United Kingdom – but for how long?

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This is an article I wrote for this week’s edition of the Fox Report in The Friend Magazine. The Friend is the most widely read Quaker magazine in Britain. Its Fox Reports, of which the Democracy unmasked series is the latest, is the magazine’s investigative arm, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Patrick Chalmers […]

Psychology of human responses to climate change

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I recently spoke at, and took part in, a UK event organised by the Climate Psychology called “Fertile and Sterile Dialogue in the Climate Change Debate”. It was a stimulating day, shared with emotionally smart people who think deeply about why we are so slow to respond to gathering evidence of human-induced climate change. I […]

Brand value of democracy

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Russell Brand has kicked up a welcome fuss with his responses to Jeremy Paxman’s recent questions in an interview about democracy and voting. His was a sparkling performance that showed the limitations of Paxman’s political thinking and highlighted the failures of the UK governance system. I would say the same is true of Western representative […]

Comment faire face au fascisme?

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Yannis Youlountas parle de son film “Ne vivons plus comme des esclaves” – un documentaire qui fait le tour des actions, des journaux alternatifs, des radios rebelles et lieux d’occupation et d’autogestion qui se multiplient dans une Grèce en crise. Pourquoi une mise en ligne gratuite? Youlountas souhaite que l’accès gratuit au film participera à […]

The theatre of elections – US or otherwise

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I have a lot of time for the work of Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight centre for digital media entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite school of journalism and mass communication. Not least of my likes is his publishing model for his book Mediactive (2010), about how people can be empowered as new […]

Groundbreaking approach to truth seeking

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I watched this interview with The Act of Killing director Joshua Oppenheimer over the weekend. He comes across as a man of massive integrity and cultural sensitivity. His film tackles the death squads who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civil society defenders and others in the years leading up to the overthrow of Indonesia’s first president […]

Résistances – un festival unique

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J’ai passé deux jours cette semaine au 17ème édition du festival de films Résistances à Foix en France. Ils se sont donné comme objectif le suivant: …de promouvoir un cinéma rarement diffusé sur les écrans, pour créer un salutaire étonnement, faire connaître d’autres regards et d’autres cinéastes que ceux du prêt-à-penser habituel. Alors bravo – […]

Greenwald on Snowden, self and conventional media

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Guardian journalist Glen Greenwald, who brought NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to the public eye, speaks at length on the last few momentous weeks. His speech follows a series of scoops revealing the massive extent of US government surveillance and storage of digital communications worldwide. The talk, which starts at 10 minutes in, features Greenwald’s reflections […]

Ethics in journalism? Nice idea

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I wrote the following email post for the Baron website in response to an article about the Hacked Off co-founder and ex-Reuters reporter Brian Cathcart. It speaks for itself: Brian’s doing a great job at Hacked Off [■ The Reuter Society – Brian Cathcart: My debt to Reuters]. I went to one of its events […]