19 November 2001

From the Editor…

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Cover story

And now the trouble really begins

Victory? Maybe, but the humanitarian disaster continues. That's why, even in Totnes, protests go on

Features

A very mild liberation for Kabul

Tim Lambon joins the Northern Alliance on its advance into the Afghan capital

Oh, what a lovely war for profits

Pharmaceutical firms, IBM, General Motors, even the cabbage growers - they've all benefited since 11 September, reports Andrew Stephen

How to divide "us" from "them"

Johann Harion a flawed poll that risked fanning anti-Muslim flames

Save Red Steve, the people's friend

Jackie Ashley defends the Transport Secretary, an improbable hero who has shown that even a dedicated new Labourite can dare to take on business

A timely lesson in propaganda

In the present war, the Americans could learn from the BBC news chief who strove to get the bad news out before Goebbels did. David Boylereports

Has Brown sprung a new poverty trap?

Means tests do help the poor but the Chancellor has still to sort out the snags

A nation made for war

When a rifle-bearing soldier takes on a stone-throwing Palestinian boy, the Israelis see nothing wrong or abnormal

How MI5 watched the left's riff-raff

Newly released files reveal damning details of British intelligence, reports Robert Taylor

Essay

The New Statesman Essay - Hype at the end of the tunnel

Hollywood uses it; so did the Nazis. Ziauddin Sardar on the world's most potent drug

Culture

Down on Triffid farm

The introduction of chaos into organised society was the persistent theme of John Wyndham's prescient fiction. Half a century after publication of The Day of the Triffids, Mark Slatteryreappraises the writer who put sci-fi on the map

The way of all flesh

Art - Kathryn Hughes finds that the Victorians differed little from us in their response to nudity

Local currency

Money - William Cook on how regional interests gave way to national myths on our banknotes

From Russia with love

Opera - Patrick O'Connor finds episode rather than epic in Prokofiev's War and Peace

Hogwarts and all

Film - Philip Kerr on how Arthurian magic saves Harry Potter from being a muggle

Revolution in the genre

Television - Zoe Williams on a new breed of soap opera

Books

Small-town blues

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage Alice Munro Chatto & Windus, 323pp, £14.99 ISBN 0701172924

King of infinite space

The Universe in a Nutshell Stephen Hawking Bantam Press, 216pp, £20 ISBN 0593048156

Golden balls. Robert Winder on a hymn to Becks: a misunderstood victim and paragon of working-class values

Burchill on Beckham Julie Burchill Yellow Jersey Press, 148pp, £10 ISBN 0224061917

Predator turned prey

Ted Hughes: the life of a poet Elaine Feinstein Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 273pp, £20 ISBN 029764601X

Fiction of the week

The Complete Short Stories J G Ballard Flamingo, 1,200pp, £25 ISBN 0007124058

Distant voices, still lives

Soldiers: fighting men's lives, 1901-2001 Philip Ziegler Chatto & Windus, 368pp, £20 ISBN 0701169540

Paperback reader

The Legend of the Holy Drinker Joseph Roth, translated by Michael Hofmann Granta, 100pp, £6.99 ISBN 1862074712

The interview

Preview: Ken Livingstone: “The world is run by monsters”

The interview

Preview: Boris Johnson: “I’ll tell you what makes me angry – lefty crap”

On Syria

Intervention in Syria won’t work, so how do we stop Assad?

GOP race so far

Infographic: Republican primary race 2012

Mind your B-sides

Mind your B-sides

Time to rethink

Time to rethink, not reassure

Who minds?

Latter Day Taint?

Alistair Darling

Alistair Darling, the Miliband dilemma and what the party must do next
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