Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Crimes abroad...crimes at home, too On Thursday 4 February 2016 the [British] Government unveiled the privatisation of its final stake in Royal Mail, bringing the curtain down on five centuries of state ownership. Also ' Is there no limit to what this Government will privatise? ': UK plasma supplier sold to US private equity firm Bain Capital

Figures of the Other: Brother, Neighbour, Stranger, Enemy "Christianity preaches the love of the neighbour, yet ultimately reduces him to a repetition of the  self. Modern democracy rests on fraternity, but all too often distorts it into inconsistent ideolo gies of identity, which pave the way for more or less explicit forms of racism. The battle for the  emancipation of woman runs itself the risk of succumbing to a global dispositif of sameness  dominated by Capital and its ruthless values. Faced with unprecedented social, economical,  and political crises, we are today increasingly urged to treat any kind of otherness that chal lenges our fragile egos as an enemy."

For someone who has recently been in Saigon, this gives me a chill in the spine. 1965-1975:  Another Vietnam Unseen images of the war from the winning side

Asylum claims are not the cause of the UK’s  record immigration

Vicious union-busting at Moroccan fish canner DOHA

The Tunisian Uprising and Beyond "In focusing his work on the technologies through which subject populations were ‘incorporated into – and not excluded from – the arena of colonial power,’ Mamdani substantiates his notion of the bifurcated state as a mode of governance. Bringing this analysis to its logical conclusion, he argues that ‘no reform of contemporary civil society institutions can by itself unravel’ such power. Rather, to redress the legacies (both material and epistemological) of the bifurcated colonial state would ‘require nothing less than dismantling that form of power.’ As attested to by past and ongoing forms of revolutionary mobilisation by those who have bee n treated as second-class citizens, many Tunisians have reached a similar conclusion."

"Over its modern history, the West has not permitted any Arab liberal [and democratic] experiment to succeed, since, to start with, it has not allowed an Arab bourgeoisie to grow independent of its control. This is the reason why the West has always sought the explicit alliance of patriarchal and theocratic societies which vehemently oppose secularism." — Ghālī Shukrī, Diktātoriyat al-takhalluf al-'arabī , Cairo, 1994.

When Fascism Was American The US hasn’t seen the stirrings of fascist mobilization since the late 1930s when mounting fascist victories in Europe galvanized its adherents in America, chief among them Father Charles Coughlin and his Christian Front. This history has something to offer us today.

Egypt: Sisi’s procession passing on red carpet in 6 October stirs anger

A physician, in order to be admitted to practice, must demonstrate his theoretical and practical knowledge of medicine. A politician, on the other hand, who, unlike the physician, purposes to decide the fate not of hundreds of people, but of millions, does not have to show such proof of knowledge. This fact seems to be one of the  fundamental reasons for the tragedy which, for thousands of years, has devastated human society with periodic outbreaks. The practical worker, no matter whether he comes from a rich or a poor home, has to go through a certain schooling. He is not elected "by the people." Working people who have proved themselves over years in their profession should determine whether or not the future worker should be a socially potent factor. This demand may be ahead of the facts, but it is indicative of a tendency. Every cobbler, carpenter, mechanic, electrician, mason, etc., has to fulfill very strict demands made on his abilities. A politician, on the other hand

" We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, … the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced." —  Herbert Marcuse,   One-Dimentional Man , 1964.

Marked out for attack: living in the UK 'asylum marke t'

In Egypt, second life for independent trade unions

"If you want to know why so many British Muslims have deserted groups like the Labour Party and Stop the War Coalition, it is because they have to choose between Blairite War on Terror supporters and Putinite War on Terror supporters. Because apparently supporting Eastern European oppression of Muslims instead of Western European oppression of Muslims (of course in Syria today you have the Western Europeans bombing one area and the Eastern Europeans bombing another side by side) is unfortunately what passes as “progressive” in much of the identity-politics dominated, reality-removed, solidarity-illiterate sections of those who call themselves “Left” today. That’s why."

The  New Yorker  is wrong. Young people are attracted to Bernie Sanders because of economic insecurity, not naive idealism

Yugoslavia after Capitalist Restoration

  Headlines on foreignpolicy.com - U.S. firms are making billions selling spyware to dictators.   - In a world where 1 in 7 people are displaced, your kindness is just condescension.

 History Of The Yemen Clusterf*ck "That scenario was repeated all over the Middle East during the Cold War, and it has a lot to do with how messed up the place is now. “For Allah and the Emir”; when Time ran that  headline   in 1963, that slogan sounded quaint and kind of touching. . . . It sounded like a nice alternative to Nasser, nationalism (and its much more dangerous corollary, nationalization) or, worse yet, Communism. So the West put its weapons and its money in on the side of “Allah and the Emir” over and over again, against every single faction trying to make a modern, secular Arab world, whether on the Nasserite, Ba’athist, Socialist, Communist, or other model. "...  Of course, the Houthi, as Shia, worship the wrong version of Allah, from the Saudi perspective. But that didn’t bother the Saudis, or the Americans, or the British, or the Israelis, back in the 1960s when they all joined hands (in a very non-peace-and-love way) to wipe out the modernizing Yem

Red Neoliberals: How Corbyn’s Victory Unmasked Britain’s  Guardian

Business is business Britain is at centre of global mercenary industry, says charity