26 October 2009
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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
Features
Palestine is paying the price for peace
The west must realise that weakening the Palestinian secular side plays into the hands of Hamas
Not suitable for kids
We continue to call for an end to child detention
Metropolis now
Before the financial crisis, New York and London walked hand in hand as “the two greatest cities in the world”. But now Mayors Boris Johnson and Michael Bloomberg are rivals, each attempting to remake and rebuild his city in different ways. Who will win?
Don’t blubber, it’s biology
Everyone should watch a whale being dissected – it teaches us about life.
The Returning Officer
Oxford, part 2
Essay
The great gamble
As the Karzai government succumbs to pressure to rerun elections and ever more coalition troops die, it seems increasingly as if we are fighting a futile war in Afghanistan. Making a deal with the Taliban may be the only way to make a clean exit
Interview
The NS Interview: Franny Armstrong
“We’re right at the end of the time when we can still do something”
Campaign spotlight: Tax appeal
Christian Aid's campaign against tax dodging by multinational companies
Regulars
New Statesman Leader
Leader: Why Britain must abort mission in Afghanistan
There are no good options left for Britain in Afghanistan. Brown should set a date for withdrawal
First Thoughts
The wrong war, being PC and Bono
Joe Biden could yet rescue the Obama presidency from a military quagmire in Afghanistan
The Politics Column
How the BNP came in from the cold
Question Time's grotesque stunt has allowed the BNP to enter the political mainstream. There is now no going back
World Citizen
The postal strike is our strike
New Labour has done its best to destroy the Post Office as a public institution. Postal workers deserve our solidarity
Culture
Hallowed spaceboy
Over 40 years, David Bowie has repeatedly reinvented himself, pursuing the idea that all pop is artifice. Graeme Thomson surveys the career of a revered innovator
Film
Fantastic Mr Fox (PG)
The puppets are gorgeous but the script's a bit familiar, writes Ryan Gilbey
Books
1688: The First Modern Revolution
A new history of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 labours too hard to prove that it was every bit as bloody as France in 1789 or Russia in 1917.
