Table of Contents:
If you encounter any difficulty using this document please let me know as soon as you notice. Contact information is at the bottom of this page.
I am happy to receive addresses of potential readers of Ender's Review who might like to receive a few trial issues and/or an invitation to subscribe. Or, if you prefer, please, send a link to this page or the index (which also has comprehensive source site links) to those you think might be interested.
Find all RSS feeds & e-mail lists on the Sign Up page –
or use this RSS feed for Ender's Review
"It’s a rare child who is truly free to experiment with life, to move towards what has vitality and away from what doesn’t (no matter how important someone else thinks it may be at that moment), to make mistakes and learn from them without being judged, measured, tested, categorized or drugged. ... In my utter refusal to use coercion against people weaker than me, I model for my children how to truly live free. The responsibility for my own happiness (or demise) lies firmly in my own hands, not in what the neighbors might think of my children’s behavior. "
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana17.html
YouTube video with audio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mb7aiM9K9Q
"During the first weekend in June, I had the privilege of attending the Future of Freedom Foundation's 'Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties' conference in Reston, Virginia. In the twenty years that I have been attending political events of all kinds – conferences, demonstrations, seminars, festivals – this was incontestably the best program I have ever witnessed."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/preston3.html
"The Libertarian view of the state is strikingly similar to Marx's--a coercive apparatus in the hands of an economic, exploitive elite. I made that point to [Higgs] and was surprised that he agreed. His contention is that Marxists have a pretty sound view of the state but a lousy outlook on economics. Libertarian and Marxist thought appear to have some common ground running all the way back to the 16th century writings of La Boetie."
http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh06052007.html
"The 1960s counter-culture comedian Lenny Bruce once speculated in one of his stand-up comedic routines on how civilization and law came into being. Bruce humorously speculated it was because people would crap anywhere they wanted when they felt the urge to defecate. Other people got tired of the smell, the flies it attracted, and stepping in it. So what did they do about it? They gathered together and assigned 'Zog the Caveman' to patrol around the common areas of the village with a big club and give a hard whacking to anyone who squatted down for a quick dump anywhere except at the designated place for pooping. "
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/massoud/massoud2.html
"The war in Iraq goes on, but we shouldn’t let it overshadow the war at home — one that frequently takes the lives of people who don’t deserve to die. It’s known as the war on drugs, but it’s really a war on people who themselves are not making war against anyone. Too often individuals minding their own business are killed by government officers. In the name of decency, this war must end."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0702b.asp
"Whether Bonds is ultimately accepted by fans is less interesting to me than what his censure suggests about our society's attitudes toward drugs: We remain convinced that even in contests where certain substances weren't banned, it's somehow uniquely immoral to use drugs to transform ourselves or give ourselves an edge. This attitude seems impervious to change, even as Americans increasingly rely on drugs in all aspects of our lives—to control our cholesterol, to improve our attention span, to change our moods on a daily basis."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/120652.html
"[I]t was all a set up worthy of David Mamet [Erev: well maybe]. DEA agents were tracking a drug gang and had bought drugs out of the car months earlier, though not when Alverez-Tejeda was there. Using wiretaps and surveillance, the DEA learned that Alverez-Tejeda was using the leader's car to transport illicit drugs. The agents then decided to stage something, perhaps even a carjacking, in order to seize the drugs without tipping off the conspirators."
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/06/appeals_court_r.html
"The siren song of political coercion to freedom lovers has always been this; that by using State coercion one can shortcut his way into imposing freedom on the masses, and that there will be no other lasting consequences from this coercive act. This, of course, has never come true. No movement predicated on coercion or violence has ever achieved lasting freedom. All successful movements have been non-violent, non-coercive movements."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/tremblay1.html
"The voting illusion hides an important truth: that using coercion against others is evil regardless of how many people may have voted for it. Every lynch mob has a majority over its victim; Aryan Nazis outnumbered the Jews in Hitler's Germany ; whites in America outnumbered blacks when slavery was legal. 'Majority rule' is a prescription for horror unless every person has the same clear and basic rights as every other--yet the natural tendency is for individual rights to be eroded as special interests push for ever-more encroachment on others. "
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/allport/allport21.html
"Society does not need the State. Quite the contrary, the State is parasitic on social cooperation. Predators seize the chance to grab for themselves what others have peacefully produced. At first, predatory raids are sporadic; but intelligent predators soon realize that they can entrench their theft on a permanent basis and the State is born."
http://www.mises.org/story/2587
"To learn a language, a child must learn a set of all-purpose rules, such as 'a sentence can be formed by combining a subject, a verb and an object' that can be used in an infinite number of ways. A new study shows that by the age of seven months, human infants are on the lookout for abstract rules – and that they know the best place to look for such abstractions is in human speech."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-06/afps-cip060407.php
"As with the decline of prior civilizations, however, our future is not necessarily a bleak one. Humanity is now confronted with the choice of whether 'society' is to continue being thought of in terms of institutionalized interests, or is to reflect the varied and spontaneous relationships that emerge from the interactions of free men and women?"
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer157.html
"In late December a federal judge rejected the Quaintances’ claim that, because cannabis is their church’s sacrament, their right to possess it is protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). ... The Quaintances were arrested just a week before the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that RFRA protects the American branch of the Brazil-based Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) from government interference with its rituals despite the fact that the group’s sacramental tea contains the otherwise illegal psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT). If UDV deserves an exemption from the Controlled Substances Act, why not the Church of Cognizance?"
http://www.reason.com/news/show/119721.html
"Certainly, home-schooling is not for everyone, and there are undoubtedly some parents who are not the best teachers. But the home-schoolers I’ve met not only have excellent academic marks, but very close relationships with their parents as well. When kids like O’Dorney succeed, their parents are truly prouder of them than anyone, because they see what their kids go through in order to achieve. "
http://www.news-daily.com/opinion/local_story_156235245.html
"Freedom lovers are everywhere, among all kinds of people, and always have been. Another book I’ve found intriguing recently is The Hopi Survival Kit by Thomas E. Mails. I picked it up initially because it contained some suggestions on farming successfully in a drought or dry climate, potentially useful for gulching purposes - but found much more than I bargained for."
http://taranjordan.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/the-tribe-truly-is-widespread/
"Remember those old photographs taken during World War II, with Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt, plus selected others, posing as masters of the universe? The victors were meeting to carve up Europe, divide the spoils, plan the future, map out a plan for our lives. Of course they created a political and economic disaster, which is what happens when mere mortals come to believe themselves to be gods. "
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/carving.html
"Only three detainees have been brought before the new commissions. One would expect the people Bush & Co. singled out for war crimes prosecutions would be high-level al-Qaeda leaders. But they weren't."
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn06072007.html
"The IDF likes to grab a Palestinian and force him to search a nearby house, so the 'human shield' will be the one who gets killed if a militant is lying in wait inside. Two years ago (yes, in the fifth year of the 21st century), the High Court finally ruled – after 'a long and drawn out legal debate' – to outlaw this barbarity. The IDF solemnly pledged to go and sin no more. But three months ago, foreign news crews filmed IDF forces once again thrusting civilian bodies into suspect houses and letting them draw the heat."
"It might be useful if the federal government (once thrown back into its constitutional cage, of course) had an agency devoted to collecting relevant intelligence, rather than what it has now – a body involved in propagating turmoil, terror, and subversion throughout most of the world."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/06/bad-company-yet-another-terrorist-plot.html
"For six and one-half years the Bush Regime has relied on coercion, intimidation, war, and threats of war. Diplomacy and good will have been shunned. The regime's blatant warmongering has resurrected the nuclear arms race."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06082007.html
"If the U.S. military remains in Iraq as long as South Korea, American personnel will still be on station in 2060. How many more dead, American and Iraqi, are necessary? How much more money must be spent? How much more horror must be suffered? The American people must say no."
http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=11096
"No matter the party, no matter the candidates, all these debates serve the same simple function of reinforcing the chosen status of the media’s chosen candidates. Across party lines, these handpicked favorites share one major thing in common, and that’s the fact that they wouldn’t change a damn thing in Washington. You really think it makes a difference whether we get John McCain or Barack Obama? Prove it."
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/002794.html
"When conservatives criticize domestic political meddling, they rightly demand that the policy be looked at not from the politicians’ point of view, but rather from the receiving end. Good advice. Why don’t they see this principle in foreign affairs?"
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0706a.asp
"Long before socialism crumbled, Hayek saw the perils of centralization. When information is dispersed (as it always is), decisions are best left to those with the most local knowledge. This insight, which undergirds contemporary libertarianism, earned Hayek plaudits from fellow libertarian economist and Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman as the 'most important social thinker of the 20th century.' The question: Will traditional reference works like Encyclopedia Britannica, that great centralizer of knowledge, fall before Wikipedia the way the Soviet Union fell before the West?"
http://www.reason.com/news/show/119689.html
"As technology and globalization continue shrinking the world, people and ideas move more quickly and freely. Political borders become increasingly irrelevant. But that's fine because the qualities that define Americans don't depend on geography. Rather, it's their history of liberty, pluck, ingenuity, optimism, and the pursuit of happiness. Culture is a matter of mind and spirit. Why entrust it to politicians, border guards, and green cards?"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0607/p09s01-coop.html
"There's a certain predictability to prices. An orderliness. It needn't be that way. Prices could be a random jumble, high one day low the next. On some days, movie tickets could cost more than oxford button down shirts, oranges more than a quart of milk. What is the source of that order? Where do prices come from?"
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Robertsprices.html
"After all, the benefit that a good provides must be in relation to individuals' particular ends and their particular set-up. Contrary to mainstream thinking, the Austrian framework shows that it is the importance of various ends that determine the selection of goods by individuals."
http://www.mises.org/story/2610
"The marquee slogan in the new cold war on global warming is that the scientific consensus is virtually unanimous. This is utterly false. The overwhelming majority of climate computer modelers, the beneficiaries of the $2 billion-a-year global warming grant industry, certainly believe in it but not necessarily most real climate scientists-people qualified in atmospheric physics, climatology and meteorology."
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn06092007.html
"Internet regulation is not a binary option—a country either has it or it doesn't. Instead, it's a continuum of practices, with heavy-handed state-run filtering and censorship (China, for instance) on one end and hands-off regulation that uses the court system to handle only certain online crimes (the US system)."
"Activists and politicians use the language of public health to legitimize government efforts to discourage a wide range of risky habits, including smoking, drinking, overeating, underexercising, gambling, driving a car without a seat belt, and riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Unlike typhoid fever and tuberculosis, the risks associated with these activities are not imposed on people; they are voluntarily assumed."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/120576.html
"According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, one club, the Original Pigeontown Steppers, whose name designates the neighborhood and the dance, was charged $1,200 pre-Katrina for police escorts. This year, police requested $7,500 before dropping the fee to $2,400."
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3196/nola_priced_out_of_the_parade/
"For Bourne, the liberals who were thirsting for influence in the halls of power had a memory lapse of catastrophic proportions: 'The American intellectuals, in their preoccupation with reality, seem to have forgotten that the real enemy is War rather than imperial Germany. There is work to be done to prevent this war of ours from passing into popular mythology as a holy crusade'."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1354
"Suffice to say here that this base-building, weapons-making, extravagantly expensive apparatus is, of course, all funded out of the U.S. Treasury, and its rapid expansion – with almost no opposition in the U.S. Congress – serves the class interests of a rising sector of the elites that derives its income directly or indirectly from administering, maintaining, and expanding America's overseas empire."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11069
"[T]he American Establishment has absolutely no use for genuine democracy at all. They have undermined, submarined, kneecapped, perverted and interfered with elections all over the world (and at home), using everything from bribes and threats to murder and terrorism, in order to procure compliant regimes who will follow Washington's dictates -- and fill the American elite's coffers."
"What appeared to be a deadly terrorist cell, on closer (or even cursory) inspection, now appears to be a tiny knot of untrained and inept radicals who displayed no interest in terrorism or ambition to carry out such crimes until the Federal Informant arrived and provided a catalyst. But before the implications of this discovery can be widely understood or appreciated, the Regime's opinion-molding apparatus has moved on, leaving behind another sedimentary layer of official disinformation."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/06/regimes-liturgy-of-terror.html
"The old liberal view lives in the writings of such people as John Locke, Frederic Bastiat, Lord Acton, Alexis de Tocqueville, and, in the 20th century, in the work of Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard. Hayek himself traced the liberal tradition from Cicero, through the Middle Ages, to John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. The thread that connects all their thought is the idea that society is more capable than government elites in shaping a prosperous order. In the same way that Locke believed that the nation state was a threat to human rights and social peace, so Kant envisioned an international order that was unmanaged from the top down but rather generated its own orderly peace."
http://www.mises.org/story/2612
"It goes without saying, of course, that we’re not at the level of Germany in 1943, but the country is definitely headed in a very bad and ominous direction. It is a journey that will become more difficult to slow down or reverse the longer we permit it to go on. In Hitler’s Germany, publicly supporting the troops was mandatory. Imprisonment or execution was the consequence of noncompliance. In America today, even though some politicians now say they don’t support the war, supporting the troops has been and still is expected by those in positions of power"
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0706b.asp
"Of course, nationalization of foreign enterprises is not a novelty in Latin America. Early in the 20th century a special ritual was shaped to mark these redeeming occasions."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Martineznationalizations.html
"It’s a time-tested approach. Empires have long sought to co-opt discontented minorities by singling leaders out and privileging them, even over the majority. For example, as the Hapsburg monarchy found itself losing dominion over a fractiously polyglot central European empire, the government in Vienna desperately tried to grease the squeakiest wheels to keep the whole contraption together."
http://amconmag.com/2007/2007_06_04/article.html
"Many US military officers are horrified at what they think would be the worst ever orchestrated war crime. There are reports of threatened resignations. But Dick Cheney is resolute. He tells Bush that the plan will save him from the ignominy of losing the war and restore his popularity as the president who saved Americans from Iranian nuclear weapons."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06072007.html
"The economic costs of empire were calculated half a century ago by the Old Right seer Garet Garrett, who said part of the problem was that 'everything goes out and nothing comes in.' The American Imperium, Garrett averred, was an 'empire of the Bottomless Purse' – and yet perhaps we will soon scrape bottom, having mortgaged our children, and their children, and exchanged our republic for what will surely go down in history as one of the biggest, and shortest-lived, empires of all time. "
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11094
"In Vietnam, U.S. bases became major targets for the communists. In addition, unlike post-war Korea, which had a clearly demarcated border that ensured stability in South Korea, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, sectarian violence, and chaos in Iraq have no fronts and are ubiquitous—much more like Vietnam. President Bush has stated his belief that the United States left Vietnam too soon before the job was done, saying that the United States should not make the same mistake in Iraq—an ironic statement from a man who successfully avoided serving in Vietnam."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1977
"I'm not a veteran, but these people are, and they know whereof they speak. They make sense, they've got passion, they've got guts, they're out there every day working to end the war crime in Iraq."
"In October, 1888 he [traveled] to Vincent van Gogh's home in Arles, France. His stay was both traumatic and [fruitful] for both artists. They learned a great deal from each other but were often at odds. Gauguin returned to Paris in December after Van Gogh's 'ear incident.' Gauguin's break with the Impressionists came when he painted 'Vision after the Sermon,' where he tried to depict the inner feelings of his subjects. This painting also marked the start of a new painting style that came to be known as 'Symbolism'."
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/gauguin.html
"The years after the war were the most fruitful. I wrote, among many others, my first papers on communication theory, I developed a system of stereoscopic cinematography, and in the last year, 1948 I carried out the basic experiments in holography, at that time called 'wavefront reconstruction'. This again was an exercise in serendipity."
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1971/gabor-autobio.html
From IMDb bio page: "In 1946 she appeared in 14 films, although mostly in small minor roles. One of them was in the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946)." [She had an uncredited part in Bedlam (1946), but credited parts in Shane (1953), Sabrina (1954) and All Mine to Give (1957), plus tons of TV appearances before going on to become Grandma Walton. Her filmography takes a long time to scroll through.]
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0179289/
"Ginsberg is best known for Howl (1956), a long poem about the self-destruction of his friends of the Beat Generation and what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in United States at the time."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg#Death_and_fame
Antiwar satire / black comedy stars Alan Arkin, Martin Balsam, Paula Prentiss, Buck Henry, Anthony Perkins, Jon Voight; screenplay by Buck Henry adapted from the Joseph Heller novel, directed by Mike Nichols. “[S]et in WWII-era Italy, the movie concerns an American Army Air Force group performing bombing runs on Italian targets. ... World War II provides the setting for this film. Questioning American moral supremacy in that conflict does not usually happen in Hollywood’s films. However, the American establishment in this film does not possess any moral superiority to its war opponents.”
http://endervidualism.com/agora/catch-22_1970.htm
"Why, how, he didn't know. But suddenly he was certain that the very silence of this place, the very fact that he and his men weren't being shot at from the hills, was one very damn bad sign. The worst kind of sign. Every minute that went by without somebody taking pot shots at them put them in that much more trouble. He didn't know how. But he knew it down to his bones and sphincters."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070611.html
"Still remarkably lean and nimble, he sports the same greased-back rocker hair he has worn since 1963. Even treatment for a heart murmur in 2003 has barely modified his legendary hedonism, although he admits he goes to bed earlier these days. … 'I’m not racist at all,' he argues. 'I just like the decorative aspect of the Nazis. I like the pageantry, the pomp. I like a parade. The bad guys always have the best uniforms.' In truth, Lemmy fiercely distrusts all political parties. And while some of his views on feminism belong in a 1970s sitcom, his guiding principles are libertarian and humanist. He is antigovernment, antireligion and antiwar, but pro-choice on issues like abortion."
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article1893238.ece
"Michael Moore's new film Sicko, a critique of the U.S. health-care system and paean to socialized medicine around the world, premiered amid great fanfare at Cannes last month."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8271
Flash animated cartoon video w/audio
http://www.markfiore.com/animation/amnesty.html
"Jon preps Ron Paul for the Republican debate with some snappy zingers. "
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=87974
"Breaking a 211-year media silence, retired Army Gen. George Washington appeared on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday to speak out against many aspects of the way the Iraq war has been waged."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/62432
"In the latest erosion of President George W. Bush’s job approval rating, a new poll released today reveals that Mr. Bush is now less popular among the American people than the so-called 'TB Guy,' Atlanta attorney Andrew Speaker."
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=6748&srch=
“[I]f there’s a key to ‘changing the world,’ I think people generally have the idea backward. Unfortunately, it seems most would rely on Control and Coercion — try as they will to hide that fact behind smiley faces and snappy slogans. They’d rely on government coercion (legislation and enforcement) to propagate their ideas.... Gandhi had a brighter idea: he said, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’”
http://endervidualism.com/catfarmer/seven_cs.htm
"The religious argument against euthanasia—that it violates the sanctity of life—contradicts the single most powerful premise of the Judeo-Christian tradition: that God gives every person free will. Under a spiritual guise, it amounts to saying that the end—the preservation of a live body that has been rendered useless—justifies the means, prolonging the torment that that body inflicts on the patient’s spirit. Finally, it undermines the belief that the spirit outlives the body, conferring sanctity on the useless body rather than on the spirit desperate to liberate itself from the suffering."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1979
"It turns out, however, that human beings do not live for the hive, for the collective. Our wants and loves are personal and subjective, not universal and objective. Constant self-sacrifice for the "good" of others is self-defeating, and coerced self-sacrifice means a downward spiral."
http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2444
"It happens every day that morally equivalent scenarios are treated differently. If I deliver an explosive device to a target via an automobile, I am a murderous car bomber. If I deliver it via a missile, I am a heroic service member. This is true even if the targets are identical."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2007/06/bugs-in-our-morality-modules.html
"Once again, summaries (paraphrases, not exact quotes) of Ron Paul’s answers from tonight’s debate." [June 5, 2007]
http://praxeology.net/blog/2007/06/05/ron-paul-in-the-debates-part-3/
"While it was clearly up to Griffin whether to apologize to NASA for {making] controversial remarks, is such contrition really necessary? He is right, after all, that even clear scientific findings about climate change don't tell us with certainty what we should we do about it. Before implementing large scale policies, it's necessary to ask if they will be effective and if the costs are worthwhile. Whether or not you agree with Griffin, do you think that scientists should be pressured to apologize when they air unpopular views?"
http://www.abetterearth.org/blog/id.4039/news_detail.asp
"Although DRM has failed to accomplish its main goal (stopping piracy), it has been successful at bringing people from every corner of the globe together... in their hatred for DRM. Loathing for the technology has reached such a pitch that consumers around the world no longer whine only in the privacy of homes and apartments. They're taking to the streets, organizing marches and rallies and teaching events to educate the unenlightened."
"In the tradition of the European explorers unleashed on the rest of humanity with letters from their kings entitling them to claim and seize the lands, treasure and inhabitants of all places not under the rule of white Christian princes, the U.S. patent office began in the 1990s, granting American corporations exclusive 'patents' for varieties of rice produced in Asia for thousands of years, for beans grown in Mexico centuries before Columbus, and for all the products which were or might be made from trees, plants, roots and molds growing in the rain forests of Africa and Asia."
Find all RSS feeds & e-mail lists on the Sign Up page –
or use this RSS feed for Ender's Review
Each week immediately after Ender's Review is posted at Endervidualism a small plain text note (~5K) containing a few links to the web edition is sent to ERevNote subscribers.
If you know of prospective readers, please send them a link to this page, or alternately if you don't wish to e-mail them yourself, you can e-mail their addresses to me at this address: Tom@Endervidualism.com and I will send them a message with a link to the latest issue and invite them to subscribe.
Comments suggestions and discussion on the content and structure of this review are welcome at the ERevD: EnderReviewDiscussion Yahoo group. Feel free to jump in there at any time.
Alternately, you may elect to receive a copy of an HTML e-mail object (50 - 90K). Archives of the HTML e-mail are available to EnderReview members. You may join that group or subscribe to its mailing list.