Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Study shows human sacrifice was less likely in more equal societies

Reach-Me-Down Romantic

The Novel, Politics and Islam

Many a ruling class has sought to erase from historical memory the blood and squalor in which it was born. As Blaise Pascal admonishes with arresting candour in his  Pensées , ‘The truth about the [original] usurpation must not be made apparent; it came about originally without reason and has become reasonable. We must see that it is regarded as authentic and eternal, and its origins must be hidden if we do not want it soon to end.’   Kant, too, was wary of speculation on the origins of political power, which he thought a menace to the state.   It is not just that these are bloody and arbitrary; it is also the sheer scandal of an origin as such, for what was born can also die. It is certain, Hume writes in his  Treatise of Human Nature , that at the origin of every nation we will find rebellion and usurpation; it is time alone which ‘reconciles men to an authority, and makes it seem just and reasonable’.   Political legitimacy, in short, is founded on fading memory and blunted sensibi

Thirteen years of near-unbroken hostilities in Iraq have been desperately unkind to the environment. Heavily agricultural Nineveh and Kirkuk governorates, on the fringes of Iraq’s “Sunni Triangle,” were caught up in the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. As far back as the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein press-ganged agricultural laborers into military service to fight Iran, landholders have had no choice but to adapt to the vagaries of war. For farmers still reeling from past troubles, the latest iteration of the conflict has plunged them even deeper into misery — and possibly sounded the death knell for agriculture in large parts of the country. At least a million acres of prime arable land has been rendered unusable as the Islamic State lays waste to huge swaths of Iraqi territory.   Systematic looting has robbed farms of much of the equipment necessary to renew operations. In an unprecedented development, some Iraqis have seen their land purposefully destroyed by th

More stupidity from Jacobin

"All of this goes a little way to explaining why Britain has, for  some time now , been considered the  global capital  for criminal money laundering among those in the know. Perhaps, with the release of the Panama Papers, the last sheen of respectability will finally be stripped away." The “Panama Papers” show that the sun never sets on the United Kingdom’s tax havens. [Republished without foreignpolicy permission] There is a temptation, when looking at the astonishing “Panama Papers,” to start by searching for politicians from your own country who are implicated. If you are British and approach the documents in this way, you’ll find slim pickings in the  information released so far . Among the many thousands of names listed in the leak as possibly implicated in dodgy tax deals, there can’t be any appearance less surprising than that of Baroness Pamela Sharples, the widow of the former governor of Bermuda. That is, until you get to Lord Michael Ashcroft — billionair