First up are the usual pieces on foreign policy and militarism:

Daniel R. Mahanty discusses how realists can also champion human rights.

David Swanson discusses the visit to the White House of a Taliban victim and drone strikes.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the victims of war in Iraq.

Joy Gordon discusses the effects of sanctions on Iran.

Binoy Kampark discusses the death to peace efforts via drone strike.

Giuliano Battiston discusses demands for accountability by Afghans.

Juan Cole discusses U.S. genocide in Iraq.

Geoffrey Mcdonald on Egypt and U.S. policy.

Kelly Vlahos discusses the Washington silence on Iraq.

Walter B. Jones discusses the Afghan War.

Jonathan Carp discusses why the draft never stopped a war.

Revelations of NSA involvement in the targeted killing program by Greg Miller, Julie Tate, and Barton Gellman.

Bruce Fein discusses the U.S. master race theory.

William Astore tells us what war is good for.

Civil liberties is the next topic:

Andrew Smolski discusses the liberal legal framework and the NSA spying program.

Ivan Eland discusses the NSA snooping.

Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Cobain discuss reasons not to believe national security is being threatened by leaks.

Jesselyn Radack on NSA collection of email address books.

Amy Davidson discusses journalists being treated as traitors.

Onward to a brief detour into environmental politics!

Juan Cole discusses ten climate change threats being ignored by the mainstream media.

A second brief detour into the politics of nationalism:

Interview with Jonathan Cook by Joseph Cotto on Israel.

And some misc. pieces follow:

Interview with Tariq Ali.

Sheldon Richman discusses problems with the ACA.

David S. D ‘Amato discusses the War on Drugs.

Conor Friedersdorf discusses post 9-11 policy.

A piece on Stephen Kinzer’s new book on the Dulles brothers.

Obama sure is good at killing people!

Book review of a new text on Israel.

We end with the first two games from the ongoing World Chess Championship:

Magnus Carlsen vs Viswanathan Anand.

Viswanathan Anand vs Magnus Carlsen.

First off are the usual pieces on foreign policy and military affairs:

1. Barry Lando discusses how presidential intervention almost squashed a damning 60 minutes segment on American involvement in Iran.

2. Andre Vltcheck discusses the recent massacre in Kenya.

3. Binoy Kampark discusses international politics vis a vis Iran.

4. David Swanson identifies 45 lies in Obama’s recent U.N. speech.

5. Anthony Gregory reviews Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.

6. Norman Pollack writes about Obama and Rouhani at the U.N..

7. William C. Lewis discusses why Washington will continue its crimes.

8. Scott Horton discusses how U.S. policy contributed to the disaster in Somalia.

9. Sheldon Richman offers commentary on the same matter.

10. Jason Mueller discusses the context of Somali piracy.

11. John Glaser discusses the potential for a military quagmire in Africa.

12. Jeremy Scahill discusses Obama’s U.N. speech.

13. David Sirota discusses Obama’s paeans to empire.

14. Janis Teruggi Page asks whether U.S. intelligence helped Pincohet kill her brother.

15. Kasturi Sen discusses how sanctions on Syria are hurting the people rather than Assad.

Onward to civil liberties issues!

1. Nozomi Hayase writes about the heroic role played by Sarah Harrison in the Wikileaks saga.

2. Jacob Sullum on NSA politics.

3. Matthew Harwood and Christopher Calabrese discuss how government is eroding privacy.

4. Noam Chomsky speaks about the shredding of liberty in America.

5. Chris Hedges discusses the origins of the police state.

Libertarian politics are discussed below:

1. Steve Horowitz discusses libertarianism and individualism.

2. Sheldon Richman discusses why the national debt is illegitimate. He invokes the words of the individualist anarchist, Lysander Spooner.

Discussion of George H. Smith’s, The System of Liberty.

Lew Rockwell discusses the appeal of libertarianism for the common man.

Drug war politics make another appearance in this edition:

1. Sadhbh Walse discusses Michael Douglas’s blasting of the U.S. penal system in a drug war context.

2. Kevin Carson chimes in on the Drug War too.

3. Ernest Drucker and Mike Trace discuss a general amnesty for drug war prisoners.

Two chess pieces to finish off:

1. John Watson reviews Najdorf’s Zurich 1953.

2. A link presenting a movie about chess hustlers.

Did any park user or local resident complain about the chess players? News reports mention no complaints about them. As a matter of fact, some parents appreciated the men teaching their kids chess and were outraged by the summonses. As the tickets say, the men failed to comply with signs. Apparently, the chess tables they were using were adjacent to a children’s play area where adults without minors are not permitted to be.

Some commenters suggested the NYPD has more important things to do. Apparently not. You see, when neighborhood activity against the posted rules takes place, it’s a quality of life issue. Total submission to the biggest gang in every matter is the way to social peace.

As the New York Times reported (“Police! Step Away From the Chess Table,” Nov. 17), “a police spokesman said that the summonses were part of a larger campaign to clean up the park, driven by complaints from residents about crime.” In an effort to create a hostile environment for some criminals, the government engages in the crime of sending heavily armed people to take money from peaceable individuals under the threat of forcibly locking them in a cage.

To a consistently authoritarian mindset, a neighborhood is a mere administrative unit, not a community where individuals enrich each others’ lives through free association. Municipal authorities must keep everything under control. Their crackdowns make it more difficult for children to interact with adults in a cooperative, rather than authoritarian, manner. Criminalizing unauthorized communication disrupts bonds of solidarity and leaves people with fewer social connections to safely turn to.

Plus there are quotas to meet and money to be made. The Village Voice’s NYPD Tapes story shows how the need to present good statistics to superiors leads to officers harassing residents to meet ticket quotas. And there are operating costs for all their fancy equipment and all the time spent looking through bags on the subway. This is, after all, the same department that blocked bicycle lanes so they could ticket cyclists who needed to travel outside of the bicycle lanes to avoid them.

State control is not a necessary precondition for social life, but is actually an intrusion into social life that actively cripples the development of free association and autonomy. The goal of safety through submission begins with ceding responsibility to agencies with little accountability, corrodes community in favor of conformity with the posted rules, and ends with life and liberty subjected to the mercy of the powerful.