Fear: The Foundation of Every Government's Power; Interview: John Mackey; Deep Space; The Edge; these articles have their titles and text in this color and are featured this week in -
Political Liberty, Life in Amerika, Ordered Liberty without the State;
Spreading Decentralism, The New World Hegemon, Politics by Other Means;
Spontaneous Order, Nonspontaneous Disorder, War Is The Health Of The State;
Bits of History, War and Peace, Great Individuals In History;
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"[P]lease ask your representatives for hearings -- not behind closed doors, but open, public hearings where these questions can be asked and answered. And lastly, for those of you who think that since I have been gagged and stopped by almost all available official channels, I must be ready to vaporize into thin air, please think again."
http://www.antiwar.com/edmonds/?articleid=5954
"It would also be a great impetus to the further dissipation of what Mr. Paya calls 'the culture of fear' in Cuba if the world can see on television what Miss O'Grady describes in the Wall Street Journal: 'For more than two years now, Fidel Castro has faced a frightening scene in Havana every Sunday. Some 30 women dressed all in white meet at St. Rita's church; when Mass is over they form a silent procession and walk 10 blocks to a nearby park. This is the kind of stuff that keeps dictators up at night'."
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050515-094255-7377r.htm
"Last Monday, the Supreme Court struck a blow for free trade among the states. In a 5-4 decision, the Justices ruled that states could not prohibit out-of-state wineries from shipping directly to consumers while allowing in-state wineries to do so. To put the matter more simply, New York can no longer discriminate against Californian goods just because the goods contain alcohol."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1512
"America has precious little poverty, if by poverty you mean lack of something to eat, clothing adequate to keep you warm and cover your private parts, and a dry and comfortable place to sleep. In the 'inner cities' or, as we used to call them, slums...."
http://fredoneverything.net/Poor.shtml
"The result of this Justice Department foray into 'terrorism' was that this eminent scientist was stripped of his professorship, tenure, salary, and medical license. He has spent his life savings and retirement funds to defend himself."
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0520,mondo1,64032,6.html
"Here's how the 'spy' section of the legislation works: If you 'witness' certain drug offenses taking place or 'learn' about them, you must report the offenses to law enforcement within 24 hours and provide 'full assistance in the investigation, apprehension and prosecution' of the people involved. Failure to do so would be a crime punishable by a mandatory minimum two-year prison sentence, and a maximum sentence of 10 years."
http://www.alternet.org/rights/22048/
"The state is reliant on complex division of labor for its parasitism, but at the same time it is burning that foundation. If and when the state collapses like the world's largest Enron, then our button pushing, college degreed, professional, and urban jobs might not much aid in transition to ordered anarchy. Some might be useless without the value infused in them by a coercive state."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/hobbs/hobbs1.html
"Build your own Hardyville, folks. You and your friends. Create your own networks of resistance. Unless national ID can be beat back in the courts -- and unless the victors then drive a stake through its heart and make sure neither it nor its blood-sucking creators return to life -- we're all going to need those private, mutually supportive freedom communities. Now is the time."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe050515.html
"Do you think the Supreme Court is giving you liberty? Ask yourself why the court pounced on state regulations instead of addressing the regulations by the pound enforced by the federal government that constitute far more of an imposition on consumers and retailers."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/court-freedom.html
"Why would our ancestors consider the jury to be one of the last bastions against tyranny and oppression? Because jurors might well decide not to convict their fellow citizens of unjust crimes, while prosecutors and judges would be fixated simply on enforcing and interpreting the laws that Congress enacts."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0501a.asp
"Some liberals are rediscovering the virtues of federalism. They dimly recall that Justice Louis Brandeis called the states 'laboratories of democracy' and are seeking to pursue their own policies at the state level when they fail in Washington. The prospect of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage has made many liberals appreciate the virtues of having 50 states, each free to make its own marriage law."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3766
"By limiting funding in terms of two year intervals, a standing army is made impossible. It was the desire of the Founders to prevent the buildup of a permanent army on land. Instead, since the Continental Army, a ragtag bunch of poorly equipped rogues, drunks, farmers, unemployed and unskilled footloose 'irregulars,' were able to defeat the finely- uniformed, disciplined and well-equipped army of King George III, it was always the opinion of the Founders that an armed people could 'take care of themselves'."
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/05/19/lang.htm
"But if you want to put America first, then listen: The Real ID Act is going to be a pain in your ass -- not Mohammed Atta's. If a guy wants to knock down a building, which is illegal, you think a legal document's going to stop him? Why? And what are sealed borders, really, but an abstract excuse to force us to buy state-brand IDs?"
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/001060.html
"Less a shaper of public opinion in a market economy with many sources of news, media coverage largely reflects what people want to see, hear and read. People choose media outlets based on their preconceived notions. And they want to see, hear and read about what the imperial president and his celebrity advisors, such as Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, are saying and doing."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1509
"[W]hat is destroying America is not immigrants, legal or illegal. They're just the convenient scapegoats for ever-increasing crises and woes arising out of failed foreign-policy and domestic-policy paradigms of empire, socialism, and interventionism that misguided U.S. politicians have brought to our land -- paradigms that ironically are enthusiastically supported by many of those in the 'blame-the-immigrants' camp."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0505e.asp
"I've always been an optimist. You have to be an optimist. … Well, think of all the things in life that actually have changed for the better. … Now, all this happened in the teeth of political onslaughts by both parties...."
http://www.counterpunch.org/forman05192005.html
"Now it comes out that the Bush administration routinely overruled its own house paranoiac to unilaterally declare orange and red alerts. The White House, of course, doesn't have its own intelligence apparatus. In making a dissenting assessment of intelligence, its judgments were entirely political."
http://www.nypress.com/18/20/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
"A mathematical study of the US House of Representatives reveals clear partisanship - including stacked committees - within the House. While this may not surprise political analysts, the objective analysis contradicts the US Code, which outlines US laws and suggests a just system in which all legislation receives a fair hearing from politicians who put the country's interests ahead of their political party's."
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7386
"Markets do not put power to decide in the hands of the uninformed public, but in the hands of the relevant experts, even when only a handful of people are experts. ... Specialization coordinated by markets is, in fact, the primary source of advancing civilization."
http://www.mises.org/story/1809
"The question becomes, who should pay the health care costs of a state worker who chooses to smoke, then gets sick as the result of that decision: the person who chooses to smoke, or Georgia taxpayers? I have a hunch what most Georgia taxpayers would prefer. Some may worry that we're on a 'slippery slope,' here ... that health insurance companies may soon factor in traits and habits such as obesity, regularity of exercise, or alcohol consumption, too. But why shouldn't they?"
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3770
"However, private property also implies a right to freedom of association, a lesson immigration foes must learn. Freedom of association means that other private-property owners in the United States who wish to invite an immigrant onto their property to live or work should be free to do so. Under current policy, the private-property rights and freedom of association of both groups -- those who welcome immigrants onto their property and those who do not -- are violated by government policy."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1511
"Examples of reflexive criminalization abound. The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, a bill to prevent the transportation of horses for human consumption, currently has 80 cosponsors in Congress (nothing against horses, but is this a huge problem?) If signed into law, it will join such illustrious federal crimes as the interstate transport of water hyacinths, trafficking in unlicensed dentures, and misappropriating the likeness of 'Woodsy Owl' and his associated slogan 'give a hoot, don't pollute' (punishable by up to six months in prison)."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3772
"This study went by the codes entered into the medical billing records and offered no information as to whether these diagnoses were further evaluated or proved correct. The researchers proceeded to plug various characteristics of these patients into their computer to create three models, looking for correlations. In the end, they found the relative risks -- chances of a relationship -- of dementia were 24% higher in underweight (BMI <18.5), 35% higher in 'overweight' (BMI 25-29.9), and 74% in 'obese' (BMI >30). These numbers sound scary, but they're inconsequential for this type of population study -- a data dredge done in a computer. Only relative risks of 200% or greater have merit in these studies."
http://www.techcentralstation.com/052005E.html
"Although the FairTax would eliminate the filing of all individual tax returns, the FairTax turns every business into a tax collector. Every small service business and every Internet business that does not currently collect state sales taxes will have to collect taxes for the federal government. Every doctor will now have to charge sales tax on his services. Where will this end? Will the neighborhood boy who mows lawns have to begin collecting federal sales tax on each lawn mowed? Will the neighborhood girl who baby sits have to do likewise?"
http://www.mises.org/story/1814
"Upon the outbreak of war, however, the exhilaration of the hour spreads through the entire governing apparatus. ... Everywhere the government turns its gaze, the scene is flush with energy, power, and money. For those whose hands direct the machinery of a government at war, life has never been better."
http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1510
"It stands to reason that proponents of the use of violence against foreigners who displease them will also have ready recourse to the same methods against their own countrymen who oppose their project. Some of those opposed to war may stand and be cut down like sheaves of wheat before the scythes of their opponents, while others will choose, in the desperation of self-preservation, to employ the very methods they deplore. If not long before, it is here where war [degenerates] for all to see into senseless killing of innocents along with the guilty."
http://www.mises.org/story/1822
"I looked at ancient Rome, and how, having got rid of kings, the Senate ended up with Caesar's nephew as emperor ... how democracy turns itself into a dictatorship. I also looked at revolutionary France ... and Hitler. It tends to follow similar patterns. Threats from outside leading to the need for more control; democracy not being able to function properly because of internal squabbling."
http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2005/story/0,15927,1484795,00.html
"State legislatures did not hesitate to instruct U.S. senators on how to vote. In fact, the very first instruction that was given to them was to meet in public! The Virginia and Kentucky Resolves of 1798 (see William Watkins, Reclaiming the American Revolution) were the work of state legislatures that instructed their senators to oppose the Sedition Act, which essentially made it illegal to criticize the federal government."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo93.html
"The Industrial Revolution, stimulated by personal liberty, secure property rights, the division of labor, and investment, was a sea change. For the first time, mass production at low prices was the path to high income. Ordinary people could afford more than one set of clothes and household conveniences. Personal hygiene came within reach."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0505d.asp
"My maternal grandfather fits this mold. ... The soul of a Cincinnatus lives in him. As it did in David Hackworth and as it does in the real defenders among us. The uniformed killers and brutes as seen in places like Wounded Knee, My Lai, Abu Ghraib, and at the rest of the massacres and atrocities everywhere on this blood-soaked planet were all in the thrall of Ares."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/massoud/massoud11.html
"[W]hat is a government's basis for depriving the public of candid press coverage of what war is all about? How else can voters make informed decisions about a war their government has led them into? The true reason why a government ... tries to censor and sanitize coverage is to prevent a public outcry against the war...." This article is not for the faint of heart, but it does nail war.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0520,schanberg,64027,6.html
"One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on September 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq. What makes our nation immune from the normal standards of human decency?"
http://www.progressive.org/june05/zinn0605.php
"So how would China fight us? If we send some carrier battle groups to intervene in a war between China and Taiwan, I think China will do something Kaplan does not mention. She will go nuclear at sea from the outset."
http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=6009
"Maria Gaetana Agnesi … was an Italian linguist, mathematician, and philosopher. Agnesi is credited with writing the first book discussing both differential and integral calculus. She was an honorary member of the faculty at the University of Bologna."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Gaetana_Agnesi
Normally, I'd just have the bio page, but Capra's filmography [at the listed URL] is so impressive it would be a shame to skip it. For the IMDb bio from the filmography select the mini biography "show more" link. Frank Capra was an immigrant who came to America with very little, but who became one of the most successful movie directors of all time.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001008/
"In 1935 he invented the first automatic refrigeration system for long-haul trucks. Jones' inspiration for the refrigeration unit was a conversation with a truck driver who had lost a shipment of chickens because the trip took too long and the truck's storage compartment overheated."
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/194/Frederick_Jones_inovator_of_many_devises
"The Edge is one of those films that will have you sitting on the edge of your seat. It is a suspense/thriller, but unlike many films of that genre, The Edge is also very thought provoking and intellectually challenging. It is a story of men struggling to survive in the wilderness, against the forces of nature in the form of extreme climate conditions, ferocious wild animals, and perhaps the most dangerous element: each other."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/edge_1997.htm
"Burroughs' worlds are not a libertarian paradise. His novels are basically for boys 11 to 14 years old. They're filled with sword fights and big apes with fangs (and big spiders with fangs, too). But there's not a good word in any of his novels for the State, or for politics, or for politicians, or corrupt religion. There is, however, true love between men and women as one of the highest values, and the desire for justice and freedom."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/wallace/wallace210.html
"I found myself reading The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel, and enjoying Smith's creation anew. So, perhaps I should reconsider my proclaimed lack of interest in graphic novels. If they're well done, as Bieser did in this case, a graphic novel can be every bit as compelling as a full-length novel."
http://endervidualism.com/salon/books/bieser.htm
"We are men of peace we are men who work and we want no quarrel. But if you destroy our peace if you take away our work if you try to range us one against the other we will know what to do. If you tell us to make the world safe for democracy we will take you seriously and by god and by Christ we will make it so. We will use the guns you force upon us we will use them to defend our very lives and the menace to our lives does not lie on the other side of a nomansland that was set apart without our consent it lies within our own boundaries here and now we have seen it and we know it."
http://wconger.blogspot.com/2005/05/remember-this-you-masters-of-war.html
I linked to a page somewhat like this for the Review a few years ago, but this one is different and I can't find the other at the old link anymore. This was submitted by a reader. It is an advertisement for a longer commercial package version (as the other was also), but still very cool and about four minutes long. Enjoy!
http://www.frontiermultimedia.com/deepspace.htm
"Speaking from the Oval Office in the nationally televised address, the president portrayed the U.S.'s conflict with the Sith as a classic struggle between good and evil. 'Now is the time for all of the nations of the world to ask themselves,' the president said. 'Are you with us, or are you with the Sith?' "
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1136
"An international team of scientists conducting research in the Amazon River Basin announced the discovery of a formerly unknown primate species inhabiting a remote jungle area roughly 300 miles from Manaus Monday. According to scientists in Manaus, the new species, Ateles saporis, is 'an amazing biological find' and 'incredibly delectable'."
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4120&n=1
"I believe in voluntary cooperation as the key principle for organizing any collective organization. Whole Foods Market is a collective based on voluntary cooperation between all the various stakeholders. No one is forced to cooperate against their will and all are free to withdraw from the collective organization anytime they wish to. A collective without freedom is by nature coercive and is therefore unlikely to lead to human flourishing."
http://endervidualism.com/salon/intvw/mackey.htm
"Naturally you were aware that books are dangerous. They give people ideas. Over the long, sad course of history, they've resulted in the slaughter of millions -- books like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Das Kapital, Mein Kampf, even the Bible -- but you had too much intelligence, too much regard for the right of other people to read, write, think whatever they please, to blame the books themselves."
http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle319-20050515-02.html
"A man's fundamental dignity as an autonomous and sovereign chooser and actor is non-negotiable and cannot be repealed, negated, or diminished by any person, group of people, government, or any other institution. Each person has a worth or dignity that should be respected under any and all circumstances or conditions. Dignity is a permanent and inseparable quality of autonomous human beings because they can use their minds to judge what is right and what is wrong."
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050515-16.htm
"This suspicion of intoxication, of unearned pleasure, is also evident in the plans inspired by research on 'vaccines' that are aimed at discouraging drug use by taking all the fun out of it. The anti-drug vaccines, which are being developed by several companies, stimulate the production of antibodies that bind with psychoactive molecules and prevent them from passing the blood-brain barrier."
http://www.reason.com/sullum/052005.shtml
"The entertainment world is all abuzz with the release of the final Star Wars episode. 'Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith' is the final installment of the popular sci-fi saga which has spanned more than two decades and has captured the imagination of young and old alike."
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin236.htm
"If you're a senior citizen, you might be eligible for property tax reductions, subsidized prescription drugs, reduced fare on public transportation, and all manner of merchandise discounts. Don't get me wrong. I don't have anything against older people. In fact, some of my best friends are over 70, including Mrs. Williams. Let's do a bit of analysis of efforts to assist the elderly...."
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050518.shtml
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