Like many people, I grew up thinking that the West had the best secret agents — James Bond being the most famous (fictional) example. It was only later on that I discovered the incredible…Read more…
Review: The Passenger, by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
It seems like everyone who reads this books loves it, and the praise from book reviewers in deafening. Allow me to offer a dissenting view. While the life story of the author is tragic and…Read more…
Teaching History: Defending the Indefensible
Last week, a youth worker in the UK named Hannah Wilkinson tweeted an image from a textbook used today in this country for A-Level history. Students were asked “To what extent do you believe the…Read more…
Review: Silverview, by John le Carré
Silverview, John le Carré’s final book, has all the elements that made his earlier books such fantastic reads. It has former spies, current spies, hard-nosed cynics, naive innocents, betrayed…Read more…
Moscow: The truth can’t be hidden forever
Last week, more than thirty masked young men broke into a public meeting at the human rights NGO “Memorial” in Moscow. They shouted “Scum!”, “Fascists!” “Get out of Russia!”, and “There’s no room for…Read more…
Review: The Key to Rebecca, by Ken Follett
Only recently, I learned that the title of this book — and a key part of the story — is based on real events. There really was a German Nazi spy who helped Rommel’s armies…Read more…
Italy: It’s time to complete the anti-fascist revolution
Of the three aggressor nations that made up the Axis during the Second World War, only one saw its population rise up and topple a dictatorship. While the populations of Germany and Japan remained…Read more…
Review: How to Stop Fascism, by Paul Mason
Journalist and author Paul Mason turns to the past to see what worked — and what didn’t work — in the fight against fascism in the twentieth century. He confronts head-on the…Read more…
Is Fairphone fair for workers?
If you own a smartphone, you’re almost certainly contributing to several big problems in the world. These include a negative environmental impact, the production of mountains of e-waste as perfectly…Read more…
Review: Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It, by Oliver Burkeman
Oliver Burkeman is a recovering “personal productivity” addict. I feel his pain. He’s a writer who knows his Pomodoro Method, his GTD, even his ‘First Things First”. And…Read more…
Review: A Line to Kill, by Anthony Horowitz
This book, the third in a series featuring the fictional detective Daniel Hawthorne, a Sherlockian consulting detective if there ever was one, and his very own Dr. Watson — Anthony Horowitz…Read more…
Hong Kong: Silence is not an option
When the question of trade unions in China would come up, some of us were fond of saying that there is an independent, democratic trade union movement in the country. It is called the Hong…Read more…
Review: Workers resistance against Nazi Germany at the International Labour Conference 1933, by Reiner Tosstorff
Every year in June, representatives of the world’s governments, employers and workers come together for the International Labour Conference in Geneva. This has been happening more or less since…Read more…
Review: Workers resistance against Nazi Germany at the International Labour Conference 1933, by Reiner Tosstorff
Every year in June, representatives of the world’s governments, employers and workers come together for the International Labour Conference in Geneva. This has been happening more or less since…Read more…
In 1933, the world’s trade unions forced Germany out of the ILO – let’s do the same today to Iran
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a clerical fascist regime. It is essentially no different from the fascist regimes we know from history – Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain and most infamously,…Read more…
Beyond refugees: What the Left needs to say and do about Afghanistan
Calls on Britain and other wealthy countries to take in Afghan refugees are absolutely correct. And those refugees should not be limited to people who worked alongside British soldiers and diplomats….Read more…
Review: A Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins
I really liked The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins’ first best-selling thriller, and approached this book with caution. One should always be prepared for disappointment following blockbuster…Read more…
Review: The Invisible Land, by Hubert Mingarelli
Hubert Mingarelli was a brilliant writer of short fiction and this is the third novel of his I read this year. His previous books, set during the Russian Civil War and the Second World War,…Read more…
Socialists in the age of Scylla and Charybdis
You will no doubt be familiar with the expression ‘between a rock and a hard place’. That phrase, apparently, has its origins in labour history. According to one online source, ‘the phrase originated…Read more…
Review: Super Human: The Bulletproof Plan to Age Backward and Maybe Even Live Forever, by Dave Asprey
Dave Asprey is famous (in some circles) as the guy who invented Bulletproof Coffee, which is both a concept and a business. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Asprey seems to be one of the first…Read more…