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"The Framers of the U.S. Constitution wisely advised a path of nonintervention in the affairs of other nations. As students of history, America’s first statesmen established peace and free trade as a wiser foreign policy course over militarism, alliance-making, and empire. "
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0710e.asp
"The group, formed by a sex workers' alliance based here, called the British Columbia Coalition of Experiential Women, will incorporate next month and is already setting the groundwork to open the co-op brothel. Members have begun scouting for a location and are enlisting the backing of local businesses, police and labor organizations."
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3345
"The mental transition from the idea that strongmen are the solution to a nation’s problems to the idea that impersonal institutions should be more powerful than those who rule is crucial. Much of the progress that has taken place in the world in recent centuries stems precisely from that transition. The countries that have not shaken off the tradition of strongman rule need to learn not to subject basic human rights to the whims of politicians acting on a wave of popular fear."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2039
"How is it that respecting life is reactionary, that defending liberty is extreme, that protecting private property rights is wacko, that consulting the Constitution is eccentric? How are inflationary policies sound economics? How is aggressive war moral? How is making the middle class dependent on the State compassionate? How is jailing people for their vices going to help them or anyone else? ... America needs a new radical in office, but instead of one who will increase government power, we need one who will shrink the government and foster more liberty."
http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2687
"Americans have gotten fat and lazy, there’s just no question about it. The Constitution was a contract for a Cadillac, but delivered a lemon. We fell hook, line and sinker for the oldest pigeon drop in the world. We’ve traded a little liberty for the empty promise of some security and just look where we’re at now."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/fontana/fontana5.html
"One must also consider the role the MSM has long been employed to play, namely, keeping Boobus Americanus entertained with the reporting of events whose import lays no burden upon the mind; to make certain – particularly in turbulent times such as these – that fundamental questions as to the form and content of political practices are not asked. Members of the media – responding to the demands of their employers – might, if the facts become sufficiently compelling to no longer be ignored, be willing to consider that the emperor has no clothes."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer164.html
"Testifying that you can tell from an autopsy how many hands were on the gun that fired a bullet is like saying you can tell the color of a killer’s eyes from a series of stab wounds. It’s absurd. The Mississippi Supreme Court said Hayne’s testimony was “scientifically unfounded” and should not have been admitted. Based on this and other errors, it ordered a new trial for Edmonds. But it wasn’t the doctor’s dubious claim that made the case unusual. It’s the fact that the court explicitly renounced his testimony. It was the first time that had happened to Hayne in hundreds of cases dating back nearly 20 years."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/122458.html
"The funeral for Carol Anne Gotbaum had barely ended before we learned that she was not the first innocent, emotionally disturbed woman to die at the hands of the police at Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/10/briefly-considered-repeat-offenders.html
"He combined an old-world cultural sense (he despised popular culture) and a political anarchism that saw the state as the enemy of everything that is civilized, beautiful, and true. And he applied this principle consistently in opposition to welfare, government-managed economies, consolidation, and, above all else, war. ... In Nock's view, it is the state that crowds out all that is decent, lovely, civilized. He demonstrates this not through deduction but through calm and entertaining tales of how rich and varied and productive life can be when the state does not interfere." [Nock ranks as one of my favorite writers.]
http://www.mises.org/story/2717
"The state--government--is sometimes defined as 'that which has a legitimate monopoly on the use of force within a specific geographic area,' but no government can ever be 'legitimate' because (absent the god-hypothesis; see below) that would require an unanimous granting of such a status, and if members of society are unanimous, there can be no occasion to use force against them. Accordingly and like the Mafia, the state is something which imposes force on human beings regardless of their wishes, period."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/davies/davies4.html
"In a country where it is still possible to discover small tribes that have avoided any contact with the white man, the government simply can’t keep track of the encroachments, even when it wants to do so. But Google Earth can."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/122043.html
"I have [cited] lifestyle as the main lever that applies this pressure. To break the concept down a little further, the arm of the lever is the market intervention of the state in favor of employers (in most cases). But that arm cannot apply as much leverage as when it has the fulcrum of our lifestyle choices to add mechanical advantage."
http://pintofstout.wordpress.com/2007/10/10/a-valuable-theory-of-labor/
"The truth is that no one really understands what makes Myanmar tick. It is an information vacuum, characterized by a surreptitious, paranoid political culture suspicious of all things foreign. The world is watching footage of Myanmar's protests in a way that would have been impossible in 1988, but it's not as if C-SPAN can set up shop in the Ministry of Home Affairs. The generals' decision-making process remains a mystery, and pundits fill the void with their a priori commitments. Exiles push sanctions; isolationists advocate restraint; China hawks blame China. "
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/latimesC35.html
"Two advocacy groups representing completely opposite political traditions met in Chattanooga, TN to discuss the possibility of some states seceding from the United States. The two sides represent states in the nation's North and the South. That may sound unusual but the New York-based Middlebury Institute and the Alabama-based League of the South hosted the two-day North American Secessionist Convention on Wednesday and Thursday."
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7008752118
"The Militia are the essential statement of popular self-government—with the Power of the Sword always in WE THE PEOPLE’S own hands. Thus they are the refutation of the Leader Principle."
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin68.htm
"The military dictators have enslaved the entire country, and recently brutally repressed protests led by Buddhist monks. There were previous protests by students that were squashed. But this time, I think the regime is doomed to failure. When a regime shoots into crowds, it is a signal that its demise is coming soon. When the people are so angry that they have lost their fear of the regime, the game is finished."
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/003008.html
"Yes, we have sunk so low; like the subjects of the old Soviet Union, we can only cringe before the Chekists and hope wanly that some slightly more enlightened KGB officer will restrain the goons. But as we know – for we have seen it demonstrated daily for almost seven years now – the goons of the Bush Regime will not be restrained, not even by one of their own."
"This atrocity will almost certainly be exploited by advocates of civilian disarmament, an inconvenient narrative notwithstanding: How do we shoehorn the message that 'Only the police and the military should have firearms' when the latest atrocity was carried out by an off-duty police officer? This will be a daunting challenge, but I'm sure that the civilian disarmament lobby's gift for sophistry is equal to the task."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/10/crandon-massacre.html
"It’s all about control. Control of the message, control of the money, control of the electoral process, control of the individuals a supposedly free society can choose from as a leader ... How can any of you voters read all this, watch what has been going on in much of the mainstream media, and believe you—and the electoral process—haven’t been massively manipulated in order to keep choking on the status quo?"
http://www.sunnimaravillosa.com/node/1214
"Pretty much all of the concerns raised by Dr. Gitlin in the original report, however, apply to the commercialized version. Any surface that absorbs or reflects microwaves should provide protection from the Silent Guardian. This should literally include the traditional tin-foil hat, as well as more mundane clothing and goggles." [Stock up on tinfoil.]
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/
20071010-nonlethal-microwave-heat-beam-hits-the-market.html
"In the last decade, Al Gore has won the triple crown: an Oscar, a Nobel Peace Prize, and (this is disputed) Florida. Now, winning an Oscar is hard—you usually have to pretend to be handicapped, or speak with a semi-convincing English accent, or spend hours in an uncomfortable period costume. And Gore himself would have trouble telling you how to claim the Sunshine State. But the Nobel Prize is easy. The important thing to remember is that peace doesn't have much to do with it. One of the very first winners was Theodore Roosevelt, a man who described the Spanish-American War as 'fun.' The Peace Prize is more of a Humanitarian of the Year Award, with humanitarian defined loosely enough to include Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger."
http://reason.com/news/show/122958.html
"Put this one up on the shelf of shame, right next to Henry Kissinger's, or the peace prize they gave to Kofi Annan and the entire UN in 2001, sandwiched between the UN's okay for the bombing of Serbia, the killing of untold numbers of Iraqis, many of them babies and children in the years of sanctions, and its greenlight for the bombing of Baghdad in 2003. "
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn10132007.html
"It seems amazing to say, but in the Bush era, distancing oneself from the Spanish Inquisition actually qualifies as political courage. In the absurd black comedy of the American electoral process, our presidential candidates are mostly two-dimensional monsters, grotesque approximations of human beings born by some obscene asexual reproductive method in the demeaning celluloid muck of the campaign trail."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16721264/mccains_last_stand
"As a libertarian, it will at least be entertaining to watch the left squirm while defending Hillary Clinton's 'right' to employ the same executive powers and engage in the same foreign policy blunders they now argue that President Bush has [superseded] his authority in claiming. And it'll be equally fun to watch the right cry foul when President Hillary claims the same powers they have so vigorously fought to claim for President Bush. The problem, of course, is that entertaining as all that might be, an increasingly imperial presidency isn't good for our republic."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,300196,00.html
"The idea that aspects of culture might ‘evolve’ in in a similar way as biological organisms dates back to Darwin himself. The notion was given a big push forwards in 1976, when Richard Dawkins introduced the concept of ‘memes’ — aspects of culture or fashion that 'propagate themselves … by leaping from brain to brain'. That idea proved to be a successful meme in itself, becoming often-referenced in the literature."
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071010/full/news.2007.152.html
"Temple Grandin, a notable advocate for the humane treatment of livestock, asserts that McDonald’s is the world leader in improving slaughterhouse conditions. While many executives at the fast-food giant genuinely may be concerned with the welfare of cattle, pigs, and chickens, undoubtedly a strong element of self-interest is also at work here, as the company realizes that corporate image affects consumers’ buying decisions."
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=8150
"Certainly, perception is, in part, culturally determined, Khan said, noting that many Asians' love of fermented fish sauce and the Swedes' widespread appreciation of fermented herring are by no means universal. Yet, experiments have shown hard-wired, innate reactions to smells, for example, by rats when first exposed to the odor of cats and even by human newborns exposed to odors."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009080825.htm
"Based on an analysis of reality, it is well-informed on economics and can be viewed as a treatise on political economy providing a literary treatment of proper economic principles, concepts, issues and themes. This great novel portrays a growing crisis of interventionism and systematic government failure and presents a thorough defense of a totally unregulated market system."
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/07/071007-4.htm
"The biggest threat today is not from communism or state socialism or even terrorism. No one in America is proposing to nationalize industry or collectivize agriculture. The threat is from the concentration of power in the hands of pedestrian centrist politicians on the pretext of national and economic security. This has a powerful corporatist element that must not be overlooked."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1634
"So it looks like about $15.4 trillion in bank assets and liabilities is being backed up by a minuscule $40.2 billion! That's a microscopic 0.0026%. A quarter of 1%! Hahahaha! Fractional reserve banking at its finest! Hahahaha!"
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG101007.html
"Trade group CTIA also criticized the ITC over the decision, saying that it "unnecessarily decreases competition" and would "cause enormous undue harm to tens of millions of American wireless consumers." The same would almost definitely happen if such a ban was placed on products made by some of the most popular hard drive makers in the world."
"That bag of chips that you decided to forgo is significantly cheaper than that bag of organic apples. If you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense. The bag of chips has gone through several manufacturing steps, and so has the bag that contains the chips. The apples have gone through no manufacturing, the bag through some manufacturing. There are labour costs associated with both products – so why the huge price difference? Two words: government [subsidies]."
http://www.newstarget.com/022118.html
"They [the Bush family] have merely been pitched up by 'a complex work of fate' to stand as witless, vulgar exemplars of the Establishment ethos as a whole. What was long obscured by the circumspection and noble rhetoric of gentlemanly good breeding among the elite, these third-rate putzes have now made manifest, revealing the engines that drive the Establishment: greed, brute force, raw power, entrenched privilege and, above all, [unaccountability]."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/
Articles/Pipe_Dreams%3A_War_Profiteers_Plow_Under_the_Poor/
"If they can be made to fear that an external enemy threatens their safety, they will happily trust their rulers with more power and money and ignore the occasional overt corruption. Nothing better serves this purpose than a foreign war."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0707b.asp
"Tzvetan Todorov, in Facing the Extreme, the Franco-Bulgarian philosopher's study of moral life in the concentration camps, observes: 'If an individual's every action is determined by the orders of those above him and the need to survive, then he has no freedom left at all. … And where there is no choice, there is also no place for any kind of moral life whatsoever'."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/boas.php?articleid=11731
"The ACLU has argued that the privilege was originally designed to merely exclude sensitive kinds of evidence from being exposed in court cases, but that the administration has used it increasingly as a way to dismiss entire cases, thus barring any effective judicial review of its more controversial tactics, including the wire-tapping of U.S. Citizens. "
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39581
"As an individualist, an opponent of Prohibition and Big Business, and an opponent of centralization and coercive authority more generally, Nock was considered a 'Man of the Left'."
http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2007/10/albert-jay-nock
"Luther's actions were neither cinematic nor groundbreaking. The choice of location for distributing his message was not one of contempt; rather, the door of a 16th-century church was often used as a community bulletin board. And the message itself encapsulated feelings many of his peers already had about the corruption of Christ's teachings. Why then the veneration? Because Luther took an intelligent look at an issue of deep significance to him, questioned it logically, and, when ignored by those damaged by his accusations, voiced his concerns in public using grassroots methods and local support."
http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/01436_95_theses.html
"After the Revolution, the conservative aristocracy that had emerged during the Colonial period wanted a strong central state with a powerful army. But the radical liberals of the day wanted a decentralized power structure and a militia. A standing army was anathema — its potential for domestic oppression was too well known."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0710f.asp
"The only difference between our Republic's transformation to Empire and that of ancient China is that ours has been more subtle. (Ours is the 'soft tyranny' spoken of by Alexis de Tocqueville.) Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution have not been burned (yet), nor have their defenders been buried alive (yet), but our founding documents and those who defend them have been ignored, scorned, circumvented, and trampled upon."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/snyder-joshua1.html
"President Roosevelt understood why Americans opposed entry into another European conflagration. That’s why he promised them on the campaign trail, 'I’ve said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going be sent into any foreign wars.' It was a lie. In truth, Roosevelt was doing everything he could to involve the United States into the war."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0710d.asp
"The only 'moderation' among these dedicated militarists is in their demeanor. Some, like Gates, prefer the higher hypocrisy of decorous rhetoric and genial backslapping, while others, like Cheney, scorn the mask and nakedly display their bloodlust and bilious scorn for humanity. But when it's time to pull the trigger – or divvy up the public purse among their war-profiteering cronies – they all line up together."
"Pundits and politicians are scapegoating Blackwater and other private security firms to help sell the continuation of the Iraq War. Some mercenaries shoot at anything that moves. They endanger locals with crazy practices like speeding down jammed highways on the wrong side. (Memo to Secy. Gates: Ban screenings of 'Ronin.') Rein in these Rambo wannabes or fire them, the argument goes, and Iraqi commuters will warm to their friendly public-sector replacements in the United States Armed Forces. A thousand roses will bloom. Soon we'll be awash in that staple of postwar gratitude, Iraqi war brides. But it isn't just Blackwater. Official U.S. soldiers are no less stupid or vicious or trigger-happy than their private counterparts."
http://www.uexpress.com/printable/print.html?uc_full_date=20071009&uc_comic=ru
"That leading U.S. policymakers talk about turning Iraq into Korea illustrates the bankruptcy of America's bipartisan foreign policy of promiscuous intervention. ... American forces spent three years fighting to a bloody stalemate on the Korean peninsula, followed by another 54 years on station ready for war. "
http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=11742
"By introducing conceptions borrowed from the Quantum Theory as established by Planck, which had gradually come to occupy a prominent position in the science of theoretical physics, he succeeded in working out and presenting a picture of atomic structure that, with later improvements (mainly as a result of Heisenberg's ideas in 1925), still fitly serves as an elucidation of the physical and chemical properties of the elements."
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1922/bohr-bio.html
"Tatum was primarily self-taught, cribbing from piano rolls, phonograph recordings, and radio broadcasts while learning what he could from musicians he encountered. ... Tatum was not only made a favorite among jazz musicians, but also European classical musicians like Conductor Leopold Stokowski, composer Sergei Rachmaninov and pianist Vladimir Horowitz."
http://www.npr.org/programs/jazzprofiles/archive/tatum.html
"American leading lady whose sweet smile and sunny disposition made her the prototypical girl-next-door of American movies of the 1940s.... Her smoky voice and winning personality made her very popular and she made more than a score of films for MGM, most often in musicals and comedies. She became a box-office attraction, paired with many of the major stars of the day."
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000742/bio
"By the mid-1970s, the tenor became known worldwide, famed for the brilliance and beauty of his tone, especially into the upper register. His 'high C' became one of his trademarks. The late 1970s and 1980s saw Pavarotti making significant appearances in the world's opera houses and establishing himself as one of the great singers of the era."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciano_Pavarotti
Anti-state dystopian scifi action/adventure stars Clive Owen, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Michael Caine, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor; directed by Alfonso Cuarón. “Although this film surely belongs in the dystopian category, in addition to the suggestion that the near future may contain social horrors it carries other more optimistic messages as well. The movie’s performances far exceeded my expectations, as did the story itself. The work ranks as an artistic achievement which reveals both some of the best and worst aspects of the human species.”
http://endervidualism.com/agora/children_of_men_2006.htm
"When I first read the book in high school, I enjoyed it. For a teenager, it offered a compelling, apocalyptic story. But what a difference 35 years of experience can make in your understanding! Now I fully appreciate the philosophical underpinnings of Le Guin’s tale. Lathe is a chilling examination of do-gooderism run wild, of the 'social planner' mentality, what the great Isabel Patterson called 'the humanitarian with a guillotine'." [I love everything I've read by Le Guin. I believe I started with Lathe of Heaven.]
http://wconger.blogspot.com/2007/10/revsiting-lathe-of-heaven.html
"This is the lesson that most people in business have yet to learn from 'Atlas,' no matter how much they may love its portrayal of the passion and the glory possible in business enterprise. At a crucial point in the novel, the industrialist Hank Rearden is on trial for violating an arbitrary economic regulation. Instead of apologizing for his pursuit of profit or seeking mercy on the basis of philanthropy, he says, 'I work for nothing but my own profit -- which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage -- and I am proud of every penny that I have earned in this manner...' "
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8740
"It's long past time I sent my tunes out into the big ol' world to see if they can fly, so as an experiment I have posted links to four of my mid-1980s recordings that I've played on the show - over there on the sidebar."
http://unclewarrensattic.blogspot.com/2007/10/songs-from-attic.html
"Rep. John Haller (R-PA) introduces a bill that will allocate (classified) dollars over the next (classified) years to fight flesh-eating (classified)."
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/proposed_classified_bill_will
"Lewis tears into the Senate for wasting time on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News for trying to link Barack Obama's lack of a U.S. flag pin to Bill Clinton."
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=111130
"NASA administrator Michael Griffin announced during a press conference Tuesday that the space agency is launching an ambitious mission to make Houston's Johnson Space Center wireless-Internet capable within one decade."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/67854
"[T]hese people who so cavalierly insult The Mogambo are going to find that not only are foreign currencies pieces of crap, but that somebody has repeatedly run over their garbage cans and smashed their mailboxes, which will perhaps teach them a lesson both about currencies and insulting psychotic lunatics. A two-fer!"
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG101207.html
"We would scarcely call a medieval doctor a poor physician if he failed to prescribe antibiotics, since they had not been invented yet. 'Morality' is a form of technology, like navigation – it is harder to blame a man without a compass for getting lost, since he lacks an essential tool for staying on the right path. Similarly, it is hard to call a man 'evil' when, for his entire life, vices have been portrayed as virtues."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/molyneux/molyneux2.html
"Another thing that plays a powerful role in squashing uncomfortable truths is the universal desire to be liked and admired within one's social circles. In the end, I suspect this desire does even more damage to the cause of truth than simple greed or professional ambition or the willingness to lie in the pursuit of noble goals."
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/
opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5717846,00.html
"The search for these causal laws of reality was very much an international enterprise among economists in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and up to World War I. Unfortunately economics veered off the tracks in the interwar period as a result of a number of factors...."
http://www.mises.org/story/2740
"any individual driver's likelihood of having a collision is affected quite significantly by how she drives -- her skill, her knowledge of her car, her degree of focus, and how much caution she exercises. ... And that means that it is methodological nonsense to treat 'the odds' for having an accident calculated by treating all drivers as indistinguishable and without influence over the degree of risk they face as if they applied equally to each individual driver."
http://www.gene-callahan.org/blog/2007/10/odds-of-your-being-killed-in-car.html
"The majority must always be wrong! Therefore, it is crucial that they remain clueless at this stage of the coming gold, silver, oil and commodities boom, while the Wily, Scheming, Greedy Pigs (WSGP) of us buy gold, silver and oil at bargain rates!"
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG100907.html
"Spin room interview after the Fox News debate in Durham, New Hampshire"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI7TYPJnfMY
"This blog gives me a place to provide back story or context for my projects which occur on different web sites, rather than clutter up those projects themselves with long explanations." [The blog's About page contains more on my intentions for it.]
"Gutsy Gibbon has some notable new features that make it a worthwhile upgrade — there’s easier access to restricted drivers and codecs, support for WPA wifi networks out of the box, a new way to manage Firefox extensions and, my personal favorite, an easy way to create a PDF printer."
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/10/ubuntu-gutsy-gi.html
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