The Dollar Vigilante Blog

The Weekend Vigilante May 18, 2013

JeffBerwick — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:57:51 +0000

Hello from Santiago, Chile,

You usually read my weekend rants with their incredibly positive tone. And you must get sick of it.

So if you want to hear about me in an unhappy mood, this is the one to read! It's nothing too terrible, but here is the story...

I was so, so happily going about my routine in Acapulco earlier this week. You know the story, awaken to my glorious view surrounded by my beautiful family and dogs. I was in the gym every day and was feeling incredibly productive. You may have noticed I wrote almost every blog this week. I actually wrote them all in a day or two. I was just so centered and full of Vitamin D and energy from the gym and my three times daily "jugo verde" as my cook there knows it... which is all manner of vegetables blended into a nice drink that had me almost feeling euphoric by Monday of this week.

I knew I had to get to Chile sometime soon. We've been doing so many things here and things have been progressing so much that I just sensed I had better get down here just to even understand the progress happening every day and, like any proprietor, just check up on everything. But every day I've been putting it off. I was just so happy for the last few weeks I didn't want it to end.

My wonderful wife whose cheeks had almost returned to normal after her root canal then said to me, "You have to go... now." This is very strange because I travel so much for work that she is always angry I am not there enough. "Why?" I asked. She told me, "I feel you need to be there." She is INTJ under Myers Briggs too (which most anarchists and libertarians are) and INTJs do a lot on feel or, "intuition" (the "N" in INTJ). That is not to say we read tea leaves or go to psychics. It just means we tend to put some weight in our decisions based on paying the most attention to impressions or the meaning and patterns of the information we get.

And with her also being born in southern Mexico, she just seems to be connected to things more than most. I actually call her "Legolas" a lot, after the Lord of the Rings character who often seems to go into an almost trance as he intuitively senses things and seems to see things coming. I can't even count the number of times she's told me, "it will rain tonight" in a place where it maybe rains once or twice per year in the dry season. Or that an earthquake is coming. There must be something to it... the animals also seem to sense these things.

In any case, I don't read too much into it, but she's right so often that I give it extra weight. And so, I found myself happily on my patio in Acapulco on Monday afternoon booking a red-eye flight through Mexico City to Santiago that night, arriving at 10am on Tuesday. That is one really great thing about what we are doing at Galt's Gulch Chile (GGC). I can be from my place in Mexico to Santiago in less than 12 hours. And from there it is only about a 30 minute drive from Santiago airport to Galt's Gulch.

Upon arriving at GGC's three-bedroom condo where we house staff temporarily I found that there was nowhere for me to sleep. I worked most of the day and by the evening I was too exhausted to even find a hotel. So, I slept on the floor. Oh, and besides not being any place to sleep there were hardly any blankets, pillows or even towels available for me to use. So, I slept on the hard floor with barely a half-blanket to cover me. And, as well, it is now late fall here and can get quite chilly at night... but not chilly enough that many apartments even have heating.

The next day was almost the exact same, work all day and then be too tired to find a hotel by evening so I did it again. Shivering on the floor through most of the evening.

By now it was Thursday and I felt something wasn't quite right with my body. This was definitely a huge culture shock from living in air-conditioned comfort from the heat and humidity in one of the nicest beds you'll ever see (I always spend good money on beds... if you don't, you should consider it!) and I am usually surrounded by my wife and a few chihuahuas who tend to snuggle into whatever crevice is available. In other words, it is eminently comfortable.

I then had a three-hour meeting that should have taken 10 minutes, but that is how it is in Latin American culture. The first two hours of every meeting is just platitudes and talking about unimportant things. To make things worse, however, Chileano Spanish is much different than the Mexican Spanish I am usually surrounded by so I had to actually pay a lot of attention just to even understand what was being said.

By the time it and a few other meetings were over it was nearly 10pm and just due to circumstance, I hadn't even eaten yet. I decided to go to the glorious Costenera Center which is full of great restaurants and bars for some food and to try to get some work done on my laptop. Along the way I ran into TDV'er and now employee of GGC and TDV Passports, Terry Vogel. His story is amazing. I met him the last time I was here and hired him on the spot. He had travelled to Santiago with his wife and three kids almost purely on my recommendation and is absolutely loving it. I'll be interviewing him this week for Anarchast... definitely check it out. He's got his kids in "circus school" here now and they make most of the money they need singing on the streets and at schools!

Terry had two handfuls of groceries when I saw him and I told him I'd be at the new Hard Rock bar (which is fabulous) working on my laptop if he wanted to drop by later. By the time he did I had my head in my hands and I apologized to him. I said, "I don't know what's wrong, but something is definitely wrong". I hadn't felt that tired and ill in a while. I guess the travel, work and two nights of sleeping on a freezing floor had finally caught up to me.

Terry amazingly got out his iphone and searched all the hotels within walking distance. He had stayed at many of them when he first arrived and advised which were the best. He then walked me to one of the hotels and I passed out no more than five minutes later, waking up in a hotel with nothing but yesterday's clothes and my laptop. I still didn't feel great, but I felt better after sleeping in a semi-warm room in an actual bed!

I then spent most of today working and in another three-hour meeting where I maybe understood half of what was being said. But my wife was right. There were many things that needed my attention here and it was a good move I came down at a moment's notice just to make sure everything progressed properly.

It's now Friday evening and I am still in my clothes from Wednesday (as I still haven't returned to the GGC apartment) and there isn't one empty seat at the Hard Rock bar (which I consider to be my new late night office, just like Mangos in Acapulco) so I am sitting at a bar/restaurant called Enzos next door... at least until a seat opens up at the Hard Rock.

Due to my horrid week this month's issue of TDV to subscribers went out nearly two days late and I apologize! I hope our subscribers can understand why. But I think it will be well worth the wait.

Although I did start off with a very negative start... it gets worse. TDV has lost its first family member this week. We are sad to announce the passing of Tom O’Brien, a great freedom fighter and hard money advocate who wrote in the first year of TDV’s existence the column, “Perspectives from the Original Silver Trader”. Tom was on the front lines of the silver market and traded the first contract to ever trade on the COMEX and ended up playing a significant part in the Hunt Brothers takedown by the federal government and spent years being attacked by the US government. He was truly an amazing individual and always full of great insights into the history of the precious metals market.

Here was a quote from Tom that was perhaps even more poignant now than it was when it first appeared in the September, 2010 issue of TDV, “I have looked into the face of death many times and walked into fire without fear. If we should have learned anything from centuries of life-changing events, it is those who face fear without fear who triumph. The heat of battle is most intense just before the tide of battle changes.”

Today, the battle is getting more intense by the day and we are saddened Tom won’t be here to see the tide of the battle change towards liberty in the coming years. Of course, before we get to a better world there will be plenty of risks as The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEO- TMSAWKI) grinds on. We extend our greatest sympathies to Tom’s family and good friends.

On a much more positive note, we actually have an interview with Terry Vogel about his experience bringing his entire family to Chile on nothing but a wing and a prayer as well my take on "constitutions" and Ed Bugos' insightful info on what is really going on in the world economy and markets. It's another jam-packed issue of all the news, info and analysis you need to survive The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) that we put out every week for subscribers.

On top of that, we haven't even fully announced it yet, but dozens of TDV Groups around the world have now been put onto private Facebook pages (for TDV subscribers only) where you can meet liberty-minded people around the world, including, off the top of my head: Lagos, Nigeria; Ilian City, Taiwan; Sao Paolo, Brasil; Medellin, Colombia; Riga, Latvia, St. Petersburg, Russia and dozens more. All of these are headed up by TDV subscribers who can give you the lay of the land wherever you may have interest. Or, even if you are just travelling, you have a place to meet up with like-minded people... as well as numerous places in the US and UK like Birmingham in the UK or Hawaii in the US where you can also get together and devise your escape plans or how to survive the coming collapse.

The most popular TDV Groups are in Jim Karger's hometown of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico where numerous TDVers have already expatriated with Jim's help, my part-time abode in Acapulco and now in Santiago, Chile where countless TDVers have already begun to migrate.

I believe I have a meeting with a number of TDV'ers who came out to see Galt's Gulch tomorrow too. I hope I am feeling better by then. This is about as unhappy and un-fiesta-like as I get. I've even got an offer to meet a number of GGC people tonight in another part of town and think I'll have to pass. One more good sleep in a warm bed should have me feeling back up to snuff though.

We are about to open our official GGC office in Santiago and a second employee/guest apartment in Vina del Mar so before I come next time I'll just make sure there is room for me around here! I didn't realize how fast things are growing. And we still haven't even offered pre-sales. My work and the work of the entire team here this week, though, tells me we are deliciously close. I hope when I come here a year or two from now it will be to stay in my own bed in a nice little casa on the grounds of GGC... and maybe with a chihuahua or two also.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

There will still be no rest for the weary, however. I plan to leave here Wednesday night, arrive in Acapulco on Thursday morning and leave for Vancouver to the World Resource Investment Conference on May 26th and 27th. I'll then likely return to Acapulco for a few days and then back down to Santiago for a few weeks prior to Las Vegas and a documentary interview on the bane of government regulation and perhaps one World Series of Poker tournament in mid June before heading to the free-er state, New Hampshire for Porcfest from June 18-23. I'll then either return to Acapulco for a few days or hit Vegas again for another tourney just prior to the Liberty Mastermind Symposium in Dallas on June 28th and 29th.

I'll then likely return to Acapulco for a week before FreedomFest in Las Vegas from July 10-13. And then, back to Vancouver again on July 27th for the Capitalism and Morality conference.

Phew. I feel tired enough already without looking at that schedule. But TEOTMSAWKI fast approaches... I'll rest a bit after the collapse. Until then, I've got slaves to help free.

Jeff Berwick

Feedback Friday - May 17, 2013

RedmondW — Fri, 17 May 2013 22:22:21 +0000

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for Feedback Fridays, when you bring the discussion to us. Have we mentioned that we want to hear from you? Send your comments, queries, conundrums, and complaints to tdv@dollarvigilante.com, comment on a post, or get on the forums.

On to the feedback…

Dear TDV,

For those of us stuck in the USSA, how likely does TDV think it is that the government will seize precious metals assets in private depositories such as the goldsilvervault.com in Idaho? I am primarily concerned with silver.

Thank you,

Ron

Vin Maru’s Response:

Dear Ron,

The topic of gold confiscation is something we cover regularly in TDV blogs posts, however we provide solutions to protect your precious metals in our paid newsletters and in our special report “Getting Your Gold Out Of Dodge”. Everyone seems to have a different opinionsabout the confiscation of precious metals and there is no way one person can know what plans the sociopaths and criminal economic planners have in store for us. The USSA already confiscated gold back in 1933 when Roosevelt issued executive order 6102 and confiscated privately held gold. He did, however, have a few exceptions to the greatest gold heist in history (so far) and they were as follows:

Section 2. All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933, except the following:

(a) Such amount of gold as may be required for legitimate and customary use in industry, profession or art within a reasonable time, including gold prior to refining and stocks of gold in reasonable amounts for the usual trade requirements of owners mining and refining such gold.

(b) Gold coin and gold certificates in an amount not exceeding in the aggregate $100.00 belonging to any one person; and gold coins having recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins.

(c) Gold coin and bullion earmarked or held in trust for a recognized foreign government or foreign central bank or the Bank for International Settlements.

(d) Gold coin and bullion licensed for the other proper transactions (not involving hoarding) including gold coin and gold bullion imported for the re-export or held pending action on applications for export license.

Short answer is, the government and central banksters can and will do anything they want. They are in survival mode and they reek of desperation. The recent take down in the gold price is a good example of what they are capable of doing. They are manipulating and controlling almost all aspects of our lives, especially the financial markets. So eventually if everyone rushes into gold during a currency collapse, they may make it illegal to buy precious metals at that time and then retroactively charge you a windfall profit tax if you currently own it. Alternatively, the insider financial elite could be buying and hording the metals for themselves knowing full well that gold will be re-evaluated multiple times higher during a re-set of the currently failing monetary system. With the recent take down in price, I suspect they could be covering their short position and acquiring all the physical metals they can while continually trying to talk down the price via their paid media outlets. There are dozens of possible scenarios of how this financial collapse will all play out. Gold is just another asset class they will try to steal from you when and if it happens.

So when you ask how likely is it that they will confiscate gold, my answer is “I really don’t know”. But for now, it’s not illegal to own gold so having some in your hands is the best way of owning it, just don’t tell anyone except beneficiaries that you own it. If you have a significant amount of precious metals and you need to vault them, then look for a private vault outside of the financial system and build a good relationship with them. You may also want to consider buying and storing some of your precious metals outside of the country you currently reside in. We can show you how here. Buying precious metals as a store of value comes down to your personal risk tolerances in wanting to protect your assets. Where to store them is a matter of convenience and preference.

If the US confiscates gold (again), they will be the first Western nation to do so in recent history and it really will show how desperate they have become. Criminal doesn’t even start to describe what Western financial planners have become. We only have to look at holders of bank deposits in Cyprus as a prime example of what they have in store for anyone with significant amounts of wealth. Of course the planners and thieves will exempt themselves from the very same confiscation they have planned for everyone else. Most western governments are enacting laws that will allow for “bail-in” during any future banking crisis. This means all Western citizens with money held in banks in excess of the insured deposit amounts will become “Cyprused” and you will lose it. What most people don’t know is that your money on deposit held with banks is no longer your money. Essentially you have loaned them that money and are now a creditor to the bank. In case of a bank failure, good luck in trying to collect any money over the insured amount. You are at the bottom of the totem pole and there will be nothing left over for you.

The East on the other hand is still acquiring gold and there seems to be no talk of confiscation there. The culture in India has an affinity to gold and they will always buy now and in the future without fear of theft from the gov’t, just possibly higher taxes. China has made purchasing gold easy and actually encourages citizens in precious metals ownership. The same goes for most of Asia and the Middle East. They have become net buyers and that trend won’t change because of price drops or fears of confiscation from Western planners.

It really shows you the two opposing views to owning gold there are in the world. While the East embraces precious metals as store of value and protection from inflation and gov’t theft, the West considers PM as barbaric relic only to be held by central planners hidden in vaults never to be seen or accounted for. So the question about holding gold comes down to where you want to hold your gold without risk and fear of confiscation. For that reason look we suggest you look towards the East for safe harbor; the West will only bring you misery and fear of possible theft and/or taxes. If you are interested in learning more about precious metals and resource investing, you may want to subscribe to my news letter at TDVGoldenTrader.

Hi Jeff and Gary,

So inspired by all you do at TDV. Its the education I wished I would of received many years ago. My question is on passports. Living in the US I have an opportunity to acquire my citizenship through birthright in Italy. Given the volatility in Europe would I be better off with a passport/citizenship through one of the countries TDV has indicated and then go from there? Planning on leaving within the next 12 months...

Sincerely,

Tommy

Jeff’s Response:

I'm almost tempted to say that any non-US passport is a good passport. But I myself was a Canadian citizen and Canada really essentially is the US-lite. They're a smilier version of the fasco-communist US with a full blown nationalized medical care system to make the world think that their version of fasco-communism is more caring of its inmates.

I would go so far as to say that citizenship in any Western country is a liability. The US is the worst. They're the ones that will tax your income around the world. The US is the one looking to create a full police surveillance state and prepping for war againsts its citizens. But while the US is saddled with its sick, murderous imperial baggage, the rest of the West is collapsing under the burden of the welfare/taxation/inflation state.

That's why we here at TDV offer citizenships in the countries we do. These are tiny Caribbean or Latin American nations -- and one Southeast Asian nation -- that simply don't have the desire or reach to mess with their citizens' lives and money that the Western nations north of Mexico and in Europe do. As far as Western nations go, we suppose Italy is a step up from the US. Italy won't try to steal the money you earn around the globe or record every electronic communication you make.

And just because you hold an Italian citizenship and passport doesn't mean you have to live in Italy or even anywhere in Europe for that matter. You could adopt the Permanent Traveler/Prior Taxpayer lifestyle with your Italian passport, too. If it's straightforward enough for you to get due to your heritage, then it may well be worth it. If you do get that Italian passport, just remember that what happened in Cyprus could just as easily happen in any Western nation, especially the blatant economic basketcases. Use your Italian passport as a bridge away from the US. Do not think of Italy as a place to do business or store your wealth.

For those without the heritage option TDV offers the most economical and sensible options. Even if you start with a European nation for your second passport because your heritage makes it relatively easy to do so, we still recommend taking a look at our Caribbean and Latin American options we make avaiable. (Do so by clicking here.)

Gary's Response:

I was born a citizen of a tiny Caribbean country and just never bothered getting my US citizenship. Long before I became the anti-state loudmouth that I am, I had a feeling that the US would eventually become the kind of place that the smart money would be fleeing. So my first passport is the kind of thing that the smart money is trying to acquire as their second passport. While this spares me a bit of the urgency I'd feel if all I had was a US citizenship and passport, I still really like the passport options TDV offers and am thinking of one in particular that would be a much better travel document than my own.

If all I had was a US citizenship, however, I'd be getting very nervous by now, especially if I hadn't alread pulled the trigger on one of TDV's citizenship and passport programs last year.

E-Verify = E-Total State

Wendy McElroy — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:05:39 +0000

[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV contributor, Wendy McElroy]

The total state needs total information. How else can it track every dollar to snatch, every child to draft, every opinion to slap down? The monitoring of movement will always be done covertly or – if revealed – in the name of safety and fairness.

Obama assumed office with a vow to lead the most transparent White House in American history. Now another Godzilla Act has another massive gotcha that steps closer to the total state. The 800 plus page Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 (S.744) was introduced in the Senate on April 17 by a powerful group of bipartisan senators known as the "Gang of Eight." And, as the comedian George Carlin once said of bipartisanship, it “usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”

Section 3101 of S.744, “Unlawful Employment of Unauthorized Aliens, contains a mandatory “Identity Authentication Mechanism” that mandates a biometric ID database for almost every adult in America. The so-called “Photo Tool” database would be administered jointly by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It would include not only personal information but also photographs from state-issued ID such as a driver's license. Every adult who drives or travels, who opens a bank account or intersects with a government agency requires a state-issued photo ID. This means almost every adult in America will be on record with the most powerful domestic surveillance and police force in the world.

The ostensible purpose of the database is to prevent the illegal employment of undocumented immigrants. Employers would be legally obligated to “E-Verify” every person they hired; that is, they would be required to “match the photo on a covered identity document provided to the employer [by the job applicant] to a photo maintained by a US Citizenship and Immigration Services database.”

The American state does not care about the financial cost E-Verify inflicts on business or taxpayers. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) estimates the cost at “about $4.1 billion in initial setup costs and $8.5 billion in ongoing annual costs to government, businesses, and employees.” Additionally, if a specified 5,000 special agents are hired at an annual compensation that starts at “$45,416 per year, the new hires will likely cost taxpayers at least $2.27 billion over the next decade.”

The American state does not care about the penalties E-Verify would inflict on employers or minorities like Hispanics who would become high-risk employees – translation, less employable. After all, the employers would pay huge penalties for employees who bypass or somehow fake verification. David Bier of CEI explained, “The Senate legislation will increase penalties for illegal hiring, paperwork mistakes or technical errors in the process, which further incentivizes discrimination....[Another] reason for avoiding foreign-born or 'foreign-looking' individuals is that if unauthorized workers beat E-Verify by assuming others' identities, employers could lose much of their workforce overnight” if the authorities find out.

The American state does not care about the social control E-Verify inflicts on individuals. The Act has a clear potential if not the likelihood of becoming a civil liberties train wreck. Once the bureaucracy is in place, there is no reason for E-Verify to stop with employment; there are reasons for the state to expand the program's mission. The DHS could demand the verification of identity and a collection of data every time a person accesses a finance service, buys a home or car, boards a plane or train, applies for a license, seeks health care, casts a vote, requests a government service, or logs into a social network.

Defenders of S.744 reply that the Act allows the database to be used only for the purpose of hiring; the Act expressly forbids the establishment of a national ID database. They should read history. Social Security numbers were introduced in 1935 by Obama's hero Franklin D. Roosevelt. They were explicitly prohibited from being used for any purpose other than tracking accounts within the Social Security program. People were expressly forbidden to use a Social Security numbers for identification. Cards issued from 1946 to 1972 had the words “for social security purposes, not for identification” printed prominently across their face. Today Social Security numbers are an unofficial and universal form of national ID without which it is difficult to function in the mainstream of society.

Two-thousand and thirteen moves faster than 1935. The evolution of Social Security numbers from innocuous from ubiquitous took decades; the evolution of S.744 may take months. Moreover, the Act does not restrain the type of biometric data to be gathered and used. Although S.744 currently mandates only the storing of photographs, it explicitly provides for the "development of specific and effective additional security measures to adequately verify the identity of an individual whose identity may not be verified using the photo tool." The Act makes vague reference to “additional security measures” that may be required to keep up “with technological advances" and to provide “a high level of certainty as to...identity.” Vagueness in law favors the state. The news outlet Policymic observed, “There is no higher level of certainty than DNA.”

The political circumstances surrounding S.744 are also cautionary. For example, last week Senator Orrin Hatch filed a proposed amendment to launch the process of collecting biometric data (e.g. fingerprints, iris scans) on all foreigners departing the United States. This is a considerable expansion of S.744's mission. And, yet, criticism from Hatch's fellow-Senators focused upon the amendment's economic cost, not upon its expansion of the Act.

Of course, any mission drift is likely to occur in silence, except for the official denials that it is occurring at all. Silence and denial have become the SOP of government agencies. Civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald addressed the recent revelation that “all digital communications - meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like - are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact.” Greenwald identifies this process as the very definition of the “ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State”. Why do Americans tolerate total surveillance? One reason is that “[t]he real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy.”

State verification is state control. The DHS could easily control social and financial interactions by delaying or refusing verification. It could create second-class citizens by tagging dissenters or others targeted for a denial of 'privileges' like logging onto the Internet, accessing their bank accounts, or buying land. Chris Calabrese – a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union – observed of S744, “It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things. More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

That would constitute the start of the end.

[Editor's Note: The US descent into a total police state continues. The best remedy remains geographical. If it is at all in your power, start taking the steps to get out and perhaps end your relationship with the empire entirely. Click here to learn more about second passports and how they can help you.]

Wendy McElroy is a frequent Dollar Vigilante contributor and renowned individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist in 1982, and is the author/editor of twelve books, the latest of which is "The Art of Being Free". Follow her work at http://www.wendymcelroy.com.

The Re-Education of Lauryn Hill

JeffBerwick — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:13:13 +0000

Ready or not, Lauryn Hill of Fugees fame has found herself sentenced to three months in a cage for extortion evasion. The extortionists call it "tax evasion", but calling it by another name doesn't change what it really is.

This sort of harassment and kidnapping is fairly par for the course in the USSA, of course. Just ask Wesley Snipes or Willy Nelson. But there is a new twist this time around. The tax-funded judge has ordered that Hill undergo psychiatric care in what amounts to brainwashing and re-education. Why? According to them, simply for publicly proclaiming the fact that the music industry is designed to strangle true talent while promoting mindless drivel.

Let's just take a look at some of Lauryn's lyrics and compare them to some of the top illuminati symbol-flashing pop stars in her genre today to see if perhaps she has a point.

Ya'll can't handle the truth in a courtroom of lies

Perjures the jurors

Witness despised

Crooked lawyers

False Indictments publicized

It's entertainment...the arraignments

The subpoenas

High profile gladiators in bloodthirsty arenas

Enter the Dragon

Black-robe crooked-balance

Souls bought and sold and paroled for thirty talents

Court reporter catch the surface on the paper

File it in the system not acknowledged by the Maker

Swearing by the bible blatantly blasphemous

Publicly perpetrating that "In God We Trust"

Cross-examined by a master manipulator

The faster intimidator

Receiving the judge's favor

Deceiving sabers doing injury to they neighbors

For status, gratis, apparatus and legal waivers

See the bailiff

Representing security

Holding the word of God soliciting perjury

The prosecution

Political prostitution

The more money you pay.. the further away solution

Now, let's look at some of her modern day peer group. Here are some lyrics to "I'm the Best" by Niki Minaj.

I hear they coming for me.

Because the top is lonely.

What the fuck they gon say?

I'm the best bitch doing it,

I'm the best bitch doing it.

I'm the be be best.

I am the Best!

Eh, Eh, it's okay.

It's okay.

Long as you know,

Long as you mothafuckin know, I am the best best best best. I'm the best best best best...

Okay. Maybe that is just one small example. Let's look at one of Beyonce's latest "hits":

I got gloss on my lips, a man on my hips

Got me tighter in my Dereon jeans

Acting up, drink in my cup

I can care less what you think

I need no permission, did I mention

Don't pay him any attention

'Cause you had your turn, and now you gonna learn

What it really feels like to miss me

'Cause if you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it

If you liked it, then you shoulda put a ring on it

Don't be mad once you see that he want it

'Cause if you liked it, then you shoulda put a ring on it

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it

If you liked it, then you shoulda put a ring on it

Don't be mad once you see that he want it

If you liked it, then you shoulda put a ring on it

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

I think Lauryn Hill might have a point!

THE RE-EDUCATION OF LAURYN HILL

Ironically, Lauryn Hill released her album, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" in 1998. Today, in the US, Lauryn Hill is about to be forcibly re-educated.

Her crime? Believing in "conspiracy theories" that the music industry pushes out people like her who try to speak about the truth in favor of those like Minaj and Beyonce above. Whether or not she is correct isn't the point, however.

The point is that the US has begun "re-educating" countless people for any belief that doesn't jibe with what is pushed out by the mainstream presstitute propaganda machine. Brandon Raub was kidnapped for doing just that and sent to be re-educated.

The term re-education camp was the official title given to the prison camps operated by the government of Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam War. In such "re-education camps", the government imprisoned several hundred thousand former military officers and government workers from the former regime of South Vietnam. Reeducation as it was implemented in Vietnam was seen as both a means of revenge and a sophisticated technique of repression and indoctrination.

We'll have to see how outspoken Lauryn Hill is after her internment. If she tones down her lyrics and contempt for the fascistic music industry, then it will be clear she has been repressed, broken and -- to take play on a line from her most famous cover song -- she has been killed softly because of her songs.

GET OUT

One of Lauryn Hill's 2002 songs is called, "I Get Out" with a chorus stating, "I get out, I get out of all your boxes... I get out, you can't hold me in these chains."

Unfortunately for Lauryn, she didn't realize she should literally get out long ago. Artists, more than most, have the ability to easily escape slavery in the US. If she had been a TDV reader years ago, she would have realized that she should have become a citizen of another country without re-education camps and with no taxes that apply to her work, like St. Kitts, the Dominican Republic (DR) or Paraguay, and lived the Permanent Traveller/Prior Taxpayer (PT) lifestyle that we promote here. As an artist that is regularly touring this would have been incredibly easy to do.

She would have saved millions of dollars in extortion payments and no matter what she said about the US music industry it is quite doubtful that the governments of places like the DR or Paraguay would find her statements cause for psychiatric internment!

Unfortunately Lauryn Hill is learning all of this too late. She probably never heard of options like this from her financial advisor or manager. It's too bad. But you don't have to make the same mistake.

If you have the capability, we suggest you look at your options to "Get Out" now from one of the most dangerous and oppressive countries on Earth, the US.

Jeff Berwick

The Digital Age and Revolution Has Begun

JeffBerwick — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:11:52 +0000

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor-in-Chief, Jeff Berwick]

Welcome to the official beginning of the digital age!

When I first heard that the Internet had finally come to fruition in 1994, I could hardly contain my excitement as I'd been waiting for it since I got my first computer in 1981. When I heard about the Internet 13 years later I didn't even know what anarchism really was or had heard the word libertarian, but I instinctively knew that most problems in the world could be solved if people would just have more of an ability to communicate and to get access to real information. Having grown up in Canada, I was certain that the government's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was not giving me the full and truthful picture of the world!

However, by around 2002, eight years later I was becoming a bit sad. Everything I hoped that would come from the Internet hadn't yet happened. Heck, most of the things I had hoped hadn't happened. Many people were just starting to use email and the world wide web regularly at that point. YouTube was still three years from being created as the bandwidth simply wasn't yet there to host and play millions of videos per day. Even mySpace hadn't even been launched until a year after that. And, it's already a distant memory.

Even Facebook, which we now know is CIAbook, was still a few years away. It wasn't really until the iPhone, which was first released in 2007, that many people finally realized the power they held in their hands.

But, now, just a few years later, it has all coalesced into what I knew it would in 1994.

I declare that the true information age has started, officially, as of 2013. It's finally all come together and now the exponential growth made capable by billions of Internet users will now bring us to a new world—and not their new world order, ours. As of the latest data calculated by internetworldstats.com, 2.4 billion people are now on the Internet.

And, by these stats Asia will be leading the way and Latin America is competing for supremacy with the residents of North America.

3-D PRINTING

It's sort of strange to think that one of the main reasons I am professing that the digital age has begun is because of "printing". If you told me that back in 1994 with my dot matrix printer that the Internet and digital revolution would result in printable handguns, I would have certainly been skeptical! But, how fast things change.

Technology is changing so fast now that you can print your own handgun in your house with an $8,000 3-D printer. It's certainly not the most advanced of weapons, currently only capable of one shot, but this changes the game.

Nation-states around the world have "outlawed" many forms of self defense devices, like guns, but of course they still exist. The main problem is buying and transporting them. Only organizations like the US government and its fascistic military industry (the military industrial complex) has the capability to sell large scale "defense" (although almost always used offensively by their clients) worldwide. In the top 10 are seven US-based fascist military vendors, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics and Raytheon. The other three are European.

But if you as an individual want your own self protection device, it is becoming harder and harder, no matter where you live. The nation-states have realized that if they are going to be tax farming their own citizens into oblivion, it is probably best not to allow them a way to defend themselves.

3-D printing changes all of this.

Just last week the US government and their attempts to control everything showed how impotent the state is in the digital age. Cody Wilson's Defense Distributed posted on their site last week, "This file has been removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information."

The file had already been downloaded 100,000 times however. It's on Pirate Bay, it's on my computer and you can get it almost anywhere. How can they stop it? The only way to stop it would be to attack and try to shut down the entire Internet. Good luck doing that—finally tens of millions of youth, if not many more, have something to fight for. They can't imagine a world without the Internet and if the government tries to shut it down, they'll take their Gears of War skills out into the street with their 3-D printed guns.

And, not to mention, in a recent poll 61% of college students in the US already want the government to stay completely out of their lives.

BITCOIN

To add extra cream to this extra yummy freedom milkshake is the fact that many of Defense Distributed's creation came from donations via bitcoin!

Bitcoin is just one arm of the new revolution.

3-D printing is taking the monopoly on violence away from the government and they can't stop it. And, bitcoin is taking the monopoly on money and banking away from the government, and again, they can't stop it.

Believe me, you are going to love this beautiful new world the Digital Age has enabled.

Again, the most dangerous criminal gang on Earth, the US government, has realized bitcoin may become a problem for their fascistic monopoly and have thought about shutting it down. The CFTC just this week said they can regulate bitcoin if they want. And many other US government officials have said that they shoud shut it down.

Good luck! Where do you go to shut down bitcoin? There is no central place where bitcoin is, the same way there is no central place where the blueprints to print a gun on a 3-D printer exist.

Game, set, match.

THE ANARCHO REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN

The digital age has enabled the anarcho-revolution. Anarchy just means, according to the Greek words, "an", without, "archy" a ruler.

The new ruler is you. Meet the new revolutionaries leading the revolution.

Thanks to Angie K. for sending us that graphic.

Good friend of TDV, Adam Kokesh, also featured in that graphic is taking the cause to the street and hopes to march with 10,000 other freedom lovers in Washington, District of Criminals, with loaded firearms on July 4th. I will likely join him there.

Things are changing fast. [And to keep up with more in-depth analysis and ways to profit from these rapid changes, check out our subscription TDV newsletter. Click here to learn more.]

And, as the digital age progresses, it will only change faster.

The saying "the revolution will not be televised" has even become archaic. Television? Who watches that 1930s technology anymore?

Jeff Berwick

The Return of the Bond Vigilante... in Japan

JeffBerwick — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:25:52 +0000

[Editor's Note: The following post is by TDV Editor-in-Chief, Jeff Berwick]

On April 11th we went public stating that shorting Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) was an effective means of, "Profiting from The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It" (TEOTMSAWKI).

Less than a month later, on May 10th, after a month replete with numerous halts of the market over intraday crashes JBGs had their worst day in the last five years. Yields rose higher by 11bps to 70bps in the 10 year bond and ended up 10 basis points higher on the day.

And, of course, the value of the bonds is inverse to the interest rate. That is a 16% rise in the interest rate level in a matter of hours. That is a massive move in the bond market.

AN ACCIDENT WAITING FOR A PLACE TO HAPPEN

Traders should take note of Japanese Government Bond prices. On April 4^th, the Bank of Japan made the announcement that they intended to DOUBLE the money supply and buy government bonds roughly equaling $80B a month. Does this number sound familiar? It should since the US Federal Reserve’s own quantitative easing program is roughly $85 billion-a-month. An important data point to remember here is that the Japanese economy is only 1/3 the size of the US economy, but its own quantitative easing program equals that of the US. To say Japan is “doubling down” on the same failed policy approach it has taken for the last 20 years would be a bit of a misnomer. This is Japan’s “all in” move as I try to keep the gambling metaphor rolling. A gamble is exactly what this is, a very big gamble with no precedent in economic history.

What are the consequences of rapidly increasing government spending, monetizing $80B a month in debt, and flooding the market with yen? It is hard to miss the headlines as the yen on the futures exchange is now trading at below 100 yen to the USD for the first time in four years.

Here is some news that you won't read in the mainstream financial papers. Japanese Bonds are trading lower now than they were after the April 4^th Bank of Japan (BOJ) announcement that they would buy a massive amount of JGBs. Huh? How can that happen? If the BOJ announced they would be a huge BUYER of Japanese Government Bonds, then how can the price be going down? Well it has. Since the April 4^th announcement, 10 year Japanese Government Bond futures have hit downside circuit breakers no less than 7 times as sellers overwhelmed the market with orders.

THE RETURN OF THE BOND VIGILANTE

Why are bonds trading lower? Think about this from a prudent lender’s point of view and you will have your answer. If I give you yen, and you give me a security (bond) that says you will give me back my yen with interest in 10 years, then why would I sit with that security and let you pay me back with a devalued currency? Well, in Japan bondholders appear to be speaking with their market participation. Bond holders are doing exactly what they should be doing. Bond holders should be liquidating bonds and converting money out of yen into non-yen denominated securities and investments (note all the M&A activity from Japanese companies in the last seven months as the smart money runs and not walks out of Japan and the yen).

How can the savers in Japan be sitting idly by and watching the purchasing power of their savings being destroyed? We are on the first chapter of a very ugly time in Japan where policy makers decisions will strain the very social fabric of the country. We will have a front row seat to the failings of the Keynesian economic philosophy. It will not be pretty for Japan. And it could very well be the first major event in TEOTMSAWKI.

SURVIVING AND PROFITING FROM TEOTMSAWKI

We have many strategies to survive TEOTMSAWKI including things like precious metals, preferably with a significant amount of them internatonalized to protect from political risk (see Getting Your Gold Out Of Dodge) and foreign real estate, such as at Galt's Gulch in Chile.

Those are mostly defensive.

In order to profit from TEOTMSAWKI we also have speculative bets on things like gold mining stocks. We also think that shorting Japanese Government Debt could bring spectacular returns over the coming years.

HOW TO SHORT JAPANESE GOVERNMENT DEBT

The tricky part to making massive gains with shorting JGBs is that you need to understand all the risks and intricacies of the futures market. Very, very few people have enough experience to do this safely and we don't recommend you do it on your own.

We suggest you use an expert like a financial advisor or broker, but only if they truly are experts in the field. Most brokers and advisors do not know how to trade these markets to limit risk and many people can lose their shirts if it is done wrong.

That's why we suggest you look to an expert to manage this trade. We've identified one of the most suitable as being Tres Knippa of ShortJapanDebt.com. Not only is he an expert futures trader, but he intricately follows and focuses solely on shorting Japanese government debt and operates managed accounts for suitable clientelle.

For TDV subscribers we'll be conducting an in-depth interview with Tres this week to lay out all the risks and rewards.

What we are seeing in Japan may be the first return of bond vigilantes to the bond markets since the 1970s and we'll be watching closely as things progress for the first major crack towards TEOTMSAWKI... and hoping to profit immensely from it.

Jeff Berwick

TDV Week in Review March 12th, 2013

RedmondW — Sun, 12 May 2013 16:11:14 +0000

Did you see the media coverage over the recent rescue of the innocent woman from a decade-long kidnapping? Thank goodness Patricia Spottedcrow was finally freed.

Oh, you thought I meant Amanda Berry and those other women in that sensational case of kidnap and sexual torture? While that was indeed horrible, I think it is worth keeping in mind that the state kidnaps people every day --especially non-whites-- and sentences them to long years in the sexual torture facilities commonly known as prisons.

From the ACLU website:

Patricia Spottedcrow of Oklahoma made headlines in 2010 when she was sentenced to 12 years in prison for her first criminal offense: the sale of a $31 bag of marijuana to an undercover informant. The senseless severity of her sentence caught the attention of advocates who quickly moved to support Spottedcrow, spawning a grassroots uprising that led to a highly unusual decrease in her sentence and, ultimately, to her early release on parole.

Last month [November 2012], her story went public again when she was reunited with her four children and her mother, who cared for them during her two-year absence.

While Spottedcrow’s tale of early release is unusual, her excessive sentence is not. She is one of tens of thousands of people sentenced harshly for nonviolent drug offenses in our criminal justice system, which embraces extreme sentencing policies for minor crimes like no other country. Mandatory minimums, life sentences without parole, unforgiving three-strikes laws for nonviolent offenses, and drug policies that emphasize punishment over rehabilitation make the U.S. a shameful outlier when it comes to criminal justice. And all of these infamous laws and policies disproportionately affect people of color, like Spottedcrow (who is part Native American and part African American).

It is also worth noting that Cleveland police were called to the home of the kidnapping rapist Ariel Castro several times over the years on reports of very strange things going on, like chained, naked women crawling around the backyard. People who defend the police inaction in investigating any reports point out that the cops couldn't very well just knock down the door and burst into the house just because some women might be being held against their will and repeatedly raped. No, busting down doors and invading homes is only warranted when people might be in possession of certain kinds of plants. In that case, it's perfectly fine for the thuggish agents of the state to invade private property with guns drawn, throw the inhabitants on the ground and maybe shoot their pets for good measure.

Ultimately regular citizen Charles Ramsey rescued Amanda and the other captives. He heard a cry for help and simply forced the door open. According to neighbors, Cleveland police had been called about the house several times over the years, but never had enough to go on to force entry the way Charles Ramsey did. Had they had reports of certain plants being grown, they would have forced their way in with guns drawn. But reports of possible human captivity and sexual torture weren't enough to act on.

Please understand this. The police in this growing police state are not here for your protection. Their job is to enforce the law. That only occasionally has anything to do with protecting you or your property. Their resources are primarily thrown at enforcing ridiculous prohibitions that get people thrown into the slave camp of the industrial prison complex. Their other main purpose is to supress dissent and protect the political class, which is why you will see them out in force bedecked in their riot gear at protests.

Sadly people think that their would be chaos without tax-funded police...as if the police actually create order and offer protection! Nothing could be further from the truth. Order is spontaneous and natural among human beings. The police are the naked domestic fist of the state meant to keep the tax cows in line. They will enforce nonsense laws that make the country the biggest prison slave nation on the planet and will do so without a trace of remorse. As the American empire continues to birth the American police state, the police will continue to reveal their true nature and role. They are not protectors of life and property. They are enforcers of the will of the political class and overseers on the tax plantation.

I write about coping with the American police state (among other coping strategies in the economically collapsing US) in TDV Homegrown. But my first advice to deal with the police state remains the same as Harriet Tubman's advice to enslaved blacks in the South: get out any way you can.

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Editor, The Dollar Vigilante

Before we get to the week in review, I’d like to remind you all of Jeff Berwick’s invitation to all of you to join him at the “Liberty Mastermind Symposium” in Dallas on June 28th and 29th. This is an event not to be missed. Read all about it here.

Here’s what we wrote about this week…

MONDAY, May 6

Protect Your Physical Precious Metals in a World of Paper Theft

TDV Golden Trader Chief Editor, Vin Maru, on protecting your assets.

“Hopefully all of this demand and buying of physical metals has put a bottom in the price of gold and silver. There is a lot of controversy on whether or not bullion banks control or manipulate the price of precious metals. Of course this is something we will never truly know because there is very little transparency in the gold market. If they do manipulate the price to their advantage, maybe the bullion banks will now get the hint that if they slam the gold and silver prices down, demand for physical will only pick up. I am sure their motive was to break support and run the stops, thus creating the psychology to stay away from gold as a safe haven. For now, maybe they feel comfortable knowing they won this round in the paper market, but the game of ownership for physical is far from over. It seems like the demand for the physical will only grow from here if prices continue to drop. This gives me hope that maybe the worst is behind us in lower precious metals prices—let’s hope so.”

TUESDAY, May 7

Creating the Stasi American

Wendy McElroy on the rise of anonymous big brother-ism in the USSA.

"The impact of being able to turn in your neighbor for their opinions or other peaceful behavior is well documented. It is a power that encourages the worst within human nature and rewards those people who lie and betray all trust. A network of citizen-informers not only creates the Stasi or Nazi state but also the Stasi or Nazi human being.”

WEDNESDAY, May 8

Government Unintentionally Turns Sanitation Crew into Killers

Jeff Berwick on man versus bird in Eurpooe.

“Fear of the vultures has been growing and has resulted in a push to allow farmers to shoot the birds which European farmers are currently stupidly forbidden to do by government as the vultures are currently a protected species. But this is a classic example of compounding problems caused by state interference in the first place. The state uses force (laws) to protect a species...but then they remove that species' food source with a separate bit of coercion meant to be a response to some other hysteria. Then the state has to be petitioned to handle the new problem it's inadvertently created.”

THURSDAY, May 9

What Anacrchists Should Learn from Chairman Mao

Jim Karger rounds up the latest in hypocrisy and stupidity from the USSA.

"Every anarchist I know is, deep within, an optimist. That observation is often unbelievable to the casual observer, what with our frequent expressions of anger and frustration toward government and other forced collectives. But, beyond those frustrations lives an almost universal belief that one day an event, or a series of events, will occur setting into motion the elimination of government which will be replaced by a society based solely on voluntary connections.”

FRIDAY, May 10

Feedback Friday – May 10th, 2013

In this week’s Feedback Friday: Passports, passports, passports, and abortion…

The Weekend Vigilante May 11, 2013

JeffBerwick — Sat, 11 May 2013 18:23:49 +0000

Hello from sunny Acapulco,

I was looking forward to my usual daily wake up in paradise when I rolled over at around 11am and my beautiful Mexican wife looked like Alvin from the Chipmunks. Her small face was bloated to nearly twice its normal size with her cheeks in huge balls.

"Er, have you looked in the mirror?" I asked her in what I now call Berspanglish because it is my own personal brand of Spanglish having picked up poorly pronounced words and slang from dozens of different Spanish speaking countries and which now leaves most Mexicans confused as to my background much the same way that in English most people can't really place my accent and style of speaking after having lived all over the world for the last ten years.

She gave me that angry, steaming look that you constantly see in the hot-blooded telenovelas. It's kinda sexy... but not this time, not with her head looking like a beachball!

I knew something had happened, but also knew not to poke a steaming, Latina bear too much or I'd set off the flury.

Finally she began to tell me... starting with, "How can you sleep through everything so easily?"

I had no answer to that. I do enjoy a good sleep as much as anyone though so why let noise or some major medical issue issue ruin it?

She went on to tell me that the irritation she had in her jaw for the last few weeks became unbearable early in the morning and she decided to go to the hospital. There are dozens of hospitals in Acapulco from free to very expensive and we have our favorite, Santa Lucia, which is midrange but still incredibly nice and with unbelievably attentive care as I found out after ending up there on an IV a few years ago after not being able to get rid of a stomach bug for nearly a month and having become so dehydrated that I could barely walk. Of course, being infected with the curse of being a man, it is only once you are nearly dead that you will even consider seeking any medical attention... something my wife still chides me on, calling me a "burro".

She, on the other hand, will head straight to a doctor or hospital with even the most minor of issues - and why not, it is so affordable here with a basic doctor visit costing as cheap as $1.50 at some pharmacies to $40 for a very good one and most make housecalls. Apparently, this morning was not very minor though.

It turned out she needed a rush root canal. And, a few hours later she was back in bed with me, without me even noticing she was gone.

The cost, by the way, was $350... although she said it is usually quite a bit higher, but, as usual, she knew everyone at the hospital and got a discount. She seems to know every person in Acapulco and calls every one of them either brother, sister, niece, nephew, uncle or aunt. It's a Mexican thing.

I was a bit sad that she had undergone this root canal process so quickly and without letting me know. My mother took the swine flu vaccine under advisement of her doctor a few years ago and a few days later she couldn't walk anymore - an apparent well-known side effect of the swine flu vaccine. I had been heavily anti-vaccine for years... but my mother doesn't read my crazy rantings. And, having been right near the epicenter of the swine flu vaccine in Mexico I had done sufficient research to know that at best it was unimportant and at worst it was a complete hoax/scam.

In either case, if she would have asked me I would have admonished her not to take it nor nearly any other vaccine on offer. But she didn't and now she is in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

And with root canals I had also done some reading in the alternative media (read: much closer to the truth than anything in mainstream media) and had some doubts about it. You can read one article on how dangerous a root canal is here.

While doing the root canal may have been the best thing to do in this case I wish I had had time to do my own research prior to her undergoing this procedure.

Because, as I've found dozens of times in the past, the mainstream Western medical system is often wrong, outdated or outright designed to make you sick. A few hours with Google would likely have given me a much better idea of her best options more than most doctors in the West can today.

WHY DO NORMALLY SMART PEOPLE LISTEN TO WESTERN TRAINED DOCTORS?

I'm a searcher of truth and as such I question everything. I also try to do my own research as much as possible. I've also immersed myself into countless different cultures and tried to learn from them the things that work.

And what I have discovered has been amazing. So much so that we are even considering starting a health related vigilante site to get wider exposure to information that most people are not aware.

In my youth, growing up around native Americans (whose blood I share) showed me a much better approach to health. They seemed to have a natural remedy for almost any ailment. It's the same in Mexico where upon stating a certain ailment, like feeling my vision was getting worse in dark environments, would be met by my Mexican wife just looking at me as though it was obvious, "Eat some avocados." And, voila, better.

And, not to mention that I have helped cure numerous people of life long afflictions from a few Google searches. I've even cured myself of many issues from a few keystrokes on Google. For a year or two I had a very noticable buildup of plaque behind my teeth no matter how much I brushed or flossed. I asked Google, he always knows. And, within a few minutes I came across a forum with other people with that issue. It turns out that bad biology in the intestines can cause this. The cure? Eat some sauerkraut. I ate some for a few weeks and the plaque was gone.

What would your average Western-trained doctor prescribe for either of these issues I've had? I can almost assure you it will be some sort of chemical that only treats the symptom of the problem but never treats the root. And, as you can see with the millions of Americans walking around with pill boxes the size of fishing tackle gear, all it leads to is a brief fix of the symptom and an ongoing degeneration of the root of the problem until you reach the point where all the chemicals have you far sicker than where you began... and you still haven't fixed the real problem, something that some better nutrition, fruit, nuts or other things would have easily repaired.

I used to watch the Biggest Loser TV show because I found it amazing to see how quickly someone near death can become totally healthy just from exercise and a good diet. I had to stop watching the year that Michelle Obama was on the show for obvious reasons but it is amazing to see these morbidly obese people who have been scarfing down buckets of pills prescribed by doctors when the only problem they had besides obvious psychological trauma mostly in their youth was they needed some exercise and to actually eat some real food. McDonald's, for the record, is not real food. As this graphic shows.

This photo was taken recently. The McDonald's burger on the right was created in 2008. The one on the left was concocted in 1996! Nearly twenty years later and it's barely changed. That just ain't right!

Food is medicine. If you eat good food and get an adequate amount of exercise and sunlight you almost surely will be of good health. How some people don't know that is unbelievable.

But, here I get to the point I want to make. How is it that so many smart, logical, free-thinking people still just blindly listen to their Western-trained doctors as they write out a prescription full of chemicals and unnatural concoctions?

How is it that someone who has done their research in economics and knows that almost anything taught in today's Western "higher learning" institutions on economics is complete rubbish will still go to their doctors, trained in those same places, and adhere to anything they say without even a modicum of research into alternatives?

Here I bring up good friend and one of the most important people in the freedom movement: Stefan Molyneux and his recent announcement of his diagnosis with cancer. And everything I say here is done with all the best respect, intentions and hopes that he beats it. And I could be totally wrong on many things as I am certainly no cancer-curing expert.

But, Stefan being such a genius and incredible critical thinker I was expecting to hear that he was going to do a lot of research into a lot of very cutting edge things that have been available to us via the Internet. And, then I heard he was following his doctors instructions to undergo chemotherapy and I was very surprised.

Again, I'm no expert on this topic, but my sense of chemotherapy is that it is a Dark Ages-style treatment and very typical of Western medical thinking. Someone has cancer so we will fill them with ungodly amounts of incredibly dangerous chemical poisons? A team of researchers from Washington state recently accidentally uncovered the deadly truth about chemotherapy while investigating why prostate cancer cells are so difficult to eradicate using conventional treatment methods. As it turns out, according to their research, chemotherapy does not actually treat or cure cancer at all, according to the study's findings. Instead chemotherapy fuels the growth and spread of cancer cells, making them much harder to stamp out once chemotherapy has already been initiated. Even if chemo does work to kill the particular cancer at that moment, at what cost?

Especially when there appears to be a revolution going on in terms of information to avoid getting cancer and in terms of treating it.

There are countless examples. Tommy Chong publicly came out, just like Molyneux, stating he had prostate cancer in 2012. He then decided to try to fight it by ingesting hemp oil (hemp/marijuana is one of the most healthy and important plants on Earth and probably the main reason it is constantly being attacked by the state and the fascistic pharmaceutical industry). One month after ingesting hemp oil daily he was cancer free.

He said he learned about it from a documentary called, "Run From The Cure". Countless others have come out and said they beat cancer with hemp oil also.

Does it really work? I don't know... but there is a lot of reasonable evidence that it does.

There is also a lot of credible evidence that keeping your body's PH levels in an alkaline versus an acidic environment all but makes it impossible for cancer to spread or even exist. Things like PH-alkanizing water devices can help. As can a diet of very alkaline foods - vegetables being the most alkaline.

Or, how about a man named Dr. Burzynski who made a documentary called "Cancer is Serious Business" and claims to have found the cure for cancer by using antineoplaston therapy. I have no idea what that is, but he claims to have had a lot of success. And he has been attacked numerous times by the FDA, which in my book is a clue that is treatment probably works.

Once you begin to see that almost anything to do with the US government or the fascistic corporatism that surrounds it is all based on lies then it only makes sense to look at techniques and organizations that are constantly attacked by this system in a much more positive light.

Knowing Stefan Molyneux, I have to believe he did reams of research and decided chemotherapy was the best way to go for his particular situation. I hope that is the case and I hope he is right. He has been one of the greatest forces ever in spreading the philosophy of freedom and is very much loved not only by his family and his friends, but by millions around the world whom he has armed with reason.

LIFE AND DEATH

Many of you reading will say, "but Jeff, you just started smoking at the age of 42!" I've heard countless YouTubers and CIABookers all look beyond the evidence and information I am giving them that the Western financial system will collapse in The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) and focus solely on my smoking and appeal to me to stop.

Many of those same people, at the same time they are saying that, are likely eating chemical garbage like McDonald's or heavily pesticided unorganic food out of plastic bags from their stores... and often genetically modified foods whose effects are still very unclear. The most exercise they get is likely as they lumber out of their Lazy-boy to the fridge for more toxins. Above them, if they live in the US, they are being chemtrailed and they likely have submitted themselves to numerous vaccines which have all but been proven to be incredibly dangerous. They likely get no more than a few hours of incredibly healthy sunlight per year upon emerging from their cubicles and basements and then when they are dehydrated enough go to their tap for their fluoride poisoned water to wash down the dangerous chemicals prescribed by their doctor to alleviate the symptoms brought on by all of the above they make it worse.

And yet they have the hubris to think they know better what is best for me than me? I could be wrong on many things but I'm pretty sure the person with the most insights into what is best for Jeff Berwick is... Jeff Berwick! I've avoided most vaccines, taken no Western chemical medicines, ever, live in a place with no poisoned water and eat almost exclusively organic locally grown food, take in an hour of sunlight per day and go to the gym regularly. I also have a family history of smokers who have lived well into their 80s and 90s often still cutting down trees in their backyard with a chainsaw or bench pressing 300 pounds at 65 years of age.

And they think my partaking of some cigarettes is a major concern? I find people funny. Do they actually think I can't make the best decisions for my life and they can? This is the heart of the problem with government when people think that way. What they don't know is that smoking, and drinking, has added a lot to my life. I really enjoy smoking and as a non-stop workaholic (but with work I love) it makes me take a break every now and then, walk outside and look at the horizon, take some deep breaths and think thoughts I otherwise wouldn't have. The drinking also helps calm me down and relax. At this stage in my life both alcohol and cigarettes add more to my life than they take away. If that cost/benefit structure ever changes to the negative, then I'll just stop. Pretty simple. There is no such thing as a "disease" of addiction. As Doug Stanhope said, there are just some things you like doing more than life.

Plus, I've always lived one way and one way only. While I do take care of myself for the most part because it improves the quality of my life I have always gone for quality over quantity when it comes to this mortal coil. I've never understood this concept of trying to live as long as possible. Many people are so intent to live as long as possible and so scared of death that they never really live.

I have lived every day of my life like it is my last but take care of myself good enough just in case it isn't.

I recently saw this video which made me further ponder on the subject.

Click here or on thumbnail

It is a song by Zach Sobiech that has extra meaning because he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in 2009 and apparently it has now reached the point where, by Western medicinal means, it is untreatable and he has resolved that he has just a few months to live with no known treatment left to attempt.

It's a nice little ditty. Although, I have to admit, I've been humming "Dead Giveaway" (video below) featuring a "songified" Charles Ramsey who discovered those girls who had been sequestered in Cleveland recently. I've felt awkward, but I can't get the song out of my head. I'll be in the shower singing, "We eat ribs with this dude!" but I suppose it is better than some old ABBA song... at least as a reprieve.

Click here or on thumbnail

If you find yourself humming it in the shower too don't blame me... blame auto-tune.

In any case, getting back to Zach's song... one of the beauties of the Internet is how quickly all manner of individuals worldwide can react so quickly with warmth and compassion... or with humor as with "Dead Giveaway" above. In the case of Zach's song, Clouds, a number of celebrities and numerous people all around the world got together to put together a music video for Clouds in response.

Click here or on thumbnail

In Zach's original video it states that through the song and video it is "his response to embrace every day with hope and joy" and goes on to state that Zach only has a few months to live.

But, here's the thing. We all just have a few months to live. Whether it be single, double or triple digits it is still months. It could be just seconds. Did you just look behind you?

With the amount of people who regularly read my writings across the interweb it is almost a statistical certainy that at least one person reading this won't be alive next month.

So, why do we wait until someone tells us we have a certain amount of months left to unleash our true emotions, joy and passion? Zach's video and the response by people around the world is beautiful. Why can't we do that with every song. With every day? With everything?

Live every day... or at least every month, like it is your last. Why wait to let go of all your stress and worries until the end. Why wait to tell the people you love how much you love them? I've always had great disdain for funerals and how people act after someone they love has died. Great outpourings of love come out for people after they are gone. That love can be much better used while they are still here and can hear you!

Not to bring in my usual anti-state nonsense, but things like making euthanasia illegal keep us from better things. It is ridiculous to wait until someone dies and then everyone shows up and tells them how much they loved them from a speech written on a piece of paper. A much better way, with someone terminally ill, would be to hold a grand celebration before they go. If the person is incredibly ill, pump them up full of steroids, ecstasy and any other plant or chemical of their choice and have them surrounded by their good friends and family in a wonderful moment. And then, in the morning, before they awaken, they can be peaceably "put to sleep". The "big sleep" as Ren of "Ren and Stimpy" used to call it.

Does that sound callous and crude to you? Perhaps you have your priorities all wrong if you think it is better for someone to suffer for months alone in a hospital bed and then, only then, once they are gone you show up and give your respects and offer your love and compassion.

Perhaps almost everything most people do today is totally wrong. Rethink everything. We've only had a few hundred years of capitalism and semi-free market innovation that has given us the time away from constantly tending to the fields and hammering out horseshoes to have time to think about what we do.

We can improve... everything.

Let's start today.

Jeff Berwick

Feedback Friday - May 10, 2013

RedmondW — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:43:09 +0000

Welcome to your Friday tradition, a weekly opportunity to demand, debate, and discuss the topics of the day or TDV's posts from the week that was. As always, send your questions, comments, queries, and concerns to tdv@dollarvigilante.com, comment on a post, or get on the forums.

On to the feedback...

SECOND PASSPORTS WITH LIMITED RESOURCES

Hi Jeff,

I read the TDV newsletter frequently, and watch just about all of the TDV and Anarchast videos. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you do, and how much you have changed my life. I see just about everything in the world from an entirely new perspective, and feel like I have just stepped out of the Matrix.

I quit graduate school about a year and a half ago because I realized it was a complete waste of time, and I have been working as a full-time writer and reporter for a magazine and website since then. I save about eighty percent of my paycheck every month, and most of that goes into precious metals, mining stocks and Bitcoins.

However, the amount I am saving is nowhere near what I would like to be, so now I am looking for opportunities outside of North America.

I would love to be able to give up my US citizenship, but I’m not sure I would actually be able to. My questions are how hard is it for someone with very little assets to gain another passport, and how hard would it be for someone with college debt that was nationalized by the US government to give up their citizenship?

Regards,

Matthew G.

Jeff’s Response:

Hi Matthew,

First, congratulations for escaping the matrix. And, secondly, depending on what kind of graduate school you were in (they aren't all an absolute waste of time - just most), congratulations on that! Most people waste 16 years of their life being indoctrinated and learning nothing of any value... and going into debt for it, as you are aware.

On the topic of US college debt... I am a VERY firm believer that you should pay any debt you voluntarily entered into. EXCEPT... if it is debt owed to the US government educational-industrial complex. Millions were sold a very, very fraudulent bill of goods in that case. It was, as all statist ideas are, a completely ridiculous concept. After twelve years of dumbing down and indoctrinating kids, let's put out propaganda throughout their lives that they still need another four or eight years of unproductive memorizing of useless info that is otherwise free on the Internet AND put them into massive, enslaving debts for worthless pieces of paper.

If you were ever going to renege on an obligation, I can't think of a better one.

That said, don't worry too much about renouncing your USSA citizenship at this point. In fact, it may not be important. You've already realized that the American Dream is a nightmare and the land of opportunity is almost anywhere except the US so all you need to do is figure out a way to go somewhere else and make a living.

This is something we can help with at TDV. TDV is much more than a newsletter... it is a community of freedom minded individuals who see the state as the unnecessary evil that it is and thousands of TDVers have already taken the steps you are pondering. We have TDV Groups in countless cities and countries around the world now. You can access this community for less than $15/month through TDV Basic. We've even just started all our TDV Groups on private Facebook pages to make it more accessible.

There have been countless TDVers who have found jobs and business opportunities through our network of Permanent Tourists/Prior Taxpayers (PT's) and freedom lovers worldwide. We have many billionaires and even more millionaires, almost all self-made, in our community. They would love nothing more than to find a young, libertarian go-getter for their profitable organizations worldwide. Get in there and mingle. I've yet to see a fellow TDVer shun another. We are all on the same wavelength.

And, to get back to my comment on not worrying about renouncing...don't worry about it! Just find your life outside of the USSA. The US is just one third world country out of nearly 300 other countries on Earth... almost all of them --except the likes of North Korea-- much freer than the US. Find your life outside it, build your productive enterprises and then worry about renouncing. I would just add that you should avoid the Western world in general, though.

Even then, it probably won't matter... as it will probably take you 5-10 years to make your fortune unless you are especially entreprenurial and by that time the US government will not exist in its current form. And, even if it does, the US dollar will have been so hyperinflated that any student loan obligations will be payable in pocket change (preferably in silver, gold and bitcoin pocket change).

Get out there, hussle, mingle, network and find opportunities (of which the world is full of them) to provide value to others and the rest will all fall into place.

MO’ PASSPORTS, MO’ PROBLEMS?

Jeff,

In 3 May Feedback Friday, you said, "In this prison planet in which we currently live the more passports you have the better."

Really? Including a USSA passport? In that case I disagree. I ditched mine a year ago, reducing life's complications and increasing employment and investment opportunities.

Andrew

Jeff’s Response:

Hello Andrew,

Ah, you caught me. Yes, there are very few passports on Earth that are truly dangerous to your life and the US passport is one. However, everything has its use. The US passport can still be a useful travel document (how long that lasts is highly debatable) but EVERY other thing about it is a liability and not a benefit.

Be it via plan or by stupidity, the US government and the Federal Reserve have taken all the opportunity out of the land of opportunity so there is very little value, if any, to holding a US passport any longer.

And, as you particularly realized, it can actually be incredibly freeing to rid yourself of that particularly oppressive slave card.

Of course, every single person has different needs, desires and situations so it is not one size fits all. One of the most massive opportunities I have seen is for quite well off people (anyone with a net worth of over a few million) to rid themselves of the oppressive US global tax regime. Many well off people make so many mistakes... they must be listening to their government registered financial advisors!

As just one example, a simple residency in the unincorporated territory of the United States, Puerto Rico, can save many people tens or hundreds of thousands in taxes per year. We are currently working on a Special Report for TDV subscribers on all the intricate details on doing this and will hope to offer Puerto Rican residency as part of our services at TDV Passports. (You can find out more about becoming a TDV subscriber by clicking here.)

Or, even better, if you have a business venture earning six, seven or more, figure income per year in the US it is incredibly easy to restructure all your enterprises offshore, all legally, and save yourself an incredible amount of money. The thing is, hardly anyone knows how to do it. Mitt Romney knows... as do most of the political and financial elite. They hope the slaves never figure it out. But TDV is made up of neo-abolitisionists!

If you have a significant business in the US and a sizable net worth, I highly advise you to call or email us at our new enterprise, TDV Wealth Management. It's all legal, perfectly above board and is exactly what people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Mitt Romney and countless other very wealthy people have done... the big difference is you don't have to be a billionaire anymore to do the same.

But hardly anyone has put the work into it to help others. We have. You can email us at tdv@dollarvigilante.com if you would like a short consultation on what we can do to help you ease yourself out of the Empire and all its aggressions.

And, if you are not above a million or two in net worth, there is still plenty you can do. We consult with and help people to legally diversify their ventures in no-tax offshore jurisdictions... again, all legally (contact TDV Offshore for more). None of us want to go to Guantanamo. And, for those with sizable IRAs, there are amazing options to internationalize your IRAs and invest in almost anything you want... all legally (see TDV Self Directed IRAs for more)! You can even buy foreign real estate like we have in Acapulco or in Chile through your IRA. No one ever told you this? Stop listening to your government-registered financial advisor... unless he at least understands half the things we are talking about here. The options are out there, but they will be closing soon so don't hesitate.

I first organized my life offshore more than 20 years ago. That next beer I buy you will be paid for with money that would have otherwise been absconded. That's why I look so happy when I buy you one!

ABORTION

Dear TDV,

I'm not against abortion, completely or collectively or morally, however as someone individually disagreeable to it, completely, I might suggest this:

TRY KILLING SOME LIVESTOCK FIRST!

You heard me correct... First, its perfectly legal. No jail time. Analyze your responses to an animal dying at your own hands. If its ok, and you can live with it, move on to something with your own DNA that grew inside of you... I mean, baby steps... start small... make sure you don't hurt yourself in the process. If you'er built for that sort of thing, you might be a good candidate for abortion. Especially if you spent months feeding the animal before you kill it.

I remember once I had a bunch of meat birds that I bought as chicks. I totally had the intention of killing them and bathing them in Tandoori flavours. Ten in all. Eventually I grew to like them so much that I put off killing them. Then they started breathing so hard they couldn't even support their own body mass, and they started shitting all over themselves with their body weight crushing their lungs. I started feeling desperate and knew I had to euthanize them in order to be kind. I made multiple attempts. Took me days of cruelty to get down to it. Eventually I had to pray, having an weird religious epiphany like Saul out on the prowl hunting Christians. I saw the light! Putting on a ski mask I walked into the barn and started wacking them over the head in desperation with a hatchet, as their bodies flipped all over the ground doing the sacrificial chicken dance. In the end I felt so horrible that I walked out to the woods with their carcasses, one by one, to feed the wolves in the dead of the winter. Still to this day, it is one of my hard earned lessons about what I'm capable of, personally.

Yes, I am capable of killing! But its not something I'd do without severe reservations.

True story! And I ain't even a vegetarian or a pro-lifer... Really I'm not even trying to show a moral fiber in my body about what is politically right or wrong. I'm just saying, be sure before you kill something inside of you. Don't hurt yourself in the process. Know your reptilian brain first, and what your instincts are made of. Life isn't just a mere philosophical element to toy with, isolated from everything else.

For myself, old fashioned morality works best unconsciously. It's individualized and not enforced on other people. It keeps me sane, and has the best "know thyself" merit in terms of mental health. Just saying. Everyone is different! If others want to kill their own fetus and pretend that demographically they can enter and leave this world at their own socioeconomic convenience, without ever having to make sacrifices in life, then who am to judge, even if I don't agree personally? I’m just not part of that camp. Never will be either.

Laters,

Jeff's Response:

Hi M.,

We received a LOT of feedback to my two paragraph soliloquy on abortion in last week's Weekend Vigilante.

In my own defence, I stated it was a trite, short comment on abortion. It certainly wasn't my 300-page book on why I think abortion is okay!

That said, let me further state why I don't have a massive problem with abortion. In fact, my issue is more to do with what it would take to stop abortion than on abortion itself. If the only way to stop people from having abortions is to have violent people force them not to, then I am against that happening. That pretty much sums it up.

Now, many people will say that the mother is commiting violence against the fetus/baby. I agree, it is not a wonderful thing, no matter what happens! As almost any reasonable women who has decided to have an abortion can probably tell you, it was probably one of the most difficult things they've ever done... and many will likely say it still haunts them.

I totally understand and any loss of life, even cockroaches, leaves me spending a few moments of silence if I accidentally or purposely step on it.

To sum up on a topic that obviously needs hundreds of pages in, now, just a few paragraphs, I still feel that it is mostly an issue of property rights. And, owning your own body. And if someone is living inside you it becomes conflictory.

I stated, if they are living in your body and they aren't paying rent that you have the right to evict. Many responded and said "can you 'evict' small children living in your house if they don't pay rent?" and my response to that would be, that they aren't living INSIDE your body therefore things get much clearer about property rights.

On that note, I'll leave it up to my anarchist philosopher genius friend, Gary Gibson, to really lay out the issues on it and discretely duck out of this conversation!

Gary's Response:

As usual, you can't look at our statist world and continue to argue about problems that exist because of the state. You have to look beyond the roadblocks the state puts up that create the conflict in the first place.

In other words, instead of arguing about when it's okay to kill something and then lobbying your tax-masters to point guns at people to abide by what you think is right...why not simply put your money where your beliefs are and work on a peaceful solution. In other words, if you want a woman to carry a baby that she doesn't really want to have, then pay her to do it. Buy protection for the child.

Because the state deems direct economic incentive in the matter of pregnancy and parenting rights as distasteful and immoral (and then uses guns to prevent it), you have the same inability of supply to meet demand that you find in the market for human organs. You can donate, but you can't sell. So demand always exceeds supply. There are shortages because a pricing mechanism is forbidden.

Let me be a bit clearer: by interfering with voluntary economic transactions, the state encourages abortion. The state has us at each others' throats over what wouldn't be an issue in the first place were it not for the state and its prohibition on incentivization. Get the state out of the way and the problem of abortion would dwindle to nothingness. The same goes for terrorism or national defense or the cost of living or black marekt violence and every single other "problem" that people think the initiation of force by monopolized aggression somehow solves.

In the case of unwanted pregnancy, there is more incentive to terminate because the state prevents the economic incentive to bring the baby to term. The tragic and monstrous option of tearing apart a healthy, tiny human being becomes preferable to a life of shame, hardship and ruin that is the only other option for a woman with an unwanted pregnancy in the current statist matrix ("statrix"). This would simply be a lot less of a problem in a voluntary world.

Just imagine if the rabidly pro-life segment of society were able to pool their resources to offer women with unwanted pregnancies enough money to make having their babies more attractive than killing it. And imagine if financially and emotionally stable couples (or triples or quadruples) could then offer mothers some money to let them raise the child as their own. Offended? That's just the market at work. People voluntarily working out solutions to their problems.

You could point out that the welfare system currently incentivizes women to have babies they don't really want. But that is a state mechanism without the necessary market feedbacks to prevent abuses. A private system by its nature would tend to discourage the kind of abuses that public systems encourage and constantly endure. How many times do you think a woman could petition a private pro-life company for birthing money before the company sniffed out a scam? Do you think a private company wouldn't significantly diminish the help they would give an individual woman with each "unwanted" pregnancy? (Three unwanted pregnancies are probably not that unwanted.) This is the opposite of the public programs which reward each pregnancy with more living space and assistance so that women are indeed incentivized to keep having babies they don't really want.

But even if a woman wanted to become a baby-mill in a private market...so what? There would be those on the market who would happily pay her for her offspring because they otherwise couldn't have a family of their own. Again, the market (individuals seeking to meet each others' needs and desires) would sort out how viable a career baby-making would be. And such a voluntary system would be better for everyone involved than the current system that produces unwanted welfare babies who grow up to produce another round of welfare dependents at the expense of the unwilling tax cows.

If you're offended by the idea of reproduction for money, then you must prefer the chaos-at-gunpoint that is the state's way. Instead of arguing about whether or not women should be "allowed" to have abortions or to have babies for money, I say society should stop relying on the violence of the state and its laws and start letting people deal with each other to work out their own peaceful solutions. Again, if you find cash incentives offensive in the case of reproduction, then you must really enjoy wrestling for the state gun over the abortion issue. I much prefer my market anarchist solution and don't at all envy you your preference for dealing with politicians' guns and dismembered fetuses.

And of course, if the state weren't in the way, their would be a lot less of the poverty, ignorance and violence that results in unwanted pregnancy. And reproductive technology would be so far advanced that there would probably also be birth control methods or "morning after" technology so reliable that there would never be any unwanted fetuses to even argue about. Arguing about abortion would quickly become as obsolete as arguing about polio.

P.S. Back in the here and now of the statrix, I personally find the practice of abortion repulsive and tragic, but am less disturbed by it if a brain has not yet developed in the creature that is being mangled and evicted. At the same time I would never, ever want the state involved in a woman's ability or decision to abort, just like I wouldn't want the state and its guns involved in anything else.

What Anarchists Should Learn From Chairman Mao

Jimkarger — Thu, 09 May 2013 07:07:18 +0000

[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV legal correspondent, Jim Karger]

Every anarchist I know is, deep within, an optimist. That observation is often unbelievable to the casual observer, what with our frequent expressions of anger and frustration toward government and other forced collectives. But, beyond those frustrations lives an almost universal belief that one day an event, or a series of events, will occur setting into motion the elimination of government which will be replaced by a society based solely on voluntary connections.

While it would be nice to believe that on one special day the Statists will simply give up, recognize the errors of their ways and capitulate, such a belief is Pollyannaish at best and dangerous at worst. Sea change does not come as the result of intellectual debate. It is never a matter of semantics. And, regrettably, it never comes peacefully. And, to that end, a voluntary society will result from nothing less than a revolution, most likely several. And, for that reason, many anarchists are optimistically naive.

If I am right, then under what circumstances might people rise up and throw off their chains? I do not know, but I see more incidents in modernity that evidence there are some who are ready, not necessarily to overthrow a government, but to defend themselves against government aggression.

Here are three events, all recent, all within the United States, any or all of which could be a beginning of the move from Statism to Voluntaryism.

Kansas v. The USSA

Guns. Governments don't like them, except when they have all of them, in which case they like them very much. And they want all of them because they find their citizens to be such pains in the ass, especially when those citizens are armed. Unfortunately for the current owners of the United States, its founders had a healthy fear of tyranny and recognized that when everything else fails to stop the powerful from abusing power, guns are an important, even necessary, alternative.

Currently, Obama and his anti-gun, full-Statist minions are trying to reform the debate by reforming history, asking questions like, "Just how many guns, and of what type, do Americans need to hunt animals? And how big do our magazines need to be to protect ourselves against our neighbors?" Disturbingly disingenuous. Jefferson and other Founders wrote extensively on the issue. The purpose of the Second Amendment has nothing to do with killing animals or your neighbors. Guns are for we the people should the government have to be overthrown. And yes, you need a lot of guns and big magazines to get that job done.

A few State governments, closer and more responsive to their constituents, have gotten the message and passed laws to insure citizens inside their borders will not be deprived of their Second Amendment rights, as was done recently in Kansas:

"It is unlawful for any official, agent or employee of the government of the United States, or employee of a corporation providing services to the government of the United States to enforce or attempt to enforce any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the government of the United States regarding a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately and owned in the state of Kansas and that remains within the borders of Kansas. Violation of this section is a severity level 10 nonperson felony."

In short, Kansas is saying that if the federal government attempts to govern firearms in that State, those doing the enforcing will end up in the State penitentiary. This seems legally defensible on at least a couple of levels. First, States have the power to nullify federal law if it is violative of the Constitution. Second, by attempting to regulate only arms firearms manufactured or owned within Kansas, the State may be successful in avoiding the assured federal argument that gun regulation falls under its Constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce.

Needless to say, Obama, through his gun-running Attorney General, disagrees, and had his minion Holder scribble a not-so-subtle threat to Kansas' governor Sam Brownback saying the feds won't honor Kansas' law, considers Kansas' attempt to protect the Second Amendment rights of its citizens is itself “unconstitutional,” and that federal agents will “continue to execute their duties,” which translated means they will kill anyone who gets in the way of their gun grab.

The makings of an armed conflict are in place.

Adam Kokesh and the March on DC

Adam Kokesh, former Marine and now a well-known libertarian activist announced on Facebook last week that he is planning a nonviolent protest in the District of Columbia which has some of the most stringent (and arguably most unconstitutional gun laws in the nation, allowing residents to possess only registered firearms on their own property, and forbidding them to carry them in public).

“We will march with rifles loaded and flung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated and cower in submission to tyranny,” Kokesh wrote. “Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington. We are truly saying in the subtlest way possible that we would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.”

Kokesh was brutally honest when he refused to predict what might happen if the police move in with force. And force is exactly what should be expected in light of a warning from DC Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier that her own armed forces will meet them at the border as will the US Park Police.

Later, in a pathetic attempt to co-opt the massive publicity Kokesh is receiving for his effort, a video producer for FreedomWorks is leading a parade of supposed libertarians using toy guns, and even had the chutzpah to schedule his a day earlier. He should just have everyone carry white flags and get it over with.

The makings of an armed conflict (at least in the case of the Kokesh march) are in place.

Cody Wilson, the Anarchist Behind the World's First 3-D Printed Gun

Cody Wilson, a 25 year old law student at the University of Texas, has created a functioning handgun produced by a 3-D printer. Using electronic blueprints and plastic, Cody's company, Defense Distributed, gives anyone with plastic and a printer the opportunity to make their own gun.

And, his ideas go well beyond making a buck on the idea. He recently observed, " . . . [the pistol is] undetectable, but more importantly it's unobservable by institutions and countries and sovereigns . . . This might be a politically important object . . . Really I see the battle as one of just trying to remain human and against you know massive forces, anonymous forces of discipline and control that we can't really understand. I don't think there's a massive conspiracy. But I do think the self is under siege and I think liberty itself is under siege . . . "

Sounds reasonably close to a call to revolution, but more a call to life without the State:

" . . . what this project's really about . . . fuck your laws, you know what I'm saying? It's stepping up, it's being able to go, you know what, I don't like this legal regime [and] I neatly step outside of it."

Do you believe the feds will intervene on 3-D firearms? Yeah, me too.

And that will likely leave thousands of 3-D printed weapons in the hands of those who want to keep them while the government will determine, horror of horrors, they are unregistered and subject to seizure.

The makings of an armed conflict are in place.

A Commonality in Events

These developments, each different with varying geneses, share an important commonality, or at least potential: an armed response to State aggression. In the case of the Kansas governor, it is a turf war between governments. With Adam Kokesh, it is an in-your-face attempt to force the government to acknowledge rights under the Constitution or arrest him for exercising those rights. And, for Cody Wilson it all about individual freedom, various Amendments be damned.

Some readers of these stories will reel backwards in horror. The very suggestion that the end of violence will result from violence is abhorrent to many who subscribe to the non-aggression principle, but history tells us that change, real change, results from revolutions, from standing up and saying, "no more," and then defending against the onslaught of the State as it retaliates to crush dissent.

Which brings me to the point: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Chairman Mao said that, and while he was wrong about a lot of things, he got that one right and every anarchist and libertarian should remember it, too, not with a view toward primary aggression to accomplish a political goal but to understand that the State will aggress against those who question its legitimacy, especially those who are prepared to defend themselves -- like Brownback, Kokesh, and Wilson.

How far are are you willing to go to protect your freedom or to regain it? Are you are willing to strap on a loaded weapon, like Kokesh? Or, do you intend to bring a water gun to a march, and prove yourself to be a sheep willing to surrender preemptively? Or, maybe you will do nothing, assuring the State a win by default? [Or do you get as far away from the police state as possible and live peacefully and productively as a citizen of a country in Latin America or the Caribbean?]

Most will ignore these questions, as the answers portend conflict and thus paint a not so pretty picture going forward. But, consider that not-so-pretty picture is far more attractive than the one of you bent over a ditch while being shot in the back of the head by those who will take your freedoms and your guns if only because they can.

Jim Karger is a lawyer and Dollar Vigilante legal correspondent, and frequent contributor to The Dollar Vigilante, who has represented American businesses against incursions by government and labor unions for 30 years. In 2001, he left Dallas and moved to San Miguel de Allende in the high desert of central Mexico where he sought and found a freer and simpler life for him and his wife, Kelly, and their 10 dogs. He is TDV's San Miguel de Allende concierge and his website is found at www.crediblyconnect.com.