When it was revealed earlier this month that the number of people who had reached the UK on small boats since Labour came to power in July 2024 had reached 50,000, the familiar circus of blame began. The Tories reproached Labour for scrapping the dismal Rwanda plan; Labour pointed to the legacy left by the Tories; Reform, as ever, reaped the spoils. But the tussle between the dominant parties over who can most bullishly ‘defend’ Britain’s borders is not only an ugly spectacle; it rests on a misguided premise.
‘and in the glass, like moonshine – the hue was purple/saturn devouring his son’ by Felix Shumba in his studio at the ISCP, February 2025
The female cabbage tree emperor moth (Bunaea alcinoe) is the size of a human hand. I saw one in 1992 in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, where the Vumba mountain range runs along the border with Mozambique; in the 1970s, ZANU guerrillas fighting for independence from white Rhodesia had hidden in the area. I snapped a shaky photo of the giant moth, beneath a dull outdoor light, with a pocket camera. I don’t know whether I still have the print, but it doesn’t matter. The image stayed with me. The moth was alone. Still. Unbothered. She seemed to own the night.
I remembered the moth when I visited the artist Felix Shumba at the International Studio and Curatorial Programme in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in March this year. Shumba, an artist from Zimbabwe, spent three months in the converted industrial space of the ISCP. Charcoal drawings hung on the walls. File folders were arranged on the floor in neat rows. Shumba had drawn oversized bugs on them in charcoal, including a moth.
Miguel Uribe Turbay, a Colombian senator and presidential candidate for the far-right Centro Democrático, died from gunshot wounds on 11 August after nearly three months in hospital. The authorities have six suspects in custody but it remains unclear who was behind the assassination. Some fingers point at one of the FARC dissident groups, though no one knows. Uribe Turbay’s death marks the country’s first magnicide since the elections of 1990, in which three left-wing candidates were assassinated.
Virtually everything the UK does regarding Palestine makes it the Republic’s ugly friend: almost anyone would look good standing next to it. But Dublin is hideous in its own right. We let US military planes that may be carrying arms to Israel pass through Shannon Airport without inspection. Our Central Bank grants regulatory approval to Israeli war bonds for sale across the EU.
From the sieges within the siege, Palestinian journalists are smeared as terrorists and assassinated by airstrike. Even when their reports reach Western media, Palestinian journalists are systematically denied the right to be credible and authoritative about the fact of the genocide they face. Palestinians must be verified.
Since the disputed elections of October 2024, protesters have gathered daily in front of the Georgian parliament building on Rustaveli Avenue in central Tbilisi. These days they wear creative face coverings: costume masks, broad-brimmed hats, lace bandeaux, disposable Covid masks and sunglasses. Joining the protests now carries a steep price. Facial recognition technology has led to fines for ‘blocking the street’ of up to five thousand laris, about £1350. Hundreds of people have been arrested and are awaiting trial for ‘organising, leading or participating in collective violence’ or, sometimes, ‘assaulting a police officer’. They could spend the next couple of years in prison.
In the West Papuan regency of Merauke, close to the border with Papua New Guinea, Indonesia is rapidly clearing land in the world’s largest ever deforestation project: three million hectares for sugarcane and rice production. Within three years, Indonesia plans to convert an expanse of forest roughly the size of Belgium into profitable monoculture. The ambition and destructiveness of the development distinguish it from previous mining or agribusiness initiatives in West Papua, which has been under Indonesian occupation since the 1960s.