april zhu

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/...

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

"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...

Quote: "An omnipresent feature of liberal chronicles of the occupation is a fixation on how much was wasted: the $2.13 trillion spent and the 176,000 people who died. Surveying the destruction wreaked on Afghanistan, these accounts conclude, unsurprisingly, that the war was a total failure. The Taliban are once again in control of Kabul. Al Qaeda runs gold mines in Badakhshan and Takhar provinces. The Afghan army is a distant memory. This humiliation is often presented as a mystery. How could so much money—more than was spent on the Marshall Plan—and “goodwill,” in the New Yorker’s words, have achieved so little? But the occupation succeeded! Every military failure was a triumph. Behind every botched mission was someone getting paid; more failures meant more opportunities to profit."

Junk Empire | Triple Canopy Like all great found objects, the butt plug invites questions.” On American waste in Afghanistan....

"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...

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.

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.

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.

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/...

Cesar Chavez breaking his third fast by receiving communion from Ethel Kennedy. Photo by Victor Aleman

"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

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.

Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike, while he and other journalists were inside their tent

Just 40 minutes before his assassination, Anas al-Sharif posted this message to the world: © Anas Al-Sharif أنس الشريف @AnasAlSharifO A To Whom It May Concern, The occupation is now openly threatening a full-scale invasion of Gaza. For 22 months, the city has been bleeding under relentless bombardment from land, sea, and air. Tens of thousands have been killed, and hundreds of thousands wounded. If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people's voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop. Please share this message and tag everyone who has the power to help end this massacre. Silence is complicity.

40 minutes before he was killed by an Israeli air strike, Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif shared this message.

It was international actors in the US-led "liberal world order" who undercut popular calls during the Revolution for "100%" civilian government and applauded the power sharing of military and militia that inevitably cracked into the violent counterrevolution that is now called "a war about nothing."

The Most Nihilistic Conflict on Earth Sudan’s devastating civil war shows what will replace the liberal order: anarchy and greed.

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...

Caitlín Doherty, Everything Else — Sidecar In Dubai.

"[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...

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

.@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...

A photo of labor activist Chris Smalls, talking into a mic

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.”

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.

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.

FEMA Didn’t Answer Thousands of Calls From Flood Survivors, Documents Show

Kristi Noem didn't renew the expired call center contracts for five days, resulting in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) failing to answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line from flood survivors in Texas. It's malevolence mixed with incompetence again and again.

photo of Jaime Alanis

Our hearts are heavy for the grieving family of Jaime Alanis, who died from injuries sustained during a chaotic raid on Thursday.

We will do everything we can to support them. We continue to work with the hundreds of farm worker families navigating the aftermath of this violent raid.

The horror in Kenya continues into the night as police or people acting as agents of the police allegedly break into apartment complexes and sexually assault women in their homes.

A collage depicting blimps, planes, drones, and ships trawling the sea and sky for digital devices and information.

NEW: A ChinaFile investigation into China's powerful, but leaky, internet censorship system at locknet.chinafile.com
1/21

Wrote a micro-review on the film Black Tea (2024) in
@thedrift-mag.bsky.social
www.thedriftmag.com/mentions/

“Bring back the child you murdered. If the state and empire wishes to act like a God that can take life, it should function as a God and resurrect life. If it cannot, then it is not a god, and its laws are not legitimate when they’re predatory.”

Professor Joy James

crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their consultants

Donate to Building Hope in Mathare, Nairobi, organized by Naomi Van Stapele We’re thrilled to announce that the construction of the Ghetto Foundation Communit… Naomi Van Stapele needs your support for Building Hope in Mathare, Nairobi

The Ghetto Foundation, a Mathare-based grassroots organization, has been doing community-led research, environmental protection, and youth work programs for decades. They're raising €20k to build a Community Resilience Center. Please contribute whatever you can!

www.gofundme.com/f/building-h...

Belgium could start a Lumumba trial next year A former diplomat involved in the plot to murder Lumumba may face trial if a magistrate allows the case to proceed

In 2022, the only mortal remains of Patrice Lumumba, a single gold-capped tooth, were returned to his family, more than 60 years after his murder. Only now are Belgian prosecutors planning to go after anyone for their role in the 1961 killing.

U.S. Officials Concede They Don’t Know Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stockpile

You’d think even pro war pundits would have learned their lesson at this point but no www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/u...

Rich Chinese cities are suffocating poor ones A hitch in the battle against smog

Since the air pollution crisis was relocated out of Beijing, people just care a lot less. It's still grim.

"In 2019 PM2.5 pollution was responsible for some 1.4m premature deaths in the country"

www.economist.com/china/2025/0...

Today's quick update [Jun 21]:

- SAF drone strike on a hospital in Mogled, West Kordofan; per West Kordofan ERR, 41 civilians were killed, along with tens of injured.

#KeepEyesOnSudan

Temperature change in Kenya from 1901 to 2024

showyourstripes.info/c/africa/ken...