A California union’s decision to host a meeting about US policy towards Cuba has prompted a congressional probe and renewed attacks on international solidarity, writes CAMERON HARRISON
RED FLAGS everywhere, thousands marched along through the drizzly weather and puddled streets. Many bent figures hobbled with canes, some were in wheelchairs next to a younger set sitting proudly on their fathers’ shoulders or in strollers. Then another big group of young people arrived, some singing or chanting leftist demands.
Most spoke German but many Turkish, English and a dozen other languages mixed in. They all moved past the rows of political stalls and snack booths, a majority had red carnations for the ring of graves and, in a brick semicircle, urns with names which once resounded well beyond Germany from 1900 to 1990.
One section is for those who fought and died in Spain. But the masses of red flowers for Karl Liebknecht and, even more for Rosa Luxemburg, was higher than I have ever seen them. Both were murdered 100 years ago.
The Berlin border closure 65 years ago did not happen in isolation, and many Western accounts omit crucial context, explains KEITH BARLOW
GORDON PARSONS recommends an entertaining account of the years between Germany’s defeat in WWI and Hitler’s seizure of power
BRENT CUTLER is disappointed by a work of historical revisionism by a former US army officer, that makes a false equivalence between the two regimes
NICK WRIGHT returns to Berlin and finds a city in darkness and political turmoil



