Brandon Darby has been notorious in anarchist circles for a decade — first as a wing-nut, a macho bully, and a womanizer; then as an informant and agent provocateur. He started out as a hippie, became a pseudo-militant leftist, and is now a pundit on conservative blogs. scott crow is one of the few people who saw this entire series of transformations unfold up close.
Confronted with recent revelations concerning the shape and scope of NSA surveillance, liberal commentators have frequently expressed dismay and forwarded objections that the monitoring of ordinary citizens is a wasteful and dangerous distraction from the hunt for real terrorists. As this selection from the new collection Life During Wartime makes clear, such protestations really miss the point, as they misunderstand both the strategy of wholesale surveillance and the ends it serves.
How is it that a couple of kids with crock pots could bomb the Boston Marathon, when counter-terrorism is the FBI's top priority? In The Terror Factory, Trevor Aaronson suggests that part of the problem might be the nature of the FBI's successes.
George Orwell's journals assess events from the perspective of the past looking forward, rather than from the perspective of our present looking back. They thus refreshingly remind us of the uncertainty of the time, the contingency of history, and the moral and political complexity so often lost to the editors of historical volumes.
Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman were arrogant, self-righteous kids who thought that their heroics could unlock the revolution and change the world. In other words: typical anarchists. And as typical anarchists, they were thoughtful, generous, creative idealists, whose devotion to their cause was only rivaled by their devotion to their friends.
In Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, two veteran war correspondents -- Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco -- tour the most desperate, impoverished, physically and socially devastated areas in the United States.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019