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November 2, 2008 in
When you are prosecuted for a crime, it is not your “straw man” that is prosecuted. The fact that your name on the papers is in all caps is as irrelevant as the fact that there is or is not gold fringe on the flag. You can’t get out from under the U.S. legal system by “redeeming your straw man.” The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) is not the supreme law of the land.
I could explain all of this in terms of what the law actually says, but it’s been done before and if you are among those who have bought the nonsense being sold by the “Redemption Theory” or “Natural Sovereignty” or “Moorish Nation” crowds, then you probably think that I’m a member of the British Accreditation Registry (BAR) with an interest in perpetuating the slavery of the American justice system. So instead of explaining the law to you, I’ll lay down some practicalities.
Whether it is true or not, there are lots of people who believe that the YOU that can be prosecuted for committing a crime is the same you that walks, talks, and breathes. These believers include every judge, prosecutor, cop, agent, and prison guard in the country. So if, based on something you heard at a seminar put on by Winston Shrout or his ilk you create a fictitious commercial instrument and deposit it in a bank, you’re likely to wind up getting arrested by real (not straw) agents with real badges, hauled before a real court with real power to send you to real prison (maybe you can share a cell with Roger Elvick, the white supremacist who dreamt up all of this Redemption nonsense) where real guards can kill the real you if you try to escape. None of these people are disciples of Elvick or Shrout; even if they recognize that the only value our money has is agreed value, all of them are willing to use violence to maintain that agreed value.
And Mr. Shrout? He’ll take your money for his nonsense, but he disclaims his advice as anything but “educational” . . . and “entertaining”. He’s not going to stand up to defend you when you get caught. That job will fall to a criminal-defense lawyer, who might not much care for the government but will nonetheless be left wishing that you had a a better defense than “They can’t prosecute me because I am sovereign.”
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what?
I’m fascinated by the existance of this stuff. I’m not interested in the details—the explanations I’ve read never make sense—but I think the phenomenon is probably an indication of some interesting aspects of the human mental process.
Does some of this pseudo-law stuff make sense to you lawyers? I ask because I have a science background, and a lot of pathological pseudo-science makes a strange kind of sense: It follows the form and structure of normal scientific thinking, but it’s lost all moorings in reality. These people are building mansions in the air…and moving into them.
People really do show up our offices insisting that their alternate realities exist. They state it emphatically, buying into these beliefs hook, line and sinker. It’s painful to be around and exasperating when they demand to know why their fantasies won’t prevail.
Ahhh yes. I get a few of these every year. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is “magical thinking.” That is, they are convinced that by reciting the proper “spells” the judge’s eyes will go vacant and he will say something like “these aren’t the droids we’re looking for” and the case will just go away.
Never works.
“Magical thinking?” Interesting term. I wonder if this kind of thinking is more common around law. I can think of two reasons (based on my complete lack of knowledge of psychology) that it would be. Either because:
1) Law itself seems so arcane, the forms, the rituals, rules. Everyone fears the dreaded “technicality” that destroys their version of justice, and so they feel they should invoke the “technically” to revive their justice. Alternately,
2) People trapped in the legal system feel so utterly helpless that they need to invent a systme that again gives them power over their environment (basically, a deathbed conversion without the death).
Of course, if Windypundit sees the same phenomena in science, I’m not sure how well they explanations track to that field.
BTW, Windypundit, where I try to click on your site, my work computer filter starts screaming Pornography!!! and locks down. I am now suspected a perv. Would it have been worth it? Why is my filter offended by your site?
Bill, Sorry about that.
I’ve had several recent posts about the P-word including a few cases involving young human offspring (I’m trying to avoid getting this site banned as well). In connection with a non-youthful case, I think I linked to some sites with content your filters may not like. If you could email me the name of your company content filter, maybe I can figure out how to unblock myself.
Bill, I think both of your explanations are sound.
If you Google the terms (e.g. “redeem straw man”) you find lots of forums filled with people who are looking for ways to stop creditors (usually credit card companies) from suing them for debts. They’ve gotten in too deep, they’ve exhausted all the plausible ways out, and they are looking for any solution.
We all cling to different things when we’re caught in extremis. The same thinking supports quack doctors, televangelists, and nationalist parties.
Mark has a good point, a lot of phony science is related to health, which probably produces the same kinds of desperate search for solutions as legal trouble does.
Also, I think a lot of people feel empowered by having special knowledge—that humans are descended from aliens, that the Illuminati control our government—that shows how much smarter they are than the people around them…even if those people seem to live happier lives.
I take it you guys are all lawyers of some type and all have made a pretty good living. Also you are probably living a satisfied life because you doing the thing that you have passion for… “doing the law”. I, on the other hand, happen to be one of “those guys”. You know, the one who was laid off and fell into financial hardship etc, etc.
You know, it’s strange, I used to spend my time talking around the water cooler like you guys and even though I knew that the general mechanism of this world was a twisted piece of crap I would never look at those crazies twice because life was good.
In reading some of your comments it would be great if you guys were to stick to the hard core facts in refuting men such as Winston Shrout on the subjects like the inception of HJR192, his take on the procedural aspects and use of Admiralty in criminal courts. The validity of birth certificates and such being negotiable instruments WITH value, the Treasury not being part of the US since 1920 and the IMF and international bankers control over our money supply and the impossible auditing of the Fed Reserve’s books. Refute all of it but refute it all with lawyer-like details and you can save a water cooler spot for me. Even at my best of times I always smelled a rat about how lawyers, commerce and the system in general worked. The false consideration given by banks for mortgages was my first actual tip to the BS I had learned all my life and right now I need a real heavy dose of hard core NON BS to balance MY books. You see it is not that people want to live fantasies, PEOPLE want to live. and I guess the big problem is that the stuff the crazies teach FINALLY makes this ass backwards, kill for a dollar society we live in finally make sense. The banks created a system based on credit (fantasy) that has enslaved all of us and increased our jail ranks exponentially. WE are the only energy backing the credit. If anything in your research can refute that basic principle of how our society works you will have an ardent listener. But until then take it easy on those going through hardship, you guys come off a little callous, even for lawyers.
CG, thanks for commenting.
The system is broken. Read around this blog some more, and you’ll see that you’ll get no argument about that here.
Among other things, the notion of sovereignty in America is all messed up. The People are supposed to be sovereign over the government (which We The People created), but we’ve allowed the government sovereign immunity, and the ability to prosecute people twice based on dual sovereignty. The principle is that The People (not you, not me, but all of us together) are sovereign; the practicality is that we lost our sovereignty a long time ago.
I wouldn’t even argue that we are not, in an important sense, enslaved. We buy things we don’t need with money that has no intrinsic value that we give up our valuable time to acquire. When we take a job, we give up freedom. When we borrow money, we give up freedom. When we live in society, we give up freedom.
If you want a cheerleader for the way things are, go to a prosecutor’s blog.
But there is so much through-the-looking-glass craziness in the Personal Sovereignty movement that it’s hard to even know where to start. Admiralty doesn’t have anything to do with criminal court. It just doesn’t. There’s no lawyerly refutation, any more than there’s a lawyerly refutation to the proposition that Venusian law applies on Earth.
Any of us could walk away from society — there’s lots of empty space out West — but if we’re going to remain in it we have to recognize the way things actually (not theoretically) work. The question is the same in a warlord’s kingdom as in a Republic: who has a monopoly on violence, and how do they use it?
The best refutation of Shrout’s voodoo is the simplest: it has been empirically tested, and doesn’t work. The government, with its monopoly on lawful violence, says that it’s not the law, so it is by definition not the law.
People have paid hard-earned money for Shrout’s advice, and then gone to prison for following it. This bothers me.
There is a struggle between two minoritys
One minority believes in life, liberty and property
The other minority, in detention, licence and seizure.
And in the middle, cops, crooks and the teaming millions.
If you want your liberty, keep away from commercial paper and institutions with a public flavor. Public means that it is sure to be regulated by government in the interest of who ever has a stake
in the plenary power of government, and that means the guys who loan your government money, and they insist that their interest payments be paid no matter what. No mealy mouth lawyer is going to disturb that system.
Public institutions exsist for one cause. To maintain a status quo where aristocrats get a bite of all public activity, be it peddling hot dogs on the street corner, or fleecing millions with hypotheticated notes.
My best advice to anyone is to do business in kind or cash with people you trust and who are discrete.
Hello Mark Bennett, It appears that the same garbage is being sold in Australia by Con Artists who pretend to be Admiralty Law Experts. I have been for some time trying to warn Australians about a person named Mark Pytellek who is conducting what he calls Honour Dishonour System in which he teaches people the garbage about UCC, Admiralty Law and how to harass creditors with the allegations of presentments and other garbage. People are paying him A$400- and up for his alleged valuable material for which he has alleged Barristers have told him his time is worth A$1500 per hour. For the A$400 that people pays him they get an alleged valuable manual and a copy of a DVD of his previous seminars. Many people that have try the lunacy of Mark Pytellek has got in deep trouble with the Court and some have been jailed for refusing to sign Bail conditions alleging that they are sovereigns and that the law does not apply to them.
The Federal Court of Australia on 24 April 2008 decided the case of Paul John Rana who try to use the garbage that the Con Artist Mark Pytellek sold to him and the Federal Judge was less than impressed with the documents prepared by the so called Admiralty Law Expert Mark Pytellek.
People that I know personally, have got themselves into trouble by following the teaching of Mark Pytellek whom like others have alleged that freemen and women do not need to register their vehicles or have a driver’s licence to drive on the roads and this people after they have been fined have commenced to harass the Police Officers, Sheriffs and other Government employees with Notices of damages for millions of dollars and UCC documents and claims of damages.
But it appears that after all the Cases decided by the Courts and all the evidence against the teaching of Con Artist like Mark Pytellek , these people do not want to hear the truth that they have been conned and persist on the way to their own downfall and that of the families. One example is that of Arthur and Fiona Cristian who own a website called Love for Life http://www.loveforlife.com.au and whom I know and my family considered our friends, but cannot longer watch them destroy their own family by following the alleged Admiralty Law Expertise of Mark Pytellek. I have try for a long time to make them see that they are going the wrong way. But what can you do when they do not want to see the reality that they have been conned. Fiona Cristian was arrested for unlicensed driving and driving an unregistered vehicle and now has to attend Court on 6 April 2009 and maybe that would make them understand that the alleged admiralty law expertise of Mark Pytellek is garbage.
I would also to take this opportunity to thank you for the much valuable information and material that I have obtained from reading your website and I will make sure that others visit your site so that the intelligent person stay away from the Con Artists that are promoting all these garbage in countries like Australia, Canada, USA and other Commonwealth countries.
Sincerely
Pedro Alfaro
II’ve been studying the UCC for 12 years along with information concerning redemption. I believe a lot a people go to jail because they don’t understand what they are doing. They don’t understand contracts or even banking, tax’s, international law, real estate, accounting…the list goes on. When you say things as if the UCC is not the supreme law of the land or lands…I begin to wonder how much you really know!? Do you really believe the constitution applies to us this very day? The notion of freedom has lost it value. We truly are not free men, but what is a free man? We do not run under any common laws to this very day, so what do you suggest is the supreme law of today sir? And no one ever said that if you redeem your straw-man that you break free…It’s only a small…very small step into controlling your own life, and taking responsibility of it…when you make argument that redeeming your straw-man does not make you free or sovereign…Is like arguing that 2 plus 2 does not equal 3…everyone that understands that mathematics knows that…just like everyone that truly knows redemption knows that just because you redeem yourself doesn’t mean you know how to function as a creditor…or how to function under a bankruptcy…or how to pay your taxes when you enter into a court setting..Ask elvik…he’ll tell you! He learned the hard way…but he knows…they even know that, but any time you go against the government, you’re a fool. I know many true freeman…and if you knew them you would shut down your site…but its good because freedom is for those who are humble, not the greedy…or the easy way to make money because you’ll end up in prison under statues..Not law…and what regulates statues? What regulates commerce? What regulates the way we live? Read yourself…study yourself…know yourself…then watch freedom enter into your life!
Well, that settles it, then. You’ll end up in prison under statues.
You’d better be careful, though. You’re approaching dangerously close to the truth with that last sentence.
[…] For the defendant: …If, based on something you heard at a seminar put on by Winston Shrout or his ilk you create a fictitious commercial instrument and deposit it in a bank, you’re likely to wind up getting arrested by real (not straw) agents with real badges, hauled before a real court with real power to send you to real prison (maybe you can share a cell with Roger Elvick, the white supremacist who dreamt up all of this Redemption nonsense) where real guards can kill the real you if you try to escape. […]
Someone recently told me about this “Strawman” set-up using our birth certificates.
I haven’t done much research on it yet. Are you saying it is not true? There has never been a person who has redemed his strawman without getting into legal trouble?
I don’t know that it’s never been done, but I have never seen it done, there is no legal reason that it should work, and I know of several people who have gone to prison for trying.
Well, I guess those who have gone to prison for it really did get something for free… room and board in the “pen” LOL… sorry , my bad humor.
I am just a “regular” person and don’t understand all the legalities of the strawman structure and it’s use as a bond however, it does seem the government has overstepped their bounds by doing this. What makes it okay for them (various government organizations) to use us (humans) when they (government officials) are elected by us ( citizens) to work for us?
Why do we not get a choice in this matter? Isn’t the government acting “above the
law” by doing this without our permission? Yet, if we as individuals persue claiming our full self by redeming our “Strawman”, we are doing something illegal? I know this must sound so ignorant to you but, it is baffling to me.
The law is the command of the sovereign, to which a sanction attaches. Which is to say that the law is what the government (legislature, executive, and courts), with its guns and its prisons, says it is.
But there are no “legalities of the strawman structure.” There is no strawman to redeem. Fnord.
Here is something I found that was too old fashoned when I was in school.
https://www.archive.org/details/Despotis1946
The only escape from the commercial system is to leave it alone.
Modern men cant do it. For one thing, modern men lack the skill to live on the land.
Second, if you try to live in someones woods, they will call the sherriff, and you will be hauled off to jail for tresspassing. Same thing with national parks. They discourage people moving in permanently, and have camp fees (theres the commercial paper thing again) to discourage loitering.
Modern men cant live without money, and who ever controlls the value and availabillity
of money is the master. The rest, just vassils.
The straw man is nothing more than book keeping entrys…file jackets, sectors on computer tape and hard drives. It is the civil persona that in the old days of out
lawing a man ment striking the name from the books. It is a representation for
legislature, a hypothetical subject, a plaything of jurists. Modern man, sadly, is
numbered for life, a human resource to be tracked, counted and exploited for
‘the good of the commonwealrh’, and the middling draughtsmen that wrote this
system into existance.
I’ve known alot of these types of people for years. One “shining” example is Peymon Mottadeheh, https://www.livefreenow.org, who runs the “freedom law school.” He invited me to speak at one of his “seminars” once, on juries. He didn’t like the fact that I kept tearing apart the fallacies he was pushing.
The only thing these people have on their side is their gullibility. Certain tax offenses require that you know or believe you owe the taxes to be criminally liable. His customers who honestly (though ignorantly) fall for his schtick have been acquitted. Of course, he takes this as proving his schtick is true.
But it isn’t — and being acquitted doesn’t get you off the hook for taxes, penalties and interest. So instead of being incarcerated, his clients just go broke. Woo-hoo!!!
Alot of these folks glom onto jury nullification, but don’t bother to learn much about juries. So they spout psuedo law, essentially (to use a militia-type term that they can understand) end up shooting blanks while sitting on real ammunition.
I know of a case in which, while a “pro-per” defendant was making his admiralty law argument based on the gold fringed flag, the judge had the bailiff simply remove the flag from the courtroom. By the time the arcane argument was over, the defendant found that the flag was gone… What I’ve told people is that interior decorators do not get to dictate the jurisdiction of the court.
I would go so far as to say that 80-90% of what these people spout is true. However, ask a prosecutor what he gets for proving 80-90% of the elements in his case. (OK, in Harris County, maybe a conviction, but in a fair county…) That’s why people fall for it: give them enough you CAN prove, and they’ll buy the part they know nothing about on a leap of faith. And then, when lawyers say that Psuedolaw Guy is full of BS, they remember that 80-90% of what they were told was verified, and the lawyers lose credibility, not the Psuedolaw Guy. And when the 10-20% that they took on faith later bites them in the butt, they blame the corrupt lawyers.
Well, you are absolutely wrong, there is a piece of paper with the same name as you, which belongs to the government, it can be called the “security of the person”.
People in Canada have gotten the proof that the human being and the person are two different entities, from the courts, from the government, even from the bank. Jacques-Antoine:Normandin is an example of this, his person died years ago, but the human being is still alive, and a judge in the Court of Quebec recognized this.
I will only defend myself as a true human being in a Common Law court, never as a person in private law courts.
Sovereignty is a fact! It does work!!!
My wife and I have closed down the local court FOUR times. Visit my site and above all click on the link to listen to the audio recording of her court appearance.
https://runnymede1215.wordpress.com
I have not got my car back but without my consent there is no jurisdiction and without jurisdiction they are check-mated!
They only got themselves deeply into shit.
Cheers
Bernard
And then have the chutzpah to tell me you know anything about the law!
Bernard
Your title is fallacious. “Redemption Theory” v “Reality” means only one can be real. Redemption OR Reality is what you are saying. Obviously Reality is Real and can not be disputed, therefore you are caliming that “Redemption” is not Reality.
Your Title shows your illogical intention.
You Say: “When you are prosecuted for a crime, it is not your “straw man” that is prosecuted.”
I Say: In order to accept your statement as reality, Proof of Claim is required.
. . . .
[“Mr. Grimshaw” — a pseudonym, I presume — goes on at great and excruciating length.]
Does cutting my dialectic with you short, regardless of length (unless you can show your subject matter is simple) show you can not rebut my arguments with real evidence backed with valid logic?
Why do you not take responsibility for your claims by furnishing proof to back them up (if you can)?
Are you not now in dishonour? Where does that lawfully place your standing?
Until you do prove up all your claims, my judgement will be your persuasion is lacking of real evidence and logically invalid – rhetoric of a sophist propagandist unworthy of my serious consideration. Have a Good day.
Recognize, please, that posting under a pseudonym subjects you to my whim even more than just posting.
You insist on logical proof of truths that can be observed any day in the criminal courthouse. Apparently you define “law” differently than I do. Which is fine—define it how you will—but as a result none of your “dialectic” shed any light on anything.
So I’ll tell you what, “Gavin”: Tell me how you define “law” (“Law is…”), and I’ll either demonstrate to your satisfaction why what the guys with the gavels and the guns say is law is law, agree with you that law (as you define it) is what you say it is, or express puzzlement.
Fair?
Show whatever I call myself relevant to this dialectic?
Are you attempting to atack the messenger instead of the messenger’s message, being to prove your claims true?
If so, show your attack is not illogical.
What I recognise, is that I am a man, that you are a man and that you are trying to get me to believe your claims and I have not seen any relevant valid proof of your claims although I have now given you two opportunities to furnish proof.
Unless you can show that all men are not equal before the law, then I take it we stand equally.
I reserve all my rights and do not consent to whatever terms and/or conditions you think you can subject me to in this forum.
If you dont like that, then delete my posts – or even better, retract your claims by deleting the whole web page, but I will take any action you take other than proving up your claims as your admission to me that you can not prove up your claims and therefore I will take it that your claims are unsubstantiable.
Show your use of the word “whim” is not a fallacial appeal to trigger the emotions fear and/or anger?
Could you be doing so thinking that it is easier to trigger my emotions than it is to furnish my intellect with facts in support of your claims?
Why do you think it is up to me to “shed light” on your claims?
Is that not your responsibility, as is it not you that made the claims?
What are your rules of evidence?
How is being silent interpreted in your courts?
For me to believe your claims, all I need is supporting relevant and valid proof.
You are the Teacher, and therefore I am the Student.
Is a wise student not a cautious one? Does a cautious student not require proof?
So, my Teacher I have many questions about your references:
Is your reference to a “court” not an illogical overgeneralisation?
What classes of “laws” do you find in the courts?
Common law? Civil law? Commerce? Admiralty? Chancery?
Is it one, some or all, or is there more?
Is “law” exactly the same as “Law” and exactly the same as “LAW”? If not, what are the differences?
What does remedy mean? What does cure and maintenance mean?
What exactly is a person? Is a person a corporation? If so, isn’t a natural person still a person? Did God create Man or a Person?
What is a cestui que trust? What are the roles in a trust and what are their relationships?
How can the average state educated man be distinguished in all this?
How does he know what presumptions are being made by the court if they are done silently and without his knowledge?
How can he question and/or correct presumptions should they not be realistic?
Is full disclosure and full discovery not mandatory in law?
What chance does the average man have of protecting his rights without knowing law? Could that explain what you claim to see in court?
My dialectic is only intended to give you the opportunity to prove your claims necessary for me to allow my belifs to align with yours or for me to realise by your inaction of presenting proof, to conclude that you have no relevant valid proof in support of your claims.
—
Are you attempting to solicit a contract?
Is there not already an agreement, being you furnish all available valid relevant proof and I will belive your claim?
So what are you asking of me?
-You want me to define Law to you?
-Would me defining “Law is…” not be considered as legal advice?
-Could it have something to do with me having no “certified” legal expertise?
-Does this not mean I can not give legal advice to you?
-If I can not, why would you ask me to furnish you with legal advice?
-Do you not have sufficient “certified” legal knowledge?
-Do you not have better access to those who do have “certified” legal advice?
-Why else would you turn to me for legal advice?
-Are you trying to entrap me into giving legal advice?
-Could this be why Winston says his presentations are only for entertainment purposes only?
So what are you offering in exchange?
Why do you intend to “demonstrate” (to my satisfaction) guys with gavels and guns when use or availability of such contraptions enable duress, tyrrany, terror, war all of which can be taken to aid the guys in kidnap, injury and loss of life?
When you say “why what the guys with the gavels and the guns say the law is the law”, are you offering me
to “benefit” from first hand experience from these “guys” equipped with “gavels” and “guns”?
Are you attempting to get me to consent to your offer to receive “why” in the presence of “guys” with “gavels” and “guns”.
Is this not another fallacial appeal to the emotions fear and anger and therefore logically invalid?
I do not give consent to contract, without dishonour. There is no need to contract and for the reason that there is potential to do harm.
Prove up your claims. I will not offer you any more opportities. Three opportunities are enough.
My own judgement will be there is no valid claim without valid and relevant proof and therefore my action will be to disgard them as erroneous.
I am a peaceful man. I intend no harm, but I can not prevent you from doing harm to yourself.
If you can’t prove up your claim, I urge you to consider deleting this whole web page as could others be misled? Is that what you intend?
Your failure to do or not to do so is solely your responsibility.
You made your claims, not me.
This. This is what we deal with when we deal with people who think that there is a hidden legal system that can trigger using magic words.
As I said in the original post, I could explain all of this in terms of what the law actually says, but it’s been done before and if you are among those who have bought the nonsense being sold by the “Redemption Theory” or “Natural Sovereignty” or “Moorish Nation” crowds, then you probably think that I’m a member of the British Accreditation Registry (BAR) with an interest in perpetuating the slavery of the American justice system. So instead of explaining the law to you, I’ll lay down some practicalities.
Practicalities—observable behavior of the system—laid down, and ignored in favor of vaguely UCC-sounding demands and claims.
“Gavin” is not willing to say what he thinks “law” means—not a legal question, but a philosophical and epistemological one. A person who can’t discuss that question and provide a working definition can’t have meaningfully discussion about the law in society. You don’t have to be a lawyer to say what law is. I’ll give my working definition: law is the command of the sovereign, to violations of which a penalty attaches. It’s not might-makes-right, but might-makes-law. It’s a functional Austinian positivist definition. It is the same whether we are dealing with caselaw, statutory law, regulations, bar rules, admiralty, criminal, civil, UCC, or any other set of rules intended to guide people’s conduct in society.
Contract law does not apply to everything. The UCC is not authority that governs ordinary relations among human beings. Can I prove it? Not to the satisfaction of someone who wants so badly to believe it that he will disregard the system’s observable behavior. It’s just not. Trying would be a fool’s errand. Which is why I lay down the practicalities and let people decide what conclusions they will draw from those practicalities.
I lead the horse to water, but I don’t care whether it drinks.
Oooooh! Sophistry! Keep it up, Gavin! Yeah! Of course, most people who practice such sophistry in court are pro-se defendants who end up in jail, but they are SOOOO much fun to watch! Don’t ever stop!
(I realize that sarcasm doesn’t always come through on the internet. That is what makes it so much fun… )
It’s not might-makes-right, but might-makes-law!
I have a couple of questions regarding this:
“Might also follows law almost letter perfect as well does it not?”
” And for every law there is a redemption to go with it; is this not so?”
Also, please share with us non-lawyer readers by answering these two part question:
” What is the full lawyer’s oath that one swears to when passing the BAR (or is that B.A.R.?) and what is the jurisdiction of lawyers?”
That’s exactly what it is.
This makes no sense, so I suspect that the answer is, “it does not.”
The question also makes no sense, so I suspect that the answer is “this is not so.”
It’s the bar, not the BAR or the B.A.R. Here is the Texas lawyers’ oath. If there is another, I haven’t taken it.
I don’t think lawyers have “jurisdiction.”
Ah so, the ‘might’ doesn’t follow law letter perfect then and there are no remedies to a law; wow, if you’re right matey then law be damned.
You have an interesting blog site but I suspect by the carefully worded statements and replies that you’re as trustworthy as a politician; bye.
Yes, the law be damned. Break it and risk the consequences or, at your option, follow it.
Go where they’re saying what you want to hear. You can’t handle the truth.
I’ll go where I will go not because an ego said so with useless cliches or because I’m blindly looking for what I want to hear; you have nothing to offer except your inflated attitude and truth is something that I can handle just not bs especially when as a supposed lawyer you don;t even know the jurisdiction of lawyers! Bye for the last time as I won’t bother with any more of your IDentity mate:o)
You will not be sorely missed, “Albert.” Your type are a dime a dozen around here: poor deluded souls with their made-up legal-sounding language, looking for a magic pill that will save them from reality.
The only true fool is one who doesn’t know it, fool; you can keep your bs and your bs blog for you have nothing to offer people except your insults stemming from your inflated mentality. I am not looking for any magic pill, nor am I deluded; this only shows your nitwited nonsense.
You just won me twenty bucks. I bet that you would come back, despite your “bye for the last time.”
Now watch me turn that into $40.
I’m betting double-or-nothing that you’ll reply again, because only the inordinately weak-willed are attracted to redemption theory.
Hi,
I am Bernard, the one who started this discussion. This is the first time in more than a year that I had a look at Mr Bennett’s site.
In one respect Mr Bennett, you are, of course, right, as you point out frequently: there is the power of the gun! That power is used by violent criminals, such as robbers and murderers, and, of course, governments – all of them all over the world. In a shooting war with the government we, the People, have the same chance of winning as a small nation, say the Vatican State or Liechtenstein, has in a shooting war against Germany or Italy or the USA or….name almost any other country.
My claim that the principles of sovereignty work has not been refuted here by anyone here. True, the government holds my property – by force, like any other thief might. As I do not have the same kind of resources at my disposal as the government there is nothing I can do about it – for the moment at least.
It is true that there are snake-oil salesmen in the sovereignty-and-redemption business. There are, however, a lot more working quite legallyin the system: the government, banks, big business, police clergy and the legal system.
But my sovereignty has NOT been touched: none of their attempts to drag my wife and me into their kangaroo courts and their jurisdiction have worked. We are free and will remain so.The Commercial Liens placed against the criminals (two cops, a magistrate, two ministers and a premier) have been published on my blog – without any repercussions because what I am doing is perfectly lawful under Common Law. And they know it or I would find myself in very hot water.
Thanks to the Internet knowledge is coming out that was not widely available before and the days of the system are clearly numbered. The gun-control campaign in the US is not about protecting people. Taking away the guns is about protecting the government from the wrath of the people. Asserting your rights in the courts is another way of dealing with the corrupt government. And it works – for the one who uses the existing laws wisely!
PS
As for the men with the guns: even they can be dealt with successfully. On my blog I document an encounter with 3 armed highwaymen, euphemistically called police officer, who arrested me, well, sort of, for not complying with their instructions to get out of the car. This arrest was unlawful as I had not breached the peace and I therefore did not accept it. The outcome: forty minutes later I drove off and no more mention of being arrested.
There is much that you and I agree on. Taking away the guns is about protecting the government from the wrath of the people; the government holds your property (still?!? Four years later!?!) by force, like any other thief might; if they wanted you in jail they would hold you by force, like any other kidnapper might.
If others hold your property (and could jail you) by force, and with impunity (I hope you’ll let me know when one of the crooks pays a penny on your fraudulent liens) you are not free.
Dear Mr Bennett,
It is clear that we will never see eye to eye on this matter and so I suggest we part company amicably. Yes, I do consider myself free, regardless of what you think or say and regardless of what the government thinks. We obviously have a different interpretation of freedom. But that’s ok. It would be a boring world if we were all the same.
Believe it or, having my car stolen by the government has been the best thing that happened to me in many many years. It forced me to take stock of myself, focus on a few things that are more important than the getting and spending of money and caused me to change direction. And again, believe it or not, even your input regarding my view of the law has been useful: it gave me food for thought.
Allow me to sum it all up: I think it does not matter how the government and its various agencies, including your profession, define and interpret the law. We, the People, are the ultimate arbiters.
For a while it may seem that the psychopathic money-and-power elite can with impunity oppress us, steal our hard-earned wealth from us, deprive us of our rights and our freedom. For a while it may seem that a government gets away with murder – both figuratively and literally.
But there is only so much that people can take and I think the breaking point is very close. If you disagree on that point then you are perhaps not paying enough attention to what is happening in the world. The natives are restless and the tom-toms cannot be ignored by any sensible man or woman.
History is full of examples of failed systems, political, economical, religious. Ours will go the same way. Whether it will change peacefully or in a bloody revolution I do not know. I advocate peaceful solutions to problems. But let’s face it:when people have nothing to lose – they, unfortunately, lose it!
And another thought: when people do lose it, believe me, it won’t be all that safe for people who will be seen to have taken the side of the oppressors. Let’s just hope you will not find the business end of a gun pointed at you! Will you still shrug it off as “might makes laws”? Please do not misunderstad: that is not intended as a threat.
Regards
As I said, you and I agree on a great deal. “Psychopathic” is a good word for government, which killed more than 250 million people (exclusive of wars) in the last century.
I am glad you’ve come to grips with the loss of your car. That’s a step toward real freedom, which lies in valuing nothing that anyone can take away from you (or at least nothing that anyone can take away from you with impunity). (I commend to your attention Thich Nhat Hanh’s Be Free Where You Are.) I hope those who follow you will accept that point—that the criminal enterprise we call “government” can take away your stuff and put you in a box if you don’t play by its rules, but that this doesn’t mean you aren’t free.
You write on your blog, “The bailiff at the Toowoomba Magistrates Court, one Allan Green, has become complicit in the crimes committed against me by the above-mentioned criminals, by refusing to execute a lawful warrant of seizure issued in my jurisdiction as a Sovereign.” If the warrant is lawful and you are sovereign, you don’t need the bailiff to execute it. So why don’t you go execute on your liens? Because you recognize that if you do you will go to prison, and you’re not so free that you’re okay with that. Until the revolution, what the guys with the guns say is law is, for all practical purposes, law.
I have friends who think the revolution is very close. While I am well-prepared for that eventuality, I disagree—I think most people are so sedated by popular culture, aroused only by the fear created by media and government, that they will continue trudging meekly to enslavement and death. Those of us who see that the solutions to the world’s problems are not in the hands of government are few and far between. Fortunately, there are enough of us to keep the light burning.
Also fortunately, those who think that they have pulled back the curtain on a secret legal system, that the UCC is transcendent law, and that they can collect the money that government has borrowed in their name are few and far between. Lawyers are not the enemy. Many of us fight the government every day to try to preserve a modicum of freedom. I suspect the government of planting this idea as a means of distracting people from what is really going on—not a grand conspiracy, but the natural consequence of giving any entity a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
Jefferson…Lenin…Gandhi… Has there been a revolution in the last five hundred years not led by lawyers?
It’s a very minor point, but that greatest of Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton wished for a rule by lawyers after the revolution.
And what exactly qualifies lawyers above others?
“Jefferson…Lenin…Gandhi… Has there been a revolution in the last five hundred years not led by lawyers? ”
I haven’t researched Jefferson and will refrain from commenting on him. Lenin and Gandhi, however, are not exactly inspiring trust.
Apart from the fact that Lenin, as a lawyer was a failure – he practised only for a short time, and lost all of the six cases he was involved in as counsel for defence – does anybody seriously claim that his Bolshevik revolution benefitted the Russian people or the world?
Gandhi likewise failed as a lawyer in Bombay and he is far from being the hero he is made out to have been. He openly admired Hitler and advised the Jews to commit mass suicide. The 109th Congress of the United States condemned him for his racism. He attempted to set up a caste system in South Africa and supported every war the British were involved in. His revolution and its legacy?A divided sub-continent and a rift between Hindu and Moslems that can probably never be healed.
There isn’t really anything in your last comment that I could vehemently disagree with, just minor points:
1)
“If the warrant is lawful and you are sovereign, you don’t need the bailiff to execute it. So why don’t you go execute on your liens? Because you recognize that if you do you will go to prison, and you’re not so free that you’re okay with that. Until the revolution, what the guys with the guns say is law is, for all practical purposes, law.”
You are right, of course: any attempt to recover my property would fail because it could only be carried out using force and that wouldn’t be wise because it will give the Beast the excuse it needs to use even more force. It would also not be a true long-term solution because you cannot, to paraphrase Einstein, solve a problem on the same level on which it was created.
You tell me that I am not free enough to enforce the liens myself for fear of the consequences! Could I not use the same argument about you? If you came to the conclusion that many of the principles of sovereignty are valid and actually work (as I can prove!) would you say so publicly? Would you risk the ire of your professional association and possibly the loss of your licence?
The wise man chooses his battles! And holds his fire when shooting would accomplish nothing. If he does that he will get to shoot another time! Be wise as serpents, as a wise man once said.
2)
“Lawyers are not the enemy. Many of us fight the government every day to try to preserve a modicum of freedom.”
True! Lawyers are not the enemy nor is police or any other group or groups you could name. The world is manipulated from behind the scenes by a tiny but immensely powerful clique. I do not know who they are although I could make an educated guess. This self-appointed elite is few in numbers and cannot do the job of keeping us in line; it needs tools: politicians to make “laws”, police and the legal system to enforce them, teachers to indoctrinate us from childhood, religions (all of them) to promise us salvation in the after-life to distract us from the need to do something NOW ……… etc.etc.
There is a Japanese proverb: The tallest nail gets hit first! Police and lawyers stick out like sore thumbs; their oppressive, outrageous and frequently just plain criminal conduct is not only plainly visible to everybody but also painfully experienced first-hand by millions of people in their daily lives; you shouldn’t be surprised that they are seen as the attack dogs of the system. While I can still understand that cops, not being trained in the law or much else for that matter, haven’t got a clue what is going on I cannot accept such an excuse for lawyers. So that means in plain English: either a lawyer does not have a clue about what is going on or his silence will have to be interpreted as acquiescence. Either way, why would anyone trust a lawyer?
3)
I do agree with you on the concept of commercial redemption. I am familiar with these teachings, for example, A4V, but I have seen no proof that it works. It is also correct to say that many if not actually most people look into the matter and adopt these approaches because they hope to find a way out of the pickle they got themselves into. My own approach is NOT based on redemption theories but on Common Law. You won’t find redemption theories on my blog and I also do not try to sell anybody the sovereignty idea. I do not conduct seminars and do not sell articles or ebooks. In fact I usually issue a warning to people that contact me for advice.
4)
You have on several occasions pointed out that my liens are fraudulent without actually supplying any kind of proof. My liens are entirely lawful; if they were not I would certainly have “heard” from the respondents, as sure as God made little green apples. Three of the respondents are lawyers; they are silent. Isn’t there a maxim in law that says:
Qui non negat fatetur (He who does not deny admits) Black’s Law Dictionary Revised 4th Edition
Error qui no resistitur approbatur (An error not opposed is approved) Black’s Law Dictionary Revised 4th Edition
“The ability to place a lien upon a man’s property, such as to temporarily deprive him of its beneficial use, without any judicial determination of probable cause dates back not only to medieval England but also to Roman times.”
United States Supreme Court, 1968 – Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U.S. 337, 349
The idea that you can avoid the jurisdiction of the court by not agreeing to it is patent nonsense. You’re saying that you can avoid being robbed by politely declining, and this is demonstrably false.
I know of many people who have gone to prison while maintaining that they are sovereign and do not consent to the courts’ jurisdiction. This disproves the thesis.
How to rectify this disproof with the positive evidence that you have (that they haven’t put you in jail)? After all, if this is the law it is the law in felony court as well as magistrate’s court.
There are two obvious possibilities: first, that everyone who has gone to prison after invoking his own sovereignty did it wrong; or second, that you are too small a fish for them to bother with.
I contend that the second is the simpler explanation and therefore most likely true: your infractions are small enough that the agents of the government aren’t comfortable using violence against you (though they are perfectly happy to seize your property). This is useful information (we want to know how far our adversaries are willing to go) but not proof of any sort of fringed-flag uppercase Weck:Mann sovereignty theory. Invoking personal sovereignty works for the same reason that wearing a bird on your head and drooling on yourself would work: because bureaucrats don’t want to deal with people who don’t share their reality if they don’t have to.
If I came to the conclusion that the principles of that theory are valid and actually work, I would use them to get my clients out of trouble. (You contend that only the judges know about these principles, but that’s errant nonsense: lawyers become judges, and judges become lawyers. Account for their overnight education and brainwashing.)
The government did not set up a company called BERNARD WECKMANN (you claim that it is true; prove it), and a man or a woman is a person. Statutes don’t say “man or woman” because “person” covers both instances.
Your liens are “lawful” works of fiction. As long as you keep them to yourself they are harmless. As long as they are not filed, the people against whom they are directed are free to sell their property without any encumbrance. The unfiled liens are, as you have discovered, worth the paper they are written on. For a lien to have an effect, it has to be filed (so that people considering doing business with the subject of the lien have notice of the lien).
As soon as you try to collect on these liens (or file them so that others have notice), they become fraudulent. In the US, people have gone to prison—held at pain of death—for such liens. Maybe Australia’s law is different, but I don’t believe that your argument is that Australia is some personal-sovereignty paradise. If you wrote a lien against me, and didn’t file it with the county clerk, I would ignore it as well.
No, it is not true that he who does not deny admits. No, it is not true that an error not opposed is approved. Your “legal maxims” are nothing more than quotes from Black’s. Black’s is a dictionary. It gives definitions for phrases, but that doesn’t give the phrases any weight.
The quote from Sniadach is from the dissent (the justice whose view of the law did not prevail). Sniadach was about corporations’ ability to do what you contend you can do—create liens sua sponte. The Court in Sniadach found that such liens violated the Constitution. If you reflect, I think you will agree with me that Sniadach is a good decision—that corporations should not have the power to place liens on our property without judicial process. That rule would apply no less to non-corporate persons like you (in the US) than to corporations.
There is nothing magical about “common law.” It is simply judge-made law (as opposed to the law made by the executive and legislative branches). If you don’t trust judges (and you don’t), you can’t trust the common law.
(As far as I can tell you invented your principles of Common Law. Perhaps a better phrase for what you are describing than “common law” is “natural law.” (We libertarians espouse the “non-aggression principle,” but we recognize that governments don’t follow it—they can’t, because government must initiate aggression to exist.)
I give up.
We could continue this discussion for ever and ever but words are cheap and come easily to a lawyer
So let’s wrap it up with the following Jefferson quote:
“If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?”
Very clever. When you start running into problems with your theory that you can’t answer, give up and blame the lawyer.
Better than killing them all.
I am not running away from problems. I am withdrawing from a discussion that is clearly not going anywhere. And since this is only a discussion and we are not involved in a legal dispute that needs to be resolved – one way or the other – it seems to me that I can withdraw at any time without dishonour.
He who leaves the battlefield thereby yields and concedes defeat. Do you think of a discussion as a battle that you need to win? Do you, perhaps, have the need to prove something, to be always right? And I am not talking about proving a point of law, I am talking about proving something else ……
I don’t have that need. I have never seen our exchanges as more than just a discussion even if it gets a bit “lively” at times.
I am not blaming lawyers wholesale! Didn’t I say in one comment that there isn’t any one group that is the enemy? I’d go further and say: as long as we have criminals amongst us we do need police as peace keepers and we do need courts to a) deal with wrong-doers and b) settle all sorts of disputes.
Unfortunately, law enforcement has become a WEAPON, a weapon which governments use not only against criminals but against everybody they want to control (except themselves, of course). Law enforcement has also been turned into a cash cow. Need more money? Let’s milk the people! Let’s invent another “offence”and and ruthlessly enforce it to fill our coffers!
The government manufactures the weapons (statutes). Police and the legal system wield them and are therefore complicit in the government’s crimes.
But the real reason I think this discussion isn’t going anywhere and I’d be wasting time and energy is this: I have proved to my own satisfaction that so-called authorities, and that includes courts, have no power other than what we grant them, either expressly or by acquiescence. When I go into court I do not have to prove anything! The burden of proof is on the court, and that includes having to prove to me that the court has jurisdiction over me!
It’s pretty clear that you, for whatever reason of your own, do not agree. But guess what! I do not care whether you agree with me or not; in fact, I can even understand that you have a vested interest in denying.
None of your sneering and none of your attempts to cast doubts on the sanity of those of us that pursue freedom bothers me. By acting in this way you are actually telling us more about YOUR character or perhaps lack thereof than about our sanity.
I take you for someone who always needs to have the last word. Be my guest!
“You can have the last word” is another bush-league rhetorical move, akin to your last. If you didn’t have to try to have the last word, you’d have quit already. But since this is my blog, you are my guest, and I do not require your permission to do anything here.
Face the truth: you have no real evidence—evidence that would convince someone who didn’t already devoutly want to believe—of any of your theories.
You have proved to your own satisfaction that courts have no more power than you grant them. That’s because you’ve never faced the government when it’s serious about something you’ve done. File those liens, or try to execute on them yourself, and I think you’ll see that the courts can exercise jurisdiction over you without your acquiescence. (In fact, I think you know this, as evidenced by your failure so far to file the liens or execute on them.)
You seem to concede that (other than the fact that it has worked for you) you have no evidence of your theories. This is cargo-cult thinking: “I did X and they did Y, so my doing X made them do Y.” But when asked for an iota of evidence that the government set up a company called BERNARD WECKMANN you fold like a cheap suit: “oh, you’re a lawyer so there’s no point in discussing this…you can have the last word.”
You’re entitled to your delusions (though if you didn’t have them you might still have your car), but the courts have exercised jurisdiction over many people without their acquiescence, even when those people subscribe to the same beliefs as you. The proof of the court’s jurisdiction is the bailiff’s guns, and the prisons. What you’ve done is fun and games; somebody is going to follow you and wind up in prison. I’d rather they didn’t.
Fighting for freedom does not require subscribing to your delusions. There are many who fight for freedom without delusion. Someday maybe you’ll join us.
Of course you think calling it a delusion is uncalled-for. That’s because it’s a delusion.
Below is the text of my new post. Enjoy!
Lawyers – Fraudsters Extraordinaire!
PRESS RELEASE: 5th April 2003.
JUDGES STEALING COMMON LAW:
Common Law is the law of the people, by the people and for the people.
Common Law is made by the people on juries when their judgments become precedents.
Statute Law is made by the other two arms or branches of government, ie: parliamentary and executive.
In Common Law countires, “Common Law doth control Acts of Parliament and when adjudged against common right to be void” (Lord Coke), ie: Common Law overrules Statute Law.
Juries nullify Statute Law.
Parliaments amend and repeal Statute Law – and have no role in making Common Law.
Judges have no role in making either Common Law nor Statute Law.
AND YET: Convened in Sydney, between 7 – 11 April 2003, here we have the WORLDWIDE COMMON LAW JUDICIARY CONFERENCE at the Law Courts Building Queen’s Square, attended by 50 Chief Justices from around the world to promote the lie that “Judges make Common Law”.
Thomas Jefferson warned that “The germ of destruction of our nation is in the power of the judiciary, an irresponsible body – working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief across the field of jurisdiction, until all shall render powerless the checks of one branch over the other and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
These judges must be stopped and put squarely in their place as nothing more than “Officers of the Courts” to do the bidding of juries, ie: of the people. Let judges get away with stealing Common Law – then Freedom and the sovereignty of Democracy, ie: when people control their own fate, will be ultterly and totally destroyed.
John Wilson
PO Box 4520 North Rocks, NSW 2151
Australia.
http://www.rightsandwrong.com.au
The arrogance of members of the legal profession is as staggering as is their ignorance. The top of the hierarchy arrogantly usurps the People’s right to make laws while the rank-and-file is as ignorant as their hapless victims, the People.
Here is a perfect example of an ignoramus. It would probably useless to send him and his ilk back to law school because that’s where they got their “legal knowledge and expertise” in the first place.
“There is nothing magical about “common law.” It is simply judge-made law (as opposed to the law made by the executive and legislative branches). If you don’t trust judges (and you don’t), you can’t trust the common law.”
Mark Bennett
Defence Lawyer
Houston Texas
blog.bennettandbennett.com
I guess that’s what passes for your “permitting” me to have the last word. Did I hurt your little feelings?
I’d love to know where you get your definition of “common law.” Not Black’s, which you otherwise quote so assiduously as a legal authority. I guess you just made it up.
MB
You are not just an ignoramus. You are a bloody thug!
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