Israel launches airstrike against Lebanon-bound convoy in Syria
No incursion into Syrian airspace, sources indicate.Israel has entered into the conflict in Syria, launching an airstrike against a convoy of Lebanon-bound weapons, according to officials from the...
View ArticleIf we arm the Syrian rebels, how do we stop British bombs and bullets getting...
The perils of intervention.Is it too late to stop Syria’s descent into hell? Since the uprising against the despotic Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011, 70,000 people have lost their lives, one...
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Politicians of the third gender: the "shemale" candidates of Pakistan
The Pakistani trans community is unlike the West's: hijras, as they are known, consider themselves a third gender, neither male nor female, and refer to themselves as "shemale". Samira Shackle meets...
View ArticleOn tour with Imran Khan, Pakistan's wildcard candiate
With Khan laid low by an accident at a rally, Samira Shackle reports on his campaign so far.It’s 7pm on a hot Sunday evening and I’m standing at a barbed wire barricade. Behind me is crowd of...
View ArticleFrom politics to football - what can we learn from Germany?
The Brits are losing out.The poet, playwright, novelist, philosopher and amateur morphologist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe didn’t have many moments of self-doubt, but he was easily impressed by the...
View ArticleBritain can prosper by understanding how Germany succeeds
Movement is everything.“The lives of the dead hang like a nightmare on the minds of the living,” wrote Marx. His words apply to the relationship between Margaret Thatcher and the Labour Party. She...
View ArticleHow German football became the best in Europe
The Bundesliga has gone back to basics.On 25 May Wembley will mark the 150th anniversary year of the Football Association by hosting a Champions League final between two German sides, Bayern Munich and...
View Article“I am a double target because I am a woman and I am Hazara”
The Hazara are a Shia minority who face constant persecution in Pakistan. Ruquiya Hashmi - the first female Hazara candidate for the national assembly - faces death threats daily.Muhammad Ahmed stands...
View ArticleThe Pakistan general election is fast approaching - but one community will...
Samira Shackle talks to members of the Ahmadiyya, a minority numbering 4 million. The Ahmadis are branded as "non-Muslims", suffer violent attacks on their mosques and will boycott this weekend's...
View ArticleInside Russia Today: counterweight to the mainstream media, or Putin's...
Up to 2.5m Britons watch the Kremlin-funded TV channel, which is so strongly critical of Western governments it's known as the "anti Fox News". But does it have a blind spot when it comes to Russia's...
View ArticleTash Aw: "It's a very complex form of bigotry"
The Malaysian novelist on fiction, immigration and the Shanghainese.On a bright weekday morning in the lobby of the Aldwych Hotel in central London, the frequent flyers are talking shop. While I wait...
View ArticleOn the fifth anniversary of Tonderai Ndira's death, how much has changed in...
Amid all the bloodshed of Zimbabwe’s 2008 election, it was the murder of the 30-year-old Tonderai Ndira that caught the international media’s attention. He became a symbol for the country's political...
View ArticleIsrael row: The bid to defund Toronto LGBT Pride is straightforward censorship
The bid to ban pro-Palestine group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid as well as the slogan “Israeli apartheid” is a direct attack on freedom of speech and the right to protest.A group of Toronto city...
View ArticleIn a generation, everything has changed for British Muslim women
My mother and I both married men from Pakistan. Both marriages ended in divorce, but their circumstances and our attitudes towards them could not have been more different: it is a sign of how much has...
View ArticleObama's crappy week
In just a couple of days, Obama's government machine had managed to inflame both their political opponents and the press to apoplexy, writes Nicky Woolf.I arrive back in America after a brief sojourn...
View ArticleLeader: The German model
In praise of the Bundesliga and more besides.As Jonathan Wilson writes on page 25 [of the 3-9 May New Statesman] , there is much for British football fans to admire in the success of German clubs in...
View ArticleA lone voice for peace
An interview with Haytham Manna.Israeli air strikes in Damascus, allegations of chemical weapons use in Aleppo, revenge massacres on the Syrian coast: to write about Syria nowadays is to become an...
View ArticleThe Great Reckoning: Why the European ideal is under threat
The certainties that sustained notions of European unity and social solidarity are collapsing. The financial structures that formed the foundations of old Europe have warped and are destroying it. So,...
View ArticleThe latest Israel-Palestine peace talks were doomed to fail before they began
If you want the bottom line about why William Hague and other dignitaries are in Israel for sham talks about peace, look at the bottom line.It’s a long way to go for a game of charades. William Hague...
View ArticleGermany is the most popular country in the world – and I can see why
Victoria Dutchman-Smith has always had a love for all things German, so she's happy to learn that everyone else agrees.Perhaps my love of all things German started out as form of teenage rebellion. Age...
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