akbar hassan

Early in my career as an immigration lawyer I casually mentioned to a client of mine, an engineer from India, in H-1B visa status that it seemed like Indians had a natural ability to excel in math and science. I will never forget his reply, “Bob, we have plenty of dumb people - perhaps more dumb people than the entire population of the United States. But you will never deal with them.” ••• Maybe it was a politically incorrect way to say it but if the US is able to “recruit” the top 10% of every country and those people come and bring their work ethic and ability (and gene pool) — it is just really weird why we would fight that because basically no other country in the world can do that. The top 10% of hard workers and brainpower from India and China constitutes a lot of people. •••

28% support the ballroom. 28%

@naguftaa جب میر کی تربت نہ رہی کس کی رہے گی

مت تربتِ میرؔ کو مٹائو رہنے دو غریب کا نشاں تو لکھنؤ میر سے مہماں کا نہ کچھ پاس کِیا!

This is how you stand up to Big Palestinian #courage

The Free Press still seems to be totally bombing on YouTube. Impressive for a $150 million company.

Randomly thought about this “bidenflation” tweet so I downloaded DoorDash and this has increased 85% under Trump lmao

what would the poem on the statue of liberty say if it were written today? not “give me your tired, your poor” but maybe “give me your millionaires and your social media history” with @trevornoah

15 years ago i customized and bought these kicks

This image of the Eastern Mediterranean wrapped in a "Jewish" Star was on the heading of the weekly Die Welt, from June 4, 1897 to December 29, 1905. amazon.com/Palestine-Mapp…

NEW on CNN: Mallory McMorrow quietly deleted thousands of old tweets after launching her Senate campaign. Posts in which she took jabs at the rural Midwest, lamented ever leaving California, and said she continued to vote there after she said she’d moved permanently to Michigan.

Why is the Trump State Department so eager to justify the administration’s Iran war as a war for Israel? (With U.S. interests appended by an “as well as.”)

Do "womens rights" include the right to not be bombed, have your family killed by unaccountable foreign militaries, or be subject to economic misery through sanctions? The practical discourse around human rights has become completely perverse and absurd at this point.

I may stand corrected, but after looking around it doesn’t seem like any other country in the world has its current leader’s picture in citizens’ passports, not even North Korea.

بادشاہی ہے بہادر شاہ کی بن بنا کر گنڈ مروّا کھیلیے زٹلی

USCIS confirms that they are actually making everyone, except for those set for naturalization swearing-ins, to be refingerprinted and "re" vetted. No explanation about why, other than, intentional delay. This is all on @USCISJoe and his terrible management of a service agency.

Ammi Ji, my nani, lived in Toronto 30 years speaking Urdu/Punjabi almost exclusively. Occasionally she would have to answer the phone. She’d say: “āī ḍonṭ no ainīthiñg,” using not a phoneme that didn’t exist in Urdu, as if Angrezi were an unimportant bother.

NEW w/ @juleswapo A deep dive into Trump’s efforts to end TPS, which the Supreme Court will consider this morning, including: -Rubio’s 180 on Haiti and Venezuela -8 of 13 canceled countries are high-risk for travelers -Many TPS holders have lived in the US 30+ years

- Comey indicted for tweeting a number. - Trump FCC threatens ABC's broadcast license. - Trump defacing more govt institutions with his name and picture. - Trump's kids cashing in on huge govt contracts. I'm always torn on whether to speak up on the daily drumbeat of Trump's creepy, corrupt, Putin-style authoritarianism. On the one hand, this has become so standard under Trump, and everyone's opinions on him have long hardened, so why bother? Just keep your head down, post on economic policy (what happened to Econ Twitter?), and don't be distracted by the daily news cycle outrages. That's the standard position in DC policy circles. On the other hand, isn't this defeatist passivity how authoritarianism thrives? Government actions that would have induced a nationwide backlash 15 years ago are now just the day's background noise. So the bar moves. It’s a familiar path: Most authoritarian nations moved there gradually yet persistently - the govt commits some outrages, waits for the public to get used to it and stop complaining, and then pushes for the next round. Authoritarian governments count on the population having a short attention span while they steadily boil the frog. But when you think about how far Trump has pushed just in the last 15 months, it’s fair to wonder where we'll be after the next 33 months of his term. So I’ve been torn - speaking up a lot during the ICE protests, then just focusing on econ for many weeks. I don’t want to bore people who’ve all made up their minds on what is happening in this country - and I've been trying to spend less time on this toxic hellsite for my own mental health. But I also think us trying to be all cool and above-the-fray is exactly what gives the administration the green light to once again push harder towards corrupt, statist, personality-cult Putinism. I don’t really have an answer here. Although this being Twitter, I’m sure that any possible approach (whether passive, hair-on-fire, or in-between) will inevitably get me yelled at here.

@naguftaa مضمون الگ ہے لیکن دوسرے شعر سے آرزو لکھنوی کی بیت یاد آ گئی۔ اس ٹویٹ میں دوسری تصویر

جس راہ سے وہ دل زدہ دلی میں نکلتا ساتھ اس کے قیامت کا سا ہنگامہ رواں تھا افسردہ نہ تھا ایسا کہ جوں آب زدہ خاک آندھی تھی بلا تھا کوئی آشوب جہاں تھا

بکا جب تک نہیں کرتا ہوں تب تک خیر ہے ورنہ بلا ہوں فتنہ ہوں آشوب ہوں آفت ہوں طوفاں ہوں میر