Meet Graham Mooreand the WhiteDragons -- yet another group of English "Freemen" who think they need not pay taxes, obey the law, get a license or registration for their car, etc. because all such laws are a "fraud" by a "fake" government, and that the only laws they need to obey are those in 'common law' (not that they know what common law is) or the Magna Carta (13th century). All other laws somehow don't count, so, in short, that they can do what they want. The Magna Carta doesn't mention you have to get motor vehicle insurance, now does it?
Naturally, as Moore's web page show, they think the UK government is legitimate is that they have not woken up to the huge world-controlling conspiracy where the usual suspects (The UN, the Illuminati, the Rotschilds, etc.) direct everything behind the scene.
As the thread linked to shows, they have decided to fight the tyranny of the UK government and had made a cunning plan for a people's revolution! They are going to take back control! Operation Earthquake will have all those treason committing MPs arrested!
Well, to my and most people's surprise, they actually did try to do it. They have interrupted a speech by London's mayor, Sadiq Khan, bringing along their handy-dandy mobile gallows to show they mean business against all those "traitors" they have "convicted" using "common law".
This was reported (see link) in major news organizations, such as Newsweek. Naturally, Khan was not arrested, and the fact that they declared they were 'standing under common law' and that if anybody touches them they will be 'done for common [law] assault' didn't stop the security guards from throwing them out of the meeting.
I must admit that making the national and international news, even as loonies, is way more than I thought they are capable of. Usually such "revolutions" end up with five guys showing up in the local pub and/or fast-food joint and declaring the revolution had started, or ranting on a street corner next to Buckingham palace or some other "symbol of tyrrany" of the sort.
One thing does annoy me, however: the reports all concentrated on the fact that they are Trump supporters and 'far-right'. They are both, but a little digging -- such as visiting the quatloos! forum -- would have helped the reporters find out the relevant information that they are not just pro-Trump or far-right, but in particular 'Freemen' who think everybody they don't like is a traitor.
It is well known that so-called 'Freemen' tend to congregate into self-reinforcing echo chambers, where they pretend they are just about to "win" against the "evil system". So long as they only harm themselves, one may wonder what harm they do to others.
Well, here is an example. The above screenshot is taken from a Facebook group dedicated to the Freemen "philosophy" -- everything is a contract, you do not have to consent to laws you dislike, your "strawman" JOHN SMITH is not the same as the "real flesh and blood, living soul, human being" John Smith (or John: Smith, John of the family Smith, etc.), and so on. I am not giving its name to not give it free publicity.
An obviously desperate woman, Tina Bell, wants help. Her son was sentenced to federal prison -- and, as another post by her made clear, got 115 (!) years: in effect, life in prison. What is her 'remedy', she wants to know.
For Freemen (see link above) 'remedy' does not mean 'what can I do to help my son'. It means, 'what magic words should I tell the judge to make my son go free on the spot'. Well, there isn't one, of course. But Ruiz Michael and Conor Duke-- the most active members of the group -- gives her all kind of totally nonsensical advice.
The connection of both to reality can be noted by the fact that, based on other postings, Conor is currently "almost ready" with the paperwork to serve a billion-dollar lien on a traffic cop because of a traffic stop, while Ruiz is trying to find the "secret way" that will allow him to find the number of his "secret birth bond" bank account based on his Social Security number. Perhaps it is the number without the dashes? He asks.
If Ms. Bell does the right thing and goes to a real lawyer who specializes in post-conviction work, she may indeed help her son. (To be fair, another person posting in the group suggested this, giving contact information to an organization that helps family members of convicts find such lawyers). If, however, she follows these two idiots -- not other word fits, frankly -- and floods the courts with this Freeman nonsense, she may well both whatever chance her son had for ever seeing the light of day again.
But what do these "Freemen" care? It's all just an ego trip for them. They do not give a damn about either Bell or her son.
Israeli Freeman Movement's Continued Saga: Recruiting the Masses to the Cause Fails Miserably
Credit: see below
Eyal Lior, which we have met before, had apparently organized a "Freeman Festival" (that is what it says above in Hebrew) on Facebook (link in Hebrew). The event shows '31 joined' (i.e., told Facebook they did) and '69 interested'. I have no idea how many actually showed up.
For comparison purposes, I checked near my own location for all events, and discovered that tomorrow (Sept. 3rd), one "local" (Facebook seems to ignore international border and considers only distance) event is a group that is going swimming on the beach in El Biyada, Lebanon. This one has 263 people interested. For the less adventurous, a lecture by a visiting German artist in Tel Aviv's 'House of Modern Ceramics' has 15 coming and 78 interested.
In any case, Lior seems to have gone "full sovurn", as quatloos! calls it. He actually has an 'I am a Freeman' ('Free Man' in his version) declaration for people to sign (in English). Looks quite familiar -- it's the same nonsense as with American or other 'freemen'.
It goes without saying that this declaration, or petition, has no legal effect; but however meaningless, how popular is it?
Well, it is hosted on the website https://www.atzuma.co.il/ ('atzuma' means 'petition' in Hebrew). According to the statistics page of this petition, here, (scroll down a bit for the numbers - link in Hebrew), it has been up on the website since 28/8/2016 -- more than a year -- and reached a grand total of 100 (online) signatures and one Facebook comment.
Looking around at the 'atzuma' website for comparison, this is less than the number of signatures collected by a petition opposing the closure of a coffee house in Ramat Gan (109), or one asking the Jerusalem city council to 'Improve the 88 bus line's route' (183).
This is not because the site is obscure: it is perhaps Israel's most prominent social-activism site, and the most popular petitions on the website achieved nearly half a million (464,000+) signatures. Many others achieved tens or hundreds of thousands of signers.
It is rather typical of "sovurn" types to think, that if only they got out the word, everybody will agree with them, and that the Internet will cause the revolution. This isn't true, as can be seen by the utter lack of interests in Lior's claims. People don't agree with them because they are speaking nonsense, not because of "evil government brainwashing".
The Israeli anarchist I have mentioned a few posts ago, Eyal Lior, is really angry. He writes, on the preview of his Internet radio show ("the only show dedicated to freedom", link in Hebrew but you can go from there to the English part of his web site), that I wrote a "hate letter" about him on this blog.
Well, what can he do against my "libel"? Sue me? Nope; that would require using the evil government's court system. Threaten my ISP? With what? With a lawsuit? Same problem. With a customer boycott, say? Not if I am a better customer, or he isn't one. He could, theoretically, bribe them into deleting my account, or hire hitmen to threaten me to stop the libel. But what if I am richer and offer the ISP more money, or can hire better "muscle" than he can hire?
So I don't see why, in Lior's anarchy, with no government, I should give a damn if I libel him or not. All I should care about is to be stronger than him. Then I could libel him with impunity, since, in his anarchy, there is nothing and nobody to stop the rich and powerful from doing what they like, while the poor and weak suffer what they must.
The whole point of having a state at all is, as Hobbes points out, that it is far better to suffer even tyranny from one person, the sovereign - let alone suffer the annoyances or bureaucracy of a modern democracy - than to be contantly at the mercy of anybody and everybody who happens to be stronger. Gee, perhaps there's something to this whole "state" thingy after all.
If one wishes to know the dangers of acting on absurd "freemen on the land" (FMOTL) beliefs, look no further than this Facebook group.
They believe for some reason that article 61 of the Magna Carta (1215), allowing the Barons to elect 25 of their number to petition or perhaps replace the king, somehow is (a) in force today, and (b) allows anybody, or at least any 25 people, to declare themselves not subject to the laws and, therefore, they need not pay taxes.
The result is as expected. They get notices to pay the council tax or the vehicle insurance; they refuse; they get another notice; they declare themselves lords and masters of the evil corrupt courts; they get fined and/or arrested and/or get their car or license taken away.
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.
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.
