Technology

The DRC’s Historic Case Against Apple Over Blood Minerals

January 1, 2025 Pavan Kulkarni, People's Dispatch. Resist! Apple, Apple Inc, DR Congo, M23 rebels, Natural Resources, Technology

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has filed criminal cases against Apple, accusing the US-based global tech giant of fueling the war against the country’s eastern region by using in its products what have been deemed “blood minerals”. “Year after year, Apple has sold technology made with minerals sourced from a region whose population is being devastated by grave violations of human rights,” maintains Robert Amsterdam, founding partner of Amsterdam & Partners LLP. The Washington DC-based law firm was retained by DRC’s government late last year to investigate supply chains for illegally extracted and siphoned minerals from Congo, especially the 3T.

Chris Hedges Report: Surveillance Education

November 24, 2024 Chris Hedges, Consortium News. Resistance Report Education, Military Industrial Complex, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology

Surveillance tools have become ubiquitous in schools and universities. Technologies, promising greater safety and enhanced academic performance, have allowed Gaggle, Securly, Bark, and others to collect detailed data on students. These technologies, however, have not only failed to deliver on their promises, but have eviscerated student privacy. This is especially true in poor communities, where there is little check on wholesale surveillance. This data is often turned against students, especially the poor and students of color, accelerating the school-to-prison pipeline. When students and teachers know they are being watched and monitored it stifles intellectual debate, any challenging of the dominant narrative and inquiry into abuses of power.

Venezuela In The Crosshairs Of Technological Imperialism

September 5, 2024 Misión Verdad Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Big Tech, Capitalism, Democracy, Elon Musk, Freedom of Expression, Plutocracy, Social Media, Technology, US Imperialism, Venezuela, X

In August, Venezuela’s re-elected president, Nicolás Maduro, signed a decree blocking access to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, for 10 days. President Maduro said of its owner, tycoon Elon Musk, “He has violated the rules by inciting hatred, fascism, civil war, death, confrontation among Venezuelans, and has violated all Venezuelan laws.” Musk, who also owns the Starlink satellite broadband network, expressed his support for the far-right Venezuelan opposition and insulted the president, which is a sign of the determination of the new global elites to carry out regime change in Venezuela. This action was accompanied by other attempts implemented through various technological platforms such as Apple, Google, and Meta.

WhatsApp Mutual Aid

July 30, 2024 Malikia Johnson, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! India, Motherhood, Mutual Aid, Technology, WhatsApp

Motherhood has quite the build up. A combination of intense care and doting during the pregnancy, leading to a baby and a wealth of responsibilities tangled with body dysmorphia and relationship issues all culminating to the realization that “the village” does not exist. You know “the village” we all hear so much about, the one that's supposed to help raise the child. In my experience there was an odd voyeuristic effect where I felt the eyes of people watching my struggle to raise my child but unwilling or unable to actually lend a hand. It’s understandable with inflation on the rise, housing becoming increasingly unaffordable, and groceries even more so - we are all doing our best to keep our heads above water.

Addressing The Historic Gap In Internet Access On US Tribal Lands

July 26, 2024 Kavish Harjai, Associated Press. Create! Indigenous Nations, Internet, Municipal Broadband, Technology

Tribal nations have struggled to connect to the web for a variety of reasons ranging from living in remote locations to lack of investment by internet service providers. The lack of service has hampered every aspect of 21st century life, from health care and education access to the ability to start a business and stay in touch with friends and family. “A lot of tribal communities, they’re probably decades behind a lot of urban areas in terms of internet connectivity,” said E.J. John, a Navajo Nation member and policy analyst at the American Indian Policy Institute. “Connectivity rates are very low.”

How A Tech Professionals Collective Shut Down Israel’s Extortion Website

July 19, 2024 Tali Shapiro, Mondoweiss. Resist! Israel, Israeli Occupying Forces, Propaganda, Technology

In May this year, as part of its psychological torture campaign on the Palestinians of Gaza, Israel’s army rained down yet another batch of leaflets on the besieged population of Gaza. The leaflets stood out for many reasons, but most of all for the extortion website associated with them. The Zionism Observer collective, made up of software developers, cartographers, translators, and archivists, traced the website’s registrar to NameCheap and the hosting service to Webflow. They immediately lodged a complaint with both companies. Webflow removed the IDF’s extortion website within 24 hours.

Generation Z Is At The Forefront Of A Powerful Uprising In Kenya

July 2, 2024 Samuel Karlin, Left Voice. Resist! Gen Z, International Monetary Fund, Kenya, Technology, Youth Activism

Youth in Kenya are rising up in the face of extreme repression. Mass protests began spreading rapidly in response to President William Ruto’s attempt to pass a tax bill. The bill would have raised taxes on household essentials including sugar and cooking oil in compliance with austerity measures that the government is trying to implement in order to receive a loan from the predatory International Monetary Fund (IMF). In response, young Kenyans, proudly identifying as “Generation Z,” have organized a mass movement online. For now, this uprising is developing independently of Kenya’s traditional parties and institutions which would benefit from co-opting the movement out of the streets.

Technology Cooperatives In The Movement: Where Are We Now?

June 18, 2024 Micky Metts, Keegan Rankin and Benjamin Melancon, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cooperatives, Technology, Worker Cooperatives, Worker Rights and Jobs

Cooperatives have many benefits to their members and communities. The transformation of the economy to one that works for all, likely requires a much greater role for cooperatives—worker owned cooperatives perhaps most of all. Marxist economist Richard Wolff has gone so far as to posit that the critical failing of past socialist revolutions has been not democratizing the workplace. Certainly, catalyzing a solidarity economy network will require as much of the economy and public infrastructure as possible to be under people's direct control. Tech worker cooperatives have the potential to provide particularly crucial infrastructure for the communication and coordination necessary for a liberatory movement and a robust and just economy.

RWU Calls For An End To The Autonomy Sideshow

April 15, 2024 Railroad Workers United, Popular Resistance. Resist! Pod Trains, Railroads, Technology, Worker Rights

With shedding union employees being a chronic obsession of the railroads, some of them have given credence to schemes to run trains 'autonomously'. While not having a serious chance of implementation at scale, these autonomous follies can soak up public funding (e.g.: $6MM to Parallel Systems) and the time of regulators and business development staff. RWU has authored a Resolution Against Pod Trains (linked above and below) to detail exhaustively the reasons 'pod trains' as a wasteful diversion.

US TikTok Ban Aims To Weaken China And Protect Tech Monopolies

March 19, 2024 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Big Tech, China, Congress, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Monopolies, New Cold War, Technology, Tesla

The US government has for years threatened to ban TikTok, one of the most popular social media apps in the country. It’s now looking like this might actually happen. This March, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation called the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”. This bill states that it “prohibits distributing, maintaining, or providing internet hosting services for a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok)”. It passed with an overwhelming majority of 352 votes in favor and just 65 votes against.

If Protests Are ‘Terrorism,’ What Are State Brutality And Surveillance?

October 25, 2023 Jen Byers, Annenberg Media. Educate! Police, State Repression, Suveillance, Technology

In 2020, in Canarsie, Brooklyn, a gunshot detection technology, called ShotSpotter, reported a gunshot fired. It alerted the NYPD and sent them to a street address. The officers arrived at the location, and a Black man named Fitzroy Gayle happened to be walking past it, on his way home. The officers got out of their cars, targeted and detained him and started hitting him, causing serious injuries to his neck, knee and ankle. “If the robot tells you, ‘GO,’ you’re already scared and amped. They just beat this guy mercilessly,” said Matt Mitchell, a digital technology expert who studied the case. “The guy was saying ‘What did I do?’ This is an example of when digital surveillance and tools go wrong.”

Is Intellectual Property Turning Into A Knowledge Monopoly?

September 21, 2023 Prabir Purkayastha, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Capitalism, Corporations, Intellectual Property, Monopoly, Privatization, Technology

The twentieth century saw the emergence of public funded universities and technical institutions, while technology development was concentrated in the R&D laboratories of large corporations. The age of the lone inventor Edison, Siemens, Westinghouse, Graham Bell had ended with the nineteenth century. The twentieth century was more about industry-based R&D laboratories, where corporations gathered together leading scientists and technologists to create the technologies of the future. In this phase, capital was still expanding production. Even though finance capital was already dominant over productive capital, the major capitalist countries still had a strong manufacturing base.

Project Provides Housing And Tech Training For Young Women Of Color

September 10, 2023 Punnya Kalapurakkel, Next City. Create! Boston, Employment, Technology, Women

The quaint, Victorian-style house where social entrepreneur Bridgette Wallace chose to bring her vision to life looks like any other home in Boston’s historic Garrison Trotter neighborhood. Built in 1900 and nestled in the heart of Roxbury, this unassuming property on Boston’s Hutchings Street houses an innovative co-living and co-learning model to curb the effects of tech industry-driven gentrification. Welcome to G{Code} House, a place where women and nonbinary people of color ages 18-24 can reside as they complete a two year coding course that prepares them to enter the workforce.

Civic Innovation Is Flourishing In Cities Right Now

July 30, 2023 Hollie Russon Gilman and Grace Levin, Next City. Create! Governance, Participatory Democracy, Technology, Urban Planning

This summer, cities around the world are unveiling and expanding new tools and initiatives in the name of civic engagement and digital innovation. From Los Angeles to Lisbon, local governments are testing different models of outreach and participation with the promise of increasing trust and equity in civic processes and institutions. Ranging from online portals to citizen assemblies, the wave of experimentation in policy and design responds to historic levels of distrust and disengagement in government at all levels. The question remains whether these new tools deliver on their promises to effectively bring underrepresented communities into decision-making processes and increase transparency and equity in bureaucratic systems.

Human Suffering Worsens In DRC, The Heart Of Africa

June 28, 2023 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Africa, Capitalism, DRC, Elections, Human Rights, Resources, Technology

It’s easy to think that the human suffering in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) couldn’t get worse until it does, and it always does. How much more Black life will have to be sacrificed to fuel the industrial world’s hunger for Congolese resource riches, meaning most of all the minerals essential to high-tech manufacturing, including state of the art weaponry? Black Africans fight one another in DRC, but all those of us on our phones, sitting in front of our laptops or in the seats of commercial and military aircraft, and in every other way wired to modern technology should know that this is our war, our highly complex and catastrophic proxy war.

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