…that’s the childish logic at the heart of a great deal of very adult violence. In this piece, I examine how quickly geopolitical conflict gets reframed as a moral—or even theological—contest, and how easily people who would reject certain ideas at home find ways to defend them abroad. What interests me is not just the…
I’ve got a new piece up on CounterPunch that dives into the increasingly bizarre civil war unfolding on the far right since the war in Iran. When your entire worldview is built on layered hatreds, sooner or later they start colliding. What we’re watching now isn’t strategy—it’s a movement arguing with itself about which enemy…
How do you understand a country that seems to contain at least two entirely different worlds? In my latest Camino a Ítaca column in the Spanish newspaper HOY, I explore a paradox I witnessed while thinking about modern Iran. In Tehran, a one-hour drive can feel like a journey across centuries — from affluent northern…
Europe is once again debating freedom — by regulating what women wear. Yes, the burka and niqab emerged from deeply patriarchal tribal traditions. That much is obvious. But here’s the awkward question: does banning them liberate women, or does it simply replace one authority with another? Years ago, I taught in Sana’a. My classroom was…
It begins with a simple observation: across Spain—and much of Europe—the streets, plazas, and churches are named after immigrants, or at least migrant ideas, from the Middle East who arrived two thousand years ago and helped shape what is now called “Christian civilization.” Yet in today’s political climate, migrants from many of the same regions…
A Bible Made to Measure Every writer has had that moment when reality starts behaving like a badly edited novel. The characters contradict themselves, the plot swerves without warning, and someone in the audience is clearly reading a completely different book from everyone else. My latest article was born from that feeling. We tend to…
🎃 Trick, treat… and tradition with a twist 🎃 What if your Halloween bucket of candy held more than sweets—what if it carried a message about identity, culture, and the absurdity of purity? In my latest column for SUR in English (“The Purity Panic: Notes from the Museum of Imaginary Nations”), I peer into the…
Premier Danielle Smith wants to protect Alberta’s children from the horrors of Judy Blume, Alice Munro, and a stray queer kiss in a YA novel. But there’s one book she’ll never ban: the Bible. The irony? Crack it open and you’ll find stories drenched in blood, lust, betrayal, mutilation, and pimped-out daughters — the kind…
The Republic of the Self-Inflicted Wound Canada’s politics has always loved its myths. But now? They’re stitched out of cowboy hats, polyester suits, and old-school Calvinism. That’s the story I dig into in my new CounterPunch article on Cowboy Calvinism. What is “Cowboy Calvinism”? It’s the gospel of grievance dressed in rodeo drag — a…
Castillo de Montánchez Longform read published in the February issue of Perceptive Travel Magazine. (click over) A family trip to a curious festival where the blessed are not the meek, but in fact their modes of transport. “The sweep before us was more than 180 degrees. The savannah, some 1300 feet below, rolled off into…