Articles
Articles
The Zombification of Intellectual Property and the Tool That Could Finally Reform It
Scott Santens: Purely by accident, George Romero’s groundbreaking film (Night of the Living Dead) instantly became a horror classic that could be licensed at no cost. The result was a movie that every theater could show, every TV station could broadcast, every artist could adapt and build off of... it was essentially a gift to the entire world. ... I think the success of zombies as a worldwide phenomenon provides an excellent case for looking at the entire idea of intellectual property (IP) differently. ... The idea of intellectual property has been twisted and malformed. What was always clearly mandated as being temporary as a means of giving innovators a head start, has become measured in terms of lifetimes instead of decades. ... Ideas are infinite and they all originate from a global commons. Ideas don’t just appear from the nothingness like particles and anti-particles in the quantum foam of the universe. Everything is a remix...
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Nov 12, 2018, 3:57pm
Articles
This Isn’t the First Time White Supremacists Have Tried to Cancel Birthright Citizenship
Nina Wallace: In a little-known episode from World War II, nativist agitators who had led earlier efforts to exclude Asian immigrant communities—and paved the way for Japanese American incarceration—attempted to strip U.S.-born Nisei of citizenship, claiming their “racial characteristics” made them “unfit for American citizenship.” The legal fight that ensued is both a reminder that we’ve been here before and an example of our long history of resisting attacks on our right to call this place home. ... Wong decided to fight back. He took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, where a 6-2 majority held that under the 14th amendment, children born in the United States are citizens of the United States—regardless of whether their parents were U.S. citizens....
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Nov 2, 2018, 3:53pm
Articles
To Unlock Brexit Talks, Britain Must Atone for a Sin of Empire: the Partition of Ireland
Robert Mackey: What few Brexit supporters on the British mainland seemed to realize at the time, though, is that their country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, has just one land border with the EU, and it is a highly contested one — the line of partition that the British Empire imposed on Ireland a century ago. ... For the past 20 years, it has been easy to forget about the mayhem and death caused by the imposition of that border, since joint membership in the EU facilitated a peace agreement that stopped the bloodshed in Northern Ireland and removed the need for security and customs checks along what one Irish writer has called the “line of malice” dividing Ireland ... “It’s not the Irish border — it’s the British border in Ireland. The Irish border is the beach.”...
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Oct 24, 2018, 11:36am
Articles
Chicago 1969: When Black Panthers aligned with Confederate-flag-wielding, working-class whites
Colette Gaiter: Chicago in the 1960s was a brutal place for poor people. Black, brown and white people all dealt with poverty, unemployment, police violence, substandard housing, inadequate schools and a lack of social services. Ethnic and racial groups each created their own social service and activist networks to combat every kind of oppression. ... One was the Young Patriot Organization (YPO) ... members were racist, and they flaunted controversial symbols associated with southern pride, such as the Confederate flag. But like blacks and Latinos, the white Young Patriots and their families experienced discrimination in Chicago. ... In his short time as a Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton wanted to advance the group’s goals by forming a “Rainbow Coalition” of working class and poor people of all races. ... Over time, the Black Panthers learned to tolerate Confederate flags as intransigent signs for rebellion. Their only stipulation was that the white Young Patriots denounce racism...
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Oct 21, 2018, 12:04pm
Articles
The American Economy Is Rigged
Joseph Stiglitz: The notion of the American Dream—that, unlike old Europe, we are a land of opportunity—is part of our essence. Yet the numbers say otherwise. The life prospects of a young American depend more on the income and education of his or her parents than in almost any other advanced country. ... Things appear to be getting worse, partly as a result of forces, such as technology and globalization, that seem beyond our control, but most disturbingly because of those within our command. It is not the laws of nature that have led to this dire situation: it is the laws of humankind. Markets do not exist in a vacuum: they are shaped by rules and regulations, which can be designed to favor one group over another. ... one of the main causes of rising morbidity—the increase in alcoholism, drug overdoses and suicides—as “deaths of despair” by those who have given up hope...
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Oct 18, 2018, 11:59am
Articles
How We Roasted Donald Duck, Disney’s Agent of Imperialism
Ariel Dorfman: I should not have been entirely surprised when I saw How to Read Donald Duck, a book I had written with the Belgian sociologist Armand Mattelart, being burned on TV by Chilean soldiers. It was mid-September 1973 and a military coup had just toppled Salvador Allende, the country’s president, terminating his remarkable experiment of building socialism through peaceful means. ... We wanted Chilean readers to realise they were being fed values that were inimical to a revolution that sought to unshackle them from centuries-old exploitation: competition rather than solidarity, prejudice rather than critical thinking, obedience rather than rebellion, paternalism rather than resistance, money rather than compassion as the standard of worth...
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Oct 14, 2018, 12:04pm
Articles
Energy Conservation Jobs Come to Coal Country
Mason Adams: A Kentucky program trains former coal miners in energy efficiency—and rallies distressed communities. ... The six-month internship with Mountain Association for Community Economic Development offered training in new energy efficiency professions, placement with a local employer, and the potential for longer-term employment after the job ended. Morris applied for the internship and was accepted, along with another ex-miner named Randall Howard. The two received hands-on training in conducting energy audits—learning how to use equipment such as infrared cameras, duct blasters, blower doors, and much more—and went to work at their respective jobs ... MACED’s energy efficiency internship program is just one of many initiatives designed to retrain workers laid off during the cratering of the coal industry over the last decade ... Woolery hopes to push some of those interns toward the solar power, where there’s potentially even more opportunity...
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Oct 6, 2018, 10:31am
Articles
Indigenous Culture Reasserts Women’s Power Through Dance
Mary Annette Pember: Native women revitalize ceremony to resist the legacy of patriarchy that supports a long-entrenched history of abuse. ... In her book (We Are Dancing for You: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women’s Coming-of-Age Ceremonies by Cutcha Risling Baldy) , a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe and assistant professor of Native American studies at Humboldt State University in California, describes the growing movement among indigenous people to rejuvenate and reinvent traditional culture, language, and spirituality as a means to heal from the legacies of colonization—particularly the legacies of patriarchy and sexual violence and assault against Native women. ... One of those ceremonies is the Hupa female coming-of-age ceremony, the Flower Dance...
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Sep 28, 2018, 2:41pm
Articles
An Untold Number of Indigenous Children Disappeared at U.S. Boarding Schools. Tribal Nations Are Raising the Stakes in Search of Answers.
Alleen Brown, Nick Estes: When Yufna Soldier Wolf was a kid, she was made well aware of why her family members only spoke English, and why they dressed the way they did. Her grandfather and other elders used to recount their experiences at boarding schools, where the government sent hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children, from nearly every Indigenous nation within U.S. borders, to unlearn their languages and cultures. “A lot of them were physically abused, verbally abused, sexually abused,” she said. ... At the center of the stories were the children who never came home from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School ... The school, which opened in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and closed its doors 100 years ago this month, was the United States’ most notorious Indian boarding school and the starting point for more than a century of child removal policies that continue to tear apart Indigenous families today...
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Sep 25, 2018, 2:57pm
Articles
New documents on Yeltsin-Clinton conversations further expose US “meddling” in Russian politics
Clara Weiss: In the early summer, the Clinton Foundation released hundreds of pages of newly declassified documents about conversations between US president Bill Clinton and Russian president Boris Yeltsin between 1996 and 1999. The documents show the extent of US meddling in Russian domestic politics in the 1990s, and are a stark testimony to the groveling of the Russian oligarchy, personified by Boris Yeltsin, before US imperialism. ... That the US heavily intervened in these elections to bolster Yeltsin, with whom Clinton had developed a close political relationship, has long been known. As a matter of fact, the US media, including Time magazine, bragged about this operation, which involved sending several highly paid former US officials to Russia to help Yeltsin with his campaign...
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Sep 22, 2018, 12:56pm
Articles
Chasing the Murderers of Ayotzinapa’s Forty-Three
Christy Thornton: Examining the disappearance of forty-three students in southern Mexico four years ago can lead to only one conclusion: culpability lies with the Mexican state. ... After all this time, and after multiple investigations, there is still no definitive explanation of what happened that night in 2014 in the small city of Iguala: Who took the students? Where were they taken? What happened to them? ... "A Massacre in Mexico" (by Anabel Hernández) presents an overwhelming case that federal government investigators working for the administration of Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto created a false narrative of local culpability and sought to close the case before an investigation could reveal the involvement of federal officials...
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Sep 17, 2018, 2:27pm
Articles
The Perfect Storm: How Climate Change and Wall Street Almost Killed Puerto Rico
Jeff Goodell: Puerto Rico has not recovered. In fact, it’s arguably as close to collapse as it has ever been. The power is on and the roads are open, but if you look closely, the entire island is held together with duct tape and baling wire. Tens of thousands of people are still living under the blue tarps that were installed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency on houses that had their roofs blown off during the storm. Engineers are still discovering bridges that are in danger of collapsing, and every time it rains, new leaks are found in concrete foundations ... It’s impossible to say exactly how much climate change contributed to Maria’s 155-mph winds, but it is possible to say pumping carbon into the atmosphere makes powerful storms like Maria more likely. ... From as early as 2005, there were signs the government wasn’t going to be able to repay the loans. But the banks didn’t care: They made money on bond transaction fees, and the high interest rate on these bonds pumped up their balance sheets....
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Sep 15, 2018, 1:38pm
Articles
Maternity Care Gets a Racial Justice Focus
A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez: Black birth workers give mothers of color healthier, safer options for labor and recovery. ... Tangiere Jones was a 26-year-old mom-to-be when she first heard about Mamatoto Village, a nonprofit that provides birth support for underserved women in Washington, D.C. She wanted the best outcome for the birth of her daughter but faced financial barriers as a substitute teacher who was the sole earner of her household. ... Like many Black mothers, Jones was aware of the risks of “birthing while Black.” For instance, the rate of maternal mortality is more than three times as high for Black women than for White women, while the infant mortality rate for Black babies is more than twice as high as the rate for White babies ... Mamatoto aims to address the physical, mental, and emotional challenges moms-to-be face, and to assist with the economic ones....
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Sep 8, 2018, 4:02pm
Articles
Ernesto Che Guevara Medical-Cultural Brigade: In Santos Lugares… looking for Haiti
Ricardo Vaz: Santos Lugares (Argentina)is a remote village, with a population of 300 according to the last official census, and the current estimate is of around 7000 people in a 100 km radius. With no telephone lines, the radio is the main source for communication and information, and that was how people were informed about the arrival of this brigade. ... The 128-strong brigade arrived on two buses, which made the journey of more than 11 hours from the city of Córdoba ... With a large contingent of doctors who studied at Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine, the ELAM, the brigade also brought other healthcare professionals such as dentists, opticians, ophthalmologists, as well as educators from the literacy program Yo Sí Puedo (“Yes I can”), students, culture, recreation and sports professionals, communicators and journalists, and others....
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Aug 31, 2018, 2:55pm
 Articles
Hiroshima, August 6, 1945
"A bright light filled the plane," wrote Col. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb. "We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud...boiling up, mushrooming." (Previously Published)
Aug 6, 2018, 11:04am
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