a thing historians will marvel about when they study this era is the extent to which the "war is a thing that happens to poorer, browner people" class went about systematically dismantling every aspect of the global political order that confined the costs of war to poorer and browner people
My latest review for @bookforum.bsky.social is also out now. In it, I think alongside Namwali Serpell’s resplendently rigorous new book on Toni Morrison about the last greatest living writer’s legacy and how we’re meant to read her.
A redevelopment project in Nairobi’s Ngara district promises revival—but raises deeper questions about capital, memory, and who has the right to shape the city. africasacountry.com/2026/02/visi...
What is a city but masses pulsing in the illusion of a heartbeat?
Here, within the old Central Business District, lies Nairobi’s innermost tree rings.
This old neighborhood is ripe for entry into the future, says the pitch deck…
Ngara has always changed; it archives the evolution of Nairobi itself. So then what of the change brought by the urban renewal project unfolding in Ngara now? What is the real question behind the question of gentrification?
I wrote this for @africasacountry:
africasacountry.com/2026/02/visi...
Remember that awful Guernica essay about Palestine last March that triggered dozens of resignations and an ultimate retraction? This is a great conversation between two of those resigning (volunteer!!!) editors.
When Hassan returned home to Chicago, he was eager to share his experiences and advocate for an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza. But instead of being welcomed like he had been after previous missions to Ukraine and Syria, Hassan soon found himself on the receiving end of a doxxing campaign.
International diplomats assume that regional powers simply need to be convinced that their interests are better served by a stabilized Sudan. Sudan's actual wartime political economy—which turns exorbitant profits for Gulf States and militias alike—belies that.
novaramedia.com/2025/11/14/g...
"UN refugee agency official Jacqueline Wilma Parlevliet said that the new arrivals told stories of widespread ethnic and politically motivated killings, including reports of people with disabilities shot dead because they were unable to flee"
this keeps getting worse
www.ctvnews.ca/world/articl...
"It was not liberalism that bestowed upon America a utopian aura; it was the country’s sheer power, the sense of boundless strength it projected after its geopolitical win in the early 1990s."
Rahmane Idrissa for @equatormag.bsky.social
www.equator.org/articles/sta...
Particularly compelled by how Sarah Khatry and @aprzhu.bsky.social's @nplusonemag.com interview shows the ways Chen's poor craft obscures Israel's colonial project.
www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."
me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually
www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
Quote: "An omnipresent feature of liberal chronicles of the occupation is a fixation on how much was wasted: the $2.13 trillion spent and the 176,000 people who died. Surveying the destruction wreaked on Afghanistan, these accounts conclude, unsurprisingly, that the war was a total failure. The Taliban are once again in control of Kabul. Al Qaeda runs gold mines in Badakhshan and Takhar provinces. The Afghan army is a distant memory. This humiliation is often presented as a mystery. How could so much money—more than was spent on the Marshall Plan—and “goodwill,” in the New Yorker’s words, have achieved so little? But the occupation succeeded! Every military failure was a triumph. Behind every botched mission was someone getting paid; more failures meant more opportunities to profit."
"Aziz knew that not all the trash would make it back to America.... But that is, to some extent, the point. Part of the violence of the occupation lies in America’s refusal to accept the gravity of what it left behind."
Joshua Craze on Aziz Hazara's art
canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/jun...
This is good. Really really good.
A lot of insights to take away to all our conversations about empathy & its limits. And some crucial ideas for me to consider as someone who hopes & tries to be a writer of both empathy & liberation.
Last March, I and other editors at Guernica resigned over the publication of an essay by an Israeli writer about treading the line of empathy.
The ensuing criticism—'condemn even empathy?'—pushed my ex-colleague and I to re-interrogate the piece's shortcomings.
www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
Last March, I and other editors at Guernica resigned over the publication of an essay by an Israeli writer about treading the line of empathy.
The ensuing criticism—'condemn even empathy?'—pushed my ex-colleague and I to re-interrogate the piece's shortcomings.
www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
Cesar Chavez breaking his third fast by receiving communion from Ethel Kennedy. Photo by Victor Aleman
"Today in UFW History - 8/21/88: Cesar Chavez ended his 36 day fast over the pesticide poisoning of farmworkers & their children during a mass at the UFWs “Forty Acres” property attended by Ethel & Kerry Kennedy, Rev. Jessie Jackson and 1000s of farm workers and supporters.
politics is conflictual and you should pay attention to who benefits from pretending otherwise and how they do so
Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike, while he and other journalists were inside their tent
Just 40 minutes before his assassination, Anas al-Sharif posted this message to the world: © Anas Al-Sharif أنس الشريف @AnasAlSharifO A To Whom It May Concern, The occupation is now openly threatening a full-scale invasion of Gaza. For 22 months, the city has been bleeding under relentless bombardment from land, sea, and air. Tens of thousands have been killed, and hundreds of thousands wounded. If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people's voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop. Please share this message and tag everyone who has the power to help end this massacre. Silence is complicity.
40 minutes before he was killed by an Israeli air strike, Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif shared this message.
It was international actors in the US-led "liberal world order" who undercut popular calls during the Revolution for "100%" civilian government and applauded the power sharing of military and militia that inevitably cracked into the violent counterrevolution that is now called "a war about nothing."
More vile than calling this war "a war about nothing" is attributing the humanitarian tragedy in any way to the retreat of the US, whose unmentioned sanctions (with exemptions for the American empire of Coke) shaped Sudan's extractive, militarized economy.
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
"[Dubai] provides normal people with the chance to buy the purest form of the most heinous commodity: the exploitation of others. If you want to know how it feels to have slaves, in the modern world – and not be blamed openly for this desire – visit Dubai."
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
.@alexjwhite.bsky.social wrote about the complicated co-authorship of Malcolm X’s autobiography with Alex Haley—particularly Haley’s lack of understanding of Malcolm’s Pan-African turn (which he sometimes made up for with plagiarism), leading to distorting omissions.
aeon.co/essays/how-a...
A photo of labor activist Chris Smalls, talking into a mic
A spokesperson for the Freedom Flotilla Coalition tells me:
“Chris Smalls is still in Givon Prison and despite repeated requests to meet with the U.S. Embassy has been ignored by his country after being abducted by the IOF in international waters.”
Breaking news: Federal immigration officers may deport immigrants with as little as six hours’ notice to countries other than their own, even without assurances that the arrivals will be safe from persecution or torture, a top official said.
Kristi Noem didn't renew the expired call center contracts for five days, resulting in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) failing to answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line from flood survivors in Texas. It's malevolence mixed with incompetence again and again.
photo of Jaime Alanis
Our hearts are heavy for the grieving family of Jaime Alanis, who died from injuries sustained during a chaotic raid on Thursday.
We will do everything we can to support them. We continue to work with the hundreds of farm worker families navigating the aftermath of this violent raid.
The horror in Kenya continues into the night as police or people acting as agents of the police allegedly break into apartment complexes and sexually assault women in their homes.
