Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Without a global orientation, we risk reinforcing the ways that the virus has seamlessly fed into the discursive  political rhetoric  of nativist and xenophobic movements – a politics deeply seeped in authoritarianism, an obsession with border controls, and a ‘my-country first’ national patriotism. This a global pandemic—let's treat it as such

Four interlocking crises highlight the limits of the market

البشرية والوباء والاشتراكية

In English, French and Arabic A pandemic in the shadow of capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination of people and nature

The arguments make sense, but I think it is a silly headline Syria's revenge? What is Syria since 2011, the regimes, the warring factions, the internally displaced, the millions of refugees, the a hundred thousand plus in jails ...? "   In a normal world, great powers would marshal the resources necessary to meet the challenge, leading a global effort of expertise, technology, money, and materiel to save lives everywhere, including in Syria."  When was that "normal time"? Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Myanmar, Ruwanda...? It's some people, some NGOS, local organisations mobilising their resources to help and save lives. Local and global powers have been waging proxy-wars and fuelling conflicts directly and indirectly, with geopolitical calculations of who is an ally and who is not, who serves their interests and who might jeopardise them. "Syria's revenge on the world" will be a second wave of coronavirus

"Our Lives Are Worth More Than Your Profits"

"The unique situation of a global pandemic reinforces the need to advocate for and amplify the voices of the marginalized and disenfranchised.  American-led wars and disastrous foreign policies have decimated health systems, through  war in Iraq  and  Yemen ,  sanctions in Iran  and beyond.  Millions of  refugees live in camps  and unsafe housing  without proper medical care and without the ability to stop the rapid spread of the virus.  Migrant workers in Gulf countries  without legal rights  are under lockdown in crowded facilities.   Vast inequality  decreases many people’s ability to access adequate medical care.  For these reasons, our mission is more vital than ever." —MERIP (Middle East Research and Information Project), 26 March 2020

"Spain has a magnificent primary care system, but its hospitals have been hit by a decade of austerity since the financial crisis. It has  only a third of the hospital beds per capita  that are provided by Austria or Germany. Yet that is still more than the UK, New Zealand or the US." How did Spain get its response so wrong?

The fish: "Hello, darling! How are you?" The dog: "Good, but I'm very thirsty!" The fish: "What would you like to drink?" The dog: "The tears of those people who dreamt to live off rents and airbnb."

Factory farming, globalised industry and rapid urbanisation

Comrade Britney Spears?

Nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation

'As if we were the disease'

Look at the bright side of life: - A drop in air pollution - A drop in wastage - A drop in consumerism (shopoholcolism, mass tourism, etc) - A drop in other types of pollution: noise, littering, "anti-social behaviour" ... - A drop in extracting more wealth from poor countries for capital accumulation and to provide affordable goods in the rich countries. Hopefully, there will be social pressure to invest more on health infrastructure and the well-being of the majority—the working people, the precariat, etc). Maybe it's an opprotunity to change "our way of life". But I am not too optimistic like this writer , for example.

الأوبئة والاستعمار والطب الإمبريالي Epidemics, colonialism and imperialist medecine Related: Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies by David Arnold Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamonds

"Socialism" to save neoliberalism? Related: (from the Financial Times) By a defender of capitalism and "the gains of the free market" in the last decades. "More complex will be the response on welfare and inequality. While the pandemic is not a crisis of capitalism, it highlights the system’s weak spots, most notably around unprotected workers and those on precarious incomes. Many lost jobs will not come back as companies see means and need for leaner operations. For some this will strengthen the case for a universal basic income or a more generous safety net. At the very least we are likely to see demands for more protections for gig workers. The crisis strengthens those who want policy to think of the less fortunate." And this one: " Bailouts will again be needed now , given a  market downturn that mirrors 1929  and an economic contraction likely to be sharper than during the previous financial crisis. But if we want capitalism and libera...

Inequality worsens the spread of Coronavirus

A Part of Denmark

On the effects of Coronoavirus and lockdowns, etc. "Now we are being reminded that contemporary capitalism is fuelled, not by financial appropriation, but by labour." —Alex Callinicos, March 2020 The exploited are the creators of wealth.

"Viruses mutate all the time to be sure. But the circumstances in which a mutation becomes life-threatening depend on human actions. But the economic and demographic impacts of the spread of the virus depend upon preexisting cracks and vulnerabilities in the hegemonic economic model. Public authorities and health care systems were almost everywhere caught short-handed. Forty years of  neoliberalism  across North and South America and Europe had left the public totally exposed and ill-prepared to face a public health crisis of this sort, even though previous scares of SARS and Ebola provided abundant warnings as well as cogent lessons as to what would be needed to be done. Corporatist  Big Pharma  has little or no interest in non-remunerative research on infectious diseases (such as the whole class of coronaviruses that have been well-known since the 1960s).  Workforces in most parts of the world have long been socialized to behave as good neoliberal sub...