08 October 2007
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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
The big decision
Martin Bright on the calculations that guided Gordon Brown through the election fever and led him to make his decision
Features
Tactical Briefing
From: The Unit To: GB Subject: Tories
Rigor mortis smiles
The prospect of a snap election has injected some steel into Tories, as Tara Hamilton-Miller reports from Blackpool
Why Burma was crushed
As Burmese pro-democracy activists are rounded up, the west looks to China to intervene. We are failing to see the seismic changes that authoritarian capitalism is bringing the world.
Still a messiah?
Forty years after his death, Che Guevara has little to offer as a guide for making revolution. So why does his image continue to inspire an almost religious following?
Sick: The great American con trick
Opinion polls in the US show that many believe health care, not the Iraq War, is the nation's biggest problem. The middle classes now realise they have been duped.
Interview
We are winning the propaganda war
Marcus Brogden talks to the veteran activist Aung Zaw who says though the military junta has clamped down on the uprising the pro-democracy forces have been boosted
Where foul is fair No 3998
Set by John O'Byrne The humanist smoker, according to a writer in the New Humanist, "favours the life of the thinker. The nonchalant rings we blow are the emblem of our free and searching spirit." We asked you to put the case for other antisocial activities on a par with smoking
Culture
Desert sounds
The Bedouin Jerry Can Band, raucous rock stars of the Sinai, are on a mission to share their extraordinary music with the outside world.
A man of distinction
After more than 40 years of experimentation, Robert Wyatt's unique sound is more accessible than ever before
More than an ugly face
It may be a funny, frothy sitcom, but Ugly Betty is actually pushing a subversive political agenda
Theatre
Bloody, bold and resolute
Patrick Stewart shines as Macbeth, but this is more than a one-man show Macbeth Gielgud Theatre, London W1
Film
Unknown pleasures
There's a surprising amount of humour in this take on the Joy Division story Control (15) dir: Anton Corbijn
Television
Breaking the silence
Stephen Fry proves that celebrity docs don't have to be cynical or simplistic Stephen Fry: HIV and Me BBC2 The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle BBC2
Radio
Happy birthday, mate
Smashie and Nicey have the last laugh as the Beeb network turns a ripe 40 Fortieth birthdays BBC network radio
Books
Goodbye America
For the past 30 years, Philip Roth's brilliant alter ego Nathan Zuckerman has chronicled the decline and fall of the American Dream. Finally, words are failing him.
Everybody in the house
Bright Young People: the Rise and Fall of a Generation, 1918 - 1940 D J Taylor Chatto & Windus, 336pp, £20
The art of noise
Re-make/Re-model: Art, Pop, Fashion and the Making of Roxy Music, 1952-1972 Michael Bracewell Faber & Faber, 400pp, £20
Apathy in the UK
From Anger to Apathy: the British Experience since 1975 Mark Garnett Jonathan Cape, 420pp, £20
The new wave
Andrew Hussey on the North African novelists at the gates of "Fortress Europe"
Observations
When the war was lost
Observations on Afghanistan Britain boasts that it is winning the Good War, but six years on the body bags are still being sent home.
