RAMZY BAROUD highlights how Israel’s ambassador sought to shut down UN officials documenting sexual violence and abuses against Palestinians
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‘Hillsborough forced me to come off the fence’ - Alan Buckley
Alan Buckley explains why he wrote Scum a poem dealing with the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster
The left has become too reliant on persuasion and too detached from the workplaces and communities it seeks to represent, argues NICK TROY
The US-Israeli conflict with Iran has had far-reaching consequences, including a boost to Pakistan’s regional standing, argues ROGER McKENZIE
The recent heatwaves revealed how ill-prepared Britain remains for a hotter future – and how unequal the ability to cope with it has become, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
The drive to strengthen European defence is reshaping relations between France, Germany, Italy and Britain, says NICK WRIGHT
The UN blames gangs for Haiti’s turmoil, while ignoring decades of foreign intervention and support for an unelected government that lie at the heart of the country’s continuing crisis, says RUBEN BRETT
I WAS born in Wiltshire but brought up in Birkenhead. My dad’s from Manchester. My mum’s from Bristol. For years this was my elaborate response — usually followed by an explanation of where Birkenhead was — to the question “Where are you from?”
I never said I’m from Liverpool, and partly this was because I was being transparent. I didn’t want to lay false claim to an identity, to pretend that I came from the home of the Beatles and the Mersey Sound Poets, from that fervently religious city of two mighty football clubs, two mighty cathedrals.
But there was something else. I didn’t feel I truly belonged anywhere. For as long as I could remember I’d felt in some profound and unalterable way an outsider. My long-winded answer was a way of saying I’m from everywhere and nowhere. And like all outsiders, I often managed my loneliness by stubbornly refusing to belong, no matter how strongly belonging was being offered.
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ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
TONY FOX invites readers to come and hear the story of the remarkable Liverpudlian International Brigader Alexander Foote
by Widad Nabi