On Thursday (18), Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court minister Gilmar Mendes agreed to hear the arguments challenging drug criminalization in the country. The lawsuit should be judged only in the second semester, but his actions finally signal the political wear of the drug war. The fight against drugs is one of the few constants in the…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Chad Nelson‘s “State Sterilization: Alive and Well in America” read by Emberlea McCulligh and edited by Nick Ford. Though past generations often justified state-coerced sterilization on such grounds as “purifying the gene pool,” today’s sterilization supporters would no doubt cite “public safety” as their rationale. Parents who consistently put their children in danger…

Una recente indagine della Associated Press sulle pratiche dei tribunali del Tennessee durante il patteggiamento ha messo in allerta gli americani su una delle tradizioni governative più agghiaccianti e finora considerate proibite: la sterilizzazione forzata dei carcerati. Secondo la giornalista della AP Sheila Burke, un caso recente ha riguardato una donna del Tennessee con disturbi…

Recent investigations by the Associated Press into the practices of Tennessee prosecutors during plea-deal negotiations have alerted Americans to one of their government’s most gruesome and supposedly forbidden traditions: forced prisoner sterilization. According to AP reporter Sheila Burke, a recent example of this practice involved a mentally ill Tennessee woman whose infant child died under…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s ““Terror” as Victim Rhetoric” read by Thomas J. Webb and edited by Nick Ford. All acts of war involve terror. The horror of war is not a byproduct, it is the intention. One cannot divorce terror from war anymore than one can divorce pleasure from sex. Treating an entire side of a…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “The Biggest Baddest Gang in Town” read by Ryan Calhoun and edited by Nick Ford. Police departments do exactly what monopolies always do — abuse and cheat consumers and, in the words of Benjamin Tucker, “furnish poison instead of nutriment.” As monopolies, police departments are exempt by law from any competitive…

With the execution of Brazilian citizen Marco Archer in Indonesia on 01/17 for cocaine trafficking, one question remains: Will the war on drugs continue to revert the achievements of civilization with cruel and absurd penalties? It is not only Indonesia that punishes the purchase and sale of banned drugs. According to Harm Reduction International, an…

Odio quei sostenitori della violenza che si spacciano per avvocati della nonviolenza. Ad esempio, quei liberal che condannano una protesta violenta ma poi invocano leggi che autorizzano un poliziotto armato ad arrestare una persona per possesso di un’arma da fuoco. O quel presidente che usa le bombe a grappolo contro i civili ma poi condanna…

Tutto questo parlare di terrorismo serve soltanto a mascherare l’impulso alla guerra con una retorica vittimistica. Vedete, la Francia non è “in guerra”, ma sta solo rispondendo ad attacchi “terroristici”. Quei vili, miserabili banditi non sono guerrieri o soldati, ma pazzi, cani sciolti del terrore. Senza questo ragionamento, l’assalto agli uffici di Charlie Hebdo del…

The entire purpose of the language of terrorism is to cloak the sentiments of war in a victim rhetoric. You see, France isn’t “at war,” they’re merely responding to “terror” attacks. Those wretched, vile gunmen are not warriors or soldiers, they’re madmen, lone wolf terrorists. The attack on Charlie Hebdo‘s office on January 7 might otherwise be…

I hate when people support violence, but claim to advocate non-violence. We see it when a liberal condemns protesters for rioting but then advocates laws that enable armed police officers to arrest and armed guards to cage people for possessing firearms. We see it when presidents who use cluster bombs against civilians condemn violence by protesters and…

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…

In Ferguson, Missouri, USA Michael Brown was gunned down by a local police officer and a wave of protests rightfully took over the town, demanding justice and an end to police abuse and militarization But what about the Brazilian Fergusons? In Brazil, police are routinely abusive, especially against poor young people from cities’s peripheries. Their use of…

Last week, Radley Balko published an interesting piece on the question “After Ferguson, how should police respond to protests?”  He contrasted the militarized approach seen in Ferguson and in the Battle of Seattle with less reactionary and more cooperative forms of policing. One police chief Balko praised was Chris Burbank of Salt Lake City, my hometown….

Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) militants recently launched a major offensive in Iraq. They managed to seize territory from fleeing Iraqi government/police forces. These Islamic fundamentalist fighters are basically engaged in behavior no better than what the Iraqi government does. Their behavior deserves no support from friends of liberty. There is a…

Last Sunday three people were killed in Las Vegas. Two were police officers on their break at Cici’s Pizza. Rather than being a day to celebrate the death of two agents of the state as a win in the fight for freedom, it is a day to reconsider the foundations of our beliefs and the…

It’s over. As the evening started on Thursday (May 15), the Military Police of the State of Pernambuco, in Brazil decided to finish a strike that had lasted the whole day. Looting, depredations, disorder and murder all happened during the strike. Stores closed, people went home. “Arrastoes” (“draggings,” where large groups of people set off…

Brazil is a violent country. A sizable part of the population experiences many aggressions in its streets. However, violence in Brazil is present in prisons too. There, it can take very subtle forms, which very few people – except those who suffer from it – come to know about. Among these subtle forms of violence are…

Whenever someone asks me about the problems of the prison state and why I would like to abolish the entire prison system, I just say, “read Nathan Goodman’s blog ya muppets!” I’m delighted to be writing this guest blog post for my pal Nathan, who does a wonderful job highlighting the problems and moral atrocities…

Non-libertarians often find libertarianism baffling. Notice the fundamentally puzzled tone of so many critiques of libertarianism – like, for example, this one by Don Herzog (I choose it more or less at random): There’s something endearingly toughminded, if that’s not an oxymoron, about libertarianism. At the same time, for the same reason, there’s something unbelievably…