The Canongate Wall outside the Scottish Parliament building, Edinburgh. (Peter Titmuss/Alamy)
The Canongate Wall is a feature of the Scottish Parliament building in Holyrood, Edinburgh. Designed by Soraya Smithson and opened with the Parliament in 1999, the wall is in pre-cast concrete; its monumentality and sense of flowing movement has something of the glacier, or a new-built ship easing down the slipway. Set into it are bullish samples of natural rock from across Scotland. Behind the parliament rises the dolorite rampart of Salisbury crags. Stone meets stone.
At the foot of the wall are the grey slabs of the pavement, and then the security bollards that surround the Parliament and keep passers-by safe from the constant traffic.
There are niches in the wall: rhomboids, like skew-whiff windows; they speak to the building as originally designed by Enric Miralles, who died before the project was complete. And maybe also to tenement windows, or eccentric pages of a book. In turn, set in these niches are stone slabs carved with lines from the Psalms, and the occasional proverb, but mostly poetry.
During a parliamentary debate on the Terrorism Bill in 2000, MPs asked whether the legislation could be used to proscribe Greenpeace as a terrorist organisation. The group had, in recent years, temporarily blocked nuclear warhead production at AWE Aldermaston, spray-painted a power station and destroyed a field of genetically modified maize. The home secretary, Jack Straw, replied that he ‘knew of no evidence whatever that Greenpeace is involved in any activity that would fall remotely under the scope of this measure’. Proscription was a ‘heavy power’ that would be used only when ‘absolutely necessary’, he said, and the Human Rights Act 1998 was a ‘profound safeguard’ against its disproportionate use.
The US has declared an uncertain and messy end to its attack on Iran. Trump announced a ceasefire some hours before it was acknowledged by Israel and Iran, and later said both sides had violated it (‘they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,’ he complained). Overall it seems likely to hold, for a while at least.
Ouvidor 63, São Paulo (Richard J. Williams)
Ouvidor 63 is an illegal but tolerated artist-led occupation of an office block in downtown São Paulo. There are perhaps two hundred artists living and working in the ‘largest artist-led occupation in Latin America’. Occupations have become rarer in the UK, especially since 2012 when legislation in England and Wales made squatting a criminal offence punishable by six months’ imprisonment. But for many people of my generation, squatting was formative. My social life as an art student in 1980s London centred on gigs in abandoned cinemas and police stations. The culture is alive and well in Brazil, though, and in São Paulo in particular.
‘Can’t you ping elsewhere?’ The question, daubed on the twelve-foot green fences encircling much of Brockwell Park in South London, has long been on the minds of local residents. For months, the park has been the subject of a battle over urban public space and culture. Austerity is driving it. Facing a large budget deficit, Lambeth Council is expected to cut local services by £99 million over the next two years. To boost its income, the council has been renting out Brockwell Park to Summer Events Ltd (which operates under the brand name Brockwell Live) since 2018. Between 23 May and 8 June this year, the park hosted five festivals – Wide Awake, Field Day, Cross The Tracks, City Splash and Mighty Hoopla, followed by the non-commercial Lambeth Country Show. As well as the direct revenue, the events boost trade for local pubs and music venues.
Israel’s codename for its attack on Iran, launched last Friday, was Operation Rising Lion, a pointed reference to the pre-1979 Iranian national flag, a lion before a rising sun. Israel and the US seem to hope that they can shatter the Iranian state and induce civil unrest. This is an attempt at regime change, or regime destruction, poorly disguised as an anti-nuclear operation.
Alejandro Éder, the mayor of Cali, asked last week when Colombia had gone back to 1989. On Saturday, 7 June, in Bogotá, a fourteen-year-old had shot Miguel Uribe Turbay, a senator and potential candidate for the presidency, in the head and chest. (It was apparently a contract hit: the boy had been offered $5000.) There were candlelit vigils throughout the country. Uribe Turbay, whose mother was kidnapped and murdered by Pablo Escobar in 1991, is in stable condition after surgery.