The End of the Deep Web? Nope.It was a wild ride last week in the world of the Deep Web, that section of the Internet that requires special tools to access. The feds took down the site called Silk Road and claim to have arrested its founder and administrator. The news streams were filled with lurid tales of derring-do in this world that seem to be drawn from a TV mini-series.
My first step was to see if I knew this fellow named Ross Ulbricht whom the feds unmasked as the Dread Pirate Roberts, the hero to cyber... (more)
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The Authoritarianism Of Elizabeth WarrenThroughout the US government “shutdown,” Democratic politicians have compared their Republican rivals to “anarchists” and argued that the “shutdown” proves government necessary. A recent speech by Elizabeth Warren on the Senate floor exemplifies this trend.
Misconceptions run rampant in Senator Warren’s speech. She conflates cooperation and government, stating “In our democracy, government is just how we describe the things ... (more)
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America's Prisons: The Worst National DisgraceThe U.S. correctional system is the worst of America’s domestic disgraces. More people languish behind bars in the United States than in any other country, except perhaps China if we factor in the unknown numbers in labor camps. As the Economist summed it up:
America has around 5% of the world's population, and 25% of its prisoners. Roughly one in every 107 American adults is behind ba ... (more)
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Shutting Down but Not Closing UpAt the time of publication, the United States government is shut down. That does not mean the gears of the state have come to a thankful halt. Over three-quarters of Washington's global hegemony remains fully functional. Tax dollars are still being redistributed. Wars continue to be waged. The public at large is going about its day unbothered by the furlough of tens of thousands of ... (more)
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Transforming America's Schools into Authoritarian Instruments of Compliance“To the degree that we take away play, we deprive children of the ability to practise adulthood, and we create people who will go through life with a sense of dependence and victimisation, a sense that there is some authority out there who is supposed to tell them what to do and solve their problems. That is not a healthy way to live.” – psychologist Peter Gray
These days, it is far too easy to rattle off the outrageous examples of zero tolerance policy run amok in our nation’s s... (more)
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A Killer of a "Joke"A US citizen who jokes about assassinating the president or any other prominent official can expect to receive a visit from the Secret Service or the FBI. Even if the statement was an ill-advised act of whimsy, rather than a credible threat, the citizen who makes it will most likely be prosecuted and face fines and a prison sentence.
Things are rather different when public officials speak irresponsibly about killing citizens. This is true even – or perhaps especially – for officia... (more)
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Humanitarian Wars and Their NGO Foot-SoldiersIn February, 2011, Soliman Bouchuiguir told a lie. It was a big one. As the head of the Libyan League for Human Rights, Bouchuiguir initiated a petition that was eventually signed by 70 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) demanding that the US, EU, and UN "mobilize the United Nations and the international community and take immediate action to halt the mass atrocities now being perpetrated by the Libyan government against its own people."
The petition invoked the "Responsibility... (more)
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Do Taxpayers Want to Pay For Those Shut Down Government Services?There is a common assumption among politicians that voters want a lot of government services, but don't want to pay for them. It's certainly true that taxpayers don't like paying taxes, and this is demonstrated in the fact that the federal government runs a deficit virtually every single year. If the taxpayers didn't mind paying the full cost of government, the feds would be able to collect enough in revenue to pay the bills. As it is, the political realities of public opposition to taxation dri... (more)
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Goodbye Silk Road, Hello Sheep MarketplaceThis is an excellent radical article from Bloomberg News. |
Taxes: Man's Inhumanity to ManMy community in the Deep South prides itself on friendship, community feeling, and an overall happy spirit. So it was a bit strange for all of this to be utterly smashed and obliterated in the course of a few calamitous weeks in which friend turned against friend, colleagues became antagonists and enemies, and families were rended asunder.
What disaster led to this? It wasn't Mother Nature. It was politics.
The question of whether to raise property taxes was put to ... (more)
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Government Policing Does Not Mix Well With Private SecurityWhen government police fail to provide adequate protection, people turn to private security. Yet, when private security becomes inconvenient for the monopoly security force (i.e., the state), purchasers of private security are punished.
Recently, public police departments in the Des Moines, Iowa area have been charging businesses and private homeowners for responding to false alarms -- that is, alarms generated by business or home security systems that were not the result of a... (more)
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The Shutdown Is Upon Us“The vast machinery of the federal government began grinding to a halt” this morning, according to the New York Times. The Smithsonian museums and national zoo are closed. Parks are shuttered. Visa and passport applicants will have their approvals delayed. Most NASA employees aren’t going to work.
These conspicuous inconveniences characterize the shutdown, as “non-essential” federal servic... (more)
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The Standing Army Marches OnWhen the Constitution’s Framers adopted the 3rd Amendment, prohibiting the peacetime quartering of soldiers, they had fresh on their minds the experience of the British occupation of Boston, the use of armed enforcers to conduct searches without traditionally restrictive warrants, and the overall spectacle of government officials heavily armed in a military capacity patrolling the streets to enforce the central state’s will. Thomas Jefferson condemned standing armies as “instruments so dangerous... (more)
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Who Wants Marijuana To Remain Illegal?Police unions, private prison corporations, alcohol and beer companies, pharmaceutical companies, and prison guard unions are said to be in the top five in terms of lobbying and paying lawmakers to keep marijuana illegal. Hey, this is DEMOCRACY at work. This is the best system on earth, right? This is the system the U.S. government tells us it wants for Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
I... (more)
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OMG--a Government ShutdownNo more predation and killing by the biggest government on the face of the earth? We should be so lucky. Despite the lying claims coming from Clowngress and the media, the Pentagram will bomb, the drones will blow up, NSA will spy, the FBI will spy, the CIA will spy and assassinate–go down the rest of the list of the alphabet from Hell. At worst, if that is the word, “non-essential” federal employees will be laid off, and lushly paid when the charade ends, having gotten an additional vacation. D... (more)
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The Emperor in DenialPresident Obama tries to have it both ways when talking of American foreign policy. He sold himself to the public in 2008 as a more prudential steward of U.S. power. He would avoid “dumb wars,” as he had called the Iraq fiasco in a speech years before. He would save money by bringing the troops home from that place, and direct the resources toward the domestic fiscal mess. He would abolish torture and end the Bush-era programs of indefinite detention and Patriot Act--style surveillance.
<... (more)
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Corporate America Goes Off the GridAs much as I love technology, part of me hates being so dependent on a live wall plug wherever I go. You find yourself trapped in some setting without accessible wall plugs and your phone is dying. You charge from you laptop, but that is dying too. You take recourse to your tablet, but that will eventually kick the bucket too.
When you finally get to a power supply, you hog as much as you can in the time you have, but you are aware that life as you know it is only as good as the f... (more)
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From Crystal Meth Addiction to Sustainable Communities
In this video Luke Rudkowski interviews Derrick Broze, founder of The Houston Free Thinkers. Derrick goes into detail about his dark past, using and selling crystal meth. Derrick is now a full time activist, organizing protest rallies, creating a sustainable community and doing everything in his power to show what an individual is capable of. We hope this video is hel... (more)
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Anarchast with Larken Rose: How Larken Became an Anarchist
On this edition of Anarchast Jeff Berwick interviews Larken Rose from http://www.larkenrose.com/.
The most dangerous superstition: http://amzn.to/15pBadf If I were king: http://youtu.be/BNIgztvyU2U The... (more)
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The Joe Rogan Experience with Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux speaks with Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. JRE #396 - Recorded on Friday September 20th, 2013 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Subjects include: media hypocrisy, wasted human potential, nature vs. nurture, epigenetics, fragmenting the central narrative, the availability of information, confirmation bias, changing the world through ... (more)
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Common Core: A Lesson Plan for Raising Up Compliant, Non-Thinking CitizensAs I point out in my new book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, there are several methods for controlling a population. You can intimidate the citizenry into obedience through force, relying on military strength and weaponry such as SWAT team raids, militarized police, and a vast array of lethal and... (more)
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Making the Victim Pay for the BulletIn overtly totalitarian countries, families of condemned state enemies are often required to pay for the bullets used to execute their loved ones. Two recent federal court rulings indicate that a very similar custom has taken root in proto-Soviet America.
On June 3, 2011, a man wearing a ski mask hurled a crude, improvised stink bomb through an apartment window in Laguna Beach, California. The payload of that infernal device was butyric acid produced through fermentation o... (more)
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Overcoming Stockholm Syndrome
In the 1970s, a strange psychological phenomenon was identified: in traumatic abduction situations, a certain percentage of the population is prone to falling in love with their abductors. But if we are living in a societal prison of the mind, then are there those who have fallen in love with their mental jailers? Find out more about societal Stockholm syndrome in this week... (more)
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Who Needs an Official State Media When We've Got CNN?In a recent Esquire column (“Dianne Feinstein Defines ‘Journalist,’” September 19), Charles Pierce recalled presidential historian George Reedy’s prediction years ago that so-called “shield laws,” which protect reporters against criminal prosecution for not revealing their sources, would involve de facto government licensing of the press. After all, the law would have to define who qualified as a “journalist”... (more)
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