10 June 2002

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

Jason Cowley, Editor, New Statesman

Cover story

You can't trust those dirty, lying hacks

Journalists boast that they are the public's guardians against corruption. Yet their own unregulated trade is riddled with what amounts to bribery

By Anthony Browne

Features

Lula and Elisa reach for power

By John Lloyd

While the left is beating a retreat in western Europe, it is gaining ground in Latin America. But, once in power, what will it inherit? John Lloyd reports

The holy name of liberty

By Arundhati Roy

With each battle cry against Pakistan, India inflicts a wound on herself. As nationalism becomes synonymous with anti-Muslim prejudice, the subcontinent risks repeating the horrors of the Nazi regime

Thinking the unthinkable

By Philip Kerr

Can we imagine a nuclear war? The novelist Philip Kerr returns to an invented scenario that now seems all too real

Comrades up in arms

By Johann Hari

Stalin still exerts a strange hold over some, not least Arthur Scargill. Johann Hari attends a Stalin Society meeting

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Essay

NS Essay - Fighting the spectre of the far right

By Godfrey Hodgson

Populist politicians who hold government in contempt and raise the alarm about "outsiders" can be stopped only by a strong social democracy

Regulars

New Statesman Leader

The case for the undecided

Cristina Odone spots a sex tourist

By Cristina Odone

In Goa, the loner among the hotel guests squats and talks to the boys on the beach reports Cristina Odone

Darcus Howe celebrates "Pablocito" Boateng

By Darcus Howe

Will Paul Boateng's loyalty be stretched by Labour's plans for asylum-seekers? Asks Darcus Howe

Mark Thomas on why the Turks are popular at No. 10

By Mark Thomas

New Labour backs the Turks over the Kurds because Turkey is the Richard Desmond of the British arms and construction world: it earns bad publicity but puts money in the right places reports Mark Thomas

Competition

Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Culture

Population doomsday

By Lionel Shriver

What do we fear most: human extinction or biological overload? Lionel Shriver on the literature of demography

Seeing red

By Ross Diamond

Advertising - Ross Diamond on the two faces of the BBC's new corporate identity

Writers in Prison

By Carole Seymour-Jones

Theatre

Classical duet

By Stephen Willis

Theatre - Stephen Willis talks to both halves of a mythical collaboration

Film

Future schlock

By Philip Kerr

Film - Philip Kerr says the new time machine fails to make progress

Television

Dull of Kintyre

By Zoe Williams

Television - Zoe Williams on a played-out documentary about a nice chap who didn't have a lot to say

The Fan

The Fan - Hunter Davies still dares to hope

By Hunter Davies

They took 400 books with them to read while they were away. My wife wants to know the titles. But, after Sweden, the last thing the team will be doing is reading bloody books