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"It makes me think that the government is self-destructing, out of control. It flails about wildly, torturing here, bombing there, invading somewhere else. Domestically it lies about its crimes, and then lies about the lies. It imprisons those it thinks might possibly be enemies, without any semblance of due process. It bullies and bribes. It tolerates no criticism. Yesterday’s buddies are today’s terrorists. So if you regard our present big-government as the source of most of our national problems, do not fret about what to do. Just wait. It is falling apart."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/hein/hein125.html
"The center was entirely devoted to holding illegal aliens, almost all of whom were from Mexico. Before I share this experience with you, I need to place the situation in a larger context. If this background context, however, begins to bore you, please feel free to skip it and go immediately to the subsection below entitled 'Inside the Detention Center'."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0603d.asp
"Until now, there have been few real opportunities for the public to weigh in on such a critical issue. Just lobbyists, weaving insider deals--politics and business married at the hip. . .the few controlling the many -- the same old song. But, according to Dr. Santiago, there is hope brimming in Florida -- and it could impact Naturopaths nationwide."
http://kevinpmiller.blogspot.com/2006/03/looking-for-truth-in-sunshine-state_09.html
"America's most dangerous enemies are native-born. And they're not in Hollywood, Madison Avenue, or Wall Street. They're not even in the legislatures of South Dakota or Missouri. Our most dangerous enemies are, instead, in our police forces. In the federal Justice and Homeland Security Departments. In the White House. And they are on the cable news shows, telling us there are exceptions to a free press."
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1775
"The most compelling material in this book, however, remains the exposure of domestic intelligence abuses. The NSA illegal surveillance uncovered by Risen dwarfs the Patriot Act controversies. Many Republicans have nonetheless rushed to embrace and defend the Bush administration's warrantless spying."
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_03_13/review.html
"Are the courts really going to let this president and vice president run the country like it's their own amusement park? Are our laws mere suggestions? Is our Constitution really too high a bar? Even the U.S. Supreme Court said war doesn't give the president a 'blank check' to abuse individual rights. But some judges haven't gotten the message."
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/05/Columns/If_judges_won_t_stand.shtml
"The state is something very different. It has no income but that which it robs from someone else. It seeks its own gain at others' expense. It protects itself and promotes itself before the interests of everyone else. It is beholden to special interests who create and control its regulatory apparatus. It is not impartial. It sides with its friends over its enemies. Moreover, the state is an exploiter, a murderer, a violator of human rights."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/five-rationales.html
"What we are witnessing today is the end of the Western Enlightenment. As usual, the end is predicated on the beginning, and the sole culprit was and is the tacit belief in political government, that is, government based on the use of force and fraud. It never worked. Never. It can't be fixed."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/klassen/klassen1.html
"The state concerns itself with the support of children in the first place as part of maintaining the illusion that the state exists to serve its subjects. If it did not provide for its most vulnerable subjects, this would be highly visible to the proletariat and raise questions about the propriety or necessity of all the other things the state undertakes. The basic premise of the total state might be undermined and become problematic to the herd. At the same time, every dollar the state spends on ordinary people, such as poor children, is one dollar less for the programs that enrich our rulers."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2006/03/mens-right-to-choose.html
"The country still works on a distributed paradiggem. That means that if you want a quart of milk, you walk a block to where there's a little Pedro-and-Maria store that probably used to be a living room and now it's a store. If you want a donut, you walk two blocks in another direction to the bread shop. You tell Conchis that you want two of those gre-t-t big ones with clumps of maple sugar or something on top and you chat with her a bit because that's how it's done. Then you go back home and chomp on them."
http://www.fredoneverything.net/House.shtml
"The spontaneous order of the free market inevitably trumps the plans of government bureaucrats to extend the power of the State. The Web may be the best example of this spontaneous order in human history. It has made nearly impossible the statist gatekeepers' control over the flow of information. The gatekeepers still control numerous gates, but the walls are so porous as to be sieves."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north441.html
"Rural folks view things differently because they live in different circumstances. Living in a less dense population, and so being relatively less under the scrutiny of prying eyes, they cope and deal with daily life happily confident that what the cops, neighbors, and the county or township doesn't know, won't hurt 'em. And for the most part, they are right, too. "
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/massoud/massoud5.html
"Over three days, the Indonesian economy was carved up, sector by sector. An American and European consortium was handed West Papua's nickel; American, Japanese and French companies got its forests. However, the prize -- the world's largest gold reserve and third-largest copper deposit, literally a mountain of copper and gold -- went to the US mining giant Freeport-McMoran. On the board is Henry Kissinger, who, as US secretary of state, gave the 'green light' to Suharto to invade East Timor, says the Dutch report."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=8684
"Ironically, even as Rumsfeld calls Chavez 'Hitler' for consolidating power, no one can deny that ever since 9/11, Bush has done everything he can to 'consolidate power,' as evidenced by the USA PATRIOT Act, the unconstitutional assumption of power to declare war, the illegal attack and war of aggression on a country that had never attacked the United States, the illegal spying on Americans by recording their telephone conversations without a judicially issued warrant, the jailing and punishment of Americans without due process of law, illegal kidnapping and 'rendition' of prisoners to foreign regimes for the purposes of torture, and of course the illegal torture, sex abuse, rape, and murder of detainees by U.S. forces."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0603b.asp
"Our government's gag rule on the International Red Cross, and its insistence that the investigators not see the prisoners, makes clear how afraid this administration is -- after Abu Ghraib -- of any further revelations of what is being done at Guantanamo to scandalize our name around the world, and not only among our enemies."
http://www.decaturdailydemocrat.com/articles/2006/03/07/news/opinion/editorial02.txt
"Seldom in history has a government miscalculated as badly as Bush has in Iraq. More disturbingly, Bush shows no ability to recover from his mistake. All we get from our leader is pig-headed promises of victory that none of our military commanders believe. Our entire government is lost in confusion."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03112006.html
"America does a lot of business with Dubai -- a fact that La Huffington considers evidence of 'corruption.' Apparently she'd much rather we just bombed them. After all, if the UAE is the hotbed of terrorism she and her allies in the War Party make it out to be, then why not invade, occupy the country, and root out the bad guys? Huffington will never address these issues, because it would expose her utter hypocrisy and spoil her fun...."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8680
"Francis Fukuyama now thinks so apparently. One of the intellectual founding fathers of the neo-conservative movement, Johns Hopkins University professor and ex-Reagan administration apparatchik Francis Fukuyama now admits that neo-conservatism's core beliefs don't work in practice as well as they did in theory."
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2006/tle357-20060305-03.html
"The Internet is probably the only real exception to the homogeneity of information, an oasis of free speech. The blogs are our contemporary counterpart of Voltaire's writings; the bloggers are the only ones who consistently speak up and say exactly what they want to say. This is where information is free, and new ideas are spread by the minute. And it is virtually impossible to stop news published on blogs; as soon as something is published, it is spread in a decentralized manner and reaches millions within hours."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/bylund/bylund5.html
"For the past 30 years, many well-meaning organizations have spent lots of time and money trying to convince more Americans to donate their organs after they die. These efforts have relied exclusively on appeals to altruism, and they have failed. It's time to use self-interest to relieve the organ shortage."
http://www.satevepost.org/issues/2006/0304/73701055.shtml
"Nuclear weapons, in short, raise the cost of war, and therefore make general warfare less likely. They're not a complete solution. The Cold War saw any number of low-level wars and guerrilla operations. But these were fought almost exclusively on the peripheries of the core interests of the two superpowers." [TE: I doubt I will ever learn to love the bomb.]
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=8683
"The problem with science serving the public interest is not that there's anything wrong with the method used in the natural sciences. Nor, indeed, is there a problem in the fact that many scientists (such as the ones who blackball original thinkers) have strong biases of their own, causing them to use their own power to limit the range of hypotheses that receive funding. After all, there are very many scientists and very many universities. A free marketplace of ideas eventually, and inevitably, weeds out those who prefer pet hypotheses to free inquiry. No, the real problem is centralized government funding of research, which always results in selective funding by people often ill-equipped to decide which studies should be funded and which shouldn't."
http://www.mises.org/story/2080
"Why, then, do politicians vote for all of those laws that shrink individual liberties? Because lobbyists and other busybodies work hard to make sure their own preferences are the norm; because politicians are sensible to big, loud groups; and because certain clienteles, like smokers, make for easy targets."
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/06/060305-5.htm
"As this case makes clear, patents don't stimulate innovation; they stifle it. How many useful products aren't being made because developers fear the kind of extortion RIM just submitted to? As the Washington Post reported, 'Intellectual property attorney Donald R. Steinberg said the size of the settlement might spur more lawsuits from patent-holding companies, but that in most cases a settlement is often desirable because it limits risk on all sides.' More extortion; more tribute."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0603c.asp
"Because relating a power to war, for Congress or the president, means never having to say you are sorry--mostly because judges seem to share a primal, extraconstitutional sense that the power to wage war is so holy and necessary it must be protected at all costs. (Hey, you can always vote out those Congressmen who passed a law requiring military recruiters in your bedroom!) This is also why the military draft isn't considered to be, as on its face it seems to be, a violation of the 13th Amendment's strictures against involuntary servitude, as the Supreme Court declared in Arver v. U.S. (1918) and reaffirmed in declining to hear United States v. Holmes (1968)."
http://www.reason.com/links/links030906.shtml
"The phrase 'war on terror' is a phony metaphor. We are not at war. Ninety-nine and 99/100ths percent of the American people are living the same way they've always lived. We have troops in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting an insurrection that our invasions of those countries caused. They are at war -- a war of their own country's making -- but the rest of us are not. Waving a flag or putting a bumper sticker on one's car cannot be called a war effort."
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=8661
"As has been evident for some time, bin Laden and the neocons both seek the same thing: a fight to the finish, no matter how long, no matter how many invasions it takes, no matter how many lives are lost. For if peace were reached between the Islamic world and the West, even a cold peace with Iran and Syria, what would they do then?"
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_03_13/feature.html
"When the people decide to do something it gets done. No government could have organized these events, they came straight form the minds and hearts of the people. … This was an amateur operation from the beginning. They had few resources, limited munitions, and no central organizing structure. That is doubtless why it worked. They had to be inventive and be prepared to acquire expertise they lacked. "
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_melinda__060310_the_shots_heard_roun.htm
"Today marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Foundation for Economic Education. On March 7, 1946, FEE was formally brought into existence, with Leonard E. Read (1898-1983) as president. Why was FEE established? Leonard Read explained the reason shortly after opening the Foundation’s doors: ... 'The Foundation’s purpose is to study and to explain the economic freedom we must have if we are to remain a free people'."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=317
"In 35 years, Amtrak -- despite dozens of promises like this -- has come nowhere near to breaking even. Several times a credulous Congress has been told that Amtrak would no longer need subsidies in a few years. These promises have all the credibility of treaties the federal government made with the Indians in the 19th century."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0511g.asp
"So imagine that somehow the United States had avoided entering World War II. ... Millions of cars would have been produced; people would have been able to travel much more widely; and there would have been no rationing of meat, tires, nylons, eggs, butter, and sugar. ... Americans would have been much more prosperous. And David Brinkley would have been able to pursue his true love. I mention this last consequence not to emphasize the trivia, but, in fact, to do the opposite -- to emphasize one of millions of stories of the large human cost that befell even Americans whom the U.S. government did not put at risk of dying. But I certainly shouldn't leave the issue of human cost without mentioning the ultimate cost -- the 407,000 Americans who lost their lives because of the war. As one of my students, a U.S. military officer, put it in a classroom discussion, the war was not good for their economy, to put it mildly."
http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=8662
"If the American Revolution, the U.S. Civil War, the Boer War, and World War I, among others, don't discredit the democratic peace theory outright, the frosty relations between India and the United States during the Cold War should give the Bush administration pause. India was loosely aligned with the Soviet Union during that period and often hostile to U.S. policy. ... The United States would be better off keeping its powder dry and remaining neutral in the Indian-Chinese competition."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1685
"Though the sanctions stirred up much public debate in Europe and outrage across the Arab world, they received relatively little attention in the United States--until a small number of religious activists, most notably the Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness (now Voices for Creative Non Violence), started publicly protesting the havoc wreaked by America's policies. ... No matter how high-minded or nuanced the policy may be, it will only produce good outcomes if the countries involved act in good faith. For more than a decade, both Iraq and the United States were fundamentally acting in bad faith."
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2520/
"It is well known today that Vespucci was in no way responsible for the fact that his name, and not that of Columbus, was given to the new World … the affectionate correspondence between the two great navigators would suffice to disprove all unworthy accusations. ... Many attempts were made to name the New World Columbia, as justice seemed to demand, but all such efforts failed."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15384b.htm
"Grahame was appointed as the secretary at the Bank and in 1899 he married Elspeth Thomson, whose snobbish attitudes Grahame did not share. Grahame wrote parts of The Wind in the Willows originally in the form of letters to his young son Alistair."
http://www.online-literature.com/grahame/
"With the coming of sound films, Beavers' career took off, and between 1929 and 1960, she appeared in more than 100 films. Although most often cast as the maid of the female star or of the starring couple, she had an opportunity to play a role equal to Claudette Colbert's in the first film version of Imitation of Life (1934), in which both women juggle the demands of single parenthood and careers."
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/736/Cincinnatis_own_actress_Louise_Beavers
Science Fiction horror romance stars Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood; screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Michel Gondry. "Often I select movies to review based on their relevance to human liberty, power and its abuse, self discovery or forging new paths. Each of those themes has some relevance to this movie. However, even more fundamental themes can make a film interesting to an individualist."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/eternal_sunshine_2004.htm
"It would have been easy to invoke the dystopias of Orwell and Huxley and portray this fascist state as the logical extension of Margaret Thatcher's government. But Moore and Lloyd are playing for higher stakes. As Moore knows better than most writers, Fascism is essentially a theory of government that sets order above liberty and regards politics as the agent of business." Excellent review !!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-kornbluth/v-for-vendetta-before-yo_b_16923.html
"What's 'V' about? Well, writer Alan Moore says that he was trying to incorporate '(George) Orwell. (Aldous) Huxley. Thomas Disch. Judge Dredd. Harlan Ellison's ' "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman.' 'Catman' and 'Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World' by the same author. Vincent Price's Dr. Phibes and 'Theatre of Blood.' David Bowie. 'The Shadow.' Nightraven. Batman. 'Fahrenheit 451'."
http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=COMICS-03-07-06
"The Food and Drug Administration today approved the sale of the drug PharmAmorin, a prescription tablet developed by Pfizer to treat chronic distrust of large prescription-drug manufacturers. Pfizer executives characterized the FDA's approval as a 'godsend' for sufferers of independent-thinking-related mental-health disorders." Unfortunately, I believe this article overestimates the pervasiveness of what it calls"Free-Thinking Disorder."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46032
"A source says Gabriel has spent days trying to dissuade the Almighty from loosing a plague of toads upon the Blair family. Gabriel reminded God that Cherie and the children had nothing to do with Tony's decisions. God's response, it is reliably reported, was: 'Blair says the Iraqis are lucky to have got bombed, so how can he complain if his family gets a few toads in the bath'?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1725799,00.html
"There's a new film that shows man's paralysis in the face of catastrophe: Bush's Katrina briefing." (Video w/audio)
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=60071
"I think the real American dream is to merge the best of Joel's and Rankin's visions. The 'American Way' or the 'American Dream' has to do with: 1) economic independence, which is different from merely gathering a large income; 2) the freedom to pursue one's dreams, even if they seem odd or non-conformist."
http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2006/03/american-way.html
"It is certainly true that a corporation per se is not a real person. No group is. But that does not stop us from conveniently referring to a group’s rights. This is acceptable as long as we remember that a group has only the rights that the individuals composing it have. The big question is: are the corporation's distinctive features derivable from the common law and contract, or do they depend on a grant of government privilege?"
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0511b.asp
"It is increasingly rational for people to be uninsured. Of course, dropping out of the insurance market is a risky thing to do, but young healthy people are almost crazy to pay the high premiums that come about from subsidizing all these unhealthy lifestyles and covering risk that they know don't apply to them. This is a lesson in the logic of interventionism."
http://www.mises.org/story/2021
"Confiscation is a very, very bad sign. It is a sign of desperation. Desperate men in power have reached those depths of depravity before, where they seize private property and call it 'confiscation.' I think we must conclude that since it has happened, it is possible."
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2006/tle357-20060305-02.html
"Dark energy and dark matter, two of the greatest mysteries confronting physicists, may be two sides of the same coin. A new and as yet undiscovered kind of star could explain both phenomena and, in turn, remove black holes from the lexicon of cosmology."
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?hbxmail=nl&id=mg18925423.600
"They hate us because we are free. Remember that because it was your mantra when the Bush Swastika flew above the White House. You said we were free, whilst your heroic gang of autocratic thugs pillaged the few remaining shreds of liberty we had left. That was your rod, your staff, the bedrock of your shreiking ignorance." Very "bad" language, but used effectively.
http://freefreedomtoldhere.blogspot.com/2006/03/fuck-you-bushies.html
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