America’s Going Rogue
The U.S. snubs treaties, obligations and universal principles.
By Noam Chomsky

A Booster Shot for Social Security
The GOP—and some Democrats—want to cut the program. Progressive Dems want to expand it.
By Sarah Jaffe

The Ethics of Mob Justice
A ‘Boston bombing victim’ Halloween costume brought out the Internet’s pitchforks.
By Sady Doyle

Mining Company Sues Canada Over Fracking Ban in Quebec
New trade agreements could hamstring progressive regulations in North America.
By Cole Stangler

Picturing an End to New York City’s Homelessness Crisis
More than 50,000 New Yorkers are homeless. Here’s what the new mayor could do to help.
By Molly Knefel

Ralph Nader: Madder Than Ever
The five-time presidential candidate has a four-letter word for today’s Democrats.
By Cole Stangler

The Adoption-Industrial Complex
Is U.S. domestic adoption about children or profit?
By Jessica Stites

Reading Camus in Tunisia
The Rebel and the Arab Spring.
By Robert Zaretsky

Is Edward J. Snowden Aboard This Plane?

America’s imperial power is on the decline, to the world’s benefit.

By Noam Chomsky

A Brief History of Squatting

The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space chronicles decades of Lower East Side occupations.

A Bill of Rights for the Homeless

Several states are considering guaranteeing civil rights for those without a roof over their heads.

Teach for America’s Mission to Displace Rank-and-File Educators in Chicago

Why are thousands of experienced educators being replaced by new college graduates?

Water, Water, Nowhere

When water becomes scarce, conservatives become environmentalists.

The Force Behind Bills To Lower Wages and Suppress Workers’ Rights? You Guessed It: ALEC

The right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council has modeled legislation to strip workers of their rights nationwide.

By Mary Bottari and Rebekah Wilce

The Dangers of Red-Baiting

A power struggle ensues as we meet the prison chef in episode 2 of Orange Is The New Black.

Helen Thomas: First and Foremost

The White House reporter smashed the glass ceiling for women and set the bar for tenacity.

‘Bargain’ on Immigration Would Feed Prison Profits

The private prison industry stands to gain millions from the Senate’s reform plan.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Clueless

The Newsroom recap: The ‘mission to civilize’ makes a comeback. Cover your ears.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains his view that a secrecy agreement is not an oath, it is a promise. (00:20) The purpose of secrecy agreements is to protect national security, not to protect abuse and illegal activities. (2:00) Bradley Manning, in his view, was faced with a dilemma of either keeping quiet or expose the abuses he saw and risk prosecution. Manning followed his moral conviction and publish the information being withheld from the public, including by a Washington Post reporter who had been assigned to his unit and did not report what he saw. We therefore need whistleblowers to provide evidence and get the word out.

The biggest change McGovern has seen in his nearly 50 years in Washington is that there is almost no big free media any more. (06:30) He describes the fourth estate as dead in the US, but says there is a fifth estate – the internet, including Wikileaks. This is a new tool for people to find out what is going on in the world. (09:40) Today most US broadcasting channels are owned and operated by the same corporations who are profiteering form the wars they have espoused and justified. (12:00)

There is hope in the alternative media, but it comes with not shackling them, as happened with Julian Assange and Wikileaks. McGovern writes for consortiumnews.com, which is one of the earliest examples of  investigative journalism online. (24:20) Julian Assange is a journalist, according to McGovern, as someone who is trying to find out what is really going on. Journalists impose their own brand of self-censorship today in order to not be ‘sensationalised’. (26:00)

source: Free Speech Debate is a research project of the Dahrendorf Programme for the Study of Freedom at St Antony’s College in the University of Oxford. http://www.freespeechdebate.ox.ac.uk

Current issue: May 2013

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Too Much | A project of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies.

About the IPS:
IPS is a community of public scholars and organizers linking peace, justice, and the environment in the U.S. and globally. We work with social movements to promote true democracy and challenge concentrated wealth, corporate influence, and military power.
As Washington’s first progressive multi-issue think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) has served as a policy and research resource for visionary social justice movements for over four decades — from the anti-war and civil rights movements in the 1960s to the peace and global justice movements of the last decade. Some of the greatest progressive minds of the 20th and 21st centuries have found a home at IPS, starting with the organization's founders, Richard Barnet and Marcus Raskin. IPS scholars have included such luminaries as Arthur Waskow, Gar Alperovitz, Saul Landau, Bob Moses, Rita Mae Brown, Barbara Ehrenreich, Roger Wilkins and Orlando Letelier.

“We’re living in extreme times and if you listened to modern rock music you wouldn’t know that,” says Gillespie. “I just think it’s odd there’s no protest, resistance or critique of what’s going down. It’s like people are tranquilised. All the rights people had fought for – people like trade unionists, anarchists, artists – are being clawed back by extremists. These people [in charge] aren’t rational thinkers. Someone like Boris Johnson hides behind that bumbling public schoolboy image but he’s a sinister rightwing c**t trying to bring in anti-strike legislation … we’ve got to fight these fucking people!”

Bobby Gillespie’s primal scream: click here to go to the interview in full @ the guardian