Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Tunisia: A social experiment against state policies

How to Understand the European Union

" The fundamental problem with the EU these days is that it needs a federal state structure simply in order to exert its basic functions. The EU 28 is a dysfunctional mess in virtually everything it does. The eurozone is stuck in a perma-crisis. The EU is pathetically weak towards Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and largely absent in Syria. Now we know that it cannot even do trade deals. My overall conclusion is that the next phase of European integration — which will happen eventually — will have to be preceded by a period of disintegration. Brexit was only the start." — Wolfgang Münchau, the Financial Times After creating such a crisis and plunder, that is probably how neo-liberal EU will restructure itself, but with more plunder  (privatisation and robbery), more attack on the living standard of the workers, more nationalism and xenophobia at home and abroad. I think Stratfor.com analysis regarding the future of the EU is more sound than the above o

The Birth of the American International Relations

" A new study from Princeton spells bad news for American democracy—namely, that it no longer exists. Asking "[w]ho really rules?" researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argues that over the past few decades America's political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power. Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters."

"This is the importance of Ngugi. Born in 1938, the son of a tenant farmer in rural, British-occupied Kenya, Ngugi grew up working the pyrethrum farms that were once the property of his ancestors. He came of age during the Mau Mau rebellion, followed by the Churchill government’s violent ​response, which included​ the detention of 150,000 Gikuyu people in concentration camps where they were electrocuted, whipped and mutilated. He vividly describes this period in his novels “ Weep Not, Child ,” the first East African novel published in English, “ A Grain of Wheat ” and “ Petals of Blood .” "Such a rich body of work [Wizard of the Crow] is of potentially tremendous importance to our understanding of how the world came to be as it is. Ngugi captures the progression from the raw plunder and violence of colonialism to the corruption of national Third World elites by the predatory forces of global capitalism, which he cheekily represented in “Wizard of the Crow” by the fictional

Power, violence, dominantion A decade after his death, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu still stands tall