**Call for pitches** 👇

Israel destroyed a Palestinian seed bank today. This is such a specific kind of evil, targeting literal hope for the future. Attempting to further alienate Palestinians from their home and land. So much destroyed just for the sake of destroying. It's awful.

To understand the appeal of the far-right today we need to examine the origins of the fascist myth of primordial male kinship. New essay, out today @eurozine.bsky.social www.eurozine.com/seeds-of-ano...

Zohran Mamdani comes from good intellectual stock. My interview with his father, the political theorist Mahmood Mamdani, in @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/cult...

“Many of the forces fighting the junta” in Myanmar, writes Francis Wade, “want nothing less than to fundamentally transform the country’s political structure to favor local dominion and autonomy.”

I have an essay in @nybooks.com on the revolution in Myanmar and the efforts by resistance groups to fundamentally transform the structure of the state. www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

"To control a people's culture," Ngũgĩ wrote, "is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others." Rest in power. lnkd.in/ePr-JtKk @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/online/2018/...

‘Immediately after the earthquake, the US Geological Survey forecast between 10,000 and 100,000 deaths. It’s a wide window – but no one knows how many more lives will be taken by the military.’ Francis Wade on the aftermath of the Myanmar earthquake, from the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ap...

On the Myanmar earthquake, the bombing raids that followed, and the aid dilemma. The message from the junta seems clear: Even those who made it through the quake should not be confident of their survival. @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ap...

“The typical suburban lawn is zealously mown, raked & bombarded with chemicals.” What if we gave up the cult of green grass & instead embraced a bounty of biodiversity in our yards? Oliver Milman explores how a cultural reset would benefit us all. #grass #lawn #biodiversity #garden #pollinators

If anyone can show me how you grow the economy by targeting people who need assistance to wash below their waist, please reply.

A while ago I spoke w/ Gayatri Spivak for @thenation.com on the teaching methods she uses to produce, in young children, 'rituals of democratic habits', skepticism of leadership, and the understanding that the state is theirs to claim www.thenation.com/article/cult...

This is well worth spending time with. The Left has no equivalent to Bannon, and no real answer to the ideology he's helped shape, which draws from multiple (seemingly opposing) strands and yet is coherent and hugely compelling vanityfair.com/news/story/steve-bannon-nato-world-order

Mbembe and Gilmore on Trump's lethal "strategy to condemn, isolate and punish South Africa for charting an independent course for its people," and the hundreds of thousands who'll die as a result www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I'm now commissioning longform essays and reported stories for @noemamag.com. If you have have ideas for pieces on climate & the natural world, nations, democracy, AI & tech, or anything else the magazine covers, drop me a DM/email: [email protected].

“On the practicalities of ethnic cleansing”

"What is left when the things you have words for begin to disappear?" @jwebsterayuso.bsky.social for @noemamag.com on ecological collapse and the corresponding loss of language www.noemamag.com/the-language...

Fun origin story on Hackney Marshes as the "utopia of [London] grassroots football", which owes its existence to the millions of tonnes of rubble leftover after the Blitz www.sapiens.org/archaeology/...

In my latest feature for Dhaka Tribune, I write about the harrowing experiences of Abul Kalam, a young Rohingya man forcibly recruited into the Myanmar army. His tale highlights his community's experience of exploitation & human rights violations in Arakan www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/r...

Underreported issue for post-coup Myanmar is the sharp rise in disease, w/ TB, malaria and HIV rates all surging at a time when 3.5m ppl are displaced & junta blocking aid. "Myanmar alone could be responsible for reversing progress on malaria globally." www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature...

Investigation by @forensicarchi.bsky.social into destruction of Gaza's farming sector: land turned to dust, greenhouses destroyed/repurposed as IDF bases. The besieged population relies on what it can produce, not import, and productive land is disappearing forensic-architecture.org/investigatio...

"How do we think about the deep traumas inflicted on populations where violence and fear serve as the currency of the ruling political class and its security apparatus?" @joelleabirached.bsky.social on Syria's coming reckoning, for @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/syr...

Christmas deep read

✨New online: @franciswade.bsky.social speaks to pro-democracy activist Thinzar Shunlei Yi about Myanmar's future