he implied without saying directly that the gorvernment used the news media like a precision weapon in control what was known, by whom and when.
And it perceivably still is. Just look at the process, the motives, and the tactics used to determine in whose interests it would be to generate the effects being produced by this. Does this actually surprise people? It's really just a matter of reverse-engineering to have a looksee at the code.
In this case, you take some foreign political figure people associate with terrorism, guns, all sorts of dangerous and icky activites, and cryptography, which is the thing you want despised at the moment. You then find a way to superglue them indelibly together in the minds of a large proportion of the citizenry. Repeat as needed until the negative backlash from regulating against cryptography has been quelled enough to make it a non-threat. Can't have them all waking up before it's too late, can we?
What tickles me pink is the timing. Whoever's in charge of placing these pieces in the news is up for a big demotion. Putting that story in the national news media directly on the heels of the movie Antitrust? How much do you think that will minimize the psychological impact? It's comforting to know they're fallible, at any rate. =)
Besides the fact that if they're already criminals, do you think they'll have any qualms about using 'illegal' encryption products? You'll only stop stupid ones, and they're rarely the ones that do the most damage.
This is what boggles my mind... These moves are obviously, and provably, not done for the reasons claimed, but always seem to end up further restricting the rights of the common man. So why are the geeks the only ones to connect the dots there? I want to say the average citizen isn't that stupid, but then it's the same rampant idiocy that has me forswearing a career in tech support before I leap off the nearest building like a clinically-depressed lemming.
So explain this to me... we [Americans] have a government trying to erode our rights, yes? And yet the federal government derives its right to rule from the Citizens themselves. By the People, for the People, remember? So we have the rights first, as individuals, and supposedly choose to defer some of those rights to our respective States. Those States got together and merged one facet of their authority to create a Federal government. So if all the rights the federal government has are conferred upon it from the Citizens, how can it then turn 'round and attempt to meddle with the rights of the Citizens, which supercede it? I think I have the answer; hit my homepage for a write-up on it.
It's actually doubly funny, since the federal government was primarily designed for the purpose of regulating interstate commerce. Where they get the uppity idea that they have jurisdiction to make laws against what people can and can't do as individuals is beyond me... a few unlawfully-ratified fraudulent documents that wouldn't stand up in a court of law. It's a faulty legal premise that's ready to be knocked over like a house of cards.
"I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." -- J. Edgar Hoover
This is completely different. According to the Agreement with DTV THEY own the card not you. If Id were to try something like this it would be damaging your property, not theirs.
So the logic of it, it seems, goes thusly: If I have a card, I or whoever I got it from never owned the sucker, but in exchange for forking over cash simply to be able to use the thing, I presumably entered into a situation in which I had access to it, I had no claim of ownership on it and am bounded by DirecTV's property interests.
What if I can find knockoff cards that conform to the system specs, but which were derived elsewhere, say Joe Leet over there threw a batch together and eBayed the things? He would have ownership, it would transfer over to me when I bought it (assuming I paid in something of value and not Federal Reserve Notes, which are debt currency and therefore IOU's). Now let's say I'm getting ready for the Super Bowl, and DirecTV's signal fries my card. Destruction of property. Could I sue, under the more common Federal law / 14th Ammendment citizenship setup? Or more precisely, could I sue without DirecTV having a case on which to countersue me for descrambling their signal in the first place? (As a sovereign citizen they would obviously have no jurisdiction to countersue, and my loss of property suit would be unstoppable.) Any thoughts?
I think it's about time we had laws that actually state some things as irrevocably LEGAL, rather than simply the opposite.
Sad. In the States at least, everything was originally assumed to be lawful unless it met certain criteria. A governmental system was established and designed for very specific purposes, and had no power beyond that. It's grown gradually rampant and unwieldy, so that it now has its fingers in everybody's pie. While I agree that certain things (we call them "rights") need to be inviolate, it's a sad sign of the times to hear someone say that we should have a finite list of what an individual is permitted to do, and the implied assumption that anything not on that list is out of bounds. Instant Kafka, just add water.
Is it wrong for me to come into your house and listen to what you say in private?
It seems to me that your analogy is somewhat flawed. A closer analogy would be that of me sitting at a bench in a crowded shopping mall having a conversation, and someone else overhearing me. Would I be annoyed? Sure. Upset that my information was being received by non-trusted parties? Certainly. And again, this signal is broadcast indiscriminantly to (or rather, at) everyone. To make it even closer, if I'm walking through a crowded shopping mall cupping hands to mouth and shouting to some one particular person, I have no right to complain if I'm overheard by a third party, even if I'm shouting it in Pig Latin.
From an economic perspective it's hard to argue *against* this kind of strategy -- putting your cash into high-yielding securities makes higher returns than a factory and yeilds greater liquidity. I just think that from a macro perspective it leaves systems vulnerable because everyone hops onto this bandwagon and no one invests infrastructure.
And then the lights go out. Perfect market correction.
"Breath is the least appreciated gift of the gods. None sing hymns to it, praising the good air, breathed by king and beggar, master and dog alike. But oh, to be without it!" - Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
An A/C, or heater (and let's face it, Californians are going to have those on 24/7/365, too) is going to use 4 kw, which is 2880kwh/month.
Actually, for most of the year we enjoy the clement weather. November to about February is when we start turning the heat on. We're real wussies when it comes to cold.
I'm not sure what the proportion of interest on/. would be, but I've seen tests showing that it's the pesticides and additives in cigarettes that are carcinogenic, rather than smoking the actual tobacco per se.
Remember, people have been smoking tobacco for donkey's years. Cancer seems to be a relatively new trend, at least in statistical significance.
I'm sure I'll get sniped on here for the type of testing done (applied kinesiology), since it's currently viewed as though it were fringe science, but amazon has an excerpt here on it. Nifty stuff.
If ten years ago there were say 50,000 international copyright violation lawsuits worldwide, there could potentially be as many as 5 million brought this year.
You know, I hadn't even considered that. What an excellent point, IMO. How very telling, then, that we [Americans] have politicians pushing for ever-increasing legislation, and an already-glutted court system as it is. Sensibly, in a not-for-profit legal system, they should be pushing to simplify laws down to the bare-bones of what's required, and establishing as much self-regulation as is feasible. I think you may have found proof for an argument I've been making for quite some time. Thank you. =)
...how could it ever be possible for the government to achieve any sort of wide-scale regulation? Intelligent software controlling the Net doesn't seem like a viable solution - it couldn't possibly cover all cases.
One word: Bottleneck.
You seem to forget, this is government we're talking about. They don't need a "viable" solution. When in doubt, squelch it all.
Your protest of private corporations owning the majority of the Internet convinced me at first glance, but then I remembered the approach government takes when it wants corporations to do something; it instates a fine, just as in the case of Yahoo. Whoops.
There must be some kind of democratically legitimate constructuion of relief for consumers under a global system. If not the laws in the state where the consumer has citizenship, then perhaps some other global body such as the United Nations should step in the fray. If it can start an international criminal court to seek genocidal leaders and try them, it can try consumer fraud.
Perhaps my take on this comes off as a little to paranoic for most of the Slashdot community, but aren't the United Nations part of the very same fray?
Let me understand this. You're voluntarily for a global government? Because this is where it starts. If these were corporations we were talking about, the idea would be shouted down as monopolistic by nearly everyone... and I'm not entirely sure that the parallel doesn't apply here. Have we learned nothing from the unfair business practices of Microsoft? From the monopolistic example of Ma Bell back in the eighties?
As far as I'm concerned, international trade, obscenity laws and international copyright regulations haven't changed simply because the content is now distributed nearly instantaneously via an electronic medium. The addition of the Internet changes none of these issues. Sure, there are agencies at work who would insist that the new Internet demands new legislation and regulations to suit this modern, wholly-unforseen development, but I think you will find it is these same agencies who are insisting that real-world commerce practices, contractual obligation, and copyright law should ("of course") be carried over onto the Internet jsut as they have been used for years in the physical world.
To them I say, "Pick a fragging lane already. You can't have it both ways."
While we're likening the development of the internet to historical models...
I'm much more inclined to interpret it to the [European] development of North America during the days of the covered wagon. At first it was enterprising individuals, trying to eke out a life for themselves away from the well-established community in which they lived (and who were willing to make a tremendous effort and risk everything they had to do so). They established communities, and once the place had a certain rudimentary structure, a wider section of the demographic followed. Once there was reasonably little risk in these formative environments, then the parasites came along, the bankers, the middle-men, the politicians, who promplty mortgaged, overcharged, and regulated the new land into little better than the place from which the first settlers originally fled.
The difference today? We're running out of places to flee. That and the leveraging force of technology for use in oppression by the ruling classes. Never before in history have so few been able to oppress so many with so little.
I see this sort of [I feel] misperception a lot. So many people seem to assume that regulation only happens when it's against the interests of a large (or very vocal) group of people. That if nobody complains, things will just generally stay the way they are, and the rights and freedoms we accept as standard will continue to be there.
Am I the only one to whom this doesn't make sense? Large multinational corporations have financial interests, as do very rich bankers, governments seem quite evidently to want to sink their meathooks into their people (not all, neccessarily, but the United States is quite definately one)... there are many agencies with both the machinations and the means to do this sort of thing purely as a bottom-line, what-do-I-get-out-of-it decision.
It's nice and comfortable to convince ourselves that the problem is in the majority of people buying into the need for regulation (and a number of them do), but working from that premise has, I feel, pretty much doomed the rest of that line of thought from the start.
I think it's safe to describe as self-evident that large organizations generally got where they are today, and hold their ground, by looking out for themselves at the expense of others. Governments will be directly and indirectly responsible for this sort of behavior for as long as it behooves them to do so; that is to say, as long as their people lay still for it. It's up to the common person to keep tabs on their government, and take action when it exceeds its bounds. While it's easy to say that this or that law was the fault of Politician X or Corporation Y, the original fault heaps back squarely on the shoulders of the citizenry. Uncomfortable as that is to face, we can either take time away from the latest commercial games to to prevent this sort of attrocity, or sit back, let it happen, and piss and moan about it afterwards.
...America works extremely well. We have a mainstream media that perpetuates misconceptions about the way the country currently works, and obscure a fair amount of crucial pieces of law from the people. Case in point, chances are you have no Constitutional rights, and neither does the Bill of Rights apply to you. (Never mind that the 14th Amendment was never lawfully ratified, see documentation here, here, and a State Supreme Court opinion here. The Supreme Court has not yet made a ruling on the validity of the 14th Amendment's supposed ratification, to the best of my knowledge.) United States citizens are bound by adhesion contracts, exchanging their rights for privileges and benefits that can be changed and revoked at will. Most of them are acutely aware of this situation as applies to their Social Security benefits, many of whom realize that they'll never see their payout. A waiver of these benefits anulls the contract, of course, and then one is free to do whatever one likes, provided there is no injured party. An essentially baseless currency is problematic, but there are those who intentionally deal in gold and barter. An increasingly misinformed citizenry is depressing (most people thought that Clinton's womanizing was worthwhile news; I'm more worried about this), but it's nice to know that when they finally push people too far, they'll eventually do something about it (although thanks to the amazing advances in modern technology, never before in history have so few been able to oppress so many with so little). All things considered, the States are a great place to be. They afford more freedom and opportunity than most other places I'm aware of... for those who understand how stuff works.
[Shameless plug: For more on this stuff, head to my page. I've got a write-up and some informative links under Sovereign Citizenship.]
You see, there are these three branches. The judges may interpet a law, but they have limited enforcement powers. The President can always refuse to enforce a court decision, and Congress can always change the law. And unless it is a Supreme Court decision, there is always appellate court...
I'm sorry, but that isn't the case. The Emergency War Powers Act suspends this system of checks and balances in times of national crisis or emergency, making the Prez the de facto despot... and we've been in a state of national emergency since the run on the banks in the back in the 1930's.
"Second-rate cases based on flawed legal theory, but impressive nonetheless"
Puhleeze, that's about a thousand federal circuit and appeals court cases, not some rogue hillbilly judge who doesn't know the law.
You misread my post in your zeal, I think. I said the cases were flawed, and that the so-called sovereign citizens in question hadn't done their homework. By those statements the reader was meant to draw the inference that the former was caused by the latter, not because some neccessarily backwater or beholden judge gave a perfectly good case unfair ruling. That last was your invention, and it was incorrect. But as always, thanks for the attitude and the inbred "Everybody knows [insert cliche'd lie here]" argument, it's always appreciated.
As far as I know the US Supreme Court has not seen fit to examine such fine legal arguments as "well, the flag has fringe on it, therefore this is a court of admiralty!"
Believe it or not, not every law of the land is created by the Supreme Court. Some of it is actually written in the form of statutes and legislation. Here are a few links to research and raw law regarding gold fringe and admiralty. Can you cite law back to refute it?
because of course you don't have to be a citizen of a country to be bound by their laws
No, but you do have to be within that country to be. The several States are not in the United States, as counterintuitive as that first seems, since the land was not ceded to the federal government upon the formation of the United States. Rather, the federal government was given jurisdiction over certain highly limited matters. It is supreme within its own bailiwick, as it should be. In all other matters, the several States are supreme, as they hold ownership of the land itself.
Would that be "obscure fine points" such as the crystal clear regulations of what constitutes an US citizen
Those are, if anything, intentionally obscure and obscured, as more than cursory reading of the alleged Fourteenth Amendment shows.
laws apply to EVERYONE, citizen or not -- whether you volunteer to recognize them or not!
I live in California. Does Japanese law apply to me? Likewise, in matters beyond the limited scope of federal jurisdiction, does federal law constrain me? Not at all.
That's an impressive assortment of cases there, I grant you. Second-rate cases based on flawed legal theory, but impressive nonetheless. That's what happens to sovereign Citizens in court who haven't done their homework. One of the tough bits about sovereignty is the need to know what you're doing when you go about it. It takes longer to learn and research, and one is likely to find oneself challenged on various obscure fine points at little or no notice, but I think it's worthwhile. That's probably why I think of it so much like Linux.
You slashdot wackos, sitting in front of your little metal boxes pressing buttons in weird and arcane formulae that make sense only to you. Everybody knows Linux is just a myth. Otherwise we'd all be using that instead of Windows. By the way, can you send me a copy of the internet on a floppy? AOL turned mine off.
Thank you for your much-needed dose of stereotyping. I've seen more well-read and documented refutations on reruns of Hee-Haw.
The states as you know them are federal zones. As bits of the federal government, they're obliged not to say anything that would hurt it. You don't hear anything about it because you don't look for it.
Slashdot Mirror
The Financial Times, hum? Wonder if they're hiring journalists. Evidently the only requirement is to search web pages for "hot stories".
he implied without saying directly that the gorvernment used the news media like a precision weapon in control what was known, by whom and when.
And it perceivably still is. Just look at the process, the motives, and the tactics used to determine in whose interests it would be to generate the effects being produced by this. Does this actually surprise people? It's really just a matter of reverse-engineering to have a looksee at the code.
In this case, you take some foreign political figure people associate with terrorism, guns, all sorts of dangerous and icky activites, and cryptography, which is the thing you want despised at the moment. You then find a way to superglue them indelibly together in the minds of a large proportion of the citizenry. Repeat as needed until the negative backlash from regulating against cryptography has been quelled enough to make it a non-threat. Can't have them all waking up before it's too late, can we?
What tickles me pink is the timing. Whoever's in charge of placing these pieces in the news is up for a big demotion. Putting that story in the national news media directly on the heels of the movie Antitrust? How much do you think that will minimize the psychological impact? It's comforting to know they're fallible, at any rate. =)
Besides the fact that if they're already criminals, do you think they'll have any qualms about using 'illegal' encryption products? You'll only stop stupid ones, and they're rarely the ones that do the most damage.
This is what boggles my mind... These moves are obviously, and provably, not done for the reasons claimed, but always seem to end up further restricting the rights of the common man. So why are the geeks the only ones to connect the dots there? I want to say the average citizen isn't that stupid, but then it's the same rampant idiocy that has me forswearing a career in tech support before I leap off the nearest building like a clinically-depressed lemming.
So explain this to me... we [Americans] have a government trying to erode our rights, yes? And yet the federal government derives its right to rule from the Citizens themselves. By the People, for the People, remember? So we have the rights first, as individuals, and supposedly choose to defer some of those rights to our respective States. Those States got together and merged one facet of their authority to create a Federal government. So if all the rights the federal government has are conferred upon it from the Citizens, how can it then turn 'round and attempt to meddle with the rights of the Citizens, which supercede it? I think I have the answer; hit my homepage for a write-up on it.
It's actually doubly funny, since the federal government was primarily designed for the purpose of regulating interstate commerce. Where they get the uppity idea that they have jurisdiction to make laws against what people can and can't do as individuals is beyond me... a few unlawfully-ratified fraudulent documents that wouldn't stand up in a court of law. It's a faulty legal premise that's ready to be knocked over like a house of cards.
"I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce."
-- J. Edgar Hoover
This is completely different. According to the Agreement with DTV THEY own the card not you. If Id were to try something like this it would be damaging your property, not theirs.
So the logic of it, it seems, goes thusly: If I have a card, I or whoever I got it from never owned the sucker, but in exchange for forking over cash simply to be able to use the thing, I presumably entered into a situation in which I had access to it, I had no claim of ownership on it and am bounded by DirecTV's property interests.
What if I can find knockoff cards that conform to the system specs, but which were derived elsewhere, say Joe Leet over there threw a batch together and eBayed the things? He would have ownership, it would transfer over to me when I bought it (assuming I paid in something of value and not Federal Reserve Notes, which are debt currency and therefore IOU's). Now let's say I'm getting ready for the Super Bowl, and DirecTV's signal fries my card. Destruction of property. Could I sue, under the more common Federal law / 14th Ammendment citizenship setup? Or more precisely, could I sue without DirecTV having a case on which to countersue me for descrambling their signal in the first place? (As a sovereign citizen they would obviously have no jurisdiction to countersue, and my loss of property suit would be unstoppable.) Any thoughts?
I think it's about time we had laws that actually state some things as irrevocably LEGAL, rather than simply the opposite.
Sad. In the States at least, everything was originally assumed to be lawful unless it met certain criteria. A governmental system was established and designed for very specific purposes, and had no power beyond that. It's grown gradually rampant and unwieldy, so that it now has its fingers in everybody's pie. While I agree that certain things (we call them "rights") need to be inviolate, it's a sad sign of the times to hear someone say that we should have a finite list of what an individual is permitted to do, and the implied assumption that anything not on that list is out of bounds. Instant Kafka, just add water.
Is it wrong for me to come into your house and listen to what you say in private?
It seems to me that your analogy is somewhat flawed. A closer analogy would be that of me sitting at a bench in a crowded shopping mall having a conversation, and someone else overhearing me. Would I be annoyed? Sure. Upset that my information was being received by non-trusted parties? Certainly. And again, this signal is broadcast indiscriminantly to (or rather, at) everyone. To make it even closer, if I'm walking through a crowded shopping mall cupping hands to mouth and shouting to some one particular person, I have no right to complain if I'm overheard by a third party, even if I'm shouting it in Pig Latin.
From an economic perspective it's hard to argue *against* this kind of strategy -- putting your cash into high-yielding securities makes higher returns than a factory and yeilds greater liquidity. I just think that from a macro perspective it leaves systems vulnerable because everyone hops onto this bandwagon and no one invests infrastructure.
And then the lights go out. Perfect market correction.
"Breath is the least appreciated gift of the gods. None sing hymns to it, praising the good air, breathed by king and beggar, master and dog alike. But oh, to be without it!"
- Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
An A/C, or heater (and let's face it, Californians are going to have those on 24/7/365, too) is going to use 4 kw, which is 2880kwh/month.
Actually, for most of the year we enjoy the clement weather. November to about February is when we start turning the heat on. We're real wussies when it comes to cold.
Done.
It's true of cigarettes...
/. would be, but I've seen tests showing that it's the pesticides and additives in cigarettes that are carcinogenic, rather than smoking the actual tobacco per se.
I'm not sure what the proportion of interest on
Remember, people have been smoking tobacco for donkey's years. Cancer seems to be a relatively new trend, at least in statistical significance.
I'm sure I'll get sniped on here for the type of testing done (applied kinesiology), since it's currently viewed as though it were fringe science, but amazon has an excerpt here on it. Nifty stuff.
If ten years ago there were say 50,000 international copyright violation lawsuits worldwide, there could potentially be as many as 5 million brought this year.
You know, I hadn't even considered that. What an excellent point, IMO. How very telling, then, that we [Americans] have politicians pushing for ever-increasing legislation, and an already-glutted court system as it is. Sensibly, in a not-for-profit legal system, they should be pushing to simplify laws down to the bare-bones of what's required, and establishing as much self-regulation as is feasible. I think you may have found proof for an argument I've been making for quite some time. Thank you. =)
I really hate to say it, but it might be time to completely break away from the internet.
Excellent. Bring hither my shortwave Ethernet modem and let's have done with this once and for all.
"...bandwidth problems, my arse..."
One word: Bottleneck.
You seem to forget, this is government we're talking about. They don't need a "viable" solution. When in doubt, squelch it all.
Your protest of private corporations owning the majority of the Internet convinced me at first glance, but then I remembered the approach government takes when it wants corporations to do something; it instates a fine, just as in the case of Yahoo. Whoops.
There must be some kind of democratically legitimate constructuion of relief for consumers under a global system. If not the laws in the state where the consumer has citizenship, then perhaps some other global body such as the United Nations should step in the fray. If it can start an international criminal court to seek genocidal leaders and try them, it can try consumer fraud.
Perhaps my take on this comes off as a little to paranoic for most of the Slashdot community, but aren't the United Nations part of the very same fray?
Let me understand this. You're voluntarily for a global government? Because this is where it starts. If these were corporations we were talking about, the idea would be shouted down as monopolistic by nearly everyone... and I'm not entirely sure that the parallel doesn't apply here. Have we learned nothing from the unfair business practices of Microsoft? From the monopolistic example of Ma Bell back in the eighties?
As far as I'm concerned, international trade, obscenity laws and international copyright regulations haven't changed simply because the content is now distributed nearly instantaneously via an electronic medium. The addition of the Internet changes none of these issues. Sure, there are agencies at work who would insist that the new Internet demands new legislation and regulations to suit this modern, wholly-unforseen development, but I think you will find it is these same agencies who are insisting that real-world commerce practices, contractual obligation, and copyright law should ("of course") be carried over onto the Internet jsut as they have been used for years in the physical world.
To them I say, "Pick a fragging lane already. You can't have it both ways."
While we're likening the development of the internet to historical models... I'm much more inclined to interpret it to the [European] development of North America during the days of the covered wagon. At first it was enterprising individuals, trying to eke out a life for themselves away from the well-established community in which they lived (and who were willing to make a tremendous effort and risk everything they had to do so). They established communities, and once the place had a certain rudimentary structure, a wider section of the demographic followed. Once there was reasonably little risk in these formative environments, then the parasites came along, the bankers, the middle-men, the politicians, who promplty mortgaged, overcharged, and regulated the new land into little better than the place from which the first settlers originally fled.
The difference today? We're running out of places to flee. That and the leveraging force of technology for use in oppression by the ruling classes. Never before in history have so few been able to oppress so many with so little.
I see this sort of [I feel] misperception a lot. So many people seem to assume that regulation only happens when it's against the interests of a large (or very vocal) group of people. That if nobody complains, things will just generally stay the way they are, and the rights and freedoms we accept as standard will continue to be there.
Am I the only one to whom this doesn't make sense? Large multinational corporations have financial interests, as do very rich bankers, governments seem quite evidently to want to sink their meathooks into their people (not all, neccessarily, but the United States is quite definately one)... there are many agencies with both the machinations and the means to do this sort of thing purely as a bottom-line, what-do-I-get-out-of-it decision.
It's nice and comfortable to convince ourselves that the problem is in the majority of people buying into the need for regulation (and a number of them do), but working from that premise has, I feel, pretty much doomed the rest of that line of thought from the start.
I think it's safe to describe as self-evident that large organizations generally got where they are today, and hold their ground, by looking out for themselves at the expense of others. Governments will be directly and indirectly responsible for this sort of behavior for as long as it behooves them to do so; that is to say, as long as their people lay still for it. It's up to the common person to keep tabs on their government, and take action when it exceeds its bounds. While it's easy to say that this or that law was the fault of Politician X or Corporation Y, the original fault heaps back squarely on the shoulders of the citizenry. Uncomfortable as that is to face, we can either take time away from the latest commercial games to to prevent this sort of attrocity, or sit back, let it happen, and piss and moan about it afterwards.
Most people seem to prefer the latter approach.
I don't think there even is one.
...America works extremely well. We have a mainstream media that perpetuates misconceptions about the way the country currently works, and obscure a fair amount of crucial pieces of law from the people. Case in point, chances are you have no Constitutional rights, and neither does the Bill of Rights apply to you. (Never mind that the 14th Amendment was never lawfully ratified, see documentation here, here, and a State Supreme Court opinion here. The Supreme Court has not yet made a ruling on the validity of the 14th Amendment's supposed ratification, to the best of my knowledge.) United States citizens are bound by adhesion contracts, exchanging their rights for privileges and benefits that can be changed and revoked at will. Most of them are acutely aware of this situation as applies to their Social Security benefits, many of whom realize that they'll never see their payout. A waiver of these benefits anulls the contract, of course, and then one is free to do whatever one likes, provided there is no injured party. An essentially baseless currency is problematic, but there are those who intentionally deal in gold and barter. An increasingly misinformed citizenry is depressing (most people thought that Clinton's womanizing was worthwhile news; I'm more worried about this), but it's nice to know that when they finally push people too far, they'll eventually do something about it (although thanks to the amazing advances in modern technology, never before in history have so few been able to oppress so many with so little). All things considered, the States are a great place to be. They afford more freedom and opportunity than most other places I'm aware of... for those who understand how stuff works.
[Shameless plug: For more on this stuff, head to my page. I've got a write-up and some informative links under Sovereign Citizenship.]
http://www.cnw.com/%7eloop/page145.htmlg /fed-up3.zip
http://www.cnw.com/%7eloop/page143.html
http://www.cnw.com/%7eloop/page144.html
http://www.cnw.com/%7eloop/page154.html
http://www.state-citizen.org/files/moneyandbankin
You see, there are these three branches. The judges may interpet a law, but they have limited enforcement powers. The President can always refuse to enforce a court decision, and Congress can always change the law. And unless it is a Supreme Court decision, there is always appellate court...
I'm sorry, but that isn't the case. The Emergency War Powers Act suspends this system of checks and balances in times of national crisis or emergency, making the Prez the de facto despot... and we've been in a state of national emergency since the run on the banks in the back in the 1930's.
Here are some sources on this...
Some more surrounding information
There is a plethora of information available on this. A simple Google search has proven extremely helpful.
"Second-rate cases based on flawed legal theory, but impressive nonetheless"
Puhleeze, that's about a thousand federal circuit and appeals court cases, not some rogue hillbilly judge who doesn't know the law.
You misread my post in your zeal, I think. I said the cases were flawed, and that the so-called sovereign citizens in question hadn't done their homework. By those statements the reader was meant to draw the inference that the former was caused by the latter, not because some neccessarily backwater or beholden judge gave a perfectly good case unfair ruling. That last was your invention, and it was incorrect. But as always, thanks for the attitude and the inbred "Everybody knows [insert cliche'd lie here]" argument, it's always appreciated.
As far as I know the US Supreme Court has not seen fit to examine such fine legal arguments as "well, the flag has fringe on it, therefore this is a court of admiralty!"
Believe it or not, not every law of the land is created by the Supreme Court. Some of it is actually written in the form of statutes and legislation. Here are a few links to research and raw law regarding gold fringe and admiralty. Can you cite law back to refute it?
Why is there fringe around the flag?
Foundation 5 Newsletter (.zip format)
Examination of admiralty jurisdiction as relevant to this
because of course you don't have to be a citizen of a country to be bound by their laws
No, but you do have to be within that country to be. The several States are not in the United States, as counterintuitive as that first seems, since the land was not ceded to the federal government upon the formation of the United States. Rather, the federal government was given jurisdiction over certain highly limited matters. It is supreme within its own bailiwick, as it should be. In all other matters, the several States are supreme, as they hold ownership of the land itself.
Would that be "obscure fine points" such as the crystal clear regulations of what constitutes an US citizen
Those are, if anything, intentionally obscure and obscured, as more than cursory reading of the alleged Fourteenth Amendment shows.
laws apply to EVERYONE, citizen or not -- whether you volunteer to recognize them or not!
I live in California. Does Japanese law apply to me? Likewise, in matters beyond the limited scope of federal jurisdiction, does federal law constrain me? Not at all.
That's an impressive assortment of cases there, I grant you. Second-rate cases based on flawed legal theory, but impressive nonetheless. That's what happens to sovereign Citizens in court who haven't done their homework. One of the tough bits about sovereignty is the need to know what you're doing when you go about it. It takes longer to learn and research, and one is likely to find oneself challenged on various obscure fine points at little or no notice, but I think it's worthwhile. That's probably why I think of it so much like Linux.
please lay off the crack. I can hear the government lawyers just snickering at you now.
Not usually, no.
Granted, it's a little hokey, but that's generally the way it goes.
You slashdot wackos, sitting in front of your little metal boxes pressing buttons in weird and arcane formulae that make sense only to you. Everybody knows Linux is just a myth. Otherwise we'd all be using that instead of Windows. By the way, can you send me a copy of the internet on a floppy? AOL turned mine off.
Thank you for your much-needed dose of stereotyping. I've seen more well-read and documented refutations on reruns of Hee-Haw.
Of course. Why didn't I think of that before.
The states as you know them are federal zones. As bits of the federal government, they're obliged not to say anything that would hurt it. You don't hear anything about it because you don't look for it.
http://republic-of-texas.org/
http://www.state-citizen.org/bbs.html
There are more links on my page to write-ups and source material.