Philip Zimbardo on the Lucifer Effect being an effect of the system; not simply “a few bad apples”, and ordinary people becoming heroes as the antidote to evil.
Dr. Max Gerson had developed a dietary regimen that has had some remarkable effects with chronic illness, nutritional deficiencies, and drug addictions to name a few. Perhaps someday in a freer-market…
July 4, 2011 | Agora Observer Editorial
The objective of this editorial is to give you a better map of reality to guide you through a terrain of deception. Wisdom is the best radar for directing one’s journey through life, and as it is said; wisdom begins with calling things by their true names. So, with an objective state of mind, let us begin.
In 1776, after more than a century of subjugation to the British empire, the early colonies of these United States gathered themselves into their own separatist congressional body to declare independence from their oppressor; King George III of Great Britain. The rhetoric within stated that “all men” are endowed with specific “inalienable rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.” Of course; that was inconsistent in its application towards blacks, ladies, children, the natives, and even fellow colonial non-real estate owners. But hey, at least the idea of freedom was there, and after all, it was a just a start…
11 years later in 1787, during the secretive CONstitutional convention, George Mason struggled to incorporate the Bill of Rights as the first 10 amendments to the newly drafted document. The Bill of Rights are simply a reaffirmation and expansion of the principals within the Declaration of Independence that, theoretically, the government was to not infringe upon. The anti-federalists objected to a federal CONstitution on the grounds that a strong national government proposed by the Federalists would eventually threaten the rights of individuals and that the President would become a king. As history played out, the anti-federalists were right. Observe, for this is the proven pattern of statism; the (erroneous) belief that the existence of a legally fictitious STATE is necessary in a society.
Independence Day used to be a holiday in recognition of the principals that emancipated a population from rule and dependency from unjust authority, aka; tyrants. The early colonists struggled, fought, and died to secure liberty to create a society were individuals could pursue their lives in the prosperity of freedom as independent, responsible human beings, rather than from the old restrictive chains of oppressive political dependency of serfdom.
Allow me to be redundantly clear; it’s a celebratory day in recognition of independence and freedom, not reverence of its opposites of dependency, involuntary servitude, and/or statism. If it has not come to mind yet, I will pose the obvious question for you: is independence really being celebrated?
Now lets apply some analysis by first comparing the environment of freedom from the early days of the colonies to the present day. Today, there is no lawful Atlantic slave trade, segregation, or unequal treatment of women, which notably existed in the first place because of STATE sanction. However, today there is historically unprecedented debt, of which was paid-off in 1835 thanks to the efforts of the least abusive type of statist. You and your property are ultimately considered property of the government. You are restricted on where and how you can speak. Freedom to travel is now a privilege. You have no say in matters of war in which your family and/or friends may die. You are ruled by less than 25% of registered voters. You and your activities are closely monitored. You are less secure due to an interventionist foreign policy. You are jailed in record numbers, higher than even “communist” China. You are systematically robbed from every year. Again, we can observe the tendency of increased statism.
Now to the issue of independence, or more accurately; lack thereof. Every person is dependent on monopolies for certain services in society; protection, contract disputes, justice, roads, etcetera. It’s possible that these services can be provided voluntarily because they are huge markets, considering that most people regard such services vital to society. However, over the course of 235 years, they have become, and remain, monopolized. Which, ironically enough, is taught in state schools as a unethical business practice and conflicts with its own antitrust laws.
So, I ask you objectively: are you really independent? Not whether or not you believe you are, but are you not, in reality, forced or free-will, dependent on the STATE?
There are many names for those who understand that anything the government does can be better accomplished in a free-market. A free-market where organizations are subject to competition governed by the economic law of survival of the fittest, or better put; most beneficial providers.
Now that we are a little more enlightened, lets end dependence and do what we can to seek real independence.
June 29, 2011 | iNEWP.com
Many people have never experienced an environment in which a free-market can truly exist. I, however, was lucky enough to be part of a week-long event where such an environment DID exist. From June 20th – 26th, I was in Lancaster, New Hampshire at the Free State Project’s Porcupine Freedom Festival, Affectionately known as PorcFest for short. During PorcFest hundreds of people join together to meet and mingle as well as live out a freedom lovers paradise. As attendance has risen, the number of vendors at PorcFest has grown as well, thanks in part to the wider range of attendees and most importantly: the lack of Government interference.
Most of the vendors in the “Agora Valley” section of the campground were not “legitimate businesses” in the eyes of any government and have no store outside the PorcFest event.
To the best of my knowledge, no one contracted any food-borne illnesses, even with the lack of any regulation on the nearly one dozen food vendors. All of the transactions were voluntary agreed upon by all parties involved.
While most of the transactions were conducted using Federal Reserve Notes, many transactions were barter transactions involving silver, copper and/or other goods for services. The market worked so well that anyone looking for work found a “job” at a rate normally above the what would be considered “minimum wage”.
Even some children looking to make a few extra dollars were successfully contracted to work, granted at lower rates that would not be allowed in the “real world.” While I am not privy to all details of contracts by most vendors, I know that at least one vendor contracted children to sell smoothies in exchange for tips – he even told the children to advertise that they worked for tips.
I was able to contract several children to work for commission. Such voluntary and mutually beneficial contracts would be prohibited outside of PorcFest due to the regulations against such activity. To the best of my knowledge, no children were abused, injured, or under-compensated for their work, and they all seemed to be having a fun time with their “jobs.”
Events like PorcFest – where people are allowed to buy, sell and work without government regulations, licensing laws and taxation – prove that a free-market system works. Anyone wishing to conduct business using government issued currency was free to do so, as were those wishing to instead use barter or one of several alternative currencies.
However, events like this also prove the “tragedy of the commons.” Event organizers and other volunteers spent two days cleaning up the common areas. I have no doubt that given some thought, this problem will be solved with a free-market solution.
June 26, 2011 | NPR.org
A unique political event is winding down in the mountains of New Hampshire: the Porcupine Freedom Festival, or “Porcfest.” The event is an offshoot of the Free State Project, a movement to colonize New Hampshire with people who believe government should do no more than protect individual rights. NHPR’s Josh Rogers stops by to hear what they’re thinking about next year’s presidential campaign.
SUSAN STAMBERG, host:
Raising money has also been tough for little-known Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson. The former New Mexico governor has called his own fundraising pathetic. Johnson is hoping to jump-start his campaign at a unique political event winding down now in the mountains of New Hampshire. It is the Porcupine Freedom Festival, or Porcfest, and it’s an offshoot of the Free State Project, a movement to colonize the Live Free or Die state with people who believe government should do no more than protect individual rights.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Josh Rogers has more.
JOSH ROGERS: Much like their spiky mascot, pilgrims at Porcfest mostly want to be left alone — particularly by government.
Mr. SOVEREIGN CURTIS (Organizer, Porcfest): They vote for no one. Nobody.
ROGERS: That’s Porcfest lead organizer, an anarchist who goes by the name Sovereign Curtis. Curtis was between pulls on a marijuana pipe outside an event called the big gay dance party. Curtis thinks many Porcfest attendees will probably skip the 2012 elections because he says government is corrupt, period. But Curtis admits a soft spot for a certain congressman from Texas.
Mr. CURTIS: I’m a big fan of Ron Paul. I tell people he’s my favorite government thug. But he’s still a government thug, you know.
ROGERS: Linda Ligana says seeing Ron Paul on C-SPAN was her political awakening. Ligana volunteered on Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign, but she’s also partial to former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson.
Ms. LINDA LIGANA: If I could have a T-shirt, one side would say Ron Paul and the other side would say Gary Johnson.
ROGERS: And as far as the rest of the people running, like…
Ms. LIGANA: Nobody, nobody I would support.
ROGERS: That view was common at this burning man of libertarianism, where some wore pistols and knocked back cocktails, and others practiced yoga and traded silver as currency. But could embracing such a counter-cultural crowd be good politics for a would-be president? Gary Johnson seemed to think so.
Mr. GARY JOHNSON: Those things don’t bother me at all.
ROGERS: Johnson acted like another face in the crowd though he was happy to talk to anyone who approached. The Republican knows he’s a long shot. But he says if New Hampshire was right for the Free State Project it might just be right for him.
Mr. JOHNSON: And I just thought, wow, this is really terrific. And that it came here, man, it just speaks volumes, you know, to New Hampshire.
ROGERS: Porcfest wraps up today. But attendees say the spirit of liberty is sure to linger.
For NPR News, I’m Josh Rogers in Concord, New Hampshire.
STAMBERG: And you’re listening to NPR News.
June 15, 2011 | Slate.com
KEENE, N.H.—My first interview with the city’s antigovernment activists is happening in an RV that, technically at least, is breaking the law. The RV houses the “Liberty on Tour” project and often parks in Keene, and today, as it’s been for many days, it’s parked next to the home of Free Keene co-founder Ian Freeman. “The city doesn’t allow RVs to park like this,” says Freeman. “But they require a complaining party, and no one in the neighborhood is complaining. Now, theoretically, anyone from the city could complain. They know what’s going to happen if they do. We’re going to make a big deal about it. We’re going to go to jail.”
That’s not boasting. That’s what Free Keene does. This city is one of the epicenters of the Free State Project, the decade-old effort to build a libertarian beachhead of 20,000 like-minded souls in New Hampshire. So far, 909 people have fulfilled the pledge and moved to the state, and around 50—Freeman thinks—currently live in Keene. (These people are serious about privacy.)
That number undersells the impact this city and these activists have on their movement. Freeman’s FreeKeene.com is a catalog of arrests, protests, and inspiring interviews, most of them in Keene. This is where one activist, Pete Eyre, spent days in jail for wearing a hat in a public hearing, and another activist, Heika Courser, was arrested for displaying her breasts after an artist painted them. The magician/TV star/libertarian celebrity Penn Jillette has mused wistfully about moving to Keene, and it didn’t take long for his endorsement to get printed on Free Keene’s fliers, below one of the slogans:
“Is liberty dying where you live? Escape to Keene!”
It’d be asking a lot to get 909 libertarians to agree about something. Before I drove to Keene, I asked a few other Free Staters, closer to Manchester, what they thought of the little city out west.
“If you move to Manchester or Concord you’re probably interested in politics,” said Kirk McNeil, a Free Stater who moved from Michigan in 2009. “If you move to Keene you probably want to do some civil disobedience.”
It took a while for the political press to decide what to make of the Free Staters. In 2007, when they were even smaller in number, they started to be looked at as a source of strength for Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. In 2009, as the Tea Party movement got under way, reporters discovered that the FSP and its annual PorcFest (the porcupine is the mascot of the project) offered this stuff in its concentrated form. In 2011, people noticed that Free Staters had been elected to the New Hampshire legislature and were introducing bills to decriminalize marijuana and classify TSA groping as sexual assault. They soon received the ultimate honor—being attacked by progressive groups as a “radical right” and Koch-connected plot.
In Keene, the “Koch-connected”* right-wingers are mostly interested in breaking behavior laws and seeing if anyone raises a fuss about it. Freeman does not pay federal taxes and hasn’t for years. He pays local property taxes, and water bills, as does the co-host of his radio show, Mark Edge.
“Those revenues,” says Edge, “are a lot less likely to be used to buy weapons to kill brown people.”
There’s some variety in how far people here are willing to take disobedience. Eyre, for example, doesn’t have a phone. “My phone was among the property stolen by individuals wearing Manchester PD badges the weekend before last,” he wrote in an e-mail. Was he robbed by a bunch of thugs pretending to be police officers? No. They were cops. He just doesn’t recognize their authority. Cops are “individuals.” Jails are “cages.” Arrest is “kidnapping.” Eyre refers to the place around Keene as “the Shire,” not New Hampshire. He, and a lot of the people in the movement, are not just libertarians, but “voluntaryists,” an ideology with a history of its own. (They point out that Ron Paul called himself one in an interview recently.) The lexicon matters.
“To me,” explains Ademo Mueller, Eyre’s friend and a partner on the Liberty on Tour trips, ” ‘jail’ is driven into peoples’ minds as a place you house bad people. To me, it’s a cage.”
“Theft is theft,” says Eyre. “Murder is murder. Doesn’t matter if you’re wearing a uniform.”
“Doesn’t matter if people voted for you, either,” says Mueller.
Ademo Mueller poses with his CopBlock sticker while Ian Freeman sits
He’s telling me this in an RV decked out—on the inside—with bumper stickers and slogans like “Evil Men Are In Control. Haven’t You Noticed?” and “Do You Own Yourself?” and “1984 Was An Instruction Manual.” There are Ron Paul stickers, and a signature from the man himself. Mueller shows me his contribution to the sticker stash: a promotion for CopBlock, the project and website he started, which encourages people to film police officers. Mueller joined the bus tour from Wisconsin, where he had two felony drug convictions, and had nothing to do.
“I spent three months in jail and 100 hours of community service,” he says. “I paid my debt to society, and then I learned that it was a life sentence. I mean, I was living in fear of what would happen, because I was getting harassed by the police, just because I was defying them and they didn’t like it. After I moved here, I lost my fear.”
“I lost my anger,” says Freeman.
“I’m a lot more outgoing than I used to be,” says J.J. Schlessinger, who manages the Keene Action Center.
The conversation moves inside the center, a well-appointed house where Free Keene friends come to cook food. A calendar near a bar says who’s cooking and when; on the other side of the room, a bookshelf has homemade jam and copies of novels by Ayn Rand. There are photos everywhere, taken by activists, of the rural beauty of the area, or commemorating times when Free Keene people defied open-carry laws or laws against smoking marijuana.
A bookshelf at the Keene Action Center
Heika Courser rolls up to the house on a blue Honda motorcycle then walks up to the porch. She’s a Keene native who met Eyre and Mueller when they had parked their RV in the parking lot of the Starbucks where she worked. The “Free Staters” pissed her employers off, but not her; she struck up a conversation with Eyre and started hanging out with the Free Keene folks. Now she wants to run for city council.
“I don’t have almost any of the same friends I used to,” she shrugs, “but I get along with the people in the city council. They’re getting used to us.”
Well, that’s complicated. Steven Lindsey, a Democrat who represents Keene in the state legislature, got into politics after years as a reporter and an activist; once, he and some protesters dressed up like ninjas and pulled a stunt to prevent a McDonald’s from being built in nearby Peterborough. (It worked, as did some other strategies.) So he understands Free Keene. He likes them. “They call me Government Steve,” he says. “It’s somewhat affectionate.”
Some of what they do still strikes him as “callow.” He tried last year to push a medical marijuana bill through the legislature in Concord, and he wanted the city of Keene to endorse it. And then came a Free Keene protest, with marijuana being smoked outdoors, and with cops getting filmed by cameras. There went any chance of a city council endorsement.
Bygones. He’s optimistic about Courser getting elected to city government some day. He thinks the movement will mellow. “My theory is that this, too, shall pass, just like the hippies came here, and that passed.”
Free Keene’s rebellion against the government started under George W. Bush, so it’s not just a fractal of the Tea Party. But the Tea Party protester who hates the stimulus and the man who moves here and shreds his tax bill—these guys come out of the same place. They are not just skeptical that the current government can work. They think government can never work. They respond to the pressures of the Great Recession, the drug war, and everything else that bugs them by giving up on the system that made them. They won’t be alone.
Clarification, June 27, 2011: This sentence about the connection between the Free Keene movement and the Koch Foundation has been adjusted to make its ironic meaning more clear. There is no formal relationship between the group and the foundation. (Return to the modified sentence.)
June 3, 2011 | Winnipeg.CTV.ca
A Senate page who was fired Friday for holding a “Stop Harper” sign during the government’s throne speech says she hopes to inspire more cases of “civil disobedience.”
Brigette Marcelle, a 21-year-old graduate from the University of Ottawa, said that she only recently decided to put her job on the line and stage the silent protest.
Though she was immediately fired from the sought-after position, Marcelle said she doesn’t regret upstaging the government on its coming out day in Ottawa.
In fact, Marcelle, who is also a theatre performer, called on people across the country to stage Canada’s own version of the “Arab Spring” and stand up to the recently-elected Conservative majority government.
“This is the only way we’re going to see real change,” Marcelle told CTV News Channel, as she conceded that Harper’s majority government will hold parliamentary sway for the next four years.
Marcelle managed to hold her sign up for about 20 seconds, and stood steps from Prime Minister Stephen Harper. She was quickly escorted out of the chamber and immediately fired.
Despite the protest, Gov. Gen. David Johnston didn’t stop reading and the speech was not interrupted. The Conservative speech borrows heavily from the government’s campaign platform, and it promises to keep the economy as the chief focus over the next year.
However, the speech also promises to get rid of the long-gun registry and break up the monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board.
Marcelle had served in the Senate as a page for nearly a year, but she decided to take action a few days ago because she said Harper doesn’t reflect the majority of Canadians.
“Harper’s agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation,” Marcelle said.
She added that the government is “blowing billions of dollars” on fighter jets and corporate tax cuts, but ignoring important environmental issues like climate change.
But since Harper recently won a majority, Marcelle said that staging “creative” protests is the only way to fight back.
“I think that Harper’s agenda is so damaging that it called for something that is different,” she said. “I think we really need to take action.”
Marcelle, who also uses the last name DePape, performed a self-penned, one-woman show called “She Rules with Iron Stix” onstage in Ottawa last year at TEDxYouthOttawa.
You can watch the performance below.
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May 19, 2011 | Agora Observer Editorial
Observing the volatility within the food markets, concerns of slow-kill additives, and the recent attacks made against health-conscience farmers; individuals are left with fewer options to turn to for REAL nutritional calories.
The burdening forces associated with these trends in the food markets continue to unmask themselves. These ailments do have have a common source; an unwelcome parasitic third party known as the STATE.
Academics, some 142 years ago, have formed some rather disturbing conclusions regarding the evidence on whether the STATE, in fact, has ANY inherent authority to act in ANY capacity as a third party, and is best summarized by this excerpt:
Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.
Citing from Lysander Spooner’s famous essay No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, it is also important to note that he was, in practice, an avid agorist as well. He successfully rivaled the USPS in 1844, only to be financially exhausted by overwhelming litigation from the bureaucrats of the parasitic monopolized system. Instead of competing to provide a better service, the mob of the STATE forced their competitor out of the market only to leave the users of mail services to the mercy of one sole provider.
In a grand display of irony, a group of individuals, known as government, commissioned with the “stated purpose” to protect rights of life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness, once again would serve as the foremost violators of the very rights they are “sworn” to protect.
Similar to the Bush Doctrine; the absurd foreign policy principal that suggests a preemptive aggression strategy against any accused enemy of the homeland, is ethically unjustified; so too is the statist doctrine which forces its subjects (citizens) into an environment of political servitude. Just as Richard Rumbold boldly stated before he left the slave-STATE society on a scaffold:
This is a deluded generation, veiled in ignorance, that though popery and slavery be riding in upon them, do not perceive it; though I am sure that there was no man born marked by God above another; for none comes into this world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him…
As Issac explains; an individual’s freedom to choose or “opt-out” is an indispensable right and such rights should rest far beyond the reaches of the federal establishment. Customers of the Schlangen Family Farm and Rainbow Acres Farms are providing their services voluntarily, while those who provide their services involuntarily want to stop them from consensually doing so.
This has not been the first time that the bureaucrats have thrown a fit over mutually-consensual commerce, something they refuse to practice themselves. While it is yet to be determined if they succeed, they will have a much harder time shutting them up as more farmers are reverting back to the agora where they can conduct business to willing customers.
Those wanting to take action can follow Grass Fed on the Hill and Food Freedom in support of Dan Allgyer and his efforts.
Also if you are in the Freeport, MN area, support Alvin Schlangen with Schlangen Family Farms.
At minimum, contact them and let them know that there is support out there; even if it is something as essential as simple moral sanction.
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