Nathan Akehurst
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Articles by Nathan Akehurst
The Border in Ceuta, Spain, Is Anything but Permissive
European Union authorities are currently deciding on images for their new banknotes. One worthy candidate for representing today’s Europe might be bodies in the water. In the Spanish exclave of Ceuta last week, another seventy deaths were added to a cumulative total of 1,570 people killed in the central Mediterranean Sea this year and tens of thousands across the mass grave that Europe’s littorals and rivers have become.
Book Launch | Along the Watchtower: Dispatches from Europe's War on Migration With Nathan Akehurst
Please note: This is an in-person event in Amsterdam. Places are limited, so registration is required. There will be no option to attend online. Europe’s war on migration is everywhere. This book unearths the forces behind it and how they’ve reshaped our society. Thousands of people die preventable deaths at Europe’s borders every year. And the situation keeps getting worse.
Migrant Rescue Operations Navigate a Mediterranean Bloodbath
Beneath the water, the African landmass spears north, pushing into the Eurasian plate where Sicily meets the Italian mainland. Atop the bedrock, the African plate’s undersea Pelagian platform raises islands into the central Mediterranean. Over the ages, prehistoric marine life sank into porous rock below its grabens, forming a 1.5 trillion-cubic-foot gas reserve. Several million years later, British Gas sank the Miskar gas field platform into the seafloor.
Death From Above
Gwynn (also known for helping draw the disputed Ethiopian-Sudanese border, over which Sudan has just accused Ethiopia of launching drones into its civil war) was among many colonial enforcers smitten with the then-novel potential of airstrikes as inexorable instruments of imperial policy. Amidst post-WWI disarmament, the nascent Royal Air Force was expanded, terrorising rebels into submission in Afghanistan, India, and Somaliland.
Resisting Europe’s Populist Decline
Western liberals and conservatives alike diligently dump domestic commitments on welfare, equality, and the environment alongside international commitments on development aid and the rule of law. A nihilistic nationalism without nation-building, its emptiness masked by vows of rearmament and attacks on migration, is the order du jour. Yet all rules have exceptions, and today’s leadership exception sits on the Iberian Peninsula.
Keir Starmer Backs Trump’s Assault on Venezuela
What began with the United States’ attack on Venezuela has now gone global. Not content with the rendition of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, amid a firestorm of destruction in Caracas, the Trump administration has followed with the military seizure of two tankers carrying Venezuelan oil. The first, the Sophia, was in the Caribbean. The second, the Marinera, was thousands of miles away, in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic near Iceland.
Estados Unidos es un imperio debilitado y peligroso
Fuentes: Jacobin América Latina El secuestro del presidente venezolano Nicolás Maduro ilustra la debilidad del liderazgo estadounidense, en su intento de afianzar el control sobre el hemisferio occidental. En lo más profundo de una noche invernal, fuerzas aerotransportadas estadounidenses surcan aullando los cielos del Caribe. Aviones a reacción lanzan fuego sobre infraestructuras clave, mientras helicópteros de ataque despliegan comandos de fuerzas especiales en objetivos terrestres.
The US Is a Weakened and Dangerous Empire
In the depths of a winter night, US airborne forces scream over Caribbean waters. Jets rain fire on key infrastructure, while attack helicopters deliver raiding parties of special operatives to targets on the ground. Amid the spectacle of shock and awe, a president is kidnapped and indicted on drug-trafficking charges. It’s a key test case for how an ambitious Republican administration intends to handle an era of seismic change.
Weakening Migrants’ Rights in the Name of Fighting Racism
“What Europe is doing with immigration is a disaster,” US president Donald Trump told Politico’s Dasha Burns in an incendiary interview published on December 9. “They’re decaying. They’re destroying their countries.” Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, agrees.
Even shots on Britons won’t stop UK’s border expansion
When an EU-funded Libyan Coast Guard patrol boat unleashed a hail of bullets at the rescue ship Ocean Viking in the Mediterranean Sea in August, it seemed very far away from Britain. But in the weeks that followed, it became clear how the attack – and others like it – had in fact struck close to home. There were two British citizens on board the Viking. In another attack a month later, there were three.
Even shots on British nationals won’t stop UK’s border expansion
World Cup 2026 kits: Every kit for the competition World Cup 2026 kits are dropping early this time around, with the tournament just around the corner. With North America hosting World Cup 2026, …
Libya’s EU-Backed Coast Guard Attacked a Migrant Rescue Ship
Ayla Emmink was resting in their cabin when the shooting started. As deputy search-and-rescue coordinator (SARCO) on the rescue ship Ocean Viking, they had been awake for thirty-six hours. The ship had taken eighty-seven people on board earlier that day (this past Sunday), rescued from two unseaworthy, overcrowded rubber boats in the central Mediterranean Sea.
All in the same boat: A decade of civilian search and rescue in the central Mediterranean
Republish this article A small, fragile light sways in the dark. The beacon sits atop Nadir, a sailing vessel standing watch over the grey wooden boat ahead of us, buffeted by high wind and waves. People on the wooden boat are yelling, scarcely audible in the howling night. Even the roar of our powerboat’s engine is diluted to a low purr. Nadir, the first vessel to respond to the wooden boat’s distress, struggles with the weather.
Israel Acts With Impunity, Europe Does Nothing
On the afternoon of May 1, according to open-source aircraft tracking, a C-130 Hercules heavy military transport took off from an airbase in Israel. The Hercules flew more than 1,200 miles west into the central Mediterranean, over Malta, and apparently did not land before returning home many hours later. Below, the passenger vessel Conscience was carrying food and medicine for Gaza.
Israel Acts With Impunity, Europe Does Nothing
On the afternoon of May 1, according to open-source aircraft tracking, a C-130 Hercules heavy military transport took off from an airbase in Israel. The Hercules flew more than 1,200 miles west into the central Mediterranean, over Malta, and apparently did not land before returning home many hours later. Below, the passenger vessel Conscience was carrying food and medicine for Gaza.
Europe’s Vain Hopes of Imperial Grandeur
There are decades when weeks happen and weeks when decades happen, goes an aphorism misattributed to Vladimir Lenin. The fortnight between J. D. Vance’s broadside against Europe at the Munich Security Conference, and Vance and Donald Trump’s vicious upbraiding of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office feels more like the latter.
‘Coalition Of The War-Willing’: Europe’s Vain Hopes Of Imperial Grandeur
By Nathan Akehurst There are decades when weeks happen and weeks when decades happen, goes an aphorism misattributed to Vladimir Lenin. The fortnight between J. D. Vance’s broadside against Europe at the Munich Security Conference, and Vance and Donald Trump’s vicious upbraiding of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office feels more like the latter.
Europe’s Vain Hopes of Imperial Grandeur
There are decades when weeks happen and weeks when decades happen, goes an aphorism misattributed to Vladimir Lenin. The fortnight between J. D. Vance’s broadside against Europe at the Munich Security Conference, and Vance and Donald Trump’s vicious upbraiding of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office feels more like the latter.
Keir Starmer’s Government Copies Far-Right Migration Plans
In a sweltering café just outside Tunis’s old medina last summer, a local human rights defender spoke of living in a climate of fear. You couldn’t remain in one place for too long. At a galloping pace, he told me stories of vicious police raids into informal camps of people looking for better lives, of people randomly apprehended and dumped in the desert, and of civil society surveilled and criminalized for speaking out.
Keir Starmer Is Aligning With Far Right Italian PM Meloni On Immigration Issue
By Nathan Akehurst / Kristina Millona LONDON: When Keir Starmer scrapped the Tories’ disastrous Rwanda deportations deal within days of assuming office, there was a sigh of relief. Many welcomed what seemed to be a decisive shift away from the previous government’s strategy of using relentless cruelty toward people migrating to distract from their failures to govern.
Keir Starmer Is Sucking Up to the Far Right
When Keir Starmer scrapped the Tories’ disastrous Rwanda deportations deal within days of assuming office, there was a sigh of relief. Many welcomed what seemed to be a decisive shift away from the previous government’s strategy of using relentless cruelty toward people migrating to distract from their failures to govern.
Starmer’s Embrace With Mussolini’s Grandchildren
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The EU Comes Out of Its Elections Weaker and Meaner
Five years seems a long time ago. When Europe last went to the polls, its politics certainly weren’t healthy. EU-backed austerity blighted lives across the continent, the radical right was rising, and from France’s gilet jaunes protests to Britain’s Brexit crisis, countries were wracked with social conflict. But there were things to be hopeful about. Popular movements had catapulted new left-wing forces into parliaments.
No, We Don’t Need Conscript Armies
Early in January, Britain’s Telegraph revealed that the once-mighty Royal Navy was running out of sailors and would have to decommission two recently refurbished frigates to staff its new ships. Reporting on a naval “recruitment crisis” exploded. The alleged posting on LinkedIn of a senior submarine job was widely ridiculed. Right-wing reporters blamed shortages on a “woke generation” not wanting to join — yet somehow also blamed the Navy’s inclusion staff for appealing to diverse recruits.
No, Europe Isn’t Being Swamped by Migrants Original
The small island of Lampedusa forms something of a natural life raft. While belonging to Italy, it sits around a hundred miles front the Tunisian coast, making it a strategic landing place throughout history — and a natural shelter for people seeking safety. In just over twenty-four hours last week, over seven thousand people arrived on the island. While crossings have peaked in the low thousands before, this number is unusually large.
As Italy And Greece Burn, Govt Leaders Obsessed About Immigrants
By: Nathan Akehurst Europe is burning. Hitting almost 110°F, Rome has broken its heat record, set only last year, and some Italian hospitals have reported inpatient numbers reaching COVID-era levels. Special flights headed to Corfu and Rhodes to evacuate tourists from fires rolling across the Greek islands, while the locals are stuck with the consequences. Even the Alps are pushing 100°F. Across the Mediterranean, Algeria recorded the hottest night in African history.
As Italy And Greece Burn, Govt Leaders Obsessed About Immigrants
By Nathan Akehurst Europe is burning. Hitting almost 110°F, Rome has broken its heat record, set only last year, and some Italian hospitals have reported inpatient numbers reaching COVID-era levels. Special flights headed to Corfu and Rhodes to evacuate tourists from fires rolling across the Greek islands, while the locals are stuck with the consequences. Even the Alps are pushing 100°F. Across the Mediterranean, Algeria recorded the hottest night in African history.
As Italy and Greece Burn, Their Leaders Obsess About Immigrants
Europe is burning. Hitting almost 110°F, Rome has broken its heat record, set only last year, and some Italian hospitals have reported inpatient numbers reaching COVID-era levels. Special flights headed to Corfu and Rhodes to evacuate tourists from fires rolling across the Greek islands, while the locals are stuck with the consequences. Even the Alps are pushing 100°F. Across the Mediterranean, Algeria recorded the hottest night in African history.
Consultancies Have Been the Handmaidens of Neoliberalism
This is where the authors’ argument becomes more existential. The pandemic, they argue, was a striking example of large-scale state failure, both in hollowed-out national states and in a global health governance system riddled with consultants and market doctrine. Meanwhile, Collington and Mazzucato point to poor but well-organized and dedicated states with recent histories of effective crisis management that performed well.
The European Union Is Stepping Up Its War on Refugees
The EU’s border agency, Frontex, has been in a drawn-out scandal since last April over collusion in hundreds of forced strandings and deaths at sea on the Greek coast, with one victim currently suing the agency. And yet the EU Home Affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson, a social democrat, has refused to ask the agency to withdraw from the Aegean. Greece, meanwhile, is boasting about preventing some 260,000 crossings while demanding more “solidarity” from the rest of Europe.
Italy’s Far-Right Government Is Already at War With Migrants
Threats, lies, and the breaking of international conventions. Another Italian government, another round of attempts to turn the ports of Italy into a circus of violations and dehumanizing logistical wranglings. Another round of bolstering Europe’s racist border regime — as if the sea were barbed wire and every boat a checkpoint. Immigration has been the bugbear of Italian politics for over a decade.
Britain’s Political Crisis Is Further Proof That It Is a Nation in Decline
Variations in fixed-term mortgages will mean that the worst of the crisis will hit Britons in dribs and drabs rather than as an avalanche — the difference is between slowly bleeding out versus dying in a head-on collision. The effect may be to dilute any chance of mass popular mobilization, certainly anything comparable to the French gilets jaunes who rallied collectively in the face of a single price hike in fuel at the end of 2018.
Liz Truss Is Gone, but the Tory Terror Continues
In September, Liz Truss inherited a parlous situation. Her party was divided and shaken by the summer crisis that brought down former prime minister Boris Johnson, a figure difficult to replace whatever one thinks of him. An already shaken country was staring down the barrel of energy shocks and inflationary pressures, and the sense of looming uncertainty had been compounded by the death of Britain’s era-defining monarch.
Britain’s Tories Are Getting Ready for Another Round of Austerity
Liz Truss might have won this summer’s Conservative election politically, but Rishi Sunak has emerged as the clear winner ideologically. When viewed in terms of the entire spectrum of Conservative Party ideology, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak aren’t that far apart. Both are neoliberals who believe in what Andrew Gamble, in reference to the politics of Margaret Thatcher, called a free economy and a strong state. The differences between the two came down to how each thought these aims could be achieved.
The European Union Is Deliberately Leaving Migrants Abandoned at Sea
Valeske and her colleagues argue that the rule of law itself has broken down in the Aegean Sea. “These attacks are illegal. But a big part of the problem is the concentration of EU executive power. If a member state violates human rights, you can take it to Strasbourg [the seat of European Parliament and the Council of Europe]. That is not the case with EU executive agencies.
Mussolini’s Ghost
I moved to the country a month ago and we took the trip as a respite from the bureaucratic nightmares of crossing borders. That day, on a wild goose chase across canals, running for the train but careless enough to stop for takeaway spritzes at a little wooden bar, the election felt very far away – even for someone who has worked in and around politics for a decade. If you’re lucky enough to be in a crowd of tourists in languid late summer, you can ignore the shadows, at least for a while.
The View on Global Warming and Migration From Guatemala: A Q&A with Juan Jose Hurtado Paz y Paz
The Border Chronicle is excited to kick off this series today devoted to climate change, migration, and global borders with this insightful interview with Juan Jose Hurtado Paz y Paz, director of the Guatemalan indigenous-focused Asociación Pop No’J. Beginning today, and throughout October, we’re going to provide discussion, analysis, and reporting leading up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt which begins November 6.
Liz Truss’s Ascent Is Not a Victory for Women
Liz Truss, the Conservative who has been selected to be prime minister of Britain, was hailed as a trailblazer by some in her own party. Conservative MP Vicky Ford gushed, “This means so much to so many women across the world!” Truss is also part of what the Washington Post has deemed “a historic moment”: for the first time ever, none of Britain’s four most powerful government positions are held by white men.
Liz Truss Will Lead Britain Deeper Into Decline
Britain’s constitutional crisis has now lasted twelve years. Were we a weaker country, a collapse of stable governance on this scale would have triggered much debate over whether foreign intervention could fix our institutions, or whether we were simply beyond help. Our political system is designed with one purpose: to produce overwhelming majority governments. It has done nothing of the sort for over a decade.
In Fortress Europe, Saving Migrants From Drowning Could Land You in Jail
Attacks on rescue crews have partially backfired — and appear to be somewhat abating. In Britain, right-wing broadsides against the Royal National Lifeboat Institution prompted an outpouring of donations. Seafarers’ union Nautilus successfully lobbied the government against including potential search-and-rescue restrictions in its Borders Bill. Recently, Britain dropped plans for pushbacks altogether, following a legal challenge by monitoring group Channel Rescue among others.
In Italy, a Mayor Who Stood Up for Refugees Faces 13 Years in Jail
On Monday March 21, lawyers for Domenico “Mimmo” Lucano, former mayor of the small Italian town of Riace, lodged a final appeal against his sentence handed down last October. The date of the verdict remains unclear, but if the appeal fails, Lucano faces thirteen years behind bars. The local politician’s demise from Fortune’s list of the world’s fifty greatest leaders to spending the last year under house arrest is another battle in the Italian right’s long war on immigrants and progressives.
Italian Mayor Mimmo Lucano, Who Stood for Refugees, Stares At 13 Years in Prison
On Monday, March 21, lawyers for Domenico “Mimmo” Lucano, former mayor of the small Italian town of Riace, lodged a final appeal against his sentence handed down last October. The date of the verdict remains unclear, but if the appeal fails, Lucano faces 13 years behind bars. The local politician’s demise from Fortune’s list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders to spending the last year under house arrest is another battle in the Italian right’s long war on immigrants and progressives.
The War in Ukraine Shows That Europe Could Help Refugees if It Really Wanted to
Across Europe, vast networks of collection points and delivery systems for aid to Ukrainian refugees are springing up, in some cases formally organized but often simply run by everyday people doing their bit. In a small city in rural France, I saw no less than three homemade signs pointing to such help on a short walk. Meanwhile, backed by volunteers, the Polish railways ministry is frantically rebuilding a line to move people through the region.
In Copenhagen, the Radical Left Just Beat the Danish Social Democrats for the First Time Ever
The dominant story of the Western left in the last two years has been decline from the high watermark of post-crash electoral radicalism. From Syriza to Podemos, parties have fallen short of either winning power or delivering in office — or, in the recent case of Germany’s Die Linke, slid backward from already weak positions.
'War or jail': The young Israelis refusing to fight
In-depth: In Israel, young people face a stark choice: go to war, or go to jail. Meet the young Israeli women who would rather face prison than enforce the occupation of Palestine. This week, 18-year-old Shahar boarded a bus from the inland Israeli city of Kfar Yona to Tel HaShomer outside Tel Aviv. Officers at Tel HaShomer's Israeli Defence Force (IDF) facility were expecting her to report for two years' compulsory military service.
The young Israelis refusing to fight
This week, 18-year-old Shahar boarded a bus from the inland Israeli city of Kfar Yona to Tel HaShomer outside Tel Aviv. Officers at Tel HaShomer's Israeli Defence Force (IDF) facility were expecting her to report for two years' compulsory military service. She would have been set for four months' basic training, from handling a Tavor assault rifle to moreshet krav, a history of IDF operations.
Europe Is Shamefully Shutting the Door to Afghan Refugees
On the picturesque Aegean island of Limnos, a new surveillance system is being field-tested this week. If effective, its thermal sensors, camera balloons, ship transponders, and satellite links will provide a 15,000-square-mile panopticon view of approaching boats. In another world, this could be an aid for rescuing people adrift at sea. But in this world, the European Union agency operating the system works to do exactly the opposite.
Why Europe Can't Shut Its Door to Afghan Refugees
In the picturesque Aegean island of Limnos, a new surveillance system is being field-tested this week. If effective, its thermal sensors, camera balloons, ship transponders and satellite links will provide a 15,000-square-mile panopticon view of approaching boats. In another world, this could be an aid for rescuing people adrift at sea. But in this world, the European Union agency operating the system works to do exactly the opposite.
Europe’s Militarized Borders Are a Band-Aid for Climate Chaos
On the morning of May 19, a Senegalese man collapsed into the arms of twenty-year-old Red Cross volunteer Luna Reyes at the shores of Ceuta. A picturesque enclave nestled on the southern side of the Straits of Gibraltar, Ceuta is one of two tiny Spanish territories in continental Africa — and thus a gateway to the European Union. Within hours, this scene of a heartfelt embrace amid chaos had gone viral, with Reyes soon forced offline by a torrent of fascist vitriol.
It’s Time to End the UK’s Minister-to-Lobbyist Pipeline
In the current series of BBC crime drama Line of Duty, a policeman at war with corruption is unhappy with how things are going at the top of government. “God give me strength . . . a bare-faced liar, promoted to our highest office! When did we stop caring about honesty and integrity?” Ted Hastings asks his commanding officer. Line of Duty has handled current affairs without shoehorning in hackneyed Brexit or Donald Trump allegories. But Hastings’s rant clearly had Boris Johnson in its sights.
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