For years, AI companies promised their product would become a democratized and abundant utility. But as the sector pivots toward business clients and financial and environmental costs rise, the question is whether its unequal gains justify the price.
Obama Blasts Dems for Their Most Obama-Like Traits
Barack Obama has attacked his party for its unwillingness to challenge institutional obstructions to enacting their agenda. It’s a fair criticism, but the 2009–10 retreat on a public option in Obamacare might be Exhibit A of this tendency.
China’s Hukou System Is Stubbornly Resistant to Reform
The Chinese authorities have announced a reform of the hukou system that ties citizens to a particular region and fosters inequality. But proclamations of the system’s death are premature, as powerful social groups have an interest in maintaining it.
The Empire Still Wants to Destroy the Cuban Revolution
Trump’s latest moves against Cuba show that Washington has never accepted the island’s defiance of US power. Now is the time for solidarity with the Cuban people.
A Remarkably Short History of Canada’s Petrostate
Former roughneck turned journalist Don Gillmor chronicles how a resource boom became a governing ideology and how Canada became a global greenhouse pariah.
Socialism cannot mean merely managing capitalism more fairly. It must point toward a society where survival is no longer contingent on the market — and where democracy extends into the economy itself.
The CIA Is up to No Good in Mexico
The mysterious deaths of two CIA agents in Mexico has raised questions about the Trump White House’s increasingly belligerent actions against the Latin American left.
The Radical History of New York City's Jewish Women
Over a century ago, Jewish immigrant women arrived in New York’s Lower East Side from the Russian Empire with nothing. Within a generation, they had pulled off some of the most combative and highly organized labor actions in American history.
Israel Is Emptying Lebanon of Its People
In Lebanon, Israel is reusing the same strategy as in Gaza and the West Bank. Demanding the “evacuation” of the population and destroying civilian architecture, it wants to make it impossible for residents ever to return.
Giving Rights to Robots Is a Bad Idea
The rich have long used the fiction of “corporate personhood” to amass privileges while protecting themselves from accountability for their misdeeds. Now tech bros and venture capitalists want to further distort the concept of a person to include robots.
Neoliberalism didn’t win an intellectual argument — it won power. Vivek Chibber unpacks how employers and political elites in the 1970s and ’80s turned economic turmoil into an opportunity to reshape society on their terms.
Rodrigo Duterte’s Trial Is a Blow Against Impunity
The International Criminal Court has scheduled the trial of former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte for November this year. It’s an overdue reckoning for the mass killings under his rule that should worry other leaders guilty of major atrocities.
When the Orthodox Church Was Red
Drawn to its promise of a “trad” conservative lifestyle, young American men are increasingly converting to Russian Orthodoxy. But two generations ago, the Orthodox Church in the US was an FBI-surveilled hotbed of Bolshevik-inspired leftism.
Canada Needs to Rebuild Public Telecoms
A century ago, farmers in the Prairie Provinces fought to treat communications infrastructure as a public necessity instead of a private luxury. A new analysis of the historical data proves they were right to do so: public telecoms build better networks.
Britain’s “Sectarian Politics” Narrative Is a Dangerous Con
Right-wing politicians and pundits in Britain have spent the last few months talking about the alleged danger of sectarian politics. It’s a cynical attempt to present British Muslims as a fifth column and to delegitimize opposition to genocide in Gaza.