AirBnB has emotionally marked the fall of the Berlin Wall’s 25th anniversary by creating a touching story of two guards from either side of the wall being reunited years later through the AirBnB’s rent-your-home service. The 18th October 1989 was arguably the most significant event for Germany since the end of […]

It was the battle that broke the back of the Nazi juggernaut sent hurtling East against the Soviet Union. After Stalingrad, Hitler’s armies were never again able to fully recover. The Third Reich was on the road to ruin. Seventy years ago, alongside the British and Commonwealth forces’ victory over Rommel’s Afrika […]

Launch a discussion or debate about ‘socialism’ and, before you can say ‘religion is the opium of the masses’, some cynical bright spark will pipe up with the usual string of cliches. ‘Ah,’ they’ll say. ‘Socialism doesn’t work. Look at Stalin. He had more people murdered than Hitler ever did. Revolutions always  […]

“WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE”, is the dramatic end of The Communist Manifesto; one of the most influential, idealistic, but impractical pieces of political literature that has ever been written. It’s a shame that Marx never lived to see his “solution” to history being employed innocently into a state; or perhaps […]

  You might think you heard a lot about this sexy, kinky book but chances are you haven’t. This is not the erotic novel by British author E. L. James but rather a young adult novel about mass suffering under communist regimes written by American novelist Ruta Sepetys. Between Shades […]

Striking miners at Marikana in South Africa have won a historic victory. The disgraceful shootings last month (August 16) saw 34 miners killed by police, 78 wounded AND 270 arrested and accused of their colleagues’ murders in a kind of sick, Orwellian twist. Despite beatings, widely alleged torture and harassment, the strike not only […]

The old political division between Left and Right is largely over. The great ideological battles of the twentieth century were buried under the rubble of the Iron Curtain, yet with neither side wining out. As a result we live in an age largely devoid of ideology, in which big ideas […]