On Wednesday, we learned the fate of American whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning. Manning was sentenced to  35 years in prison for leaking documentation of war crimes to Wikileaks, after conviction on violating key provisions of the Espionage Act (an act which is in and of itself an offense to liberty and repeatedly abused by the…

Not too long ago, I predicted that if I live to the average American male lifespan of 76 — I’m 46 now — I’ll have outlived the United States as we know it. At the time, I feared I was being over-optimistic, but lately I’m leaning the other way and thinking that my timetable may…

In theater productions of Peter Pan, there’s a scene where Tinkerbell is dying. Peter exhorts the audience to clap their hands to save her. If everyone just claps harder and says “I believe in fairies!” Tink will be restored to life by the power of faith and love. Progressive calls to defeat corporate power and…

Most people take it for granted — because they’ve heard it so many times from politicians and pundits — that they must trade some privacy for security in this dangerous world. The challenge, we’re told, is to find the right “balance.” Let’s examine this. On its face the idea seems reasonable. I can imagine hiring…

Egypt is in turmoil. As I write this, more than 500 people have been killed and thousands wounded in an ongoing conflict between the Egyptian military (on behalf of a coup-installed junta) and supporters of the overthrown Muslim Brotherhood regime (supporters of the Brotherhood believably claim the death toll is probably much higher). In the…

Lots of people have lots of complaints about the Internet, and some of those complaints are based in fact. One that I hadn’t heard before, until US Secretary of State John Kerry brought it up in recent remarks to embassy personnel in Brazil, is that the Internet makes it “much harder to govern, much harder to…

“An open, public, informed conversation on surveillance,” writes Philip Bump in The Atlantic Wire, “has been the president’s stated goal since shortly after the Edward Snowden leaks began” (“It Doesn’t Count as Outreach When Obama Talks About the NSA in Secret,” August 9). In a society governed by “rule of law” as portrayed by our,…

Even as the U.S. security state becomes more closed, centralized and brittle in the face of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks, civil society and the public are responding to the post-Snowden repression by becoming more dispersed and resilient. That’s how networks always respond to censorship and surveillance. Each new attempt at a file-sharing service, after…

Back in 2006 Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, in The Starfish and the Spider, contrasted the way networks and hierarchies respond to outside attacks. Networks, when attacked, become even more decentralized and resilient. A good example is Napster and its successors, each of which has more closely approached an ideal peer-to-peer model, and further freed…

Imagine if you had to fight in a court of law in order to be permitted to move in with friends, go to work, and make basic decisions about your daily life. Jenny Hatch doesn’t have to imagine, because she just fought and won that battle for her basic liberties. Hatch has volunteered for political…

Lately, it hasn’t been clear what exactly the First Amendment protects. Between whistleblowers PFC Manning and Edward Snowden, one awaits a sentencing of potentially 90 years in prison, and the other finds himself trapped in a country where he doesn’t speak the language. Perhaps it’s time to find a better way to protect free speech….

Everywhere you look in the right-wing commentariat, you see the recurring theme of the “underclass” as parasites. Its most recent appearance was the meme of the productive, tax-paying 53% vs. the tax-consuming 47%. And of course there’s the perennial favorite mythical quote attributed to Alexander Tytler, trotted out by many who should know better, about…

A decade after Califormia’s disastrous experience with Enron-style electrical utility “deregulation” — rolling blackouts and price spikes — caused Arizona to abandon a similar project, the Arizona Corporation Commission is once again considering it. The real problem with “deregulation,” as promoted by the libertarian establishment — the think tanks and lobbyists who pressure the state…

If there’s one thing the libertarian establishment — that is, mainstream libertarian organizations whose main activity is lobbying the state for “free market reform” — loves, it’s so-called “privatization.” An article by Paul Buchheit at Truth-out.com (“Eight Ways Privatization has Failed America,” Aug. 5) treats the failure of privatization as a reflection on the limits…

Major Ashlend Fein, US Army prosecutor in Bradley Manning’s court martial, caught my attention when he referred to Manning as an “anarchist” in closing arguments. As an anarchist, I’d be proud to share that label with Manning. But I’ve never heard from any reliable source that he considers himself one. Manning — if indeed guilty…

Dear President Obama, I possess neither Emile Zola’s writing talent nor his penchant for presidential flattery, but I think I may perhaps lay rightful claim to some semblance of his well-developed sense of moral outrage. I address you as “president” only as a concession to popular convention. In truth, your claimed authority is a fraud,…

In California, prisoners are fighting back against appalling human rights violations. Their hunger strike is into its third week, with nearly 1,000 inmates still participating. When the strike began, 30,000 prisoners refused meals. The prisoners are striking against long term solitary confinement, a punishment recognized as a form of torture by sources as diverse as…

Everything was going well for the al-Assad regime as it basked in 40 years of rule — until what started as a peaceful demonstration against the Baathist dictatorship violently escalated into full-blown civil war. Another war in the Middle East? Uncle Sam wants you! US president Barack Obama can now green-light his administration’s plan to…

Peak Oil analysis site The Oil Drum recently announced it’s shutting down operations. Due to a dearth of new content, the management decided to stop publishing new material after July 31, leaving the existing content as a permanent archive. Naturally this evoked chortles of mirth from the Wall Street Journal. Those dumb old gloom-n-doomers at…

I’m shocked — shocked! — that Colonel Denise Lind, the military judge who ruled in February that Bradley Manning could be tried on various charges even after being held prior to arraignment for more than five times the absolute longest time specified in the US Armed Forces’ “speedy trial” rules, has now also ruled that…