Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

From an article available to subscribers “In  May 1945, soon after Germany surrendered, the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) asked people which country they felt had contributed the most to its defeat. At the time, respondents were highly conscious of the millions of Soviet troops who had died on the eastern front and their decisive role in weakening the Nazi forces, as well as the United States’ late entry into the war: 57% chose the Soviet Union and only 20% the US. When IFOP asked the same question this year, the ratio was inverted: the US scored 60% against 25% for the Soviet Union. “For many years, D-Day was seen as a relatively minor event…  In 1964 De Gaulle himself refused to attend: ‘Why should I go and commemorate their landings when they were a prelude to a second occupation of France? I won’t do it!’ “That all changed in 1984 amid growing US-Soviet tension…  The countries of the ‘free world’ made a show of unity, presenting themselves as defenders of ...

Profiting from war

I don’t like Tariq Ali, but the topic is one of my favourites. In his Preface, Tariq Ali makes clear that he does not support toppling Churchill’s statues wherever they stand—but rather, a deeper battle on the field of historiography, against a consensus that “appears hegemonic but remains vulnerable.” This is the context in which  Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes  is written—and in which, if I’m any judge at all, it succeeds admirably. Timidity of a ‘radical’. What about opposing all statues, be it of Churchill, Thatcher, Lenin or Chavez? A review of Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes

A VPN is required Mistress of War

How Winston Churchill and the British government attacked the Greek Resistance and sowed the seeds of civil war

Ashes in the Snow

Katyn

Hiroshima and Nagasaki as Collateral Damage

History sanitised Via Michael Roberts "It was Victory in Europe day on Friday 8 May, the 75th anniversary of the day that the 'Allied' powers officially defeated the 'Axis' powers in Europe (but not in Asia). The celebrations in the UK were all about Britain standing alone to defeat the Germans, with a little American help. No mention of the UK's colonial allies in Southern Asia, or the dominions of Australia, Canada etc. And above all, no mention of the role of the Soviet Union and China. But where was the war  won, and who suffered the most casualties?" "The bear that somewhow isn't in the room" Related Every state has its own myths. Here is one of Britain's

Mike Davis on Coronavirus

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch

Britain “The scorn which the angry young men hurled at the establishment was a class resentment but one devoid of any class consciousness,” feminist Lynne Segal writes perceptively in  Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy . In the decades that followed, shaped by race riots, feminism, Thatcherism, the miners’ strike and the collapse of heavy industry and trade unionism, working-class solidarity appeared to fracture. The rise of what’s now called identity politics began. From the the Blitz to Brexit "While in 1931 10% of married women  were in work, that rose sharply to 21% in 1951 and 47% in 1972 It is interesting to draw a c omparison here . If in an industrial power like Britain, an Empire, with 200 years of capitalist development, women became half of the workforce only in early 1970s, how should one analyse the condition of women in Africa and the Middle East? Why Arab women, for example, do not in total terms make half of the workforce? Does that have som...

Luydmila Pavlichenko See also Battle for Sevastopol (free to watch on putlockers.me or putlockers.dance), but the English subtitles are atrocious. And with an unrealistic sniper duel.

The Battleship Island A 2017 South Korean movie.

The Last Note A movies by Pantelis Voulgaris (It will play after closing two or three pop up windows)

UK The centenary of the RAF The firestorm that created Germany's Nagasaki

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

"We formed an alliance with Stalin right at the end of the most murderous years of Stalinism, and then allied with a West German state a few years after the Holocaust. It was perhaps not surprising that in this intellectual environment a certain compromise position about the evils of Hitler and Stalin—that both, in effect, were worse—emerged and became the conventional wisdom." — Thimothy Snyder, a Professor of History at Yale, US. An interesting perspective. Stalin vs. Hitler: who was worse? Who killed more: Hitler, Stalin, or Mao?