Featured Articles
Table of Contents:
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
"One of the most prominent and poignant cases of federal prosecution of people involved in the medical marijuana movement has come to a relatively good end. Renee Boje, who fled to Canada in 1998 rather than face a 10-year to life mandatory minimum sentence for her peripheral involvement in a Los Angeles medical marijuana research grow, pleaded guilty last week to possession of ½ gram of marijuana, was sentenced to one year of probation and allowed to return to Canada."
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/450/renee_boje_ordeal_over
"Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is a group of current and former police officers, judges, prosecutors, and elected officials who've come out against the drug war. Their introductory video is below."
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/29393.html
"I cannot help but wonder if the Founders of this nation would have been willing to accept freedom and liberty on the same grounds. Radicalism freed this country from its original masters, not incrementalism. Principle and the will to take freedom back from the overseers and masters is what it will take this go around, too."
http://uncivildefence.blogspot.com/2006/08/gettin-free-part-2_18.html
"The FCC exerts indirect control over the content of broadcast media through its licensing of broadcasters and its power to fine companies over the highly subjective opinion of what constitutes 'offensive' content. Every eight years radio and TV broadcasters must reapply to renew their licenses. This allows the State to apply pressure on the broadcast news media via the corporations that own them. ... The sad fact is that Americans no longer have a free press. A free press was an early legacy of the Revolution against British Mercantilism that achieved the independence of the American colonies, but soon this system too would be corrupted and collapse into Statist meddling and control in favor of special interests."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/young/young28.html
"Asset forfeiture is not a new practice -- it's been part of the War on Drugs for years. But it does not speak well of our system of 'checks and balances,' of protecting the 'rights of the accused' if the courts tolerate laws and procedures that trample the property rights enshrined in the 5th and 14th Amendments. ... The problem is in asset forfeiture itself. It strips protections away from the innocent and allows cops to become carjackers, with the ability to stop us and take our possessions from us as they please."
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1927
"When I first saw this video, I thought it was done by a critic of cops. Explosions, night raids, 'Thunderstruck,' -- seemed like the kind of thing a critic might throw together to show the cowboy mentality of the Eufaula, Alabama SWAT team (Eufaula's population: 13,463). I then saw that the video was made by an actual member of the Eufaula SWAT team. Which sorta' puts the scary footage and ass-kickin' music in an entirely different perspective, doesn't it?"
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026972.php#026972
"Of course the source of the negative connotation is that bread and circuses are used by politicians to buy loyalty and provide distractions from their actions among the populace. They are used as a political strategy to pacify the people as their society delves further into militarism, but does that make food and entertainment evil? Does not then the state make all it touches evil?"
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/davis/davis3.html
"It is obvious that Lao Tzu viewed the state as a likely oppressor of the individual. He thought that any truth in government abides in nonaction and in weakness. ... He observed that the fulfillment of others and of things results not from the prominence of a ruler's virtues but from the withdrawal of self."
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/06/060820-4.htm
"Political rulers tend to be manipulative and unprincipled brutes; after all, their specialty is getting and using power. Turning them loose with practically unlimited resources is a deadly recipe for warfare. Furthermore, when a people with wealth applauds militarism and selects its rulers as the most savage and warlike, they get what they want and deserve. The end result of concentrated state power, as in its disruption of the peaceful evolution of private commercial law, is the destruction of private property rights."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff96.html
"Indeed, the dream of an independent Kurdistan dates back to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. The League of Nations promised the Kurds a homeland of their own. Instead their homeland was broken into shards and parceled out to Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran. Only in Iran, where the local Kurds call the Persians 'cousins,' do they feel much kinship with their nominal countrymen. Nowhere do Kurds feel more distant from their fellow citizens than in Iraq. They have had their own de facto independent state here for the last 15 years."
http://www.reason.com/0608/fe.mt.the.shtml
"Industry analysts say travelers aren't afraid of being blown up by terrorists. They're right. Hundreds of millions of people fly each year; very few end up shredded among the wreckage of an office tower. But passengers are afraid. They fear that the government's draconian security measures will make them miss their flights. That real and wholly justifiable fear has already cut ticket sales by as much as 20 percent."
http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20060822
"[T]he U.S. has led the campaign to force the Chinese to unlink the yuan from the dollar and let the yuan float. If that were to happen, the French would have their prize. The other countries that link their currencies to the dollar and form the Asian dollar bloc would cut their dollar tethers and the bloc would break apart. This would roll back the U.S. dollar hegemony, inject instability into what was the Asian dollar bloc area and retard the flow of Asian savings to the U.S."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6632
"What many Americans fail to understand is that it is entirely possible to have democracy and dictatorship at the same time. Democracy entails the use of elections to place people into positions of power. Dictatorship entails the extent of the powers that the ruler is able to exercise after he assumes office. Therefore, it is entirely possible to have a democratically elected dictator -- a person who has been duly elected to office who exercises dictatorial powers. This is exactly the case of George W. Bush."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0605a.asp
"There is increasing evidence that Israel instigated a disastrous war on Lebanon largely at the behest of the United States. The Bush administration was set on crippling Hezbollah, the radical Shiite political movement that maintains a sizable block of seats in the Lebanese parliament. Taking advantage of the country's democratic opening after the forced departure of Syrian troops last year, Hezbollah defied U.S. efforts to democratize the region on American terms. The populist party's unwillingness to disarm its militia as required by UN resolution--and the inability of the pro-Western Lebanese government to force them to do so--led the Bush administration to push Israel to take military action."
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3444
"One key aspect of the program is certain, however: whether it's being used against terrorist suspects, or political opponents, or competitors of the Bush Faction's corporate cronies, the main purpose of the program is to establish the principle that the 'unitary executive' cannot be bound by any law. It is yet another step in the careful, fully conscious construction of a presidential dictatorship, a new kind of state to replace the old Constitutional Republic that Bush and his fellow elitists find so inconvenient to their pursuit of wealth, dominion and ideological fantasy."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=817&Itemid=135
Or "Democrats Walk Themselves to the Gallows" -- "What Emanuel appears to be saying here is that 'bloggers' -- by which he really means 'people who voted against Lieberman' -- are welcome to 'contribute,' but not welcome to actually decide elections. In other words, we'll take your votes, but we'll decide who you vote for. An admirable sentiment for an elected official. How is it that these people have avoided being pitchforked to death for this long?"
"Conservatives pride themselves on being 'strict constructionists,' the keepers of the one true interpretation of the Constitution. But this claim rests on a weak foundation. There is no one true interpretation. The historian Merrill Jensen noted that Alexander Hamilton, a staunch nationalist, and Thomas Jefferson, a staunch decentralist, looked at the same Constitution and saw two contradictory things. Each saw a plan of government consistent with his own predilections."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0608g.asp
"Forget 'empiricism,' say the neocons -- let's go with what we 'know' about the Iranian 'regime.' They're the Bad Guys, part of the Axis of Evil, and therefore we don't have to stick too closely to the facts to justify bringing about regime change. We don't need 'evidence' -- what the heck is that, anyway? -- all we need to do is cherry-pick 'raw' intelligence and cook it up into a kind of polemical goulash, which we can then sell to the politicians and the American public."
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9603
"If a woman prefers life in a harem than having one man of more modest means all to herself, that should be her choice. Polygamy - the possibility of one man getting all the women - would provide an incentive for men to improve themselves - such as in income, character, or looks - in order to attract women."
http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2006/08/defending-polygamy.html
"Let's take another look at Frank, an actor some people know best from his appearances on MADtv. How much is his current career based on MADtv and how much is it based on his being among Google Video's Top 100 clips, for example? MADtv is meaningless to his career at this point. And even more importantly, the video sharing market of today would allow a Frank Caliendo to rise to the top and make a good living even if MADtv had never existed, which is the scariest lesson of all for Hollywood's talent gatekeepers. It isn't that Hollywood is dying, but being reborn with a new skeleton and muscles. And while the studios and networks hope to still provide the brains to drive this new entity, that is very doubtful."
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060824.html
"This is a story about a barbecue. In the South Florida back yard of a friend who had invited me over for dinner, I saw a most unusual barbecue, but what I learned about it from its owner informed me about a lot more than barbecues. It hinted at the incredible power of freedom -- the freedom of people to trade with each other, over distances and across borders. "
http://www.mises.org/story/2273
"For simplicity's sake, I won't even address the question of corporate subsidies. Suffice to say that penniless people aren't getting all or even most of the handouts. ... It's telling, at any rate, that one of the centers Wagner studied, the poorhouse in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, evolved directly into both the county nursing home and the county jail. They share the same complex to this day."
http://www.reason.com/links/links082206.shtml
"Government departments routinely fail to achieve their stated goals. (Forty years and many trillions of dollars into the war on poverty, and poverty's not yet been licked. How many more years? How many more trillions?) Departments can't even keep track of their own budgets. The Pentagon misplaces billions the way the rest of us misplace our keys. The FBI has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a new computer system that is such a turkey that agents still use paper files. This sort of thing is the rule, not the exception."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=725
"If public exposure of pork could embarrass Congress out of its current abuse, the profligacy would have ended a long time ago. Since the mid-1990s, McCain has been giving his speeches identifying, even lampooning, thousands of outrageous examples in defense bills. The result? Congress increased the pork in those same bills from $4.2 billion in 1994 to the $9.3 billion in 2006."
http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1798
"The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. ... The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act. ... Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/what_the_terror.html
"After 'two weeks of interrogation, an inch-by-inch search of his house and analysis of his home computer, officials are now saying that his extradition is "a way down the track" if it happens at all,' notes the Daily Mail. 'It comes amid wider suspicions that the plot may not have been as serious, or as far advanced, as the authorities initially claimed…. Analysts suspect Pakistani authorities exaggerated Rauf's role to appear "tough on terrorism" and impress Britain and America.' How fortuitous, especially for the neocons and Bush's Ministry of Homeland Security, busily working to trounce the Constitution and turn America into a snoop and police state."
"The only surprising thing about this sweet deal for unabashed war profiteers with a direct line to the White House is that the trial was actually allowed to run its course before the foreordained conclusion. Then again, there was no real need for the administration to sweat it - Ellis is a decidedly safe pair of hands for Bush's dictatorship of the executive."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082506J.shtml
"The biggest special-interest group of all -- the federal government itself -- has 'seized power by rewriting the supreme law of the land,' as Judge Napolitano says in the subtitle to his book. Just as Calhoun predicted. The purpose of the book, says the judge, is to tell 'the unhappy story of liberty lost, federalism trampled, and Big Government run amok'."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo105.html
"The trouble with Star Trek, however, lies in the insistent reliance upon the false framework of the State, even in the futuristic space-traveling universe in which Kirk, Picard, and their respective crews hypothetically exist. That such a debilitating, wasteful, arrogant monstrosity should still exist in a time where men can travel freely among the stars, teleport to and fro at will, and intermingle with beings from other worlds, is to me, an unthinkable horror."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/knight/knight1.html
"The discovery of a neolithic complex of caves in Greece suggests not all cavemen were club-wielding, nomadic hunter-gatherers, but included some farmers and shepherds. They even had the Stone Age equivalent of a toolshed. Evidence of such homebody cave dwellers comes from a recent excavation of a cave complex dating from 5300-3900 BC."
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1723824.htm
"Although foreign policy elites detest casualty aversion in democracies, it is actually a good thing--or would be if overly adventurous political officials would see this inherent, abysmal trade off in fighting against guerillas and avoid it. Guerilla tactics are the most successful type of warfare in human history.... [G]uerillas are on the defensive and are usually fighting on their own terrain, which they know far better than the occupying power. They also have a better intelligence network on their home soil than does the occupier,"
http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1794
"[W]hile these vagabond cells can certainly still do some minor damage, their real aim at this point is to provoke our overreaction. The best they can hope for is to disrupt our way of life, and instill fear and panic -- like making us think that we're one liberal Supreme Court justice away from every warblogger's favorite new vocabulary word, dhimmitude."
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026980.php#026980
"Ahh, those were the days! Remember when it was heroic to incinerate civilians? Let's not go too far back in time, though. A century earlier, western nation-states were establishing rules of war that would make everything the US military has done since then a serious war crime."
http://www.bkmarcus.com/blog/2006/08/inflammatory.html
"HOWARD PHILLIPS LOVECRAFT (20 August 1890–15 March 1937) is probably best known as a writer of weird fiction, but some believe his voluminous correspondence to be his greatest accomplishment. You can explore his numerous facets through the many pages outlined here:"
"[A] girl she danced with [at dancing classes] told her about auditions for chorus girls. The law said you had to be 16 years old, and although they were only 13, they decided to lie about their ages at the audition."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Keeler
"No other player in NBA history has spawned so many myths nor created such an impact. ... A track and field star in high school and college, Chamberlain stood 7-1 and was listed at 275 pounds, though he filled out and added more muscle as his career progressed and eventually played at over 300 pounds. ... Even when he was in his 50s, a story would pop up every now and then about some NBA team talking to Chamberlain about making a comeback ... Rather he continued to be a voracious reader who also published several books and involved himself with other pursuits including maintaining a lively bachelor's existence."
http://www.nba.com/history/players/chamberlain_bio.html
Film Noir crime drama stars Jessica Alba, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jaime King, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, Brittany Murphy, and many more; written by Frank Miller, directed by Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino. "Although not for every film viewer, those who enjoy gritty and hard-edged crime drama will search long and hard to find a film that, like this one, pulls no punches. Those, like me, who harbor skepticism for the American establishment will find kindred spirits in the characters of the movie and the apparent attitude of the filmmakers."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/sin_city_2005.htm
"The Libertarian Futurist Society presented its annual Prometheus Awards in three categories Aug. 25 at the World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim, Calif."
http://www.lfs.org/releases.htm
"The problem, as always, is not the free market but the government. Morgan's world could not exist except for the fact the government looks the other way about corporations making huge profits off of supporting wars. Where this unholy combination of the government and corporations (actually an unholy marriage of the government, corporations and the military) will lead in real life is a minority of super-rich, almost no middle-class, and a large mass of the poor, hopeless and violent."
http://tonova.typepad.com/thesuddencurve/2006/08/tales_of_corpor.html
"President Bush just can't understand why he hasn't gotten a "Thank" You card from the Iraqi people."
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=73261
"Despite an increased workload and growing societal pressure to form lasting partnerships with other activist groups, the 39-years-young NOW has never been seriously affiliated with any other organization, perhaps due to its decision to focus on ambitious campaigning and legal advocacy work during its twenties instead of public relations."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/51848
"While the promotion of Iran from the Axis of Evil to the Axis of Eviler drew no initial response from President Ahmadinejad, it sparked an angry reaction from North Korean President Kim Jong-Il, who said today, 'North Korea will not sit idly by and allow another nation to be called eviler than it'."
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=6571&srch=
"Virtually all the great writers, poets (and artists and composers as well) were non-conformists, many of them deeply at odds with the system they lived under. One is supposed to identify with 'the greats', but what is the message of their lives? People you admire, creative people, are non-conformists. Therefore non-conformism must be a good thing, and the system that ignored them, ridiculed them, persecuted them is loathsome. When a youth sees a singer, artist or writer condemned in the media for being a troublemaker, what must he or she think?"
http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/education-system-cant-educate.html
25 more questions for supporters of endless war. #26-50 -- e.g.# 41: "You resent the fascist/Hitler comparisons made to Bush. But if the President can set aside laws passed by Congress, spy on citizens without a warrant, detain anyone at will, excuse torture, and invade foreign countries that posed no threat to us, what are we supposed to think?"
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1924
"The Deadwood hero leaves bodies in the thoroughfare, while the reality hero tries to prevent the bloodshed in the first place. The Deadwood hero is a vigilante, while the reality hero understands the inherent value of a society dictated by the rule of law. The Deadwood hero is impulsive, aggressive and macho, while the reality hero is a rational consensus-builder with an intelligent plan of action. Under a curtain of fear from terrorism, we have been manipulated into thinking that our national security depends on casting our lot with a Deadwood hero, when in fact it lies with the other."
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/08/20/Columns/US_could_use_more_gir.shtml
"[A] brief review of the historical record of violence, fanaticism, and aggression by some other people is in order as well. ... [I]t seems logically apparent to me that white males are congenitally disposed toward violence and should be profiled, searched, and watched at all times in order to suppress their dangerous and uncivilized proclivities."
http://alisvoice.blogspot.com/2006/08/some-fan-mail.html
"If one is an Anarchist, and one is going to drink (whether on occasion, or on a consistent basis), one ought to contemplate how to do so in a manner which reduces rather than enhances State power. Here, we come to the meat of the matter. Or, we Strike the Root, if you will. Homebrewing, home fermentation, and even distillation of hard spirits can all be done without tangling with tax authorities so long as one does not intend to vend the end product for cash, or exceed certain quantities on a per annum basis. "
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/knight/knight2.html
"Now, Armadillo World Headquarters--this is getting difficult. You probably didn't know that armadillos had a headquarters. Well, they did. They're more organized than you think. It was an open-air music-and-lotsa-beer joint where wild bands played seditious music for dirty rotten anarchistic hippies, like me, and all these Texas gals, the which there ain't no better on this or any other earth, except maybe in Arkansas, (well, or Alabama, or….) wandered around in tight cut-offs and the music soared and flew and flapped and you hollered 'LSD!' at the waitress, who brought you a whole mug of it. (It meant Lone Star Draft. At least during working hours.)"
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.