Liberty Pile - Libertarian News

All the Libertarian news you can use for the week of January 9th, 2009.

Where to start, where to start. Oh, I know! Let's start with Obama's chief of staff (Rahm Emanuel) spouting off on C-SPAN about his proposed civil defense (e.g. draft) force composed of all Americans ages 18-25. That's right folks, you thought the draft was gone after Vietnam? Nope, it's just been dressed up with a new name. Although, the consequence is still the same: you lose your freedom.

There's some good news coming out of Virgina with their recent opposition to enforcing the federal ID card, aka Real ID. I bet they cave if they get Federal matching funds for implementation.

Oakland, CA - The tax-payer supported gang of thugs known as the police gunned down a perfectly peaceful and cooperative black man in public on Tuesday. Of course, the "authorities" are denying any wrong-doing. Can you guess what happened to the cop who shot the guy? Paid leave.

In economic news this week, commercial bank share of consumer credit is now greater than 32%. Factory orders tumble and post-Christmas sales slid 0.8% in the US.

To get a handle on the current economic climate, its good to take a refresher on the basics. Chris Martenson has posted his entire economic crash-course video series for everyone to enjoy. The whole series is about three hours long and very easy to digest.

So far, 750 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza bombardment that started last week. The UN has since halted aid shipments to the Gaza Strip and is now investigating Israel's shelling of a U.N. school in Gaza that killed nearly 40 people.

An Agorist Primer by Samuel Konkin was recently published in hard-cover by Kopubco. Agorism is a form of counter-economics and I highly recommend this book to anyone who might want to understand why this kind of activity is important to Libertarians of all ideologies.

The Great American Think-Off has released its 2009 essay question entitled "Is it ever wrong to do the right thing?" Libertarian philosophers (that's you!) should have fun with this question. Previous questions have been on the topics of immigration and security vs. freedom.

I leave you with a video of now media-darling Peter Schiff on Russian Today.