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I have a confession to make. I love not one despised style of music, but two: heavy metal, and country& western. As they scroll down my iPod, my friends weep – and retch. And it gets worse: I believe these eruptions of noise offer a political parable. Really: set aside your prejudices and your earplugs and stock up on metal and country. You will slowly see we have misunderstood two of the most politically charged, politically reviled places on earth: the Muslim world, and the Deep South. Don’t turn the page over; stay with me.

There is already famine in Africa but it is not the fault of the Soil Association or British organic food markets. Up to 14 million people in the Horn of Africa are at risk of starvation and this has little to do with Western-imposed attitudes to organic farming. Millions more are suffering in Zimbabwe, and food riots have flared from Egypt to Mozambique. The root of the problem in almost every case is political, not scientific.

Conor Foley: Western failure to grasp the reality of Afghanistan is exacting a terrible cost on the civilian population

Tom Fawthrop: The junta won’t let in western aid workers. Unfortunately, the south-east Asian nations that could be saving lives in Burma are dragging their feet

Tom Fawthrop: The junta won’t let in western aid workers. Unfortunately, the south-east Asian nations that could be saving lives in Burma are dragging their feet

Simon Jenkins: The Chinese quake gave relief to western leaders whose hypocrisy on intervention is exposed by post-cyclone inaction

Assuming a pro-western coalition can be formed, it must maintain the positive momentum generated by the polls through EU-oriented reforms

Assuming a pro-western coalition can be formed, it must maintain the positive momentum generated by the polls through EU-oriented reforms

If you ask me, this year’s furore over China hosting the Olympics hasn’t even properly begun. We all expected there to be demonstrations interrupting the tour of the Torch, but I don’t think many of us expected so many anti-Western outbursts by indignant Chinese. In the last few weeks, millions of young Chinese people (many of them students) have been signing online petitions expressing their anger at the Western media’s support for Tibetan independence.

Sanctions imposed on Burma have failed to move the junta, but where western governments have proved powerless, nature may be more effective.

News that England is poised to become the most crowded nation in western Europe will come as little surprise to the millions who already battle their way to work in London and the South East.

The official death toll from the cyclone that smashed through western Burma at the weekend was last night put at more than 10,000. Road and rail links, not good at the best of times, have been disrupted or destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people are in desperate need of shelter and clean water. Last night - two full days after the disaster - the Burmese foreign minister went on television to say that the government was prepared to accept international help.