Maybe some people like the idea of opting in to censorship, or maybe they don’t trust themselves to withstand the hypnotic pull of gay pornography. Whatever the reason, Radiant Mobile, which bills itself as “the first ever Christian mobile carrier,” launches today, and will completely ban porn from its devices for all users, no matter their age. Apparently, the company’s leadership is responding to a pornography crisis among Christians: their website calls this sexual blockade “a practical solution to a spiritual problem.” Radiant Mobile will also offer a filter for other content, such as violence, self harm, and content related to gender, which if taken at face value, would eliminate over half of the internet. Founder Paul Fisher, who previously hosted a reality TV show that tried to turn unhoused people into models, told MIT Tech Review that the company will even ban news organizations if they post too much LGBT content, as well as university webpages. The LGBT filter, though optional, will be turned on by default. To build such a warped information bubble, Radiant has partnered with Israeli cybersecurity company Allot, who will prevent banned internet material from loading on users’ devices: a tactic also used by authoritarian regimes. According to

After last week’s Congressional vote to curb Trump’s attacks on Cuba failed 51-47, the President has imposed new, vague sanctions on the country. They target anyone who supports the Cuban government, its security forces, or its alleged human rights abuses, based on the grounds that Cuba poses “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the U.S. What counts as support to the government? It’s hard to tell. More predictably, however, the White House has accused Cuba of providing “safe haven for transnational terrorist groups” such as Hezbollah, even though there is no evidence to support such a claim. The point of the sanctions appears to be pressure, something the island already feels plenty of, having been strangled by U.S.-created fuel shortages and blackouts. Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, called the sanctions “collective punishment,” while Trump once again floated the prospect of military action, quipping that he’ll have a military vessel stop by Cuba on its way back from Iran.

I Saw Assata in Havana

at a farmer’s market I’d visited, Calle 19 y B, her visage wholly

unbothered, starkest foil to the New York metro area police posters dated ’73

which an inmate, first meeting her behind bars, reportedly said made her seem

bigger, scarier, than in real life. She’s a figure in at least two imaginaries. In one of them

swathed in teal and jade Ankara atop a wicker peacock chair near the pork, fist up

the whole time. In the other, this one, a simple tee and denim daytime look, rounded

gold earrings with little leaves on ’em, braids stretching behind her: veins,

deltas sketched on a map, black and black-

and-blue, hands shuffling through the produce, hands

unbound, skin so lively and smooth she looked in-person airbrushed

to my dream eyes. I approached at first

with Spanish to present a bit less of a threat.

You’re from Jersey? Which part?

Up north, Essex and Hudson counties.

You here for that two mil, then?

The horizon loomed

on the horizon. We choked on

Quebec’s flames;

Big Bird got fired; bastions

vaporized; our sclera red, our robot

therapists gagging on grandiosity;

Xmas gig-decorators spreading

tinsel; Sesame Street

now a development zone

needing philanthropists; men

turning man-o-spheres;

Higher Ed hitting new lows.

Data centers siphoned

water, info. A doom-com:

“When the Climate Met DSM-VI.”

Who would douse

the puppets and pundits

now on fire; can we count

on “viewers like you.”

This poem was co-published and supported by the journalism non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. 

For court watchers, signal. For ICE watchers, salute.

My impatience as the cryptopad doc reconstitutes itself.

Wherein walking next to someone in public constitutes obstruction,

Invites arrest. I try to read

Between the lines of the statistics. My neighbors plead:

We especially need white-presenting folks.

I review my chances of detention, of doxxing.

Could I, as a friend fears, become de-naturalized?

As if I had been artifice, & after five years here, became flesh–

Or, eyeing my old greencard status,

A sudden opposite of alien—a resident earthling, a resident familiar.

My adjunct colleagues and students are fired. Scratch that.

They receive, quote unquote, letters declining reappointments.

Officially, the admin can’t share why. ...

Seb Alex is an animal rights activist, lecturer, photojournalist and author who runs the Middle East Vegan Society and has given animal rights advocacy workshops to over 1300+ activists across Europe, the Middle East and Australia. He is the author of the free e-book When Logic and Animal Rights Meet, which explains how logical fallacies are used to justify animal exploitation and how you can detect them. 

Q: Why do you recommend animal advocates study logic and argumentation? 

Alex: The reason why I believe it’s important for people to understand how arguments work in order to discuss animal welfare issues intelligently is because I strongly believe that we have reason, logic and ethical consistency on our “side” of the argument. Although emotional approaches also work with some people, an appeal to emotion isn’t always as powerful as a simple logic-based argument that someone can’t build an answer against. Ultimately, the cause we fight for is one where the suffering or exploitation of other animals depends on how well we fight for them. Given the importance of this issue, I believe every advocate should understand how to build strong arguments for animal rights.

Q: What’s an example of the kind of logical thinking you’re talking about? 

John Sanbonmatsu is Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His powerful new book The Omnivore’s Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves “peels back the myriad layers of myth, falsehoods, and bad faith that keep us eating meat.”

Q: You have said that “The animal economy today is the greatest system of mass violence and injustice in the history of the world.” What do you mean?

Sanbonmatsu: The Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin defined genocide as the attempt to obliterate a people’s or ethnic group’s identity by undermining its “biological structure” and “elemental means of existence.”  By analogy, we as a species are engaged in genocide against all the other animals of the earth—that is, against sensitive beings known to possess intelligence, subjectivity, complex emotions, and a demonstrated vulnerability to trauma.  So extreme are the harms we routinely inflict on other animals that we would consider them war crimes were they inflicted on members of our own ...

Sinergia Animal is an international animal protection organization working in countries of the Global South to reduce the suffering of farmed animals. They are currently running a divestment campaign to pressure the World Bank to cut off factory farm funding. Fiona Cameron of Sinergia spoke to Current Affairs.

Q: Why is cutting off the financing an important part of addressing factory farming? Tell us a bit more about what kinds of pressure can be exerted this way.

Cameron: To address the core problems of factory farming, we have to follow the money. Banks are key drivers of factory farm expansion. Much financing supporting industrial animal agriculture comes from large commercial ...