After the financial crash of 2008, Europe’s leftist parties had an opportunity to channel the anti-establishment fervour of ordinary voters and move from the fringes to the mainstream. For a time, the tide throughout Europe appeared to be shifting to the left. However, earlier this month, after the socialist government of Tsipras was swept aside in the Greek general election, it now appears that the European left is in deep crisis. Yascha Mounk, writing in the Atlantic, suggests that a chain of recent electoral defeats for the left means that the heralded resurgence of socialist parties has peaked – a lesson which the Americans would do well to take into account.
Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.
