A week in the life of the world | Global edition

1 MARCH 2024 | VOL .210 No.9 | £5.95 | €9

African
freedom
Senegal and the continent-wide
decline of democracy
SPECIAL REPORT 10

Ukraine Travels Wrecking

and Russia in time the joint
A tale of The new Kneecap,
two war science of Belfast’s rap
economies history sensations
22 34 51
Founded in
Manchester, England
4 July 1919

A week in the life of the world

Vol 210 | Issue № 9 1 MARCH 2024

4 34
Guardian Weekly is an
edited selection of some of
the best journalism found in
the Guardian and Observer
newspapers in the UK and the
Guardian’s digital editions GL OBAL REP ORT F E AT U R E S
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The weekly magazine has an the last seven days How new technology is helping
international focus and three United Kingdom ................... 8 us discover the ancient world
editions: global, Australia and Science & Environment ........ 9 By Jacob Mikanowski ........... 34
North America. The Guardian The big story The power imbalance between
was founded in 1821, and Senegal Non-elections and the the world’s languages
Guardian Weekly in 1919. We threat to African democracy.10 By Ross Perlin ...................... 40
exist to hold power to account

45 51
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15
The Guardian is wholly owned Hamas and Netanyahu ........ 45  Music
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and any profit made is In-depth reporting and analysis Lenin’s head and Nazi statues
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Peace talks hope as time runs  Books
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UK of the Labour leader .............57
A week that brought shame to a poem about

60
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As one economy burns, be a secondary
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Join the community 1 MARCH 2024 VOL

On the cover Last weekend, Senegal should
Twitter: @guardianweekly have been staging a fair, competitive election.
facebook.com/guardianweekly
Instagram: @guardian African Instead, President Macky Sall’s postponement
freedom
Senegal and the continent-wide of voting has thrust the country into chaos.
decline of democracy
SPECIAL REPORT

Mark Townsend reports on a generation of

Africans who have grown up experiencing only
democracy, but are now saddled with stagnant
Ukraine
and Russia
A tale of
two war
Travels
in time
The new
science of
Wrecking
the joint
Kneecap,
Belfast’s rap
economies and scant opportunities.
Photo: Guy Peterson/Getty; Guardian Design
economies history sensations

SPOT ILLUSTRATIONS:
MATT BLEASE
4

Global
2 RUSSIA 4 BEL ARUS

Tightly controlled election

report cements Lukashenko’s rule

Belarusian authorities on
Monday announced preliminary
results from parliamentary and
local elections in which only
Headlines from candidates loyal to the country’s
the last seven days authoritarian leader were allowed
to compete and the opposition
called for a boycott, the Associated
1 UKRAINE Putin had Navalny killed to
Press reported. The vote further
thwart freedom, allies claim cemented the 30-year rule of
Zelenskiy gives battlefield
Alexei Navalny’s allies have President Alexander Lukashenko,
death toll for the first time alleged Vladimir Putin had the who declared his intention to
Copyright © 2024 Volodymyr Zelenskiy has given opposition leader killed in jail seek another five-year term in a
GNM Ltd. All rights a figure for the number of to sabotage a prisoner swap in presidential election next year.
reserved Ukrainian battlefield deaths in which Navalny would have been Most candidates belonged
the war with Russia for the first exchanged for a convicted hitman to the four officially registered
Published weekly by time, acknowledging that 31,000 jailed in Germany. parties: Belaya Rus, the
Guardian News & soldiers have been killed. Maria Pevchikh, a close ally Communist Party, the Liberal
Media Ltd, Speaking in Kyiv a day after the of the opposition leader, said Democratic Party and the Party
Kings Place, two-year anniversary of Vladimir Navalny and two US nationals of Labor and Justice, all of which
90 York Way,
Putin’s invasion, the Ukrainian were in line to be exchanged for support Lukashenko. The Central
London, N1 9GU, UK
president said he believed his Vadim Krasikov, a Russian FSB Election Commission said 73% of
Printed in the UK, country would win despite recent security service hitman who is the country’s 6.9 million eligible
Denmark, the US, military setbacks. He conceded serving a life sentence in Germany. voters cast ballots, filling all 110
Australia and western weapons were in short Pevchikh alleged Navalny had seats in the national parliament
New Zealand supply. His troops were running been killed because the Russian — 51 of which went to Belaya Rus —
low on ammunition and at one president could not tolerate the and 12,514 seats in local councils.
ISSN 0958-9996 point late last year were firing one thought of him being free. Last Sunday’s election was
shell for every 12 unleashed by The Russian authorities claim the first in Belarus since the
To advertise contact the Russians, he said. The ratio Navalny fell unconscious and died contentious 2020 vote that
advertising.
was now 1:7. “They have a great after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” handed Lukashenko his sixth term
enquiries@
superiority,” he admitted. Arctic penal colony. Russia said in office and triggered a wave of
theguardian.com
He refused to say how many Navalny died of natural causes. mass demonstrations.
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Trump beats Haley in home Indigenous people sue over
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manage
500,000 including the wounded. Haley in her home state of South Canada have launched a lawsuit
He described Putin and Russia Carolina, a stinging setback that alleging they were subjected
USA and Canada
gwsubsus
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@theguardian.com Kremlin had murdered the to the nomination. without their consent that
Toll Free: Russian opposition leader Alexei The Associated Press called the left them feeling “violated
+1-844-632-2010 Navalny, he added. South Carolina primary for Trump and humiliated”.
Spotlight Page 22  as soon as polls closed, in a clear Chief Andrea Paul said she
Australia and indication of his large victory. and 60 other members of the
New Zealand Trump locked in approximately Pictou Landing First Nation
apac.help 60% of the vote. underwent an MRI in 2017 for a
@theguardian.com Palmetto state voters have research project administered
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The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

UK headlines p8
9 SWEDEN

Leaders meet in Budapest

to confirm Nato accession
6 CANADA
Hungary’s parliament has
Vending machine reveals approved Sweden’s Nato
accession nearly two years after
use of facial recognition the historically neutral country
2
8
An error message on a vending applied to join the alliance,
4
machine has inadvertently bringing to an end months of
revealed that a number of them limbo and diplomatic wrangling.
1
have been using facial recognition Speaking after the vote on
technology in secret. Monday, the Swedish prime
There was no prior indication 6 minister, Ulf Kristersson, hailed “a
that the snack dispenser at the historic day”. The vote followed
University of Waterloo was a meeting last Friday between
using the technology, nor that a Kristersson and his Hungarian
camera was monitoring student 3 counterpart, Viktor Orbán.
movement. Users were not asked Turkey gave its approval to
for permission for their faces to be the Nordic country in January,
scanned or analysed. leaving Hungary the last
Invenda, the company that remaining country to do so –
produces the machines, claims despite assurances from Orbán
the technology is compliant with that it would not be the final Nato
GDPR, the European Union’s member to sign.
privacy standards, but it is unclear Spotlight Page 23 
whether it meets Canadian
equivalents. 10 FRANCE

7 BRAZIL

Union reaches deal with

operator of Paris landmark
The Eiffel Tower reopened to
visitors after a six-day strike by
employees demanding changes
8 DENMARK to the landmark’s business model
and better maintenance of the
Tens of thousands attend Investigation into Nord 330m structure, which is showing
Stream blasts dropped widespread traces of rust.
rally to support Bolsonaro The tower’s operator said in
Tens of thousands of supporters Denmark dropped its investigation a statement it had reached an
of former president Jair Bolsonaro into the 2022 explosions on the agreement with unions. It added
rallied in São Paulo, in a show of Nord Stream pipelines carrying that both sides had also agreed to
strength against legal challenges Russian gas to Germany. “an ambitious €380m ($412m) up
that could put him in jail. The pipelines were ruptured to 2031” towards upkeep of the
The far-right former president in the Swedish and Danish zones attraction, which is visited by up
called the rally after being of the Baltic Sea in September to 7 million people a year and will
targeted by a police raid last 2022. Russia and the west, at feature prominently in the Paris
month investigating an alleged loggerheads over the invasion Olympics later this year.
coup attempt. In a speech lasting of Ukraine in February that year,
about 20 minutes, he refrained have denied involvement.
from attacking old foes and the “There is not sufficient
supreme court. Allies expressed grounds to pursue a criminal
concern before the event that case,” Denmark’s police said in
any remarks against Brazilian a statement.
authorities or institutions could Sweden dropped its own
get him into even hotter water. investigation last month, saying
it lacked jurisdiction, but handed
evidence to German investigators,
who are yet to publish findings.
1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly
 12 TUNISIA

Former president among

jailed opposition figures
Former president Moncef
Marzouki has been sentenced to
eight years in prison in absentia as
part of the country’s crackdown on
opponents of president Kais Saied.
The judgment came as
prominent opposition figure
Jaouhar Ben Mbarek was
sentenced to six months in prison.
Authorities said Marzouki had
violated laws against incitement
and called for the overthrow of the
government, a court spokesperson
told Tunisia’s state news agency. 18
His lawyer, Samir Ben Amor, 16 13
told AP the sentence illustrates 15
19
“the hardening of the political
line taken by the government
against opponents”.
14 JA PA N

Expensive toilets cause

a stink at world expo
11 U N I T E D N AT I O N S Visitors to next year’s world
exposition could find themselves
Palestinian aid agency hit 13 JA PA N spending a penny in toilets that
by $450m budget shortfall cost more than $1m to build,
The UN agency for Palestinian sparking a row over the event’s
refugees has been forced to spiralling costs.
“stretch every dollar” and juggle Japanese media reported last
its finances to continue vital week that some of the 40-plus 20
work in Gaza after 18 donor bathrooms at the site in the port
countries suspended funding over city of Osaka will cost as much as
allegations of links to Hamas. ¥200m ($1.3m).
The UN Relief and Works Eight of the expo site’s
Agency for Palestine Refugees in restrooms will be designed by
the Near East (UNRWA) is facing a up-and-coming architects, the
Crime boss accused of
shortfall of $450m from a budget minister in charge, Hanako Jimi,
of $880m as it confronts the selling nuclear material said . The cost, he said, “isn’t
biggest humanitarian crisis seen in The head of a crime syndicate necessarily high considering the
the organisation’s 75-year history. conspired to traffic uranium scale of the project”.
Last week, Philippe Lazzarini, and plutonium in the belief
head of the agency, said UNRWA that Iran would use it to make
had reached a “breaking point”. nuclear weapons, US prosecutors
The agency said it has paused aid have alleged.
deliveries to northern Gaza amid Federal officials said Takeshi
reports of famine in the area. Ebisawa, 60, and others showed
samples of nuclear materials
that had been transported from
Myanmar to Thailand to an
undercover Drug Enforcement
Administration agent.
Samples of the seized material
were later found to contain
uranium and weapons-grade
plutonium, media reports said.

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 The big story p10 
Global report 7

15 CHINA 17 I S R A E L / PA L E S T I N E 19 INDIA D E AT H S

Gaza death toll set to pass Runaway train travels

30,000 amid peace talks 70km without a driver
The death toll in Gaza was likely to Indian Railways has ordered an
pass the grim milestone of 30,000 investigation after a runaway
this week, as negotiators tried to freight train loaded with gravel Stan Bowles
pin down a ceasefire and hostage- travelled 70km without a driver. Former Queens
release deal, and the Israeli About 50 carriages set off solo Park Rangers
government pressed ahead with on Sunday, from the northern state and England
plans for an attack on Rafah. of Jammu and Kashmir to Punjab, footballer. He died
The Israeli prime minster, before being halted by wooden on 24 February,
Huge data leak lifts lid on
Benjamin Netanyahu, convened blocks placed on the tracks. aged 75.
country’s hackers for hire the war cabinet for a briefing with “We have ordered an inquiry,”
A big leak of data from a Chinese negotiators who had been at talks Deepak Kumar, a Northern Edie Ceccarelli
cybersecurity firm has revealed in Paris. It was due to meet again to Railways spokesperson, told Supercentenarian
state security agents paying tens discuss preparations for an assault Agence France-Presse, adding that who was the
of thousands of dollars to harvest on Rafah, where an estimated no one was hurt in the incident. oldest person in
data on targets, including foreign 1.5 million Palestinians have The train, running at 100km/h, the US and the
governments, while hackers sought shelter. A deal might delay was captured in a video that went second oldest
hoover up information on any that operation, but would not viral on social media. person on Earth.
person or institution who might be prevent it, Netanyahu told CBS. The incident happened after She died on
of interest to prospective clients. Negotiators from Israel, Qatar, the train stopped for a crew 22 February,
The cache of more than 500 Egypt and the US agreed the “basic change, local media reported. It aged 116.
leaked files from the Chinese contours” of an arrangement then began moving down a slope
firm I-Soon was posted on the during talks in Paris, White House after the driver and his assistant Ameen Sayani
developer website Github and is national security adviser Jake disembarked. Pioneering Indian
thought by cybersecurity experts Sullivan told CNN, with final radio presenter.
to be genuine. Some of the targets details still under discussion. He died on 20
discussed include Nato and the A report by Reuters, citing February, aged 91.
UK Foreign Office. a senior source close to the
Other targets include the British discussions, outlined plans for Roger Guillemin
thinktank Chatham House and a 40-day pause in all military Nobel Prize-
the public health bureaux and operations as well as the exchange winning French-
foreign affairs ministries of the of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli American
Association of Southeast Asian hostages at a ratio of 10 to one. neuroscientist.
Nations countries. Spotlight Page 15  He died on
21 February,
aged 100.
16 CHINA 18 S O U T H KO R E A 20 T U VA L U Hydeia
Broadbent
Climate targets off track ‘Severe’ health alert issued Former attorney general
US HIV/Aids
despite renewables growth as doctors go on strike elevated to prime minister activist. She died
China is off track on all of its core The government has raised its Feleti Teo has been selected as the on 20 February,
2025 climate targets, even though public health alert to “severe” for Pacific island nation’s new prime aged 39.
clean energy is now the biggest the first time, after thousands of minister, weeks after an election
driver of the country’s economic doctors went on strike to protest that put ties with Taiwan in focus. Mike Procter
growth, analysis has found. against recruitment plans. Former attorney general Teo South African
The government has The doctors are protesting secured the support of lawmakers who was one of
supercharged the growth of the against government plans to elected in January, government cricket’s greatest
renewable energy industry, but raise the number of trainee secretary Tufoua Panapa told all-rounders.
it has simultaneously poured doctors in order to boost the Agence France-Presse. He died on 17
stimulus funds into construction number of physicians in essential There has been speculation February, aged 77.
and manufacturing, and continues healthcare sectors such as that Tuvalu could consider
to approve coal power. paediatrics, obstetrics and establishing relations with Beijing.
China’s total energy emergency care. After Monday’s announcement,
consumption increased by 5.7% The strikers insist they are Andrew Lin, Taiwan’s ambassador
in 2023, in the first moment since campaigning for higher pay and to Tuvalu, told AFP he had won
2005 that demand for energy grew reductions in their workload, assurances from the new prime
faster than its GDP – which grew and not against the planned minister that the countries’ ties
by 5.2% last year. recruitment drive. were “rock solid and everlasting”.

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

8 Global report
United Kingdom

BUDGET C U LT U R E

Public services ‘cannot bear Trespassers descend on

planned spending cuts’ Saltburn stately home
Britain’s stretched public services The owner of the 700-year-old
will buckle under the weight of stately home used in the film
the spending cuts being planned Saltburn has revealed he has had
for after the election, economists to ask staff to patrol the grounds
have warned, as Jeremy Hunt to stop trespassers trying to take
prepares for another round of tax photos and videos of themselves.
C O N S E RVA T I V E S reductions in next week’s budget. Charles Stopford Sackville,
Experts say the level of public the owner of Drayton House in
Suspended Tory says he
sector spending pencilled in Northamptonshire, told the Mail
does not rule out defecting for the next parliament would on Sunday he was unprepared for
Lee Anderson said he does not mean cuts equivalent to those the attention Emerald Fennell’s
rule out defecting to Reform undertaken by David Cameron’s film would bring with it.
UK, in a move that would give government from 2010 to
the rightwing populist party 2015. Some warned the next
its first MP. Anderson, a former government will not be able to
Conservative party deputy chair, implement them, and will have to
who has been suspended from raise taxes or borrow more.
sitting as a Tory MP because of The warnings came as the
his comments about the mayor chancellor considers cutting
of London, Sadiq Khan, said he billions more from public
had “been on a political journey” spending to pay for cuts in either
when pressed about whether he income tax or national insurance.
would join Reform.
“You’ll say Lee Anderson rules
out/doesn’t rule out joining the
Reform party, so I’m making no SECURITY P O P U L AT I O N
comment on my future,” he said
Shamima Begum loses Fertility rate plunges 3.1%
in his latest interview with his
employer GB News. British citizenship appeal in a year to a record low
When asked if he would be a Lawyers for Shamima Begum Campaigners have warned that
Conservative candidate at the have vowed to “keep fighting” to “procreation has become a luxury
next election, Anderson said: bring her home after they failed item”, after it emerged that the
“That’s not up to me,” but that he in a fresh attempt to overturn a fertility rate in England and Wales
would still be standing. decision to remove her British had fallen to its lowest level since
Anderson, who was a deputy citizenship after the court of records began in 1939.
Tory chair until last month, was appeal ruled against her. Official figures from the
suspended from the party whip Three judges unanimously Office for National Statistics
last Saturday after he refused to concluded that the then home (ONS) showed “total fertility”,
apologise for saying Islamists had secretary, Sajid Javid, had the calculated based on the birthrate
“got control of” Khan. Anderson power to set aside concerns she across different age groups, fell to
claimed on GB News that the may have been a victim of child 1.49 children per woman in 2022.
London mayor had “given our trafficking when she left east That is well below the rate of
capital city away to his mates”. London aged 15 and travelled with 2.1 needed to maintain a steady
He now sits as the independent two friends to live under Islamic population without significant
MP for Ashfield in Derbyshire. State in 2015. The court also held immigration. In total, there
Rishi Sunak and ministers that Javid had acted lawfully even were 605,479 live births in 2022,
have avoided describing if it meant Begum, now 24, was according to the ONS, down 3.1%
Anderson’s comments as racist effectively stateless. from a year earlier, and the lowest

546
or Islamophobic. number since 2002.
If Sunak had been hoping that Falling birthrates since 2010
the controversy die down, he is have prompted schools closures in
The number of likely to be aghast at a potential many areas in recent years.
‘drunkonyms’ defection to Reform, which has Joeli Brearley, chief executive
– synonyms for been causing the Conservatives of Pregnant Then Screwed, said:
being intoxicated headaches in byelections and “It is no surprise that fertility rates
– used by Britons, threatens to eat into Tory votes at have hit the floor. Procreation has
according to a the general election. become a luxury item in the UK.
study by German Spotlight Page 18  Childcare costs are excruciating.”
linguists

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 Do you have a recently taken picture you’d like to share with
Guardian Weekly? Scan the QR code or visit theguardian.com/
9
pictures-guardian-weekly and we’ll print your best submissions

 Reader’s
eyewitness
Festival faces
‘In the Spanish
mountain
hamlet of
Almiruete,
Guadalajara,
botargas (men)
parade with
mascaritas
(women) in
a traditional
festival to mark
spring. The
curious masks
represent
nature’s
produce and
the start of the
growing season.’
By Jon Santa
Cruz, East Dean,
England, UK

SCIENCE AND brighter than our sun, was “hiding in ▼ Lepidoptera and whether or not individuals had
EN V IRON M EN T plain sight”, researchers say. is among the most diabetes, the researchers found that
Australian scientists spotted diverse animal the risk of experiencing nocturia was
a quasar powered by the fastest groups known to 48% higher in those who spent five
growing black hole ever discovered. science, making or more hours watching TV or videos
C L I M AT E C R I SI S
Its mass is about 17bn times that up approximately a day than those who watched less
of our solar system’s sun. The light 10% of living than an hour.
Demand could lead to ‘energy from the celestial object travelled for organisms The research was published
turmoil’, says Cop28 chief more than 12bn years to reach Earth. on Earth in the journal Neurourology and
The problem of the ever-growing The findings by Australian NATURE PICTURE Urodynamics.
LIBRARY; LEE DALTON/
demand for power must be National University researchers, in ALAMY
addressed if the world is not to risk collaboration with the European
INSECTS
descending into “energy turmoil”, Southern Observatory, the
according to the president of last University of Melbourne and
year’s Cop28 summit. France’s Sorbonne Université, were
Butterfly genomes barely
In a discussion hosted by the published in Nature Astronomy. changed for 250m years
International Energy Agency, Sultan The genomes of butterflies and
Al Jaber, the chief executive of the moths have remained largely
MEDICA L R ESE A RCH
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, unchanged for more than 250m
said: “The energy transition will years despite their enormous species
lead to energy turmoil … if we
Binge watchers more likely to diversity, according to a new study
only address the supply side of the need night-time loo breaks published in the journal Nature
energy equation. Researchers have found that people Ecology & Evolution.
“We cannot and should not who spend lengthy periods in front The researchers said the analysis
pursue the energy transition by of the TV are more likely to need to gives clues as to how Lepidoptera
only looking and working on one pee multiple times a night. – the order of winged insects that
side of the equation.” Researchers in China analysed contains butterflies and moths –
data from the US National Health have been so resilient throughout
and Nutrition Examination Survey dramatic changes on Earth.
S PA C E
and found that 32% of the 13,294 Researchers at the Wellcome
participants, aged 20 and older, Sanger Institute and the University
Universe’s brightest object reported experiencing nocturia, the of Edinburgh said their findings can
was ‘hiding in plain sight’ need to wake up and urinate two or help with conservation efforts for
The brightest known object in the more times a night. After taking into the species amid a rapid loss of the
universe, a quasar 500tn times account factors including age, sex planet’s biodiversity.

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

10 The big story

Africa
 SENEGAL 11

Is democracy
Amid the uncertainty, critics accuse
Sall of stealthily rolling out a police
state. Others warn he may yet take his
cue from neighbouring countries by
calling on the military to back him up.

in Africa on
Nine coups have reshaped Africa’s
Sahel region since 2020, creating an
unbroken strip of military-run states
across the continent’s width – the

its last legs?

same distance as London to Kabul.
More will come, analysts warn.
Ebenezer Obadare, the Douglas
Dillon senior fellow for Africa studies
at the US-based Council on Foreign
Relations, said that for the first time
in 25 years the continent’s experi-
ment with liberal democracy has hit
Senegal’s slide into chaos bodes badly in a “reality check”.
A generation of Africans who have
a year of key elections for the continent, grown up experiencing only democ-
racy have been saddled with stagnant
the future of which lies with a younger economies and scant opportunities.
“The idea of democracy delivering
generation that seems disillusioned by the goods has not happened,” he said.
Olayinka Ajala, a senior lecturer in
the apparent failures of elected leaders politics and international relations at
Leeds Beckett University, who also
and stagnant economies advises governments on develop-
ment issues, agreed that many among
Africa’s vast younger generation are
disillusioned with democracy.
By Mark Townsend DAKAR “The median age [in Africa] is
around 19.6 years – it’s crazy,” he said.

D
jbril Camara remem- crazier than previous ones – and that “Many of them are educated, well
bers thinking that it was saying something,” said Omar. travelled, exposed to social media.
was the wildest dem- At least, for once, their other They are all asking: ‘How come we
onstration yet, the brother, Abdoulaye, known to most are still in this situation?’”
thunderclap of tear- people as the rapper Baba Khan, was The question lands at a critical
gas almost constant. not involved – or so they thought. period for the world’s second-largest
Then a shocking new sound: the crack But as Omar left their home on continent: 19 scheduled presidential
of a live bullet. Camara scrambled to Saturday 3 June last year, he felt a hand or general elections are set for 2024,
the roof of his block of flats. on his shoulder. It was his brother’s reshaping many of Africa’s remaining
Below, the protest had descended boss from the henna parlour. “I turned democracies in the months ahead.
into pandemonium. People were to face him,” said Omar. “He had a Topping the bill is regional hegemon
shrieking as they ran. Plumes of tear- strange look …” South Africa. But the continent’s most
gas billowed across the Niarry Tally For decades, Senegal has been developed economy is ruptured along
district of Dakar, Senegal’s capital. lauded for its exceptionalism, a bea- racial and economic lines as it prepares
Four hundred metres east, out of con of freedom in a turbulent region. for its tightest election since the end
 Scenes in Camara’s sightline, a body lay in the Yet Khan’s fate exposed its slide from of apartheid 30 years ago.
Dakar after the street. Protesters kept attempting to bulwark of democracy to authoritar- Elsewhere, Mozambique, Ghana
presidential retrieve it. But every time they got ian regime. Last weekend, the world and Tunisia stage important elections.
elections due to close, the police aimed another volley should have been watching Senegal Other states, such as Rwanda, will
take place last of teargas. “The police wouldn’t let stage a fair, competitive election. be processional, guaranteed to give
weekend were them get near,” said Camara, 32. Instead, President Macky Sall’s deci- power to those who already have it.
postponed Downstairs, his older brother, Omar, sion to cling to power by postponing But it is Senegal’s slide into chaos
MICHELE CATTANI/ was heading out to sunset prayers at voting without offering a new date has that has spooked democracy’s pro- 
AFP/GETTY; JEROME
FAVRE/EPA; CEM OZDEL/
the mosque. “The protest sounded thrust the country into chaos. ponents – a “head-scratcher” in
ANADOLU/GETTY

The continent’s
experiment with
liberal democracy has Africa’s polls to watch Nana Akufo-Addo & Jakaya Kikwete
hit a ‘reality check’ Key elections in 2024, page 13  Why education matters, page 14 

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

12 The big story
Africa

the words of Obadare. Its predicament sitting on Khan’s old bed in a tiny flat.
raises an obvious, profound question. Around midnight, a neighbour
Is democracy dying in Africa? Is it, in shared a video showing police dragging
many places, already dead? a body, later geolocated to a street 400
metres from their home and close to

B
y the time Djbril and Omar Garage Guédiawaye, a scruffy car park
arrived at the protest against where Khan appears to have been shot.
President Sall’s unpopular Omar and Djbril recognised the fig-
rule, it was dark and eerily ure’s dreadlocks. Clearly in a bad way,
quiet. The crowd had fled. Only a at least their brother seemed alive,
group of masked police from the local flinching when officers jabbed him.
station in the HLM neighbourhood Several hours later, however, staff
stood milling about. at a nearby fire station said police
But these were the men believed to had dumped a body that looked like
have killed their brother. In the days Khan, which officers claimed they had
ahead, these officers would attempt found on the road.
to cover up the shooting, eventually The body, which was taken to ▲ People protests that began last month after
dumping Khan’s body in the apparent the morgue at Dalal Jamm hospital, cast symbolic Sall’s postponement of the election,
hope it might never be identified. offered clues to Khan’s last hours. “It electoral votes a further three people have already
Over the next 24 hours, Djbril and had clearly been roughly shaken and in a mock polling been shot dead.
Omar searched Dakar’s police stations beaten – there was residue of sand station in Dakar Such a bloody reaction can, analysts
and hospitals for their brother. Four everywhere. You could still see traces JEROME FAVRE/EPA say, be partly explained by the arrival
times the police denied any knowledge of sweat,” said Djbril. of agitating factors such as Russia.
of a shooting. No body could be found. Numbered 5,519 and dated 7 June Obadare detects Russia’s hand in
Yet Khan’s phone was still switched 2023, Khan’s death certificate con- redrawing west Africa’s governance
on, ringing out. firmed he was shot in the left side of structures. Vladimir Putin proudly
Omar began believing that Khan’s the stomach, a bullet slicing through advertises Senegal as its “important
boss may have mistakenly identi- his internal organs. “Contusions” were and reliable partner” in Africa.
fied him. On the day he died, Khan, detected all over the body, indicating Alex Vines, who has led the Africa
38, the father of a seven-year-old girl he was dragged or possibly beaten. programme at the Chatham House
and a rapper with a rapidly growing No account of the protest suggests thinktank since 2002, said: “What is
and politicised anti-Sall fanbase, had a warning round was fired. Similarly, different than, say, 10 years ago, is
felt unwell and went briefly to meet a no other live round appears to have that there’s heightened geopolitical
friend at HLM’s outdoor market. been used during the protest. Why competition with countries like the
“He had diarrhoea and was feeling then just a single bullet? This was no Russian Federation really stirring
really weak. The last thing he wanted random “wrong time, wrong place” things up using false information.”
was a demonstration,” said Djbril, tragedy, say Khan’s family. He was Disseminating disinformation
deliberately silenced, they allege, in during election campaigns is likely
When democracy a targeted extrajudicial killing. to be a theme of 2024 as autocratic
When democracy dies, regimes regimes discredit democracy as a
dies, regimes become become relaxed about beating or lock- global model of governance.
relaxed about beating ing up citizens. During the wave of Pollster Afrobarometer found that
protests in which Khan died, another in 24 of 30 countries, approval of the
or locking up citizens 22 people were killed by police. In the idea of military rule has risen during
the last decade and that just 38% of
 A banner of those asked expressed satisfaction
Vladimir Putin at with democracy.
a rally in support Throughout Senegal, growing
of Burkina Faso’s numbers are in hiding, fearing for
leader, Capt their lives. When Khan was shot last
Ibrahim Traoré summer, things were considered grim.
OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT/ Consensus suggests the situation may
AFP/GETTY
now be even worse.
Opposition members are being
rounded up and elements of the media
attacked. During protests last month,
journalists were deliberately targeted.
Ousmane Diallo of Amnesty Interna-
tional said: “A female journalist was
slapped and beaten by police until she
passed out. A colleague trying to help
was beaten around the head and neck.”
Such aggression surprised few
in Dakar’s media. Speaking an hour

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 A F R I C A’ S E L E C T I O N S T O WA T C H 13
Three bellwether polls for the continent

before violence erupted after Friday South Africa

prayers on 9 February, Mamadou Mauritania
South Africa will hold a pivotal
Thior, president of Senegal’s media
election at the end of May with
ethics organisation, predicted col- Dakar
leagues would be among the victims: the ruling ANC predicted to
Senegal
“It is a very worrying time. Journalists The lose its majority for the first
Mali
are being jailed. Reporters harassed Gambia time since taking power with
and targeted.” the fall of apartheid 30 years
Khan’s family believe that this is Guinea-
what happened to their brother, who Bissau
ago. President Cyril Ramaphosa
Guinea
had arrived in Dakar in 2009 to make – a protege of Nelson Mandela –
his name as a rapper. Initially pro-Sall, confirmed the 29 May date last
he began criticising the president as he week, launching a campaign
became more tyrannical. His criticism amid widespread voter
200 km
found an audience; by last summer his
videos were routinely getting 80,000
200 miles mistrust following corruption
views on TikTok. of Sall party members, signalling he and record unemployment.
was an issue, a nuisance,” said Omar.  ANC

T
hree months before he was The family know that they them- paramilitary
shot, Khan uploaded a viral selves may be targeted for speaking supporters
video mocking Sall. In a out but “we’ve got nothing to lose”, in Durban
country where people are said Djbril. They also say it is certain RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP/
GETTY
arrested for using emojis to laugh at the HLM police knew Khan. “He was
the president, it is unlikely to have a local celebrity. Everyone knew Baba
gone unnoticed. Khan,” added Djbril.
Omar alleges that Sall’s political Looking ahead, Leeds Beckett Uni-
party was becoming angry with his versity’s Ajala predicted that the for-
brother’s outspokenness. “An uncle tunes of democracy in Africa will nose-
told us [after the shooting] that he was dive before they improve, anticipating Ghana
flagged by a closed social media group that an “anti-colonial sentiment” in The once-thriving west African
west and central Africa will increase. nation is sinking into debt,
“But eventually they’ll realise that the economy is dire and living
military dictatorships are actually not
better than what they had,” he added.
standards are falling quickly,
Vines also predict ed “buyer’s prompting predictions that
remorse”, adding: “Men in uniforms the opposition will prevail
being presidents doesn’t work. They in the December election.
don’t have the tools or accountability.” Free expression is also under
Obadare noted how a string of Afri-
attack with journalists targeted
can coups in the 1980s eventually gave
away to a broad demand for democ- by security agencies. The
racy. “I’m a bit anxious but at the leading opposition candidate
same time there are so many positive last month publicly expressed
things going on in specific countries an anti-LGBTQ stance.
that make you hopeful.”
By contrast, Khan’s family have
 Footage of Baba Khan being dragged dwindling hopes of any justice. More Rwanda
through Dakar after being shot. His than 260 days since the shooting, there The country’s president, Paul
family believe the rapper was silenced in has been no investigation, inquest or Kagame, is standing for
a targeted extrajudicial killing by police disciplinary proceedings against any re-election in July, meaning
officer. The police offered no comment
he is certain to extend nearly a
for this article.
A complaint sent to police by Khan’s quarter of a century in power.
family on 10 June last year has also The result is not in doubt.
received no response. In the mean- The last election, in 2017, saw
time, Sall holds on to power and the Kagame win with more than
protests in Senegal continue.
98% of the vote. That was after
“If he still could, Baba Khan would
have talked nonstop about Sall’s presiding over controversial
behaviour,” said Omar. “He wanted a constitutional amendments
society where everybody had a voice. that have allowed him to stay
Most of all he wanted peace.” Observer in power until 2034.
MARK TOWNSEND IS THE OBSERVER’S
HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

14 The big story
Africa

C OM M E N TA RY secondary, up from 35%, and 33% in While trimming education

E DU C AT ION upper secondary education, up from spending might relieve budgets
23%, while the number of tertiary in the short term, it is depriving
education students has risen from economies of long-term prosperity.

Young at heart fewer than 800,000 in 1970 to above

17 million today. More girls are in
To support domestic financing
of education and prevent this
school than ever before. backsliding, donors, multilateral
Two-fifths of all But as we usher in this year of
education, we must acknowledge
institutions and the private sector
can step up, pursuing all possible
Africans are aged that any hard-won gains fall
short of preparing for tomorrow’s
means – including debt relief – to
help finance the quality education
under 15. School opportunities and risks.
After the Covid pandemic,
that African children need. For
African governments, smarter

funding is the key millions of children, adolescents

and youth were out of school across
spending is also imperative. Without
it, development will stagnate when

to their futures sub-Saharan Africa. Only one in

five children achieve the minimum
Africa should be racing ahead.
Africa is the world’s youngest
proficiency level in reading by the and fastest-growing continent. It
end of primary education. Girls are currently accounts for 14% of the
By Nana Akufo-Addo particularly disadvantaged in the world’s working-age population.
and Jakaya Kikwete only region in the world not to have That is set to rise to 42% by the end
achieved gender parity in enrolment of the century.

T
he African Union (AU) is at any level in the education system, Today, 40% of Africans are under
marking 2024 as its first with one in three girls married 15. Another 100 million children By the
Year of Education. This before they turn 18. This trend, will be born here by 2050. With
could not have come while troubling, is not irreversible. education, young Africans can fuel end of the
at a better time. Commitment To build the Africa we want, we a powerhouse. Yet, of the 1 million century,
to education has marked the must finance quality education that Africans entering the labour market
continent’s progress since the equips children with the knowledge every month, fewer than 25% find a Africa will
1960s era of independence. Now and skills to succeed, and to secure a job in the formal economy. account
more than ever, this resolve must peaceful and prosperous future. Since the Global Education
transform Africa into the world’s National budgets remain the Summit in 2021, 21 African heads of for 42% of
powerhouse for the 21st century. principal source of education state have signed the Declaration on the world’s
In 60 years Africa has made funding, but these often struggle Education Financing that demands
considerable progress in education, to cover essentials such as teacher exemplary levels of investment. The working
with more children finishing school. training, salaries and books. AU year of education can re-energise population
Primary school completion rates Since 2020, education budgets in members in committing to adequate
across the region between 2000 and nearly half of low-income countries domestic financing.
2022 rose from 52% to 67%. High diminished by an average of 14%. Multilateralism is essential to
school dropout rates slowed too, More than 20%of total spending finance transformative education,
with 50% of pupils completing lower went to servicing debt. which is why we support multi-
stakeholder collaborations such  Students at a
as the Global Partnership for school in Accra,
Education (GPE). Over 20 years, Ghana: another
GPE has contributed $6bn to 100 million
support education funding in children will be
sub-Saharan Africa. born in Africa
Today, African influence is by 2050
asserting itself globally – the AU OLIVIER ASSELIN/ALAMY
has a seat at the G20. This influence
can expand with its growing young
population if matched with a quality
education that unlocks the potential
of every girl and boy.
Nelson Mandela recognised the
foundational importance of learning
when he said: “It is not beyond our
power to create a world in which
all children have access to a good
education. Those who do not believe
this have small imaginations.”
NANA AKUFO-ADDO IS THE PRESIDENT
OF GHANA; JAKAYA KIKWETE IS THE
FORMER PRESIDENT OF TANZANIA

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 In-depth
t reporting and
n analysis
ana
naly
lysi
lysiis
sis

ENVIRONMENT
Is Argentina
losing its taste
for beef?
Page 24 

I S R A E L / PA L E S T I N E

Peace talks
A
closed-door meeting of spy for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, ▲ Tents set up
chiefs, military officials and according to a Reuters source. by Palestinians
diplomats late last week – In an interview on NBC’s Late Night who fled south in

raise hopes backed up by comments by

US president Joe Biden on Monday –
renewed hopes of a ceasefire deal amid
with Seth Meyers, Biden also said Israel
would be willing to temporarily halt its
war if a deal is reached to release some
search of safety
in Rafah, Gaza.
The area is under
as time fierce debates at the United Nations,
but observers warned that time was
of the hostages. “Ramadan’s coming
up and there has been an agreement by
Israeli attack amid
reports of famine

runs down running out to prevent a Israeli offen-

sive on Gaza’s southernmost city.
During a visit to New York, Biden
the Israelis that they would not engage
in activities during Ramadan as well,
in order to give us time to get all the
and dwindling
supplies of aid
ABED ZAGOUT/ANADOLU/

for Rafah told reporters that he believed a new,

temporary ceasefire in Gaza was pos-
hostages out,” Biden said.
His appearance came hours before
GETTY

sible by 4 March, as Hamas was report- details of a draft proposal from truce
edly considering a draft agreement talks in Paris were published by
By Ruth Michaelson and for a 40-day pause in fighting and the Reuters, citing a senior source close to
Continued 
Julian Borger NEW YORK exchange of dozens of Israeli hostages the discussions. The plans reportedly
16 Spotlight
Middle East
included a 40-day pause in all military held by Israel, media reports suggest,
operations as well as the exchange of according to Agence France-Presse.
Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hos- The secretive talks in Paris involved
tages at a ratio of 10 to one. David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mos-
Under the ceasefire terms, hospi- sad intelligence service, conducting
tals and bakeries in Gaza would be separate meetings with Egyptian spy
repaired, 500 aid trucks would enter chief Abbas Kamel, head of the CIA
the strip each day and thousands of William Burns and Qatari prime minis-
tents and caravans would be delivered ter Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrah-
to house the displaced. The draft also man bin Jassim Al Thani.
reportedly stated Hamas would free Negotiators discussed a pause in
40 Israeli hostages including women, fighting along with the release of the
children under 19, people over 50 and remaining 136 Israeli hostages. State-
the sick, while Israel would release ments from Israeli officials that at
about 400 Palestinian prisoners and least 31 of the hostages are dead and
would not re-arrest them. It would also the threat from a minister in the war
reportedly allow the gradual return of cabinet of a ground offensive in Rafah – A Hamas representative told the ▲ Friends and
displaced civilians to northern Gaza, where an estimated 1.5 million people Observer the Palestinian side feels it relatives of the
except men of military age. are sheltering – by the imminent has “nothing left to lose” due to the Israeli hostages
Over the weekend, Israel’s war cabi- Muslim holy month of Ramadan if no destruction in Gaza, as the death toll held by Hamas at
net approved the broad terms of a deal agreement was reached had increased approaches 30,000. They are confi- a rally in Tel Aviv
to pause fighting for several weeks in the pressure for negotiators. dent that the armed wing can continue OHAD ZWIGENBERG/AP

exchange for the release of hostages Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace fighting, they added.
held in Gaza. In a protracted bid to negotiator, said Israel was “keeping The group has sought a prisoner
bring about a truce, Egypt, Qatar, the the Americans warm, and not wanting swap of 500 Palestinian prisoners for
United States, France and others have to be blamed for the talks collapsing”. every Israeli soldier held in Gaza, they
acted as go-betweens for Israel and US negotiators, he said, were said. Its broader demands included
Hamas, with negotiations ongoing. A attempting to drive progress over an immediate ceasefire, the complete
deal could include the release of sev- details within the negotiations despite withdrawal of Israeli troops and
eral hundred Palestinian detainees major disagreements on substantive humanitarian aid to the north.
issues such as a permanent ceasefire. As peace talks were being held in
‘There is a hope that “There is apparently a hope in the Paris, diplomatic negotiations took
talks that this time Hamas will change place at the UN in New York. Last week,
Hamas will change its its position as it’s now feeling a degree the US vetoed a security ceasefire reso-
position as it is feeling of pressure it hasn’t previously, but
there’s nothing to suggest that’s the
lution in the UN security council for the
third time, but that did not kill the mat-
more pressure’ case,” he said. ter. The US circulated an alternative

1.5
Million people
estimated to be
sheltering in
Rafah, southern
Gaza, which is
under threat
from a potential
Israeli ground
offensive

 Children in a
building in Rafah
destroyed by
Israeli airstrikes
REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
 Opinion p45 
17

calling for a temporary ceasefire “as PA L E S T I N I A N “The moment you think things
soon as practicable” and a block on TER R ITOR IES aren’t going to get worse, they some-
any Israeli attack on Rafah. That reso- how manage to, consistently.”
lution has been discussed behind the After a particularly deadly night in
scenes but it is not clear whether it will
be introduced formally. Arab states are
undecided on its merits and Russia and
No safe place mid-February, when Israeli forces con-
ducted a rare operation to rescue two
hostages and airstrikes killed at least
China are expected to block it as it falls
short of an immediate ceasefire.
One family’s 67 in Rafah, Shahed decided enough
was enough.
The UK abstained last Tuesday,
sparing the US from isolation in the attempt to She holds an Irish passport and
both her parents have Irish visas as
council. The UK call for an immedi- she is their sole carer. But the Israeli
ate suspension of hostilities to allow
for negotiations on a sustainable
flee Rafah authorities have declined to add her
father and mother to a list compiled
ceasefire, was closer to other council by the Egyptian authorities of people
members than to the US stance, that By Ruth Michaelson and Faisal Ali approved to pass through the Rafah
a ceasefire could only be negotiated crossing out of Gaza.

T
by the parties, not from the outside. he view from the window of ‘Every “I thought about the border and I
Despite Biden’s demands to Isra- the Almodallals’ kitchen in just deeply wanted to be safe,” Shahed
el’s prime minister, Benjamin Netan- Rafah is nothing but rubble. minute in said. “I could barely believe I’d man-
yahu, that Israel should not conduct Piles of debris that used to Gaza it feels aged to stay alive. We made our way to
a ground invasion of Rafah without be their neighbours’ homes surround impossible the border, and even that wasn’t easy,
a plan to protect civilians, US offi- them in the al-Zuhour neighbourhood, there were bombardments and explo-
cials see no signs of a plan for Gazans gaping holes ripped the remains of to live, it’s sions everywhere.”
displaced multiple times by military walls, leaving only mounds of broken like a fresh She and her parents made it
operations. They do not expect any glass and concrete that crack in the through the Palestinian border, but at
Israeli plan to come close to US require- silent air when people tread on them.
battle to the Egyptian crossing they were told
ments, let alone the standards set by “We were targeted three times: To survive’ “it is an impossible mission to accept
international humanitarian agencies. the right of our house, the left, and your father”. Walid’s health is fail-
US officials say the military pres- behind it. Now we joke that we’re Shahed ing, which makes leaving him behind
ence in the Gaza is at its lowest since next,” said Shahed Almodallal, a Almodallal unimaginable. The Almodallals waited
the launch of the ground offensive 21-year-old student who has spent the all day at the crossing to see if things
at the end of October. Despite this, last four months living at her family could change.
heavy bombardments of the enclave, home in Rafah, unable to return to her “It was just two steps to a safer
including Rafah, have continued amid apartment or her university in Gaza place,” Shahed said.
reports of famine and dwindling aid City after both were destroyed in After waiting until 10pm, Shahed
supplies. Two UN agencies declared Israel’s bombardment of the territory. said the family made a terrifying jour-
last week that they are unable to Her mother, Naima, often refuses ney back to their home amid airstrikes.
deliver aid to northern Gaza as des- to look out the window, appalled by “We didn’t know if we’d live to the
perate people have removed aid from the destruction, and the family have next morning. Every minute here in
trucks, amid attacks on aid convoys. taken to sleeping at a relative’s house Gaza it feels impossible to live, it’s like
The UN said “catastrophic levels in fear of more strikes. a fresh battle to survive. We are still
of acute food insecurity” were inten- Israeli forces have escalated strikes waiting, and this has thrown us into
sifying across Gaza while Save the on Rafah, where an estimated 1.5 mil- the unknown.”
Children reported that families were lion people are sheltering, as officials, Israeli authorities and Ireland’s
forced to “forage for scraps or food left including the prime minister, Benja- Department of Foreign Affairs have
by rats and eating leaves out of des- min Netanyahu, threaten a ground been contacted for comment.
peration to survive”. invasion of the area in the coming FAISAL ALI IS A GUARDIAN
Biden administration officials have weeks. Families such as the Almodal- MULTIMEDIA JOURNALIST
voiced frustration over Israel’s patchy lals say they are trapped, with nowhere
cooperation on humanitarian efforts, else to go, despite months of desperate  The Almodallals’
and Netanyahu’s promotion of a post- work by Shahed – an Irish citizen – to living room,
conflict plan for Gaza that excludes the try to evacuate along with her parents. damaged by
Palestinian Authority. There is no sign They have been faced with a terrible airstrikes
of Biden using the most powerful form choice, to split up and leave behind SHAHED ALMODALLAL

of leverage available to him, namely her father, Walid, who is ill, or to stay
threats to halt the flow of arms and together and risk death.
ammunition. Observer William Schomburg, the head of
RUTH MICHAELSON IS A JOURNALIST the International Committee of the
COVERING THE MIDDLE EAST; JULIAN Red Cross delegation in Gaza, said the
BORGER IS THE GUARDIAN AND situation in Rafah was one of “despera-
OBSERVER’S WORLD AFFAIRS EDITOR
tion, fear and a lot of anxiety – a huge
Léonie Chao-Fong and Maanvi Singh amount of uncertainty as to what’s
also contributed to this report going to happen next”.

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

18 Spotlight
Europe

L
UNITED ast week had started well in Essex of the Tory MP David Amess claimed that “Islamist cranks and
KINGDOM for the Palestine Solidarity by an Islamist extremist remains leftwing extremists” had taken con-
Campaign (PSC). Keir Starmer fresh in their minds. But last week the trol of the UK’s streets. It was all part
had finally backed calls for an accusations against pro-Palestinian of a leftwing agenda, she said. The
By Toby Helm immediate ceasefire between Israel campaigners widened. Conservative MP Lee Anderson said
and James and Hamas and the Prince of Wales had The front page of Saturday’s Times Islamists had “got control of London”
Tapper raised his concerns about the appalling reported that the PSC had been trying and its Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, had
loss of life in Gaza. to sabotage British democracy, no less, “given our capital city away to his
But last Saturday, as more than and force parliament into lockdown. mates”, comments that saw him sus-
200 people gathered at Conway Hall Goldie, and others with her, seemed pended from his party last weekend.
in London for the campaign’s annual anything but extreme in their meth- Many of those heading towards
general meeting, optimism that the ods or views as they went about their Conway Hall wore the keffiyeh, the
Middle East debate might be turning business. She told how she and friends black-and-white scarf that has come
the PSC’s way had been superseded by had handed out leaflets for months to symbolise the Palestinian cause.
puzzlement – and some anger. in Carlisle town centre most Saturday But Roshan Pedder, from Surrey,
“It’s not extremist to be against lunchtimes. The public, she insisted, proudly showed off her African
the war,” said Fiona Goldie, an activ- was “overwhelmingly sympathetic”. National Congress scarf, as a symbol
ist from Carlisle in Cumbria. “It’s the “The feedback we get from some- of hope, and to demonstrate that those
norm to want peace.” where as non-political as Carlisle is at the meeting were from a long and
She was referring to suggestions that people are outraged. They want wide tradition of peace campaigning.
that pro-Palestinian activists like her our government to do something.” Pedder rejected the idea that
▼ Protesters had been in some way responsible for But with feelings over events in demonstrating outside an MP’s office
opposite the
the chaotic scenes inside the House of Gaza running high, and as the UK was wrong. “I don’t see how it can be
House of
Commons on Wednesday and Thurs- heads towards a general election, intimidating as long as it’s peaceful,”
Commons on day last week, during a debate on the arguments over Israel and Gaza have she said. “Isn’t talking to our MPs what
the day of the Middle East conflict. become entangled with domestic we’re supposed to do in a democracy?”
debate on a For months MPs have reported Westminster politics and the entire Last Thursday morning, British
ceasefire in Gaza
feeling intimidated by pro-Palestinian debate has turned toxic. democracy was very much in the
ISABEL INFANTES/
activists in their constituencies and Last Friday, the twice-sacked Tory frame. After 24 hours of furious and
REUTERS online. The murder in October 2021 home secretary, Suella Braverman, unseemly argument over the handling

The day Britain’s

democracy failed
As MPs gathered to debate a ceasefire in
Gaza, the Commons descended into chaos,
with accusations of bad faith and bias

24
 ▼ Speaker Lindsay Hoyle apologised 19
twice to the House in 12 hours
MARIA UNGER/ REUTERS

of a debate in the House of Commons all it was worth, saying the episode
on a Gaza ceasefire by the speaker, Sir had shown the contempt with which
Lindsay Hoyle, the veteran Labour MP Westminster regarded Scotland’s rul-
Barry Sheerman rose to declare the ing party and the third biggest party in
behaviour of his colleagues a disgrace. the Commons.
Vicious political point-scoring Last Thursday, a tearful and clearly
had drowned out serious debate on sleep-deprived Hoyle made his second
events in Gaza, and whether calling apology to the house in 12 hours for
for a ceasefire was now the best way what he admitted had been a serious
forward. “It was shameful that the BBC error of judgment. “I apologise to the
had to blank off the proceedings at one House. I made a mistake: we do make
stage because of the crude and vile lan- mistakes and I own up to mine.” But
guage that was coming from one end of he made clear that he had had in mind
the chamber,” said Sheerman. the interests of all MPs, and he had felt
A senior Tory MP roamed the those would be best served by allowing
Commons corridors furious at the way two amendments, Tory and Labour, as
the house had failed to conduct a civi- Motion for debate If no Labour amendment had been well the SNP motion, so all the main
lised, serious and dignified discussions The SNP’s allowed, and Starmer had been left to party positions could be laid out.
on the Israel-Gaza question, of all issues. motion was for whip his MPs to abstain, this could It had been for the very best of
“It is a fucking disgrace. We are an immediate, have seen mass resignations, as hap- reasons, he said, to help, not fan the
now in a row with ourselves, debat- unconditional pened with the likes of Jess Phillips flames. “I will defend every member
ing whether to kick out the speaker of ceasefire, with in a similar situation last November. in this House. Every member matters
the House of Commons, rather than the onus on Israel, “The situation was really tense to me in this House,” he said. “As has
the issue at hand, which could not be and it mentioned at the top,” said one Labour source. been said, I never, ever want to go
more serious,” they said. “It is the most what it called “There were fears that at least two through a situation where I pick up
depressing day of my life as an MP.” the Netanyahu shadow cabinet members would have a phone to find a friend, on whatever
government’s resigned. There would have been a big side, has been murdered by a terrorist.

H
oyle’s troubles had begun “collective rebellion that would have seriously I also do not want another [terrorist]
the previous morning, punishment” damaged Keir.” attack on this House – I was in the chair
when he decided to go of Palestinians. There were reports, denied by on that day … The details of the things
against the advice of his Labour’s Labour and Hoyle, that team Starmer that have been brought to me are abso-
amendment,
own officials and select a Labour had made clear to the speaker that the lutely frightening for all members of
meanwhile, was
amendment, as well as a government party would not back his re-election the House, on all sides. I have a duty
for an “immediate,
one, to an SNP opposition day motion unless he called the Labour amend- of care and I say that. If my mistake is
humanitarian
calling for a ceasefire between Israel ment. What ensued was undignified looking after members, I am guilty.”
ceasefire”
and Hamas. Normally only the gov- chaos as Hoyle felt the full force of Although more than 70 MPs have
observed by all.
ernment can put down an amendment Tory and SNP fury. Both parties with signed a motion expressing no confi-
It condemned
to an opposition day motion but Hoyle an interest in exposing Labour splits. dence in the speaker, their efforts to
the terrorism of
had gone out on a limb. Hamas, while also When the clerk of the house, Tom oust him seem to have stalled, at least
Hoyle, who used to sit on the Labour demanding the Goldsmith, wrote an official note for for now. Plenty of rightwing Tories
benches before becoming speaker, had release of hostages, publication to record that the speaker have swung behind him, including the
left himself open to accusations of and calling on had gone against convention and his veteran Sir Edward Leigh, who said it
bias, and of helping Starmer avoid the Israel to stop its advice, the Tories withdrew from was time to move on and have another
damaging prospect of many of his pro- bombardment. the process and the votes. Labour’s debate as soon as possible on a govern-
ceasefire MPs rebelling by voting for The government amendment passed and the SNP ment motion, with all amendments
the SNP motion calling for an uncon- amendment put motion was never voted on. Immedi- considered “to restore our reputation
ditional and immediate ceasefire. the emphasis on a ately SNP MPs suggested that Hoyle’s as soon as possible”.
Many Labour MPs felt under humanitarian pause position was untenable. Back at Conway Hall , Pedder
pressure from constituents to show to the conflict, Last Wednesday night there were wondered how ordinary people could
they backed a ceasefire. If Labour’s own working towards rowdy scenes, worse than any many get their voices through. Referring to
amendment wasn’t selected, backing a ceasefire. could recall. Penny Mordaunt, leader the behaviour of the main parties and
the SNP motion would have been the of the House of Commons, desper- their MPs, she said: “These were peo-
only way to answer those voters. One ate to score political points, accused ple applying archaic rules that nobody
senior Labour MP said: “Everyone the speaker of having “hijacked” the understood. We have a system that
knew that the SNP had chosen the issue debate and “undermined the confi- does not allow the public voice to enter
of a Gaza ceasefire for their opposition dence of the Commons”. parliament. MPs were looking after
day solely to expose splits on our side. The SNP milked the occasion for their vote banks instead of looking at
It was entirely cynical on their part. I the genocide – there’s no other word
think Hoyle was right to do what he ‘MPs were looking for it – in Gaza, and the injustices over
did. Opposition days are supposed to the last 75 years that the Palestinian
be occasions when the opposition par- after their vote banks people have suffered.” Observer
ties criticise the government. This SNP
opposition day was different. It was
instead of looking at TOBY HELM IS THE OBSERVER’S
POLITICAL EDITOR; JAMES TAPPER IS
designed to attack Labour.” the genocide in Gaza’ A LONDON-BASED JOURNALIST

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

20 Eyewitness
China

 Blazing saddles
Shehuo folk artists take part in
performances at a fair held in
Xunxian county, Henan province.
Shehuo is a traditional, carnival-
like celebration, usually held on
the 15th day of the lunar year. It
features performances such as
dragon and lion dances, opera
and other regional variations

XINHUA/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
21
22 Spotlight
Europe
shortages caused by conscription have
pushed up prices. The official inflation
rate has almost halved, from 11.5% last
autumn to 6.6% in January, but this
month the central bank maintained its
tough stance to prevent a resurgence,
pegging interest rates at 16%.
There are a number of reasons for
Russia’s resilience. Its economy was
10 times the size of Ukraine’s when the
war started. Its physical infrastructure
has not been flattened. A huge increase
in the defence budget has boosted
growth. Putin has been preparing for
the conflict for years.
Tim Ash, a Russia expert at the
Chatham House thinktank, said: “Only
Putin knew there was going to be a war
and he had prepared for it. But it’s clear
that sanctions are removing some of
the financial buffers and stockpiles.”
Mark Harrison, an economic histo-
rian and emeritus professor at Warwick
University, said Putin had ramped up
defence spending from 3% of national
income to nearer 7%, and it could hit
RUSSI A / U K R A I N E 10% over the next year. “But Putin
doesn’t know any more than we do
where the tolerance of the Russian peo-
ple lies. The process of feeling for those

As Ukraine burns,
no fighting are still going concerns. limits is different for an authoritarian
Inflation has come down from a peak leader because he knows the people
of 27% to less than 5%. won’t tell him, or at least not until it is

Russia is thriving Even so, Ukraine’s economy

remains on a knife-edge. It needs more
than $40bn of western aid this year to
too late for his leadership to survive.”
Javorcik said it was unrealistic to
expect the first wave of sanctions to
balance the books and keep the mili- bring the economy to its knees.
Kyiv needs $500bn to get the country back on tary equipped. The cost of piecing the “Sanctions are working,” Javorcik
country back together is $486bn over said. “But they are working slowly.”
its feet. But Moscow has so little debt that even
10 years – up from $411bn a year ago. Being cut off from western technology,
sanctions have not done much damage … yet By contrast, Russia has emerged capital, knowledge and management
from two years of war relatively techniques will lead to weaker produc-
By Larry Elliott and Phillip Inman unscathed. Soon after the war started, tivity growth, the impact of which will
the International Monetary Fund said be amplified by the loss of human capi-

F
actories destroyed. Roads it expected the Russian economy to tal caused by skilled workers leaving.
blown to pieces. Power suffer a severe two-year recession. The scale of the damage to Ukraine
plants put out of action. Steel The economy did shrink in 2022, coupled with the failure of sanctions
exports decimated. A flood of but only by just over 2%, and in 2023 it to stop Putin have forced the west to
refugees out of the country. Ukraine grew – according to IMF estimates – by
– the poorest country in Europe – has ▲ A stall does 3%. There is no hard evidence the war
paid a heavy economic price for a two- brisk business effort has forced ordinary Russians to
year war against Russia waged almost at a Moscow tighten their belts. Generous welfare
entirely on its own soil. shopping centre benefits have underpinned incomes
More than 7 million people – about last summer while a tight labour market has sup-
a fifth of the population – have been NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/ ported strong wage growth. Consumer
AFP/GETTY
plunged into poverty. Fifteen years spending rose 6% last year.
of human development have been Russia entered the war in a strong
lost. In the first year of the war, the A dairy factory financial position. Vladimir Putin
economy contracted by 30%. in the Poltava planned for an invasion with a high
Yet it could have been even worse. region of Ukraine oil price that filled his exchequer with
Beata Javorcik, chief economist at the after being hit by funds and with a debt-to-GDP ratio
European Bank for Reconstruction and a Russian rocket down about 20%. Last year, Russia’s
Development, said 90% of businesses ANDRIY YERMAK/OFFICE
OF THE PRESIDENT OF
budget deficit was limited to just over
in the areas of Ukraine where there was UKRAINE/EPA 1% of GDP. On the downside, labour

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

Opinion p48
23

consider what to do next. One option Now all that is history. On

is to tighten sanctions. Harrison draws Monday, the Hungarian parliament
a comparison with the western front voted in favour of the Scandinavian
in 1918 and the collapse of German country’s membership.
morale after the allies tightened their What will this mean for Sweden
blockade, preventing vital supplies and the wider world?
reaching civilians and the army. For Nato, it gives the alliance
“Russia is not at this stage yet, but access to Sweden’s territory and
if sanctions are tightened, who knows turns the Baltic into a “Nato sea”
when war-weariness takes hold,” he surrounded by member countries.
said. “A war plan involves your enemy Emma Rosengren, a research
running out of options as it runs out of fellow at the Swedish Institute of
resources. And in the interests of the International Affairs, said Sweden
west, that needs to be Russia.” would probably serve as a logistical
Ash said there were signs of sanc- hub for defence planning.
tions becoming tougher. Big lenders A N A LY S I S ▲ Prime minister And for the historically neutral
in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are SWEDEN Ulf Kristersson country, it marks a dramatic change
reported to have begun closing bank hailed a ‘historic in national identity. In January,
accounts of Russian nationals. Some day’ for Sweden Kristersson warned Swedes –
Chinese banks and Turkish lenders
‘Long farewell’ accustomed to seeing themselves as
JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/
GETTY
have reacted to US threats in December a peaceful nation – to prepare for the
to cut off access to foreign banks doing possibility of war, and the country
business with companies that support
Russia’s defence industry.
Nato accession restarted compulsory civic duty, a
form of national service that was
There is pressure on the G7 to seize
Russia’s frozen reserves and use marks change dismantled after the cold war.
For Social Democrat voters,
them to raise debt to rebuild Ukraine. the move will mark a particularly
Almost $300bn of Russian assets have
been immobilised since the invasion.
of national striking departure. The idea of Nato
membership was long considered
The UK and the US have warmed
to this idea but EU members of the G7 identity unthinkable in the party, with a
former defence minister, Peter
warn there is no basis in international Hultqvist, declaring in 2021 that he
law for seizing the assets of a foreign By Miranda Bryant STOCKHOLM could “guarantee” he would never
country. Since more than half the Rus- participate in a process to join Nato.
sian reserves are held in the EU, there Just a few short months Only months later, as Russia’s
are fears seizure could lead to inves- ago, Sweden’s Nato invasion led to a dramatic shift in
tors dumping the euro on currency membership seemed both public opinion and among
markets. A compromise could be to a very long way from political parties, the leader of the
seize the interest on these reserves, being a done deal. Having submitted Social Democrats, then prime
an estimated $15bn. its application to join in May 2022 minister Magdalena Andersson,
Ukraine faces an immediate cash after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, embarked on the process of
crisis and needs financial help to fill a it seemed at times as though Sweden’s membership.
$39bn black hole in its budget. Spend- Stockholm might be left hanging Magnus Hjort, the director
ing this year is expected to be just over interminably. While Finland, which general of Sweden’s psychological
$81bn while revenues are forecast to had applied to join the alliance at defence agency, has described
be about $43bn. The defence budget the same time, became a member at it as a historic moment for the
alone comes to just under $42bn. record speed last April, Sweden got country. Robert Dalsjö, a director
The EU and the IMF have continued stuck in a diplomatic quagmire. of research at the Swedish Defence
financial support but US aid is being Last year a series of Qur’an Research Agency, said the step
blocked by Congress. burnings in Sweden inflamed completed Sweden’s “long farewell
“It would be extremely unfortunate ties with Turkey. As recently Russia’s to neutrality” – a process that began
if a lack of money meant Ukraine’s mac- as September, Viktor Orbán’s invasion at the end of the cold war when it
roeconomic stability, which has been government was embroiled in a dropped the label and applied for
achieved during wartime, were thrown public war of words with Sweden led to a EU membership.
out of the window,” Javorcik said. over criticism of Hungary’s shift in For Kristersson, the moderate
Without further funding, Ukraine democracy and teaching in Swedish leader of Sweden’s centre-right ruling
would become a failed state, he said. schools. Late in January, after
public coalition, it puts him more forcefully
“And that would affect European coun- Turkey’s parliament gave Sweden opinion on the world stage. And removing
tries through a potential second refu- the green light, the Hungarian prime and among Nato from the to-do list leaves more
gee wave and instability on its eastern minister pushed for negotiations time for domestic issues.
border.” Observer in a public letter to his Swedish
political
MIRANDA BRYANT IS THE GUARDIAN’S
LARRY ELLIOTT IS THE GUARDIAN’S
counterpart, Ulf Kristersson. parties NORDIC CORRESPONDENT
ECONOMICS EDITOR; PHILIP INMAN IS
THE OBSERVER’S ECONOMICS EDITOR

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

24 Spotlight
Environment
only 45 million people. Exports of beef
and derivatives accounted for nearly
$3bn in 2020, making Argentina the
world’s fifth highest exporter.
However, a quiet revolution is
under way. Consumption of beef has
been falling in Argentina since the
1970s, and the decline has accelerated.
Between 2018 and 2021, the average
amount of beef eaten annually slipped
from 57.8kg to 47.8kg per person – the
lowest since the 1920s. This neverthe-
less represents much higher consump-
tion than the 18kg a year eaten by the
average Briton or 26kg in the US.
A RGEN TINA ▲ A chef cooks This change in the Argentinian diet
meat on a parrilla is partly down to a rise in the number of
typical of a vegetarians and the increasing popu-
steakhouse larity of other meats such as chicken,

Is a behemoth as well as harsh economic conditions

JON G FULLER /VWPICS/
ALAMY
and government health campaigns.
Malena Blanco, who lives near Mar
of global beef del Plata, a seaside city 400km from
the capital, became vegetarian when

losing its taste she was 11 and turned vegan in her 20s,
motivated by a TV documentary about
meat production.
for meat? “The documentary featured a
slaughterhouse, and I realised what
I was consuming was an animal – and
By Sam Meadows BUENOS AIRES I loved animals,” said Blanco, who
co-founded Voicot, the organisation

T
he billboard in Buenos Aires behind the billboards, with Fede Cal- I T A LY
shows a piglet standing for- legari, in 2013. Blanco, 44, is one of
lornly by a butcher’s fridge. High steaks the 12% of Argentinians who are veg-
“Dónde están mis amigos?” A $3bn meat etarian or vegan, according to a 2022

Flour power
– “where are my friends?” – it reads. survey – an increase of three percent-
industry
Such adverts have sprung up around age points on the year before.
Argentina’s capital as part of a con- Scores of vegetarian restaurants
certed campaign by the animal rights
groups Animal Save Movement and
Voicot, an Argentinian organisation,
53m
Number of cattle
are springing up across Buenos Aires.
Restaurants such as Marti and Buenos
Aires Verde serve entirely vegetarian
Insects on
to promote vegan diets.
In Argentina, eating meat – and
in particular a steak – prepared on
in the country of
45 million people
menus, while even steakhouses now
usually have a few non-meat options.
One of these new vegetarian
the nation’s
the asado, or barbecue, is a cher-
ished national tradition. The typical
Argentinian restaurant is a parrilla – a
100.8
Amount in kilos
restaurants – Chuí, a trendy bar below
railway arches in a former welding
workshop – has recently been added to
menu at last
steakhouse that can serve a bewilder- of beef eaten per the Michelin Guide. Perhaps in a sign
ing variety of grilled meat, with some head in 1956, of how vegetarianism continues to be Italy’s first facility breeding
menus offering beef 30 different ways. the peak year for viewed in Argentina, when it opened,
crickets for human food hopes
Between 1914 and 2021, the average consumption the owners decided not to advertise
annual figure for beef consumption the lack of meat on the menu. to challenge the country’s
in Argentina was 73.4kg per person.
This figure takes in the peak year, 1956, 12% Nicolas Kasakoff, the vegetarian
co-owner of Chuí, said: “ Usually
deep-rooted preconceptions
when the average Argentinian ate an Portion of the [Argentinians] associate veganism By Angela Giuffrida MONTECASSIANO
astounding 100.8kg of beef, as well as population and vegetarianism with health. We
the lowest year, 1920, when the figure who identify as wanted to get away from that. Across
was still a hefty 46.9kg. vegetarian or Latin America, [vegetarianism] is still
Unsurprisingly, beef remains big vegan seen as a bit odd. But since we opened,
business in Argentina. The country’s another four or five vegetarian restau-
vast pampas grasslands are famous for rants have opened. It’s a new wave.”
the herds reared there. The country SAM MEADOWS IS A REPORTER BASED IN
boasts 53 million cattle in a country of SOUTH AMERICA

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 25

after 30 days of life, are frozen before

being dispatched to an outside com-
pany, where they are freeze-dried and
ground into flour.
Like all insect powder, the cricket
flour produced by Nutrinsect has to
be combined with traditional flour for
use in an array of food items, including
pasta, pizza, cakes and biscuits.
Among the grievances of farmers
currently protesting across Europe is
the emergence of insect-based food.
“We are actually in solidarity with
the farmers, and not against them,
because without traditional flour
there would be no cricket flour,” said
Cianni. “It is an ingredient filled with
all nine essential amino acids, miner-
als and vitamins that is integrated with
other ingredients … crickets are bred
without any use of medicine, and no
antibiotics. It is a true superfood.”
On top of that, the product is
beneficial for the environment. Produc-
ing one kilo of cricket flour requires five
litres of water compared with 15,000
litres needed to produce a kilo of meat.
As for the space required, Nutrinsect’s
plant is 1,000 square metres. “Whereas
to make 200kg of meat you need
100,000 square metres,” said Cianni.
Since being awarded the licence,

‘G
o on, try it, it is good,” said ▲ Crickets at the the EU approved the sale of crickets, Nutrinsect’s cricket flour has been
José Francesco Cianni as Nutrinsect factory. locusts and darkling beetle larvae for bought by food-supply companies,
he handed over a packet Europe’s edible human consumption in early 2023, while some chefs are testing its poten-
containing a light brown insects market is there was a flurry of permit requests tial for use in broths. But it will be some
powder with a crispy texture. forecast to reach from Italian companies keen to take time before the cricket flour – which
Sitting in his office in a pristine $2.9bn by 2030 a slice of the edible insects market, comes at a pricey €60 a kilo – reaches
warehouse-like building, down the which in Europe is forecast to reach Italian supermarket shelves. “The aim
corridor from five rooms where mil- ▼ Cricket flour €2.7bn ($2.9bn) by 2030. is to achieve large-scale production,
lions of crickets are being bred, Cianni produced by By late last year even the Italian which will lower the price,” said Cianni.
is in jubilant spirits. Nutrinsect sells government appeared to recognise In the meantime, among Nutrinsect’s
In January, Nutrinsect, the startup for around €60 the potential and relented its ban. biggest challenges is changing the
founded by Cianni and his brother in a kilo Nutrinsect’s venture began in 2019 misconception about insect-based
Italy’s central Marche region, was the ROBERTO SALOMONE with the import of 10,000 crickets food. Cianni said he has been hit with a
country’s first company to be given from Germany to the plant in Monte- deluge of emails from people saying he
a licence to produce and sell insect- cassiano. Cianni is proud to say that was making food with “dirty” insects
based food for human consumption. not a single cricket has been imported that “come from far away”.
The licence was a just reward for since. “These are their descendants “In reality, the crickets are bred in
the years the siblings had spent pursu- – thousands and thousands are born an aseptic environment and the flour
ing their conviction that protein- and each day,” he said, pointing to a tray is 100% Italian,” he said.
vitamin-packed crickets were not only teeming with hatched eggs. The crick- A taste of the flour confirmed
good for human health, but could con- ets are raised in plastic containers filled Cianni’s assessment that its flavour is
tribute towards saving the planet. with egg cartons. In one of the rooms similar to “pumpkin seeds, hazelnuts,
“The whole aim is to produce Cianni’s voice is almost drowned out and even a little bit like prawns”.
alternative proteins in a sustainable by the sound of chirping. “These are The one person Cianni still has to
way,” said Cianni, who grew up on a the adult males singing, it’s their call convince is his mother. “I’ve tried
traditional farm in Calabria. to the female to begin mating,” he said. 1,000 times, but it is still ‘no’,” he said.
Nutrinsect’s licence was all the The odd cricket jumps out of their “But that’s OK, especially in a country
more noteworthy given the backdrop container for a saunter along the cor- like Italy, which is so dedicated to food.
of proclamations by Giorgia Meloni’s ridor, but the majority stay put. “Yes, But we hope that over time, people will
rightwing government that Italy’s the cricket does jump, but it is more gradually change their minds.”
treasured cuisine must be sheltered of a burrowing animal,” said Cianni. ANGELA GIUFFRIDA IS THE GUARDIAN’S
from the menace of insects. But after The insects are heat-treated and, ROME CORRESPONDENT

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

26 Spotlight
Global

G
DEMOCR AC Y ail Huntley recognised the
gravelly voice of Joe Biden
as soon as she picked up the
phone one day in January.

The threat of AI in
Huntley, a 73-year-old resident of New
Hampshire, was planning to vote for
the president in the state’s upcoming
primary, so she was confused that a

a year of elections pre-recorded message from him was

urging her not to.
“It’s important that you save your
vote for the November election,” the
Governments and tech f irms are at odds over how best to police message said. “Voting this Tuesday
only enables the Republicans in their
an information ecosystem at serious risk of disruption
quest to elect Donald Trump again.”
Huntley quickly realised the call
By Jonathan Yerushalmy was fake, but assumed Biden’s words
had been taken out of context. She was
shocked when it became clear that the
recording was AI-generated. Within
weeks the US had outlawed robocalls
that use voices generated by AI.
The Biden deepfake was the first
major test for governments, tech
companies and civil society groups,
who are all locked in heated debate
over how best to police an informa-
tion ecosystem in which anyone
can create photo-realistic images of
candidates, or replicate their voices
with frightening accuracy.
Citizens of dozens of countries –
including the US, India and most likely
the UK – will go to the polls in 2024, and
experts say the democratic process is
at serious risk of being disrupted by
artificial intelligence.
Watchdogs are warning that with
more than 40,000 layoffs at the tech
companies that host and moderate
much of this content, digital media is
uniquely vulnerable to exploitation.

Mission impossible?
For Biden, concerns about the potential
dangerous uses of AI were expedited
after he watched the latest Mission
Impossible movie. Over a weekend at
Camp David, the president viewed the
film, which sees Tom Cruise’s Ethan
Hunt face down a rogue AI.
The deputy White House chief of
staff, Bruce Reed, said that if Biden
MANUEL BALCE CENETA/AP/GUARDIAN DESIGN

hadn’t already been concerned about

what could go wrong with AI, “he saw
plenty more to worry about” after
watching the movie.
Since then, Biden signed an executive
order that requires AI developers to
share safety test results and other
information with the government.
And the US is not alone in taking
action: the EU is close to passing one
of the most comprehensive laws to
 27

regulate AI – however, it won’t come

into effect until 2026.
Katie Harbath – who helped develop
policy at Facebook for 10 years and UK –
now works on trust and safety issues E
Expected
with tech companies – thinks the US by November
m
government’s actions don’t go far Legislative Russia –
enough. Concerns about stifling inno- 15-17 March
vations – especially as China moves Presidential
d
Iran
Ir a –
ahead developing its own AI industry US – 5 November 1 March
– could play into this, she said. Presidential Legislative
Harbath has had a ringside seat and Legislative
to how the information system has
India –
evolved – from the “golden age”
April-May
of social media’s growth, through South Africa – Legislative
the great reckoning that came after Expected by August
the Brexit and Trump votes and the Legislative
subsequent efforts to stay ahead
of disinformation. over how effectively tech companies under the election blackout laws,
Her mantra for 2024 is “panic respon- Campaign trail are regulating AI-created content debunking the recording was almost
sibly”. She said that in the short term, Countries outside the hothouse of the US presi- impossible.
regulating and policing AI-generated highlighted are dential election. The manipulated audio appears to
content will fall to the very companies holding elections have fallen through a loophole in the
that are developing the tools to create it. this year ‘Weapon of mass manipulation’ way Facebook owner Meta polices AI-
“We just don’t know if the companies Despite OpenAI’s ban on using its generated material on its platforms.
are prepared,” said Harbath. “There tools in political campaigning, Reu- Under its community standards, post-
are also newer platforms for whom this ters reported that the products were ing content that has been manipulated
election season is their first real test.” used widely in last month’s election in ways that are “not apparent to an
Last month, major tech companies in Indonesia – to create campaign art, average person” and in which a person
took a big step towards coordinating track social media sentiment, build has been edited to say “words that they
their efforts with the signing of an interactive chatbots and target voters. did not say” is banned. But this applies
agreement to voluntarily adopt “rea- Harbath said it’s an open question only to video.
sonable precautions” to prevent AI as to how proactively newer compa- Pro-Russian candidate Robert
from being used to disrupt democratic nies such as OpenAI can enforce their Fico went on to win the election and
elections around the world. policies outside the US. become prime minister.
Among the signatories are ChatGPT “Every country is a little different,
creator OpenAI, as well as Google, with different laws and cultural norms When will the future be here?
Adobe and Microsoft – all of which … When you have US-focused compa- Despite the dangers, there are some
have launched tools to generate AI- Major players nies it can be hard to realise that the signs that voters are more prepared
created content. Many companies have OpenAI, whose way things work in the US are not how for what’s coming than authorities
also updated their own rules and are powerful Dall-E things work elsewhere.” may think.
software has been
banning the use of their products in Slovakia’s national elections last “Voters are way more savvy than
used to create
political campaigns. Enforcing these year pitted a pro-Russian candidate we give them credit for,” said Harbath.
photo-realistic
bans is another matter. against another who advocated for “They might be overwhelmed but they
images, has said
Midjourney’s CEO, David Holz, has maintaining stronger ties with the understand what’s going on in the
its tool will decline
said the company is close to banning EU. With support for Ukraine’s war information environment.”
requests that
political images, including those of the efforts on the ballot, the vote was For many experts, the major area of
ask for image
leading presidential candidates. Some highlighted by EU officials as poten- concern isn’t the technology that we’re
generation of real
changes appear to have already come people, including tially at risk of interference by Russia already grappling with, but the innova-
into effect. When the Guardian asked candidates. and its “multimillion-euro weapon tions on the other side of the horizon.
Midjourney to generate an image of Midjourney – of mass manipulation”. As the elec- Academics, writing in MIT’s Technol-
Joe Biden and Donald Trump in a box- whose AI image tion approached and a national media ogy Review, said that when it comes
ing ring, the request was denied and generation is blackout began, an audio recording of to how AI may threaten our democ-
flagged as falling foul of the company’s agreed by many the pro-EU candidate, Michal Šimečka, racy, the public conversation “lacks
community standards. to be the most was posted to Facebook. imagination”. The real danger, they
However, when the same prompt powerful and In the recording, Šimečka appeared said, isn’t what we’re already scared of,
was input, but with Biden and Trump accurate – said to discuss plans for how to rig the but what we can’t imagine yet.
replaced by the UK prime minister, users may not election by buying votes from mar- “What are the rocks we’re not
Rishi Sunak, and opposition leader use the product ginalised communities. The audio looking under?” Harbath asked. “New
Keir Starmer, the software gener- for political was fake – and news agency AFP said tech happens, new bad actors appear.
ated a series of images without any campaigns “or to it showed signs of being manipulated There is a constant ebb and flow that
problems. try to influence by using AI. we need to get used to living in.”
The example goes to the heart of the outcome of an However, with media outlets and JONATHAN YERUSHALMY IS GUARDIAN
concerns among many policymakers election”. politicians mandated to stay silent AUSTRALIA’S UK/US SITE EDITOR

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

28 Spotlight
Africa
building in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. An
Emirati consortium is reportedly in
talks for a $22bn deal to acquire land on
Egypt’s north coast, one that Bloom-
berg reported also involves TMG.
The sales are part of Cairo’s efforts
to cope under a growing mountain of
debt. Sisi’s rule has been marked by an
outsize economic role for those close
to his regime, notably Moustafa, while
his citizens suffer amid biting austerity
measures and rising inflation. Egypt
is now the second-largest debtor to
the International Monetary Fund after
 The pyramids Argentina, and is currently in talks to
of Giza seen increase its loan programme.
from the Marriott “This is clearly a country selling
Mena House hotel public assets under duress,” said
in Cairo Kaldas, an analyst with the Tahrir
HEMIS/ALAMY Institute for Middle East Policy.
EGYPT Moustafa is Egypt’s largest real “Egypt’s finances are in a completely
estate developer, whose business unsustainable position.”
empire has witnessed a rebirth since Mena House was built to be a royal
his release from prison in 2017, after hunting lodge before it was converted

‘Fire sale’
President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi par- into a hotel in 1887. The marbled floors
doned him of a murder conviction. His and vaulted ceilings welcomed guests
portfolio includes properties across for visits that demonstrated the former

Historic Egypt’s capital, the crown jewel of

Sisi’s megaprojects, in addition to his
hospitality arm, Icon.
might of Egyptian diplomacy, when
the hotel hosted peace talks between
Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and
hotels put His Talaat Moustafa Group (TMG)
has acquired seven heritage hotels
representatives from Israel in one of
its banquet rooms.

on market as across Egypt, including Mena House.

This includes others that serve as
monuments to Egypt’s recent past,
Luis Monreal, the general manager
of the Geneva-based Aga Khan Trust
for Culture, said he hoped the new

debts mount including the Sofitel Winter Palace in

Luxor, the Old Cataract in Aswan and
owners understood that Egypt’s his-
toric hotels have a value beyond the
the Steigenberger Cecil in Alexandria. financial. “They’re part of the history
International hotel chains continue of Egypt, tourism that contributed to
By Ruth Michaelson to run the hotels, but Icon bought a the integration of Egypt into the wider
majority stake in the Egyptian govern- world,” he said.

A
s dusk fell over the verdant ment company which owned them. ‘This won’t A spokesperson for TMG declined
grounds of the Marriott The Egyptian prime minister, to comment on the hotel sales. Both
Mena House hotel , the Mostafa Madbouly, celebrated the stabilise the the Sofitel and Steigenberger hotel
reflection of the Great Pyra- $800m sale to Moustafa, who lauded economy, chains also declined to comment. A
mid of Giza grew darker. the acquisition for bringing in foreign it just spokesperson for the Marriott hotel
A band played a smooth jazz currency. He added that the sale was chain that operates Mena House
rendition of the Eagles’ Hotel Cali- financed by “a well-known interna- kicks the emphasised that everything was busi-
fornia on the grassy lawns as guests tional strategic investor”. can down ness as usual. “The transaction does
assembled for dinner, while the staff Weeks later, the mystery buy- not impact day-to-day business or our
attempted to project a sense of busi- ers were revealed as the Abu Dhabi
the road – employees,” they said.
ness as usual, despite the hotel’s Developmental Holding Company Egypt owes Kaldas pointed out that selling
recent acquisition by an infamous (ADQ), a sovereign wealth fund based $30bn’ hotels will ultimately prove coun-
Egyptian real estate tycoon, Hisham in the Emirati capital along with its terproductive in the state’s efforts to
Talaat Moustafa, and two powerful subsidiary the Abu Dhabi National Timothy E raise funds, as the desperately needed
Emirati conglomerates. Exhibitions Company (Adnec Group), Kaldas foreign currency that hotels bring in
The sale of Mena House and six owners of the ExCel centre in London. Political will now flow elsewhere. “This will not
other historic hotels – financed by the No piece of land or modern history economist stabilise the economy, it just kicks the
Emirates – is part of what Timothy E is considered off limits in the Egyptian can down the road – Egypt owes $30bn
Kaldas, an analyst of Egypt’s struggling government’s desperate efforts to raise in the next year,” he said. Observer
and often opaque economy, termed funds. Emirati investors have snapped RUTH MICHAELSON IS A JOURNALIST
“an underwhelming fire sale” of state up Egyptian properties and companies COVERING THE MIDDLE EAST
assets, as the government clamours in recent years, including the $200m A reporter in Cairo
for cash injections. sale of an infamous government contributed to this story

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 29

NIGER I A stress disorder, some come in with Terror campaign indoctrination against education. She
depression, some come with anxiety Between 2013 and found an opportunity when several
– it changes,” she said. Akilu initially 2018, according girls spoke of their desire for revenge
envisioned Lafiya Sarari as a model to the UN, Boko against those who had killed their par-
Haram abducted
The school
of reconciliation, where children of ents or exploited them. “I told them
victims, perpetrators and the secu- more than 1,000 that you don’t have to be a soldier or
rity forces could receive education children, using hold a gun for revenge,” Zaifada said.

helping girls together. But the conflict disrupted

education, leaving gaps in learning for
children too old for traditional primary
them as soldiers
and domestic or sex
slaves. Amnesty
“Education can be their revenge.”
Falmata Mohammed Talba, 20,
found the daily therapy at school so
to heal after school classes. “I didn’t even know
‘ABC’ when I came here,” said Usman,
International
estimated
beneficial that she began replicating
the sessions with her two brothers,
that 1,436
Boko Haram who enrolled aged 12.
Funding for the ongoing pilot pro-
gramme for 100 girls came from a grant
schoolchildren and
17 teachers were
who attend a government-run school.
“I helped my brothers the way
Lafiya Sarari helped me. I tell my

atrocities by the US Catena Foundation. Initially,

the students learned together, but as
abducted between
December 2020
and October 2021.
brothers, ‘This is what they told me.
Why don’t you too start practising it?’”
they progressed they were streamed Seven years after the launch of
by academic achievement. Thirty Lafiya Sariari, Zaifada still has daily
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani pupils have successfully passed sessions with her students.
MAIDUGURI national exams and are preparing for Hassana’s psychological progress
university this year. has been notable, even though her aca-

W
hat 19-year-old Binta It is a far cry from how they arrived, demic advancement has been slower
Usman remembers fearful and distrustful. They struggled than that of some of her peers. She
most vividly about her to interact or form friendships with still relies on an interpreter to express
early days at the Lafiya other children and often resorted to herself in English. “My relatives were
Sarari girls’ school in Maiduguri, the violence at the slightest provocation. so worried about my behaviour that
capital of Nigeria’s Borno state, are the Those who had been involved with whenever I started acting out, they
frequent tears that made it hard for Boko Haram, like Hassana, used to would start shouting out passages of
her to concentrate in class. “We’d all try to intimidate their peers with the the Qur’an to calm me down,” she said.
be sitting in class and all of us would threat of violence. “But, all that has stopped. The night-
just be crying,” she said. “They went through intervention mares have also stopped.”
Like Usman, whose father was sessions, coping, resilience, expres- As for Usman, the crying has
killed and family held captive by the sive therapy,” said the school counsel- stopped. She smiles broadly as she
militant jihadist group Boko Haram, all lor, Hauwa Abdullahi Zaifada. “Some ▼ Boko Haram shares her aspirations of winning a
100 women and girls at the school have could not talk about their experience has targeted scholarship to study law at Cambridge
either witnessed a parent’s murder or but we got to hear their stories through schools in north- University. “I hear it is a good school,”
been kidnapped themselves. drawings and music. eastern Nigeria she said.
Another pupil, 17-year-old Hassana, One of Zaifada’s primary goals since 2010 ADAOBI TRICIA NWAUBANI IS A
recalls being forced to join the mili- was to overcome Boko Haram’s STR/AFP/GETTY NIGERIAN JOURNALIST AND NOVELIST
tants, handling weapons and carry out
acts of violence. “We drank blood,”
she said.
Boko Haram has targeted schools
as part of its campaign of atrocities in
north-eastern Nigeria since 2010. It has
carried out massacres and multiple
abductions, including 2014’s killing of
59 schoolboys, the kidnapping of 276
schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014 and 101
girls in Dapchi in 2018.
The Lafiya Sarari school was set up
in response to the terror Boko Haram
has inflicted. Established in 2017 by the
Neem Foundation, a Nigerian charity
set up to help communities affected
by violence, the school is designed
to provide support and education to
those who have suffered trauma.
“What we do is a trauma-informed
learning approach,” said Dr Fatima
Akilu, a psychologist who helped set
up the foundation.
“Some people have post-traumatic
30 Spotlight
Science
MEDICA L R ESE A RCH If these preliminary results bear out amyloid, which has been proven to
in clinical trials, it could be one of the have antimicrobial properties.
cheapest and most effective weapons If this theory is correct, attempts
in our fight against dementia. to boost the immune system’s overall

Gift of the jab

According to the World Health functioning could prevent the devel-
Organization, 55 million people have opment of the disease.
dementia, with about 10 million new

N
cases each year. Alzheimer’s disease ew approaches are certainly

Could the is by far the most common form,

accounting for about 60%-70% of
cases. It is characterised by clumps
needed. After decades of
research on ways to clear
the plaques, only two new

TB vaccine
of a protein called amyloid beta that drugs have been approved by the US
accumulate within the brain, killing Food and Drug Administration. Both
neurons and destroying the synaptic are based on antibodies that bind to
connections between the cells. the amyloid beta proteins, triggering

help fight Exactly what causes these plaques

to develop has been a mystery, but
multiple lines of evidence implicate
an immune response that clears them
out of the brain. This appears to slow
disease progression in some patients,

Alzheimer’s?
problems with the immune system. but the improvement in overall quality
When we are young, our body’s of life is often limited.
defences can prevent bacteria, viruses Anti-amyloid antibodies also
or fungi from reaching the brain. As we come with a hefty price tag. “The
get older, however, they become less cost of treatment is likely to lead to
efficient, which may allow microbes to an enormous health equity gap in
Studies suggest the BCG shot, discovered a work their way into our neural tissue. lower-income countries,” said Marc
Autopsies have revealed that brains Weinberg, who researches Alzheimer’s
century ago, may provide an effective way to
of people with Alzheimer’s are more at Massachusetts general hospital in
protect people from developing dementia likely to be home to common microbes Boston. (He emphasises his opinions
such as the herpes simplex virus, the are personal and do not reflect those
By David Robson cause of cold sores. Crucially, these of his institution.)
germs are often entrapped in the Could existing vaccines such as BCG

S
cientific discoveries can offer an alternative solution? The idea
emerge from the strangest may sound far-fetched, but decades
places. In early 1900s France, of research show that BCG can have
the doctor Albert Calmette surprising and wide-ranging benefits
and the veterinarian Camille Guérin that go way beyond its original pur-
aimed to discover how bovine tuber- pose. Besides protecting people from
culosis was transmitted. To do so, they TB, it seems to reduce the risk of many
first had to find a way of cultivating the other infections. In a recent clinical
bacteria. Sliced potatoes – cooked with trial, BCG halved the odds of devel-
ox bile and glycerine – proved to be the oping a respiratory infection over the
perfect medium. following 12 months, compared with
As the bacteria grew, however, the people receiving a placebo.
Calmette and Guérin were surprised BCG is also used as a standard
to find that each generation lost some treatment for forms of bladder can-
of its virulence. Animals infected with cer. Once the attenuated bacteria
the attenuated microbe no longer have been delivered to the organ,
became sick but were protected from they trigger the immune system to
wild TB. In 1921, the pair tested this Camille Guérin (left) remove the tumours, where previ-
potential vaccine on their first human and Albert Calmette in ously they had passed below the
patient – a baby whose mother had just their laboratory at the radar. These remarkable effects are
died of the disease. It worked, and Pasteur Institute in 1931. thought to emerge from a process
the result was the Bacille Calmette- Their vaccine is still called “trained immunity”.
Guérin (BCG) vaccine that has saved recommended for use in After an individual has received
millions of lives. newborns by the World BCG, you can see changes in the
Health Organization
Calmette and Guérin could have expression of genes associated with
never imagined that their research the production of cytokines – small
would inspire scientists investigating molecules that can kick our other
an entirely different kind of disease defences, including white blood cells,
more than a century later. Yet that Decades of research show into action. As a result, the body can
is exactly what is happening, with a BCG can have benefits respond more efficiently to a threat –
string of intriguing studies suggest- be it a virus or bacteria entering the
ing that BCG can protect people from that go way beyond its body, or a mutant cell that threatens
developing Alzheimer’s disease. MUSÉE PASTEUR original purpose to grow uncontrollably.

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

New hope
A safe way
forward

1921
The year the
BCG vaccine
was first tested
on a human
patient

10m
New dementia
cases each year,
according to
A University of Wisconsin-
the WHO
Madison study suggests
BCG injections can reduce

45% plasma amyloid levels,

particularly among those
Average risk carrying gene variants
reduction in associated with a higher
bladder cancer risk of Alzheimer’s
patients who had
received BCG

There are good reasons to believe ‘Simply delaying patients with bladder cancer, but as yet
that trained immunity could reduce there is little data on the general popu-
the risk of Alzheimer’s. By bolster- Alzheimer’s would lead lation. One obvious strategy may be to
ing the body’s defences, it could help to huge savings – both in compare people who have received the
keep pathogens at bay before they BCG vaccine during childhood with
reach the brain. It could also prompt
suffering and our money’ those who hadn’t, but the effects of
the brain’s own immune cells to clear BCG may dwindle over the decades.
away the amyloid beta proteins more replicated the findings. Weinstein’s The clinching evidence would come
effectively, without causing friendly team, for instance, examined the from a randomised controlled trial, in
fire to healthy neural tissue. records of about 6,500 bladder cancer which patients are either assigned the
patients in Massachusetts. Crucially, active treatment or the placebo. Since

A
nimal studies provide some they ensured that the sample of those dementia is very slow to develop, it
tentative evidence. Labora- who had received BCG and those who will take years to collect enough data
tory mice immunised with hadn’t were carefully matched for age, to prove that BCG – or any other vac-
BCG have reduced brain gender, ethnicity and medical history. cine – offers the expected protection
inflammation, for example. This The people who had received the injec- from full-blown Alzheimer’s com-
results in notably better cognition, tion, it transpired, were considerably pared with a placebo. But we can only
when other mice of the same age begin less likely to develop dementia. hope that early positive results will
to show a steady decline in their mem- The precise level of protection inspire further trials.
ory and learning. Would the same be varies between studies, with a recent For Weinberg, it’s simple. “The BCG
true of humans? meta-analysis showing an average risk vaccine is safe and globally accessi-
To find out, Ofer Gofrit of the reduction of 45%. If this can be proven ble,” he said. It is also incredibly cheap
Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical with further studies, the implications compared with the other options, cost-
Centre in Jerusalem and his colleagues would be huge. “Simply delaying the ing just a few pence a dose. Even if it
collected the data of 1,371 people who development of Alzheimer’s by a cou- confers just a tiny bit of protection, he
had received treatment for bladder ple of years would lead to tremendous says: “It wins the cost-effectiveness
cancer. They found that 2.4% of the savings – both in suffering and our contest hands down.”
patients whose treatment included money,” said Prof Charles Greenblatt As Calmette and Guérin discovered
BCG developed Alzheimer’s over the of the Hebrew University of Jerusa- with their potato slices more than a
following eight years, compared with lem, who was a co-author of Gofrit’s century ago, progress may come when
8.9% of those not given the vaccine. original paper. you least expect it. Observer
Since the results were published Illustration by Plenty of caution is necessary. The DAVID ROBSON IS A
in 2019, other researchers have Observer design existing papers have all examined SCIENCE JOURNALIST

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

32 Spotlight
North America
A N A LY S I S Losing South Carolina is almost Haley, a former accountant, said she knew
U N I T E D S TAT E S always a bad omen for presidential the maths last Saturday did not add up to a
hopefuls and defeat in a victory. But, like the Republicans’ Cassandra,
candidate’s home state is viewed she warned: “I don’t believe Donald Trump

Down, not out

as irrevocable. But as the last Republican can beat Joe Biden.”
standing between Donald Trump and the With most of the results tallied, Haley had
party nomination, Nikki Haley thrilled captured just under 40% of the vote. “I know

Nikki Haley supporters last Saturday by deftly capitalising

on her small but consistent show of support
from voters desperate for an alternative.
40% is not 50%, but I also know that 40% is
not some tiny group.”
The risk for Republicans is that some of
presses on for Trump was declared the winner within one
minute of polls closing in the Palmetto State,
those voters, like Kathy Aven, say they will not
support Trump in November.

Republicans an unsurprising but nevertheless stinging

rebuke for Haley at the hands of the voters
who twice elected her governor.
“Even if she drops out, I’m voting for
Nikki,” said Aven, moments after Haley
addressed her supporters. “If all I have is

not ready to “That is really something,” Trump told

supporters in Columbia, the state’s capital.
Biden or Trump, I’m voting for Nikki.”
According to exit polls, 78% of Haley

crown Trump
“This was a little sooner than we anticipated.” voters in South Carolina said they would be
It was Haley’s fourth consecutive loss this dissatisfied if Trump was the nominee; 82%
primary season. With the odds, and history, said he would be unfit for the presidency if
weighted against her, she refused to bow out. convicted of a felony; and just 4% believe he
Addressing supporters at a primary party in is physically and mentally fit to be president.
Despite a stinging loss in her Charleston, Haley conceded to Trump, but She performed best among voters with
said it was clear a significant share of the vote independents, those with an advanced
home state of South Carolina,
– perhaps as much as 40% – of Republicans degree, and those who believed Biden was
the presidential hopeful is were not looking to crown the king. legitimately elected president in 2020.
refusing to quit the race “I said earlier this week that no matter what But as she continues to exasperate Trump
happens in South Carolina, I would continue to and his allies, Haley’s dilemma was laid bare
By Lauren Gambino CHARLESTON run,” Haley said. “I’m a woman of my word.” in South Carolina. The “Tea Party governor”,
The chandeliered ballroom erupted in who was once a rising star in Republican
applause and chants of “Nikki!” politics, is now an avatar of the anti-Trump
These voters’ voices, and donations, are resistance for her refusal to “kiss the ring”.
fuelling her long-shot bid, giving it life beyond And yet among those voters in the state
South Carolina, a “winner-take-all” state. who still like Haley, many love Trump more.
Her support will translate into little more “He is the best president in my lifetime,”
than a handful of delegates at most, but it said John, who declined to give his last name,
could achieve something else: remin
reminding after casting his ballot for Trump at the main
Trump that he has not fully capture
captured the branch of the Charleston county public library.
Republican party just yet. “I was a big Nikki fan. I still am, actually.
I thought she was a wonderful governor of
South Carolina,” he continued. “But I have
the template for a guy that served four years
as my president, and I know how I felt under
I said earlier, no matter Trump. I love Nikki as a governor. I love
Trump as my president.”
what happens, I would In her speech last Saturday, Haley vowed
continue to run. I’m a to continue telling “hard truths” until she is
faced with her own hard truth about the path
woman of my word forward. Standing before voters in the state
that raised her, Haley proved that she is not
done fighting and is scheduled to visit the
critical state of Michigan.
Amid her losing streak, that perseverance
will remain memorable. Hours earlier, Haley
accompanied her mother, a naturalised US
 Repub
Republican
citizen born in India, to the polls to cast a vote
presidential
presiden
for her daughter who would be the first female
contender Nikki
contend
president of the United States.
Haley ca
campaign-
“I am grateful that today is not the end of
ing in Mi
Michigan
our story,” Haley said.
REBECCA
R
REBE CCA COOK/REUTERS
CO
LAUREN GAMBINO IS POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
FOR GUARDIAN US
 33

 A ruling that The National Infertility Association

embryos are announced that nationwide embryo
‘extrauterine shipping services have indicated that
children’ has cast they will stop transporting embryos
uncertainty over in and out of Alabama.
IVF in Alabama The Alabama ruling enshrines tenets
and beyond of “foetal personhood” into state law.
SCIENCEPHOTO.COM/ Alabama has long been a labora-
SHUTTERSTOCK
tory for foetal personhood measures.
Between 1973 and 2022, when the
US supreme court overturned Roe
v Wade, Alabama law enforcement
criminalised nearly 700 people for
allegedly endangering “unborn life”
– a record number of cases. In 2018,
Alabama became the first state in the
country to enshrine a foetal person-
hood clause into its state constitution.
Many within the anti-abortion
movement oppose IVF, in part because
U N I T E D S TAT E S including the Legerskis’, have paused Embryo rights embryos may be created that are not
their IVF operations, leaving the The push for foetal ultimately used during the complex
Legerskis’ remaining three embryos personhood, process. But many IVF patients never
stuck in icy storage. which seeks to realised a process to create families
endow embryos
Alabama
“The three embryos that we have, could land in abortion foes’ crosshairs.
that are frozen right now, that we and foetuses with The Alabama state supreme court
can’t use as of right now, are very full legal rights case, written by the court’s chief

IVF ruling important to us and our best hope,”

Tucker Legerski said.
The Legerskis are far from the only
and protections,
is a long-term
goal of many in
justice, repeatedly cited the Bible as
justification for the court’s reason-
ing. Liberty Counsel, a conservative
sparks off prospective parents wondering what
the future of IVF holds, both inside
the anti-abortion
movement, given
Christian legal organisation, has
already used the Alabama supreme
that opposition
infertility Alabama and beyond its borders. IVF
patients and advocates in Alabama
are rushing to figure out what the rul-
to abortion is
predicated on
court ruling to argue in a Florida case
that Florida’s state constitution, like
Alabama’s, protects “an unborn child”.

scramble ing and subsequent cessation of care

means for their deeply time-sensitive
the belief that
life begins at
conception.
But not all religious Christians agree
with Alabama’s ruling. Rodney Miller
plans. Outside Alabama, people are is the chairman of the board for Carry-
However, such
petrified that similar restrictions could well, a faith-based Alabama group
protections can
By Carter Sherman soon surface in their state. that helps people navigate infertility,
lead the alleged
“We watched the abortion access including through supplying financial
rights of embryos

T
ucker Legerski and his wife, get taken away slowly and we’ve heard grants to people going through IVF.
to clash even
Megan, have spent more people say: ‘You don’t have to worry with the people He says he and his wife relied on their
than two years and tens of about IVF, IVF is safe and fine.’ And who might be faith to get them through their decade-
thousands of dollars trying here is an exact story showing how IVF carrying them. long struggle with infertility, which
to have a baby. is not fine,” said Kristin Dillensnyder, culminated in their adoption of frozen
Married since 2021, the Alabama an infertility coach who underwent embryos that his wife carried and that
couple last year embarked on in-vitro IVF in Alabama and subsequently led to twin toddlers. In the past fort-
fertilisation (IVF). After they retrieved had a daughter. night, amid the fallout from the ruling,
eggs, a specialist combined those eggs Since the ruling, Dillensnyder said the couple travelled to Tennessee to
with sperm to create four quality she’s heard from clients in South transfer embryos in the hopes of hav-
embryos. Last autumn, they success- Carolina, where she now lives, who are ing more children.
fully transferred one embryo, resulting terrified that their state will be next. “If “Here we are with the advances of
in a pregnancy – but eight weeks in, it you’re in a red state, it really just feels medicine and science, discussing in-
ended in a miscarriage. The couple had like it’s just a matter of time,” she said. vitro fertilisation and frozen embryos,
planned to attempt another embryo Tara Harding, a doctorate family and I think it is a beautiful thing that
transfer this autumn. nurse practitioner and fertility coach God has given us with the science and
But now, in the wake of an Alabama based in North Dakota, has also heard the medicine and the advancements,”
supreme court decision that ruled from clients from across the country Miller said. “It’s very disheartening to
that embryos are “extrauterine chil- since the ruling. They’re no longer know that, despite all of that, Alabama
dren”, the Legerskis don’t know sure where to undergo IVF; they’re seems to be going backwards.”
what will happen to their hopes afraid that their embryos will become CARTER SHERMAN IS A REPRODUCTIVE
of having children in Alabama. At trapped in a state that may limit the HEALTH AND JUSTICE REPORTER AT
least three Alabama IVF providers, procedure. Last Friday, Resolve: GUARDIAN US

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

How CYTHIANS DID TERRIBLE THINGS.
Two-thousand five-hundred years ago, these warrior

technology nomads, who lived in the grasslands of what is now south-

ern Ukraine, enjoyed a truly ferocious reputation. Accord-
ing to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Scythians drank
is opening the blood of their fallen enemies, took their heads back to
their king and made trinkets out of their scalps. Sometimes,

up a new they draped whole human skins over their horses and used
smaller pieces of human leather to make the quivers that
held the deadly arrows for which they were famous.
realm of Readers have long doubted the truth of this story, as they
did many of Herodotus’s more outlandish tales, gathered

knowledge from all corners of the ancient world. (Not for nothing was
the “father of history” also known as the “father of lies”
in antiquity.) Recently, though, evidence has come to light

about the that vindicates his account. In 2023, scientists at the Uni-
versity of Copenhagen, led by Luise Ørsted Brandt, tested

old world the composition of leather goods, including several quivers,

recovered from Scythian tombs in Ukraine. By using a form
of mass spectrometry, which let them read the “molecular
barcode” of biological samples, the team found that while
most of the Scythian leather came from sheep, goats, cows
By Jacob Mikanowski and horses, two of the quivers contained pieces of human
skin. “Herodotus’s texts are sometimes questioned for their
historical content, and some of the things he writes seem
to be a little mythological, but in this case we could prove
that he was right,” Brandt told me recently.
So, score one for Herodotus. But the hi-tech detective
work by the Copenhagen researchers also points to some-
thing else about the future of history as a discipline. In
its core techniques, history writing hasn’t changed that
much since classical times. As a historian, you can do what
Herodotus did – travel around talking to interesting people
and gathering their recollections of events (though we now
sometimes call this journalism). Or you can do what most
of the historians that followed him did, which is to compile
documents written in the past and about the past, and then
try to make their different accounts and interpretations
square up. That’s certainly the way I was trained in graduate
school in the 2000s. We read primary texts written in the
periods we studied, and works by later historians, and then
tried to fit an argument based on those documents into a
conversation conducted by those historians.
But what if there was another way? What if instead of
Illustration by digging in the archives and criticising arguments, you could
Daniel Liévano write history directly from the physical remains of the past,
reconstructing events with the forensic detail of a crime
scene investigator? This would be a history written not from
words, but from things. Archaeology, art history and other
disciplines rooted in the close study of material culture
have long held out this promise. But traditionally there
has been a dividing line between what they could offer
and what was seen by many historians as their true task.
These fields tended to move on different scales with differ-
ent subjects. Historians, examining archival documents,
written annals and inscriptions, focused more on
named individuals in specific moments. Archaeolo- 
gists and their brethren, examining changing styles

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

36 The new science of history

of architecture, burials and so on, gathered information, with comparable attention to material evidence. “Once you
but on a broader scale. In a few places, such as the study of have physical pieces of the past in your hands, then the
coins and seals, the two methods overlap. But, generally, entire toolkit of the scientific revolution can be applied to
these two approaches to the past – text-based and thing- it,” he said. “If you have leather, you can look at what the
based – have been assigned in different domains. Recently cow drank. If you have lumber, you can see what forest
though, this division has become blurrier. it grew in. With molecular data, you’re opening out this
In the past decade or so, scientists’ ability to extract giant treasure house of human history, going back to our
information from material remains has grown exponen- migration from Africa.”
tially. In some cases, such as the study of ancient climates, Many share McCormick’s enthusiasm. Money and grants
old techniques have been employed with new scope and have flowed towards efforts to apply laboratory methods
precision. In others, procedures such as whole-genome to the study of the past. Institutes, initiatives and centres
DNA sequencing – once expensive and error-prone when for excellence have sprung up everywhere from Oslo to
applied to ancient samples – have become reliable and Beijing – and with them solutions to questions historians
ubiquitous. We also have brand new methods of dating, never even knew to ask, let alone answer.
imaging and chemical analysis, which have allowed the
detritus of antiquity – from teeth to shoes to ancient rubbish HE NEW SCIENCE OF HISTORY IS
itself – to speak about the past as eloquently as any archive. particularly illuminating when applied
Today, historians are not only reading manuscripts; to eras for which written documenta-
they are testing the pages themselves to track the genes tion is scarce. Much of what we know
of the flocks of cows and sheep whose skins were used to about life in what scholars call the early
make the parchment. Minute traces of protein found in medieval period, for example – the
archaeological digs can now be used to precisely identify period once widely known as the dark
scraps of decayed organic matter – beaver pelts in a Viking ages – comes from monastic chronicles
grave, to take one example – and source them back to their and saints’ lives. These sources supply plenty of informa-
point of origin. The study of ancient proteins is now its own tion about religious observance, but have much less to say
field, called proteomics. Other forensic techniques have about the origin of kingdoms, say, or the growth of trade.
opened up other lost pages of the past. Analysis of stable In the past decade, science has filled in some of the
isotopes preserved in human bones and animal teeth has blanks. After the fall of the western Roman empire, the
allowed scientists to track the movement of a single girl European economy went into a tailspin. There was no
from Germany to Denmark in the bronze age, trace the economic index to track the scope or timing of the crash,
importation of baboons into ancient Egypt from the horn but historians have been able to recover a bird’s eye view
of Africa and follow a woolly mammoth from Indiana on by looking at evidence preserved in ice. Ice cores taken
its annual migrations across the midwest 13,000 years ago. from Swiss and Greenlandic glaciers preserve a chronologi-
Sequencing of ancient DNA taken from medieval ivory cal record of the composition of the atmosphere, stacked
chess pieces traced their origins back to the African savan- year over year. Levels of lead in these cores correlate to the
nahs. Ancient chicken bones have been used to chart the amount of silver that was being mined at any given moment.
spread of Polynesian peoples across the Pacific. When atmospheric scientists measured this ancient lead
These developments have not been universally pollution in sections of the ice core dating to the first mil-
celebrated. Humanist scholars tend to see past events in ▼ Bone to pick lennium AD, they found silver production crashed in the
human terms, with the great drivers of history coming Analysis of animal third century – earlier than expected and well before the end
from changes in culture and society. Natural scientists skulls has shown of Roman power – and didn’t pick up for 400 years, when
tend to focus on fluctuations in the natural world, often walrus bones the Merovingians re-opened major silver mines in France.
ascribing the fall of empires and kingdoms to factors such were shipped On the micro-economic level, archaeological evidence,
as prolonged droughts and outbreaks of plague. Some his- 4,000km to be analysed in new ways, shows how trade networks began to
torians, like the Byzantinists Merle Eisenberg and John used in ancient re-emerge across the continent after its nadir in the sixth
Haldon, caution against “overhasty assumptions” concern- chess pieces and seventh centuries. Using DNA, one lab determined
ing the relationship of society and environment, and warn MURDO MACLEOD that animal skulls unearthed in a medieval settlement
of “exaggerated claims” about the impact of climate and beneath modern-day Kyiv belonged to walruses killed in
disease on civilisation. the waters between Canada and Greenland, from where
Other historians are thrilled by the possibilities the new they were shipped 4,000km to be used for making jewel-
science offers. For Michael McCormick, a medievalist at Har- lery and chess pieces. Chemical analysis of beads found in
vard and the holder of the university’s chair in the Science Viking emporiums showed that the glass in them had been
of the Human Past, the cumulative effect of these various ous scraped from Roman mosaics, hundreds of miles from their
scra
innovations has been a “scientific revolution”, which h is ultimate resting place in Scandinavia.
ultim
still in its infancy. Speaking with audible excitement from om Bead by bead, tooth by tooth, this research reveals a
B
his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, McCormick said aid picture of the links joining north and south, east and west.
pict
history today is roughly in the same place astronomy was But is this really something new? Archaeologists have had
“when Galileo first looked up with his telescope”. centuries of practice fitting physical evidence to historical
cent
In the 1970s, as a graduate student at the Catholic olic narratives. There has, however, always been a disconnect
narr
University of Louvain in Belgium, McCormick learned d all between the two sources of information. The materials
betw
the skills then required of a medieval historian: “Greek ek unearthed by excavators provide copious data on the lives
une
and Latin philology, linguistic history, vulgar Latin, late e of ordinary people, but don’t offer an exact chronology. By
Greek, classical Greek and palaeography.” These days,, contrast, the textual sources used by historians tend to be
co
he thinks, this sort of training needs to be supplemented d firrm on dates, but vague on the specifics of everyday life.

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 37

long been unclear. Now, though, along with human genes,

PALAEOCLIMATOLOGISTS
paleogenticists have been able to sequence the genetic code
of diseases that afflicted people at their deaths. This means
that they not only diagnose ancient maladies, but observe

CAN DRAW ON DATA

how they spread and mutate over time.
In doing so, palaeogenetics have helped unravel one of
the great catastrophes – and mysteries – in history.

CULLED FROM THOUSANDS

N THE YEAR 536, THE WORLD STARTED GOING
awry. First, the sun went dim. Even at noon in
midsummer, it stayed pale and cool, looking

OF ANCIENT TREES AND

more like the moon. Wheat rotted in the fields
and grapes spoiled on the vine. Winter that year
was dreadfully cold, as were those that followed.
Five years later, a worse calamity struck. In 541,

GLACIAL SAMPLES TO
reports of a terrible disease started arriving on
the shores of the Mediterranean. It was said to have arrived
in Egypt from some distant place, perhaps Ethiopia or India.

ASCERTAIN THE
Travellers in Palestine reported passing abandoned villages
in which the illness had killed everyone who had not fled.
By 542, the contagion was in Constantinople, the capital
of the eastern Roman empire (AKA the Byzantine empire)

CONDITIONS IN A GIVEN
and one of the world’s most populous cities. At its height,
contemporaries estimated the plague was killing 10,000
people a day. Work of all kinds ceased. Starvation ran riot.

SPOT ON THE GLOBE IN

Even the emperor, the great Justinian, who had codified
the laws and built the great church of Hagia Sophia, fell ill.
Historians have had trouble sorting out exactly what
happened and why. The few chronicles we have from the

ANY GIVEN YEAR

time of the plague – known as the Justinianic plague, after
the emperor – provide only a pinhole view of events: a view
from the capital, a traveller’s report from Palestine, and lit-
tle else. Having no concept of bacteria or viruses, those who
A new method for studying ancient climates is allowing experienced the plague could not determine its biological
scientists to close this gap. Today, palaeoclimatologists cause. The strange cold spell that preceded the plague was
can draw on data culled from thousands of ancient trees equally mysterious. Was the cooling something local, or
and glacial samples to ascertain the conditions in a given was it a global event? And what could cause the sun to dim?
spot on the globe in any given year. It is now possible to ask The effects of this strange double disaster are disputed
very specific questions about the climate changes lurking as well. Not long ago, to many experts, they did not seem
behind major historical events. For instance, what was pivotal. Today, historians sometimes describe 536 as the
the weather like when the Huns marched on the Roman “worst year in human history”, and the decade of suffering
empire? (Extraordinarily dry, especially in summer – just that followed as one of the major turning points in world
the thing to get pastoralists to look for greener pastures.) history. For Mischa Meier, a professor of history at Tübin-
Or what was the weather like in Mongolia when Genghis gen University in Germany and a specialist in the history
Khan was gathering his forces? (Warm and wet, perfect of Byzantium, it marked a major “caesura [break] between
for feeding an army and its tens of thousands of horses.) epochs”, which “played a fundamental role in the transition
Along with climate, pandemics form another of the great from late antiquity to early middle ages”.
forcing agents of history. Enormous progress has been made The Byzantine empire did not fall as a result of the plague,
in recent years in identifying the sources and transmission but it did change. It became a more fearful place and more
routes of ancient plagues. Credit goes largely to the study of inclined to put its trust in religion than in the wisdom of the
ancient microbial and viral genes, which allows scientists ancients. Instead of Aphrodite and Cicero, its people began
to identify ancient contagions. Genome sequencing has to idolise the Virgin Mary. Religious processions replaced
become faster and cheaper, while scientists have become chariot races. Emperors ruled less as Caesars than as fire-
better at finding DNA in skeletal remains, for instance, by and-brimstone preachers, promising salvation in the face
targeting the bones of the inner ear, which contain an unex- of a threatening apocalypse. In a sense, then, the ancient
pected bonanza of ancient genes. Today, more than 10,000 world ended here, not with a siege, but with a sneeze.
ancient genomes have been sequenced and thousands more This thesis about the transformative nature of the
are on the way. This torrent of fresh data has made it possible plague and its attendant disaster is rather new, and it
to track migration across the millennia. Anthropologists remains controversial. The story of how the disasters of
can chart the diffusion of early humans from Africa, and the 540s went from a historiographical hiccup to one of
prehistorians can observe the rise of horse-based nomads the great inflection points in history involves a genera-
in the late stone and early bronze ages. tion of multidisciplinary scientific detective work,
Diseases moved in tandem with people, but the exact and demonstrates the power of the new tools at our 
routes by which they spread between continents have disposal to unlock the past.
HSIAO CHIH CHIEH/GETTY

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

38 The new science of history

Historians had long suspected that the Justinian plague establish that the Vikings arrived in Newfoundland in 1021,
was caused by Yersinia pestis, or the bacterium responsi- two decades later than historians had previously thought.
ble for the bubonic plague. But without genetic evidence, By looking for radiocarbon spikes in ice cores pulled up
there was no way to know for sure. Then, in 2014, palaeo- from the depths of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica,
geneticists finally identified the first clear signature of the scientists were able to solve the mystery of the seven-year
bubonic plague dating to the sixth century. It came from an gap. It became clear that there had been miscalculations in
unexpected source – southern Germany, far from the bus- the previous ice-core data, throwing out the chronology.
tling cities of the Mediterranean, which had been assumed The new Miyake data corrected this, and the seven-year gap
to be the plague’s natural home. Since then, it has been vanished: there really had been an eruption in 536, which
identified in sixth-century remains in France, Spain and caused the strange, sun-blotting cloud of that year. And two
the UK. Analysis of bodies buried in a medieval cemetery subsequent eruptions, in 540, and 547, contributed further
in rural Cambridgeshire revealed that 40% of the people to the extreme cooling that characterised the entire decade.
interred there had died suffering from the bubonic plague. With these new dates, researchers could assemble
Cumulatively, these discoveries suggest that the Justini- the data from genes, tree rings and ice cores into a single
anic plague was far more widespread than written sources coherent narrative about what happened post-536. It was a
had indicated, reaching beyond the remaining borders of nightmarish picture: years of sunless summers and freezing
the Roman empire to afflict such barbarian backwaters winters, capped by an outbreak of perhaps the deadliest
as Bavaria and Cambridge. The low amount of variation disease in human history. There is archaeological data to
among the sixth-century samples indicates that it must support this image of a world caught in mid-collapse. Exca-
have spread across the whole of Europe at lightning speed. vations across Scandinavia have shown that the mid-sixth
Identifying the culprit behind the other half of the century was a period of extreme poverty and violence. In
536 disaster – the strange weather that began that year – the words of the Danish archaeologist Frands Herschend,
required different scientific tools. Tree rings supplied the when the whole region “went down to hell”. No wonder
first piece of the puzzle. Using information from trees in the Byzantines thought the world was about to end.
the Austrian Alps and the Altai mountains, Ulf Büntgen, a But then again, it didn’t. The Byzantine empire didn’t
professor of environmental systems analysis at Cambridge, fall in 541. It weathered the shocks of an unprecedented,
and his co-authors were able to show that 536 really was deadly epidemic and simultaneous extreme volcanic
an exceptional year, “the coldest summer in the northern weather event without collapsing. This had led some his-
hemisphere in the past 2,000 years”. The decade after 536 torians to doubt that the event marked anything like the
was the single coldest decade of the past 2,000 years. “end of the ancient world”. To Lee Mordechai and Merle
Eisenberg, historians at Hebrew University and Oklahoma
UT WHAT CAUSED THIS SUDDEN,

A SERIES OF
shocking cold snap? To find out, scien-
tists had to peer inside Arctic glaciers.
When palaeoclimatologists examined
ice cores dating to the sixth century,

HUGE VOLCANIC
they noticed an unusually high concen-
tration of sulphates in the years after
the start of the late antique little ice age.

ERUPTIONS
In the pre-industrial past, sulphur in the atmosphere had
one main source: volcanoes. Gigantic volcanic eruptions
pump huge quantities of gas into the upper atmosphere,
where they can trigger episodes of global cooling by bounc-

MUST HAVE
ing solar energy back into space. The ice core data suggested
to climate scientists that a series of huge volcanic eruptions
must have depressed global temperatures sometime in

DEPRESSED GLOBAL
the mid-sixth century. But there was a problem: the dates
didn’t line up. The ice cores indicated that the first erup-
tion occurred in 543. How could global cooling start seven
years before the eruption that caused it? The solution to

TEMPERATURES
this riddle came from an unlikely source.
In 2012, a Japanese astrophysicist named Fusa Miyake
was studying how the sun’s behaviour has changed over

SOMETIME IN
time. To do this, she measured the concentrations of car-
bon-14 – also known as radiocarbon – found in individual
rings of ancient cedars from the lush, moss-strewn for-
ests of Yakushima Island. Miyake found that the amount

THE MID-SIXTH
of radiocarbon spiked in certain years, probably as the
result of the massive solar storms that struck the Earth in
those years. Any organic material alive at the time of one

CENTURY
of these storms carries a telltale chemical signature. These
carbon-14 spikes – now known as Miyake events – provide a
way of tying objects from archaeological sites to individual
years. Among other things, Miayke events have been used to
HEMIS/ALAMY

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 39

 Precious find State University, respectively, the show up in tree rings. Historical work rooted
sho
Tiny pieces of Justinianic plague was no more than han an in aancient genes faces a parallel problem. It
lapis lazuli were “inconsequential pandemic”. They hey argue generates
ge
ener tremendous amounts of information,
found in the that there is little evidence that the
e plague led to the but this comes
com shorn of the kind of rich context that
teeth of a nun fall of empires or the collapse of states.
tates only more trad
traditional
diti
d iti humanistic methods can supply.
whose body Speaking to me over the phone from Oklahoma, Eisen- Not all the recent scientific inquiry into the past has
was excavated berg compared the story of the sixth-century crisis to a focused on conquests and catastrophes. For Michael McCor-
from a medieval “murder mystery with no body”. There is a killer, there is mick, the real impact of new “molecular history” is its abil-
cemetery a modus operandi, but the victim doesn’t die. Indeed, as ity to “open windows on lives of people without voices”.
GETTY Eisenberg pointed out, after the plague, Byzantium was Women, disabled people and the enslaved are present in
largely “fine” for another 80 years, until the Arab conquests written sources, but usually only in “tiny numbers”, and
devastated the empire and deprived it of much of its terri- seen through another’s eyes. However, in cemeteries, all
tory three generations later. “How can you plausibly con- these people are present, and in great numbers.
nect something that happens in the 540s with the 630s?” In 2014, scientists examined the dental calculus – the
Eisenberg asks. “That’s like saying the 2008 recession was ancient plaque – on the teeth of a deceased nun whose
caused by the 1918 flu.” body had been excavated from a medieval cemetery in
central Germany. The dental calculus revealed tiny flecks of
HIS TENSION, BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC lapis lazuli, which at this time was as costly as gold. Its main
discoveries on one hand and historical use was as a pigment: lapis lazuli was the crucial ingredient
narratives on the other, is a recurring in ultramarine, the most vivid and beautiful blue available
feature of the new age of interdiscipli- in the medieval world. Why did this otherwise anonymous
nary, lab-powered history. In history, nun, who died around the year 1100, have this rare and pre-
causation is rarely as simple as a lab cious substance in her teeth? Archaeologists’ best guess is
result. Events happen inside a web of that it was a result of her painting illuminated manuscripts,
human institutions and ideas. They either preparing the pigment or licking a paintbrush (per-
gain meaning only insofar as people ascribe meaning to haps to give it a finer point) while painting.
them. For generations of historians, myself included, this Little is known in detail about women’s role in creating
means that any attempt at understanding a change in the illuminated manuscripts. Only about 1% from this period
past requires delving into the details of culture, religion, can be securely attributed to women. But as this nun’s
economics and political organisation. teeth show, the silence of the written sources should not
But when scientists interpret events, they tend to stress be taken for evidence of women’s absence.
climate over culture, or pandemics over politics. Drought We will most likely never know the name of this German
alone has been blamed for the collapse of the classical Maya, nun. There are limits to what any artefact or bodily remain
the Hittites and Akkadians, Angkor in Cambodia, Tiwan- can tell us. However, those limits are being expanded all
aku in Peru and the ancestral Puebloans of the American the time. New techniques of isotope analysis based on the
south-east. Meanwhile, volcanic eruptions have been held close examination of the chemical elements inside human
responsible for the downfall of several other civilisations, teeth and bone fragments are allowing scientists to track
in addition to the collapse of the Byzantine empire. the movement of people not just across generations, but
Critics point out that in those periods of history for which within single lifetimes. Combined with DNA analysis, this
we have more detailed documentation, sudden collapse has produced a stream of intimate (if fragmentary) stories
in response to ecological stress is rather rare. Nicola Di from the deep past: an African boy who grew up on the
Cosmo, an expert on China and central Asia at the Institute shores of the Red Sea and died young in Roman Serbia; a
for Advanced Study at Princeton, observes that there is “no girl from the bronze age born in southern Germany and sent
single model or paradigm” for how societies respond to north (to marry? To die?) in Denmark; a young Sarmatian
climate catastrophes. The nomadic empires he studies were – one of the heirs to Herodotus’s Scythians – raised in the
particularly vulnerable to changes in seasonal weather, as shadow of the Caucasus mountains, who went west in the
they depended on animal herds that could be easily wiped time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius while still a child,
out by “protracted droughts and winter disasters”. and died in Britain, laid to rest in an unmarked grave in a
But even living this close to the environmental edge, ditch at the edge of a farm in what is now Cambridgeshire.
states could prove to be resilient in the face of calamity. Did he come there as a soldier, or a slave? After 10 years
Soon after the Eastern Turkic empire was hit by a string or so in the empire, had he taken up Roman ways, or did
of extremely cold winters in the late 620s, it suffered a he keep to the customs of his nomad ancestors? This is yet
series of military defeats and was ultimately dismantled another thing we can only guess at. But the fact that we can
by Tang China, its neighbour to the south. A century and a even ask these questions highlights how profoundly the
half later, the Uyghur empire, which occupied roughly the study of the past has changed in just a few years. History is
same area as the Eastern Turks, confronted what should now entering its pointillist phase, in which the big motions
have been a crippling, multi-decade drought. But instead are caught in a thousand individual movements. With an
of imploding, it thrived, in large part by establishing a mili- individual, we see history played out on two scales. In the
tary alliance and maintaining valuable trade links with the background, the stuff of big history – wars, trade routes
same Tang dynasty. and clashes spanning the better part of a continent. In the
In these cases, the conditions for survival or collapse foreground, a young man, dead, far from home, whose life
were shaped by political and economic decisions, rather and fate we can only imagine •
than by the raw facts of climate. But changes in foreign JACOB MIKANOWSKI IS A JOURNALIST
policy and the direction of international commerce don’t AND CRITIC BASED IN BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

 Diversity of language T THE HEART OF LINGUISTICS is a radical premise:
all languages are equal. This underlies everything
is an essential human we do at the Endangered Language Alliance, an
eccentric extended family of linguists, language
good – yet so many activists, polyglots and ordinary people, whose
mission is to document endangered languages
of them are being and support linguistic diversity, especially in the
hounded out of world’s hyperdiverse cities.
Language is a universal and democratic fact cutting across all
existence. As a matter human societies: no human group is without it, and no language is
superior to any other. More than race or religion, language is a win-
of justice, the powerful dow on to the deepest levels of human diversity. The familiar map
of the world’s 200 or so nation-states is superficial compared with
must stop imposing the little-known map of its 7,000 languages. Some languages may
their languages on specialise in talking about melancholy, seaweed or atomic structure;
some grammars may glory in conjugating verbs while others bristle
the powerless with syntactic invention. Languages represent thousands of natural
experiments: ways of seeing, understanding and living that should
By Ross Perlin form part of any meaningful account of what it is to be human.

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 Users of Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Mandarin, reality and not others, however unconsciously. This is the essence
English and the like have continually proclaimed their languages of what makes linguistics fascinating and revealing.
holier, more perfect or more adaptive than the unwritten, unstand- All languages may be equal in the abstract, but much harder to
ardised “dialects” they look down on. But from a linguistic point of bridge are the social and historical disparities among their speakers.
view, no language as used by a native speaker is in any way inferior, let At present, about half of all languages are spoken by communities
alone broken. The vast majority have always been oral, with written of 10,000 or fewer, and hundreds have just 10 speakers or fewer. On
language a derivative of comparatively recent vintage, confined to every continent, the median number of speakers for a language is
tiny elites in a small number of highly centralised societies. Writing is below 1,000, and in Australia this figure goes as low as 87.
palpably a trained technology of conscious coding, in comparison with Today, these numbers reflect serious endangerment, and even
the natural and universal human behaviours of speaking and signing. languages with hundreds of thousands or a few million speakers can
Perceptions of linguistic superiority or inferiority are not based on be considered vulnerable. In the past, however, small language com-
anything about the languages themselves, but on the power, class munities could be quite stable, especially hunter-gatherer groups,
or status of the speakers. Every language signed or spoken natively which typically comprised fewer than 1,000 people. Likewise, most
is a fully equipped system for handling the core communicative older sign languages, now critically endangered, evolved in so-called
demands of daily life, able to coin or borrow words as needed. “Lan- deaf villages, where the incidence of hereditary deafness in the popu-
guages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what lation was significantly higher than elsewhere, though still rarely
they may convey,” said the linguist and polyglot Roman Jakobson. In more than about 2%. Many hearing people in these villages
other words: it’s possible to say anything in any language, but each could also sign, but the core group of signers was typically 
language’s grammar requires speakers to mark out certain parts of several hundred at most.

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

42 War of the words

Many people think the world, or at

corner of it, is growing ever more
but monolinguals are increasingly
In general, sheer speaker or signer numbers have always mattered Though languages have always changed and come and gone, the scope
less than intergenerational transmission. A small language can remain for linguistic imperialism has widened exponentially since Nebrija’s
strong for centuries as long as parents, grandparents and other car- day. A comparatively small number of empires and nation states, now
egivers are using it with children. Take Gurr-Goni, an Aboriginal bristling with 24/7 communication and education systems, cover
language from north-central Arnhem Land in Australia, which has every inch of the Earth. Worldwide, centuries of imperialism, capital-
had just several dozen speakers as far back as anyone can remember. ism, urbanisation, environmental destruction and nation building
Far from being an isolated group, Gurr-Goni speakers maintained are now coming to a head linguistically. With power behind them, a
their language in a context of multilingual equilibrium, where each few hundred languages keep growing and getting all the resources,
“father tongue” was integrally connected with certain lands and while the other 95% struggle.
natural resources. It’s this kind of equilibrium that has been vanish- Particularly dominant are just a few dozen languages of wider
ing fast as colonial and national languages take over. communication, less politely called “killer languages”. English,
But why does linguistic diversity matter in the first place? For a Spanish and Chinese are on the march, but so are Nepali and Brazil-
linguist, the answer is clear enough: little-documented, primarily oral ian Portuguese. These languages are spreading through political,
languages are often the ones with the most to teach us about the nature economic and cultural conquest, and the consequences are seeping
and possibilities of human communication more generally. Without into everything. At the same time, only under extraordinary circum-
the Khoisan languages of southern Africa, we wouldn’t know how stances are a few new languages emerging, such as Light Warlpiri,
extensively and expressively clicks could be used. Without Warao, developed out of mixing English and the Aboriginal language Warlpiri
spoken in Guyana, Venezuela and Suriname, we wouldn’t know that in Australia’s Northern Territory.
object-subject-verb could be the routine way of ordering a sentence. In anglophone settler societies such as the US and Canada, geno-
Without the Hmong-Mien languages of south-east Asia, we wouldn’t cide, expulsion, disease and every form of prejudice and pressure
know that a language could have a dozen tones. exerted on Native peoples have profoundly altered the linguistic
But it’s also what the languages carry inside them: the poetry, landscape. About half of the 300 distinct languages once spoken
literature, jokes, proverbs and turns of phrase. The oral histories, the north of the Rio Grande have already been silenced, and most of those
local and environmental knowledge, the wisdom, and the lifeways. remaining are no longer actively used, with under 10 native speakers.
Only a fraction of this ever can or will be translated. Only a few of the largest, including ᏣᎳᎩ (Cherokee), Diné Bizaad
If this still sounds theoretical, consider even more immediate, (Navajo) and Yup’ik can in any way be considered “safe”, though
practical consequences. Research shows that there is no substitute profoundly embattled, for the coming decades. Likewise, most of
for mother-tongue education, and that language maintenance is the hundreds of Aboriginal languages once spoken in Australia are
an integral component of physical and mental wellbeing – perhaps either no longer spoken or down to small clusters of elderly speakers.
especially so for long-marginalised Indigenous and minority peoples. Dominant-language speakers opine that everything would be easier
For this is the crux of it: languages are not “dying natural deaths”, and better if everyone would just speak their particular dominant lan-
but being hounded out of existence. guage. But common languages don’t unify in and of themselves – look
at many of the world’s civil wars, or the deep divisions in anglophone
IKE BIODIVERSITY, linguistic diversity remains American society today. The imaginative challenge of big differences
strongest today in remote and rugged regions tra- is quickly replaced with the narcissism of small ones: scrutinising
ditionally beyond the reach of empires and nation other people’s accents, sociolects, word choice, tone of voice.
states: mountain ranges like the Himalayas and the The spheres of use for smaller languages and nonstandard varieties
Caucasus; archipelagoes like Indonesia and the Sol- are continually shrinking: they often emerge only in private, yielding
omons; and what were once zones of refuge like as soon as a speaker steps outside. Now the shift is happening inside
the Amazon, southern Mexico, Papua New Guinea homes as well. Families around the world are hitching their fate to
and parts of west and central Africa. But these too English and other dominant languages – abandoning not just words,
are now under tremendous pressure. but vast traditions of gesture, intonation, facial expression, conver-
“Language has always been the companion of empire,” wrote sational style and perhaps even the culture and character behind all
Antonio de Nebrija in his 1492 Gramática Castellana, which aimed to these. Only in the face of intense political, economic, religious or
raise vernacular Castilian Spanish to the level of Latin and other impe- social pressures do people stop passing on their mother tongues to
rial languages, just in time for European conquests across the globe. children, but today these pressures are everywhere.

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 43

least their ▲ Rare breed

Katrina Esau, one
of the last speak-

diverse,
ers of the Khoisan
language N|uu,
teaching in South
Africa

in charge MUJAHID SAFODIEN/

AFP/ GETTY

Of course English in particular, supercharged by business, pop ▲ Cross roads linguist do? Sound systems are entire ecosystems
culture and the internet after centuries of colonial expansion, is Australian road for the ear, but even on an initial listen you can try
the real empire of our time – far more fluid and influential than any sign with English to make out the shapes of syllables, the qualities
political entity. Many English speakers go their entire lives without place names of vowels, the puff of aspiration, the bent tongue
encountering anything significant they can’t do or get in their lan- crossed out of a retroflex. There may be clues in the intonation
guage. Whatever the power dynamics of any given conversation, TESSA PIETERSMA / patterns: variations in pitch, rhythm, loudness,
ALAMY
English is pure linguistic privilege, the reserve currency of commu- voice quality or the length of sounds, which convey
nication. The push to learn it is an event of planetary significance, not only vibes, but essential information, like how
swelling a linguistic community of going on half a billion native Eng- rising pitch in English can signal a yes-no question. Under the rush of
lish speakers worldwide, plus another 1 or 2 billion who know it as a unfamiliar sound, flowing at hundreds of syllables a minute, you try to
second language. These numbers are growing every day. hold back from the scramble for meaning and suss out the structure.
Many people think the world, or at least their corner of it, is growing From the glottis to the lips, the whole tract where spoken language
ever more diverse, but monolinguals are increasingly in charge. The happens is just 12 to 15cm long. Across evolutionary eons, a space
monolingual mindset, bone-deep in almost every anglophone Ameri- for eating and breathing gradually took on linguistic uses, not just
can, blocks any real urgency about other languages. A multilingual anywhere but at certain places of articulation: the lips, the teeth, the
childhood, only now widely recognised as an inestimable cognitive alveolar ridge, the hard palate and the soft one behind it, the uvula
advantage, can add a whole dimension to someone’s understanding that hangs like a little grape above the throat, the pharynx and the
of the world. But to do it right, especially for monolingual parents, larynx. The tongue – that near-universal symbol of language – darts
can require serious effort and resources. and bends to make contact wherever it can. For signers, it happens
in the hands. (In what follows, I use terms such as speech and oral for
HAT SHOULD A MONOLINGUAL PERSON the sake of simplicity, but virtually everything here also applies to
DO? Every time someone speaks, they sign languages.) There are also whistled languages, drum languages
embody an inherited chain of choices. It and many other ways of emulating speech across space.
can be profoundly useful to be a native To document and describe languages while there is still time ought
speaker of the dominant dialect of a to be the first task for a linguist. Yet a linguist’s moment of discovery
dominant language. Representing the is also almost always the moment of grasping a disappearance. For
associated “mainstream” culture with any outsider claiming to “discover” any human society or culture or
every sound means being able to talk language – that is, announcing the existence of some smaller group
to many and sound good to most. Rarely does a dominant-language to the ruthlessly joined-up juggernaut sometimes known as “us” – is
monolingual need to speak anyone else’s language, and it counts also arriving at, and bound up in, the moment of its destruction. The
as a charming attempt if they do, a mark of open-mindedness and same forces that bring an outside linguist in are bringing everything
sophistication or an advanced party trick. Since reading and writing else as well.
usually hew close to the dominant dialect, book learning is easier. A The organised movement to preserve the world’s languages is
person “without an accent” is by default considered to be smarter or recent. In 1992, the linguist Michael Krauss warned that linguistics
better educated as soon as they open their mouth. would “go down in history as the only science that presided oblivi-
Yet people intensely aware of privilege based on gender, race, class ously over the disappearance of 90% of the very field to which it is
or sexuality seldom consider their linguistic privilege. English or Span- dedicated”. This helped light the spark. Inspired by the new push
ish or Mandarin or Urdu may just seem like the air you breathe. The for biodiversity and the growing movement for Indigenous rights,
only cure for monolingualism is to learn other human languages, but a cohort of linguists and language activists vowed to use new tech-
it’s at least a start to learn about them, from those who speak them. nologies to record and preserve as much as possible of the world’s
Maybe there should be a special kind of therapy for monolinguals, vanishing linguistic heritage. Ideally, speakers record and document
where you have to sit listening to a language you can’t understand, their own languages, and this is now increasingly common.
without translation but with total patience. Language documentation may sound like an obvious priority for
For an academic linguist, this is an occupational hazard. On first linguistics, but it flies in the face of what most linguists have
meeting, a speaker knows you don’t know their language, but there been focusing on for the past 70 years: language, not languages. 
is a useful ambiguity. If not learning languages, what exactly does a Following Noam Chomsky, most have been chasing theoretical

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

44
4 War of the words

Every language is limitless ▲ Shelf life

A selection of
dictionaries in a

if speakers are speaking it Beijing bookshop

TIM GRAHAM/ALAMY

or signers are signing it

and computational questions, seeing themselves as Martians trying or ingrained connections to ancestors, traditions, territories and
to document an essentially uniform language called Earthling. Their knowledge systems can easily seem irrelevant, obscure or simply
evidence has come mostly from the largest languages, which hap- impossible to access under contemporary conditions.
pen to be the dominant ones they’re familiar with. Few meaningful It’s a powerful-sounding truism, but not quite true, that language
universals have emerged from all the armchair theorising and labo- and culture are inextricably linked, since group identities in some
ratory testing. Theory has its place, of course, but it’s essential that cases persist after the loss of a language. Nor should anyone feel
languages be documented on their own terms. The real view from forced to stay within any particular culture. What matters is that
Mars, it turns out, is that linguistic diversity on Earth is far more individuals and communities have meaningful options for how they
profound and fundamental than previously imagined. relate to their linguistic pasts and construct their linguistic futures.
At the same time, there is an essential toolkit that every language Given the normal and natural human capacity for multilingualism,
should have: a substantial dictionary, a detailed grammatical descrip- maintaining a less widely spoken language need not preclude learn-
tion, and a representative corpus of recorded stories, oral histories ing a more widely spoken one.
and other texts showing the language in action, and at least partially
transcribed, translated, analysed and archived. To the extent that HERE ARE NOW HUNDREDS of language revitalisa-
speakers are willing, these materials should be maximally accessi- tion movements around the world, most launched
ble and archived for posterity. Speakers of larger languages take for in just the past few decades, creating a wealth of
granted effectively limitless resources in and about their languages. experience for others to draw on. It can feel like
Forget Siri, speech recognition, automatic translation, spellcheck and nearly impossible work, where even a single new
other nifty tools: imagine not having a dictionary, any established speaker of a highly endangered language counts
way of writing or any authority on the language at all, aside from an as a serious triumph, requiring years of dedica-
elder you have to find and ask in person. tion. At the same time, scattered speakers are
It’s one thing to help build arks, or at least archives, but linguists now finding one another in virtual spaces, where language learning
don’t and can’t “save” languages. By definition, every language is options are multiplying and reality-augmenting and artificial intel-
limitless as long as speakers are still speaking it or signers are signing ligence possibilities are on the horizon.
it. No language ends on the last page of a dictionary. From a finite If one critical ingredient has been missing from language
number of sounds, words, rules and techniques, speakers form an revitalisation movements, it is real financial, political and technical
infinite number of utterances. There is no single way that a community support from majority populations. Speakers of endangered languages
“really speaks”, nor any one authoritative type of data to preserve almost never encounter outside interest in or knowledge about their
for all time. Language is too fluid. languages, while persecution, mockery and stigma are still common.
Unfortunately, many linguists also dwell on damaging, defeatist To the extent that language policy or discussion is on the agenda at
abstractions about language “death” and “extinction” while Indig- all, it relates to specific points of conflict in a few dominant languages,
enous scholars state clearly that oppression is the threat, and that not the collapse of linguistic diversity itself.
reclaiming Indigenous languages is about liberation and recovery For the revivers of endangered languages, a sense of radical futility
from historical trauma. Linguistics, like anthropology, has skeletons may be waiting round the bend of every utterance. Where will I speak
in its disciplinary closet. Fighting for endangered languages can only this? Who will understand me? Will I ever start thinking in the lan-
mean fighting on the side of their speakers and signers, and ultimately guage? When almost no one else is doing it, matching a string of
it’s always up to communities whether and how to keep using their sounds to a meaning can seem downright arbitrary. And yet it is only
languages. Some have been struggling to do so for centuries; others after ingesting masses of often arbitrary-seeming words that people
are less concerned. Of course, there are not only pressures, but also can process or produce them at speed, and only then that they can
always enticements to learn a dominant language, which may grant start feeling the indescribable sense of what it is to live in a particular
access, however limited, to the dominant culture’s resources. language. To try to communicate with what is no longer a tool of com-
For some members, the breakdown of a traditional community may munication – to resurrect a whole worldview that is almost over the
feel like emancipation; for others, a disaster. Whether it’s a matter horizon – is a wonderful madness •
of survival or a question of common sense, the logic of abandoning ROSS PERLIN IS A LINGUIST, WRITER AND TRANSLATOR
a smaller mother tongue for work, education, migration, marriage This is an edited extract from Language City: The Fight to Preserve
or any number of other reasons can seem unassailable. Once-valued Endangered Mother Tongues, published on 7 March

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 45
Comment is free, facts are sacred CP Scott 1918

SIRIN KALE
How stalking
victims are
being let down
Page 47 

I S R A E L / PA L E S T I N E
Paris talks of fer a sliver of hope
disaster can be averted in Rafah
▲ A dove flies
over houses hit by
Israeli strikes in
Jonathan Freedland
}
Khan Younis, Gaza
IBRAHEEM ABU
MUSTAFAREUTERS

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

46 Opinion

oth sides in the war between Israel the hostages it holds, agree the exile of Yahya Sinwar, the
and Hamas now face a fresh set of mastermind of 7 October – and the pressure on Benjamin
fateful choices. The decisions they Netanyahu, inside and outside Israel, to end the war
take in the coming days are not only would be such that it would be all but over. The killing
a matter of life and death for many would stop. Yet precisely no one thinks Hamas will ever
thousands of Palestinians, and for do that. Few even think to demand it.
the remaining 134 hostages held by Instead the focus, naturally enough, is on the stronger
Hamas. They also have the power to party, Israel, which also faces a critical decision. There
shape events for years, if not decades to come. The start are negotiations in Paris, aimed at brokering a release of
of Ramadan, on 10 March, is the crucial deadline, and the the hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held
clock is ticking. in Israel and an accompanying pause in fighting. But
I say “both sides”, though that can easily get forgotten. there is an even more momentous choice to be made.
The Israeli bombardment of Gaza has been so relentless, Israel could go ahead with its threat to launch a
the destruction so intense and the death toll so high, that ground operation in Rafah, the southern border town
many stopped seeing it as a war long ago. It was striking where the bulk of Gaza’s population – some 1.5 million
how often in last week’s UK parliamentary debate on people – have fled for safety. The Israel Defense Forces
Gaza, before it descended into chaos, the shadow foreign would get the satisfaction of taking on what it says are
secretary, David Lammy, had to remind colleagues that the last remaining Hamas brigades, hiding underground.
they could not simply issue a demand that Israel stop, But the price would be terrifyingly high, incurring either
because “a ceasefire, by necessity, means both sides.” colossal loss of life, an exodus of refugees fleeing into
If the reminder was necessary, it’s because Hamas has neighbouring Egypt, or both. Which is why so many
become an invisible player in this conflict. That’s literally world leaders have been imploring Netanyahu to hold
true on the battlefield. “They don’t show themselves. back. It is the desire to avert a catastrophe in Rafah that
They avoid contact. You see the targets for a few has, in part, given fresh impetus to those Paris talks.
milliseconds,” one Israeli reservist who fought in Gaza
told my colleague Jason Burke, describing how Hamas Meanwhile, another option beckons. Guided by the
fighters would emerge only fleetingly from their vast principle that every crisis is also an opportunity, as
network of underground tunnels to open fire. well as the knowledge that moves towards peace in the
It’s true, too, of the coverage of the war. Israel says Middle East have often followed war, the White House
that it has killed some 12,000 Hamas men, which would is advancing what it is not quite calling the Biden plan.
represent about a third of the organisation’s fighting It would see the US agree a defence pact with Saudi
force: Hamas says it has lost half that number. Either Arabia, in return for which the Saudis would establish
way, those thousands of Hamas dead are all but unseen diplomatic ties with Israel. Together the three would
and rarely discussed. The health ministry in Gaza, which form a strong alliance against Iran and its proxies:
is controlled by Hamas, gives a daily total of those slain, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in
often adding that almost all were women and children. Yemen. Israel would get what it has sought for decades:
The heartbreaking footage that comes out of Gaza formal acceptance across the Arab world and official
matches that account: it shows civilians rather than partners in its core battle against Iran. The price? Israel
fallen fighters. Hamas combatants remain out of sight. would have to agree to Palestinian statehood, the pursuit
And because we stop seeing them, we stop seeing of which is central to the Biden initiative.
them as having agency – as if they have been merely Now, of course there are a hundred reasons to assume
passive in the horrific events of the last few months, this new plan will go the way of all the old ones – and
events that were set in train by Hamas’s attacks on end in failure. Israel could march into Rafah, cause a
southern Israel and its massacre of 1,200. Passive is not, humanitarian calamity and risk being branded a pariah
incidentally, how many in Gaza are coming to view the state. Or it could say a tentative yes to the US president,
organisation: there have been reports of anti-Hamas recognising a truth that is plain to the
demonstrations breaking out across Gaza. Jonathan world: that there are two peoples who
Hamas has agency even now. If it were truly horrified Freedland is claim the same small land and that the
by the daily death and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, a Guardian only outcome that can give both what
and if it simply wanted the killing to stop, it could release columnist they need is a state for each.
Israel should seize this opportunity
with both hands. Except it is led by a man who has
devoted much of his life to ensuring a Palestinian state
can never happen: Benjamin Netanyahu. Israelis need to
Israel should seize this be rid of him, replacing him with a pragmatic leader who
can see what Israel’s national interest so clearly demands.
chance, but Netanyahu There is a tiny, reed-thin chance that something
better might come out of this horror show of a war. To
has devoted his life to grasp it, the Palestinians need to be free of Hamas and
ensuring a Palestinian Israelis free of Netanyahu. Every day those men remain
in power is a curse on both peoples – who have surely
state can never happen been cursed long enough •

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 47

UNITED Most stalkers never see the inside of a prison cell,

KINGDOM Police repeatedly fail and instead receive fines, or community or suspended
sentences if they’re convicted. Like Michael Sellers.
He’d fixated on seven women at his workplace before
victims by not taking locking on to Gracie Spinks, 23, whom he met when they
both worked at an e-commerce firm in Chesterfield.
Spinks reported Sellers to the police in February 2021,
stalking seriously but Derbyshire constabulary closed the case after
giving him a warning, deeming it low-risk. Sellers was

Sirin Kale
never arrested and police didn’t check his personnel
file, which would have revealed that he’d been fired for
stalking Spinks. When police were alerted that a bag
containing an axe, three knives, a hammer and a note
reading “Don’t Lie!” had been found in a field near where
Spinks kept her horse, they did nothing, even though her
family believe a receipt in the bag could have identified
Sellers. Weeks later, Sellers murdered Spinks, and then
killed himself.

If we saw stalking for what it truly is – often a

stepping-stone on the route to murder – perhaps
police would take it seriously. But they do not. Too
easily, stalking victims are dismissed. I’ve heard all
the justifications: “it’s just online”, “it will die down”,
“change your number”, “delete your social media
accounts”, “this is just a lovers’ tiff ”. But nothing
seems to change. Derbyshire police have accepted they
failed Spinks, and apologised to
Sirin Kale is her family. I’ve seen so many of
a feature writer these apologies. They’re always
for the Guardian the same and commonly include
the platitude of “lessons being
n March 2022, I published an investigation learned”. They don’t bring anyone back. I’m not
into the crimes of Matthew Hardy, who convinced they protect future victims either.
had been sentenced to nine years in prison My reporting on stalking began in 2018, when I
in what was then believed to be the UK’s launched a national anti-stalking campaign, Unfollow
worst-ever case of cyberstalking. The story Me, at my former employer Vice, in partnership with
caught the public’s attention and I later the stalking advocacy service Paladin. Using freedom of
turned it into a six-part Guardian podcast information laws, I found that more than 60 women had
series, Can I Tell You a Secret?, which topped been murdered by stalkers in a three-year period, despite
the UK podcast charts. It has now inspired a new, two- having reported them to the police.
part Netflix documentary of the same name. Alice Ruggles, Shana Grice, Molly McLaren. I cannot
Hardy tormented people, mostly women, for years. forget their names. Their last moments haunt me. How
He broke apart families, relationships and professional Ruggles’ ex-boyfriend slashed her throat with a knife as
relationships. He sent nude photos of his victims to she cowered from him in her bathroom. How McLaren’s
their work contacts. He called them late at night and ex-boyfriend stabbed her 75 times in a car park in broad
breathed down the phone; when the women cried from daylight. How Grice’s ex-boyfriend subjected her to
stress and fear, he’d send them mocking messages. On unthinkable terror in the months before her death – he
one occasion he nearly wrecked a wedding. His victims let himself into her house and watched her sleeping
were diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Nobody – before murdering her. All three women reported
knows how many people Hardy targeted. Cheshire their stalkers to police, who did next to nothing. Grice,
constabulary alone received more than 100 reports unbelievably, was fined by Sussex police for wasting
about him, resulting in 10 arrests and two restraining police time. It’s been six years now, and all I see is the
orders, over an 11-year period. same police apologies.
Hardy’s crimes were memorably awful, but away from What I believe underpins all of this is a rich seam
the true-crime podcasts and Netflix documentaries, of misogyny. Men – and it is mostly men who are
stalking is an ordinary, unremarkable sort of crime – one stalkers, although of course they can be victims too
that attracts scant attention from police and prosecutors. – who feel entitled to women’s attention, their bodies
▲ Victims of In fact, arguably stalking has been all but decriminalised and sometimes even their lives. And police forces that
Matthew Hardy in England and Wales, with devastating consequences: regard women as time-wasters and their complaints as
share their stories just 6.6% of reported stalkers are charged with a crime, histrionics. Stalking victims deserve to live in safety and
NETFLIX/ALAMY and only 1.4% are convicted. peace. Right now, as a society, we are failing them •

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

Opinion

UKRAINE

that were never sought or wanted. Ambitions have been

Art shows the surreal abandoned and plans have been cast aside. The war
has crept like a mist into every aspect of domestic life,
into the tender, tremulous matters of love and sex, into
reality of wartime in a the school day where cheerful young Ukrainian kids,
alongside maths and English, get lessons on never, ever
touching something that might be a mine.
way the news never can “What we don’t see in the news headlines is
conversations around the kitchen table – families

Charlotte Higgins
discussing, for example, how much fuel they would
need if they suddenly had to flee to Warsaw,” said
Uilleam Blacker, associate professor of Ukrainian
ussia’s war against Ukraine has studies and East European culture at University College
never been only about territory London, at an event last week. To come close to the
and artillery, about politicians feeling and texture of war as it is lived behind the lines
and putative peace deals. Of – and behind front doors – it is necessary to turn to the
course, that is the easiest and work of Ukrainian artists, writers and film-makers.
most acceptable register in Blacker was in conversation with Natalya Vorozhbit,
which to consider unthinkable one of Ukraine’s most significant playwrights, and
violence: as a geopolitical problem Molly Flynn, the editor of a new anthology of Ukrainian
happening at a far distance. But Russia’s aggression is plays in English translation, which were all written in
an event of shocking magnitude in every individual the wake of the Maidan protests a decade ago. Since
life in Ukraine, and in lives elsewhere, too. The war then, Ukraine has seen an efflorescence of documentary
 Yehor, 2020, is not only happening on the frontline but in homes theatre, often rapid and reactive, and centred on
by Lucy Ivanova and hearts. Deaths are mourned. Lives that were once ordinary lives – work that has formed a kind of artistic
YEVGEN NIKIFOROV straightforward have been propelled into directions parallel to Ukraine’s vigorous civil society.

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 Founded 1821 Independently owned by the Scott Trust

In Kyiv last autumn, I met a group of playwrights

who were debating how to write in the thick of the
full-scale war. In the immediate wake of 24 February
Millions are suf fering as
2022, it had felt difficult, and perhaps unimportant,
to write at all, they told me: the focus was on how
to survive. In the months that followed, though,
the world ignores the
there was an outpouring of documentary theatre,
closely based on real accounts of stories of escape and
survival. And last year, they told me, they detected
spiralling conflict in Sudan

E
a fresh turn in Ukrainian theatre. Some playwrights ven before a Not only is global attention
were using comedy in their work, some fantasy, communications absorbed by the crises in the
some even forms of sci-fi. blackout hit Sudan Middle East and Ukraine,
Playwright Oksana Grytsenko told me she was last month, few but the former is having a
writing a play about Ukraine’s toppled statues of were watching a war that has “catastrophic” effect on aid, as
writer Alexander Pushkin coming alive to join the killed thousands of people Houthi attacks on shipping in
Russian military. When life is turned on its head, and displaced more – almost the Red Sea slow deliveries of
surreality and metaphor might provide the only 8 million – than any other food and medicine, and drive
accurate way to express a situation. Similarly, poetry current conflict. “It’s not a up prices. The consequences of
is flourishing in Ukraine: it is the medium capable forgotten crisis. It’s a wholly Sudan’s war are spilling over.
of expressing how violence explodes meaning; ignored crisis,” Kitty van der Half a million people have fled
how it cuts into and unravels the plot coherence of Heijden of Unicef said at the to South Sudan, exacerbating
individuals’ lives. Munich Security Conference. the food crisis there.
Eighteen million people Outside players are
You might think that reading a poem about the war, in Sudan are acutely food sustaining this conflict. The
or looking at a painting or watching a film, might insecure, and about 3.8 million UAE denies supplying arms,
somehow be a secondary experience, less immediate children are malnourished. At but its support for the RSF
and instructive than, say, watching the news. I suspect the Zamzam camp in Darfur, is well-known; Hemedti’s
the opposite is true: in the hands of a good artist, you a child dies every two hours. forces have ties to the Wagner
can be plunged into the life of another human, all There have been widespread group. Egypt backs the
distance eradicated, all boundaries collapsed. This can atrocities including massacres Sudanese armed forces. More
be extraordinarily painful, as in the and sexual violence. Jan are dabbling in this conflict.
Charlotte Bafta-winning documentary 20 Days Egeland, secretary general As Mr Egeland said, there is
Higgins is the in Mariupol, whose director, Mstyslav of the Norwegian Refugee a stark disparity between the
Guardian’s chief Chernov, thrusts the viewer right Council, warns that “textbook wealth of resources employed
culture writer inside the besieged city. ethnic cleansing” in Darfur – by to wage this war and the
Ukrainian poet Halyna Kruk the paramilitary Rapid Support paucity of those to address
wrote a poem recently, which has been translated by Forces (RSF) and allied Arab its consequences. The UN’s
Uilleam Blacker. It begins by considering a scene of militias – has forced almost humanitarian response plan
recent horror and death: “Watching from afar, you 700,000 to flee. Yet while the is less than 4% funded, with a
can always stop in time, / not get too close, where region’s genocidal violence was $2.6bn shortfall.
the eye sees too much.” Literature, she writes, can a global cause two decades ago, While more money is
edge us towards a position where we can absorb what it barely registers now. desperately needed, the
might otherwise be unendurable details: “The child’s In just five years, Sudan has solution is an end to this war.
shoe, which flew into the air from the child’s foot, / transitioned from dictatorship However, there is no sign of
when they were mixed with the shards of glass and to revolution to coup – and last progress. Mediation efforts
concrete, the women’s broken fingernail emerging April, to civil war, when Gen by the Intergovernmental
from the rubble, / the unblurred remains of the body.” Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, de Authority on Development
A poem can offer a way of seeing an unblurred reality, facto leader and army chief, regional bloc have faltered.
in its bright and painful glare, Kruk suggests: the and Lt Gen Mohamed Hamdan The African Union has played
boundaries of artistic form contain it, and make it – Dagalo (known as Hemedti), little part in talks, though
just – bearable to see. who controls the RSF, turned on it has appointed a panel to
I think a lot about the tender paintings by Lucy each other. The International look at peace efforts. The UN
Ivanova I saw in January in an exhibition at the Jam Crisis Group warns that next security council “does little
Factory, a newly opened arts centre in Lviv. Using could be de facto partition, beyond condemn attacks on
the simple means at her disposal – small canvases, if not state disintegration. civilians and call for access
sketchbooks – she painted the most intimate scenes: Tensions in the Sudanese to humanitarian assistance”,
her husband Yehor scrolling through the news, or armed forces also appear to relief agencies said last week.
sitting on the edge of the bed; the two of them naked, have grown as the RSF has For the sake of Sudan and the
she heavily pregnant, in the kitchen of a temporary gained ground. Meanwhile, region, it cannot keep looking
apartment; later, her son Sava at five days old. These militias are mobilising against away. The US and others must
works of art are also a witness to experience and the the RSF and jihadist fighters also press the outsiders fuelling
foundations of cultural memory. This, too, is the war • may be drawn in. this conflict to step away •

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

50 Opinion
Letters
WRITE Horror and hypocrisy in • The death of Alexei The only way of things, such as visit his
TO US wake of Navalny’s death Navalny has provoked arriving at peace family in California. And
The news of Alexei outrage across the west. and averting a global I am sure that the Church
Navalny’s sudden death But what gives us the right catastrophe is through of England would have
has led to calls for the to judge? We all appear negotiation resulting in an no problem if its vacated
Letters for authorities in Russia to to have agreed to forget independent Palestinian office of supreme governor
publication
be held responsible (Big the unhelpful memory state. This requires was filled by Jesus.
weekly.letters@
story, 23 February). They of Jamal Khashoggi, steady efforts on the part John Bragg
theguardian.com
— are answerable according the journalist who was not only of Israelis and Solihull, England, UK
Please include a to human rights law, but tortured and murdered by Palestinians, but of all
full postal address achieving accountability agents of Saudi Arabia’s other nations. Cessation of Solid ground to query
and a reference against Russia has become crown prince, Mohammed military aid to both sides Manhattan’s foundations
to the article. harder since its expulsion bin Salman. After a polite would be a good start. In Charlie English’s
We may edit letters. from the Council of period of sanctimonious Juliet Flesch review of Revolusi by
Submission and Europe in 2022. As a bloviating, that ended Kew, Melbourne, Australia David Van Reybrouck, he
publication of all result, Navalny’s family with Joe Biden giving the describes “the swampy
letters is subject cannot now petition the prince a happy fist bump. Biden must realise time patch of ground we
to our terms and
European court of human All friends again. waits for no one, even him now call Manhattan”
conditions, see:
THEGUARDIAN.COM/
rights to get to the truth We condemn some I’m 81, and active and (Books, 16 February). The
LET TERS-TERMS about his death. dictators for killing their healthy, as are many of reviewer or perhaps the
Nevertheless, UN political enemies, but let my friends. All with long author of the book may
Editorial bodies such as the human ourselves be bribed by the professional careers be confusing Manhattan
Editor: rights committee still have blood money of others behind us. We know we with Washington DC,
Graham Snowdon jurisdiction over Russia. In and agree to overlook couldn’t do it now. Neither which was indeed built
Guardian Weekly, January, the court decided their own killings. The can Joe Biden. A fact, on a swamp. Manhattan,
Kings Place, the Russian government condemnation of Vladimir not a fault (Memory fail, however, (unlike some
90 York Way, had a case to answer in a Putin feels like so much Spotlight, 16 February). of New York City’s other
London N1 9GU, lawsuit brought by myself cant and hypocrisy. Paula Jones boroughs) is built on
UK
and others on behalf Robert Frazer London, England, UK solid bedrock.
of Navalny, his Anti- Salford, England, UK Emily Matthews
To contact the
editor directly:
Corruption Foundation The royals are sinking but Bristol, England, UK
editorial.feedback and supporters in Stop military aid first in an the prospects are bright
@theguardian.com response to the punitive attempt to secure peace Testing the British I swear you need to cut
steps taken against them Congratulations to Nesrine monarchy’s fragility out the dismal buzzwords
Corrections in 2019, including absurd Malik on her article on (Spotlight, 16 February) Claire Cohen (A well-
Our policy is to criminal prosecutions for the horror of Gaza and the was reminiscent placed profanity is
correct significant money laundering, their illogical western response of re-arranging the the perfect riposte to
errors as soon as designation as “foreign (Big story, 16 February). deckchairs on the Titanic. the gender swear gap,
possible. Please agents”, raids on their No decent person can A growing number of Opinion, 23 February)
write to guardian.
homes and offices, and the deny or diminish the utter us are hopeful that the invites us to be shocked
readers@
freezing of bank accounts. immorality of the Nazi monarchy will falter by her wide range of
theguardian.com
or the readers’ The arc of justice may Holocaust or the appalling in a more serious way obscenities, including
editor, Kings Place, be very long, but we will invasion and slaughter to be replaced by a “buggeration”, “knobber”
90 York Way, not forget Navalny’s on 7 October, but these democratically elected and “arse biscuits”. I’m
London N1 9GU, directive that “you are not events cannot be used to president along the lines far more offended by her
UK allowed to give up”. justify the destruction of of Ireland or Germany. use of the dismal business
Prof Philip Leach Gaza and the continued Relieved of the burden buzzword “impactful”.
Middlesex University, killing and maiming of of kingship, Charles would Gerwyn Moseley
London, England, UK innocent Arabs in Gaza. be able to do more normal Gilwern, Wales, UK

A WEEK
IN VENN
DI AGR A MS
Edith Pritchett

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 Film, music, art, books & more
51

VISUAL ARTS
The secret
sculptures
of Spandau
Page 55 

B elfa st
us
Rioto eecap are
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trio K Northern
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unitin ’s young
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Irelan while also eir
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peopl reviving t
e
nativ ge.
a
langu da
Miran
er
Sawy
em
met th

1 March 2024 The Guardian

TheGuardian Weekly
GuardianWeekly
Weekly
1 1March
March2024
2024The
52 Culture
Music

 PORTRAIT SLOW AFTERNOON IN THE WARM WOODEN Though they’ve been bubbling under for quite a while,
By Hannah enclave that is Madden’s Bar, Belfast. A handful of middle- this year Kneecap are kicking into a higher gear. There’s the
McCallum aged Guinness drinkers chat quietly, nestled like comfy dogs upcoming album, a tour of the US and Canada, a main-stage
in the corner. The lights are low. The music is comforting. appearance at Reading and Leeds festivals and – the thing
Until, blap! Not quite a cowboy entrance, but the door that will catapult them to bigger renown – their excellent,
opens and energy levels leap. In bowl three young men, harum-scarum, semi-autobiographical film, Kneecap. The
familiar to the barman, the drinkers and anyone who’s band all play heightened, cartoon versions of themselves
interested in rap or who watches Joe.co.uk or Vice videos. to tell a heightened, cartoon version of their story. It won
Kneecap, the Irish-language band smashing out of Belfast the audience award at this year’s Sundance film festival.
and into the world, are here: rappers Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó The band returned home from Sundance before the
hAnnaidh, 26), smooth-skinned and pretty in a blue jumper award was announced, but they’d already made quite the
and mac; Móglaí Bap (Naoise Ó Cairealláin, 30), with a grin impression. Not only with the film but with their stunts.
like a smiley shark, in an excellent Lacoste tracksuit, and They brought a PSNI (Northern Ireland police force) Land
DJ Próvaí, AKA JJ Ó Dochartaigh, 34, usually pictured in Rover with them, and found a place called Provo to have
an Irish flag balaclava, but today with no face covering and their picture taken with it.
black clothes. They’re straight to the bar: Guinness for Mo Like Eminem, Kneecap’s humour is the key to their
Chara and Móglaí Bap, a blackcurrant and soda for Próvaí. success. Their wit and eloquence shine through every-
▲ High energy Though they rap in Irish, and are from republican thing they do. There’s a great Joe.co.uk interview about
DJ Próvaí, Móglaí Catholic backgrounds (Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap from West “stupid questions you shouldn’t ask Irish people”. After
Bap and Mo Chara Belfast, Próvaí from Derry), Kneecap’s fanbase is broad, a beautifully argued section from Mo Chara, about how
HELEN SLOAN from Toddla T – who produced their debut album, Fine Art, the British will only be able to deal with their colonial his-
due out in June – to, it seems, everybody in this pub. Their tory if they tackle it as openly as the Germans did after the
▼ Masked singer fans include young people from the unionist side, who’ve second world war, he says: “But the Brits just wanna hide
An undercover been singing along to Kneecap tracks, right from their 2017 their past, because they feel too guilty,” and makes a fists-
DJ Próvaí (JJ Ó debut single, C.E.A.R.T.A. (“cearta” is Irish for rights). to-the-eyes cry-baby face.
Dochartaigh) “We’ve always said [the] Irish [language] is for everyone,” Kneecap are often seen as political, not only by unionists
HANNAH MCCALLUM says Móglaí Bap. “We talk about both sides of the community, in Ireland’s North, but by the UK government (the Business
we’re working-class and we have the same kind and Trade department recently intervened to stop them
of background and the same wants and needs.” receiving an arts grant). They’ve been escorted from their
own concert by security for chanting revolutionary slo-

r t o f th is fi rs t gans; they’ve got a song called Get Your Brits Out, about a

We’re pa (hypothetical) wild night out with the Democratic Unionist

of y o u n g p e o p le party (DUP) politicians Arlene Foster, Jeffrey Donaldson and

group
Christy Stalford; and a skit about the IRA coming down hard
on drug takers. They’re bad boys, taking out authority fig-

elf a st to sp e a k ures without fear: “We don’t discriminate who we piss off.”

in B
to g e t he r s o ci a lly
Irish
 We talk about both 53
sides, we have the
same working-class
background
Though it’s their establishment baiting that makes
headlines, far more fundamental to the band’s soul and mis-
sion is that all three are Irish speakers (Irish is Móglaí Bap’s
first language). This might seem unprovocative to anyone
outside Belfast, but official recognition of the Irish language
was one of the reasons the Northern Ireland assembly was
suspended in 2022 (the DUP opposed the Identity and Lan-
guage Act, which gave Irish a legal status equal to English).
The act was passed in late 2022 and the campaign to have
the language recognised is a storyline in the film. Kneecap ▲ Riot act
started rapping in Irish to show that it’s a living language Kneecap perform
that can describe not only the traditional Irish smell of turf a 1990s documentary about the rave scene in Belfast that at New York’s
on a fire but what’s going on in real life now, from sex to records a time when kids from the nationalist and unionist Bowery Ballroom,
drugs to silly jokes about drinking Buckfast. communities met in a field to dance – but couldn’t hang October 2023
And beside all of this, to most of their young fans, out afterwards because there was nowhere neutral to go. SACHA LECCA/ROLLING
Kneecap are simply a great band: funny, wild, a brilliant STONE/GETTY

D
live act, a craic. As one YouTube commenter says: “I do RUGS PLAY QUITE A PART IN KNEECAP’S
not understand a word they’re saying, but I do understand world. They invented Irish words for them,
that this is an absolute banger.” The best rap comes from because the language didn’t have them.
a living culture, and Kneecap’s is working-class Ulster. “Snaois” is coke, “coppling” is ketamine.
They’re self-proclaimed “lowlife scum”. Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap started inventing
We pile upstairs to another lovely wood-lined room words for drugs while hanging out in their
to chat. The band co-wrote Kneecap with director Rich teens. Later, they had a squat for a while together and ran
Peppiatt, who badgered them for six months before they events. Everyone would go out until 2am, then pile back and
agreed to meet him. All three of Kneecap are great in the bring out instruments and play Irish music, dancing til 6am.
film, so good that I initially thought Próvaí was played by “MDMA and Guinness,” says Mo Chara. Rave, rebel songs
a professional actor. They did drama lessons for six weeks and great tunes, all still central to what Kneecap are about.
and on the first day the film set was packed. They discov- “Kneecap was born of the need to represent that
ered later that it was because everyone was so worried identity,” says Móglaí Bap. “[We were part of] this weird
that they wouldn’t be able to act. But they hold their own first group of young people in an urban setting in Belfast
against such excellent actors as Simone Kirby and Michael to really speak Irish together socially … sharing the words
Fassbender. Fassbender plays Arló, Móglaí Bap’s dad, an and the youth culture, and taking recreational drugs, and
IRA man who disappears, presumed killed by the police, all that melded together.”
but is living in hiding. And using their own language to express what they want.
There’s also an appearance by ex-Sinn Féin leader Gerry Móglaí Bap set up an Irish-language festival – it’s how he
Adams, during a sequence where all the band are in a ket- and Mo Chara first met Próvaí, who came to speak – and he
amine-fuelled hallucination. I’d assumed that Adams’s wrote a play in Irish about a young man being addicted to
appearance was CGI – there’s quite a bit of that in the film gambling, which he was for a while. “It’s about language
– but no, he really is there. The band asked him, assuming and culture,” says Móglaí Bap. “There’s no point in having
he’d say no, but he agreed, though “he changed ‘fucking’ to a united Ireland if it’s just about economics.”
‘flipping’,” says Mo Chara. “We thought he’d have a problem “Irish isn’t a Catholic or republican language,” says Mo
with the drugs, but it was just the profanity.” Chara. “The Protestants and unionists have every right to
The film is due out later this year. Before that, Fine Art have the opportunity to learn it.”
will be released. Made in a three-week whirlwind in the We’re downstairs now, and the pub is filling up for the
summer of 2023 (they had loads of songs but scrapped them evening session. A few of the band’s friends have turned up:
all and wrote new ones when they went into the studio), Sinead, Mo Chara’s girlfriend, who runs the Irish-language
Fine Art is based around a night in a pub like this one. There school that Móglaí Bap set up; Hannah, who takes the pho-
are spoken parts in between songs, where we hear people tos. A surfer-looking guy pops in, they all have a chat in
go out to have a smoke, or go to the toilet and sniff a line of Irish, then he pops out again. The band tell me about Irish-
coke. The music is wildly varied, from a beautiful opener, language schools, how they were banned until the 1990s,
featuring Lankum’s Radie Peat and based around a 1960s how parents had to collect money door to door to pay the
jazz sample; through the bass-driven groove of Better Way teachers. How “six or seven” of DJ Próvaí’s old pupils are
To Live, the single, with Fontaines DC’s Grian Chatten on the now Irish teachers. And time passes, slowly and quickly,
chorus; to a sample of 808 State’s head-thumping classic through Guinness and discussion, rampant piss-taking and
Cübik on Ibh Fiacha Linne. The final track, Way Too Much, a spot of shouting, until I have to leave • Observer
is uplifting piano house. MIRANDA SAWYER IS AN OBSERVER FEATURES WRITER
The band had two themes in mind. First, they wanted Fine Art is out 14 June on Heavenly Recordings. Kneecap
to prove that Irish could work over all kinds of music. And are touring North America to 4 April and appear at UK
second, they were inspired by Dancing on Narrow Ground, festivals in August. The film Kneecap is out later in 2024

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

54 Culture
Visual arts

Ocean drive
‘T
his is bigger than going from A to B,” little ferry that would buzz between the islands,
says Edward Fuglø. “This is a route the romance of the crossing may be gone, but
into another world.” Fuglø is a Faroe driving through the tunnel is quite an experi-

Undersea Islands artist who has created the

paintings decorating the arching interior of a
new tunnel snaking beneath the north Atlantic.
ence. Alongside Fuglø’s vivid artworks, it has
its own soundscape. By tuning their car radios
to 100FM, drivers can immerse themselves in a
legends of Glowing, stylised human figures, many wear-
ing Viking helmets and carrying spears, loom
composition by Sunleif Rasmussen that draws
on sounds he experienced on his own early visit

the Faroes with a 3D intensity from steely grey walls. The

figures are accompanied by longships, mythic
enchanted horses, cattle, birds and depictions
to the construction site. The dreamy electro-
acoustic rhythms amplify the thrumming of
tyres, reinforcing the feeling of heading into
of ancient stone ruins. another dimension.
A new tunnel featuring Using the latest projector technology, the 10 The new tunnel is the second stage in an
images – each several metres high and produced ambitious €360m ($390m) project, which saw
audiovisual artworks from Fuglø’s originals – are as bright as neon, and a similar link connect Streymoy with its eastern
connects residents of the represent fantastical creatures and characters neighbour Eysturoy. As it nears Eysturoy, the tun-
North Atlantic islands from Faroese legend. “Inside the tunnel we are nel splits allowing drivers to emerge on different
dry,” Fuglø muses, “but we have the sense of the sides of the island. This three-way connection
to their heritage as well weight of the ocean above us. And we are cross- led to the world’s first underwater roundabout,
as their destinations ing between very different islands; places with which Samuelsen turned into a visual centrepiece.
their own distinct identities, even in a place as Inspired by the giant arc lights used to
small as the Faroes.” illuminate the excavations, he commissioned
By Tim Ecott I was taken through the tunnel for the first the Faroese sculptor Tróndur Patursson to come
time 18 months ago, when construction was half- up with a permanent installation. The result
finished. The sound of trickling water made an involves colourful lighting and a massive circle
eerie soundtrack to the monstrous shadows cre- of life-sized steel figures that encircle the rounda-
ated by the dynamiting of small sections of the bout as if holding hands. The design is based
basalt rock face. My guide was Teitur Samuelsen, upon the Faroes’ unique national “ring dance”,
the tunnel company CEO, who has overseen this in which hundreds of people perform rhythmic
giant infrastructure project. He told me to hold side-to-side-movements.
out a cupped hand and collect some of the water. “We never suspected that the Eysturoy tunnel
“Taste it!” he laughed. “It’s fresh, it’s not sea- would cause such a stir,” says Samuelsen. “Many
water. We’re more than 150 metres below the tourists include a journey as one of their must-see
seabed – this comes from the bedrock. It’s not a experiences in Faroes. They call it ‘the jellyfish
▼ Shaft of light sign that the tunnel roof is leaking.” roundabout’, because of its shape and the eerie
A projection of The newly opened link is 10.5km long and underwater effect of the coloured ceiling lights.
artist Edward connects Streymoy, the main Faroes island and We felt that we had to produce something equally
Fuglø’s longboat home to the capital Tórshavn, and Sandoy, a artistic for the latest tunnel.”
adorns a wall small island where just 1,200 people live. For Fuglø is struck by the pace of change in the
OLAVUR FREDERIKSEN those who had only ever reached Sandoy on the Faroes. “My grandmother lived on another island
and would sometimes take three days to get to
Tórshavn by rowing boat, stopping to stay at
farmhouses en route and waiting for the right
tide and weather. She would never believe the
speed at which we do things now.”
Fuglø is keenly aware of the history and the
folk traditions of these islands that continue to
play a part in everyday life, whether it be chain
dances, or everyone knowing which island their
grandparents came from. In his tunnel paint-
ings, which he says were partially inspired by
the idea of ancient man making marks on cave
walls, he has included numerous coloured birds.
These are a reference to Diðrikur, who was born
on Sandoy in 1802. An uneducated farmhand,
Diðrikur produced colourful paintings of Faroese
birds on scraps of packaging paper.
His simple silhouettes now hang in the
national gallery. Some 150 metres beneath the
Atlantic, Fuglø’s modern counterparts perch like
Diðrikur’s birds in these miraculous tunnels that
look both to the past and the future.
TIM ECOTT IS A WRITER AND AUTHOR OF
THE LAND OF MAYBE: A FAROE ISLANDS YEAR

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 Culture 55
Visual arts

Statues of
 About face man: Rudolf Hess. On his
The collection of death in 1987, the prison was
unwanted and demolished. The spot where
recovered it sat is now a supermarket.

liability
statuary at The citadel’s director, Urte
Spandau, Evert, has been hoovering up
including the statues nobody wants, hid-
head of the den or left in warehouses.
Lenin monument A touchscreen map shows
STADTGESCHICHTLICHES where the monuments were
MUSEUM SPANDAU
originally located. Many were

H
oused in a former munitions depot in a in Berlin’s central park, Tiergarten: among them,
At the ancient citadel of fortress on the outskirts of Berlin is an statues of Friedrich Wilhelm III and his wife,
Spandau in Berlin, German exhibition like no other: a veritable Queen Luise (the only woman on display), gen-
car boot sale of statues – damaged, erals, or thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, and
history is redefined with a dismantled or dumped – dating from medieval the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.
near-secret exhibition of times to the Nazis to communism. Unveiled: It is customary in German museums to attach
rejected sculptures, from Berlin and Its Monuments has for the past eight warnings to Nazi relics. Here visitors are invited
years cast an unvarnished light on German his- to imagine themselves in 1930s Berlin. One of
Kant and Lenin to Hitler tory. Yet almost no Berliners have heard of it. the more bizarre exhibits entangles the British
I am standing in the courtyard of the citadel occupying forces with the Nazi aesthetic. In the
By John Kampfner at Spandau, a place that has had many purposes run-up to the 1936 Olympics, the much-decorated
since its first recorded mention in 1197, few of Nazi sculptor Arno Breker was commissioned to
them reassuring. From the late 16th century, it create a lifesize nude, Decathlete – the male body
became a garrison city. During the Third Reich in triumphal form, Aryan beauty with more than
it housed research into the nerve gases tabun a hint of homoeroticism. Postwar, the British
and sarin. After the second world war, Spandau kept it in the garden of their barracks. Only 
became synonymous with the detention of one years later, when the statue had to be moved,

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

56 Culture Reviews
Visual arts
was its significance realised. A dedication in bold MUSIC
letters to Hitler had been covered up.
The cavernous halls of the depot add to the
sense of menace. The pièce de résistance is in Loss of Life
the final room. In December 1991, the mayor MGMT, Mom + Pop
of reunified Berlin decided to take Lenin down
★★★★☆
from his plinth. Two decades earlier, a giant
19-metre sculpture had been unveiled to mark
the centenary of the Soviet ruler’s birth. This MGMT, a band who once seemed
was in Leninplatz, in the heart of the capital of intent on alienating the fans who
the German Democratic Republic. Demolition had bought their debut album,
workers had to run the gauntlet of protesters. 2007’s Oracular Spectacular, have
But the contractors couldn’t get him down: the seized the opportunity presented
concrete was too tough. Another firm was found. to them by their surge in popularity
Lenin was removed, chopped into 129 parts and FILM on TikTok. Loss of Life, their
buried in a forest in Müggelheim. His four-tonne fifth album, is just as tuneful as
head found its way to Evert’s exhibition. its predecessor Little Dark Age
Now he lies, humiliated, on his side on the Dune: Part Two and a world away from 2010’s
floor, with four bolts used for the deconstruction Dir, Denis Villeneuve Congratulations or 2013’s dense,
still sticking out from his scalp. He is devoid of claustrophobic self-titled album.
★★★★☆
one ear. Some statues have lost their heads; oth- In fact, Loss of Life covers a
ers have had facial details removed. Many were surprising amount of musical
taken off their pedestals, once-powerful figures The second part of Denis ground in 45 minutes. A duet
forced to meet the visitor at eye level. Traces of Villeneuve’s monumental with Christine and the Queens,
their dismantling – fractures, bullet holes – have Dune adaptation is an epic sci-fi Dancing in Babylon, could slot
not been erased. Children are invited to clamber hallucination whose images speak of on to the soundtrack of an 80s
on top of Lenin. Visitors are encouraged to touch fascism and imperialism, of guerrilla blockbuster, were it not decorated
the statues – “call it the people’s appropriation”, resistance and romance. As before, with keyboards that twist and bend
Evert tells me. She has hosted an Israeli ballerina the film is superb at showing us an off-key. Elsewhere, the duo have
dancing on top of Nazi memorabilia. entire created world, a distinct and acknowledged the influence of
now unmistakable universe. everything from Ziggy-era Bowie

S
ince I first met Evert in 2019, she has been Villeneuve shows such ambition on Bubblegum Dog to Nothing to
looking for more booty. Two months ago, and boldness here, and a real film- Declare’s flirtation with Simon
she emailed me to say she had alighted on making language. But I can’t help and Garfunkel-esque folk. You get
“more toxic objects of remembrance”. I feeling now, at the very end, that the reference points, but it never
headed over quickly. In an adjacent warehouse though it’s impossible to imagine sounds like explicit homage, partly
stood several new objects, including a bust of anyone doing Dune better – or in because everything gets fed through
Hitler. Made of Carrara marble and designed by any other way – somehow he hasn’t MGMT’s psychedelic filter.
Josef Limburg, it stands forlorn on a wooden totally got his arms around the Phradie’s Song might possess
crate. He sports a smashed nose – Evert is not sure actual story in the one giant, self- the sweetest melody the band have
if it was an accident or deliberate. This Hitler was contained movie in the way he got written to date, its feather-soft,
one of quite a few dotted around public offices, them around his amazing Blade chanson-inspired tune butting
most of which were destroyed by allied bomb- Runner 2049. against the dramatic swell of synth;
ing. It was found last summer during one of the There’s no doubt that Timothée I Wish I Was Joking glides gracefully
many excavations around central Berlin as new Chalamet carries a romantic action along, spiked with funny lines:
buildings are constructed. “None of the other lead with great style, even though “Nobody calls me the gangster of
museums wanted it, so I thought I might as well there is so much going on, with so love,” it protests, a self-deprecating
take it,” Evert says. She had to obtain special per- many other characters, that his retort to the smug boasts of Steve
mission from the local authority. heroism and romance with Chani Miller’s old hit The Joker.
The exhibition does not focus exclusively on (Zendaya) is decentred. But this is a Loss of Life strikes a balance
the Third Reich or the GDR. Berlin’s 800-year real epic and it is exhilarating to find between weirdness and pop more
history is richer, more multilayered. My favour- a film-maker thinking this big. impressively than any MGMT album
ite piece is Albrecht von Ballenstedt. Known as Peter Bradshaw since their debut. It is a delightful
Albert the Bear, he was the first local prince, On release in the UK and US; in thing to immerse yourself in.
slayer of Slavs – and now symbol of the contem- Australian cinemas from 14 March Alexis Petridis
porary city. Unveiled in 1903 by Kaiser Wilhelm
II, it is the earliest known depiction of Albert.
Berlin is beginning to reclaim its history, to Podcast of the week The Spy Who …
redefine it, with characteristic intensity and Indira Varma hosts this dive into the “dank, murky world full of
bluntness. After all, what other city would dump
dark corners, sinister motives and corroded morals” occupied by
many of its statues in a warehouse on the edge of
town and expect people to find them? spies. First up is the story of Dusko Popov, whose playboy ways
JOHN KAMPFNER IS AN AUTHOR,
inspired Ian Fleming’s James Bond. It’s irresistibly f ilm-like, with
BROADCASTER AND COMMENTATOR dramatic recreations of scenes from the time. Hannah Verdier

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 Culture 57
Books
he’s not really a politician in the conventional
sense. He came to Westminster late in life after a
long legal career and if it went wrong could prob-
ably leave it behind to go and work in a bookshop.
He ran for leader on a leftwing platform before
dumping it for a more centrist one, a move Bald-
win portrays as less machiavellian than prag-
matic: his Starmer is both reluctant to be aligned
with any one Labour faction and curiously un-
political. What emerges is a portrait of a leader
willing to do whatever it takes, but still occasion-
ally reliant on being told what that is by more
acutely political advisers – with some of the most
illuminating passages covering Starmer’s more
recent political positioning and McSweeney’s
role in the evolution of Labour strategy.
If there is scandal lurking in Starmer’s past
then this biographer hasn’t found it, unless you
are shocked that as a young lawyer sharing a flat
above a brothel he offered legal advice to some of
the young women downstairs. Baldwin identifies
no smoking gun in Starmer’s time as director of
public prosecutions, concluding that far from

K
BIOGR APHY eir Starmer can be a hard man to read. failing to prosecute paedophiles, his record at
The backstory we will hear endlessly the CPS was one of diligently prosecuting sexual
in the run-up to the election – that his abuse cases previously treated as too difficult.
father was a rather emotionally distant More surprising for some readers will be
Steady as he goes toolmaker, his mother a nurse who suffered with Baldwin’s take on tensions within the shadow
a painful form of arthritis, and that they raised cabinet. Rumours of a fractious relationship with
A biography of the four children on a tight budget in a pebble-dashed deputy leader Angela Rayner, culminating in
semi – explains him to some extent. But he tells it a botched attempt to reshuffle her? All better
Labour leader mirrors with a slight stiffness that leaves many wonder- now, apparently. Widely reported frictions with
its unflashy subject, ing if there isn’t something more. A genuinely shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband
revealing account of the rather private man on over green policies? Baldwin, who worked for
but offers intriguing course to lead the country feels badly overdue. Miliband when the latter was leader, describes a
clues as to what The former journalist turned spin doctor Tom friendly, mutually supportive relationship.
Baldwin is at pains to insist this isn’t an author- Perhaps the most illuminating part of the book
motivates him ised biography, but it doesn’t seem entirely unau- for anyone struggling to get a sense of Starmer
thorised either. Baldwin was originally recruited personally covers his relationship with his
By Gaby Hinsliff to help the Labour leader with a memoir he had younger brother Nick, who has a learning dis-
been persuaded to write in 2022. A year later, ability. His fierce protectiveness for his siblings
Starmer backed out of a publishing deal but seems key to his character and politics – but key
agreed to cooperate with the more conventional also perhaps to that feeling that he is always hold-
biography Baldwin proposed writing instead. ing something back. Unlike his parents, they are
This book is the result, benefiting from access still alive, vulnerable to intrusion.
to Starmer’s friends, family, ex-girlfriends and As children, Nick’s siblings got into fights at
wife Vic, and close aides including his highly school, protecting him from bullies. As an adult
influential strategist, Morgan McSweeney. The he has had what his politician brother calls a
author has been a fly on the wall at everything “really tough life” – one that defies glib slogans
from shadow cabinet meetings to family break- about social mobility. Though Keir was always
fasts. It is as intimate an insight into Britain’s the golden boy, he recalls his father telling him
likely next prime minister as readers that he shouldn’t consider himself
are probably going to get, and crucial more successful than Nick, who had
to understanding what makes him more barriers to overcome. This is a
tick. But as Baldwin admits, anyone reminder, Baldwin suggests, that the
“hoping to find these pages spattered overly simplistic working-boy-made-
with blood” will be disappointed by an good stories politicians tell about
account that mirrors its subject: care- themselves on the campaign trail
▲ Deep waters ful, nuanced, unlikely to set the world B O O K O F invariably hide complicated subplots.
Keir Starmer on fire, but eminently capable of doing THE WEEK If Keir Starmer still seems frustratingly
photographed on the job it set out to do. Keir Starmer: hard to pigeonhole, maybe that’s ulti-
Worthing beach If Starmer’s ideological outline The Biography mately our problem, not his.
in 2021 seems blurrier than most politicians’ By Tom Baldwin GABY HINSLIFF IS A
LEON NEAL/GETTY that is, his biographer argues, because GUARDIAN COLUMNIST

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

58 Culture
Books

I
FICTION n the dark times / Will there also be An introduction explains that each charac-
singing?” muses Brecht in the Svendborg ter has been created by a different writer, and
Poems. “Yes, there will also be singing / a wide-ranging cast reflects the diversity of the
About the dark times.” The impulse for lam- authors. The rooftop becomes a very crowded
Ghosts in Manhattan entation in a crisis is instinctive and, perhaps, stage and each day a wonderful variety of tes-
socially useful. But how we voice a response to timonies is recounted. There are ghost stories,
Margaret Atwood, catastrophe can be contentious, not least with angels appearing in Mexico, a nun in a Catholic
the recent Covid pandemic. And while it may be hospital who can predict when patients are about
Celeste Ng, Dave Eggers too early to judge the overall effect of the crisis on to die, war stories, a tale of gay adoption. Even
and others collaborate the written word, we seem to have come out of it an anecdote about a pet rabbit becomes a par-
with more of a feeling of discord than harmony, able about how shared trauma can act as a bond.
on a lockdown novel and a sense that the plague and its quarantine The standout story for me is set in Texas in
that explores our accelerated an already existing divisiveness and the 1970s, about a Black female country and
cultural dissonance. western musician who falls in love with a white
need for connection So in many ways the publication of male star, “kind of a cross between
Fourteen Days could not have been Kristofferson and Glen Campbell
By Jake Arnott more timely. Commissioned by the with a lot more grit”. Harsh realities
US Authors Guild Foundation, with of time and place are captured with a
▼ In it together proceeds going to support its chari- real musicality, in a sad and beautiful
This collective table work, this is a collaborative ballad of doomed love. It’s revealed
narrative is set in novel set in New York at the start of at the back of the book to have been
New York at the lockdown, offering a collective nar- Fourteen Days written by Alice Randall.
start of lockdown rative of that time and produced by Edited by The novel’s central character is the
JOHN MINCHILLO/AP
36 literary heavyweights from the Margaret Atwood building’s caretaker, Yessie, a second-
US and Canada. and Douglas Preston generation Romanian-American les-
Edited by Margaret Atwood and bian whose prime motivation is to
Douglas Preston, there’s work here from an reach her father, who has Alzheimer’s and is
impressive list of writers, including Emma Dono- trapped in a nursing home in another part of
ghue, Ishmael Reed, Dave Eggers and Celeste the city. In the meantime she struggles to keep
Ng. The book is pitched as an “ode to the power a thread running through the novel, diligently
of storytelling and human connection”, and the recording each evening gathering for us, referring
setting is an apartment building in Manhattan, to convenient notes left by the former caretaker
where residents gather on the rooftop at twilight; that give useful character breakdowns and catchy
socially distanced interactions develop as they nicknames for the residents.
begin telling tales. A shared sense of grief and There’s an awful lot of setup here, which
isolation emerges and, as New York becomes the hinders the sense of a coherent novel. Instead,
epicentre of the pandemic, the stories become “a a rather contrived frame story to the individual
reminder of what we’re losing, keeping people narratives is established, like Boccaccio’s Decam-
away from their loved ones as they die”. eron, itself set during the Black Death pandemic of

G
MEMOIR ary Stevenson had a meteoric rise from discovers that “a lot of rich people expect poor
the rags of east London to the riches people to be stupid”. Using this insight to win
of Citibank, and his new book charts a card-based trading competition against his
that journey. This is not a sleazy tell- posh fellow students, Stevenson is offered an
Cashing out all along the lines of the 2008 bestseller City- internship and then a job at Citibank. His first
boy, or the 2013 box-office hit The Wolf of Wall bonus arrives early in 2009, a few months after
A former City trader Street. Stevenson is exceedingly smart and a the collapse of Lehman Brothers nearly destroyed
man with a conscience. Since leaving the bank the global economy. It is £13,000, well over half
looks back in anger at the age of 27, he started the YouTube chan- of what his dad makes in a year as a Post Office
in this darkly funny nel GarysEconomics to explain, among other worker. Next year, Stevenson’s bonus comes
things, how massive money creation by the Bank to almost £400,000, and from then the boy is
account of the of England has favoured the wealthy, while warn- hooked. Multimillion-pound bonuses follow, and
business of big banks ing young people off get-rich-quick being the most profitable trader in the
bitcoin schemes. In 2021 he was one of world becomes the sole focus of his life.
30 millionaires to sign an open letter Talk to traders and bankers in the
By Joris Luyendijk calling on the UK prime minister, Rishi City and many will tell you a similar
Sunak, to increase taxes on the rich. story: finance is not a job, they say, but
Early chapters describe a childhood a lifestyle that consumes you.
amid violence, poverty and glaring To blame Stevenson for his increas-
injustice, all within sight of the tow- The Trading ingly blinkered mentality would be
ers of Canary Wharf. A maths genius, Game harsh. Before Citibank, he had been
Stevenson gets into the London School By Gary Stevenson fluffing pillows in a sofa shop for £40
of Economics (LSE) where he quickly a day. He saw friends throw away their

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 59

14th-century Europe. It’s an obvious inspiration, BOOKS OF THE MONTH

though it doesn’t get a mention until the 12th day. The best new picture books and novels for children and teens
“Listening to all of you up here, hiding from
the plague, telling stories,” declares the poet,
a struggling Black writer and academic. “How By Imogen Russell Williams richly characterised sift the town’s dark
could this whole thing not remind us of the and unforgettably secrets and bring Becca
Decameron?” His own tale becomes something of atmospheric. safely home? An instantly
a recursive satire, recounting a seminar in which addictive and well-crafted
diverse arts practitioners hold “classical readings supernatural mystery for
about the plague now that it has been declared a 14+, from the author of
national emergency”. Representatives of various The Hazel Wood.
minorities at the seminar soon condemn Bocc-
accio as being homophobic, transphobic, ableist,
elitist, antisemitic and racist. Here, as elsewhere,
there is much debate about who is truly given a
voice, where “one person’s censorship is another Time Travellers:
person’s didacticism”. And despite, or maybe Adventure Calling
because of, the discursive nature of the novel, a By Sufiya Ahmed Stitch
strong theme does emerge from the heart of it: On a school trip to By Pádraig Kenny
the struggle for identity. parliament, rebellious Brought to life by
The appearance of ghosts also becomes Suhana is surprised to Professor Hardacre,
a recurring trope, providing a rather hokey find herself teaming up Stitch has been awake Queerbook
denouement, but it’s the spectre of the culture with “good kids” Mia and for 585 days, although By Malcolm Mackenzie
wars that truly haunts the book. Fourteen Days Ayaan – and the three his creator has not been This affirming whistlestop
chronicles how Covid-19 exacerbated a fever new pals definitely don’t seen for months. When tour through queer history
of competing rights and fierce arguments over expect to be transported the professor’s nephew and culture features an
free speech and silencing. And it inadvertently back to 1911, into the arrives, the castle is A-Z of camp icons as well
pinpoints the effect that lockdown had on litera- midst of a coronation thrown into uproar, and as protest timelines,
ture: how it has become increasingly solipsistic and a march for women’s Stitch and his friend changing terminology,
and autofictional, with lived experience valued rights. Can they get back Henry Oaf are forced iconic artists, music, film
over creative storytelling. The power of much home safely – and do all to flee. But the world and more. Engaging, witty
of the writing here is undeniable, as is the sense three of them want to outside reacts with horror, and thoughtful, it’s full of
of personal testimony. The fact that it doesn’t go home? Short, pacy calling them “monsters” a supportive kindness that
cohere as a novel is perhaps the point, giving us and thought-provoking, … Written from Stitch’s LGBTQ+ teens may find
a more accurate reflection of the fractured world this thrilling 8+ novel innocent but clear-sighted indispensable.
we came back to. The imagination remained focuses on the suffrage perspective, Kenny’s
socially distanced, leaving us with a strange movement, especially the revisiting of Frankenstein
sense of collective isolation. women of colour often is a poignant, deeply
JAKE ARNOTT IS AN ENGLISH NOVELIST erased by history. rewarding Gothic
story for 9+.

futures on drugs. But this book calls itself “a con-

fession”. At some point you expect Stevenson
to inject some self-reflection into the narrative.
That point never comes. Instead, Stevenson
spends 400 pages fulminating against everything The Brilliant Brain
and everyone. He lashes out at his parents, at the By Dr Roopa Farooki
school that expelled him, at students and profes- and Viola Wang
sors at LSE and at his fellow traders. He bristles Both straightforward and
with contempt for the brokers who depend on On Silver Tides intriguing, filled with
him and he rages about management. By Sylvia Bishop The Bad Ones bright illustrations, this
This is a well written and often darkly funny Kelda and her family are By Melissa Albert introduction to the brain
book that makes a convincing case that high boat-dwelling silvermen One winter’s night Nora’s details its structures,
finance is as toxic, reckless and deeply cynical who can breathe and best friend Becca goes how it works, and how
as ever. It is fantastic that Stevenson now uses his swim like fish – but Kelda’s missing, along with three best to take care of it. It’s
understanding of economics and high finance to sister Isla is different. other people. Becca’s perfect for reading aloud
campaign against inequality. It falls short as a con- As their community left coded messages, but to children of four and
fession, though, lacking any real introspection, turns against them, they seem to point back up, or for independent
let alone repentance or the making of amends. poisoned waterways into the past: to another readers who’ll enjoy
One wishes Stevenson had given an account of and painful betrayals disappearance 30 years showing off vocabulary
this part of his healing process, too. It might have drive Kelda to attempt ago, and to the sinister such as “occipital” and
helped others trapped in similar cages of gold. a terrifying journey. figure of a predatory “cerebrum”.
JORIS LUYENDIJK IS AN AUTHOR AND THE FORMER A shimmering, stark, goddess, a neighbourhood IMOGEN RUSSELL WILLIAMS
WRITER OF THE GUARDIAN’S BANKING BLOG original novel for 12+, urban legend. Can Nora IS A CHILDREN’S BOOK CRITIC

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly

60 Lifestyle
y

MODER N LIFE The youngest one sends a left the youngest one’s dinner
Tim Dowling message that says: “Seeing grandpa suggestion unanswered.
tomorrow what about dinner.” I send him a text that says:
The middle one sends nothing. “pasta cheech.”

I invite my three “Fine,” I write. “The meat stays

in the freezer.” I fall back on my
Pasta cheech is a classic Italian-
American store-cupboard supper

sons round for original plan of No Plan.

The next day, at lunchtime, I am
handed down over generations, but
not to me: I learned to make it when I

Sunday lunch. alone eating an egg and toast. A key

turns in the front door. The middle
was about 50, from a YouTube video.
The youngest one sends a text:

Silence ensues one walks in and sheds his coat.

“Hey,” he says.
“I could come for pasta cheech.”
He arrives just after eight. We
“Hey,” I say. “There’s eggs.” settle in front of the television

M
y wife is off for “I ate,” he says. He sits down and with two bowls and two beers.
a weekend trip with a takes out his phone. I think he might On the screen a couple’s dream
friend. The dog stands have come to look in on me, as if home building project slowly
on the sofa and watches I were a cat; to make sure there’s destroys their lives, one terrazzo
through the window, whining softly water in my bowl. Or maybe he’s floor tile at a time.
as the car pulls away. Me, I’m fine – I here to see the actual cat. “Harsh,” says the youngest one.
have plans, which are no plans at all. “What’s up?” I say. In the break, a home insurance
On second thought, I think, I could “Nothing much,” he says, advert appears with CGI creatures
invite my three sons over for Sunday thumbing his phone. I wonder if involved in some domestic mishap.
lunch. I post a message to the family the serpent’s tooth thing might “What kind of animal is that
WhatsApp group. “Mum is away,” it have given rise to some general supposed to be?” I say.
says. “I could do Sunday lunch here, concern about my mental wellbeing. “A wombat,” says the youngest
but you have to let me know if you’re In which case, I think: mission one.
coming cos I gotta take a big piece of accomplished. “Oh yeah,” I say, realising the
meat out of the freezer.” “I might have a coffee,” he says. animal is wearing a T-shirt that says
I hear: nothing. Not for an hour or “Have you seen this?” I say. I WOMBAT on it. “So his accent is,
the rest of the morning. I decide not remove the magnetic whisk from like, geographically appropriate.”
to take my sons’ silence personally. inside the milk frother. I think the “It is,” says the youngest one.
Anyway, I think: this is not about “Whoa,” he says. “Whereas these meerkats,” I say.
you; it’s about defrosting times. “Brand-new spare part,” I say, middle “They’re still Russian,” he says.
This aloof approach lasts about 20 twirling it before his eyes. “I was on one has “Which never made sense,” I say.
minutes, after which I send another a waiting list for it.” “But before this Australian wombat
message: “So that’s how it is. How “So it works now?” come to arrived to make the anomaly plain …”
sharper than a serpent’s tooth.” “Whisk away, my friend,” I say. look in “We just went along with it,”
I hear: nothing. “Whisk away.” he says.
Three hours later, my wife posts a The middle one drinks two on me, as “Speak for yourself,” I say.
message that says: “Poor Dad.” coffees, watches the first half “I signed a petition.”
The oldest one sends a message of a football match and leaves.
if I were I think: if his mother was here, she
that says: “I’m busy tomorrow.” At about seven, I realise I have a cat would stand for none of this.

STEPHEN COLLINS

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 KITCHEN AIDE 611
6
By Anna Berrill

T H E W E E K LY
RECIPE
By Nigel Slater

№ 256
Pappardelle
with artichokes
and lemon
Cook 15 min The pasta dinner I make over and
Serves 2 over again is the one that involves a
10-minute trip to the deli on the way
home to pick up lemons, basil and

A clear winner: what is brown some of those preserved artichokes

in oil. The loose ones are usually

butter and how do I use it? larger than those in jars but both are
good. I then warm the artichokes in
a little olive oil (the stuff they come
in is best drained off and replaced
What’s the deal with brown butter? for a deep golden colour before Ingredients with something more delicious),
I keep seeing it in recipes and pulling the pan off the stove. 125g dried then I toss them with the chopped
on menus. You can use brown butter in pappardelle herbs, lemon and grated parmesan
Ben, Sheffield, England, UK myriad ways, both sweet and 250g bottled before introducing wide ribbons of
artichoke hearts
savoury. At the Camberwell Arms, pappardelle. A pinch of dried chilli
1 lemon
Achieved by heating butter until the it’s something of a staple seasoning, 6 bushy sprigs
flakes added to them as they warm
water evaporates and the milk solids adding depth and complexity of parsley is good here too.
caramelise, brown butter (or beurre to cabbage, for instance. It’s 10g basil leaves
noisette) can enhance the flavour equally good when used to make 6 tbsp grated Method
of all the good things – cookies, scrambled eggs, poured over pasta parmesan Cook the pappardelle in deep, salted
cakes, pasta, pork chops. “It can be or gnocchi, stirred into soup, or to 1 tbsp olive oil boiling water till tender, about 4-5
a beautiful thing,” agrees baker Lily dress grains or meaty white fish minutes. While the pasta cooks,
Jones, of Lily Vanilli in east London, (it’s especially good in a crab roll, drain the artichokes, and if they are
who recently launched an initiative Jones says). Brown butter is also not already cut in half then do so.
across the capital to get birthday valuable in the likes of hollandaise, Finely grate the zest from the lemon.
cakes to those who would otherwise Davies adds, to serve with eggs Remove the leaves from the
go without. “It has a subtle, nutty, benedict or asparagus although parsley and basil, roughly chop both
toffee caramel flavour that brings admittedly we’re a little way off the and mix together with the lemon
extra sweetness and richness.” UK’s asparagus season. zest. Sprinkle the grated parmesan
You’ll need a heavy-based pan Of course, brown butter makes over a grill pan or baking sheet and
and some good-quality butter cut all manner of bakes better, the place under the overhead grill for
into pieces. (“Better-quality butter classic financier being a prime a few minutes, watching carefully
equals better-tasting brown butter,” example. “It’s a rich, almondy cake/ until it colours (take care as it burns
Jones insists.) As the butter melts, sponge hybrid made with quite a easily). Remove from the grill then
swirl the pan to prevent the milk lot of brown butter,” Davies says. scrape into crumbs with the edge of
solids from caramelising too quickly Alternatively, Jones would put a metal spatula or palette knife.
– “it’s ready when clear [separated] brown butter to work in brownies Warm the olive oil in a shallow
and with a nutty aroma”. Easy “with lots of sea salt”, or a chocolate pan, add the artichokes and cook
enough, but you’ll need to exercise ganache for filling or icing cakes. them for 6-8 minutes till they are
patience (and not to use too high a Brown butter in biscuits is just plain starting to colour. Turn once and
heat), because butter can burn in the good sense, and particularly in continue cooking for a couple of
blink of an eye, says Mike Davies, nobs – “II just
Davies’ kryptonite, Hobnobs minutes. Drain the pappardelle and
chef/director of the Camberwell love them.” Simply make e the brown gently toss with the artichokes.
Arms in south London. “Over a nd solidify,
butter, leave it to cool and Scatter in the pa
parsley, basil and
medium heat, it will take five to then rub into flour, sugarr and oats. lemon, and grin
grind in some black
10 minutes, but just keep an eye “Brown butter Hobnobs are a secret pepper. Divide between plates and
on it,” he advises. “And remember, ce.”
weapon level of brilliance.” dust with the totoasted parmesan
being a fat, butter retains heat, so it ANNA BERRILL IS A FOOD WRITER crumbs. Observ
Observer
will continue cooking [once off the Got a culinary dilemma? Email
heat] for some time.” You’re looking [email protected]

LEW ROBERTSON/GETTY

1 March
Marc 2024 The Guardian Weekly
ar h 20
 Notes and Queries
62 Diversions The long-running series that invites
readers to send in questions and
answers on anything and everything

QUIZ 8 Who had a worldwide hit CINEM A CONNECT COU N T RY DI A RY

Thomas Eaton with a song first recorded Killian Fox BRIGHTON
by Gloria Jones? East Sussex, England, UK
What links:

O
1 What are currently 9 Jean Harlow; Marlene Name the films and the female actor n the allotment, the trees
determined by a reporting Dietrich; Reese who connects them. sing with starlings, as if
panel of 5,100 homes? Witherspoon; Ana de Armas? the birds were decorating
2 Which Shakespeare title 10 British Library (two); them, as if it were
character only gets his Lincoln Castle; Christmas. I listen to them whistle
name in Act 1, Scene 9? Salisbury Cathedral? as I clear a bed to sow seeds. They
3 Which two US companies 11 Elephant by Kendra chatter while I repaint my shed.
have reached a $3tn Haste; mosaics by Eduardo They’re famous for murmurating
market value? Paolozzi; Labyrinth by around Brighton pier, said to be one
4 Who is claimed to have Mark Wallinger? of the best places in the country to
found the true cross 12 Blackpool; Dundee Utd; watch their heart-stopping displays.
around AD326? Luton Town; Netherlands; Sometimes I join the crowds to
5 In climate history, Shakhtar Donetsk? watch them shape-shift into the sky,
what was the LIA? 13 Hans Larive; Airey Neave; as an orange sun sinks into the sea.
6 The highest point on the Pat Reid; Hank Wardle? I love the display, but I prefer the
equator is in which country? 14 Apollo; Comet; Fire; buildup. I prefer hanging back on the
7 Threatened by Fury; Giant; Legend; Nitro? allotment as they get ready for their
Panama disease, what 15 Australia; Fiji; Hawaii; party. I prefer watching clouds of
fruit is the Cavendish? New Zealand; Tuvalu? them pulse towards the seafront as I
walk the dog, feeling their wingbeats
PUZZLES The longest day in over me before I step into the gym.
RESCUE, FESCUE.
ANTIDOTES. 4 Same Difference
Chris Maslanka England? (9) X-RAY; WEDNESDAY. 3 Jumblies These starlings are as much a part
of this city as the seafront itself.
Puzzles 1 Wordpool c). 2 Cryptic
and Annie Hall all star Sigourney Weaver.
3 Jumblies Cinema Connect Working Girl, Aliens They dazzle onlookers each evening,
1 Wordpool Rearrange the letters incorporate the union jack.
15 National (or state) flags that
but by day they’re among us: in
Find the correct definition: of STATIONED to make 14 Gladiators in 2024 TV series. our gardens and allotments, our
WYN another word. 13 Successfully escaped from Colditz. trees and rooftops. Lately, they’ve
a) falconer’s gauntlet been on our streets, too. Suffering
that play in orange/tangerine.
London Underground. 12 Football teams
b) keen 4 Same Difference of Magna Carta. 11 Artworks on the national declines of 53% since 1995,
c) runic symbol for w Identify the two words it’s thought that a lack of food is
10 Locations of the four original copies
films: Platinum B; B Venus; Legally B; B.
d) wend that differ only in the Cell (Tainted Love). 9 Stars of Blonde to blame, thanks to intensively
letters shown: 6 Ecuador (Cayambe). 7 Banana. 8 Soft
Emperor Constantine). 5 Little Ice Age.
managed farmland and the loss of
2 Cryptic R***** (save) Microsoft. 4 (Saint) Helena (mother of gardens beneath plastic and paving.
Cross beam – it reveals F***** (pointer) figures (Barb). 2 Coriolanus. 3 Apple and They eat insects, spiders and
what’s inside (1-3) grubs – all of which need spaces
Answers Quiz 1 UK TV viewing
© CMM2024
to live and breed too. In 2019,
CHESS the start, as Buettner has monitoring, post-game Brighton and Hove council stopped
Leonard Barden stated that his ambition interviews, expert running using the weedkiller glyphosate on
is for $1m for each of the commentaries, plus a time our streets, but it couldn’t get the
continental knockouts. limit designed to produce staff to do the job by hand and so
After the success of last Weissenhaus was scrambles, all added to complaints about Brighton’s weeds
month’s Freestyle Chess showcased in spectacular the glitz. made national news. Amid all the
event where the world style. A confession booth Freestyle has many noise and hot air, our starlings
No 1, Magnus Carlsen, during play, television fans, but it may remain a tucked in. Could our weedy streets
defeated the world No 2, closeups, heart rate niche sideline unless the have helped starling numbers?
Fabiano Caruana, in huge prize funds become The council recently overturned
3908 White mates in four moves
the final, its billionaire (by Fritz Giegold, Stern 1957). Just
reality, and possibly even the ban, and will resume its chemical
organiser, Jan Buettner, a single line of play, with all Black’s then. At best, it could warfare imminently. I will miss
has stepped up his replies forced. permanently boost the watching the starlings feed from our
interest further. chess economy, just as the streets. May the allotment still sing
Buettner’s plan is a 8 entry of Rex Sinquefield with them. Kate Bradbury
Freestyle elite eight-GM 7 and St Louis has done
invitation in India late 6 since 2008. However,
in 2024, followed by a 5 Freestyle’s major selling
five-continent global tour 4
point, its absence of
in 2025, and including a memorised openings,
3
new four-player women’s is a negative for the
tournament. Weissenhaus 2 average player.
had a $200,000 prize fund, 1 Kxh4 4 Nf3 mate.
but even that may be just
3908 1 Ra3! b4 2 Ra4! b3 3 Rh4!
a b c d e f g h
ILLUSTRATION: CLIFFORD HARPER

The Guardian Weekly 1 March 2024

 Guardian Puzzles & Crosswords
Access over 15,000 puzzles on our app. 63
Download from the App Store or Google Play.
Read more: theguardian.com/puzzles-app

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Quick crossword
9 No 16,783
10 11 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

12 13 8 9

10

14 15 16 11

All solutions published next week

17 12 13

18 19 20 21 14 15

22 16

23 24 25 17

18 19

26 27 20 21

28 29 22 23

The Weekly cryptic By Brendan Across 10 WWII battle (10)

1 Herb (4) 12 Gorgeous and eye-catching (8)
No 29,310 3 Climates (anag.) (8) 13 On-board scrubber? (8)
8 Sty noise (4) 16 Opposition (6)
9 Bubbly (8) 18 Large wader (4)
Across 15 A point above 18 in game before final pass
11 Loquacious type (10) 19 Teenage miscreant’s ‘award’ (4)
1 Fly like some insects, or bat (7) forward (9)
14 Fair (6)
5 Like husband found in a fornicating situation? 17 Rowdy drunk driver admitting nothing (8)
15 Knockout fixture (3,3)
(7) 19 Put out eggs – almost leave out scrambled (7)
17 About to break down (2,3,5)
10 Food in repast is oddly deficient (4) 21 It’s not easy catching variety, American
20 Sit on and across (8)
11 Mark similar to 18, but higher (10) counterpart of 24 (7)
21 Insulation mineral, as shiny Solution No 16,777
12 Snaps emerging branches (6) 22 Doesn’t finish some panda food (6)
silicate (4) C A S T L E A S T R A L
13 Maximally exposed, first covering up hole (8) 25 Is highly moving in theatre part (5)
22 Take it easy! (4,4) O T A T E U
14 Minded after power is handed over (9)
23 Grey (4) F R I E D M A I L B O X
16 Secure arms from Communist Russia (5) F R L A M U U
18 One among 6, 25 amalgamated, or what E A R N E S T U T T E R
divides them (5) Down E U R L Y
20 Monarch displayed in museum – initially 1 Flow regulator (8) P A R R I C I D E
housed show in ground-floor extensions (9) 2 French policeman (8) B A A U D
L E A S T R E L A P S E
23 Invariably costly meal, it’s said, extended by 4 City in Pakistan (6)
O U L C I H M
indefinite period (8) 5 Gibberish (5,5) WA RM I S H F R O Z E
24 Kind of 18, or kind of blue (6) 6 Dainty (4) E A K E N A
26 Flits with dashing young men around small 7 Cummerbund, for example (4) R E L I E F C R A Y O N
Roman square (10)
27 Tyrannical ruler found in previous answer,
Solution No 29,304
after all (4)
28 Originality of points, three of them in all (7)
Sudoku
29 Conservative regret about pathetic campaign N O T W O W A Y S A R M Y Hard
(7) I A V E N B O Fill in the grid so
I N O N E E A R A B O A R D that every row,
O G T A R U S every column
Down
A N D O U T T H E O T H E R and every 3x3
2 Inflict corporal punishment on kid, for
E E D I C box contains the
example (7)
3 Start of tribute about stupid Italian poet (5) S P A D E S D U R A T I O N numbers 1 to 9.
4 Passing white’s soaring over grass (8) L P U D
Last week’s solution
6 Add fatty stuff to heart of cabbage, say (6) Q U O T I E N T M O T H E R
7 Put in situation hard to get out of? Possibly, T E C H R
providing one red’s OK (9) N O T Q U I T E Q U I N S Y
8 Ambassador’s immersed in European matter N U F A U R H
in Greek city (7) R I M I N I T H E R E A R E
9 Endlessly distrust the writer taken in by U L E R E M E
penchant for verbal ambiguity (6,7) E M M A S T E I N B E C K

1 March 2024 The Guardian Weekly