Away from the often complicated nuances of theory, I would say that socialism is simply the attempt to artificially inject a greater degree of justice and fairness into our myriad goings on. Its success depends on the notion that 'justice' and 'fairness', though abstract concepts, must be forced, through our own labours, to be given real concrete existence in the world. Of course, any government or monarchy or even a tyranny may claim that their form of governance is permeated by considerations...

Authorized and introduced in August of 1956 by FBI Director Hoover, the initial intentions of the COINTELPRO programmes were broadly focused towards disrupting and discrediting the reputation and the functionality of the Communist Party in the USA. However these methods of counterintelligence increasingly became a means through which the Bureau could act on their wider sentiments of opposition to and fear of newly emerging politically motivated groups who appeared to Hoover as aligning themselves...

An often ignored page of modern European history, and one of its grimmest, is the Greek Civil War (1946-1949), erupting just as the embers of WWII were dying out.
Even as the Western powers and their Soviet allies were dismembering the remnants of the Nazist empire, the stage was being set for the next power struggle: The Cold War. It was becoming increasingly evident that the former allies would soon cease to be so, and that their spheres of power should be swiftly determined to avoid an...