Anti-Voodoo Cult: Death, Despair, and Religious Exploitation in West Africa

They died expecting the Holy Spirit who never descended to rescue them. They died seeking spiritual help that they never received. Five persons reportedly suffocated to death and several others were hospitalized for respiratory problems after a prayer ritual went awry in Benin in West Africa. A religious cult that opposed the local voodoo tradition, […] Read more

Why We Should Consider Giving Everyone Free Money

How would it sound if your government paid everyone in your country a basic income every month, on top of their salary, to spend in any way they like, without any criteria, conditions or requirements? This is the very promising idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI), which is being tested by various countries at the […] Read more

Interview with Andrew Copson

Andrew Copson is Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association (BHA), a position he has held since January 2010, and former Director of Education and Public Affairs at the BHA from 2005 to 2010. In 2015, Andrew Copson was elected President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, the global umbrella body for atheist, Humanist, sceptic and secularist […] Read more

Interview with Scott Blair

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your family and personal story – culture, education, and geography? I had a classic American beginning. My father was a General Motors Engineer; my mother was a nurse (until starting a family – this was the late fifties). We were a TV-like family of five in an all-white community in […] Read more

Linda Sarsour is a Disgrace ​to Feminism

Sarsour’s statements are an affront to women and men around the world who fight an uphill battle to escape and fight against misogynistic laws. The praise and support that Sarsour has received makes it appear that American feminists are not particularly concerned about the wellbeing of their sisters in far-off lands. Read more

The Populism of the Women’s March in the US

In light of Donald Trump’s controversial inauguration as 45th president of the US, women recently organised themselves into a series of marches in order to show their power and political will. As many of us feminists know, institutionalised sexism, patriarchy, warmongering, racism and class division have finally come to the fore and have become far […] Read more

Humanism: Realising and Resisting Change in Africa

In 1994, a student gave me a book, and one of the lines in the book read, “If you want to change the society, start a movement”. I did not understand the full importance of this statement but the insight struck me and stuck with me, and never left me since then. In 1996, I […] Read more

Kept in the Dark: Immigration detention in the UK

Dev* stood in front of his PowerPoint slideshow in a glass-walled room in the Warwick Oculus building and recalled his first 3 months in the UK for his audience. He had volunteered to hold a discussion on immigration detention for Warwick Amnesty before their trip to Campsfield Detention Centre.  A once-hopeful asylum-seeker emerging from difficult […] Read more