There is much disagreement on Islamic websites about anal sex between men and women. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highest-ranking Shia cleric in Iraq, says it is "strongly undesirable", but permissible if the wife agrees.

This seems to be quite a common view, though many Sunni clerics maintain that consent is irrelevant. "Anal sex is a grave sin and is completely forbidden, regardless of whether the wife agrees to it or not," one says.

The most common religious objection to anal sex is that it frustrates the main purpose of marriage - to produce children - and the same objection is applied to masturbation. "Islam strictly forbids the waste of seminal fluid," one website says.

It is precisely to avoid having too many children that some Muslims practice anal sex. One man, writing to the Islamic Q&A website, says that his wife doesn't have any problem with it.

"I think this is the best way of family planning instead of using condoms," the man writes, though he adds that many of his friends have told him otherwise. "People are confusing me so please tell me what to do."   more »

Never pick a fight you know you cannot win. Or so I was told. Pick an argument if you must, but not a fight. Nothing I have read or heard in recent weeks suggests that fighting Iran over its nuclear enrichment programme makes any sense at all.

The very talk of it - macho phrases about "all options open" - suggests an international community so crazed with video game enforcement as to have lost the power of coherent thought.

Iran is a serious country, not another two-bit post-imperial rogue waiting to be slapped about the head by a white man.

It is the fourth largest oil producer in the world. Its population is heading towards 80 million by 2010. Its capital, Tehran, is a mighty metropolis half as big again as London. Its culture is ancient and its political life is, to put it mildly, fluid.

All the following statements about Iran are true. There are powerful Iranians who want to build a nuclear bomb. There are powerful ones who do not. There are people in Iran who would like Israel to disappear. There are people who would not.

There are people who would like Islamist rule. There are people who would not. There are people who long for some idiot western politician to declare war on them. There are people appalled at the prospect. The only question for western strategists is which of these people they want to help.   more »

A new audiotape may be designed to tell the West it has more to fear than Zarqawi and Ahmedinejad.

Osama bin Laden's latest message, if indeed it is from Bin Laden, is most notable for the long silence that preceded it. The audiotape broadcast Thursday on al-Jazeera would be the Qaeda leader's first direct communication with his public in a little over a year.

The voice attributed to Bin Laden addresses himself to the United States, warning that new attacks on U.S. soil are "in the planning stages," but offering a truce predicated on U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It is obvious now that Bush has been misleading the people," says the voice on the tape. "It is better for you not to fight the Muslims on their territory and we offer a long-term truce."

The message — relatively "moderate" by Jihadist standards, in that it appeared to stake out a hypothetical negotiating position and the prospect of coexistence with the U.S. at the same time as warning of new violence — was notable less for its content than for the fact that it was released at all.

Despite directly addressing Americans, its primary purpose may nonetheless be to remind Arab and Muslim audiences of his existence, and to reiterate his claim to primacy among the Jihadists.   more »

As the oil price nudged above $64 a barrel yesterday on heightened concerns about disruption to supplies from Iran and Nigeria, a small group of geologists, economists and commodity traders was meeting in London to consider a more fundamental question: when will the world begin to run out of oil?

That moment is known as "peak oil" - the point at which production stops increasing and goes into inexorable decline.

Some commentators believe that moment may be as little as two years away, some reckon we do not need to worry for another 20 years and some think the peak of production is so far in the distance that it is pointless to even try to put a timescale on it.

But one thing that all shades of opinion are agreed on is that when peak oil does happen, its impact on the world economy - and the consumer lifestyles so many of us take for granted - will be profound.

Chris Skrebowski, the editor of the Energy Institute's Petroleum Review, believes peak oil will occur in 2008, at which point the world will move into "a land without maps where we are all likely to be poorer".

For oil is essential to almost everything we do - 90 per cent of world transport is oil-dependent; all petrochemicals are produced from oil; 99 per cent of our food relies on oil in some way, either to grow it or get the produce to market; and 95 per cent of lubricants are oil-based.   more »

Contrary to popular wisdom, the World Bank’s mission is not to reduce poverty in developing countries.

Its mission, defined by the victors of WWII - notably the U.S. and Britain - was to assist in the reconstruction of Europe and, additionally, to facilitate growth in developing nations, many of which were still European colonies.

It is this second mission that is referred to as ‘development’ and which has taken on greater importance over the years.

During the first 20 years of its existence, more than 90 percent of the projects the World Bank funded were designed to improve communications infrastructure and facilitate the production of electricity.

The money lent to developing nations went towards their purchase of goods and technologies from industrialized countries—what they needed, in short, to realize pro jects that allowed for an increase in exports from the South to the North.

During this period, projects for education, health, access to clean drinking water and purification of sewer water received less than 5 percent of loan moneys.

From its inception, the World Bank was a tool for American and Allied foreign policy. Countries that opposed their strategic interests were systematically refused loans from the World Bank and the IMF:   more »

The forces that dominate British politics have responded to Blair's enfeeblement by rushing to occupy that narrow strip of territory now taken to be the centre ground.

In the case of the Tories, Cameron has presented himself as Blair's natural successor, even as marginally to his left - appearing to challenge business and police privileges, prioritise global poverty and the environment and, in the ultimate pantomime of spin, redistribution and social justice.

And whoever wins the Liberal Democrats' leadership election, there is no question that the young turks, with their little Orange Books and neoliberal nostrums, are the rising power in the party.

Gordon Brown has been heading in exactly the same direction. Presumably convinced he has party votes for the leadership succession in the bag, Brown has turned to the right.

Declaring himself a Blairite at last, his attempts to woo Rupert Murdoch, the Daily Mail and the corporate world have become ever more shameless.   more »

18 JANUARY

Japan: "Hikikomori"...Teenage Boys Withdraw from the World

Maureen Dowd Longs for a 'Cocky' Democrat

Impeach Bush for War Crimes

'Big Pharma': Dangerous Drug Pushers

US Bombing Pakistan: An Act of War

Boycott Israel! Just As We Did with Apartheid South Africa

Bush: Latest in Long Line of Imperial Warmongers

Will America Attack Iran? "Petrodollar Warfare"