20 June 2005

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

Latin America rises up

While Bush pursues his global mission, big changes are happening in his own backyard. A region Washington is used to bullying has started to rebel - and it has found a new friend

By Isabel Hilton

Features

One country bent on change

By Simon Hooper

Boom and bust

By Adam Feinstein

'Magical realism has now generally been replaced by a streetwise literature that reflects the fact that most Latin Americans no longer live in a sleepy, rural world, but in overcrowded cities'

A view that is no longer private property

By Beatrix Campbell

The Black Mountain looms over Belfast, but until this month the city's people were banned from enjoying it. Beatrix Campbell recounts a tale of liberation

Goodbye to all that

By Anton La Guardia

What will Israel leave behind as it quits the Gaza Strip? Anton La Guardia on the demolition dilemma

Essay

NS Essay - 'We have a softened Thatcherism in public life, combined with a pretence that 1980s values have been overthrown. It's having it both ways. It's living in sin'

By Nick Cohen

No one could deny that the Conservatives lost the culture war - just look at the hatred our novelists heap upon their ruthless, privatising Tory villains, even after all these years. And yet nobody is asking to have the pre-Thatcher world back

Regulars

New Statesman Leader

Farm subsidies that starve the world

The Politics Column

Politics - Richard Reeves tells the time unaided

By Richard Reeves

The arrival of more management consultants at Downing Street bodes ill. Rather than injecting real business experience into government, Blair is recruiting in his own image

Mark Thomas looks closely at his wristband

By Mark Thomas

US foreign aid programmes give more back to the giver than to the needy and help ailing armies shoot more Palestinians. Is this a cause worth wearing a wristband for?

Darcus Howe detects something in the water

By Darcus Howe

How can you explain the bully-boy politics of Trinidad? Something in the water?

Competition

Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Culture

A Premier League player

By Paul Bonaventura

George Stubbs has long been recognised for his peerless portraits of animals. But, argues Paul Bonaventura, he is one of the world's greatest artists, by any measure