28 November 2005

From the Editor…

Welcome to the New Statesman website. Whether you are a new reader or an existing one - online or via the magazine - I hope you'll enjoy the great writing, fresh ideas and provocative debate that make the New Statesman Britain's award-winning current affairs weekly

Jason Cowley, Editor, New Statesman

Cover story

Apartheid

They don't shop in the same shops, swim in the same pools or even wait at the same bus stops. Peace has brought more segregation for Northern Ireland's people, and the government is colluding in the change. John O'Farrell writes from Belfast

By John O'Farrell

Features

Sudan: a colony again

By Pieter Tesch

Policed by a large foreign army and administered by international bureaucrats, it has lost control of its own destiny. But can the new-style colonists bring peace?

Essay

NS Essay - 'The front line in the struggle for women's rights appears to lie in the poorest, most patriarchal, least democratic nations. In the west, it has been won'

By Racheal Walker

. . . or so we are led to believe. The truth is more complex. Developed countries hardly offer a good example in their treatment of women - and in fact they help make things worse

Regulars

New Statesman Leader

The futility of secrecy

The Politics Column

The politics column - Jon Trickett on Labour's Tory white paper

By John Trickett

For those who read the Tory manifesto earlier this year, there is more than a hint of deja vu about the education white paper. Themes overlap. So do the words

John Pilger - recommends the world wide web

By John Pilger

If you want to know the truth about Iraq, join the millions who have given up on the silences of the mainstream media

Ziauddin Sardar - on the culture of martyrdom

By Ziauddin Sardar

If suicide killing was a viable weapon of just war, then the Prophet Muhammad would have used it

Commons Confidential

Village life - Kevin Maguire admires unity in Westminster

By Kevin Maguire

Paxman licks his wounds, Hoey is pursed, but the workers, united, will never be defeated

Competition

Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Culture

Master minds

By Michael Bywater

What makes a genius? Certainly not going on a creativity course and learning to "think outside the box". According to an exhibition devoted to Nobel laureates, genius is the product of grinding practice, heroic self-absorption and the ability to recover from mistakes