Category: Uncategorized

by MAHMOUD KHALIL

A letter dictated by Mahmoud Khalil over the phone from ICE detention in Louisiana.

My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.

Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.

Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.

On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours?—?I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.

My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns—based on racism and disinformation—to go unchecked.

I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention?—?imprisonment without trial or charge?—?to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.

I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.

While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing?—?based on racism and disinformation—to go unchecked.

Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students?—?some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation?—?and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.

If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change?—?leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.

The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.

Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.

In These Times for more

Scheerpost for more

This was a talk Kshama Sawant gave at the Workers Strike Back conference in Seattle in February 2025.

Youtube for more

by NARESH R. PANDIT, FENG WAN, & PETER WILLIAMSON,

The success of the Chinese AI firm DeepSeek shocked financial markets and major US tech firms in January 2025. But it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise.

Because, for decades now, plenty of companies in China have been developing competitive advantages that enable them to make remarkable progress. This involves a different strategy to that of many big western firms that rely on things like branding – like Apple – and exclusive technology – like Nvidia – to succeed.

Instead, these less well-known Chinese companies have focused on delivering more innovation faster and cheaper. And our research suggests that they have been able to achieve this by being much more adaptable in how they do business.

So DeepSeek may not be alone as a gamechanger. Here are four more Chinese firms looking to disrupt the global economy in a similar way.

1. DJI Innovations

DJI Innovations makes low-cost drones that produce aerial photography and videos. Founded in 2006 by Frank Wang (who became Asia’s youngest tech billionaire at the age of 36), the company develops camera technology and software as well as engineering drone systems used in industries including agriculture and defence. Its technology has been used in the filming of shows like Better Call Saul and Game of Thrones.

DJI’s cutting-edge research and development involves highly sophisticated automated assembly lines that make more for less cost. This has led to rapid international expansion and foreign partnerships, making the company a dominant player which is tough to compete against.

2. Unitree Robotics

A DJI Innovations spin-off founded in 2016, Unitree Robotics specialises in high-performance quadruped and humanoid robots, as well as components like robotic arms. These products incorporate artificial intelligence and have many applications in consumer and industrial markets.

But in a sector where progress can be slower than we might expect, Unitree’s rapid development cycles –from initial idea, through development and testing, to commercialisation – give it an edge over rivals. This cycle speed is achieved through highly digitised processes, and large highly skilled development teams, which place it ahead of many rivals.

For example, in 2024 one of the firm’s humanoid robots (already capable of soldering and cooking) set a new walking speed record of 3.3 meters per second. And in early 2025 the company’s robots performed a traditional Yangko dance alongside humans.

The Conversation for more

by SARAH BOURASSA

Experts reveal how parents and caregivers can pick up on cues and learn how to meet their needs.

Highly sensitive kids feel their emotions and surroundings deeply. But how do you know if your child has this personality trait? There are subtle day-to-day behaviors you can watch for that indicate they may be a highly sensitive child (HSC).

A HSC has “heightened sensory abilities … [and is] extremely caring but tends to get overwhelmed by stimuli in the world,” said Dr. Judith Orloff, a psychiatrist and author of the upcoming book “The Highly Sensitive Rabbit.” “It’s so essential in parenting to identify if you have a highly sensitive child so you know how to meet their needs.”

We talked to experts about the not-so-obvious signs that your child is highly sensitive, how they interact differently with the world, and parenting tips you can use to help them thrive.

First of all, what does “highly sensitive” mean exactly?

The personality trait was first researched by psychologist Elaine Aron in 1991, who wrote the book “The Highly Sensitive Person: How To Thrive When The World Overwhelms You.” According to Aron, about 15-20% of children are born highly sensitive, which means they have a “nervous system that is highly aware and quick to react.”

Dr. Becky Kennedy, clinical psychologist and founder of Good Inside, describes these kids as “deeply feeling” and “porous to the world.”

“Their pores, you can almost imagine, are bigger, and so more flows into them and more flows out,” she said. “They have a lot of hypervigilance to all the details they notice.”

Sign No. 1: They don’t like loud noises, strong scents or bright lights.

A HSC hears, smells, sees, tastes and feels more intensely.

“They feel things like they’re holding something with 50 fingers instead of five,” Orloff said.

Huffpost for more

by FRANCESCA MEZZENZANA & GABRIEL SCHEIDECKER

Early childhood development interventions in the Global South is a huge industry built on highly questionable assumptions

The Black child has no toys. He does not ?nd around him any occasion to arouse his intellect … the early childhood of the Black always takes place in an environment intellectually inferior to any imaginable in Europe … The Black child remains inactive for long hours. He thus undergoes a terrifying head shrinking from which it is virtually impossible to recover. The neural centres of his cortex, which should normally be used for exercise, do not receive the necessary stimuli for their development.

When the Belgian professor of psychology Robert Maistriaux wrote the above in 1955 to describe African children, he was not doing anything unusual. His words confirmed what European colonisers then wished to hear: that colonised people were somewhat cognitively deficient and needed to be rescued from themselves. The fact that ‘science’ supported this view gave only more legitimacy to the colonial project. In the 1950s, such scientific claims – linking brain deficits to inadequate childcare – seemed uncontentious.

In July 2024, the cover of The Economist portrayed a golden globe in the shape of a brain against a pink background. ‘How To Raise The World’s IQ’ boasted the title, introducing the issue of how to improve children’s brain development globally through improved nutrition and mental stimulation. It features research on malnutrition, responsive care and brain development. A careful reader won’t take long to realise that the ‘world’ mentioned in the title does not, however, represent an abstract, universal category of humanity. Here, ‘how to make the world brainier’ means how to make a certain part of the world brainier. That part of the world is the Global South.

You know that the developing brain is a truly popular topic when even The Economist, hardly a child-focused magazine, dedicates a cover to it. From colonisers in the past to the economists of today, this obsession with children’s brains – and especially with the brains of Brown, poor children – seems to continue. If anything, it has only increased – no doubt thanks to the increasing popularity of neuroscience and brain-scanning technology. This is evident in the field of early childhood development (ECD) interventions – a multibillion-dollar industry– where brain-focused programmes have gained prominence.Nolonger merely about ensuring physical health, many early childhood interventions have the explicit goal of improving brain development. As UNICEF puts it: ‘too many children are still missing out on the “eat, play, and love” their brains need to develop …’ Together with the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO), corporate foundations and NGOs, UNICEF has also placed children’s optimal brain development at the core of its agenda.

In 2018, these UN organisations launched the Nurturing Care Framework that seeks, in part, to implement interventions to improve children’s brain development in the Global South. These consist of advising and training parents in childcare practices thought to be conducive to optimal emotional and cognitive development or, in other words, to a thriving brain. These interventions are based on two simple premises. First is the idea that parental behaviour in the first years of life can alter the basic architecture of a child’s brain. As UNICEF’s Early Moments campaign claims: ‘In this formative stage of life, a baby’s brain can form more than 1 million new brain connections every single second – a pace never repeated again.’ The second is the belief that a very particular type of childcare – described as ‘nurturing’ – is conducive to sturdy brain circuits. A series of counselling cards from the WHO and UNICEF illustrates what this entails: talking and singing (even before birth), parent-child play, frequent eye contact, etc. No one would be surprised by such advice. It is the same that parents across the world can find on the internet, in popular science magazines, in the mainstream media, and even on the blog of a multinational food company like Nestlé.

Aeon for more

by GRANT INSKEEP

“China has entered an ‘Age of Sarcasm’. Anywhere outside of state-sponsored parties, entertainment shows, or the comedies and skits on television, China’s rulers and official corruption have become the main material for the sarcastic humor that courses through society. Virtually anyone can tell a political joke laced with pornographic innuendo, and almost every town and village has its own rich stock of satirical political ditties. Private dinner gatherings become informal stage shows for venting grievances and telling political jokes; the better jokes and ditties, told and retold, spread far and wide. This material is the authentic public discourse of mainland China, and it forms a sharp contrast with what appears in the state-controlled media. To listen only to the public media, you could think you are living in paradise; if you listen only to the private exchanges, you will conclude that you are living in hell. One shows only sweetness and light, the other only a sunless darkness.”

— Liu Xiaobo

Since the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War, and the subsequent retreat of the Republic of China (ROC/ Taiwan) to the island of Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been the recognizable state of mainland China. During this time, China was certainly an independent actor forging their own destiny, but wasn’t really a player in the global arena at large, having been incorrectly viewed by Western intelligence agencies as a Soviet satellite or proxy. Reality was far different and much has changed the last 70+ years as China is now the second most powerful empire, the third largest in area (influence/hegemony), and the second strongest military power in the world.

China, like the US more than a century ago, is the clear rising power globally, whereas the US is much like the British were around the time of WWI—the most powerful empire in existence but in noticeable decline. China is also projected to become the largest economy in the world by 2030 in terms of GDP (gross domestic product). Although, in terms of PPP (purchasing power parity), which accounts for different services and costs in separate countries, China has already overtaken the US economy and became the worlds top manufacturer in the early 2010’s. This was a title the US had held since 1890. Let’s examine how this all unfolded and what the future could hold.

FRONTIER WARS & CONSOLIDATION OF POWER

Immediately after seizing power and creating the modern Chinese state, Mao Zedong immediately moved to invade Tibet and bring it under Sino control permanently. After the collapse of the Qing dynasty, there was a subsequent intermediary period where it had been a de-facto independent state. 40,000 Chinese troops effectively forced Tibet to surrender at gun point, although in China this is what’s called the “Peaceful Liberation of Tibet.” A phrase that Orwell could’ve easily predicted. China wanted Tibet for its natural resources and to militarize a strategic border with their rival India, an increasingly important geopolitical matter today.

Counterpunch for more

by MALAKA GHARIB

After writing 50 books, Pakistani American kids’ book author Saadia Faruqi is covering an issue she’s never explored before in her newest title, The Strongest Heart.

“This is the first time I’ve written a book that completely revolves around mental illness and the repercussions it has on family life, especially on kids,” says Faruqi. “It’s a topic that’s very close to my heart and the theme is personal to me.”

Published in March, The Strongest Heart follows Mo, a Pakistani American eighth grader, as he struggles to understand his Abbu — “father” in Urdu — who has schizophrenia. The book is based on Faruqi’s own rocky relationship with her father, whom she believes also had this condition.

Growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, Faruqi says she was afraid of her father’s episodes and often felt confused. The adults never “sat me down and explained anything. Nobody said, ‘Hey, don’t be scared.’ ” She hopes The Strongest Heart, geared toward middle schoolers, can offer comfort and strength to young people who live with someone with mental illness at home.

So far, the book has earned four starred reviews. Kirkus Review writes: “The portrayal of serious mental illness and the complex emotions of a child whose parent suffers from it are realistic, eye-opening and moving.”

Faruqi, the Houston-based author of the popular kids’ book series about a Pakistani-American girl named Yasmin, talks to NPR about mental health in Pakistan and what she wishes she could say to her dad if he were alive today. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was it like for you growing up in Pakistan with a father who had mental illness? 

It was frightening. I never knew which dad I was going to get. When I walked into the house from school, I dreaded going inside because I didn’t know whether he was going to be angry or loving.

What the grown-ups knew was not always what the kids knew because there was no sharing of information. What I have pieced together is based on things I eavesdropped on as a kid.

We think he had schizophrenia. He could have also had an adjacent kind of mental illness because many of these illnesses share a lot of symptoms. It was very unclear. [In Pakistan], there was no good way of diagnosing mental illness. ?

How did you cope? 

I got completely immersed in books, especially those that took me away in terms of fantasy and had witches and dinosaurs.

Most of the literature in those times was British because [Pakistan] used to be a colony of the British, and Enid Blyton, Jane Austen and Daphne du Maurier were favorite authors. Then once I entered high school, I got immersed in Shakespeare. That was the first time I realized how powerful words could be to bring about emotion in other people.

NPR for more

by JESMIN PAPRI

Facing competition from Vietnam and Cambodia, factories are using automation and surveillance to ramp up production and cut labor costs.

• Automation in Dhaka’s garment factories is leading to job cuts, especially for women.
• Smart surveillance devices monitor workers as factories struggle to compete globally.
• Brands are “pleased” by smart factories that produce efficiently and quickly.

The young woman quickly sewed a piece of gray fabric and handed it down the manufacturing line at one of Dhaka’s largest garment factories. She looked impatiently at the woman before her, as if willing her to work faster and pass on the next piece.

Atop her sewing machine, a screen glowed a red warning. She had made only seven pieces so far, it showed. Her target for the day was 101. As she progressed, the screen’s color would change to orange, and then, if she hit the target, green. If she remained consistently behind, she would be fired.

The tablet-sized screen is part of an internet-connected device called “Nidle,” short for “No idle.” Its sensors track how many pieces the woman sews in an hour, and how many minutes she is idle.  

Nidle is among the newly adopted devices in Bangladesh’s top garment factories that fall in the category of “smart manufacturing.” These include fully robotic devices and partially automated machines that require some human guidance. The factories supply brands such as H&M and Zara, which rely on bringing mass-manufactured garments to retail quickly, before a trend dies out. 

Having computerized machines drive human labor is meant to solve a critical problem facing Bangladesh’s garment sector: rising wages in a nation whose competitive edge historically has been its cheap workforce. 

“Increasingly, workers are getting scarce in a country like Bangladesh, where per capita income is increasing. So workers are demanding more,” Khondaker Golam Moazzem, research director at the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka, told Rest of World. “There is a tendency, at least to some extent, to use machines to replace workers.” 

Rest of world for more

by JONATHAN COOK

The US president looked like a gangster as he roughed up Zelensky. But he wasn’t the one who stoked a war that’s killed huge numbers of Ukrainians and Russians

If there is one thing we can thank US President Donald Trump for, it is this: he has decisively stripped away the ridiculous notion, long cultivated by western media, that the United States is a benign global policeman enforcing a “rules-based order”.

Washington is better understood as the head of a gangster empire, embracing 800 military bases around the world. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been aggressively seeking “global full-spectrum domination”, as the Pentagon doctrine politely terms it.

You either pay fealty to the Don or you get dumped in the river. Last Friday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was presented with a pair of designer concrete boots at the White House.

The innovation was that it all happened in front of the western press corps, in the Oval Office, rather than in a back room, out of sight. It made for great television, Trump crowed.

Pundits have been quick to reassure us that the shouting match was some kind of weird Trumpian thing. As though being inhospitable to state leaders, and disrespectful to the countries they head, is unique to this administration.

Take just the example of Iraq. The administration of Bill Clinton thought it “worth it” – as his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, infamously put it – to kill an estimated half a million Iraqi children by imposing draconian sanctions through the 1990s.

Under Clinton’s successor, George W Bush, the US then waged an illegal war in 2003, on entirely phoney grounds, that killed around half a million Iraqis, according to post-war estimates, and made four million homeless.

Those worrying about the White House publicly humiliating Zelensky might be better advised to save their concern for the hundreds of thousands of mostly Ukrainian and Russian men killed or wounded fighting an entirely unnecessary war – one, as we shall see, Washington carefully engineered through Nato over the preceding two decades.

Henchman Zelensky

All those casualties served the same goal as they did in Iraq: to remind the world who is boss.

Uniquely, western publics don’t understand this simple point because they live inside a disinformation bubble, created for them by the western establishment media.

Henry Kissinger, the long-time steward of US foreign policy, famously said: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

Zelensky just found that out the hard way. Gangster empires are just as fickle as the gangsters we know from Hollywood movies. Under the previous Joe Biden administration, Zelensky had been recruited as a henchman to do Washington’s bidding on Moscow’s doorstep.

The background – the one western media have kept largely out of view – is that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US tore up treaties crucial to reassuring Russia of Nato’s good intent.

Viewed from Moscow, and given Washington’s track record, Nato’s European security umbrella must have looked more like preparation for an ambush.

Keen though Trump now is to rewrite history and cast himself as peacemaker, he was central to the escalating tensions that led to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Brave New Europe for more