Sadly, the resounding feature of the 2012 local elections is one of a weak democracy. It's true that of the 32 per cent of people who decided to vote, more voted Labour than any other party. But the dominant characteristic of 2012 is that almost seven in every 10 people decided that the election wasn't worth the walk to the polling station writes Alfie Stirling.
Recently returned from a study tour of Cuba, Dr Tomasz Pierscionek recounts his meeting with Jesus Montera, an international relations officer of the CTC
Sam Hunt lets off steam as he tallies up the cost of running a car these days
In the 60's I assigned myself the meditation of walking extremely slowly down 14th Street, Greenwich Village's northern border, to Union Square, allowing my senses to notice acrid smells, loud sounds, crowded store windows - but not letting my mind grab for any of it, says Jean Claude van Itallie.
Shortly after progressive Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba was overthrown by a Western backed coup in 1960, the former UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld, died in mysterious circumstances. John Green asks if the two events were in any way connected.
Israel's colonization policies are entering an alarming new phase, comparable in historic magnitude to the original plans to colonize Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem following the war of 1967, writes Ramzy Baroud.
As the US President hints at a withdrawal from Afghanistan, R.M. Harrison wonders whether he has taken heed of the old saying "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
A one-sided justice sees weaker states punished as rich nations and giant corporations project their power across the world, says George Monbiot.
By common consent (at least among those like me who lived through it), the 'golden age' of broadcasting - at the BBC especially - was that which spanned the 1960s, writes W Stephen Gilbert.
John Pilger describes the politicising of the law in western democracies and the emergence of increasingly draconian police powers: the corollary of a contrived state of 'permanent war'. Why should this be accepted?