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…

The online liberty group “Thoughts on Liberty” pumps out some good stuff more often than not. The site is intellectually managed and operated by “a team of ladies writing about freedom” who offer their unique perspective on libertarianism. Like most addressing the liberty movement, the authors usually take a right leaning (or all-out right stance)…

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

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

Se há coisa que o establishment libertário — isto é, organizações libertárias da corrente majoritária cuja principal atividade é fazer lobby junto ao estado em favor de “reforma de livre mercado” — adora, é a assim chamada “privatização.” Artigo de Paul Buchheit em Truth-out.com (“Oito Maneiras pelas Quais a Privatização Não Deu o que os…

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

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

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

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

Two quotations, juxtaposed, summarize the errors into which modern American defenses of ‘free markets’ and capitalism have entered. In the process these errors led to abandoning any real meaning for liberty or human well-being.  Right wing libertarians in particular sincerely believe they are seeking to preserve these values, but they are sincerely wrong. But before…

Were anyone to call me dishonest or untruthful he would touch me to the quick. Were he to say that I am unpatriotic, he would leave me unmoved. “What, then, have you no love of country?” That is a question not to be answered in a breath. The early abolition of serfdom in England, the…

There’s an occupational category called “futurist,” which involves attempting to guess the likely future based on extrapolations from current trends and their interactions. Now, many people can spot the major currents of change in our time. It’s when a number of those currents intersect, producing all kinds of whorls and eddies and butterfly effects, that…

Are you concerned about overpopulation? If you live in a city, or Asia, it is easy to feel justified. But strictly speaking, the Earth has plenty of land, air, food and water for billions more. The limit is energy and the true crisis is poverty. Billions live in a world of destitution brought about by state-augmented…

“The Fourth Estate,” as a nickname for the press, is anecdotally attributed to Edmund Burke, when the House of Commons was opened up to press reporting in the 18th century. The idea is that the press is another branch of government without official recognition, representing the interests of civil society as a whole, and acting…

A White House petition asking US president Barack Obama to pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has passed the 100,000-signature mark, theoretically compelling a response from the Obama administration (I say “theoretically” because the finish line on these petitions has been moved before). My own sympathies naturally lie with Snowden, and the petitioners’ hearts are presumably…

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Trevor Hultner. Parece que a reação padronizada da mídia ao surgirem denunciantes em nossos dias é distorcer-lhes a imagem de tal maneira que nunca ninguém possa vê-los como pessoas simpáticas. Assim aconteceu com Daniel Ellsberg. Aconteceu com o segundo cabo B. Manning. E, agora,…

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Lysander Spooner’s “NO TREASON” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Lysander Spooner’s “NO TREASON”. $2.00 for the first copy. $1.50 for every…

It seems that the standard media response when whistleblowers come out these days is to twist their images in such a way that no one could ever find them sympathetic figures. It happened to Daniel Ellsberg. It happened to Pfc. B. Manning. And now, it ‘s former Booz Allen Hamilton system administrator Edward Snowden’s turn…

Muitos economistas acham que a próxima bolha a estourar em nossa atual crise será a dos empréstimos a estudantes. A dívida de empréstimos a estudantes encontra-se em alta histórica, e as taxas de empréstimos federais estão prestes a dobrar, de 3,4% para 6,8% – a despeito de pequeno esforço para fazer com que os juros dos empréstimos a estudantes acompanhem…

Many economists think that the next bubble to burst in our current crisis will be student loans. Student loan debt is at a historic high, and federal loan rates are about to double, from 3.4% to 6.8% – despite a small effort to have student loan interest rates mimic the rates government grants big banks. This…