Help keep awareness about Antonio’s felony case by spreading this flyer and the new video that shows the affidavit and video. More information about his case here.

Affidavit Harassment

Link to No Spit! No Wipe! .pdf flyer

On Saturday January 28th, 2012, well over a hundred people from all walks of life, protested on the steps of the Austin Police Department for solidarity of the victims of police abuse on January 1, 2012. This was the second rally that was organized to protest police abuse in Austin, the first was Occupy Austin Courts on J19 at the criminal courthouse. I helped organize both of these events and was happy to see the support from Occupy Austin, anarchists, Ron Paul supporters and moms who were previously non-activists. The is a great example of how people in the community can come together and support each other for a noble cause. Activists took part in street actions stopping traffic with their signs and many speakers rallied the crowd with the use of a bullhorn. The support of the community was evident, with all the honks in support from all the vehicles passing by. We also had different local news media show up and shoot interviews, similar to the first protest. The police left us alone for the most part, although we did notice some on a roof observing, it was a peaceful rally without any trouble. It seemed as if everyone had a camera that day to capture this historically and for personal protection. We also had live coverage of the rally online that day with gonzo journalist, Kit O’Connell, live tweeting and I livestreamed video with my smartphone. The rally ended with a march through the streets of downtown around APD headquarters. It was an empowering experience exercising our rights and showing solidarity for the NYE 3.

Stay up to date with case on the Free the NYE 3 and Free Antonio Buehler Facebook pages.

Below is my interview on the Freezone with Freeman, talking about the events that happened on NYE and the Occupy APD protest. Also below is a great video compilation by Mike Hanson Archives and a photo slideshow from various attendees of the rally.

During a DWI stop on January 1st, 2012 police violently assaulted a woman for informing a friend about her right to refuse a sobriety test. A bystander, Antonio Buehler, who saw the violence (and captured it on film) was then also assaulted and arrested on trumped-up charges. The entire incident was caught on video and shows the officers’ version of the events is untrue. Recently police Corporal Hipolito stated to Keye news, that he did not see evidence on the dash cam video of Antonio spitting on the officer.

This is a Rally to protest the APD for adding additional charges to the female victim and withholding the dash cam video that would further exonerate Antonio of the felony charge.

Demands:
*All charges against the victims dropped.
*Police officers Patrick Oborski and Robert Snider immediately fired, and criminal charges filed against them.

Bring:
*Yourself and at least one other person.
*Cameras
*Signs

Free the NYE 3 Facebook page

Occupy APD Facebook Event page

Occupy APD .pdf flier

Click on image below and ‘right click save’ for this image below.

Come out and show support for Antonio Buehler and the other victims of police abuse on January 1st, 2012. This is a peaceful showing of solidarity. All you really need to bring is some friends and cell phones/cameras. Learn about the incident here. Click on the image below to maximize then ‘right click’ and save it. For better quality download the pdf through the link below.

Occupy Austin Court pdf file

Occupy Austin Courts Facebook Page

The New Years Day incident in Austin involving police officers Robert Snider and Pat Oborski abusing peaceful citizens has reached nationwide media coverage. It all began with a DWI traffic stop in front of a 7-11, while the driver was out of the vehicle with police, the passenger Norma Pizana was informing her friend her rights. She is quoted in an interview here, “Yelling out of the car to my friend her rights is not interfering, it’s telling her rights,” said the woman. “And sitting in the passenger seat, never opening the car door, I’m not harming myself, I’m not harming others.”

Apparently officer Pat Oborski didn’t like her shouting to her friend about her rights, so he approached her sitting in the car and warned her to stop. Antonio Buehler was parked getting gas at the 7-11, he and his friend were watching the driver perform a field sobriety test in heels. He was the designated driver that night and was driving his friends truck home from a party. Pizana continued her 1st amendment speech and was yanked out of the car violently, causing bruises on her arms and legs. At this point she began to scream for help, as she was being pulled up from the ground by her arms over her head.

Shocked at what he saw, Buehler began to take pictures of the girl being manhandled by the two officers. Then officer Oborsky leaves the woman and begins to confront Buehler for taking pictures, “‘What the hell are you taking pictures for,’ or something along those lines,” said Buehler. “My response was, ‘I am allowed to. Public official in a public place.’” Then things turn for the worst as the officer accused him of interfering with an investigation (a charge that isn’t listed against him) and began to push him in his chest. Buehler has his hands up in the air, seemingly complying but asking why he is being assaulted.

While  pushing Buehler’s back over the tailgate, Oborsky declared that Buehler spit on him and then proceeded to take him down hard. It was at this point that Buehler said he feared for serious injury, the officer began to twist his arm back unnecessarily in order to inflict pain. Although he was complying and not resisting on the ground, he heard another officer state that he was going to taser him, he then yelled out “don’t taser me”. They picked him up and dragged him to the BAT mobile for a breathalyzer test, in order to pin some  DWI or public intoxication charge on him. Buehler states that while in custody, officer Oborsky told him that he was going to teach him a lesson for messing with the police. He was then charged with harassment of a public servant (a police officer), which is a third degree felony and resisting arrest.

Thankfully the police spectacle was being filmed by a witness from across the street using their cell phone. Miraculously, through public pleas across the internet, he was contacted by the witness and received the video from a post on Craigslist. The witness also stated that they are willing to testify to what they saw. It seems that the police are the ones getting a lesson about the power of smartphones and social media. They also learned that they can’t judge people by appearances and that they should treat us all with respect when performing their duty. This serendipitous moment, could be the tipping point that will allow for positive change in Austin’s police culture.

Buehler’s bio speaks for itself, and illustrates that he is a man of integrity who seeks to help others:

Antonio Buehler is a Westpoint graduate, Army Ranger and graduated from Stanford with a MBA. His philanthropic activities have focused on education and helping disadvantaged youth. He currently serves on the Board of Governors for the West Point Society of New York. Antonio covered Congressional Districts NY-8 and NY-9 as a Field Force Representative for the West Point Department of Admissions. Antonio coordinated all college fairs for West Point in the five boroughs of New York City. He also served as a liaison for both West Point and Stanford University at various college fairs in New York City. Previously he has served as Treasurer and board member of A Caring Hand, a New York based non-profit focused on child bereavement. Antonio ran a program to clothe children in war-torn Kosovo, volunteered at a Bulgarian orphanage, coached high school football in Germany, mentored children in the United States, and has sponsored three African children for the past eight years.

Similar past behaviors of the police in different cases, lends credence to the theory that the problems at APD are more than a few bad cops, its institutionalized. The lawyer that Pizana retained went through something quite similar herself. Attorney Mindy Montford was arrested for public intoxication in 2009 after giving legal advice during a traffic stop to a friend who was driving. The false charges were thrown out by a judge, but the detective just filed it with another judge, got another warrant and started it all over again. This is called “judge shopping”, and is a tactic they use to retry people in order to skirt double jeopardy. So it seems we have another instance of APD seeking to silence and arrest anyone that is trying to advise someone of their rights. Again, they made the mistake of messing with someone who could fight back and expose their corrupt behavior.

It also seems that APD has an aversion to citizens filming them. On December 4th, 2010, John Bush And Matthew Medina were arrested for not complying with a lawful order. The two activists were performing a cop watch that night and the arresting officer is shown at the beginning of the video grabbing Bush’s arm. They continue to observe the officers from a distance and then that same cop comes up to him and demands that he leave. It’s strange that he is so visibly upset about them, considering the other cops around seem not to care, because they are busy doing their job. The cop then tells Bush to go behind some pole, he complies but the officer keeps advancing towards him. The officer continues to close the distance while telling them to get behind a pole that they are actually standing near. Although they are clearly away from the location and not interfering, the officer decided to arrest them for not complying with a lawful order.The situation could have been handled differently by the officer, he could have diffused the situation by going back to whatever he was doing once the two backed up. Watch video of the incident here.

A recent First Circuit court ruling, affirms citizens rights to film police officers performing their duties in a public space. The three judge panel also concluded that citizens have the right to gather information about public officials to protect and promote the free discussion of governmental affairs.

The First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow: is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative. It is firmly established that the First Amendment’s aegis extends further than the text’s proscription on laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” and encompasses a range of conduct related to the gathering and dissemination of information. … The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting “the free discussion of governmental affairs.

The courts ruling makes it very clear that we have the right to film public officials in public, especially if you feel that they are abusing their authority. As pointed out in my interview of Buehler on Stranger Advice:

“I’m very fortunate and blessed because I’m a Westpointer, a military guy, a Stanford MBA, people tend to give my story a listen, hey he’s got credibility. This cop was wiling to send me to jail for a very long time just because he didn’t like me taking pictures. If I was a black or Hispanic male, or a white person from a very poor neighborhood, I think things would have turned out very differently.”

This is a very true statement considering the history of APD and their use of deadly force against people of color in East Austin. The Austin police department is currently fighting a lawsuit by the Carter family for wrongful death of their son Byron Carter Jr., who was shot dead as a passenger in a moving car. After 7 months, the debate still goes on due to the fact there isn’t video evidence, and the testimony of events by police are questionable.

Buehler’s story has been covered by the media very well to my surprise, local Austin news KVUE filed a Freedom of Information Act request for any other complaints about officer Oborsky. The media and others are also demanding that the on board camera video be released. The footage is apparently being held by the department because of their ongoing investigation. Buehler plans to take the case all the way to jury trial if he has to. He has also filed a report of police abuse through the Police Monitors office. Pizana has also stated to the media that she also seeks to file charges against the officers for abuse.

The public has rallied behind Buehler, a Facebook group was launched in support of his heroic action, with many lending support in anyway they can. Others have stepped forward to tell their own stories of abuse, some that even involve officer Oborsky. A donation fund has been setup for Buehler, Pizana and the other woman driver, as well. This incident has been a catalyst for people to work together in order to take action against police abuse. The first court date for the Buehler and Pizana is on January 19th at the Austin Criminal Court building on West 11th street downtown. We will keep covering this case as it progresses.

Occupy Austin Courts January 19th Flier pdf

Occupy Austin Courts Facebook Page

___

Help support a driver who was coerced into a breathalyzer, a passenger who endured police abuse – and former Army Ranger Captain Antonio Buehler, who was fraudulently arrested upon questioning and photographing the abuse. This fund will be split three ways equally to help defray legal expenses for Antonio Buehler and two other victims of police mistreatment in an incident that occurred early New Year’s morning in Austin, TX.

https://rally.org/APDvictimfund/donate

Related Links & Info

News & Blogs

West Point Grad Arrested For Defending Woman Abused By Austin Police
APD officers accused of abuse during New Year’s arrest (KVUE)
Two APD officers accused of abuse during New Year’s arrest (KVUE/Yahoo!News)
Man Accuses Two APD Officers Of Abuse During New Year’s Arrest (MyFoxAustin)
Austin DWI Stop Leads To Abuse Allegation (KSAT)
West Point Grad Arrested For Defending Woman Abused By Austin Police (DailyPaul.com)
Chivalrous Veteran Confronts Abusive Austin Police — Gets Assaulted and Arrested(LewRockwell.com)
Republic Magazine, Police Abuse in Austin: Iraq Vet Antonio Beuhler Assaulted, Falsely Charged for Photographing Brutal DWI Arrest
Austin Man Facing Felony After Photographing Cops Making Arrest (Pixiq.com)
Veteran Arrested for Attempted Chivalry (or spitting on APD officer) (Daily Kos)
His Name Is Pat Oblarski (CopBlock.org)
Video: Antonio Buehler Covered On Freedom Watch
Video: Austin Police Abuse Victim Speaks Out & Shows Bruises – Will File Formal Complaint Against Officers
Alleged victim of APD police abuse retains attorney Mindy Montford (KEYE coverage on female passenger)
Woman involved in a controversial New Year’s day arrest talks (KVUE)

In-Depth Radio Interviews: Antonio Buehler

InfoWars Nightly News (01/06/12, footage mark 59:23)
Liberty Talk Radio (01/06/12)
Stranger Advice (01/06/12)

The Occupy movement, shouldn’t be a movement, it should be a paradigm shift of thinking based on breaking their chains and becoming self-sufficient. Assume your power and create the system you want instead of asking for the system to change itself. The globalists behind the system, that can’t be voted out, have been in control of governments for generations and will not yield control willingly.

Since we are dealing with a hierarchical system, the best way to defeat it is to stop consenting and withdraw. We the people are the bedrock that the bricks of the pyramidal control system lays on. The different pillars of control are stacked on top of us, and if we stopped supporting it, the mechanisms of control will fall. We need to shake the very foundation of the system, and let the bricks fall where they may. Then we can seek out ways to rebuild that will benefit us individually and collectively.

Our focus needs to be shifted towards competing government institutions, personal protection agencies, dispute resolution agencies, mutualism and voluntary exchanges. The idea of working together and creating community based solutions independent of government is revolutionary. This means using counter-economic actions like barter, borrowing and untraceable currency are peaceful ways to withdraw economic consent to the State.

Everyone in Occupy has a skill, talent or idea that can be used to help them manifest the reality they want. Working on yourself, then organizing with others to build new ways to exchange goods and services are the key. Decentralized peer-to-peer non-coerced mutually beneficial voluntary exchanges was the model of the past, and is the emerging model now. With access to relatively cheap high level technology, we can build the Agora online that will help connect and foster Agorism in real life.

Check out our site based around “crowdfunding” each other instead of politics, PostPolitical.us.

Currently we are working on the online Agora of exchange, so stay tuned!

During Houston’s 2011 End The Fed Rally, attendees were fortunate to have their minds expanded by the revolutionary strategy of Agorism by John Bush. John is a hard working activist and inspiring speaker based out of Austin, Texas. John is not only spreading the message of true freedom, he is also working on numerous projects based on mutual aid and voluntaryism.

H/T CopBlock.org

More on the ideas:
Agorism.info http://agorism.info
Voluntaryist.com http://voluntaryist.com
Private Defense Agencies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_defense_agency
“Justice Without the State” video with Bruce Benson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN34fUtpJkg
Edward Forchion “NJ Weedman” Modern Day Hero http://copblock.org/9588/edward-forchion-nj-weedman-moden-day-hero
Anarchy & the Law: The Political Economy of Choice edited by Ed Stringham http://amazon.com/Anarchy-Law-Political-Economy-Choice/dp/1412805791
“Ed & Elaine Brown: Property Rights Advocates Jailed for Life” http://libertyontour.com/2011/06/13/browns/

More from John and his crew:
Liberty Bell http://lonestarsmart.net/libertybell
Lone Star SMART http://lonestarsmart.net/
Operation Defuse – http://operationdefuse.com
Black & Yellow Pages http://indigoagora.com/black-yellow-pages
DEA & FBI Agree: Drug Prohibition is Futile http://libertyontour.com/2010/10/09/dea-fbi-agree-drug-prohibition-is-futile

Ben Godwin from the awesome website: JustLive.us joins us for a chat. Ben talks about the sites origin, design and goals. We discuss agorism, mutual aid, self-sufficiency, Direct Action, diverse groups moving into agoric activity, the building of alternate systems to replace the Failed States and the Snake Oil they have been peddling, people looking for and building systems to solve their real world problems – now.

Check it out, and listen to the other episodes while you’re there — it’s a great show. Topics covered so far have ranged from Bitcoin, to Loom, to Hawala, just to name a few.

Grace Lee Boggs says she would like the chapter titles of her new book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, written with Scott Kurashige, to become buzzwords for progressive activists.

So I imagine “Detroit, Place and Space to Begin Anew” or “We Are the Leaders We’ve Been Looking For” on T-shirts, trying to fit them on for size in the coming era of struggle to rebuild Detroit and Michigan.

More than just buzzing around, Boggs wants people to really ponder the meaning and implications of those words. “What does it mean to start anew? What does it mean to say we are the leaders we’ve been looking for?” she asks me rhetorically. “I think instead of growing our budgets, we need to be growing our souls. What are the economics of happiness instead of gross national product? People of every race are beginning to think differently. They’re beginning to recognize that life isn’t just about making a living. It’s about making a life.”

Boggs is a political philosopher whose thought and activism have been reaching around the globe from her modest home near Mack and East Grand Boulevard. Last week, I sat down with her and Kurashige, a Boggs Center board member and director of AC Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at the University of Michigan, to ask how her ideas relate to some of the tumultuous events taking place these days. The large, though not fancy, brick house is filled with books and papers. It’s not an advertisement for the electronic age and predictions of a paperless society. Boggs, the daughter of Chinese-American restaurant owners, earned a Ph.D from Bryn Mawr in 1940, became a leftist, and married black autoworker-activist James Boggs. The Boggses collaborated with the Marxist historian and theorist C.L.R. James during the 1950s, and, starting in the 1960s, set their own course, writing several books either separately or together. These days, Grace, a widow recently turned 95, is the leader of the nonprofit Boggs Center, headquartered at her home, which is the hub around which a number of efforts — Detroit Summer, the Allied Media Project, Detroit City of Hope, the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality and others — maintain their philosophical grounding and connection to a broader, growing movement in Detroit.

Boggs’ revolution is not a call to seize political power from the government. “A cultural revolution has begun to take place,” says Boggs. “It’s a phenomenon as historic and as far-reaching as the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, and from agriculture to industry. Now we’re at the heart of a change from industry to a world where people work not so much at jobs. Work is something that we do to develop skills as much as to produce goods and services. We’re so used to the idea that we work in order to make money, but that’s not why people have worked throughout history and that’s the kind of way we’re going now. It provides a very different perspective of revolution. It’s not about seizing state power to plan the economy. [...continue reading at MetroTimes...]

Much of the radical left subscribes to some version of “Dump the bosses, put the workers in charge.” Brian Edwards-Tiekert tours a bakery in Oakland that went out of business — until its workers brought it back. Melissa Hoover describes how worker-run businesses adapt to a bad economy. And Gayle McLaughlin discusses her plan to create jobs by following the model of the cooperatives in Spain.

(Audio at the link)

Wally Conger posted this review in praise of the work when it came out in scanned-PDF form:

Roderick T. Long’s “Toward a Libertarian Theory of Class,” which first appeared in Social Philosophy & Policy (Summer 1998), is finally available for download as a two-part PDF…

I think this is a seminal work in the ongoing struggle to build a hardcore radical Libertarian Left movement from three disparate strands — libertarian capitalism, libertarian socialism, and what Long calls “libertarian populism.” If you consider yourself a Libertarian Leftist, you should really read this. If you consider yourself a serious Libertarian Left activist, you should really study this thoroughly and add it to your intellectual arsenal.

Original PDF (combined into one file, 47 pages, 8.1 MB)

OCR’d PDF (40 pages, 512 KB) — In this version, the footnotes have been moved to the end of the document.

The OCR has been gone over, but we’d appreciate hearing about out any errors, missing text, etc.

Below is an excellent primer I would like to share that is the epitome of seeking liberty through an agorist strategy.  Davidson is a man of great wisdom and true grit, who’s gift to humanity is his ideology of living life as a sovereign being. His writings are informative from a historical context, witty, and straight to the point without pulling punches.  I’ve been a friend of his on facebook  for a little over a year now and we have communicated several times on the site. This beautifully written essay below deserved to be viewed outside of the realms of FB, it also fits perfectly with the spirit of JustLive. Enjoy and spread!

“From indignities that the beasts themselves would not endure you can free yourselves by simply willing it. Resolve to serve no more, and you are free. Withdraw your support from the Colossus that crushes you, and it will crumble in the dust.” ~ Étienne de la Boétie

In the year of our Lord 1215, at a place called Runnymede, a king after whom toilets have been named ever since signed a great charter.  Magna Carta was signed by king John to recognize the demonstrable fact that he did not rule by any “divine” right.  Indeed, in pursuing the full application of that document’s meaning, a later king, Charles I, was shown not to rule at all – by virtue of having his head sawn off by a swordsman.

Yet by half measures such as Magna Carta the people of England were led back into slavery.  First they were assured that England has no fixed constitution – though Magna Carta identified not only freedoms for the barons, but also for the yeomen – without whose bows the victory at Runnymede would have been far from certain.  Next they were discouraged from keeping guns about their persons.  Ultimately, they were disarmed, and now they are spied upon by their government, taxed to death, and regulated unto poverty.  And given how much England has fucked over my ancestral home, Scotland, and the rest of the world, I’m hard pressed to find much of a fuck to give about them.

But this idea that some must rule and the rest serve is entirely wrong.  And, apparently, by killing Charles the First, Louis Seize, and various other kings, people have somehow failed to convey this idea earnestly and well.

For in its place we find vox populei, vox dei which is an idiotic refrain if ever there were one.  The voice of the people is the voice of God?  Seriously?  Have you actually listened to these fools?  Have you watched any of them at the super market?

No, that is no substitute.  The divine right of the people to rule each other is no improvement upon the divine right of kings to rule everyone else.  You have to get past this idea of government as an externally imposed concept.

L. Neil Smith did the world a great favour by imagining what things would be like if Thomas Jefferson had penned one extra word in the declaration of independence in 1776.  Had he written, “Governments derive their just powers from the unanimous consent of the governed,” then the whiskey rebels would have been much more assured of their nullification, Washington would never have been able to conscript 13,000 slaves to march across Pennsylvania (killing 12 of them during the process) and both Washington and his tax man Hamilton would likely have been shot as traitors.  The Probability Broach is such a good book, you really ought to read it, or its graphic novel adaptation, or both.  Seriously.

In the analysis of the word “government” as something other than externally imposed coercion, what could it mean to be “governed”?  If it does not come from outside of you, could it come from within you?  If you were to govern yourself, what would that be like?

It would mean choosing for yourself.  It would mean taking choices on your own, without being supervised, without being threatened, without being deceived.  It would mean being responsible for such choices as you entered with full knowledge, voluntary agreement, competence, where an exchange of value took place.  In other words, it would mean being an adult.

Being free is not a decision you make.  It is not a sign you hold.  It is not a protest you attend.  It is not a comment you make on a blog.  It is not a hat you wear in a courthouse, nor a license plate some group of thugs supply you to put on your car.

Rather, it is an attitude you have, about life.  It is a way of living.  Being free is an aspect of every choice you take, every interaction you have with others.  Being free is being governed by no one other than yourself.

And who better to govern you?  You know what you are really like.  You know what fibs you have told.  You know what is best for you.  You know which things really suit your tastes, and which are reasonable substitutes.  In the market you pick the things that suit you, knowing that there are things there which suit others.

Are you harmed by choices you don’t take?  No.  Having extra spicy peppers in the store which you do not have to choose does you no harm.  It neither picks your pocket nor punches your face.  It simply sits there in a bin of vegetation which you are free to pass by.

In my own book Being Sovereign, I made an effort to give voice to this attitude.  The book is a series of essays, mostly from my financial newsletter The Indomitus Report.  In these essays, I try to capture some of the attitude and philosophy behind my being sovereign.

For I am sovereign. I have assumed among the powers of the Earth the equal station to which the laws of nature, and of nature’s God entitle me.  You should, too.

Then what does it mean to be sovereign?  It means that I choose for myself.  I am not supervised in taking choices.  I am not ordered about.  If I do what someone has asked me, very likely they have asked pleasantly, in a manner signifying their understanding that I have choices.  Civility and courtesy are useful in honoring the sovereignty in others.  And if I do what I have been asked to do, it remains my choice to do so, and my responsibility.

Every day, for at least some part of each day, you do what you choose without being supervised.  Why not be that way all the time?

And if you are your own government, then what business do you have involving yourself in the government by others of your neighbors, or of people across the sea?  Shouldn’t you mind your own fucking business?  Isn’t it time for you to withdraw from the system that attempts to oppress you?  Put some distance between you and these evil men and women who think they are right to rule you.

Were you to do so, you would be joining approximately 174 million persons who did not vote in the November 2008 election (of whom only about 77 million were ineligible due to age or current incarceration).  Were you to do so, you would be joining approximately 182 million Americans who filed no form of personal income tax paper at all in April 2010.  Were you to do so, you would be joining about 103 million Americans who either did not return any census form, or only wrote the number of persons in their “household.”  In short, you would be jumping into a very crowded pool.  Come on in, the water is fine.

Put down your remote control.  Turn off the television.  Spray paint “This box lies” on the face of your TV.  Kick it in.  Throw it in the street and shout, “I’m mad as hell, and I don’t have to take it any more!”

Stop petitioning the government.  Have you noticed that they are not listening, still?  I think they never will.  Were you seriously expecting the government to stop oppressing you because of that silly sign you held at the airport protest over the porno scanners and groping thugs?  Yes, sure, I put on a “press” badge and took some photos of a recent airport protest in the expectation of being able to document some of the violence that seemed likely to ensue.  But I didn’t carry a sign.

I don’t write to congress critters.  I don’t ask that my government change the way it is doing things: because I govern myself, when I want my government to change something, I simply change it.

I don’t vote.  I understand that you have deeply held reasons for voting.  Still.  Can you honestly say in the 40 years of its existence that the Libertarian Party has changed anything for the better, at all?  Really?  Do tell.  Yes, they became corrupt, sold out their platform in 2006, and nominated an arch Republican drug warrior, bigot, and gun law prosecutor in 2008.  Do you still think, after 40 years, that voting Libertarian is going to fix anything?

I don’t vote because I don’t consent to be governed by anyone else.  I don’t vote because I don’t agree that the outcome of the election is victory for whomsoever garners the largest number of counted votes – not the largest number of cast votes, certainly.  I don’t vote because none of these people have a contract with me to represent my actual interests.  They appear to have contracts with people in major industries who give their campaigns a lot of money, though.

Why are you so concerned, anyway?  If you are individually oppressed by some law, break it.  It isn’t your law.  You didn’t consent to it.  Why obey it?  Disobey.  Your chains: break them.

Your signs of protest do not demonstrate your power.  They demonstrate your subservience.  You are asking the people to help you change the system that oppresses you.  Why?  You are asking those in power over you to change the system that oppresses you.  Why?

Why not simply do those things you choose to do, for yourself?  Why not choose today to do anything that you think is the right thing to do?  Do you have any other sensible obligation, really?

These mala prohibitum laws arise mostly as revenue measures.  The things they prohibit are not evil in themselves (mala in se) but are “wrong” in that they are prohibited.  Did you know that in “repealing” the prohibition amendment, the constitution was amended to make it illegal to sell alcohol in defiance of the laws of the United States or any of the states? So, where is your constitutional freedom to distil your own whiskey?  You do have such a freedom, which pre-dates the writing of the constitution, and which was in the 9th Amendment for a time, but if you are a constitutionalist, you should be aware that right was “written out” in allegedly repealing Prohibition.  Whoops.

Why are there standing courts?  You know about the dangers of a standing army, and also about the people who profit from its existence.  So you know why there is a standing army.  But why are there standing courts?  Why is there a courthouse in the city which is the county seat of the county in which you live?  Why is there a federal courthouse in some large city near you?

Courts don’t have to be organized that way.  For tens of thousands of years, the people in a community looked to the elders of their community to sit in judgment of each other.  When the crime or tort was judged, the judgment might be appealed to the community as a whole.  But after the judgment was delivered, the court ceased to exist.  The elders involved in supplying good judgment went back to working for a living.  And the next time a crime happened, the judges would be called back to sit under the acacia tree and talk it over.

This court building has to be paid for.  If it isn’t maintained, it falls apart.  The clerks in the building need to be paid.  The judge needs to be paid.  He also needs goons, because what he does for a living isn’t fair.  So he has bailiffs.  He gets to have the only armed men in the room.  (So explain to me, again, why you want to keep going into that room?  Shouldn’t you insist on your freedom to keep and bear arms, and refuse to enter places where you aren’t free?)

From where does the money come to pay for all these things and people?  From fines, court costs, fees, and your voluntary compliance.  But there aren’t enough actually wrong things going on to pay for all that labyrinth of things and people at the courthouse.  Can you imagine some rural district in Montana where they have only one murder every ten years, no rape (because everyone is armed), and only the occasional vandalism or property theft?  Yet that district has a courthouse, judges, sheriffs, bailiffs, clerks.  How?

By having the county government and the municipal governments pass statutes defining various peaceful behaviors as mala prohibitum.  Now if you drive a reasonable and prudent speed greater than a magic number, you are breaking a statute.  You can have a conversation with a statutory enforcement agent, or pig.  You can get a ticket for that!  And maybe mail in a bit of money to assuage their hatred of your freedom.  Or maybe contest it in court.  Maybe wearing a hat that says “Don’t Tread on Me.”

If the court wants more judges, or clerks, or bailiffs, they get more statutes written making more peaceful behaviors into pseudo-crimes.  And more of your friends get stopped and ticketed.  And beaten up.  And caged by arbitrary authorities.

How would you react if these people were doing these things without the colour of law?  What if a biker gang came to your town and began similar proceedings?  Wouldn’t you at once ignore them and also prepare to defend yourself against them?  Wouldn’t you put together a mutual protection group on an ad hoc basis to get rid of the biker gang?

It seems to me that the more you engage their system, the more you are full of fail.  And the more you resort to half measures, the more you have to clean up later on.

Withdraw from the system.  Remove yourself from their sight.  Trade with each other.  And stay as far away from those things as you are able.  Wear your freedom every day.  Live it.  Believe it.  You rule you.

People help each other on the path to agorism.

http://www.indomitus.net/

facebook.com/planetaryjim

Attack Tyranny at Its Weakest Link — Enforcement
by Kevin Carson of C4SS

Goo-goo liberals and “good citizens” of all stripes are fond of saying that “We must continue to obey the law while we work to change it.” Every day I become more convinced that this approach gets things precisely backwards. Each day’s news demonstrates the futility of attempts at legislative reform, compared to direct action to make the laws unenforceable.

The principle was stated most effectively by Charles Johnson, one of the more prominent writers on the libertarian Left (“Counter-economic Optimism,” Rad Geek People’s Daily, Feb. 7, 2009):

“If you put all your hope for social change in legal reform, …then… you will find yourself outmaneuvered at every turn by those who have the deepest pockets and the best media access and the tightest connections. There is no hope for turning this system against them; because, after all, the system was made for them and the system was made by them. Reformist political campaigns inevitably turn out to suck a lot of time and money into the politics—with just about none of the reform coming out on the other end.”

Far greater success can be achieved, at a tiny fraction of the cost, by “bypassing those laws and making them irrelevant to your life.”

Johnson wrote in the immediate context of copyright law. In response to an anti-copyright blogger who closed up shop in despair over the increasingly draconian nature of copyright law, he pointed to the state’s imploding ability to enforce such laws. The DRM of popular music and movie content is typically cracked within hours of its release, and it becomes freely available for torrent download. Ever harsher surveillance by ISPs in collusion with content “owners” is countered by the use of anonymizers and proxies. And the all-pervasive “anti-songlifting” curriculum in the publik skools, in today’s youth culture, is met with the same incredulous hilarity as a showing of “Reefer Madness” to a bunch of potheads.

The weakest link in any legal regime, no matter how repressive on paper, is its enforcement.

I saw a couple of heartening news items this past week that illustrate the same principle. First, a judge in Missoula County Montana complained that it would soon likely become almost impossible to enforce anti-marijuana laws because of the increasing difficulty of seating juries. In a recent drug case, so many potential jurors in the voir dire process declared their unwillingness to enforce the pot laws that the prosecution chose to work out a plea deal instead. The defendant’s attorney stated that public opinion “is not supportive of the state’s marijuana law and appeared to prevent any conviction from being obtained simply because an unbiased jury did not appear available under any circumstances…” The same thing happened in about sixty percent of alcohol cases under Prohibition.

Public agitation against a law may be very fruitful indeed — but not so much by creating pressure to change the law as by creating a climate of public opinion such that it becomes a dead letter.

Another morale booster is the rapidly improving technology for recording cops, which Radley Balko (a journalist whose chief bailiwick is police misbehavior) describes in the January issue of Reason Magazine (“How to Record the Cops”). Miniaturized, unobtrusive video cameras with upload capability can instantly transmit images for storage offsite or stream content directly to the Internet — which means that the all-too-frequent tendency of thuggish cops to seize or destroy cameras will result only in video of the very act of seizure or destruction itself being widely distributed on the Internet. “Smile, Officer Friendly — you’re on Candid Camera!”

The practical implication, according to Balko, is this:

“Prior to this technology, prosecutors and the courts nearly always deferred to the police narrative. Now that narrative has to be consistent with independently recorded evidence. And as examples of police reports contradicted by video become increasingly common, a couple of things are likely to happen: Prosecutors and courts will be less inclined to uncritically accept police testimony, even in cases where there is no video, and bad cops will be deterred by the knowledge that their misconduct is apt to be recorded.”

As such technology becomes cheap and ubiquitous, police will increasingly operate in an atmosphere where such monitoring is expected — and feared — as a routine part of their job. Even the most stupid and brutal of cops will always carry, in the backs of their minds, the significant possibility that this might be one of the times they’ve got an audience.

New technology, empowering the individual, will soon deter cops in a way that decades of civilian review boards and police commissions failed to achieve.

So the goo-goos have it backwards. Don’t waste time trying to change the law. Just disobey it.

Found a great post on lewrockwell by SEKIII about his view on the fallacy of copyrights. These ideas can be expanded to the current digital media debate with the RIAA. A novel take on copyright licenses that allows free use of someones work in the public domain, is called copyleft. This basically gives each person possessing a copy of the work the same freedoms as the author, including:

1. the freedom to use the work,
2. the freedom to study the work,
3. the freedom to copy and share the work with others,
4. the freedom to modify the work, and the freedom to distribute modified and therefore derivative works.

We practice this method on our site which is detailed in the footer at the bottom of every webpage.
_______

This originally appeared in The Voluntaryist, July 1986.

Samuel Edward Konkin III (1947–2004) was the author of the New Libertarian Manifesto and a proponent of free-market anarchism.

Having done every step of production in the publishing industry, both for myself and others, I have one irrefutable empirical conclusion about the economic effect of copyrights on prices and wages: nada. Zero. Nihil. So negligible you’d need a Geiger counter to measure it.

Before I move on to exactly what copyrights do have an impact on, one may be interested as to why the praxeological negligibility of this tariff. The answer is found in the peculiar nature of publishing. There are big publishers and small publishers and very, very few in between. For the Big Boys, royalties are a fraction of one percent of multi-million press runs. They lose more money from bureaucratic interstices and round-off error. The small publishers are largely counter-economic and usually survive on donated material or break-in writing; let the new writers worry about copyrighting and reselling.

Furthermore, there are a very few cases of legal action in the magazine world because of this disparity. The little ‘zines have no hope beating a rip-off and shrug it off after a perfunctory threat; the Biggies rattle their corporate-lawyer sabres and nearly anyone above ground quietly bows.

Book publishing is a small part of total publishing and there are some middle-range publishers who do worry about the total cost picture in marginal publishing cases. But now there are two kinds of writers: Big Names and everyone else. Everyone else is seldom reprinted; copyrights have nothing to do with first printings (economically). Big Names rake it in – but they also make a lot from ever-higher bids for their next contract. And the lowered risk of not selling out a reprint of a Big Name who has already sold out a print run more than compensates paying the writer the extra fee.

So Big Name writers would loose something substantial if the copyright privilege ceased enforcement. But Big Name writers are an even smaller percentage of writers than Big Name Actors are of actors. If they all vanished tomorrow, no one would notice (except their friends, one hopes). Still, one may reasonably wonder if the star system’s incentive can be done away without the whole pyramid collapsing. If any economic argument remains for copyrights, it’s incentive.

Crap. As Don Marquis put in the words of Archy the Cockroach, “Creative expression is the need of my soul.” And Archy banged his head on typewriter key after typewriter key all night long to turn out his columns – which Marquis cashed in. Writing as a medium of expression will continue as long as someone has a burning need to express. And if all they have to express is a need for second payments and associated residuals, we’re all better off for not reading it.

But, alas, the instant elimination of copyrights would have negligible effect on the star system. While it would cut into the lifelong gravy train of stellar scribes, it would have no effect on their biggest source of income: the contract for their next book (or script, play or even magazine article or short story). That is where the money is.

“You’re only as good as your last piece” – but you collect for that on your next sale. Market decisions are made on anticipated sales. Sounds like straight von Mises, right? (Another great writer who profited little from copyrighting – but others are currently raking it in from Ludwig’s privileged corpse – er, corpus.)

The point of all this vulgar praxeology is not just to clear the way for the moral question. The market (praise be) is telling us something. After all, both market human action and morality arise from the same Natural Law.

In fact, let us clear out some more deadwood and red herrings before we face the Great Moral Issue. First, if you abolish copyrights, would great authors starve? Nope. In fact, the market might open a trifle for new blood. Would writers write if they did not get paid? Who says they wouldn’t? There is no link between payment for writing and copyrights. Royalties roll in (or, much more often, trickle in) long after the next work is sold and the one after is in progress.

Is not a producer entitled to the fruit of his labor? Sure, that’s why writers are paid. But if I make a copy of a shoe or a table or a fireplace log (with my little copied axe) does the cobbler or wood worker or woodchopper collect a royalty?

A. J. Galambos, bless his anarchoheart, attempted to take copyrights and patents to their logical conclusion. Every time we break a stick, Ug The First should collect a royalty. Ideas are property, he says; madness and chaos result.

Property is a concept extracted from nature by conceptual man to designate the distribution of scarce goods – the entire material world – among avaricious, competing egos. If I have an idea, you may have the same idea and it takes nothing from me. Use yours as you will and I do the same.

Ideas, to use the ‘au courant’ language of computer programmers, are the programs; property is the data. Or, to use another current cliché, ideas are the maps and cartography, and property is the territory. The difference compares well to the differences between sex and talking about sex.

Would not ideas be repressed without the incentive (provided by copyrights)? ‘Au contraire’ the biggest problem with ideas is the delivery system. How do we get them to those marketeers who can distribute them? (Ed. note: most readers probably know the answer to this in 1996, this was written in 1986)

My ideas are pieces of what passes for my soul (or, if you prefer, ego). Therefore, every time someone adopts one of them, a little piece of me has infected them. And for this I get paid, too! On top of all that, I should be paid and paid and paid as they get staler and staler?

If copyrights are such a drag, why and how did they evolve? Not by the market process. Like all privileges (emphasis added), they were grants of the king. The idea did not – could not – arise until Gutenberg’s printing press and it coincided with the rise of royal divinity, and soon after, the onslaught of mercantilism.

So who benefits from this privilege? There is an economic impact I failed to mention earlier. It is, in Bastiat’s phrasing, the unseen. Copyright is a Big publisher’s method, under cover of protecting artists, of restraint of trade. Yes, we’re talking monopoly.

For when the Corporation tosses its bone to the struggling writer, and an occasional steak to the pampered tenth of a percent, it receives an enforceable legal monopoly on the editing, typesetting, printing, packaging, marketing (including advertising) and sometimes even local distribution of that book or magazine. (In magazines, it also has an exclusivity in layout vs other articles and illustrations and published advertisements.) How’s that for vertical integration and restraint of trade?

And so the system perpetuates, give or take a few counter-economic outlaws and some enterprising Taiwanese with good smuggling connections.

Because copyrights permeate all mass media, Copyright is the Rip-off That Dare Not Mention Its Name. The rot corrupting our entire communications market is so entrenched it will survive nothing short of abolition of the State and its enforcement of Copyright. Because the losers, small-name writers and all readers, lose so little each, we are content – it seems – to be nickel-and-dime plundered. Why worry about mosquito bites when we have the vampire gouges of income taxes and automobile tariffs?

Now for the central moral question: what first woke me up to the problem that was the innocent viewer scenario. Consider the following careful contractual construction.

Author Big and Publisher Bigger have contracts not to reveal a word of what’s in some publication. Everyone on the staff, every person in the step of production is contracted not to reveal a word. All the distributors are covered and the advertising quotes only a minimal amount of words. Every reader is like Death Records in Phantom of the Paradise, under contract, too; that is every reader who purchases the book or ‘zine and thus interacts with someone who is under contract – interacts in a voluntary trade and voluntary agreement.

No, I am not worried about the simultaneous creator; although an obvious victim, he or she is rare, given sufficient complexity in the work under questions. (However, some recent copyright decisions and the fact that the Dolly Parton case even got as far as a serious trial – means the corruption is spreading.)

One day you and I walk into a room – invited but without even mention of a contract – and the publication lies open on a table. Photons leap from the pages to our eyes and our hapless brain processes the information. Utterly innocent, having committed no volitional act, we are copyright violators. We have unintentionally embarked on a life of piracy.

And God or the Market help us if we now try to act on the ideas now in our mind or to reveal this unintended guilty secret in any way. The State shall strike us – save only if Author Big and Publisher Bigger decide in their tyrannous mercy that we are too small and not worth the trouble.

For if we use the ideas or repeat or reprint them, even as part of our own larger creation – bang! There goes the monopoly. And so each and every innocent viewer must be suppressed. By the Market? Hardly. The entire contractual agreement falls like a house of cards when the innocent gets his or her forbidden view. No, copyright has nothing to do with creativity, incentive, just desserts, fruits of labor or any other element of the moral, free market.

It is a creature of the State, the Vampire’s little bat. And, as far as I’m concerned, the word should be copywrong.

A good article by Ross Kenyon from the Center for a Stateless Society, illustrating the pervasive stereotypes that are perpetuated against anarchists.

How would the NAACP respond if a politician or other public figure had said this about all black people?

Recently, US Representative John Boehner (R-OH) odiously mischaracterizedanarchist philosophy and painted an inaccurate portrait of its core values, saying that at Tea Party events there are “Always a couple of anarchists who want to kill all of us in public office.” Anarchism is an ideology based on individual freedom and opposition to institutionalized aggression, not on some insane love of public mayhem.

Yes, when people hear the word “anarchist” their neurons start firing on images of Molotov cocktail-wielding, black bandanna-wearing street fighters at G20.

That impression is more a product of 200 years of Boehner-style smear rhetoric than an accurate perception of what anarchism means or what anarchists do. It’s on par with any other stereotype — the “lazy/violent Negro” used to justify Jim Crow, the “potential pedophile” trotted out to support discrimination against homosexuals and other sexual minorities, the hopped-up robber or rapist offered up as justification for the war on drugs.

Yes, there are violent and insurrectionary anarchists, just as there are people who resemble those other stereotypes. No, those particular people are not representative of this diverse movement any more than those other stereotypes are representative of African-Americans, LGBTQ persons, or recreational drugs users.

I’ve attended Tea Parties as an anarchist because I’m a sincere libertarian who cares about limiting the power, scope, and size of government and fighting its unjustified intrusion upon the lives of peaceful individuals. Many of of my fellow Tea Party attendees intuitively and intellectually grasp the danger of the unlimited state and seek to reduce its influence over their personal lives. Anarchism is a radical extension of that reasonable impulse, not the nihilist tantrum that Boehner makes it out to be.

At Tea Party events, I like to ask questions of people who care about limiting governments.

How is land is justly acquired? Most people accept homesteading, occupancy and use as appropriate justification to call a parcel of land one’s own.

In reply, I note that the state homesteads nothing, produces nothing, but merely draws a political boundary and declares that if one lives within the stated arbitrary geographical area one must buy defense and justice services from its monopolistic organization.

What happens if someone attempts to buy competing services not linked to artificial political borders? Agents of the state will throw that person in a cage (and kill them if they resists).

Market anarchism is such a basic and consistent idea, an idea so in tune with the values professed by the Tea Partiers, that it’s only natural for anarchists to show up and challenge fellow freedom-lovers to adopt it.

I agree that a consistent philosophy which values and respects the peaceful choices of the Tea Partiers and their neighbors is indeed a threat to Boehner and his ilk, but not a threat of the type he claims. It’s not a death threat, it’s the threat of a pink slip.

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C4SS News Analyst Ross Kenyon is a senior of American History at Arizona State University. He is a member of the ASU Students For Liberty leadership team, as well as a summer intern in Washington, DC.