5000 Feet is the Best refers to the ideal flight altitude of a US Predator drone. Ideal, that is, for killing and destruction, so it’s entirely appropriate that it’s also the title of a 30-minute video at the partially re-opened Imperial War Museum in London. If you don’t associate the museum with art and discussion of issues of war and peace you obviously haven’t visited for several years. Its main draw is still the military hardware that hangs from the ceilings and squats like poison toads on swathes of floor space, but the museum has a fascinating art collection and is not afraid to tackle the pros and cons of contemporary conflict. Issues don’t come more controversial at the moment than US drone attacks, so fittingly the film – together with an exhibition of photos [...]

It's been a good week in Britain for writers and actors of Nigerian origin. Tope Folarin won the £10,000 Caine Prize for African Writing, which has been described as Africa’s leading literary award, for his short story,  Miracle. Set in Texas in an evangelical Nigerian church where the congregation has gathered to witness the healing powers of a blind pastor-prophet, hre story is about religion and the gullibility of those caught in the deceit that sometimes comes with faith. Three of the four others on the shortlist are also listed as Nigerian:  Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (The Whispering Trees), Elnathan John (Bayan Layi) and Chinelo Okparanta (America). On stage, Chiwetel Ejiofor is starring in A Season in the Congo at the Young Vic in London, a play about Congo's murdered prime [...]

Wadjda is stifling and a breath of fresh air. Stifling because the film is about women in Saudi Arabia: a breath of fresh air because it’s the first full-length feature directed by a Saudi woman – hardly surprising in a land without cinemas and where films are banned. It’s also comparatively rare in the sense that few directors are forced, as was Haifaa Al Mansour, to film from inside a van, communicating with the part-German crew by walkie-talkie to avoid the disapproval of a woman mingling with men on set. In addition, it’s about a girl wanting a bike, which is itself a challenge to conservative Muslims (who raise the objections that were voiced in this country not so long ago – that, for example, cycling will prevent you having children later in life). It is, in fact, [...]

For journalists, interviewing diplomats ("an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country") is usually a waste of time. All you get is the party line. For a TV or radio programme like "Today" it's a last resort, when no genuine specialists on a country or topic can be found. So hats off to the Brazilian ambassador - and to the government from which he takes his cue - for responding so reasonably to this morning's questions about the demonstrations in his country. Instead of blaming outsiders (whenever spokespeople resort to that line you know they are avoiding issues raised by protesters'and are preparing or justifying a clampdown), he said the demos raised questions from which everyone could learn. He was of course echoing President Dilma Rousseff's response - she said the government was willing to listen and [...]

Daniel Nelson The DVD of Chasing Ice now out, complete with bells and whistles: interviews with filmmakers, a commentary track with various people, a week with the film in Sundance, audience reactions to the film, updated time-lapses, an interview with the composer and a booklet. All fun, but the documentary’s strength remains its striking visual evidence of how much and how quickly many glaciers have retreated. Seeing the film a second time, it strikes me how aggravating – to put it mildly – photographer James Balog must feel when watching the ranting commentators on US TV airily dismissing climate change as a liberal hoax without any scientific basis. Balog spends years creating, installing and monitoring specially adapted cameras to capture first-hand evidence in some of the [...]

Since the UK Green Film Festival that ended on 8 June was sponsored by Friends of the Earth, perhaps it was no coincidence that the two main awards went to films to which audiiences could react by taking concrete action. The Palme Verde (the green equivalent of the Cannes festival's Palme d'Or) went to Trashed, an alarm signal about waste that "ends on a message of hope and ultimately shows how the risks to our survival can easily be averted through sustainable approaches to the 'waste industry'." It is fronted by actor Jeremy Irons. Collecting her award at the Hackney Picturehouse after a screening of the film, director Candida Brady said Irons was genuinely committed to the cause - "he wears a jumper until it falls to pieces." Asked by Andy Atkins, executive director of Friends of the Earth, for her final [...]

Remarks by General, Qi Jianguo, deputy chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army, at a security conference in Singapore this weekend, reinforces comments about China's state ideology made in London recently by China-watcher Isabel Hilton. Speaking at a recent event associated with the current British Library exhibition on propaganda, Hilton, the Editor of China Dialgue, said that the communist party's propaganda machine initially "focussed on a workers' state narrative", and aimed to squeeze out all other messages, to eliminate the competition. As the party machine narfrowed, very narrow ideological guidelines were established. For example, only half a dozen theatrical performances were approved for a quarter of the world's population. After Mao Zedong's era,however,  she noted, China opened up: [...]

Having spent several hours - years ago - talking to the surviving, ageing, ailing, immensely dignified South Korean "comfort women"  who were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers in the Second World War, and who feel they have not had a proper apology or compensation, I am furious with the recent claim by the Mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto, that the brothels were necessary to maintain discpline. Hashimoto's comments are outrageous and shocking, even if they are in a long line of disgusting remarks by Japanese right-wingers. His words are shameful and he is shameless. Sadly, I feel I must equally condemn a column in a South Korean newspaper that has poured petrol on the fire by describing the dropping of atomic bombs on Horishima and Nagasaki as "divine punishment" and stated: "God often borrows [...]

Was there a post-disaster disaster in Haiti? In other words, was the relief operation that followed the 2010 earthquake in "the Republic of NGOs" - a fiasco? There are now so many well-documented criticisms - the latest is Jonathan Katz's book, The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a A Disaster - that surely there's a need for a independent inquiry to attempt an assessment of the performance of NGOs, the United Nations and a government facing an avalanche of uncoordinated advisers. The problem is that the task is so big that the inquiry itself might be overwhelmed. Perhaps different groups should look at themselves, focussing on specific questions. The UN, for example, on why its response to the charge that the cholera epidemic originated in the UN peacekeepers' camp was [...]

People in the North who play down the threat of climate change often make inane comments such as, "Oh good, we'll be able to grow grapes and have wine" or "Great, more subathing". Now the Dana Centre, which puts on evening events for London's Science Museum, has given real cause for (some) cheer. It is presenting a "climate change and cocktails" evening:"Chemical reactions underpin everything on Earth. Join us for an evening of beautifully crafted cocktails, each one representing a fascinating chemical process that drives our changing climate." It's free - if you don't drink. Otherwise it's £10, but you get two climate cocktails "and a sweet surprise". * OneWorld's London Listing of global justice events