21 July 2008
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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
The dark side of paradise
A special New Statesman focus on South East Asia with Philip Bowring, Joe Cummings, Marina Mahathir, Elizabeth Pisani, Ziauddin Sardar, Ruth Padel, Sholto Byrnes and more. Edited by Rachel Aspden and Sholto Byrnes
Features
Time for a change
Can ex-offenders teach teenage boys to reject a life of crime? When David Blunkett went to prison for a reality TV show, he learned more than he expected
A talking shop – or an EU of the east?
Philip Bowring asks if the Association of South-East Asian Nations has a future
To go or not to go?
Should you visit Burma? Not if you want to discover the harsh realities of life under the generals
Women under fire
South-east Asia's women hold high office in business and politics, but they face challenges from growing conservatism.
Monks, generals and karma
Buddhism and politics
Tolerance v terror
Even though extremism has taken root in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, their long tradition of moderate Islam offers hope.
Selling out the little guy
Has eBay forsaken the community values that made it such a success?
Regulars
Diary
Less Demos, more lilo
Does harbouring a secret longing for an inept successor, possibly unpleasant, maybe even scarily unattractive, make me a terrible person?
Politics
After Gordon
There are even those who relish the idea of leaving Cameron in charge of the worsening economic situation
Party of the poor
Oliver Letwin, who chairs the Conservative's policy review and Tory research department, on why he believes his party is now the one that represents the least well off
One step forward . . .
In opinion polls Uribe regularly gets upwards of 80 per cent support. Since the dark days the political landscape has changed completely, writes Alice O'Keeffe
This England
Each printed entry will receive
a £5 book token. Entries on a POSTCARD, please, to This England, NS, address on http://www.newstatesman.com/nscontactus.htm
Shazia's Week
Cancel Edinburgh!
Three weeks in a hot caravan telling Mandela stories to strangers is a holiday of sorts. Read about Shazia's week
Taking the proverbial No 4036
Set by Brendan J O'Byrne
We asked you to come up with some proverbs de nos jours
Arts & Culture
Small screen, bigger picture
When the NS film critic Ryan Gilbey started watching the HBO series The Wire, cinema suddenly began to look compromised and conventional
A lost world
Songs from 1920s Baghdad bring us a diverse city where the streets and nightclubs were full of music
Brilliant cruelty
Wyndham Lewis's portraits are wonderfully ruthless appraisals of the literati of his time
The way I see it
Alicia Keys
Keys is a singer and founder-director of the charity Keep a Child Alive, which combats Aids in Africa. http://www.keepachildalive.org
Performance
Warmth, wonder and wisdom
The superstar country singer proves her worth as a feminist icon
Dolly Parton
O2 Arena, London SE10
Film
The golden age of animation
Pixar makes yet another great leap forward with its latest release
WALL·E (U)
dir: Andrew Stanton
Standard Operating Procedure (15)
dir: Errol Morris
Television
Lost in translation
Eighty minutes doesn't do justice to one of the world's seminal texts
The Quran
Channel 4
Travels
Eye of the storm
For all its warlike past, the Sinai peninsula is a quiet success story in a troubled region
Books
Ped-o-Matique
In this gripping short tale Jane Rogers explores the pleasures ,and unexpected pains, of using a Ped-o-Matique. Plus don't miss top tips for holiday reading
Holiday reading
The New Statesman's critics and contributors recommend the books they have most enjoyed this year
Observations
Lessons we fail to learn
Five years after the tragic death of David Kelly, little has changed. Whitehall has ducked all criticism, appearing to have learnt little from the Iraq experience
Last chance for peace?
What turned a weak state into one willing to commit mass murder was the 1989 coup. It brought to power a small cabal, governing through patronage, coercion and atrocity
No faith in government
You must be careful about saying you have no faith. Britain is now a "multi-faith" society
If I were a poor man
One result of the mayhem engulfing the US economy is unlikely: there has been an abrupt drop in the number of divorces
