Aiden Abbott

The new right-wing art scene is disappointing

It averaged a brutal 91 degrees this week in Cameron County, the southernmost tip of Texas, and a group dressed as the cast of O Brother, Where Art Thou have been there sweating away at something big. A colossal limbless torso is parked on the dunes and a head, suspended from a crane, is swaying very gently in an ocean breeze. There is the smell of metal and hot dust.  Pending some finishing touches and last-minute dabs of glue, this Atelier Missor’s Prometheus, soon to be unveiled at SpaceX’s Starbase launch site – standing contrapposto, torch aloft, bidding the rockets a comradely “Adieu!

Prometheus SpaceX

Ahmed al-Sharaa can be a great man of history

Trump’s Middle East tour in May last year felt like the end of an era. Here was the former al-Qaeda commander, Ahmed al-Sharaa, now leader of Syria, shaking hands with a vulgar American Commander-in-Chief, who resembles the caricature of a US president we might find in an al-Qaeda cartoon. Yet the War on Terror’s two leading men, the President and the Jihadi, having ended the last act at each other’s throats, have returned to the stage arm-in-arm to take a bow. Al-Sharaa has trimmed his beard, put on a suit, replaced Bashar al-Assad as president and begun welcoming western investors to help him rebuild his country after a decade and a half of civil war. Trump has dropped the showy religiosity and moral posturing of his predecessors.