Redemption Theory vs. Reality
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.”
About The Author
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.
http://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, http://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.