Last week two apparently contradictory but equally important health issues have been at the forefront of the news agenda, both underlining the importance of healthy and sensible eating.

On the one hand the government had its bony knuckles rapped by an influential committee of MPs for its slowness to tackle the obesity epidemic in children, with efforts hampered by ministers' attempts to stay friendly with the powerful - not to mention rich - food industry.

And at the same time, the debate about the use of stick-like models and body image was reignited in the run-up to London Fashion Week next month.

As revealed by The Guardian, the British Fashion Council, which owns and runs the annual event, has stopped short of demanding that designers do not use extremely thin models bordering on the anorexic.   more »

Maybe the spark for a wider conflict is just what the increasingly desperate President Bush seeks. His fixation on Iranian activities in Iraq cannot be explained by his cover story, which is that Tehran is supplying weapons to forces that kill U.S. troops.

To date, no hard evidence that the Iranian government is sending high-powered weaponry into Iraq has been made public, and no credible proof may be forthcoming.

In general, one should take such claims with a large grain of salt, much like the skepticism with which one should greet the official U.S. story about the firefight in Najaf on the weekend that supposedly claimed the lives of 250 insurgents.

To begin with, some 99 percent of all attacks on U.S. troops occur in Sunni Arab areas and are carried out by Baathist or Sunni fundamentalist (Salafi) guerrilla groups.   more »

Today we're virtual prisoners, chained in our cubicles, toiling for 'the man'.
We're replacable pawns to further profits. Yet, there's no revolution, no anger, no challenge to the status quo. We accept our lot, programmed to obey authority.

Wasn't that what school was all about? Sitting behind a desk for six hours, mindlessly bored. Just being 'trained' to fit into the new-style treadmill of work.

Got to work hard in school and get good grades so you can get a good job so you can buy everything you want... and if you don't get a 'proper' job, you're a 'failure'.

To compensate for the boredom and futility of work we chase the 'rewards' of consumerism, borrow more money to buy status symbols, and then have to work harder to pay off our debts. Life is a bitch and then you die   more »

For the past two years, US presidential candidate John Edwards has been crisscrossing the country speaking at union rallies, joining picket lines and campaigns to raise the minimum wage, and visiting homeless shelters, low-income housing developments and emergency food banks.

This is hardly the typical path to the White House, and it certainly doesn't look like the higher-profile campaigns of fellow-Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

But instead of tailoring a message to have the widest possible appeal, Edwards, a former US senator and his party's vice presidential candidate in 2004, has charted a bold course for the presidency: He wants to lead a moral crusade against persistent poverty and widening inequality in the world's wealthiest nation.   more »

Let’s get one thing clear: George Bush and his friends wouldn’t combat global warming, even if the atmosphere were on fire.

His plan, announced at the State of the Union, was basically that we would cut down a little on imported petroleum and supplement it with a silo of corn liquor.

That’s not a plan. It’s a case of nothing. As the saying goes, half measures don’t produce half results, they produce no results.

We need results, and we need them now. The planet needs the biggest, most ambitious, bold, worldwide and effective human effort ever made.   more »