Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Poverty prize

"In her book  Learning From the Germans , the philosopher Susan  Neiman observes that the enormity of the Holocaust has forced Germany to address the darkest aspects of its past. But it has also allowed Britain and America not to do so, to avoid thinking too deeply about the history of slavery or of empire, to minimise their horrors in comparison with the Holocaust." —Kenan Malik, the Guardian online 13 October 2019

95 suicides or about one death every four days! "In the drive to make universities profitable, there is a fundamental confusion about what they are for. As a result, there has been a shift from prizing learning as an end in itself to equipping graduates for the job market, in what for some can be a joyless environment. At the same time as access to university was dramatically expanded, spending on public services was slashed: in the decade after the financial crash, day-to-day spending on public services as a share of GDP was at its lowest since the late 1930s. This meant savage cuts to local authorities, schools budgets and NHS mental health provision." In addition to the workload at university, according to a 2014 report , "a significant number of students  (45%) do paid part-time  work alongside their studies, with 13% doing a 35-hour week." That's what we call joyful learning and learning to develop critical thinking! In reality, corporate universit

Propaganda – Engineering Consent

Israa Abdelfattah, 41, was one of the most iconic leaders of the 2011 revolution. More arrests in Egypt

"This image has also become a stereotype because it is simplistic in its pitting supposedly free sisters in the West against wretched victims in Arab countries. Muslim societies are assumed to have sweeping patriarchal structures, while it is claimed that Western societies are pictures of progressive modernity, says Swiss social anthropologist Annemarie Sancar. Neither of these absolute views are correct." The West's gleeful obsession with "oppressed Arab women" Further reading: Islam in Liberalism by Joseph A. Massad "In his analysis of the emergence of 'military humanitarianism,' David Chandler notes that the development of the NGO regime prevalent in the 1980s focused on 'capacity buidling,' 'empowering,' and 'civil society' (and this is of course in line with the democratisation ideas...that Muslims lack civil society and one has to be created for them to advance democracy), 'as they argued the need for a lo

Via Michael Roberts Poland, the largest Eastern European country, goes to the polls today. The socially conservative Law and Justice party government is expected to increase its vote share in the election. The centre-right Civic Platform — which ruled Poland from 2007 to 2015 with EU President Donald Tusk remains unpopular because of its previous austerity measures in line with EU policy. In contrast, Law and Justice has raised welfare  benefits. The flagship policy was a child benefit scheme, dubbed 500+, that pledged a monthly payment of 500 zlotys for every second and subsequent child, a sum that could provide larger families with the equivalent of another salary. And now the government is offering a sharply higher minimum wage which would increase in steps from 2,250 zlotys (€511) today to 4,000 zlotys by the end of 2023 — a 78 per cent jump. This is the basis of support for Law and Justice probably despite its promotion of Catholic-infused conservative values; and its

While Kurds are talking about "betrayal" and "stab in the back", "Within the first two weeks, most of Iraq's cities and provinces  fell to rebel forces. Participants of the uprising were a diverse mix of ethnic, religious and political affiliations, including military mutineers, Shia Arab  Islamists, Kurdish nationalists , and far-left groups." [sectarianism has been going on since the 7th century?] Read here what the American regime's position was  1991 uprisings in Iraq

According to Climate Accountability Institute between 1965 and 2017, "twenty largest investor-owned and state-owned fossil fuel companies produced carbon fuels that emitted 35% of the global total (480 GtCO2e)."  Carbon Majors

It's a good article. Brexit is a necessary crisis