Planet: Critical

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Honduras is being sued for a third of its GDP by an American company—why? Because the developing nation changed its mind about Prospera building a charter city on its territory. This case, which could bankrupt Honduras, will be judged in a back room of the World Bank by three people, none of whom are obliged to even have a law degree. Matt Kennard, investigative journalist, co-founder of Declassified UK and author of Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy, explains the origin of the investor-state dispute settlement, and how this shadowy legal system has infiltrated politics, skews policies, and traps developing nations into exploitative relationships with some of the world’s biggest corporations, definitively undermining the democratic process. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical

Other worlds are possible. Not only that, they exist alongside ours already. This is a truth that's difficult to remember when we're confronted with the global shitshow that is our geopolitical, ecological and climactic collapse. But communities everywhere are facing down the barrel of the future by taking it into their own hands. Filmmaker Matt Golding is documenting their stories—and turning the world of narrative strategy on its head doing so. For some years, I've been working with Matt and his team on Antidote, a project which tells stories of community power and radical social change across the UK. Matt wanted to figure out how to tell these stories in a way which felt equally inspiring and accessible, without the off-putting earnestness that a lot of "positive news" leans into. The results speak for themselves. He's created viral shorts of these communities, a podcast series, and documentary footage which tells these stories in a way that really makes you feel that change, whilst hard work, may not be as difficult as we are all led to believe. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical

FROM THE ARCHIVES: When institutions fail—communities take back control. Community organising has never been more important in a world where people are increasingly isolated from one another, competing in a deliberately precarious market, dislocated from their culture, their land, their history. We experienced the power of community resilience during the pandemic, and the deep desire to help and rebuild. Humankind has a long history of doggedly overcoming the odds when facing a crisis. But we don’t have to rely on a crisis to push us over the edge—and the coming crisis will be much worse than anything we’ve ever experienced. CIVIC SQUARE in Birmingham is infrastructure for the public good, embedded in the local community’s needs, dreams and desires. Launched by the team who ran Impact Hub for five years, CIVIC SQUARE is reimagining the public space as a neighbourhood that fosters the convening of ideas in a participatory ecosystem. Immy Kaur is the co-founder of CIVIC SQUARE. She explains the history of community organising which led to this immense project, detailing how to leverage systemic change and nurture imagination. She explains the history between public good, government and industry, the importance of knowledge, and the role communities will face in the upcoming crisis. See also WeCanMake in Bristol. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical

 Denise Utochkin was a postdoc researcher at the University of Copenhagen investigating how artificial intelligence could be used in the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. However, Denise was fired from their postdoc for starting a campaign that sought to abolish AI altogether, after realising that the only way to produce and work with fair algorithms was to not use them at all. I invited Denise onto the show to contextualise AI for us, asking: what are its connections to capitalism, colonialism, extractivism, supremacy? Throughout the episode,  we also discuss the moral purity of the left, the collapse imaginary, and actually end with a discussion on what kind of revolutionary action is helpful today—and what has been tried and tested and proven to fail.  Show Notes Ali Alkhatib's To Live in Their Utopia: Why Algorithmic Systems Create Absurd Outcomes (link to PDF) Yarden Katz's Artificial Whiteness: Politics and Ideology in Artificial Intelligence (publisher's link; Anna's Archive link) Plus Nick Land's Machinic Desire 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical

FROM THE ARCHIVES: How can we change an economic system that has a life of its own? 10,000 years ago, homo sapiens began farming a grain surplus. This surplus led to the creation of societal and cultural hierarchies which divorced our species from our long relationship with the natural world. This week’s guest, Lisi Krall, argues that our current economic system of fossil-fuelled capitalism is an interpretation of that same system—and we must repair our relationship to the more-than-human world if we are to change the system. But it is a momentous challenge. One, she argues, we must not think culture alone can overcome. Lisi Krall is a Professor of Economics at the State University of New York Cortland where she researches political economy, human ecology, and the evolution of economic systems. She's also the author of Bitter Harvest: An Inquiry into the War Between Economy and Earth. She explains how systems self-propagate, evolve and dominate culture, arguing acts of local resistance are key to building a sustainable world, and warns against projects like the Green New Deal, which she claims is the status quo masquerading as the solution. 🌎 Subscribe to support Planet: Critical