Danny Finkelstein points out ten of the unheroic things that Fidel Castro has done in his criticism of Harriet Harman for calling the bearded one ‘a hero of the left’. I am generally categorised as being on the left; if Fidel Castro is also on the left, I would think that ‘left’ has no meaning [...]

The BBC World Service has a radio play, To make the people smile again, the story of a young George Wheeler who went to fight in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. It includes interviews with some of the remaining Spanish, British and American survivors. You can listen to it here.
xD.

A protest took place today in Central London, so far as I can see, against the PKK by Turks. I only know about it because I walked past it and there were lost of people waving Turkish flags, carrying placards opposing the PKK & terrorism and chanting ‘No to terrorism, no to the PKK’. I [...]

I am delighted to have had a letter published in today’s Guardian; it’s the second one down on this page. It reads
Your article (It was murder: the Chávez version of liberator’s death, November 17) neglects the importance of Bolívar’s last days to any interpretation of his impact on Latin America. Reviled by the educated classes [...]

The King of Spain, Juán Carlos I de Borbón y Borbón, recently told Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela to, in no uncertain terms, shut up, after the latter called the former Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar, a fascist. Now, I am no fan of Aznar, but Chávez’s comments are not just mistaken but actually [...]

I agree with Ewan Watt that the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Relations Committee should not have recognized the Armenian Genocide as such, but perhaps for slightly different reasons. Ewan is, in foreign policy terms, very much a realist and I do agree that the results of the Committee’s decision have already been profoundly negative [...]

Russia does come across as an old aristocrat, now living in greatly reduced circumstances, that feels the desperate need to maintain appearances. If we can call Russia a person, it does seem to have moved on from communism by selling not just the family silver, but the estate’s mills, mines and factories. A lot of [...]