Section: New Statesman (The United Kingdom)
I’m a Marxist – we are misunderstood on both the left and right
In these days of identity politics, the ideology remains refreshingly bracing in its view of the world. Earlier this month I stood among a cheering throng in a city square as a statue of Friedrich Engels was unveiled. This is not a sentence many have had cause to write for several decades. The “ceremony” marked the closing of the Manchester...
A UK mosque is targeted once a week – we need to deal with anti-Muslim hatred
Communities can’t just carry on as normal. Between May 2013 and June 2017, 167 mosques in the UK were targeted in anti-Muslim incidents and attacks. These incidents, reported to and confirmed by Tell MAMA, the national project tackling growing anti-Muslim hate crime which I founded, range from the distribution of anti-Muslim literature in...
Why have we had to rely on hackers to stop catastrophic ransomware again?
The latest ransomware attack even hit Chernobyl safety systems – but once again, it was down to independent hackers to save the day As the latest malware virus spread around the world, surreal images appeared on Twitter: bemused Ukrainian shoppers standing around supermarket checkouts, watching screens fill up with ominous lines of text;...
Oliver Stone on interviewing Vladimir Putin: “There are two sides to every story”
The director says his conversations with the Russian president, like all of his works, speak for themselves. “You’re going to start with this blogging bullshit?” Oliver Stone raises his voice at a reporter, a look of fury on his face. The director has been asked about the veracity of a video shown to him by the Russian president in his...
Ukrainians now have more freedom of travel – but less freedom of thought
Ukraine’s government is rightly concerned about Russian cyber aggression. But does that merit online censorship? Ukrainians have sacrificed so much in their bid to be recognised as fellow Europeans. Their struggle to extricate themselves from Russian domination is written in the blood of the Euromaidan protestors and the toll of its...
What Winston Churchill and George Orwell had in common
A new book from Thomas E Ricks explores the similarities between two 20th century mavericks. In his essay “The Prevention of Literature”, published in 1946, George Orwell describes attending a meeting of PEN, the club founded in 1921 to defend the interests of writers, on the tercentenary of Milton’s Areopagitica, in which the poet...
Admission: A Life in Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh – a handbook for giving up hope joyfully
Globetrotting brain surgeon’s second memoir offers a frank asessment of man and medicine. I confess: I haven’t read Henry Marsh’s first memoir, Do No Harm, nor was I aware of the praise it had garnered or the prizes it received, before I read this, his second memoir. I did, however, have an encounter with Marsh some years ago:...
Diary: The summer’s musical promise, the withering of the BBC, and universities after Brexit
“Ahead of us, the summer is thick with musical promise.” Right now, London is awash with gorgeous music. Amid the election and Brexit verbosity, how welcoming it is to relax in the harmonies of golden sounds. Recent treats include Thomas Adès’s new opera, The Exterminating Angel, at the Royal Opera House – an intense score of...
Banksy, “boy jobs” and the bedroom: Theresa and Philip May REVEAL ALL on The One Show
“I quite like ties. Jackets, stuff like that.” “There’s boy jobs and girl jobs, you see!” One minute into the Prime Minister’s first joint interview with her husband and they are already tenderly reinforcing gender norms. You see, Philip takes the bins out, while Theresa runs an election campaign (away from the public – which might be...
The friendly hitman: how boxing gave Anthony Joshua a second chance
At 19, he was fitted with an electronic tag. At 27, he is the world’s top heavyweight boxer. Boxing nicknames usually fall into three categories. There’s the smart, such as Michael “Second To” Nunn. The cool: “Sugar” Ray Leonard. And, most often, the blunt: James “Bonecrusher” Smith, “Iron” Mike Tyson and Roberto “Hands of Stone”...
