waiting lists in the UK and last month hospital waiting times reached an all-time high according to figures from Stormont's Department of Health. One in every six people in Northern Ireland is currently waiting for a first appointment with a consultant and more than 100,000 of them have been waiting for more than a year. On average, there is a four-year wait for a knee or hip operation. In emergency departments, no patient should wait more than 12 hours for treatment, but in September 2019 almost 3,500 patients waited longer."

Return to Revolution

We have to end the permanent wars

If this article is supposed to stress the contradictions of capitalism yet its progress to an ever better world, it is a mediocre attempt. Quoting Marx and Engels is meant to support the bourgeoisie's  violence, not to condemn it. Thus when the author speaks about how progress has come at a cost, he minimises the scope and depth of that cost. He could have added that the existing system with a cost is better than any alternative. The author has ignored too many negative effects from waste to exploitation, from persisting poverty to wars and proxy-wars, to creating the conditions of more wars, from stress, depression, precarity to insecurity, inequality, and stagnating wages, from monopolies to corruption, from the rise of neo-fascists, nationalism, xenophobia, racism and hate crimes, building more borders to persisting slums, oppression of women, child labour and human trafficking, from proliferation of narcissism and indifference to commodification of everything, normalising po...