Most Sudanese citizens of all religious affiliations are desperately poor. As in most other African countries early deaths through malnutrition and disease are so rife that many just count themselves lucky to be alive, let alone benefit from the wonders of Western consumerism, fun culture and post-modern enlightenment (the kind of fuzzy thinking that endows

Spiked Online are at it again, jumping at the chance to blame common atrocities on the spectre of green fascists. To the likes of Frank Füredi and Brendan O’Neill a green fascist is anyone who doesn’t believe in their technocratic vision of unlimited human and material growth, if indeed they believe their own propaganda. More

In one way or another a growing percentage of workers in the UK are engaged in various sectors of the persuasion industry. Call it new media, education, publishing, marketing, sales, customer relations, call centres, advertising, entertainment, legal services, lobbying, consulting, advice bureaux, research institutes, awareness raising charities, they are all in the multi-billion pound business

Information Clearing House recently republished extracts from the late Robin Cook’s diaries, in which Blair concedes that Iraq could not strike the West or even nearby Israel with weapons of mass destruction. It also reveals how the initial scepticism of some New Labour Cabinet ministers in the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq

A good way to dispel concern about an emerging trend is to set up a phoney debate pitting the views of social conservatives rejecting cultural change against progressive change enthusiasts, e.g. only paranoid Daily Mail readers could possibly oppose the growing encroachment of war-themed video games in mainstream life. Progress is by default associated with

If we want to strike a sensible balance between individual freedom, self-realisation, social cohesion, democracy and good community relations, we should be aware these noble aims can only coexist and thrive in optimal socio-environmental conditions that have stood the test of time. For too long we have worshipped the abstract world of economics rather than

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Alan Greenspan in his memoirs. Why did the US and UK invade Iraq? Theories abound, but here are the top four: To get rid of weapons of mass destruction. To overthrow an evil dictator and

A few months after Coalition forces successfully secured control of Baghdad and toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein in Fardus Square before the world’s media, Tony Blair referred to way future historians will remember the liberation of Iraq. It is certainly possible to construct a version of history in which the US and UK armed

Years of conditioning have led us to believe our benevolent leaders and entrepreneurs want to protect us from all sorts of political extremists, commonly defined on the outmoded left-right spectrum or in terms of religious fundamentalism. That our leaders themselves may be extremists seldom dawns on the collective imagination of media pundits. Could we not

What is in your genes and what is not? The nature versus nurture debate has long presented us with a false dichotomy as nurture, i.e socio-environmental influences, is very much part of nature. But many commentators have narrowed the definition of nature to refer only to genes, the mere blueprint or genotype that determines our

Hardly a day passes in the modern mainstream British media without a peadophilia-themed scandal, whether it be police discovering hundreds or thousands of child porn images on some poor soul’s hard drive, a young woman’s revelation about her parents’ role in childhood sexual abuse, a high-ranking official or celebrity using his (or her) credit card

The Internet is not going to disappear any time soon, at least short of a nuclear holocaust or a world-wide power outage. Big business has simply invested too much money in it to let that happen. What’s at stake is the pioneering concept of a free and open network of hyperlinked resources. Media leviathans may

If you obsess with or consider stalking political celebrities, personally I think your fixations and potential actions are both ill-advised and in all likelihood counterproductive. Politicians not only thrive on publicity, the media would be quick to whip up a frenzy of hysteria should anyone attempt to threaten their life. An assassination attempt represents a

Call me a cynic, but the BBC seems to have transitioned magnificently from its role as a covet apologist for the Blair regime to a smooth public relations operation for the emerging Brown leadership. Such a transition requires no change in logo, editorial control or political outlook. Indeed, as the electorate has grown tired of

Results from recent regional and local elections should bring a few cheers to those, like me, who have long distrusted New Labour. While the letters in Tony Blair nearly form an anagram for Tory Plan B (if we replace i with p), David Cameron certainly follows in the deceptive footsteps of our Tone, as the

Consuming re-enactments of violence in various forms has long brought considerable pleasure to large number of people, especially but by no means exclusively, males. Quite clearly many residents of middle class suburbs in towns and cities across the prosperous world are relatively shielded from the real-world physical violence that millions experience on a daily basis

Someone queried the other day whether any evidence linked Stanley Feldman, co-author of Panic Nation, with Spiked Online. A quick Web search reveals a number of his articles and references in the infamous GMO-promoting, pro-Nuclear, pro-Drug and pseudo-libertarian Web site. But then something caught my attention, right on the front page. Spiked Online are running

In the Web development world there’s been a lot of buzz about an acronym many of us previously associated either with a brand of detergent or a Dutch football team. In a nutshell Asynchronous Javascript And XML means inserting new information into a Web page without reloading the whole page. Traditionally Dynamic HTML would use

Open letter to George Monbiot I just read your recent piece (3 May 2007) on Alexander Cockburn’s anthropogenic climate change scepticism and his reliance on one scientist. Let me first state that broadly speaking I’m with you on this one. Irrespective of our exact scientific interpretation, it seems obvious that the exponential rise in humanity’s

One well-designed Website, www.anxietyculture.com seemed worthy of a link exchange request as it was publicised in the forum of another site I respect Medialens. It claims to offer an antidote to the mainstream media with a special focus on the left’s favourite bête noire The Daily Mail. I particularly liked the article on ‘Team spirit

Thoughts on Michael Bywater’s Big Babies or Why Can’t We Just Grow Up Originally prepared for a talk and discussion at the South Place Ethical Society Book Club. Why do people seem to behave differently these days? Why do young girls appear to be more interested in sex? Why do young boys appear to be

In response to Charlie Brooker’s piece on Guardian Comments Free: Why I hate Macs Hey, I’m using a Mac and also use Linux on another machine, use Windows XP + Linux at work and have endured my fair share of woes with the various incarnations of fenestrated operating systems falling victim to viruses, spyware and

Over the last week the mainstream media in the UK have focused on two moral issues. The first concerned the televised racial slurs of a working class Londoner raised in a Bermondsey council estate who made her name on Channel Four’s Big Brother against a multi-millionaire Bollywood diva. The second drew our attention to the

If you view this site with Firefox or other browsers based on the Gecko 1.8+ engine, you’ll see the body of articles neatly arranged into two free-flowing and self-balancing columns. This relies on the new CSS 3 column module, implemented in Gecko browsers as -moz-column before ratification by the W3C. Safari and Opera have introduced

Do children need game consoles, mp3-players, camera phones, bedroom TV sets with inbuilt DVD players? Probably not. Few cross-cultural comparisons would suggest such devices are of any educational benefit. Indeed they distract children from other forms of play and learning, bombard them with a never-ending blur of junk information and prepare them only for a

I read with interest your report about celebrity endorsement of alternative diets and treatments (The truth about celebrity health claims, Wed 03/01/07) . While I agree the media disseminates a multitude of disinformation and scare stories that may lead people to choose unwise diets, may I point out that Sense about Science is a front