Marking Juneteenth, but recognising it was only ever the beginning of the long, unfinished labour of turning release into freedom, freedom into equity and equity into power. I've rarely written with such urgency about the past. Rarely had to. josephsfurey.substack.com/p/necessary-...

Dances with Zapatistas - my first job as a foreign correspondent was revolutionary in every way josephsfurey.substack.com/p/dances-wit...

My first job as a foreign correspondent was revolutionary in every way. #zapatistas #ezln #chiapas #lacandonjungle #selvalacandona #mexico #zapatour #subcomandantemarcos josephsfurey.substack.com/p/dances-wit...

Football support, for those who really feel it, is a radical mystery. I got to belong to something before I knew what belonging was, except as joy. Pure joy (and, of course, the profound misery that is its flipside, though there’s joy in that too) #arsenal

Jon Caramanica has certainly got a lot of backs up. But this is not the first time a fiftysomething has crawled round a neighbourhood with the windows down, loudly advertising his connection to what the kids like, and caused widespread concern. I’m still waiting to see some puppies. #billyjoel

I rarely have the opportunity to write about Ireland, and this was a joy. Agreeably digressive, it takes in, among other things, the filid, the Irish Iliad, Cú Chulainn, the Cooley Peninsula and the Táin Way. josephsfurey.substack.com/p/once-upon-...

Tom Waits, witness, mourner and reluctant seer Includes full video of The Last Ride documentary; a rare recording of Ralph Waite’s 1980 movie, On the Nickel; Waits’s guest spot on the BBC Radio 6 show Iggy Confidential; and a couple of other things. josephsfurey.substack.com/p/the-last-r...

Probably my most personal piece so far: on rubber tramping, freighthopping, precarity and homelessness in the United States. Somehow it manages to be funny – at my expense, naturally. josephsfurey.substack.com/p/asphalt-gy...

Fear and Loathing on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail #gonzo #huntersthompson #lousiville #kentuckyderby josephsfurey.substack.com/p/going-wher...

Trump is going to come undone. He's playing three slot machines at once, hoping chaos itself will hit the jackpot. #cuba #venezuela #iran josephsfurey.substack.com/p/petrostate-of-play

Latest Substack. Among other things, it’s about the secondhand book trade, David Seabrook, psychogeography and the bit of England I’d want to represent me if I died in action. Contains a not too fuzzy recording of The Cardinal and the Corpse. josephsfurey.substack.com/p/all-the-de...

Go siúil tú ar an aer in aghaidh do bhreithiúnais féin. A blessing from a Heaney via a Furey. Agus go mbuafaidh Arsenal F.C. anocht COYG #stpatricks #arsenal

Go siúil tú ar an aer in aghaidh do bhreithiúnais féin. A blessing from a Heaney via a Furey. Agus go mbuafaidh Arsenal F.C. anocht COYG #stpatricks #arsenal

Marc Agnifilo has built his career on Sean Combs and the Alexander brothers. The odds have just shortened on him replacing Bondi. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/n...

Light lengthens across the burbs, grass recalls its colour, the tiny engines of birds turning the morning over. Introductions falter halfway along the tongue – politesse for a world that’s already moving on.

Re. Greenland. The US Navy’s two hospital ships - Mercy and Comfort - are undergoing maintenance. Landry is governor of a state that places in the bottom five for infant and maternal mortality, chronic disease burden and overall life expectancy josephsfurey.substack.com/p/greenland-...

#jessejackson #blackhistorymonth “The American dream is a narcotic, but unevenly dispensed. Liberty was once rationed by race – and now the hard-won advances of the Sixties are being gleefully trashed” josephsfurey.substack.com/p/necessary-...

I’ll be back in the States soon, to finish a book, road-test a rebooted body and take the pulse of a country that’s been through a radical rewrite since I left it four years ago. It's going to be a ride for sure. More here… josephsfurey.substack.com/p/where-this...

A US nuclear site in Greenland, Camp Century, was closed in 1967. Diesel fuel, PCBs, sewage in unlined sumps and low-level radioactive coolant from a portable reactor were left entombed in the ice. Cue a warming Arctic. Thanks America. More here... josephsfurey.substack.com/p/greenland-...

Smart play from Arsenal. Conserved vital energy. Defence barely tested, but very ably assited by Eze, among others. Havertz goal, a little icing on an already tasty cake

Scott Hommel is running for Lamar County Commissioner in the March 3 primary in Texas, having resigned as chair of the Lamar County Rep. Party after racist remarks he posted on the Gab platform surfaced Paris, Texas. Great movie. The town? Not so much josephsfurey.substack.com/p/well-alway...

Is the Melania documentary so bad they had to release three million Epstein files?

This started life as frustration at the number of AI-generated hot takes I was seeing on U.S. intervention in Latin America/Venezuela, areas I know well. It turned into a week of work. But I'm happy with it, and believe it's worth your time josephsfurey.substack.com/p/the-long-s...

A chillingly mendacious retelling of the January 6 insurrection on the White House’s own site www.whitehouse.gov/j6/

Ah, the first day of the Merrineum, which I coined - to my cackling satisfaction - last year. Although I did also like Festervale and Taintmas. Betwixtmas seems to be in common use. Any others?

ICE respects no bounds. theintercept.com/2025/12/19/i...

On the unchecked rise of ICE, the resurgence of racial profiling and how – 35 years later – Northern Exposure still represents the best of America (includes Christmas gift). #elainemiles josephsfurey.substack.com/p/cold-comfo...

Genius from Thomas Frank, getting Simons to red card himself. It has lulled Liverpool into a state of smug, slow-motion self-harm.

The Epstein files release was predictably partial but – as it’s been from the start with this administration – it reads less like caution than a bodge job. Material appears to have been hauled out in haste or subjected to wholesale redaction and shoved into the public domain with a shrug

If Richard Tice objects to Reform UK being described as racist, the remedy is straightforward: condemn racism clearly, consistently and without equivocation. As the case of Reform’s first councillor in Scotland proves, the party will take anyone www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

With the latest mass shooting at Brown University, it is worth recalling that during the decade that Clinton’s federal assault weapons ban was in force, mass-shooting deaths fell by around 43%. After the ban expired in 2004, mass-shooting fatalities rose by 239% in the following decade

Eileen Higgins ends GOP’s 28-year control of Miami City Hall.

World Cup 2026 Nothing in this piece has been addressed. I'd be amazed if teams don't pull out josephsfurey.substack.com/p/world-cup-...

Local law enforcement agencies in 40 states are current participants in ICE cooperation agreements. The expansion has been encouraged by incentives: for example, federal reimbursement for participating officers’ salaries, benefits and overtime (in some cases)

New Orleans antisemitism summit Mayors are being courted to reframe student protest and foreign-policy critique as “hate” while their own residents face: racialised policing; gang-database abuses; criminalisation of poverty and homelessness www.currentaffairs.org/news/a-dark-...

Republican lawmakers carved up Nashville in 2022, redrawing the 7th District and two others to stop the city electing another Democrat. The result is a district stretched across 14 counties, with barely one in five of its voters living in Nashville. Fuck Tennessee.

So long, Tom Stoppard I’ve seen more of his work than any other playwright's, except Shakespeare. He never talked down to an audience and made intelligence feel romantic, teaching us that an idea can break your heart as cleanly as a love affair.

That’ll do nicely, Arsenal. AND you made me some money. We just took the second half away from them. They looked genuinely confused by the end of it

The Sofa Alliance is behind the “use cash” campaign. Big Upholstery has been stealing your coins for years, one cushion crack at a time.

Rubio is such a heel. Not only is the Ukraine peace proposal a Russian document - it was translated into British English, not American English.

“Launched in 2018, the U.S. Civil Rights Trail stands as a breakwater against this tide of whitewash, propaganda and historical vandalism – because it can be seen, touched, walked. In these days of state-sanctioned amnesia, visibility is resistance.” open.substack.com/pub/josephsf...

No wonder Border Control has gone after Charlotte, which is home to St Matthew, one of the largest Catholic parishes in the US. The Church is one of the last institutions in US life with a large, multi-ethnic congregational base and a social teaching on migration that fundamentally contradicts MAGA

FIFA and Trump. This reads presciently josephsfurey.substack.com/p/world-cup-...

Stephen Miller has endorsed Andrew Cuomo. Black mould, bedbugs and the BQE at rush hour have all issued statements of support. Unpaid internships have released a joint letter praising his “leadership style” and the smell of summer garbage on Canal Street has wished him “good luck”.

The Land of the Free has been free – for all, in law – for just 60 years. America’s road to racial justice has been long, tortuous and bloody – and we’re nowhere near a rest stop, let alone a scenic overlook. @prisonculture.bsky.social @prisonpolicy.org josephsfurey.substack.com/p/necessary-...

Feels a little strange being away from New Orleans for Halloween, which takes up most of October there. As my Vodou-practising neighbour told me the day we met, “It’s a season here, not a day. We know it takes time to raise the dead.”

I had such a meaningful night in Chicago with Eve Ewing at the National Public Housing Museum, and I'm grateful to @katieprout.bsky.social for this piece on the event and THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US—about housing, state violence, political imagination, and refusing the myth of dispassionate journalism.

@brian-goldstone.bsky.social White return replaced white flight. Streets were reclaimed like lost property, and the people who made them – in districts rich in art, music and memory – were shown the door, priced out of the very picture they had painted. josephsfurey.substack.com/p/necessary-...

A DOMESTIC Success wasn’t you. The cups moved on to other shelves to keep their sheen. But failure suits, boxed at the top of the stairs, among the crocks your mother saved. #writing #poetry #prompt