technocrit

Ironic fascism is a disturbing symptom of the Trumpist right’s mounting ethnonationalism and authoritarianism.

Unless publishing gatekeepers adopt drastically more equitable practices and become partners in disseminating knowledge, they will continue to lose ground to open access alternatives, legal or otherwise.

Unless publishing gatekeepers adopt drastically more equitable practices and become partners in disseminating knowledge, they will continue to lose ground to open access alternatives, legal or otherwise.

US military forces struck two small boats off the Pacific coast of Colombia Wednesday, killing at least five people. The strikes were the eighth and ninth since President Trump issued orders September 2 for a campaign of military violence against alleged drug traffickers that is both illegal and unconstitutional.

While Trump claims that the strikes are justified because the United States is at war with drug cartels based in Latin America, the White House has not sought a declaration of war from Congress, or even a congressional resolution authorizing military operations, as in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The strikes are in flagrant violation of international law. The US government has offered no evidence against the people it is annihilating, and even their names are unknown. And the military assaults are taking place in international waters, where ships of any nationality supposedly have “freedom of navigation,” a right that Washington claims to be defending in the South China Sea...

“It is shocking and unacceptable that in the United States in 2025, poverty steals almost a decade of older Americans’ lives,” said Ramsey Alwin, president of the National Council on Aging.

We need to swiftly transform No Kings from a Democratic Party spectacle to a grass roots resistance movement.

In the digital age, the collaborative and often community-governed effort of scholarly research has gone global and unlocked unprecedented potential to improve our understanding and quality of life. That is, if we let it. Publishers continue to monopolize access to life-saving research and increase the burden on researchers through article processing charges and a pyramid of volunteer labor. This exploitation makes a mockery of open inquiry and the denial of access as a serious human rights issue.

...

When infrastructure is too centralized, gatekeepers gain new powers to capture, enshittify, and censor. The result is a system that becomes less useful, less stable, and with more costs put on access. Science thrives on sharing and access equity, and its future depends on a global and democratic revolt against predatory centralized platforms.

But today, the sheer scale of the US military build-up does not align with the idea of a cynical political stunt, nor does Trump’s decision to cut off all diplomatic backchannels with the Venezuelan government and deauthorise special envoy Rick Grenell’s outreach to Maduro. The more we look at the military deployment and the increasingly belligerent rhetoric from Trump officials, the more the pursuit of regime change through military means appears to be the most plausible explanation...

We also shouldn’t be surprised if, when the first attack fails to produce the promised uprising, regime-change advocates demand another strike, then another. Convinced the government is on its last legs and needs just one more push, they would likely pressure Trump to keep bombing, and perhaps even support the formation of some form of armed opposition, currently nonexistent in Venezuela.

Such a Libya-style proxy war would flood an already volatile region with more weapons and money. Criminal organizations and irregular armed groups already operating on Venezuela’s western border — and beyond, in neighboring Colombia — would thrive in the chaos, swelling their ranks and profiting from arms and human trafficking: a nightmare scenario for Latin America.

During the last few years of draconian US sanctions on Venezuela — which have significantly contributed to shortages of food, medicine and fuel — more than seven million Venezuelans have fled their country. This unprecedented wave of migration has had profound repercussions across the region and beyond, including in the US, where it has influenced the 2024 elections in Trump’s favor. If US sanctions produced such an exodus, we can only imagine the scale of the refugee crisis that would result from an actual war. It is no surprise that Brazil and Colombia, Venezuela’s most strategic neighbors from the point of view of any potential conflict, have strongly opposed a US military intervention.

The bitter irony is inescapable: an operation justified by anti-narcotics rhetoric would create ideal conditions for drug-trafficking organizations to expand their power. The military build-up off Venezuela’s coast is a slippery slope towards an armed conflagration that could lead to far greater suffering for the Venezuelan people, a potential political quagmire for the United States, US troop casualties and the catastrophic destabilization of much of the region.

"If I listened to polls I would have not run for my first office, or my second office - and I certainly wouldn't be sitting here."

Donald Trump’s yes-men at the Consumer Product Safety Commission are withdrawing a series of proposed safety rules, including an appendage-saving safety mandate for table saws. This will mean thousands more fingers lost per year.

The Supreme Court, urged on by well-funded far-right ideologues like Stephen Miller, is set to curtail important provisions of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door to aggressive, racially based disenfranchisement.