If you use “thick libertarian” and “thin libertarian” to refer to individuals, you’re misunderstanding the terms. All libertarians are thin libertarians, and all libertarians are thick libertarians. Thin libertarianism is just the thin core that all libertarians agree on in so far as they’re libertarians, thick libertarianism is the additional beliefs that we add onto those in order to have a more full understanding of libertarianism. The view that only the “thin” aspects matter is itself a “thick” view, since the “thin” aspects don’t directly entail that.

Tentei encontrar um único, singelo e mísero exemplo de censura ou discriminação de conteúdo nos serviços de internet fornecidos atualmente no Brasil. Procurei casos em que os provedores estavam bloqueando acesso a sites específicos ou oferecendo planos mais caros para acesso a mais conteúdo. Por incrível que pareça, não encontrei.

Pensei que eu poderia estar fazendo algo de errado, porque, afinal, estou procurando na própria internet. Talvez o meu provedor de internet estivesse censurando minhas buscas e, ao digitar “censura por provedores de internet” no Google, o próprio provedor já poderia estar filtrando meus resultados. É possível que eu vivesse numa Matrix internética, tudo o que eu vejo é o que querem que eu veja e talvez eu nem me dê conta.

No entanto, eu consegui encontrar diversos usuários criticando o serviço do meu próprio provedor na internet. Aparentemente, meu provedor está falhando miseravelmente na sua tentativa de censurar os usuários. Também fui capaz de acessar sem problemas sites de empresas concorrentes e orçar seus serviços, que, em alguns casos, eram mais vantajosos para mim.

Impossível. Tentei entrar em sites que poderiam gerar algum desconforto ao meu provedor. Sites que defendem posições políticas radicais e fora do mainstream, por exemplo. Não tive problemas em acessar o C4SS. Minha barra de favoritos, composta de sites libertários e anarquistas, continua incólume.

Consigo ver e baixar vídeos, ouvir e baixar músicas. Sites de torrent continuam acessíveis; não podemos dizer que provedores de internet sejam muito simpáticos a eles. Mas continuam a um clique de distância no navegador. Não importa quais sites eu acesse e a quantidade de dados que eu baixe, continuo pagando a mesma tarifa mensalmente. Quem diria?

Eu não acreditei no que estava vendo, porque, pelo que me dizem, a internet deveria estar quase totalmente fechada para mim. Sem uma regulamentação de neutralidade da rede, os provedores cobram mais caro para acessar sites e podem até censurar o que eu posso ou não posso ver, de acordo com meu plano de dados.

É isso que Alessandro Molon, deputado do PT carioca, afirma. Segundo ele, sem a aprovação do Marco Civil para a internet, “quem hoje acessa de graça o Youtube vai ter que pagar mais para assistir vídeo, quem baixa música vai ter que pagar mais para baixar música“.

Por um minuto eu desejei muito que meu provedor cobrasse mais caro para eu assistir vídeos do Youtube, para que eu não tivesse acesso ao site e não tivesse que ouvir as mentiras ridículas de Alessandro Molon.

Porque toda a argumentação em favor do Marco Civil da Internet aprovado pela Câmara dos Deputados na última terça é baseada em mentiras, alarmismo e num impulso regulatório totalitário. A neutralidade da rede não passa de um chavão vazio.

Afinal, o governo alega que quer garantir a “liberdade” da internet no Brasil, que está ameaçada pelos provedores. Será?

O estado brasileiro é o segundo colocado em solicitações de retirada de conteúdo do Google. Não muito tempo atrás, era o líder. Recentemente, o Superior Tribunal de Justiça decidiu que qualquer “conteúdo ofensivo” deve ser retirado do Youtube.

Portanto, ônus de provar que a exigência governamental de neutralidade da rede vai aumentar nossa liberdade é de seus defensores.

Não há a menor necessidade de defender a internet desregulamentada das alucinações de Alessandro Molon e Jean Wyllys de que os provedores – e não o governo – estão prestes a cercear toda a liberdade que temos hoje em dia. É justamente o contrário.

O Marco Civil da Internet foi aprovado pela Câmara dos Deputados nesta terça-feira (15), sendo encaminhado para votação no Senado. Um dos principais pontos do projeto de lei 2.126/201 é assegurar a neutralidade da rede, impedindo que os provedores possam ofertar pacotes de conexão diferenciados – por exemplo, acesso por um preço mais baixo apenas para certos sites no celular e acesso ilimitado a qualquer site por um preço maior.

O discurso da neutralidade da rede é sedutor. Afinal, caso deixemos as empresas ofertarem pacotes de conexão diferenciados, as pessoas terão menos acesso à internet de forma ilimitada, por preços mais altos ou porque as empresas podem bloquear conteúdo de sites que consideram como concorrência. Por isso, seria necessário tratamento igualitário a todos os conteúdos na rede.

Contudo, essa defesa da obrigatoriedade da neutralidade da rede é uma distração do problema real.

Em um livre mercado, a neutralidade da rede tende a ser obtida pelo próprio processo de competição, mas sem desconsiderar a demanda pela não-neutralidade, onde, por exemplo, pessoas poderiam optar por acessar apenas e-mail, redes sociais e alguns sites específicos de seu celular pagando menos, ou grandes empresas que congestionam o tráfego de dados poderiam pagar mais de modo que os consumidores de menor tráfego não arquem com os custos dessa congestão.

Isso ocorre pela liberdade de escolha: se uma provedora não oferece pacotes de acesso neutro a um preço razoável, é possível migrar para outra, além de que isso cria incentivos para que concorrentes entrem no setor introduzindo inovações, que resultarão em um leque mais atraente de pacotes alternativos, inclusive para lidar com os problemas técnicos da congestão no tráfego de dados, entre outros.

O próprio projeto de lei reconhece que a neutralidade da rede não pode ser mantida a qualquer custo. E adivinhem de quem será o poder de determinar quando o benefício da neutralidade não valerá o seu preço?

§ 1º A discriminação ou degradação do tráfego será regulamentada nos termos das atribuições privativas do Presidente da República previstas no inciso IV do art. 84 da Constituição Federal, para a fiel execução desta Lei, ouvidos o Comitê Gestor da Internet e a Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações, e somente poderá decorrer de:

I – requisitos técnicos indispensáveis à prestação adequada dos serviços e aplicações; e

II – priorização a serviços de emergência.

Quem terá o poder de determinar quando a neutralidade da rede não deve ser seguida será o próprio estado, que, conforme a teoria da escolha pública nos ensina, não é nada neutro. A democracia representativa geralmente não funciona para o bem da maioria, mas sim em benefício de minorias bem organizadas, dentre elas constando as grandes corporações bem-conectadas politicamente, que podem investir em lobby para ajustar o a proporção entre neutralidade e não-neutralidade que acharem mais interessante.

Portanto, eis o que o Marco Civil da Internet não discutiu e que é o problema real: os impedimentos à livre entrada, permanência e saída nesse setor, além da falta de abertura à experimentação e à inovação, por conta da legislação e de outras deficiências institucionais.

Isso impede a determinação do equilíbrio ideal entre neutralidade e não-neutralidade para melhor satisfazer a demanda por serviços de internet em dado momento por meio da livre interação com os usuários, que são aqueles que sabem com maior exatidão o que é melhor para si mesmos. Essa negociação livre, inclusive, nem ao menos impõe custos sobre o resto da sociedade, ao contrário da nova legislação.

O Marco Civil da Internet só agravará problemas do mercado que já existe, ao apostar na neutralidade e dar poder ao governo de determinar o que significa de fato a “neutralidade”. Se as corporações controlam Brasília, dar mais poder ao governo é dar poder às corporações.

I promised myself that I would no longer comment on what Barack Obama has to say, because it’s just not worth the time and effort. Obama’s public remarks are comprehensible only if you keep one thing in mind: he, like other politicians, thinks most people are morons.

I am so appalled by what Obama said in Europe the other day, however, that I must break my promise. In his speech he said, regarding events in Crimea, that

Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy. Now, it is true that the Iraq War was a subject of vigorous debate not just around the world, but in the United States as well. I participated in that debate and I opposed our military intervention there. But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future.

It is hard to believe that a presidential speechwriter could manage to pack so many lies into so few sentences. But the speechwriter could only compose the sentences. Obama chose to deliver them, and for that, he should be indicted for gross deception with malice aforethought. (Need I say this is not unique to Obama? Virtually all politicians are demagogues. Obama’s distinguishing trait is his smoothness.)

Let us count the lies.

The Iraq War was a subject of vigorous debate not just around the world, but in the United States as well.

Note he did not say “honest debate,” for how honest can a debate be when the government fills the mostly willing media with lies about WMD and suggestions that Saddam Hussein was connected to the attacks on 9/11? Every top member of the Bush administration having anything to do with “national security” lied to the public at one time or another. People who questioned the “slam-dunk” intelligence were dismissed as pusillanimous or soft on Saddam. If that counts as open debate, then there is no difference between the Bush administration and any outright autocratic regime.

America sought to work within the international system.

Really? In terms of international law, Bush was not allowed to launch a war against Iraq, which had threatened no one, until he secured another resolution from the Security Council (the 18th or 2nd, depending on how you count). That resolution was proposed but then withdrawn when Bush realized it would be vetoed. So he ignored the UN rules, which prohibit launching a war unless it’s in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council, and invaded on his own say-so, after Congress rubberstamped his discretionary “authorization for the use of military force.” Yes, he dragged some other governments’ forces along for cover, the so-called Coalition of the Willing, 3 members of which — out of 48 — actually sent some troops. (The Bush administration was good at coming up with Orwellian names for things.)

We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain.

No, they didn’t, but in many respects the Bush administration sure tried. America’s savvy rulers long ago realized that old-style empire building was passé. Subjugated populations wouldn’t stand for it, and that raised the already considerable costs of empire maintenance. So a new, softer imperialism was born. No more annexations. No more UN mandates or protectorates. No more de jure colonies. But this says nothing about de facto control, which was the Bush regime’s objective in Iraq from Day One.

The presumptuous whiz-kid bureaucrats sent in after Saddam fell were armed with plans to remake Iraq right down to its traffic lights and flag. The oil resources were to be “privatized” and parceled out to crony American companies. (Remember the promises that oil revenues would pay for the costly war? Didn’t happen.)

Billions of dollars ostensibly spent to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed by American bombers (beginning in 1991) ended up lining the pockets of contractors, subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors (ad infinitum) — with little to show for it. Iraqis to this day suffer from inadequate public services like water, electricity, sewerage, and medical care.

The Bush administration also expected to have some three dozen permanent military bases (with lots of American firms granted lucrative business concessions), and an embassy the size of the Vatican.

Few of these plans came to fruition — but only because Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who wasIran’s handpicked candidate for prime minister, wouldn’t permit it. To be sure, the U.S. government did not gain territory or grab resources — but not for lack of trying.

We ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future.

The war indeed ended in 2011. But let’s not forget that before (most of) the troops left, Obama begged al-Maliki to let U.S. forces stay beyond the deadline set in the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Al-Maliki — who didn’t need the United States when he had Iran in his corner — demanded conditions so unacceptable to Obama that most forces were withdrawn as scheduled. (SOFA was signed by Bush, but that doesn’t stop Obama from claiming credit for “ending the war.”) The U.S. government continues to finance, arm, and train al-Maliki’s military, which represses the minority Sunni population.

What was left to Iraq’s people was a catastrophe, as already indicated. Peter Van Buren, a State Department officer who oversaw reconstruction in two eastern Iraqi provinces, calls the Iraq War “the single worst foreign policy decision in American history.” There can hardly be a better example of blind ambition. Take the deadly siege of Fallujah in 2004. Journalist Dahr Jamail writes,

According to the Bush administration at the time, the siege of Fallujah was carried out in the name of fighting something called “terrorism” and yet, from the point of view of the Iraqis I was observing at such close quarters, the terror was strictly American. In fact, it was the Americans who first began the spiraling cycle of violence in Fallujah when U.S. troops from the 82nd Airborne Division killed 17 unarmed demonstrators on April 28th of the previous year outside a school they had occupied and turned into a combat outpost. The protesters had simply wanted the school vacated by the Americans, so their children could use it. But then, as now, those who respond to government-sanctioned violence are regularly written off as “terrorists.” Governments are rarely referred to in the same terms.

The architects of the catastrophe had a plan, and the welfare of Iraqis would not be allowed to get in their way. As Van Buren points out,

All that was needed [the Americans thought] was a quick slash into Iraq to establish a permanent American military presence in the heart of Mesopotamia. Our future garrisons there could obviously oversee things, providing the necessary muscle to swat down any future destabilizing elements. It all made so much sense to the neocon visionaries of the early Bush years. The only thing that Washington couldn’t imagine was this: that the primary destabilizing element would be us.

The invasion unleashed a conflagration of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiites, unseen during Saddam’s tenure and consciously facilitated by the U.S. government. Most Sunnis were cleansed from Baghdad. Countless were killed and maimed; millions more became refugees. The fire burns out of control to this day, fueled by the oppression and corruption of al-Maliki, who’s earned the moniker “the Shia Saddam.” Van Buren writes,

As part of the breakdown, desperate men [in the Bush administration], blindsided by history, turned up the volume on desperate measures: torture, secret gulags, rendition, drone killings, extra-constitutional actions at home. The sleaziest of deals were cut to try to salvage something….

The mind boggles at the sheer evil the Americans, who expected gratitude, did there. The result? Van Buren notes:

Even the usually sunny Department of State advises American travelers to Iraq that US citizens “remain at risk for kidnapping … [as] numerous insurgent groups, including Al Qaida, remain active” and notes that “State Department guidance to US businesses in Iraq advises the use of Protective Security Details.”

That is what has been left to the Iraqi people by the benevolent power of the United States of America. As for the U.S. government’s respect for Iraq’s sovereignty, the Obama administration is pressuring al-Maliki to stop allowing Iraq’s ally Iran to fly through Iraqi airspace to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his civil war. So much for Iraqi sovereignty.

This highlights just one of the many absurd features of U.S. policy (if you can call it that): while Obama helps al-Maliki fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, the United States also helps al-Qaeda affiliates fight Assad in Syria. (For the record, al-Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq before Bush invaded.) Again, the mind boggles.

The upshot is that one need not condone Vladimir Putin’s ham-handedness to see that Obama has no leg to stand on when he contrasts Russia’s essentially bloodless and provokedannexation of Crimea with America’s unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq. Unfortunately, the Americans who committed this cold-blooded mass murder and societal destruction are less likely to face justice than Putin is for his crimes in, say, Chechnya.

(Thanks to Scott Horton for his helpful suggestions.)

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, O conto de fadas iraquiano de Obama.

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

This is perhaps nowhere as true as with factory farming and genetically modified crops. For example, Ron Bailey at Reason regularly defends these things against organic farming and sustainable agriculture advocates, and other supposedly “statist” enemies on the Left.

But in fact it’s hard to be more statist than the agribusiness interests themselves. The so-called “Monsanto Protection Act” — actually a rider attached to a farm bill last year — provides that unless and until the Secretary of Agriculture makes a regulatory decree against Monsanto’s genetically modified crops, courts will be prohibited from issuing injunctions against the planting and distribution of such crops based on tort litigation against them. Companies like Monsanto  regularly, repeatedly and consistently push to prohibit food producers or grocers from advertising products as GMO-free, on the grounds that such advertising amounts to disparagement of genetically modified crops by implication, when — according to the industry — “sound science” shows that GMO crops are just as safe as non-GMO ones (a claim, by the way, that Bailey parrots in virtually every article he writes on GMOs).

But guess what? Since the passage of the Monsanto Protection Act, a new study by ProfitPro (“2012 Corn Comparison Report”) has found that chlorides, formaldehyde and glyphosate — substances not found in natural corn — are present in genetically modified corn. Glyphosate, in particular, is found in GMO corn at 13 parts per million. The EPA limits glyphosate in drinking water to 0.7 ppm, and exposure at 0.1 ppm has caused organ damage in some lab animals. Glyphosate, a strong organic phosphate chelator, immobilizes positively charged minerals like manganese, cobalt, iron, zinc and copper, which are vital for normal growth and development of crops, and strips them of nutrients — which perhaps explains why non-GMO corn has 437 times the calcium, 56 times the magnesium and seven times the manganese of GMO corn. That Monsanto Protection Act just might come in handy.

As if this weren’t enough, Monsanto’s business model depends on strong patent monopolies, which it enforces in the most thuggish ways imaginable — namely, accusing farmers adjoining GMO crops of “piracy” if their crops are contaminated by Monsanto’s proprietary pollen. If anyone is entitled to legal damages, it would be the farmers whose crops are contaminated by Monsanto’s poison. But of course the USDA — which amounts to an executive committee of corporate agribusiness, staffed by political appointees who came through a revolving door from Monsanto, Cargill and ADM — doesn’t see things that way.

Meanwhile, agribusiness interests in a dozen states are pushing so-called “Ag Gag” bills that would criminalize whistleblowing and undercover investigation of animal cruelty in factory farming operations.

On top of everything else, consider that the biggest agribusiness operations are either situated on stolen land (like the big farms in California, many of which were haciendas occupied by politically favored Anglo settlers after the Mexican war), or are enormous concerns actually paid for holding most of their land out of use (like the biggest cereal farms in the Midwest and Plains). And the big California agribusiness interests depend on subsidized irrigation water from all those dams the Army Corps of Engineers likes to build.

Throw all this together, and we see that corporate agribusiness is a virtual creature of the state, and depends on the state on a daily basis not only for its profits, but its continued existence. So it turns out that the real enemies of the free market are not all those anti-GMO activists, but the agribusiness interests themselves. Perhaps that’s why former Archer Daniels Midland CEO Dwayne Andreas said “The competitor is our friend. The customer is our enemy.”

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Agricoltura Intensiva: Chi È il Vero Statalista?

La maggiore organizzazione del Tea Party in America, Tea Party Patriots, ha recentemente celebrato il suo quinto anno di attività promettendo di raddoppiare gli sforzi per ottenere il pareggio del bilancio federale e il ripagamento del debito pubblico. L’effetto, immagino non intenzionale, sarebbe la distruzione del capitalismo come lo conosciamo oggi.

Il capitalismo corporativo, fin dalla sua formazione alla fine del diciannovesimo secolo come cuore dell’economia americana (con una grossa dose di intervento statale), è afflitto da due croniche tendenze critiche: 1) Una insufficiente domanda in aggregato, che risulta in una capacità produttiva infruttifera, e 2) un surplus di investimenti capitali a cui non seguono profitti.

In assenza dell’intervento statale nell’economia, volto a nascondere il calo del profitto attraverso la spesa di stimolo della domanda, l’acquisto diretto di produzioni industriali e la creazione di nuove opportunità di investimento, il capitalismo corporativo americano – e con esso il sistema capitalistico mondiale – sarebbe già morto di Depressione cronica decenni fa.

L’unica ragione per cui la Grande Depressione degli anni trenta non portò il sistema alla fine fu il fatto che la seconda guerra mondiale ovviò temporaneamente al problema della capacità produttiva inutilizzata e del surplus di capitali offrendo nuove enormi opportunità di profitto (finanziate con il debito pubblico, ovviamente) e distruggendo gran parte degli impianti e dei macchinari del resto del mondo. Nel 1945 gli Stati Uniti emersero come il paese con la maggior capacità industriale al mondo, e praticamente privo di concorrenza da parte di quelle che un tempo erano state le aree industrializzate d’Europa. Con la maggior parte degli impianti costruiti a partire dal 1940 a spese dei contribuenti, l’industria americana usciva dalla guerra enormemente modernizzata ed equipaggiata. L’effetto pratico fu un riavvio totale, una generazione di prosperità caratterizzata da cicli economici deboli, sicurezza del posto di lavoro e salari in crescita.

Attorno al 1970, però, avendo l’Europa e il Giappone ricostruito le proprie capacità industriali, il mondo fu nuovamente afflitto da un eccesso produttivo e una scarsità nella domanda. Da allora il capitalismo ricorre ad un espediente dopo l’altro per evitare la crisi. È a partire dagli anni ottanta che l’economia americana viene tenuta fuori dalla recessione in gran parte grazie ad enormi deficit federali, che aggiungono qualche centinaio di miliardi di dollari l’anno di domanda aggregata ed evitano che capacità in eccesso e sovrapproduzione sfuggano di mano. I capitali in eccesso hanno trovato sfogo nella cosiddetta economia FIRE (Finanza, Assicurazioni e Immobiliare), fiorita a partire dagli anni ottanta, nelle bolle speculative gonfiate dall’intervento statale come il Dotcom Boom negli anni novanta, e infine nel boom immobiliare nei primi anni duemila.

Ma c’è una via di sbocco per i capitali in eccesso di cui si parla poco, ed è il debito pubblico (vedi “Superflous labor and state debt,” The Real Movement, 10 marzo). Il debito attuale è attorno ai 17.000 miliardi di dollari. E, contrariamente a ciò che dice la destra, non sta spingendo fuori gli investimenti privati. Allo stato attuale, le imprese si rifiutano di espandere le proprie capacità, o di assumere personale, perché non c’è abbastanza domanda su cui fare affidamento per ripagare gli investimenti. Quei 17.000 miliardi, dunque, non avrebbero trovato altro impiego utile; ma ecco che, grazie alla cortesia dello Zio Sam, chi possiede debito pubblico americano può contare su un rientro garantito… ed esentasse! È una funzione analoga a quella svolta dai contributi agricoli tesi a tenere su i prezzi: i grossi proprietari terrieri ricevono una rendita per i terreni tenuti fuori produzione.

Il modello capitalistico emerso alla fine dell’ottocento – e che lo stato a contribuito enormemente a creare – è sempre dipeso dall’intervento statale su larga scala per mantenere la propria rimuneratività. La grande espansione dello stato, lo stato sociale, l’industria bellica e la spesa in deficit, lungi dal rappresentare un’invasione di quel campo che prima apparteneva al “libero mercato”, sono funzionali alla sopravvivenza del sistema capitalistico così come lo conosciamo noi.

L’idea del Tea Party di pareggiare il bilancio e ripagare il debito pubblico avrebbe l’effetto di togliere questo aiuto essenziale del governo ad un sistema che, anche così, sopravvive appena. Taglierebbe 500 miliardi l’anno di domanda aggregata ad un’economia che a malapena sta a galla. E scaricherebbe 17.000 miliardi di capitale in un mercato già saturo: al confronto, la Grande Depressione fu una passeggiata.

Quello che abbiamo noi oggi non è libero mercato. È un sistema strutturalmente definito dalla collusione massiccia tra capitale e stato, profondamente dipendente dall’intervento statale per la propria sopravvivenza. Il programma del Tea Party distruggerebbe alla base i mezzi di sopravvivenza del capitalismo. Io non sono un keynesiano. Io non voglio salvare il capitalismo. Voglio solo un libero mercato senza particolari privilegi statali per le grandi imprese e i ricchi. E allora, se davvero voi gente del Tea Party volete distruggere il capitalismo, non posso che dire: benvenuti a bordo, compagni!

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

*Not really.

I was surprised to open up the Columbia Journalism Review’s website last week and see this article by Steven Brill peering up at me: “Stories I’d Like To See: A fair view of the Koch brothers, and explaining bitcoin.”

This section in particular cracked me up:

This article in the Washington Post last week tried to link the Koch brothers’ support for the Keystone energy pipeline to their company’s economic interests. But it was so lame — none of their products is due to go through the pipeline — that it made me want to read a complete article, full of unbiased reporting across the range of their business interests. I want to know just how self-interested the brothers’ political spending spree actually is.

Sure, any political activism by rich people to limit taxes and government regulation is bound to be in their interests generally. But do the Koch brothers have a more specific agenda, as the Post article tried to prove? Or could it be that Charles and David Koch just happen to believe a conservative government is good for their country?

The brothers and their foundation have also given hundreds of millions to multiple charities that have nothing to do with politics. As this article in the Indianapolis Star points out, the Charles Koch Foundation “underwrites research and teaching at Brown, Mount Holyoke, Sarah Lawrence, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Vassar and some 245 other colleges.” The New York State Theater at Lincoln Center has been renamed the David H. Koch Theater because he’s such a generous benefactor.

These are not beneficiaries associated with hard right causes.

Brill is right, of course; while it might be easy to paint the Kochs and their corporation with one evil, monolithic brush, you can’t do it with any real consistency. But this article, as interesting as it was, wasn’t the reason I was headed over to CJR.

Over on their #Realtalk blog, journalist Ann Friedman listed out some common worries she heard from new journalism school graduates about their job prospects. One I liked – about the awkwardness of networking – described a very stigmergic scenario:

I know, I know. I need a network, but networking is for douchebags.

Networking is for douchebags if you’re only doing it to get a job or a promotion. (Or “connecting” with random journalists on LinkedIn en masse.) Instead, think of your network as a community—a group of professional collaborators with whom you share skills and ideas, contacts and advice—that you invest in whether or not you’re looking for a new job. This is what Robert Krulwich calls horizontal loyalty.

For now, your network is going to be made up of a lot of other entry-level journalists—like your classmates and fellow interns—plus a few people who have been your internship supervisors. You need to get over the feeling that you’re competing for the same three jobs and see other entry-level journalists as allies. You personally may only know three higher-up editors, but if you share the wealth, together you know six or 10 or more. Ask your friends to make introductions, and do the same for them. This is how to slowly expand the number of people you know while also investing in the careers of those who are important to you. It takes time, but the payoff is real.

And just in terms of straight media news, there’s an interesting project coming out of the Online News Association, called “Build Your Own Ethics Code.” According to CJR reporter Edirin Oputu, Build Your Own Ethics Code is “a toolkit to help news outlets, bloggers, and journalists decide on ethical guidelines that match their own ideas about reporting and journalism”:

The project, which includes the collaboration of ONA’s news ethics committee with roughly two dozen journalists and academics, will give reporters a chance to look at the issues that arise in the course of reporting and to draw up an ethical code based on the kind of work they do and the ethical help they believe they need, said ONA’s executive director, Jane McDonnell.

‘I think that when you get journalists in a room together, you can see that there is a complete will to make sure that their reporting and distribution is as close to perfect as they can get it. But the speed at which they work often kind of negates that, or makes it more difficult,’ she said.

ONA will also open the project up for crowdsourcing at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, in early May.

That’s it for now! Check back in next week for more media news and anarchist tidbits.

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Uma decisão recente de um tribunal federal dos Estados Unidos derrubou a tentativa da Comissão Federal de Comunicações (FCC – órgão regulatório de telecomunicações dos EUA) de forçar uma política para a internet de “neutralidade da rede”, como descrito por Joelle Tessler da agência de notícias Associated Press:

A Corte de Recursos do Distrito de Columbia dos Estados Unidos decidiu que a FCC não tem autoridade para requerer que os provedores de banda larga deem igual tratamento a todo o tráfego que passe por suas redes. Essa foi uma grande vitória para o grupo Comcast, a maior empresa internet a cabo do país, que contestava o direito da FCC de impor essa ‘neutralidade’ obrigatória sobre os provedores.

Os defensores da neutralidade da rede, incluindo o diretor da FCC, alegaram que a política é necessária para evitar que os provedores de acesso favoreçam ou discriminem alguns sites ou serviços online, como programas para ligações por celular via internet ou softwares que rodem dentro do próprio navegador. Eles firmam que há precedentes: regras de não-discriminação tradicionalmente são aplicadas a redes de ‘transporte comum’ que servem ao público, como estradas, rodovias, fiações elétricas e linhas telefônicas.

Porém, os provedores de banda larga como a Comcast, a AT&T e a Verizon argumentam que, depois de gastar bilhões de dólares em suas redes, elas devem poder ofertar serviços diferenciados e gerenciar seus sistemas para que evitar que certos aplicativos sobrecarreguem o sistema.

Exatamente. As redes pertencem às empresas e não ao governo. E, adivinhe só? Em um livre mercado, se uma empresa decidir impor as restrições mencionadas acima, sua concorrente vai ofertar serviços irrestritos a preços razoáveis condizentes com a realidade do mercado livre. De fato, os preços cairiam ainda mais na ausência da moeda inflacionária estatal, dos impostos, das regulamentações, da burocracia e de todas as outras medidas arrogantes e inúteis que são impostas sobre todas as empresas pela força do estado, que inflam artificialmente os custos de operação. É realmente necessária uma decisão do governo para que isso ocorra?

Além do mais, alguém realmente acha que a motivação do governo ao utilizar o FCC neste caso como seu braço executivo contra os provedores de internet (ISPs) é pura e nobre e que seu desejo é apenas promover o bem dos consumidores? Vamos dar uma olhada mais a fundo no artigo da Associated Press:

A decisão unânime de terça feira pelo painel de três juízes foi um revés para a FCC porque questiona a autoridade da agência para regulamentar a banda larga. Isso pode causar outros problemas além do impedimento da adoção de regulamentações referentes à neutralidade da rede. Também há implicações sérias para o ambicioso programa de expansão da banda larga lançado pela FCC no mês passado. A FCC precisa da autoridade para regulamentar a banda larga para que ela possa levar adiante as recomendações principais do plano. Entre outros pontos, a FCC pretende expandir a banda larga usando recursos fundo federal de subsídio às linhas telefônicas em comunidades pobres e rurais.

Não diga! Parece se tratar de mais um programa assistencialista que os social-democratas não queriam que fosse abandonado. Perceba também como o governo – neste caso a FCC – novamente “precisa da autoridade para regulamentar” para salvar o mundo dos gananciosos porcos capitalistas. Afinal, são as “grandes corporações” que desejam nos explorar com suas estratégias severas de censura ao livre discurso na internet. No meu caso, uma empresa que deseje prestar serviços para mim voluntariamente através da concorrência por melhores serviços a preços baixos sempre será melhor que uma instituição que deseja limitar as escolhas e monopolizar o mercado literalmente através das armas – para impor censura, derrubar toda a rede ou fazer o que quiser sem ter que dar quaisquer explicações, fazendo tudo isso com dinheiro roubado.

No final das contas, tudo se resume ao princípio simples em que se fundamenta o anarquismo de livre mercado: ou você acredita que a base de todos os relacionamentos humanos é e deve ser a violência, ou não. A escolha é sua (ao menos esta). Você deve decidir.

Texto originalmente publicado em 9 de abril de 2010.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Perfect freedom is often dismissed as a fantasy. This post is aimed at refuting that notion. A good starting point is the late Ellen Willis’s distinction between personal and sovereign freedom. The former pertains to the ability to do whatever you want as long as you obey the law of equal freedom. This law stipulates that you can’t impinge upon another’s autonomy through force, coercion, violence, and compulsion. Sovereign freedom is essentially the negation of true liberty, because it grants license to do so. True liberty is synonymous with personal freedom.

The reason that many people don’t understand perfect freedom is due to the conflation of personal and sovereign freedom. Instead of recognizing that so called sovereign freedom involves the ability to exercise power over others, they use the two interchangeably. Some might say that one’s man freedom is another man’s oppression. This confuses the subjective with the objective. What may be experienced by an individual as oppressive may not really be so. A racist might see the court mandated end of Jim Crow as restricting his or her freedom to avoid African-Americans in public places. This is hardly an instance of oppression. Perfect freedom depends upon seeing how this is not truly repressive.

As long as we delineate the boundaries protecting each individual’s autonomy, we will be in a position to understand the difference between personal and sovereign freedom. The encroachment upon the legitimate space of another is not about liberty. It isn’t in keeping with the law of equal freedom. You act as if you possess more liberty than the other person by not respecting his equal rights. What you really claim is license to violate the rights of another. This creates an inequality of power and status.

Another good example of this is a person claiming that liberty requires he or she be allowed to control the actions of employees. In this instance; the person is claiming sovereign dominion over people based on business ties. Left-libertarian, Kevin Carson, has described this as contract feudalism. A concept about the preservation of feudal relations between lord and serf in the modern workplace. You may contract into it, but you have little choice about working for somebody else. Independent employment is harder to make successful.

A final instance of so called sovereign freedom pretending to be about liberty involves claims by nation-states pertaining to independence from external forces. This is really about the uncontested control of territory and prerogative to order others in that physical space around. Let’s work to put an end to sovereignty and increase personal freedom.

A Tacoma, nello stato di Washington, gli immigrati detenuti nel Northwest Detention Center fanno lo sciopero della fame. Gli agenti dell’Immigration and Customs Enforcement stanno cercando di intimidirli, minacciando di alimentarli a forza.

Parlando con americani, ho notato che molti di loro non hanno simpatia per i detenuti. Appongono agli immigrati il marchio di “illegali” e usano ciò come scusa per ignorare la violazione dei loro diritti umani. Gli esseri umani non possono essere “illegali”. Chiamarli così significa disumanizzare i migranti con una tossica ideologia razzista. Le azioni possono essere pericolose, o anche criminali. Ma cosa c’è di criminale nel fatto di migrare in sé? I migranti senza documenti sono solo persone che vanno a vivere all’estero, per lavorare, mantenere le proprie famiglie e intraprendere pacificamente azioni commerciali e di collaborazione con altre persone. Questo non è un crimine. Propriamente intese, le migrazioni contribuiscono alla fioritura di una società libera. Aggiungete a ciò che la maggioranza degli immigrati nei centri di detenzione non è stata condannata per alcun crimine.

È chi imprigiona e opprime gli immigrati che commette una serie di crimini nel nome dell’autorità statale. Prendete, ad esempio, l’idea di alimentare a forza gli scioperanti della fame. L’alimentazione forzata è universalmente considerata una tortura; è stata giudicata crudele e inumana da associazioni come la Croce Rossa Internazionale, l’Associazione Medica Mondiale e le Nazioni Unite. Per definizione, alimentare a forza chi fa lo sciopero della fame significa violarne brutalmente e dolorosamente la libertà corporale al fine di sopprimerne la capacità di espressione politica.

Ma la criminalità dei centri di detenzione degli immigrati non finisce qui. C’è anche il fatto che gli immigrati vengono trattenuti indefinitamente per cosiddette “procedure civili”. Non essendo accusati di un crimine, non gli si riconosce il diritto ad essere rappresentati legalmente. Nel 2010, l’84% di loro era privo di avvocato. Questa non è giustizia. È un rapimento aprocessuale ammantato di legalità.

Spesso questa detenzione priva di accusa, giudizio e rappresentanza legale avviene per profitto. Il Northwest Detention Center, dove avviene lo sciopero della fame, è gestito in regime di “privatizzazione” dal Gruppo GEO. Come altri profittatori carcerari, quale la Corrections Corporation of America e la Management and Training Corporation, il Gruppo GEO estrae profitti osceni dal governo per tenere esseri umani in gabbia. Invece di fornire beni e servizi a chi vorrebbe comprarli, i profittatori carcerari offrono violenza di stato in cambio di denaro estorto alla popolazione attraverso l’obbligo delle tasse.

In tutto il mondo, i governi usano le frontiere come scusa per violare i diritti e fare violenza criminale. Il Canada, ad esempio, mette dentro gli immigrati per un tempo indefinito semplicemente perché sono immigrati. I detenuti sono spesso tenuti in isolamento, riconosciuto a livello internazionale come una forma di tortura.

Lo stato di Israele manda i rifugiati africani a un enorme campo di prigionia. Questi rifugiati sono soggetti a violenza e discriminazione aggressiva per via del clima di razzismo paranoico che porta a temere gli africani come “infiltrati” in grado di minare la demografia ebraica di Israele.

In tutto il mondo gli stati rapiscono, ingabbiano, torturano e deportano migranti e rifugiati, e la brutalità delle restrizioni all’immigrazione non finisce qui. Sotto governi oppressivi, le frontiere servono anche a tenere intrappolati gli abitanti, impedendo loro di scappare a violente atrocità. Molti rifugiati lesbiche, gay, bisessuali e transgender, ad esempio, sfuggono alla repressione omofobica dello stato russo solo per ritrovarsi intrappolati nella tagliola della burocrazia immigratoria.

La crisi ucraina è similmente esacerbata da restrizioni all’immigrazione, che intrappolano gli ucraini nel fuoco incrociato del conflitto. Come ha fatto notare recentemente Sheldon Richman,

“Gli ucraini che, temporaneamente o permanentemente, vogliono uscire dal loro ambiente pericoloso, dovrebbero essere liberi di trasferirsi negli Stati Uniti. Mettiamola così: Come osiamo noi americani confinare gli ucraini in una situazione da cui vorrebbero disperatamente scappare?”

Gli immigrati sono spesso accusati di comportamenti criminali. Ma in fatto di politica immigratoria il vero crimine è quello perpetrato dallo stato. Lo stato rapisce, tortura e depreda, e tutto per difendere delle linee tracciate su delle mappe. E così dà la possibilità ad altri stati di opprimere brutalmente i soggetti intrappolati. Tutti gli stati sono attività criminali, e tra le armi più pericolose di cui dispongono ci sono le frontiere.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

This piece by Lorenzo Morales at La Silla Vacía shows, with concise and beautiful prose, the process through which the FARC impose themselves on local peoples in Colombia, becoming the de facto rulers of an incipient state.

Morales tells us about life in Araracuara, a small, isolated town within the Caquetá Department, deep within the Amazon. During the last couple of years, the town has been going through an illegal gold-mining boom.

The town is so hard to reach that it used to house a penal colony in 1939, and today “…remains a confined place: there’s no road, a ticket to board the weekly 19-seat plane that arrives from Bogotá costs more than minimum wage. A beer costs 5000 pesos, a gallon of gas 16,000, twice as much as in Bogotá.”

Furthermore,

There, reality is inmune to the announcements of the Ministry of Environment, to the statements of the Defense Ministry, the plans of the one in charge of housing, to the governmental promises of infrastructure or healthcare. There, life governs itself, with its own laws.

That is… until recently:

Two months ago the FARC came back down from their strongholds in the upper Caquetá, from Florencia, San Vicente, Puerto Rico, El Doncello. They didn’t come with guns and swamp boots, but in small groups of militias, camouflaged among the strangers who come to this land looking to suck some of the new bonanza: the gold. New, because poverty here is an interlude between bonanzas: that of rubber 100 years ago, tiger or jaguar skins 50 years ago, coca 25 years back…

They arrived to restore order, they say. Order, in guerrilla logic, is to send boys to remove their piercings and get haircuts, forbid miners from getting drunk in brothels in Puerto Santander (across the river), lower the volume of music in the bars, sweep the town’s roads. Everyone knows that is the recurrent costume that precedes their next suit, that of armed “chepitos” [popular term denoting pintoresque, harrassing debt collectors that used to be common in Bogotá] asking for compulsory contributions. Said and done.

A forthcoming “NASA study” that predicts medium-term collapse has gone viral on the Internet, based entirely on Nafeez Ahmed’s advance writeup for The Guardian (“NASA-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for ‘irreversible collapse’?,” March 14).

To start with we should note, just in passing, that it turns out not to be quite a “NASA study” after all. It was the work of independent researchers at the University of Maryland, using analytical tools that had previously been developed for an entirely different NASA study. It wasn’t commissioned or funded by NASA. And on top of everything else, a lot of the authorities cited to support its premises aren’t all that pleased with the authors’ interpretation of their work (“Keith Kloor, About That Popular Guardian Story on the Collapse of Industrial Civilization“; “Judging the Merits of a Media-Hyped ‘Collapse’ Study.” Discover, March 21; ).

The study, a group effort led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei, argues for a cyclical pattern of civilizational rise and collapse in human history, based on the interaction of two mutually-reinforcing variables: 1) the growth of resource extraction to unsustainable levels and 2) the polarization of societies between economically privileged elites and commoners. The latter process insulates economic elites from fully experiencing the real costs of resource depletion, and allows them to externalize the suffering from the crisis onto the lower orders — thus delaying a rational response until it’s too late.

First of all, its line of analysis strikes me as fairly simplistic, assuming a handful of very gross variables and playing out a scenario based on a first-order extrapolation from them, with very little taking into account of agile responses to feedback — especially the rapid growth of ephemeralizing technologies that are totally changing the game compared to previous collapses.

And oddly enough, it’s being cited by a lot of commentators as evidence for why we need state intervention. But if anything, it’s the state and the model of industrial growth it promoted the past century or two that are pushing us toward collapse.

The main function of the state has been subsidizing a model of expansion based on the wasteful use of additional resource inputs rather than boosting productivity through more efficient use of existing inputs. Under the existing model of capitalism, the state does two major things. First, it enforces privileges and artificial property rights that result in large monopoly rents to the propertied classes. The overall effect is to shift income from workers with a high propensity to consume to rentiers with a high propensity to save and invest, so that capitalism is plagued with chronic crises of overinvestment and underconsumption. Second, the state subsidizes a business model based on large-batch production for large, centralized market areas using extremely expensive, specialized machinery — a model of production far higher in overhead and far more capital-intensive than would be sustainable in a genuine free market, without subsidies and barriers to competition. Because of the enormous capital outlays required for this model of production, industry is driven to minimize unit costs by running continually at full capacity, and the capitalist state organizes society around the consumption of this output, which was undertaken without regard to preexisting demand.

So we have an economy whose dominant class face an enormous glut of far more capital than it can find profitable investment outlets for, and find themselves in a constant uphill battle against excess industrial capacity and inadequate consumer demand. In short, it’s an economy organized by the state around solving the problems of a ruling class with too many resources, and every incentive in the world to use them as inefficiently as possible.

The state’s chief activity has been finding ways to waste capital and soak it up on horribly inefficient blockbuster projects as capital sinks for solving the problem of overaccumulation and idle capacity, to encourage waste investment in inefficient ways of doing things, and pay people to hold land out of use or subsidize the most land-inefficient forms of industrial farming. The automobile-highway complex, mass suburbanization, planned obsolescence and the military-industrial complex all fall under these headings.

At the same time, the state preempts ownership of the natural environment and gives preferential access to it to the economic ruling class, effectively turning it into an unorganized and unregulated commons that industry can use as a no-cost, no-liability sink for pollution and a subsidized source of artificially cheap raw materials and fuel inputs.

The study argues that “elite power” will protect the ruling classes from the negative effects of looming collapse for some time after commoners begin to experiencing it, thus allowing “business as usual” for the privileged despite “impending catastrophe.” As for the saving potential of technological advances, don’t count on it. The only effect it will have — based on what amounts to a warmed-over appeal to Jeavons’ Paradox — is to temporarily encourage even larger-scale, less sustainable consumption and resource extraction.

I’m a lot more optimistic than the authors on both counts.

First of all, the legal barriers and subsidies that insulate the elites from the real costs of the decisions they make are rapidly becoming unsustainable. While industry’s demands for subsidized inputs rise exponentially — as you might expect from the basic principles of economics — the state is becoming fiscally exhausted from its inability to keep up with those demands. And crises of Peak Oil, Coal, etc. will likely drive the collapse of long-distance industrial supply and distribution chains, and the relocalization of production, in the near future. Meanwhile, as the revolution in high-tech, ephemeral manufacturing tools makes the means of production increasingly cheaper, smaller in scale and more amenable to relocalized production by individuals and small groups, corporations find themselves forced to resort to legal monopolies and anti-competitive barriers like licensing and “intellectual property” to prevent manufacturing from being undertaken by ordinary workers and consumers outside corporate boundaries. But as the record industry or NSA can tell you, legal barriers to the free use of information and technique are becoming virtually unenforceable.

And it’s the “lower orders” themselves, the very people who experience the externalized negative consequences of resource depletion, who are being driven by necessity to develop the new, more efficient technologies that will become the building blocks for the post-capitalist culture.

So what we’re really seeing is an old state-corporate economic order, accustomed to achieving its goals by throwing unlimited cheap capital and land at them, experiencing something very much like past collapse scenarios described by Joseph Tainter. At the same time, a new junkyard dog economy of micromanufacturing, open-source hardware, free software, permaculture, vernacular building techniques and passive solar design, household micro-enterprise, cooperatives, etc., is emerging from the ruins of the old corporate dinosaur economy. It has grown up in the face of unrelenting pressure to extract every last drop of value from the merest scraps of land and capital, and will eventually digest the decaying ruins of the system it supplants.

So yes, an old system is collapsing. But it’s entirely feasible for a new and better one to take its place. The only thing the state can do, in alliance with the old order, is to obstruct the new one by enforcing the inequalities of wealth and unevenness of resource distribution Motasharrei points to. And the best way to get rid of those inequalities is for the state to stop actively promoting them.

Muitas pessoas nutrem uma certa simpatia pela ditadura militar que governou o Brasil até os anos 1980. Não é incomum ouvir dos mais velhos que, naquela época, havia empregos, que a educação pública era decente, que a violência não estava fora do controle como nos dias atuais, que o país estava em ordem. E é fato que o país estava em ordem. Mas a quem servia essa ordem?

A ditadura, efetivamente, impôs algo que se assemelhava a “ordem”. Como todo governo autoritário, não tinha que responder a ninguém, censurava opositores e policiava ostensivamente as ruas em busca de atividades “subversivas”. Violência? Existia, mas era abafada pelo governo. As informações que surgiam eram apenas as interessantes para o regime e os opositores eram sistematicamente calados e perseguidos.

Mesmo a ideia de que o país prosperava economicamente durante os anos de chumbo é patentemente falsa. O “milagre brasileiro” dos anos 1970, que consistiu basicamente em inflação e endividamento público para financiar grandes projetos estatais (como a famosa rodovia Transamazônica), colocou o país no caminho do colapso econômico. Que de fato ocorreu: o Brasil foi o Zimbábue dos anos 1980, uma década perdida, de empobrecimento, sofrimento para o povo que convivia com uma inflação que chegava a 3000% ao ano. Convenientemente, os mais nostálgicos do regime não lembram desses fatos.

E mesmo quando lembram, minimizam os problemas. O número de mortos e desaparecidos por perseguição política durante a ditadura brasileira é calculado em cerca de 400. Como esse número absoluto é relativamente “baixo” se comparado aos regimes militares do resto da América Latina ou mesmo o de regimes comunistas como o de Cuba, os mais autoritários descartam qualquer discussão do tema como pequeno problema. O que é, naturalmente, um completo absurdo, porque a avaliação da justiça do regime militar não é uma quantificação rasteira do número de cadáveres. Para eles, Vladimir Herzog foi apenas um caso “excepcional” e não o modus operandi do regime.

Este 22 de março foi o dia de as viúvas da ditadura celebrarem suas ilusões sobre o regime que fez com que o Brasil parasse no tempo por 20 anos.

Com os 50 anos da Marcha da Família com Deus pela Liberdade (que foi chamada de Marcha da Vitória pelo regime que se instalou em 1964), certas alas conservadoras decidiram organizar “protestos” em várias cidades pelo Brasil. As novas “Marchas da Família” foram às ruas.

Pediam uma nova “intervenção militar” contra a “ameaça comunista” no Brasil. Pediam o restabelecimento da farsa que era a ordem durante a ditadura. Ouviram-se gritos “Viva Médici” e “Viva Geisel”. O fato de essas manifestações celebrarem sujeitos pífios como o deputado Jair Bolsonaro diz muito sobre os ideais políticos defendidos por quem foi as ruas.

Porém, não podemos dar uma importância indevida às marchas, já que não saiu tanta gente assim às ruas. A de São Paulo reuniu cerca de mil pessoas. No Rio, cerca de 200 compareceram. Contingentes quase irrisórios em cidades gigantescas. Sem mencionar as deprimentes reuniões de cerca de 6 pessoas no Recife e 9 em Natal. As viúvas da ditadura encenaram um espetáculo triste, não apenas por conta das visões retrógradas defendidas, mas também por conta de sua irrelevância.

Os jornais brasileiros consideraram pertinente cobrir as marchas, mas, se elas nos mostraram algo, é que sua ideologia e seus valores, como a ditadura, ficaram enterrados no passado. São fósseis que apenas alguns poucos querem desenterrar.

Esses poucos grupos que saíram às ruas hoje querem voltar no tempo, mas não perceberam que não têm mais o controle do relógio político. E provavelmente nunca mais terão.

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

The dictatorship effectively imposed something that resembled order. Like every authoritarian government, it was accountable to no one, it censored the opposition and scoured the streets in search of “subversive” activities. Violence? It did exist, but news about it was suppressed. Information the population got was filtered by the regime and critics were silenced and persecuted.

Even the idea that Brazil was economically prosperous in the “Years of Lead” is entirely false. The so called “Brazilian miracle” of the 1970s — which consisted basically of inflation and rising public debt to finance pharaonic government projects such as the Trans-Amazonian highway — put the country on the path toward economic collapse. Which in fact occured: Brazil was the Zimbabwe of the 1980s, a lost decade, of impoverishment and suffering for the people, who had to live with inflation topping 3000% a year.

Conveniently, the more nostalgic forget these facts. And even when they remember them, they minimize the problems. The number of dead and disappeared people due to political persecution during the dictatorship is calculated to be around 400. It’s a relatively “low” number compared to other military regimes from Latin America or even the communist regime of Cuba, so authoritarians dismiss any discussion of the subject as a non-issue. Which is, of course, absurd, because justice is not a comparison of the number of dead bodies. To them, Vladimir Herzog was the exception, rather than the rule.

This March 22 was the day for the widows of the dictatorship (as they are often called) to celebrate their illusions about the regime that made Brazil freeze in time for over 20 years. On the anniversary of 50 years of the misleadingly named Marcha da Família com Deus pela Liberdade (literally, March of the Family, with God, for Liberty, later called the Victory March by the new government) — that protested against the government of then leftist president João Goulart — some conservative groups decided to organize “protests” in several cities all over the country. The new “Marches of the Family” took the streets.

They called for “military intervention” (that is, a coup d’état) against the “communist threat” in Brazil. They called for the re-establishment of the farcical order of the military regime. Cheers for generals Médici and Geisel (two of the military presidents) could be heard. The fact these manifestations celebrated a contemptible figure such as congressman Jair Bolsonaro (an overt homophobe known for defending public lynchings of criminals) speaks volumes about the political ideals of those present.

However, we shouldn’t ascribe too much importance to these “marches.” Few people actually participated in them. Several leftist and anti-fascistic organizations were concerned, but in the end there wasn’t much reason to be. São Paulo’s March boasted about a thousand people, while Rio’s was able to attract 200. Negligible numbers in huge cities. Not to mention the sorry groups of 6 people in Recife and 9 in Natal. The widows of the dictatorship enacted a depressing play, not only for the reactionary views they defended, but because it made absolutely clear how irrelevant they are.

Brazilian newspapers found it important to cover the protests, but if anything, they have shown us that their ideology and values, much like the dictatorship, are buried in the past. They are fossils that very few people are willing to dig out.

The few in the streets this last Saturday want to turn back the clock, but they haven’t noticed they do not control the gears anymore. And there’s nothing they can do about it.

Il sedici marzo scorso, Claudia Silva Ferreira ha commesso questo crimine: viveva nel posto sbagliato con il colore della pelle sbagliato. È uscita a comprare pane e prosciutto con una tazza di caffè in una mano. Non sai mai quanto può essere letale una tazza di caffè se tenuta da una donna nera e povera, che vive nella periferia di una città brasiliana. La polizia ha sparato la donna due volte, lasciando il corpo allungato per terra, il petto perforato.

L’hanno portata fino alla macchina della polizia per portarla all’ospedale. Il sedile posteriore era pieno di armi e non potevano metterla lì: ci sono delle priorità. Così Claudia è stata messa nel bagagliaio, che per strada si è aperto lasciandola cadere a terra, i vestiti impigliati nel paraurti, ed è stata trascinata per quasi 400 metri. Alla fine i poliziotti si sono accorti che era caduta e l’hanno ripiegata a posto. Lei è morta.

La Polizia Militare ha negato quello che gli abitanti dei sobborghi di Rio de Janeiro, Morro da Congonha, Madureira, hanno visto. Dicono di aver trovato Claudia già sparata. Nel corso della stessa operazione, la polizia ha ucciso un sospetto spacciatore e ne ha ferito e arrestato un altro, sequestrando quattro pistole, radio e droga. Probabilmente ne valeva la pena: la droga distrugge le famiglie.

Se non fosse stato per la droga, la Polizia Militare non sarebbe stata costretta ad arrampicarsi su per la collina della favela, non avrebbe incontrato una minacciosa e violenta donna nera di 38 anni con una tazza di caffè, e non sarebbe stata costretta a sparare due volte nella sua direzione, cosa che comporta metterla nella macchina e portarla in ospedale. La droga fa a pezzi la famiglia. Claudia, ad esempio, aveva cresciuto otto bambini, quattro figli suoi e quattro nipoti. Adesso la sua famiglia è smembrata per colpa della droga.

Come possiamo pretendere che i militari aiutino una donna moribonda? Sono militari mica per niente. Li chiamano “soldati” (in questo caso, due sottotenenti e un sergente) e li mandano alla guerra. L’idea di proteggere le persone è completamente aliena ad un’organizzazione militare e la Polizia Militare ne è la dimostrazione ogni volta che entra in una favela e vede gli abitanti non come persone ma come potenziale danno collaterale.

Tra quelli coinvolti, il sottotenente Adir Serrano Machado è il più efficiente. È stato coinvolto in 57 azioni che riguardavano qualche forma di contrasto, lasciandosi dietro 63 morti. Il sottotenente Rodney Miguel Archanjo è stato molto più circospetto, con sole cinque azioni e sei morti. Il sergente Alex Sandro da Silva Alves, invece, ha fatto il debutto la domenica in cui Claudia è stata sparata: la sua prima operazione di contrasto.

Considerato tutto ciò, è chiaro che una demilitarizzazione indebolirebbe troppo la polizia, rendendo impossibile la lotta al crimine. Se vogliamo che qualcuno vada su per le favelas a confiscare erba e coca, dobbiamo avere i soldati.

Ma è proprio quello che vogliamo?

In campagna elettorale suona bene dire che la presenza della polizia è aumentata e che la battaglia contro la droga si è intensificata. Ma questo significa che centinaia di Claudia Silva Ferreira continueranno a morire. Perché l’unico modo per mantenere l’illusione di una città sicura e senza droghe consiste nello sparare persone innocenti nelle favelas.

Se continuiamo a pensare che la brutalità della polizia sia un’eccezione non arriveremo da nessuna parte. La brutalità della polizia brasiliana è istituzionale, e serve agli obiettivi del governo. Non è possibile controllare il traffico di droga, o sostenere la legittimità della missione dello stato nella “lotta al crimine”, senza l’uso della forza letale. Con l’attuale politica sulla droga, non c’è la possibilità di far cessare la violenza della polizia: senza questa, lo stato non potrebbe mai affermare il suo potere.

Per il momento, la Polizia Militare potrebbe almeno pubblicare un opuscolo con un elenco delle attività sospette che gli onesti cittadini dovrebbero evitare. Come essere neri e camminare con una tazza di caffè.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

In 1975, two leftists, one of whom had been a top GOP insider and a founder of the American libertarian movement, collaborated on a book published by a leading Washington, D.C. left-wing think tank and the Unitarian Universalist Association advocating devolution of political power from the federal, state and city levels to self-sufficient local neighborhoods, hopefully facilitated by the passage of a Republican senator’s bill to fund them with the redirection of three-quarters of income tax revenue.

David Morris and Karl Hess’s Neighborhood Power: The New Localism is simultaneously a time capsule from a forgotten moment of the New Left, a glimpse into roads not taken in the four decades since, a counterexample to the assumptions of today’s culture wars, and a prescient foreshadowing of today’s nascent trends towards a post-industrial future.

The central focus of the book is the building of neighborhood organizations for the purpose of directly addressing local needs, rather than exerting pressure on the political system to take care of them. After a brief general introductory chapter (which was included in the anthology First Harvest: The Institute of Policy Studies, 1963-83 as representative of how, in the words of its introductory blurb, “[d]ecentralization and participation have characterized IPS activities”), the slim volume gets straight to the process. Initially covering the creation of small, informal local organizations formed ad hoc to deal with specific day-to-day issues, the scale subsequently steadily broadens along with the hopeful broadening of the purview of the organizations themselves. While the growth of any particular is limited, by cooperation they are able to take on more and more of the social, economic and political functions within a single neighborhood, and then between freely associating neighborhoods. The conclusion sketches a decentralized, green, communitarian utopian future, Ecotopia meets a post-industrial News from Nowhere.

Along the way, attention is given to specific practical issues. While technology is not as central a focus as it is in Hess’s other work (one of his other books is Community Technology), there is a decent amount of material on it. This includes prescience in both local food production (Hess was a central participant in forgotten predecessors of today’s urban farming boom), computers (the Community Memory System has a cameo), and renewable, green energy. An entire chapter is devoted to movements by tenants increasing their bargaining power vis-a-vis landlords; while the deck was certainly stacked against them, it seemed to be less utterly so than in today’s era of gentrification.

It should be clarified that the book’s approach is far from completely apolitical. While the strategy outlined steers almost entirely clear of conventional electoral politics and political pressure groups, it is far from purist in rejecting state reforms (to the point of endorsing rent control!) and includes the taking on of political functions from local government, albeit in a manner reminiscent of Proudhon’s dissolving of government into society. And the descriptions of neighborhood governments flexing their muscles sometimes come off as petty authoritarian (which would seem to be part of the appeal for many), though far less than taken for granted today and tempered by the decentralist aspects. Like Murray Bookchin’s municipalism, which it strongly parallels, it can be seen as soft on local state power. Samuel Edward Konkin III’s understandable view of Hess as a “neighborhood statist” at the time parallels anarchist criticisms of Bookchin.

The writing eschews jargon, in the manner of the straightforward, concrete social criticism of contemporaries like Paul Goodman and John Holt. The best rationale is not an elaborate academic argument, but

the residents of the Adams Morgan community growing vegetables on their roofs, mapping out the neighborhood for urban food production, setting up cooperative businesses, talking about small-scale technology, building solar cookers, starting neighborhood assemblies, hosting block parties, having fun (Acknowledgments page).

It deliberately steers clear of ideological posturing, to a degree rare on the left then and virtually unheard-of today. While it is not technical, it offers a clear overview and is well grounded in the relevant background.

Readers familiar with Hess from other periods of his viewpoint-shifting life may be wondering how it compares to his other writings. It is less personal, more conventionally structured, and containing very little of the “enthusiasm and respect for entrepreneurs” his final book lamented his earlier self not having. While he’s moved far from the anarcho-capitalism of “The Death of Politics“, let alone his Goldwaterite days, he maintains a distrust of elites and big government, and a petit-bourgeois friendliness towards non-big business.

How is it a snapshot of trends at the time? In many ways, it benefits from being written after the decline of “the Sixties”. It’s easy to forget that the mid-’70s-left was still optimistic that the tide was in their favor, and it was starting to learn from the mistakes of the Sixties, shifting away from an over-reliance on the protest movement model to more sustainable, less purely idealistic forms to ones with better technical and economic grounding.

Conscience can be a strong motivating factor, but it is also true that the Vietnam War taught us that there is little staying power derived from using morality as the driving force… The lofty ideals of a conscience confront the mundane bureaucratic regulations of the state. (39)

Identity politics, then on the ascendance, was still associated with decentralist and participatory strands which the book is optimistic about. And it would benefit in turn from them: “Serious problems could develop if a choice must be made between supporting the salaries of a black organization as opposed to a white one, or a gay group as opposed to a women’s group. But if the gay organization needs a mimeograph machine”, it and the others would both benefit from pooling it as a common resource (77).

In terms of the rise of an academic left which, despite lip service to Marxism, deals with everything but the means of production, there is a sharp critique of the strategy of raising class consciousness:

The theory is attractive, although probably more so because it permits most people to avoid doing hard work on the local level while they try to refine their rhetoric and ideas until they achieve the final “correct” position. But in a more basic sense it’s wrong-headed because it does not relate to people where they are, and particularly does not do so through an optimistic vision of the future. The sectarianism of the left is often caused by too much talking and too little doing. Picky fights about dogma tend to subside as people work together in some productive enterprise. Or at least the arguments are over very real things. What should be done when a worker breaks a leg and the company refuses compensation is a question that lends itself to much more concrete analysis than what should be done when the workers take over the factory and the army comes in. (42)

While even then, much of the American left was viscerally hostile towards decentralization, the decentralist tendency was far more robust. The acceptance in the discussion of healthcare of the need for patient understanding and control, not just the availability and affordability of service by experts, was far more resonant. Thus little of the book is spent in a defensive crouch. There was already a tendency of assuming that decentralization would go hand in hand with racism, and the authors defend their devolutionary proposals against charges that they would lead to “parochial and racist and illogical” schools (71) and “neighborhood parochialism and small-town isolationism and prejudice” (143), but it was less entrenched in an era where civil rights was seen as emblematic of local organizing and community control was still largely associated with an active Black Power movement.

The ongoing decline of interest in economic alternatives has been both a cause and an effect of the relegation of “alternative” goods to individual consumer choices (usually with Whole Foods-style markups). Optimistic predictions of laundromats becoming community hubs seem wildly out of place in an era when even Barnes & Noble and shopping malls have difficulty staying afloat. Rather than joining together to form a basis for a new society, isolated economic alternatives have floundered to survive in the inhospitable existing economy.

With the book’s publication being near the high-water mark of the influence of decentralism, it is emblematic of its rapid decline that such an approach has been almost completely forgotten, even by the survivors of the environment it came from. As the IPS shifted away from the decentralist strands of the New Left, its view of taxes went from “a sort of tithe” (74) to a book enumerating “excellent reasons not to hate taxes”. Aside from a small circle of fans and historians, libertarians half-remember Hess at best, despite his undeniable historical importance, and are puzzled by his lack of enthusiasm for big business and mass markets. Senator Mark Hatfield is usually remembered as a moderate due to his opposition to the Vietnam war, but a quote declaring that “It is clear today that the great experiment of our cities is a failure”, lamenting the loss of “community self-management”, and stating the need for “neighborhood government and interneighborhood cooperation” (97) doesn’t sound much like something one would hear from the lips of Nelson Rockefeller.

The use of the assumed necessity of centralization as justifications by technocratic liberalism and plutocratic conservatism are treated mercilessly:

To the modern liberal disposition this means that central planning, powerful executive-type government, and technocratic elites are justified and, indeed, necessary in running a society “efficiently.”

To the modern conservative disposition this means a justification of the hard class lines in society (the poor will always be with us, the rich will rise to the top naturally) and also justifies a corporate system which, by providing everything for people, makes it unnecessary for people to bother about anything but consuming — and showing up for work on time. (7)

(That last paragraph is a bit different than what one would expect from an opponent of big government, ain’t it?) And the pretense that only conservatives are against “liberal elitism” is far harder to maintain in the presence of a real left that says stuff like this:

Liberals say that smarter people can better represent everyone’s interests. But that just means that the supposedly smarter people can say they better represent those interests. They certainly don’t go out and interview everybody. They may assume that they don’t have to do that because, after all, everyone is pretty much alike. But we know that is simply not true, from experience, and even the existence of the liberal, or elitist, position says clearly that they themselves don’t believe we are all alike. They see themselves, at least, as different. (12)

And down-to-earth causes can unite people across political lines. Conservative James J. Kilpatrick, at what started as a partisan political debate with Hess, recalled that “before the evening was over we were talking about fish in his basement and tomatoes on his roof.” (43)

Given the place of environmentalism in today’s culture wars, it is illuminating to get a reminder of the pre-greenwashed state of the left of the time:

During a meeting a group of avowed Marxists who had been working with automobile workers in Detroit, trying to organize them in opposition to their union and company, were questioned about their ultimate goals. They responded, “To take over General Motors.” “What then?” they were asked. That was enough, they answered; the workers would control production and share in the wealth they themselves have produced. That was said to be “the revolution.”Yet, if we see General Motors as a part of the problem, and the multiplication of steel-bodied, internal-combustion-engine vehicles as contributing to our societal breakdown, a mere change in ownership would not necessarily mean real social change. (119)

(And the modern left would be content with getting a job there.) Since the mainstreaming of “green” hasn’t led to a concomitant questioning of the “need to maintain the rate of growth and the sheer physical output of this society” (119), it’s worth a reminder that such a paradigm is as obsolescent as the fossil fuels it ran on:

Nuclear-power plants, metropolitan sewage-treatment plants, internal-combustion engines or solar cells, in-house waste-cycling systems, and electric cars. It is not only an ecological and economic choice, but a deeply political one. It asks whether we want to move our productive facilities back into our communities, or remain at the mercy of isolated forces operating on criteria that give human concerns a low priority. (124)

While acknowledgement of the non-economic costs of large scale production have started to go into the mainstream, liberals who never question their economic efficiency are stuck hand-wringing, and many buy-small leftists simply duck the question altogether. Morris and Hess make solid use of a knowledge of the inefficiency of big business, citing the work on diseconomies of scale by Ralph Borsodi and Barry Stein, and offering a sharp rejoinder to stock claims of “efficiency”:

Conventional wisdom holds that larger firms are a natural, even a welcome, extension of business activities, and that they should be encouraged. Such concentrations are said to bring with them efficiencies that lower consumer prices. The reality is that prices grow as concentrations grow. The truth is that bigness brings with it higher profits. Also, it is apparently true that bigness breeds slothfulness, that creativity and igenuity are submerged, in the largest firms, to the goal of profitability, that with their influence in distribution and advertising, large corporations can create markets fromt heir most convenient and profitable items rather than bothering to make products that people genuinely need. Their most imaginative efforts are in marketing, not in production of high-quality goods. Even the large profits of huge corporations may not be a sign of business acumen and efficiency. Many large enterprises get their profits as a result of their political influence, through tax write-offs and subsidies, import quotas, and defense contracts, not through competition in the marketplace. (116)

And noting that “volunteer labor, foundation grants, $25-a-week salaries, are flimsy foundations for a new society”, they devote extensive attention to getting a solid economic base through surplus from local business activities. Cooperative organization was already becoming successful at producing surpluses: one co-op was able to allow five-week vacations for its workers, and estimated that current productivity would allow that duration as a norm in a cooperative economy. In an era where it is assumed that skyrocketing technological productivity will somehow never allow an increase in leisure time, it is worth reviving the idea of cooperatives taking surpluses in terms of leisure time rather than wages.

How does the book hold up from today’s perspective? A standard modus operandi of belittling the ferment of the 1960s and 1970s is to acknowledge individual bits and pieces that have become mainstream, like recycling or feminism, but to write off the rest as naive and doomed to failure by inherent impractical utopianism. Some readers of this book of will inevitably do so. But while the book has its share of overly optimistic predictions (cost-competitive solar power by 1990!), it holds up better than many of its contemporaries, being more grounded and pragmatic than the ones focusing solely on symbolic actions and consciousness raising. Many of its ideas were already starting to be put into practice and working in local efforts at the time only to be abandoned, epitomizing not-tried-and-found-wanting-but-found-difficult-and-not-tried. And in many ways it was prescient. Some passages sound like something you’d hear from a city planner today:

Transportation systems became locally oriented. It seemed ridiculous to think that in the old days it was easier to get downtown, a distance of some ten miles, than it was to go sideways to another neighborhood, a distance of half a mile. Now the minibuses, the electric cars which were rented, not owned, by the neighborhood residents, and the bicycles took care of local transportation. (165)

In recent years, there has been a return to some of the ideas, usually without awareness of the past. Urban gardening, which Hess was a pioneer of, has seen a renaissance. The maker movement has started to push modern technology past the era of mass industrialism. “Collaborative consumption” is rediscovered as an unprecedented novelty. Too much emphasis is placed on the role of the latest technology, and too little on social and organizational factors; it is worth getting a perspective on successes with the technology of the ’70s. To modern-day movements, it offers perspective that they didn’t arise in a vacuum.

Everyone has something to gain from taking a look at Neighborhood Power.

The Center, C4SS, had a rather interesting 2013, that ended with us having a large sum of money to play with.

But our fun will not continue without your help, your continued support and donations.

In order to make the case for why you should forgo a cup of coffee every month and donate to C4SS, the current Coordinating Director for C4SS will put together a report on what the donors received for the month and what future donors can expect. C4SS pays all of the writers that contribute and we prefer micro-donation swarms. We will certainly (re)publish free content as well as spend a big donation, but, as market anarchists, we are covetous of the resiliency and information embedded in trade and micro-donations.

So, what did you get instead of a cup of coffee?

C4SS published:

18 Commentaries,
12 Features,
4 Weekly Abolitionists,
8 Life, Love and Liberty blog posts,
4 Weekly Libertarian Leftist Reviews,
3 Missing Commas and
8 C4SS Media uploads to the C4SS youtube channel.

And thanks to our wonderful and devoted Media Coordinators our Commentaries have been submitted to media outlets around the globe as well as regularly translated into a growing number of languages:

7 Spanish translations,
1 Swedish translation,
17 Portuguese translations and
5 Dutch translations

Thanks to our talented and aggressive Portuguese translator and Media Coordinator, Erick Vasconcelos, Brazil has surpassed both Canada and the United Kingdom in the list of countries that most visit the site, making it second to the US. If you ever thought that market anarchism was or needs to be a global conversation, then C4SS is the place to donate. If we are missing a language (and we are missing a lot) and want to help, let us know.

Speaking of translations and global conversations, C4SS has been able to secure enough funding to pay for high quality translations of Kevin Carson‘s The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Fist. So far we have translators signed on for Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. We have already received an Italian version. And we are currently looking for a Greek translator. If you can help us or know some one that might be able and interested in translating roughly 18,000 words of medium density mutualist-speak into Greek, let us know – we can compensate for their labor!

C4SS has a number of projects in the works that have already been paid for, we are just waiting for the work to be completed. To pique your interests I will name a few:

• Jonathan Carp has been working on reviews for two books: Emma Griffin’s “Liberty’s Dawn” and AK Press’ “Ready for Revolution“.
• Nathan Goodman is working on reviews for two of Victoria Law’s books from PM Press: “Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women” and “Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities“.
• Christiaan Elderhorst is working on a review of Michel Bauwen’s new book “De Wereld Redden“.
• Natasha Petrova is finishing a review of Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s second edition of “Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical“.
• Grant Mincy is reviewing Arun Agrawal’s “Environmentality: Technologies Of Government And The Making Of Subjects“.
• And Anna Morgenstern is working on three more articles to develop and round out her “anarcho-[x] is impossible” series.

We have put together a symposium of sorts on David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years. At the moment we have articles ready from Kevin Carson, Wolfi Landstreicher and William Gillis. It is only Charles Johnson that is still finishing his review.

C4SS is preparing two books. Kevin Carson has written an introduction to a Colin Ward annotated edition of Pyotr Kropotkin’s “Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow”. This edition will also include a copy of Murray Bookchin’s “Towards a Liberatory Technology”. The other book is a collection of C4SS articles and studies concerning libertarian notions of and defenses for public property, with an introduction written by Roderick T. Long.

In the greater C4SS world, the “Markets Not Capitalism” Into the Libraries project can report two successes and one bonus point. The Albany New York Public Library and the Stockholm University Library are both sporting new copies of “Markets Not Capitalism”. The Stockholm Library already had one so David Grobgeld put in a request to have Kevin Carson’s “Studies in Mutualist Political Economy” added to their catalog.

C4SS’s affiliated student network, The Students for a Stateless Society (S4SS), has added two new chapters, Texas State and Appalachian State University. The University of Oklahoma S4SS is hosting, along with other student groups, two speaking events with C4SS Senior Fellow and Molinari Institute President Roderick T. Long; Thursday the 27th, Eudaimonistic Approaches to Libertarianism and, Friday the 28th, Robert Nozick, Class Struggle, and Free-Market Socialism. OU S4SS is also gearing up to produce a new periodical they are calling The New Leveller. And the Appalachian State University S4SS is currently raising funds to ship C4SS Senior Fellow Charles Johnson out to speak during their university’s Social Justice week – please consider helping them out in their fundraising drive.

There are many more projects that C4SS is developing that I can’t go into because the details are still being worked out, but look forward to an update on our Entrepreneurial Anti-Capitalism project, details on a beta-test for a paid internship program and getting our political quiz, finally, working again.

Needless to say, all of this work is only sustainable through your support. If you think the various political and economic debates around the world are enhanced by the addition of left libertarian market anarchist, freed market anti-capitalist or laissez faire socialist solutions, challenges, provocations or participation, please donate $5, today, to keep C4SS going and growing.

ALL the best!

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

The most recent development on that front as I write this column — quite possibly to be superseded by other news before press time — is the “suspension” of Russia from the G-8 Group. As conflicting opinions fill the air, I’d like to offer the simplest plausible explanation for what we’re seeing:

Oligarchs, the American ones at least as much as their Russian counterparts and probably more so, pine for the return of the Cold War.

Most of us regular people don’t, of course. We who are over 40 or so remember what it was like to live under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation should the standoff between two “superpowers” break loose in a big way.

But for the American oligarchy — better-known as the “military industrial complex” — which rose to dominate the US economy and political milieu in and immediately after World War II, there’s just not as much easy money or unquestioned power in being “the world’s sole remaining superpower.”

They need a big foil to keep their racket going. Penny-ante stuff like terrorism comes with lower profit margins. The big money is in nuclear weapons, expensive aircraft, that kind of thing — the stuff you use to fight foes with at least theoretical parity in military might. And let’s face it, “Iran as a nuclear threat” just doesn’t pass the laugh test as justification for those kinds of projects.

The American oligarchy needs a big enemy to justify the trillion dollars a year or so it rakes in domestically from American taxpayers (plus whatever it makes on foreign arms sales and so forth). An enemy with a large population, a real industrial base, a commanding position in its region. An enemy known, at least in the last century or so, to harbor expansionist ambitions and to represent a tough nut to crack in all-out war.

In a word, the American oligarchy needs Russia.

And what does Vladimir Putin need? Well, he needs an excuse to get back to being the Big Bad Bear. Like the US, Russia and its satellites, suzerainties and allies tend to solidify into a formidable, authoritarian monolith in the face of external threat, but that monolith commences fraying at the edges and falling apart should peace perchance break out. As with America’s oligarchy, Russia’s (in most cases the same faces as during the Soviet era, or their heirs) needs that external threat to keep the gravy train rolling.

The very best enemy ever, the Nazis, went inconveniently missing after oh, 1945 or so (Russia Today’s efforts grow some from scratch in Kiev notwithstanding). So on to the next best enemy: America.

It’s like the tale of B’rer Bear and B’rer Rabbit, only with two B’rer Bears, each begging the other not to throw him into the briar patch while secretly hoping that’s where they’ll both end up. Everybody wins! Well, at least both sets of oligarchs win. The rest of us, not so much.

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, Putin y Obama están de acuerdo: ¡todos al zarzal!
• Portuguese, Putin e Obama concordam: Para o caminho dos espinhos!

If you oppose mass incarceration, you should oppose empire. If you oppose imperialism and militarism, you should oppose the prison state. Empire and incarceration are two related institutions of brutal state violence, and they are mutually reinforcing.

A new article by my friend Henia Belalia argues that immigrants’ rights should be understood in a context where migration is often forced by America’s destructive policies of imperialist intervention. At one point, the article examines the case of the Cañenguez family, which I also briefly discussed in last week’s blog. Ana Cañenguez and her family fled violence in El Salvador, and ICE is demanding they self-deport back to that nation. In her article, Henia examines how the violence in El Salvador is largely rooted in U.S. imperialism. She writes:

Today, nearly one quarter of El Salvador’s population lives and works in the United States. The economy, which once relied on its coffee exports, now depends on the remittances of its workers abroad who send money back to their family. This exchange is expedited by the fact that since 2001, their official currency is the dollar. In other words, every deportation of a Salvadorean worker in the United States has a direct negative impact on the economy of this small Central American nation.

To understand this situation, it’s helpful to start with El Salvador’s 12-year civil war, which was to become the most costly U.S. intervention in Latin America.

The United States spent $1 million a day funding death squads and a far-right military government in efforts to ward off the spread of communism and “another Nicaragua.” As a result, the country was traumatized by massive human rights violations and the death of 75,000 people. But perhaps what really tipped the scales was the formation of U.S.-funded private development organizations like FUSADES, which furthered neoliberal programs inside the country. The United States has also meddled in elections and set preconditions for U.S. aid that incentivizes — one might say bribes — politicians to open up the country to foreign multinationals. The recent enactment of the public-private partnership law, for example, grants “the government the right to sell off natural resources, infrastructure and services to foreign multinationals.”

El Salvador has been torn apart, impoverished, and destabilized by violent intervention from the American state. Now, when people like Ana Cañenguez peacefully travel from El Salvador to America to support their families, the United States government seeks to use force to deport them and destroy their livelihoods. In other words, America’s policies of mass deportation are policies that re-victimize those who already face poverty and violence because of the American empire.

These policies of mass deportation are part of the larger prison industrial complex. As Henia explains, “The deportation quota is set at 400,000 a year, and the private-prison industry has a powerful vested interest in keeping detention centers filled. DHS has even conceded “detention bed mandates” to the for-profit industry, ensuring a certain number of migrants will be detained in order to maximize profits.” The same concentrated interest groups that profit off of mass incarceration and drug prohibition also profit from this border imperialism.

The prison-industrial complex and America’s military empire are mutually reinforcing pieces of a larger system of coercion. Let’s do all we can to understand this system, to build alternatives to it, and to resist it.

A raíz de la quiebra de Mt. Gox, el portal de intercambio de Bitcoin, más de cuatrocientos de sus clientes han expresado interés en presentar una demanda colectiva contra la casa matriz y su presidente ejecutivo, Mark Karpeles. Mt. Gox era la mayor plataforma de intercambio de Bitcoin del mundo. Aunque el funcionamiento de Bitcoin sigue siendo incomprensible para muchos, su valor es real. Las pérdidas Mt.Gox se estiman en US$480 millones.

No cabe duda de que las acusaciones de fraude y negligencia están justificadas, pero una demanda podría no ser la mejor manera de buscar justicia en la economía no regulada de Internet. Es curioso que los miembros de la comunidad de Bitcoin, muchos de los cuales se oponen a la intervención del gobierno en la creación de moneda, recurran tan rápidamente a los sistemas jurídicos del estado cuando la situación se descontrola. Una demanda sin duda abrirá nuevas vías para que los legisladores compliquen aún más el uso de Bitcoin y criptomonedas similares.

El activista político estadounidense Samuel Edward Konkin III popularizó el término “contra-economía” para describir todas las transacciones voluntarias que ocurren fuera de la esfera del mercado regulado por el estado. Bitcoin, y las criptomoedas en general, cumplen un rol importante en la contra-economía al eliminar del todo a la moneda fiduciaria de la ecuación. Sin embargo, para mantener al máximo el poder de la contra-economía, tenemos que integrar sistemas jurídicos no gubernamentales dentro de su marco general. En lugar de correr de vuelta al estado cuando las cosas toman un giro equivocado, la oportunidad debería ser aprovechada para discutir y desarrollar sistemas mediante los cuales pueda hacerse responsabilizerse a las empresas de la contra-economía por sus acciones.

Un ejemplo de la regulación contra-económica proviene de la comunidad en torno a la “Ruta de la Seda”, un mercado en línea basado en Bitcoin para la compra y venta de drogas ilegales. Un grupo de sus usuarios que se hace llamar “Los Vengadores del LSD”, hicieron análisis químicos del ácido que compraban para probar si en realidad estaban en posesión de LSD auténtico, proveyendo a los demás usuarios un estándar de seguridad para la compra y consumo de drogas. Esto ilustra cómo un mercado negro puede autorregularse sin necesidad de recurrir a la imposición de los organismos burocráticos, como la Administración de Alimentos y Drogas.

Bitcoin juega un papel liberador en lugares como Ucrania e Irán, proporcionando un sistema de pago independiente de la intromisión de los gobiernos y de las directrices establecidos por los bancos centrales. Es posible que si el destino de Mt.Gox se coloca en manos de los jueces, surgirá un marco para su regulación. La regulación puede que satisfaga nuestra necesidad occidental de que se nos garanticen sentimientos ilusorios de seguridad. Pero lastimará a la libertad económica de los países en los que vive gente menos afortunada que en Occidente. Esto redundará en detrimento del potencial revolucionario de la moneda digital.

Actualmente no existe un sistema para imponer la responsabilidad en las transacciones llevadas a cabo en los mercados de Bitcoin. Puede que el recurso a los sistemas jurídicos del estado sea la única manera de que los clientes de Mt.Gox reciban la restitución que se merecen. Lo que sí hay que tener en cuenta, es que esta opción está lejos de ser óptima. No sería sorprendente que a raíz de esto se desencadene una discusión sobre la regulación gubernamental de las criptomonedas. De hecho, parece inevitable. En el futuro, la contra- economía digital tendrá que encontrar maneras de regularse a sí misma. Los ingeniosos métodos que seguramente surgirán en cuanto a la regulación de las transacciones en línea podrían dar lugar a ideas para autoregular también nuestras comunidades “analógicas”. llegará el día en el que la regulación gubernamental del mercado será una cosa del pasado, a medida que la auto-regulación contra-económica la reemplace por completo.

Artículo original publicado por Christiaan Elderhorst el 7 de marzo de 2014.

Traducido del inglés por Carlos Clemente.