Remembrance day is used by contemporary politicians and militarists to justify new wars. In doing so, they betray those they claim to commemorate. But still, collective remembrance is important if we are to escape the cycle of violence, and wearing poppies standing beside those who glorify war is the only conspicuous way we have.

When he was arrested buying illegal arms in Zimbabwe, the British press told us how ‘humane, romantic and English’ Simon Mann was.

In fact, he’s a corporate mercenary, part of a new generation of colonials using military force to take the natural resources of poorer countries. 

Humane, romantic? No, murderous and greedy. English? Yes, very much so.

An account of the 1915 Armenian genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire, a crime still denied by Turkey today.

A full-blooded Native American of the Lakota Sioux tribe, Lame Deer’s observations on contemporary western life are at once endearingly naïve and vehemently wise-assed, disarmingly straightforward and profoundly clear.

It’s been said that the war in Iraq and the high price of oil are the same thing – a desperate bid to grab oil reserves as demand starts to outstrip supply and our whole way of life — being dependant on cheap and plentiful oil — collapses.

But isn’t this just another environmentalist scare story? Aren’t they always crying wolf?

With clear, unequivocal admissions from the oil companies and the Bush administration – the very people whose interests lie in denying the problem — that the time of crying wolf is past and the wolf is at the door, we can be sure it’s not just inevitable, it’s starting about now.

Low-cost flights make country-hopping affordable for pretty much everyone. But while the cost to the passenger is cheap, the cost to the planet is great.

When your seat on a transatlantic flight causes more CO2 emissions than a whole year’s domestic fuel, plane use is at odds with the ecosystem that sustains us.

When the Pentagon identifies global climate change as one of the biggest threats to worldwide stability over the next 20 years, you know we are really in trouble

Prohibition of most recreational drugs is expensive in every way. Thugs profiteer, users are poisoned by adulterants, and huge resources pay for the persecution of people who have done no harm to anyone, not even themselves.

And there isn’t any evidence to show that this policy has, or ever will, achieve any of its stated aims.

Legalising all recreational drugs is the only sensible response.

The account of a brief questioning by police in a country lane whilst visiting standing stones graphically illustrates the same brutal and inhumane mentality common to police the world over. 

Enforcing rules with violence but not caring what the rules are, whether they make sense, or whether they harm or hurt. The police are not a barrier between us and violent chaos, they are the snarling weapon of those who repress us, they are a barrier between us and the world we deserve.

With the evaporation of evidence for the Weapons of Mass Destruction that were the supposed reason for the war on Iraq, an obvious question is not being asked. If it wasn’t about WMD, what was it about?

What could be so important that the politicians with the highest approval rating of their generation would risk their careers and the lives of thousands? What’s in Iraq that we could need so much?

As tobacco kills a third of its users, the incentive to give up is high. But there is an intensity to tobacco addiction that makes it an emotionally searing experience to stop. This is not just because of the withdrawal from nicotine, but also from the physiological suppression of proper breathing and, thereby, emotional responses caused by smoking. This article gives experience and insight from a writer who has grappled with the demon weed.