by James Armel Smith | Jul 9, 2019 | Artificial Intelligence, European Commission, Facebook, Google, Maarten Goos, Personal Data, reCAPTCHA | Journalism |
Without even knowing it, we are often doing unpaid work for tech companies like Google and Facebook. According to economist Maarten Goos, the time has come for people to be compensated for that work. “You should profit from your data,” he says. You may not even know... 
by James Armel Smith | Jan 20, 2019 | Border Wall, Donald Trump, Immigration, Mexico, United States | International Relations, Journalism, Political Science |
Modern states have to keep out non-citizens. They cannot do otherwise. A wall , a physical boundary, only makes that more visible, writes Eric Hendriks. Be honest about that. Are you a fence or a wall person? If you consider that a strange question and think that a... 
by James Armel Smith | Dec 5, 2018 | Donald Trump, Human Rights, Jamal Khashoggi, Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia, Trade | International Relations, Journalism, Political Science |
“Blinded by cheap oil and seduced by weapons sales, Trump maintains his alliance with a hereditary dictatorship with medieval social mores.” It remains unsettling even after two years – especially when it is all there in black and white, complete with... 
by James Armel Smith | Dec 5, 2018 | Black Pete, Blackface, Minstrel Shows, Racism, Sinterklaas, The Netherlands, Zwarte Piet | Anthropology, Cultural History, Dutch Studies/Netherlandic Studies, History, Social History, Sociology |
Interview According to historian Elisabeth Koning, Dutch minstrel shows, in which white artists played black buffoons, served as a source of inspiration for Black Pete. Black Pete was influenced by the international blackface tradition. The “minstrel show” was a... 
by James Armel Smith | Oct 31, 2018 | Frankenstein, Mary Shelley | Cultural History, History & Philosophy of Science/Science & Technology Studies, Literature |
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by James Armel Smith | Oct 26, 2018 | #MeToo, Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, Donald Trump, Supreme Court | Journalism, Political Science |
It was a bad weekend for the rule of law and democracy. The Chinese director of Interpol disappeared from Lyon and was later found to have been arrested in China. In Turkey, the possibility that Saudi Arabia murdered a critical journalist inside the Saudi consulate in... 
by James Armel Smith | Sep 29, 2018 | Donald Trump, International Criminal Court, John Bolton, The Netherlands, United Nations | International Relations, Journalism, Political Science |
The fact that the United States is … turning its back so emphatically on the international legal order is ultimately harmful to everyone. In his speech at the beginning of this week, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton combined two favorite subjects: his... 
by James Armel Smith | Sep 12, 2018 | Donald Trump, Human Rights Watch, Saudi Arabia, United States, Weapons, Yemen | International Relations, Journalism, Political Science |
There would be no war in Yemen without American and British weapons. But Carolien Roelants sees no sign of movement toward terminating that assistance. There is an unbelievable photo in which Donald Trump points out on a board the number of weapons he has sold to... 
by James Armel Smith | Aug 24, 2018 | Antitrust, European Commission, Google, Margrethe Vestager | International Relations, Journalism, Political Science |
Margrethe Vestager is without a doubt the most popular European commissioner at the moment. The Dane heads the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission. She adjudicates on issues of market power, cartels and unfair competition. With a snap of her... 
by James Armel Smith | Aug 9, 2018 | Antitrust, European Commission, European Union, Google, United States | International Relations, Journalism, Political Science |
The €4.3 billion (approximately $5.1 billion) fine that the European Commission imposed on Google last week seems like an enormous sum of money. The penalty relates to Google’s alleged abuse of power in the mobile phone market. Some 85 percent of mobile devices... 
by James Armel Smith | Jul 22, 2018 | American Dream, Philip Alston, Poverty, United Nations, United States | Journalism, Political Science |
In a scathing report, the United Nations denounces “Third World conditions” in the U.S. Politicians are capable of tackling the extreme poverty there, but do not want to. Of the world’s 2,208 billionaires, one quarter live in the United States. They share the country... 
by James Armel Smith | Jul 5, 2018 | Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic Party, Midterm Elections, New York, Progressivism | Journalism, Political Science |
‘We won because we organized. We won because we had a very clear, winning message, and we took that message to doors that had never been knocked on before.’ Twenty-eight-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in the New York primary elections is a... 
by James Armel Smith | Jun 11, 2018 | Deterrence, NATO, Netherlands, Nuclear Policy, Opinion | International Relations, Journalism, Political Science |
A coherent nuclear policy is not only in the national interest, but also contributes to a strong trans-Atlantic bond, argues guest columnist Elmar Hellendoorn.* Lack of understanding of nuclear weapons constitutes one of the greatest risks for international security.... 
by James Armel Smith | May 26, 2018 | Donald Trump, Europe, Iran Nuclear Deal, Opinion, United States | International Relations, Journalism |
“[T]here is no doubt that the United States – in the wake of its earlier withdrawal from the Paris climate accord – has, once again, further distanced itself from the international community this week.” With his now well-known bravado, American President... 
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