March 16 — 22, 2008

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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.

Private Protection

      By Sheldon Richman from Liberty & Power: Group Blog

"The main reason freedom of speech is more secure than it used to be is that the ACLU and other civil-liberties groups have for years promoted the idea to the public that free speech is a good thing. Moreover, whenever the state makes a move against it, these groups spring into action. That is, they act as private defense agencies. Interestingly, they are nonprofit and unarmed."

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/48607.html

Switzerland Re-Affirms Bank Secrecy

      By Daniel J. Mitchell from Cato@Liberty

"Tax-loving politicians in Europe and tax-harmonizing bureaucrats at the European Commission in Brussels and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris are not smiling today. They have already received bad news from Austria and Luxembourg, and now Switzerland has announced that it has no intention of weakening its human rights laws regarding privacy simply because money is escaping high-tax nations."

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/03/21/switzerland-re-affirms-bank-secrecy/

California Backs Off Real ID - Update

      By Ryan Singel from Threat Level from Wired.com

"States have until March 31 to request a two-year extension, and DHS had said before Thursday it won't grant Real ID extensions to states who don't commit to implementing the rules in the future. That meant Tuesday's letter looked like enough to join California to the small rebellion against the Real ID rules."

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/california-back.html

The Speech: A Conservative’s Take

      By Scott Horton from Harper's Magazine

"As comedian Jon Stewart put it, 'Obama spoke to us. . . as adults.' It’s something we’re not used to. Noonan makes precisely this point. "

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002707

Life in Amerika

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

Another Drug Raid Nightmare

      By Radley Balko from Reason Magazine

"Over the last quarter century, we've seen an astonishing rise in paramilitary police tactics by police departments across America. Peter Kraksa, professor of criminology at the University of Eastern Kentucky, ran a 20-year survey of SWAT team deployments and determined that they have increased 1,500 percent since the early 1980s—mostly to serve nonviolent drug warrants. This is dangerous, senseless overkill. The margin of error is too thin, and the potential for tragedy too high to use these tactics unless they are in response to an already violent situation (think bank robberies, school shootings or hostage-takings). Breaking down doors to bust drug offenders creates violent situations; it doesn't defuse them."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/125538.html

Government-Made Crises

      By Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Consider price controls, an intervention that governments traditionally turn to in response to their own debasement of the currency. As prices rise in response to monetary debasement, people begin screaming at businesses for raising their prices, not realizing that rising prices are in reality just a reflection of the falling value of the dollar due to government’s inflation of the money supply."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0803f.asp

In the age of ebooks, you don't own your library

      By Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing

"It's funny that in the name of protecting 'intellectual property,' big media companies are willing to do such violence to the idea of real property -- arguing that since everything we own, from our t-shirts to our cars to our ebooks, embody someone's copyright, patent and trademark, that we're basically just tenant farmers, living on the land of our gracious masters who've seen fit to give us a lease on our homes."

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/23/in-the-age-of-ebooks.html

More Political Taint in the Spitzer Case

      By Scott Horton from Harper's Magazine

"The comparison of this case with the handling of the 'D.C. Madam' case produces a very curious bifurcation. Eliot Spitzer is worthy of being a target, and the dedication of massive resources to nab him. But G.O.P. Senator David Vitter and Bush Administration Director of USAID Randall Tobias are not. What, other than the fact that the latter are Republicans and the former Democrats, provides the basis for distinction?"

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002714

Ordered Liberty without the State

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

Small enough to fail

      By Rad Geek from Rad Geek People’s Daily

"[T]hat is the real lesson of this story: the class structure of the State and its economic regimentation. In Anarchy, with freed labor and freed markets, there is another way. A way for working people to be free to take control of their own lives, and to live by their own work, in their own homes, by voluntary mutual aid, and by gifts freely given. In which none of us, no matter how 'small', will be forcibly corralled into depending, for our security, healthcare, homes, retirements, and livelihoods, on the interests of entrenched big players—neither the economic fortunes of self-aggrandizing robber barons, nor the tender mercies of the political appropriations process."

http://radgeek.com/gt/2008/03/19/small_enough/

The Goal Is Freedom: The State Is Morally Hazardous to Your Health

      By Sheldon Richman from Foundation for Economic Education

"It's never been more important for advocates of individual liberty to emphasize that what is failing today is not the free market but the state. ... Intentions are irrelevant. The laws of economics proceed whether those who interfere have good motives or bad. But we should not be oblivious to the fact that most interference is not 'public-spirited.' Rather, it's self-serving, as power-wielding politicians hunt for votes and reward corporate allies. The interventions provide privileges that the special interests are happy to collect."

http://fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1961

Gold And the PPT's Virtual Garden

      By Alex Wallenwein from The Euro vs Dollar Monitor

"You see, father state - and those who finance it – are very concerned about your emotional well-being. You cannot be allowed to see your economic reality as it is, because that might make you not like it and, God forbid, might make you even want to do something about it – like, oh, maybe turn around and walk the other way? That is not permissible. It is unacceptable because the rocky path along the abyss is all father state is able and willing to give you. "

http://www.small-business-goldmine.com/gold-and-the-virtual-garden.html

“But you support the State by your own actions!”

      By Francois Tremblay from Check Your Premises

"I have been posting about popular statist retorts or arguments, and this is another big one. They accuse us of supporting the State, or of being hypocrites, because we use State 'services' like the roads. It is quite true that we use these 'services': not just the roads, but the currency, the water system, the sewer system, the telephone, grocery stores, and so on and so forth. But it does not at all prove that Anarchists are hypocrites."

http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/
2008/03/20/but-you-support-the-state-by-your-own-actions/

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

At 67, hippie-midwife who changed childbirth in America still crusades for natural method

      By Travis Loller from SouthCoastToday.com

"Despite living on a commune in rural Tennessee, Ina May Gaskin has had the kind of career success most people only dream about. A midwife who never formally studied nursing, Gaskin has helped to bring home birth and lay midwifery back from the brink of extinction in the U.S. An obstetrical maneuver she learned from the indigenous Mayans of Guatemala has made it into scientific journals and medical textbooks, and her insistence on the rights of a birthing mother empowered a generation of women to demand changes from doctors and hospitals."

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/
article?AID=/20080316/NEWS/803160399/1018/OPINION

War of the Worlds: The Human Side of Moore's Law

      By Robert X. Cringely from I, Cringely

"Technology is beginning to assail the underlying concepts of our educational system - a system that's huge and rich and so far fairly immune to economic influence. But the support structure for those hallowed and not so hallowed halls has always been parents willing to pay tuition and alumni willing to give money, both of which are likely to change over a generation for reasons I've just spent 1469 words explaining."

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080321_004574.html

Windows is caught between Mac and Linux

      By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols from DesktopLinux.com

"For the first time in ages, the sale of new PCs with Windows as a percentage of the PC market is declining sharply. The new winner is the Mac, but, while no one does a good job of tracking the still-new, pre-installed Linux desktop market, it's also clear that Linux is finally making impressive inroads into Windows' once unchallenged market share."

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8541837412.html

Resisting the Empire

      By Joseph Gerson from Foreign Policy In Focus

"A growing alliance among anti-bases movements in countries around the world, including the United States, is preventing the creation of new foreign military bases, restricting the expansion of others, and in some cases may win the withdrawal of the military bases, installations and troops that are essential to U.S. wars of intervention and its preparations for first-strike nuclear attacks."

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5087

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

Smearing Obama: Every antiwar candidate has to endure the same hate campaign

      By Justin Raimondo from AntiWar

"Racism is closely linked to imperialism, and it doesn't take a genius to understand why. Since, by definition, a policy of conquest means conquering foreigners, and these peoples are often, albeit not always, of another race, it behooves the conqueror to rationalize his aggression in racial terms. 'Take up the white man's burden' – up until very recently, Kipling's poetic phrase has been the leitmotif and battle cry of the global Anglo hegemon. It was, and is, a world order founded on racism, mercantilism, and militarism, the three pillars of hegemonist thought. "

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12532

The Collapse of American Power

      By Paul Craig Roberts from CounterPunch

"The Bush administration's $410 billion deficit forecast is based on the unrealistic assumption of 2.7% GDP growth in 2008, whereas in actual fact the US economy has fallen into a recession that could be severe. There will be no 2.7% growth, and the actual deficit will be substantially larger than $410 billion. Just as the government's budget is in disarray, so is the US dollar which continues to decline in value in relation to other currencies. "

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03182008.html

Printing Money for Wall Street

      By Oskari Juurikkala from Acton Institute

"Modern central banking claims to serve lofty goals: high employment, price stability, and economic growth. In fact, it only enriches those who run the system. Sometimes it is the national government. ... In other instances, the central bank is a private entity serving the interests of the financial elite. This was true of most central banks historically, including the Bank of England (founded in 1694), which was only nationalized in 1946. Unbeknownst to many, the 1913-founded U.S. Federal Reserve System also comes under this category."

http://www.acton.org/commentary/440_printing_money_for_wall_street.php

Tremors at the Roof of the Earth

      By Scott Horton from Harper's Magazine

"There can be no doubt that the Dalai Lama understands both the strengths of the old men in Beijing and their weaknesses. His power rests in his moral authority. And their attempts to attack him and pin the blame for the tragedies in Tibet, Qinghai and elsewhere upon him have fallen flat."

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002668

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

America’s Anti-Militarist Tradition

      By Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"War, Clausewitz noted, is politics by other means. That makes high-ranking generals a species of politician. Not a few have harbored presidential thoughts, and some have made it. It has been reported that Petraeus would like to be another. These are the people the pro-war conservatives are willing to trust implicitly? "

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0712b.asp

One Foot in the Grave: Iran Attack Nearer, More Likely Than Most Suspect

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"Cheney has long been an evangelist for the 'one-percent solution;' i.e., if there is even a one percent chance that some threat might prove true, you must act as if the danger is 100 percent certain to occur. This paranoid lunacy -- or shrewd marketing device to guarantee non-stop boodle from war profiteering -- is now the official governing philosophy of America's foreign policy."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1461&Itemid=135

The Audacity of Friends

      By Jesse Walker from Reason Magazine

"Obama's connection to Wright is like his cigarette habit, his willingness to talk about his past drug use, his fondness for gritty TV shows -- it's a sign that there's an actual human being in that suit after all, no matter how empty it may seem when he's blathering about 'an insistence on small miracles' and the like. It's a sign he might know a thing or two about the real America after all."

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125555.html

A laughable assertion

      By Paul Campos from Rocky Mountain News

"Leave aside Clinton's dubious claim that she has more relevant experience than Obama for the office of commander in chief. After all, even if this were the case, we care about experience only because we believe that, on average, experience helps people do a better job. In other words, what really matters isn't experience but performance. And in regard to the biggest foreign policy issue of their careers, the performance of Clinton and McCain has been catastrophic."

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/mar/19/campos-a-laughable-assertion/

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

The War on Recession

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

"Let's think about the big picture. The economy was overinflated due to reckless monetary policy and government agencies treating critical sectors such as housing as a democratic right and thereby too big to fail. The trend dates back decades but the bubble became insanely large only within the last 5–10 years. Something had to give. And it turns out that this was just the beginning. All sectors were puffed up and inflated. Can we agree that there was a problem — that not all was well, despite appearances? I think we can. So what do we do in this case? There has to be a downward correction, but there's no reason to panic. A good correction is just what a recovery needs to get going. Such is the nature of the Fed-created business cycle."

http://www.mises.org/story/2925

Inflation Is Baked into the Cake

      By David Galland from Safe Haven

"The word 'inflation' covers two different concepts, and it's important to keep them separate. One concept is monetary inflation, which is when the supply of money increases faster than the supply of goods and services. The other concept is price inflation, which is an increase in the overall level of prices for goods and services. The relationship between the two is the relationship of cause and effect. Monetary inflation causes price inflation. But while almost everyone sees price inflation when it happens, few people notice the monetary inflation that is causing it."

http://www.safehaven.com/article-9715.htm

Recipes came about by evolution

      By staff from New Scientist

"Coq au vin and steak-and-kidney pudding may not bring to mind the principles of evolution. Yet evolutionary mechanisms may well be reflected in recipes for these tried-and-tested dishes."

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/
being-human/mg19726484.700-recipes-came-about-by-evolution.html

Spring Cleaning For Free Market

      By Andrew Jeffery from Minyanville

"The mortgage crisis and credit crunch will ultimately claim more victims. Indeed they must so the market can right itself. We can take heart that, so far, the worst offenders have been the hardest hit."

http://www.minyanville.com/articles/index.php?a=16311

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

The Fed-Engineered Commodities Cave-In

      By Alex Wallenwein from The Euro vs Dollar Monitor

"So, what was the real point of these actions? If the only change that has any kind of teeth was the coordinated dollar-support action, why did the world's central banks not disclose that? Answer: Because everybody knows that such action would prop up the dollar and probably result in a correction in the commodities markets. Under those conditions, the battered US Fed would not be able to stand there and accept the adulation of the cheering masses as the 'hero who saved the markets.' It's a con-man's trick, through and through. ... Just look past the smoke, break some of the mirrors, and reality looks exactly the way it did before Bernie staged this rehabilitation of the Fed's image as an institution that can 'save' the markets."

http://www.small-business-goldmine.com/commodities-cave-in.html

Bernanke and the Holy Grail

      By George F. Smith from Strike The Root

"The Fed and the government -- the public sector -- will 'do what it takes to maintain the stability of our financial system,' according to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and that is precisely why we can expect more of the same -- bailouts, inflation, jittery investors, false euphoria, the continued destruction of the dollar -- not just now but for as long as the government controls the money supply. History tells us so, and theory backs it up."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/smith/smith2.html

Winding Up Bear -- Paulson's Gift to His Bankster Buddies

      By Mike Whitney from CounterPunch

"Paulson is clearly out of his depth. He's simply not the man to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. His only concern is bailing out his rich friends in the banking industry. The interests of workers and consumers are just brushed aside. Has anyone from the Dept of the Treasury (or the Fed) suggested a bailout for the 14,000 Bear Stearns employees who just lost not only their jobs but the entire retirement when the company was purchased by JP Morgan? "

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney03202008.html

Alice in Wonderland

      By Peter Schiff from Safe Haven

"In the early stages of the biggest credit crunch in U.S. history, buying shares in Visa, a company that derives its revenues based on transaction fees from credit card purchases, qualifies as a particularly ill- timed investment. Perhaps buyers of these shares didn't get the memo, but the days of Americans using credit cards to buy products they cannot afford are about to come to an end. "

http://www.safehaven.com/article-9740.htm

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

Truncating the Antecedents

      By Robert Higgs from The Independent Institute

"[A]ny honest account of U.S. foreign policy reveals that this country’s government has engaged again and again in foreign interventions whose official justifications cannot withstand critical scrutiny. Many of these interventions amounted to little more than armed errand-running for privileged American business interests seeking to beat foreigners into line and, not coincidentally, to line their own pockets. This aspect of U.S. foreign policy famously led General Smedley Butler to declare that war is a racket."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2149

No Country for Old Men: The Reality of Iran in the Shadow of War

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"The entire 'War on Terror' is an engine for crony profiteering on a monstrous scale – and the greatest transfer of public wealth into private hands the world has ever seen. Those who believe that the Bushists would hold back from striking Iran because it is too 'risky' don't understand the stakes these warmongers are playing for. As they will never suffer personally or financially from even the worst outcome of their policies, the game is well worth the candle for them. Others will do the dying. Others will face the ruin. Others will weep with pain and grief."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1461&Itemid=135

The American Insanity Conundrum

      By Timothy V. Gatto from Countercurrents.org

"The Progressive Press remarks; 'Doesn’t he [Bush] know that almost 4,000 Americans and untold Iraqi’s have died in a quagmire? Doesn’t he realize that the cost of this war is in the trillions? Doesn’t he realize that we are no closer to victory than we were five long years ago?' Sure he does. He just doesn’t really care. He feels that as long as the defense contractors are making windfall profits along with Halliburton and their subsidiary KBR, and are getting gigantic no-bid contracts, and the Federal Reserve pours trillions of dollars at interest into the economy, making the bankers rich, and as long as the oil companies can get their hands on that Iraqi oil, the world is a great place. If you believe that he sees anything as wrong or right, you have a problem with your perception."

http://www.countercurrents.org/gatto210308.htm

On Iraq war’s fifth anniversary, Bush says US troops must stay

      By Bill Van Auken from Global Research

"Millions of people all over the world and within the US itself know that the opposite is the case. This is a criminal war of aggression waged in pursuit of the interests of America’s financial elite with the aim of establishing US hegemony over one of the main oil-producing centers of the world. "

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=VAN20080320&articleId=8402

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

Armed for Liberty

      By Alan Gura and Robert A. Levy from Cato Institute

"Two hundred years ago, the rights secured by the first 10 amendments were so widely accepted that many of the Framers considered a Bill of Rights unnecessary. Yet the Anti-Federalists wisely insisted on a Bill of Rights, fearing that fundamental tenets of individual liberty might later be deemed inconvenient, impractical, or even dangerous."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9282

Yreka still full of secession fury

      By Michelle Locke from ContraCostaTimes.com

" Jefferson, a would-have-been 49th state made up of a handful of neighboring counties in northern California and southern Oregon, lasted only a few days in 1941 before it was squashed by the cold reality of Pearl Harbor. More than six decades later, the yearning for a state -- or at least an identity -- of their own still lingers in residents who suspect their concerns are overlooked and undervalued by decision makers in more populated parts of California."

http://www.contracostatimes.com/bayandstate/ci_8601091?nclick_check=1

Arthur C. Clarke, Futurist and Scifi Legend, Dies

      By Annalee Newitz from io9

"Not only did Clarke create a legend with 2001 (he worked on the film with Stanley Kubrick too), but he also predicted many of the scientific inventions of the twentieth century such as telecom satellites."

http://io9.com/369440/arthur-c-clarke-futurist-and-scifi-legend-dies

Stagflation and Other Misconceptions

      By Steve Saville from Safe Haven

"'Inflationary recession' is, we think, a better term than 'stagflation'. In a world where money can be created in unlimited amounts and counter-cyclical monetary/fiscal policies are enormously popular, most recessions will be inflationary. In fact, the weaker the economy becomes the more inflation there will likely be and the faster consumer prices will likely rise. It is therefore not surprising that the worst recession experienced by the US over the past 40 years (1973-1975) coincided with the fastest increase in the general price level."

http://www.safehaven.com/article-9719.htm

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

Five Years of Folly

      By James Leroy Wilson from The Partial Observer

"Iraq has a price tag we can no longer afford. One little-known fact is that in November 2000 Saddam expressed his intention to sell oil in euros instead of dollars. Some believe this was the real cause of the war, to keep Iraq's oil pegged to dollars. If this was a means of 'saving' the dollar, it hasn't worked, as the war itself has helped increase the national debt and cheapen the dollar."

http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2876

Iraq Winter Soldier Hearings – A Victory for Independent Media

      By Jeff Cohen from Dissident Voice

"In 1971 at age 19, I had a life-changing experience when I met dozens of Vietnam veterans who’d descended on my hometown of Detroit to testify at the 'Winter Soldier' hearings organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In anguished presentations, the Vets painstakingly described the horrors against Vietnamese they’d seen or taken part in. And the attitudes of racism and bloodlust that motored the war. Many vets blamed the lies in mainstream media for convincing them to go to Vietnam in the first place."

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/03/iraq-winter-soldier-hearings/

Five Years of War: Let the Country Divide, and Get Out

      By Ivan Eland from The Independent Institute

"The historical record on partitions illuminates dos and don’ts for any soft partition of Iraq into a loose confederation—the most important of which is that the Iraqis must do the dividing themselves for it to have crucial legitimacy in their eyes."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2148

The War That Never Ends

      By Jacob Wheeler from In These Times

"Veterans like Kristofer Goldsmith discovered first-hand how the government sent them ill-prepared into a war under false pretenses, changed their rules of engagement with every deployment, brainwashed them into dehumanizing the Iraqi population, and brought them home without adequate means of caring for those for whom the war still rages on."

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3585/

Gazing Ahead

Attempts to peek into the future.

Should the Federal Reserve be Abolished?

      By Alvaro Vargas Llosa from The Independent Institute

"Advocating the abolition of the Federal Reserve, an institution people take for granted, seems too radical for most people, who think financial crises are the result of too little, not too much, government regulation. So the knee-jerk reaction, as exemplified in so many editorials and statements on the campaign trail nowadays, is to scream in favor of government intervention—the reason why bank rescues and the pumping of new money is the government’s sacrosanct policy. It is time to think more boldly."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2153

Video: Luxim's tiny but powerful plasma lightbulb

      By Michael Kanellos from CNET News.com

"Silicon Valley's Luxim has developed a lightbulb the size of a Tic Tac that gives off as much light as a streetlight."

http://www.news.com/Luxims-tiny-but-powerful-plasma-lightbulb/1606-2_3-6234653.html

Where are Precious Metals Headed in 2008?

      By Howard Sun from Seeking Alpha

"A major [reason] leading to the gold bull market goes back to economics 101 – increasing demand and decreasing supply for the metal. The increasing demand for gold is driven not only by large institutional investors who are losing confidence in the US dollar, but also by commercial industries and retail consumers in Jewelery, Retail, Industrial and Exchange Traded Funds."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/69029-where-are-precious-metals-headed-in-2008

IBM opens processor communications with optical switch

      By Michael Kanellos from Tech news blog - CNET News.com

"The component, which is still in the experimental stage, is the latest piece of technology in the field of optoelecronics. Currently, signals inside chips gets passed on electrons running on microscopic wires. Compared with photons (particles of light), electrons are slow, and they generate heat. In optoelectronics, researchers hope to take technology from fiber-optic communication and shrink it to the chip level."

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9894733-7.html

Culcha'

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

Ursula K LeGuin on Anarchism, Writing

      Ursula K LeGuin Interviewed by Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness from Infoshop News

"Jefferson thought we already had liberty as an inalienable right, and only had to pursue happiness. I think the pursuit of liberty is what the Left is mostly about. But also, I think if you really want to pursue liberty, as an artist, you cannot join a movement that has rules and is organised. ... I can't put my work directly in their service, expressing their goals. It has to follow its own course towards freedom."

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2008031918105998

44 Years of 3-Minute Poems: The kamp konservatism of the Kinks

      Book Review of Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else, by Thomas M. Kitts, Reviewed by Jesse Walker from Reason Magazine

"In their first decade as a recording unit, the Kinks experimented with trad jazz, musical theater, Indian raga, and New Orleans funk. Above all, they delved into the English music-hall tradition, with its vaudevillian showmanship, singalong melodies, working-class sympathies, and epicene moments of burlesque. The constant thread was a willful refusal to follow pop fashions."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/125597.html

UWA 48: Myke Phoenix Rising

      By Warren Bluhm from Uncle Warren's Attic

"He's ba-ack ... "

http://unclewarrensattic.blogspot.com/2008/03/uncle-warrens-attic-48-myke-phoenix.html

Songs of Freedom

      By Russell Madden from Atlas Magazine

"I would like to focus on another facet of art: music. More specifically, I want to share with you some songs that I believe encourage either liberty or its attendant values and virtues."

http://www.russellmadden.com/Songs_of_Freedom.html

The lighter side

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

Army Holds Annual 'Bring Your Daughter To War' Day

      By staff from Onion News Network

"Girls between the ages of 8 and 14 spent the day helping their parents fight insurgents and defuse mines."

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/army_holds_annual_bring_your

Crisis in the Chartland

      By Aasif Mandvi and Jon Stewart from The Daily Show

"Aasif Mandvi reports on the Bear Stearns bailout while experiencing gravitational altitude correction."

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=164179

You Suck at Photoshop #9

      By Donnie Hoyle from YouTube

"Donnie Hoyle gets as close to a pair of tomatoes as he'll ever get."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13KelrbkGpI

Black Guy Asks Nation For Change

      By staff from The Onion

"Reports indicate that the black man has been riding from city to city across the country, asking for change wherever he goes. Citizens in Austin, TX said they spotted the same guy standing on the street Friday, shouting far-fetched ideas about global warming. Cleveland residents also reported seeing him in a local park, wildly gesticulating and quoting from the Bible. And last week, patrons at the Starlight Diner in Cheyenne, WY claimed that the black man accosted them while they were eating, repeatedly requesting change."

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/black_guy_asks_nation_for_change

Deep Thought

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

The Fed's New Tricks Are Creating Disaster

      By Frank Shostak from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"The damage from the loose monetary policies of the Fed from January 2001 to June 2004 cannot be undone by trying to fix symptoms. Various activities or financial bubbles that sprang up on the back of loose monetary policies have weakened the bottom line of the economy. This fact cannot be undone by another dosage of policies that attempt to suppress the symptoms. If anything, such policies are likely only to weaken the bottom line further."

http://www.mises.org/story/2922

Smarter Than a Rothschild or a British Prime Minister?

      By Douglas Herman from Strike The Root

"I am not an educated man, nor do I possess any advanced degrees, but I do enjoy reading a wide range of subjects. The most important thing I’ve learned is not to trust learned people at face value, but seek a second, third or fourth perspective, oftentimes from other, equally uneducated people like myself. Humans, especially many college educated ones, possess a predictable tendency to lie, cheat and steal, or otherwise hoodwink lesser educated or more gullible souls (like myself). Later these shysters run for high political office on their vast, prior accomplishments. "

http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/herman/herman3.html

I Suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Part 3

      By James Glaser from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Veterans have every kind of wound imaginable, and many that no one could imagine. It seems understandable that veterans with these wounds could suffer from combat stress for years, maybe for a lifetime. There is another group that suffers the same combat stress as those I just described, but this group has no physical scars to remind them of their time in combat. "

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0712e.asp

Life After Bear Stearns

      By Theodore Butler from SilverSeek.com

"The main difference between the gold and silver is that silver is the better value on the true fundamentals. The world doesn’t have to end for silver to climb in price. Nor does the dollar have to collapse. Nor must there be inflation, deflation, turmoil in the financial system or a fight to quality. If, unfortunately, those circumstances occur, silver should do fine. But all that has to occur for silver to quadruple in price again, just like it has already quadrupled, is for time to pass and more people recognize its true fundamentals and for the manipulative short position to be resolved. This will happen regardless of changing conditions."

http://news.silverseek.com/TedButler/1205864199.php

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

The Great Privatizing Ploy

      By Garry Reed from River Cities' Reader

"A government monopoly transmogrified into a government-protected 'private monopoly' is not privatization, and it's not vulture capitalism. It's pretend privatization engineered by vulture governmentism."

http://www.rcreader.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12651&Itemid=42

Hooker Answer

      By Marina from HotForWords

"Your answer to the Hooker riddle"

http://www.hotforwords.com/2008/03/20/hooker-answer/

Are We Out of Cheap Silver?

      By Vincent Bressler from SilverSeek.com

"While the price of silver in the futures market was falling by 17% this week, coin shops all over the country were running out of silver. We are witnessing a disconnect between the financial markets and reality. In the financial markets, the silver shorts hold all the cards: 1) They have a virtually unlimited check book from the FED 2) They can influence the futures exchange to jack up margin requirements when the price is falling rapidly, but not when it is increasing rapidly 3) They can changes the delivery and trading rules on the futures exchange."

http://news.silverseek.com/SilverSeek/1206111600.php

Stepping Up the Spending Surveillance

      By The Mogambo Guru (Richard Daughty) from The Daily Reckoning

"I note with alarm that with the index at 1293, everybody who bought the stocks of this index since the third quarter of 2006 has lost money! Hahaha! Nice investing, dudes!"

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG031808.html

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