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"Two of the three front-runners for President must be considered war criminals for voting for the Iraq Authorization in 2002. For that reason, I can't see myself voting for either John McCain or Hillary Clinton; how can I vote for someone I believe should be in prison?"
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2925
"Weekend sales tax collection holidays prior to the start of the school year have been declared recently in several states to reduce parents’ out-of-pocket costs of buying clothing and school supplies. Retail sales boom as a result."
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=85
"Did you know that at the end of the Great Depression, America had 3,200 community currencies? There are numerous groups throughout America interested in starting community currencies. As my good friend Franklin Sanders likes to say, using precious metals could be the 'Just do it' shortcut"
http://www.solari.com/blog/?p=858
"Whatever a libertarian may think of the wisdom of smoking marijuana, it cannot be denied that these particular pot-smoking college students – who were presumably not picking up the habit solely for this event – were engaging in what can only be called anti-state activism. Rather than cowering away from the state, hoping to be overlooked, they risked arrest in an act of defiance that brought one of the state's more ridiculous laws into greater disrepute."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/clark-d5.html
"There were 30,000 people in jail for drugs in 1980, while today there are half a million. Other factors include the criminalization of nearly everything these days, even passing bad checks or the pettiest of thefts. And judges are under all sorts of minimum-sentencing requirements. "
"On April 25, 2008, in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Mark Nolt, a Wenger Mennonite (Horse and Buggy Mennonite) dairyman, threatened for months with arrest for selling raw milk without a permit was removed from his property by state troopers."
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohen04262008.html
"No matter how rigorously rational the reasons, how artfully articulated the arguments, how many millions of taxbucks the governcrats will burn through to build the Great Speed Bump of Mexico, it will never produce the results its cheerleaders insist on pretending it will."
http://www.rcreader.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12720&Itemid=42
"Others argue that the worst is still ahead…that the stock market will melt down…that housing prices will fall another 20%…and that the whole world will go into a monumental downturn."
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/RSS/DR042408sec1.html
"Even though most people refuse to think about it this way, the fact that there is a state means a lot of our choices are already made for us. We do not have the freedom to lead our own lives, we have but the freedom to pick one of the few alternatives made available to us - so that we can serve the privileged classes. We are in this sense nothing less than slaves, even though we are indeed granted some freedoms and a life that is not directly and in detail (but indirectly) ruled by others."
http://www.perbylund.com/blog/?p=49
"[T]he trend of government interference to 'help' with such problems is reliably making them worse and creating new problems, including epic tragedies such as the worldwide rise in food prices (combined with outright shortages) caused in large part by government biofuel mandates. Why let the market decide what to do with that corn crop (uh, sell it as food?) when government can forcibly divert it into ethanol fuel, enriching various corporate pals in the process. Side effects include environmental degradation, food riots and starvation in the Third World (and soon, perhaps, for the poor here in America), and a likely increase in both greenhouse gases and imported oil use."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/allport/allport9.html
"The struggle to create a healthy way of life in America will not be an easy one. ... The first step is to free ourselves of the slave mentality that the doctor knows everything and that we are dependent on him/her to cure us of all our ailments."
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=2536
"Ask Americans what made our country great and they will say, without hesitation, that liberty is our touchstone. Yet ask Americans what their government should do for them and the answer can be boiled down simply to this: 'Control, tax, and regulate my neighbors.' Americans want liberty for themselves, but they want something very different for others."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/ruwart3.html
"Linux has been proclaiming the year of the desktop for years, to no avail. Meanwhile, quietly, insidiously, it has been taking a rising share of the mobile and embedded market."
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9925293-16.html
"Like other areas that have been shut out of the postindustrial economy, Grays Harbor turned to renewable energy not for feel-good reasons but financial ones. 'Politically I am on the right side of Genghis Khan,' says Quigg. 'I'm not a lefty wacko.' Nevertheless, 'We make the greenest products, and we make them with the greenest fuel,' he enthusiastically boasts."
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/05/rural-renewal-small-town-americas-lifeline.html
"As with any would-be Windows rival, Ubuntu 8.04 faces an uphill battle for hardware and software certifications, although the move by Dell in 2007 to begin preloading Ubuntu on some of its notebook and desktop PCs points to progress on the hardware front. As for software, the continued improvement of open-source alternative applications such as the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, Firefox Web browser and Evolution groupware client go a long way toward providing users with the tools they require to get their work done from a Linux-based desktop."
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Ubuntu-804-Is-Ready-to-Take-On-Windows/
"OMNow is dedicated to the "development, the support, and the empowerment of an open media infrastructure," says the Foundation, which is seeking corporate members to help support the Gnash and Cygnal free software projects. The group is also said to collaborate closely with other nonprofits like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and OLPC (One Laptop Per Child). OLPC, which is seeding low-cost Linux laptops in developing nations, offers a pre-installed version of Gnash."
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5137440588.html
"World-saving is actually a bipartisan foreign policy. It is the belief that the American version of democracy must be spread throughout the world, by force if necessary. It is the vain belief that Americans have unique values that everyone, no matter their cultural, political, or economic differences, must also have."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0801d.asp
"When a grandmother is molested at a checkpoint, it's standard procedure -- but woe betide the grandmother who dares put up what meager and half-hearted resistance she can. Turning traumatized geriatric women into 'violent felons' displays one facet of the perverse genius of the Homeland Security State."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2008/04/our-ever-ripening-reich-continued.html
"No nation can stay on top of the world forever. But when you have no competition, you can't rely on others to bring you down; you have to find ways to destroy yourself. For that job, America found just the men it needed just when it needed them most - Alan Greenspan and George W. Bush. What these two men accomplished is probably one of the greatest feats in human history. They took the richest, most powerful country the world has ever seen and, in the space of only five years, practically ruined it. ... But sensible leaders do not make history. Fools do. People reach for glory. Then, they over-reach."
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/RSS/DR042308sec1.html
"The Empire swears by democracy, but how does that translate in reality? In the immediate aftermath of the 1999 war, the taxpayer-funded National Endowment for Democracy – through its Democratic and Republican institutes – waged a campaign to topple the government of Slobodan Milosevic."
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=12732
"There's a persistant political myth that paranoia is only a feature of the fringe, something common among alienated radicals and reactionaries but rare in the great American center. In fact, paranoia has been ubiquitous across the political spectrum. You can find it in nearly every faction and movement at every point in American history, not least among those establishment figures who think they're immune to conspiracy theories."
http://reason.com/news/show/126160.html
"The only two substances that definitively get someone to quit running for President are gold or lead. In Mrs Clinton’s case even their potency might fail. Gold, in this case the lack of it in the form of campaign funds, wouldn’t stop her tottering into the next round of primaries on a shoe-string. And even if – perish the thought – an assassin retained by the Democratic National Committee stepped from behind a shrub and laid Mrs Clinton low, we’d have Bill Clinton insisting that a generic Clinton family candidacy for the Democratic nomination be kept in play, while he simultaneously sought repeal of the 22cnd amendment which bars US presidents from serving more than two terms. "
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04262008.html
"There has been much talk of the Israel Lobby and its distorting effect on U.S. foreign policy, especially in regard to the Middle East. What is never talked about is the extent to which the Lobby is part of Israel's very active and efficient intelligence-gathering operation. The aboveground pro-Israel movement and the covert fifth column are often intermingled organizationally...."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12740
"Politicians claim to be friends of the small 'family farmer,' but most government payments go to large farms, with the largest 9% of all U.S. farms (with revenue above $250,000) getting 56% of all payments under the current bill, enacted in 2002. More than half of U.S. farms receive no payments at all, because they don’t produce corn, wheat, cotton or other major crops that qualify for commodity payments."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2176
"The main influence on the simulated network as it grows is the need to efficiently connect new areas to the existing road network – a process they call 'local optimisation'. They say the road patterns in cities evolve thanks to similar local efforts, as people try to connect houses, businesses and other infrastructures to existing roads. Evolution has ensured that local efficiency also drives the growth of transport networks in biology – for example, in plant leaf veins and circulatory systems."
"Over half of the electricity produced in the U.S., for instance, never actually gets used for a productive purpose. A lot of it gets converted into heat, and is then lost."
http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9921561-54.html
"Gas prices are up and oil executives are once again testifying before Congress. Clearly, many politicians, pundits, and consumers lament the rising cost of gas. Before we join them in their chorus, let us take a step back and ask this question: Are gas prices really all that high?"
"In its own way, energy is a form of capital, isn’t it? And it is a major competitive advantage to control a source of low-cost energy. In fact, control over reliable sources of low-cost energy may be even better than access to cheap capital, especially in years to come. There are so many dollars in this world that almost any darn fool can borrow them, or how else to explain what has been happening on Wall Street lately?"
http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Archives/2008/20080423.html
"The SAVE Act may or may not come to a vote this session, but employment verification will almost certainly be a part of future compromise legislation on immigration reform. That's worrying. Walls offend us aesthetically and symbolically; they’re clumsy and primitive and cruel. But they’re also easy to tear down; far easier than a slowly metastasizing system of total employment surveillance, of growing databases and expanding bureaucracies."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/126091.html
"Few areas of the economy are more strewn with protectionist laws than agriculture—in rich and poor countries alike. A panoply of quotas, subsidies, tariffs and prohibitions designed to win votes and, essentially, bribes has discouraged the much-needed increase in food production. In normal free-market circumstances, the slightest signal that prices were going up would have been enough to ensure that masses of capital were invested in farming for food."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2177
"The US Dollar, along with the Pound Sterling, still lost half its value for consumers and savers between 1981 and today. But annual rates of inflation held below 3%, with occasional dips towards 1% growing ever-more frequent at the start of this decade. And all this while, with no one daring to mention it beyond a few cranks at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, the supply of money worldwide has surged once again."
http://www.safehaven.com/article-10059.htm
"Although Keynes is not ordinarily cited as a strong anti-inflationist–indeed in important ways, his later views helped to create a well-nigh inevitably inflationary system of government macroeconomic interventionism–I know of no stronger statement against inflation than the one he expressed...."
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=83
"Those former generals who seemed generously to have come out of retirement to provide disinterested analysis of the Bush administration’s military adventures are neither generous nor disinterested. Instead, they are self-conscious, self-seeking conduits for the Pentagon’s talking points, and well connected to military contractors trying to make money off war. "
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0804e.asp
"Since the state is a criminal gang, referring to the ideals in the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights makes about as much sense as referring to a Mafia stooge’s claims that he only wants to 'protect' a shopkeeper that he is in fact extorting, or a pimp’s protestations of virtuous benevolence with regards to his enslaved prostitutes. ... Governments, naturally, always benefit from rousing the general population into animosity against an external enemy. As the saying goes, 'war is the health of the state.' It is very easy to restrict liberty, increase taxes, and promote 'unity' when patriotic fervor can be commingled with fears of invasion and the natural – if cowardly – bloodlust that erupts at the exciting prospect of ogling a safe and distant foreign war."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/molyneux/molyneux1.html
"For a multitude of politicians, interest groups, professional associations, corporations, media organizations, universities, local and state governments and federal agency officials, the War on Terror is now a major profit center, a funding bonanza, and a set of slogans and sound bites to be inserted into budget, project, grant and contract proposals. For the country as a whole, however, it has become a maelstrom of waste and worry that distracts us from more serious problems."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2179
"There are many effective ways in which a moral people could protest. Consider investors, for example. Clearly Halliburton and military suppliers are cleaning up. Investors flock to the stocks in order to participate in the rise in value from booming profits. But what would a moral people do? Wouldn’t they boycott the stocks of the companies that are profiting from the Bush Regime’s war crimes? "
http://counterpunch.org/roberts04232008.html
"The key element of Campaign 1988 was the success of George H.W. Bush’s political advisers – most notably Atwater – in painting Michael Dukakis as a liberal elitist with a foreign-sounding name, a softness toward dangerous criminals (especially black ones), and an uncertain love of the American flag. The conventional recollection of that campaign holds Massachusetts Gov. Dukakis as an inept politician, a not-ready-for-prime-time player, and a rookie lightweight who was easily dispatched by a seasoned heavyweight, then-Vice President Bush."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/042308.html
"The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa, who appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago. The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations before the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/24/close.call.ap/index.html
"Pattison reviewed existing archaeological and genetic evidence, and conducted a new analysis of British DNA. Then, starting in 2001 and working backwards to pre-Roman times, Pattison calculated for each generation the net population growth and the origins of immigrants. He concludes that people with Germanic origins came to Britain well before and after the early Anglo-Saxon period, and this long period of immigration can explain a relatively strong Germanic genetic signal today."
"Soap Opera.. most of us know where the soap comes from.. but how about the opera?"
http://www.hotforwords.com/2008/04/22/soap-opera/
"One would think that the title of my talk – 'The Middle East: Turning the Page on U.S. Foreign Policy' – is fairly noncontroversial, as such things go. Yet the very idea of turning the page – that is, of making a significant change – in our policy in the region is considered heresy, and not only in foreign policy circles but in Washington, D.C., generally. The reason is because our Middle Eastern policy has become hopelessly politicized, locked into a formulaic and increasingly unrealistic stance highly detrimental to our national interest yet artificially maintained by one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington."
Part 1:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12717
Part 2:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12718
"A common strategy of terrorists is to strike the stronger aggressor, hope for an overreaction, and thus gain zealous recruits and funding for the terrorists’ cause. Instead of using intelligence, law enforcement, and limited military and covert action in the shadows to capture or kill terrorists in a low-key way after 9/11, the administration’s highly publicized cowboy invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq were overreactions that must have put a smile on bin Laden’s face."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2175
"The most important argument against the draft is moral. Whatever the excuse given for its implementation, the draft is a form of slavery. Period. ... Of all the forms of slavery that have existed throughout history, forcing someone to fight and die in war is among the most disgusting and is a form of murder against all who don’t survive."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0801h.asp
"The explosion of walls and enclaves reinforced by aerial violence across Iraq suggest that the primary counterinsurgency lessons being followed by the U.S. military in Iraq today derive less from the lessons of 'Lawrence of Arabia' than from Israel's experiences in the Occupied Palestinian Territories over the past decade."
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5162
"Since the birth of the floating (sinking?) currency regime at the beginning of the 1970s, the best bull market of any decade has always continued until the beginning of the next decade."
http://www.safehaven.com/article-10048.htm
"[G]oing into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=JOH20080426&articleId=8813
"In Star Wars and Star Trek, the main way to get around the galaxy is to use warp speed or flip on your hyperdrive, which is a bit like hitting the gas pedal as hard as you can so you'll get there a bit quicker. There's more science to it than that, involving subspace fields and hyperspace and all that jazz, but the end result is that you're traveling very quickly. But besides speed, what other faster than light alternatives are there? Check out our list of other ways to get there in scifi."
http://io9.com/382662/forget-warp-speed-try-one-of-these-alternative-ftl-ideas
"The company has essentially devised a way to better commercialize urea, a compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, found in urine."
http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9925048-54.html
"This new version seems more likely to be a reboot, with new actors playing rebel leader Blake and the rest of the gang, plus the flouncy-but-evil Supreme Commander Servalan."
http://io9.com/383719/blakes-7-poised-to-launch-a-new-rebellion
"In the 1950s, Heston affirmed our beliefs by bolstering them with a face for our classical heroes. In the 1970s, he challenged us with new expressions and a new kind of hero, inspiring a whole generation to strive towards reform and circumvent our approaching perils."
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/he-was-legend/
"Every six months, the Materials Research Society celebrates the most eye-catching images found in the course of their researchers' studies -- celebrating the serendipitous convergence of science and art."
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/04/gallery_nano_art
"Everyone could use a forest of Albunea, a place where dreams, ghosts, owls, oracles and ancestors offer hints about your fate and advice about difficult decisions. In 'Lavinia,' Ursula K. Le Guin's brilliant new novel, a great deal is illuminated in Albunea, not least of which is the true character of Lavinia."
http://www.oregonlive.com/O/artsandbooks/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/1208296504122710.xml&coll=7
Talk show hosts interview slain soldier's mother.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/home_depot_honors_fallen_soldiers
"Platinum members can now purchase submersible convertibles, dinosaur bones and $100 a cup coffee harvested from Indonesian jungle cat feces."
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=166957
"Jason Jones and John Oliver attempt to care about Philadelphians in local taverns, local bowling alleys with attached taverns and diners with liquor licenses."
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=166851&title=indecision-2008-apathetic
"Sn4tchbuckl3r reboots his life in Peopleburg, with a gentle push from some new friends."
"When Americans think about nature, we picture the wilderness, go camping, to Yosemite. But nature is happening in our homes, gardens, lawns, and on our plates. ... What happens on our plates dictates the composition of species in the world -- the reason there are plenty of cows and not too many wolves left."
http://www.progress.org/2008/nutrient.htm
"A standard theory among a large school of evolutionists is that intelligence is low among people in sub-Saharan Africa, where humanity apparently originated, because life in tropical climates doesn’t impose great intellectual demands; when people migrated to colder climates, as for example in Europe, they had to evolve higher intelligence to survive. To most people it seems obvious that higher intelligence would be useful anywhere at all, so why, they ask, didn’t it arise below the Sahara?"
http://fredoneverything.net/Hart.shtml
"Calling someone a gold bug is rarely a compliment, and often an insult. For most people, a gold bug is a weirdo, at best, and a complete nut case, at worst. Don’t these gold bugs understand that gold does not pay interest or dividends? And as for those who advocate a return to the gold standard, geez, what are they thinking? Don’t they know the relic of a vanished politico-economic order when they see one?"
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/49581.html
"The price of the zinc required to mint pennies has been steadily increasing ... the cost of producing a penny is now 1.7 cents — it costs nearly two pennies to make one. Producing a coin at a higher cost than the value of the coin itself is known as 'negative seigniorage.' This phenomenon has led many to question the continued existence of the penny and suggest it be abolished. Understanding negative seigniorage in economic terms will lead to an opposite conclusion: hundred dollar bills should be done away with."
"So why isn't gold going like gangbusters right now? A lot of people have a lot of theories as to why gold is going down, when the theory and the entire history of economic mankind say it should be going up, and most of them are right, to one degree or another, as there are as many reasons for acting as there are actors, and there are eight million stories in the naked city."
http://www.safehaven.com/article-10051.htm
"The naked video… "
http://www.hotforwords.com/2008/04/21/naked/
"It's bigger than Mercury, has dune seas like Tatooine (or Arrakis) and has the coolest name of any moon: Titan. The Cassini spacecraft is still revealing many of its secrets, with another flyby scheduled just a few weeks from now."
http://io9.com/382911/why-titan-is-the-awesomest-moon-in-the-solar-system
"[C]omplaints stem from the anti-Microsoft backlash, which reflects dissatisfaction with the company's history, business practices, tactics, and bogus announcements. Much of the disgruntlement, however, can be attributed Vista itself—and the poor marketing job done by Microsoft."
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