At sunset on a clear day you can see thirty miles across the Rio de la Plata from Colonia de Sacramento to the skyscrapers of Buenos Aires as the sky behind them turns orange. Julio Cortázar once wrote: ‘I speak of Uruguay and Argentina as one country because they are, despite the nationalists.’ When Argentina’s economy collapsed at the end of 2001, Uruguay’s soon followed. It happened again with the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath. Argentina has 45 million people, Uruguay three million; the Buenos Aires metro area is more than seven times the size of Montevideo, where two-thirds of the country lives.
Israel has assassinated a record number of Palestinian journalists, refused to allow international reporters to enter Gaza, imposed internet blackouts during its most bloody assaults, asked Meta to take down more than thirty million social media posts, and allocated $150 million for its 2025 hasbara (propaganda) budget, a twenty-fold increase on previous years. And yet, despite all these efforts, global public opinion is turning against it.
If there’s anything ironic about being so scared of telling the wrong joke that you run straight into the arms of the House of Saud, it seems lost on the Riyadh Comedy Festival performers, who have, on the whole, described their experiences in Riyadh as positive – or at least positive enough to clear their consciences.
By endorsing the Trump plan, Keir Starmer continues the long-standing British position of denying the Palestinian people’s right to national self-determination. The UK’s recognition of Palestine at the UN last month will go no further than its symbolic function. The Trump-Blair plan for Gaza is colonialism by another name.
The 77th Emmy Awards were over and I was heading home in the back of a self-driving car. I texted a friend, as I watched the wheel turning by itself: ‘I feel like I am being driven by a ghost.’ And of course, I was: the ghost of the cab driver whose livelihood has been taken away by a tech giant. I listened to music, encouraged by a disembodied voice to sing along as loudly as I wanted to: ‘We can’t hear you.’
The Hio, which Carlo Pérez Osorio was sailing on with seven other passengers, was intercepted in international waters by Israeli armed forces in the early hours of this morning. The last contact with the boat was at 03:23. According to the Global Sumud flotilla tracker, all but two other vessels have either definitely been intercepted, or are assumed to have been, by Israeli forces. The boats are said to have been sprayed with skunk water, rammed, attacked by drones and boarded by armed soldiers. The fate of many passengers is still unclear. Demonstrations in Belgium, Greece, Italy, Spain and the UK began last night to protest against the interception of the boats, and against the interception of the transfer of humanitarian aid, an act prohibited under the ICJ ruling of January 2024 in South Africa v. Israel.
Greta Thunberg on the Global Sumud flotilla (Photo © Carlos Pérez Osorio)
Democratically elected governments in the UK, the US and the EU are enabling a genocide by supplying weapons (and other forms of support) to the perpetrators. This could stop tomorrow. More and more people globally are recognising that, and doing something about it.