Sept. 10 - 16, 2006

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Ender's Review
of the Web

Web articles of likely interest to individualists found during the preceding week.
 

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Pursuing Liberty

Articles showing the positive influence of action in the pursuit of Liberty.

Wiccan Sign Allowed on Soldier's Plaque

      by Scott Sonner from San Francisco Chronicle

"The widow of a soldier killed in Afghanistan won state approval Wednesday to place a Wiccan religious symbol on his memorial plaque, something the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs had refused." [TE: Perhaps, eventually, many people will even come to understand what freedom of religion means.]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/09/13/national/a182704D71.DTL

The Content of Our Character

      by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith from The Nation

"Since Congress is scheduled to adjourn in two weeks, deadlock seems at least as likely as new legislation. The good news is that with a deadlock, the Rasul and Hamdan decisions--as well as the War Crimes Act--remain intact. Principle has played some role in the resistance to the Bush Administration. "

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061002/brecher

Daughter of the Constitution

      by Nat Hentoff from The Village Voice

"The first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's secret warrantless surveillance program and the corollary lawlessness of its enabler, George W. Bush, continues to have her judicial competence derided by certain law professors, including some who support her basic finding but complain that her ruling had too much passion and insufficient legal analysis."

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0637,hentoff,74411,6.html

Rebelling Against Torture and Bush

      by Robert Kuttner from Common Dreams

"My father survived the war not because of the generosity of the Nazis to Jewish soldiers. The Germans must have been tempted to send captured Jewish American soldiers to Auschwitz along with Polish, German, and Dutch Jews and kindred human garbage. But they did not. My father survived because, amazingly, even the Nazis respected the reciprocal agreements on humane treatment of prisoners."

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0916-24.htm

Life in Amerika

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

The Perfect Economic Storm

      by Retta Fontana from Strike The Root

"But you're insulated, you say--you own stocks. Stocks are neither a reliable asset nor a valuable source of income, no matter what Wall Street would like you to believe. The market is in basically the same place it was five years ago, as opposed to the U.S. Dollar, which has been in a free fall against other currencies for the past five years. Even if we accept the government's calculation of yearly inflation at only 4% (it's actually much higher when you add in housing and fuel, but who needs those?) if you were lucky enough to have earned 4% and paid taxes on that return, you've actually lost money by holding those stocks."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/fontana/fontana7.html

THE LOW POST: Why Ask Why?

      by Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone

"If nineteen knife-wielding lunatics blowing a hole in the middle of Manhattan on international television can't even temporarily knock us out of 'What, me worry?' mode, you have to feel pretty good about our future chances for remaining just as cheerfully numb through even a more serious disruption of our fantasy existence."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11618300/the_low_post_we_still_have_no_idea_iwhyi_911_happened/1

Feds lower boom on alternative money

      by Barbara Hagenbaugh from USA TODAY

"The government Thursday warned consumers and businesses that it is illegal to use alternative money known as 'Liberty Dollar' coins, which organizers promote as a competitor to the almighty dollar. 'We don't want consumers to be fooled,' U.S. Mint spokeswoman Becky Bailey says, noting U.S. Attorneys offices across the USA have noticed a marked increase in inquiries about the coins. The coins' producers vowed to fight the government's decision."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-09-14-liberty-usat_x.htm

IRS Orders All Saints to Yield Documents on '04 Political Races

      by Louis Sahagun from Common Dreams

"At the time, IRS officials said the agency also began expediting investigations into charges of improper campaigning under a new enforcement program, the Political Activity Compliance Initiative. Under it, the IRS will no longer wait for an annual tax return to be filed or for the tax year to end before investigating allegations of wrongful campaigning."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0916-01.htm

Ordered Liberty without the State

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

The Two Great Evils and the Hammer of Infinite Power

      by Glen Allport from Strike The Root

"[T]he power wielded by government creates and exacerbates emotional damage (neurosis) in millions of people. In turn, this widespread neurosis ensures that government power is often put directly to evil use, and is sought after by the most ambitious and cruel among us. Governments are often run by outright psychopaths -- Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Mao, and Saddam Hussein are only a few of the better-known examples from recent history; see any newspaper for more -- and soon, these institutions of coercion will wield powers that are unimaginable today. ... The guiding light for healthy choices in use of technology -- and for healthy behavior generally -- is emotional health, the more widespread the better. The social fabric that best enables healthy human choices is freedom infused with love and compassion; that is, a society that rigorously guards against the initiation of coercion (by government or otherwise) and which gives every new life the best possible chance to be treated with respect, love, and compassion."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/allport/allport2.html

Market anarchism as stigmergic socialism

      by Brad Spangler from BradSpangler.com

"The Wikipedia entry on market anarchism has been ever so slightly bugging me for a while, but I've not been able to lay my finger upon the matter of precisely why until now."

http://www.bradspangler.com/blog/archives/473

Victory through renunciation

      by Nicholas Strakon from The Last Ditch

"Without empire abroad and totalitarianism at home, the United State would be much weaker, but America and perforce the American people would be much stronger. Allah help any Muslim terrorists -- and even he would have difficulty helping them -- who came among a people proud, vigilant, armed, and energized by their refound liberty. The state makes us weak, stupid, helpless, and hysterical; liberty allows us and our social institutions, including our means of defense, to be as strong, smart, efficacious, and sober as we and they are capable of being."

http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/lights144.htm

Can the State Improve a Hobbesian World?

      by Edward Stringham from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"Perhaps government does not create order and instead does the opposite. Could it be the case that cooperation does not depend on government? Could it be the case that more cooperation would occur without a state? Although most people agree with Hobbes that some form of government is necessary, until recently the issue was merely an assumption that had never been analyzed from an economic point of view. This changed in the early 1970s when members of the Center for the Study for Public Choice became the first group of economists to engage in a systematic study of these questions."

http://www.mises.org/story/2127

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

How to Best Herd Cats

      by Ron Beatty from The Libertarian Enterprise

"In a way, this area is what the Free State projects are looking to achieve. However, it's happened on a more natural level. Instead of a massive publicity campaign, it's been more one of us mentioning it to friends, friends who've pulled up stakes and moved here."

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2006/tle384-20060910-02.html

Reparations and the Stateless Society

      by Christopher Awuku from Strike The Root

"Of course, there is no government within a market anarchist community. As a consequence of this, distinct groups in society wouldn't have to be at constant loggerheads. Since full freedom of association would exist within the market anarchy, people wouldn't be compelled to associate with groups of people they disapproved of, or even despised."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/awuku/awuku5.html

Centanni and Wiig Escape: A Celebration and Lessons Learned

      by David R. Henderson from Antiwar.com

"Imagine you're an innocent person captured by a Middle Eastern group. What would you prefer to be: an employee of Fox News, a random Palestinian, or a random U.S. soldier? If you've answered that you'd opt to be a Fox News employee, you've said that you trust your employer more than you trust, among others, the U.S. government. Me too. "

http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=9659

Buckley Nails It

      by James Leroy Wilson from Independent Country

"In the past few weeks, I've been reminded of what I like about conservatism, and why I once counted myself as one. The Aug 28 American Conservative was one reminder. The October Washington Monthly, in which seven conservatives come out rooting for Democratic victory in 2006, is another...."

http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2006/09/buckley-nails-it.html

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

Before 9/11, There Was 11/9

      by Ira Chernus and Tom Engelhardt from Antiwar.com

"The war on terrorism has revived the Cold War mindset, in which we are all citizens of a national insecurity state. The terror of impending annihilation from a vast, conspiratorial, and evil enemy has again become the vague backdrop of everyday life. To assure ourselves of our absolute goodness, we must see the enemy as absolute evil; not a collection of human beings bent on harming us, but a network of monsters bent on -- and capable of -- destroying us utterly. In other words, Cheney's 'new normalcy' is but a version of an older, deeper apocalyptic terror."

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=9682

Fatal Vision: The Strategy of Chaos and Ethnic Cleansing

      by Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"[A] series of events now emerging from the 'arc of crisis' stretching from Central Asia to the Mediterranean bear witness to the deadly chaos and 'creative destruction' celebrated by the new Shigalovs dancing attendance on the Bush-Cheney administration. These disturbances include strange, Bush-backed treaties with al Qaeda fueling American deaths in Afghanistan; the assassination of moderate voices in Pakistan and Iraq; the despairing surrender of the last hope of holding back civil war in Iraq; and feverish new plans for more war in the turbulent arc, based on the deliberate fomenting of sectarian strife. Ralph Peters -- 'Terror War' analyst, hack novelist, ex-military intelligence officer -- was the cartographer of creative destruction in the Journal article."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=842&Itemid=135

Edward Bernard Glick Wants You for U.S. Army

      by Matt Hutaff from The Simon Magazine

"That's right! Glick has just summoned forth some magical trifecta which 1) insists the draft is a great recruiting tool and morale booster; 2) turns feminism and equal opportunity on their ears by stating women and minorities need better representation; and 3) regards every minority who enlisted as some chump whose qualifications could only find him a job in the armed forces! What does that say about our armed forces? And how exactly can blacks view military service 'as just another job choice' when they are forced to participate in the job? The statement boggles the mind."

http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/01231_edward_bernard_glick_wants_us_army.html

America Did Not Ask for This War???

      by Robert Johnson from Strike The Root

"America begs for war when it demands the Islamic nations obey UN resolutions while never demanding that Israel do the same. A case in point, UN Resolution 242. UN Security Council Resolution 242 calls for pre-1967 borders to be established in the Middle East and for Jerusalem to remain an open city free of any one government's control. Israel has ignored this resolution for years while America has done absolutely nothing to encourage Israel to follow it. "

http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/johnson/johnson6.html

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

Bush on the Ropes -- Retroactive Immunity?

      by Dave Lindorff from CounterPunch

"For while the list of this president's crimes against the Constitution, the Republic and the People of the United States is long and ugly, the truth is that the two areas where he is the most vulnerable to impeachment are precisely the two that he is working so hard now to make go away: the warrantless NSA spying program and the abuse of the detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere."

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff09152006.html

The Hoekstra-Harman Hoax

      by Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"For the War Party, deception isn't just a tactic, or even a strategy -- it's a lifestyle. That's why they're indifferent to getting caught. Like a hardened criminal arrested for his umpteenth felony, the neocons see brazen lying as just a routine procedure. Caught red-handed, they just move on to their next subterfuge, one invariably designed to drag us into war."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9702

Moth in the Flames of War: The Fall of Tony Blair

      by Chris Floyd from t r u t h o u t

"So wedded is Blair to Bush's policies that he's now led his country into what many say is rapidly becoming Britain's Vietnam - not the Iraqi quagmire, which is increasingly regarded here as an irretrievable failure, but the 'good war' in Afghanistan, where Blair has hurled an underprepared, undermanned expeditionary force into the violent chaos spawned by Bush's callous neglect of the broken country in favor of his Iraq adventure."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091406J.shtml

Fear Mongering on the Anniversary of 9/11

      by Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"President Bush and other Republican politicians like to have it both ways. They crow about their anti-terrorism efforts by bragging that the United States has not had another attack since 9/11, while keeping the fear of another attack alive to win elections. In short, the president tells us that we are 'safer but not safe.' Such fear mongering is exactly what the terrorists want. Terrorists can save resources by conducting major attacks only at rare intervals and relying on irrational fears of people and governments to do the rest."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1811

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

"At Last You Know the Truth"

      by Sunni Maravillosa from Endervidualism

Another new essay from Sunni Maravillosa on 'sustainability', freedom and some implications. "Each participant will become part of the freedom systems they use. However, understanding that inevitable result and advocating the establishment and perpetuation of a system are very different things. I'm resigned to the former; I don't foresee seriously engaging in the latter. ... It presupposes that we, today, know what will be best for those living in the future. We don't.”

http://endervidualism.com/sunni_m/discordian.htm

Scent of father checks daughter’s maturity

      from Penn State Live

"Chemical cues from fathers may be delaying the onset of sexual maturity in daughters, as part of an evolutionary strategy to prevent inbreeding, according to researchers at Penn State."

http://live.psu.edu/story/19397

Neanderthals and humans lived side by side

      by Rowan Hooper from NewScientist.com

"Neanderthals were thought to have died out as modern humans arrived in Europe. Now, artifacts found in a cave in Gibraltar reveal that the two groups coexisted for millennia before Neanderthals finally dwindled out of existence."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10070?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn10070

LifeSharers Proposes 'Members Only' Approach To Organ Donation

      by Lindsay Wilcox from KLTV

"Members request their organs be offered to other members who are also committed donors before they are offered to those waiting on the national list." [TE: Sounds a bit different than what the headline implies.]

http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5404779&nav=1TjD

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

The Political Economy of Fear

      by Sheldon Richman from Foundation for Economic Education

"Americans pride themselves on their limited self[!]-government, but that only indicates how deeply embedded is the official fear-inducing ideology of state protection. … If it all sounds like a protection racket, that's because it is. Not that there aren't real threats in life. But even many of those have their roots in government's domestic and foreign conduct. As the Public Choice theorists teach, government has its own dynamic, an internal principle of expansion that is inexorable unless checked by the people's eternal vigilance."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=778

Myths of the Mixed Economy

      by Llewellyn H. Rockwell from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"If the mixed economy is such a disaster, why do we have one? Because it enables the well-connected to loot the rest of us in a social democracy disguised as 'democratic capitalism'."

http://www.mises.org/story/2323

Housing Socialism

      by Gregory Bresiger from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Faced with the choice to sell a product or service in a place where one could charge market prices without fear of controls or in one where prices -- and therefore profits -- were controlled or often extinguished, what rational person would opt for the latter? Rent controls, the same as every other government price control, go against the innate human desire for improvement. ... The desire for self-improvement is not the mentality behind price-control laws and rent-control laws. Behind them is the mentality of social engineering."

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0606d.asp

Is Drug Use a Violent Act?

      by Bradley Doucet from Le Québécois Libre

"A drug user does not resort to the use of force when he takes drugs. (A drunk who goes home and beats his wife after a night of bingeing is another story: he is guilty of a crime for the act of beating, but this does not make the drinking itself a crime, nor does it make the vast majority of peaceful drinkers into automatic criminals, as if by association.) A buyer and a retailer of drugs do not engage in the use of force either. They engage in a voluntary exchange, as do a wholesaler and a retailer, and again a producer and a wholesaler. "

http://www.quebecoislibre.org/06/060910-6.htm

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

The Bogeyman Industry

      by Butler Shaffer from LewRockwell.com

"Fear-peddling is very much in danger of becoming monopolized by the state, which long ago realized that keeping people perennially frightened was the most effective method of maintaining them in a huddled and obedient mass. From the primitive tribal chief who was able to convince his neighbors of the threats posed by the 'Nine Bows' across the river, to today's political shakedown artists with their terrorist phantoms, fear has been the essential organizing principle of politics."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer143.html

Ten Lessons from 9/11

      by Sheldon Richman from Free Association

"5. As Randolph Bourne said, getting into a war is like riding a wild elephant. You may think you are in control -- you may believe your objectives and only your objectives are what count. If so, you are deluded. Consider the tens of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqi and Afghanis. What did they have to do with 9/11?"

http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2006/09/ten-lessons-from-911.html

Five Years After

      by Roderick T. Long from Austro-Athenian Empire

"By the logic of the situation, government restrictions will always increase. When restriction A makes one tactic more difficult, the terrorists switch to a different tactic, so the government imposes restriction B -- but, of course, doesn't remove restriction A. Given the massive variety of tactics for terrorists to switch among, this process has no natural endpoint short of total government control over every aspect of life."

http://praxeology.net/blog/2006/09/11/five-years-after/

Losing the war on terror

      by B.W. Richardson from Montag …

"The key question, of course, is why do the politicians want us to be terrified? The answer is obvious: Frightened people are more easily controlled. Career politicians live to gain control. If we are not terrified, the politicians fear they may lose control of us, and that thought terrifies them."

http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2006/09/losing-war-on-terror.html

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

The Economics of Prohibition

      by Mark Thornton from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"The Progressive Era (1900-1920) marks the pinnacle of American prohibitionism. As America 'progressed' to become an imperial power, it did so in part on the international prohibition of narcotics and the Harrison Narcotics Act. The act also helped the medical and drug industries 'progress' toward the exalted monopoly status that they now enjoy. ... One early lesson from American history is the unmistakable interaction between war, intemperance, and prohibition. Avoiding war is perhaps the most important thing a government can do to avoid intemperance, addiction, and drug abuse. Conversely, drug abuse and prohibitions are a significant long-term cost of war."

http://www.mises.org/story/2269

Bush After 9/11 -- Five Years of High Crimes and Misdemeanors

      by Dave Lindorff from CounterPunch

"I want to write about the five-year crime spree against the Constitution and the American people that began almost immediately as the buildings fell, and that today has the American Republic teetering on the brink of a totalitarian future. Because it is clear that Bush and his advisors, far from acting to unite the country and protect it from attack, used that horrible tragedy half a decade ago as an excuse to terrorize Congress and the American public, and as an excuse to set the nation on a permanent war footing, so as to aggrandize unchecked power and to usurp the powers of the Congress and the Courts, thus converting the presidency into a dictatorship."

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff09112006.html

Why was real croc hunter's death ignored?

      by Vin Suprynowicz from Las Vegas Review-Journal

"It could be an interesting exercise to compare the prominent coverage of Irwin's death with the slim few paragraphs (at most) devoted by the America news media on or about Aug. 4, 1999, to the death of 44-year-old Rodney William Ansell. The 1988 Australian Northern Territory Man of the Year -- so honored in part because he was widely acknowledged to be the real-life character on whom Paul Hogan, Ken Shadie, and John Cornell based their movie character 'Crocodile Dundee'...."

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Sep-10-Sun-2006/opinion/9222009.html

Traitors to the American Revolution

      by Thomas J. DiLorenzo from LewRockwell.com

"The Constitution was essentially a failed attempt to overthrow the decentralized, federalist system that was created by America's first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation. The delegates to the constitutional convention were only instructed to revise the Articles, not replace them. The first thing they did was to ignore the instructions they were given and write an entirely new constitution."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo107.html

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

Pondering Surrender

      by Anthony Gregory from LewRockwell.com

"It is what the U.S. government has done in our name that has popularized anti-Americanism. Look at how the Iraq War has turned much of the civilized world against us. And this is among those viewing the war from afar. Picture the aggression happening in your own backyard. A rational person should be able to see that most people are not going to sympathize with a superpower that starves their children, occupies their towns, bombs their homes, and tells them it is doing them a favor."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory120.html

9-11 Five Years Later

      by James Leroy Wilson from The Partial Observer

"Imagine an inter-racial criminal incident igniting a race riot. The American wars on the Taliban and Iraq, its support of Israel's war on Lebanon, and its hostility toward Iran amount to an international and religious equivalent of a race riot: destroy everyone who even remotely resembles the guilty party. Hundreds of thousands are now dead or maimed, and a trillion dollars has been spent, out of 'revenge' for 9-11, and we're not through yet."

http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1946

Understanding Why Iraq Is a Disaster

      by Thomas Gale Moore from Antiwar.com

"Blaming the chaos in Iraq on a failure of planning or on a failure to use the correct tactics is similar to the effort by some Marxists to blame the fall of communism in the Soviet Union on a failure to practice communism correctly. It never addresses the root issue: the war could not be won, because it was a colossal mistake."

http://www.antiwar.com/moore/?articleid=9684

9/11 and the search for truth

      by Brad Spangler from BradSpangler.com

"Imperialistic U.S. foreign policy made something like 9/11 inevitable. While most people are cowed by aggression, some won't be. Pigeons will come home to roost. The Power Elite didn't have to carry out 9/11 in order to benefit from it. They undoubtedly, in general terms, saw it coming. Their critics certainly did. The attacks were, while thoroughly evil, a natural reaction to the bloodthirsty policies we have been letting the politicians in this country get away with."

http://www.bradspangler.com/blog/archives/469

Great Individuals In History

Some people stand out from the crowd.

Musician/Composer -- Clara Schumann : Sept. 13, 1819

      From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Besides being remembered for her eminence as a performer of nearly all kinds of pianoforte music, at a time when such technical ability was considerably rarer than in the present day, she was an impressive composer in her own right."

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

Philosopher/Logician/Scientist -- Charles Sanders Peirce : Sept. 10, 1839

      by Max H. Fisch from peirce.org

"He is the only system-building philosopher in the Americas who has been both competent and productive in logic, in mathematics, and in a wide range of sciences."

http://www.peirce.org/life.html

Writer -- William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) : Sept. 11, 1862

      from Literature Network

"O. Henry (1862-1910) was a prolific American short-story writer, a master of surprise endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. A twist of plot, which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance, is typical of O. Henry's stories."

http://www.online-literature.com/o_henry/

Filmmaker -- Robert Wise : Sept. 10, 1914

      by Lukas Fichtinger from Internet Movie Database (bio page)

"Wise started as a director with some B-Movies and his career went on quickly, and he made MANY classic movies."

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0936404/

Culcha'

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

Red Dawn (1984)

      Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism

Military action / adventure stars Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson, C. Thomas Howell; based on a story by Kevin Reynolds, directed by John Milius. "I don't know whether director John Milius might now appreciate the irony of America being invaded by an occupying force and the bravery of young people in resistance. However, this film deserves a fresh viewing in light of the many changes in the world since its making."

http://endervidualism.com/agora/red_dawn_1984.htm

Why They Hate Our Movies

      by Howard Suber from The Huffington Post

"Why do people around the world continue to prefer American films after all these years? I don't think it's because our films are 'better'; I think it's because most American films sell something that people want, something they're hungry for, and can never get enough of. What they're selling also explains why today, as always, there are a significant number of people who hate our movies. What American movies are selling is ... Individualism -- the belief that the most important power in the world lies within each person."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-suber/why-they-hate-our-movies_b_29396.html

Hardyville Film Fest 2006

      by Claire Wolfe with Wally Conger and Oliver Del Signore from Backwoods Home Magazine

"As in previous years, the screenings start September 15, and you have until October 20 to cast your votes for the People's Choice Awards. As we did last year, Wally Conger, BHM webmaster Oliver Del Signore, and yours truly will bang our heads together, argue vehemently, and bestow Judge's Awards (including some special, surprise awards) to be announced November 1."

http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe060915.html

On the run: Joss Whedon Takes Over "Runaways"

      by Dave Richards from Comic Book Resources - CBR News

"Dry those eyes! The adventures of the 'Runaways' won't be coming to an end. Marvel plans to continue the book and has lined up a new creative team, whose run will begin in April. Joining new artist Michael Ryan will be a writer who is well known for chronicling the adventures of super powered teenagers. CBR News spoke to new 'Runaways' writer Joss Whedon about the book."

http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=8342

The lighter side

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

Don't Download This Song

      by "Weird Al" Yankovic from myspace.com

"'Weird Al' Yankovic's first single from the album 'Straight Outta Lynwood' (in stores September 26). Video directed/animated by Bill Plympton." [MySpace appears to use a Flash player. Also available at YouTube and Google Video.]

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1130211390&n=2

Oliver - We Are Safe!

      by Jon Stewart and John Oliver from The Daily Show

"THERE ARE MURDEROUS MURDERERS OUT THERE WITH NOTHING BUT MURDER ON THEIR MIND!"

http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=75364

Report: Majority Of Americans Unprepared For Apocalypse

      from The Onion

"Over 87 percent of Americans are unprepared to protect themselves from even the most basic world-ending scenarios, according to a study released Monday by the nonpartisan doomsday think-tank The Malthusian Institute."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/52708

Knuckle's Sandwich

      by Mark Fiore from MarkFiore.com

Animated flash cartoon - video w/audio

http://www.markfiore.com/animation/washington.html

Deep Thought

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

What is a Hacker?

      by Bruce Schneier from Schneier on Security

"A hacker is someone who thinks outside the box. It's someone who discards conventional wisdom, and does something else instead. It's someone who looks at the edge and wonders what's beyond. It's someone who sees a set of rules and wonders what happens if you don't follow them. A hacker is someone who experiments with the limitations of systems for intellectual curiosity."

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/09/what_is_a_hacke.html

Why I Hate America -- And Why I'm Not Leaving

      by Mickey Z. from CounterPunch

"'Why do you hate America?' This is a remarkably easy question to provoke. ... When pressed, I sometimes reply: 'I don't hate America. In fact, think it's one of the best countries anyone ever stole.' But, after the laughter dies down, I have a confession to make: If by 'America' they mean the elected/appointed officials and the corporations that own them, well, I guess I do hate that America-with justification."

http://www.counterpunch.org/mickey09162006.html

No News Is Slow News

      by John Pilger from Antiwar.com

"When I began working as a journalist, there was something called 'slow news.' We would refer to 'slow news days' when 'nothing happened' -- apart from, that is, triumphs and tragedies in faraway places where most of humanity lived. These were rarely reported, or the tragedies were dismissed as acts of nature, regardless of evidence to the contrary. The news value of whole societies was measured by their relationship with 'us' in the West and their degree of compliance with, or hostility to, our authority. If they didn't measure up, they were slow news."

http://www.antiwar.com/pilger/?articleid=9703

Moral Implications of Race and IQ

      by Vache Folle from St George Blog

"I am agnostic about whether there are genetic differences in intelligence among 'races'. It is widely supposed that Africans are less intelligent on average than Europeans and that East Asians are smarter on average than Europeans. This may or may not be so, but even if it is so, racial differences in intelligence would be devoid of the moral implications some folks seem to think they possess."

http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2006/09/moral-implications-of-race-and-iq.html

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

The 9/11 Enigma, Revisited

      by Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"These people are not crazy: they are smart enough to question the 'accepted' narrative, and their skepticism of governmental beneficence is healthy and quintessentially American. The problem with the 9/11 Truthers is not that they question the conventional 9/11 narrative, but that their alternative explanations defy common sense -- and divert attention away from the core mystery of 9/11, which is: how in the name of all that's holy did a conspiracy envisioned on such a large scale, and stretching over at least five years, go undetected?"

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9683

California Retro

      by Patrick J. Michaels from Cato Institute

"If people think that current hurricanes are being juiced by global warming, if they think that the calving of Greenland is unprecedented (despite decades of warmer temperatures in the early 20th century), then they will expect some return for their grief. But hurricanes will continue, and more people will be exposed to them. The earth's temperature trajectory won't be altered a measurable iota. Despite their efforts to lower emissions, people will see absolutely no current weather change that could possibly be ascribed to this policy."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6687

A foot in the door

      by B.W. Richardson from Montag …

"Having given up on the two major parties, it's still encouraging to hear a call for slapping down the party in power, from members of that party. A pile of seven Republicans who realize the GOP has dropped all pretense of being the limited-government alternative have written essays on the theme 'Time for us to go' for Washington Monthly."

http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2006/09/foot-in-door.html

Pursuing The Elusive Euro -- Tribulations Of An Expat

      by Fred Reed from FredOnEverything

"I'm going to tell you how I entered the underworld, and became a money launderer, and international drug wallah, and remorseless criminal, just like Carlo Gambino or Bin Laden or Condoleezza Rice. Yes. I am now of one blood with Pablo Escobar. It is a service of the Anglo-Irish Bank. I imagine that my picture can be seen on wanted posters in European post offices."

http://fredoneverything.net/AIB.shtml

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