I live in Chicago, where police abuse is a disheartening daily reality, concentrated almost entirely in black communities, ruining lives, splitting up families. The white professionals I know live in good neighborhoods, ensconced either in downtown high-rises or out in the suburbs, safely away from the violence but hearing enough about it to casually blame…
On December 22 Maricopa County, Arizona Attorney Bill Montgomery dropped criminal charges stemming from an animal abuse case last summer. In that incident, Green Acre kennel allegedly locked twenty dogs in a sweltering room — in the Arizona summer — leaving them to die of heat prostration and dehydration. Why, you might wonder, would Montgomery drop…
Spanking. Consensual physical or verbal abuse. Physical restraint. Female ejaculation. Strangulation. Facesitting. #ThingsBannedInUKPorn No, it’s not an anarchist’s Christmas wishlist. The above is a selection of the #ThingsBannedInUKPorn this month. There are many angles people have taken when criticising these recent restrictions on pornography production, all of which can be thought of as anarchist in some…
Paul Krugman recently argued that “Conquest Is for Losers” (New York Times, December 21) like Vladimir Putin: “You can’t treat a modern society the way ancient Rome treated a conquered province without destroying the very wealth you’re trying to seize. And meanwhile, war or the threat of war, by disrupting trade and financial connections, inflicts large costs…
A new finding of bloodshed in WWI’s “Christmas truce” on the cusp of its hundredth anniversary strengthens, rather than undermines, its example for peace. The UK’s Telegraph reports (“Christmas truce of 1914 was broken when German snipers killed two British soldiers,” December 22) the incident, pieced together from historical records. On the front lines in…
Peace on Earth and goodwill toward all — in a world of conflict, ’tis the season of peace. Sadly, this holiday season the United Nations released a study indicating that 2014 is among the worst years on record for the world’s children. Chronicled in the report is another disturbing history of war and state violence. An estimated…
On Saturday, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp released four of its 136 uncharged detainees from custody. Six years late, Barack Obama is inching closer towards keeping his promise: “I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that.” But as for the pledge to restore habeas corpus that accompanied his making an anti-Guantanamo…
The Colbert Report‘s windup completes its namesake’s shift from the gadfly who tore into George W. Bush at an official White House event to the court jester who gave softball publicity to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It is thus the perfect symbol of the evolution of American liberalism from the tail ends of the administrations…
Imagine that the title on your house would be recognized only if Congress approved it. Would you feel safer or less secure? This reality is already faced by millions of Brazilians who live in the favelas and have their possessions subjected to this political game. A game that should be extended to the indigenous peoples of Brazil,…
I’ve been reading through the International Organisation for Migration’s recent “Fatal Journeys” report, which examines the lives lost during migration. The Mediterranean crossing from Africa to Europe saw more than 3,400 deaths this year alone. Men, women and children from the developing world are risking their lives — in some cases with tragic consequences — to come to Europe….
Arizona’s Tonto National Forest is a landscape of beautiful complexity, from the Sonoran desert’s flowering cacti to the gorges and mountains of the Mongollon Rim. Home to rare desert lakes, fertile river valleys, meandering streams and grand plains stretching across the horizon, its air is still sweet, mixed with juniper, fir and ponderosa pine. On December…
In Saturday Night Live‘s parody of Citizen Kane, on a slow news day Charles Foster Kane says, “if there’s not any news, we’ll make some,” and begins randomly shooting people out the newspaper office window. That’s the first thing I thought of on reading reports that two plainclothes California Highway Patrol cops found themselves outed —…
It’s surprising what passes for high political drama these days. After a DC dust-up similar to, but neither as exciting as watching paint dry nor as convincing as professional wrestling, the US House of Representatives passed a $1.1 trillion “Cromnibus” bill to fund the federal government through September 2015, passing it on to the US…
Gizmodo reports that Swedish police raided the Pirate Bay, seizing its servers and shutting down its web site on December 9. My first reactions were irritation and even anger. But now I just feel like laughing. The state is an obsolete organization and becomes more and more so as it continuously tries to enforce the unenforceable. At first glance, this…
The US Senate’s minimal, partial, heavily redacted summary of its report on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program is out. That report’s reception by establishment media turns out to be at least as demonstrative of the problem it addresses as the report itself. As any recovering addict will helpfully inform you, the first step is admitting the…
Major political parties in the United Kingdom are so far divorced from market anarchism as to render them a homogeneous mass of irrelevance. That said, it’s worth examining the policy announcements in Wednesday’s Autumn Statement by Chancellor George Osborne, if only to clarify the anarchist position and provide a critique of what many Brits incorrectly…
Police body cameras are all the rage lately. Al Sharpton wants them used to monitor the activities of cops. Ann Coulter wants them used to “shut down” Al Sharpton. The White House wants them because, well, they’re a way to look both “tough on police violence” and “tough on crime” by spending $263 million on new law enforcement technology….
Dilma Rousseff, in her bid for re-election to the presidency of Brazil, stated that opponent Marina Silva intended to “give away to the bankers” control of the Brazilian economy. Dilma’s electoral bluff assumed that voters would believe that bankers are nowadays unable to dictate the path the national economy should take. Not even Dilma believes this…
The conservative American Enterprise Institute offers yet another defense of sweatshops from a self-styled advocate of liberty and free markets, Professor Mark J. Perry. Indeed it is more than just a defense; it’s a selective compilation of quotes and anecdotes hailing sweatshops as perfectly praiseworthy routes out of poverty. Typical free market defenses of sweatshops focus…
The recent events surrounding Michael Brown’s death raise the topic of justice in modern society to a new place in public consciousness. Many have called for justice for Brown, and almost always this consists of calling for the indictment, prosecution, and punishment of Darren Wilson, the policeman who shot Brown. Would this be true justice for Michael…
