Guantánamo stands out as one of the most extreme examples of how people’s lives can be totally ruined not because they actually did anything wrong, but because it was simply not politically advantageous for anyone to care what happened to them.

This week we're talking about perhaps the most widely misused term in all of politics - authoritarianism. Why is it so misunderstood? Let's take a look.

The American attitude toward the French Revolution has been generally favorable—naturally enough for a nation itself born in revolution.

For a good while one could blame Trump for the prosecutorial monstrosity perpetrated on journalist Julian Assange. But now it’s time for Trump to move over. The single worst assault on the first amendment and a free press in recent centuries is no longer solely his. Biden owns it. Biden could end this state persecution of a journalist today, if he felt like it. A persecution that a U.N. expert has called torture. A persecution that could easily lead to Assange’s death.

Juneteenth isn’t the "other" Independence Day, it is the Independence Day. By Jameelah Nasheed.

Malcolm X died fifty-one years ago today, just as he was moving toward revolutionary ideas that challenged oppression in all its forms. By Ahmed Shawki. (Feb. 2016)

How many people with a sense of entitlement does it take to screw in a light-bulb? Why just one, of course. They stand still holding the bulb and the world revolves around them. And when the govern…

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Thursday the jailing of two Reuters journalists had nothing to do with freedom of expression and they can appeal against their seven-year sentences, prompting a sharp rebuke from the United States.

Tommy Frenck is the proud owner and proprietor of The Golden Lion, a traditional, half-timbered guesthouse surrounded by meadows in a small village in central Germany.

Lonnie Holley

The Long Night of Ideas in Berlin took a look this year at growing threats to freedom of expression around the world. A talk at the Maxim Gorki Theater examined what Germany can do to help protect this human right.

Steven Nadler on Spinoza.

Despite pervasive racism and the weight of the Great Depression, Bessie Stringfield found freedom on the open road. By Giselle Defares.

We really are going to have to start a conversation about ethics, aren’t we? By John Michael Greer.

King’s vision for civil disobedience cannot be separated from his anticapitalism and his concern with the “evil” of poverty. By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.

“Freedom” is just another word for being under the thumb of a powerful white man — for now. By Laurie Penny.

There is no public space on the internet. This needs to change. By Navneet Alang.

“Apparently it has not occurred to anyone that a ‘good American,’ like a ‘good German’ or a ‘good Japanese,’ must be, pro tanto, a bad human being.” By Bertrand Russell. (1922)

Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852.

Thoughts on poverty, misery, and the great revolutions of history.