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
"[L]ately the news has been full of the case of Lt. Ehren Watada, who publicly and loudly has proclaimed the illegality of and his opposition to the war in Iraq. Now, I'm not a gooshy type that tears up at grand proclamations of principle, but this guy has balls and I am really amazed at his intellect and clarity. Fuck the douchebags occupying Iraq -- Watada is the hero."
http://www.anti-state.com/blog/?p=66
"In earlier motions, Col. Head had ruled that Watada's claim – that the war is immoral and illegal – would not be a permissible defense at trial. Watada had hoped to argue under the so-called Nuremberg [Principles] which arose from trials of Nazi war criminals after World War II. The fourth of the Nuremberg Principles says that superior orders are not a defense to the commission of an illegal act, meaning soldiers who commit a war crime because they were 'just following orders' are just as culpable as their superiors."
http://www.antiwar.com/glantz/?articleid=10496
"SDS was a leading force in the 1960s student rebellion against imperialism, corporatism, white supremacy, et hoc genus omne; and free-market anarchists were part of it from early on. Now SDS is back, in a political environment remarkably like that of the Vietnam era, and the prospects for reviving and extending the left/libertarian alliance (though for those of my ilk the goal is better described as a reunification than as an alliance) are looking better than they have at any time since ’69."
http://praxeology.net/blog/2007/02/09/it-takes-a-village/
"Since education tax credits are private money, not public funds, they don't run afoul of state constitutional restrictions like vouchers might. That's one reason why former Governor Pataki proposed an education tax credit for New York State instead, and one reason why tax credits are the best reform for education in New York City. That may also be one reason why other politicians, like Governor Spitzer, oppose vouchers but support education tax credits. Tax credits are a great way to give parents power to choose the best school for their child without being overruled by the courts."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=7354
"Prince George's County abuts the Imperial Capital, and at the beginning of the decade the odor of corruption became so pervasive that the Justice Department put the police under FBI scrutiny. The elevation of Officer Washington – whose reputation was hardly a secret -- to second in command of the County's Homeland Security office apparently raised no eyebrows in Washington. He's most likely just the sort of hero the Feds had in mind when they created the Heimatsiecherheitsdienst."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/02/im-from-government-so-i-get-to-kill-you.html
"Must an observant Muslim woman wear a hijab, a traditional headscarf, in the presence of a cross-dressing gay man? The assimilation of North America's Muslim population will involve wrestling with some odd questions."
http://www.ifeminists.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.85
"Peter Boyle died in December. His wacky turn as Frankenstein’s tap-dancing monster in a Mel Brooks movie led the obituaries, along with his role as the curmudgeonly father on a hideously popular sitcom. When I heard the news, however, I pulled out one of my old issues of Life magazine."
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3013/whos_afraid_of_peter_boyle/
"Robertson went from curing goiters over the airwaves to running for president; Falwell went from squirming explosions of homosexual panic to prayer breakfasts in the White House; the dinky, late-night TV shows grew into international media networks worth billions of dollars. And the crank notions of divinely sanctioned militarism, aggressive obscurantism, blistering intolerance and virulent hatred of the personal freedom that lies at the heart of the American dream of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,' all became the official policies of the ruling faction of the United States government."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1026&Itemid=135
"The pattern usually goes as this: A gang of robbers and murderers first dominates a society. This gang can sustain itself on the products of that society. So, as Ludwig von Mises pointed out, any gang of robbers isn’t necessarily a state. For if such a gang robs and then goes on the run and does not pretend to have a rightful claim to your money, it is not a state. It must be able to sustain itself by constantly exercising such compulsion on innocent people. If they weren’t innocent, then they would be plainly viewed as hostages or prisoners. They must be turned into prisoners without anyone knowing it. "
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/mike/mike5.html
"You can point out that 2,000 people have well-paying jobs, and that tells us literally nothing about whether those jobs are making society wealthier. The wealth of those 2,000 people could be increasing, but they're only a subset of society. If those 2,000 people are trying to destroy the peaceful livelihoods of people who are growing a crop that other people want, then those 2,000 people are having a net negative effect on society's wealth. Although I'm not advocating this, we would be better off paying them to do nothing than paying them to destroy. And we would be even better off paying them to do something that others value. What would be evidence of value? The fact that others are willing to pay for it."
http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=10468
"The view of morality de Waal argues against is one which separates morality from nature. This view, which he labels the Veneer Theory, holds that morality is not something that comes from our evolved nature but is something we have created for ourselves: it comes from our reason, not our genes; it comes from our culture, not our nature. It thus separates us from our primate cousins, for whom, under this view, morality is not a possibility, and it separates us from our evolutionary history, for at some point reason and culture gave us the option to be moral, whereas before we were amoral animals like the rest."
http://www.biorationalinstitute.com/shownews.php?nid=2180
"Thanks, Claire Wolfe, for the kind words about Agorist Class Theory: A Left Libertarian Approach to Class Conflict Analysis, the free e-book I stitched together last year based on unfinished work by the late Samuel Edward Konkin III. "
http://wconger.blogspot.com/2007/02/revisiting-agorist-class-theory.html
"The war in Iraq has reaffirmed the decisive limits of technology when fighting against enemies who are decentralized and determined. It has been extraordinarily expensive but militarily ineffective, and America is ineluctably losing its vast undertaking. Rivals are much more equal, and wars more protracted and expensive for those who persist in fighting them. America's ambitions for hegemony throughout the globe can now be more and more successfully challenged."
http://www.counterpunch.org/kolko02102007.html
"The fact is that DRM isn't making the grade. It inconveniences users and doesn't particularly protect intellectual property owners. My sense is that this position is being broadly, if slowly, adopted in the music industry, and much of what we saw from Jobs this week was his attempt to rush to the front of the mob. And I applaud that, because a clear call to action by someone with plenty of skin in the game is needed if anything is going to change." [This article doesn't cover only decentralist topics, but the title theme seems to.]
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070209_001642.html
"He said if the planet was to survive, it was vital to find a way of getting rid of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. He said he believed offering the $25m (£12.5m) Earth Challenge Prize was the best way of finding a solution. " [Whatever the accuracy of his assessment of the situation, this technique to find a "solution" surely beats using State action.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6345557.stm
"Concern about the impact of globalization and distant multinational corporations on their communities and locally owned businesses is one of the motivations behind making local money that will stay at home, community activists say."
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/international/16647661.htm
“Unfair trade is yet another of the shiny slogans that festoon the spectacle of globalization like tinsel on a pole dancer. How can different regulations and practices in different countries constitute unfairness? Isn’t it the essence of trade that different countries have different things to offer – whether cheaper labor, or better technology, or more bountiful natural resources, or more welcoming business environments?”
http://endervidualism.com/lilar/tale_of_2globes.htm
"Replace the head of the state or even the structure of the state itself, and the culture will continue to enable the oppression. It goes deeper than a theme I've dropped here before: Those who thought replacing Clinton with Bush would make the United States more free were bitterly disappointed, and those who think replacing Bush will solve the crisis will be equally disappointed. Herrs Bush and Clinton are only symptoms of the problem."
http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2007/02/totalitarianism-begins-at-home.html
"The contrast between the model of responsible and responsive governance in Canada and the sniveling, defensive, fabulizing posture of the White House and Justice Department on this matter of national character is the answer to the question: Why does the rest of the world hate us?"
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/04/News/Truly_tortured_logic.shtml
"The Pentagon report encouraged government officials to unchain themselves from the statute book: 'Sometimes the greater good for society will be accomplished by violating the literal language of the criminal law.' The report stressed that 'the necessity defense can justify the intentional killing of one person to save two others.' Thus, invoking the possibility of another 9/11 can automatically banish any concerns about collateral damage during interrogations."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0611c.asp
"Even the most long-lasting institutions, such as the family, are seen as fundamentally pathological and exploitative. The same is true in international relations: they don't like Republican wars that much, but offer no model of internationalism that can replace the view that it is always and everywhere war by someone against someone, and so the only way to stop war is to wage one."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/dems-doomed.html
"Very little happens in public affairs, however, without the money to effectuate it. And much has happened. The Bush administration has turned on the funding spigots—with the most rapid budget increases of any administration since that of LBJ. The administration has wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on everything from expanding benefits in an insolvent Medicare program to massive increases in the defense and homeland security budgets. Like LBJ, Bush has spent taxpayer dollars on both guns and butter simultaneously."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1906
"As for asteroid collisions, this job is simply too important to entrust to government as Posner recommends. Government cannot protect us from ordinary criminals or terrorist attacks, nor can it even timely warn tsunami victims. So why should we assume it capable of deflecting asteroids if only we give it enough money?"
http://www.mises.org/story/2470
18 cogent points
http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/02/what-you-need-to-believe-to-be.html
"Alfred Marshall ... called economics 'the study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.' This was the enterprise of Marshall and Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman: they tried to understand what people do and the implications of their behavior for the society at large. But my favorite definition of economics is a variant of Marshall's. It comes from a student who heard it from another teacher of hers: economics is the study of how to get the most out of life."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Robertsopportunitycost.html
"In an unmolested market economy — one where all dealings are consensual — the 'allocation' of wealth and income is the result of transactions. There is no literal allocation, because there is no storehouse from which a custodian distributes wealth according to some arbitrary standard. Wealth comes from the production and exchange of goods and services. If someone efficiently produces a good that many people willingly trade their money for, he becomes wealthy."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0611b.asp
"Bangalore’s incredible success in the information technology field stems not just from its wealth of skilled workers, or the lower cost of employing them relative to U.S. or Canadian workers, but from the fact that so many are fluent in English. And that’s a skill they are likely to have picked up in private schools."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=7497
"Just a few whiffs of a chemical found in male sweat is enough to raise levels of cortisol, a hormone commonly associated with alertness or stress, in heterosexual women, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists."
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/02/06_sweat.shtml
“We would like the state to stop telling us what to do…whether it is in airports, in our schools, or in our bedrooms…but we dig in our heels equally at efforts by global corporations to improve our water or our vittles at the expense of our health and with subsidies from our tax dollars.”
http://endervidualism.com/lilar/playing_gt_game.htm
"The impressive thing about the case, part of the Justice Department's legally shaky crusade against online gambling, is not the evidence but the government's sinister spin on it. The feds pretend they're pursuing criminals while prosecuting honest businessmen for providing services Americans want."
http://reason.com/news/show/118561.html
"Given what is stated above, the Bush plan would seem to be the beginning of reform. But it's not so simple. First, note that formerly excluded noncash income will now be included in gross income, albeit subject to the new deduction. While that may partly undo a long-standing distortion, it will also raise some people's taxes. The original exemption manipulated behavior, although perhaps not intentionally. Now the limited tax-deduction would also manipulate behavior -- this time by intention."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1098
"The 'art of central banking' is the art of pretending to know what one does not know. Not only is it not a science; it is not even an art. At best it is alchemy; at worst it is a gigantic cheat. When economic systems grow in complexity and diversity, central planning and interventionism become exponentially inefficient, and the need arises for more decentralized coordination mechanisms."
http://www.mises.org/story/2462
“Ah – the media war. Until now we thought the war meant those cluster bombs going off in Baghdad. But we realize we were mistaken. It must have been the blood that got us confused! The real war we now see is on the front pages. Take cover!”
http://endervidualism.com/lilar/sofa_samurai_rise.htm
"As a general rule for understanding public policies, I insist that there are no persistent 'failed' policies. Policies that do not achieve their desired outcomes for the actual powers-that-be are quickly changed. If you want to know why the U.S. policies have been what they have been for the past sixty years, you need only comply with that invaluable rule of inquiry in politics: follow the money."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs54.html
"Abuse of authority naturally comes with this kind of political power. Indeed, the very reason that the Founders of this country stressed separation of powers was to keep any one branch from becoming all-powerful, precisely because the Founders understood human nature and political power-grabbing. Consider the so-called war on terrorism."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0611d.asp
"Same as it ever was: elitist fat-cats – sorry, well-connected, respectable businessmen – playing both sides to skim the rich, red cream of blood money sluicing through the backrooms of governments at war."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1025&Itemid=135
"Not surprisingly, agents sometimes died on the job. Searching law-abiding passengers is far safer and easier than tracking criminals, but it's also useless: no TSA screener anywhere has caught a terrorist. Second, the railroads confronted a real enemy. They neither lied nor exaggerated the risks because that would cost them customers. Contrast that with the bureaucrats at the TSA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. They depend on taxpayers' fears of ubiquitous, magically lethal terrorists for their jobs and cushy offices."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1089&year=2007&month=2
"All in all, no matter how clever a leader can be or how craftily populist coalitions are built, the fact is that personalismo, as well as excessive centralization, condemns government agencies and public servants to paralysis as all decisions, appointments, and initiatives require the leader's direct involvement, approval and action. This is what ultimately undermines the effectiveness of populism once its leaders are in office."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Martinezbrave.html
"In the late 19th and very early 20th century, there was a much more widespread understanding among both leftists and free-marketers of the symbiotic relationship between state and corporate power. Just imagine telling William Graham Sumner, or Benjamin Tucker, or Emma Goldman, that the relationship between government and business is one of enmity!"
http://praxeology.net/blog/2007/02/06/remembering-corporate-liberalism/
"Many of the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence were inspired by abuses of military power by the British Government at expense of the rights of the colonists. Similarly, many of the provisions inscribed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights (such as the limitation of appropriations for the Army to two years, and the Third Amendment’s prohibition of the quartering of troops in private homes) were inspired by well-entrenched, and amply validated, American concerns about the potential danger of military establishments being employed against the people as occupation forces."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/02/from-surge-to-slavery.html
"Watada's stand is helping spark resistance in many walks of American life. More than 1,000 active-duty soldiers have now signed the Appeal for Redress, asking for an end to the Iraq War. Appeal founder Jonathan Hutto made the connection between Watada's case and the soldiers' action. 'The Appeal for Redress stands in solidarity with all those who resist the current occupation of Iraq, the mass murder of the Iraqi people, the harm and destruction done to American service members and their families, and the ill use of American tax dollars.... We hope that Lt. Watada is successful in his defense of his actions. We further hope that his actions inspire other service members to look deeply into the cause of this conflict and to follow their moral conscience'."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070226/brechersmith
"Time is running out for the pro-war neocons: Bush has less than two years left in office and is facing a revolt in Congress. ... Evidence continues to accumulate that the Bush/Cheney Administration is planning an air and naval war against Iran in spite of a rising chorus of protests by serving and retired senior US military officers and diplomats."
http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2007/02/countdown_to_wa.php
"Many of the most compelling voices against the Iraq war come from the men and women who were ordered into a conflagration that should never have begun. Opinions may be debatable, but experiences are irrefutable. And the devastating slaughter that the U.S. war effort continues to inflict on Iraqi people has a counterpoint in the suffering of Americans who are left with unspeakable grief."
http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon02062007.html
"What would the world look like without the WMDs of the United State of America? Certainly much more peaceable. We would no longer be able to threaten, cajole or scare other countries. Likewise, other countries would not need to continue the accelerated process of building up their own WMDs. Some may, of course, but without the WMDs in possession by the U.S.A., their own fear-mongering campaigns no longer have the world's largest stockpile of weapons to use in manipulating their own populace to fund their own little wars."
http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com/2007/02/bush-brings-back-body-bags.html
"French author and a pioneer of the science-fiction genre best known for novels such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea (1870), Journey To The Center Of The Earth (1864), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before air travel and submarines were invented, and before practical means of space travel had been devised."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Verne
"The bus incident led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association.... The association called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. The boycott lasted 382 days and brought Mrs. Parks, Dr. King, and their cause to the attention of the world. A Supreme Court Decision struck down the Montgomery ordinance under which Mrs. Parks had been fined, and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation."
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/par0bio-1
"Although he personally gained more than 35 patents, Wang's first major contribution to information technology was his invention of the magnetic 'Pulse Transfer Controlling Device' (patent #2,708,722, granted 1955). By precisely regulating the flow of magnetic energy, Wang made magnetic core memory a practical reality."
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/wang.html
"Truffaut was the most popular and successful French film director ever. His main themes were passion, women, childhood and faithfulness." [From the IMDb bio page.]
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000076/
"The Toad considered the bill lying on his desk. It bore the name of a credibly bland Midwestern congressman as sponsor, though in fact like so many other bills making their way through Congress, it had been written by some faceless drone in an industry group or government bureau. Custom needs — custom laws; that's how the game is played."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070205.html
"Normally, no, I’m not a huge horror reader. I like my fiction full of bug-eyed monsters and chicks in metal underpants and men with quick minds and nimble fingers. But Priest’s work isn’t really straight-up horror. Instead, it starts to nibble around the edges of interstitiality, where it’s easier to define what it isn’t than what it is."
http://www.bookslut.com/specfic_floozy/2007_02_010615.php
"Remains of the Day is certainly a warning to all who feel a 'devotion to duty' in one of the traditional institutions of society. You could easily just end up wasting your life following orders from incompetents."
http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/02/remains-of-day.html
"Dream is a satiric, laugh-out-loud, white-knuckled sci-fi thriller. And I’ve already put it on my nominations ballot for a Hugo this summer."
http://wconger.blogspot.com/2007/02/book-review-androids-dream.html
"America needs a hero to distract us from our woes. Thank you, brave/crazy astronaut lady. "
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=81918
"In another devastating blow to the state's already fragile economy, the Unemployment Insurance Agency of the state of Michigan permanently shuttered its nine branch offices Monday, leaving more than 8,500 unemployment employees unemployed."
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/thousands_lose_jobs_as_michigan
"Stephen looks back at a time when the defendant was innocent until proven amphibious."
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=81949
"Carole's Tapestry album resides on my short list of favorite recordings. It was an enormous hit in an era which gave rise to many. Carole's song writing had influenced popular music for a while, but Tapestry brought her performing out and showcased it also."
http://tonova.typepad.com/thesuddencurve/2007/02/music_video_bab_1.html
"Acting without thinking is how we wind up with torture as a military tool. It’s how we wind up with countless children dead from war. It’s how we wound up with a nation full of people who want nothing more than a little security and are willing to sacrifice everyone’s most basic rights and freedoms in hopes of getting some--just don’t ask them to challenge the status quo. (No! Anything but that!) Sadly, they can’t see until it’s too late that this road to Hell does not deliver the goods they were expecting from politicians."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana4.html
"It’s been a very long time since I studied plants. Odd, that, since one of my favorite pastimes while young was to walk in the woods. Back then, I was fairly good at identifying trees—mostly by their leaves and fruit; bark color helped some too but I didn't attend to bark texture sufficiently to use it as an identification aid."
http://www.sunnimaravillosa.com/archives/00000906.html
"The essay examines particular brain heuristics, how they work and how they fail, in an attempt to explain why our feeling of security so often diverges from reality."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/the_psychology_2.html
"The fiction of majority rule has become a license to impose nearly unlimited controls on the majority and everybody else. The doctrine of “majority rule equals freedom” is custom-made to turn mobs of voters into spoiled children with a divine right to plunder the candy store. The only way to equate submission to majority-sanctioned decrees with individual freedom is to assume that individuals have no right to live in any way that displeases the majority. The more confused people’s thinking becomes, the easier it is for rulers to invoke democracy to destroy freedom."
http://jimbovard.com/blog/2007/02/07/democracy-versus-liberty/
"Even more telling was the series of cell-sized videos called 'Connect to Art,' the Finnish phone company Nokia's attempt to play patron. Since 2004, Nokia has invited video artists to create brief clips 'made expressly for viewing on mobile devices'; these are not just on display in the Baltimore museum but can be downloaded from the company's website and kept on your own phone like a little Mona Lisa in your wallet."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/118472.html
"The phrase 'one-way hash function' might sound arcane and geeky, but hash functions are the workhorses of modern cryptography. They provide web security in SSL. They help with key management in e-mail and voice encryption: PGP, Skype, all the others. They help make it harder to guess passwords. They're used in virtual private networks, help provide DNS security and ensure that your automatic software updates are legitimate."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/a_new_secure_ha.html
"The cholesterol theory of cardiovascular disease is far from explaining what causes most heart attacks and strokes. Some 500,000 Americans die of a sudden-death heart attack annually with low-to-normal cholesterol."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi69.html
"Is a free and compassionate world even possible? It is easy to get caught up in feeling that such a world could never be. ... A healthy world can seem so distant, so far from what exists now, as to seem unreal in some way; a mere and foolish fantasy. If you’ve been feeling that way lately, I have good news: free and healthy societies are not only possible and practical in the real world: they exist right now. Many of them, in fact. They are small, for the most part, but no less real or important for that. "
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.