Revolutions tend to occur in waves, triggered by the aftermath of wars, like the world wars, or by revolutions in leading countries, like the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848. In the last generation, there have been four regional waves of revolution. With the end of the Cold War, communist regimes were swept from power from Eastern Europe to Central Asia, surviving only in a few countries including China, North Korea and Cuba. Unable to justify themselves with the pretense of fighting communism, military dictatorships were swept away in Latin America. Then the Arab Spring triggered a wave of populist if not necessarily democratic revolutions against autocracies in North Africa and the Middle East.

Are we seeing a new wave of revolutionary politics in the heartland of the industrial West? Although governments are not being violently overthrown in Europe, political systems are being destabilized by the rise of anti-system movements opposed to the major establishment parties. In Greece, the leftist Syriza party and the far-right Golden Dawn have sapped power from the political center. The most recent Italian election was dominated by anti-system candidates, including Silvio Berlusconi and the comedian Beppe Grillo.

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One of the latest salvos came in an op-ed today in the Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily that ripped into the computer company under the headline "Destroy Apple's Unparalleled Arrogance."

It accuses Apple of "Westerners' traditional sense of superiority" in its policies toward China. Although China requires all companies to offer two-year warranties for thier products, Apple has only a one-year global warranty for its devices, according to People's Daily.

The article denounces Apple for being greedy, profit-driven, and "arrogant" in what Beijing commentator Bill Bishop calls a "fairly nasty nationalist tone."

The op-ed comes on the heels of other anti-Apple news reports and editorial cartoons in state-run media.

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Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov led zealots who lined up at Stalin's grave, praising him as a symbol of the nation's "great victories" and saying that Russia needs to rely on this "unique experience" to overcome its problems.

Stalin led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Communists and other hardliners credit him with leading the country to victory in World War II and turning it into a nuclear superpower, while critics condemn his repressions. Historians estimate that more than 800,000 people were executed during the purges that peaked during the Great Terror in the late 1930s, and millions more died of harsh labor and cruel treatment in the giant Gulag prison camp system, mass starvation in Ukraine and southern Russia and deportations of ethnic minorities.

The liberal Moskovskie Novosti's cover Tuesday read "Stalin. Farewell" with the dictator's face scribbled over with childish graffiti, while staunch Communist daily Sovetskaya Rossiya ran a cover story on Stalin headlined "His time will come."

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The wonderful Jane Mayer recounts an Americans for Prosperity rally she covered in Texas two and half years ago, at which now-Texas Senator Ted Cruz “accused the Harvard Law School of harboring a dozen Communists on its faculty when he studied there” in the early 1990s. The revelation of these baseless, McCarthy-esque accusations sheds light on the origins of Cruz’s baseless, McCarthy-esque questioning of Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel. (The best part of Mayer’s piece is the bewilderment of Charles Fried, a Republican who served in the Reagan administration and later taught Cruz at Harvard, who diplomatically told Mayer that Cruz’s statement “lacks nuance.”)

Mayer adds:

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Through a spokeswoman, Cruz has responded to the story, and stands by the claims he made in his speech. The New Yorker reports:

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The actor's verified Sina Weibo account sent the message Monday: "It is the truth. Yup, I'm coming." That was forwarded more than 31,000 times and netted over 14,000 comments, many expressing surprise. He gathered more than 100,000 followers.

The IMDb.com movie website says Pitt was banned from ever entering China because of his role in the 1997 "Seven Years in Tibet." The government was upset about the film's portrayal of harsh Chinese rule in Tibet. His later film "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" with Angelina Jolie was popular in China.

Former NBA star Stephon Marbury who now plays for China's professional basketball league is prolific on Weibo and has over 779,000 followers.

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Now, with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) likely to be confirmed as the next secretary of state, theUnited States will have a top diplomat who has been a frequent critic of America’s 50-year-old effort to force regime change in Havana.

In recent years, Kerry has been the Senate’s most prominent skeptic of US-funded pro-democracy efforts that give financial backing to dissident groups in Cuba and beam anti-Castro programming to the island through radio and television programs based in Miami.

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There are plenty of tragic and inspiring choices, but the most obvious legacy Castro will leave behind is the broken family.

As the plane touched down at Jose Marti Airport I still wasn’t sure I would be allowed to enter Cuba in the first place. I had spent my last trip a few months earlier conducting illegal interviews with the country’s most famous boxing champions, men who had turned down millions and were only willing to discuss it if I paid them under the table. Of course there was no official way to have these interviews given the sensitivity of the topic. The state security had started following me after the first interview. All the Cubans I was working with couldn’t understand why we weren’t being arrested. But we kept going until we landed every interview on my wish list. Then it was just a matter of getting that material out.

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But the files, which previously had been heavily redacted, do not contain any new information about Monroe's death 50 years ago. Letters and news clippings included in the file show the bureau was aware of theories the actress had been killed, but they do not show that any effort was undertaken to investigate the claims. Los Angeles authorities concluded Monroe's death was a probable suicide.

Recently obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, the updated FBI files do show the extent the agency was monitoring Monroe for ties to communism in the years before her death in August 1962.

The records reveal that some in Monroe's inner circle were concerned about her association with Frederick Vanderbilt Field, who was disinherited from his wealthy family over his leftist views.

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As far as neighbors went, the sex workers were fine — quiet, courteous, not prone to cooking stinky tofu. The few times my clothes fell from the bamboo poles used to dry laundry in China, they saved the garments for me until I could make the trek downstairs to retrieve them. We didn’t share an entrance, though a window in the back of the parlor opened onto my stairwell, and on my way home on hot nights I would see the women brushing their teeth. (Even the room that doubled as a kitchen and bathroom glowed fuchsia.) As the years passed I rarely had reason to think about the brothel. But it remained a difficult thing to explain to overseas guests, invariably evoking one of those questions about China that evade any quick, pat answer.

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Mo says he does not believe censorship should stand in the way of truth, but that it can be used, or is sometimes even necessary, to stop rumors and defamation.

China's first writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature is in Stockholm, where he is set to receive the prestigious prize next week.

Mo dodged questions about fellow writer and compatriot Liu Xiaobo, who won the Peace Prize in 2010 but remains in prison. Mo has previously said that he hopes Liu will be free soon, but he refused to elaborate Thursday while meeting with journalists in Stockholm.

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How about the small towns of rural Colorado? That’s the setting for “Red Dawn,” the 1984 piece of militia porn that pitted a group of American kids against the combined might of the invading armies of Cuba, Nicaragua and the USSR. Led by Patrick Swayze, they lived off the land and harvested what seemed to be a never-ending supply of rocket-propelled grenades, with which they blew up tanks and Soviet-American Friendship Centers.

The film was released in the height of the Cold War, and its ludicrous premise (best summed up as “Hey kids, let’s go fight an insurrection!”) fit well with the rest of the decade’s fear-mongering anti-Soviet propaganda and jingoistic paeans to American exceptionalism. Let’s not forget that this was the same year that Reagan joked, “My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

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The 37-year-old activist — who has won numerous journalism awards, been named on Time’s 100 Most Influential list and interviewed recently re-elected US President Barack Obama — was detained as she and others protested the arrest of opposition lawyers and activists outside a Havana police station. She was released late Thursday night.

The news was broken on Twitter Thursday by Yohandry, a pro-government website which is rumored to have been set up by the state itself as a counterweight to Sanchez’s own blog, Generation Y.

Then her husband Reinaldo Escobar, a fellow activist, confirmed Sanchez's release.

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Since islanders won’t need an “exit permit” to travel anymore — just a passport — many expect a flood of visa applications at foreign embassies once the new policy takes effect Jan. 14.

Maybe so. But probably not.

The reality is that for years the vast majority of Cubans who wanted to travel — and could afford to — were not denied the exit permit to leave the country. More than 30,000 a year emigrate from the island, mostly to the United States. They include the more than 7,000 who arrive illegally, typically across the US-Mexican border or by boat. Any Cuban who reaches US territory is eligible for US residency under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act.

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Days after the 57-year-old novelist thrilled his country by winning the Nobel Prize for literature, China’s central censorship organ issued a directive to media companies instructing them to strictly police online discussion for anti-party chatter or mentions of two other Chinese-born Nobel winners.

China Digital Times has a translation of the leaked directive:

“To all websites nationwide: In light of Mo Yan winning the Nobel prize for literature, monitoring of microblogs, forums, blogs and similar key points must be strengthened. Be firm in removing all comments which disgrace the party and the government, defame cultural work, mention Nobel laureates Liu Xiaobo and Gao Xingjian and associated harmful material. Without exception, block users from posting for ten days if their writing contains malicious details.”

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The image of the world standing still is the turn of phrase of Sheldon Stern, former historian at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, who published the authoritative version of the tapes of the ExComm meetings where Kennedy and a close circle of advisers debated how to respond to the crisis. Those meetings were secretly recorded by the president, which might bear on the fact that his stand throughout the recorded sessions is relatively temperate compared to other participants, who were unaware that they were speaking to history.

Stern has just published an accessible and accurate review of this critically important documentary record, finally declassified in the late 1990s. I will keep to that here. “Never before or since,” he concludes, “has the survival of human civilization been at stake in a few short weeks of dangerous deliberations,” culminating in “the week the world stood still.”

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