28 August 2006
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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
Cover story
Bloggers for hire
The days of genuine "citizen-generated" media may be numbered. Suddenly big business is all over the blogosphere, paying armies of willing recruits to praise products
Features
Meanwhile . . .
For weeks we have been swamped by news of Lebanon, Israel and the liquid bomb plot, crises that have drowned out other reports from around the world. Yet events elsewhere have been scarcely less alarming. Here are some of the things that have happened while we were looking the other way
Israel: What happens next?
The left is in disarray and the right has nothing fresh to offer. All Israelis can do is wait for a bold new direction to emerge
The colonel and his third way
Muammar al-Gaddafi has rejected terrorism and brought Libya back into the international fold. Now he is returning to his early radical ideas, which he thinks have common ground with some of new Labour's
The white country
Is our multicultural society a myth? Across swaths of the country, it barely exists. Yet many migrant workers and people from ethnic-minority backgrounds are moving into rural areas. Will this intensify latent racism or disarm it? Janet Bush reports from Devon
Regulars
New Statesman Leader
When we need to be frightened, and when we do not
Ministers must not be allowed to scare us into accepting new terror laws
The Politics Column
Blunders, yes, but idealism, too
Terrible mistakes have been made, but overall I believe the historical judgement on the Blair years will be much kinder than the judgement of contemporaries
Lost in translation No 3943
Set by Valerie Yule We asked for a well-known piece of oratory translated into Bushspeak
Culture
Light entertainment
The Blackpool Illuminations attract more visitors than the Edinburgh Festival, but are ignored by snooty arts critics
Battling the censor
My single is a hit on the net. So why are the mainstream media running scared, asks Rizwan Ahmed
Theatre
On a wing and a prayer
Edinburgh's oddest, most electrifying work is produced far from the Fringe Edinburgh International Festival Various venues
Film
Almodóvar on the rocks
Spanish master's eagerly anticipated latest is a let-down Volver (15) dir: Pedro Almodóvar
Television
Live from the heart - and groin - of England
Fluffy, cynical and informative, a new magazine show has the common touch The One Show BBC1
Books
A long and bloody crusade
The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda’s road to 9/11 Lawrence Wright Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 470pp, £20 Al-Qaeda may be a source of terror today, but its evolution has been marked by uncertainty, upheaval and, at times, comical ineptness. Roger Hardy on the roots of global jihad
A nice paint job
I Was Vermeer: the legend of the forger who swindled the Nazis Frank Wynne Bloomsbury, 288pp, £14.99
The old and the new
The Sea Lady Margaret Drabble Fig Tree, 352pp, £17.99
Pushing the boundaries
John Sutherland glimpses the future of bookselling in a punk collective's outrageous outpourings
Reheated Scotch broth
The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs Irvine Welsh Jonathan Cape, 400pp, £10.99
On the bright side
New News Out of Africa: uncovering Africa's renaissance Charlayne Hunter-Gault Oxford University Press, 173pp, £12.99
Monkey business
Mr Thundermug Cornelius Medvei Fourth Estate, 105pp, £10
Intergalactic vibes
The Wisdom of Sun Ra ed. John Corbett University of Chicago Press, 144pp, £13
The real thing
Fake: forgery, lies and eBay Kenneth Walton Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 304pp, £9.99
