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"One of the most powerful weapons against neoliberalism and corporate rule is to demonize the big business interests in terms of their own 'free market' rhetoric. Dean Baker does this regularly. Baker skewers the 'free trade' rhetoric of Tom Friedman by pointing out the real mercantilist nature of phony 'free trade agreements,' in which so-called 'intellectual property' plays the same protectionist role for transnational corporations as tariffs did for the old national industrial trusts."
"The federal government, after all, is considered our provider and protector, isn’t it? Why in the world would we need protection from our provider and protector? Moreover, in America everyone knows that we are the government, right? Why would we need protection from ourselves?"
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0808a.asp
"The time has come for the United States to plan not only its exit from Iraq, but from other countries where our military presence is unnecessary and often unappreciated. We don’t need U.S. troops in Europe, for example, where there is no military threat to NATO, nor in South Korea or Japan. Our European and Asian allies are wealthy enough to pay for their own security needs."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2376
"Federal regulators have given the green light to stevia, a natural, zero-calorie sweetener that could transform the sweetener world...."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-stevia-sweetener-fda-dec17,0,63568.story
"Every year, we see scores of innovations trickle onto the web — everything from new browser features to cool web apps to entire programming languages. Some of these concepts just make us smile, then we move on. Some completely blow our minds with their utility and ingenuity — and become must-haves."
http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2008/12/YE8_web
"Something is happening to this country. It still has a lot going for it—friendly people, great diners, good blues, country bands, widespread availability of illegal drugs. But the government is out of control. Everything is illegal and watched. It’s getting so you can’t shoot cats from a car window with a twelve-gauge any more. Who wants to live in that kind of world? We’ll probably be overrun by cats, drown in them."
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Bastards.shtml
"The court filing says police raided Manna Storehouse and the Stowers’ home Dec. 1, 2008. It is alleged that 'during the raid, at least one if not several police entered the home with guns drawn' and that the family’s home was also surrounded by police with guns drawn, according to the court filing. At least eight children were in the home during the raid."
"All governments thrive on lies. We might even say that apart from weapons and men cruel enough to wield them on behalf of the rulers, lies are a government’s most essential resource."
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=620
"I was talking with some friends over the Christmas holiday break and they were commenting on how lucky we are that we live in a free country where we have the liberty and the opportunity to live our lives the way we want and are not controlled by the government like in other countries."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/cooper1.html
"Imagine if you were home having a glass of wine with dinner and you get a call that one of your children is hurt or sick and in an emergency situation. Imagine not being able to get to them because your car decided that the wine you just drank was enough to lock you out of driving. That’s not an anti-drunken driving safety device; that’s a neo-Prohibitionist enforcement device—evidence that groups such as MADD have strayed from their original purpose to combat drunken driving."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2389
"Local licensing, zoning and safety laws whose main function is to criminalize low-overhead business models in the informal and household sectors should be eliminated. 'Intellectual property' should be eliminated as a barrier both to the development of modularized, easily reparable product design, and to competing open-source models of production."
"What is the state? It is the group within society that claims for itself the exclusive right to rule everyone under a special set of laws that permit it to do to others what everyone else is rightly prohibited from doing, namely aggressing against person and property."
"This five-and-a-half-minute-long interview was conducted by Nick Gillespie and shot and edited by Dan Hayes. Widely published in both popular outlets and academic journals, Sartwell teaches at Dickinson College."
http://reason.tv/video/show/638.html
"A free market in money and banking will not necessarily lead to a 100% gold standard, nor would every form of paper money have to be a certificate entitling the owner to trade it for precious metal."
http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2008/12/free-banking.html
"[T]he state has a particular history, and exists in the context of that history. If it's a tree, it's a big oak deeply rooted in particular soil. The 'right' approach is a considered pruning of the tree or, at the libertarian extreme, cutting it low on the trunk and leaving the stump and roots. The 'left' approach is removal -- 'root and branch'...."
http://knappster.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-on-left-v-right.html
"The Quiet Revolution will involve the people acting in their own self-interest and putting an end to unnecessary consumption. And the result of this Revolution will be a new financial system. One based on created wealth, not on borrowing to finance future wealth. And one that doesn't rely on government debt and inflation to survive one day to the next."
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=3130
"In the world of scenario planning, the fact that something is unthinkable should not prevent us from considering it. The breakup of the Soviet Union was unthinkable almost until the day it happened. At the same time, of course, not every impossible thing will happen."
http://kk.org/ct2/2008/12/breakup-of-the-usa.php
"Residents from the Milwaukee neighborhoods of Riverwest and East Side are scheduled to meet Wednesday to discuss printing their own money. The idea is that the local cash could be used at neighborhood stores and businesses, thus encouraging local spending. The result, supporters hope, would be a bustling local economy, even as the rest of the nation deals with a recession."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-talk_moneydec03,0,2902061.story
"Today saw the launch of a group that aims to protect open source projects from patent disputes both by formally establishing prior art and by participating in patent peer review. The new group is called Linux Defenders, and it divides its efforts into three main branches."
"The only 'change' that America really wants to hear about is evicting George Bush from the White House. They're sick of him and all the disturbance he has caused in their financial affairs. But beyond that, the American public is deathly afraid of the kind of changes we actually face...."
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/12/does-mr-o-know.html
"[T]his notion that the Nazis were sub-human has served every government everywhere ever since. At the very time that they do many of the things the Nazis did, they hold heads high and say 'we are not like them'."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/82/davies/davies14.html
Lew Rockwell interviews Dr. Paul Craig Roberts author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions (with Laurence Stratton) [podcast/MP3]
http://www.lewrockwell.com/podcast/
?p=episode&name=2008-12-11_082_rogue_state.mp3
"We are assured by the awe-inspiring U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve that if we trust them with essential control of the American economy, all will be set right."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0812c.asp
"The task of reflation, which the incoming government has set for itself, involves much more than merely printing lots of paper money, and spending it like crazy: it means maintaining the inflationary mindset, the inflated goals, the inflated rhetoric, and, most of all, the inflated military budget that supposedly ensures our role as the world's last and only superpower."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13924
"Governments are managed by elites who are beholden to somewhat larger elites for support. Members of the former usually spring from the latter. Whether the nature of rule dictates this sort of cozy arrangement, as pronounced by the Iron Law of Oligarchy, or not, we see this type of tight, inbred elite rule in virtually every society, regardless of its declared ideological commitments and ideals."
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=604
Lew Rockwell interviews David Nolan: a founder of the Libertarian Party. [podcast/MP3]
"Time will tell whether the next president exhibits courage or cowardice. Personally, I doubt very much if Obama is another JFK or FDR, but simply another Bush man in black face. Clearly, in his hasty rush to Washington to bail out the bankers before the election, he did what he had to do. He did the bidding of his backers. After all, how else to continue the status quo, unless one poses, chameleon-like, to oppose it?"
http://www.strike-the-root.com/82/herman/herman8.html
"Madoff's scheme played into the belief that wealth was not something to work for, but something to scheme for. It could be generated by playing your cards right, hooking into the right networks, and finding the right 'investments.' The people with whom he dealt had, it turns out, some internal sense that there was something a little bit shady about the whole operation. But they dispensed with this sense when the fat checks arrived, and concluded that whatever was making this perpetual motion machine operate, it did work."
"Barack Obama is picking the very folks who helped get us into this financial mess to now try and lead us out of it. ... You can see the feathers coming out of their mouths as the foxes are once again put in charge of the henhouse."
http://www.progress.org/2008/writeoff.htm
"Threats against allies accepting missile defense hardware and naval exercises in the U.S. sphere of influence are Russia’s way of signaling that further NATO expansion to include Russia’s key neighbors will meet stiff resistance. The up-to-now oblivious U.S. government needs to finally heed these warnings."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2382
"A paper-money system is not beneficial from an overall point of view. It does not create real resources on which our welfare depends. It merely distributes the existing resources in a different manner; some people gain, others lose. It is a system that makes banks and financial markets vulnerable, because it induces them to economize on the essential safety valves of business: cash and equity. Why hold any substantial cash balances if the central bank stands ready to lend you any amount that might be needed, at a moment's notice? Why use your own money if you can finance your investments with cheap credit from the printing press?"
"In a sound economy, personal virtue would be good for the economy as a whole. People who put off buying fleeting pleasures and possessions in exchange for greater financial freedom will send a signal to producers that they must create less expensive, more cost-effective goods. This fosters innovation, and soon high-quality products will be affordable for the poor that were, just a few years before, luxuries for the rich. This is how a sound economy grows. Not by creating more dollars, but by getting more and more for the dollar over time."
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=3114
"It remains to be seen whether it will work, but with Sun's OpenStorage business growing dramatically faster than the rest of the storage industry, it just might work."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10111061-16.html
"Life has shaped the physical shape and form of the rocky planet we live on. Life, a standing wave of ephemeral organisms, each one who lives a nano-second in geological time, shapes the seemingly eternal rocks beneath them. It is not just layers of pre-living organisms in marble and limestone, but the very mountains may be influenced by life."
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/12/technology_a_ge.php
"Rails 3 will be more modular and will give users much of the flexibility and 'framework agnosticism' that was available in Merb—the ability to cherry pick which components are used and choose between several different options for various layers of the stack. In order to balance this with the out-of-the-box ease of use that developers have come to expect from Rails, the new version will still have good, consistent defaults."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/
20081224-ruby-on-rails-and-merb-to-merge-for-rails-3.html
"Financial regulation is usually proposed to protect the unsophisticated. People knowledgeable about finance and securities presumably can take care of themselves. But what makes the Madoff scandal so noteworthy is that the most sophisticated types were taken in, even though several experts sounded alarms. Why?"
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0812p.asp
"The recent financial turmoil (circa September 2008) should, once again, remind us that the institutions of government money and fractional reserve banks are systemically unsound and inherently dishonest."
http://www.voluntaryist.com/forthcoming/bailoutobservations.php
"In this 47-minute video, Paul Grignon lays out the workings of the fractional reserve system, explaining how banks are able to create money and then collect interest on it." [Although I don't agree with all the ideas expressed, this video has tremendous insight.]
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/03/where-money-comes-fr.html
"If the economy is to experience healthy sustainable growth, this garbage needs to be thrown out—and the incompetent managers and investors who created it need to be removed from positions of control over assets they have demonstrated they cannot manage responsibly and successfully. Free enterprise is a system of profit AND loss. If the government rides to the rescue of every large-scale, politically connected loser, the system will grow ever more rotten from the top down."
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=800
Lew Rockwell interviews Dr. John McDougall: Dr. McDougall's Health and Medical Center; McDougall Newsletter Archives [podcast/MP3]
http://www.lewrockwell.com/podcast/
?p=episode&name=2008-12-17_086_the_medical_industrial_complex.mp3
"What is America? Obviously, it’s many things, but one can’t help but think that for the Limbaughs and Hannitys, it is essentially the government. "
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0808b.asp
"Here is how the game is played: Current defense contractors, and companies that hope to get a piece of the multibillion-dollar tax dollar action, hire retired generals to use their influence and connections to push their products on TV, in the guise of doing 'analysis'."
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/dec/03/campos-analyst-for-hire/
"Although media coverage has focused on U.S. occupations and counterinsurgency/counterterrorist campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq—which had the perverse result of further inflaming Islamist radicalism—the Bush administration has been busy stirring that same hornet’s nest in other parts of the world, especially in Africa. Not only has the administration not been honest with the American people about the reasons for the 9/11 attacks, it has also been self-delusional."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2398
"The private military contracting industry is generally thought of in terms of two types of employees. There are logistics workers who drive the trucks, build and staff the bases, maintain the weapons, and do many other non-armed tasks. And then there are security contractors who carry guns and, when necessary, fight to protect their clients. But the industry is far more diverse than that, though you would not know it to read the average commentary on the subject."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9807
"Did fearful investors suddenly shift from holding 2-year corporates to holding T-bills, thereby driving down the price of these corporate bonds and, equivalently, driving up their effective yield? Such a move might seem compatible with the onset of regime uncertainty."
"At first, the Mediaeval sinner could expiate his sin by doing good works in public like feeding the poor or comforting the sick while the modern sinner could recycle Dixie cups or plant a bush. But, in both cases, this left the ruling classes out of the loop. So the Mediaeval power brokers began selling indulgences, which allowed the Church to do the good acts for them, and today's offset vendors began selling carbon offsets, which allows the corporations to do the good acts for them."
Lew Rockwell interviews David Beito: author of Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance During The Great Depression [podcast/MP3]
http://www.lewrockwell.com/podcast/
?p=episode&name=2008-12-18_087_depression_and_tax_resistance.mp3
"I wonder what the other blowhard pundits seen here have to say about making fun of Euro Pacific Capital president Peter Schiff's accurate predictions in 2006 and 2007 about the economic meltdown and its causes?"
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/24/in-2007-pundits-scof.html
"Imagine that at Lexington and Concord, British Major John Pitcairn does not shout 'Disperse you Rebels—Damn you, throw down your Arms and disperse!' . . . and that the shot heard ‘round the world is not fired. Imagine that instead he reads to the assembled colonists the following decree by British Commander-in-Chief General Thomas Gage, modeled of course after the newly minted 2008 District of Columbia gun law:"
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2390
"The story of socialism at Plymouth Rock is one that few Americans are taught in their public (i.e., government) schools. "
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0811p.asp
"Obama would do well to learn the lessons of his predecessors and avoid the reflexive inclination to prove his strength by attacking Pakistan. The need for a young and inexperienced new president to avoid appearing weak resulted in John F. Kennedy’s disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and consequent Cuban Missile Crisis. These acts were performed for no strategic reason and nearly caused the world’s nuclear incineration."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2375
"Even if you set aside the magnitude of Israel's violations of the Geneva conventions and the long terrible history of its methodical collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, consider the vastly disproportionate carnage in the conflict."
http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=13969
"The scale of the contamination is mind-boggling. Laos was hit by an average of one B-52 bomb-load every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, between 1964 and 1973. US bombers dropped more ordnance on Laos in this period than was dropped during the whole of the second world war."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/03/laos-cluster-bombs-uxo-deaths
"Analysts, and some politicians, argue that the real motivation behind the military operation is ambitious Israeli politicians and the upcoming Israeli elections due Feb. 10. During heated debates in the Israeli Knesset, or parliament, Israeli-Arab Knesset Members (MKs) accused the Israeli government of waging a war for electioneering purposes."
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45258
"There are hopes among many Obama watchers that the new president will take steps to repair America's ties with the Middle East by withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and opening a diplomatic dialogue with Iran. Thus having strengthened U.S. status in the Middle East, Obama might be in position to embrace a more activist strategy aimed at bringing about Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9856
Lew Rockwell interviews Gerald Celente: Founder/Director of The Trends Research Institute [podcast/MP3]
"Will the government simply take over private property? Will it leave titles in private hands, but strip the owners of real control and profitable use of their properties? These questions fall under the rubric of regime uncertainty."
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/57839.html
"The government says we've been in a recession for the past year. Experts say it'll be at least another year before it's over. And everybody says it's the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Nice sound bite. What does that mean?"
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/12/23/10_things_that_wont_survive_the_recession_1.html
"To make matters worse, first-time jobless claims are hovering around a 26-year high, which they explain as 'elevated readings' that 'indicate the labor market is deteriorating as the economy heads into a second year of a recession.' In fact, 6 of the 10 components of the Leading Indicator were down, using words like 'slump', 'plunging,' and 'record low'."
http://news.goldseek.com/RichardDaughty/1230706920.php
"In the twilight of the Bush days, in the twilight of the twilight season, a consensus has formed that we are headed into a long, dark passage leading we know not where."
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/12/people-get-ready.html
"This past weekend saw the debut of a remake of the classic 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still. The original movie was so good that I don’t know why anybody really thought it necessary to make a new version. But much of modern culture has turned into a cheesy imitation of the past. So why should the movie biz be any different?"
http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/an-alien-tree-hugger-scoffs-at-earths-governments/
"By Thanksgiving weekend, we've had our fill of turkey. But why not get a festive jump on end-of-the-year "Worst of" lists with a dash of holiday vitriol?"
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/11/no-thanks-requi.html
"Rumor has it that Strike Entertainment is talking about picking up the rights to John Carpenter's They Live. "
http://io9.com/5102045/6-rules-for-remaking-john-carpenters-they-live
"Acclaimed comic book writer Harvey Pekar discusses Studs Terkel, and his own secular Jewish identity, with cultural historian Paul Buhle."
http://jbooks.com/secularculture/Pekar.htm
"The legendary James Thurber wrote the parody ... It is my great pleasure to read it aloud...."
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/24/susie-bright-reads-t.html
"Trying to fix problems caused by excess consumption with more spending is like telling a fat guy that the way to lose weight is to eat more donuts."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKc4XFK0iVY
"NASA instructors offer a firsthand look at the training astronauts endure before they can physically and mentally withstand an appearance on Larry King Live."
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/nasa_simulator_prepares
A guide to understanding flow charts in flow chart form
"He [bin Laden] added that the losses due to the Madoff fraud would have an immediate impact on al-Qaeda's financial health, forcing the terror network to shutter several regional offices and to cut back on the production values of Mr. bin Laden's videos."
http://www.borowitzreport.com/article.aspx?ID=6973
"Now I can afford to cruise the streets looking for hitchhikers, so that I can give them a ride while I explain to them, 'Hey, kid! Did you know that money is created by debt nowadays? It is!' "
http://www.safehaven.com/article-11989.htm
"We humans are choice-making animals. The freedom to make choices is both a blessing and a curse. Depending on age, temperament, information, and alternatives, some people experience the opportunity for choice as exhilarating, others as tormenting. Traditionally, it was one of the functions of religion to relieve people of choices. Today, psychiatry and the therapeutic state perform the same job."
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-therapeutic-state-the-burden-of-responsibility/
"The study of chaos makes us more familiar with the non-linear nature of complex systems. From our own bodies to social systems to the rest of the physical universe, our world is far more characterized by spontaneous, informal, and unplanned behavior than our linear thinking chooses to acknowledge."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer185.html
"Libertarians have done fairly well as it concerns the drug war, leading the reform movement and articulating the idea of self-ownership on the issue of drug use. Some libertarians have complained that we focus too much on the issue, but this is absolutely not true. When hundreds of thousands of people are imprisoned and the Bill of Rights has been ravaged, it is difficult to overstate the importance of the issue. It is also a good way to introduce a left-liberal to the real viciousness of which the state is capable. "
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0808d.asp
"The eccentrics like Leedskalnin are best left ignored, as are any artifacts or theories that challenge that status quo. After all, universities are beholden to State funding. And this causes faculty to make conclusions that are in line with State interests."
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=3122
"[S]cience hasn't led to the creation of new tricks. Yet even if it doesn't there could be practical spin-offs, says Kuhn. Many of the techniques advertisers and politicians use to persuade us are straight out of the magician's book of tricks, so a better knowledge of them could arm us all against manipulation."
"For me, the short-list of stuff in a quality life begins with some decidedly low-tech things: a garden, well-prepared meals, a decent home, and some beautifully-crafted objects. None of these require much money or many hours on the job. We have the good fortune to live when high productivity has made living well possible with little work."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/82/groves/groves3.html
Origin of Ponzi Scheme
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3_h8eNgYrU
"What else sells in a depression? Possibly a board game. When a heater salesman named Charles Darrow lost his job in Philadelphia following the 1929 stock market crash, he survived by working odd jobs. One day some neighbors showed him a board game they had been developing, and Darrow was intrigued. "
http://www.strike-the-root.com/82/smith/smith9.html
"Currently we take a 'top-down' approach to microelectronics, taking a silicon wafer as the raw material, then carving ever smaller components into it. But the burgeoning field of nanotechnology allows us to experiment with the kind of thing nature does all the time: building things from the bottom up by letting atoms self-assemble into tiny structures."
"The Eclipse Foundation has released an updated roadmap, one that recognizes Windows current importance, but also sees Windows Vista as an opportunity to nudge developers to the Eclipse platform, potentially away from Microsoft's Vista...."
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