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I found Kevin to be an articulate but soft spoken advocate for hard currency. While at the liberty forum he did make sales and encourage local merchant’s to accept the currency in addition to fed notes but at no time did he claim that they were actual federal reserve notes. Instead he represented them as pieces of Silver, Copper and Gold which have a lasting value through the ages. I will say he did try to shed light on how the federal reserve system, and the currency which is issued from it, works to any who would listen.

Of course the big problem is, shining the light of truth and facts about the system as it stands does undermine it.

As far as the various reincarnations of the series, movies etc, I quickly discovered that the ones which were military sci fi in nature were great and the rest could be chucked with no love lost.

So it was with mixed expectations I went to see JJ Abrams newest Trek movie. I like Abrams work, and on the whole I enjoyed the movie. The new actors did a commendable job and the movie was an action treat from start to finish. I was disappointed that they did not embrace what Trek should have been, true military SF.

———————-SPOILERS————————————

My main beef with the movie is the writing.

1) Will someone please shoot whatever Star Trek writer has it in his head that Time Travel is a mandatory plot device. Everyone came into the theatre knowing this would be a reboot of the series and no one really expected the whole Romulan grunge rocker from the future to walk through and explain why this reality is different.

2) OK assuming we must have a time travel plot, why would Spock who would sacrifice himself to save 1 ship a few movies back, not suicide to destroy the Romulan big bad right off and save Vulcan? If you can suicide and detonate the black hole whatsit, go for it Spock.

3) Military aspects of the movie are pathetic. Lets take a newly commissioned starship and hand it to a group of Academy students…Lets promote the guy we were just about to expel for cheating to first officer.

4) While I like Simon Peg, what happened to the chief engineer who should have been running engineering before Peg was beamed on board? Please don’t tell me he was the red shirt with the explosives.

What I would really have loved would have been to see David Weber write a Star Trek movie. Lets get the Navy aspects right. Abrams did a decent job directing and the effects were fantastic, if only the story wasn’t so weak.

To quote one local resident looking to spread the word about the local currency:

“All of our money is backed by nothing. That’s what we have our faith in,” she said. “Money’s not real wealth. The real wealth is our resources and our community interdependence.”

This joins a growing trend across the country of dissatisfaction with Federal reserve notes and the quest for alternatives. The US government forced the shutdown of the alternative currency the Liberty dollar but has so far been ignoring local currencies like the Ozark Hour or the similar in concept Berkshares available in western Massachusetts or Ithaca Hours from New York.

The biggest issue seems to be getting local businesses to accept the currency but many point out it means the money will be spent locally which is a good thing.

That being said, the podcast No Agenda had a brief mention of this clip from you tube (feel free to stop the video after the radio show portion ends the rest is just odd). This was posted on 4/12 to YouTube but the recording is from a 3/30/2009 broadcast. Essentially some one was reporting the men in black shipping Avian flu vaccines covertly. OK sounds paranoid and odd, but there’s quite a few folks out there who will believe the government is conspiring to do just about anything. Also since it is Avian Flu and not Swine Flu it couldn’t be connected to the current “Pandemic”.

Then someone mentioned this story (Bloomberg , Times of India,LifeGen) The company Baxter, which is on tap to develop the vaccine for the current outbreak, last year, shipped a sample of live (deadly) avian flu to be mixed into a sample of human flu vaccine. The key line from these articles is the following

It’s emerged that virulent H5N1 bird flu was sent out by accident from an Austrian lab last year and given to ferrets in the Czech Republic before anyone realised. As well as the risk of it escaping into the wild, the H5N1 got mixed with a human strain, which might have spawned a hybrid that could unleash a pandemic.

Now here is the article which caps this chain. The Sydney Morning Herald has the following to say

The new strain contains gene sequences from North American and Eurasian swine flus, North American bird flu and North American human flu, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now I realize that this is fairly fringe/black helicopter paranoid. But am I crazy thinking that there might be a connection here?

So that being said, I will be rebranding GeekHeretic as Liberty and Geekery. Geekheretic.com will still direct you to the new blog, and all the old articles and fun will still be there. We will also be offering some T shirts and other fun merchandizing. Its in the works currently and will be up when its ready.

Here is the tea party audio courtesy of WGY.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

There are podcast links available for this audio here

My first impression was wow there must have been a sale on Gadsden Flags, because there was about 40 when we first arrived (about an hour before the scheduled start time). My second impression is wow we should have brought more flyers (we were giving out flyers for the new continental congress.)

Contrary to common reporting this event was not a republican organized conspiracy against the current administration. Most of the speakers and participants were against both parties and were generally libertarian. The most common grievances I heard were:

1. Bailouts
2. Eroding the bill of rights (Especially the Second amendment)
3. Lack of representation
4. Special Interests controlling politicians
5. Career politicians/Term Limits.
6. Our children’s future.

I was also struck by how many children there were. Kids of every age from babes in arms through teen agers were there. One little girl had a shirt that said, “I am Four years old, have no job and already am $160,000 in debt.”

There were no professional speakers or politicians at this event. Every speaker was a local businessman or retired veteran and all spoke from the heart. Al “William Wallace” Roni from the local talk radio station played MC and was equally enthused about the event. I recorded much of the audio and will post it shortly after I break it up by speaker.

One last comment, last week DHS posted a report which indicated that folks attending these events event should be viewed as potential fanatics/domestic terrorists. I originally scoffed at this idea, but after being surrounded by a couple of thousand pissed off libertarians for 4 hours yesterday, I think the establishment should be worried.

Here is my flickr stream of the event.

View 2009 Tea Parties in a larger map

Google Map of all of the tax day tea parties. Click here for the details. Update: Not shown here because of the zoom level is 2 in Alaska and 2 in Hawaii.