Technobabel
Technobabel: Against the inevitability of tomorrow's robot economy.
Writer Curtis White looks at the tomorrow being sold by today's tech cheerleaders and sees massive environmental and economic disruption guided by the rise of a myopic, Randian technoplutocracy, and explains how it's not too late to change the course we're on, and why the key to resisting tech narratives might be found in the romanticism of Bjork.
Curtis is author of We, Robots: Staying Human in the Age of Big Data from Melville House.
African land rights activists face local persecution and international complicity.
Oakland Institute founder Anuradha Mittal profiles the heroic, dangerous work of Global South land rights activists like Nasako Besingi and Pastor Omot Agwa, who face violence and terror charges from hostile governments fueled and funded by private equity firms, international development agencies and governments reaping profit from environmental destruction and property crimes against local villagers and farmers.
The Oakland Institute just posted the release International Civil Society Alarmed by Conviction of Cameroonian Environmental Human Rights Defender.
Voters and courts on both sides of the border are pushing against the US-Mexico drug war.
CIP Americas director Laura Carlsen explains why a recent Mexican Supreme Court decision to legalize marijuana (for four citizens) isn't the begining of the end of a century-long drug war, but it might be the begining of the begining - to a conversation about personal freedom, the health and social implications of legalized marijana, and a way out of US-imposed military conflict.
Laura was just on CCTV talking about legalization trends in Mexico and the United States.
Inside the secret, boring, scandalous world of offshore elite tax avoiders.
Sociologist Brooke Harrington explains how she learned about the world of tax avoidence experts by becoming one herself, her journey into the international network of offshore havens and professional middle-men dedicated to keeping profits from taxation, and why tax dodging has been such a lucrative gamble, from the Crusades to the private jet era.
Brooke is author of the Atlantic article Inside the Secretive World of Tax-Avoidance Experts.
A Black American's case for refugee status in Canada.
Live from Vancouver, Kyle Lydell Canty explains why he, as a Black American, is applying for asylum in Canada to escape unchecked police violence, racism embedded into the core of American institutions, and a culture that brainwashes its citizens into compliance.
Kyle wrote the Guardian opinion piece It's so dangerous to be a black American, I've sought asylum in Canada.
To help with Kyle's legal fees, contribute to his GoFundMe here.
Western complicity, then silence: A report from Beirut after the bombs.
Human rights activist Rania Masri questions the West's selective solidarity for victims of terrorism, and Western governments' complicity in creating, funding and sustaining the very forces it claims to oppose - a cycle of violence the victimizes those outside our solidarity - ordinary Muslims in the Middle East.
Rania was quoted in the Intitute for Public Accuracy's news release From Beirut After Bombing: 'We are Not Numbers'.
Cashing in on the moral bankruptcy of fiscal conservatism.
Jeff Dorchen defends those with the least - long a punching bag of fiscal conservatism - by suggesting far more useful punching bags, such as babies, gladiators, terrorists, leech-like financiers, the everturning wheel of karmic economics, and the most punchable of all punching bags, NPR's vacationing, baguette chewing flagship anchor Robert Siegel.
