Delivery worker in China waiting for the light to turn green -- TurnOnTheNight, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Tings Chak At the entrance to Xingfuli, a residential compound in Ganzhou, Jiangxi province, a bulletin board displays the names, photographs, and phone numbers of the people responsible for managing the neighbourhood. Though an ordinary bulletin board at first appearance, among the building representatives and Communist Party members is an unexpected name: K

Lula and Xi in May, 2025 -- Lula Oficial, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Tings Chak On 25 October, Brazilians will return to the polls to choose between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in an attempted coup. The first round gave Flávio 47.03 per cent of valid votes against Lula’s 45.16 per cent, revealing the enduring strength of the far right four yea

While genuine concern exists, constant warnings from AI companies serve as both a marketing tool and a consolidation strategy. As major companies manage stock prices and upcoming IPOs, the benefits of portraying the technology as powerful and dangerous are becoming clear. By John P. Ruehl Just weeks before its scheduled November IPO, Anthropic is facing growing attention over the potential dangers of its technology. The resignation of former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon o

Group photo of BRICS Member/Partner Countries Outreach Invitees and Heads of International Organisations at the 18th BRICS Summit -- Prime Minister's Office (GODL-India), GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons By Vijay Prashad The 18thBRICS Summit, held in New Delhi on September 12–13, occurred amid an exceptional intensification of international contradictions. Wars in West Asia, unilateral sanctions, tariff barriers, and the weaponisation of finance and technology have exposed t

Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in China, May 2026 -- public domain image By Vijay Prashad President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, t

Michael Day, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Tings Chak The television series Asking the Vast Earth (问苍茫, 2023) opens with a scene of a young Mao Zedong swimming in the Xiang River, swollen from the heavy rains. A fisherman calls from the bank to the lone swimmer: ‘You fool, you’re asking to die! The river is raging after the storm—there are boats, why are you swimming?’ Mao laughs and calls back: ‘Never mind how fierce the water is. Once you understand its temper, you ca

Image via X By Vijay Prashad In Minaçu, in the northern part of the Brazilian state of Goiás, the landscape bears the scars of an earlier mineral rush. For decades, the town depended on the Cana Brava asbestos mine, whose prosperity was inseparable from lethal illnesses and a long history of environmental damage. Now Minaçu has been recruited into another promised future. At the Pela Ema mine, Serra Verde extracts rare-earth elements required for electric motors, wind turbine

Massive state and federal lawsuits take Meta to task over widespread harm to children. sharpemtbr, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons By Sonali Kolhatkar As a mother of two children who has often been on the losing side of family battles against screen time, I’ve been closely monitoring New Mexico’s landmark lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook. State Attorney General Raúl Torrez took the company to task to protect children “from sexual abuse, online sol

Once one of the world’s most militarized frontiers, the Russia-China border along the Amur River Basin shows how a long-running territorial dispute can evolve from confrontation to integration. No. 41 Boundary Marker at China–Russia Border -- Ncysea, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By John P. Ruehl Since the early 1990s, the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk, located on the Amur River, has steadily reemerged as one of Russia’s most important “border trade hubs.” Sitting dir

Russia’s challenge to prevailing IP and copyright norms is central to its pursuit of technological sovereignty. Global fragmentation and Western divisions have given Moscow space to test the system’s limits without fully abandoning it. General view of Red Square, 2025 -- Юрий Д.К., CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By John P. Ruehl Taking an invention and claiming it as yours is called intellectual property, based on practices followed by US and European businesses. But what h

Each leap in human communication—from vocal anatomy to writing to digital networks—followed the same pattern: faster, more complex, less individual. By Deborah Barsky Many people are overwhelmed by the fast-paced evolution of mass communication in a world increasingly shaped by the internet and artificial intelligence (AI). Yet ideas have not always circulated across the globe at lightning speed. Looking into deep time allows us to view our current mode of existence from a br

Trump is flouting regulations to reap billions for himself, as ordinary Americans teeter on the edge of economic ruin. Trump on May 19 -- public domain image By Sonali Kolhatkar President Donald Trump has brazenly engaged in what appears to be insider trading. A bombshell story published in Bloomberg on May 14, 2026, revealed that Trump made thousands of stock trades in the first quarter of this year with companies connected to the government. This isn’t fake news. Bloomberg

Flag of the PRC in Potala Palace square in Lhasa, the capital city of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region -- image via news video screenshot By Biljana Vankovska As one becomes more familiar with the complexities and civilizational depth of China, curiosity naturally extends beyond its major cities toward regions often obscured by mythology, ideological distortion, and geopolitical propaganda. This has certainly been my own experience. The more I learn about China, the

Trump and Xi Jinping on May 15 -- public domain image By Vijay Prashad The scenes unfolding in Beijing were carefully choreographed, yet politics can never be reduced to mere spectacle. When US President Donald Trump traveled to China for his summit meeting with Xi Jinping, Western media, as it often does, fixated on spectacle: lavish banquets, honor guards, theatrical gestures that were designed to flatter the US president. Yet beneath all this ritual lay another reality, ha

Automation has shaped governments for decades, but new AI-driven systems are taking on functions from warfare to welfare. Promising speed and efficiency, their growing influence over decision-making complicates political accountability and risks autonomous governance being beyond human control. Miami-Dade fully autonomous patrol vehicle -- image via news video screenshot By John P. Ruehl In April, the General Services Administration announced plans to automate 1 million work

Trump with Xi Jinping in Beijing, May 13 -- public domain image By Tings Chak Desde Pekín, esta semana se está llevando a cabo ante los ojos del mundo la primera visita de Estado de los EE. UU. a China en nueve años. El Gran Salón del Pueblo está abierto a Donald Trump, quien ha viajado acompañado de dieciocho ejecutivos estadounidenses, entre los que se encuentran Apple, Tesla, BlackRock, Boeing y Nvidia. El jueves se celebra un banquete de Estado, seguido de un té y un almu

Trump arrives in Beijing -- image via the White House on X By Tings Chak From Beijing this week, the first US state visit to China in nine years is being staged for the world to see. The Great Hall of the People is open to Donald Trump, who has traveled with eighteen US executives—Apple, Tesla, BlackRock, Boeing, and Nvidia among them. A state banquet on Thursday, followed by tea and lunch on Friday. On the streets of Beijing, ‘the Beast‘ has been securing the motorcade route

By Biljana Vankovska China’s conduct in the UN Security Council often disappoints those who expect it to openly confront what they see as an unrestrained American imperial machine. This expectation was especially evident in China’s abstentions on two key recent occasions: UNSC Resolution 2803 on Gaza, which effectively enabled Trump’s ‘Peace Board’ experiment and even hints at bypassing the UN, and the latest vote on Iran ( Resolution 2817 ), which produced the distorted im

The Cayman Islands sits at the heart of a network of British financial jurisdictions. Together, they manage trillions in assets, influencing global capital flows and investment networks. Flag of the Cayman Islands -- Dickelbers, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By John P. Ruehl China, which was the largest holder of U.S. government debt as recently as 2019 , has cut its holdings to the lowest level since 2008 , driven by changing trade patterns, geopolitical concerns, and

The American Southern accent reveals how linguistic prejudice reinforces classism, regionalism, and subconscious bias across generations. Plate with a quote from the film Forrest Gump at Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant in Hollywood, California, USA. -- Prayitno, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Madeline VanArsdale [Author’s note: IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet. It is an alphabet of symbols, not entirely unlike the Latin alphabet, which is used to guide pronunc