At the height of anti-NSA furor in January 2014, The New Republic (TNR) published a hit piece on Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald that criticized their anti-government beliefs, portraying the leakers as “paranoid libertarians” and traitors to progressive government ideas. Said TNR: By exposing the secrets of the government, they claim to have revealed…

President Obama thinks that forcing us to vote might be a good idea. That he could favor punishing people for not voting — which means taking their money by force and imprisoning or even shooting them if they resist — is unsurprising. The essence of government is violence — aggressive, not defensive, force. Government is…

Beklendiği gibi, Başbakan Benjamin Netanyahu’nun Washington DC’deki Kongrede verdiği konuşmaya verilen tepkiler Israil’de ve Amerika’da parti içerisinde bölünmelere neden oldu. Netanyahu’nun savaş propagandasına yatkın olanlar Iran’la nükleer anlaşmaya karşı reddedilemez, ikna edici öneri duydular. Netanyahu’nun “kurt bağaran oğlan” rutinine tanıdık olanlar ikna edilmediler. Konuşma sonrasında,Netanyahu’nun İsrail’de beklenen seçim numaraları değişmedi, ve Amerika Birleşik Devletlerinde, Washington’ın partizan muhafazakarlar ve basınlar “liderlik gıpta” iddea ettiler (Elisabeth Hasselbeck, R-Fox…

David Graeber. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy (Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2015). This book is, properly speaking, not a book at all, but a collection of essays loosely clustered around the common theme of bureaucracy. Of the material in the book, only the long introductory essay…

A story over at Estado de S. Paulo (“Brasil que se vire com arenas vazias, diz FIFA. ‘O problema é de vocês’”, Estadão Esportes, March 21) notes that FIFA isn’t at all interested in Brazil anymore, and that the useless stadiums the 2014 World Cup left us are not their problem and should be dealt…

Murray Bookchin. The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies & the Promise of Direct Democracy. Foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin (New York and London: Verso, 2015). This book is a collection of Bookchin’s essays on libertarian municipalism and communalism, extending from the period when he still considered himself an anarchist until his final post-anarchist phase. In…

Il sito Antiwar.com (un nome che dice tutto) il diciotto marzo ha annunciato la decisione di Google Adsense di sospendere il suo conto, risorsa fondamentale per stare online, per aver pubblicato foto di torture e abusi scattate nella prigione militare di Abu Ghraib in Iraq (Eric Garris, “Google Disables All Ads on Antiwar.com,” 18 marzo)….

In 1890, anarchist feminist Voltairine de Cleyre published Sex Slavery, a short speech in defense of Moses Harman, a women’s rights supporter who was prosecuted under Comstock law for publishing allegedly obscene material. De Cleyre argued that in her society, women were viewed as the property of their husbands, and had little power over their…

The website Antiwar.com (whose name is self-explanatory) announced March 18 that Google Adsense had suspended its account — a major source of the revenue it needs to stay online — for publishing new photos of torture and abuse from the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq (Eric Garris, “Google Disables All Ads on Antiwar.com,” March…

Immaginate questa scena: Una bella sera, perfettamente ubriaco, sfondate un’area recintata dalla polizia con la vostra auto. Immaginate che l’area sia davanti alla Casa Bianca. E che sia stata recintata perché si sospetta che sia la scena di un crimine, una possibile bomba, e voi avete mandato tutto all’aria. Gli agenti corrono subito verso la…

Il sedici marzo è una data importante per tutti quelli che cercano pace e armonia tra gli uomini: la Giornata delle Frontiere Aperte. Il sito openborders.info, fondato da Vipul Naik, è al suo terzo anno di vita (è nato il sedici marzo 2012). Mira ad aprire la conversazione su immigrazione e libertà di movimento oltre…

March 16 marks an important date for those who cherish peace and harmony between human beings: Open Borders Day. The website openborders.info, founded by Vipul Naik, is in its third year of existence (it began March 16, 2012). It aims at opening up the conversation around immigration and freedom of movement across political borders. Its…

Oggi un individualista in politica rischia di farsi una nomea. Non c’è da sorprendersi. Dopotutto la politica è dominata da politici eletti, e la politica elettorale va essenzialmente contro l’individuo. In un libero mercato o in un’associazione volontaria di qualsiasi genere, le persone in disaccordo sarebbero libere di andare da qualche altra parte. Le elezioni…

Imagine the following scenario: You’re driving along one fine evening, pretty thoroughly drunk, and ram your car through police tape and into a barricade.  Suppose further that the barricade you’ve smashed into is in front of the White House. For good measure, let’s add that the police tape you broke was marking off an active crime scene…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “A University Built by the Invisible Hand” read by Joey Clark and edited by Nick Ford. In the 12th century, Bologna was a center of intellectual and cultural life. Students came to Bologna from all over Europe to study with prominent scholars. These individual professors were not originally organized into a university;…

We must face the fact that criticism of the libertarian philosophy in the mass media will most likely misrepresent its target, making the commentary essentially worthless. That’s painfully clear from what critics publish almost weekly on self-styled left-wing and progressive websites. How refreshing it would be for someone to set forth the strongest case for…

Come c’era da aspettarsi, la reazione al discorso al Congresso del primo ministro Benjamin Netanyahu si sono divise secondo linee di partito, sia in Israele che negli Stati Uniti. Quelli che condividono la sete di guerra di Netanyahu ci hanno visto un argomento convincente, indiscutibile per opporsi a qualunque accordo sul nucleare con l’Iran. Quelli…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Jeff Ricketson‘s “Elizabeth Warren’s War on Students” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. It’s absurd to suggest that the solution to overpriced government student loans is to eliminate profit from the program. Loans are supposed to be the current use of one’s future capital. Interest rates signal how efficient this advance…

As a libertarian masochist who keeps up with the regular by-the-numbers attacks on libertarianism at Alternet and Salon, I almost dared to hope for something at least marginally better from Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect (“The Libertarian Delusion,” Winter 2015). I was disappointed. “The stubborn appeal of the libertarian idea persists,” Kuttner writes, “despite…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Education and the “Progressive” Corporate State” read by Ian Anderson and edited by Nick Ford. The official White House happy talk, predictably, takes the corporate state’s assumptions for granted: “In our growing global economy, Americans need to have more knowledge and more skills to compete — by 2020, an estimated 35 percent…