The analogy in the headline “Thor 2 is a Cinematic McDonald’s Cheeseburger” (Eileen Jones, Jacobin) is apt. There is indeed a strong parallel between the predominance in comics-to-film adaptations and diner-food restaurants: A few homogenous, formulaic products aimed at broad mass-market appeal. But far from Jones’s “perfect example of how market competition does not actually provide us with the…

Back in 2010 Newt Gingrich explained that US president Barack Obama lies “outside our comprehension” unless we use his “Kenyan, anti-colonial” ideological orientation as a reference point for understanding his bizarre actions. Obama has been amazingly successful at concealing his deep-seated hatred of colonialism — to the point of praising Europe, in a speech last…

A retired colonel was heard on March 25th by Brazil’s National Truth Commission (Comissão Nacional da Verdade) to clarify how “political prisoners were tortured” and identify “who was alive when they arrived, who died and who is still missing, as well as the torturers” from Casa da Morte (“Death House”), an underground center for repression located…

More than a decade ago, neoconservative bloggers coined the term “Fisking” for the polemical device (originally demonstrated against left-leaning journalist Robert Fisk) of taking apart a commentary, sentence by sentence,  analytically ripping each part to shreds. Although the neocon positions in this debate range from misguided to repugnant, the technique itself is a good one….

US Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) believes the Senate has enough votes to pass the Free Flow of Information Act, creating a federal “shield law” for the first time. The bill was ostensibly written to address the Justice Department’s unprecedented acquisition of Associated Press phone records, as well as several other high-profile cases where journalists might…

I tried to find a one simple case of censorship or content discrimination in Internet services in Brazil. I looked for cases in which Internet Service Providers (ISPs) blocked access to specific websites or offered more expensive plans that afforded access to more content. As incredible as it may sound, I found nothing. I thought…

The so-called Civil Landmark for the Internet, approved by Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies on March 25, now proceeds to the Senate. One of the main selling points of the bill is “net neutrality,” a legal device to prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from offering various Internet access plans — for instance, a cheaper price for just…

From a free market anti-capitalist perspective, Jeremy Rifkin’s account of “The Rise of Anti-Capitalism” [New York Times, March 15] gets it almost right. Rifkin’s thesis that “The inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant,” in a process which “is about to…

In the mainstream libertarian movement, accusations of “statism” typically focus on a fairly predictable set of targets. Anyone who complains of racism, sexism or other social justice issues, the economic exploitation of workers or degradation of the environment is reflexively accused of statism on the assumption that exploitation, injustice and pollution could only be problems…

Many people in Brazil are still rather sympathetic to the military dictatorship that ruled the country until the 1980s. It isn’t uncommon to hear from older people that, back then, jobs were plenty, public education was decent, and violence was not out of control — that the country was in order. Sure it was. But…

Since reading 1984 as an adolescent, I’ve remained perpetually amazed at George Orwell’s prescience. The Edward Snowden/Glenn Greenwald surveillance state strip-tease has recently focused attention on one aspect of that predictive acumen, but “we have always been at war with Eastasia” is returning to the fore due to the … “situation” … with Ukraine, Crimea and…

Claudia Silva Ferreira’s crime, last March 16, was living in the wrong place and having the wrong skin color. She went out to buy bread and ham, a cup of coffee in hand. We can never know how lethal a cup of coffee might be if held by a black, poor woman living on the…

Recently US Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) attracted attention by calling for an all-out ban on Bitcoin, which he claims is not only “unstable and disruptive to our economy” but encourages “illicit activity.” If Manchin thinks any such law can actually be enforced, he’s delusional. His delusion illustrates a much broader phenomenon: The tendency of those…

Joe Nocera devoted a recent column (“Will Digital Networks Ruin Us?” New York Times, January 6) to Jaron Lanier‘s “universal theory” that the tendency of “network efficiencies” to benefit but also destabilize large organizations are the root cause of a host of problems in domains with nothing else apparently in common. Such brittleness and dysfunction is everywhere,…

The largest Tea Party organization in the U.S., Tea Party Patriots, recently celebrated its fifth anniversary with promises of redoubled efforts to balance the federal budget and pay down the national debt. Of course this would have the — presumably unintentional — effect of destroying capitalism as we know it. Corporate capitalism, since it coalesced…

Matthew Yglesias may be the most left-libertarian friendly liberal commentator out there. Not only is he unusually open to free market ideas, but he’s also repeatedly shown strong sympathies for open-source and post-scarcity approaches to economic organization. In fact, he’s practically built his brand around setting himself against the two defining features of American liberalism…

Today, the Iraq War turns eleven. If you’re an American, you’d be forgiven for thinking the war in Iraq was over. After all, Barack Obama, after being thwarted in his desperate attempts to extend the American military presence there, has been crowing about how he “ended” the war in Iraq. But the war never ended….

It’s been more than a month since Toine Manders, tax consultant and former leader of the Dutch Libertarian Party, was arrested and jailed for protecting his clients from theft.  Less than a week away from his son’s first birthday Toine is still held prisoner and his custody has been extended for an additional 90 days….

Jeremy Rifkin heralds “The Rise of Anti-Capitalism” (New York Times, March 15), citing a paradox whereby “[t]he inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant, and no longer subject to market forces.” Rifkin’s arguments about how reductions in marginal cost affect economic relationships…

On Thursday, March 13, in interrogating Juliano Torres, executive-director of the Brazilian chapter of Students For Liberty (Estudantes Pela Liberdade – EPL), the Brazilian Federal Police (Polícia Federal) made sure they had all his travel records at hand to make their intimidation tactics appear even punchier. The Federal Police has been summoning for questions (or,…