Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

It is a good revisit, and it always reminds me of a colleague who upon mentioning Orientalism and Edward Said in 2010/11, she said: “that a long time ago,” implying that it became outdated. She too was taken by ‘liberal globalisation’, ‘human rights’, etc.  I still prefer and recommend Vivek Chibber’s and Sadiq Jalal al-Azm’s approaches, for they show the limitations of Said’s analysis. Hamid Dabashi in his The End of Two Myths has also pinpointed what Said was unable to analyse and incorporate in Orientalism. Furthermore, we should not forget that today there is a whole literature on neo-Orientalism. Why Edward Saïd’s book still matters

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The open letter makes it clear that these issues are not confined to surgery or anaesthetics but are commonplace. Dr Hilary Williams said there was widespread sexual innuendo when she was a trainee. "It's quite frightening to think that the perpetrators are in some way being protected by current systems - not necessarily deliberately," she added. Related Female surgeons sexually harassed while operating 35,000 cases of sexual misconduct in NHS [alone] in five years We know that  half of women  have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace - this rises to  seven in 10  for disabled women.  One in eight  LBT women have experienced serious sexual assault or rape at work. Four out of five women don’t report the abuse they have experienced. Male violence against women is endemic Sexual violence endemic at UK universities and colleges Pervasive in UK schools

Note:  Gabon mentions the ‘egalitarian principles of the French Republic’. I wish he referred to when in its history the Republic has ever had those egalitarian principles in reality. Gabon does not put the word ‘Islam’ in inverted commas. Is ‘Islam’ one as it is often portrayed or attacked? Does the French state have a problem with the ‘Islam’ of the Saudi monarchy? Does it have a problem with the .’Islam’ of el-Sisi in Egypt?  Did the French state have any problem with Bourguiba’s and Ben Ali’s regimes when they banned the headscarf in Tunisia public institutions and repressed those who broke the law? ******* “Even more surprisingly given the extremist and openly anti-Republican nature of Philippe’s declarations - even former presidential candidate  Marine Le Pen  never advocated anything like this - there has been little reaction from the political class, media, and public intellectuals, with the notable exception of an  open letter  by a handful of acad...

In exchange for a bailout from the IMF

“The internal colonialism thesis was not a plausible explanation of South African apartheid. It could not explain the fact that, by the 1970s, the majority of the workforce employed in modern industrial production in South Africa, such as auto plants, textiles, and steel production, came from the nonwhite sections of South African society that were supposed to be colonized.” Racism was deeply intertwined with capitalism, argues Kundnani

Complicity in extrajudicial killings

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Si leurs détracteurs médiatiques et politiques y voient un nouveau signe de la sournoise invasion des  « musulmans   », c’est-à-dire des Maghrébins, leur histoire n’a cependant rien à voir avec l’Occident musulman .

Economy, Society, and Hegemony

According to AJ+, the number of pupils who wear abayas in school represents less than  0.00005 percent   of all students in the country:  A threat to ‘France’s secularism’:  The latest example of how French state institutions work together to uphold institutional racism Related “ Muslim societies are assumed to have sweeping patriarchal structures, while it is claimed that Western societies are pictures of progressive modernity, says Swiss social anthropologist Annemarie Sancar. Neither of these absolute views are correct.” The West's gleeful obsession with the 'oppressed Arab woman' Liberal feminism is bankrupt Imperialist feminism and liberalism A photo from qantara.de

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The state has adopted the model of the "military camp" in its urban structures and institutions

“The strike is the first in union history to target all three companies at once.” The class war: On Friday, Ford announced that it had laid off 600 workers at a Michigan assembly plant as "a consequence of the strike". And the President is attempting to maintain the social peace.

The other side of ‘the new cold war’

Campaign to free teacher unionists

Why did Libya floods result in such a large loss of life? كان من الممكن تفادي سقوط معظم القتلى  The BBC: A Libyan politician says the country's deadly flooding was a disaster waiting to happen Guma El-Gamaty, head of the Taghyeer Party, says budgets to repair the dams were not allocated properly after Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown Most of the thousands of deaths in the Libya floods could have been avoided, the UN's World Meteorological Organization says Warnings should have been issued, leading to evacuations, "and we could have avoided most of the human casualties"

Frank Ospina, and UK immigration detention centre Related ‘Illegal migrants terrorising’ the UK Agents of Their Own Abuse

The wrong kind of secularism