COMMENT:
The enemy will ratchet the screws they got us under tighter...
No lemme rewrite that: the enemy will ratchet the screws we let them keep us under tighter.
That fits.
What's going to have to fit for you -if you want Freedom-is to take it. We are few in number and geographically distributed so we have little to no power, even in our locales. Especially in our locales because well, we as a movement don't get the steady game, the long game and seek to start, build and expand the Second American Revolution.
The enemy will strike at us largely locally because the feds are too few for national coverage; they rely on state and local governments to enforce their edicts or inform them when they need to bring the federal hammer down on a nail sticking out.
You can build up the underground economy but snitches are bitches that get stitches and wind up in ditches... well they should but we're too nice and law abiding. Laws are an enemy quiet weapons system and being nice to bullies and thieves doesn't pay.
The dollar is a economic weapon that steadily loses purchasing power and the enemy will enforce a monopoly on its currency. What do we do? Use silver and gold, barter items, self-issued script? When we can?
We need a political cover to start up and expand our economic initiatives or it's over. We can either get serious and start taking back communities through recall election to create a local shield, and build and expand the SAR, or we can try enforcing it with our rifles. Because what we're doing now will get us picked off as the enemy's revenuers and snitches take us out one by one, or by bunch.
Get politically active, fight, or give up.
J. Croft
Federal government seeking to make forms of bartering illegal after court ruling
By Kenneth Schortgen Jr
April 4th, 2011 12:03 pm ET
Finance Examiner
The Federal government is trying to establish bartering private currency of any type as an illegal enterprise in a false interpretation of the court's recent conviction of Liberty Dollar's owner Bernard Von NotHaus.
In a case where the government used conspiracy and counterfeit charges against NotHaus to establish that he intended to mint and illegally replace US currency with a private one using silver coins, the US Attorney is now parlaying the conviction to say that this ruling sets a precedent against any private barter transactions which use any form of currency besides established Federal Reserve Notes.
The Federal government also is seeking on April 4th to take receipt of the $7 Million dollars in silver 'Liberty Dollars' that were minted and sold by Von NotHaus.
The idea for using private currency for barter transactions is not new, and in fact is currently being done in a few cities around the country. In Detroit for example, a group of businesses created their own barter currency known as 'Detroit Cheers', and several businesses agreed to the use of local currencies in leiu of federal reserve notes.
A Detroit trio of small-business owners are reviving the idea, following an emerging national trend. The businesses are creating a currency called Detroit Cheers, and more than a dozen city merchants have already agreed to accept it as real money. "The world is just now reeling from economic chaos; in Detroit, that's how we always roll," said Jerry Belanger, 49, a backer of the currency, as he watched the initial run of Cheers bills roll off the presses last week....
Detroit Cheers joins an estimated 75 local currency systems that have sprung up recently in the U.S., said Michael Shuman, author of "The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition." – Detroit News
This attempt by the Federal government to use a single court case to establish a new precident of law in regards to barter and currency gives warning to the states and the public that any course of action towards removing themselves from federal control over economic and monetary policies will be met with force and or prosecution.
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Use the Dollar or Else
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Look up the phrase "a unique form of domestic terrorism" on a search engine and you will turn up a story about a man whom the US government is trying to cage from now until the time of his death.
And his crime? His unique form of terrorism? He minted silver and copper coins and sold them. In other words, he did what innumerable entrepreneurs from the beginning of time have done. He attempted to provide consumers with a store of value. No one was forced to buy. He met a market demand, and that’s it.
Whom did he hurt? No one. Unlike illegal drugs, which the government bans on grounds that it doesn’t want us to hurt ourselves, these silver coins did not endanger their users. They only gave people an option on what to do with their money. Did the proprietor attempt to claim that these were legal tender for monetary exchange? No, he sold them for what they are.
Could people use them for money? Yes, but people can use anything for money: shoes, shells, flash drives, or books. Whether something is money or not depends on the intentions behind the exchange. Do you acquire something to consume it? It is not money. Do you acquire something in order to trade it for something else? In that case, it takes on money-like properties.
It is wholly understandable that people have doubts about the future of the paper dollar. Many people are seeking alternatives, in their own financial interest. What this proprietor did was provide something that turned out to be a possible alternative to the dollar. And for that, and that alone, he is being hounded and destroyed.
His name is Bernard von NotHaus and he is 67 years old. In the course of the proceedings, he was called every name imaginable. He was called a crook, a terrorist, a crank, and a crazy man. What he actually did, however, should be fully legal and encouraged in any nation, in all times and all places.
A nation that is confident about its money’s future would not fear currency competition. A nation with a dying money uses every possible means to crush the competition. That is precisely what is happening in the case of the so-called Liberty Dollar.
What’s striking here is that no one believes there is any reason to argue the point. It is obvious to his persecutors that he is a criminal. "He's playing on a core idea of the radical right, that evil bankers in the Federal Reserve are ripping you off by controlling the money supply," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. "He very much exists in the world of the anti-government patriot movement, whatever he may say. That's who his customers are."
And what is the interest of the SLPC in this case? This is a group that claims to be about stopping hate and racism – and this has something to do with opposing poverty. And yet here they are intervening in a case in which a man is actually trying to prevent people from being impoverished. As for the Fed, it is not exactly an act of hate to point out that the Fed controls the money supply. Bernanke himself admits this!
The government has made no bones about the foundation of its case. Citing a Civil War-era law, prosecutors say that it is a crime to compete with the official dollar. Note that they are not citing the U.S. Constitution, which nowhere prevents such a thing. In fact, private coinage has a rich history in the U.S. It was essential when the West was being settled. Providing coinage services was as common as any other trade.
But since 1971, when the dollar became all paper, there has been a sense that its viability needs the backing of federal guns in order to thrive. This attitude is inconsistent with freedom. The right of private coinage is an essential part of free enterprise. Currency competition, especially in a digital age, is something that every country needs.
As Seth Lipsky wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "it's a loser's game to suppress private money that is sound in order to protect government-issued money that is unsound."
Precisely. As Lipsky points out, NotHaus operated very close to the line in terms of legality. He put the dollar sign on his coins, for example, and sold them with numbers. I can’t comment on his business dealings or the integrity of his operations. But this much is clear: the grounds on which he is being hounded are egregious and tyrannical.
Allowing for alternative currencies is not terrorism. It is a path to monetary reform, merely an application of the principle of free enterprise to a sector that should have never fallen so completely to government control. The people who are working to provide alternatives should not be jailed; they should be celebrated in every country that values freedom.
April 6, 2011
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail], former editorial assistant to Ludwig von Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor of LewRockwell.com. See his books.
Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
A Well Regulated Discussion HERE: http://www.awrm.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=46;t=000026;p=1#000003
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