JASON WALSH loathes toffs as much as the next pleb but he doesn’t want to see fox hunting banned

25 years after giving up Greek, ANDREW CALCUTT explains why he is now a Latin lover

Nationialism was the politics of empowerment in the nineteenth century – but it’s now 2010, says ANDREW GALLAGHER

Allow commercial whaling, says DAVID JACKMANSON

Michael Foot wasn’t a hero of the left, he was the last in a long line of Labour losers, says JASON WALSH

Is Britain headed for a hung parliament, asks JASON WALSH – and does it matter?

The UK government’s science policy isn’t just contradictory, it’s used a stand-in for politics, says science journalist TIMANDRA HARKNESS

Mad, bad and dangerous to know, the Tea Parties are the flip side of Obamamania and both contain positive aspects

Hillary Clinton’s unsolicited offer to mediate between Britain and Argentina should remind us that you don’t need a history degree to know the Falklands don’t belong to Britain. All you need is a map

The earthquake that struck Chile was stronger than the one that struck Haiti in January but the death toll is literally a thousand times lower

Updated: 19.30 UTC

They may offend liberal opinion but tabloid newspapers are the first line of defence for a free press, says JASON WALSH

ANNA MORVERN says the alleged Mossad assassination should not be allowed to force biometric identity documents on us

Official censorship pales in comparison to unofficial censureship, says BRENDAN O’NEILL

YAEL MAURER says her country’s foreign assassination antics would be funny – if they weren’t so serious

forth reader MICHAEL GILLESPIE gives his view on the proposed bill of rights for the North

Whatever about the ‘necessity’ of austerity packages, anti-Greek sentiment is inflated by prejudice and unmasks EU bully-boy tactics

The authorities have given over authority to children, argues DENNIS HAYES, and it is tantamount to child abuse.

Forget the fading messianic effect, Obama’s energising of politics still matters and we could still do with some of that enthusiasm here at home

There’s plenty to dislike about fake ‘amateur’ sports but let’s focus on the skill and beauty of the games, says JASON WALSH

Gliberals whinging about labour conditions in the third world are helping to keep the poor in chains, says JASON WALSH

JACQUI RUSSELL argues for more development – and transparency – in Uganda as a way of guaranteeing rights

In the first of a series of articles before the Belfast Salon debate OWEN POLLEY argues for a modern Britishness against ‘Ulster’ identity

Sun, sea and… no sex or politics. According to reports Australia has gone censorship crazy, at home and away (on the internet). DAVID JACKMANSON brave the battle of the (bantam) breasts to find out what’s really going on

The lesbian, the Pope and the right to free speech

The Republic of Ireland has a lower population than major cities – the only reason anyone cares about Ireland is because of the conflict

The shine has come off the Conservatives’ alliance with unionists as sectarian politics reasserts itself in Northern Ireland, says forth editor JASON WALSH, writing in the Guardian

forth editor JASON WALSH reporting for the CS Monitor

Why personal communication should be personal, in Global Comment

As the Ukrainian presidential election goes to round two, candidates’ “pro-Western” or “anti-Western” leanings are not what actually matters, says NATALIA ANTONOVA reporting from Ukraine

Paul Chambers arrested under controversial law and banned from airport for obvious joke, report forth editor JASON WALSH and MARK HUGHES in the Independent of London

Some commentators say Haiti would be better off if had never overthrown its French colonial masters. They’re wrong, says JASON WALSH

Comparisons are unfair and unhelpful but we do need to get our act together, says JASON WALSH

Both climate changers and their opponents should stop blowing hot air over cold weather, says PATRICK WEST

China-bashing has a long and ugly history, says forth editor JASON WALSH, writing in Global Comment

Despite sounding like a German discount retailer, Rod Liddle is the Waitrose of boring, right-wing ‘controversialists’, says PADDY HOEY

Attacks on Yemen for being a ‘hotbed of terrorism’ are just the latest in a series of unjust insults slung at the Middle Eastern country, says JAMES HEARTFIELD

The Northern Assembly is too important for grandstanding – unless it’s officially sanctioned grandstanding, says JASON WALSH

DAVID JACKMANSON reports on the Sea Shepherd whaling fiasco

JAMES HEARTFIELD traces the Ballardian history of middle class panics, from societal breakdown to the population bomb and global cooling, in a special illustrated essay for forth

With the situations in Iraq, and Afghanistan regularly described as ‘states of anarchy’, JASON WALSH asks exactly what is a state anyway?

We know airport security is a problem when European governments are planting plastic explosives on travellers, says JASON WALSH

China’s execution of British man Akmal Shaikh was a disgrace but it had nothing to do with Copenhagen, despite the green conspiracy theories, says JASON WALSH

ROB LYONS laments the latest attack on freedom in the name of airport security

Islamic militants are more like angsty goths than traditional third world liberationists, says JASON WALSH. Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab is just the latest in a long line of alienated rich boys playing soldier

This year’s swine flu panic crowned a decade in which the gap between public-health scaremongering and reality was vast, says DR MICHAEL FITZPATRICK

Despite BA’s High Court injunction to block a 12-day Christmas strike, it was a fitting end to the Year of Surreal Industrial Relations that it took airline cabin crew to stand up for workers, says TIM BLACK

Having spent three decades predicting the collapse of capitalism real soon now the left has been blindsided by the global recession. Here’s why:

Both boosters and critics of capitalism should so a little more (free) market research. JASON WALSH crunches the numbers.

RICHARD DWYER says that lurking behind our supposedly ‘democratic’ culture old-fashioned snobbery exists in spades

Today’s recession is not the result of ‘risky investment’, in fact it follows a thirty-year decline in real productive activity. The business class needs to stop whining and get back to work, says JASON WALSH

DAVID JACKMANSON prevails upon forth‘s Australian readers to reject the Labor government’s censorship plans

Never mind bottling on healthcare, US president Barack O’Bomber won the Nobel Peace Prize for continuing Bill Clinton’s legacy of a more caring, sharing warmongering

In light of the cod conflict between the private and public sectors in Ireland, forth reprints this article by James Heartfield which shows that business and the state are intertwined

forth editor Jason Walsh comments on the gay marriage debate in the Guardian

With the international court of justice set to rule on Kosovo’s independence we can expect more secessionist movements – and a lot worse, says JASON WALSH

With identity cards being launched in Manchester STEPHEN GINN asks why Labour is persisting with this unpopular, unworkable and failed idea

The only thing that is truly unsustainable is a belief in sustainability says ROB LYONS

The US president manages to withdraw from Afghanistan while sending more troops – what’s going on?

With Dublin City Council going cycling crazy, Londoner Stephen Ginn offers a cautionary tale about the dangers – of politicised transport

A fashion shoot for an in-flight magazine taken at the Berlin Holocaust memorial was tastless and silly, but it was not anti-Semitic

Long-caricatured as resource destroying monsters clad in steel and glass, the skyscraper has never been viewed positively by Irish eyes. More’s the pity, says Jason Walsh

So-called ‘East-West’ links between Britain and Ireland created as part of the peace process are a waste of time, says Jason Walsh

Australian socialist David Jackmanson reports on the rise of Clive Hamilton, whom he calls Australia’s leading ‘pseudo-leftist’

Marking the recent visit of Arthur Scargill to Ireland, former Yorkshire miner Edward Devoy compares the era of the miners’ strike to today

Terry Sanderson of Britain’s National Secular Society says arguments with religion aren’t polite – nor should they be

Another US state has said no to gay marriage – but what is the state doing in people’s bedrooms anyway?

People have the right to do stupid things – even to commit ‘medi-sins’

Of course the border distorts the economy – this imaginary line has distorted everything else in Irish life since the 1920s. Forget shopping and look at the real economic story, says Jason Walsh

David Jackmanson argues for a political use of social media that doesn’t disappear up its own tweet

Neither a saint nor a ‘slimy Albanian’, today’s radical-atheist assaults on Mother Teresa are the intellectual equivalent of mugging a defenceless old woman, argues Brendan O’Neill

Restrictions on freedom of movement are an offence to human decency

Protesting the BNP’s appearance on Question Time wasn’t about debating immigration policy, it was about protestors wanting to feel good about themselves, says Stephen McGlennon

If we denied a platform to every political party that espoused idiotic views there would be no politics on television at all

The Twitter-led virtual lynching of Jan Moir is a sad indictment of what passes for politics in these atomised times, says Jason Walsh

In the first of a series of essays entitled ‘What is to be done?’, free software activist and computer programmer Richard Stallman gives his thoughts on the state of the world and what should done about it.