There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Hans Modrow, 1928-2023: Son of the German Democratic Republic
The man who oversaw the peaceful yet tragic end to state socialism in the east, then stayed to fight for the working class in the newly unified Germany, passed away on February 10, aged 95. KEITH BARLOW salutes his life and career
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
HIGHLY regarded by the many who knew and knew of him, it would be no exaggeration to say that Hans Modrow was the son of the German Democratic Republic, of which he was the last-but-one Prime Minister. Only five when the Nazis came to power, his generation was overshadowed by hatred, fascism and war. He trained as a machinist. Towards the end of the war, he was conscripted into the Volkssturm (a mass militia set up by Hitler in 1944).
He was taken prisoner of war by the Red Army and went to the Soviet Union. There he attended an anti-fascist school. In 1949 he returned to the east of Germany, the part which then became the German Democratic Republic (GDR). He worked again as a machinist and joined the GDR’s Free German Youth organisation.
He soon joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) – founded in 1946 through a unification of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) on the territory of the future GDR.
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