Table of Contents:
I'm sorry for the lateness this issue. I've contended with MSFT server extension problems as well as chronic ISP connectivity issues. If you encounter any difficulty using this document please let me know as soon as you notice. Contact information is at the bottom of this page.
I am happy to receive addresses of potential readers of Ender's Review who might like to receive a few trial issues and/or an invitation to subscribe. Or, if you prefer, please, send a link to this page or the index (which also has comprehensive source site links) to those you think might be interested.
Find all RSS feeds & e-mail lists on the Sign Up page –
or use this RSS feed for Ender's Review
"How the heck are we going to clean up after government? The generic and sufficient answer, offered in TOLFA, is of course that 'the market will find a way,' and so it will. There is no product or service in demand that a free market cannot fill. However, now that the prospect of total government collapse (as de la Boétie predicted) is upon us, the nuts and bolts of how it might do so can engage our attention, for time is quite short."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/davies/davies1.html
"Freedom can't be sustained by bits of paper, however noble their intent. Freedom can't be sustained by guns, useful though guns may be in discouraging both freelance and tax-supported gangsters. Freedom certainly can't be sustained with vast edifices of legislation, regulation, and punishment. That's one of the great cons of all time -- believing the very destroyers of freedom can be freedom's saviors. To endure, freedom must be self-governing and self-regenerating. That's not to say that freedom doesn't require effort."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe060715.html
"Russo observes how the U.S. was transformed from a nation of independent citizens to a nation of employees. Given that there were always more jobseekers than jobs, and given the attachment of benefits to jobs during the FDR era, webs of dependency were woven that led to a distinctively American 'road to serfdom' as capitalism became corporatism (another word for which is soft fascism)."
http://www.newswithviews.com/Yates/steven20.htm
"Three months of chemotherapy last year made Starchild Abraham Cherrix nauseated and so weak that at times the tall, skinny teenager had to be carried by his father because he couldn't walk. So when he learned in February that the cancer was active once again, he balked when doctors recommended another round of the drugs, as well as radiation."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/09/health/main1786821.shtml?source=RSS&attr=U.S._1786821
"There is so much legislation against victimless crime on the books, we are subject to arrest even while sitting in our own homes minding what used to be our own business. You simply never know when you have transgressed against the dictates of 'the people.' It's 'The People' versus you. 'The People' of course meaning the state dressed up as a benevolent representative of the will of the public. A public too fucking lazy, stupid, or brainwashed to know or care about the torrent of outrage daily perpetrated in its name by its fascist proxies."
http://noauthority.org/2006/07/12/ill-take-my-chances-with-the-ira/
"Competition made America's colleges and universities the best in the world, not government subsidies. Increasing the government's role in higher education will devolve our institutions of higher learning into something akin to the public schools."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,203191,00.html
"I do not think embracing another vehicle of state power -- another political party -- is really the answer. After a rather long time with my head in the sand -- or stuck in other places equally dark -- I have come to an even more controversial conclusion. For black folk there is only one viable option -- abolish the state."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/alston1.html
"I think it likely, in a panarchy, that many local property systems would coexist: syndicalist or communist localities would exchange their goods with each other and with private firms in anarcho-cap, Georgist, and Tuckerite communities, in a larger meta-system. In any society, even one composed mainly of communistically-owned local property, the meta-system would likely involve huge elements of market exchange."
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/07/property-and-markets-under-communism.html
"The fact remains, that without the state hog trough, many corporations wouldn't exist at all. Stop the state from acting as a goon squad for the corporations. No more injunctions, no more rubbish about 'illegal' strikes. Yes, the government can mediate if it wishes, but quit taking sides with the corporations. No more using the police to break up picket lines or bully demonstrators. The police should only intervene if an actual crime is being committed, and then only with the individual doing it. One person smashing a window should not be an excuse for beating and arresting 50 people." If one can cope with the blog color choices, this entry merits a read.
http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/withdraw-corporate-life-support.html
"Liberal welfare-statism is a pretty natural--if misguided--reaction to a society in which the state, through privilege, creates great disparities in income. Privilege creates massive distortions, made cumulative through the process of feedback, that must be dealt with somehow. One way of dealing with the consequences is through a Rube Goldberg device like redistributive welfare policy, another layer of policy to counteract the first layer, to prevent underconsumption from becoming too destabilizing and the underclass from becoming too radicalized. The other way is to eliminate the privilege itself--a lot simpler."
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/07/libertarian-left-alliance-once-again.html
"You take care of your kids, and one day, they will take care of you. In the past, having children was an investment in your future. You knew that one day your children would take care of your needs as you took care of theirs. This created many incentives that produced a healthy family. For one thing, you had to be somewhat nicer to your children and make sure that you instilled good values. Children without a good work ethic or good values are not likely to perform well in the job market. A parent would have to teach these values to children to insure his or her own needs at a later time."
http://www.mises.org/story/2218
"Television networks have the right to demand that their clips be deleted when posted by people who have no rights to the material, but Supan says such complaints are declining as the major broadcast and cable networks -- all of which have held talks with YouTube -- have recognized the importance of not alienating their viewers."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/09/AR2006070900895_pf.html
"Most tyrannies aren't the epic variety involving a Stalin or a Hussein. They are more subtly subversive, sapping freedom from a fragile system that precariously depends on the integrity of those in charge. It doesn't take much more than a corrupt sheriff, a mayor who helps a developer grab private property with eminent domain or a president who claims that terror suspects have no rights to negate our foundation of liberty and fairness."
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/07/09/Columns/The_plot_to_defeat_ou.shtml
"How many Abeers are in Iraq? It is hard to believe that she was the only rape victim in three years of occupation. How many Greens are there in the military? It is taboo to even ask the question. No American politician, even those speaking against the occupation, discuss it without reference to 'our brave men and women in uniform.' ... Green and the Known Participants and the Sources of Information are not the only guilty parties. The politicians who sent them to Iraq are guilty. Americans who wanted to 'finish the job' and 'take out Saddam' are guilty too. Everyone knows that atrocities are inevitable in war, but they clamor for it anyway."
http://www.blackcommentator.com/191/191_freedom_rider_iraq_rape.html
"He has used the never-ending war on terror to claim unlimited power for the president during wartime. For example, he has flouted the Constitution by detaining prisoners without trial, spied on Americans without the constitutionally required warrants, and blatantly said that he will follow a congressionally passed law against torture when he feels like it. None of the other post-war presidents have claimed unlimited power during wartime or crises. This is a truly dangerous claim, especially when the war is perpetual. "
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1763
An Essay by Bob Wallace on politics and The Count Of Monte Cristo -- "Pareto ... divided rulers into two kinds: Foxes, who use fraud; and Lions, who use force. The mass of people he called Sheep. ... The interests of a nation are almost always determined by what the rulers want, be they Foxes or Lions. The Sheep are unfortunately often easily led by the rulers, even if they're led over a cliff. It's done by propaganda, and the mass of Sheep always fall for it.”
http://endervidualism.com/bwallace/in_politics_no_murder.htm
"A terrible thing is happening, and not enough Americans are aware to be able to do anything about it. Zionists in Israel and in the Bush administration are leading America into war with Iran, Syria, Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. The consequences for America, Israel and the Middle East will be disastrous, but as long as Washington is in thrall to Zionist paranoia, nothing can be done about it. "
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=9311
"Politicians strive to make Americans view elections as sacrosanct. Challenges to election results are portrayed as heresies that threaten to destroy the entire republic. After the 2004 presidential election, many Democrats went on the warpath over alleged voter fraud and manipulation in Ohio and elsewhere. The Constitution requires Congress to certify the Electoral College voters for each state before a president is officially elected. A handful of Democratic members of Congress formally challenged the seating of the Ohio electors when Congress reconvened in early January 2005. Though the debate in the House of Representatives lasted barely two hours, many Republicans feared that raising the topic had derailed the nation and the march of history."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0604c.asp
"[S]tatism does not inevitably follow from the acknowledgment that human activity may be significantly increasing mean temperatures. The fact that you assume it does demonstrates that you have assumptions in common with many of the 'eco-socialists': that existing economic trends result from the free market, and that state intervention is necessary to counter them. In fact, just the opposite is true. The government needs to stop subsidizing the consumption of energy and transportation, so that the full cost of transportation is reflected in its price, and the full cost of shipping goods long distance is internalized in their price. If such government intervention were eliminated, we might be buying stuff made in efficient small factories 20 miles away instead of huge factories 1000 miles away, or buying produce grown close to home instead of from factory farms with subsidized irrigation water in California."
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/07/truth-matters-less-than-whos-saying-it.html
"In fact, in a perfectly free market setting, there would be no redistributive tax schemes, and thus no need for the special creation of a favorable tax environment within the nonprofit framework. However, in the celestial throne of Leviathan's regulatory and tax state, the nonprofit is a small escape hatch for those wishing to gain as much advantage as possible while losing as little as possible to the corridors of power."
http://www.mises.org/story/2238
"From the beginning, Acadia's lands were to be saved for all, not just the individuals committed to their preservation. Had the owners intended to monopolize the land, they never would have sought national park status. Public access to the land could have been achieved without converting the area into a national park. The principle of conservation benefiting all was already firmly established before the public transformation of Acadia."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=623
"Why does socialist central planning not work? The means of production are not held privately, so there cannot be any exchange markets for them and therefore no exchange ratios established. That means there is no way to calculate profit and loss. Without profit and loss, there is no way to assess the tradeoffs associated with alternative uses of resources. That means there is no economy in the literal sense of that term. ... The process of production is too complicated to be run by anything as stupid as a government bureaucracy."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/soviet-style-iraq.html
"[W]e hold the illusion that the religious Right and the progressive Left are far apart, but they're not. That's because just about any activity under the sun can be perceived as 'harmful' to either Society or the Family, and usually both. … Some Leftist feminists want to ban pornography as allegedly harmful to women, just as the Right opposes it because it's allegedly harmful to the Family. The Left may ban 'price gouging' of gasoline because of the social inequity of huge corporate profits, whereas the Right would ban it because of the harm it does to the Family's budget."
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1888
"The great weakness of central planning is its inability to respond quickly and adapt to changes and unforeseen circumstances. No centralized authority, no matter how well-intentioned its employees and well-functioning its internal operations, can overcome this problem. The superiority of markets over central planning is widely recognized around the world, except apparently by those responsible for American disaster relief policy. ... Decentralized, market-based institutions utilize information and respond in a way that a centralized government planning agency simply can't."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6510
"Early America had tariffs, land grants, patents, and cash subsidies. The libertarian rhetoric often remained, but the mercantilists were in charge. This perspective helps us to better understand American foreign policy, which is integral to the mercantilist system. The American people's security was not at stake in most of the foreign adventures American presidents have undertaken. Security became an issue only after intervention created resentment against the United States."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0607b.asp
"[T]hey don't care about governing, coherent policies, etc. What they care about are loot and dominion. The only way they know how to get it is through strong-arm Mob tactics: you threaten the mark, and if he doesn't pay up, you beat him or kill him. (Actually, it is a pretty coherent policy after all: the logical consistency of a thug.) Thus this new 'quiet' is in some ways even more dangerous than the bellicosity of old."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/floyd/floyd14.html
"Right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer has weighed in against the Supreme Court's latest ruling in Hamdan, claiming that the Court erred in barring President Bush from denying Guantanamo detainees the protections of the Third Geneva Convention. The basis for his argument is that the U.S. is at war, and that traditionally 'supreme courts have been loath to intervene against presidential war powers in the midst of conflict.' Let's look at this assertion for a minute."
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff07112006.html
"All those members of society who contribute to the creation of values are deemed productive, but Say awards pride of place to the entrepreneur. … There exist, however, categories of persons who merely consume wealth rather than produce it. These unproductive classes include the army, the government, and the state-supported clergy -- what could be called the 'reactionary' classes, associated by and large with the Old Regime. ... In any given society, a sharp distinction may be drawn between those who live by plunder and those who live by production."
http://www.mises.org/story/2217
"On June 12, 1947, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a unit of the Jewish terrorist army in Palestine, kidnapped two British sergeants, Clifford Martin and Mervyn Paice. This was the Irgun's response to the scheduled execution of three of its own members who had been found guilty by British authorities in an assault at Acre and had been condemned to death by hanging. Two months earlier, a large group of Irgun terrorists, some wearing British uniforms (a violation of the Geneva Accords, by the way), had fired missiles into the British fortress at Acre and then assaulted the compound."
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/olson_irgun.htm
"A few years ago, I supported the City University of New York's decision mandating the teaching of American history on all its campuses. I was denounced by several department heads for 'jingoism.' They insisted 'world history' be taught instead."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-07-12-constitution-edit_x.htm
"This is surely one of the most threadbare excuses for a war ever uttered. One wonders how Israel's spokesmen can say it with a straight face. Soldiers in wartime are captured, not 'kidnapped.' If Hezbollah has 'kidnapped' those two Israeli soldiers, then how do we describe the jailing of thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, on the basis of their alleged sympathy for Hamas -- now the democratically elected government of Palestine?"
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9301
"Unlike the case of Haditha, where Iraqi public opinion was furious about the massacre months before it reached to the U.S. mainstream media, the Iraqi press had not even heard of Abir until the U.S. army accidentally found out information about her while investigating another incident. This raises questions about the number of other similar cases that were never investigated and were blamed on non-occupation parties instead."
http://www.counterpunch.org/jarrar07112006.html
"It's true that if you really are willing to 'do everything' in retaliation for the kidnapping of a soldier, or attacks on your forces, or attacks on civilians, then this is included. Any atrocity at all is included in 'doing everything,' and that is precisely why the willingness to 'do everything' in retaliation for an attack, no matter what the cost to innocent third parties, is a moral crime of the first order."
http://radgeek.com/gt/2006/07/13/proportionality
"Ann Radcliffe will always be remembered as the great exponent of Gothic fiction. Though Jane Austen would parody her novels in Northanger Abbey (1818), Radcliffe's wild, often bleak, landscapes, dark threatening men, and gothic mysteries lived on in the works of Keats, Mary Shelley, the Brontes, Dickens, and Bram Stoker and many others."
http://www.chawton.org/biography.php?AuthorID=36
"Modigliani was a young man of fey beauty, and his work has a wonderful slow elegance that is unusual, but compelling. Through the influence of the Rumanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, he fell under the spell of primitive sculpture, especially from Africa. He went on to develop a sophisticated, mannered style built upon graceful, decorative arabesques and simplified forms."
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/modigliani/
"Jerry Rubin's anti-establishment beliefs were put down in writing in his book Do it! -- Scenarios of the Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 1970, ISBN 067120601X), with an introduction by Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and unconventional design by Quentin Fiore. After the Vietnam War ended, Rubin changed his political views and became an entrepreneur and businessman."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Rubin
Movie Review of King Of Hearts (1967) by Tom Ender. Antiwar comedy stars Alan Bates, Geneviève Bujold, Adolfo Celi, Micheline Presle; directed by Philippe de Broca. "Although all of human society gets satirical treatment in King Of Hearts, the mainstream's seeming eagerness to commit violence against or kill people in an organized fashion catches the most attention from the barbed wit of director Philippe de Broca."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/king_of_hearts_1967.htm
"Fans of the TV series Firefly have produced this film about the effort to coax a rebirth of the story of Malcolm Reynolds and his little band, an effort that amazingly resulted in creation of the feature film Serenity. Regular readers of these musings know they've become my all-time favorite TV show and science-fiction movie. The new film features interviews with creative genius Joss Whedon, at least five cast members, and fans of the series of all kinds, chronicling the improbable journey to Sept. 30, 2005, when the Big Damn Movie debuted."
http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2006/07/they-done-impossible.html
"As Max Stirner famously put it, 'The State calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.' To a libertarian, crime is crime, whether it is committed by civilians or by agents or officials of States. Agents and officials of States commit most of the crime that takes place on our planet, with the result that fictional stories about State-sponsored crime -- war novels, espionage novels -- tend to be less interesting, on balance, than fictional stories about civilians who turn to crime. The latter are more intrinsically novel, you might say."
http://www.rationalreview.com/content/14540
"People who identify themselves as libertarians tend to be deeply skeptical of global warming claims because every 'cure' inevitably demands colossal socialist-fascist style big government central planning schemes requiring massive infusions of our taxbucks and the total annihilation of all individual freedom. This suspicion generally renders libertarians resistant to a severe psychosis identified by psycho-political epidemiologists as 'eco-obsessive syndrome'."
http://www.freecannon.com/GlobalWarmingScares.htm
"The crick run dry! There's Comanche in the paths! Hide the women and the Internets!"
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=71653
"Flanked by poster-sized images of Fat Albert and Babe Ruth, the American Mendacity Association (AMA) today launched a new initiative for a federal tax on sofas and lounge chairs. Following its proposal for a tax on sodas sweetened with corn syrup (the 'crack cocaine' of sweeteners), the organization's board vowed to do more to 'protect our children from the ravages of relaxation'."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=618
"Boys are churning wads of energy. They are physical and competitive. They want to climb things, test themselves, jump off of things, explore, drive fast, fight, behave like damn fools, and sack cities. In later years this energy may serve them well, but not yet. School is hellish for them, with its year after year of sitting, bored out of their skulls, while some drone babbles. It is worse for the bright, verging on child abuse. They hate it. I did."
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Boy%20Crisis.shtml
"Federal spending last year ate up 20.1 percent of what Americans produced. That's more than when this President took office. And the administration's projections through 2011 don't have it falling by much. After that point the picture is far bleaker, when Social Security and Medicare hit their icebergs. This also leaves out the open-ended bill for war spending."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=626
"Years ago, talking about security, I complained about the link between computer and chair. The easy part is securing digital information: on the desktop computer, in transit from computer to computer or on massive servers. The hard part is securing information from the computer to the person. Likewise, authenticating a computer is much easier than authenticating a person sitting in front of the computer."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/07/click_fraud_and.html
"Surely, if not for subsidies, quotas, tax breaks, and laws and regulations restricting unfair competition, we would not have the choice of goods and services we have, and, at the best possible prices. Great choices at great prices are certainly a mark of freedom. Without an activist state to protect this freedom, we would all be left to fend for ourselves in the chaos and uncertainty of unregulated markets. Protection against slavery to markets requires sacrifice and cost."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/goslin/goslin2.html
"The result is a mess in Mexico, and neither Mises nor Rothbard would be surprised by it. Rothbard, in fact, would surely have welcomed it, because any event that has the effect of reducing the legitimacy of the state increases the realm of social cooperation -- as was happening in the United States throughout the 1990s.Mises was close friends with Otto von Habsburg, whose family once ruled Mexico under a model that, whatever its faults, endeavored to decentralize power and respect the rights of the individual. Many countries -- not the least of which being Mexico -- would benefit from finding models that accomplished the same."
"The fact that blacks are equal before the law, through whatever means that has been achieved, is a key issue which should not be ignored. It is only lately, when the government is finally becoming an equal opportunity oppressor that libertarianism is starting to resonate."
Find all RSS feeds & e-mail lists on the Sign Up page –
or use this RSS feed for Ender's Review
Each week immediately after Ender's Review is posted at Endervidualism a small plain text note (~5K) containing a few links to the web edition is sent to ERevNote subscribers.
If you know of prospective readers, please send them a link to this page, or alternately if you don't wish to e-mail them yourself, you can e-mail their addresses to me at this address: Tom@Endervidualism.com and I will send them a message with a link to the latest issue and invite them to subscribe.
Comments suggestions and discussion on the content and structure of this review are welcome at the ERevD: EnderReviewDiscussion Yahoo group. Feel free to jump in there at any time.
Alternately, you may elect to receive a copy of an HTML e-mail object (50 - 90K). Archives of the HTML e-mail are available to EnderReview members. You may join that group or subscribe to its mailing list.