How does power shape ideas and ideologies today? Who controls the information on which public discussion rests? How is power used to exclude critical thought in politics, the media, universities, state policy-making? Has neo-liberal globalisation introduced a new era of state duplicity, corporate manipulation of truth and intellectual conformity? Are we entering a new age of unreason? The Socialist Register 2006 examines contemporary public debate and policy-making, scientific and social scientific research, statistics, the media, the business 'community', the World Bank, humanitarian 'aid', the role of the theatre. What standards of intellectual integrity exist today? After postmodernism, is it still possible for truth to prevail over half-truths and lies
