La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces) is a 1968 film which presents an analysis of colonialism and imperialism in the periphery countries. "This legendary underground film criticized neo-colonialism and called for the overthrow of the Argentine government. Intended to be a film which "the System finds indigestible," La Hora was made and distributed outside of the commercial film industry. Because ...

The Tory Government had decided to implement a new tax on April 1st 1990 to replace local government taxation systems. They described as their most important, 'flagship' legislation. It was to be a tax on each person rather than on property (as before). The government named it the 'Community Charge', but protestors dubbed it 'the Poll Tax', drawing parallels with the legendary Poll Tax mass uprisings in 138 ...

If we want to make poverty history, we need to understand the history of poverty. A funny and sinister animated odyssey through time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=TxbmjDngois ...

Of all the operas written during Germany's Weimar Republic (1919-33), probably the most haunting is the last. Kurt Weill's The Silver Lake, written with playwright Georg Kaiser, tells the story of two losers - a good-hearted provincial cop and the thief he has shot and wounded - as they make their way through a society ruined by unemployment, corruption and vice. After spending a week again in Greece - amid ...

Eric Hobsbawm, one of Britain’s greatest historians, died on 1 October aged 95, leaving behind him a considerable and varied body of writing. He was a lifelong communist but one whose views were trenchant, critical and never formulaic. His life in many ways mirrored the great events of the 20th century about which he wrote so well: the rise of imperialism, fascism and communism was as much part of his life ...

Actual fascists in actual black shirts are waving swastikas and murdering ethnic minorities in Athens   "After the immigrants, you're next." That's what was written on flyers that appeared this week in the gay clubbing district of Athens. As violence against immigrants and ethnic minorities escalates across Greece, supporters of the ultra-right Golden Dawn party have also begun to promote hate attacks ...

The famous clenched-fists image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos protesting against black oppression at the 1968 Olympics is worth revisiting as London 2012 presents us with a regime of licensed private dictatorship, writes Mike Marqusee. ...

Anti-capitalist protests in Union Square brutally attacked by police. Economic hardship among the workers. Ostentatious expenditure by the wealthy.  This scenario sounds like the news headlines of the past couple of years, yet the period referred to is the year 1914 and the story is the one told in More Powerful Than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives and New York’s Year of Anarchy.  This book is ...

Book V of Aristotle’s Politics describes the eternal transition of oligarchies making themselves into hereditary aristocracies – which end up being overthrown by tyrants or develop internal rivalries as some families decide to “take the multitude into their camp” and usher in democracy, within which an oligarchy emerges once again, followed by aristocracy, democracy, and so on throughout history. Debt has b ...

Think Greece's current economic malaise is the worst ever experienced in Europe? Think again. Germany, economic historian Albrecht Ritschl argues in a SPIEGEL ONLINE interview, has been the worst debtor nation of the past century. He warns the country should take a more chaste approach in the euro crisis or it could face renewed demands for World War II reparations. Former German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer ...