Nuit Debout, place de la République. By Thomas Bresson, under a CC License.

The July issue of New Internationalist is out now, featuring three articles from me.

The theme of this month’s magazine is ‘smiley-faced monopolists’. It argues that “for Facebook, Amazon and Google, we have traded our privacy for something we find useful and put on hold our support for ethical shopping in exchange for the ease of low (or no) price and almost-instant gratification.” The magazine questions the exploitative and anti-democratic nature of  ‘surveillance capitalism’.

My feature focuses on online ‘direct’ giving and lending platforms. Why bother with aid agencies when you could just get money directly to those in need?

I also wrote two short articles for this month’s news section: one on the relentless Nuit Debout movement and discontent in France, and the other about the ‘refutrees’ of the Newbury bypass which were saved from destruction and are now thriving around the country.

Find out more about this month’s magazine, as well as reading selected articles, here at the New Internationalist website.