30 April 2007
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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
Cover story
Pakistan: The Taliban takeover
Pakistan is reverberating with the call of jihad. Taliban-style militias are spreading rapidly out from provinces in the far north-west. The danger to the country and to the rest of the world is escalating
Features
A good month to bury bad news
John Reid is planning to use the Blair-Brown interregnum to shovel out all the overdue business of a famously dysfunctional department
Nowhere else to go
It is too easy to believe that anyone who votes for the BNP in the 3 May elections is a racist or a fool. Its message speaks to those who feel no other party is listening.
Bobby: My moral beacon
Robert Kennedy believed he had a mission to combat poverty. In an exclusive extract from his book on heroes, Gordon Brown reveals how he has been influenced by RFK
A vision of the future
China's multimillion-dollar port scheme in Baluchistan gives it a foothold in the Middle East that is making India and Iran nervous. If a naval base follows, the US may well begin to share their concern.
"Misguided women"
Disparaging terms for burqa-clad women used to be a joke - but not after female students began a campaign of kidnap, intimidation and issuing fatwas.
Schools of hope
With the virtual collapse of government schools, many parents have to depend on Wahhabi-funded madrasas. But a new foundation aims to provide quality, secular, subsidised education. It deserves our support
Regulars
Someone still loves you, Boris
Russian 21st-century leaders don't bother to sweat. They either cancel elections or falsify them
The unmentionable causes of violence
Present-day American males are the most pampered examples of their species in history, and compensate by vicariously nurturing self-images of masculinity removed from reality
Shadows of doubt No 3975
Set by George Cowley Ziauddin Sardar wrote: "All of us, whatever our beliefs and inclinations, could do with a serious dose of doubt." We asked for doubts from a leading figure of your choice
Culture
Remixing Vernon
Each translation or adaptation glows with a different set of influences. DBC Pierre has relishes the process
Feel the noise
Daniel Trilling braves the feedback to investigate an exhilarating avant-garde musical movement
Theatre
A change for the worse
The menopause is reduced to songs about hot flushes in a lightweight show Menopause: the musical Shaw Theatre, London NW1
Film
A hair's breadth from greatness
Evocative slice of skinhead life gets bogged down in worn symbolism This Is England (18) dir: Shane Meadows
Television
This diary looks good on paper
Despite its best efforts, BBC4 proves that a comic classic is impossible to film The Diary of a Nobody BBC4
Books
Teenage kicks
From secret journals and juvenile delinquency to the Hitler Youth and problem pages, adolescent angst has always been with us. Teenage: the creation of youth 1875-1945 Jon Savage Chatto & Windus, 549pp, £20
Paradise island?
Coconut Chaos: Pitcairn, mutiny and a seduction at sea Diana Souhami Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 259pp, £14.99
Living and breathing
An Ocean of Air: a natural history of the atmosphere Gabrielle Walker Bloomsbury, 321pp, £15.99
Their generation
On Chesil Beach Ian McEwan Jonathan Cape, 166pp, £12.99
Bottom of the class
The Great City Academy Fraud Francis Beckett Continuum, 174pp, £16.99 ISBN 0826495133
Under the surface
Inner Workings: essays 2000-2005 J M Coetzee Harvill Secker, 304pp, £17.99 ISBN 1846550459
