I‘m starting today what I’d like to be a weekly feature of this blog, though we’ll see how long  I keep it up… I don’t do a lot of link posting here anymore, having largely relegated that to my Facebook feed. However, Facebook does not allow for much analysis, nor can I group a cluster of links together at once, so I thought I’d start putting together some links to articles dealing with politics/economics/radical type stuff, on a weekly basis, along with some of my market-anarchist flavoured analysis. Enjoy.

Groves of Luxury and Idleness?: Roderick Long’s response to this article. ‘It’s true, of course, that professors have much more control of their time than is the case in most other jobs. (Actually it ought to be the case in a lot of those other jobs too.) But having more control of your worktime doesn’t mean it’s not worktime.’

Food Safety for Whom?: In sum: The take-over of agriculture by centralized entities is not a result of free markets, despite the rhetoric of neoliberalism; rather, as with so much of the corporatized global economy, it has been facilitated by a regime of rules, regulations, and other forms of government support, often hiding under the label of ‘food safety.’ Big capital and big government are working together across the planet to finish off smallholders, fully centralize markets, destroy independent producers, and concentrate profits and power in fewer hands. The process is partially directed by the ‘hidden’ mechanisms of state power; it is also- even in the early twenty-first century- supported by the direct and brutal application of force against recalcitrant peasantry:

Land Grabbing in Peru: ‘Years later, in 1974, the Law on Native Communities recognized the right of indigenous peoples in Peru’s Amazon region to collective ownership of their territories, although this was limited to the lands immediately surrounding established settlements. In 1977, however, the Forestry and Wildlife Law prohibited the titling of land designated as “suited to forestry” within the area of indigenous communities; this land would instead be transferred to state ownership. This measure totally undermined the rights of Amazon indigenous communities, since practically all of the land in the vast forested plain of the Amazon basin is “suited to forestry” and consequently, the indigenous peoples living there would be denied access to the forest, on which they largely depend for their livelihoods.’

And: Lengthy Prison Terms and Heavy Fines for Baihutou Village Chief and Land Rights Activist: ‘Xu, Gao, and Zhang were active in resisting the local government’s requisition of village land. Villagers believe that their prosecution is an act of revenge by the local authorities in Baihutou Village.’

U.S. Drug-War Policy Planting the Seeds of Civil-Society Destruction: ‘The rising death toll, more than 40,000 lives to date, in Mexico’s drug war has clearly been inflamed by President Felipe Calderon’s U.S.-appeasing militaristic policies, but many of the weapons fueling that war were put on the ground years ago via the vast quantities of arms shipped into Mexico and Central America, often covertly, during the civil and proxy wars waged in Latin America during the Cold War.’

How to Lower the Price of Prescription Drugs: A still somewhat statist, but headed in the right direction approach to liberating a crucial part of the medical industry. If drugs were released into a genuinely free market, people the world over would suddenly find health care affordable and accessible without state or corporate healthcare intervention. Which is why, naturally, it hasn’t happened…

An Interview With Eric Miles Williamson: ‘Being “educated” has never in human history been a “right.” Being minimally educated, since the onset of the industrial revolution, has been a requirement. Industrialized nations needed to have a minimally competent work force, and a work force that was civically loyal. Hence, public education, sponsored by the state. Not great education, but public education. The idea that public education should do anything more than produce responsible and competent citizens sounds like something that would come out of the mouth of a hippy.’