More and more artists of worth are squandering their integrity by selling their music to advertisers. If even Brian Eno will do it, is there any hope left?

Yes there is. Some artists retain their dignity and purpose and refuse to be mere whores at the capitalist gang-bang.

Every year the UK throws billions of plastic bags into landfill sites and watercourses, wasting resources, polluting land, rivers and seas, and choking and suffocating wildlife. In Ireland, and many other countries, bags are now taxed, encouraging people to re-use them and leading to a 90% drop in bag consumption.

There is a Bill before the Scottish Parliament to introduce the tax there, and there is no reason why such a tax cannot be introduced across the UK, except for the fact of the government is in the pocket of the retailers who want to keep us overconsuming, polluting and poisoning.

In eastern Iceland, one of the largest pristine wilderness areas left in Europe is to be dammed and flooded to supply power for an American-owned aluminium factory. The cost to Iceland’s unique ecology is incalculable. It has been deliberately ignored by Greenpeace as part of a deal to promote Iceland as an eco-tourist destination.

But despite the destruction being already underway, there is still a lot that we can do about it.

The G8 was formed to ensure the world’s richest countries stay that way. To decide to ‘make poverty history’ would be to undo all that it exists to ensure.

As with all serious problems, human beings can view the challenge posed by the imminent peaking of oil production in three distinct ways: pessimistically, optimistically or realistically.

And even though everyone thinks they understand what those ideas mean, it’s surprising how often they get confused with one another.

The pessimists say nothing can be done, the optimists that it will all somehow work out; both perspectives are tricks of denial, and obstacles to us tackling the problem.

The collapse of the trial of a supposed Al-Qaida gang who were going to poison London exposed the deception behind the terrorism-fear the government deliberately fabricated.

This article by veteran investigative reporter Duncan Campbell was originally published in The Guardian but they have removed it from their website. It is reproduced here because this information belongs in the public domain and should not be subject to government censorship.

Despite the way our media tell it, it’s not true that the conflict in the occupied Palestinian lands is an inexplicable ‘cycle of violence’, any more than it was true of apartheid South Africa. If there is to be a lasting peace in Israel and Palestine then South Africa has lessons to teach us.

In the mean time, as this article details, Israeli soldiers kill unarmed Palestinians and westerners and there’s barely a murmur of discontent.

What difference does buying Fair Trade coffee actually make? Isn’t it a similarly unfair cash crop whether it’s Coffee Direct or Gold Blend?

Fair Trade does make a difference, and not just in terms of social justice but in environmental terms too.

One of the most common dismissive worries of vegetarianism and veganism is that such a diet can’t provide a human with enough protein. Colin Tudge explains exactly why we need protein, and how we ended up with the idea that we should have a lot of it, and why it is untrue, dangerous and how in fact a vegetarian or vegan is highly likely to be getting all the protein they need.

Christmas comes around once more, and with it the traditional carols and other Christian linguistic gobbledegook. Their continued use of incomprehensible terminology saves us from actually understanding what they’re on about, and so protects us from becoming involved in their religion.