Yarnell Perkins wrote:Hey Vanlose, I tried to talk with Dad yesterday about his grand jury experience, but he said he couldn't really remember much, just that it was the county grand jury and he felt they were just rubber-stamping indictments for unbelievably large numbers of crimes. He felt like he was too inexperienced with the legal system to argue with the prosecutors and other grand jurors. It was more like he felt that matters of such importance deserved more time and attention than the jury gave them, but he didn't feel he had the knowledge or experience to do anything.
He got even vaguer after saying that and then he went to sleep. He's old enough that going to church and then eating Sunday dinner is enough to wear him out.
Sorry.
that's alright. thanks man. his reservations (the highlighted) are valid though, seeing that courts are run by lawyers, judges, legal professionals, (and mainly enforce laws made by and for corporations) in such a way that any kind of transparency is ruled out by way of savvy and coercion.
IanEye wrote:vanlose kid wrote:because the point being made is a different one. the author is laying down what is necessary for the establishment of a state/society with regard to common laws and currency. – any currency agreed upon by consensus within a community as the means of payment can function as such only on the basis of said agreement: this is what gives "power" to the state and to a currency. – he's expressing a political theory of state, and basically, saying that once a community agrees on a means of payment it becomes the means of payment – it's legality is derived from that consensus.
this is also borne out empirically. Cf., Andrew Jackson, or the early American colonies on the question of money.
it's fairly straightforward, unless one is of the view that a privately owned banking cartel with a monopoly over money is necessary for the establishment of a state.
well, your Austrian and Swiss examples are interesting ones, but the author starts off quoting the Constitution of the United States and then proceeds to ignore the Constitution of the United States when it doesn't suit his argument.
again, the point i was trying to make, which you missed either wittingly or out of sheer ignorance, is that a private banking cartel is
unnecessary for the issuance and control of money within a society. they function as a middleman. and the middleman is not a necessary prerequisite, especially if his main function is to turn a profit by making people pay for the use of his product.
let me illustrate that: imagine all roads in the US were privately owned and the law was such that you or anyone were only allowed to use the roads for which you payed, in effect, that you could only go places you had paid to go, the owners would be in control of your movement. the same goes for the privatization of the internet.
the same goes for money which should, and historically, in the US as
per the Constitution, did once function as a common utility – a
res publica – not in the hands of private corporations: the few, and to which the many gain access at a premium. – as a people, US citizens
pay for the use of money. – most of the world's citizens do.
it amounts to shutting down free unlimited access to common space, handing control of it over to a private corporation that restricts access unless you're willing and able to pay for it. (on edit: there are equivalent issues with regard to land use.)
furthermore, the monopoly of a society's money by the few and charging the many for the use of it without their consent in perpetuity (interest) is tyranny – also known as debt slavery.
that is a fact. – if you agree with that then state your point and be done. i (shall) have no argument (nor traffic) with friends of tyrants.
IanEye wrote:The author also says this:
“For the étatist, money is a creature of the state,” and surely one of the greatest tragedies of our time is that the people, in their unwitting acceptance of monetary positiv-ism, are statists themselves, if only as pawns in a game that has been rigged utterly and completely against them.
In your reply to me you said this:
vanlose kid wrote:the author is laying down what is necessary for the establishment of a state/society with regard to common laws and currency.
So, [P1] if the society is comprised of people, and [P2] those people are statists then [Con.] this whole theory is starting to sound like an incredibly lame circle jerk.... [irrelevant blowhard bs.]
.[/center]
the point of what you charmingly call "euro porn" is to illustrate the fact that the middleman is not necessary. never has been.
what this means is that their need be no argument against such constructions as the FED or the BoE. it also means that arguments for such constructions need not be rebutted. they are empty, and the constructions can only be put in place either through
deception or force: lies and tyranny.
*
re your attempt at logical deduction: depends on what you mean by statist, doesn't it? is the society of people in fact statist or have they been put into that position unwttingly, i.e.
without their consent? – maybe you're incapable of seeing that, or of asking yourself that question.
anyway, re [P2] one can always question whether the people are in fact statist, i.e. whether they have a clear idea: as in whether the people who run the state for the statists, i.e. politicians and government workers, have fully informed them of the rules and the rights they have given over. that emphatically is not the case. take the fact that in general people do not know that the FED is a privately owned corporation run for the personal profit of the few who own it. so the "statists" in this scenario don't really know what they're signing up for do they? but i guess you have no problem with that? if you do then there's really no point in engaging with me because the whole exercise on your part consists in proving that the few private owners of the FED shall be given leave to dictate to the many without it being made clear to the many that they do. that's tyranny.
and if you're all for it, then enjoy. i have nothing to say to you. – none of this of course prevents you from being the blowhard that you are and continuing your game of meaningless and juvenile oneupmanship. feel free to do so.
*
exojuridik wrote:Well, since I’ve been summoned from the void, I might as well proffer my 2 cents of devil currency.
Actually, I don’t have a clue what the whole strawman argument is about considering the fact that we live in a society that is defined by the nation-states which is itself governed according to laws administered by a legal system composed of courts and government agencies. No, it is not perfect or even internally consistent. Yes, we live in a fallen world where God’s law has been violated by the hubris and vanity of men. So what else is new?
Most of the issues raised here seem of a political rather than legal nature. The legitimacy of the workings of government or the laws or the economic system is entirely a question dealing with one’s allegiance to the sovereign i.e. one’s own country. Without enforcement at the point of a gun, laws have no real meaning or importance. Sure there might be philosophical or religious meaning to be found in the discussion of true higher LAW, but this has no meaning in the real world, unless, of course you are Justice Clarence Thomas and adhere to some inchoate vision of Natural Law.
IOW – there is no “cheat code” in the law. The Law is merely what the judge on the bench decides it is given the facts of the case and guided by precedent and statute. One can appeal his decision but most judges don’t like their decisions to be overturned so they adhere pretty tightly to conventional interpretations of the law. Furthermore, the courts have jurisdiction based on enabling provisions in the state or US constitution. In most countries the constitution is the highest law in the land and would trump any 17th century practice of Earls and Marquises or whomever.
Any lawyer who attempted to make a “strawman” argument in an American court would likely find himself sanctioned or subject to malpractice suit. It depends on the procedural stances of the parties – if one is going to sue then there needs to be a cause of action recognized by the courts. If one is say subject to a tax evasion charge, one can say whatever one wants but no lawyer in their right mind would suggest using laws that aren’t laws as a defense.
In my mind the whole problem with the strawman movement is that it distracts from the very real problem of there not being enough laws or access to courts. The real danger is when people are denied causes of actions to redress their injuries or enforce their rights. The cases concerning Guantanamo all rested on the ability of individuals to enforce their constitutionally protected rights in a federal court.
The strawmen have an ally with the conservative federalists and corporate defense attorneys. They too wish to limit the jurisdictions of the courts and question the legitimacy of causes of action found in the law. The best defense to corporate malfeasance is a lack of jurisdiction by the courts. Additionally, most dockets in the federal courts are woefully burdened with caseloads. It can take years before plaintiffs have an opportunity to have their case tried.
In sum, the courts are unfair and countenances injustice on a daily basis. However, short of genuine revolution, the law is our only sword/shield against the depredations of the powerful. Researching arcane theories that holds the law is not the law seems more to be a sign of mental illness than scholarship. The strawman argument according to its’ own terms has nothing to do with the law as practiced. So why bother.
agreed, in part. i'll just restate some general points re my own position here, because it seems they may have been missed earlier on.
i agree with exo re the fact that the strawmen seem to have no recourse or argument and that their policies and modes of seeking redress seem slightly if not entirely misguided. again, i've said that.
i also agree that the courts (and the money systems in like manner) are unfair, as it is clear that the "laws" or legal statutes that comprise most of the rules of the US and other nations were formed by and for corporations at the expense of the common man. knowing that, i have to admit, i understand it if some people, the strawmen being a case in point, feel that their rights have been overridden. – i'd like to note that much of my thinking is in fact informed by Marx's
Capital – and it is clear, if you've read it, that the game is rigged by Capital and capitalists. that is a fact. they make the laws (cf., my thread on tax Havens).
i disagree with exo re his statement that all law only has meaning when enforced at the point of a gun. there's another thread here on ideas on non-hierarchical management much of which is based on the premise that a group of people, a community or society, can agree on common rules or law without necessarily having to seek redress against wrongs by waving a gun around. this can be done by general consent, in the same way that a free money system can be put in place by general consent. these are not a priori propositions of metaphysics or legal philosophy but empirical facts. ask Marx or Bakunin (even they speak of natural/common laws) or anyone with an interest in these things. – better yet, look around you.
a society without law is an oxymoron. it wouldn't be a society. and unless you subscribe to some Hobbesian metaphysical argument concerning the state of nature and the need for a Leviathan (his entire argument is
petitio principii) it seems fairly clear that what folks like Marx and Bakunin spoke about when speaking of natural laws were laws that a commonality consented to in practice. they're rules of the road anyone can agree on.
what the strawmen invoke in way of common laws are best expressed or encapsulated/encoded in the US in the form of Constitution and the Bill of Rights (you can read a review of a book
here making the case based on empirical findings that dispute resolution among parties, in this case farmers and ranchers in Shasta county, CA, function without law, or rather within "a system of norms, a private law code having no connection to courts, legislatures, or any other agency of state power" . – these "develop naturally".
i personally see an analogy here with indigenous societies which normally are considered lawless, but in fact have laws, only not in a western sense. these are natural laws. it was laws like these that were codified by Alfred of Wessex:
The term is of English origin and is used to describe the juridical principles and general rules regulating the possession, use and inheritance of property and the conduct of individuals, the origin of which is not definitely known, which have been observed since a remote period of antiquity, and which are
based upon immemorial usages and the decisions of the law courts as distinct from the lex scripta; the latter consisting of imperial or kingly edicts or express acts of legislation. That pre-eminent English lawyer and law-writer, Sir William Blackstone, states in his "Commentaries upon the Laws of England" that
the common law consists of rules properly called leges non scriptœ, because their original institution and authority were not set down in writing as Acts of Parliament are, but
they receive their binding power and the force of laws by long immemorial usage, and by their universal reception throughout the kingdom; and, quoting from a famous Roman author, Aulus Gellius, he follows him in defining the common law as did Gellius the Jus non scriptum as that which is
"tacito illiterato hominum consensu et moribus expressum" (expressed in the usage of the people, and accepted by the tacit unwritten consent of men).
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09068a.htm
so, there is
in fact a distinction between common law and legal statutes, and it is a very clear one. running the two together is of no use.
and in the case of the US, as exo also remarks re the Guantanamo detainees, seeking recourse in the Constitution from arbitrary
lex scripta or other forms of coercion, such as the Patriot Act, is in fact a valid means of seeking redress for wrongs.
for further reference re my thinking on common law and indigenous law, here's an example excerpt from an article that i like (wish i could post the whole thing but it's a pdf).
CONNECTION TO LAND AND SEA AT ERUB, TORRES STRAIT
Stream: Aboriginal Territory and Management Rights
Disciplines: Anthropology, Geography
Introduction
In this paper we examine the relationship of indigenous, ethnological, and legal discourses
in the definition of rights to land and sea among Torres Strait Islanders in northern Australia. In
Australia, to a greater extent than in Canada or any other settler state,
the rules and customs of
indigenous tenure systems are legally regarded as the source and test for state recognition of
native title. The native claims process routinely depends on a combination of indigenous and
anthropological documentation and
testimony to formulate jurisprudence on the validity of claims.
Hence, a three-cornered discourse – indigenous, ethnological and legal – is shaping the emergent
realities of property, boundaries and territories in contemporary Australia.
We take as axiomatic that
property is [like money, in my view] the product of social practices and processes; that it
is about relationships among people in regard to objects owned. The social contestation of
property definitions and demarcations is ongoing, so any attempt to represent or codify property
rights in a fixed and formal fashion involves a certain abstraction and reification. This is as true
within customary tenure systems as it is for current jurisprudence and legislative actions to define
native title, and by corollary to redefine contiguous rights in the wider society. In the legacy of
Marx, the ideology of property as object (e.g. the myth of absolute possession of ‘things’ as
capitalist commodities) is distinguished from actual property as a social process.
Anthropologically, we know that property as object is naturalized, reified, and taken-for-granted
in a variety of cultural ways, according to distinctive ontologies and social practices.
In some systems the status of property as the outcome of social politics of negotiation or
subordination may be relatively transparent. To an extent, this seems true of local property
relations at Torres Strait; and it is patently true of contemporary efforts to reconcile the property
and jurisdictional rights and claims of indigenous people in Australia with private and Crown
claims in the wider context of the state.
Euro-Australians may profess bewilderment at the
profusion and elasticity of indigenous claims and counter-claims, according to conflicting and
competing rules and histories that we address later on. But this situation appears to be the
ordinary and indeed primary reality of property, if we first debunk our own European-derived
sense of property as precise, discrete and unproblematic objects and delimited spaces. Post-Mabo
Australia, like post-Delgamuukw Canada, has been shaken in its naive self-assurance that written
deeds in court house records are as primal and perpetual as the stars.
A second axiom: In embracing cultural relativist perspectives, the discourse of enlarged
recognition of native title is an intersystemic negotiation of meanings. On the one hand, the
Australian state expects native title claimants
to demonstrate “continuous connection” to country
in their own cultural terms. On the other hand, the power conferred by such a demonstration is
made meaningful by comparing native title to other forms of title in the encapsulating Australian
system. In regard to legal force,
the High Court asserts that indigenous property rights shall not
enjoy lesser protection than Euro-Australian private property, pursuant to the Racial
Discrimination Act (1975; see Brennan, 1995:13, 17). In regard to legal form,
native title, though
a right sui generis, has become a collective freehold analogue of title in fee simple --
conventionally the most “complete” form of private property in Euro-Australia. A generalizeable
and universalist notion of “equality,” together with more specific Euro-Australian approaches to
bundling rights, anchors the analogy. Inevitably, the discourse on indigenous rights tacks back and
forth between two poles: the culturally relative or particularistic, and the comparative or
universalistic...
http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstre ... sequence=1
the site is the Digital Library of the Commons
http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/ – what can i say? it's great, and free or part of the
commons, for now. check it out.
*
as for the allies of the strawmen and so on. yes. also, not really interested. as i said, my interest, here as in the threads i usually post to, is in the machinery: how these things work.
*
for the record, i am not and have never been part of the freeman movement or any other movement ever. and have no plans to become one. – blowhards (provided they have the mind and human decency to do so) need not worry and may conserve their energy for more useful activities.
*
edit: formatting, typos, links, etc.
*
on further edit:
in my eyes, the majority of the world's population is slowly becoming aware of the fact that all of us, as far the "they" are concerned, are indigenous and have no rights.
*
on further edit: i'd just like to note two things.
1) the
Capital is an
analysis of capital and
not a political tract (that's the
Manifesto etc.,);
2) the freemen's methods and their understanding of the law may be tenuous at best, that, however, does not mean that their concerns are not real, nor are they easily dismissed.
*
"Teach them to think. Work against the government." – Wittgenstein.
