>Does the Rationale Behind Hate Speech Contradict Itself?

> Brendan O’Neill of British online mag sp!ked writes about the effort to ban what is known as “murder music” (though not by fans of said music), i.e. Jamaican dancehall, in the southern England city of Brighton. The music is accused of inciting violence (or at least stuff that leads to it) against gays and […]

>An Alternative to Humanitarian Imperialism

> Alvaro Vargas Llosa provides an example of one in his recent article “The Humanitarian Dilemma”: On Oct. 25, nine French citizens, seven Spaniards and a Belgian were arrested after the French charity Zoe’s Arc tried to airlift 103 children out of eastern Chad, near the border with Sudan, claiming they were orphans from Darfur. […]

>Fascism and "Islamo-Fascism". A Clarification.

> The Minaret of Freedom Institute has prepared a “background briefing” on both Islam and Fascism, to help prepare students, or anyone else interested, to counter the claims by Neo-Conservatives forthcoming in their imminent “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week”. From October 22-26 luminaries such as David Horowitz, Rick Santorum and politically-correct-politically-incorrect Ayan Hirsi Ali will speak at […]

>Where I Live

> CASTRO VALLEY, CALIFORNIA

>German Anarcho-Syndicalism in Action

> Via Brad Spangler via William Gillis: The counter-economic production of bicycles from BradSpangler.com September 23rd, 2007Kudos to William Gillis for alerting us to the Strike Bike! Striking workers have occupied a bicycle factory in Germany and are preparing to resume bicycle production as their own self-managed enterprise with support from the anarcho-syndicalist Free Workers’ […]

>Myspace Profiles of Interest to Libertarians

>Those I’ve created thus far: 1. Voltairine de Cleyre 2. Benjamin Tucker 3. Thomas Szasz 4. Christopher Lasch I understand that Christopher Lasch isn’t particularly “libertarian”, and in fact was quite critical of consumerism, neo-liberalism and the homo economicus branch of conservatism (and indeed there is much to criticize), but I’m hot off of reading […]

>In Lieu of Anything Actually New to Write…

> I direct you to my older writings on Strike the Root (where I was also a guest editor for a while): 1. Right-Libertarianism’s Image Problem 2. America’s Economic Strangulation of Africa 3. What Is the Euphemism for Censorship? 4. The Myths of Home Schooling and the Inferiority of State Education 5. Immigrants, Immigration and […]

>Kevin Carson on Regulation as Cartelization

> From the estimable Mr. Carson, an excerpt from his forthcoming book on organization theory: A good example is in the building trades, where the regulatory entry barrier enjoyed by licensed contractors “reduces and cancels opportunities for the otherwise much more efficient self-builder.” Construction codes prevent most self-building, and drive the cost of professionally built […]

>This is What People Mean by "Slippery Slope"

>Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine reports that increased enforcement against smoking in private establishments in Amsterdam will have the unfortunate effect of squelching the one big reason people go there in the first place: to smoke. In the U.S., smoking bans that apply to just about every other workplace commonly exempt tobacconists, on the theory […]

>Both Reality Check and Plea for Ethical Sanity…

> Peruvian economist and libertarian Alvaro Vargas Llosa writes: A few weeks ago, Rosita, a Bolivian in her late 40s, told me how on her journey to the United States, she was raped in Guatemala and swindled in Mexico, and how she had to cross the desert into this country after losing a brother who […]