On Panahi in @thenation.com, a good read. www.thenation.com/article/cult...

In @theguardian.com on Kamel Daoud, Houris, and the case of Saâda Arbane. www.theguardian.com/books/2026/f...

'Memoirs of a Palestinian Communist' in @jewishcurrents.bsky.social jewishcurrents.org/memoirs-of-a...

In the @newleftreview.bsky.social today on Godard and Linklater’s 'Nouvelle Vague'. newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

What does Epstein’s household economy reveal about the billionaire far-right? Melinda Cooper traces the disturbing logic connecting primal patriarchy, transhumanism, and the rule of masters over servants. www.equator.org/articles/eps...

The photographs of white figures cowboying through a troubled terra nullius, coupled with encomiums to an escapade cut short by Bezos, are a reminder of all that is wrong with legacy media. My @washingtonpost.com subscription has long been cancelled. Their familiar, worn-out stories won't be missed.

"In France, leftwing intellectuals hailed Khomeini as the new Gandhi, among them Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault, who would later regret setting up a Khomeini support committee, ignoring Simone de Beauvoir’s warnings." @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

Remembering al-Amiriyah, where in 1991 US 'smart bombs' killed 408 civilians in a bomb shelter by inceneration, including my father's aunt, Rajiha, and his cousins, in western Baghdad. Her grandson is getting married these days. www.aljazeera.com/opinions/201...

On Kleber Mendonça Filho’s devastatingly beautiful film in the @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"Trump would carry on (...) absorbing the lesson that there is always someone to shaft, some group to label animals or cockroaches – as George Bush’s Gulf War monsterized Iraqis." JoAnn Wypijewski in @newleftreview.bsky.social newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Mohammed Harbi went from participating in Algeria’s independence struggle to writing some of the most important books about its history. Harbi, who died last month at the age of 92, was a creative Marxist thinker and a champion of democracy in Algeria.

"But we went back there and he gave the [Iraqi] guy a pretty good pounding. Nothing really in the face. A lot of stomach shots, and I would say two or three groin shots, very harsh." A must read from @lalehkhalili.bsky.social in the new @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘We are not, and we must not become, a nation that imprisons and deports people because we are afraid of what they have to tell us,’ Young wrote. We shall see. Jameel Jaffer on 'Thought Control' in the new @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"Walter Benjamin did not make it out." In @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

In @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...

Grazie, Giorgio.

Storefronts are shuttered in Baghdad's downtown this morning, riot police, as usual, are called in. The state, mired in corruption and indebted from extravagant spending on its urban spectacle, is raising import tax. Locals fear prices will go up, merchants their trades lost. Tense moments ahead.

‘In my first year at university, I had taken the bus through Gaza City every day. Now we were travelling through streets and neighbourhoods that had once been familiar to me, but I barely recognised anything.’ Hassan Ayman Herzallah eats shawarma in Gaza City. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

Recently in Baghdad.

‘From a European perspective, this is a story of explosive celebrity and subsequent disappearance. Baya’s gouaches and sculptures were exhibited in Paris when she was sixteen. She modelled in clay alongside Picasso.’ Susannah Clapp on the mid-century Algerian artist. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

It belonged, Asch’s cover letter explained, to “a female Georgian” who was—in my slightly ungrammatical translation—“suddenly deceased of venereal disease.” This young woman, I discovered, was a captive of the Russian forces. She had been raped to death. @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...

‘Wise up or the same thing will happen to you.’ Alexander Clapp on murder in the Amazon, in the new, godsend issue of the @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"It was a reminder – perhaps a rather too facile reminder – that we were all in this together. But together in what exactly? I didn’t know." Salar Abdoh, an essential read in @equatormag.bsky.social www.equator.org/articles/the...

I traveled home to Minnesota to report on the rolling fallout of Operation Metro Surge. Both the occupation and neighborhood responses was breathtaking in scale. History in the making. www.nybooks.com/online/2026/... Thanks to the @economichardship.bsky.social for support

"Identification with the mambise guerilla; invocation of the machete-charge; rehearsal of ‘patria o muerte’ cries – often performed at the top levels of state, these are not without their residual popular bases." On Cuba and Venezuela in @newleftreview.bsky.social newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Excellent by Nihal el Aasar in the @newleftreview.bsky.social on the politics of the Grand Egyptian Museum. newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

My essay and review of Vali Nasr’s 'Iran’s Grand Strategy' is out in the London Review of Books. @lrb.co.uk

Anika Banister on Yoko Ono’s music of the mind

In the final episode of our ‘Aftershock’ podcast, @danielsoar.bsky.social is joined by Patrick Cockburn, @lalehkhalili.bsky.social and @tomstevenson.bsky.social for a live discussion. What is the legacy of America’s ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East? Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...

The lecture that I gave on January 16 in London, the second of the LRB Winter Lectures, is now available online. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Jérôme Tubiana in @nybooks.com, a must read on Darfur. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

A beautifully written piece in @equatormag.bsky.social, strangely reserved about the author's view of -a necessary(?)- foreign intervention. Is every Iranian swayed by Trump's promise to rescue? Are they detached from what happens across the border in Iraq and beyond? www.equator.org/articles/teh...

Apparently this tourist tried to do his homework for this bland @foreignpolicy.com piece and was torn not to plagiarize my lines for @bostonreview.bsky.social ad verbatim. foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/23/p...

‘The destruction of Palestinian lives is now a base line in a holding pattern. The ferocious white heat of the past two years of unrelenting attacks has receded from view, but the genocide continues.’ @selmadabbagh.bsky.social on the situation on the ground in Gaza. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...

Schmitt's ghost summoned in the fatherland. Ian Klinke in @jacobinmag.bsky.social jacobin.com/2026/01/germ...

On a side note, despite Europeans' claims of 'stability', an implicit redemption of the neocolonial state-building project of 2003, until recently the Institut français sat behind concrete security walls, and both the embassy and AFP's bureau sit in fortified ghettos. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/w...

London tickets for @adamshatz.bsky.social’s Winter Lecture on Friday 16 January, ‘Another Country’, are sold out, but you can still join the livestream. More details and tickets here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lrb-winter...

The @financialtimes.com columnist @edwardluce.bsky.social has argued that in annexing Greenland, the US ‘would kill Nato in one swoop’. But would it? Trump appears to think Europe’s leaders are cowed enough to accept even this. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...

Trouvé’s artworks "are unfashionably, hermetically psychological. Because of all the accidents of circumstance they seem to allude to, these monuments commemorate all the unconscious ways that the physical world impresses itself upon us." @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...

Excellent analysis by Narges Bajoghli: time.com/7345623/iran...

Iran's lonely walk.

What a loss. Honored to have written for LeftEast. lefteast.org/farewell-sta...

Statement by the union of Iranian bus-drivers. www.counterpunch.org/2026/01/12/s...

"US power has been reduced to spectacle, and for spectacle to remain powerful it needs to be repeated." Greg Grandin in @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/4e0e...

‘“I watched​ it literally like I was watching a television show,” Donald Trump said. “I watched last night one of the most precise attacks on sovereignty.” He then corrected himself: “I mean, it was an attack for justice.”’ NEW - Tony Wood on Venezuela: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

There exists no precise account for those disappeared in Iraq in the post-2003 'sectarian war', an undesirable history now buried under the neoliberal monuments of al-Sudani's government. The nameless are emerging in gunny sacks in Baghdad, wanting to speak. www.alaraby.co.uk/society/%D9%...

'The President's Cake' is going to the Oscars, here's what I had to say about the film in my @jacobinmag.bsky.social review: jacobin.com/2025/08/pres...

"Baghdad is seen by most of its inhabitants as a tabula rasa for top-down machinations, a laissez-faire renewal as insolent to its disregard for common sense as it is to the city’s history." Great essay by @nabilsalih.bsky.social on how Baghdad's cityscape mirrors Iraq's broken political order:

I enjoy @vijayprashad.bsky.social's books, but his assertion in this @counterpunchmedia.bsky.social piece that Iraq's 'shock and awe' was "dwarfed by the bombing of Operation Absolute Resolve (2026) against Venezuela" is an unnecessary exaggeration. www.counterpunch.org/2026/01/08/t...

Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi once prophesied the cyclical destruction of the Abbasid capital, writing that the city “shall be swallowed up in the earth faster than an iron tent peg sinks in wet ground.” Now it seems like a succession of governments wants nothing more than to drown Baghdad from above.