Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Polish women should to travel to Turkey, Tunisia, or Azerbaijan–countries with Muslim majority–to seek abortion.   Abortion: Ban on almost all terminations

Classism and accent prejudice in UK’s top universities

This is not surprising. Three years ago a YouGov poll showed that “the majority of the people” support the public running of some key sectors such as the railways, the mail service and the water companies.  Transport for Wales rail services to be nationalised Comments on the BBC Related Nationalisation vs privatisation

  In the briefing, Dr Ali said: "The problem with focusing on ethnicity as a risk factor is that it misses the very large number of non-ethnic minority groups, so whites basically, who also live in deprived areas and overcrowded housing and with high risk occupations." He added the whole population should have a "personalised risk assessment" rather than just targeting ethnic groups. "It doesn't make sense to put all ethnic minorities in the same basket as it doesn't make sense to put all whites in the same basket," he said.  On structural racism, he said he was not convinced by the narrative that racism played a part in coronavirus deaths. My comment: What about class then, Dr Ali? What about the overlap of class and racism?  If the whites also suffer from risk because of their class and social conditions they live, the non-whites, the working class, the poor, suffer from both racism and class oppression. Ethnic minority Covid risk ‘not explained ...

  Mr. Macron will deliver a solemn eulogy to Mr. Paty on Wednesday at the Sorbonne. He has already been hailed as a martyr of the French Republic. The emotion of thousands who turned out for him across France was real. A huge gathering at the Place de la Republique in Paris recalled the ones held after the attacks of 2015. But a few wondered about what had transpired in Mr. Paty’s class. “I feel like it’s very hard to use these cartoons for strictly educational purposes,” said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, EHESS, in Paris. “Secularists think that it is their right, because of the law that allows blasphemy and any form of mockery of religion. But on the other hand, there is the feeling that in doing so, it is the Muslims who are despised, not the prophet,” he said. “By using cartoons to teach freedom of expression, we do not understand that we offend people,” Mr. Khosrokhavar said. “There are a thousand ways to express ...

 After banning the use of anti-capitalist materials at schools, the move now is to make  teaching “white privilege” as an uncontested fact illegal

 “No piece of land is worth” I think that’s an underestimation of the role of property in conflicts whether between states or classes or among the marginalised. And the case of the Armenians, the Turkish genocide is in the collective memory. Enmity has a longer history in the “imagined community” than 30/40 years ago.

 “This Land is Your Land”

 The IMF smokescreen

“I’m never going to blend in.” We are not comfortable talking about certain things. Same here, Nadiya. If you as a celebrity is unable to blend in, what about me? Twenty years and I have not been accepted and decided not to try to blend in, for if you want to be accepted, you must go with the stream, accept the status quo, be polite and don’t talk about subjects that make the other feel uncomfortable or upset, don’t express your radical views, don’t judge people, talk about the banalities and the mundane, don’t try to attack prejudices because people don’t want to appear ignorant or intolerant. Nadiya Hussain

 Despite a US-backed coup Morales’ ally set for win They will try other methods in future, including sabotage, sanctions, etc. Related The US-backed coup in Bolivia was based on lies Bolivia’s coup

 When you own a country, you do with its wealth whatever you want while your brothers and sisters (Arabs and Muslims) from Lebanon’s “failed state” to Syrian refugees are suffering. You also stretch your arms to help reshape the geo-strategical board of the MENA region. You get support from the heart of “free market democracies” interested in selling you properties and weapons, and they protect you. An Arab revolution that does not spread to overthrow those rotten pigs and employ the Gulf resources for the majority of Arabs, cannot be called a revolution. Sheikh Khalifa’s £5bn London property empire

“ Party members were from all ethnicities and religious sects of Syria, making it likely the most diverse among leftist parties in the country. Women also had a significant and, in later years, growing presence in the ranks of the LCP [Labour Communist Party] though were largely absent from leadership positions (p.191). Alongside the initial involvement of women in the first steps of the party through “Marxist Circles”, or collective political groups, they played an increasingly important role throughout different periods of the party. Female members also suffered from the multiple campaigns of arrests by the security services, especially at the end of the 1980s as their numbers and participation in the party increased. As Shabo writes, the significant numbers of women in the LCP and their activism made the party clearly distinct from other leftist and communist groups, where women’s roles were comparatively less prominent.” Syria’s Labour Communist Party

  Man can drop part of name denoting slave ancestry

 The Unintended Consequences of Turkey’s Quest for Oil

  A Lesson in Drawing By the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998) Translated from Arabic

French Education Minister: “The Republic is under attack.” The reason? One French man was beheaded for his “freedom of expression.”  “At the very moment that, in the name of fighting terror, the French state is devastating Raqqa, arresting refugee activists, banning climate demonstrations, and giving police the power to conduct home-invasions without a warrant at any hour for three months, the political classes’ propagandists have rallied French society behind them under the banner of defence of Republican ‘values’ – liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy, civilization, human rights. In this situation, the nature of Republicanism as the all-purpose ideology of the French ruling class emerges clearly. Republicanism can be harnessed to justify anything that aligns with the interests of French state power. In the name of Republican values, France can  criminalize BDS , hold up racist caricature as an exemplary exercise of free speech, or  seriously contemplate  censor...

 Andreas Malm: “The likely future is escalating catasrophe”

 Partners in Crime

  Joe Biden’s America is [another] myth