Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

  Despite ongoing claims about “ungovernability,” transhistorical blood feuds, or the racialized nature of “the Arab” and “the Muslim,” there is, in fact, nothing exceptional about war and conflict in the Middle East. The region was left with the obscured but violent legacies of notions like the semi-civilized and extraterritoriality. The War on Terror brought these concepts back to center stage. Blowback from weaponized techniques of extraterritoriality impact the United States as well as the Middle East. One hundred and one years after Versailles, the twinned concepts of extraterritoriality and the semi-civilized continue to shape our world in ways that can no longer be overlooked. From Versailles to the War on Terror

  Good points here. However, I don’t agree with this: Those who share love and admiration for a pluralizing world must unite across differences of race, class, gender and theology in their efforts to restore our democracy. The author believes in class collaboration. Class is central in the same system of imperialism he is condemning yet he advocate a unity across differences regardless of class. What sort of democracy is a one that maintains class opression? Biden’s characterisation of Putin applies to ‘Neoliberal Ideologies’, too.

 An event organised by SSK-GNU research team in South Korea.

In the UK , 70% of flights are made by a wealthy 15% of the population, with 57% not flying abroad at all. In the US , just 12% of people take two-thirds of flights.  Canada : 22% of the population takes 73% of flights. The Netherlands:  8% of people takes 42% of flights. China:  5% of households takes 40% of flights. India:  1% of households takes 45% of flights. Indonesia:  3% of households takes 56% of flights. Source: the climate campaign group Possible

  Marwan Daoudy challenges core assumptions behind the climate-conflict hypothesis Related Interview with the Marwa Daoudi On blaming climate change on the Syrian civil war

 Very good and inspirational. Teaching Anthropology of the Economic from MENA Related A Few Things Wrong with Political Economy of the Middle East

This is good! “Most critics are hardly capable of identifying the major problems of identity politics: firstly, its widespread disregard for the importance of intersectionality, knowledge and expertise (that is independent of the respective identity) and secondly, the lack of a critique of capitalist structures and socio-economic inequalities (beyond specific identities), which, in turn, prevents a comprehensive understanding of discrimination, oppression, exploitation and emancipation.” The poverty of mainstream universalism and exclusive identity politics

Another product of ‘neoliberalism” Another national scandal

  A 2018 TV series “ Set during World War II, "The Terror: Infamy" centers on a series of bizarre deaths that haunt a Japanese American community, and a young man's journey to understand and combat the malevolent entity that is responsible. Chester Nakayama and his friends and family from Terminal Island, Calif., face p ersecution from the American government, and they battle the evil spirit that threatens their future. A look at the often overlooked time of Japanese American internment camps and what it truly means to be an American. From 1942 to 1945, more than 145,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians were forced from their homes and into internment camps by their respective governments, simply because of where they or their ancestors were born. Their story is one of perseverance in the face of injustice.”

 “We must look back at the Arab New Left”

  Loosing Oneself in Kerala’s Gulf Migrant Literature

 Macron’s Wars

  Fanon Can’t Save You Now

Example: the U.S. “As a deduction, the value of the tax benefit increases with income. The higher the marginal rate of the donor, the larger the tax benefit, meaning that the wealthier the taxpayer, the less they must pay for each dollar of their charitable gifts. Thus, for a gift of $1,000, a taxpayer in the 37 percent bracket gets $370 in tax savings while a taxpayer in the 15 percent bracket gets just $150 — a $220 difference in the size of the tax benefit for the same gift. In addition, as an itemized deduction, only a small fraction of taxpayers actually have a tax incentive to give, further increasing unfairness. Thus, millionaires can get a return of 37 percent on their charitable contributions, while a middle-income taxpayer who claims the standard deduction gets no tax benefit at all for a contribution of the same amount. Such middle-income taxpayers thus have no incentive to give, and when they do, their gift is not acknowledged by the tax system even though their sacrifice i...

  Including Arab Americans in the Biden Administration

  Why border lines drawn with a ruler in WWI still rock the Middle East

 

The author has ignored exploitation of labour as a source of wealth. In fact, he ignored that even inherited wealth comes from past labour. Note that the word capitalism is not mention even once. As regarding why “ the belief that Britain is a meritocracy is ingrained in our collective psyche,” one has to include the role of ideology . Where does wealth comes from? Related The meritocrats shall inherit the earth What Does the Ruling Class Do When it Rules?

The turbulence within the main protagonists of Italian politics, and the paradoxical emergence of yet another government following a bourgeois bloc strategy, can each be connected to a unitary framework. The bourgeois bloc is not simply a social alliance that brings together the middle and upper classes, from both Left and Right, around a neoliberal reform of capitalism that draws its legitimacy from the European integration process. It is also an ideological project, which entails a complete restructuring of political cleavages. The electoral disasters faced by both the Renzi-era Democrats and Berlusconi's Forza Italia — the parties which carried this project — have not erased the effects that this experience has had on the structuring of social and political conflict. The Paradoxical Return of the Bourgeois Bloc