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
Prague wrestles with public pride in historic socialism
The problem with the National Museum’s exhibition on the communist-governed era is that the public liked it and the values it represented too much — looking at the beggars under the bridge outside, who can blame them, writes JOHN CALLOW
Reliefs cast into 1950s gates show a socialist selection of Czech history
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
WHEN is a museum not a museum? This is the question that the Czech National Museum poses in its new exhibition, Collections & Politics, exploring the themes and narratives that underpinned the presentation of the past under socialism.
After November 1989, those museums dedicated to the working-class movement and its leaders were closed, while the surviving institutions were overhauled and reconfigured in light of the seismic political, economic, and cultural shift to neoliberalism.
As a consequence, much was lost — destroyed, despised, or sold off to collectors — and what was left of the socialist past was shuttered away in basements and storage units, out of sight, and only brought to mind through “ironic” expositions that thoroughly de-contextualised and frequently mocked the artefacts.
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As the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia rebuilds support through anti-cuts campaigns, the government seeks to silence it before October’s parliamentary elections through liberal totalitarianism, reports JOHN CALLOW
John Callow salutes the life and struggle of the gifted and persuasive educationalist who oversaw the unification of teaching unions and refoundation of the Communist Party
Tito's famous split with the USSR to walk the path of a mixed economy and the 'self-management' of production was the work of a former partisan hero whose transformative economic project's success still has much to teach us today, argues JOHN CALLOW
JOHN CALLOW tells the story of the innovative but little-known judge, Sir John Holt (1642-1710), and his influential judgements on witch trials
