Aug. 14 - 20, 2005

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Ender's Review
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Web articles of likely interest to individualists found during the preceding week.
 

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Political Liberty

Articles showing a positive influence of political action on the cause of Liberty.

Shunning the Real ID Enablers

      by Garry Reed from Loose Cannon Libertarian

"So, in addition to my personal HP prohibition, I've launched my anti-Microsoft mission -- I'm joining the Browser Wars. No, I'm not getting next to Netscape. … For all my everyday browsing business, I'm now foraging with Firefox."

http://www.freecannon.com/ShunIDEnablers.htm

Prostituting the Constitution

      by Kerry Howley from Reason

"Do any organizations actually promote prostitution, or is this just a fun exercise in First Amendment pettifoggery? It's hard to [say] what it means to 'promote the practice' of selling sex, but aid workers say reaching and educating prostitutes is key to fighting sexually transmitted disease. Stigmatizing the trade, they say, only makes hard-to-find sex workers harder to reach."

http://www.reason.com/links/links081605.shtml

Something's Happened -- America Has Turned Against the War

      by Dave Lindorff from CounterPunch

"That was why the local coverage was so important all around the country. Closer to the ground, away from the self-important editors of the national media, who seem to have trouble realizing they aren't part of the government, editors and reporters are picking up the groundswell of opposition to the war that is building with every new coffin unloaded at Ft. Dix."

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff08192005.html

Life in Amerika

Articles depicting the negative impact of politics on the cause of Liberty.

These Are Interesting Times -- Like Ebola

      by Fred Reed from FredOnEverything.net

"New York's searches seem to establish the principle that local jurisdictions can search, with no reason at all, anyone aboard public transit -- buses, subway, trains, ferries. Why not people within fifty feet of governmental buildings, in crowded places thought attractive to terrorists, or on sidewalks? And of course if they find illegal paraphernalia of a non-terrorist persuasion, such as drugs, or cigarettes without a tax stamp, they will arrest the bearer. Soon it will be pirated CDs. The police will naturally use 'random' searches to conduct fishing expeditions. It is curious that an entire system of constitutional protections can be dismantled just by ignoring it. I would have thought it more difficult, but it isn't."

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Anti-Terrorism.shtml

This Is America?

      by James Otteson from The Libertarian Enterprise

"I asked whether they now intended not only to violate my right to be free of arbitrary searches and seizures, but also my right to free speech. I was then told -- through clenched teeth -- that if I said 'one more word,' they were going to 'lock me up' and make me 'go Greyhound the rest of [my] life.' 'I have that power,' one security guard growled at me ominously."

http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle332-20050814-02.html

Corrupted Justice -- Courthouse Jackboots

      by Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch

"Regulators and prosecutors create crimes by how they interpret regulations. Defendants don't know they have committed a crime until a prosecutor springs his interpretation on them. You can't get laws more vague than this."

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08182005.html

Ordered Liberty without the State

Some people say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an interesting topic.

An Argument for Self-Governance

      by Michael S. Rozeff from LewRockwell.com

"The only sure road to a better alternative is to know at the outset that the State is a deeply flawed and destructive institution. The Founding Fathers knew this, or at least some did. Their rhetoric bespeaks a profound distrust of power, yet a feeling that the State was necessary! Jim Davies reminds us of Paine’s errant view that 'Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil'...."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff13.html

Christianity and Anarchism - A Match Made in Heaven

      by Roger Young from Strike The Root

"Being accountable to Christ and being governed by church or state doctrine are two different things. One is a spiritual responsibility as a child of God, the latter is obedience to the rules of men. If I am guilty of the former, I hurt no one. If I settle for the latter, my potential for bloody mischief is unlimited."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/52/young/young1.html

How is the Libertarian Left different?

      by James Leroy Wilson from Independent Country (blog)

"By being both anti-authoritarian and anti-corporate monopoly, Left Libertarians present a clean break from right-wing coalition of neo-cons, the Religious Right, and Big Business. In opposing the war, in promoting local control (which many Greens do), in fighting state-sanctioned corporate privilege, and in fighting to protect our civil liberties, the Libertarian Left has far more in common with the Left than with the Right as it is presently identified."

http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2005/08/how-is-libertarian-left-different.html

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

Fat, Unfit, and Fifty: A Different Bug-Out Scenario

      by Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine

"Plan first for the emergencies that are most likely to happen to you. Plan for what you are most likely to need and what you are personally capable of doing in those specific emergencies. Only after that, extend your purchases and your preparations to other scenarios."

http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe050815.html

The Pentagon's Surprisingly Sober Look at China

      by Ted Galen Carpenter and Justin Logan from Cato Institute

"Until now, such regional powers as Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia have been able to shrug off China's growing power because of the assumption that the United States would do whatever it took to balance against China. With a costly and distracting war continuing in Iraq, the Defense Department may have come to the recognition that its resources are not infinite, and that China's neighbors must share the concern over its growing power and prepare their own responses."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4246

Iowa Judge Tries to Subvert Trial by Jury

      by Iloilo Marguerite Jones from The Price of Liberty

"When Judge Gregory Hulse of Adel, Iowa, threatened Iowa citizens with arrest because they were distributing jury informational pamphlets, he was subverting both the First and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution, according to Iloilo M. Jones, Executive Director of the Fully Informed Jury Association, of Helena, MT (FIJA)."

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/08/18/FIJApress.htm

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

Duck Soup

      by Chris Floyd from The Moscow Times

"Left unexplained is why Shiite Iran would want to help Sunni insurgents overthrow a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government led by Tehran proteges (and employees) who are busy aligning the country with, er, Tehran. That's the kind of self-defeating stupidity one might expect from the Bush poltroons, who have spent $300 billion and almost 1,900 American lives to establish an unstable, terrorist-ridden, fundamentalist Islamic state in the center of the Middle East."

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/08/19/120.html

A Constitution for Iraq

      by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from LewRockwell.com

"Government gains not by adhering to its own restrictions, but by re-rendering them as positive mandates. Hans-Hermann Hoppe takes the point even further. He says that if you look historically at the conditions under which constitutions are written, you find that their underlying purpose is not to restrict government power, but rather to expand it, with rhetoric about freedom and rights to serve as a distraction."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/iraq-constitution.html

Rumsfeld's Ray Gun

      by Kelly Hearn from AlterNet

"Though the ADS, for example, will be facing chaotic, unruly situations, the reports said volunteers were banned from wearing glasses and contact lenses to prevent possible eye damage. In other tests, volunteers were told to remove metallic objects such as keys to avoid 'hot spots' that might burn skin."

http://www.alternet.org/story/24044/

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

Neocons "out" Cindy Sheehan as Communist Peace-Nazi hatemongering subversive

      by Henry Gallagher Fields from The Last Ditch

"Under Horowitz's leadership, FrontPage stampedes onto difficult ground where most of the most brazen would fear to tread. The target now is Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq and who is now calling for the U.S. military to withdraw from Iraq. In recent weeks Mrs. Sheehan has been protesting outside the presidential ranch at Crawford, Texas, where the Dodo-in-Chief is currently vacationing by cutting brush, falling off bicycles, and pursuing other diversions consonant with the imperial dignity."

http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/fields_sheehan.htm

Time to Streamline Burdensome Airport Security

      by Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"How did we get to this abysmal state of affairs? Because even in times of crises -- in fact, especially in times of crises -- politics plagues government security efforts. The Congress and the bureaucracy have to show the nervous public that they are doing something, even if those efforts make little sense."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1550

Jim Crow in Affirmative-Action Clothing

      by Sheila Dugan from The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

"An example of such odious regulations include the licensing and hygiene-instruction requirements for hair braiders in California, Maryland, and Kansas. Let's be honest about which communities such regulations harm most. Not since the days of Bo Derek running on the beach in the movie 10 have white women worn cornrows. Bond seems not to recognize that he favors the same kind of regulatory apparatus that was used to oppress blacks after the Civil War through the Jim Crow laws."

http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=7118

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

According to Nature

      by James Leroy Wilson from The Partial Observer

"In a free market, there would be no patents. Inventors and innovators would bring their wares to the market to sell. If one invents the widget and makes it to the Patent Office on Tuesday, and another, working independently, arrives on Wednesday, the inventor who got there first enjoys years of monopoly to produce, price, and sell widgets. There are even international agreements that enforce this. But in a free market, the person who can build a better one at less cost, would be free to do so, no matter who invented it first."

http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1583

Baby comes with brain repair kit for mum

      by Andy Coghlan from NewScientist.com

"Stray stem cells from a growing fetus can colonise the brains of mothers during pregnancy, at least in mice. If the finding is repeated in humans, the medical implications could be profound. Initial results suggest that the fetal cells are summoned to repair damage to the mother's brain. If this is confirmed, it could open up new, safer avenues of treatment for brain damage caused by strokes and Alzheimer's disease, for example."

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725134.300

The Seven Deadly Sins of Government-Funded Schools

      by Mark Harrison from Cato Institute

"The key to improving the education system is to move away from a politicized government-operated system to a decentralized, competitive market. Schools that compete and are directly accountable to parents simply work better than the bureaucratic alternative."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4178

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

The Myth of the Magical Multiplier

      by Frank Shostak from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"John Maynard Keynes's writings remain as influential today as they were sixty years ago. His ideas remain the driving force of economic policy makers at the Fed and Government institutions. These ideas permeate the thinking and writings of the most influential economists on Wall Street and in academia."

http://www.mises.org/story/1889

Nailing Free Enterprise

      by P. Gardner Goldsmith from The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

"What licensing is actually designed to do is to exclude lower-priced competition, pumping up the incomes of the specially privileged, while providing more money to the state in licensing fees. The exclusion of lower-priced competition is a destructive force all its own. It not only represents the suppression of individual choice by the government, and those using it to gain a competitive advantage; but it also diverts capital from where consumers would have directed it."

http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=7110

How the Modern Medicine Monopoly Has Failed Us

      by Carolyn Dean from NewsWithViews.com

"The new breed of doctor, like my brother's doctors, fits this new pattern well. They are convinced this 'cookbook' medicine is superior and their elite journals and medical associations know best. Like members of the society Aldous Huxley described in A Brave New World, they are mere cogs in the wheel of the state's machinery. They do not question the authorities or the wisdom of their decrees. They do what they are told. They are unable to think for themselves."

http://www.newswithviews.com/Dean/carolyn4.htm

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

The Answer to Cindy Sheehan's Question

      by Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"The unfortunate truth is that that is all too often a characteristic of the military mindset. It is resentful of people who think independently -- those who don't toe the official line, don't believe the official lies, and don't fully support whatever one's government does with respect to war. "

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0508g.asp

The War Against Cindy

      by Butler Shaffer from LewRockwell.com

"'Life' belongs to living individuals, not to the state, a message each of us must impart to our children and grandchildren as they learn to resist the seductions of those who would destroy them. It is also time for Americans to take a stand with Cindy Sheehan and help this country rediscover its soul, and return to the sense of decency from which it has so aimlessly strayed."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer116.html

A Mercenary Society -- America's Good Germans?

      by Robert Jensen from CounterPunch

"The problem is not just that the United States now has a mercenary army but that we are a mercenary society. The problem is not just that our army fights imperialist wars, but that virtually all of us are in some way implicated in that imperialist system."

http://www.counterpunch.org/jensen08172005.html

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

Machiavelli and U.S. Politics

      by Lawrence Ludlow from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Reagan is remembered for opening the curtains on 'morning in America' despite saddling taxpayers with massive debt and profligate spending, trade protectionism, expanding bureaucracies, and an extension of criminal law that has stuffed our prisons with nonviolent offenders. Even his tiny cut in marginal tax rates in 1981 was offset by tax hikes later that year -- not to mention bracket creep from inflation. His words -- not his actions -- are remembered by the faithful -- just as Machiavelli suggested. The half-truth may be that he believed his own words, but his actions belied them." The quote here is from Part III.

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0508d.asp

Who called Joe Stalin 'a Christian gentleman'?

      by Vin Suprynowicz from Las Vegas Review-Journal

"Thus was half of Europe -- Poland, Czechoslovakia, the half that World War II was actually fought to set free -- turned over to the tender mercies of this mass murderer and his heirs for two whole generations, based on the dangerous conceits of an enfeebled nitwit...."

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Aug-14-Sun-2005/opinion/2772077.html

What They Won't Tell You About Capitalism

      by Laurence M. Vance from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"Echoing Murray Rothbard, DiLorenzo carefully distinguishes between free-market capitalism and state capitalism. Free-market capitalism -- 'true capitalism' -- is based on secure private property rights, the division of labor, social cooperation, freedom of contract, freedom of association, and voluntary exchange on the free market."

http://www.mises.org/story/1887

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

Antiwar Populism: The Floodgates Open

      by Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"The president, however, doesn't have to respond to any questions: he lives in a bubble, where anyone who contradicts him is summarily exiled or otherwise intimidated into silence. Word is out that the Bush White House is beginning to resemble the place during the last days of Richard Nixon...."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7009

Cindy Sheehan Is Right

      by Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Conservative commentators and talk-radio personalities apparently can't fathom why Mrs. Sheehan hasn't accepted her loss with more equanimity, if not satisfaction. After all, they suggest, her son perished while carrying out the inspired will of the president of the United States. Not everyone gets to go to his reward in such a grand fashion."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0508h.asp

What Does the Administration’s Leaked Mea Culpa on Iraq Portend?

      by Robert Higgs from The Independent Institute

"The hope, of course, is that when the U.S. forces have repositioned themselves in these enclaves, the Iraqi resistance will lose interest in attacking the Americans and turn their energies toward joining a coalition focused on ordinary politics -- that is, on looting the country's oil revenues. If they persist in slaughtering one another, well, the Bush administration realizes that it can do nothing to stop them -- short of leaving the country, which it certainly will not do in any event -- and so it will rest content to protect U.S. forces inside the big bases, where they will be shielded from the mayhem of the surrounding countryside by wide, lethal, perimeter defenses."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1553

Great Individuals In History

Some people stand out from the crowd.

Writer/Poet -- Sir Walter Scott : August 14, 1771

      From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Scott was responsible for two major trends that carry on to this day. First, he popularized the historical novel; an enormous number of imitators (and imitators of imitators) would appear in the 19th century. It is a measure of Scott's influence that Edinburgh's central railway station, opened in 1854, is called Waverley Station. Second, his Scottish novels rehabilitated Highland culture after years in the shadows following the Jacobite rebellions."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott

Playwright/Actress -- Mae West : Aug. 17, 1893

      from IMDb (The Internet Movie Database)

"Mae West made her first movie when she was nearly 40, and became a sex symbol (for lack of a better term) at an age when other actresses were being considered for roles as mothers to aging adolescents. Less remembered is the fact that she wrote many of her own screen vehicles, making her one of the great comedy scenarists of her time."

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0922213/bio

Athlete -- Roberto Clemente : Aug. 18, 1934

      The Official Roberto Clemente Website

"Clemente joined the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1955, where he played his entire eighteen year Major League Baseball career from 1955 to 1972. Roberto played in two World Series, batting .310 in 1960 and .414 in 1971. He was the National League Batting Champion four times, was awarded twelve Gold Gloves, selected National League MVP in 1966 and was chosen as the MVP in the 1971 World Series."

http://www.robertoclemente21.com/Biography/biography.html

Culcha'

Books, Movies, TV, Media, Music, poetry, etc.

A Boy & His Dog (1975)

      Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism

"Like some other movies I’ve recommended, this film isn’t going to suit everyone. It has extremely dystopian themes, violence and sexual situations. That said, in my opinion it is still a very good film. Those who will like it will probably like it very much. This review should help you to decide if you will belong in that group."

http://endervidualism.com/agora/boy_and_dog_1975.htm

The Traveler, by John Twelve Hawks

      Reviewed by Sunni Maravillosa from Sunni's Salon

"The friend who lent me The Traveler liked it; he calls it a 'paranoia novel' and says he likes that kind of book in general. Fair enough; it does deliver on paranoia. Wally says it 'deserves to be a best seller', and is 'the closest we've been in a long time to seeing a libertarian-leaning novel break into the mainstream'. If you like dystopian novels, and 'paranoid fiction', then perhaps you'll enjoy The Traveler more than I did...."

http://endervidualism.com/salon/books/hawks.htm

Adapting Heinlein's Harsh Mistress -- Minear takes a second stab at the script.

      by Paul Davidson from IGN Entertainment

"Tim Minear has written screenplays for Firefly, The X-Files, Angel, and The Inside; and now he's adding feature films to his resume as he pens an adaptation of Robert Heinlein's novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."

http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/642/642251p1.html

The Long Way Home : A Repairman Jack Story, an Amazon Short

      by F. Paul Wilson from Amazon

"'The Long Way Home' arose from the aphorism about no good deed going unpunished. Jack is not a do-gooder per se. He fixes problems on a cash-and-carry basis. He's not a crime fighter; in fact, he's a career criminal. He does his damnedest to avoid the police. So I figured putting him in the position where he's the only one who can help a downed cop would create a lot of dramatic tension. It does."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000A0F6RC/endervidualis-20

The lighter side

Humor, satire, cartoons, parodies, food, popular music and other things to amuse.

U.S. Intelligence: Nukehavistan May Have Nuclear Weapons

      from The Onion

"'Nukehavistan's topography is dominated by flat, featureless stretches of gypsum and alkali, punctuated by the occasional deep crater and the twisted remains of metal structures,' Jacoby said. 'Its main exports are surplus Geiger counters, Tyvek fabric, and radioiodine-laced milk, and its only known import is weapons-grade plutonium.'"

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=1

Victory Is . . . Not Having to Say You're Sorry

      by Mark Fiore from The Village Voice

Flash animated cartoon

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0534,fiore,67048,9.html

It's A Family Act... An interview with the director of The Aristocrats, Paul Provenza.

      by Paul Krassner from New York Press

"Paul Provenza is an edgy stand-up comic and serious actor who portrayed Abbie Hoffman in the stage version of the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. He's also co-producer (with Penn Jillette) and director of The Aristocrats, a documentary about a joke involving incest, bestiality and other scatology, as told and analyzed by 100 comedians (including myself), each with their own filthy version."

http://www.nypress.com/18/33/news&columns/paulkrassner2.cfm

Deep Thought

Scientific and scholarly studies, philosophical essays, in-depth and longer articles

Interview: Chris Sciabarra

      by Sunni Maravillosa from Sunni's Salon

"I ended up pursuing the study of politics, however, because I was most interested in analyzing society and social relations systematically. Focusing on political philosophy, theory, and methodology afforded me that opportunity."

http://endervidualism.com/salon/intvw/sciabarra.htm

Regulating Risk: The Role Of Choice In A Free Society

      by Bradley Doucet from Le Québécois Libre

"In a truly free and just society, the state will not limit the choices adults make with regard to risk any more than it will tell them whether to live in the city or in the countryside. Rather, the laws will allow people the maximum possible number of choices, leaving them free to carry out their own experiments in living, each attempting to create the best life she can."

http://www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050815-8.htm

Well, fancy that! Children's future decided by parents, not by committee

      by Mick Hume from The Times (London)

"The unspoken assumption is that a child's welfare must be protected from without, by the HFEA or the courts. Why? Because the authorities see parents as potentially selfish fashion victims who cannot be trusted to decide what is best for their own children."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1054-1741241,00.html

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

Get Ready for World War III

      by Paul Craig Roberts from Antiwar.com

"Gentle reader, do you realize the danger of having a president so disconnected from reality that he plots to attack Iran--a country three times the size of Iraq--when he lacks sufficient forces to occupy Baghdad and to protect the road from Baghdad to the airport?"

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=6936

The Coming C.H.U.D. Wars -- We've tried to warn you.

      by Jim Knipfel from New York Press

"You might be asking at this point: If these C.H.U.D.s are such a big problem, where are all the eyewitness accounts like the ones we saw in the 70s and 80s? Why aren't any of those 4,000,000 daily commuters seeing these C.H.U.D.s? And why is New York Press the only paper in town that's been covering this story?"

http://www.nypress.com/18/33/news&columns/knipfel.cfm

Global Warming Blows -- Or Does It?

      by Patrick J. Michaels from Reason

"You would think that reviewers of Emanuel's paper at Nature would have thought to ask whether, in fact, there was evidence for increasingly powerful storms. But they didn't. There is just no incentive in the scientific community to kill the remarkably fertile global warming goose, a beast that feeds on public fears."

http://www.reason.com/hod/pm081705.shtml

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