Back in the ’90s, the Financial Times referred to the G8 countries and the Washington Consensus they enforced as a “de facto world government.” As if we needed any reminder that such a global corporate regime exists in practice, consider the Trans-Pacific Partnership currently under negotiation. Although in theory the authority of all treaties signed…

Cory Doctorow, convidado de honra da vindoura convenção de ficção científica FenCon em Dallas, observa (“Durante o fechamento, alguns cientistas não podem falar acerca de ciência,” Boing Boing, 4 de outubro) que alguns de seus colegas palestrantes não poderão falar se o fechamento do governo continuar. Por eles serem cientistas espaciais do governo, estão enquadrados na…

El libertario Harry Browne una vez escribió que el gobierno «sabe cómo romperte las piernas, darte unas muletas y decir “¿Ves? si no fuera por el gobierno, no podrías caminar”». Pero con déficits y recesiones al acecho, los gobiernos han estado volviéndose más tacaños en cuanto a la entrega de muletas. La Cámara de Representantes…

Cory Doctorow, guest of honor at the upcoming FenCon science fiction convention in Dallas, notes (“During the shutdown, some scientists can’t talk about science,” Boing Boing, October 4) that some of his fellow speakers will be unable to speak if the government shutdown continues. Because they’re government space scientists, they fall under the purview of the…

Em 399 antes da Era Cristã, pelo crime de “corromper os jovens” e debilitar a crença nos deuses tradicionais de Atenas, Sócrates foi sentenciado a beber taça de cicuta. Se o objetivo era silenciar a voz de Sócrates, é seguro dizer que o tiro saiu totalmente pela culatra. A história de Sócrates só fica em…

The seemingly unbridgeable ideological gap in America between economic libertarians, on the one hand, and on the other, those who advocate various manners and degrees of redistribution of wealth can be rationally resolved through an understanding of the significance of the concepts of property rights and redistributive justice to those who advocated them in 1640’s…

In 399 BCE, for the crime of “corrupting the youth” and undermining belief in the customary gods of Athens, Socrates was sentenced to drink a cup of hemlock. If the goal was to silence Socrates’ voice, it’s safe to say that plan backfired in a big way. The story of Socrates stands second in the…

How many times have you heard a politician, addressing some issue of regulatory policy, speak of “all the stakeholders” being at “the table?” That phrase has become popular recently, in particular among sponsors of maximalist copyright law proposals like SOPA and ACTA. “All the stakeholders had seats at the table — the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft…

The long-awaited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2013 report is now making headlines. The report is designed to inform the global community about the current state of climate science — the scientific debate, consensus and (most importantly) data. We will learn of the latest scientific projections of temperature increase, sea level rise and extremes in weather. The report is seven…

“You wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a handbag, you wouldn’t steal a television, you wouldn’t steal a movie.” Sounds familiar doesn’t it? For years the copyright industry has been telling us that piracy is a crime. However, recently another supposedly heinous copyright crime has been added to the list: exposing racism. On September…

In a recent Esquire column (“Dianne Feinstein Defines ‘Journalist,’” September 19), Charles Pierce recalled presidential historian George Reedy’s prediction years ago that so-called “shield laws,” which protect reporters against criminal prosecution for not revealing their sources, would involve de facto government licensing of the press. After all, the law would have to define who qualified…

Libertarian Harry Browne famously wrote that government “knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, ‘See, if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.’” But with deficits and recessions looming, governments have been getting stingier when it comes to handing out crutches. The U.S. House of Representatives recently…

The United States and Russia appear to have reached an agreement over the conflict in Syria. The powers have adopted a diplomatic resolution to bring Syrian chemical weapons under international control. For now, this development has calmed the rhetorical march to war as it is now unlikely to see a U.S. military strike on Syria in the…

Recently someone on an email discussion list I follow pointed out that authors or publishers of copyrighted pieces may be reliant on royalty income for their subsistence. The alternative to proprietary information might be that “only people with income from other sources (such as academic salaries) [would] be able to make their voices heard.” I…

Robert Reich (“Syria and the Reality at Home in America,” Nation of Change, September 7), noting that the share of the population either working or seeking work was at a thirty-year low, writes “A decent society would put people to work — even if this required more government spending on roads, bridges, ports, pipelines, parks…

En todo el mundo, la gente protesta contra la intervención de EE.UU. en Siria. Los sondeos muestran un escepticismo generalizado ante la amenazante guerra. En lugar de aumentar la seguridad de los estadounidenses, es probable que la intervención apoye a fuerzas vinculadas a al Qaida. No obstante parece inevitable que el Gobierno de EE.UU. lance…

In the debate on Syria, progressive pundits are letting us know that do-gooders can’t be peaceniks. Recently, pro-war commentators on liberal media outlets have greatly outnumbered the doves, with MSNBC leading the way. These humanitarian interventionists understand what the most famous progressives of all time made clear, that the obligation to rescue the unfortunate comes with an obligation to…

Forbes contributor psychiatrist Dale Archer asks whether America’s wealth gap could lead to a revolt. Highlighting recent fast food workers’ strikes and the struggle for a “living wage,” Archer observes that “disparity between the nation’s top earners and the bottom 80 percent has grown exponentially over the past three decades, and it’s been exacerbated by…

When you take a big dose of syrup of ipecac, you get a big stream of projectile vomiting. And when someone calls for a living wage, you get a nice big vomit stream from the usual suspects on the Right, denouncing such calls on the basis of what they call “hard-headed economic rationality.” Response to…

The Obama administration has announced the formation of a panel of “outside experts” to review the NSA’s surveillance practices. And a wide-ranging, diverse collection of experts they are; when it comes to institutional backgrounds and viewpoints, they span the entire spectrum from A to B. They remind me a bit of the space shuttle crew…