Another World Was Possible
In keeping with recent celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, let’s consider just how far the actual results fell short of their promise. To take just one example:  the West systematically suppressed all economic alternatives to neoliberalism in the countries of the former Soviet bloc after the fall of communism. In Russia, neoliberal intellectuals like Jeffrey Sachs eagerly supported derailment under Yeltin of  Gorbachev’s market socialist agenda for mutualizing state-owned factories as worker cooperatives.  (The latter “land to the tillers” and “factories to the workers” policy, by the way, was exactly the model of

Hired Guns 1, Government 0
Making recent news is the fact that the MV Maersk Alabama has been attacked by seagoing Somali gunmen again – last time was in April, when Vermont sea captain Richard Phillips and the vessel he was in charge of were hijacked. It was several days before U.S. Navy snipers were deployed to the area and killed Phillips’ captors. This time no hijacking occurred. Why? Maersk had hired and embarked with an onboard armed private security team. As a further boon, although shots were fired, this time there were zero casualties. Surprisingly, the decision by Maersk received considerable accolades from members of the American military Observe this quote from a November 18 AB

Why Anarchists Should Hurrah the Recession
According to Devin Dwyer of ABC News, “Enormous budget deficits in nearly every state across the country are “wreaking havoc” on government employees, the services they provide, and the residents who need them most, according to a new report by the Pew Center for the States. Dwindling state tax revenues during the recession have forced states to furlough workers, raise taxes, crowd more kids into classrooms, and trim social services. But experts say those measures and others can only go so far in keeping many states from going broke.” This should have anarchists jumping for joy. True, the part about raising taxes is no anarchist’s wish,

With Enemies Like This, Who Needs Friends?
An interviewer recently interrupted Rupert Murdoch’s bellyaching about all the traffic and free advertising Google was sending News Corp’s way (I believe “steal our stories” is the expression he actually used) to ask him a seemingly obvious question:  if he was so bothered by Google’s links to his content, why didn’t he just use the robots.txt protocol to block indexing from Google? His response:  “I think we will.”  That’s the first time he’s explicitly made that threat. All the jubilation and cheering you hear is from Pirate Parties, anti-copyright activists and penguinheads all around the world.  Punishing people for direct

UK: Common Sense Isn’t Common Anymore
Last Tuesday, an ex-soldier called Paul Clarke was convicted of possessing a firearm and may now face a minimum sentence of five years. One day Mr Clarke was standing on his balcony when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden, and on closer inspection he found that the bin liner contained a sawn-off shotgun. The reaction of Mr Clarke was instinctual – he went to the local police station and handed it in. Since he had technically ‘possessed’ the weapon on the journey to the station, he was deemed to be in breach of the law and will now be banged up for half a decade. Also last week, there was Lorraine Elliot, the lawyer who lost her job after it was