Being based in Cambodia has led us to learn a lot about the carnage that occurred during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. This era gets explained in many different ways, but it can be summarized by the what they renamed the country, Democratic Kampuchea. Democratic Kampuchea despite emptying the whole population into the countryside […] More
In the good old days of the cold war, it was relatively easy to pick your camp, the Capitalist West, or the Communist East, and of course, in both these camps, you had dissenters. Those fighting for freedom in the Eastern Bloc tend to be more well known, but it should be remembered that there […] More
Before we get to psychedelic socialism, some context. The 1960s were a turbulent and exciting time in pop-culture, most notably in the western world. The counter-culture movement was tearing up the worlds of music, fashion and ideology only to rebuild them again in another image. For a bright moment in this, the psychedelic movement gripped […] More
As reported by USA Today, the Recording Industry Association of America has released a report confirming that in the first half of 2020 vinyl records outsold CD’s for the first time since the 1980s. While this may be surprising to some older folks who tossed their cumbersome record players when CDs became the leading format, […] More
The 2020 COVID pandemic has caused most countries around the world to close off their frontiers to tourists. Typically allowing only residents and freight can come in and out. An exception to this is most of Europe, where close integration means that it was simply not feasible to keep the borders closed. Europeans wanting to […] More
A few weeks ago I was on a call to a Chinese friend who informed me that China had a vaccine that would probably be ready by October and that “important” people such as the military and medical staff were already receiving it. I took said information with a very large grain of salt, but […] More
Apart from a little pushing and shoving between France and Germany, the map of western Europe has looked pretty similar since the days of Napoleon. The border between Portugal and Spain is in fact the oldest frontier in Europe, dating back to the 1300s when the kings of both countries, who were cousins, tired of […] More
You’ll see many a right-wing communist hater declare that because the National Socialist Party, the Nazi’s has socialism as part of their name it means they are one and the same. Now whilst sane thinking people obviously know this is ridiculous, sticking feathers up your arse does not make you a chicken after all, there […] More
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