Yep – Afghanistan again (remember Afghanistan, kids?). The quote is from Ramazan Bashardost, former planning minister in the post-Taleban regime. According to Reuters, he reckons that “Billions of dollars of aid that have poured into Afghanistan have done little to improve people’s lives”.

Three things to prove he’s talking arse: Read More

Forget the flap about Google.cn for a bit. In China, the main media controversy right now is the closure of Freezing Point, a popular weekly supplement of the China Youth Daily, on the orders of individuals in the Central Propaganda Department. The magazine didn’t have a particular agenda as such, but embodied a general commitment to freedom expression in China to the effect that it published articles contradicting the official line and various contemporary and historical incidents. Not surprisingly, this made it some powerful enemies. Read More

It happens without you noticing it – you go away for a week or so, don’t get to see any television and then when you come back, everything’s gone back to the 1970s.
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Last night, sat in the plush and felicitously comfortable artier-than-thou cavern that is the South Bank’s National Film Theatre, I hoped to receive an answer to a question that had been puzzling me for a long time. I wanted to know just what Michael Winterbottom, the director of A Cock and Bull Story, was thinking when he decided to try to film The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, one of the finest—and one of the craziest—books ever written.

Having now seen the film, and having listened to the entertainingly enlightening post-performance Q&A with Mr Winterbottom, I’m afraid I’m still not sure.
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As anyone who is—or has been—a student in the days of the denigration of the degree knows, pecuniary problems beset one to an alarming extent. If it wasn’t for the ‘credit-card-ignorance’ factor that accompanies every student loan (that £12,000 doesn’t exist until I’m into my thirties right?), university finances would be a cause for some rather critical concern.
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Richard Dawkins’ new show is on tonight. The Root Of All Evil is entertaining. If you believe yourself to be intelligent-ish, and are somewhat anti-fundamentalism and pro-science, it’s obviously a joy to watch a well-read academic who understands logical argument debate a succession of hardcore religious types who have little concept of logic, argument or evidence.
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Here’s a scenario for you: you have a time-machine, but it will only travel back to Christmas 1996. Labour are obviously about to win next year’s election, and you’re allowed one bet, on this question: who’s going to be the most influential political philosopher of the next decade? Granted, it’s a funny sort of time-machine, but where does your tenner go?
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Terror stalks Britain. Terror stalks much of the Western world. According to journalist Anthony Browne, whose pamphlet ‘The Retreat of Reason‘ has been making considerable waves over the past couple of weeks, this terror is political correctness. A scourge of modern life that has poisoned public debate. Worse, since 1997 Britain has been run ‘by a government largely controlled by politically-correct ideology’. Scary. What does this ideology entail? Well:

people who transgress politically correct beliefs are seen not just as wrong, to be debated with, but evil, to be condemned, silenced and spurned.

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Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel will today launch his country’s EU presidency which, after Blair’s pisspoor efforts over the last six months, can only be a relief to all concerned – even though Austria is the only member state to be more EU-sceptic than Britain.

And so as the Austrian presidency opens, we’re back to square one, with new EU President Schuessel announcing his intention – just as did our own dear Tony Blair six months ago – to “restart the negotiations on the constitution.”
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So, it’s a new year, with new programmes and new hopes from TV executives all round that they’ve found the new hit and won’t lose their jobs along with the ratings.
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