TAZ is a leftist German newspaper born in radical leftist cells in the 1960s. TAZ is published in German and in English; its paywall is virtually impenetrable. Its articles are “in your face,” designed to provoke and anger the reader. TAZ stirred up a hornets’ nest with its June 15 article: “Getting rid of the police – All Cops are Berufsunfaehig (unsuited to any job).” After considering alternative employment opportunities for former cops, TAZ concludes they should be deposited in the nearest garbage dump.

One of the received ideas that became a ‘truth’ after the fall of the Berlin Wall was that the Soviet bloc’s populations cursed communism, yet obeyed it slavishly. In fact, many social movements within the Eastern bloc had long aspired to genuine socialism. The collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989-1991 is still portrayed as a collection of simplistic clichés. British political analyst Timothy Garton Ash says that ‘in 1989 Europeans proposed a new model of non-violent, velvet revolution’, a reverse image of that of the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917. 

Hoover Institution fellow Robert Service discusses the life of Leon Trotsky.

The difficulties in Greece’s relations with Turkey are also a problem for the European Union, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Thursday as he repeated criticism of Ankara’s maritime boundaries agreement with the Tripoli-based government in Libya.