Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Two views on China: Esteban Mercatante argues that China is capitalist while Richard Smith says it is not. The Contours of Capitalism in China Why China isn’t Capitalist

Here’s is what we learnt about the working class and democracy

Crise au Liban

In the Oxfam language and tone MENA billionaires’ wealth increased by $10 billion

History doesn’t give much reason to be hopeful. “In keeping with the longstanding pattern of political behaviour during pandemics,”  wrote  global health expert David P Fidler of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC, in  Science  on 14 August, “vaccines will eventually reach most populations, but only after powerful countries have protected themselves.” How the race for  Covid-19 vaccine is getting dirty Related Rampant destruction of forests ‘will unleash more pandemics’

A quality analysis Dreams and Nightmares of the World’s Middle Classes

Carlas’s Song Reviews of the film Related Nicaragua:  A revolution compromised

Covid-19 and Urban Marginalisation

Andrew Smith of  Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT)  said: "By training and collaborating with despots, dictatorships and human rights abusers, the UK risks making itself complicit in the abuses that are being inflicted." “Risks making itself complicit”? Andrew Smith is either naive or a liberal idiot. UK ‘providing training for repressive regimes’

Ashes in the Snow

A book review Israel is an Army with a Country Attached

Solidarność: 40 years ago and now The writer calls the former communist-party-led regimes of eastern Europe “state socialists.” There is no left consensus on the character of those regimes. I wouldn’t call them state socialists though. They were dictatorial, bureaucratic regimes that controlled most of the economy. “ Today, the union [Solidarity] is almost entirely allied with PiS, and thus with all the illiberal, anti-democratic, anti-immigrant, homophobic, protofascist policies and practices that the party has been promoting.” The Triumph and Tragedy of Poland’s Solidarity Movement

Katyn

I think arguments that reinforce irrationality and conservatism always find millions of followers. Those millions of people have their prejudices, and their opinions on subjects like Marxism, socialism, human nature, etc are based on lack of knowledge and miseducation or material interest. The contradiction lies in this: in their daily life people generally make rational decisions, but when it comes to subjects like capitalism, hierarchy, human nature, socialism, ‘ordinary’ people have irrational ideas about those subjects. Their ideas has been built over many years, and often since childhood. Most people do not break away from what was inculcated in their minds at home and at school. Like a Muslim preacher who gains fame by hitting the right neurones of a Muslim mind that prone to conservatism, John Peterson is a Western preacher for a Western audience that too has its own conservatism and prejudices. And the more capitalism as an economic and social system enters into crisis and ...

Maesteg-based Sian Summers-Rees, chief officer of City of Sanctuary, said: "The asylum system itself is dehumanising. Sometimes the system can take years and the quality of the decision-making by the Home Office is not good." Asylum seekers ‘in limbo’ and unable [not allowed] to work

When the Americans were spreading freedom in another country and “a revolution was badly led.”

Can Arabic Language ‘Translate’ into the Modern World?

English landowners have stolen our rights. It is time to reclaim them

What if Palestinians just disappeared? A review of the novel  The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem