Speaking in Knoxville, Tennessee on January 9 US president Barack Obama unveiled an initiative to provide two years of community college tuition-free, nationwide, to anyone meeting attendance and grade requirements. The idea, inspired by a similar program in Tennessee, aims to make two years of college as universal as high school is now. Obama’s proposal is in…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “State Justice Failed Michael Brown. People’s Justice is Just Getting Started.” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. The consequences for cops who draw public attention due to their extreme levels of brutality, in this new age of citizen journalism, is instructive. The people are more than happy to administer…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Chad Nelson‘s “The Inherent Flaw of the Criminal Justice System” read by Dylan Delikta and edited by Nick Ford. The protesters who utter such concerns about the validity of a state prosecution of a police officer have their finger on an issue that market anarchists have long recognized. Government checks and balances are a…

Buone notizie per tutti! La polizia di New York è in sciopero. La settimana scorsa, gli arresti sono crollati del 66% rispetto alle previsioni annuali, mentre le multe per gli automobilisti sono giù del 94%. Risultato: New York non è finita nel caos. Non c’è stato lo spara spara per le strade. Non c’è stato…

Re-elected New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s inaugural address was built around the purported necessity of big government since “there is no small solution to big problems.” Cuomo’s exemplar of a big government solution success story from New York state history: The Erie Canal. But that megaproject was not just a prototype for the industrial age’s spectacular engineering…

Good news, everyone! The police of New York City are on strike. Over the past week, arrests rate have dropped by 66% versus annual expectations, with traffic enforcement down 94%. As a result, New York did not rip itself apart in a wave of disorder. People were not executed on the street. Society did not collapse. This poses a…

Partisan combatants have quickly taken up sides in the public debate over US president Barack Obama’s preemption of a wedding planned by two US Army captains at a course at which he wanted to golf. Obama’s defenders stress that the White House was unaware of the planned wedding until after scheduling the president’s game. They…

I live in Chicago, where police abuse is a disheartening daily reality, concentrated almost entirely in black communities, ruining lives, splitting up families. The white professionals I know live in good neighborhoods, ensconced either in downtown high-rises or out in the suburbs, safely away from the violence but hearing enough about it to casually blame…

On December 22 Maricopa County, Arizona Attorney Bill Montgomery dropped criminal charges stemming from an animal abuse case last summer. In that incident, Green Acre kennel allegedly locked twenty dogs in a sweltering room — in the Arizona summer — leaving them to die of heat prostration and dehydration. Why, you might wonder, would Montgomery drop…

The recent trajectory of events leading up to the shooting of NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, and the nationwide police backlash afterward, have made it clearer than ever how police feel about the public they supposedly protect and serve: they’re terrified of us. For more than twenty years, the Drug War and associated…

On Saturday, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp released four of its 136 uncharged detainees from custody. Six years late, Barack Obama is inching closer towards keeping his promise: “I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that.” But as for the pledge to restore habeas corpus that accompanied his making an anti-Guantanamo…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “Jon Stewart, Jester for the Warfare State” read by Erick Vasconcelos and edited by Nick Ford. The difference between Carlin and Stewart is that Carlin was not beholden, he kept nothing as sacrosanct and by the time of his death had at one point offended the sensibilities of every demographic on the…

The Colbert Report‘s windup completes its namesake’s shift from the gadfly who tore into George W. Bush at an official White House event to the court jester who gave softball publicity to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It is thus the perfect symbol of the evolution of American liberalism from the tail ends of the administrations…

È stato pubblicato un sommario minimo, parziale, fortemente censurato del rapporto che il senato americano ha redatto sul programma di torture della Cia dopo l’undici settembre. Il modo in cui i media di regime hanno accolto il rapporto illustra il problema in questione non meno del rapporto in sé. Come direbbe un tossicodipendente che cerca…

We are fascinated by the image of rebellion. The present generation came of age amidst global unrest and upheaval, from the Arab Spring to the anti-austerity movements in the West. Its immediate impulse has been to identify with those in the streets, even in the case of ill-fated and dubiously progressive movements. The image of…

La procedura seguita dal gran giurì riguardo Darren Wilson, l’assassino di Michael Brown, dimostra quanto sia fittizia negli Stati Uniti la separazione dei poteri. Gli unici a farlo notare, purtroppo, sono quelli che protestano per le strade nel Missouri… sempre che abbiano la fortuna di poter dire la loro per due minuti in un’intervista da…

The US Senate’s minimal, partial, heavily redacted summary of its report on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program is out. That report’s reception by establishment media turns out to be at least as demonstrative of the problem it addresses as the report itself. As any recovering addict will helpfully inform you, the first step is admitting the…

Oltre tre mesi dopo la morte di Michael Brown, avvenuta per mano di Darren Wilson in pieno giorno a Ferguson, nel Missouri, ecco che arriva il verdetto del gran giurì. Non ci sarà un processo, nessuna giustizia per il suo crimine dai tribunali di stato. Wilson non sarà processato mai, tanto meno condannato. Ma nel…

Ironically, the shooting death of unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown by white Ferguson, MO, police officer Darren Wilson is a distraction from the racist police brutality that ravages America. Whether or not Wilson shot Brown unjustifiably, and whether or not Brown provoked the shooting by grabbing for Wilson’s gun, the police — and the government…

Police body cameras are all the rage lately. Al Sharpton wants them used to monitor the activities of cops. Ann Coulter wants them used to “shut down” Al Sharpton. The White House wants them because, well, they’re a way to look both “tough on police violence” and “tough on crime” by spending $263 million on new law enforcement technology….