Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crises." —Dante Alighieri, The Devine Comedy

Al-Jazarī الجزري With English subtitles

Libya A good beginning in putting the situation in a big picture of "civilisational" context. However, I always wonder why most writers do not qualify "democracy" as if everybody agrees with the existing order. The socio-economic formation in which this "democracy" functions is rarely questioned, especially in today's "neoliberal" form of capitalism that even liberal sccholars have attacked as a source of violence and destruction. The social groups/strata that formed the former Libyan regime and how the regime came about and why it took the features it took is fundamental in understanding why Libya could not have a capitalist democracy. Neither Egypt, Syria or China. The focus on individuals doesn't help that much because the individuals themselves work within the trappings they found before them. There is a difference between structure and moment. Furthermore, one should not conflate the ideals of the French revolution and how capit

Kar Marx was not flawless, but the question of methodology and approach in analysing social phenemona have always been crucial, not only for a scientific understanding of what is happening around us, but also in determing the social factors and groups responsible of this or that outcome and the actions (or the form of actions) carried out by those who advocate and work for a meaningful change. So long as we persist in our tendency to hive off the study of economics from politics, philosophy and journalism, Marx, will remain the outstanding example of how to overcome the frangmentation of modern social thought and think about the world as a whole for the sake of its betterment.  (my emphasis) — Mark Mazower, the Financial Times, 05 August 2016

Countering Christian Zionism in the Age of Trump

India-Kashmir "What the BJP government has done is akin to what Serbia's Milosevic regime did in 1989 by unilaterally revoking Kosovo's autonomy and imposing a police state on Kosovo's Albanian majority.  But the BJP government's approach to Kashmir goes beyond what Milosevic intended for the Kosovo Albanians: subjugation." A point of no return?

Qatar: Migrant Workers Strike Over Working Conditions