Young people under the age of 26 are to be given theatre tickets in a new government initiative and taxpayers will be paying £2.5 million. Will that be money well spent? Will the young people want to go to the theatre and if they do...

Two Tibetans have made a film Leaving Fear Behind including interviews with more than 100 Tibetans. They asked people for their views on the Dalai Lama, the Olympics in Beijing and the presence of the Chinese in Tibet. The two film...

A book that I am reading is Why do People Hate America? written by Ziauddin Sardar & Merryl Wyn Davies. So why do people hate America? George W Bush had a go at answering the question. "They hate our freedoms" he said but of course he...

Grassroots Bookshop in Manchester was one that I really liked and over the years I have been to radical bookshops in other cities, such as Leicester, Bristol and London. Grassroots Bookshop of Manchester is no more, I understand. Human...

We Shall Overcome became the anthem of the civil rights movement in the USA. The song was popularised by Pete Seeger and Joan Baez as well as by many other singers. Recently I have listened to the song on a CD by the Harlem Gospel...

A singer I have liked for years is June Tabor and she is doing a concert in Gent, Belgium on 10 Nov. 2008 with Huw Warren and Mark Emerson. The concert is to mark four important anniversaries including 90 years since the 1918 Armistice...

I am a musician and I love listening to music as well as playing it. Regular readers of my blog may remember that I like to mention songs that inspire or inform and support the human rights movement. I have been at a music festival for...

I have the view that the Serious Fraud Office should investigate allegations of serious fraud – the clue to what they should be doing is in the name of the organisation! The government appealed against the legal ruling that the Serious...

A film called Johnny Mad Dog is set to create an unusual level of authenticity by using Liberian children who have been soldiers. Update, October 2009: See this review of the film from the Guardian.

I went on a walk the other day and was talking to a young woman who has views that should make her an Amnesty supporter. However, she said that she had fallen out with the organisation, partly over the policy on abortion and partly...

Control Arms is a campaign run by organisations including Amnesty International. They have just re-launched the website. One of the ways you can contribute is to ask your MP to sign a declaration of support for an effective arms treaty...

Colombia: Blood on Britain's Hands is the title of a recent article on the Upside Down World website by Jeremy Dear. Update, Nov. 2008: Amnesty has a news item on Colombia: One step forward, many to go . Sacking 25 members of the...

I was pleased to see some political singing in the concert to celebrate Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday. Entertainment is fine but why not put a political edge on it as well? Eddy Grant sang his song, Give Me Hope, Joanna , which comes...

I agree that the real disaster in Burma is the government , to use a phrase I read on the Burma Campaign website where you can also view their short video featuring the voice of Ricky Gervais. A girl survives the cyclone but there are...

Opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has announced that he will not stand in the next round of the elections in Zimbabwe. He does not want to ask voters to support him and so risk injury or death. An article today on BBC News...

A report in the Observer says that high street stores such as Primark are not being careful enough about the source of goods such as clothing. Primark has now sacked three of its suppliers after revelations by Panorama and the Observer...

See this list of ten shocking facts about slavery today . Shocking fact number one is that there are more people in slavery now than at any time in history. Update 8 July 2008: Foreign domestic workers in Saudi Arabia suffer severe...

Documents confirm that the government of the USA hid details of detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), according to this article on McClatchy. Documents just released by a Senate committee quote a military...

Have a look at these powerful adverts created by Amnesty International in several different countries.

Earlier this year Foreign Secretary David Miliband apologised to MPs and said that he had been misinformed when he said that extraordinary rendition flights had not landed on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, a British territory. He...