Apr. 22 — 28, 2007

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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.

Real World Politics and Radical Libertarianism

      By Anthony Gregory from LewRockwell.com

"To be an individualist and libertarian is to understand that no one, anywhere, should ever be aggressed against by anyone, and that the state is the principal form of institutionalized aggression in our world. But its effects and its causes are sewn throughout culture. The state is a reflection of prevailing ideology. We must change that ideology. First we must understand it, which requires a deep appreciation of history, economics, and the dynamics of interpersonal affairs."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory136.html

Freedom isn't totally "free" in some sense.

      By Adem Kupi from A Pox On All Their Houses

"In order for you to be free, your neighbor must be free, in the long run. Eventually the mechanisms that suppress behavior you find reprehensible will be used against you too. Eventually the totalitarian machines in far off lands will create totalitarian machines here, to fight against them, if you let that happen."

http://poxyhouses.blogspot.com/2007/04/freedom-isnt-totally-free-in-some-sense.html

How Can Women Defend Themselves Against Stalkers?

      By Eva Liddell from CounterPunch

"The Virginia Tech killer did a number of things before his rampage that could have been dealt with. If the account is true, he took pictures of girls in the classroom, up their skirts. As far as normality would permit they were allowed to be "offended." What would have happened if one of the girls had gone over to him slapped him in the face, grabbed his camera and stomped it to pieces? Her angry reaction would have been deemed not normal. I guarantee it."

http://www.counterpunch.org/liddell04272007.html

Cho Seung-Whatever

      By Jonathan David Morris from The Free Liberal

"It would be wrong to blame Cho’s actions on our society. Society didn’t turn Cho into a cold-blooded killer; Cho turned Cho into a cold-blooded killer. No one made him stalk two classmates, or call in bomb threats, or send a hardly coherent 'multimedia manifesto' to Brian Williams. He did all that stuff on his own. ... He was a goddam weirdo. And a certifiably dangerous weirdo. Why did this school insist on letting him stick around?"

http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/002732.html

Life in Amerika

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

Parents Adrift on an Angry Sea

      By Kerry Howley from Reason

"Parents, adrift illiterates that they are, probably haven’t perused many studies on media violence and child aggression, nor many meta-analyses assessing the state of that research. But perhaps they’ve already concluded, through the field experiment that is parenting, what skeptical researchers have long held: The link between televised violence and a violent society is extremely tenuous."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/119902.html

The Bubble Collapses, The Police State Expands (Quick Update)

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"With household budgets already under stress from increases in non-discretionary spending – food, energy, and housing – why can't county governments bite the bullet and take in a little less? There are countless ways to answer that question, but they can all be easily digested into this simple proposition: County governments have constituencies to feed, and they have Sheriff's Departments to command."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/04/bubble-collapses-police-state-expands.html

The Worst in Atlanta

      By Radley Balko from TheAgitator.com

"The New York Times is now reporting that the officers have told federal investigators that their behavior was not out of the ordinary. That corruption, planting evidence, and giving false testimony are routine at APD."

http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027748.php#027748

They Never Learn

      By Robert A. Levy from Cato Institute

"At the Virginia Tech press conference after the slaughter of 32 defenseless people, the university's president cautioned that it wouldn't be possible to have police guard every classroom and dorm. What he omitted was this cold, hard fact: By making the university a 'gun free zone,' his administration and the state legislature had fostered a climate in which ubiquitous police would be necessary. Without a means to protect themselves, Virginia Tech students, faculty, and other employees were more likely to be victimized by the only people on campus who had readily available guns: killers and lunatics."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8212

Ordered Liberty without the State

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

Beautiful Chaos

      By P. Gardner Goldsmith from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"The free market, the organically created, spontaneous outgrowth of human individuality and peaceful human interaction, solves the ethical problems of Locke's theory. It allows every man to give his consent, avoids the pitfalls of government preying on the slothful side of human nature, and promotes man's positive attributes: creativity, work, and thrift. It allows us to get services, even police services, provided to us voluntarily, without forcing others to pay for something they do not want, or do not want to the same degree, and it fosters bonds between those in need of charity and those who provide it. It is truly the noblest achievement of society, and, at the same time, that which allows society to exist."

http://www.mises.org/story/2546

Neither Conservative Nor Progressive

      By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from LewRockwell.com

"The free market can organize protection better than the state. Private enterprise can and does provide the police function better than the state. As Hayek argued, the state is wildly overrated as a mechanism of order keeping. The state is and has been in history a source of disorder and chaos."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/our-kind-central-planning.html

Democracy: Social Organization for Dummies

      By Francois Tremblay from Strike The Root

"The fact that people believe the State to be [a] social absolute strongly informs their beliefs and behaviour. Statists sometimes use the popularity of socialism to 'prove' that people do not desire to be free. But this is a woeful misunderstanding of the situation. As long as people believe the existence of the State to be a social absolute, they will seek to co-opt (or so they believe; of course we know that the relationship is actually inverse) the power of the State for their own gain and purposes."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/tremblay/tremblay4.html

Praxeologically defining market

      By Brad Spangler from BradSpangler.com

"In this sense, all genuinely voluntary socialism is a market phenomenon. In a stateless society, 'capitalism' and 'socialism' would stop being political ideologies and become merely competing business models (cooperatives and mutual aid associations being 'socialistic' for example)."

http://www.bradspangler.com/blog/archives/601

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

Virginia Tech

      By Pierre Lemieux from The Independent Institute

"Obviously, when people are intent on massacring defenseless students, there is no sure panacea. Yet, there must be a reason why such killings haven’t occurred at places like the University of Utah, where people licensed to carry guns can bring them on campus, including university buildings. There might be a reason why the Dawson College killer, who had a car and apparently no special reason to target that specific school, did not go instead to the National Police School, about 100 miles from Montreal, where all students are armed."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1958

The Second Amendment: The Constitution, In Miniature

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"The 'collectivist' view, Lazare writes, 'is becoming harder and harder to defend' as more honest scholarship – that is, honest scholarship, more widely reported – demonstrates what should be obvious: The American Founders, who had wrested independence from Britain in a war that began with gun-toting citizens repelling an effort to disarm them, were determined to protect the individual right to armed self-defense. And nothing could be more alien to their intentions than the 'collectivist' view of firearms ownership."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/04/second-amendment-constitution-in.html

The Lesson of Virginia Tech

      By Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"The lesson from the horrors at Virginia Tech is that no one can really, fully delegate to another his right to and responsibility for self-defense. You may feel the municipal or campus police are looking out for you, but no police force can guarantee to be where you need it when you need it. There’s only one person sure to be on the scene when you are attacked: you."

http://fff.org/comment/com0704m.asp

Why Did So Many Die?

      By Jim Davidson from The Libertarian Enterprise

"Last night was difficult because Charlie Gibson and other talking heads on the mainstream news were asking, 'Why did it go on so long?' The obvious answer: all the victims had been disarmed by politicians. There had even been a Virginia Assembly bill recently to return the right to keep and bear arms to professors and students, overturning other laws which had unjustly and unconstitutionally stripped that freedom away. The recent bill failed. "

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle414-20070422-04.html

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

Our Captive Media

      By Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"The Washington press corps is as much a part of the courtier system as the government itself: indeed, it has been subsumed into the government in all but name. These people work together, live together, and often marry each other..... More importantly, their politics are all centered around the importance and even the majesty of government: most of them are liberals, albeit of the modern sort, who believe that government is the end-all and be-all of human existence: that there is no problem, large or small, which cannot be solved by state action. "

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10881

J. Edgar Bloomberg: COINTELPRO in NY

      By Nat Hentoff from The Village Voice

"We have only very incomplete knowledge of the depth and extent of past and present NYPD surveillance of lawful organizations in this city. The eye that never sleeps, under the Bush administration, as I've reported, is also on the job around the country with advanced technology and interconnected databasing that J. Edgar Hoover couldn't have even dreamed of."

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0717,hentoff,76426,2.html

Working for the Clampdown

      By James Bovard from The American Conservative

"The new law expands the list to include 'natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition'—and such 'condition' is not defined or limited. These new pretexts are even more expansive than they appear. FEMA proclaims the equivalent of a natural disaster when bad snowstorms occur, and Congress routinely proclaims a natural disaster (and awards more farm subsidies) when there is a shortfall of rain in states with upcoming elections. A terrorist 'incident' could be something as stupid as the flashing toys scattered around Boston last fall." [Scott Horton interviews Jim Bovard about the subject of this article.]

http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_04_23/article4.html

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

      By Naomi Wolf from The Guardian

"If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

THE LOW POST: Death of a Drunk

      By Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone

"He was, like all politicians who grew up in that system, an opportunist. He read the writing on the wall and he threw his weight behind a 'revolution' that turned out to be a brilliant ploy hatched by a canny group of generals and KGB types to privatize Soviet assets into the hands of the country's leaders, while simultaneously cutting the state free of its dreary obligations toward the rank-and-file Russian people."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/14272792/

The Courage to Withdraw

      By Saul Landau from CounterPunch

"Lies worked better to convince a frightened Congress, media and public. Cheney used the Karl Rove super-tactic: he threw fear in the faces of potential skeptics to intimidate them. It worked. Congress authorized Bush's invasion of Iraq; the media behaved like White House PR hacks."

http://www.counterpunch.org/landau04232007.html

Bush-Backed Liberation of Somalia

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"The U.S. corporate media – and indeed, much of the 'progressive' media as well – have largely ignored the conflict in Somalia, beyond a few brief mentions in the traditional 'oh, those African savages are killing each other again' mode. But the war in Somalia is an American war."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1122&Itemid=135

Cindy Sheehan and Norman Solomon Blast Democrats for their Role as the War Party

      By Dan Bacher from American Chronicle

"She pointed out that it isn’t just Bush and the Republicans that are committed to war and military intervention, but the Democrats as well. She said that Democrats and Republicans both constitute “the War Party” with the exception of brave Congress members...."

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=25353

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

Open source becoming more innovative?

      By Matt Asay from InfoWorld

"I would have denied open source's relevance beyond core infrastructure. But then a funny thing happened to open source. Capitalism. Money. And suddenly, business models started to be discovered that would allow companies to form communities (or leverage existing ones) to monetize open source. In middleware. In applications. Everywhere."

http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/04/open_source_bec.html

The Goal Is Freedom: Labor's "Right to a Free Market"

      By Sheldon Richman from Foundation for Economic Education

"What should free-market advocates say about this controversy? As might be expected, in a corporatist mixed economy such questions aren't as clear-cut as they appear on the surface. Of course, the pro-business side opposes the EFCA, while the pro-labor side supports it. Both say they want to protect workers from intimidation. But looking deeper we see that the conflict is over how a government agency, the NLRB, should manage labor relations. Should libertarians be offering advice to interventionists on how to do a job that they shouldn't be doing in the first place?"

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1266

A Free Market in Childbirth

      By Jim Fedako from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"Break the healthcare guilds that exist all the way from medical education through licensing, reduce government interventions, and watch the healthcare system improve at Intel speed. Please do not advocate for a government-run healthcare system, or even its predecessor, universal coverage. Think Walter Reed or the Soviets before going that route."

http://www.mises.org/story/2540

School Choice: Florida Can Add Momentum

      By Adam B. Schaeffer from Cato Institute

"The educational choice movement is broad, deep and American in every sense of the word, because it comports with American values: family, community and individual choice. Its supporters want only the freedom to decide where their children go to school."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8208

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

Tuning Out Free Speech

      By Jesse Walker from The American Conservative

"A revived Fairness Doctrine wouldn’t just rein in the Fox-style right-wing shows that irk people like Dennis Kucinich. It would deliver a harsh blow to the 'progressive talk' format that has emerged in the last few years as an alternative to Rush Limbaugh and his imitators. It would be a harsh blow, in fact, to any station that programs from a particular point of view."

http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_04_23/article3.html

Straight Talk: Duke Case Shows Justice System's Flaws

      By Radley Balko from FOX News

"Nifong is by no means the only overly aggressive prosecutor in this country. And Durham is by no means the only jurisdiction where the wrong people have been wrongly accused. As Seligmann suggested, the only real difference may have been that the Duke players had the resources to fight back. Many others don't."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,267800,00.html

It's Not the Uninsured, Stupid

      By Michael F. Cannon from Cato Institute

"Everyone wants to make health care better and more affordable. But if simply expanding coverage won't get us there, where should policymakers focus their efforts? They could start with the fact that federal laws have created a health care system where patients are too often spending someone else's money when they purchase medical care. On average, third-parties pay for 86 cents out of every dollar of medical care American patients receive. That's about the same share as under Canada's socialized health care system."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8199

Defending American Skies . . . from Competition

      By P. Gardner Goldsmith from Foundation for Economic Education

"Just like so many other cases in American history, especially in the field of antitrust law, the government has been used in an unconstitutional manner to effectively hamper a competitor, all to the detriment of the consumer. The presence of a coercive federal government permits many modern-day mercantilists to use nonmarket methods to stifle their competitors, allowing them to continue to be less efficient and less productive. As many writers have pointed out , government regulations and antitrust suits have been used over and over to block competition and force consumers to pay more for what they want."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1263&year=2007&month=4

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

Chertoff Uses Totalitarian Comparisons To Defend War on Terror

      By Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"The 9/11 attacks were treacherous acts of terrorism, but Chertoff and the Bush administration, the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and the American media act as if they were the beginning of history. Only in religion and quantum physics are there events without cause. Most Americans are unaware of their government’s history of unnecessary and profligate meddling in the affairs of countries throughout the Middle East. For their own safety and security, Americans cannot continue to ignore that the Islamist venom resulting in 9/11 was rooted in this U.S. interventionist and quasi-imperial foreign policy."

http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1959

Why The Regime Must Lose In Iraq

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"The 'partial' suspension of habeas corpus, Burke correctly insisted, was nothing of the kind; it established a principle 'which may be advanced further and further at pleasure, on the same argument of mere expedience....' Because of the war in America, Burke sorrowfully observed, 'not only our policy is deranged, and our empire distracted, but our laws and our legislative spirit appear to have been totally perverted by it.' For speaking and writing in defense of the rule of law and in opposition to the war, Burke wryly noted, 'I am charged with being an American' -- the direct equivalent, in that time, of being accused of sympathizing with 'Islamo-Fascists' today. "

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/04/why-regime-must-lose-in-iraq.html

The War Goes Ever On

      By Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch

"President Bush and his dwindling band of apologists allege that the U.S. cannot withdraw from Iraq without a bloodbath between Sunnis and Shi'ites. This bloodbath is already occurring. Indeed, the bloodbath was caused by the U.S. invasion, which took political power from Sunnis and gave it to Shi'ites in the form of a U.S. protectorate or colony."

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts04242007.html

Where the Dead Rot in the Streets: Bush's Terror War in Somalia Rages On.

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"Dow Jones noted that Somalia's new, Bush-installed prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, is now pushing an Iraqi-style 'oil law' that will give the Bushist oil barons and their global cronies control of Somalia's unexploited oil fields, through the usual 'production sharing agreement' that guarantees decades of fat profits for foreign companies while starving the natives of their patrimony...."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1120&Itemid=135

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

The Real Tragedy of Waco

      By Glenn Jacobs from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"In the subsequent investigations, the government whitewashed the incident, suggesting to the American people that it was more important to 'put the incident behind us' than to uncover the truth. In spite of all this, however, instead of being held accountable for criminally negligent (or perhaps worse) acts, those involved in the Waco massacre were actually praised. ... The lesson that we should have learned from Waco is that we have a right, indeed a duty, to be suspicious and distrustful of our government. "

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0704l.asp

Girly Mags vs. the Censors

      By Jacob Sullum from Reason

"Although they may sound like part of 'Bodies…The Exhibition,' 'bifurcated girls' were a popular attraction in American men’s magazines at the turn of the 20th century. 'The Bifurcated Girl Is Coming!' announced a May 1903 magazine cover. The following month, there it was: an entire 44-page issue featuring 'Gay Girls in Trousers' and 'Leading Actresses' in 'Men’s Togs.' Yes, bifurcated girls were girls in pants."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/119246.html

From White House to Abu Ghraib

      By Sasha Abramsky from Guardian Unlimited

"Zimbardo has long been haunted by the events that his experiment precipitated. The realization that he and his fellow-experiment designers had created an utterly toxic environment, in which decent people playing guards speedily degenerated into brutes and decent people playing prisoners became abject, cowering, hysterical captives, has informed Zimbardo's career ever since."

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sasha_abramsky/2007/04/from_white_house_to_abu_ghraib.html

More on Stephen Foster (1809-91)

      By Jeffrey Rogers Hummel from Liberty & Power: Group Blog

"Like William Lloyd Garrison, Foster was an opponent of the Constitution and an advocate of disunion, as well as a pacifist. Yet by the mid-1850s he was defending non-resistance on only strategic grounds for himself and argued to his fellow abolitionists that it was perfectly consistent to urge slaves and others to use deadly force in self-defense."

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/38118.html

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

Algeria, the Model

      By Scott McConnell from The American Conservative

"The French war in Algeria, never well known in the United States, has its own claims to stake. Before the Iraq War commenced, some Pentagon special operations officers attended a screening of Gillo Pontecorvo’s classic 1966 docudrama, 'The Battle of Algiers'."

http://amconmag.com/2007/2007_04_23/article.html

Deliberate acts of deceit

      By Kevin Tillman from Guardian Unlimited

"After the truth of Pat's death was partially revealed, Pat was no longer of use as a sales asset, and became strictly the Army's problem. They were now left with the task of briefing our family and answering our questions. With any luck, our family would sink quietly into our grief and the whole unsavory episode would be swept under the rug. However, they miscalculated our family's reaction. Through the amazing strength and perseverance of my mother, the most amazing woman on earth, our family has managed to have multiple investigations conducted."

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/kevin_tillman/2007/04/deliberate_acts_of_deceit.html

Ghetto Blaster: Bush Accelerates Concrete Cage Plan for Baghdad

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"No doubt we will soon find that this figure of 10 open-air prisons is itself a lie, and that the Bushists are actually constructing up to 30 such neighborhood concentration camps, as called for in the plans that Fisk uncovered. … What will life be like in these 'gated communities,' as the Pentagon, with its customary dry wit, calls the ghettos? Residents will be fingerprinted and submitted to 'biometric scanning' as the basis for identity papers which they will be forced to display to the armed guards stationed at the few exit points from the ghetto."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1121&Itemid=135

Taiwan's Free Ride on U.S. Defense

      By Ted Galen Carpenter from Cato Institute

"The Taiwan legislature's reluctance to pass a 'special defense budget' to pay for U.S. weapons systems looks set to continue as the island's presidential campaign heats up. That leaves America in the unenviable position of having an implicit commitment to defend a fellow democracy that doesn't seem especially interested in defending itself."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8203

Great Individuals In History

Some people stand out from the crowd.

Philosopher -- Immanuel Kant : Apr. 22, 1724

       From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather only the good will itself. A good will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanity — understood as rational agency, and represented through oneself as well as others — as an end in itself rather than (merely) as means."

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

Physicist -- Max Planck : Apr. 23, 1858

       from The Nobel Foundation

"Planck was able to deduce the relationship between the energy and the frequency of radiation. In a paper published in 1900, he announced his derivation of the relationship: this was based on the revolutionary idea that the energy emitted by a resonator could only take on discrete values or quanta. The energy for a resonator of frequency v is hv where h is a universal constant, now called Planck's constant."

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1918/planck-bio.html

Singer/Songwriter -- Roy Orbison : Apr. 23, 1936

       from The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

"Orbison’s most memorable performances were lovelorn melodramas, such as 'Crying' and 'It’s Over,' in which he emoted in a brooding, tremulous voice. The melancholy in his songs resonated with listeners of all ages, but especially heartsick teenagers who knew how it felt to lose in love. ... Moving to the Nashville-based Monument label in 1960, Orbison settled on the somewhat formal but unrestrained style that carried him through a string of unforgettable hits, including a pair - 'Oh! Pretty Woman' and 'Running Scared' - that reached #1."

http://www.rockhall.com/inductee/roy-orbison

Actress -- Jill Ireland : Apr. 24, 1936

       from Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki

"Through the 1970s, she appeared in many movies starring her husband Charles Bronson including The Mechanic (1972, with Steve Vinovich, Celeste Yarnall, and Alan Gibbs); Breakout (1975, with Roy Jenson); and Breakheart Pass (1975, with Ed Lauter)." [Also Hard Times (1975)]

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Jill_Ireland

Culcha'

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

The Way It Should Have Been

      By Bob Wallace from Endervidualism

Bob Wallace spins a small fantasy tale similar in some ways to recent events at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia. However, in this story, Bob makes several crucial changes leading to a different ending. Bob created this "modern fairy tale" in the form of a script for a simple multi-character one act play.

http://endervidualism.com/bwallace/way_it_should_been.htm

Under Siege Part IV: Big Men

      By Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine

"Some agencies gain power by giving. That is, they give away others' money while retaining a fat 2/3 share for themselves. Others gain power by taking. That is, they take homes, land, vehicles, and bank accounts in the various wars-on-this-or-that and pocket the profits without criminal charges or the messiness of trials. Both givers and takers were needed for control. You just had to be wise in introducing the balance."

http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070423.html

Morons Rule the World

      Review by Retta Fontana from Strike The Root

"The first time I watched 'Idiocracy,' I found myself in a kind of humorous denial. I realized I was attempting to distance myself from what I was seeing on the screen. The second viewing broke through my wall of denial. I was stunned by its accuracy and relevance to the current state of politics. I’m beginning to see it everywhere now, like a bad dream from which I cannot awaken."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana12.html

"He'll save every one of us!"

      Review by Wally Conger from out of step

"While we’re waiting for SciFi Channel to unveil its highly secretive version of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon later this year, Universal Home Video is finally releasing a 'special edition' DVD of the 1980 Mike Hodges-directed movie on August 7. ... There’s great stuff in this film. Besides some terrific space babes, there’s a fantastically sinister performance by Max von Sydow as Ming the Merciless ('Pathetic Earthlings...who can save you now?'). And Topol’s Dr. Zarkov, who seems to get Flash Gordon and Dale Arden to the planet Mongo without government assistance, is delightful." [Like Wally, I always liked this film. I saw it in the theater.]

http://wconger.blogspot.com/2007/04/hell-save-every-one-of-us.html

The lighter side

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

Wall or Nothing

      By Aasif Mandvi and Jon Stewart from The Daily Show

"Aasif Mandvi reports on America's plan to redesign Baghdad to resemble the Pac-Man game."

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=85905

Breaking News: Something Happening In Haiti

      By staff from Onion News Network

Important news out of Haiti's capital today. The Onion's Don Abrams reports live.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/60953

NBC News Issues Stricter Broadcast Standards for Future Mass Murderers

      By Andy Borowitz from Borowitz Report

"Speaking at NBC News headquarters in New York, Mr. Capus said that while NBC will 'continue to be the home for mass murderers’ videos going forward,' homicidal maniacs should 'think twice before sending any old video into NBC News'."

http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=6730

Colbert Report: Mending Wall

      By Stephen Colbert from The Colbert Report

"A very hopeful sign: the wall surrounding Baghdad unites both Sunni and Shiite in frustration. "

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=85948

Deep Thought

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

Is Global Warming a Sin?

      By Alexander Cockburn from CounterPunch

"In a couple of hundred years, historians will be comparing the frenzies over our supposed human contribution to global warming to the tumults at the latter end of the tenth century as the Christian millennium approached. Then, as now, the doomsters identified human sinfulness as the propulsive factor in the planet's rapid downward slide. ... Devoid of any sustaining scientific basis, carbon trafficking is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed, just like the old indulgences, though at least the latter produced beautiful monuments."

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04282007.html

Dangerousness Is Not a Disease

      By Thomas Szasz from Foundation for Economic Education

"To be sure, dangerousness is a problem, but it is not a medical problem. It is a human problem -- a moral, legal, economic, social, and political problem -- a problem for everyone in the dangerous person's social ambit."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1257

Konkin on agorism vs. anarcho-capitalism

      By Brad Spangler from BradSpangler.com

"While it’s not a comprehensive answer in my opinion, we can find a good starting point in distinguishing agorism from anarcho-capitalism in this interview with SEK3…."

http://www.bradspangler.com/blog/archives/610

A Nation Paralyzed -- and Soon Polarized

      By Jim Amrhein from Whiskey & Gunpowder

"Psychos aren't stupid. They're cowards, but they aren't dumb. They don't often stage their rampages at police stations, gun shows, National Guard armories, honky-tonk bars, biker rallies, or even bad neighborhoods. They pick schools and malls and post offices and restaurants and quaint Amish communities to murder their way to their sick 15 minutes of fame. That's because they KNOW no one is there who can fight back effectively..."

http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Archives/2007/20070423.html

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

What, Me Twisted?

      By Fred Reed from FredOnEverything

"Over and over it happens, like incurable migraine. A public figure slips up and says something that One Doesn’t Say, something that upsets one tribe or other of the sacred and sensitive—blacks, Jews, women, homosexuals, American Indians. The offender is always a white male. The press attack him like hyenas dragging down a crippled zebra."

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Twisted.shtml

Babies overfed to meet flawed ideal

      By Andy Coghlan from NewScientist.com

"Now research is beginning to confirm what many mothers have long suspected - that the most commonly used growth charts, based on babies fed high-protein formula milk, wrongly classify lean but healthy babies as underweight. What's more, by encouraging mothers to overfeed their babies, the charts may be setting perfectly healthy children on the path to obesity."

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19426014.100

Unintended Consequences

      By Indur Goklany from Cato Institute

"Ironically, much of the hysteria over global warming is itself fueled by concerns that it may drive numerous species to extinction and increase hunger worldwide, especially in developing countries. Yet the biofuel solution would only make bad matters worse on both counts."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8206

Is Microsoft's monopoly kaput?

      By Robert X. Cringely from InfoWorld

"In just a few short days our choices in desktop operating systems seem to have tripled. Not only has Dell agreed to distribute Linux on certain desktop models, but it's also given XP a new lease on life. Responding to user requests on its Ideastorm site, Dell has agreed to offer consumers the option to get XP and not Vista on select Dimension desktops and Inspiron notebooks -- at least until Microsoft sends XP off to the OS boneyard in January 2008."

http://weblog.infoworld.com/robertxcringely/archives/2007/04/is_microsofts_m.html

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