Innehållsförteckning för 8 December 2023 från Guardian Weekly

THE DUBAI SKYLINE is designed to inspire wonder, the sparkling glass towers reflecting the desert sky. At the northern end of the emirate, the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa, juts into the atmosphere. If you face the tower with your back to a neighbourhood that largely houses migrant workers, you can gaze at it through a 150-metre-high gold frame – also the world’s largest – intended to present the real-life cityscape as though looking at a photo. The sense of awe that comes from staring up at the towers of glass and metal or the fake canals and lakes between them, much like the manicured islands created to function as sea-level gated communities for the wealthy and famous, comes from the constant sense that everything the eye lands on…

Last Friday morning, Reham Shaheen had a rare chance to talk to her husband, Muhanad, who had been sheltering with their family in Deir al-Balah, in the southern half of Gaza, shortly after Israel’s military restarted its campaign of bombing. The aid worker, now in Jordan, had been separated from Muhanad and their three children because of a work trip two days before the war. Now she could do little other than listen to his despair down the line as Israel’s air force struck again and again. “He was feeling really helpless and feeling frustrated,” said Shaheen, who works for the disability charity Humanity & Inclusion. “He told me, ‘I’m really regretting that I moved from the north to the south, because now the bombing this morning is targeting the…

Lunching on a sandwich in the central market of Volendam, a port north of Amsterdam, Gerald, 24, was lucid about his choice in last month’s Dutch election. “I voted for Wilders, and many of my friends did too,” he said. “I don’t want to live with my parents for ever. I want my own home, and to be able to provide for my family later on. Wilders wants to figure out the housing crisis, and make our healthcare better. Those are the most important topics for me.” If everyone who voted in the election were aged under 35, Geert Wilders, the far-right populist whose Party for Freedom (PVV) shocked Europe by winning the most parliamentary seats, would have won even more. In last year’s French presidential runoff, Marine Le Pen…

Above canvas awnings along the narrow streets in Patronato, a busy commercial district in Chile’s capital, Palestinian flags hang from lampposts and frame warehouse doors. Bakeries sell baklava, pitta and falafel; and shelves are stacked with products imported from the Middle East, their ingredients hastily covered over with Spanish approximations. Here in Santiago, 13,000km from Gaza, Palestine’s cause and culture burn brightly: Chile is home to the largest Palestinian diaspora outside the Middle East, numbering as many as 500,000 people. “I would love to say that the support is born from an innate sympathy for human suffering,” said Dalal Marzuca, 28, a third-generation Chilean Palestinian. “But I think it’s more likely that everyone here just has a friend, colleague or classmate with Palestinian heritage.” Marzuca works at a Palestinian coffee…

More than 180 years after Māori leaders gathered near the banks of the Waitangi River to sign the treaty that became New Zealand’s founding document, their descendants fear the rights afforded to them in the agreement may be under attack. The country’s new coalition government, sworn in last week, has said it will review the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, or Treaty of Waitangi, which upholds Māori rights. “For us, this is a modern-day confiscation of our treaty rights, hard-earned and fought for by our predecessors,” said Tukoroirangi Morgan, hundreds of whose ancestors were killed by British troops in the invasion of the Waikato in the 1860s. The government – led by National’s Christopher Luxon and with the populist New Zealand First leader, Winston Peters, and Act party libertarian…

One of the few things that still brings the Republican and Democratic political establishments together is their shared reverence for Henry Kissinger. Kissinger’s death, at the age of 100, has served as a reminder that the wide-ranging and substantial allegations of war crimes against him never dimmed the admiration he inspired among the powerful in Washington. “Henry Kissinger, war criminal beloved by America’s ruling class, finally dies,” was the Rolling Stone headline on his obituary, expressing the bewilderment and frustration of many progressives at his enduring popularity among the elite. Republican tributes were hardly surprising – it was as national security adviser and then secretary of state to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford that Kissinger made his mark on the world. What is more striking is the enduring fealty of…

Olaf Scholz, Germany’s safety-first chancellor, has been harshly criticised for foot-dragging on military assistance for Ukraine. As Russia’s invasion loomed, he was ridiculed for offering 5,000 helmets instead of heavy weapons. Early German doubts and prevarications delayed delivery of missiles and Leopard tanks. It got so bad that, in April last year, Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was bluntly told he was not welcome in Kyiv. What a difference a war makes! As the conflict approaches the two-year mark, Scholz, remarkably, is now leading the western effort to keep Ukraine afloat. Continued US military aid is in doubt. President Joe Biden’s proposed new $61.4bn package has been blocked by Republicans in Congress. EU funds worth €50bn ($54bn) are held up by Hungary’s Kremlin-friendly leader, Viktor Orbán. Former UK prime minister Boris…

‘We only went to Kenya because a Nairobi businessman fumbled in his jacket pocket.” So begins Nicholas Rankin’s hybrid of history and memoir focused on the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s. The businessman’s car keys “snagged the trigger of his Beretta, and he shot himself in the stomach. My father got his job.” Historians don’t write history, they curate it, and in Trapped in History Rankin challenges his own childhood absorption of propagandistic accounts of Britain’s imperial past. Nearly 70 years after his arrival in Kenya from Sheffield, Rankin, a former BBC World Service producer, writer and consummate storyteller, has composed an insightful tale of hubris in colonial east Africa, underpinned by rigorous research. When, in 1953, Rankin’s stockbroker father, James Tennant Rankin – known as Tennant – told…

Across 1 Unofficial (communication) (3-3-6) 9 Unesco-recognised South American dance (5) 10 Divine beings (7) 11 Biblical boat-builder (4) 12 Time-server (8) 14 (Brief) means of ventilation (3-3) 15 Soft, silvery-white metal (6) 18 Calamity – I’d assert (anag) (8) 20 Slant put on information (4) 22 How something may be assumed (1,6) 23 Take up (5) 24 Naval rank equivalent to a sergeant (5,7) Down 2 Travelling show (7) 3 (Archaic) trust – wort (anag) (4) 4 Last – bear (6) 5 Substance released (8) 6 Major constellation which includes the star Betelgeuse (5) 7 Spot the difference (12) 8 Something to brighten up a living room? (8,4) 13 Tale of woe told to elicit sympathy (3,5) 16 Oiled MP (anag) – suddenly collapse (7) 17 Confidence (6) 19…

1 CLIMATE CRISIS Cop28 head cornered over fossil fuel phase-out claim The president of Cop28 was forced to mount a fierce defence of his views on climate science, after the Guardian revealed his comment that there was “no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C”. Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company, Adnoc, said at a press conference at the summit in Dubai, which is due to conclude on 12 December: “I respect the science in everything I do. I have repeatedly said that it is the science that has guided the principles or strategy as Cop28 president. We have always built everything, every step of…

Pornsawan Pinakalo’s three great aunts would not have missed his return for the world. Kularb Pinakalo’s knees couldn’t quite get her up to the room in Bangkok airport where her nephew was meeting other family members for the first time since being taken hostage in Gaza. But after travelling for four hours by van to the Thai capital, the 63-year-old was ready and waiting for him to emerge in the arrivals hall, alongside 84-year-old Nangnoi Pattataysan and Noi Prakobkan, 82. “I just want to give him a hug,” Kularb said. She was so overwhelmed that she could hardly think of what to say to him, she added. Pornsawan was one of 17 Thai nationals who landed in Bangkok on last Thursday after the foreign ministry and Thai Muslim groups worked…

‘Wilders addressed their anger. They didn’t hear any solutions, but he gives words to their fears’Ahmed Marcouch Soon after news broke that the populist Geert Wilders and his anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) had won the most votes of any party in the Dutch elections, Ahmed Marcouch found himself comforting his distraught eight-year-old. Earlier in the day, a teacher at his son’s school had explained the election results, discussing the differences between parties. Now Marcouch’s son was terrified that the family would have to leave the country. “It was heartbreaking,” said Marcouch. But for the Moroccan-born mayor of the eastern Dutch city of Arnhem, it was also a worrying sign of just how deeply politics had veered into the personal. PVV emerged as the most voted-for party in the Gelderland…

A salvo of machine gun fire, customary during funerals, illuminated the night sky as dozens of men converged in a dimly lit, unpaved alley on the edges of the sprawling slums of Sadr city to pay their respects. A giant picture of Ali Hassan al-Daraaji had been erected outside the family home in north-east Baghdad to announce his “martyrdom” in last month’s US airstrikes on Iraqi armed groups. The series of strikes left nine fighters dead, including Daraaji, the first Iraqi fatalities linked to the Israel-Hamas war. The Pentagon said it acted in self-defence of its troops, who returned to Iraq in 2014 to help the Iraqi government fight Islamic State. Many of the men at the funeral were members of Kataib Hezbollah, the secretive group believed responsible for the…

ONE FREEZING COLD MORNING, I drove past the outer edge of Denver, Colorado, past Buckley air force base, past the suburban neighbourhoods huddled at the edge of the Great Plains. I saw rising from the prairie several low bumps, lifting from the horizon like icebergs. As I got close to them, I saw they were encircled by barbed wire and knew I had reached my destination. I pulled into the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site, cutely known as Dads. I was part of a tour, arranged by a local reporter. Ten people gathered around our guide, Doc Nyiro, a Dads manager, middle-aged, with a studious, geeky demeanour. Nyiro began by telling us that Dads is open 24 hours a day, six days a week. Every day, 800 trucks arrive, culminating in…

For Britain, renewed demands by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece’s prime minister, to relinquish the Parthenon marbles brings the country face to face with its colonial past. For Greece, repatriating the sculptures, which have been housed in the British Museum since 1817, is a matter of national identity. For the past 200 years, Greeks have leaned heavily on the idea that the present-day nation is an extension of ancient Greece. From a young age, this is what I was taught in school. Ancient Greece was everywhere in the curriculum and we were encouraged to feel great pride in having originated from the cradle of European civilisation. But after moving abroad as an adult and reading more widely, I started to question the fragile link between our past and present. Most Greeks will…

Jonathan Lethem is best known for his inventive use of genre and elegiac musings on his native borough. In his 1999 breakthrough novel Motherless Brooklyn, its narrator Lionel Essrog’s Tourette syndrome propelled a fast-moving neo-noir with an explosive glossolalia. The title nodded to Essrog’s orphaned status, and his struggle with loss and displacement was embellished with obsessively inventive linguistic flourishes. Lethem’s 2003 bestseller The Fortress of Solitude was also set in Brooklyn, a complex bildungsroman with richly layered references to music, comic books and street art. Twenty years on, and Lethem’s return to his home turf sees the language stripped down. “Keep the light, let alone the honeyed light, from your eyes, ” an anonymous narrator insists early on. “Just the facts, man – no painterly effects. We’re here to…

The ford is a problem. We shuffle across the Rhenass River, water almost at the top of our wellies. Somehow free from squelchy socks, I ponder when somebody last walked this lane. This is one of the island’s most isolated upland areas, and we cannot see a single house, person or car in any direction. Above us stands Greeba Mountain. At its base, the Blaber bog. This muted landscape is desolate yet alluring. Across the valley, cattle graze old pastures ringed with gorse. Raven and redpoll pass overhead, then a buzzard. Five years ago, I would have been awestruck to see one; today I have seen three. Our cave-dwelling Manx ancestors once ate them. We stare at our feet as we search for one of the unsung delights of these…

The scene is one familiar from many conflicts. Soldiers line up to get food from a canteen, weapons slung haphazardly over their shoulders, boots muddy, shirts undone. An armoured personnel carrier clanks by, the roar of its engine temporarily drowning out the boom of artillery. Officers shout orders. Tired men jump down from dusty vehicles and swear. Even during the recent ceasefire, the rear areas of the massive Israeli military offensive in Gaza were busy. So too was Hamas, which used the seven-day pause in hostilities to reorganise its battered forces. At 6.45am last Friday, 15 minutes before the truce was due to expire, Hamas fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel. All day, phone apps that warn Israelis of incoming missiles buzzed and beeped. In the late afternoon,…

There it is, on a wintry morning: charred masonry, gnarled metal, glass shards, rubble and dust. Yet another ravaged building in Ukraine: this violation is against Kherson’s regional library for children, a place of effervescent creativity with a wonderful collection, named Dnipro Seagull library, after the birds that soar over the city’s river. Atop the stairs, there was a beautiful stained-glass panel featuring a seagull on the wing. The library was due to celebrate its centenary next year. The seagull glass is now shattered, after the hit by two Russian artillery shells late last month. Library director Olha Kryzhanivska’s greeting is weary, but fired with a will to reclaim this haven and save its collection. “It seems we should be used to it,” she sighed. “The city is under attack…

The UK’s most hazardous nuclear site, Sellafield, has been hacked into by cyber groups closely linked to Russia and China, an investigation by the Guardian reveals. The astonishing disclosure and its potential effects have been consistently covered up by senior staff at the vast nuclear waste and decommissioning site, the investigation found. The Guardian has discovered that the authorities do not know exactly when the IT systems were first compromised. But sources said breaches were first detected as far back as 2015, when experts realised sleeper malware – software that can lurk and be used to spy or attack systems – had been embedded in Sellafield’s computer networks. It is still not known if the malware has been eradicated. It may mean some of Sellafield’s most sensitive activities, such as…

The dancing continued until the early hours. Family and friends – and Suru the dog – gathered in western Nepal to mark the joyful end to what had been a historic day for Maya Gurung and Surendra Pandey. Last Wednesday, they became the first same-sex couple in south Asia to have their marriage legally recognised. “Finally we are completely together, finally we are completely each other’s, finally we can perform each other’s funeral if we die tomorrow,” Gurung, 37, a transgender woman, said as the couple sat in the register office in rural Dordi municipality, where she was born. “Yes, we won it, we did it. We can have a beautiful future now,” said Pandey, 27, a cis-man. Six months ago, Nepal’s supreme court issued an interim order directing the…

A few months ago, the former president Donald Trump accused the Republican party of speaking “very inarticulately” on abortion. And yet, for the GOP presidential frontrunner, inarticulateness seems to be a feature, not a bug, of his own approach to abortion. Trump thinks he can run in 2024 as a “moderate” on abortion, Rolling Stone reported last week – even though he’s currently running ads in Iowa, a crucial state in the Republican primary, proclaiming himself “the most pro-life president ever”. It’s a title to which Trump has a legitimate claim: his three nominees to the supreme court not only handed the nation’s highest court a definitive conservative majority, but all three voted to overturn Roe v Wade in summer last year. While Republicans have flailed over how to message…

WHAT WAS THE SONG? Mary couldn’t quite remember. It was one of Mr Pepper’s classics, certainly. A ballad. Possibly You Are My Sunshine? What did it matter; the point was the voice. Not Mr Pepper’s – she knew what he sounded like well enough, being one of Easterlea Rest Home’s regular afternoon entertainers. No, this voice was new, and belonged to a man who had sat down in the chair next to her and started to sing along. She was so stunned – by the way his voice seemed to pour out of him, by its fierce clarity and defiance of age – that she turned to stare. The man winked at her. Cheeky bugger, thought Mary. It’s not entirely clear when this was. Two years ago, maybe three? Timings,…

There is no such thing as a perfect victim, but a million ways to be an imperfect one. She was drinking. Her skirt was too short. She went willingly back to the footballer’s mansion, or up to Harvey Weinstein’s hotel suite, so what did she think was going to happen? Maybe she was a teenage runaway, or a sex worker; he was a good boy, or a much-loved celebrity. There is a long list of reasons rapists get away with it, but it all too often starts with a jury’s refusal to listen to a woman they have already decided for some stubborn reason not to like. Remember that, as we come to the distressing picture now emerging of alleged multiple rapes and sexual assaults by Hamas fighters amid the…

I love salad. I eat it almost every day: as a meal, as a side, sometimes as a side to another salad. What I don’t like is a bad salad, and I’ve had hundreds of those, often made by me. We asked Australian cooks, chefs and fresh produce enthusiasts for their tips on making a great salad. Choose your leaves … There are more options than rocket, baby spinach and lettuce. Thanh Truong, a fruiterer who also goes by the moniker Fruit Nerd, loves microgreens, sorrel and fresh herbs. And there is no shame in buying a premixed salad pack, as the combination of leaves is chosen for flavour and balance. Truong says a salad spinner is essential. “ If there is a little bit of water you’re diluting the…