Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A valuable insight on Cuba since the early 1990s. I find it strange though that someone trained in ‘Marxist historiography’ calls the pre-1989 eastern European countries / the USSR ‘socialist countries’ and defends the ‘Western’ sanctions on Russia.

 A very good analysis. From the Tsar to Today, via Stalin, the Imperialist Will Marks the History of Russia

An invasion that has little to offer to Ukrainians, Russians and the world

The End of Anti-Fascism Related: The New Anti-Communism: Rereading the Twentieth-Century

The BBC: ignoring criminal consequences of an era In its " Russia's bitter taste of capitalism ", there is an omission of the major consequence of the restoration of capitalism in Russia and the USSR, which is that  the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union took more lives than the Iraq and Syrian wars put together : 1.9 million excess deaths in Russia alone in 1990–95; around 4 million for the  USSR in the 1990s.  Sources:  – Vladimir Shkolnikov and Giovanni Andrea, "Population Crisis and Rising Mortality in Transitional Russia’, in Cornia and Renato Paniccià, eds,  "The Mortality Crisis in Transitional Economies", Oxford 2000, p. 256; Michael Marmot,  "The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects our Health and Longevity", New York 2004, p. 196. –  Jospeh Stiglitz's Globalisation and Its Discontents, 2002 Then add the plunder of the wealth and the rise of the oligarchs. Compare that with the way the BBC deals wi...

I have just finished reading The Man Who Loved Dogs by Leonardo Padura, in its English translation. It is a great novel. I wish I could read it in Spanish.

Britain In December 1989,  Corbyn was one of only four MPs to sign a parliamentary motion  congratulating the “magnificent outburst” by striking workers in Czechoslovakia “against the corruption and mismanagement of the Stalinist bureaucracy”. “Even though Russia is no longer communist, there is still this assumption on many parts of the left that it is anti-imperialist, and they’re willing to turn a blind eye to things Russia does in other countries,” Greenberg said. “There’s a continuity between that part of the left’s attitudes back then to Czechoslovakia and its dissidents and its attitudes now to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its involvement in Syria. Those old attitudes are still there.” "Corbyn, the spy, and the cold war long shadow"

Western imperialism, financed, supported and used some of them. Stalinism repressed them. They were, and still have been, part of the geo-political chess board. "How the USSR’s effort to destroy Islam created a generation of radicals" Sleeping With the Devil: How U.S. and Saudi Backing of Al Qaeda Led to 9/11 A Special Relationship "CIA roots of Islamic fundamentalism" I don't agree with the title though and everything in the analysis, but there is a good background.

Soviet Lithuania in Pictures (1970s - 1990s)