Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A rare historical photo Congo, 1904

" Servicing warfare and neoliberalism is a terrific path to scholarly eminence. Those who condemn warfare and neoliberalism become uncivil goblins, impenitent radicals, sloppy polemicists, immature agitators, scourges on the good name of the profession. Ruling-class sycophants, meanwhile, don’t encounter trouble for their service to power. It’s the same around the world: dissenters are the ones to get fired, arrested, even murdered. It’s almost comically obvious, and yet plenty of academics persist in recycling the mythological virtues of tone and civility as criteria for fitness as an academic, as if those descriptors are detached from norms of power — as if using a civil tone means you can’t articulate ugly ideas." Six ways to unsettle colleagues and irritate administrators Six ways of resistance, but the eradication of corportae universities should be the solution.

A very good analysis that avoids economic determinism. "But the truth is sometimes uncomfortable. Cultural attitudes aren’t always "caused" by anything else in some immediate or obvious sense. To explain how people "got" to believe in racist and xenophobic status hierarchies is to explain hundreds of years of Western history and the complicated story of how race and national identity were made in the West. As a result of this history, many people value their culture and identity as much as they value economic security. When their vision of the way the world should work is threatened, they see it as a  personal threat . They’re racist because race and hierarchy and group identity have come to play integral roles in how humans understand the world. To deny that is to deny that both identity and the past matter, to assume everything is reducible to some kind of material or economic ultimate cause. History has shown, conclusively, that this is a mistake.&q

I am almost certain that the 21st century battle for the Middle Earth will be fought between the Burkinists and their allies and the nudists and their allies. Context: there will soon be a park for nudists in Paris.

How the Trumps got rich

An event Technology, Capitalism, Class

Disgusting, nauseating, revoling celebrities

" Beyond the racist and exclusionary borders of Tower Europe, there are other insiduous ways of silencing and marginalising the voices of people from the Global South, namely the Eurocentric framing of discussions, hearing from one or two voices from the Global South at the end of the day (after dinner and wine), not giving enough time to discuss important questions of colonialism and race, etc. I am becoming very pessimistic with everything coming from Europe (or almost). Fanon has been right after all: let's leave this Europe and its ways!" — Hamza Hamouchene

From Jane Austen to Beatrice and Eugenie … the long reach of UK slave-owning families

Syrian activist barred from travel after UK seizes passport at Assad’s request

I disagree with the writer here in using "socialist states" and "stalinist states" to mean the same thing. The analysis, otherwise, is very interesting. The Anti-colonial Origins of Humanitarian Intervention: NGOs, Human Rights and When Humanitarianism Became Imperialism

Putin and Assad are bombing Syrian hospitals on purpose

A talk in London Anwar Shaikh talk on Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises and in New York Marx and Capital: The Concept, the Book, the History

"This inclusion of Islam in the Nietzschean catalogue of more 'honest', pre-, non- or even anti-European societies offers two further points of interest: first, that Nietzsche's remarks do not greatly differ from the kinds of observations a whole century of European Orientalists were making about Arabs and Muslims in general — that Islam is incapable of democracy, that is fanatical and warlike, that it is Frauenfeindlich and socially unjust, etc. Nietzsche's only difference, ironically, is that he affirms these prejudices instead of lamenting them. Nietzsche, who had never visited a Muslim country and whose closest brush with the 'Orient' was the 'southern' sensuousness of Naples, had to rely on an extremely unreliable canon of Orientalists for his information about Islam and Arab culture. The fact that Nietzsche's opposition to 'progress' led him to react positively to the kind of racial and generic defamations attributed to the Middl

" A major problem is that global warming, as with the associated environmental problems, can’t be solved within the capitalism that has caused, and is accelerating, the problem. All incentives under capitalism are for more growth and thus more greenhouse-gas emissions, and there is no provision to provide new jobs for the many people who would be displaced should the heavily polluting industries in which they work were to be shut down in the interest of the environment. The private capital that profits from environmental devastation is allowed to externalize the costs onto society, an inequality built into the system. The concept of  “green capitalism” is a dangerous chimera ." Systemic Disorder

Warned us about the shock doctrine then he was assassinated

"A fractious Europe, a failing currency, a challenged economy, populist parties on the rise, a divided left, migration from the east, an atmosphere of fear combined with social and sexual liberalism. The parallels between Britain today and Germany in the 1920s may well make this a compelling moment to revisit those postwar German thinkers who gathered in what was known as the Frankfurt school for social research – something akin to a Marxist think tank, [...] Little wonder, given the history of the 20th century, that the Frankfurt school gave us intellectual pessimism and negative dialectics.  Jeffries’s biography  is proof that such a legacy can be invigorating."   –  Lisa Appignanesi,  Guardian

I recommend this Contradiction of Capital and Care

From the BBC If he [Jeremy Corbyn] beats Owen Smith, he said he would be "the same Jeremy Corbyn that I've been through the last year and the last 30 years in Parliament", and that he would invite his critics "to come on board to work together". "I have taken it on board, understood what they're saying and asking them to behave in a decent and responsible way and come together so that we do have an ability to take the fight to the Tories. He expressed a hope that some of the front bench MPs who resigned would return, saying "we need to bring in many other talents" to the shadow cabinet. My comment No, and no. Corbyn is ready for a compromise with the Blairites and their allies although he is in a strong position. Corbyn has the support of the majority of the Labour Party members. If he really has a long term view, he shouldn't compromise with the criminals, i.e. those who presided over the domestic and foreign policies, includi

A book The Poisoned Well - empire and its legacy in the Middle East I think it is worth reading this book.  My questions to the author after reading the review:  “He also briskly dismisses the fashionable ISIS/Daesh-driven exaggeration of the significance of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement and other post-WW1 ‘lines in the sand’ to focus more sharply on the dismal shortcomings of the post-colonial era. Just one niggle: the ruling family of Saudi Arabia is (still) the Al (upper case, no hyphen) Saud, like the Al Thani in Qatar, and not to be confused with the more common Arabic definite article.” Does that mean the authors dismiss two fundamental aspects of the historical process: the artificial nation states in the region and the economic factors, i.e. the uneven development of capitalism and the core’s interests for stability in the region, a stability which guarantees the status quo and thus economic and geo-political interests? Does the author also dimiss the West’s role in c