Skip to main content

Posts

Non, Je Ne Regret Rien

To my belated discovery 
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mythology of the Sectarian Middle East

I wonder how I missed this excellent article on ‘sectarianism’ in the Middle East when it was published in 2017. It reminds me of at least a statement and a question by two English who did History at the London School of Economics. One said: “Now I understand why there are many conflicts in the Arab world. It is because there are many dialects.” The other asked me when the split between the Sunnis and Shi’a took place, implying that it is ‘a millennium-long conflict’.  Related Coexistence, sectarianism and racism – an interview with Ussama Makdisi Boundary making and sectarianisation in Syria 2011-2013 Making and unmaking of the greater Middle East
Post a Comment
Read more

Netherlands Slavery

Proceeds from this brutal labour enriched the Kingdom of the Netherlands and contributed to the "Golden Age", a period of economic prosperity in the 17th Century that saw the Netherlands witness huge advancements in science and culture.  In the western province of Holland alone, a Dutch Research Council study found 40% of economic growth between 1738 and 1780 could be attributed to slavery. The Netherlands has been accused of perpetuating and institutionalising racism. Approximately 70% of the African-Caribbean community in the Netherlands, which mostly consists of descendants of slaves, believe an apology is important. And yet in the broader population, almost half of the Dutch do not support an apology, while 38% do, according to an I&O Research poll. What built modern Holland
Post a Comment
Read more

Workers Struggle in Western Europe

Source: The New Statesman  
Post a Comment
Read more

Syria: The Making of Sects

Against amnesia While many cheer and clap in and for the World Cup and while some were outraged by the ‘banning’ of alcoholic in stadiums, let’s not forget the criminal role of Qatar and Qatar-based media and business entrepreneurs in the destruction of Syria.  “Rather than using ‘static categories’ (Fujii, 2009, p. 8), such as ‘sectarianism’ and ‘militarism’, I examined processes of ‘sectarianisation’ and ‘militarisation’ to adequately analyse dynamic socio-political phenomena. In dynamic settings (such as genocide, social movement, revolution, and civil war), static categories cannot fully capture actors' shifting relations, behaviours, discourses, perspectives, motives and identifications, nor can they capture the endogenous sources of changes.” Boundary making and sectarianisation in Syria 2011-2013
Post a Comment
Read more

How a British Forces Raid Went Wrong

and a young family paid the price “ Unknown to the British public at that time, SAS operatives were already suspected at the highest levels of UK Special Forces of illegally killing Afghan men who had surrendered and been detained, and later covering up the killings with fabricated reports.” " Instead of getting to the bottom of what happened and correcting any criminal behaviour, SIRs [Serious Incident Reviews] became a way of cleansing an incident of any wrongdoing," a former senior Royal Military Police officer said. "Some senior officers were using SIRs as a tool to prevent scrutiny. It seemed they were deciding on non-referral and then writing the SIR to justify the decision." Related Australian elite troops killed Afghan civilians [for practice] Hunting Russians, Giving Pass to Americans The bombing killed more than 160 civilians
Post a Comment
Read more

MENA: Intimate Partner Violence

According to  the World Economic Fortum’s  Global Gender Gap Report 2020
Post a Comment
Read more

Pakistan’s Coercive Sweatshop Capitalism

Excerpts Political parties’ coercive activities make their support essential to doing business as their members maintain discipline in the factories. Pakistan’s textile industry, which employs 15 million people and contributes 8.5% of its GDP, has emerged stronger from the [pandemic] crisis; foreign sales, which represent more than 60% of Pakistan’s total exports, broke all records in 2021-22 ($19bn). Pakistan’s brand of industrial capitalism is likely to mount a strong immune response to any trouble ahead. Its ability to overcome crises throughout its history is not just down to its adaptability or even state subsidies. It’s mainly due to an extensive repressive apparatus, and civil and military authorities’ tolerance of employers’ illegal practices. [In the textile sector] ‘modernisation’ includes the feminisation of the workforce, which for cultural reasons is less advanced than in other Asian countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.  Pakistani women, supposedly ‘more c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Haiti 1804 - Today’s World

On 1 January 1804, the Republic of Haiti declared independence. “Haiti offered asylum to enslaved people who could reach its shores. The Haitian Revolution inaugurated an independent Haitian trade, which sent free Haitians on business around the Caribbean and encouraged enslaved sailors to desert to freedom. Enslaved people also escaped to Haiti by other means. For example, in the Bahamas in 1822, slaveholders complained that more than 100 enslaved men and women from the island of Grand Caicos had overwhelmed their drivers and overseers, taken their children with them, and stolen open boats to flee to Haiti. Once on land in the Black republic, any person of African descent was free and eligible for citizenship. It was Haitian policy never to permit the re-enslavement of Haitian citizens or refugees. Robin Blackburn writes that ‘Haiti had saved the honor of the New World revolutions’, coming closer to realising the universal rights proclaimed by American revolutionaries than American fo...
Post a Comment
Read more