June 18 - 24, 2006

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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.

Interview: J Bishop of HelpMeImpeachBush.com

      Reviewed by Sunni Maravillosa from Sunni's Salon

"The idea behind HelpMeImpeachBush.com is simple: it's made up of thousands of blocks on the main page, which people can purchase for pretty cheap. They can put any kind of image on their block that they want, such as a logo or motto. Most will probably include a link to their site, but even people without sites can buy blocks. And any money raised will go towards impeaching George W. Bush!"

http://endervidualism.com/salon/intvw/bishop.htm

Odyssey to America -- A departure…

      by Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"This odyssey of an essentially stateless person, as he navigated his way through the Middle East via the underground highways and byways of the Arab gay subculture, illustrates so many of the problems that beset our troubled world that his story seems almost like some sort of parable. "

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9181

Move to Block DEA Medical Marijuana Raids Heads for House Floor Vote Next Week

      from StoptheDrugWar.org

"For the fourth consecutive year, an effort is underway in Congress to stop the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from arresting and prosecuting medical marijuana patients and providers in the 11 states where it is legal."

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/441/hincheyvote.shtml

Life in Amerika

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

Fireworks Over Fireworks

      by Becky Akers from Foundation for Economic Education

"During the next weeks, then, Leviathan's legions will sourly slander fireworks. State and local governments will portray them as the pyrotechnic equivalent of nicotine: the surest route to ruin for those innocents lured into lighting them. And that danger, of course, is why Our Masters must protect us from them. We little children can't possibly judge whether the glory and excitement justify the risk of lighting the fuse."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=566&year=2006&month=6

Sure, let's open the door for SWAT teams

      by John Tierney from Inside Bay Area

"To reassure traditionalists, Scalia declared that unreasonable searches are less of a problem today because of 'the increasing professionalism of police forces.' Well, it's true that when police show up at your home in the middle of the night, they're better armed and trained than ever. They now routinely arrive with assault rifles, flash grenades and battering rams. So if your definition of a professional is a soldier in a war zone, then Scalia is right. The number of paramilitary raids by police has soared in the past two decades as cities, suburbs and small towns have rushed to assemble their very own SWAT teams."

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060621/OPINION03/606210344/1008/OPINION01

Hard Knocks With No-Knock

      by Tim Cavanaugh from Reason

"For regular viewers of COPS, the real surprise in last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision in Hudson v. Michigan, which gives police officers greater leeway to conduct 'no-knock' raids on residences, must have been that police failure to knock was an issue at all. Anybody who's seen the paramilitary searches and seizures that highlight the long-running police reality show (usually with a deadpan subtitle describing the action: '6:00 a.m., warrant served') might presume that police officers are never expected to honor the domestic peace of the people whose homes they're invading."

http://www.reason.com/links/links062006.shtml

Ordered Liberty without the State

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

How We Can Get There From Here

      by Jim Davies from Strike The Root

"So the main task to be completed in my opinion is to so educate every member of society one by one as to convince him that a zero government society is the only kind consistent with his human nature and the only one that will maximize his pleasure in life; and that must be done by reason. So the two obstacles to surmount are the vast numbers involved, and the ugly fact that most people have been so well indoctrinated that they are barely open to reason; they live rather by myth, prejudice and superstition."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/davies/davies8.html

A Terminal State

      by Stefan Molyneux from LewRockwell.com

"The facts are clear, the math is clear, the lack of political will is clear, the self-interest of our rulers is clear -- the government is dead. Dead, dead, dead. Sure, it might look OK from the outside, but it's already starting to smell."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/molyneux/molyneux24.html

Don't Let Government Define Marriage (Or Optimal Child-Rearing Environments)

      by Gard Goldsmith from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"They seem blissfully unaware that once the power to define words is given to the state, it merely depends on who runs the state in order for the definition to be changed, and they seem too ready to tinker with the US Constitution in order to manage something that should have absolutely nothing to do with the state."

http://www.mises.org/story/2209

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

Speakeasy cuisine

      by Janine DeFao from The San Francisco Chronicle

"[T]he duo, and their friends, managed to create the illusion that Digs was a real restaurant, with black-shirted waiters attentively serving guests, votives on the tables and original art propped between the picture rail and box-beam ceiling of the dining room. The vibe was somewhere between Chez Panisse and a rave, with a racially diverse crowd of diners ranging from twentysomething hipsters to fiftysomething suburbanites."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/22/UNDERGROUND.TMP

Quick 'n' Clean

      from Wired

"Posted on Adaptive Path's Web site, the white paper laid out his under-the-hood thinking, with charts and succinct explanations. It turned out he wasn't alone -- Google was using the same principle to cook up Google Maps. That turned out to be the perfect example of the form. Spend a few years using Yahoo Maps and MapQuest, then try Google Maps. You'll get Ajax at once. Web pages become fluid, more like desktop applications or videogames. 'It's the difference between looking at motion-picture stills,' Garrett says, 'and actually watching the movie'."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/ajax.html

Let's Google and Yahoo Our Kids' Education

      by Joel Turtel from NewsWithViews.com

"Bureaucratic, government-controlled public schools will never give your kids the kind of joyous education they deserve, the kind your children can get in a homeschooling environment. At home, your kids can learn from Google, Yahoo, learning software, or hundreds of other low-cost education resources available to you right now."

http://www.newswithviews.com/Turtel/joel19.htm

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

Bush's Wiretap Crimes and the FISA Farce

      by James Bovard from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"President Bush proudly announced last December that he is violating federal law. He declared that in 2002 he had ordered the National Security Agency to begin conducting warrantless wiretaps and email intercepts on Americans. He asserted that the wiretaps would continue, regardless of the law. Bush claims that he must ignore the law because the secret federal court created to authorize such wiretaps moves too slowly to protect U.S. national security. Amazingly, his claim has been treated with respect by much of the nation's media. Much of the media groveled at his claim the same way that the special court grovels to federal agencies."

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0603c.asp

Their Barbarism, and Ours

      by Norman Solomon from Antiwar.com

"When journalists maintain a flagrant double standard in their language -- allowing themselves appropriate moral outrage when Americans suffer but tiptoeing around what is suffered by victims of the U.S. military -- the media window on the world is tinted a dark red-white-and-blue, and the overall result is more flackery than journalism."

http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=9187

Bush's Baghdad Palace

      by Nicholas von Hoffman from The Nation

"This gigantic complex does not square with the repeated assertions by the people who run the American government that the United States will not stay in the country after Iraq becomes a stand-alone, democratic entity. An 'embassy' in which 8,000 people labor, along with the however many thousand military personnnel necessary to defend them, is not a diplomatic outpost. It is a base. A permanent base."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060703/howl

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

A Plague on Both Their Houses

      by Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"When it comes to foreign policy, America's political leaders play a game of bait and switch -- and the American people get taken in every time. ... The American people -- notoriously 'isolationist,' i.e., sympathetic to a foreign policy of minding our own business -- are overwhelmingly opposed to the warmongering of our political elites."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9191

Killing Iraqi Children

      by Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"This U.S. government mindset was expressed perfectly by former U.S. official Madeleine Albright when she stated that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children from the U.S. and UN sanctions against Iraq had, in fact, been 'worth it.' By 'it' she was referring to the U.S. attempt to oust Saddam Hussein from power through the use of the sanctions. Even though that attempt did not succeed, U.S. officials still felt that the deaths of the Iraqi children had been worth trying to get rid of Saddam."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0606g.asp

Win One for the Gipper (Ayatollah Khameini)

      by Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"The real driver behind U.S. policy in Iraq still remains murky. It certainly wasn't to enshrine the will of the people in Iraq. If that were the case, the administration would have agreed to the proposal of some Democrats to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from that country. The president and vice president of Iraq have requested one, and 80 percent of Iraqis want U.S. troops to go home."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1752

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

Teaching Basic Economics to Fifth Graders

      by Arthur E. Foulkes from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"My goal with these fifth graders was not just to introduce them to the basics of economic science, but to inoculate them against future attempts to teach them bad economics. By showing them that trade, money, savings, competition, and prices all have distinctly human origins and purposes, I hoped to help them make better sense out of the "economics" they will some day be exposed to."

http://www.mises.org/story/2207

Aid for Education: Ask the World's Poor What They Want

      by James Tooley from Cato Institute

"In poor urban and peri-urban areas of these countries my researchers found the majority of poor schoolchildren attend private schools that outperform the state schools, all with lower salaries for teachers. ... If so many children are in private unregistered schools, then education for all turns out to be much easier to achieve than currently believed."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6437

In Defence of Steroids

      by Jasmin Guénette from Le Québécois Libre

"I am not suggesting that people should take steroids or use other drugs. But just as I don't want other people choosing what's right for me, I don't want to choose what's right for others. This is what respect is all about; not forcing other people to think like you, to act like you and to obey laws simply because vote-seeking politicians and their allies think some products should be illegal. "

http://www.quebecoislibre.org/06/060618-2.htm

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

Supreme Court Ruling on Police Raids Endangers Citizens

      by Radley Balko from FOX News

"Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in its 5-4 decision in the case of Hudson v. Michigan that when police conduct an illegal, no-knock raid, any evidence they seize in the raid can still be used against the suspect at trial, even though the raid was conducted illegally."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200495,00.html

Separating School From the State

      by James Leroy Wilson from The Partial Observer

"When there was a Communist bloc, we were told that the children in their schools were told lies about the West and about their own history. The Chinese people are apparently lied to about China's 'right' to Tibet and Taiwan. Arabs are supposedly lied to about the agenda of the United States. Yet, our own public schools are at least as socialistic as theirs; how can we be so confident that we aren't being lied to about our own history? Just because the educators themselves believe the lies do not make them true."

http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1867

Kelo: Taking the E.D. out of Economic Development

      by Edward J. Lopez from The Independent Institute

"Too often planners get eager to manufacture success stories in their own home towns, neglecting underlying economic realities. In these cases, eminent domain simply pries open opportunities that wouldn't otherwise make economic sense. This has ripple effects, too. Bad ones. It attracts developers who see eminent domain as a cheaper way to get the land they need, especially with hold outs. Developers spend valuable resources persuading policymakers rather than building better, lower cost housing. Regulators further their careers by taking credit for revitalization. Eminent domain doesn’t serve the public interest as much as it serves a cozy triangle of special interests."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1757

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

The Alchemists: Turning Blood Into Gold

      by Chris Floyd from LewRockwell.com

"War and rumors of war are engines of limitless profits for the crony-cons. It sends oil prices sky-high and keeps those pork-laden contracts for weapons and 'military servicing' rolling in. And the terrorism that thrives in this deliberately created chaos is another massive money-maker, as vast armies of 'security consultants' ply their political connections to gobble up tons of insider grease."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/floyd/floyd10.html

Remembering the Forgotten War

      by Anthony Gregory from Northwest Meridian

"American history is filled with examples of military interventions, covert actions, and wars throughout the world. Only a few are remembered in any significant sense. The Korean War, being the largest war not well remembered, should stand as a reminder of the real, lasting effects of aggressive war policy and intervening in foreign affairs. The Korean War might be the primary forgotten war, but in a country at war so often and for so long and with so many nations as is the United States, we risk seeing the phenomenon of the Forgotten War becoming a norm, rather than an anomaly."

http://www.nwmeridian.com/content/060622_02_p3.php

Americans Should Be 'Anti-American'

      by Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"[W]hen Kagan writes about anti-Americanism, he's deliberately using an equivocal term in order to elicit unthinking, knee-jerk anti-anti-Americanism in his readers. He likes the imperial U.S. foreign policy, so when foreign people express their hated for it, Kagan and his ilk misdirect us to think the foreigners hate us as individuals. The apologists for empire count on you not to examine the matter too closely, because if you did, you might see the merit in what the foreigners are saying."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0606i.asp

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

Ashes at the end of Rainbow Farm

      by Michael H. Hodges from The Detroit News

"Some call it Michigan's own mini-Waco. Just one week before the September 11 terrorist attacks, FBI and state police sharpshooters took out the two owners of a pro-marijuana, libertarian enterprise known as Rainbow Farm in the southwest corner of the state."

http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060620/LIFESTYLE/606200379/1005

Is the Income Tax Unconstitutional?

      by Sheldon Richman from Foundation for Economic Education

"Some people argue that the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution is unconstitutional. But the Constitution sets up an open-ended, if onerous, amendment process. The framers fenced off no subject for amendment (except the importation of slaves before 1808 and equal state representation in the Senate). Maybe they should have, but they didn't. An amendment to the Constitution, therefore, cannot logically be unconstitutional."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=575&year=2006&month=6

Ludicrous Headline Du Jour

      by Retta Fontana from Strike The Root

"In 1800 a loaf of bread cost two cents. In 1900 a loaf of bread still cost two cents. Today I pay $4.50 for a good loaf of fresh, whole grain bread. Is it because today's bread is so much better than it was in 1800? What I buy now is not unlike artisan bread of the past -- fresh, high quality ingredients, handmade daily."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/fontana/fontana5.html

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

Atrocities in the 'Good War': A Tract for Today

      by Robert Higgs from LewRockwell.com

"War does horrible things to men, our own sons included. It demands the worst of a person and pays off in brutality and maladjustment. It has become so mechanical, inhuman, and crassly destructive that men lose all sense of personal responsibility for their actions. They fight without compassion, because that is the only way to fight a total war. . . ."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs45.html

That Death Toll

      by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"The only real moral issue that strikes the Bush administration -- which is directly responsible for every one of these lost lives -- is annoyance that anyone would be upset. The fodder knew what they were getting into when they signed up. It's dangerous work. In any case, it is a noble cause, or so they are told. We are told that the cause is the democratic reconstruction of Iraq, but the invasion has so far resulted in a society ruled by martial law, a people imprisoned under a conquering regime, and a puppet state that swears to uphold Islamic law."

http://www.mises.org/story/2224

Friendly Fire Ambush -- Iraqi Troops Are Turning on Their American Counterparts

      by Marjorie Cohn from CounterPunch

"A month before he died, Patrick told his father that Iraqi forces they were training had attacked his unit. When he filed a complaint with his chain of command, Patrick 'was told to keep his mouth shut,' his mother said. After Patrick died, his parents conducted their own investigations. The Army denied requests to see autopsy reports. The McCaffreys persisted. They talked to soldiers in their son's unit and managed to learn what really happened."

http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn06222006.html

Great Individuals In History

Some people stand out from the crowd.

Philosopher/Mathematician -- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz : June 21, 1646

      from Eric Weisstein's World of Physics

"He believed in a deterministic universe which followed a 'pre-established harmony.' ... He was self-taught in mathematics, but nonetheless developed calculus independently of Newton. Although he published his results slightly after Newton, his notation was by far superior (including the integral sign and derivative notation), and is still in use today."

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Leibniz.html

Actor -- Errol Flynn : June 20, 1909

      From In Like Flynn - Errol Flynn - Official Web Site

"Flynn was the granddad of action heroes who came in with talking pictures, ushering in the era of action-adventure movies beloved of film buffs throughout the 20th century. He defined the swashbuckling heroic type invented in that era." (has audio)

http://www.inlikeflynn.com/

Writer -- Octavia Butler : June 22, 1947

      by Amy H. Sturgis from Reason

"Butler challenged how well we understand ourselves and, without preaching or oversimplifying the subjects she broached, she pointed out how we may be at fault in the inherent cruelty of the human story. … Institutions of coercion, from governments to religions, were Butler's targets. Individuals, not groups, were her protagonists."

http://www.reason.com/0606/cr.as.the.shtml

Culcha'

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

Flashback (1990)

      Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism

Social comment crime dramedy stars Dennis Hopper, Kiefer Sutherland, Carol Kane; directed by Franco Amurri. "[This film shows that] no matter how much things have changed from the time of the countercultural apogee of the 60's, some very important things have not. Although Flashback has serious themes, much of the film focuses on humorous ones."

http://endervidualism.com/agora/flashback_1990.htm

Book Review: The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula Le Guin

      Reviewed by Sunni Maravillosa from Sunni's Salon

"I was unprepared for the force contained within the pages of The Lathe of Heaven. An unremarkable hero--almost an anti-hero, really--with one remarkable ability draws readers into a swirl of power, manipulation, and his attempt to hold on to love as reality morphs throughout the story. Le Guin, as she often does, layers thought-provoking ideas through the unfolding story and interactions of her characters...."

http://endervidualism.com/salon/books/leguin.htm

A Remarkable Man

      Reviewed by Robert Capozzi from The Free Liberal

"Coming from a world of plain talk, laminate paneling, and Friday night fish fries, Thompson rocked the 'ruling class' of Wisconsin. While they prevailed, his head was held high and he maintained a 'happy warrior' composure throughout his campaign. Whether A Remarkable Man was a story of political futility or hope is up for the viewer to decide."

http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/002125.html

The lighter side

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

Player Haters

      by Jon Stewart from The Daily Show

"Seriously, the House of Representative is filled with insane jackasses." (video w/audio, player resizes window at start, commercial may precede program portion)

http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=70892

Kinko's Manager Hopes Child Stays Missing A Little Longer

      from The Onion

"As a local FedEx Kinko's became the nerve center of a desperate search for missing 9-year-old Haley Bonhomme, branch manager Thomas Pyle expressed a 'deep personal investment' in the tragedy. The 35-year-old copy-store veteran remains eager to facilitate the girl's frantic parents' bulk-orders of hundreds of flyers, posters, and notices, he said."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/49787

Rove, Satan Plot G.O.P. Fall Strategy

      by Andy Borowitz from Borowitz Report

"At a joint press conference today in Washington, White House advisor Karl Rove said that he would be plotting the Republican Party's fall election strategy with his longtime comrade-in-arms, Satan. The Prince of Darkness, wearing his traditional red horns and cape and carrying a smoldering pitchfork, appeared to beam as Mr. Rove, his protégé, talked about how much he was looking forward to working with him on the fall campaign."

http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=5207

Deep Thought

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

The Limits of Utilitarianism

      by James Leroy Wilson from Independent Country

"The libertarian argument is not, ultimately, a utilitarian one; the principle is not that freedom will make us 'better off' dollars-wise, but that it is a moral imperative to not force peaceful people into parting with their liberty or property to advance the vision of someone else."

http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2006/06/limits-of-utilitarianism.html

Meaning, Not Matter

      by Sheldon Richman from Free Association

"The 'Captain' (Tim Allen), realizing the danger, begins to give orders to his 'crew,' most of whom are understandably reluctant to get involved. After hearing one such order, the Spock-like science officer, 'Dr. Lazarus' (Alan Rickman), reminds his fellow thespians: 'You don't have to listen to him. He's wearing a costume, not a uniform'."

http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2006/06/meaning-not-matter.html

Was Shooting Judge Weller Justified?

      by Wendy McElroy from ifeminists.com

"A high-profile news story is sparking discussion of when it is appropriate, if ever, to use violence to secure personal advantage or social change. … If Mack did shoot Weller, then it was not merely an act of revenge but also an act of strategy aimed at social reform. At least, that's how the accused murderer wishes to portray the shooting -- as one man's blow for justice."

http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2006/0621mcelroy.html

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

Why I Won't Renew With Amnesty International

      by David R. Henderson from Antiwar.com

"Whenever government intervenes in our affairs or in the affairs of people in other countries, it creates unintended consequences, many of which are bad. This is true for two main reasons, the same two reasons that caused the spectacular failure of socialism: incentives and information."

http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=9163

Overconfidence is a disadvantage in war, finds study

      by Roxanne Khamsi from NewScientist.com

"Overconfident people are more likely to wage war but fare worse in the ensuing battles, a new study suggests. The research on how people approach a computer war game backs up a theory that 'positive illusions' may contribute to costly conflicts."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9374-overconfidence-is-a-disadvantage-in-war-finds-study.html

Fixing the problems in our food supply is really a matter of taste

      by Robyn E. Blumner from St. Petersburg Times

"[O]ur comestibles have been scientifically manipulated. Suppliers have doctored it to look pretty, have fewer seeds, withstand mechanized harvesting without bruising and sit in a warehouse or on a truck without aging - every consideration but the taste."

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/18/Columns/Fixing_the_problems_i.shtml

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