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Technology Needs Assessments by Congress, Municipalities, and Local Civic Groups
The pace of for-profit technological innovations is accelerating, but to what end beyond corporate sales? The gap between marketing new high-tech products and assessing their intended and unintended consequences has never been greater. Let’s start with the ballooning of augmented reality inside virtual reality. Facebook’s Oculus Rift escapism has flopped. Trying to improve on this […]
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Diamonds for the Antichrist
This is the exposé I wrote for The Guardian that killed off “Reverend” Pat Robertson’s billion-dollar financial scams parading under the banner of The Christian Coalition. Note: The juiciest parts I got from Robertson himself, recorded on a miniature reel-to-reel tape recorder hidden inside a fake cigarette lighter. No-one asked why I had a cigarette lighter—but no […]
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For Argentina’s Small Farmers, the Land Is Predictable but the Markets Are Not
Thirty years ago, in my economics textbook in India, the section on international trade referred to Argentina. It would be better, according to the textbook, for Argentina to concentrate on the production and export of beef, while Germany should direct its resources towards the production of electronics. This example was used to illustrate Adam Smith’s […]
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Empire Fables: Vladimir Gluten and the Country that Keeps Attacking Itself
A hound and a cat sat on a couch and watched TV. The hound flipped through the channels with the remote but could only find two mollusks debating how stupid Joe Biden is and the National Weather Service talking about a terrible pestilence sweeping the land. “Wait!” said the cat. “Let’s see what they named […]
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France’s Global Warming Predicament
When one of the world’s most developed culturally elite countries, France, tosses in the towel on the IPCC 2°C barrier, it sends a loud and clear message that the global warming fight is losing the battle. Seriously, France expects 4°C. The country is bracing for 4°C according to Environment Minister Christophe Béchu: “We can’t escape […]
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Politically Conditioned Funding in Palestine
Over the last two decades, funding in Palestine has become tied to ever-increasing restrictive conditions that are used to control and limit Palestinian civil society. We partnered with Al- Shabaka and Badil to produce the visual illustrating how restrictive funding supports Israeli colonial policies, depoliticizes Palestinian society, criminalizes resistance to Israeli colonization, and thwarts Palestinian […]
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Global Capitalism: Anti-Democratic Politics and Existential Crisis
Though it is not often examined in these terms, the popular disaffection of Americans with government in general and the rise of anti-democratic politics around the world are seemingly predictable reactions to the contemporary global crises in the international capitalist economy. Persistent poverty, pandemics, military conflict, economic displacement, climate catastrophes, migration, widespread corruption and social […]
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Convenient Villains: Kathleen Folbigg’s Miscarriage of Justice
They – being the howling press, the screeching vox populi, and anybody else wishing to weigh in – were very clear about it. Kathleen Folbigg was guilty as hell and deserved her special place in it. For two decades, she spent her time behind bars in New South Wales, condemned by a jury for killing […]
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