PARIS

• Breaking is probably better known to most of us as breakdancing.
• So why is the sport officially called breaking, and how is something so freestyle and subjective going to play out as a scored sport in Paris this summer?
• Throughout the 1980s the phenomenon garnered international exposure via music videos and movies such as Flashdance (1983), Breakin’ (1984) and Beat Street (1984).

Why the Olympics?

• It is also fair to say though that breaking made it to Paris 2024 thanks to the insistence of the host country.
• Los Angeles 2028 will add flag football (a variant of American football), lacrosse, cricket and squash.

What we will see in Paris?

• There is a three-part qualifier for the games, so no doubt each of those qualifying athletes will be in the history books.
• Already qualified through WDSF World and continental championships are some heavy favourites, such as B-boys Victor (US) and Danny Dan (France), and B-girls India (Netherlands) and Nicka (Lithuania).
• The last 14 will be decided by the top-ranked 80 breakers at the dedicated Olympic qualifier series in Shanghai in May and Budapest in June.
• However, this number has increased to nine in the Olympic framework, presumably to minimise subjectivity and risk of errors.

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Mikhail Batuev does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• He is on a secret mission to meet representatives of Britain’s ruling Labour party – including, he hopes, the recently elected prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald.
• The 38-year-old Matteotti, a tireless defender of workers’ rights, still hopes Mussolini can be stopped.
• For Matteotti, this new British government – the first to be led by Labour, although not as a majority – is a beacon of hope.

Four days in London

• Britain’s new prime minister was a working-class Scot who had made his way up via humble jobs and political activism.
• In contrast, Matteotti hailed from a wealthy family that owned 385 acres in the Polesine region of north-eastern Italy.

• The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.
• But something else may have troubled Mussolini about Matteotti’s visit to London – part of a European tour that also included stops in Brussels and Paris.

Death of a socialist

• He had reportedly been working on this speech day and night, studying data and checking numbers for many hours.
• This secret group, known as Ceka after the Soviet political police created to repress dissent, had been following Matteotti for weeks.
• The squad’s leader, US-born Amerigo Dumini, reputedly boasted of having previously killed several socialist activists.
• Socialist MPs, alerted by Matteotti’s wife, denounced the MP’s disappearance – but were not altogether surprised by it.
• For a few days, it appeared that the resulting public outrage – much of it aimed at Mussolini himself – might even bring down Italy’s government, spelling the death knell for fascism.

Why was Matteotti murdered?

• His death can be seen as one of the most consequential political assassinations of the 20th century.
• Yet for the Italian right, Matteotti is a ghost.
• Throughout her political career, Italy’s current prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has hardly ever spoken about the historical crimes of fascists in Italy, and not once about the murder of Matteotti.
• The historical debate about the murder has also never reached a unanimous conclusion about who gave the order to kill Matteotti and why.

The LSE documents

• The story of how the documents came to be secreted away in the LSE library takes us back to London for another clandestine visit – this time by Gaetano Salvemini, an esteemed professor of modern history who fled Italy in November 1925.
• In December 1926, while still in London, Salvemini received the secret package which he soon passed on to the LSE.
• But they were driven by the conviction that these documents could one day prove beyond doubt that Mussolini had orchestrated Matteotti’s assassination.
• Salvemini may thus have considered the LSE a safe haven – and there the documents have remained ever since.

A voice from the dead

• Rather, the move allowed Mussolini to legislate unchallenged while the seats of the 123 MPs who had joined the rebellion were left vacant.
• Matteotti’s article, entitled “Machiavelli, Mussolini and Fascism”, was a response to an article published in the magazine’s June issue by Mussolini himself.
• The Italian prime minister’s translated essay about the Renaissance intellectual Niccolò Machiavelli had carried the provocative headline “The Folly of Democracy”.
• The article was widely commented on in the British press, which had been following the story of Matteotti’s murder almost daily.
• His funeral was rushed through very quickly, with the coffin being transported overnight in an attempt to prevent public gatherings.

The end of Italian democracy

• In a speech to parliament on January 3 1925, he took “political responsibility” for the murder while not admitting to ordering it.
• Mussolini’s speech ended with a rhetorical invitation to indict him – to a parliament now populated only by fascists.
• The speech signalled the end of Italian democracy.
• The nature of Mussolini’s involvement was little discussed in the wake of his execution in April 1945 and the end of the second world war.
• Was it the evidence of the Mussolini government’s corruption that he planned to reveal to the Italian parliament the day after his kidnap?

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• He has also received funding from the Fondazione Giacomo Matteotti to study the LSE documents.
• Gianluca Fantoni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• This has also meant that Chinese foreign policy has become more personalised and that Xi’s own diplomatic engagements offer potentially important clues about its direction.
• The international order is clearly in flux and a key driver of this change, by its own admission, has been China.
• Read more:
  Xi and Biden spoke on the phone for 105 minutes: what does this say about their relationship?

The European dynamic

• Engagements with Germany, however, also have a broader European, and especially EU dimension.
• Germany now has its own moderately hawkish China strategy, aiming to reduce economic reliance on Beijing.
• But Berlin is still considered softer than many other EU member states and therefore an important ally for Beijing within the EU and in EU-US deliberations on China policy.
• From a German and European perspective, the Russian conduct in the war against Ukraine remains a key concern.

Scholz and Xi on diplomacy

• These included sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the importance to explore diplomatic ways to end the war.
• What is significant is Scholz’s statement that rather than western military support for Ukraine, diplomacy now takes centre-stage.
• China’s approach to managing, and shaping, the fluidity of the international system relies predominantly on diplomacy, albeit with a significant coercive streak.

Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU's Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

• Imagine seeing the face of Helen of Troy staring back at you, from within the ashes of a 2,000-year-old city.
• And these ashes aren’t the scars of a city burned down for the sake of “the face that launch’d a thousand ships”.
• Helen is depicted in stunning detail (alongside Paris, the prince of Troy) in one of the paintings on the recently discovered fresco wall of the winter dining room of a Pompeian villa.
• Read more:
  Pompeii’s House of the Vettii reopens: a reminder that Roman sexuality was far more complex than simply gay or straight

The women of Troy

• It’s not just their unusual style, which shows the painters experimenting with new techniques and representing the latest artistic fashions.
• It’s the trio of women from Greek myth collected together in a way that makes us see the Trojan war myth anew – and puts the stories of women at the forefront.
• It shows that, just like us, Pompeii’s elite were well versed in – and eager for – stories of the women of ancient Greek myth.

The role of the fresco

• Sit on one side, and you’d be faced with the image of Helen’s very first encounter with Paris.
• Is there a sense that Helen is lingering, uncertain, with that back foot scraping behind her?
• You can just imagine the Pompeian literati quaffing glasses of expensive wine as they gazed at Helen’s face and debated the subject.
• This is the price of ownership over your body as a woman in Greek myth – the loss of your voice.
• As the grim skeletons discovered in the villa show, just like the Trojans, Verus and his guests didn’t listen to Cassandra either.

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Emily Hauser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.