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Bradley Keyes is the guest editor today.
 

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Sweatshops
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR The recent tragedy in Bangladesh took over 1,000 lives, and I hope blame is properly attributed and some kind of compensation awarded. It has unfortunately re-awoken a slew of guilt merchants known, curiously, as “liberals,” who are shrieking for something to be done to stop Walmart, J.C. Penney and other retailers doing business with Bangladeshi companies. The oddity of that L-word is that it was coined in early 19th Century England to...
The Voluntary Voice (Book Review #4)
Column by Alex R. Knight III. Exclusive to STR Most of us are familiar with scores of libertarian books written by movement luminaries or anthologies containing scores of them, both past and present. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so refreshing to see a volume go into print straight from the grassroots. The Voluntary Voice: A Book by Individuals (Volume One, 2013), is a compendium of writings from a variety of libertarian perspectives that all exude what the title in part...
U.S. Military ‘Power Grab’ Goes Into Effect
Original article By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries.
Australian Government Initiates Covert Internet Censorship
Original article The country's financial regulator, has quietly started issuing legal notices to ISPs requesting them to block certain types of websites deemed illegal. There's no oversight or appeals process, and already a false positive event has resulted in some 1,200 innocent websites being blocked from Australians viewing them.
Lawsuit Says IRS Illegally Seized 60 Million Health Records
Original article The suit said the 15 IRS agents involved in the raid did not have a search warrant or subpoena for the medical records which “may concern the intimate medical records of every state judge in California, every state court employee in California, leading and politically controversial members of the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild, and prominent citizens in the world of entertainment, business and government, from all walks of life."
Argentina's Modest Proposal: Buy Bonds Or Go To Jail
Original article Argentina's president Kirchner, a keen observer of recent events in Cyprus, has figured out a way to kill two birds with one stone, namely attempt to put an end to tax evasion, and fund the capex of the recently nationalized state oil company YPF (now that its former owner, Spainish Repsol, is less than keen to keep investing in its former Argentine subsidiary). To do that she will present the local tax-evading population (pretty much anyone with any disposable income and savings) with a...
Florida Quietly Shortened Yellow Light Standards & Lengths, Resulting in More Red Light Camera Tickets for You
Original article The 10 News Investigators discovered the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) quietly changed the state's policy on yellow intervals in 2011, reducing the minimum below federal recommendations. The rule change was followed by engineers, both from FDOT and local municipalities, collaborating to shorten the length of yellow lights at key intersections, specifically those with red light cameras (RLCs).
Desensitization Training: Police Practice Fighting 'Angry Parents'
Original article Puyallup, Washington police ran a SWAT-based training exercise to prepare for the possibility of angry, armed parents attempting to take over a school.
Apple Deluged by Police Demands to Decrypt iPhones
Original article ATF says no law enforcement agency could unlock a defendant's iPhone, but Apple can "bypass the security software" if it chooses. Apple has created a police waiting list because of high demand.
The Free State Project Grows Up
Original article Excellent article by Reason magazine about the history and some of the successes - so far - of the Free State Project.
Restaurant Owners Blast Proposal to Tax Employees' Tips as Business' Income
Original article Help us save New Hampshire, and the business and people in it. Join the Free State Project.
"Give people a second chance" -- George Zimmer, founder, Men's Wearhouse
Original article One more contrarian thing: It is Zimmer's policy that no employee or interviewee will ever undergo a criminal background check. Conventional retail wisdom says this guarantees petty larceny on a grand scale. In fact, the company loses a mere 0.4 percent of revenue to theft, way less than the typical 1.5 percent loss suffered by big retailers.
Amateur Beats Gov't at Digitizing Newspapers: Tom Tryniski’s Weird, Wonderful Website
Original article One computer expert working alone has built a historic newspaper site that's orders of magnitude bigger and more popular than one created by a federal bureaucracy with millions of dollars to spend. Armed only with a few PCs and a cheap microfilm scanner, Tom Tryniski has played David to the Library of Congress’ Goliath.
Music: Cliffs of Dover by Eric Johnson
Original article
Photo Gallery: Lightning
Original article Awesome !
Given A Choice, Would I Choose To Live In A World With No Gun Control, Or With ‘Reasonable’ Gun Controls”
Original article
Taxes on Some Wealthy French Top 100 Percent of Income
Original article "More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data."
Veritas Est Non Grata
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Alex R. Knight III 2012-10-17 00:00
Column by Alex R. Knight III Exclusive to STR   Twenty-five years ago, in 1987, the rock band Fleetwood Mac recorded a song with a chorus sung by composer Christine McVie that went, “Tell me lies, tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies….” It was as apt of a sentiment as could be for that despicable era of militarism, conformity, worship of authority, and “Just Say...
A Deadly Outbreak of Misinformation
9.5
Carrie Burdzinski 2012-10-16 00:00
Column by Carrie Burdzinski. Exclusive to STR * Compounding pharmacies: heroes or outlaws? – NBC News * Compounding pharmacies highlight need for government to regulate business – Forbes * Meningitis outbreak sheds light on compounding drugs and lack of regulation – Fox News These alarming headlines refer to the deadly fungal meningitis outbreak allegedly traced to...
Slavespeak, Part II
10
tzo 2012-10-15 00:00
Column by tzo. Exclusive to STR Bombs in the Brain The design of Slavespeak is such that its words and terms detonate emotional bombs in the brain that function like controlled directional explosive charges. The use of them reflexively jumps the state of mind directly from a to b without the benefit of rational thought. They are of the category “anti-concepts,” as Ayn Rand called them...
Who Loses 2012?
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Tim Hartnett 2012-10-12 00:00
Column by Tim Hartnett. Exclusive to STR   Every four years the undecided American whipping boy is in for some lumps from his betters. During mid-term elections, the non-aligned generally go unscathed in the two-party turf war. Where the Commander-in-Chief is concerned though, mass movementarians are less forgiving. You’re either a Guelph or a Ghibilene. The theory is that only a dolt...
Free Health Care!
10
Jim Davies 2012-10-12 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR   That was the promise, made by politicos in the England of my youth; health care, they said, is a right, an entitlement. In Churchill's wartime cabinet, William Beveridge, whom I briefly met 15 years later, had designed a scheme by 1945, and it was rushed through and implemented in 1947. The exodus of British doctors to North America began shortly...
Can Voluntaryism Fix the Machine?
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Alex R. Knight III 2012-10-10 00:00
Column by Alex R. Knight III. Exclusive to STR The much vaunted libertarian journalist and commentator H.L. Mencken once wrote: “I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.”   I don’t consider it a stretch at all to say that this is how any voluntaryist worthy of the title feels. But statists – left, right, and...
Slavespeak, Part I
9.75
tzo 2012-10-08 00:00
Column by tzo. Exclusive to STR   Introduction   An individual will quite naturally assume that he is in control of the language that he uses. He selects the words and phrases he feels are necessary to express himself or to describe people, places, and events in the world around him. He is the ultimate master over this tool that exists to facilitate his communication efforts, just as he...
The Biased News Media Recommended
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Scott Lazarowitz 2012-10-08 00:00
Column by Scott Lazarowitz. Exclusive to STR   Recently on the NPR show On the Media, Brooke Gladstone updated their overview on the question, “Does NPR Have a Liberal Bias?” Generally, many people believe that NPR and much of the mainstream news media are biased to the left. Among the findings from some of Gladstone’s analysts were that in some cases NPR was actually...
Coal Or Wind?
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Jim Davies 2012-10-05 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR On October 3rd I admit it; curious to see which was the more convincing actor, I did waste ten minutes watching the opening of the Presidential Debate Charade. I saw Obamney say twice, with slightly different words, that they loved the middle class. So they should; that's the segment of society from which government derives most of its loot.   Before...
Harming the Cause for Liberty
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Bradley Keyes 2012-10-05 00:00
Column by Bradley Keyes. Exclusive to STR Harm - a small but powerful word with a strong, emotional pull. No one wants to be harmed. But is it the best word to use when trying define liberty? Phrases such as: "As a voluntaryist, it is my personal opinion that, we should take individual responsibility, that our decisions regarding our bodies should be left to us, individually...
User's Guide to Spreading the Philosophy of Liberty Recommended
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livefreeretiree 2011-09-19 00:00
Column by Vahram G. Diehl. Exclusive to STR Whatever the collective heading they arbitrarily choose to fall under, the supporters and practitioners of free choice who reject coercion through force or fraud as a viable ethical standard are constantly facing barriers in the path to spreading this moral precept to those around them. Those who believe in a stateless and free society absent of...
A Rationalist's Call to Action: Commence Breeding
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livefreeretiree 2011-09-20 00:00
Column by Vahram G. Diehl. Exclusive to STR Crisis! The planet is in a state of dreary imbalance! Tasks that should take three steps take three hundred! Human affairs everywhere are initiated with unnecessary hardship and carried through with extensive roundabout hoop-jumping and mountains of parlor-trick paperwork! Entire populaces can scantily differentiate their defecatory...
Staying Sane in an Unsane World
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livefreeretiree 2011-09-27 00:00
Column by Vahram G. Diehl. Exclusive to STR It is no secret that most people do not know what they are talking about, most of the time, on most subjects.  As a young person with an inclination toward the exclusive use of reason, this is for me an especially infuriating environmental defect.  People who cannot use reason (most people) will substitute authority in its place,...
Fun and Gun
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Mark Davis 2011-10-13 00:00
Column by Mark Davis. Exclusive to STR  I’ve had enough of the emotional handwringing about the evil of guns and the chastising rhetoric about gun owners. Of course, inanimate objects like guns can’t be evil or good; they are just tools that can be used for good or evil. Further, gun owners are no more inherently wicked than people who own knives, hammers, shovels or...
On the Road to a Right Education
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livefreeretiree 2011-10-17 00:00
Column by Vahram G. Diehl.   We face a profoundly sad state of affairs in human civilization. What is called a conventional education today is little more than mass cultural training in a particular brand of patriotism, including enforced memorization of the current era's arbitrarily acceptable ideas. The entire public school system operates under one goal: preparing every...
The Spinnerians
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Leonidas 2011-10-17 00:00
Column by new Root Striker G. Asher. Exclusive to STR   Let’s imagine a group of high minded, socially conscious, wealthy individuals. They form a charitable social group called The Spinnerians.   The Spinnerians energetically do all manner of kind works. They diligently raise money for children’s hospitals. They help the elderly. The feed and house the homeless and get them...
The Great Pretender(s)
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Peter McCandless 2011-10-19 00:00
Column by Peter McCandless. The Platters released their famous song “The Great Pretender”on November 3, 1955. It’s popularity drove it to the number one position on both Rhythm and Blues and pop charts in 1956, according to Wikipedia. The words of the first stanza go like this:               Oh-oh, yes I’m...
Tools for Tyrants: Fear
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Paul Bonneau 2011-10-25 00:00
Column by Paul Bonneau. Exclusive to STR  It occurred to me that it might be useful to dissect the tools that tyrants use to keep us under their thumbs. Knowing what they are and how they use them can help us defend against them. I don’t know if anyone has systematically gone over this before. If someone knows of such an effort, please comment below.   The first tool (ignoring...
To Vote or Not to Vote? I’d Rather Go Fishing
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Alex R. Knight III 2011-10-31 00:00
Column by Alex R. Knight III.   Exclusive to STR   There resides here in southern Vermont a radio personality and newspaper columnist who prefers to simply go by the handle of “Fish” (no, it’s not Abe Vigoda living out a retirement fantasy in the Green Mountains), who in the October 26th edition of the Brattleboro Reformer began his column titled “To Vote or...
The Human Crisis as I Understand It
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livefreeretiree 2011-11-11 01:00
Column by Vahram G. Diehl. Exclusive to STR  Premises   It has been for me a comforting and long awaited personal revelation that the human body and its various metabolic constituents are not made special or apart from external reality. That we are not different from the food we consume, the other animals and plants with which we co-habituate the universe, the soil we cultivate,...
An Armed March on Washington? MUST READ
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Alex R. Knight III 2013-05-07 06:52
Column by Alex R. Knight III. Exclusive to STR Perhaps never before have I encountered a proposal within Liberty Movement circles that has generated more controversy faster and further than Adam Kokesh’s planned July 4th march on Washington, District of Criminals, in which he states that himself and the other participants “will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to...
The Orwellian Paradigm--Killing You, For Your Own Safety MUST READ
9.625
fmoghul 2013-04-10 08:12
Column by Faisal Moghul. Exclusive to STR Almost 30 years ago, cultural critic Neil Postman argued in Amusing Ourselves to Death that television’s gradual replacement of the printing press has created a dumbed-down culture driven by mindless entertainment. In this context, Postman claimed that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World correctly foresaw our dystopian future, as opposed to George...
Frameworks, Virtual Reality and Civil Society: A Manifesto for the Doctrine of Love and Freedom MUST READ
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Glen Allport 2012-12-06 08:44
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR Perhaps I should say this paradigm shift is resuming. The healthier incoming paradigm is a modern, more accurate, better-supported, and better-understood version of one that began the shift towards a free, healthy, and prosperous world more than three centuries ago and which informed the creation of the United States itself: Classical Liberalism. - 1...
Timeline of a World-Killing Paradigm Shift MUST READ
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Glen Allport 2012-05-14 00:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR   Part 3 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"   Part One of this series discussed the Non-Aggression principle, calling it "the libertarian half of the Golden Rule" (compassion being the other half) and describing the function of aggression in creating not only tyranny and war but also...
Terrorist Alert: Government Extremists Threaten Americans MUST READ
9
Glen Allport 2012-03-26 00:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR   Question: are you more terrified by Muslim extremists, by "domestic terrorists" – or by your own government? Which group is more likely to assault you? To kill you? To unjustly imprison and even torture you?   The U.S. federal government has ALREADY:   Built and is staffing a huge gulag of concentration camps ["...
The State Is a Firing Squad MUST READ
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JGVibes 2012-02-17 01:00
Column by JGVibes.   Exclusive to STR   Although the common perception of human nature is very negative, the truth is that most people who aren’t mentally ill have a very difficult time committing acts of violence. Usually it takes a sizeable payment and a fair amount of manipulation to convince someone to act violently, and even then a tremendous amount of guilt typically...
How the 1% Took America's Wealth--and How to Get It Back MUST READ
9.25
Glen Allport 2011-12-01 01:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR  - 1 - Plundering Wealth vs Producing Wealth   In recent decades, the rich have gathered an increasing share of the total wealth in the United States. As this wealth disparity grows and especially as large numbers of the formerly middle class fall into poverty and even into homelessness, this flow of wealth from main street (from anyone not...
'Anarchy or Minarchy' Is Only Half the Question, Part 2 MUST READ
9.5
Glen Allport 2011-04-13 03:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR  This is Part 2 of a response to a column by Wesley Messamore. Last week's Part One of this column discussed the following:   ·      Minarchy: Lighting a Match to the Fuse of Tyranny ·      Anarchy: By Itself, Yang without Yin ·      The Missing Key...
Oh, Stanley MUST READ
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tzo 2011-03-30 03:00
Column by tzo. Exclusive to STR   Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist best known for his Milgram Experiment, a study conducted in the 1960s.   Dr. Milgram wanted to research the relationship between obedience and authority, and he was at least partly motivated to do so by the events of the Nazi Holocaust. It greatly troubled him that so many supposedly good people could...
The Pathocracy Unmasked MUST READ
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Glen Allport 2011-02-11 04:00
Column by Glen Allport. Exclusive to STR - 1 - Exposed as Criminals and Psychopaths, the Coercive Elite are Desperate to Stop the Flow of Honest Information     "When Bush cancelled his trip to avoid prosecution, the human rights groups who prepared the complaints made it public and announced that the Bush Torture Indictment would be waiting wherever he travels next." CCR...
The Licensing Effect Recommended
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Lawrence Samuels 2013-05-10 08:28
The article below contains excerpts from L.K. Samuels’ new book, In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action. Column by L.K. Samuels. Exclusive to STR Good intentions rarely make good laws. Those who do evil almost always think they are doing good for goodness’ sake. Nobody sees himself as evil. As Will Smith, the American actor, once quipped, “...
The Pugsley Plan Recommended
8.5
Jim Davies 2013-01-14 08:46
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Prior to Harry Browne's first run for US President in 1996, his friend John Pugsley wrote him a passionate “open letter” urging him not to. As far as I know, Harry didn't reply, but he did continue his campaign – and repeated it four years later. He got few votes more than the LP normally receives, but his platform and campaign were...
Ed Schultz and His Alleged Middle Class Heroes Recommended
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Angelo Mike 2013-01-04 01:00
Column by Angelo Mike. Exclusive to STR Ed Schultz has set quite the task out for himself. On his New Year’s Eve broadcast on MSNBC, he announced who his “Middle Class Heroes of 2012” are. Schultz is a self-styled liberal, so his recipients of the title “Middle Class Hero” are predictable and worthy of a certain amount of eye rolling. The general reverence for...
The Trials Recommended
8.33333
tzo 2012-12-11 08:49
Column by tzo. Exclusive to STR To anyone who has seen or read The Reader (a synopsis of the relevant part of the story is here), one of the main questions raised in the story is, "What should be done with Hanna?" Was she responsible for her actions even if she was so thoroughly indoctrinated so as to be completely confused by the charges against her? She asked more than once, while...
464 Lost Years Recommended
8.25
Jim Davies 2012-12-10 08:48
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Recently I re-read part of that seminal essay, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boëtie, written in 1548, or 464 years ago. He said that if you want to topple a tyrant, all you need to do is to withdraw support. No violence, no sweat, just stop helping him. Yet 24 years later there was a massacre of Huguenot Protestants, indicating that...
The Duty to End the State Recommended
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Jim Davies 2012-11-30 08:53
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR Many reading this already understand the Self-ownership Axiom; that we each own our own lives by right, and hence that all government is an unnatural and ruinous appendage. Among those who do, though, surprisingly there is disagreement over what to do about it. Some hold that resistance by such voluntaryists in the present government-saturated environment...
Why I'm Leaving America Recommended
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SailboatDiaries 2012-11-07 01:00
Column by new Root Striker Michael Fielding. Goodbye, America. For as long as I’ve lived you’ve been my only home. I’ve had a wonderful life here. Your inhabitants are almost universally kind, and I’ve become lifelong friends with many of your citizens. All of my family lives here, everyone I have ever known or loved, and I will miss them all a lot. But after 22 years, I...
Voting Is Not Rational Recommended
9.66667
Stephen Nichols 2012-11-01 00:00
Column by Stephen Nichols. Exclusive to STR While reading Paul Bonneau’s recent column on STR entitled “Voting Is Not Irrational,” I was taken aback by the obvious flaws in his analysis and the conclusions resulting from that analysis. It’s been a few days since his article was published and I’ve been formulating my response to it for some time. Let me now share with...
St. Abe Recommended
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Jim Davies 2012-10-23 00:00
Column by Jim Davies. Exclusive to STR When the Church of Rome has in mind to elevate one of its heroes or heroines to the status of sainthood, it follows a certain procedure – one element of which is to hear the opinion of an advocatus diaboli – a devil's advocate. His job is to reason against the proposed canonization, so reducing the probability of error. That task fell in...
A Reason Not to Vote Recommended
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Stephen Nichols 2012-10-18 00:00
Column by Stephen Nichols. Exclusive to STR I don't know about you, but I take a look at my financial situation pretty regularly. I like to keep tabs on my family's spending and keep things under control. I also like to reduce or eliminate any unnecessary expenses. Take a moment to review this chart of some recent family spending: Notice anything big that sticks out there? Yeah, me...

 

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