Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The UK universities benefiting from opioid money "Philanthropy" as a facade

What is it? The Advertising Standard Authority (ASA) said the Missguided advert featured "highly sexualised" images and "objectified women", while it told Boohoo to make sure its advertising was "socially responsible". The BBC's research found that on a typical UK High Street fashion retailer's website, 8% of women's modelling images were "racy", compared with 16% for online-only sites. Missguided said: "Our website reflects what appeals to the young women who love to buy from us - sassy, empowered, unafraid of what others think." In a world, "a free market," where almost everything is commodified, who has a monoply on definitions? Is sexualising and commodification of the body confined to fashion advertisement? Is it not one of the values that distinguishes "us," the "liberated", from the Other, but unites us with a commodified/sexualised Colombian or a Japanese?

Here is one of the reasons I once criticised/mocked the American historian Timothy Snyder when he boasted of "the rule of law." He doesn't contextualise that law in class, race and capitalist relations where "big thieves hang small ones."  Jailed for Life for Stealing a $159 Jacket? And 3,200 more serving Life Without Parole

"The women were demanding an end to the indefinite detention of asylum seekers, minors, pregnant women, and survivors of torture, rape and trafficking, a practice that is sanctioned in no European country apart from the UK; in the US, it was introduced under the post-9/11 Patriot Act and signed into law under President Obama. The political philosopher Howard Caygill goes so far as to argue that violence at the borders of the modern nation-state has been the chief means by which modernity has contained and denied the violence of its own civility: ‘The possibility of feats of extravagant and unrestrained violence at and beyond the border [have historically] contrasted with the constraints of rational management of violence within the borders of nation-states.’ To put it simply, violence at the border serves a purpose, and so does the shock it provokes. It obscures the violence of the internal social arrangements of modern nations, which fight to preserve the privilege of the f

s  North  China  Campaign  of  1860  was  not  unex- pected;  most  immediately,  it  followed,  and  was  partly  inspired  by,  wars  in Algeria  and  India  in  the  preceding  decades.  Yet,  there  might  seem  to  be a  contradiction  between  the  liberal  character  of  the  leaders  of  the  cam- pai gn  and  the ir  T ali ban -li k e  dem oli tio n  of  the  pal ac es  and  gar den s  a t Y uanmingyuan.  Ringmar ,  how eve r ,  disputes  tha t  a  contradiction  exis ts . Liberalism  in  the  mid-19th  century  championed  free  exchange.  When  the liberal ’  free-market  policies  met  with  resistance,  such  as  in  China,  violence, and  sometimes  barbarism,  became  a  natural  course  of  action s  North  China  Campaign  of  1860  was  not  unex- pected;  most  immediately,  it  followed,  and  was  partly  inspired  by,  wars  in Algeria  and  India  in  the  preceding  decades.  Yet,  there  might  seem  to  be a  contradiction  between  the  liberal  chara

Can Violence Ever Be Legitimate?

"Big issues transcend Brexit." Indeed. I remember when in late 2018 I asked someone who works in Parliament: with or without Brexit, will there be an end to obscene inequality, exploitation, austerity, tuition fees, support of dictators...? He replied: "No," with a strange look at me as if I had asked him questions that either he never heard of or they were irrelevant. Ken Loach