Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The emergence of a ruling class?

Arguable, but very interesting. An interview with the author. Here are the main arguments in case you cannot access the article . “Constant emphasis on racial and ethnic disparities diverts public attention from the growing class divide in the West between the college-educated overclass and the working class. The nation-state is the only unit of government that has been able to mobilise extra-political popular sentiments and national identity to improve the condition of the majority of people, not just an oligarchy or aristocracy. The actual ruling class in the US and similar Western democracies is not a tiny number of freakishly rich individuals, or heirs and heiresses, but the top 10 or 15 per cent of the population – almost all of them with college diplomas and often graduate or professional degrees. I was criticised for arguing in  The New Class War  that education, not income, is the major dividing line between classes in the modern West.  There are two working class...

Names and faces

Another spillover of a failed revolution, uneven development, marginalisation …and genuine democratic restructuring of society. The absence of prevalent and radical forces that are able to unite the nation and establish a fair distribution of wealth.. The complex character of such a situation in different parts of the world is the focus of Michael Mann’s The Dark Side of Democrac y. “Class conflict has always been important in the development of modern society.” A weak class conflict invites all sorts of other conflicts. It even lays the ground for ethnic conflicts and genocide.  Counter-revolutionary and reactionary forces and regional powers always have interests in playing a role in exploiting and redirecting conflicts.  Dirar has vowed to use weapons to liberate the Beja people , who are native to eastern Sudan, from “historical marginalisation” by governments in Khartoum.  Related Lessons from European history “I will argue that class struggle and its institutio...

شعر سعدي يوسف

  تحديات المناخ والانتقال العادل نحو طاقة مستدامة في شمال أفريقيا Related The energy transition in North Africa - neocolonialism again!

 

“The refusal to actively resist the authoritarian tendencies of regimes like China, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Iran structurally prohibits us from organizing against imperialism as a global system. Focusing on only certain aspects of US influence at the expense of addressing the complicity of other states in the global economy—working alongside the US’s  other  aspects of dominance— only  selectively  critiques global imperialism .”

University and College Union (UCU) is involved in a prolonged dispute about the pay, pensions and conditions of its 120,000 members. Planned: The University and College Union (UCU) has announced a total of 18 days of industrial action during    February and March. Strikes are planned for February  1, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 21,22, 23, 27, 28 and March 1, 2, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22.

  موضوع الخمر يقدم مثالا حول كيفية قيام رجال الدين بتغيير القرآن واللغة العربية لتتماشى مع أحاديثهم وتفسيراتهم ورؤيتهم الخاصة للدين والشريعة

“A demonstration for equality turned into an all-Jewish, Zionist demonstration advocating for Jewish supremacy in Israel. Once again, demonstrators said: don’t bother us about the occupation. We are dealing here with the judicial system; let’s not confuse the issues - as if the occupation does not overshadow everything and define the Israeli regime more than any of its other components. The hypocrisy and double standards of the Zionist left were once again revealed in all their ugliness.” Zionists only

In an era of “consume and move on”, culture, ‘comfort zone’, avoidance of ‘controversial’ statements and topics, etc.,  Socrates can help

هناك فرق بين الصور الكاريكاتورية المسيئة للنبي والمنمنمات الفارسية عن نشوء الإسلام Muslim activists misunderstand Islam  (only part of the article)

What happens with thinkers who operate outside the European philosophical ‘pedigree’?

An associate professor based in Qatar does not include Qatar as a dictatorship and does not even hint to any of Qatar’s involvement in the 2011 uprisings, for example.

Mapping the Sahel Background analysis The redeployment of French imperialism in Africa

Nature and Revolution in Marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis

“The aggressive transmutation of ruling regimes into warring garrison states presiding over competitive military industrial complexes has degenerated all these states into alien powers treating entire nations as their military bases.” The rise of Iran’s military-industrial complex

 “He was only Isis because he had to accept the reality,” said Ayad of the herder who had pointed him to an underground bonanza. “He wanted a cut too. The spoils of war are fair game.” The search of IS’s hidden loot

“The problem of the Reformists was—and is—that they want to create a series of changes with little danger while also preserving and boosting the system. But the hope-giving movement of today is free from the shrapnel of political Islam, and this is clear from its slogans. In order to explain what it wants and does not want, this generation of protestors has not resorted to any concept that has a religious or even quasi-religious pedigree, and this is a great accomplishment. This method and path were completely intuitive and arose out of the protestor’s collective wisdom.” And that is not an exception. Whether in Tunisia and Egypt or Libya and Syria, the 2011 uprisings, and later the 2019 uprisings in Sudan and Algeria, did not resort to religious slogans and concepts. “ One of the reasons for this accomplishment is that the current movement, in a completely self-motivated fashion, did not seek any coalition with the present political structure, because fundamentally, it had no relation...