Dec. 31, 2006 - Jan. 6, 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.

Find Freedom Friend

      By Retta Fontana from Strike The Root

"I’m convinced that the greatest freedom lies in holding our own feet to the fire, facing reality, no matter how awful it may be. When we face the truth about the nature of government, about the state of our nation, when we face the truth about our own human nature, only then can we do anything about it. Freedom can be had in the most oppressive circumstances because it’s an inside job. "

http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana1.html

In a bad year, some good folks who stood out

      By Robyn E. Blumner from St. Petersburg Times

"As to the year's singular civil liberties hero, the Freeby goes to MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann. The journalist's scathing commentaries illuminated the gathering danger of the Bush administration in a way no one else with a mainstream audience was willing or able to do. Taking his cues from the sportscaster he once was and from Edward R. Murrow, Olbermann eloquently called 'em as he saw 'em."

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/12/31/News/In_a_bad_year__some_g.shtml

Putting God in His Place

      By Nat Hentoff from The Village Voice

"While the school's principal says there has never before been a problem with this teacher, he is now aware—as bloggers around the world are tuning into this fractious constitutional lesson—that this growing problem goes to the heart of the 'Establishment Clause' in the First Amendment."

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0701,hentoff,75417,2.html

Pacifist's 50-year fight against war carries on

      By Rona Marech from baltimoresun.com

"Mensalvas' voice is just one amid what has become a loud chorus of anti-war sentiment, but she has a claim that distinguishes her scratchy, unwavering tones from the others: She is one of the oldest active anti-war protesters in the country. … She was married with four children when, during World War II, she went to work replacing gears on machines at International Harvester, a farm equipment manufacturer that began making tanks during the war. It was there, she said, that she learned about war and profit -- that it was more lucrative to build a tank that would be destroyed than to make tractors that lasted 20 years."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.mensalvas03jan03,0,7709246.story

Life in Amerika

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

They'll "Find A Reason" To Lock You Up

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"The mindset of the officers involved in this incident dictates that they can 'find a reason' to send anybody to jail. It isn't necessary for an individual to commit a crime against persons or property, or even an offense against what is considered good public order. All that is necessary is for an agent of the State to decide that an individual is insufficiently submissive."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/01/theyll-find-reason-to-lock-you-up.html

Stranger Than Satire: Past Year 'Predicts' New One

      By Radley Balko from FOX News

"It is something of a clichéd tradition for a columnist to write a year-end or New Year column that makes exaggerated, sometimes humorous predictions for the next 12 months. I wrote such a column at about this time last year, with 'predictions' that reflected the continuing, creeping influence of government in our lives. Unfortunately, the state of civil liberties and both economic and personal freedom haven't improved much over the past year. So I figure it's time for another round of unlikely predictions as to what we might expect from our government in 2007."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,240560,00.html

The Coup: Hardyville's Finest

      By Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine

"Now, our new federally financed rejects from the ATF may have been dumb. But they weren't dumb, if you know what I mean. Their lack of cogitation didn't interfere with their survival instincts. Yes, they definitely came to hate certain Hardyvillians for their resistance (and no doubt many names went down on many 'get later' lists). But like hearty self-preservationists everywhere, they avoided the 'hardened targets' and went after the easy marks first."

http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070101.html

The Goal Is Freedom: Extortion in Port Chester

      By Sheldon Richman from Foundation for Economic Education

"Local planning entities and politically connected developers have been running roughshod over property rights for years. It has become so common that it's hardly controversial anymore. It's just the way things are done. Most people think economic development couldn't happen without such practices."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1018

Ordered Liberty without the State

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

Shut Up About the 'Bill of Rights' and Play the Ace

      By Thomas Van Wyk from Strike The Root

"Even though Americans still 'theoretically' possess de jure legal rights as 'enshrined' in The Holy Bill of Rights and the Constitution, the de facto situation is much more sinister. This is not particularly surprising. Thinkers as diverse as Murray Rothbard, Lysander Spooner, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Mikhail Bakunin have pointed out in their own ways that the State really does not protect rights or safeguard common-sense morality, but is indeed predicated on violating and tearing asunder both."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/wyk/wyk1.html

Major Interests of the State

      By Michael S. Rozeff from LewRockwell.com

"I will stress that the state naturally is an organization whose members’ acts are designed to keep the state going with its powers intact so as to maintain the benefits that flow to members of the state. While free market organizations also wish to survive and benefit their members, the difference is that they can’t lawfully achieve those aims without benefiting society; while the state can’t achieve its aims without harming society."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff127.html

Idle questions

      By Charles Johnson from Rad Geek People’s Daily

"So why do you suppose it is that virtually every American news report on Ethiopia’s war of conquest has insisted on referring to the Baidoia gang by the phrase Somalia’s internationally-backed government (2, 3, 4), or Somalia’s internationally-recognized government (6, 7), whenever they mention the purpose of the assault?"

http://radgeek.com/gt/2007/01/04/idle_questions

Con Men and True Believers

      By Sheldon Richman from Free Association

"The government's rules are rigged in favor of power and against liberty. When government rules, such as the Constitution, can be interpreted in favor of liberty, they can just as easily be interpreted against it. Have you noticed that the Constitution hasn't stopped government from growing?"

http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2007/01/con-men-and-true-believers.html

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

Alternative form of homeschooling embraces child-directed learning

      By Danielle Braff from Post Tribune

"[W]hile homeschooling students far exceed unschoolers in terms of numbers, the unschooling movement appears to be slowly increasing. There aren't any statistics on unschoolers yet, but their popularity is reflected in the number of unschooling message boards on the Internet, in the abundance of unschooling clubs, in the frequency of unschooling conferences and in the slow but steady movement of unschooling into the vocabulary of educators."

http://www.post-trib.com/news/194009,unskul.article

Contra Localism?

      By Gene Callahan from Crash Landing

"Those people are interested in killing the people of Elba because the US has so blatantly 'not' followed Kaufmann's localist policies. Since that is 'exactly' why Osama bin Laden says 9/11 happened, and since countries such as Sweden, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Taiwan, all fairly free and full of infidels, have suffered no attacks, the burden of proof would seem to be on you here."

http://www.gene-callahan.org/blog/2007/01/contra-localism.html

Home is where the school is

      By Kevin Mwachiro from The Standard

"The concept of home schooling may be new to many, and one that we believe is only practised by foreigners and we quickly dismiss the concept. Truth be told, there is a small but growing number of Kenyans who are opting to educate their children within the comfort of their homes."

http://www.eastandard.net/mag/mag.php?id=1143963315&catid=317

California: One nation, under Arnold?

      By Peter Bart from Variety.com

"A liberated California would be an instant global force, Governor, and would provide you with a messianic platform. Trade would soar, incomes would rise and the government could lavish its resources on infrastructure and education rather than foreign wars. Who needs Washington's pathetic 'entitlements' when we could create our own?"

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117956493.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

Ivy Blindness -- A Foray into Psycho-political Ophthalmology

      By Fred Reed from FredOnEverything

"It occurs to me that a surfeit of money, and the associated life within an invisible plastic bubble that seems to accompany it, may explain much of our curious political lunges. I have nothing against money (you can test this by sending me a lot) or people who have it. But it has side effects. ... How much of the dysfunction of national policy can be explained by our rulers’ never having been in the subway? Never having encountered the world in which the rest of us, here and abroad, live? Sure, things other than insular innocence play a part: ambition, greed, idealism, vanity, good intentions, bad intentions. But…how do you manage a world you haven’t seen?"

http://fredoneverything.net/IvyBlindness.shtml

US Hypocrisy Reaches All Time High

      By Paul Craig Roberts from Antiwar.com

"If the US general staff had the integrity of Lt. Watada, America and Iraq would have been spared the pointless and bloody conflict. Bush was able to illegally initiate the conflict, because the American military behaved exactly as the German military and followed the orders of a criminal commander-in-chief. Watada must be court-martialed in order to protect Bush and his obedient commanders from war crimes charges."

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10258

Leviathan's Web

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"In the omissions we can see, once again, the true priorities that govern the Homeland Security State: Protect the Regime and its servants uber alles, while treating the public at large as criminals who are free only by the grace of the Almighty State. It's worth noting as well that the development of this huge database has proceeded without so much as a syllable of protest from the Republican-aligned conservatives who, a decade ago, rent the air with anguished cries over the Clinton White House's illegal acquisition of 'raw' FBI files on hundreds of Republican officials."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/01/leviathans-web.html

CYA for the USA: The Coverup of Complicity Continues

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"Two things stand out in this story by Burns and Santora – or rather, two salient facts lurk behind the furious spin that the reporters have assembled. First, that despite all the protestations by U.S. officials here, it was the Americans who actually had the final say in letting the execution go forward. And second, the rank lawlessness of the execution is in fact a direct emulation of American 'democracy' under the Unitary Executive Decidership of George W. Bush."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=983&Itemid=135

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

Special comment about ‘sacrifice’ : BBC reports Bush will reveal troop surge plan in sacrifice-themed speech

      By Keith Olbermann from MSNBC.com

"If in your presence an individual tried to sacrifice an American serviceman or woman, would you intervene? Would you at least protest? What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them? ... The additional men and women you have sentenced to go there, sir, will serve only as targets. They will not be there 'short-term,' Mr. Bush; for many it will mean a year or more in death’s shadow. This is not temporary, Mr. Bush. For the Americans who will die because of you, it will be as permanent as it gets. ... Sacrifice, Mr. Bush? No, sir, this is not 'sacrifice.' This has now become 'human sacrifice.' And it must stop." [For those who've seen Apocalypto, hope for an eclipse.]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16442767/

The Low Post: Hussein in the Membrane

      By Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone

"Rhetorical question: if you're going to offend the earth's entire Sunni population by letting a Shiite mob hang a prominent Sunni politician on a Muslim holiday -- on television on a Muslim holiday -- why bother interfering in the burial question? Seriously, why? To curry favor with the Sunnis? Because it's 'the right thing' to do? What kind of deranged lunatic hangs 'the Sunni sword' at the end of Ramadan and then tries to make up for it with the world's Sunnis by allowing a 'civilized' burial? 'We will all become a bomb,' is how one Palestinian responded to this latest act of decency and goodwill on the part of the United States."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13061298

Thug Bones in Bushland and Babylon

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"Yet the fact remains: Saddam -- who had been a murderous blunderer throughout his reign, not unlike a certain brush-cutting goober from Crawford -- managed to pull off a PR masterstroke at the end. The level of sheer idiocy and incompetence it would take to make Saddam look good even for a nano-second is almost inconceivable; yet the remarkable Mr. Bush and his team were obviously up to the challenge."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=985&Itemid=135

Torture and the "Goodness of America"

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"'Which is to say it's full of 'good Americans' (I use that expression, alas, in the same way the phrase 'good Germans' was once used – yes, it's come to that) of the sort who react to torture with the same thoughtless, reflexive approval Glenn Beck displayed."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/01/torture-and-goodness-of-america.html

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

Worker-owned co-ops growing

      By Janis Mara from Inside Bay Area

"The bakery, along with Berkeley's Cheese Board Collective, the Berkeley Free Clinic and San Francisco's Rainbow Grocery Cooperative, is an example of the 30-year tradition of worker-owned cooperatives in the Bay Area, which has the largest concentration of such companies in the United States."

http://origin.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_4935436

Self Interest, Rightly Understood

      By Samuel Gregg from Acton Institute

"Contracts exist, in part, because there will always be some people who will unreasonably decide not to fulfill their promises. Likewise, the network of free exchange assumes that people normally engage in exchanges in order to meet their own needs rather than from a specific concern for the well-being of those with whom they are exchanging goods and services. ... Commercial society requires free exchanges into which people enter in pursuit of their own interests. ... Adam Smith’s reference to the 'invisible hand' perplexes some, but is simply a metaphor for the idea that through allowing people to pursue their self-interest, unintended but beneficial social consequences for others will follow."

http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?article=360&fromemail

Omega-3 fatty acids to appear in hundreds of grocery products this year

      By Ben Kage from NewsTarget.com

"As studies proving the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids continue to crop up, food manufacturers have begun a campaign to include the healthy additive in a variety of everyday grocery products."

http://www.newstarget.com/021392.html

Saddam's Lesson for Us: Love and Freedom Require Each Other

      By Glen Allport from Strike The Root

"The vast, complex, finely coordinated and voluntary web of interaction that continually creates our world is staggering, and only functions because it is a voluntary and emergent system. Trying to turn this miracle into something that is centrally-planned, centrally-controlled, and coercively-run is a mistake of the greatest magnitude. "

http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/allport/allport1.html

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

The Eminent-Domain Origin of Shenandoah National Park

      By Bart Frazier from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"The establishment of Shenandoah National Park in 1926 is one of the greatest abuses of eminent domain in our country’s history. With the Commonwealth of Virginia condemning the entire area and removing more than 450 families, many by force, the park would eventually encompass 196,000 acres. After people were evicted, Virginia transferred the property to the federal government and Shenandoah National Park was born."

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0609f.asp

Why Does Poverty Persist?

      By Manuel F. Ayau from Foundation for Economic Education

"There is no reason why poverty should exist in the world today amid all the modern wonders in technology, agriculture, medicine, and more. Poverty persists because governments in poor countries do stupid things, many of them advised by their well-intentioned charitable donors. Lets point out a few of these obvious but persistent tragic mistakes."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1021

The Gummint Skools

      By Vin Suprynowicz from LewRockwell.com

"After that German state’s 'humiliating defeat by Napoleon in 1806, a new system of schooling was the instrument out of which Prussian vengeance was shaped, a system that reduced human beings during their malleable years to reliable machine parts, human machinery dependent upon the state for its mission and purpose,' Mr. Gatto has learned. 'When Blucher’s Death’s Head Hussars destroyed Napoleon at Waterloo, the value of Prussian schooling was confirmed'."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz57.html

What Won't Nasa Invent Next?

      By Tim Swanson from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"In addition to the free ride the agency gets from reporters, NASA has also been incorrectly credited with inventing numerous widgets, ranging from personal computers to freeze-dried ice cream…."

http://www.mises.org/story/2434

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

Bush Cuts and Runs from Reason -- His Last Hurrah

      By Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch

"In the name of a concocted 'war on terror,' the American public has permitted Bush an endless stream of mistakes. These mistakes are destroying any prospect for peace in the Middle East, committing America to endless and pointless conflict, destroying America's soft power while demonstrating the limits of its military power, creating a domestic police state, and endangering the US dollar. There is no imaginable gain from the Middle Eastern conflict that Bush has initiated that could possibly offset these costs to Americans."

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01032007.html

It's All In Your Head

      By Butler Shaffer from LewRockwell.com Blog

"Political systems could not function without inducing fear in the minds of millions of people, and if genuine fear-objects do not exist, they can be instantly fabricated. Indeed, as every child can attest, the fear of non-existent threats can be more terrifying than ones that can be seen. As the 'war on terror' confirms, most people are gullible enough to embrace all kinds of restraints upon their lives in order to be protected from state-created bogeymen. In the years following World War II - when the government required a new hobgoblin in order to maintain and extend its power - the 'communist' threat was hallucinated by the likes of Sen. Joseph McCarthy...."

http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/012011.html

An all-consuming 'war on terror'

      By Ian S. Lustick from baltimoresun.com

"Bureaucrats unable to describe their activities in 'war on terror' terms were virtually disqualified from budget increases and probably doomed to cuts. With billions of dollars a year in state and local funding, the Department of Homeland Security devised a list of 15 National Planning Scenarios to help guide its allocations. To qualify for Homeland Security funding, state and local governments had to describe how they would use allocated funds to meet one of those chosen scenarios."

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/baltsun09.html

Somalia: A State Restored? Not So Fast

      By William S. Lind from CounterPunch

"For more than a decade, Somalia has been Exhibit A in the Hall of Statelessness, a place where the state had not merely weakened into irrelevance but disappeared. Somalia's statelessness had defeated even the world's only hyperpower, the United States, when it had intervened militarily to restore order. Fourth Generation war theorists, myself included, frequently pointed to Somalia as an example of the direction in which other places were headed."

http://www.counterpunch.org/lind01062007.html

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

Soundbite: End of the Rainbow [Interview of Dean Kuipers, author of Burning Rainbow Farm]

      Interviewed by Jacob Sullum from Reason

"Tom Crosslin didn’t envision a violent confrontation with the government when he started holding cannabis-themed music festivals in rural Cass County, Michigan, in 1995. But he faced a local prosecutor, Scott Teter, who was determined to shut down the gatherings on Crosslin’s property, known as Rainbow Farm."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/117077.html

Impeaching, prosecuting Nixon could have elevated the nation

      By Amy Goodman from Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"If those emerging power brokers had witnessed a vigorous prosecution of Nixon and his co-conspirators, it could have elevated the country ... and changed history. Perhaps a decade later, the Reagan-Bush administration would have thought twice about the Iran-Contra scandal, in which an unaccountable administration would defy Congress and illegally support the Contras in Nicaragua, who killed thousands of civilians."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/298235_amy04.html

Dissent Is American

      By Ralph Young from History News Network

"Let us also remember the patriots who fought the American Revolution to establish independence from a government that was not responsive to the needs of its colonial subjects, and reflect on the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. None of this was accomplished without a great deal of debate, dissent, protest, argument, resistance. None of it was easy. But somehow we did evolve into a country 'of the people, by the people, for the people.' Or did we?"

http://hnn.us/articles/31632.html

What Exactly Did Gerald Ford Heal?

      By Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"For once Americans could see the truth about unrestrained government: its subservience to privileged interests, its disregard for freedom, its pettiness. The wizard’s curtain had been pulled aside momentarily — and the people were disgusted. Respect for government and the presidency plummeted. This terrified the bipartisan power elite. The broad revulsion threatened to undermine the tacit consensus that had supported the Democratic-Republican power structure for years. Who knows what might have happened if the public’s outrage had not been contained? Maybe a third party would have flourished. Power and lucre were at stake. Something had to be done."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0701b.asp

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

The Urge to Surge -- Political Cover or Escalation?

      By Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch

"If Bush ignores US military commanders and expert opinion and accepts the surge option advanced by the delusional neocon allies of Israel's right-wing Likud Party, US troops will be engulfed in general insurgency. … The neocons believe that the loss of an American army would be met with the electorate's demand for revenge. The barriers to the draft would fall, as would the barriers to the use of nuclear weapons."

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01062007.html

Mission Accomplished -- The War Party meant to destroy Iraq – and so they did

      By Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"America's real war aims are another matter entirely, and they are coming into focus as the situation on the ground develops. After all, why assume that what is currently happening in Iraq isn't part of the program? Surely the Americans knew the dismemberment of the Iraqi state would have to mean Shi'ite hegemony, an empowered Iran, and the prospect of a regionalized conflagration. It defies belief that they didn't: our rulers may be evil, but they sure as heck aren't stupid (and I'm not talking about the president, who is a genuine dolt)."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10253

How Security Problems Can Undermine Economic Progress

      By Ted Galen Carpenter from Cato Institute

"Hawks openly advocate air strikes against Iran's nuclear installations. Indeed, U.S. military action is more likely in the case of Iran than it is in the case of North Korea, because U.S. leaders fear Tehran's connections to Islamic terrorist groups and worry about the possible transfer of nuclear weapons to such groups. Yet if the United States attacks Iran, the consequences could be horrific, since Iran would probably not passively absorb such an assault. A response such as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz would have devastating economic effects on a global scale."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6873

The Sway of Interests

      By Michael S. Rozeff from LewRockwell.com

"Anti-Communism was the foundational concern of the U.S. for decades, influencing and shaping all its foreign interests. This has now been replaced by terrorism as a pervasive umbrella or vehicle for molding U.S. interests. In both cases, the U.S. has found a convenient and plausible enemy. In both cases, it is easy to whip up fears and to stimulate a domestic chorus of warmongers calling for blood and ever more blood. In both cases, it becomes easy for people to react and not think. In both cases, war-makers and war-supporters combine to influence U.S. actions. The general population is left in the dust to have their ideas and thoughts manipulated by the latest propaganda."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff126.html

Great Individuals In History

Some people stand out from the crowd.

Artist -- Henri Matisse : Dec. 31, 1869

       from the WebMuseum

"[A]rtist often regarded as the most important French painter of the 20th century. The leader of the Fauvist movement around 1900, Matisse pursued the expressiveness of colour throughout his career. His subjects were largely domestic or figurative, and a distinct Mediterranean verve presides in the treatment."

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/matisse/

Actress -- Josephine Hull : Jan. 3, 1877

       from Internet Movie Database

From the IMDb bio page: "Has had a successful 50 year career on Broadway before bringing her roles in 'Arsenic and Old Lace' and 'Harvey' from the stage to the screen."

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0401449/

Musician -- Xavier Cugat : Jan. 1, 1900

       From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"[W]as a Spanish-Cuban bandleader whom many consider to have had more to do with the infusion of Latin music into United States popular music than any other musician. "

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

Filmmaker -- Sergio Leone : Jan. 3, 1929

       from A Fistful-of-Leone!

"A Fistful of Dollars created the spaghetti western genre which encompassed more than 200 films, sharing the features of being created in Italy, frequently being filmed in Spain, featuring self-assured killers with no names, scores either by Ennio Morricone, or in his style, and, of course, the shootout."

http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/

Culcha'

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

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

      Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism

Antiwar action / drama stars Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Arnold Lucy; based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, directed by Lewis Milestone. “Lewis Milestone deservedly won the Best Director Oscar for this movie. His excellent direction along with the exceptional special effects for the time and also the fine cinematography have given this particular execution of the story great lasting power. However, the dispassionate evaluation of war itself and what it does to people make this story a classic.”

http://endervidualism.com/agora/all_qt_wstrn_frnt_1930.htm

Apocalypto: A Movie Review

      Reviewed by Byron W. King from Whiskey & Gunpowder

"[C]omplex societies seem to have a sociopolitical inertia that keeps on increasing their level of complexity in order to survive new challenges. In the early stages, societies in the ascendancy can afford to throw resources at their problems. But this cannot go on indefinitely. Or at least, no other society in history has even managed to pull it off over the long haul."

http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Archives/2007/20070104.html

Another film freedom lovers ought to see

      Reviewed by B.W. Richardson from Montag ...

"It's a compelling film with a quietly spectacular performance by Julia Jentsch in the title role, but while it draws extensively from transcripts of the kangaroo court that condemned to death Scholl and two other members of the group, it's a little sparse about events prior to the day she and her brother, Hans, were arrested. It's a minor flaw, if it is a flaw...."

http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2007/01/another-film-freedom-lovers-ought-to.html

UWA #16: New Year's Rockin' Attic

      By Warren Bluhm from Uncle Warren's Attic

"Celebrating 2007 and the spirit of freedom with nifty stuff from 1922 to the present day! The show is peppered with moments from the classic James Stewart vehicle Shenandoah, which should be mandatory viewing for kids of all ages."

http://unclewarrensattic.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=166611

The lighter side

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

The Year In Review

      By Dave Barry from Miami Herald

"It was a momentous year, a year of events that will echo in the annals of history the way a dropped plate of calamari echoes in an Italian restaurant with a tile floor."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16345989.htm

2006: Freedom in the rearview mire

      By Garry Reed from Loose Cannon Libertarian

"It's time to play 'Year in Review,' that game beloved by the MSM (that's cybersay for mainstream media) because, come the new year, journalist types are hung over, bored, unimaginative, and generally find it easier to dig through old headlines than to write something original."

http://www.freecannon.com/RearviewMire.htm

Bush to Announce Exit Strategy from Reality

      By Andy Borowitz from Borowitz Report

"When reports emerged that the president was considering deploying an additional 'surge' of troops in Iraq against the advice of military experts and overwhelming public sentiment, many in Washington suspected that the move was part of a larger plan to withdraw from reality entirely."

http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=6664&srch=

Luckiest Despot in the World

      By Mark Fiore from MarkFiore.com

Animated flash cartoon (video w/audio)

http://www.markfiore.com/animation/despot.html

Deep Thought

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

The Statist Mindset of Anarchists

      By Per Bylund from Strike The Root

"No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I think about it, I fail to understand the anarchism in this example, and others, presented by anarchists. If I would champion abolishing the state but still reserving the right to say what must be after the state has been abolished, I certainly wouldn’t be an anarchist. If I had the right individually or collectively to make my own exclusive definition of what anarchism is, I wouldn’t be an anarchist. I would be a statist. It seems many anarchists can’t think out of the box: they want something 'instead of' the state, and so they put a lot of thought into making plans and defining what society they would want to see. The problem is that they think so much about this dream of theirs that they get stuck in the system they call anarchism. But anarchism isn’t a system, it is non-system. Anarchism is spontaneous order, not contrived order."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/bylund/bylund1.html

Crimes Against Society

      By James Leroy Wilson from The Partial Observer

"We all know of two types of crime, crimes against persons and crimes against property. When somebody physically attacks someone else, we call that a crime. And when somebody steals or destroys somebody else's property, we call that a crime. Where the slippery slope comes in is society's insistence on a third category of crime, a crime not against specific people and property, but vague, intangible crimes against society itself. "

http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2050

The Science of Evil

      By Caroline Borge from ABC News

"In ABC News' version of the Milgram experiment, we tested 18 men, and found that 65 percent of them agreed to administer increasingly painful electric shocks when ordered by an authority figure."

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2765416&page=1

Why we're so good at recognizing music

      By Clive Thompson from International Herald Tribune

"Most memories degrade and distort with time; why would pop music memories be so sharply encoded? Perhaps because music triggers the reward centers in our brains. In a study published last year Levitin and group of neuroscientists mapped out precisely how."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/03/features/music.php

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

Bob's predictions for 2007

      By Robert X. Cringely from I, Cringely

"This is my 2007 predictions column, where I first examine my predictions from 2006 to see how well or poorly I did (my multiyear average is around 75 percent) then provide a list of predictions for the current year that are sufficiently vague that I may be able to squint and claim that they were correct, too, a year from now."

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070105_001440.html

Judge's Book Fans Flames of Culture War

      By Wendy McElroy from The Independent Institute

"From a selfish point of view, however, I wish Dierker had not published. His book makes advocacy more difficult for writers like me who agree with him but prefer to reason rather than to rage. Dierker makes some solid points but they will be lost in the circus that passes for political discussion these days. It is a circus Dierker has invited."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1886

The Lord of Misrule

      By Jesse Walker from Reason Hit & Run Blog

"Scholars still debate whether the carnivals served as a safety valve, and thus ultimately undergirded the social hierarchy, or if they were something more revolutionary -- in Bakhtin's words, a liberatory 'second world and a second life outside officialdom.' The two positions are not mutually exclusive, and I doubt that there's a single answer to the question. I should note, though, that the Church eventually cracked down on the celebrations. Clearly, not everyone in the establishment felt that order was being reinforced."

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/117559.html

Must Love Liberty

      By Retta Fontana from Strike The Root

"Liberals are 'feeling' people; they feel feelings, they are interested in feelings, they talk about feelings and they worry about the feelings of other people. This might sound funny to someone who isn’t a 'feeler,' but I’m not joking. Some people are wired this way. They are often creative and make good writers and artists. If I weren’t one of these feeling people, I wouldn’t get it at all, so I don’t blame you for finding this humorous. All you non-feelers, you’ll have to trust me on this. It’s not something we do to avoid real work. Feeling is real work, vital work to people, women, like us. "

http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana2.html

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