The Liberty Lamp: Libertarian News & Editorials

Just yesterday, I found out about a cool new (old?) band called Poker Face. They are a hard rock band that is very libertarian in some ways. Their songs have a lot to do with love and standing up for your rights. Musically speaking, the guitar rifts are hard core yet melodious somehow, and other insturments, like pianos and woodwinds, come in during various songs. Another cool thing about this band, unlike many modern heavy metal goups out there, is that you can actually *understand* what the helvetica they're saying on a somewhat regular basis! At least I think that's a plus- Can't speak for all those Saliva, etc. fans out there though... It's not my fault they're not cultured enough right? :D

As I'm typing this, I realized that I have albums from several different bands that one could consider "protest rock" or whatever you want to call it. I really like this stuff, and the bands I'm thinking of all have great music as well as great lyrical messages. Ergo, I'll code up a page here listing some of the best ones with links to their official websites.

Finally, just as a note, stay tuned for yet another important privacy/anonymity resource, and also some little-known counter-intelegence/government intel agency info. You'll have to be the judge of their quality, but some of these documents at least appear to have been suppressed and made to "mysteriously" dissappear, as if by magic! Like I said, stay tuned. Our social networking people have been putting in overtime on this so it will hopefully be worthwile to you all.

Bad news, friends! It appears that Rosa Parks has just passed on. She was 92 years of age, and it has been a full half century since her historic refusal to give up the bus seat. Parks gave credence to the term "sit-in" like no other. Check out the news announcement and look at the photo portfolio.

Remember.

For those about to hold their ground for their values, we salute you! -The LAN Team

Unexpectedly, at least to me, GW Bush has aparently today appointed a replacement for the post of Federal Reserve Chairman, pending Alan Greenspan's retirement at 79. This is all well and good, except for the slight problems stemming from the facts that "The Fed" is not only not part of and not accountable to our elected representatives, but also that it is more than likely highly unconstitutional. Check out the forum post linked to in this blog entry's title for more information on this.

On the plus side, there is something you can do about this. Check out the Liberty Dollar website and find out how you can save your own economic ass while kicking the Fed's at the same time.

Act On It!

Here's a follow-up to our August report on the potential corrupt use of Eminent Domain use by the city. For a very brief review, the gist of the issue was that in the post Kelo Decision environment, the city wanted to destroy over 200 homes for private developers. Now, according to the San Diego Union Tribune, approximately that same number of individuals volunteered to help clean up the community of Logan Heights, near downtown San Diego. All told, their work culminated in the repainting of a church and fire station, and low income living facilities. Because of recent buget issues, the city has been unable to maintain many of its own structures.

Though there is no mention of a direct connection between the eminent domain plans from a few months ago, one can definately make a sound argument that these kinds of projects demonstrate well how large numbers of concerned residents and citizens can take care of buisiness on their own without the help of city government. In addition, the newly restored buildings' quality is one less BS excuse shady developers can try to use to steal citizens' property that doesn't belong to them!

Today, just a short time after Congressman Ron Paul's whistle-blowing on the topic (see below post), President Bush has again reiterated his afinity with using the United States military to control large portions of the country under martial law. The pretense for getting Congress to give him such powers (which would be unconstitutional either way) is that when the almighty Avian Flu comes to North America and kills an alarmingly high number of say 50 people (it has killed 60 in the world so far) that we're all going to go crazy and induce murder and mayhem. Exactly... Nevermind the fact that military occupation actually exacerbates these problems, as demonstrated by the Hurricane Katrina fiasco.

Speaking of FEMA, Michael Chertoff of the Department of Homeland Security has admitted that the Federal Government's actions were ineffective. No kidding. And to think he had to go to grad school just to be able to reason like that...

Recently, I resubmitted this blog to the Neo-Libertarian Network's blog site, because of the domain change this month. When I did this, I realized that I needed to update the same settings for FeedBurner, so that those of you who use RSS/Atom to subscribe to this blog's feed will be updated properly. Long story short, the related links around here have been fixed, and you can resubscribe to this blog by updating your bookmarks to point to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheLibertyLamp.

Thank you!

While listening to the Harry Browne Show earlier this week, I heared an interview with Dr. Mary Ruwart, PhD, a libertarian political writer and former research scientist for Upjohn Pharmaceuticals*. She has just published a really cool sounding book, Healing Our World In an Age of Aggression. As you'd probably guess, it is about how we can create a more peaceful, productive, and more just society, and appeals to people of almost any political leaning.

In addition, she has published several other books on related topics, which can be found by clicking the title link of this post. At the bottom of the page are a number of short essay pieces that are in HTML format and free to read at your leizure. I ordered her book, which came with a number of bonus PDF format literature. This is a limited-time thing, but at least a few of them are currently or will soon be in print, so all is not lost!

In other news, I have just added a new page to the LibertarianActivism.com website. In a nutshell, I consolidated a few of our existing links about libertarianism, and added a number of new ones. If you're unfamiliar with what the philosophy is, or want to learn about some additional educational and/or activism related projects, out site is now the place to go. You can find this new categorized information by going to our homepage, or by clicking here.

The Literature section also has some new additions, with more coming soon. Some of the new pieces will be from Dr. Ruwart. As always, we here at the Libertarian Action Network always enjoy your feedback, and will gladly post any interesting material you send us- with appropriate citation of you of course!

*Upjohn Pharma doesn't show up on Google as having an official website. I get the impression that they were bought up by another company five or six years ago, perhaps Phizer? If you know, please email me at firefox-spam@walala.org so that I may inform my readers.

Although I usually take anything they say with a large grain of sea salt, it appears that some in the wide world of big-government loving liberal indy media have gotten something right:

Ron Paul says indictment story is far more damaging than media is portraying, avian flu martial law provisions aimed at gun confiscation.

Congressman Ron Paul has accused the Bush administration of attempting to set in motion a militarized police state in America by enacting gun confiscation martial law provisions in the event of an avian flu pandemic. Paul also slammed as delusional and dangerous plans to invade Iran, Syria, North Korea and China...


The funny thing is, Paul has been saying this for years as a Libertarian, but it only becomes "news" as a Republican. What does this mean? THINK ABOUT IT!

I was just introduced to a new book, courtessy of DownsizeDC, entitled Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression. It just went on sale today, and It looks pretty cool. Here's a snippet of the synopsis:

"Hi! I'm Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, research scientist, entrepreneur, writer. One day several years ago, a number of seemingly disconnected ideas about the way we relate to each other as individuals, societies, and nations, fell into place like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. The resulting picture filled me with uncontainable excitement about the future of humankind. I wrote Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression so that you could "see" the picture through my eyes and experience this revelation!

You Could Be 3 to 18 Times Wealthier Than You Are Now!

You would be at least 3 times wealthier than you are today if our society didn't needlessly destroy jobs and stifle productivity (p.189). As a landlady, I saw this destruction over and over again. One of my tenants sewed custom curtains in her apartment. Another took care of the children of her working neighbors. These women were struggling to get by, but proud to be earning their way. Their activities created no extra noise or traffic.

To our city officials, however, these hard-working women were criminals. Why? They didn't have business licenses. Their apartments weren't zoned for commercial activity or remodeled to meet the stricter requirements for businesses. Consequently, the city officials told the women to get out of business and on to welfare or face prosecution. Tearfully, they complied.

Who paid the salaries of the city officials? You did! Who paid for the welfare checks? You did! Who paid even more for the vast bureaucracy that distributes the welfare checks? You did! Your hard-earned money continues to be used to destroy jobs and create poverty.

Sadly, the stripping of your paycheck doesn't end there. Since child care providers must do the expensive (and, in most cases, needless) remodeling required by city ordinances (p.49), you pay more child care without receiving more quality or value. Since businesses have to buy their curtains from a factory instead of a home-based business, you pay more for their products. You pay--again and again and again!

But it gets worse. Every bureaucratic regulator destroys about 150 jobs per year (p.56). Your job could be next--and, like my tenants, you wouldn't have any paycheck at all!

Don't be discouraged by what I've just shared with you, though. There's another side to the story. If we can destroy wealth and create poverty, we can reverse the process. Why not destroy poverty and create wealth instead? By applying principles in Healing Our World, we could all be 3 to 18 times wealthier and live longer, happier, lives!"

It sounds cool. I'll convey my thoughts when it comes. In the meanitime, early orderers recieve a collection of 6 other e-books about personal finance/how-to-live-a-good-life issues. These are advertised to be worth collectively about $150USD. How much is that in Liberty Dollars?

This weekend, I purchased and set up a new DNS domain for this web site and associated web services. The domain name is Libertarianactivism.com. I think it will go farther to convey the changing mission of our work here at The Phoenix of Light. Please see our home page for more information about what exactly these mission statement changes are. In a nutshell, we will focus more on computer security and activist support projects. Check back frequently!

Believe it or not, A recent poll done by the fine people over at Conservative HQ found that a whopping 83% of conservatives questioned aggree that President George W. Bush is anything but a true conservative politician. Truly, actions do speak louder than words!

I'm not clear as of yet what the statistical soudness of this study is, but I just e-mailed the site webmaster and will post the results here on this blog as soon as I recieve them. For all those disgruntled conservatives out there: have you considered voting Libertarian lately? :)

Over the last couple of days, I have discovered a few more good 'net resources pertaining to Internet anonymity, digital cryptography, and blogging. Seeing as the related 'paranoid' category in the Writings section of the site (see title link) is getting rather large, I plan to transplant all computer anonymity/security related documents on their own page, which will be linked to from the main Writings section. Doing so should result in easier navigation and shorter, more consitent pages. Expect this to appear within the week. Stay tuned also for some new current events/editorial content.