Brief Notes on the Criminal Racket called "Government"

"Everyone knows that the State claims and exercises [a] monopoly of crime ... and that it makes this monopoly as strict as it can. It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien. There is, for example, no human right, natural or Constitutional, that we have not seen nullified by the United States Government. Of all the crimes that are committed for gain or revenge, there is not one that we have not seen it commit – murder, mayhem, arson, robbery, fraud, criminal collusion and connivance."

Albert Jay Nock, from Our Enemy, the State

Support Your Local Panopticon

When Davenport, Iowa joined the roster of cities with automated red light cameras several years ago, the City Council and Police Department soothingly assured the public that the cameras were intended as a revenue-neutral safety measure.

In addition to being notoriously unreliable, red light and speed cameras undermine public safety and their use as an enforcement mechanism is patently unconstitutional. They do bring in the bucks, however, which is why they are so popular with municipal governments. (Well, that and the bribes and kickbacks offered by some contractors involved in this corrupt criminal enterprise.)

The municipal government – which is to say, the criminal clique controlling Davenport -- now enjoys a $250,000 “windfall” harvested by their traffic control cameras, and is planning to plow the profits into building a local panopticon – a “citywide wireless network allowing police to view live streaming video from their squad cars,” reports the Quad-City Times. “In addition, the department will begin recording its captured video, allowing it to [be used] as evidence to prosecute crimes.”

Thus far, one camera mounted on a high-rise overlooking a busy city street has been used “in making arrests for prostitution, public consumption of alcohol and loitering,” which aren't the kinds of violent assaults on person and property most people envision when discussing the legitimate role of police.

Here's one rendering of the "Panopticon" prison concept, as envisioned by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham...

During comments made to city Aldermen, Police Chief Mike Bladel “was careful not to reveal too much” about the “undisclosed number of portable and mobile cameras” that will be purchased with the money extorted from the public through the red light cameras.

“We really don't want to demonstrate to the public our full capabilities, but yes, it would be our goal to identify people from a long distance, and that is an achievable goal,” said Chief Bladel.

... and here's a more updated version of the Panopticon concept.


Why keep such details from the public, if Bladel and his department are there to “serve and protect” them? If the Davenport Police Department were actually carrying out the function of “peace officers,” they would want to be a conspicuous and welcome presence, rather than a furtive and hostile one. It's clear that Bladel's department has assimilated the Homeland Security mindset, in which protecting the State is the highest duty, and the people who are supposedly protected are treated as a pool of potential terrorists.

The Davenport P.D. Is “partnering” with Raytheon Company, one of the major contractors for the Homeland Security/Military Industrial Complex, to conduct a six-month trial of its panopticon system. After that, “the wireless network would have to be funded through the police department's regular budget.”

Which means, of course, that once the seed money has been consumed, the Davenport P.D. Will have to ramp up its efforts to shake down motorists in order to keep their surveillance system up and running.

Chances are they'll seek advice from their comrades in blue over in Iowa's Dallas County, where Sheriff Brian Gilbert and his Boyz, until recently, was taking in hundreds of thousands of dollars by looting interstate motorists through “asset forfeiture.” Thanks to the federal “war on drugs,” police can seize cars and cash and convict them – not their owners – of having a “nexus” of some sort to criminal activity. Using this federally approved approach to highway robbery, Gilbert's Gangstas hauled in about $1.75 million over the past four years, and probably would be still be soaking up the bucks today if they hadn't gotten a bit too greedy and sloppy.


U.S. Mint: A Den of Thieves

How often are we told that the fundamental purpose of government is to protect the innocent from those who would simply take whatever they want by force?

I'd guess this truism is recited nearly as often as the criminal syndicate called “government” does exactly the same thing – that is, taking whatever it wants by force, while threatening to kill anyone who resists.

Contemporary outrages like “asset forfeiture” and seizure of property on behalf of corporate interests through eminent domain certainly exemplify this function of government. But for sheer audacity, few contemporary crimes committed under color of government authority can compare to FDR's 1933 seizure of privately owned gold.

By executive decree, in defiance of the Constitution, law, and decency, the execrable Roosevelt simply ordered citizens to turn in their gold, at an artificially low price. The gold was removed from circulation so the Federal Reserve could have a freer hand to inflate the currency. This wasn't the wickedest thing FDR did before he took the handicapped-access ramp to hell on April 12, 1945 (Stalin, to whom FDR had handed eastern Europe at the Yalta Conference a few weeks earlier, was so bereaved by Roosevelt's death that he permitted his photograph to be published on the front page of Pravda), but it was pretty close to the top of the indictment.

To their considerable credit, some Americans refused to comply with the illegal order to turn in their money.

Shortly before Herr Roosevelt issued his confiscation decree, the U.S. Mint pressed several hundred thousand Gold Double Eagles, all of which were supposedly melted down into bars before they were released into circulation. However, over the decades a handful of the Double Eagles have been found – meaning, in all likelihood, that one of the stainless and heroic public servants in the Mint's employ made off with a small quantity of the gold and sold it on the black market.

A Philadelphia jeweler named Israel Switt somehow came into possession of 19 Double Eagles. Until recently it was believed that all of his coins had been found. However, in September of 2004, Joan Langbord, one of Switt's heirs, found ten more of his 1933 Double Eagles in a safe-deposit box.

Displaying a touching ingenuousness, Langbord contacted the U.S. Mint to have the Double Eagles authenticated. The Feds reacted in a perfectly predictable fashion: They stole the coins by having the Secret Service declare them to be “seized.”

“Langbord, along with her sons Roy and David, have filed a suit against the Mint. This is almost certainly a futile gesture, chiefly because the Feds have inexhaustible funds to fight the case (which wouldn't be true, of course, if we were still on the gold standard).

“The Mint's lawless position is that by merely claiming the coins were somehow removed from the Mint unlawfully in the 1930s, they can take the Langbords' property without proving it in a court of law," observes Langbord's attorney, Barry Berke.

This is the same U.S. Mint, recall, that produces slugs of junk metal it calls "coins," while trying to convince people that using gold and silver in private transactions is a species of “counterfeiting” and “fraud.”


We're from the Government, and we're here to help!

Good Enough for Government Work: A Friendly Note from a “Proud American” at the TSA

Four years ago, film producer Nicholas Monahan used a piece on Lew Rockwell's website to describe how his pregnant (and nigh-on-delivery) wife was molested at a airport security check, and how he was arrested and treated as a quasi-terrorist for the supposed offense of objecting to that crime.

Just a few days ago, one of the chair-moisteners employed by the Transportation Security Administration – that's the Homeland Security Department's special division in charge of harassment, petty theft, and the molestation of passengers and children – wrote to Lew Rockwell to defend the honor, such as it is, of his degenerate agency. Since the author of that letter is a federal employee, it should come as no surprise that it is replete with errors of spelling, diction, and logic – in addition to being sent to the wrong person, since Lew was not the author of the essay that provoked the letter in the first place.

Here are the highlights, such as they are, with the spelling and punctuation intact:

"I was searching some webpages, and came accross your website that mentioned TSA in it. So i read it. You'll understand later in my letter to you. As I was reading, I was playing out both sides of the incedent that happen to you, your wife, and your child. as well as the screeners at the airport. Here's a few things that you, I guess, have completly forgotten when it comes to national security, and YOU being EXEMPT because...what, your wife is pregnant and you're tired? Sorry, doesnt work that way.... The screeners are doing their jobs. Yes, the female screener who was screening your wife SHOULD have asked your wife if she would like private screening before making her unveil herself infront of so many strangers, however, this is NO excuse for you to become irate and demand to know whats going on. Yes, she is your wife and you would like to know whats happening, but charging up to a screener and demanding to know what they did is absolutly NO way to go about it.... your total lack of confidence in what TSA is here doing, to me, as a proud american, makes me absolutly disgusted. For you to totally throw out the terrorists attacks on 9/11, and those all over the world makes me want to go house to house just so I can tell them. 'hey, you, put down your newspaper full of bs, one sided stories and get an opinon of your own, and do something for your country' but of course, I can't do that.
again with the terrorism. they HAD to touch your wifes breasts, she is no exempt because she is pregnant. Maybe you have not seen any movies with women carrying 'fake' babies but its possible. Its a maternity suit...people use them. AND they can hold a whole lot of stuff which is illegal in the sterile....So next time you start coming to conclusions, maybe you can take a step back, take a deep breathe and ask yourself "well...is it really that bad for them to be doing this?" or maybe ask yourself 'oh, do I want another 9/11?'.... It distrubs me how often I hear people talk badly about the TSA and how its all 'bullshit'. The TSA Screeners (which are now Officers) are more then capable of performing their much needed duties, every day. Yes, people make mistakes, and the female screener for your wife made a slight one, but that doesnt excuse your behavior.”

What “distrubs” me (I'm guessing that's the federally approved spelling from now on) is the news that the arrogant, illiterate bullies employed by the TSA are now “officers” -- meaning, I suppose, that they have the power to carry out arrests on their own supposed authority.

Mr. Monahan's “behavior” was to demand that someone take responsibility for official misconduct that left his near-term pregnant wife a sobbing wreck. There is no need to “excuse” behavior that is understandable, responsible, and proportionate to the offense.

At least, this would be true if we were still, in any sense, a free society.