Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"Criminal sons of bitches on the make. That's what we've been." Route Irish (a movie)

The multiculturalism the European right fears ...

John Gamey: As the forces of Bashar al-Assad, backed by the Russian air force, reconquered Daraa city, the birthplace of the Syrian revolution, an aid worker reported to Kareem Shaheen in The Guardian that “people have accepted the reality that the entire world is fighting against the revolution, and therefore it cannot continue.” Shaheen is correct; the realisation however is late. The “the entire world” – all the major imperialist and regional reactionary powers – has been against the revolution since its outbreak in March 2011. Their differences have been entirely tactical. The crushing of heroic Daraa involved an unwritten agreement between the Assad regime, Russia, the US and Israel. Four ‘heroes’ of today’s global ‘alt-right’ – Assad, Netanyahu, Trump and Putin – have emerged triumphant over the corpse of the Syrian revolution.” Syria Endgame

This headline is on Foreign Policy, not on a marxist website America is committing war crimes and doesn't even know why (In the url the adjective 'awful' is added to describe the crimes. I am not aware whether under Obama, for example, the likes of FP, ever called the actions of the US "war crimes").  Personally, I began to learn about the crimes of American imperialism only in the build up to the 2003 war on Iraq. At that time, it was through books and documentaries by authors such as Noam Chomsky and William Blum. Before that I mainly knew the crimes of Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein ...  The claim in the FP article that Iran has been supporting the Houthis is flimsy and has been disputed by a few analysts  who qualified such "a support".    Here is one of those analyses . Related One of Blum's book is the famous Rogue State . Ironically, it is endorsed by Osama bin Laden and available on the CIA website. No, it is not a conspiracy theory

From the archive The contradictions of identity Gary Younge will be speaking at the British Academy , London, 17 September 2018

An admission that this one of the inherent aspects of capitalism In Tooze’s view,  “These crises are hard to predict or define in advance,”  and, short of more regulation, there is nothing we can do. In a way, as long as capitalism continues as the dominant mode of production globally, that is pretty much right.  That reminds me of what Greenspan said in his final summation of the crisis: “ I doubt that stability is achievable in capitalist economies, given the always turbulent competitive markets continuously being drawn toward but never quite achieving  equilibrium” . He went on,  “unless there is a societal choice to abandon dynamic markets and leverage for some form of central planning, I fear that preventing bubbles will in the end turn out to be infeasible. Assuaging the aftermath is all we can hope for.” Crashed: more the how than the why

"If we don't understand class struggle, we don't understand anything"

Aerial photographs 

Foreign Powers and the Syrian Calculus

"When Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999, there was hope. He was a man who championed the poor in what has always been a deeply divided society. He was a vibrant and controversial figure who wanted to lead a socialist revolution in Venezuela.  But Chavez was helped by strong commodity prices that funded his ambitious social programmes. With a fall in oil prices, President Maduro has had no such luck - and little of the charisma his predecessor had. During his leadership, the country has fallen into economic decline." ( The BBC ) Yes, strong commodities benefited Venezuela and other countries for a while, but a new socio-economic project cannot be built on a temporary boom or in one country or some "islands". That is impossible in a global capitalist system. The experience of Venezurla has proved that any faltering in the boom affects not only state revenues but also any deepening of popular democracy. And if the new leadership, whatever ideas and ideals it