Patrick Cockburn discusses the bloody history of Baghdad.

Kent Paterson discusses the challenging of a militarized police state.

Medea Benjamin discusses the broken promises of Obama.

Martha Rosenberg interviews Michael Arria.

Jeffrey St. Clair discusses the recently passed away, Gabriel Kolko.

Justin Raimondo discusses how a CIA backed general recently launched a coup in Libya.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses the awfulness of the 9-11 museum.

Jim Hightower discusses how the allegedly libertarian Koch Brothers fund a group that wants solar taxes.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the history of the First World War in 100 moments.

Jonathan Turley discusses the imperial presidency.

Wendy McElroy discusses the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s acquiring of submachine guns.

Cathy Young discusses the situation in the Ukraine.

Daniel Larison discusses Rand Paul’s opposition to the appointment of David Barron.

Human Rights Watch discusses U.S. training of an abusive Cambodian military.

Sheldon Richman discusses U.S. intervention in Libya.

Anneke E. Green discusses the drone memos.

Laurence M. Vance discusses conservative attempts to ban chocolate milk.

Joseph Stromberg discusses corporatism in theory and practice.

Predrag Rasjic discusses cartels and subsidies in Canadian agriculture.

Chris Floyd discusses the roots and fruits of the War on Terror.

John Knefel discusses the endless war.

Andrew Levine discusses stopping Hilary Clinton.

Daniel Kovalik discusses the U.S., Colombia, and the death squad state.

Sheldon Richman discusses Keynes.

Wendy McElroy discusses idealism vs gradualism.

Gary Reed discusses why Memorial Day is more aptly named Government Day.

Franklin Lamb discusses liberating Syria.

Helen Redmond discusses the diehard drug warriors.

Yifan Hou defeats the great Judit Polgar.

Viktor Korchnoi defeats the chess genius, Robert James Fischer.

When a descriptive term carries a negative connotation, there is a widespread tendency to associate the term with its worst referents. When critics of Obamacare call it “fascist,” for example, they are regularly accused of absurdly likening Obamacare to the Nazis’ campaigns of mass slaughter. Yet “fascism” is a word with a meaning, and the kind of expansive business/government partnership represented by Obamacare seems to fit that meaning fairly well.

To be sure, the critics of Obamacare use the term “fascism” because it has a negative connotation, and it is the extreme forms of fascism that have played the largest role in giving it that connotation. But the point of using the term, as I see it, is not to give the misleading impression that Obamacare is equivalent to more extreme forms of fascism in the scale of its badness, but simply to point out that they’re bad for similar reasons. (Of course some idiots do seem to regard Obama and Hitler as equivalent in degree of evil, but they’re a different problem.)

Another example is the term “slavery.” When libertarians call taxation or conscription forms of slavery, their claims are often dismissed, on the grounds that taxation or conscription are hardly comparable in thoroughgoing awfulness to antebellum American slavery. But while this is certainly true, it is also true that antebellum American slavery represents one of the worst forms of slavery that has ever existed. Compare, for example, the much milder form of slavery that prevailed in medieval Scandinavia. In the 13th-century Icelandic Gisli’s Saga, we’re told that Gisli’s slave Kol owns a sword (!) which his master must ask permission to borrow (!!). This was obviously a less thoroughgoing form of slavery than the one that reigned in Dixie. Given the many and varying degrees of awfulness that slavery can take, treating all comparisons to slavery as comparisons specifically to antebellum American slavery is historically myopic.

That’s not to say that such comparisons don’t often mean to invoke antebellum American slavery. Often they do; consider Robert Nozick’s “Tale of the Slave,” or this more recent parable by Larken Rose, both of which invoke the image of the plantation. But the point of such references is not to show that political democracy (the target of Nozick’s and Rose’s parables) is as bad as plantation slavery, but rather that it rests on the same principles.

As Plato writes in Republic II:

Suppose that a short-sighted person had been asked by someone to read small letters from a distance; and it occurred to someone else that they might be found in another place which was larger and in which the letters were larger – if they were the same and he could read the larger letters first, and then proceed to the lesser – this would have been thought a rare piece of good fortune.

In the same way, one reason it’s useful to invoke the Nazis or the antebellum slavers is that it’s easier to detect mistaken ethical principles in a clear and vivid case, from which the appropriate moral can then be transferred to cases where the wrongness is more moderate and thus harder to see. Parables like Nozick’s and Rose’s are doing precisely this: pointing first to slavery written in large letters in order to help the reader recognise slavery when written in small letters.

(This, after all, is why moral philosophers use thought experiments. To take another of Nozick’s examples: if you have trouble seeing why it’s wrong to kill cows for food, try looking at a case where the pleasure you get is not from eating beef but from bashing a cow on the head with a baseball bat, since the wrongness in that case is written in larger letters, as it were, and so is easier to grasp.)

It’s common to charge that comparisons involving fascism or slavery trivialise the latter evils by linking them to phenomena that are obviously much less bad. But the charge of trivialisation seems to me to apply only when the evils are claimed to be comparable in degree. It is not trivialising the Black Death to point out that it and the common cold are alike in being infectious diseases.

I think the widespread resistance to comparisons involving fascism or slavery is functional; it serves to immunise advocates of mild degrees of fascism or slavery against recognising the true nature of what they are advocating, and thus enables advocacy of fascism and slavery to survive and prosper. (When I say it’s functional I don’t mean that it is consciously employed for this purpose; spontaneous-order mechanisms can produce and maintain bad orders as well as good ones.)

The same dynamic can be seen in common reactions to the charge that one’s ideas are racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or transphobic, and so on. The term “racist,” for example, tends to conjure up the image of the Ku Klux Klan or something of that sort. Thus if people know they don’t share the ideas and attitudes of the Klan, they presume that they must not harbor any ideas or attitudes legitimately describable as racist.

As I’ve written previously:

There is a tendency … to treat racism and sexism as equivalent to hostility toward persons of a different race or gender. Thus where such hostility is absent, racism and sexism are presumed to be absent also …. For example, Walter Block argues that because heterosexual male employers are attracted to women, they are more likely to be prejudiced in their favour rather than against them.

But racism and sexism are found in more forms than simply that of hostility (not that there isn’t plenty of that form around too ….). A white male employer who feels no hostility toward women or minorities may still be inclined to pay them less or deny them positions of authority if he holds, say, prejudicial expectations about their likely capacities.

But what if these expectations are rationally justified? The problem is that they generally aren’t. And the arguments on behalf of such expectations are so shockingly sloppy (as,e.g., Anne Fausto-Sterling shows [and today I would add Cordelia Fine]), and the historical track record of such arguments is so wretched, that an employer’s indulgence in such expectations is overwhelmingly likely to be the result of an irrational bias, most often one unconsciously absorbed from the culture. In such cases we will say that the employer’s decision is shaped by racism or sexism – but in saying that, we are not(necessarily) saying that the employer is an evil, hate-filled person. After all, by analogy: most people are statists, but that doesn’t mean that most people are filled with hatred for individual liberty.

And indeed racism, sexism, etc. are quite a bit like statism in being typically acquired by “semi-conscious osmosis” rather than “forthright embrace.”

Someone may hold the view that blacks are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent or less provident than whites – or that women are genetically predisposed to be more risk-averse and less scientifically talented than men – and quite sincerely disavow any racism or sexism because their views are not motivated by hostility to women or blacks. But terms like “racism” and “sexism” are not words for emotions. They denote interlocking networks of beliefs, practices, assumptions, and institutions. The view that women or blacks tend to be innately inferior to men or whites is, straightforwardly, racist and sexist in the descriptive sense; it is so in virtue of its content, not in virtue of its motivations. And the additional pejorative sense is warranted because the case for such views is generally so bad that only some distorting factor can explain their adoption. But the distorting factor needn’t be hostile feelings. It can just as easily be a set of assumptions so ingrained that they have retreated into the background of the mind so as to become invisible – as happens with statism too.

People tend to hear the accusation “your ideas are racist [or sexist, or etc.]” as equivalent to “you are a racist – and therefore a bad person.” The accusation can also sound as though it is being delivered from some height of purity, by those who could never be guilty of such evils themselves.

Of course the accusation is often delivered in such a way as to reinforce both impressions. But such impressions, whatever their cause, serve to mask the nature of racism (or sexism etc.) and so help to perpetuate it. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other such malign patterns of thought and action – including statism, I would add – are so pervasive in our culture that it is very dangerous for those who charge others with committing them to assume themselves free of such contamination. But that is not a reason to refrain from criticising racism, sexism, etc. where we find them, any more than the fact that we ourselves may stray from a trail is a reason to refrain from pointing out when others are straying from the trail. As Ayn Rand writes, the right rule in such matters is not “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” but rather “Judge, and be prepared to be judged.”

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 Guardian writes, “in a compromise that moved the formerly strong legislation out of committee and into action, the bill was weakened significantly: in came more immunity for telecoms, and out went tough transparency and provisions for the Fisa court, along with protections against warrantless “backdoor” searches of your communications.”

The bill was later watered down further, widening NSA’s search powers and placing even more power in the hands of the Director of National Intelligence.

The bill’s original backers dropped their support for the USA Freedom Act.  “Under the finalized floor version of the USA Freedom Act, it would be completely legal for the NSA to request all records for an area code, zip code, or even all of the emails for accounts that start with the letter ‘A,’ all without a warrant,” US Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) says. Many civil liberties groups also abandoned support for the bill.

These developments are disappointing, but not surprising. This is how government works. Bills are passed largely through logrolling, a process of give and take where propositions supported by different ideologies or interest groups are put together under one bill to increase its chance of passing. So bills originally intended to protect civil liberties often have provisions added to secure the support of hawks, statists and surveillance enthusiasts.

Moreover, the state tends to secure its own interests and those of concentrated special interest groups first and foremost. Bills that pose a substantial threat to the NSA, their telecom company collaborators or profiteers like Booz Allen Hamilton will tend to be eroded or defeated due to the power of these predatory interest groups. Or worse, they will be twisted to serve the interests of these oligarchs.

Legislative reform is a dead end, but there’s a better way. We can route around the state, thwart its surveillance efforts, and make it progressively harder to intercept and watch our communications. A coalition of civil liberties groups, progressive advocacy organizations and libertarian organizations is urging people to do just that. They’re calling it Reset the Net. On June 5th, they urge Internet users and web developers to begin using a wide variety of internet security tools to thwart the NSA. These tools include everything from open source encryption protocols to anonymity services like Tor. Reset the Net’s privacy pack specifically offers open source tools because these tools allow any user to test, verify and improve their security. Tools like this can be installed, designed and improved by any individual, with no permission needed from any government.

Reset the Net is an inspiring example of mainstream civil liberties groups from across the political spectrum embracing the anarchist tactic of direct action. Rather than begging governments to limit themselves or pass benevolent reforms, direct action takes change into our own hands without asking permission.

Direct action allows us to route around the state, to make its mass surveillance operations much more difficult to perpetuate. This is how we can and must end state criminality. Not by reforming the state, but by treating it as damage and routing around.

Come tutte le persone nate nello stato di Para, anch’io amo l’açaí (pronunciato assaì). Tutti i paraensi, a prescindere dallo status socio-economico, lo mangiano. È una realtà innegabile della vita nello stato di Para. Se vivi nella capitale, Belem, açaí ti ricorda costantemente che sei nell’Amazzonia, così come gli aironi in centro città.

Açaí, preparato secondo la tradizione, è così amato nello stato di Para che c’è una canzone che dice così: “Chi va a Para si ferma, mangia l’açaí e rimane.”

L’açaí che si vende a Para non è lo stesso che si vende in tutto il Brasile. Il suo aroma vero lo si può trovare solo nella forma pura preparata qui, non in quella diluita e miscelata che si vende altrove.

Data la richiesta, chi può avere interesse a minacciare l’açaí tradizionale? Lo stato, ovviamente.

Nel 2010 fu presentato un disegno di legge che imponeva la “Pastorizzazione obbligatoria della polpa di açaí.”

Il primo paragrafo dice tutto:

§1 La polpa derivata dal frutto dell’aizeiro (Euterpe oleracea) deve essere sottoposto a pastorizzazione secondo regolamenti specifici, con l’obiettivo di prevenire la trasmissione di malattie agli esseri umani.

Il commercio di açaí non pastorizzato (tradizionale) sarebbe stato punibile, la prima volta, con una multa di 1.000 dollari, con il servizio civile e 2.500 dollari di multa la seconda, e con la chiusura dell’attività la terza.

A giustificazione fu citata una malattia chiamata chagas. A difesa del provvedimento, il proponente disse che mangiare açaí non pastorizzato, come accade soprattutto in Amazzonia, “potrebbe diventare un problema di salute pubblica di grosse proporzioni, [perciò] sentiamo che è importante rendere obbligatoria la pastorizzazione della polpa di acaizeiro.” Come notò Flavio Pinto, “i paraensi usano l’açaí da così tanto tempo” che la legge non ha alcun senso. Tanto più che “i venditori adottano già” misure di igiene e di qualità.

La proposta era talmente assurda che la sua approvazione avrebbe reso illegali i “punti vendita tradizionali di açaí in tutto lo stato di Para.” I piccoli ritrovi, “riconoscibili dall’insegna viola, arrivano a 4.000 solo nell’area metropolitana di Belem.” Secondo il Sindacato dei Lavoratori della Frutta e Derivati di Para (Sindfrutas), “l’attività coinvolge oltre 100.000 famiglie soltanto nella regione”.

L’allora presidente di Sindfrutas, Solange Motas, mise in evidenza la perdita di posti che sarebbe risultata: “Il senatore Tiao Viana non ha idea di quanti posti si perderebbero in questa regione. Sappiamo di oltre 4.000 ritrovi che vendono açaí, solo nei dintorni di Belem, e in tutto lo stato il numero dovrebbe superare i 10.000. Il progetto di legge impedirebbe a queste persone di lavorare. È una legge con mille difetti, come si vede già dal testo.”

Comunque la si veda, la proposta era stupida. Dalle drastiche interferenze con le tradizioni locali ai problemi seri che avrebbero avuto migliaia di piccoli commercianti, era chiaramente una legge ingiusta e completamente staccata dalla realtà locale. La ragione prevalse e la proposta di legge, fortunatamente, fu bocciata.

Ma non dobbiamo fermarci qui. È spaventoso che un senatore federale, a migliaia di chilometri dallo stato di Para, abbia il potere (e la faccia tosta) di proporre un disegno di legge in grado di interferire così pesantemente con le tradizioni locali. È spaventoso il fatto che il parlamento nazionale di Brasilia abbia il potere di passare una legge del genere in grado di alterare profondamente la vita dei paraensi. È chiaramente assurdo pensare che i paraensi, che mangiano açaí da tantissimo tempo, abbiano bisogno di Brasilia per evitare di morire di Chagas.

Certo, potrebbero esserci contaminazioni, occorrono standard di sicurezza sanitaria, ma niente può giustificare la messa al bando dell’açaí non pastorizzato, e niente può togliere all’individuo la libertà di scelta.

È ora di togliere dalle mani del governo la capacità di decidere cosa possiamo e non possiamo mangiare. Dobbiamo impedirgli anche solo di concepire una disegno di legge di quella natura e la possibilità di interferire profondamente con l’attività dell’Amazzonia. Ad essere sinceri, dovremmo approvare una clausola valevole per l’eternità: il diritto inalienabile di mangiare e vendere l’açaí come ci pare. Il diritto ad un açaí che non abbia il gusto amaro dello stato.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Neste sábado (24/05), é a data oficial da Marcha das Vadias no Brasil. O evento acontecerá em várias cidades ao redor do país, e, segundo a organização da Marcha em São Paulo, em sua página no facebook, trata de chamar atenção da sociedade para que esta “entenda que as mulheres não são responsáveis pela violência que sofrem. A sobrevivente nunca é culpada. Culpado é o agressor.”

Deve-se recordar que, na origem da Marcha, está o slut-shaming, uma forma de controle do comportamento feminino baseada em humilhação e intimidação sistemáticas de mulheres que se desviam de determinados parâmetros de conduta sexual. O efeito disso é regular a sexualidade feminina de modo mais rigoroso e repressor do que a masculina, normalizando a desigualdade de gênero.

Associado a isso, há a “cultura de estupro”: elementos culturais que, mesmo da perspectiva da cultura “respeitável” (isto é, não criminosa) da sociedade, normalizam ou relativizam certas formas de estupro e assédio sobre o corpo (geralmente) feminino. O efeito disso é a utilização da possibilidade do estupro e do assédio sobre o corpo (e, indissociavelmente, o psicológico e o emocional) como uma forma de intimidação e, no limite, de punição e correção da sexualidade feminina.

É quando se vê desde essa perspectiva mais abrangente que se pode ver a ligação entre os fenômenos: o slut-shaming pode servir de trampolim para justificar o assédio e o estupro. Um exemplo seria rotular determinadas mulheres como “vadias”, para, então, desculpar ou ser condescendente com a violação da intimidade e da dignidade sexual delas porque elas estariam “provocando” e seriam de algum modo culpáveis por isso. (Para uma instância mais sutil, veja este texto onde critico misturar probabilidade estatística com moralização da vítima.)

O caráter profundamente anti-libertário desse tipo de prática cultural é manifesto: trata-se de um desrespeito à liberdade sexual e aos arranjos consentidos entre adultos autônomos que dela derivam, no limite chegando mesmo a negar às mulheres o seu direito de negar consentimento à investida masculina caso elas de alguma forma tenham se desviado de certos padrões.

A cultura brasileira historicamente foi marcada pelo sexismo. Em 1927, a anarquista individualista Maria Lacerda de Moura, uma das pioneiras do feminismo no Brasil e envolvida com o movimento operário à época, escreveu o texto “Seduzidas e Desonradas”  no jornal O Combate onde denunciava o duplo padrão de moralidade e o slut-shaming, focado na virgindade feminina e sua guarda para o casamento, com severas penalidades às desviantes:

“E ai daquela que se esquece do protocolo.

“Se, hoje, não é lapidada, se não é enterrada viva como as vestais, se não é apedrejada até a morte, se não sofre os suplícios do poviléu fanático de outros tempos, inventou-se o suicídio: é obrigada a desertar da vida por si mesma, porque a literatura, a imprensa, toda gente aponta-a com o dedo, vociferando o “desgraçada”, “perdida”, “desonrada”, “desonesta”, abrindo-lhe, no caso contrario, as portas da prostituição barata das calçadas, com todo o seu cortejo de misérias, de sífilis, de bordeis, de humilhações, do hospital e da vala comum.”

“Miserável moral de coronéis, de covardes e cretinos!”

No Brasil de Maria Lacerda de Moura, os tabus ligados à virgindade pré-marital catalisavam as atitudes sexistas. No Brasil da Marcha das Vadias de 2014, temos a divulgação de fotos e vídeos íntimos de garotas, nuas ou mantendo relação sexual, por meio do WhatsApp, possibilitando assim a rápida viralização e subsequente exposição pública. É o revenge porn, a vingança de um ex-parceiro sexual, que vaza fotos e vídeos privados como se fosse pornografia, com o objetivo de expor sua ex-parceira.

Como nos dias de Maria Lacerda de Moura, as garotas vítimas dessa divulgação imoral e criminosa (pois que fere o preceito do consentimento voluntário livre) são humilhadas, intimidadas, perseguidas, assediadas, desencadeando todo um ciclo de slut-shaming , culpabilização da vítima e pretexto para assédio em seu círculo de convivência ou no mundo virtual que, a depender de sua intensidade e do próprio perfil emocional da vítima, pode mesmo levar a vítima ao suicídio, como no caso da Julia Rebeca. Os tempos mudaram, mas muita daquela “miserável moral de coronéis, de covardes e cretinos” ainda persiste na mentalidade de muitos.

E como mudar isso? Na tradição feminista, uma importante ferramenta é a ação direta, buscando promover mudança social descentralizada a partir da “base”, sem apelar para estruturas coercitivas como o Estado. Charles Johnson refere-se às formas de solidariedade e resistência que muitas feministas empregaram historicamente para mudar as atitudes sociais e prover ajuda para mulheres que dela necessitassem, como “grupos, reuniōes, culture jamming, redes de mulheres agredidas, centros de combate ao estupro e outros espaços feministas” originalmente sem conexão com o governo.

Dentro desta admirável e libertária tradição de ação direta feminista, atualizada para tempos onde a tecnologia propiciou novas formas de slut-shaming, temos um grupo de seis meninas feministas de 16 anos de idade que criaram um protótipo de aplicativo de celular, o For You.

A ideia, conforme já divulgado, é apoiar meninas adolescentes que tiveram suas fotos vazadas na internet, criando um espaço seguro onde possam conhecer outras vítimas, discutir os temas que circundam a revenge porn (por meio de abas educativas sobre legislação, manifestos sobre como isto não é sua culpa, depoimentos de vítimas, etc.) e inclusive embaixadoras locais para montarem grupos presenciais que combatam a intimidação que as vítimas possam vir a sofrer. Em vídeo, elas explicam como querem usar a tecnologia para distribuir informação sobre abuso online, empoderando as vítimas.

“Se eles usam apps para nos humilhar, nós revidamos usando apps para nos empoderar e organizar!”, é o mote do grupo formado por Camila Ziron, Estela Machado, Hadassa Mussi, Larissa Rodrigues e Letícia Santos. Elas estão participando do concurso Technovation Challenge, cujo grupo vencedor receberá 10.000 dólares de financiamento e suporte para desenvolvimento.

A emancipação feminina está sendo e será obtida por meio da ampliação e do esclarecimento das redes de cooperação social voluntária. Isso nos leva a uma perspectiva de mudança social feminista mais sociológica,  evolucionária, microeconômica. Mas também é dessa maneira que a liberdade humana em relação às estruturas coercitivas do Estado será alcançada. Coincidência? De modo algum, pois a emancipação feminina é uma instância do progresso em direção a uma sociedade livre.

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, as the state of being free from domination and oppression, imposed by an authority, on one’s way of life, behavior or worldview. This idea means many different things to different people, but the fundamental idea of liberty is individual agency. This libertarian tradition notes that all human beings deserve to be free and equal in dignity and rights. Slavery, on the other hand, can be understood as the absolute domination of the individual — it is the end of agency. Slavery bucks the trend of human progress, it cages liberty. Slavery is unjustifiable and thus illegitimate — it has no place in a democratic society.

To obtain and protect liberty, all illegitimate authority must be abolished. When we tear down systems of domination and oppression, when we liberate humanity from illegitimate power structures, we find the true beauty of human nature. Liberty, then, requires active participation from the populace. Liberty is the product of labor. If a population is passive or apathetic, then systems of power and domination can spread like a cancer throughout society.

Because of this, those dedicated to the principles of liberty and democracy should be very concerned about a recent report, from the United Nations International Labor Organization (ILO), that says forced labor (read slavery) generates a $150 billion annual worldwide profit. Even worse, $99 billion, (two-thirds) of this total profit, is generated through the sexual exploitation of men, women and children. The rest of the revenue comes from forced economic labor in agriculture, construction, mining and domestic work.

This fundamental evil, forced labor, the unwilling utility and exploitation of another must be abolished. To accomplish this abolition, it is necessary to look at the pre-existing conditions that give rise to such authoritarian systems — poverty, violence, poor education, class struggle, racism, sexism, etc – and confront the mechanisms through which these social forces subjugate human beings. This begs the questions: Where does power come from? Who should posses it? Who is responsible for our lives? These questions should lead to inquiry into our social organization and how to better the rights and welfare of all individuals — the common good.

Our collective libertarian tradition can answer these questions and progress the common good by dismantling power structures from above and building, only when needed, from below. When accomplished, labor will be inclined and liberated. In absolute liberty society will change, as America philosopher John Dewey notes, “from a feudalistic to a democratic social order,” respecting all workers as genuine human beings as opposed to resources for economic exploitation.

Luckily, folks continue to labor for liberty so that all may labor in liberty. The emerging open source, networked order, of autonomous individuals and civic sector groups, is advancing Mutualism and working for emancipation in ways traditional command and control governance is incapable of. This new order is stigmergic – decentralized in the freed market. Groups such as Women at Risk International, International Justice Mission and many more are liberating enslaved individuals in both local and global campaigns.

The New Mutualism is coming. May every individual one day live in liberty — until then, and ever after, let’s labor for the common good.

Gli abitanti del villaggio di Kala/Balge, nello stato nord-nigeriano di Borno, si sono ribellati. Tra le incertezze dei politici e i tweet degli attivisti, gli abitanti di Kala/Balge hanno preso le armi e hanno messo in fuga il nemico con un’imboscata contro un convoglio di Boko Haram, che stava arrivando per assaltare il loro villaggio. Almeno quarantuno uomini di Boko Haram sono stati uccisi e dieci catturati nell’assalto a sorpresa contro due camion carichi di militanti. Armati di fucili, machete e archi, gli abitanti di Kala/Balge hanno coraggiosamente fatto quello che l’esercito nigeriano non ha potuto fare, e hanno messo in fuga Boko Haram.

Noi siamo stati portati a pensare che “attivismo” consista nel volere che qualcun altro faccia qualcosa. Imploriamo i politici eletti, i burocrati, spronandoli all’azione. Ma l’attivismo migliore, il più efficace, è quando prendiamo in mano la situazione e risolviamo i nostri problemi – o colpiamo i nostri nemici – da soli. Nello stato messicano di Michoacán, la popolazione si è ribellata contro il cartello del narcotraffico dei Cavalieri Templari, cacciandoli via con una forza tale che il governo messicano dispera di sopprimere i vigilantes e ora spera di corromperli, trasformandoli da una manifestazione spontanea della rabbia popolare in un altro braccio armato dello stato criminale. Speriamo che resistano.

E ora la popolazione si sta sollevando in Nigeria. Mentre il resto del mondo ha risposto ai crimini odiosi di Boko Haram con hashtag e selfie, la popolazione di Kala/Balge ha risposto con proiettili e machete, prendendo in mano la propria vita e le proprie famiglie. Difendere se stessi significa imparare a confidare in se stessi; i corsi di autodifesa, oltre alle tecniche per sconfiggere l’assalitore, insegnano anche ad avere fiducia nella propria forza e nel proprio potere. Boko Haram ha reagito come da sempre reagiscono i bulli davanti ad una vittima che improvvisamente prende coraggio: hanno fatto dietrofront e sono scappati, lasciandosi alle spalle morti e feriti da quei codardi che sono sempre stati.

Anche in America, il centro dell’impero, dobbiamo imparare ad agire direttamente contro i bulli tra noi, contro le forze dell’impero. Non occorre che l’azione sia frontale e violenta, anche se chi decide di affrontare direttamente gli oppressori merita il nostro rispetto. All’interno del movimento contro la guerra di questi ultimi quattordici anni ci sono stati molti eventi buonisti diretti a risvegliare le coscienze e raccogliere fondi. Ma l’attivismo più efficace ha preso due forme: scoraggiare l’arruolamento nelle forze armate, e incoraggiare chi è arruolato ad uscirne. Entrambe rappresentano una sfida più efficace degli striscioni, allungano una mano verso i soldati ed offrono loro una buona alternativa alla vita militare, uno degli ultimi luoghi della nostra società in cui giovani capaci possono ottenere un lavoro sicuro con una buona paga e benefici. È importante il risultato ottenuto: togliere acqua dal mulino imperialista, obbligando i suoi padroni a impiegare più denaro e tempo a cercare di trattenere i soldati e meno ad uccidere e menomare.

Parlare di alternative all’arruolamento in un istituto superiore di borgata non ha la stessa drammaticità di un’imboscata ad un convoglio di Boko Haram nella giungla nigeriana nel cuore della notte, ma le due cose condividono un aspetto chiave: non devi implorare per ottenere pietà e pace. In entrambi i casi, prendi il nemico frontalmente, e affronti personalmente il meccanismo che causa oppressione e dolore. Se vogliamo salvarci, dobbiamo seguire l’esempio coraggioso della popolazione di Kala/Balge, e salvarci da soli.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

De acordo com texto do jornalista Leonardo Dupin no blog de Juca Kfouri, a concessionária Minas Arena terá o direito de operar o estádio do Mineirão em Belo Horizonte por 25 anos, após “seu” investimento de R$ 654,5 milhões, com cerca de R$ 400 milhões pegos no BNDES. O acordo assegura que, em caso de prejuízo no negócio, o governo do estado de Minas Gerais terá que repassar até R$ 3,7 milhões por mês para o consórcio. Em 2013, ano em que a empresa registrou prejuízo em todos os meses, o estado repassou R$ 44,4 milhões para garantir os lucros corporativos.

Geralmente o governo não é tão direto na sua tentativa de inviabilizar prejuízos corporativos. Ao que parece, desta vez o estado brasileiro não achou necessário esquemas mirabolantes e decidiu simplesmente repassar dinheiro diretamente para os ricos.

Os consórcios que controlam os outros estádios da Copa fizeram negócios parecidos, com “investimentos” feitos com dinheiro generosamente emprestado pelo BNDES, a maior ferramenta de transferência direta de renda dos pobres para os ricos do Brasil. A presidente Dilma Rousseff têm aparecido em público e na TV para assegurar aos brasileiros de que o total gasto em estádios foi de “apenas” R$ 8 bilhões, com R$ 25 bilhões de reais no total para a Copa, a maioria aplicada em “empréstimos”, que retornarão para os cofres públicos.

Faltou contabilizar os subsídios de empréstimos e contratos de concessão. Faltou contabilizar todas as expulsões e maquiagens públicas para não mostrar nossos pobres para os turistas. Faltou contabilizar o estado policial esportivo que foi estabelecido desde o anúncio da Copa do Mundo e das Olimpíadas no Brasil.

A menos de um mês da Copa do Mundo, poucas bandeiras do Brasil decoram as janelas, poucas pinturas com o mascote do Mundial tomam os muros, a escalação da seleção foi cercada de pouca antecipação ou surpresa e pouco se fala de positivo sobre o campeonato. Todos os símbolos que sempre marcaram no Brasil as Copas que ocorriam em outros países parecem efetivamente ausentes do evento que, segundo o governo, seria a “Copa das Copas” em solo nacional.

O que tem sobrado são protestos, críticas e resistência, que culminaram, no último dia 15, com o Dia Internacional de Luta Contra a Copa (15M). Protestos tomaram muitas das capitais do Brasil, acompanhados de greves de professores, de funcionários do transporte público e, em Pernambuco, até da polícia. Digna de nota também foi a participação do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto, que tem os maiores motivos para reclamar: a Copa é o ápice de um modelo de urbanização que expulsa os pobres dos centros urbanos e empurra o valor do trabalho ainda mais para baixo.

O governo, como sempre, tenta pintar a administração do PT como anos desenvolvimento ininterrupto, mas a lua de mel acabou. Não importa quem vencerá o torneio, o capitalismo corporativo já é campeão.

Nada ilustra melhor esse fato do que o processo de gentrificação do Maracanã, agora local frequentado exclusivamente pela elite, onde os torcedores devem assistir futebol sentado, tirar a camisa após o gol é proibido, foguetes são inseguros e bandeiras têm que estar de acordo com o livro de regras da FIFA. Se nem o futebol é mais como nós o jogávamos, só resta a dúvida do 15M: Copa para quem?

Of all the complex wicked problems addressed by the current environmental movement, perhaps the most urgent is climate change.  The scientific community overwhelmingly agrees that ecosystems are rather vulnerable to changing climates, with a large number of species (upwards of 40%) at risk of extinction if current warming trends continue. It is well noted in the peer-reviewed literature that concentrations of  important greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) in the atmosphere have increased markedly since the advent of industrial society – a product of anthropogenic utility of fossil fuels (though factors such as deforestation have also played a role). Beyond the human race, the success or failure of the environmental movement holds great implications for all flora and fauna and all of Earths most vast and wondrous landscapes and seascapes.

Fossil fuels are the primary source of energy for industrial (and industrializing) societies. Particular to the United States, fossil fuels provide 85% of the nation’s energy. Of the three pillars of the fossil industry – oil, natural gas and coal – coal is king. Coal is the primary source of energy for the United States, providing over half of the electricity consumed by Americans. Coal is king because it fuels the grid of industrialized society. Coal also just so happens to be the most carbon intensive fossil resource. A kilowatt-hour of electricity from coal produces 2.4 lbs of carbon dioxide which is more than double the amount for oil and natural gas. Though responsible for just half the electricity generated in the United States, King Coal is responsible for 80% of the carbon dioxide released by utilities.

Imagine the sense of urgency the environmental movement must have felt, then, in the spring of 2007 when Energy Department analyst Erik Shuster circulated a document proposing 151 new coal-fired power plants be slated for construction. What to do about such a crisis?

Ted Nace, in his book, Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal, describes the extraordinary organizing methods and political engagement of environmental activists that empowered them to halt the construction of 109 of the proposed plants.

Climate Hope is a relatively easy, incredibly engaging read. Climate Hope is a testament to the power of democratic social movements, protest and the mobilization of citizen coalitions. The book tells the story of how organized people, from sit ins at coal surface mines, to blockades of large financial institutions, were able to deliver an incredible blow to what is arguably America’s most powerful industry.

Nace takes a comprehensive look at what the climate and anti-coal movements have experienced first hand – social movements that advance and uphold public welfare, seek justice and progress society. Climate Hope is a first person narrative of the authors own involvement in the environmental movement. The early chapters of the book describe his transformation from a concerned citizen to an activist, while the latter chapters describe in detail the growing anti-coal movement.

Nace opens his narrative with a discussion of climate scientist Dr. James Hansen. In May of 2007, Dr. Hansen, a prominent figure in the climate movement himself, argued that by simply moving beyond coal, 80% of the anthropogenic climate problem could be solved. Hansen, at the time, was a leading climate scientist at NASA and his declaration of “the 80% solution” is what inspired Nace to begin his activist work.

Nace then describes the environmental movement. He starts by looking at the campaigns of rather well-known (NRDC, Sierra Club, RAN, etc) civic sector institutions and how they proposed the United States move beyond coal. To his dismay, there was little being done on the “80% solution,” so Nace started what is now CoalSwarm.org which serves as a global reference center about coal. The site contains information about coal plants (existing and proposed), strip mines, pit mines, industry officials, coal companies, coal politics and local to global environmental groups and actions.

Nace also informs readers about the heart and soul of the anti-coal campaign – democratic social movements. Though large campaigns are very important, those on the frontlines of the fight against coal are self-organizing. Of particular interest to the libertarian is the description of the modern environmental movement. Nace writes:

It was the famed leaderless coordinating style of the youth climate movement. Although direct action is most often associated with protesting against something, the youth climate movement can also be seen as a large, far-flung experiment in new ways to run groups and make decisions without top-down hierarchies and arbitrary authority. This puts the movement in the wide tradition of anarchist, anti-authoritarian social innovation.

And he is dead on with this description. If those of us in the environmental movement are to resist power and domination in our communities, how can we tolerate such forces in our movement? In my own experience organizing against mountaintop removal coal mining I have seen first hand, and been amazed at, how successful this stigmergic organization actually is. Nace does a great job describing the actions of those from across the nation, from the Great Pacific Northwest to the gentle Appalachian Valley and Ridge. Here are some of the activists, scientists, and political leaders profiled in the book, along with the coal executives they opposed (from climatehopebook.com):

• Attorney Carol Overland, whose startling revelations of runaway costs eviscerated proposed coal plants in Minnesota and Delaware.
• Coal baron “Buck” Harless, who rallied his industry to win West Virginia for George Bush in the 2000 election, ensuring that destructive mining practices would continue unabated for eight years.
• Navajo activist Elouise Brown, whose impromptu blockade in subzero weather turned the tide against Blackstone billionaire Steve Schwarzmann’s Desert Rock power plant.
• Climatologists James Hansen and Pushker Kharecha, whose calculations identified a phase-out of coal as the key measure capable of staunching climate chaos.
• Appalachian coalfield activists and Goldman Prize winners Maria Gunnoe, Judy Bonds and Keepers of the Mountains Activist Larry Gibson.
• Coal flak Bob Henrie, who masterminded the industry’s “clean coal” campaign.
• Organizer Ted Glick, whose Washington, D.C., hunger strike and Vietnam-era organizing skills inspired and instructed a new generation of activists.
• Youth activists Hannah Morgan, Kate Rooth, and scores of other direct action protesters who conducted lock-down blockades at mines and coal plants, despite repeated police use of pepper spray, taser guns, and pain compliance holds.
• Attorney Bruce Nilles, who forged the Sierra Club’s pioneering campaign against coal while most other national environmental groups sat on their hands.
• Benedictine monk Terrance Kardong, whose 30-year fight to halt the spread of strip mining in North Dakota culminated in a “win for the mouse.”
• Rainforest Action Network leader Mike Brune, whose organization’s protests against banks exposed the coal industry’s financial underbelly.
• Organizers Dana Kuhnline and Sierra Murdoch, whose Power Past Coal campaign sparked over three hundred grassroots protests.

Of particular importance to me is his chapter “War Against the Mountains,” which touches on the subject of mountaintop removal coal mining. Coal mining has a long history in Appalachia. The deep pit mines and the “canary in the coal mine” are reminiscent of a mining method whose time has, for the most part, past. The “new school” method of coal extraction is coal surface mining. Through much of Appalachia, the preferred surface mining method is mountaintop removal/valley fill – a process that literally blasts away the tops of mountains and pushes the left over material, deemed overburden, into the valleys and streams below. Since the 1970’s, over 520 mountains have been leveled by the mining technique (an area three times the size of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park) and waste from this process has added toxic pollutants to over 2000 miles worth of Appalachian waters. This mining method is rather contentious in the region and in recent years arguments both for and against have grown increasingly heated. On one side of the issue are folks concerned about their cultural and natural heritage, on the other side are those worried about losing the only economic boon in the coalfields. Nace describes this tug of war in Climate Hope, recalling a protest he was part of in a West Virginia holler:

As I watched these scenes of chaos, it was obvious what motivated both sides of the controversy. On the one side were West Virginians whose families had long treasured these beautiful mountains, in some cases for over two hundred years. Most Americans, faced with the destruction of their homes, would fight just as hard. On the other side were workers who feared for their livelihoods and their families. Though they had been manipulated into serving thugs for an unscrupulous corporate boss, their personal concerns were no less valid.

This is a particularly important quote. For some in the environmental movement it is easy to disregard the arguments and emotions of coal miners. It is rather important, however, to carefully consider where they are coming from. Remember, coal is king in Appalachia, and for many, mining coal is what keeps food on the table. Coal mining itself has deep, romantic cultural roots throughout the region. I was happy to see Nace alert readers to the fact that we should be standing with coal miners. Mine workers are being lied to by industry suits, the mechanization of coal is costing thousands of miners their livelihood. Coal surface mining replaces working people with machines, explosives and specialized, outsourced, labor. The promise of a new Appalachia, beyond coal, is a promise to liberate all individuals from economic centralization.

For all the great things Climate Hope is, the book is not an endorsement of  liberty, statelessness or pure democracy. Though direct action is thoroughly discussed, my one objection to the book is its endorsement of wind, solar, geothermal and other “green industry” pathways to transition the United States, and world, off of coal. His economic arguments about the true cost of coal are spot on, and his analysis of falling prices in the green energy sector are largely accurate as well, but I find it disturbing that we are to endorse other large industries as the answer to our energy woes. Don’t get me wrong, these resources are incredible and should absolutely be utilized, but we must transition away from large, hierarchical  industries and allow communities to democratically manage their energy needs in the open market place – no more energy “kings,” no matter how green the alternatives.

In the final analysis, I highly recommend this book. It is an incredible narrative that pays homage to the self organized movement against coal. The book praises numerous citizens groups and individuals that have networked together to take on the challenge of climate change – standing up to one of the most powerful industries on the planet. The movement is incredibly diverse, composed of  coalfield residents, coal miners, climate scientists, religious leaders, students, academics, city slickers (such as myself) and many more from across the planet – all working together on the 80% solution.

This movement has seen crushing defeats along its journey, but has also garnished great triumphs. When feeling low, Nace’s narrative is a great resource to turn to. The environmental movement has the momentum. Climate Hope tells the story of when we fought King Coal and we won.

Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal by Ted Nace, published by Coal Swarm. $4.00

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 aren’t bound by the same duties that the Brazilians who live on the asphalt” — the “asphalt” being the area outside the hills where favelas in Rio are located. According to him, that’s why “removing is necessary.”

It’s a shame that Mezzomo isn’t willing to call what he defends by what it is: The violent expropriation of the favelas’ inhabitants of their legitimate property. Favelas are “irregular” only by a judicial formality. Outside a few efforts of urban regularization, favelados are still considered invaders and criminals almost by definition, although they homesteaded previously unowned and unused land.

That should explain why Mezzomo isn’t so anxious to leave his own house and go live in a favela, even though their dwellers are “superior citizens”: The truth is that there’s no privilege for those who live in the favelas. They are considered second class citizens, unworthy of basic guarantees, excluded from property rights and deprived of individual liberties.

Favela dwellers live with daily oppression by the police, with constant danger brought by drug dealers, with the threat of eviction (be it for “safety” reasons, against floods, for instance, or for urbanity reasons), with unhealthful environments (from trash and sewage), and with overall poor services. Living in favelas is clearly not the dream described by Mezzomo. Favelas don’t pay land tax, but I’m willing to bet few favelados consider the benefit worth the cost.

It’s symptomatic that Mezzomo mentioned the Tijuca neighborhood as an example of “devaluing” after the growth of favelas. Tijuca had been an upscale area, that decayed with the arrival of the favelas and, presumably, of the unwanted. The problem is that favelas, as irregular developments, are not a result of urban freedom, but rather the cruel consequence of years and years of violent intervention, urban zoning and the ban on the occupation of perfectly viable land.

The attempt to expropriate the poor who live in the favelas adds insult to injury, and is especially criminal because it removes citizens from the urban centers, where there are economic opportunities, and dislocates them to the periphery, far from the eyes and sensibilities of the rich.

For Mezzomo, “removals” are a taboo subject in Rio’s and Brazil’s politics. Complete lie. Removals are sanctioned and practiced as a consistent state policy, supported by the middle class. Evictions from the favelas are the modern enclosures.

In Rio, over 20,000 families have been evicted since 2009. It’s estimated that 250,000 people will be removed in preparations for the World Cup, though there are no precise data.

Minha Casa, Minha Vida program (“My House, My Life”), by the federal government, works diligently to enrich real estate developers and send the poor off to the urban outskirts.

I know I won’t convince the middle class or the rich with the above arguments, so I came up with a proposal that should make everyone happy: Let’s remove the rich and the middle class from the noble neighborhoods, put them on the periphery and give the poor their old houses and apartments in Leblon, Ipanema, and Copacabana. How about that?

In one of comedian Louis CK’s standup routines, he talks about the vile things that come out of his mouth directed at other drivers when he gets behind the wheel. “In what other scenario,” he asks, “would a person feel comfortable saying such foul things to others?” Put a little distance and a scrap of metal between him and the other drivers, though, and Louis CK becomes a monster hurling invectives at other people at will. Most of us have experienced the same sensation of being emboldened when behind the wheel, knowing that regardless of what we do or say the chances of ever having to see other drivers again are slim to none. CK’s bit is very funny, but it highlights a larger, more general problem – one that occurs when the consequences of one’s actions are not fully experienced by the actor. This chasm between the actor and the consequences of their actions is the defining characteristic of government, and is the antithesis of libertarianism.

Salon’s “Grow Up Libertarians,” like so many other popcorn critiques of libertarianism, would have you believe that “government is just the things we decide to do together.” A basic look at what some of those “things” are and how they are accomplished, however, tells us exactly the opposite.

From taxation to war, government carries out activities that, were each person directly responsible for them and the resulting consequences, would simply not get done. Like the driver separated by a few feet and a car capable of speeding away, most people go about their lives without much concern over what government does in their names on a day-to-day basis; government’s actions are simply too far removed, too remote, from our direct experiences of daily living. So how exactly does this government sleight of hand play out? It takes place in several, subtle ways, each one making government action a little bit more veiled to the common man.

Informational Block

Facts and details surrounding government action are always difficult to obtain and where they are available, they are usually hard to process in any meaningful sense. You can certainly review a federal highway program, if you are so inclined, but such things are measurable only by comparison to other previous highway projects. Furthermore, the sheer magnitude and complication of the available information about government programs puts them off limits to all but a few CBO bureaucrats. It is easier for the individual to simply give up and let government do what it will, effectiveness and accountability be damned. Other times, details surrounding government programs are purposely kept secret for the obvious reason that the truth about them would result in pushback. The result is the same. In both cases the individual lacks the requisite knowledge to make an informed decision about government.

Another example, few in the United States are aware of the details surrounding their government’s foreign drone bombing campaign being carried out in the Middle East and Africa. Of those who are at least aware of it, specific details remain unavailable, like the number of fatalities or the identities of the slain. For those who go so far as to educate themselves on the nitty-gritty details with what limited information is available, evaluation of the program is next to impossible. Reliance on second-hand sources, and even then usually only government or government-friendly sources, is the only means for assessment. There are a number of different informational blockages shrouding the U.S. government’s drone program, but this is not unique to drone warfare. There exist layers upon sub-layers of such informational blockage ingrained in all facets government, making it nearly impossible for individuals to evaluate any component part of it. The most an individual can do is gauge, on a very general level, whether his life and the world around him appears to have improved over a given number of years. What connection this quality of life assessment has to do government is totally uncertain.

Were Americans fully aware of the actual facts and statistics about war and other government programs, many of the programs would not live to see another day. Informational block is a difficult obstacle for individuals to overcome, but there are many private efforts at bringing transparency to government. Regardless of the success of these efforts, it is heartening to see that people are aware of the informational block. Some within the antiwar movement are doing yeoman’s work by trying to provide people with information about the aforementioned drone program, such as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, but unfortunately the informational block is only one type among many that prevents people from receiving true experience and all that comes with it.

Experiential Block

Continuing with the war example, another layer of removal occurs when third parties carry out the deadly attacks instead of citizens or politicians themselves. Consent for war would be far more difficult to obtain were citizens, the supposed beneficiaries of war, or the politicians ordering the killing, directly responsible for effecting their plans. Not only would large-scale war-making be a logistical nightmare for its masterminds and supporters if the burden of military service shifted to the actual people in whose name wars are fought, but so too would retaining the personnel to continue fighting over the long-term.

Government war-making is instead made easier by the fact that politicians have a professionalized, standing army ready to act on command – no thought or deliberation required. Troops are literally prepared to fight at a moment’s notice. Given this convenient arrangement, government can garner more support for its wars among the citizenry since it has a professional warrior-class ready to send off to battle. The cost of war ends up being externalized. Were warmongers forced to put their money where their mouth is, support for war would look quite different. American opposition to the Vietnam War was a stark example of what happens when the government enlists unwilling citizens to fight its battles.

But now that the United States government maintains an “all-volunteer” military, such obstacles as existed with the Vietnam War have supposedly been put to rest. Each and every soldier is said to be voluntarily committed to carrying out the government’s whims. Common sense tells us what a farce this is – how many soldiers would remain after one tour of duty in places like Iraq or Afghanistan if they were truly voluntary, at-will employees?

The US’s current drone war is the quintessential fully-removed-from direct-experience-war. With drone warfare, the United States government has attempted to sanitize war for its citizens and troops alike. With no body bags returning home as a result of drone warfare, there need not be any concern about its other consequences. Drone pilots are said to have an easier go of it than traditional fighter pilots since they work from the controlled confines of an office.

But despite the government’s attempt at a “cleaner” and more palatable form of war – that is, one that is shielded by an experiential block on several levels – seeds of dissent over the drone war are sprouting up everywhere. Even the drone pilots have not been insulated from the anguish and horror of war, as the government had hoped. For many of these pilots, basic human empathy still manages to trump the government’s attempted experiential block. But strong experiential blocks still remain whenever war is removed by any degree from the people who create it (politicians) and those who financially support it (citizens). This is by no means a call to return to the draft. It is simply pointing out the subtle way in which governments makes war possible.

Economic Block

There is yet another important layer of removal that takes place when government acts – the economic block. Taxation, the government’s main source of revenue, occurs on a massive and impersonal level. The federal government’s financial arm, the IRS, siphons off people’s incomes in amounts it deems necessary to fund all of its activities, which are said to be tacitly endorsed by citizens through their casting of ballots. While taxation occurs in many other forms separate and apart from the income tax, the bottom line is that none of these other varieties of taxation are voluntary either. Meaning that taxpayers do not have a choice in their government’s activities. If the relationship between government and citizen were one of true agency, each government action would require actual approval and funding. Such a principal-agent relationship, while not necessarily direct experience, would at least move government action one step closer to the goal of direct experience.

Given the choice to fund or not fund warfare in far-off lands from their own incomes, few would actually choose the affirmative. Presented with a checklist of government programs which they could fund with the fruits of their own labor, the reality is that the farthest away, most remote government activities would be the first to fall by the wayside. But given the economic block that separates people’s tax dollars from the programs they fund, individuals are unable to itemize government programs for evaluation the way they might with a hired contractor building their home.

In an ideal world, supporters of war would be forced to justify their overseas ambitions, and then raise funds for them directly. Such an arrangement would undoubtedly attract much less support – some would object on moral grounds, others for financial reasons. And few among the war-supporters would be willing to personally haul the unwilling opposition off to prison for their refusal to comply with revenue raising efforts. The experiential block frees war-supporters from ever having to consider such a wild scenario.

Communication Only Possible Between Equals

Writer and philosopher Robert Anton Wilson said that “communication is only possible between equals.” By this, Wilson meant that accurate feedback is blunted where relationships of authority exist. The feedback that exists in any authoritarian relationship tends to be of the type that merely confirms what the authority figure wishes to hear. Conversely, libertarianism can be said to be “seeing what men are really are comfortable with”. In libertarianism, lines of communication occur on an even plane, and the direct experience that comes with such communication tells communities what does and what does not have collective support. Take away the facade of government and the various “blocks” that come with it and individuals are forced to confront their consciences.

Libertarianism seeks to make decision-making decentralized, ideally down to the point of the individual making all of his or her own decisions. It is a philosophy of true personal responsibility, not the phony kind bandied about by politicians and preachers. Real, true experiential decision-making for people, and the trial and error process that comes with it, is what libertarianism is all about.

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 paid a deposit on and could return for a refund of that deposit … yeah, I’m old), point it at the “enemy,” shoot.

Apparently these “homemade guns” weren’t very dangerous. I don’t remember hearing of any serious injuries in the “bottle rocket wars,” though I don’t doubt there were some, somewhere. But other “homemade guns” certainly existed. Harlan Ellison describes “zip guns” made from car antennas or coffee percolator tubing in his non-fiction New York City gang life memoir, Memos from Purgatory (I wonder if Ellison ever gets the credit he deserves for foreshadowing Hunter S. Thompson’s breakout book, Hell’s Angels?). I once saw a demonstration of a “one-shot field-expedient shotgun” made from an old Sears catalog, a rubber band, a nail and a shotgun shell.

All of this is just to establish that there’s nothing new about non-traditional manufacture of firearms by individuals. Ever since we’ve had guns, we’ve had homemade guns.

3D printing just makes it easier. A LOT easier. Easier all the time.

It’s only been about a year since Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed debuted the “Liberator,” a single-shot, .380-caliber, 3D-printed pistol, releasing the plans for it “into the Internet wild.”

Within weeks, as Andy Greenberg of Wired reports, enthusiasts were designing and producing multi-shot .38 pistols. Recently Japanese freedom fighter Yoshitomo Imura was arrested with (allegedly) a 3D-printed six-shot revolver. It appears that fully automatic weapons (or conversion parts for existing guns) are out there for the printing.

It’s time to repeat, with emphasis, what Cody Wilson told the world a year ago when he rolled the Liberator out:

“Gun control” is over.

It’s done.

It’s as dead as music copyright, and for the same reason: Advancing technology has taken the matter out of the hands of government regulators and their privileged industry monopolists.

Nobody has to like it.

That’s how it is whether anyone likes it or not.

Personally, I like it. If there are going to be guns — and there ARE going to be guns — I’d rather they were easily available to regular people than only to state military and law enforcement agents, violent criminals (but I repeat myself) and those who curry state privilege. In America, the statistics seem to indicate that violent crime goes down, not up, in environments of easier gun availability and fewer legal restrictions.

“An armed society is a polite society,” wrote science fiction master Robert A. Heinlein in 1942. That makes sense to me, but even if he was wrong, I’d rather go armed than unarmed in an impolite society. Everyone with access to modern technology — not just in the United States but everywhere — now has that choice.

A new, free society is building itself in the shell of the dying authoritarian society. Technologies of abundance, with all those technologies imply, are an inescapable feature of that new, free society. The sooner you begin availing yourself of your continuously expanding options, the faster and less violent the transition will be.

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 state of Minas Gerais will cover any losses in their business up to $1.7 million. In 2013, the consortium had losses every month of the year and the state footed the bill, giving them over 20 million dollars to secure corporate profits.

The government is generally not as straightforward in trying to protect corporations from losses. It seems that this time, the state didn’t try to be very roundabout and just funneled money directly from the pockets of the tax-paying poor to those of the tax-eating rich.

The consortiums that control other World Cup stadiums have similar sweetheart deals, with “investment” money generously coming from BNDES, the largest tool of upward wealth transfer in Brazil. President Dilma Rousseff appears frequently on TV to assure us that the total spent on stadiums was “only” $4 billion, whereas total overall is around $11.5 billion, most of which should actually be “recouped” by the public, because they were “loans.”

Rouseff forgot to account for subsidies and concession contracts. She also forgot to account for evictions and urban make-up projects intended to hide our poor from fearful tourists. Not to mention the cost of the police state that has wreaked havoc since the World Cup and the Olympics were announced to be held in Brazil.

We’re less than a month from the World Cup and yet we see few flags hanging from windows, few paintings of the tournament’s mascot on walls. The announcement of the national team was met with little anticipation or surprise, and very little positive speech is heard about the championship at all.

Protests and criticisms have abounded, however, culminating on May 15 in the International Day of World Cup Resistance (15M). People took to the streets in many Brazilian capitals, accompanied by teachers, public transportation workers and, in Pernambuco, police strikes. Also worthy of note was the manifestation of the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST), comprised of people who have the biggest reasons to complain: The World Cup caps off a model of urban development that evicts the poor from the city centers and pushes the value of their labor even lower.

The government, as always, tries to paint the Worker’s Party (PT) administration as the halcyon days of neverending development, but the honeymoon is over. No matter who conquers the World Cup, the real winner is corporate capitalism.

Nothing illustrates this better than the gentrification of Maracana stadium, once a hub for the people, but now a place attended exclusively by the elite, where fans are supposed to watch the game sitting down, taking off your jersey is forbidden, fireworks are “unsafe” and the flags you take are strictly regulated according to FIFA’s rulebook. If not even soccer is like we used to do it, we can only ask the biggest question from 15M: World Cup for whom?

Gary Chartier returns to the Tom Woods Show to sort out a current controversy among libertarians.

“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 the hook of talks at last week’s 33rd International Space Development Conference, have to do with the existing treaty framework between nation-states, prohibiting national territorial claims in space but not addressing the growing “private sector” space movement. In order for space settlements to proceed apace, Koebler posits, “[T]he [US] State Department or some other national body is going to have to strike a deal with other nations — and other nations that want to do this are going to have to strike a deal with us.”

But Koebler’s concerns are, in a word, irrelevant as regards both government and “private sector” space colonization plans.

The states most likely to lead the way into space on a permanent habitation basis — the US, Russia and China — are de facto superpowers who won’t think twice about abrogating the 1967 Outer Space Treaty or other agreements the instant they see advantages in doing so. And the corporations planning “private sector” projects will almost certainly leverage the protection of the states from which they operate to proceed equally unfettered.

What I find more promising, though, are the likely outcomes once humans have established permanent habitations off of Earth. “[T]here is enough wiggle-room in the language of the treaty that spacefaring nations can sign memoranda of understanding with each other to allow specific commercial activities,” writes Koebler. But there’s a lot more wiggle room in space itself to get away from nation-state memoranda and corporate “human resource” policies.

It’s likely that both Earthbound nation-states and corporations will encourage the populations of habitations far from Earth to become self-sufficient as quickly as possible. It’s neither cheap nor trivial to ferry people and supplies back and forth between Earth and low orbit or the Moon, let alone Mars or the moons of Jupiter or Saturn.

And the instant those off-world habitations are self-sufficient — that is, once they are capable of providing their own shelter, air and air pressure, food and water without depending on the long and tenuous tether to Earth — odds are they will begin to feel limited (at MOST) obligations to their previous  nation-states or corporate bosses and will start doing … well, whatever they damn well please.

They won’t be smack up against other societies contending with them for scarce resources, at least not for awhile. Nor will their old political and corporate bosses have the means to enforce any discipline upon them which they consider inimical to their own prosperity. They will feel free to innovate and to invent new modes of social organization, or to give second tries to old ones which failed on Earth the first time around.

The distance between Jolly Old England and its 13 American colonies in 1775, and George III’s ultimate failure to impose his will upon those colonies, is instructive … and that distance pales next to the distances involved in space colonization and the means of transportation available. The long arm of Earth law will not be able to effectively reach them. And that means there will be no “space colonies” absent the ongoing consent of the colonists.

In the military, we learn to leave no one behind. Whatever the cost, whatever the situation, everyone comes home: unharmed, wounded, or dead. The importance of this principle is drilled into us from the very beginning of basic training, when our PT formations loop around to pick up those who fall out and the entire platoon is late if one individual is late. We are taught this ideal because thousands of years of experience teaches that a cohesive unit, with each member trusting in and looking after the others, is more effective in combat. That lesson is only taught because it helps us serve them better, not because our masters actually believe in such a lofty ideal. We are disposable.

In Phoenix and most likely elsewhere, the VA health care system has been leaving veterans to die while awarding bonuses to those perpetrating the neglect. The VA has always been an awkward problem for the US government. Promising to care for veterans for the rest of their lives is a key recruiting point, but actually spending the money to provide that care does not pad Lockheed and Raytheon’s bottom lines as much as building ships that don’t sail and planes that don’t fly. But now, in our new age of access and transparency, keeping the dirty secrets of the VA has become nearly impossible.

But should we exert ourselves to “fix” the VA? Is it worth our time? No. The VA is a Potemkin village, a recruiting tool used to assure naïve young men and women that their damaged bodies and ravaged minds will be cared for after their time in uniform. The degree to which it can perform this function while simultaneously minimizing the amount of actual care provided is the true measure of the VA’s success, and why VA reform is doomed from the outset.

But those lessons we learned in boot camp aren’t completely worthless. While many veterans fall on hard times, others of our number do well for ourselves, and if we apply the “No One Left Behind” ethos to our civilian lives, we can perhaps someday dispense with the VA entirely while simultaneously forming a mutual aid network that could be a kernel for a future free society.

Numerous Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs) already exist, but far too many are focused on lobbying the government for more aid for veterans. Rather than follow their lead, we should look to the great work being done at the Under the Hood Café, Coffee Strong and similar GI Coffeehouses around the country and world. These institutions serve as focal points for the wider community, bringing veterans and their families together, allowing them to lean on each other and benefit from each other’s strength. Expanding on this network and looking after one another in civilian life the way we did in uniform is the real path to fixing the problems we face.

David Stockman discusses how the Vietnam War led to the war in Afghanistan and other wars today.

Justin Raimondo discusses the troubling return of nationalism.

Jayel Aheram discusses how Malala Yousafzai is being used as a puppet for imperialism.

Philip Giraldi discusses torture, the Senate, and the CIA.

Conor Friedersdorf discusses how No Place to Hide is a conservative critique of a radical NSA.

Alexander Reid Ross discusses drones over Nigeria.

Ramzy Baroud discusses what the media is not telling us about Yemen.

Peter Lee discusses local nationalism and big bullies.

Andrew Levine discusses the Cold War Obama-style.

Franklin Lamb discusses Palestinian refugees coming from Syria to Lebanon.

Alyssa Rohricht discusses the mantra of the NSA.

Medea Benjamin discusses the promotion resulting from killing a 16 year old via drone.

Jeff Ricketson discusses fractal libertarianism.

Pepe Escobar discusses the pivot to Eurasia.

Roderick Long discusses strong words and large letters.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses the FBI, NSA, and reforms.

Shikha Dalmia discusses why Muslim bashing by Bill Mahr is uncool.

Matthew M. Robare discusses Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky speaking together.

J.D. Tuccille discusses the late R.J. Rummel’s work on death from government.

Brian Dohetry discusses Robert Sarvis.

Paul Hein discusses the irrelevance of government.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses why conservatives are doomed.

Lawrence Samuels discusses Mussolini’s place on the left-right political spectrum.

Alex R. Knight III discusses defending the state.

Jacob G. Hornberger and Sheldon Richman present The Libertarian Angle.

Margaret Kimberly discusses the situation in Nigeria.

Wendy Call discusses how the War on Drugs destroys lives.

Eric Margolis discusses the bridge that began the Great War.

Ernst Gruenfeld beats the great Alexander Alekhine.

Ernst Gruenfeld draws with David Janowski

In a post at the Students For Liberty (SFL) blog, (“Between Radicalism and Revolution: The Cautionary Tale of Students for a Democratic Society,” May 6), Clark Ruper uses the example of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) as a warning against factionalism and division within the libertarian movement. The libertarian movement, he says, should be united on a broad common agenda that appeals to as many people as possible — one that focuses on the “most important” issues like fighting corporatism and foreign interventionism and protecting civil liberties. Ruper seems to focus mainly on anarchists, revolutionaries, social justice advocates and left-libertarians as the sources of potential schism. And he makes it clear that his post was motivated, in large part, by recent controversies over the “thick libertarianism” or “non-brutalism” endorsed (among others) by Roderick Long and Charles Johnson, Gary Chartier, Sheldon Richman and Jeffrey Tucker:

Some argue that “real” libertarianism or an improved libertarianism must also include anarchism, or progressivism, or critical race theory, or any number of perspectives….

For us today, it often seems that libertarianism is not enough; what we really need is left-anarchism or thick libertarianism or non-brutalist libertarianism or any number of camps out there.

In response Jeff Ricketson at the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) (“Radicalism as Revolution: A Call for a Fractal Libertarianism,” May 18) has challenged Ruper’s call for monolithic unity and instead praised fractalism as a positive good:

What he should have called for is a libertarianism united under the common banner of freedom, with passionate, friendly discussion on the issues therein, and a fractal nesting of smaller, more specialized groups.

Fractalism and specialization, he says, are good because they increase the agility, resilience and adaptability of the larger movement in the face of change.

And this is quite true. It’s hard for libertarian activists working in specific communities to relate basic libertarian values to the particular needs and life situations of the people they’re working with, if they have to clear everything with the agenda approval authorities at Party Central Headquarters.

I myself, along with others at C4SS, have come under criticisms similar to those of Ruper for what our critics see as excessive attention to social justice concerns. They say we have lost our rightful focus on the “real” issues, the “big stuff” — like the corporate state, economics, class, war and civil liberties. Instead we have been distracted by “Political Correctness” and “Identity Politics.” We should stick to a simple, common libertarian agenda with broad appeal, limiting our focus to those “important issues” and avoid saying anything that might alienate white cultural conservatives who agree with us on the economic stuff.

Of course this is ironic, given that much of this hand-wringing over narrow, “inflammatory” agendas that might alienate someone in Flyover Country comes from a “pan-secessionist” movement that welcomes neo-Nazis and national anarchists, and whose leader called for purging the anarchist movement of LGBT activists. So apparently alienating the Chick-fil-A and Duck Dynasty crowds who wallow in their own sense of victimhood is a big no-no, but not showing support for gay or transgender people who are genuinely victimized every day by structural injustice isn’t so bad.

In any case, calls for One Big Movement, united around a simple common platform with the broadest possible appeal, are fundamentally wrong-headed. This is essentially the same argument that the old establishment Left — some of whom proudly call themselves “verticalists” — have made against the horizontalist direction the Occupy movement has taken. It’s the standard patronizing criticism from managerial-centrists in the liberal and “Progressive” community:

Appoint leaders and adopt a platform!

The thing is, Occupy came very close to doing that. The people from Adbusters and New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts who showed up at the early planning gatherings were all set to agree on One Big Demand for their common agenda, appoint public spokespersons, and all the rest. Had they done so, Occupy would have been another flash-in-the-pan movement that disappeared from the news in a few days. But David Graeber and a handful of other horizontalists — Wobblies and veterans of the Seattle movement — coalesced into an opposition group that quickly replaced the establishment people as the dominant culture within Occupy.

Instead of adopting an official leadership and agenda, Graeber and the horizontalists chose to follow the loosely networked model of the M15 movement in Spain. Instead of one common demand, or a short platform with a few key points, they decided to center their message on the “We are the 99%” meme — in loose opposition to things like the power of corporations and banks over the state, neoliberalism, imperialism, etc. — and let the various subgroups, communities and individuals that made up the broader movement set their own agendas relating their particular needs and concerns to that broader theme.

In other words, Occupy didn’t have a platform — it was a platform. It was a ready-made toolkit, brand and library of imagery and slogans to be used and adapted to the specific needs and agenda of any group that shared the general opposition to neoliberalism and the power of finance-capital.

Both Ruper and the center-left critics of Occupy are appealing to an outmoded mid-20th century organizational model. In this model, celebrated by Joseph Schumpeter and John Kenneth Galbraith, industrial production required large, hierarchical, capital-intensive organizations that possessed economies of scale and extensive divisions of labor, and were governed by Weberian-Taylorist work rules, job descriptions and “best practices.” And agitating for political change was a function that required large size, capital and hierarchy just like GM, GE and all those industrial dinosaurs.

But guess what? Those industrial dinosaurs are obsolete. They are doomed. And their organizational model, and all who follow it, are likewise doomed. Technological changes have destroyed the material basis for most hierarchical institutions and caused capitalization requirements for duplicating their functions to implode. Cheap micromanufacturing tools, desktop technology that outperforms the work previously done by publishing houses and music studios, and networked many-to-many communications with virtually zero transaction costs, have enabled individuals and small horizontally organized peer groups to do things that previously required powerful institutions in giant glass and steel buildings, full of thousands of drones in cubicles, run by a bunch of men in suits at mahogany desks on the top floor.

The dominant economic and organizational paradigm today is networked, horizontal — stigmergic. It’s the organizational model of movements ranging from Wikipedia and the file-sharing movement to Anonymous and Al Qaeda. In this model, everything is done by individuals or small self-selected affinity groups united around many different agendas. Everything is done by the individual or small group most interested and motivated to do it, most qualified to do it, without waiting for anyone’s permission. And rather than “detracting” from some common mission, the contributions of the individuals and affinity groups are synergistic and mutually reinforcing. In file-sharing networks, when anyone cracks the DRM in a song or movie, it immediately becomes the common property of the whole network. When a new and improved IED is developed by a cell in Al Qaeda Iraq, it can be immediately adopted by any other cell that finds it useful — or left alone by any cell that does not. A stigmergic network is the ultimate in Hayekian distributed knowledge.

We no longer need to aggregate ourselves into large institutions in order to accomplishing anything, or get everybody together on the same page before anyone is allowed to take a step. The activists are already doing it themselves. What they need is simple: support and solidarity. They can decide for themselves what is important to the communities they are part of and work with, and how the broader libertarian agenda relates specifically to them. And meanwhile any of the rest of us can do the same with our own local concerns, while wishing our comrades well in the other sub-movements and offering them solidarity and support whenever we are in a position to do so.

All this means that it is totally unnecessary — not that it ever was necessary — for those seeking gender or racial justice to throw themselves under the bus and support the common economic-class agenda “Until After the Revolution” or “For the Good of the Party.” In fact it is counterproductive. The kind of forced unity and subordination to “important” issues that Ruper advocates is, paradoxically, the one way guaranteed to foster discord and division.

Based on my own conversations with friends, I think it’s pretty clear this tendency to subordinate “divisive” (race and gender) issues to the “important” (politics and economics) stuff is the main reason libertarianism and anarchism are perceived by women, LGBT people and People of Color as the province of “white anarchist dudebros.”

I’ve seen the same thing in online establishment liberal circles of the sort that call themselves “Pragmatic Progressives” (and are derided by others as Obots) and use the #UniteBlue hashtag. No matter what the issue — Obama’s use of drones to murder innocent civilians, NSA surveillance, corporate collusion in drafting the TPP — their standard responses are “So would you rather Romney was in office?” or “How will this affect Hillary Clinton’s chances in 2016?” This kind of cynical opportunism at the expense of the needs of real human beings is ugly — wherever we find it.

If this forced unity around the “real” issues fosters division and resentment, then the way to foster unity is to actively address and take into account the specific interests and needs of different segments of the population. The practice of intersectionality — that is, taking into account the way different forms of oppression like class, race, gender, etc. oppression mutually reinforce each other and differentially affect different subgroups within activist movements — was not developed for the sake of a “more oppressed than you” competition. It was developed precisely in order to prevent internal fracturing of racial justice movements along class and gender lines, feminism along class and race lines, etc., by being mindful of the special needs of the least privileged within each movement.

If you want to see what happens to a movement that focuses on the “important” (economic) stuff without regard to intersectional issues, just look at the sharecroppers’ unions in the 1930s, that split into separate black and white movements — separately defeated — thanks to COINTELPRO-style efforts by the planter class to exploit racial divisions among the membership. Or you could take a look at the typical mainstream gathering and take note of how many attendees are white males, and ask yourself why the One Big Movement is so unappealing to the majority of the population who are women and People of Color.

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 levels. Although total collapse will probably take 200 years or more, the loss of the whole sheet could bring the total sea rise to between 14 and 17 feet — over and above previous predictions, which assumed the western sheet would remain intact. In California alone, this would put LAX, the San Francisco airport and the San Onofre nuclear plant underwater, according to governor Jerry Brown. North America is entering its third summer in a row of extreme drought — the worst in centuries in the southwest US.

Meanwhile, Harvard Ph.D. student Vanessa Williamson suggests Tea Partiers are skeptical of anthropogenic climate change because of two beliefs: “First, the coastal elite looks down on people in Middle America; second, the government wants to exert ever-more control, and will use any pretext to do it.” The goal of the “global warming hoax,” Tea Partiers believe, is “to undo the American way of life — big cars, big homes, suburban sprawl — and make the heartland look more like the coasts” (Christopher Flavelle, “Climate Change is Stuck in the Culture War,” BloombergView, May 9).

What’s most striking is the belief that the Middle American lifestyle of SUVs, split-level ranches in cul-de-sacs, strip malls and Big Box stores is some sort of spontaneously emergent behavior in the free market, and that this could only be “undone” through increased government control. The truth is just the opposite.

Car Culture and the sprawl lifestyle was created by massive government intervention and only survives from massive ongoing government intervention. It lives, moves and has its being in big government. Local governments subsidize freeways from general revenues and get still more subsidies in the form of federal grants. Government — in cahoots with the local real estate industry — uses eminent domain to bulldoze low-income neighborhoods for new freeways. Building codes mandate giant golf-course front lawns. Zoning laws criminalize mixed-use development, corner groceries and affordable walk-up apartments downtown. Downtown gentrification projects replace large amounts of nearby housing with mandated parking, make much more of housing unaffordable to original residents, and destroy small businesses that previously served the ordinary daily needs of the surrounding neighborhood instead of out-of-town yuppies.

Federal government created and continues to heavily subsidize the Interstate Highway System, without which the Walmart “warehouses on wheels” logistics system that destroyed Main Street couldn’t exist (and, oddly enough, the Red State politicians who are most vocal about “big gummint leaving us alone” are also likely to see their main job as bringing home federal highway pork for the Chamber of Commerce). Government uses eminent domain to steal farms and Native American territories protected by treaty for pipelines. It sets liability caps for oil spills. Its courts, from the mid-19th century on, have weakened the earlier strict tort liability standards for corporate malfeasance (like pollution from fracking and mountaintop removal).

And don’t forget the murderous wars the US fights and the costly military establishment it maintains to keep fuel cheap. It’s amazing how many recent wars to “defend our freedom” involved creating military bases and installing puppet regimes around the Caspian Sea or Persian Gulf oil basins. By far the biggest portion of America’s “defense” [sic, sic, SICK] budget goes to maintaining a Navy of 11 Carrier Strike Groups, whose main purpose is to subsidize shipping via oil tanker and container ships by keeping the sea lanes open at general taxpayer expense (Adam Smith observed over 200 years ago that merchant shipping itself should justly bear the cost of its own protection).

Add to all this the fact that Red States are mostly net tax consumers. Their regional economies are dominated by military bases, military industries or extractive industries (mining, logging, fossil fuels, ranching) that are heavily subsidized by the federal government. So what Red Staters call “the American way of life” is nothing but corporate welfare, and the SUV and monster truck are its poster children.

The implications are obvious. Climate change is not something for the government to combat by prohibiting or taxing various activities that contribute to CO2 emissions. Just the contrary: The best way to combat anthropogenic global warming is for government to stop doing stuff like actively subsidizing or mandating sprawl, subsidizing long-distance shipping and transportation, and subsidizing energy consumption. Government is the problem, not the solution.

This week marks the 2014 National Week of Action Against Incarcerating Youth. Across the country, actions will be held to protest everything from the criminalization of queer and disabled youth to the isolation of youth in solitary confinement. Ultimately, what activists are protesting is systematic child abuse by the state.

Kids are being locked in cages by the government all across the country. The consequences are devastating. According to a report from the Justice Policy Institute:

A recent literature review of youth corrections shows that detention has a profoundly negative impact on young people’s mental and physical well-being, their education, and their employment. One psychologist found that for one-third of incarcerated youth diagnosed with depression, the onset of the depression occurred after they began their incarceration, and another suggests that poor mental health, and the conditions of confinement together conspire to make it more likely that incarcerated teens will engage in suicide and self-harm. Economists have shown that the process of incarcerating youth will reduce their future earnings and their ability to remain in the workforce, and could change formerly detained youth into less stable employees. Educational researchers have found that upwards of 40 percent of incarcerated youth have a learning disability, and they will face significant challenges returning to school after they leave detention. Most importantly, for a variety of reasons to be explored, there is credible and significant research that suggests that the experience of detention may make it more likely that youth will continue to engage in delinquent behavior, and that the detention experience may increase the odds that youth will recidivate, further compromising public safety.

So the state is engaging in violence that scars young people physically and mentally, and hurts their economic prospects; and this practice may even increase rather than decrease the chance of future crime. Moreover, according to the same report, most of these youth are not even a threat to others, as “about 70 percent are detained for nonviolent offenses.”

Once incarcerated, youth are subjected to severe abuses. For example, many youth are isolated in solitary confinement, which is widely recognized as a form of psychological torture. According to the American Civil Liberties Union:

Solitary confinement can cause extreme psychological, physical, and developmental harm. For children, who are still developing and more vulnerable to irreparable harm, the risks are magnified – particularly for kids with disabilities or histories of trauma and abuse. While confined, children are regularly deprived of the services, programming, and other tools that they need for healthy growth, education, and development.

The impacts of solitary on adults are harmful enough. “It’s an awful thing, solitary,” wrote John McCain, “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” Subjecting youth to this kind of torture is monstrous.

Incarcerated youth are also all too often raped and sexually assaulted by guards. According to David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow, “4.5 percent of juveniles in prison and 4.7 percent of those in jail reported such [sexual] victimization—rates that ought to be considered disastrously high.” Their risk was higher in youth detention centers, “minors held in juvenile detention suffered sexual abuse at twice the rate of their peers in adult facilities.” Most of this abuse is committed by guards employed and paid with tax dollars:

Some 2.5 percent of all boys and girls in juvenile detention reported having been the victims of inmate-on-inmate abuse. This is not dramatically higher than the corresponding combined male and female rates reported by adults or juveniles in either prison or jail. The reason why the overall rate of sexual abuse (9.5 percent) was so much higher in juvenile detention than in other facilities is the frequency of sexual misconduct by staff. About 7.7 percent of those in juvenile detention reported sexual contact with staff during the preceding year. Over 90 percent of these cases involved female staff and teenage boys in custody.

Government employees are committing child sexual abuse against caged victims. These guards are often repeat offenders. “In juvenile facilities, victims of sexual misconduct by staff members were more likely to report eleven or more instances of abuse than a single, isolated occurrence.” All of this data comes from research conducted by the government’s own Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The impacts of the state’s systematic caging and abuse of children are not equally distributed across the population. The Center for Children’s Law and Policy documents many studies showing the racially disparate impacts of youth incarceration and juvenile justice policies. LGBTQ youth also face disproportionate impacts from the juvenile justice system. According to an article in The Nation:

The road to incarceration begins in pretrial detention, before the youth even meets a judge. Laws and professional standards state that it’s appropriate to detain a child before trial only if she might run away or harm someone. Yet for queer youth, these standards are frequently ignored. According to UC Santa Cruz researcher Dr. Angela Irvine, LGBT youth are two times more likely than straight youth to land in a prison cell before adjudication for nonviolent offenses like truancy, running away and prostitution. According to Ilona Picou, executive director of Juvenile Regional Services, Inc., in Louisiana, 50 percent of the gay youth picked up for nonviolent offenses in Louisiana in 2009 were sent to jail to await trial, while less than 10 percent of straight kids were. “Once a child is detained, the judge assumes there’s a reason you can’t go home,” says Dr. Marty Beyer, a juvenile justice specialist. “A kid coming into court wearing handcuffs and shackles versus a kid coming in with his parents—it makes a very different impression.”

Queer and transgender youth are treated differently by the justice system before they are even tried and convicted. Once incarcerated, they face brutal violence. From beatings to victim blaming to bigoted slurs from guards, queer and transgender youth are regularly abused in juvenile corrections facilities.

Some of America’s youth incarceration problem begins in the schools. “Zero-tolerance” policies in public schools criminalize violating school rules, producing what is often called the school to prison pipeline. The racially disparate impacts of this school to prison pipeline are well documented, and they often criminalize minor infractions.

Outside of school, youth are often directly targeted by police thanks to ageist laws like curfews. Laws often restrict freedom of movement and bodily autonomy for youth, and justify this coercion through condescending and paternalistic platitudes. In a particularly appalling recent case of paternalism sending youth to prison, a transgender girl was sent to an adult prison without charges or trial, because the state had power over her as her “guardian.” The desire to protect youth provides ideological cover for the state to treat them even more abusively than it treats adults.

The American state is uniquely punitive in some respects. According to Amnesty International, “The United States is believed to stand alone in sentencing children to life without parole.” Amnesty identifies “at least 2,500 people in the US serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for crimes committed when they were under 18 years old.” Before turning 18, these youth were permanently separated from society, permanently sent to violent hellholes.

The essence of imprisonment as we know it is throwing away a human being, treating them as disposable. Prisoners are subjected to violence, abuse, and torture. They are held in austere and inhumane conditions. And they are kept out of the general public’s sight. They are punished rather than being made to make amends or provide restitution to victims. It’s bad enough to treat any human being this way. To treat children this way is unconscionable. Stop caging kids.