Who will Win "UK Freeman of the Year" Award?

This spoof video (complete with laugh track...) is a good summary of the potential winners in the "UK Freeman of the Year" award -- those UK "Freemen" who were the most annoying, amusing, or generally absurd. For more details on all of them, see the appropriate Quatloos! forum.

John Oliver on MLMs

In case you have not seen it, here is John Oliver's Last Week Tonight's show segment about MLMs. It is very funny and, what is more, informative. I have found this video on the "MLM the Truth" web site, which -- contrary to most "the truth" web sites, which seem to be conspiracy-theory mongers... -- is an objective, well-researched site.

Israeli (Kinda/Sorta) Freemen

Credit: See Below

Curiously, there are also freemen in Israel. The above banner is from the following web page, where Eyal Lior proudly proclaims his 'Project no State in Israel', with the subheading stating  'A government is a gang of murderers, thieves and liars, no service or product should be forced on you at gunpoint'.

...but don't hold back, Mr. Lior, tell us how you really feel about the government.

While the ideology is not 100% "freemen", so far as I can tell, e.g., not having anything about the birth bond conspiracy theories, Magna Carta, etc., it is so extremely anarchist so as to amount, in effect, to the same thing.

The crucial point is that Lior does not merely believe, like anarchists on the one hand and Ayn Rand on the other, that the (or any) government is evil and should be dismantled. He thinks that he can, single-handedly, declare that it has been dismantled, and that he does not have to pay taxes, social security, etc. Apparently Rand was a wishy-washy wimp in her views about the government; Lior sets her straight.

Worst of all, he gives "legal advice" to clients suckers on how to not pay taxes, not pay traffic tickets, etc. No doubt, Israeli bureaucracies (like those everywhere) being what they are, he may well occasionally "win" for a client a remission of minor traffic fines or the like, just so that the clerk involved will not have to deal with this nudnick. But it needs not be explained here what trouble he can get his clients into.

Especially amusing is his 'deceleration of cowardice'  (lit. 'of fear') which he suggests attaching to all government forms, payments, licences, etc., so as to then sue the state for damages (good luck, kiddo). In this commendably brief form (a few lines; link in Hebrew), the undersigned declares that one is paying or requesting a license to do something because one is 'terrified by the power of the state'. Anarchists are at least better at self-mockery than "real" freemen.

Australian Freemen

There has been quite a bit in this blog about American and British freemen, but little of other places. Here is a quick and amusing post, from an Australian legal blog which gives quite a few such cases. One can always check the Quatloos! board's relevant section, as well.