NM's blog

If nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from certain 'modular' forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine? History, it seems, has decreed that we in the postcolonial world shall only be perpetual consumers of modernity. Europe and the Americas, the only true subjects of history, have already thought out on our behalf not only the script of colonial enlightenment and exploitation, but also that of our anticolonial resistance and postcolonial misery. Even our imaginations must remain forever colonised. —Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, 1993, p. 5

Hanieh challenges narrow accounts of the war that reduce its significance to fluctuations in oil prices. Instead, he situates the conflict within a broader political economy of empire, tracing how the Gulf’s strategic importance lies not only in energy exports but also in its central role in global supply chains, financial markets, and emerging infrastructure corridors…  Hanieh’s central intervention is that the war should be understood not as a discrete geopolitical event but as part of a wider struggle over the organization of trade, capital flows, infrastructure, and political authority in a rapidly changing global order. 2025 saw the largest consumption of oil, gas, and coal in human history…  [R]ather than a move away from fossil fuels, we are seeing renewables layered onto an expanding hydrocarbon base.  Since the 1970s, these surpluses have largely flowed into dollar assets, Western banks, US Treasury markets, and consumption of US military hardware. Through these ...

“Metin Cihan, a Turkish journalist exiled in Germany, has documented what a growing number of observers see as Turkish duplicity: all talk and no action , Turkey speaks out against Israel but without cutting trade ties. “Basically,’ explains Henri Barkey, emeritus professor of international relations at Lehigh University (Pennsylvania), ‘Israel and Turkey find themselves in similar situations in Syria. Both occupy a significant amount of Syrian territory. They face parallel security challenges: the Kurds for the Turks, and Hizbullah and other groups for Israel. Neither wants to see the Iranians return, even though that’s unlikely to happen.’ The weakening of Iran, a historic rival, suits Turkey.” The article is available in 9 languages. Socio-economic indicators and political prospects Türkiye's Gini Realities:  The top 20% of earners capture  48% of total national income , whereas the bottom 20% receive just 6.4%. The richest segment earns roughly  9 times more  tha...

“U.S. imperialism is currently the most aggressive geopolitical force, openly coercive, and deploying military and economic instruments with diminishing restraint. What links its resurgence to the present state of the world economy? How is geopolitical turmoil connected to capitalist reproduction at a time when productive accumulation has slowed to a crawl in the historic core of global capitalism, while financial capital continues to expand and fuel speculation? “ The preceding analysis of contemporary balance-sheet imperialism converges on a single structural paradox, namely, the U.S. share of global manufacturing (value added) has fallen from roughly half in 1945 to just over 16–17 percent today, while the dollar’s share of allocated official reserves has slipped only slightly below 60 percent.   U.S. monetary and financial dominance is accompanied by the demise of its productive primacy. Meanwhile, U.S. multinational enterprises remain pre-eminent and rely on the global functi...

Karl Popper ’s theories are universally taught at universities worldwide  as a foundational component of standard academic curricula. Rather than being confined to a single department, his ideas—primarily  falsifiability , the  problem of induction , and the  open society —are integrated across multiple disciplines. Popper argued that an  Open Society  functions exactly like a laboratory. In science, we advance by making bold claims and eliminating errors through experimentation. In a democracy, we advance by implementing "piecemeal social engineering" (policies) and eliminating errors by voting bad leaders out of office without bloodshed. Both require the absolute freedom to criticise authority and speak openly. Professors often note a cultural divide: while contemporary academic philosophers view Popper’s model as overly simplistic, practicing scientists and science educators still heavily embrace and teach his strict view of the scientific method.  ...