At least everyone’s having fun

Do you love Football? Are you excited for World Cup? Do you have politics? if so you will love Equator's first online seminar – a four-session course on the politics of Trump's 2026 World Cup, taught by genius football historian David Goldblatt! Sign up here –  www.equator.org/courses/worl...

Two months ago, we published a fantastic essay by Mona Ali on the Hormuz crisis and the emerging picture of a world after American hegemony. The strait is still not open – but America's dollar dominance has not yet collapsed. Tomorrow we're discussing it online! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/after-amer...

David Wolf, thank you for introducing me to @equatormag.bsky.social. I haven't stopped reading this magazine since this edition of the SLR. They are consistently producing incredible writing & reporting the most interesting stories I'm reading in (digital) print right now.

Nasser Abu Srour spent three decades in Israeli jails – but nothing could prepare him for the dehumanising abuse visited on Palestinian prisoners after October 7. This is his account of surviving Ben-Gvir’s torture camps

This week @equatormag.bsky.social we are publishing a remarkable memoir by the Palestinian prisoner Nasser Abu Srour – who was jailed in 1993 and released last year. After October 7, Israeli prisons became "torture camps", as B'Tselem put it. This is what it was like: www.equator.org/articles/why...

I am moved beyond words by this beautiful piece of writing on How To Eat by the wonderful Yasmin Khan open.substack.com/pub/risingup...

Pleasingly eclectic spread of coverage for IF WE TOLERATE THIS coming in, from the New Statesman, Tablet, Financial Times and the Economist so far... and they all like it! uk.bookshop.org/p/books/if-w...

WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE

This is all just what happens when the immovable object of the Treasury meets the unstoppable force of the PLP. Not sure it has anything to do with Starmer or his beliefs.

David Edgerton vaporises the Starmer project in the NS: www.newstatesman.com/politics/lab...

This is one of the smartest things I have read in many years. Thanks to @andisheh.com for unknowingly turning me on to @equatormag.bsky.social!

I personally would prefer it if Burnham could be swapped in quickly and easily, and it’d probably be better for the nation. But I see no reason why the Greens should now help people who just spent two weeks calling them hateful racist cranks trying to give heroin to children.

This is a nice sentiment but there is no such thing as "country before party": how are we all meant to agree on what's good for the country if not through political contests?

Eva Menasse Bad memories Nothing can stop Germany’s moral panic over antisemitism

"critics of Germany's repressive reading of memory culture are treated as antisemitic – suggesting that the real Staatsräson is not just the protection of Israel, but of German moral purity." Menasse has written a superb analysis of Germany's frightening memory culture malaise.

Wild how McTague keeps coming out with stuff we were saying ten-plus years ago. Please continue sir, welcome to the resistance.

What I found in editing this essay by Eva Menasse about German moral panic is that no matter how many stories you've read about the absurd abuses of German memory culture, there are always more examples you haven't heard yet: www.equator.org/articles/ger...

ok what's the 2026 consensus on posting here vs posting there? is it considered poor form to post the same thing in both places? are some people doing whole separate identities on each site? should i post more Equator links here?

i support this proposal

Can’t make it to a HERE WHERE WE LIVE IS OUR COUNTRY event? I’m teaching an online course on The Bund this June with @equatormag.bsky.social www.equator.org/courses/the-...

On May 4, join @equatormag.bsky.social and @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social for an online event celebrating Zheng Xiaoqiong, perhaps the most important Chinese writer to depict the lives of migrant laborers on Guangdong – where she once herself worked at factories.

Our latest editorial — on the meaning of America’s defeat and the new world to come: www.equator.org/articles/gho...

Do I need to know about “shoplifting discourse”

"If you live outside Africa —whether in the Americas, Europe or Asia —Africa is going to be a bigger part of your life. In trade, investment, tourism, literature and music, African integration into the world system is beginning in the way it did for Asia over half a century ago"

this is shocking yet true to many of us whose only experience of the world that has shaped our lives is american primacy post 1991 www.equator.org/articles/gho...

Reminder — this is happening today! 6pm UK / 2pm EDT... It's free!

One theme of Equator is the post-American world – the end of the era when people everywhere saw the US as a model for their own futures. This memoir by @siddharthadeb.bsky.social, about leaving India for American academia, is a study of global disenchantment: www.equator.org/articles/fro...

“At the root of so many of our moral and political crises today is what Simone Weil, describing life under European fascism, called ‘the adoration of power in its most brutal form’.” Our editors on the Iran war: www.equator.org/articles/epi...

We're doing a series of Equator online events with writers about their books: the first one is tomorrow, featuring Anand Gopal talking about his extraordinary process for reporting "Days of Love and Rage", about a group of Syrian rebels. Sign up for free here: www.eventbrite.com/e/how-i-wrot...

Why does the old regime persist? For this @equatormag.bsky.social symposium, I offer some stylised explanations of what the ECFR calls ‘strategic lunacy’: the tenacity of European servility despite the waning of both US power and the benefits of submitting to it. www.equator.org/articles/dea...

Naghmeh Sohrabi and Arang Keshavarzian talk to Equator's @shainin.bsky.social about the US-Israel war on Iran, the reactions within and outside the country, and the future of the Islamic republic. Register for free: www.eventbrite.com/e/the-war-on...

if you'd like to have me on *your* podcast to talk about Equator and how Keir Starmer sucks, let me know podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/1...

I know they do things differently in the lobby but this sort of sourcing drives me absolutely nuts. If Mandelson won’t give you comment on the record just write that he declined to comment. You don’t need to launder his excuses through a lens of deniability

“It is energising to witness the founding of an explicitly left-wing publication – of all things, a magazine! – with such a sense of political purpose and intellectual vigour.“ A very nice piece by Mark O'Connell about the launch of Equator: www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

In Equator's first free Zoom event Melinda Cooper and Quinn Slobodian discuss the revelations of the Epstein files, and what they tell us about the obsessions of America's elites. Time: Thursday, 26 February, 7 PM ET / Friday, 27 February, 11 AM AEST Register: www.eventbrite.com/e/epstein-fa...

I love China and hip hop so I was an easy sell but I can't recommend this @equatormag.bsky.social piece enough. It is so hard to get good essays in English about life in China; this one is about so much more than music (though it's got that too)

After jailing Imran Khan two years ago, Pakistan’s military establishment has tried to erase him from public life. @osmansamiuddin.bsky.social travelled to Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore to report on this bizarre effort to disappear the country’s most famous man. www.equator.org/articles/the...

Amazing how they just say this stuff out loud now. I assume they understand people can see them saying it.

This week's big new Equator story The Hidden Imran by Osman Samiuddin The cricketing legend is Pakistan’s most famous man. Can the state make him vanish? www.equator.org/articles/the...

Find out more at equator.org

The true essence of Starmerism: smug grandstanding about how he's not grandstanding. (Recall his pre-prepared response to a protestor at his conference speech in 2021: "Shouting slogans or changing lives, conference?")

“People are emboldened in part by the weakness of the regime, but also because society has been brimming with energy from both previous national protests & daily claim-making by nurses, teachers, truck drivers, farmers, pensioners, oil workers & many others. These protests don’t exist in a vacuum.”

From this weekend's @equatormag.bsky.social newsletter, an interview with Arang Keshavarzian on the scale and significance of the protests in Iran: www.equator.org/articles/ira...

A question we can't stop asking is whether Trump is radically novel in American history or just a revival of the most reactionary past. This essay by Nikhil Pal Singh provides a new understanding the nature of Trump's hybrid regime: call it Homeland Empire www.equator.org/articles/hom...

New genre of Binmenism (cf @danhancox.bsky.social ) slop has dropped: nostalgia for watching tv in the nineties

BREAKING Chinese spies only people brave enough to move to world's most dangerous city

New Substack from me - on "the battle for the soul of this country", fascism and UK rap's Flag Play danhancox.substack.com/p/i-think-i-...

“Everyone wants Ukraine to be a nation of heroes – but no one wants to talk about the violence required to sustain armed resistance to Russia’s invasion.” A powerful new essay for EQUATOR by the Ukrainian writer and photographer Yevgenia Belorusets equator.org/articles/the...

New @equatormag.bsky.social: @naomiaklein.bsky.social on how the Surrealists transformed the wreckage of history into revolutionary art – and what their example can teach us about the fight against fascism today www.equator.org/articles/sur...