"Given the way things are going in the US, corporations seem to have more freedom of speech than university students. And it might not be long before datacenters have more rights than women."

 The Week in Patriarchy  AI (artificial intelligence)

Pity the poor AI datacenters facing ‘discrimination’

The centers are diverting much-needed resources from regular people. Local resistance has the industry playing defense 

 

by Arwa Mahdawi 

 

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/16/pity-the-poor-ai-datacenters-facing-discrimination

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‘The people getting filthy rich from AI will never have to live next door to their moneymaking creations.’ Photograph: Mark Hertzberg/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

“I continue to speak out because the kids are counting on us,” she said. “I continue because I would want people to speak out if it were my kids. It’s my calling to care about all children. It’s just who I am and I can’t not care.”

The current moment builds on decades of work – mothers harnessing their organizing power, meeting up with each other to keep their communities safe, launching and supporting campaigns, advocating for changes in public policy and getting out the vote. Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty Images

 

‘I see every child like I see my children’: why US mothers are on the frontlines of resistance movements

Mothers’ experiences often intersect with federal policy battles over gun violence, immigration and childcare

Rachel Leingang in Minneapolis and Ankita Rao in Washington

Sun 10 May 2026

Sarah spent the first months of the year following immigration agents around the Twin Cities to document arrests and violations of constitutional rights. On the day Renee Good was killed by a federal agent after dropping her son at school, she too had been surrounded by agents who screamed that they were the good guys.

On the other side of the metropolis, Linsey Rippy showed up daily to a church, ready to assemble and distribute boxes full of produce, beans, rice, cereal, sometimes adding in formula for babies stuck at home with their parents because it wasn’t safe to go out during “Operation Metro Surge”, the Trump administration’s widespread and violent immigration enforcement crackdown.

Mothers built the backbone of the resistance in Minnesota, quickly setting up networks to get kids to school and feed people, march and protest, monitor immigration agents, give rides, protect school grounds and fundraise for rent – a revolution made of caregiving and community. The movement accelerated nationally when millions saw a now iconic photo of five-year-old Liam Ramos, who was detained in the state along with his father and taken to the Dilley immigration processing center in Texas.

Rachel Accurso, the popular children’s show host and advocate known as Ms Rachel, ramped up a campaign on social media and across TV networks to end immigration detention for children. She described a video call with a nine-year-old, Deiver, a spelling bee winner who was also held at Dilley detention center in Texas who wanted to be released so he could go to the state bee, as “devastating and surreal”.

“I see every child like I see my children and I think about their mothers having to see them suffer,” Accurso said. “It breaks me.”... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/10/mothers-resistance-protest-movements

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"This is where things get tricky: I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say about Palestine Action in this column without getting chucked in jail myself. Last July, you see, the British government took the extraordinary, and hugely criticized, step of terming the group a terrorist organization on the same level as the Islamic State militant group. This is despite the fact that Palestine Action has killed nobody; its efforts are focused on trying to shut down weapons manufacturers enabling the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Even the government’s own intelligence assessment, a declassified version of which was obtained by the New York Times, undercut its condemnations of the group, finding that most of their activities “would not be classified as terrorism” under Britain’s legal definition. Still, the British government has been very busy arresting thousands – many of whom are elderly activists – for the “crime” of peacefully holding up a sign saying: “I support Palestine Action.” "

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/06/greta-thunberg-palestine-action-arrest 

Greta Thunberg came to stay – and my kid may have inadvertently helped her get arrested

Arwa Mahdawi

 

The activist had held a sign written with my daughter’s crayon. Try explaining that to a four-year-old 

 

Tue 6 Jan 2026 05.00 EST

 

‘I’m back in the US now and I can’t quite fathom what Britain, under the leadership of a former human rights lawyer, has become.’  Photograph: Prisoners for Palestine/AP

 

It was 6am. London. A few days before Christmas. My four-year-old is singing at the top of her lungs and charging around my parents’ house on a hunt for the perfect crayon. There is nothing particularly unusual about this scene except for the fact that the crayon in question was for Greta Thunberg. The world’s most well-known activist needed a writing tool and my daughter, O, was on the case. (Remember this crayon: it’s going to be important later on.)

O, I should note, had absolutely no idea who Greta was. We’re not longtime chums or anything like that. Rather Greta was in London to support the Palestine Action-linked hunger strikers. She needed somewhere to stay and my dad, who is a Palestinian refugee, and appreciative of anyone speaking up about the place where he was born but can’t return to live in, keeps an open house for activists who need a bed or a meal. When the visit had been hastily arranged by a friend of a friend of my sister a couple days earlier, we’d tried to explain to O that Greta was a famous activist who tried to help people and the environment.

“Does famous mean beautiful?” my princess-obsessed child asked. Oh dear, I thought, I have failed as a parent and a feminist.

“No, it doesn’t. And remember being beautiful is not important – what’s important is being kind,” I said, trying to redeem some feminist points.

“How dare you!” O replied. This has been her favourite catchphrase for a while now. I have no idea where she picked it up; probably from a kid’s show. I had thought nothing of it until the surprise Greta visit.

“Please don’t say that while Greta is here,” I told O. I didn’t want her to think we were making fun of her memorable rebuke. But once again, I failed at parenting: everyone knows that the best way to get a kid to keep doing something is to suggest they stop doing it.

While Greta may be famous, the hunger strikers she was coming to support are definitely not; they have had very little mainstream media attention. Indeed, if you are reading this in the US, you may not have heard about them at all. So, in brief, eight activists awaiting trials for alleged offences relating to Palestine Action have been on hunger strike since 2 November, the anniversary of the Balfour declaration.

This is where things get tricky...  READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/06/greta-thunberg-palestine-action-arrest

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Torture in Israeli prisons rose sharply during war, says freed Palestinian author - Nasser Abu Srour says prisons became like ‘another front’ in Gaza conflict and tells of struggle to adjust to life outside

A Palestinian protester holds a placard in 2015 bearing a portrait of Nasser Abu Srour during a demonstration marking Palestinian Prisoner Day in the West Bank town of Bilin, near Ramallah. Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images

Julian Borger

Tue 4 Nov 2025 02.00 EST

A celebrated Palestinian author who was freed last month after more than 32 years in Israeli prisons has said the use of torture increased dramatically during his last two years of captivity as Israel came to treat its jails as another front in the Gaza war.

Nasser Abu Srour, whose prison memoir has been translated into seven languages and is tipped to win a major international literary prize this month, was among more than 150 Palestinians serving life sentences who were freed as part of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and then immediately exiled to Egypt, where most remain in limbo.

Abu Srour, 56, recounted a sharp increase in the use of beatings and the deprivation of food and warmth after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023.

“The prison guards uniform changed, with a tag on the chest written on it the word ‘fighters’, or ‘warriors’, and they started acting like they were in a war and this was another front, and they started beating, torturing, killing like warriors,” he said.

A UN commission listed 75 deaths of Palestinians in Israeli custody between 7 October 2023 and 31 August 2025... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/04/freed-palestinian-author-nasser-abu-srour-israel-prisons-gaza-war 

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"Fashion has always been political. Now, demonstrators are putting pro-Palestinian slogans and symbols on their clothes – and not just for marches" REPORTING by Ellie Violet Bramley. Photographs by Ethan Parker in The Guardian

 

Wear it loud, wear it proud: how marchers for Gaza are bringing ‘protest dressing’ up to date

It’s early afternoon at the latest national march for Gaza in central London. A man is wearing a sweatshirt bearing a photograph of Hind Rajab, the five-year-old girl who was killed in the Gaza conflict last year along with family members and the paramedics who tried to save her. He doesn’t want to be named. But it is, he says, his attempt “to keep her memory alive, until we get justice … Whether it takes one month, one year, 100 years, I’m not giving up. I’m not going to stop wearing this until the killers are behind bars.”

It’s a heart-rending example of a phenomenon common to all these marches over the past two years: people are here to call for an end to the war and the Israeli occupation, and many are using their clothes to bolster their message.

Far from being a frivolous afterthought, protest dressing has become an important part of these marches. Wearing the symbols and colours of solidarity can be an expression of grief and a call to action.

“Enough is enough,” says Mariama, who is in her 30s and works for the NHS in Nottingham. She is wearing a football-style shirt with a Palestinian flag in place of the club crest. Alongside it are the words “viva Palestina” and a visual representation of the contested area.

“It’s one way of giving voice to your opposition, my opposition, to the occupation of Palestine,” says the Rev Poppy Hughes, 65, of her Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) pin badge. Otherwise “there’s nothing to identify you as somebody who’s opposed to the occupation and the genocide and the starvation.”

There’s a sense of shared project about it. “You feel more united when you’re sharing the dress code,”... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/sep/19/wear-it-loud-wear-it-proud-how-marchers-for-gaza-are-bringing-protest-dressing-up-to-date 

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Protesting over Gaza’s starvation feels like screaming into a void – but we mustn’t stop by Nesrine Malik in The Guardian

Political platitudes and a few trucks of aid won’t save the children dying now. But they show leaders can’t ignore public opinion for ever

Illustration: Nathalie Lees/The Guardian

Mon 28 Jul 2025 01.00 EDT

Last modified on Mon 28 Jul 2025 03.14 EDT

The children die first. In conditions of starvation, their growing bodies’ nutritional needs are higher than those of adults, and so their reserves are depleted faster. Their immune systems, not yet fully developed, become weaker, more susceptible to disease and infection. A bout of diarrhoea is lethal. Their wounds don’t heal. The babies cannot be breastfed as their mothers have not eaten. They die at double the rate of adults.

Last week, over a period of just 72 hours, 21 children died in Gaza of malnutrition and starvation. The path to death from starvation is a slow and agonising one, especially in a territory suffering shortages of not just food, but medicine, shelter and clean water. The total death toll from hunger surpassed 100 at the weekend; 80 of those were children. An aid worker reported that children are telling their parents that they want to die and go to heaven, because “at least heaven has food”.

Every single one of these deaths, and those that will come, is preventable. The World Health Organization described the starvation as “man-made”, but it is more than that. It is foreseeable and thus deliberate. Israel’s siege on Gaza has blocked tonnes of aid from entering, or being distributed to those who need it, according to humanitarian organisations there. The “tactical pause” of military operations for a few hours a day in three parts of the Gaza Strip to allow in some aid is a measure that does not ameliorate a crisis accrued over time. The starvation, long warned about, is the latest phase of a campaign almost two years long, for which words are now entirely inadequate.

Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass punishment – all these descriptions still somehow do not capture the lurid and varied ways in which Palestinians in Gaza are being killed: bombed in their homes, and in their tents, burned alive in their hospital beds, shot while queueing for food and now starved. It almost doesn’t matter what it is called any more, because all you need to see to know that what is happening is a crime that requires immediate action is the bones of a child sticking out of its thin skin, while the food it needs is being blocked by Israeli soldiers.

The time for justifications, arguing about semantics and hand-wringing over the “complexity” of the conflict has long passed... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/28/gaza-israel-aid-starvation-children

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A 2025 BANG on POTs protest of Israel's systematic starvation & torture of Palestinian men, women, & children in Gaza #PALESTINE

Misan Harriman

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I just discovered that the woman on the right is Selma James, an American writer, feminist, and social activist. She co-authored the book 'The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community' with Mariarosa Dalla Costa, founded the International Wages for Housework Campaign, and coordinates the Global Women’s Strike. She is also a co-founder of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. She will turn 95 next month. She was married to C L. R. James. The woman with her is an activist named Nina Lopez.

Still marching at 94 years old! Wow

Thanks for the information, @angeledavidguillou  https://www.instagram.com/p/DMlVsYEomZQ/

The rules of the institutions that define our lives bend like reeds when it comes to Israel – so much that the whole global order is on the verge of collapse: The destruction of Palestine is breaking the world

by Moustafa Bayoumi

Sun 6 Jul 2025

Sereen Haddad is a bright young woman. At 20 years old, she just finished a four-year degree in psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in only three years, earning the highest honors along the way. Yet, despite her accomplishments, she still can’t graduate. Her diploma is being withheld by the university, “not because I didn’t complete the requirements”, she told me, “but because I stood up for Palestinian life”.

Sereen Haddad. Photograph: Olivia Cunningham

Haddad, who is Palestinian American, had been raising awareness on her campus about the Palestinian fight for freedom as part of her university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The struggle is also personal for her. With roots in Gaza, she has lost more than 200 members of her extended family to Israel’s war.

She was part of a group of VCU students and supporters who attempted to set up an encampment in April 2024. The university called in the police that same night. Protesters were pepper-sprayed and brutalized, and 13 were arrested. Haddad was not charged, but she was taken to the hospital “because of the head trauma that I endured”, she told me. “I was bleeding. I was bruised. Cuts everywhere. The police slammed me down on the concrete, like, six different times.”

But last year’s attempted encampment wasn’t even the reason Haddad’s degree is being withheld. This year’s peaceful memorial of it was. And how that scenario played out, with the university and campus police constantly changing the rules, illustrates something worrisome far beyond the leafy confines of an American campus.

Israel’s war in Gaza is chipping away at so much of what we – in the United States but also internationally – had agreed upon as acceptable, from the rules governing our freedom of speech to the very laws of armed conflict. It seems no exaggeration to say that the foundation of the international order of the last 77 years is threatened by this change in the obligations governing our legal and political responsibilities to each other.

We are ignoring the collapse of the international system that has defined our lives for generations at our own collective peril

This collapse began with the liberal world’s lack of resolve to rein in Israel’s war in Gaza. It escalated when no one lifted a finger to stop hospitals being bombed. It expanded when mass starvation became a weapon of war. And it is peaking at a time when total war is no longer viewed as a human abhorrence but is instead the deliberate policy of the state of Israel.

The implications of this collapse are profound for international, regional and even domestic politics. Political dissent is repressed, political language is policed, and traditionally liberal societies are increasingly militarized against their own citizens... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jul/06/destruction-of-palestine-is-breaking-the-world

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