Magdi El-Gizouli articulates something missing from so many reports on the war in Sudan: that, for the young members of the resistance committees that formed the backbone of the Revolution, fighting the RSF is a necessary, dialectical extension of that very struggle. www.equator.org/articles/kha...
Khartoum After the Storm • EQUATOR
How Sudan’s revolutionary generation was dragged into total war
equator.org
Undone by this haunting piece by @aprzhu.bsky.social. "The distances, the lenses, as well as the ghosts of loss, regret, guilt, and betrayal that haunt the anthropologist harmonize with the profound sense of displacement one feels in diaspora." offassignment.com/wids/april-zhu
Bad Witness: What I Didn't Say About Reporting on Chinese Christians in Kenya — Off Assignment
“I was born into Christianity as I was born into America. In my childhood, there was the church and the diaspora, and I could not imagine one without the other.”
offassignment.com
These are the kind of things that annoy me. You take a beautiful, rich and evocative language and rob it of its dynamism and colour and contort it into unnatural shapes to advance developmentalism. This is why sheng’ is the language of joy.
@mmnjug.bsky.social · 4mo agoToday is the World Kiswahili Language Day 2026 THEME: Kiswahili for peace, solidarity and global economic diplomacy #KiswahiliDay #KiswahiliDay2026 www.unesco.org/en/articles/...
one of the best essays i've read recently, by my dear friend alfred jung lee www.thebeliever.net/on-descripti...
On Description - Believer Magazine
Not long ago, I was reading, in a magazine profile, a physical description of a person “who has a prodigious white beard, wavy gray bangs, and dark, beetling eyebrows.” A photo of the person was inclu...
thebeliever.net
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
Emma Yeomans@yeomans.bsky.social · 8mo ago"The trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics when moving to Dubai."
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 Heartbreaking Work of Swaggering Genius
Namwali Serpell’s study of Toni Morrison – Omari Weekes
bookforum.com
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...
Visiting Ngara
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
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…
april zhu@aprzhu.bsky.social · 8mo agoNgara 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...
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...
Visiting Ngara
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
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.
A Document of Complicity | Sarah Khatry and April Zhu
April Zhu: Let’s start with the charges. UnHerd columnist Kat Rosenfeld wrote that we editors who resigned in protest had reached with our “hot little hands” for “the censor’s pen.
nplusonemag.com
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.
These Health Care Workers Spoke Out for Their Peers in Gaza. Then Came Backlash.
Medical institutions are silencing their staff and impeding efforts to build solidarity with medical workers in Gaza.
truthout.org
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...
Gulf States and Warring Militias Alike Are Profiting From War in Sudan | Novara Media
For the UAE and Saudi Arabia, a divided Sudan is easier to dominate and profit from, writes Joshua Craze.
novaramedia.com
"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...
Sudan’s paramilitary killed hundreds including hospital patients in Darfur, residents say
Sudan’s paramilitary forces killed hundreds of people including patients in a hospital after they seized el-Fasher city in the western Darfur region over the weekend, according to the UN, displaced re...
ctvnews.ca
"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...
Statemania • Articles • EQUATOR
When the American Dream came to Africa
equator.org
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...
How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review
Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.
bostonreview.net
"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...
Junk Empire | Triple Canopy
Like all great found objects, the butt plug invites questions.” On American waste in Afghanistan....
canopycanopycanopy.com
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.
april zhu@aprzhu.bsky.social · last yr.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/...
A Document of Complicity | Sarah Khatry and April Zhu
April Zhu: Let’s start with the charges. UnHerd columnist Kat Rosenfeld wrote that we editors who resigned in protest had reached with our “hot little hands” for “the censor’s pen.
nplusonemag.com
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/...
A Document of Complicity | Sarah Khatry and April Zhu
April Zhu: Let’s start with the charges. UnHerd columnist Kat Rosenfeld wrote that we editors who resigned in protest had reached with our “hot little hands” for “the censor’s pen.
nplusonemag.com
"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
A.R. Moxon@juliusgoat.bsky.social · last yr.One of the biggest blunders (when well-intentioned) and betrayals (when not) in Democratic rhetoric over the years is their impenetrable insistence that what voters respond to is somebody who begins by finding common ground with their opponent, no matter who that opponent is or what that ground is.
Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike, while he and other journalists were inside their tent
Al Jazeera Says Its Correspondent Anas Al-Sharif Has Been Killed In Gaza, And Israel Confirms It
Broadcaster Al Jazeera says its correspondent Anas al-Sharif has been killed in Gaza City, and Israel’s military confirms it.
huffpost.com
40 minutes before he was killed by an Israeli air strike, Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif shared this message.
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...
The Most Nihilistic Conflict on Earth
Sudan’s devastating civil war shows what will replace the liberal order: anarchy and greed.
theatlantic.com
"[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...
Caitlín Doherty, Everything Else — Sidecar
In Dubai.
newleftreview.org
.@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...
How Alex Haley wrote and reframed the life of Malcolm X | Aeon Essays
Alex Haley co-wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X but Haley left out some profound elements of Malcolm’s political thought
aeon.co
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.
ICE memo outlines plan to deport migrants to countries where they are not citizens
The dramatic shift in policy could result in thousands of immigrants being deported to places where they lack family ties or even a common language.
washingtonpost.com