A Teenager Slain On Saturday, August 9, eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was walking with a friend on the 2900 block of Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri. He was on his way home on the hot, humid afternoon, walking down the middle of the street when the two were approached by Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson. Reports of what…

On August 12, Brazil’s largest news program, Jornal Nacional, interviewed presidential candidate Eduardo Campos. Of his 15 minutes replying to questions, he spent at least 10 of them touting the presence of his family in the state apparatus. He filled the remaining time with banalities such as “we can’t give Brazil up.” The following morning, Campos’s private jet crashed…

Immanuel Ness, ed. New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism (Oakland: PM Press, 2014) (Amazon link). In his foreword to the book, Staughton Lynd describes the official model of unionism in the United States, first pioneered by the company unions under the American Plan (especially by the company union…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Advocates of Freed Markets Should Embrace ‘Anti-Capitalism’” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Gary Chartier, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Defenders of freed markets have good reason to identify their position as a species of “anti-capitalism.” To explain why, I distinguish three potential meanings of “capitalism” before suggesting that…

Nearly a century ago, after four bloody years of World War I, British colonialists created the state of Iraq, complete with their hand-picked monarch. Britain and France were authorized — or, more precisely, authorized themselves — to create states in the Arab world, despite the prior British promise of independence in return for the Arabs’…

Well, that didn’t take long. The morning after The New York Times Magazine publishes the Gray Lady’s most charitable and understanding in-depth treatment of libertarianism since the modern movement’s emergence in the 1970s, Paul Krugman had ready his obligatory harrumphing dismissal. Getting into his economic-wonk comfort zone as quickly as possible, Krugman perfunctorily brushes past the entire…

In an article that will no doubt make “progressive” hearts go pitty-pat (“The 1% May Be Richer Than You Think, Research Shows,” Bloomberg, August 7), Jeanna Smialek suggests that top 1%’s wealth is far greater even than official statistics indicate — and that because so much of that wealth is hidden in offshore tax havens government efforts to…

Recently the story went viral of the Pennsylvania State Department of Agriculture threatening a Mechanicsburg seed library on the grounds that it was in violation of regulations intended to thwart the danger of (ahem) “agri-terrorism.” To comply with the regulations, the library would have to confine itself to distributing only store-bought seeds and not distributing…

On August 7th, President Obama announced his authorization of targeted strikes over Iraq in order to quell the ongoing Islamic State offensive. Just as important are the statements his administration has made through the actions that followed. The bombs actually started to fall on Friday, announcing without words that the US government’s policy of actively managing Iraqi affairs from afar…

Oggi la mia attenzione è stata attirata da una vicenda di aprile che mi era sfuggita. Sembra che Fatah (la tradizionale organizzazione guerrigliera componente principale dell’Olp) e Hamas abbiano annunciato una riconciliazione e un piano per formare un governo di unità nazionale: “uno sviluppo che potrebbe vedere i territori palestinesi sotto un’unico comando per la…

U.S. bombs fall on Iraq yet again, in strikes authorized by Barack Obama against the militant Islamist group Islamic State, which has taken over a chunk of the country. Between this and the deployment of US military “advisers,” the memory of Obama’s campaign criticizing war in Iraq on his way to office has grown a…

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, the four-year bloody nightmare that claimed 16 million lives — 7 million of them noncombatants — and wounded over 20 million people. That would have been bad enough, but the conflict was merely Act One in a much bigger war. The…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The Question is, Why Would ANYONE Trust the Government?” read and edited by Nick Ford. What was government doing, back when trust was so high? As soon as it emerged as global hegemon after WWII, the US began resorting to direct invasions, military coups and death squads when countries refused to…

According to a recent story at Shareable by Kelly McCartney and Sarah Baird (“Pennsylvania Seed Library Investigated by Department of Agriculture,” August 7), the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture is investigating an heirloom seed library as a possible vector of attack by “agricultural terrorists.” Libraries for sharing traditional and heirloom seed varieties are a growing phenomenon nationwide, intended…

Convicted in 1994 of sexually assaulting a young boy, John Henry Skillern of Texas once again finds himself incarcerated and awaiting trial, this time for possession and production of child pornography. Skillern’s arrest comes courtesy of Google. Few, I expect, will shed tears for Skillern with respect to his alleged sexual predations. Nonetheless his case once more…

Zygmunt Bauman, in Postmodernity and Its Discontents, writes that religion, in its traditional form, used to celebrate human insufficiency. With a path more or less outlined for her entire life, the individual found herself powerless to change the conditions she was inserted in. In contrast to what he considers the “postmodern” condition, of uncertainty, premodern…

It is easy to see moral irony in the arguments of those who support Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government in the ongoing dispute against a group of so-called vulture funds, led by the highly litigious Elliot Associates. Anyone even slightly familiar with the corrupt shenanigans of Fernandez, her late husband — former president Nestor Kirchner — and their…

Kevin Carson discusses why distrust in government is a good thing. Kevin Carson discusses how the makers and takers aren’t who you think. Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the War on Drugs, intervention, and immigrant children. Patrick Cockburn discusses the Saudi complicity in the rise of ISIS. Gina Luttrell discusses bootleggers, baptists, and birth control. Justin…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The ‘Makers’ and ‘Takers’ — Not Who You Think” read and edited by Nick Ford. But you don’t get to be super-rich — to the tune of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars — by making stuff. You get that filthy rich only through crime of one sort or another…

Critics of libertarianism on the Center-Left sometimes depict it as a radical ideology that would turn upside down everything we know — a doctrine of such thorough-going change that the critics are compelled to ask “what society in human history was ever organized along libertarian lines?” Not so! Nick Gillespie (“Why an 1852 Novel by…