From Boing Boing: The ACLU has spent years in court trying to get a look at a top-secret FBI interrogation manual that referred to the CIA’s notorious KUBARK torture manual. The FBI released a heavily redacted version at one point — so redacted as to be useless for determining whether its recommendations were constitutional. However,…

“To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue. … To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed,…

The late, great HL Mencken defined puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time.” I haven’t visited Michael Bloomberg’s New York City in more than a decade, but if I landed at LaGuardia tomorrow, I’d half expect to be greeted by officials right out of Tompkins Harrison Matteson’s painting “Trial…

The main plotline of the Star Wars prequel trilogy concerns an apparent conflict between the central government (the Senate) on the one hand and a coalition of mercantile interests (the Trade Federation, the Commerce Guild, etc.) on the other. As events unfold, however, it quickly becomes obvious to the audience (though much less quickly to the protagonists)…

I suppose we will forever be subjected to incomplete accounts of the life of Nelson Mandela and the evil he struggled against. Both the Right and the Left (as conventionally defined in America) are too busy pushing agendas to provide the full story. On the establishment Right (with some honorable exceptions) apartheid was deemed unimportant…

I had not intended to write anything on the death of Nelson Mandela. Partly because I am exhausted, but mainly because I wish to demonstrate my right not to mark his passing in any way — notwithstanding any affection I might bear the man. I feel that it is a right that needs to be…

Glenn Broadnax of Brooklyn, New York, suffers from anxiety and depression. According to recently released court documents, on the evening of September 14th he was “talking to dead relatives in his head,” which led him to try “throwing himself in front of cars to kill himself.” As he disrupted traffic, police arrived. Broadnax reached his hand into…

Stephen Moss discusses Jeremy Scahil’s, Dirty Wars. Karam Filfian reviews Dirty Wars. Anthony Papa asks for a pardon of both drug war prisoners and the turkey. Deepak Tripathi discusses Obama’s Middle Eastern policy. David Macray discusses the plight of ex-convicts. Ahmad Barqawi discusses Bandar’s reign of terror. David Rosen discusses the private security threat to…

They don’t create oppression; they just make it possible What I’m about to say may surprise you, but I assure you it’s the honest truth: in my personal experience, cops are overwhelmingly decent folks. They almost always conduct themselves “professionally” and have generally treated me with respect. I’m not saying stories of law enforcement abuse haven’t…

Criminality, Counter Economics and the Silk Road, or We’re All Illegalists Now! At this point in time, it seems of little doubt to most that Ross Ulbricht was none other than a Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR). According to files obtained by the feds off of Ulbricht’s computer, it also appears that he is the first…

On the night of May 14, 2010 16-year-old Bronx resident Kalief Browder was walking home from a party. He was stopped by police and “identified” by a stranger as a robber. Despite the lack of any evidence whatsoever, Browder was put in prison where he remained for three years. He missed the birth of his cousin,…

C4SS Senior Fellow and Lysander Spooner Research Scholar, Nathan Goodman, gives a fantastic presentation on rape culture, transphobia and strategies for resistance for the Genderevolution Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The JFK administration’s public image has often been compared to that of Camelot, a mythical royal court. What’s more disturbing is that the people who apply such terms to this 20th century gang are almost always applying it in a positive sense. “What could be better,” say these waxing nostalgic imperialists, “than an administration which commands…

Today marks Transgender Day of Remembrance. On this day, transgender and gender non-conforming people join with our allies to mourn and memorialize the transgender and gender non-conforming people who have been killed for who they are.  There’s a lot at stake here. Trans* people, particularly transgender women of color, face horrendous bigotry, violence, and murder….

Anarchists who intend to act as though we didn’t live in a dystopic world must find themselves perplexed at every moment. With the ecosystems of civil society so atrophied and virtually every surviving institution of value captured and beaten into participating in the bloody circus of statism, who do you call? What do you do…

Naomi Klein, to a casual reader, might seem to hate the free market. Or at least she hates what most people think of as the free market, based on the conventional use of that term by mainstream politicians and journalists. And the usual vulgar libertarian suspects (see here and here and here) have reacted with exactly the kind of by-the-numbers polemics you’d…

Sweden is often depicted in the international media as a bastion of pluralism, tolerance and progress. This image stands in stark contrast to the lived realities of marginalized people in Sweden who face an increasingly violent and desperate state. Reports of inner border controls in the Stockholm public transportation system have caused anger, fear and…

Welcome to the fourth review! Let’s get started. First up are the usual pieces on foreign policy and militarism: Daniel R. Mahanty discusses how realists can also champion human rights. David Swanson discusses the visit to the White House of a Taliban victim and drone strikes. Patrick Cockburn discusses the victims of war in Iraq….

Today we can celebrate the recent relaunch of the Silk Road drug market, named for a predecessor taken down over a month ago by federal agents for its connection with an alleged assassination conspiracy involving alleged founder Ross Ulbricht. The FBI is attempting to tie Ulbricht to the online identity of the Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), an entrepreneur…

Acabo de ler que pais de estudante autista do ensino médio detido em operação de cilada de drogas em Temecula, Califórnia, em dezembro último, moveram processo contra o distrito escolar. Os pais estavam “inicialmente satisfeitos com seu filho ter feito seu primeiro e único amigo no ano passado na escola,” mas ficaram desconfiados quando o…