Five Smooth Stones; Prisoner of Azkaban; Hardyville Does Drugs; Strictly Ballroom; these articles have their titles and text in this color and are featured this week in -
 
Ender's Review of the Web
 

Web articles of likely interest to individualists found during the week of May 30 - June 5, 2004.

 
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Political Liberty
Articles showing a positive influence of political action on the cause of Liberty.
 
Laugh About It, Shout About It
        by Julian Sanchez from Reason
"The libertarian voter's question, then, can be framed as a puzzle about the right level of abstraction at which to ask the question: 'How would I have people situated similarly to me cast their ballots?' The problem, and the source of much of our November uncertainty, is that there's no one clear answer to that question."
 
Michael Badnarik:The LP Picks a Winner
        by L. Neil Smith from The Libertarian Enterprise
"Any way you slice it, November will be a turning-point in history. We can frighten and humble the other two parties (all it would take is 10% of the vote) or let them be emboldened to do even worse than they have. Congratulations again, Mike, and condolences, as well. The road ahead of you is long, hard, twisted, and uphill all the way."
 
In Praise of the Libertarian Party
        by Harry Browne from HarryBrowne.org
If the Libertarian Party didn't exist, we would have to invent it. but, fortunately, we don't have to. It does exist, and it achieves a great deal that isn't accomplished by any other libertarian organization. The party is by no means the entire libertarian movement, but it's a vital part of it."
 
Life in Amerika
Articles depicting the negative impact of politics on Liberty.
 
The Padilla Doctrine Doesn’t Infringe on Freedom -- It Destroys It
        by Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"The Padilla doctrine is not simply another infringement of liberty, but instead makes freedom in America a dead letter. How can a person be considered truly free when his own government has the omnipotent power to punish him without according him the procedural guarantees provided in the Constitution and Bill of Rights?"
 

No Use Being Paranoid . . .

        by Mary Starrett from NewsWithViews.com
"Giving government and corporations access to too much information has always been a bad idea. Each and every time we give up info we can rest assured we will come to regret it."
 
The man behind all the bad decisions
        by Robyn E. Blumner from St. Petersburg Times
"There have been many Gonzales missteps but attention has focused recently on a memorandum he wrote to Bush on Jan. 25, 2002, in which he said that the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war should not apply to al-Qaida or Taliban prisoners."
 
Ordered Liberty without the State
Some people say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an interesting topic.
 
Reap What You Sow
        by John Markley from Strike the Root
"Human faculties strengthen with use and atrophy with neglect; this is as true for the mind as it is for the body. The more people simply use the commands of the state as a substitute for their own judgment, the more they will come to depend on the state to know what to do."
 
Who's the Boss?
        by Paul Hein from LewRockwell.com
"Government is based upon lies, lots of them. The idea of popular sovereignty is one of the biggest. Those who rule, rule by force. ... If they fall from favor, they are 'despots' and 'tyrants,' and must be deposed, so that, by the use of force, a new 'sovereign' ruler can be established who is congenial to the boys at the top."
 
"The Day after Tomorrow" -- Skating with barbarians
        by Malcolm Reynolds from The Last Ditch
"Their preferred mode of action is political campaigning for greater government regulation of private enterprise. Yet the state is by definition wasteful of resources, and its war machine despoils both lives and nature. Only private enterprise, driven by human ingenuity and initiative, can provide alternate energy sources that reduce the negative environmental impact of civilization."
 
Spreading Decentralism
Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.
 
Five Smooth Stones
        by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from LewRockwell.com
"In Iraq, the result is the humiliating defeat of the largest, richest, most well-armed state in the history of the world. Small guns beat big guns. An ideology of national independence beat an ideology of national domination. The desire to be free trumped the demand to conform to the dictate of the imperial power. There is something incredibly inspiring about this."
 
Courting Disaster: Bush's Real Strategy in Iraq
        by Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute
"The various Iraqi factions have retained their armed militias because they fear domination from other groups that might gain control of the governmental apparatus of a unified post-occupation Iraq. Such fears could cause a civil war. But the creation of a loose confederation or a partition should reduce such fears and lessen the chance of internecine conflict."
 
Iraq, R.I.P.
        by Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com
"All governments, even the worst dictatorships, depend on some form of popular support, even if that only amounts to passive resignation. But passivity is not what we're seeing in the response to the American presence. It is the insurgents, rather than Washington's handpicked servitors, who enjoy popular support -- and, increasingly, legitimacy -- in the eyes of the Iraqi people."
 
The New World Hegemon
Depictions of the coming Imperial power
 
Inside America's Animal House - Masked and Anonymous
        by Chris Floyd from CounterPunch 
"'Global insurgency. Crack the hell out of them. The path of action. Anything that flies on anything that moves.' ... This is what they do, what they've always done. From the Indians to the Iraqis, whatever gets in the way of their power and privilege -- individuals, tribes, whole nations -- gets trampled, broken, ruined, slaughtered."
 
The United States of Boeing
        by Brandon Snider from Antiwar.com
"Making taxpayers pick up the tab is one area where the merchants of death have become ever more efficient. Paying off politicians, stealing documents, building dangerously sub-standard equipment and over-charging for it -- hey, it's all in a day's work."
 
Abu Ghraib of Our Dreams
        by Abe Arias from Strike The Root
"The truth is that we lost the Second World War. ... Everything that we supposedly opposed, we have become. ... No army marched on Washington to destroy our Constitution. But the federal army marches upon foreign lands and lights Waco fires on our soil to remind us who is Master of the realm. We are now a desperate people, looking for anyone else in the world to blame other than ourselves."
 
Politics by Other Means
War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.
 
Government Is Not "Us"
        by Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation
"We sing the praises of freedom in the good old United States, but freedom doesn't mean what it once meant. It used to mean personal autonomy, and self-ownership, but now it means little more than the vote."
 
Beware of 'Credible Intelligence'
        by Ray McGovern from Antiwar.com
"Fanning further fear of terror is the only remaining ploy to boost the president's sinking poll numbers. The struggle against terrorism is the issue on which George W. Bush still gets relatively good marks. Small wonder that he used 'terror/terrorist/terrorism' no less than nineteen times in his speech at the Army War College on May 24. But is that all that is afoot here?"
 
Memorial Day in Your Face
        by Miles Woolley from LewRockwell.com
"Our president put this country into a war for the purposes of making billions of dollars for his circle of friends and relatives who profit from the war industry, e.g., Halliburton Corporation, Kellogg, Brown and Root Co., and The Carlyle Group. The economic issues alone will leave our children and their children paying for years and generations to come."
 
Spontaneous Order
Articles showing decentralized successes.
 
The Rivers Run Through It 
        by Erich Mattei from Ludwig von Mises Institute
"Both in theory and history, those markets least regulated by the state have been the most efficient. The solution to Louisiana's river pilot controversy and shipping famine is not new legislation, but the exact opposite: de-intervention. "
 
'Click It or Ticket' Sticks It to Drivers
        by Jonathan David Morris from Strike the Root
"Cops write tickets because safety belts save lives?" I said to myself. No, they don't. They write tickets because they make money. All that safety jazz is a bonus. ... Click It or Ticket is an annual, nationwide program, which this year runs May 24th through June 6th. According to Buckle Up America, it 'combines strict enforcement of safety belt laws with targeted advertising'."
 
The Single Biggest Problem
        by Ron Beatty from The Libertarian Enterprise
"In my first year of school, the teacher had me teaching reading to other students, especially the ones she didn't want to 'bother' with. This worked out so well that I never went to second grade, and only went to third and fourth because my parents insisted on it."
 
Nonspontaneous Disorder
Articles showing centrally planned disasters.
 
Child Labor
        by Jacob Sullum from Reason
"When I mention that we're adopting a girl from China, even to strangers such as the teller at our bank or the customer service representative at our insurance company, the usual response is, 'Oh, that's so wonderful!' If it's so wonderful, why is it so hard?"
 
Europe's New Oppressors
        by Richard W. Rahn from Cato Institute
"Imagine a club where members of the volleyball teams enjoy drinking and eating more than exercising and, as a result, are very fat and out of shape. The club decides to expand its membership to include a group of men who only recently gained their independence from abusive parents.... In the above, substitute France and Germany for the fat guys, and the 10 new entrants to the European Union as the hard-working thinner guys, and you begin to understand the new European oppression."
 
Bonjour Wal-Mart?
        by Louis James from Tech Central Station
"If this blindness is highly persuasive to many Americans, who are supposed to be culturally more inclined to approve of capitalism, imagine how well it will play in Europe. Consider what US Wal-Mart haters have achieved with just words, and then consider what people like French labor unionists might do...."
 
War Is The Health Of The State
War is the ultimate State intervention in society.
 
Fighting for Freedom
        by Butler Shaffer from LewRockwell.com
"To be for peace is to denigrate the memories of those who 'sacrificed' for our 'freedom.' The idea of soldiers 'fighting for freedom' is an Orwellian-like concept riddled with self-contradictions. To begin with, wars have always reduced individual liberty, not only during but after the wars."
 
Remember
        by Roger Young from Strike the Root
"Remember the broken bodies and shattered psyches, still with us to remind us of war's human cost. Remember the lost potential, the dashed dreams, the oceans of shed tears, the newly discovered war against desperation and hopelessness. Yes, remember the fallen, the dead. Visit their resting places with solemn respect. Make note of their obscenely abundant and escalating numbers."
 
Candy Canes of Bamboozlement
        by Sofreh-ye Pretta Aghd from LewRockwell.com
"The purpose of government is not to protect. It is only to pretend to protect – fooling enough people that it remains alive for the fat years before the collapse. ...  If you believe that government brutes, rather than simply manipulating terrorism, are not above executing it, consider the power an orchestrated color accompaniment could add to the performance."
 
Bits of History
The Past seen with a fresh look.
 
1914 and the World We Lost
        by Richard M. Ebeling from The Freeman
"However imperfectly, throughout all that was called at that time 'the civilized world,' the rule of law prevailed and the rights of individuals to their life, liberty and property were widely respected."
 
15 Years after Tiananmen
        by James A. Dorn from Cato Institute
"It has been 15 years since the tragic deaths of pro-democracy protestors in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, and 25 years since Deng Xiaoping embarked on economic reform in 1979. ... Yet little progress has been made in limiting the power of the Chinese Communist Party over fundamental human rights."
 
Hardyville Does Drugs
        by Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine
"Until the twentieth century, no government believed that people were too foolish to make choices about their own drug use. Don't you find that odd, M'am, that our great-great grandmothers' government thought our great-great grandmothers were wiser than we are?"
 
War and Peace
Articles showing the nature of War.
 
The Problem Is At the Top
        by Ralph R. Reiland from Antiwar.com
"What's wrong with blaming a few Army reservists for Abu Ghraib is that it pretends that Major General Geoffrey Miller, the head of interrogation at Guantanamo, wasn't summonded [sic] to Baghdad last year to teach U.S. commanders in Iraq a few new tricks of the trade. [and] ... that the Bush administration didn't decide, long before Army Pfc. Lynndie England put anyone on a leash, that captured members of alleged terrorist networks and other alleged evildoers and 'dead-enders' weren’t eligible for the protection of the Geneva Conventions."
 
The Mirage of 'National Unity'
        by Thomas J. DiLorenzo from LewRockwell.com
"This kind of loose confederation, which gives sovereignty to the states, is similar to the original ideal of American federalism. But that ideal was overthrown in America in 1865. Today's neocons are the political descendants of the Hamiltonians, Whigs, and nineteenth-century Republicans who worshipped the centralized state and sought to profit both politically and economically from it."
 
U.S. Planning Long Stay in Iraq
        by Ted Galen Carpenter from Cato Institute
"Truly sovereign countries have governments that are able to pass and rescind laws. Those governments, not foreign military commanders, control the security forces operating in their territory. "
 
Great Individuals In History
Some people stand out from the crowd.
 
Dancer - Josephine Baker : June 3, 1906
        from The Official Site of Josephine Baker
"It was also during this time that she began adopting children, forming a family she often referred to as 'The Rainbow Tribe.' Josephine wanted her to prove that 'children of different ethnicities and religions could still be brothers.'"
 
Entertainer - Mel Blanc : May 30, 1908
        by Don Markstein from Toonopedia
"Speedy Gonzales, Tasmanian Devil, Pepe LePew, Marvin the Martian … Mel Blanc did them all -- even the characteristic 'Meep Meep' of The Road Runner. For decades to come, he was the one man most closely associated, in the hearts and minds of the public, with the Warner Bros. cartoon stars."
 
Musician - Benny Goodman : May 30, 1909
        from Wikipedia
"It should be noted ... however, that Goodman himself was no mere imitator; he was an astonishingly virtuosic and creative clarinetist, and one of the most of innovative jazz musicians of the pre-Bebop era."
 
Culcha'
Books, Movies, TV, Media, Music, poetry, etc.
 
"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"
        by Stephanie Zacharek from Salon
On the basis of reading this review I saw the movie on its opening weekend. I was not disappointed. Occasionally, although they were good adaptations of the books, the first two movies dragged. This movie never even slows down and it is more interesting in every way: the characters, the atmosphere, the actors, the effects. I recommend it highly, but not for small children. "One of the greatest fantasy films of all time" is not necessarily over stated. (Ad view or subscription required for full review.)
 
Anime Dreams
        by Anders Sandberg from Reason
"In the cyberpunk novels and films of the 1980s, the future was usually run by megacorporations that had taken over all the functions of government. Ghost in the Shell takes a slightly different road. Rather than vanishing, the government becomes symbiotic with the corporations.... Such corporatism ... is hardly alien to Japan -- or to Europe and America, for that matter."
 
Strictly Ballroom (1993)
        by Tom Ender from Endervidualism
"Strictly Ballroom is one of my favorite movies. It can appeal to all audiences for several reasons. Although it is set in the world of ballroom dancing, it could almost as easily have been about tennis, or ice skating or any number of other things. It is really about the challenges that face the innovator: he or she who challenges the status quo." Strictly Ballroom is being shown on Showtime. Endervidualism has schedule information.
 
The lighter side
Humor, satire, cartoons, parodies, food, popular music and other things to amuse.
 
Many Americans Still Unsure Whom To Vote Against
        from The Onion
"According to the poll, 46 percent of the registered voters surveyed would vote against Bush if the election were held tomorrow, while 45 percent said they were ready to vote against Kerry. Factoring in the 2 percent margin of error, the two candidates are essentially deadlocked in the race to determine which candidate America doesn't support."
 
Four More Years of Funation
        by Bob Wallace from Strike The Root
"Besides, we all know Jesus wants us to vote for Bush. I know this because George told everyone God talks to him. I find this a bit humiliating, because God doesn't talk to me. But then, I'm not President. Or a king, like in the past. But I digressify. Let's just say I'll do what Jerry Falwell and Hal Lindsey want, because I don't want a lightning bolt in the head. Or places farther south."
 
The First Haiku Of George W. Bush - The Breakthrough
        by Matt Taibbi from New York Press
"I nodded. 'Certainly, sir, a toaster. Now, just put that picture of a toaster into words. It's three lines, sir. The first line is five syllables, the second seven syllables --' 'Never mind that!' he said. 'How many words do I use?' 'Well, sir,' I said. 'That depends. If they're long words, not too many, but if they're short words....'"
 
Deep Thought
Scientific and scholarly studies, philosophical essays, in-depth and longer articles.
 
Libertarianism in One Sentence
        by Roderick Long from Strike The Root
"David Bergland once offered 'Libertarianism in One Lesson.' I would like to offer libertarianism in one sentence. The most succinct formulation of libertarianism I can think of is this: Other people are not your property."
 
Decoding the Science of Synchronization
        by Nigel Goldenfeld from Physics Today
"We now know that many real networks are not random collections of nodes and links. Real networks are connected in special ways that have functional significance. … Sync is one of those rare books that can profitably be read and enjoyed by both experts and laypeople."
 
Invisible beam tops list of nonlethal weapons
        by Greg Gordon from The Sacramento Bee
"'Torture is primarily a psychological device, and finding different ways to use the body against the mind has been the struggle of torture technologies for thousands of years.' He said 'human history would demonstrate' that once a potential torture technology is available, it usually is put into action."
 
Miscellany
Articles not easily classified.
 
RIP, President Reagan
        by Tibor R. Machan from Sense of Life Objectivists
"It was also quite awkward when it turned out that by all reasonable standards Ronald Reagan proved to be a better president and diplomat than any of those the Left championed, especially because he actually made a monumental contribution to the defeat of the Soviet Union by way not primarily of arms but of ideas and policies."
 
Memorial Day Memories
        by Mose Hastings from The Price of Liberty
"Patrick Henry, foreseeing the danger of having a strong central government, and even more prescient of the Lincoln to come wrote 'If your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy is it for him to render himself absolute!'"
 
Three cheers for the Cos
        by Walter E. Williams  from Townhall.com
"Don't give me any of that legacy-of-slavery nonsense unless you can explain why all of these problems were not worse during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at a time when blacks were much closer to slavery, were much poorer, faced more discrimination and had fewer opportunities."
 
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