Kevin Carson discusses how the makers and takers aren’t who you think.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the War on Drugs, intervention, and immigrant children.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the Saudi complicity in the rise of ISIS.

Gina Luttrell discusses bootleggers, baptists, and birth control.

Justin Raimondo discusses how neocons are going undercover.

Ivan Eland discusses resolving conflict in artificial states.

Bionic Mosquito discusses the criteria for a just war.

Eric Peters discusses the non-aggression principle.

Patrick Cockburn discusses ISIS in Syria.

Norman Solomon discusses the god complex of Uncle Sam.

Wendy McElroy discusses voluntaryist anthropology.

Sheldon Richman discusses the smear of isolationism.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses how government power is about having power rather than catching terrorists.

Nick Gillespie discusses a libertarian foreign policy.

Jeffrey Miron discusses libertarianism.

Andrew Bacevich discusses the lessons from America’s war for the Greater Middle East.

Justin Raimondo discusses the new meaning of isolationism.

Patrick Cockburn discusses Christians in Iraq.

Sheldon Richman discusses Jane Cobden.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the practicality of libertarianism.

Sheldon Richman discusses the politics of the border.

Sheldon Richman discusses why he can’t help being a libertarian.

John LaForge discusses censorship and myth-making surrounding the atomic bomb.

Ron Jacobs discusses Tonkin and Watergate.

Patrick Cockburn discusses how ISIS is winning on two fronts.

James Rothenberg discusses the American flags and its followers.

Empty Wheel discusses whether civil libertarians are falling for faux NSA reform.

Alexey Shirov beats Boris Gelfand.

Yifan Hou beats Li Chao.

Ho pensato che magari stavo sbagliando, visto che, dopotutto, stavo cercando in internet stesso. Forse il mio fornitore blocca la ricerca, e quando digito “censura da parte dei fornitori di accesso ad internet” su Google è lo stesso fornitore di accesso che filtra i risultati. Forse stavo vivendo in una sorta di Matrix di internet, in cui tutto quello che vedo è quello che il potere vuole farmi vedere e io non me ne accorgo mai.

Però ho trovato diversi utenti che criticavano i servizi offerti dalla loro compagnia, che è quella di cui mi servo io. A quanto pare, il mio fornitore ha fallito miseramente nel suo tentativo di censurare i suoi utenti. Sono riuscito anche ad accedere ai siti della concorrenza e fare una valutazione dei loro prezzi; che, sorprendentemente, in alcuni casi risultavano più bassi di quello che pago io.

Non è possibile. Ho provato con altri siti che avrebbero potuto dare fastidio al mio fornitore. Siti che notoriamente sostengono posizioni politiche radicali e non ortodosse, ad esempio. Con C4SS non ho avuto problemi di accesso. La barra dei segnalibri del mio browser, dove sono diversi siti libertari e anarchici, è uscita incolume.

Posso guardare e scaricare video, così come ascoltare e scaricare musica. I siti torrent sono più vivi che mai per quanto mi riguarda; e non si può dire che siano ben accettati dai fornitori di accesso. Eppure sono a distanza di un click. Non importa quanti siti visito e quanto traffico genero, pago sempre la stessa cifra, ogni mese, per accedere ad internet. Chi l’avrebbe mai detto?

Non potevo crederci. Mi avevano detto che internet per me era quasi completamente chiuso. Senza le norme sulla neutralità della rete, i fornitori di accesso fanno pagare di più per accedere e secondo il piano sottoscritto non mi fanno accedere a certi siti web: una censura.

Questo è quello che ha detto il deputato federale (brasiliano, ndt) Alessandro Molon. Dice che, se non ci fosse la cosiddetta Pietra Miliare Civile di Internet, una nuova legge approvata dalla camera che impone la neutralità della rete, “chi oggi accede gratis a YouTube dovrà pagare di più per vedere i video, e chi scarica musica dovrà pagare di più per farlo.”

Per un attimo ho sperato che il mio fornitore mi facesse pagare di più per accedere a YouTube, così non posso entrarci e sentire le bugie ridicole e nauseanti di Molon.

Lo stato dice che vuole garantire la libertà su internet. È vero?

Lo stato brasiliano è secondo quanto a richieste di eliminazione di contenuti da Google. Fino a qualche tempo fa guidava la classifica. Di recente, la Corte Superiore di Giustizia ha stabilito che qualunque “contenuto offensivo” deve essere rimosso da YouTube.

Dunque l’onere di dimostrare che la neutralità della rete proposta dal governo allargherà la nostra libertà, invece del contrario, spetta tutto ai suoi sostenitori.

Non c’è neanche bisogno di difendere l’internet senza regole dalle dichiarazioni allucinanti di Alessandro Molon e Jean Wyllys, secondo i quali i fornitori di accesso – e non lo stato – stanno per privarci della nostra libertà. Perché è esattamente il contrario.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

I thought I might have been doing something wrong, for, after all, I was searching the internet itself. Perhaps my ISP was blocking my searches all along, and when I typed “censorship by Internet Service Providers” on Google, the provider itself could have been filtering my results. It is possible that I was living in an Internet Matrix, in which everything that I see is what the powers that be want me to see, I may never be able to notice.

However, I managed to find several users criticizing the services provided by the company I contract from. Apparently, my ISP is failing miserably in its attempt to censor its users. I was also able to access competitors’ websites and estimate their prices – which, astonishingly, turned out to be better than what I’m currently paying for Internet in some instances.

It can’t be. I tried to enter more websites that could generate some discomfort to my provider. Websites which are known to advocate radical and unorthodox political positions, for example. I had no problems getting to C4SS website. The bookmarks bar on my browser, featuring several libertarian and anarchist websites, remains unscathed.

I am able to watch and download videos, as well as listen to and download music. Torrent websites are as live as ever for me; we can’t even say they are a welcome feature of the Internet for providers. Yet they are still a click away. No matter how many websites I access and how much data I transfer, I still pay the same price each month for Internet. Who would’ve thought?

I could not believe it, because I’ve been told that the Internet was supposed to be almost entirely closed off to me. Without net neutrality regulation, ISPs can charge more money for access and censor websites according to the data plan I happen to subscribe to.

That is what federal deputy Alessandro Molon (PT-RJ) has claimed. According to him, without the so called Civil Landmark of the Internet, a new piece of legislation that enforces net neutrality and has just been approved by the Chamber of Deputies, “people who access Youtube for free today will have to pay more money to watch videos, people who download music will have to pay more money to do it.”

For a minute I really hoped my provider would charge more money for Youtube, so that I wouldn’t be able to access it and listen to Molon’s ridiculous, nauseating lies.

The government claims to be willing to guarantee freedom on the Internet. Well, is that true?

The Brazilian state is in second place when it comes to requests to take content down from Google. Not long ago, it was the leader. Recently, the Superior Court of Justice has ruled that any “offensive content” should be taken down from Youtube.

So, the burden of proving that government net neutrality is going to enhance our freedom, rather than hamper it, is on its advocates.

There is no need of defending unregulated Internet from Alessandro Molon’s and Jean Wyllys‘s hallucinating claims that ISPs – and not the government – are about to take away our liberty. It’s clearly the opposite.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Neutralità della Rete e Bugie.

But this campaign is illustrative for another reason. Facebook is under fire not just for permitting misogynistic speech that condones violence, but for banning speech far more innocuous. As Soraya Chemaly, Jaclyn Friedman and Lauren Bates explain in their open letter to the company:

These [misogynistic] pages and images are approved by your moderators, while you regularly remove content such as pictures of women breastfeeding, women post-mastectomy and artistic representations of women’s bodies. In addition, women’s political speech, involving the use of their bodies in non-sexualized ways for protest, is regularly banned as pornographic, while pornographic content — prohibited by your own guidelines — remains. It appears that Facebook considers violence against women to be less offensive than non-violent images of women’s bodies, and that the only acceptable representation of women’s nudity are those in which women appear as sex objects or the victims of abuse. Your common practice of allowing this content by appending a [humor] disclaimer to said content literally treats violence targeting women as a joke.

This is truly a vile double standard. It treats women’s bodies as more offensive than violence against women. It treats rape and domestic violence as less objectionable than women breastfeeding.

What we should keep in mind, however, is that this double standard did not start with Facebook. The same double standard has been promoted for more than a century as part of US law. One of the few exceptions to the First Amendment that the US government recognizes is an exception for “obscenity.” The US government claims the power to prosecute and incarcerate people for speech and expression it deems legally “obscene.”  Historically this has meant targeting sexual expression.

In 1873, Anthony Comstock convinced Congress to pass the Comstock Law, banning “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” content from the mails. Moses Harman, publisher of anarchist feminist journal Lucifer the Lightbearer, was jailed multiple times under Comstock’s reign, because his periodical featured “obscene” advocacy of birth control and free love. Margaret Sanger was similarly charged with obscenity for distributing information about contraception. The Comstock Law was used to punish practically anyone who sent information about contraception or criticism of marital rape through the post.

Obscenity law has changed a lot since the days of the Comstock. In 1973, in Miller v. California, the Supreme Court affirmed that “Obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment” but narrowed the definition of obscenity, defining speech as obscene based on the following criteria:

(a) whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value

“Prurient interest” refers to sexual arousal. So the US government claims the power to use force and violence to censor speech based on it being sexually arousing, “offensive,” and lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”  This provides justification for the US government to censor completely non-violent pictures of naked bodies. As John Stoltenberg writes, “obscenity laws are constructed on the presumption that it is women’s bodies that are dirty, that women’s bodies are the filth.”

Based on the Miller test, US courts have also ruled that government censorship of sexist material is unconstitutional. Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon’s Civil Rights Antipornography Ordinance was ruled unconstitutional in part because “The Indianapolis ordinance does not refer to the prurient interest, to offensiveness, or to the standards of the community.” Instead, the statute referenced objectification of women, degradation of women, and portrayal of violence against women.

The American legal system believes that the state has more legitimate interest in stopping people from being sexually aroused than in countering sexism or violence. Don’t you think those are bizarre priorities?

As a matter of principle, the state should have no power to censor. Furthermore, the state’s backwards priorities present a good argument for its abolition. In addition to abolishing the state, we should seek to stop its toxic and bigoted standards from defining the privately run social media spaces we use.

Não há nada tão engraçado como a visão dos funcionários autoritários de uma ordem fenecente tentando reprimir uma revolução que não entendem — e fracassando miseravelmente.

A tentativa do Departamento de Estado de censurar arquivos imprimíveis de armas de fogo em 3-D doDEFCAD é a mais recente — e uma das mais divertidamente hilariantes — tentativa dos Senhores da Escassez de tentarem entender a revolução da Abundância que ameaça o poder deles. Menos de um dia depois de o DEFCAD ser forçado a removê-los, os arquivos apareceram em A Baía dos Piratas e Mega. Este último caso é especialmente engraçado; Kim Dotcom está provavelmente morrendo de rir a respeito.

Qualquer pessoa que já tenha ouvido falar do Efeito Streisand poderá ter contado a você que isso aconteceria. Tentar suprimir informação na Internet só faz chamar mais a atenção para a informação original — que permanece facilmente disponível — e outrossim deixar constrangido o pretenso supressor na medida em que a tentativa de supressão torna-se, em si, uma narrativa. Já perdi a conta do número de pessoas, ontem, que disse nunca ter ouvido de Cody Wilson ou de armas de fogo imprimíveis em 3-D antes da história da ação do Departamento de Estado tornar-se conhecida, mas pretendia ir à Baía dos Piratas – TPB e verificar. Graças aos não pretendidos esforços promocionais do governo dos Estados Unidos, provavelmente cem ou mil vezes mais pessoas sabem onde obter os arquivos imprimíveis de armas de fogo de Cody Wilson, em comparação com antes.

Nada obstante, os bocós que se congratularam há poucos dias a propósito de tirar do ar aqueles arquivos de armas de fogo imprimíveis não são exatamente o tipo de pessoa que você suporia ter ouvido falar do Efeito Streisand — obviamente. São como o parceiro do comediante que recita as frases que dão ao comediante a oportunidade de fazer piadas nessa peça, atuando só para nosso divertimento. São como a Matrona da Sociedade que entra no salão de jantar num curta dos Três Patetas e demanda: “Qual é o significado disto?!!” Para eles, a Internet é apenas uma grande Série de Tubos, e tudo o que eles têm a fazer é fechar uma válvula em algum lugar para controlar o fluxo de informação. Acontece apenas que a Internet não funciona assim. Na memorável frase de John Gilmore, ela trata a censura como estrago e a contorna.

Lembram-se do gracejo de Joe Biden acerca de “furto” de “propriedade intelectual” não ser diferente de “assalto-relâmpago na Macy’s”? A abordagem do governo dos Estados Unidos em relação ao DEFCAD ilustra a mesma fundamental concepção equivocada. Trata informação digital infinitamente replicável como se fosse bem finito e excluível existindo numa localização física, sobre a qual alguém pode exercer controle ou posse física do mesmo modo que se fosse apenas um sapato ou uma cadeira.

A lógica jurídica deles — legislação de controle da exportação — exibe o mesmo fracasso conceptual. Eles não conseguem entender que os “bens” que o DEFCAD estava “exportando” chegavam a seus portos de destino em todo o mundo no mesmo segundo durante o qual era feito o upload dos arquivos para o website.

Um arquivo digital pode ser replicado infinitamente com custo marginal próximo de zero; o mesmo padrão de informação pode existir num número ilimitado de lugares simultaneamente. Vê só? Acabo de fazer isso com a função copiar-colar de meu browser. Tente fazer o mesmo com a joalheria do Macy’s. Não é possível “furtar” uma canção ou um filme digital — o ato de replicação não afeta as cópias já na posse de outras pessoas, mas apenas aumenta o número de cópias no mundo. Eis porque copiar não caracteriza furto. Analogamente, você não consegue privar o mundo de acesso à informação mediante remover a cópia em um website.

Olhar para essas pessoas que ficam tentando usar ferramentas conceptuais da era da escassez para combater a abundância é como olhar Napoleão tentar derrotar Heinz Guderian ou Erwin Rommel com canhões em cima de duas rodas e infantaria em massa em formações de linha e coluna. Eles não detém as ferramentas conceptuais para entender, menos ainda para combater, a nova sociedade cujo nascimento estão tentando impedir.

Eis porque as tentativas do governo para impor escassez artificial falham toda vez, independentemente de quantas vezes ele lhes mude o nome — ACTA, CISPA, etc. — e tente de novo. Não há como consertar a estupidez.

Assim, para vocês, Senhores da Escassez — representados desta vez por seus lacaios nos Departamentos de Estado e de “Defesa” dos Estados Unidos, tenho uma mensagem: Vocês não têm nenhuma autoridade que devamos respeitar.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 12 de maio de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

The State Department’s attempt to censor 3-D printable gun files from DEFCAD is the latest — and one of the most gut-bustingly hilarious — attempts by the Lords of Scarcity to wrap their minds around the revolution of Abundance that threatens their power. Less than a day after DEFCAD was forced to remove them, the files appeared on The Pirate Bay and Mega. The latter is especially funny; Kim Dotcom is probably laughing himself silly over it.

Anyone who’s ever heard of the Streisand Effect could have told you this would happen. Attempting to suppress information on the Internet just draws more attention to the original information — which remains readily available — as well as embarrassing the would-be suppressor as the attempt at suppression becomes a story in its own right. I lost count of the number of people yesterday who said they’d never heard of Cody Wilson or 3-D printable guns until the story of the State Department’s action came out, but intended to go to TPB and check it out. Thanks to the U.S. government’s inadvertent promotional efforts, probably a hundred or a thousand times more people know where to get Cody Wilson’s printable gun files than did before.

But the clowns who congratulated themselves a couple days ago over shutting down those printable gun files aren’t exactly the sort of people you’d expect to have heard of the Streisand Effect — obviously. They’re the straight men in this piece, just performing for our amusement. They’re like the Society Matron who walks into the dining hall in a Three Stooges short and demands “What is the meaning of this?!!” To them the Internet is just a big Series of Tubes, and all they have to do is shut off a valve somewhere to control the flow of information. Only the Internet doesn’t work that way. In the memorable phrasing of John Gilmore, it treats censorship as damage and routes around it.

Remember Joe Biden’s quip about “theft” of “intellectual property” being no different from a “smash-and-grab at Macy’s”? The U.S. government’s approach to DEFCAD illustrates the same fundamental misconception. It treats infinitely replicable digital information as if it were a finite, excludable good existing in one physical location, that one can exert physical control or possession over just like a shoe or a chair.

Their legal rationale — export control legislation — displays the same conceptual failure. They couldn’t quite grasp that the “goods” that DEFCAD was “exporting” arrived in their destination ports around the world the second the files were uploaded to the website.

A digital file can be replicated infinitely at near-zero marginal cost; the same pattern of information can exist in an unlimited number of places simultaneously. A digital file can be replicated infinitely at near-zero marginal cost; the same pattern of information can exist in an unlimited number of places simultaneously. See? I just did that with the copy-and-paste function of my browser. Try doing that with jewelry from Macy’s. You can’t “steal” a digital song or movie — the act of replication doesn’t affect the copies already in others’ possession, but only increases the number of copies in the world. That’s why copying is not theft. Likewise, you can’t deny the world access to information by removing the copy from one website.

Watching these people try to use scarcity-age conceptual tools to combat abundance is like watching Napoleon try to defeat Heinz Guderian or Erwin Rommel with hub-to-hub artillery and massed infantry in line-and-column formations. They lack the conceptual tools to understand, let alone fight, the new society they’re attempting to prevent the birth of.

This is why the government’s attempts to impose artificial scarcity fail every time, no matter how many times they change the name — ACTA, CISPA, etc. — and try again. You can’t fix stupid.

So to you Lords of Scarcity — represented this time around by your flunkies in the U.S. Departments of State and “Defense,” I have a message: You have no authority that we are bound to respect.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Governo dos Estados Unidos versus DEFCAD: É Impossível Consertar a Estupidez.

The sexual offenses Assange has been accused of involve serious issues of consent. But a lot of suspicious circumstances surround the proceedings, which seem tailor-made for deflecting attention from the crimes revealed by WikiLeaks. Charges against Assange have changed multiple times and the allegations seem to keep getting worse. Assange’s lawyers claim that despite their overtures to the prosecution, the state has not been cooperative with them. The state would apparently prefer to make a big show by issuing a flashy Interpol directive to hunt down a fugitive. It’s a strange kind of fugitive they’re after — Assange cooperated with the police and turned himself in immediately after a proper arrest warrant was issued. It’s also noteworthy that the original Interpol notice was made within two days of the Cablegate releases.

Whether guilty of the sexual offenses or not, Julian Assange deserves a fair trial. This will be difficult to get in a government court where the judge is a politician and the prosecutor is out to win. Assange will need not only good legal representation, but also political pressure and money.  Both of which the US government and its corporate sycophants are trying to keep out of the contest.

But the mask of power really slips when extradition to the United States is brought up. If Assange is extradited to the US, that means either the sexual charges are bogus or the international community regards telling the truth a more serious offense than rape. Who has Assange hurt in the US? There is no crime in damaging the interests of a gang of criminals.

Democracy is the legitimizing story for modern government. But government actually suppresses democracy by ruling over people and using its control of information to mislead the public. The success of WikiLeaks in dispersing the power of knowledge among the broader population damages the ruling class’s ability to prevent people from making informed decisions.

Recent WikiLeaks cables reveal that the US government manipulated courts in Spain, pressured German authorities away from holding CIA agents accountable, lied about bombings in Yemen, pressured the Turkish government to hold closer to the US position on Iran, and offered governments favors in exchange for their help in disappearing Guantanamo prisoners — to name just a few things.

They’ve also revealed US military contractors engaging in child prostitution, the Afghan vice president transporting $52 million in cash from unknown sources, and western corporations manipulating governments. Is Eric Holder promising to do “everything that we can” to get to the bottom of any of these crimes and hold people accountable? Nope. This is how they do things, and they’re only outraged that the peasants have found out.

The crimes revealed in published cables are of prime importance no matter how big the issue of Assange becomes. But the revelations also underscore the importance of defending Assange. If the government succeeds in making an example of him, then people might be dissuaded from spreading information. The same holds true for alleged leaker Bradley Manning. The more that politicians get away with, the more censorship they will attempt.

Political pressure can mean showing that people are watching, raising voices against the state, disrupting censorship prosecutions, and holding corporations accountable for siding with the state. This should be done concurrently with the continuous and innovative spread of information and the creation of more resilient funding networks. It must be made clear that the state stands to lose if it raises the stakes in the battle over free speech.