A media storm has surrounded this year’s Oscars in Hollywood, as a result of the lack of ethnic diversity in the nominations for the acting categories. Similar criticisms have also been levelled at the Brit Awards, the main musical awards in the UK. Owen Walsh explores the question of diversity within the culture industry.

Over five-hundred reports of abuse and harassment were made to the police in Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve. What exactly happened remains unclear. What is not uncertain is that the assaults in Cologne have been used by the ruling class and the right-wing media to attack and demonise immigrants, dividing the working class.

The ugly face of Obama’s “hope we can believe in” has been starkly revealed. The extrajudicial killings of Michael Brown andEric Garner, unarmed black males killed by white police officers, have set off an emotional firestorm of protests and outrage on a scale not seen in the US in many years. It is the task of the Marxists to help people draw out the revolutionary conclusions implicit within the situation.