I'm fairly new to the intellectual discussion of liberty.  While I've been anarchist minded since my early adulthood I was only officially beknighted an anarchist by Doug Casey himself somewhere around 2004.  Before then I thought what most of the brainwashed public thought, that the word anarchy meant violence and chaos.  I hadn't even heard the word libertarian until that same evening.

But I've dug my head deep into the virtual library that is the internet for the last eight years reading everything I can get my hands on.  So, I've been coming onto things somewhat like a newbie... or a virgin you might say. This parallels my experiences of being the father of young children. As we go through life, unless we are incredibly careful, we get tied down with all sorts of intellectual baggage that simply makes no sense in a rapidly changing world.  That is why having a young child around is a laugh a minute as they point out ways of seeing things that you would never, in a million years, have imagined. Everything is new for them, everything is questioned – their inquisitive nature allows us to see the world with fresh eyes. Like the kid who asked his mom why she had two.  Is one for hot and one for cold milk?

And so, like a newborn anarchist I've wandered the world.  I have read quite a bit about liberty and freedom, but I haven't met many who call themselves “libertarians”.  I always assumed that anyone who denotes themselves as "libertarian" was "on the same team" as me.

AN ANARCHIC AWAKENING

Well, there have been three distinct moments in the last month where I realized that is simply not the case.  It's not the case at all.

The first was when I was invited to an LA cocktail party hosted by Reason.com.  Reason proclaims it is "libertarian" so I couldn't wait to get to the party and have some interesting freedom minded conversations.  To be honest I was shocked by what I heard – one starry eyed attendee celebrated Barack Obama’s calls for socialized medicine during his State of the Union. I quickly became castigated just for mentioning I am an anarchist.  The top speaker at the event was the former mayor of Washington, who everyone cheered heartily.  Apparently he closed down a few public schools.  I could tell that my question, "Why not close all of them?" would have been met with great distress so I didn't bother.  In fact, just mentioning I lived in Mexico just drew glares and puzzlement.  Why would you live there, it's so dangerous, they'd ask... right before I headed into Hollywood and saw some things that really scared the crap out of me.

The next thing that awoke me to the world around me was when I went to FreedomFest in the Bahamas.  It is Freedomfest after all, I thought some people might be interested in Freedom.  I was on a panel with Richard Rahn a self described “Libertarian Conservative”. Rahn, a senior fellow at the “libertarian” CATO Institute, seemed disgusted to meet me after I was described as a prodigy of Doug Casey's and then he went on to natter on about how governments need to change how they regulate banks.  To give you a sense of the type of worldview that CATO espouses, check out the following blog post from CATO celebrating the “death” of Osama Bin Laden:

All Americans celebrate the news that we have been waiting to hear for over nine and a half years: Osama Bin Laden is dead. The operation that resulted in his demise is a credit to the prowess and professionalism of the men and women in our military, and our intelligence and law enforcement agencies. All Americans — and the world — owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

I've since learned that this particular species of statist is what Lew Rockwell calls a "beltway libertarian". The model of the “beltway libertarians” is to whisper in the ear of the king, and hope that he changes his ways. Accordingly, the name of his speech was "Nine Countries That Did It Right".  Yeesh.

And then, today, I was listening to the debate between Yaron Brook and Doug Casey and it was all crystallized.  Doug attempted to be cordial with Yaron, stating that Randians and anarchists are on the same team to which Yaron stated that they weren't.  Anarchists are against freedom and are for tyranny, he said!  I almost choked on my coffee and Baileys!

He went on to gush about how the US Military is such a force for good.  Yes.  He said that.  And, in some sort of bizarre, perhaps early onset of alzheimers, paranoid statement, said that if it weren't for the US Military spending more than the rest of the world combined that the "barbarians would be on our shore'.  Yes.  He said that.

BRAINWASHING OF THE PRIOR GENERATIONS

In fact, most of these so-called libertarians seem to really love the US Military.  You know, the one that kills more men, women and children every year than... anyone.  For decades in a row.

Poor guys.  They've been brainwashed.  They need to watch "The New American Century" to see what happened to them.  They've been systematically lied to their whole lives... by many of the same people decades ago who are still around today.  Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and other scoundrels have a sick belief that the only way America can be prosperous and safe is to always have an enemy.

The Soviet Union was certainly a murderous totalitarian state, but the Military Industrial complex was happy to have an “Evil Empire” that would require a permanent war footing.

And, when the Soviet Union fell they scrambled to find a new enemy.  They chose muslims.  It could have been anything really... it could have been pygmies.  Close call pygmies!

The entire US is a big propaganda pit.  That's why Americans seem like complete morons when they leave their protected walls and go out in the world and try to talk to the unbrainwashed.  Because they rattle off all sorts of nonsense that can only make sense to someone who also has been brainwashed.  “They hate us for our freedom”, "If we didn't go to Europe in World War II we'd all be speaking German now," etc.

If you don't believe propaganda surrounds Americans like an ubiquitous blanket just look at the movies.

RAMBO III - LIBERATOR OF THE MUJAHEDEEN

Try to get a copy of US Government propaganda in its golden years with Rambo III.  It's hard to find nowadays - a bit embarrassing to all involved.  For those who forgot this piece of expertly packaged patriotism, John Rambo was sent in to defend the Mujahedeen (soon to be the Taliban) of Afghanistan from the Soviets.

I just re-watched it today and here is some of the dialogue:

US military officer: You talk peace and disarmament to the world and here you are wiping out a race of people (in Afghanistan)

Soviet officer: We are wiping out no one!  I think you are too intelligent to believe such absurd propaganda

US officer: You expect sympathy?  You started this damn war and now you have to deal with it

Soviet officer: And we will.  It is just a matter of time before we achieve complete victory

US officer: (laughs).  You won’t get victory.  Every day your war machines lose ground to a bunch of poorly armed, poorly equipped freedom fighters.  The fact is that you underestimated your competition.  If you’d have studied your history you’d know that these people have never given up to anyone.  They’d rather die than be slaves to an invading army.  You can’t defeat a people like that.  We tried.  We already had our Vietnam!  Now you are having yours.

Soon after, Rambo and an Afghan horseman ride into a beautiful valley and the horseman states, "This is Afghanistan.  Alexander the Great tried to conquer this country.  Then Genghis Khan, then the British.  Now Russia.  But Afghan people fight hard, they never be defeated."

Then as Rambo enters into the Mujahedeen camp the music turns sweet and angelic.  The Mujahedeen riders depicted as heroes and freedom fighters, little doughie eyed kids looking up to the strong American to help them out of their horrible ordeal.  The rest of the movie is to be expected… bombs, explosions, heroic music and Rambo defeating the entire Soviet Army single-handedly.

But the irony of the whole thing today is the point.

So, where is Hollywood with "Rambo V: Return to Afghanistan", to once again free the Mujahedeen from the latest occupying force?  Not. Going. To. Happen.

STATISTS OF ALL FORMS ARE AN ANACHRONISM

In the debate, Doug Casey finished off by stating that governments are an anachronism.  I'd add to that.  Statists are also an anachronism.  Mostly older and heavily scarred from decades of brainwashing, these so-called libertarians cling to the need for government.  What they actually have is a fear of freedom.

And, really, given what they've been through, you can understand.  But it's time to step off the stage folks.  You are embarrassing yourselves.  Since the advent of the internet ALL of these topics have been talked over countless times by great minds worldwide (Stefan Molyneux being one of the topmost but there are thousands of others) and anyone who looks objectively at the discussions cannot possibly think the violent and coercive state has any positive role in modern life.

Yaron Brook not only embarrasses himself with his out-of-touch, anachronistic comments but he actually outs himself as a traitor to Ayn Rand by his statements.  He uses the collectivist words "we" and "us" with great abandon, something for which his supposed idol, Ayn Rand (a friend of Doug Casey's by the way), warned against.  And, he states the necessity for a coercive government countless times in the debate.  But, let's listen to what Ayn Rand said:

"In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government—the police, the armed forces, the law courts—are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance."

Let me know when payments are voluntary, Yaron.  And, if they are, don't be expecting a cheque.

CONSERVATIVE LIBERTARIANS

Most of those listed above, including Richard Rahn of Cato, publicly call themselves "Conservative Libertarians".  A libertarian means that freedom is of your utmost concern... choosing things to which you think freedom applies and choosing other things to which it doesn't is disingenuous at best, cognitive dissonance at a minimum and mostly just outright fraudulent.

If there is one group, the "conservative libertarians" or the anarchists who don't deserve to even be mentioned on the freedom political spectrum it is "conservative libertarians".  Take heart that out of respect to the memory of Ayn Rand, Doug Casey didn't wipe the debate floor completely with you today, Yaron.  The millions of anarcho-capitalists rising up worldwide will do you no such courtesy.

That is a guarantee.

We laughed.  Then, literally 3 minutes later, another crossed our path on Anarchists.

It was quite funny as well!  How strange though that this particular style of humor would come out on two topics we enjoy at nearly the same time.  But then another flashed across our screen from our friends at The Silver Circle Movie:

OK, wait a second.  We get it!  This has turned into a meme.  It had only been about 10 minutes since we saw the first one and numerous were flooding through now.  Already they had gone from having a point about a topic or a person to almost mocking of the meme itself:

And then about 15 minutes after the first one went public it reached the ultimate in mockery:

It was at that point we announced the internet meme officially dead.  Exactly 15 minutes from its birth!  Andy Warhol was right!

But we couldn't resist one final one:

Join our Dollar Vigilante Facebook page to receive these memes in real time, before they die: https://www.facebook.com/DollarVigilante

Like, Jesus, for example.  Boy, he'd be surprised to find out that his teachings of self-ownership and anarchism got turned into him being a zombie god that people think can hear him from where he lives in outer space and ask him to make it so they win football games.

Or, wouldn't it be great to bring Thomas Jefferson back from the dead and take him to the Jefferson memorial where Adam Kokesh (possibly one of the only men in the business whose been handcuffed more than me) got headlocked and arrested for dancing (read my short novela on how that would go down here).

As HL Mencken said, "Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood".  And, boy do we ever seem to misunderstand them!

1984 AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL

George Orwell Lived HereOne of the most interesting would be to bring back George Orwell, the man who wrote the dystopian novel, 1984, which ended up being an instruction manual for most western nation states.

The only thing he got slightly wrong was the date.  If he had chosen 2004 it would have been slightly more accurate.  After all, in 1984 we could still go to a Van Halen concert and dance to "Jump" without being overly watched, videotaped, regulated and abused by the law.  Not so much anymore.

UNMANNED DRONES TO MAN THE SKIES OVER AMERICA

Even Orwell may be shocked to hear that Congress has just passed a bill, the FAA Reauthorization Act, mandating that the Federal Aviation Administration create a comprehensive program for the integration of drone technology into the national air space by 2015. The FAA predicts that there will be 30,000 drones crisscrossing the friendly skies of America by 2020.

Currently all drones are “piloted” by desk jockeys who sit in air-conditioned offices, occasionally dealing some death at the push of a button. Imagine some publicly "educated" kid who’s played Black Ops in his basement his whole life and is completely unattached to anything resembling real life sitting behind the joystick - only a finger twitch away from you being blown into bits…

"When is the pizza coming in? Blowing up wedding parties sure does build an appetite.”

So in this brave new world of big brother, with eyes in the sky 24-7 keeping Americans "safe", it would seem that the US military is being influenced by another pop-culture icon, namely the Terminator series.

Hunter-Killer

For those of you unfamiliar with the Terminator movies, they are set in a dystopian future where an integrated autonomous strategic defence computer becomes self-aware and sets out to exterminate the human race.  The star of the terminator movies is - in another twist of cruel fate - none other than the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays an autonomous killing machine known as the “Terminator”

Taking a cue from the radical environmentalist James Cameron (who recently fled the US), DARPA has come up with the first generation of completely autonomous drones, the X-47B.  This robot plane will be able to carry up 4,500lbs of ordinance and will be almost completely undetectable – and we are sure the Pentagram will soon be asking the FAA to clear the skies for its menacing presence.

Future hunter-killer

The LA Times, in a profile of the latest and greatest to come out of the military-industrial complex, asks, "New drone has no pilot anywhere, so who's accountable?": 

"Although humans would program an autonomous drone's flight plan and could override its decisions, the prospect of heavily armed aircraft screaming through the skies without direct human control is unnerving to many."

So let’s get this straight: unmanned, armed, autonomous drones will be scouring the continental USA for targets (sovereign citizens, marijuana growers, Ron Paul Supporters) in the Global War On Terror?

But hey, all is not lost, it looks like the Iranians have already found out a way to commandeer US drones – live by the sword of technology and you will die by it.

During the interview, Salami stated, “The U.S. plane that we recently took over is not much more advanced than our drone technology. However, a combination of achievements and advancements in the areas of intelligence and aeronautics and guiding and controlling has been used in this aircraft, which can (help us make) technological achievements."

Most humans today, especially in the government indoctrinated US, have had rational and logical thinking bred out of them to the point where you could never communicate with them on anything except for the repetition of mantras they are told to repeat.

We'll take our chances with the robots.

At least if the robots have some form of artificial intelligence... better than non-existent intelligence... we may be able to talk some sense into them.  Maybe in the not so distant future, there will be a DDoS attack on the Pentagram’s servers, and the power will once more return to the hands of the people.  Armies of programmers from around the world, like those who work with Anonymous, could find a way to short circuit or reprogram the drones.

Who knows, maybe we could get them reprogrammed and send all 30,000 en route to Washington DC, programmed to disarm the very police state that created them.

Subscribe to The Dollar Vigilante today to get information and insights into the best ways to escape from the coming drones and where and how to go elsewhere.

Not only are the conclusions they reach from the data completely at odds from reality but the data itself is so contorted that Cirque de Soleil should be jealous.

In the Disgraceful State of the Union address, Barack O'Bomber stated, "In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005."

And the US Government's unemployment statistic looks to have backed off from near 10% to what is now proclaimed to be 8.3%.

This photo included in the propaganda piece, "Job Gains Reflect Hope a Recovery Is Blooming" from the New York Times at a California job fair is almost scientifically put together to convey feelings of happiness and hope at all the new jobs that have suddenly became available!

The woman in back is smiling and the nice lady in the red dress is going through what appears to be pages and pages of job options for the woman in front who looks on with a pen and paper surveying all her countless options.

There's just one problem.  There has been no change in the jobs outlook in the US.  O'Bomber, should it come as a surprise, lied?  And there was no big increase in jobs in January.  All that happened was, inexplicably, 1.2 million people just dropped out of the labor force between December and January.  1.2 million people who wanted to work in December all of a sudden aren't interested in working anymore a month later.

While you certainly couldn't blame anyone for not wanting to work given the fact that the US Government offers free food, spending cash and even helps you pay your mortgage.  But, even that is not likely what really happened.  What happened was "government accounting".

The Labor Force Participation Rate which plainly shows the amount of people who have a job as a percent of the population has, thanks mostly to massive unemployment, but also helped along by government accounting tricks has now hit a 30 year low of 63.7%.

There really is only two reasons to look at almost any government economic statistic or it's parroting in the mainstream media.  One, is for entertainment purposes.  And the second is to be aware of what the masses are being told so you can best see how you can take advantage of their misguided belief in the government statistics to profit from their ignorance.

At The Dollar Vigilante we are always trying to find the truth through the thicket of government lies and propaganda to make better investing and life decisions.  Subscribe today to be a part of our community of dollar crash survivors.

On Saturday I proudly wrote that I was not the reason that a number of squad cars were called to the California Investment Conference.  In fact there were two separate assaults on the Mercenary Geologist, Mickey Fulp, at the conference so I was enjoying being out of the spotlight for a change.  That was, until Saturday evening when I apparently committed the crime of “walking down the street” (which actually is a really rare, circumspect thing to do in California).

Handcuffed in Palm SpringsI swear, I do not try to attract the police but in the US it is nearly impossible to avoid… and if you don’t smile and bow down they’ll be on top of you in an instant.  I and a TDV subscriber, Ken J., decided to leave a bar called the Nest because the average age of the partiers was around 75 years old and were walking a few blocks to another place when a squad car pulled up and started shining its big, bright light at me.  Confused, but not overly surprised, I stopped, and he hopped out.  Three other squad cars were right behind him and surrounded us.  He immediately put me in handcuffs and the next thing I knew I was in the back of the squad car.

I asked him what we had done and he told us that he kidnapped us because we had been drinking and were walking down the street.  But, he stopped trying to charge me with anything as soon as he saw my Dominican Republic passport.  He actually let out a little sigh when he said, “You’re not American?”

I responded that I wasn’t and he put down his ticket book where he appeared to be ready to write out a fine.  He then zeroed in on Ken, who is a local slave and who they have complete power over.  He spent quite a while trying to get Ken to tell him where his car was so he could “drop us off there”… after which he’d pull Ken over for a DUI, without doubt, but Ken was too smart to fall for this obvious ruse.  In the end, the cop actually drove us back to the hotel.  It was sort of like a free taxi service, but in handcuffs and against your will.

DANGER DANGER EVERYWHERE

It is amazing how many warnings there are for everything in California.  Here are just a few ones that I saw.

I didn't know that!  Thanks for the totally random warning, California!

Or how about some more random, vague warnings about how if you hang around there you'll get cancer or won't be able to have babies.

Probably the most ridiculous is this warning on a slow moving walkway.  Yes, the voice repeats every 10 seconds, “Warning: The Walkway is Deadly”.

That walkway is many things...  but, deadly?  Yeesh.  

MEXICO

I’m on a flight from Houston to Mexico City now, so I should be safe from being kidnapped again now until the next time I go back to the US.  I like the style in Mexico so much more… there aren’t warnings for anything.  I prefer it that way.  I had an American friend mention once that there should be a warning sign beside a small, 2 feet deep hole in the sidewalk that he saw.  I had to explain to him, “Here we don’t need warning signs.  What we do here is just not fall into the hole”.

It works pretty well.

It's already been quite an interesting investment conference here in SoCal.  On the first day, Mickey Fulp, the Mercenary Geologist, got punched out by a uranium mining company executive requiring two police cruisers to come to the scene!  I took special pride in the fact that the police coming to this event had nothing to do with me, unlike at the same time last year when I ended up in handcuffs in Phoenix.

THE WAR ON INFORMATION (REAL INFORMATION)

In other news, governments around the world are beginning to realize that the internet and its free access to information is a direct threat to themselves.  They've tried brainwashing the masses to stop them from being able to think - making it so they can only memorize propaganda and various arcane factoids.

Because, as H.L. Mencken said, "The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."

We've seen SOPA and PIPA tried to be run through Congress in the US.  And ACTA, the "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" has been tried internationally.  In various countries they are trying the same thing as well.  In Canada the government is attempting to pass Bill C-11, known as the Copyright Modernization Act... and many other countries are working on similar legislation.

You may have noticed that here, at The Dollar Vigilante, we don't include a copyright notice on any of our material. That's because we would never look to the government to use force to stop people from transmitting our information.  Not to mention that it is simply not necessary.  You can start up a website under a different name and try redistributing our material, but very quickly word of mouth will spread that they are just duplicating our original material and just through ostracization, people would stop going... It'd be like having a knock-off of an Apple iPhone, called a Banana iPhone even if it was markedly cheaper.  You'd be mocked for being so cheap and lame to buy the knock off.  Sure, some people who really couldn't afford an Apple iPhone may buy it... and that is fine.  But the vast majority wouldn't want to be seen as being so cheap nor out of fashion.

So, why are governments trying to ram through these IP copyright acts?  There has been no big outcry by anyone except the dinosaur music and movie industry who, stupidly, think this may give them advantage... when in fact, it would also hurt them (just like when they tried to get VHS and Beta outlawed) as innovative ways to spread their wares were shut down.

In fact, the history of copyright has a very seedy past.  It was never about helping content producers... it was always about censorship as Karl Fogel describes in this excellent speech given at a Google Tech Talk.

So, what is the real reason behind all of these attempts to cloister the last free place on Earth?  It is the pure fact that government... especially a socialist government, cannot exist without propaganda.  If the truth is known about how a socialist/fascist government works then it will stop "working".  This is why Barack O'Bomber stays up nights worrying about how to stop it.

Many countries already have... In fact, The Dollar Vigilante is one of the sites blocked by the Great Firewall of China.  And if governments have their way, many more countries will block these transmissions of truth.  Truth is incompatible with statism as oil is with water.

The good news is, no matter what they try, they probably can't stop it now.  The internet was designed to be able to withstand almost all attacks.  And the cat has been let out of the bag.  Even though the average person does not understand that what they've been given is a truly anarchic environment they do understand the value of it.  And they won't be too happy if it gets taken away.

It takes a lot to get most people off their sofas and fighting against attacks on their liberties but taking away their internet just may be one of them.

ANARCHIC ROUNDTABLE

I had the enjoyment of being on a roundtable about anarchy with a good friend, Gary Gibson, earlier this week.  Aside from being informative, it was just outright a lot of fun.  You can listen here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/kerrylutz/Gary_Gibson-Jeff_Berwick_02-09-2012.mp3

SUBSCRIBER UPDATE

Ed Bugos has been working furiously on his latest junior gold mining stock recommendation and it will be released in the next Interim Update this Monday.  As well, the long awaited Special Report on "Getting Your Gold Out Of Dodge", a treatise on internationalizing your precious metals will be released to subscribers this month.  For non-subscribers it will also be available for a fee.

We've spent many months looking at countless options and ways to get your precious metals geopolitically diversified.  This is the only report of its type that we know of and if you are thinking about transporting your gold or purchasing/storing gold internationally, it will be a must read to avoid many of the horror stories including confiscation and jailtime that many have encountered by trying to do so without the proper information.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

This photo touched me the most this week.  You can see the amazement and happiness in the eyes of this little girl as she lives life... something that has been all but made illegal in the western world today... living.  Is it any wonder that so many children today are depressed or have so called ADD.  They aren't sick and there is nothing wrong with them.  We've put them into child prison for a minimum sentence of 12 years.  What else would you expect?  Never be concerned if your child "isn't doing well in school".  That just means he/she is showing great potential!

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

Here is yet another hilarious "Bad Lip Reading" soundbite... this time on Rick Santorum.

Perhaps the funniest part is that what he is purported to say is about as intelligible as what he really says!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

That's it for this weekend!  We better get back to the conference... we don't want to miss another assault and battery!  Have a great weekend!

Nothing makes me happier than to tell them, “I did… and I’m so much happier now.”

No one ever has a comeback for that… except for the odd, “well, good….”.

You see, almost everyone in the western world, if not the entire world, has been trained to think in terms of their own geographic region.  As soon as you go beyond that most can’t even understand.

As example, in 2003, after I left Canada I lived for a year in Santa Monica (L.A.), California.  It was the worst year of my life living in the place where souls come to die.  But the best part of it was when I’d get caught speeding at regularly upwards of 120 miles per hour (sometimes as high as 200 mph) in my Dodge Viper.

I’d get pulled over by the all watchful eye of the state and they’d ask me for my driver’s license.  I’d give them my Canadian license.  The dimwitted costumed thugs would look at my license for minutes at a time… even resorting to squinting as though that would translate what they saw.

“You are 180 feet tall?” they’d ask.

“Uh, that’s centimeters,” I’d respond.  The funny part is that in Canada not one person in a thousand would describe their height in metric… but thanks to the radical socialist Pierre Trudeau, the government imposed the metric system upon the residents of the terrritorial monopoly known as Canada.

They’d then try again.

“You weigh 49 pounds?” (that was before I started putting on some weight!)

“That’s kilograms,” I’d respond.  Again, no one in Canada describes weight in kilograms…

At that point the cops would look at their ticket and wouldn’t be able to compute how to translate the two, hand me back my license, and tell me to “slow down”.  Even if they did give me a ticket, I’d crumple it up in front of them and throw it onto the street as I sped off.  And now, I do the same worldwide with my Dominican Republic license.

But the point is, still, to this day, governments aren’t set-up to enslave the global population (as much as they'd like to - one world government).  They still mostly enjoy oppressing the 99.7% of the population, who like serfs of old rarely go 10 miles from their birthplace.  (618,134 US taxpayers filed a Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts Report (FBAR) in 2011 – or 0.3% of the population has begun to move its assets outside of the control of the US)

And so, recently, when the FBI denoted “domestic sovereign citizens” as being the new terrorist risk, I took great pleasure.  They actually all but copied our mission statement from The Dollar Vigilante website.  They said, “extremists who disregard their U.S. Citizenship, do not pay taxes and blatantly ignore authority,” are the new threat to law enforcement.

Well, we long ago stopped describing ourselves in slave terms.  I’m not Canadian, or American, I’m a homo sapien, from Planet Earth.  So, we are excluded from their definition.  We don’t, nor will we ever pay taxes, as we choose to live under the three flag theory, originally encapsulated by Harry Schultz, which states that we are a citizen of a country that does not tax outside of its jurisdiction, who has their business(es) in jurisdictions of low or no taxes and who has their home in a place where they are welcomed and considered as a tourist.  Also known as the Permanent Tourist or Previous Taxpayer (P.T.) theory.

But, other than not being a “US citizen”, we almost exactly qualify as the latest threat to law enforcement according to the FBI.

Perhaps the funniest part about this new FBI wild goose chase is that they call the new threat “sovereign citizens”.  That’s an oxymoron if there ever was one.  You might as well call them free slaves.  Sovereign is free, “citizen” is a slave.

We wonder, are un-domesticated extremists a risk to law enforcement?  If we are not American or have given up our western passports and live outside of the US, but still do not pay taxes and still ignore authority, are we a risk?  Apparently not.

And, that is yet another reason why expatriation can be so healthy.  If we were to live in our home countries, we’d be considered as extremists or terrorists.  And, not to mention the fact that just living in the western world today with all its regulation and oppression often feels like playing hopscotch with a manhole cover removed in the middle.

Where we live, whether it be Mexico, Thailand, anywhere in South America or most of Asia, we are just considered people.

The paradigms are all changing.  Dozens of countries are in all out revolt, including Italy, as we broke prior to mainstream media (which still hasn’t mentioned it – oops) right here at TDV.  Nation states are in a state of collapse.  Doug Casey has been a big proponent of phyles.  The world has become smaller thanks to air travel and telecommunications. Because of this, likeminded people can easily find each other and group together.  It only makes sense.  Certainly, where I was born, other than enjoying the gladiator sport of hockey or donuts at a place called Tim Horton’s, I had nothing in common with most of the people who lived around me.

"Generally, one simply must internationalize one's assets. The biggest danger investors face, by far, is not market risk - huge as that will be - but political risk. The only way to insulate yourself from such risk is to diversify yourself politically and geographically." - Doug Casey

Today, I live in Acapulco, Mexico and have my own libertarian enclave (AcaCondos http://acacondos.com) down here where numerous people are buying beach condos and hanging out together.  As a backup plan, because Mexico is a little uncomfortably close to the US (although Acapulco is in the very south), I have also purchased a lot in Doug Casey’s Galt’s Gultch in northern Argentina… a place where they will have a communal clubhouse filled with books by Ludwig von Mises, Hayek, Rothbard and many other libertarian and Austrian greats.

We continue to help readers and subscribers live Harry Schultz’s “three flag theory”, and help people to get out of their home country (or at least their assets), become citizen of a country that does not tax outside of its jurisdiction (like the Dominican Republic) and live in places that are more hospitable than the western world, of which we’ve covered more than a dozen countries in our newsletter.

We invite you to join our growing community of dollar collapse survivors and find ways of internationalizing yourself or your wealth to survive the coming Age of Turmoil.  We have our own private group where like-minded people can trade information and ideas from over 50 countries around the world.  Subscribe to The Dollar Vigilante to get more actionable info and more in depth research and analysis.  In fact, we feel like we may be the only people out here trying to help the little people (the non-political and financial elite) whether it be from our report to help investors retain their shares (http://tdv.bulletproofshares.com) when their broker becomes bankrupt or through our numerous other reports or articles helping people escape the oppression and theft of their own government.  Your government registered financial advisor isn’t telling you any of this, is he?

Click through to watch Jeff's interview.

Jeff takes Daniela through the main points of his speech "The End Of The World As We Know It". He touches on the key reasons why we here at The Dollar Vigilante are raising the alarm about the global fiat currency system and educating our readers on how you can find a safe harbor in the coming storm.

Kitco is running a poll to see which speaker attendees will be most interested in seeing, so drop by to watch the interview and vote for Jeff.

Even though, at the end of the interview his anarchist instincts kick in and he refuses to enter into any type of voting situation, we figure this one is okay because it is completely voluntary.

We look forward to meeting you in Palm Springs.

Here at TDV, we seek to put together a worldview that incorporates the lessons of history, and enables our subscribers to see what has occurred in the past so they can apply those lessons to protect themselves and their loved ones from the economic storm that is coming. We pull the knowledge from the memory hole that those in power would seek to have us forget.

In this issue Jeff breaks down the reasons why the US Dollar is on it’s last legs, Private Parts delves into the latest from the “Graveyard of Empires” and we have our first feature from Caroline Mayer on Living in Guatemala.  In the next week also, Ed Bugos, resident analyst at TDV will be featuring an exciting Colombian exploration company in his report. As well, our report on “Getting your Gold out of Dodge will be released in the coming weeks.

Subscribe to The Dollar Vigilante today to join our growing community of dollar collapse survivors.

Hint: It involves you being a serf

Gary Kinghorn, TDV Correspondent

Over years of studying government tyranny, monetary reform and freedom, I’ve run across a lot of information about how unconstitutional the US Income Tax is, how the 16^th Amendment was never ratified by the requisite number of states, and how there’s really no law that compels citizens to pay Federal Income Tax. One of the best documentaries on this topic was the late Aaron Russo’s film “From Freedom to Fascism”. At one of Ron Paul’s early campaign rallies in the Bay Area in July, 2007, I even arranged for Joe Banister, a former IRS enforcement agent and whistleblower living locally in San Jose to speak about the topic. A lot of the arguments seemed very convoluted to me, and for sure nothing seemed clear enough that you could take on the IRS and a heavy-handed judiciary and expect to come away unscathed.

Along comes a fantastic new e-book, “Taxation by Misrepresentation”, by John W. Benson, which I now believe is by far the best resource to understanding the true constitutional aspects of our income tax system, as well as the origin of the laws and processes involved in compelling citizens to pay it. Far from being convoluted, it is an extremely logical, sound and extraordinarily well-researched book. The engineer in me can connect all the dots and see where all the legal facts and foundations lie. The book lays out the definitive case that US income tax is absolutely a “voluntary” tax, which cannot be made compulsory by virtue of its unconstitutional nature, and which requires a great deal of fraud and outright intimidation on the part of the IRS to convince people that what can only be voluntary, is instead a lawful requirement.

The thesis of this book by John Benson is that the US Constitution explicitly disallows a tax on one’s labor, and that the 16^th Amendment took “Income” to mean the same thing as used in the Corporation Excise Tax Act of 1909. Current Treasury regulations explicitly state exemptions from “gross income” include “those items of income which are, under the Constitution, not taxable by the Federal Government”, without ever enumerating such. But our treacherous overlords engineered a legalistic workaround for this thorny dilemma. Such a tax could be implemented if it was in accordance with “due process” according to the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, requiring that such due process does not differ in principle from the statute law of England for the King to collect revenues at the time the Constitution was formed.

 As a result, all IRS processes and procedures are, in substance and effect, simply the ancient English revenue processes and procedures employed by the king’s revenue officials in the Exchequer (Treasury) in 1791 dressed up in modern garb. To be sure, the author claims, the words used are different and not easily understood. In fact, these procedures and the laws relating back to them are deliberately shrouded in complexity in order to avoid the populace gaining any real insights to the foundations of our tax system.

Therefore, John claims, in order to understand today’s tax processes and procedures, you must understand the ancient processes employed by the Exchequer, some dating back in time before King John was forced to sign the Magna Charta, the Great Charter of Liberties, on the Plains of Runnymede in 1215. If you knew that the foundations of our tax code relate back prior to the Magna Carta, you are in a very small minority.

A precedent-setting Supreme Court tax case in 1856 cited several English treatises as authorities on the ancient processes used by the king’s Exchequer. John and his associate, Glenn Ambort, spent over a year hunting down the four principal treatises, as they are all long out of print, and read through each of them. They traced the tax processes and procedures employed by the IRS today and laid them side by side with the English processes. By this process, John demonstrates a compelling case that the income tax process used today by the IRS must be based upon one of the only two processes used by the king in 1791, both of which are cited in the 1856 Supreme Court case, namely, either the finding of an inquisition, aka an inquest of office (administrative hearing, in today’s terms), or a “statute staple” process (an ancient form of contract enacted by Parliament for the benefit of merchants).

His conclusion as to which of these two processes apply to the Form 1040 tax return is both startling and has consequences that bring into question the convictions of countless Americans imprisoned for alleged tax crimes, not to mention the billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars collected by force in the name of tax laws. Essentially, the statute staple process is a voluntary contractual process used in merchant law and not common law. The result is that IRS taxation is a voluntary contractual process between consenting parties and cannot be compelled on an individual. Much of the IRS code and procedures today are therefore designed to both conform to this fact, while insidiously hiding its significance from the populace, and doing everything in their power to intimidate tax payers to “volunteering” payment, even if at gunpoint.

If this wasn’t bad enough, there’s another staggering implication to be revealed. In another blog post/book review I wrote, I covered how U.S. Citizens “volunteer” themselves into the status of “U.S. citizen” under the definition of the 14^th Amendment. As I pointed out, this new “Federal” citizenship was initially intended for the recently freed slaves (rather than making them citizens of their states as most citizens were at the time). John points out in a blog post on his site how Chief Justice Fuller described the 14^th Amendment citizenship rule in United States v. Wong Kim Ark:

The rule was the outcome of the connection in feudalism between the individual and the soil on which he lived, and the allegiance due was that of liegemen to their liege lord. It was not local and temporary, as was the obedience to the laws owed by aliens within the dominions of the Crown, but permanent and indissoluble, and not to be cancelled by any change of time or place or circumstances.

And it is this rule, pure and simple, which it is asserted determined citizenship of the United States during the entire period prior to the passage of the act of April 9, 1866, and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, and governed the meaning of the words “citizen of the United States” and “natural-born citizen” used in the Constitution as originally framed and adopted. I submit that no such rule obtained during the period referred to, and that those words bore no such construction; that the act of April 9, 1866, expressed the contrary rule; that the Fourteenth Amendment prescribed the same rule as the act, and that, if that amendment bears the construction now put upon it, it imposed the English common law rule on this country for the first time, and made it “absolute and unbending” just as Great Britain was being relieved from its inconveniences.

In other words, if you are a 14^th Amendment “citizen”, you are a serf on the land, a liege to your lord, in this case the Federal Government. The Federal Government, as it would to a serf, “owns” your labor and can rightfully take your income now (the compensation for your labor) as it deems reasonable according to the contractual benefits you “applied for” when you “volunteer” or “contract” yourself into this status. Remember that under the Constitution, we have unalienable rights and are Citizens (cap “C”) of the United States of America (the country, not the corporation). How do you “volunteer” yourself to become a 14^th Amendment citizen-serf, under the definition designed for freed slaves? Well, by “voluntarily” submitting your IRS Form 1040, you annually assert that you are a 14^th Amendment citizen (small “c”). The 13^th amendment prohibits involuntary servitude, but does not prohibit “voluntary” servitude according to contract law.  Ergo, you have been had. This is less the Home of the Free and Land of the Brave, than the Home of Fools and the Land of Liars.

So, what do you do now? John points out in very clear terms in his “Disclaimer” at the very opening of his book that this is a political battle. Do NOT stop filing the usual tax returns and paying the usual taxes that the IRS and the courts require. This would be like going to a Mafia crime boss and telling him there’s no law allowing him to extract his “security” payments. You will not come out better for the conversation. But realize that we have become a nation of thugs and corruption, and not laws, despite your education to the contrary. John pleads with his readers to unite to overturn the entire system and replace it with a fairer and more transparent tax system for all, rather than for a small number to try to win a few battles in courts that, in his view, are simply not going to allow any victories, truth and justice be damned.

John has made this a very easy read for the layman, but provided enough references that other researchers will be able to verify facts for themselves. He is close to releasing a legal guide for attorneys defending tax protesters that will be far more detailed based on his 30+ years of research. Finally, you will be amazed at the personal tribulations that John Benson and his colleague, Glenn Ambort, have been through, as detailed in the final chapters of the book. When you expose the fraudulent foundations of an empire, you are not electing the comfortable, easy way of life. But like they say, you only catch flak when you are over the target.

To order your own copy of the book, click here.

Bio: Gary Kinghorn is currently a senior marketing manager at Cisco in Silicon Valley, and is a part time ex-patGary Kinghorn in Argentina at Doug Casey's "Galt's Gulch" in Cafayate. He is a long-time student of the Austrian School of Economics and previously worked as a financial advisor at Citigroup/Smith Barney. He continues to follow and offer advice on the economy, geopolitical landscape and asset protection strategies.