King Juan Carlos I of Spain’s announced abdication has instigated a flurry of commentary contrasting dictatorship and democracy. The consensus views the remaining non-honorary power of the dozen remaining monarchies in Europe, particularly in diminutive monarchies like Liechtenstein and the Vatican, as vestigial holdouts from the relentless trend towards the representative-democratic nation-state as “the end of history.” A beloved monarch’s…

After gathering in Derby Square, in downtown Recife, SlutWalk went on to take Conde da Boa Vista Avenue, one of the most important streets in the Pernambuco state capital. The Union of the Socialist Youth (União da Juventude Socialista, UJS) were there and took posters, slogans and pamphlets with them. I was able to overhear…

I coined the term “vulgar libertarianism” several years back to describe reflexive mainstream libertarian defenses of the existing corporate capitalist system as if it were the free market, and using “free market” principles to justify the evils of the corporate economy. I recently saw one of the worst examples of this phenomenon ever, courtesy of…

After reading Maureen Dowd‘s gripping tale of her recent experience with the devil’s lettuce, a wave of compassion and sadness for her washed over me. Marijuana poisoning is no laughing matter. As she recounts, for hours she lay incapable of moving from her hotel bed. The weed came on strong, mere minutes after she ordered a…

Few reading this will find it in anyway a novel insight that the Drug War has always been about control. The elimination of drugs was a useful narrative, but it’s one which has fallen into disfavor. As we learn what little threat these banned chemicals pose, all that is left is the gripping fist of…

This week, the chemist Alexander Shulgin died. Hailed/demonized by the press as the “Godfather of ecstasy”, Shulgin was a pioneer in the science of mind altering substances and an outspoken drug advocate. From a distant enough perspective, Alexander Shulgin was just a chemist often under the employ of the federal government and chemical companies. His…

As a boy in the southeast African nation of Malawi, William Kamkwamba harnessed the wind.  In 2002, drought and famine — common problems in one of the world’s least-developed countries — forced the boy and his family to forage for food and water as thousands starved. Kamkwamba, however, knew if he could build a windmill…

Everyone seems to like privacy — so much so that we often expand the term into the social concept of “privacy rights,” indicating that privacy isn’t just a good thing but something to which we are all entitled. This leaves unanswered an important question: “To what degree and in what respects?” Last month the European…

The environment, specifically climate change, is recieving some much deserved attention as of late. Discussion of climate change is healthy and necessary, but it seems the politico-media complex exclusively discusses climate, leaving other urgent crises to fall under the radar. One such crisis is Earth’s impending sixth mass extinction. We live in a time of precipitous biodiversity loss — on…

From the New York Times piece on the recently passed Maya Angelou: “Hallmarks of Ms. Angelou’s prose style included a directness of voice that recalls African-American oral tradition and gives her work the quality of testimony.” Testimony. In the Alabama Southern Baptist churches I grew up in, we gave our testimonies. By that we meant…

Over the past few weeks, the American business lobby and in particular the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have come out in force to support the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. These groups and their puppets in Washington insist that the Ex-Im Bank is good for American small businesses and supports job…

In “Invitation to a Dialogue: Alternative Therapies” (New York Times, May 14), Dr. James S. Gordon writes: “Many economists believe that health care costs will continue to rise. Even more distressing, the Affordable Care Act will likely reinforce current practice, which dictates surgical and pharmacological interventions that can be expensive, inappropriate, burdened by side effects and, often,…

Last Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed something called “the USA Freedom Act.” The bill was intended by its authors to end the National Security Agency’s broad and privacy-shredding bulk data collection program, but the final version that passed is so weak that bulk data collection will still be permitted. Trevor Timm at the…

Rudolph Rocker once said that there is a definite trend in the historical development of human civilization which strives for the “free, unhindered unfolding of the individual and social forces of life.” This is indeed an accurate account of human history — we strive for the beautiful ethic of liberty. Liberty can be described, rather simply,…

Recently Rodrigo Mezzomo, in an article for Instituto “Liberal,” argued for the removal of the favelas as an urban necessity in Rio de Janeiro. According to the author, favelas symbolize “disorder and illegality,” and result from “invasions and disordered occupations.” Moreover, favela dwellers are “superior citizens, not subjected to the constitutional order of the country, because they…

I saw my first “homemade gun” when I was a kid. Older kids — teenagers — would save up the 4th of July fireworks known (for obvious reasons) as “bottle rockets” and play “war” with them: Stick the firework in a glass soda bottle (this was back when soda came in glass bottles that one…

According to Leonardo Dupin on journalist Juca Kfouri’s blog, Minas Arena consortium will have the right to operate the Minerao soccer stadium in Belo horizonte for 25 years, after their investment of about $300 million, $180 million of which was kindly lent by Brazil’s state development bank, BNDES. The agreement guarantees that the government of the…

“The biggest challenge to getting functioning space hotels and moon colonies might not even be, you know, building them and subsisting in space,” writes Jason Koebler (“The First Space Colonies Might Be Illegal,” Vice, May 15). “Instead, it might be navigating the tricky international legal framework governing off-world ownership.” Koebler’s concerns, which he hangs on…

It’s been a pretty bad couple of weeks on the climate front. Two separate teams of climate scientists warn that the collapse of the western Antarctic ice sheet has already begun and is now too late to stop. The six glaciers already in retreat are enough, by themselves to add four feet to global sea…

[Note: This piece was originally written as a letter to the editor of the New York Times in reply to its “Invitation to a Dialogue” on alternative therapies.] As Dr. Gordon notes, legislation ostensibly aimed at increasing the affordability of health care has had the effects of locking in a status quo of needlessly high levels of costly treatment required…