1/Inside the Cocaine Valley: My upcoming book, “Peasants” (Bloomsbury, Knopf, 2026), has taken me to many fascinating places. One of them is VRAEM, a remote region in Peru, a place of cocaine, narcos, and the last remnants of the Shining Path, the Maoist guerilla group which threw the Peruvian state into crisis in the 80s and 90s. 2/The Apurímac, Ene, & Mantaro rivers have carved spectacular valleys through the Andes. Beyond the natural splendour, VRAEM is one of the world’s most important centres of cocaine production. The coca bushes which stretch across the hills sustain thousands of peasant farmers, who navigate the worlds of criminality & the state.

1/Today marks the 45th anniversary of the day Iran became colonised by the religious fundamentalists, backed by urban guerrilla terrorists, fuelled by a mass propaganda which portrayed the late Shah as a decadent despot, and Khomeini as the saviour of the people of Iran.





2/This propaganda stood in sharp contrast to the experience of my parents and grandparents, who were horrified by the destruction of the prosperity, modernity, order, dignity, pride, and security they had known before.

1/There is a reason today's #iraniangovernment fears the power of #Iranianwomen's bodies. Whenever that power is unleashed, history changes & states fall. All over Iran, women are removing their veils, exposing their beauty & saying no to cowardice.
#Mahsa_Amini #IranProtests2022 2/This regime of corrupt mullahs cannot withstand such an onslaught.
In 550BCE, attempting to escape a vastly larger Median army, fleeing Persian soldiers were stopped in their tracks by an indignant crowd of women.