Freedom Lawyers of America

REPORTER DEATH LINKED TO CONRAD BLACK?

by Sherman H. Skolnick

www.skolnick@ameritech.net

www.skolnicksreport.com

2/19/4

 

Exclusive Details!

 

A highly well-informed political columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, Steve Neal, was found dead today under very odd circumstances.

 

In their report, 2/19/4, the Chicago Tribune apparently tried to cover up the strange event. They said that no foul play was suspected by the police. Other Chicago mass media reports, however, stated that the police were investigating possible foul play. Among other things, it is strange how the invisible poison, carbon monoxide, flooded his house.

 

The Sun-Times report said in its opening news item, "Steve Neal, Chicago's premiere political columnist for decades, famous for his encyclopedic knowledge of history and political lore, for endlessly swapping stories with political junkies that ranged from a biography of Wendell Wilkie to the correspondence between Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Truman, died Wednesday at his Hinsdale home." 

 

All the mass media reports, nevertheless, conveniently censored reported details. Such as, that Neal was quietly investigating that his boss, Sun-Times owner, Lord Conrad Black, had ostensibly misappropriated, huge funds, including pension funds of his media empire. Some reportedly informed Neal that the amount of defalcation was at least two hundred million dollars. AND, that Black was apparently hiding business losses of his company, Hollinger, that same way done by the late infamous Robert Maxwell who plundered hundreds of millions, sucked out, from among other places, his media workers pension funds.

 

[When some Sun-Times reporters were asked by us of the apparent embezzlement of media workers and others pension funds of the Lord Black empire; the reporters, by their response to our off-the-record inquiries, were not inclined to ask questions about their employer, Conrad Black. Their attitude was apparently entirely different than Steve Neal who over the years we never found to be a media blackmailer, liar, and cover-up artist as many others seem to be.]

 

Like latter day Lord Black, Maxwell was an  earlier secret key official of Israeli intelligence and reportedly tried to blackmail funds out of the State of Israel to cover up his failing media machine. According to some published accounts, swindler and blackmailer Maxwell was murdered in 1991, by Israeli agents throwing him off his huge yacht into the Atlantic Ocean, offshore of Spain. Some claim that local officials examining Maxwell's recovered corpse, were reportedly corruptly influenced to announce that Maxwell (a fake name) had some kind of heart attack and fell off his boat.

 

[Compare current details of Lord Black with those of Robert Maxwell in the controversial book "Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy; The Life and Murder of A Media Mogul", by Martin Dillon and Gordon Thomas, hardback 2002, paperback 2003.]

 

Neal was reportedly inquiring into what, if anything, the Bush Justice Department is doing in investigating the criminal role of Jim Thompson, former Illinois Governor, and for several years now Chairman of  the huge worldwide law firm, Winston & Strawn and Thompson is a Hollinger official supposedly involved in supervising the auditing of the firm's funds. [In 1994, we did a one-hour documentary on our public access Cable TV Program in Chicago, showing Thompson's role in a secret inner unit of his lawfirm, not doing law work, but reportedly deeply involved in handling huge funds from dope trafficking worldwide. Several employees of the firm confirmed the validity of our documentary. Thompson is also a key operative of the gay underground government and media cult, a corrupt operation mentioned elsewhere on various websites posting our stories, including www.skolnicksreport.com www.cloakanddagger.ca www.rense.com COLUMNIST Sherman Skolnick.]

 

A Director of Hollinger, "Big Jim" Thompson, is accused of okaying or facilitating the huge misappropriations of Hollinger funds, of which Lord Black recently alleged he did not know about, yet he and his cronies pocketed the loot.

 

[Over a period of years, we quietly and confidentially exchanged data on voting district politics and other issues with Steve Neal who we found to be reasonably ethical unlike some  blackmailers in the mass media.]

 

Notice this oddity. Lord Black, designated a purported nobleman by the Monarchy, is a purported Catholic. Despite the antagonism of Queen Elizabeth II to Catholics, Black is given the honor on occasion of walking right behind the Queen. Reliable sources contend Queen Elizabeth II uses her private bank, Coutts Bank London, to launder purported illicit funds for Lord Black's apparent scandal-ridden media empire built on  nothing but hot air. See related stories and secret Coutts Bank records posted and archived througth www.cloakanddagger.ca

 

Was Steve Neal the victim of foul play? Stay tuned. More coming as it develops.

 

==========================================

Mr. Skolnick is a co-host, with Lenny Bloom, of a frequent internet show, that can be heard by audiostreaming ON-LINE, and is archived, through www.cloakanddagger.ca Visit that website for current schedule.

 

Recently published, the book "Ahead of the Parade" by Sherman H. Skolnick, A Who's Who of Treason & High Crimes---Exclusive Details of Fraud & Corruption of the Monopoly Press, the Banks, the Bench and the Bar, & the Secret Political Police. Can be ordered U.S./Canada 1-800-861-7899.

 

Can also supposedly be ordered from Amazon.com HOWEVER in recent times they have blockaded their own marketing and sales of this controversial book by demanding TWICE the listed price.

>
> It's OK to dodge taxes, says Berlusconi
>
> As election pledges go, it was almost certainly a winner: don't pay tax.
>
> The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, suggested yesterday it was
> "morally acceptable" to avoid paying taxes if they were too high, as he
> launched his European parliamentary election campaign.
>
> "If we ask citizens to pay 33% tax they will all convince themselves that
> it is right and a duty, that it is correct to pay for the services they
> receive," Ansa news agency quoted him as saying.
>
> But the billionaire media tycoon also told a press conference that if
taxes
> amounted to more than 50% of people's income, it seemed "morally
> acceptable" to avoid paying.
>
> He pledged to bring down taxes next year ahead of Italy's 2006 general
> elections.
>
> Opposition politicians howled with disapproval. "This is clearly an
> instigation to break the law," said a Left Democrat, Fabio Mussi. "It is a
> crime not to pay taxes. It would be good if Berlusconi remembered that."
>
> Mr Berlusconi confirmed he would stand for European elections this June,
> dismissing the possibility of losing as an "impossible hypothesis",
despite
> recent polls indicating his popularity is sliding.
>
> His candidacy comes days after his arch rival, the European commission
> president and former prime minister Romano Prodi, launched a campaign to
> unite the Italian left against Mr Berlusconi's centre-right coalition.
>
> Observers say the prime minister is likely to decline taking up a seat in
> the European parliament should he win, passing it to another candidate
from
> his party.
>

> Morse code is entering the 21st century -- or at least the late 20th.
>
> The 160-year-old communication system now has a new character to denote
the
> "@" symbol used in e-mail addresses.
>
> In December, the International Telecommunications Union, which oversees
the
> entire frequency spectrum, from amateur radio to satellites, voted to add
> the new character.
>
> The new sign, which will be known as a "commat," consists of the signals
> for "A" (dot-dash) and "C" (dash-dot-dash-dot), with no space between
them.
>
> The new sign is the first in at least several decades, and possibly much
> longer. Among ITU officials and Morse code aficionados, no one could
> remember any other addition.
>
> "It's a pretty big deal," said Paul Rinaldo, chief technical officer for
> the American Radio Relay League, the national association for amateur
radio
> operators. "There certainly hasn't been any change since before World War
II."
>
> The change will allow ham radio operators to exchange e-mails more easily.
> That's because -- in an irony of the digital age -- they often use Morse
to
> initiate conversations over the Internet.
>
> "People trade their e-mail addresses a lot," said Nick Yocanovich, a Morse
> code enthusiast who lives in Arnold, Md.
>
> Morse code uses two audible electrical signals -- short "dots" and
slightly
> longer "dashes" -- to form letters, numbers and punctuation marks. Created
> in the 1830s by Samuel F.B. Morse, who invented the telegraph, the
> electronic signaling system spread across the world, and until the past
few
> decades, it was used widely by the public, industry and government.
>
> "It was the beginning of the Information Age," said Gary Fowlie, Chief of
> Media Relations and Public Information for the ITU, which has its
> headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
>
> When Morse died in 1872, more than 650,000 miles of telegraph wire circled
> the globe. By the early 20th century, Morse messages were being sent
> wirelessly, via radio.
>
> Perhaps the most famous Morse communication is the international distress
> signal S-O-S. It consists of three dots, three dashes, and three more
dots.
>
> But with the proliferation of digital communications technologies such as
> cell phones, satellites and the Internet, Morse code has lost its
> pre-eminent place in global communications. "There's really no reason to
> use it anymore," said Robert Colburn, research coordinator for the History
> Center of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
>
> Today it's largely the province of ham radio operators, including 700,000
> in the United States. While not all of them communicate regularly in
Morse,
> almost all are familiar with it.
>
> Some ham operators wouldn't mind more changes to spice up the language.
> While Morse code has a period, a question mark, and even a semicolon, it
> offers no simple way to articulate excitement.
>
> "I was hoping they'd add a character for the exclamation point," said
> Yocanovich, who is active in the International Morse Preservation Society.
> "It expresses an emotion that's difficult to get across any other way."
>

> Most distant known object in universe discovered
>
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/7961704.htm
>
> PASADENA, Calif. - Peering back in time to when the universe was just 750
> million years old, a team of astrophysicists announced Sunday they have
> spied a tiny galaxy that is the most farthest known object.
>
> "We are confident it is the most distant known object," California
> Institute of Technology astronomer Richard Ellis said of the galaxy, which
> lies roughly 13 billion light-years from Earth.
>
> The team uncovered the faint galaxy using the two most powerful telescopes
> of their kind - one in space, the other in Hawaii - aided by the natural
> magnification provided by a massive cluster of galaxies.
>
> The gravitational tug of the cluster, called Abell 2218, deflects the
light
> of the far more distant galaxy and magnifies it many times over.
>
> "Without the magnification of 25 afforded by the foreground cluster, this
> early object could simply not have been identified or studied in any
detail
> with presently available telescopes," said astronomer Jean-Paul Kneib, of
> Caltech and the Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees in France.
>
> The magnification process, first proposed by Albert Einstein and known as
> "gravitational lensing," produces double images of the galaxy.
>
> Word of the discovery came during the annual meeting of the American
> Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle. Further details
> appear in a forthcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
>
> The discovery gives a rare glimpse of the time when the first stars and
> galaxies began to blink on, ending a period that cosmologists call the
> "Dark Ages," said Robert Kirshner, an astronomer with the
> Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
>
> "The possibility is here we really are beginning to peek into that time,"
> said Kirshner, who was not connected with the discovery.
>
> "People have gone there in their imagination - they've thought about it.
> Now we are getting the facts. And there's nothing like getting the facts,"
> he added.
>
> The Hubble Space Telescope revealed the first glimpse of the galaxy,
backed
> up by subsequent observations made with the Keck Observatory's 10-meter
> telescopes atop Mauna Kea.
>
> The galaxy is just 2,000 light-years across. That's far smaller than our
> own Milky Way, which is roughly 100,000 light-years in diameter.
>
> Analysis of the galaxy revealed its light had been shifted into redder
> wavelengths, or redshifted. The farther away an object is in our expanding
> universe, the faster it is moving and the larger its redshift.
>
> The team was less confident about the precise redshift they had measured,
> estimating it as between 6.6 and 7, Ellis said. Any value in the range
> would still place the galaxy as the farthest known object, he added.
>
> The galaxy also has a stronger ultraviolet signal than that seen in
younger
> star-forming galaxies. That suggests the galaxy contains a higher
> proportion of massive stars.
>
> Cosmologists have predicted that early galaxies contained types of stars
> unlike those that came into being much later in the history of the
universe.
>
> The team searched only a small area of the sky before they turned up the
> galaxy, suggesting the sky is dense with similar galaxies and that the
type
> of massive stars it contains were common after the end of the so-called
> Dark Ages, Ellis said.
>
> "That's very interesting if it's true," Kirshner said.
>
> No one knows how long the Dark Ages lasted in the wake of the Big Bang
13.7
> billion years ago.
>
> ON THE NET:
> http://www.caltech.edu
> http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/
> http://hubblesite.org/
>
>
> Biblical images etched in highest courts in America
> http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=2441
>
> On November 13, 2003 the Alabama Court of the Judiciary ordered the
removal
> of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore from his post. The decision resulted
> from Moore's refusal to obey what he considered a tyrannical order from a
> federal judge commanding him to remove a stone monument of the Ten
> Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama supreme court building.
>
> The federal court, which was not overruled because the Supreme Court
> refused to consider Moore's appeal, insisted that the state of Alabama
> could not acknowledge God by displaying a religiously-based
representation,
> even though the Alabama constitution says, "We, the people of the State of
> Alabama, in order to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and
> secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, invoking
> the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish the
> following Constitution and form of government for the State of Alabama."
>
> HUMAN EVENTS intern and photojournalist Carrie Devorah went to federal
> government buildings in the District of Columbia and photographed some of
> the many religious and religiously inspired items in those buildings. In
> addition, she obtained a picture from the White House of the Adams Prayer
> Mantel. These pictures are a small sampling of the many religious images
> scattered throughout government buildings in D.C. and around the country.
>
> Will all of these images eventually be removed by the order of
unrestrained
> federal judges? Will the Alabama state constitution?the current version of
> which was adopted over 100 years ago, in 1901?have to be revised? More
> important, will Congress and the President act to restrict federal courts'
> jurisdiction over such matters, as the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives
> them the authority to do, before it is too late?
>
> [CAPTIONS TO ALL PICTURES SHOWN:
> Moses with the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Library of Congress
> Moses on the rear facade of the U.S. Supreme Court
> Moses with the Ten Commandments inside the Supreme Court's courtroom
> "Liberty of Worship" statute resting on the Ten Commandments outside the
> Ronald Reagan Building
> The Ten Commandments in the floor of the National Archives
> The Adams Prayer Mantel in the White House (Photo Courtesy of the White
House)
> Painting called "Knowledge" in the North Hall of the Library of Congress
> An excerpt from Virginia's Statute of Religious Freedom, authored by
Thomas
> Jefferson, on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial
> "De Soto's Burial in the Mississippi River" in the rotunda of the U.S.
Capitol
> A stained glass window of George Washington praying, in the chapel in the
> U.S. Capitol
> A phrase from Lord Tennyson in the rotunda of the Library of Congress
> A memorial plaque from the Free Press Methodist Episcopal Church inside
the
> Washington Monument
> A painting of the Roman goddess of war in the Senate side of the U.S.
Capitol
> An excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural speech carved into the
> interior of the Lincoln Memorial]
>
> These images are the sort that federal courts have increasingly ruled
> "unconstitutional" for decades.
>
> If the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) or some other plaintiff
> decides to sue to remove any or all of these images, what would be the
result?
>
> If the courts are consistent, these images -- and countless more like them
> -- could be removed by a judicial elite hostile to all forms of religious
> expression in public.
>
> --------------------
>
> # God in the Temples of Government: Part II
> http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=2664
>
> As a follow-up to her first project on religious images in Washington,
> D.C., public buildings (see "God in the Temples of Government"), HE intern
> and photojournalist Carrie Devorah took more pictures of religious images
> and also gathered three U.S. stamps with religious themes.
>
> Will the courts eventually outlaw these images, as they have other
> religious symbols such as former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's Ten
> Commandments monument?
>
> If not, why not?
>
> [CAPTIONS TO ALL PICTURES SHOWN:
> Inscription inside the Washington Monument
> Jesuit Father James Marquette in the U.S. Capitol
> Sculpture in front of the U.S. district court building
> Image called "Religion" in the U.S. Capitol
> Carving of Ten Commandments on doors of the U.S. Supreme Court
> Charlemagne inside U.S. Supreme Court
> Muhammad inside U.S. Supreme Court
> Painting in U.S. Capitol of Pocahontas' baptism
> Three U.S. stamps commemorating holidays
> Discovery of the Mississippi River by Hernando De Soto in the U.S. Capitol
> Detail of one of the ornaments on the Christmas tree in the Library of
> Congress.]
>

______________________________________________________
Report finds con artists, identity thieves can easily access your PC
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37062

One of the hottest new computer-related technologies is the wireless
router, but the popular Internet connection also opens the door to thieves,
according to a consumer report.

High-tech criminals, using just a pocket PC and a $20 antenna, can pick up
someone else's Internet connection from up to 10 miles away, says KIRO-TV
in Seattle.

A wireless router beams an Internet connection through the air to other
computers without the use of wires. It allows, for example, a laptop to
connect from anywhere in a home or business.

Not only does it open a huge door for con artists and identity thieves, but
it allows even perverts to walk right through, the KIRO report said.

"Imagine the case of pornography or child pornography and all of a sudden
the authorities are knocking on your door and taking you away and you don't
know what they're talking about - because someone downloaded child
pornography via your connection," Brett Hiley, a computer security
consultant, told KIRO.

Hiley demonstrated the hundreds of connections he could get while sitting
in an SUV in Seattle's east suburbs.

"It looks like we're sitting here in an anonymous location, and we have
full Internet access," he said.

Hiley warned that not only can hackers steal your connection, they can
watch everything you do and even steal your personal information through
free programs available via the Internet.

"I have personally found financial institutions that were transmitting
credit information . Social Security numbers, names, numbers, addresses,
phone numbers, your credit report," he said.

Secret Service agent Wallace Shields confirmed that to KIRO.

"You can basically sit in a parking lot, and if you know what frequency to
go in on when the stores download by satellite, you get tons of credit card
information," Shields said.

Hacking tools exist, KIRO said, that decode passwords, even on some sites
that claim to be secure.

Shields said it's important to use the encryption technology that comes
with most routers, but KIRO's investigation found the security features are
not user friendly and apparently most people have not turned them on.

Out of nearly 100 wireless connections KIRO accessed from a park during its
investigation, fewer than half were encrypted.

AND SEE:
Microsoft: Major Windows security flaws
Could let hackers break into computers to steal files, delete data,
eavesdrop
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/02/10/financial1426EST0167.DTL&type=tech

Think you can fly a helicopter? Try it. It is fun!

Click on the helicopter,

hold the mouse key down to go up and release the key

to go down.

It's not as easy as it seems either.

http://www.hurtwood.demon.co.uk/Fun/copter.swf

On your way home from work, stop at your pharmacy and go to the
thermometer section and purchase a rectal thermometer made by Johnson
 and  Johnson. Be very sure you get this brand !!
 When you get home, lock your doors, draw the curtains and disconnect
the phone so you will not be disturbed. Change into very comfortable
 clothing and lie down on your bed.
 Open the package and remove the thermometer. Now, carefully place it
on the bedside table so that it will not become chipped or broken. Take
 out the literature and read it carefully. You will notice that in small
print there is a statement, "Every rectal thermometer made by Johnson and
Johnson is personally tested".
 Now, close your eyes and repeat out loud five times: "I am so glad I
do not work for quality control at Johnson and Johnson."

HAVE A NICE DAY AND REMEMBER, THERE IS ALWAYS SOMEONE ELSE WITH A JOB THAT IS WORSE THAN YOURS!

"In every civilization ... there are always certain alien spirits who keep a disinterested regard for the plain intelligible law of things irrespective of any practical end." Albert Jay Nock



You are gone these twenty years, Mr. Nock, yet to a fragmentary number, whom you once called the "remnant," your work -- they say -- will live forever. This is very perplexing to us a collectivist delegation that has come all the way to this Place to interview you. Why do you smile? You are indeed a puzzling relic of a breed that used to be known as individualists. What were you individualists like? Is it true that you did not believe in democracy?

"I could see how 'democracy' might do very well in a society of saints and sages. ... Socrates could not have got votes enough of the Athenian mass-men to be worth counting. ...As against Jesus, the historic choice of the mass-man goes regularly to some Barabbas. ? Above all things the mass-mind is most bitterly resentful of superiority. It will not tolerate the thought of an elite. ...Under this system ... the test of the great mind is its power of agreement with the opinions of small minds. ...An equalitarian and democratic regime must by consequence assume ... that everybody is educable."

Do you not believe in compulsory education?

"I have never been able to find any one who would tell me what the net social value of a compulsory universal literacy actually comes to. ...It enables scoundrels to beset, dishevel, and debauch much intelligence as is in the power of the vast majority to exercise."

You are odd indeed. Don't you have any regard for society?

"There is no such thing as society. ...I have never been able to see 'society' otherwise than as a concourse of very various individuals. ...When the great general movement toward collectivism set in, ... 'society,' rather than the individual, became the criterion of hedonists. ...Comte invented the term altruism as an antonym for egoism. ...This hybrid or rather this degenerate form of hedonism served powerfully to invest collectivism's principles with a specious moral sanction, and collectivists ... made the most of it."

If people were truly opposed to collectivism, why is it that it is flourishing all over the Earth?

"Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, ... collectivism is the political mode best suited to their disposition. ...Under its regime, the citizen ... is relieved of the burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told."

Will you not agree that the collectivist plan calls for the abolition of war and poverty in the future?

"What we and our more nearly immediate descendants shall see is a steady progress in collectivism running off into a military despotism of a severe type. Closed centralization; a steadily growing bureaucracy; state power and faith in state power increasing; social power and faith in social power diminishing; the state absorbing a continually larger proportion of the national income; production languishing, the state in consequence taking over one 'essential industry' after another, managing them with ever-increasing corruption, inefficiency and prodigality, and finally resorting to a system of forced labor."

Will you not admit that only collective power can do away with iniquity and misery? (But you are smiling again!)

"It is an attractive idea. ...A closer examination of the state's activities, however, will show that this idea, attractive though it be, goes to pieces against the iron law of fundamental economies, that man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion. ...Spencer and Henry George had familiarized me with the formula."

We do not understand you.

"There are two ... means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the un-compensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means. ...

"The state, then, whether primitive, feudal, or merchant, is the organization of the political means. Now, since man tends always to satisfy his needs arid desires with the least possible exertion, he will employ the political means whenever he can -- exclusively if possible; otherwise, in association with the economic means. He will, at the present time, that is, have recourse to the state's modern apparatus of exploitation; the apparatus of tariffs, concessions, rent-monopoly and the like."

Do you mean to imply that the state is not brought into being to serve the needs of all men?

"The positive testimony of history is that the state invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive state known to history originated in any other manner."

But are there not good states, as well as bad?

A state is a state is a state. "Thus colonial America, oppressed by the monarchical state, brings in the republican state; Germany gives up the republican state for the Hitlerian state; Russia exchanges the monocratic state for the collectivist state; Italy exchanges the constitutionalist state for the 'totalitarian' state."

But does not the state abolish crime?

"The state claims and exercises the monopoly of crime. ...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."

Does not the state provide social security and other great services?

"The state has no money. It provides nothing. Its existence is purely parasitic, maintained by taxation. ?A naive ignorance of this fact underlies the pernicious measures of 'social security.' ...What such schemea actually come to is that the workman pays ... the whole bill."

Should not the state intervene in cases of emergency?

"Every intervention by the state enables another, and this in turn another, and so on indefinitely. ...When this takes place, the logical thing, obviously, is to recede, and let the disorder be settled in the slower and more troublesome way ... through the operation of natural laws. ...The state then intervenes by imposing another set of complications upon the first ? until the recurrent disorder becomes acute enough to open the way for a sharking political adventurer to come forward and, always alleging 'necessity,' the tyrant's plea, to organize a coup d'etat."

Isn't the state, however, naturally necessary for man?

"Under a regime of natural order, that is to say, under government, which makes no positive interventions whatever on the individual ... misuses of social power would be effectively corrected. ...Under a regime of actual individualism, actual free competition actual laissez-faire ... a serious or continuous misuse of social power would be virtually impossible."

Just what do you mean by your peculiar distinction between government and state?

"Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access; and beyond that it does not go. The state, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the state may provisionally grant him ...

"While government is by its nature concerned with the administration of justice, the state is by its nature concerned with the administration of law -- which the state itself manufactures for ... its own primary ends?

"The code of government should be that of the legendary King Pausole, who prescribed but two laws for his subjects, the first being, Hurt no man, and the second, Then do as you please."

If you feel so strongly about state abuses, why did you not become a reformer?

"It is easy to prescribe improvements for others; it is easy to organize something to institutionalize this or that, to pass laws, multiply bureaucratic agencies, form pressure groups, start revolutions, change forms of government, tinker at political theory. The fact that these expedients have been tried unsuccessfully in every conceivable combination for six thousand years has not noticeably impaired a credulous unintelligent willingness to keep on trying them again and again."

Then what can any person do to improve society?

"The only thing that the psychically human being can do to improve society is to present society with one improved unit. In a word, ages of experience testify that the only way society can be improved is by the individualistic method ... of each one doing his very best to improve one?

"I found myself settled in convictions which I suppose might be summed up as a philosophy of intelligent selfishness, intelligent egoism, intelligent hedonism: ... to know oneself as one can; to avoid self-deception and to foster no illusions; to learn what one can about the plain natural things of life, and make one's valuations accordingly."

What a dangerous theory! If every one were permitted to act freely in accordance with his own valuations, there would be no end to crime.

"It seems to be a fond notion with the legalists and authoritarians that the vast majority of mankind would at once begin to thieve and murder and generally misconduct itself if the restraints of law and authority were removed?

"The practical reason for freedom ? is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed. Everything else has been tried, world without end. ?

"Freedom, for example ... undoubtedly means freedom to drink oneself to death. ...It also means freedom to say, 'I have studied, I have graduated, I never drink.' It unquestionably means freedom to go on without any code of morals at all but it also means freedom to rationalize, construct and adhere to a code of one's own. Freedom to do the one without correlative freedom to do the other is impossible."

But what must man do to fight injustice?

"Simply nothing... The student of civilized man will ... regard the course of our civilization ... as an instance of nature's unconquerable intolerance of disorder, and in the end, an example of the penalty which she puts upon any attempt at interference. ?

"If it were in my power to pull down its whole structure overnight and set up another of my own devising -- to abolish the state out of hand, and replace it by an organization of the economic means -- I would not do it. ...The effect would be only to lay open the way for the worse enormities of usurpation possibly, who knows? with myself as the usurper!"

Well, Mr. Nock, thank you for the interview. It has been most enlightening. When we return to Earth, we will ask our legislators to study your proposals, and have our committees debate them in open forum. (But why do you continue smiling?) Meanwhile, is there any final statement that you would care to make?

"I learned early with Thoreau that a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone; and in view of this I have always considered myself extremely well-to-do. All I ever asked of life was the freedom to think and say exactly what I pleased, when I pleased, and as I pleased. ?

"It is true that one can never get something for nothing; it is true that in a society like ours one who takes the course which I have taken must reconcile himself to the status of a superfluous man; but the price seems to me by no means exorbitant, and I have paid it gladly, without a shadow of doubt that I was getting all the best of the bargain."

1]
A  Common Problem


Reporters interviewing a 104 year-old woman:

"And what do you think is the best thing about
being 104?" the reporter asked.

She simply replied, "No peer pressure."

------------------------------------------ * * * * *

The nice thing about being senile is you
can hide your own Easter eggs.

------------------------------------------ * * * * *

Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came
up to the very elderly widow and asked, "How old was
your husband?"

"98," she replied. "Two years older than me."

"So you're 96," the undertaker commented.

She responded, "Hardly worth going home is it?"

------------------------------------------------- * * * * *

I've sure gotten old. I've had 2 By-pass surgeries.
A hip replacement, new knees. Fought prostate
cancer, and diabetes.

I'm half blind, can't hear anything quieter than a
jet engine, take 40 different medications that make
me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts.

Have bouts with dementia. Have poor circulation,
hardly feel my hands and feet anymore. Can't
remember if I'm 85 or 92. Have lost all my friends.

But..... Thank God, I still have my Florida driver's license!

------------------------------------------------ * * * * *

A 97 year old man goes into his doctor's office
and says, "Doc, I want my sex drive lowered."

"Sir", replied the doctor, "You're 97. Don't you
think your sex drive is all in your head?"

"You're damned right it is!" replied the old man.
"That's why I want it lowered!"

---------------------------------------------- * * * * *

God, grant me the senility
To forget the people
I never liked anyway,
The good fortune
To run into the ones I do,
And the eyesight to tell the difference.

------------------------------------------------ * * * * *

An elderly woman from Brooklyn decided to
prepare her will and make her final requests.
She told her rabbi she had two final requests.

First, she wanted to be cremated, and second, she wanted her ashes scattered over Bloomingdales.

"Bloomingdales!" the rabbi exclaimed. "Why
Bloomingdales?"

"Then I'll be sure my daughters visit me twice a week."

> I spent part of this week in a bizarre world. U.S. District Judge John
> McBryde, the no-nonsense judge once accused by a fellow federal judge of
> "bizarre and bullying conduct," locked me along with dozens of other
> spectators in his courtroom. McBryde really did order his bailiffs to lock
> the door.
>
> And who was I locked in there with? An all-star team of federal income-tax
> haters, some of whom don't recognize the authority of the United States
> government, and showed this by refusing to stand whenever the judge and
> jury entered the courtroom.
>
> It was the trial of Bedford businessman Richard Simkanin, who was
convicted
> Wednesday of 29 counts of violating U.S. tax laws. McBryde locked the door
> because he said he didn't want people running in and out. But courthouse
> security was tight and protesters outside held signs demanding McBryde's
> impeachment.
>
> I would bet you money, tax-free of course, that hardly anybody in that
> courtroom pays federal income taxes. Most were proud of it, and who
> wouldn't be if they could get away with something like that? Even a
> reporter for a "patriotic" Web site sitting next to me said she didn't pay
> federal income taxes. "But don't put my name in the paper," she said.
>
> Simkanin has been locked in a federal cell for months after he supposedly
> had a meeting at his Bedford office and, an informant alleged, said that
> killing a few judges might attract attention to the cause. His supporters,
> including a Round Rock talk radio host who told me that he attended the
> meeting in question, said Simkanin never said any such thing. But McBryde
> wasn't taking chances.
>
> The tax haters in the courtroom hated McBryde as much as they hate income
> taxes. They acted surprised when he didn't let the trial become a circus
> testing the validity of federal income tax laws. No, McBryde figured his
> job was to help a jury determine whether Simkanin broke laws when he
> stopped filing personal tax returns and ceased withholding federal taxes
> from his Bedford employees' paychecks.
>
> Simkanin may be the ultimate Bedford character in a city of great
> characters. After research in his library, which he called "one of the
> largest tax-book private libraries in Texas," he testified that he
> concluded taxes were, in his words, "alleged taxes."
>
> At one point, he became so angry about the federal tax system that he
> announced on his Web site that he was expatriating himself from the United
> States, which he said was a government "in rebellion against the Republic
> of Texas."
>
> He began telling his employees that those who pay federal taxes "become
tax
> slaves." And although we all know that's true, he took it much further.
>
> Once he received a letter from the Department of the Treasury, but he
> challenged it, testifying that for all he knew, it could have been from
the
> Department of the Treasury of Puerto Rico.
>
> He surrendered his Texas driver's license and replaced it with his own ID
> cards, including one from the "International Governmental Affairs Agency."
> He admitted he made that up because, he testified, "it just sounded good."
>
> He named his sister-in-law, who joined the company as a file clerk, his
> replacement as president. He asked her to pay him in cash and take his
name
> off official papers so he could drop off the government's radar. His
> accountants told him he was making huge mistakes, and when he wouldn't
> listen, they resigned.
>
> But for someone who wanted off the radar, he sure flew back on. With
> others, he took out a full-page ad in USA Today explaining why he had
> serious reservations about the federal income tax system. And he
surrounded
> himself with that all-star team of anti-taxpayers who are household names
> in households that don't pay taxes. These buddies served as a crazy cast
of
> character witnesses at his trial.
>
> There was Joseph Banister, a former IRS special agent who was recently
> hauled into a San Francisco federal court by prosecutors who demanded that
> he stop telling people income taxes were illegal. At first, the feds
> considered having Banister's hearing last month on an isolated federal
> island to keep out the kind of crowd with whom I shared the locked
> courtroom. But later they relented and yanked him into a regular
courtroom.
>
> There was Eduardo Rivera, a pony-tailed lawyer from California who took
the
> stand to say that he didn't believe that everyone had to pay income taxes.
> But under cross-examination by federal prosecutors, he acknowledged that a
> permanent injunction had been placed against him in a California federal
> court that prevented him from saying just those things.
>
> There was Bob Shulz, the founder of We the People for Constitutional
> Education, who complained on the witness stand that this whole anti-tax
> argument stems from the fact that the 16th Amendment enacting a federal
> income tax was improperly ratified in 1913. Somebody should get on that.
>
> And there was Larken Rose, an Internet anti-tax rebel who called income
tax
> a "fraud without rival in history" and said the IRS was an "extortion
> racket." On a Web site, I found a letter by him titled "Please Prosecute
> Me" that begins, "I, Larken Rose, have not filed a federal income tax
> return for 1997 or any subsequent year."
>
> But Rose has not been prosecuted, probably because he doesn't make enough
> money selling videotapes off his Web site for the government to spend
money
> chasing him. It is Simkanin, now Bedford's own convicted tax martyr, who
is
> the newest hero of the movement.
>
> In closing arguments, his lawyer asked the jury, "Does he look like a
> criminal to you?"
>
> These jury members, who see an April 15 tax deadline coming their way, are
> no suckers. Hey, if they pay, why shouldn't the guy with the funny
driver's
> license pay, too? So in answer to the question about whether he looked
like
> a criminal, they unanimously answered that he did.
>
> Dave Lieber's Column Appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
>

I'm back.

----- Original Message -----
From: "R. J. Tavel, J.D."
To: "Learning Electronically About Freedom mailing service"

Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2004 6:44 AM
Subject: Gates plans end to spam by 2006


> GET ALL THE BREAKING LEGAL NEWS ALL THE TIME at
> http://freedomlaw.com/LNEWSUPD.html
> updated every 15 minutes on the coffee table at Freedomlaw.com
> http://freedomlaw.com/coffee.html
> ______________________________________________________
> Microsoft seeking 'magic solution' based on concept of identifying sender
> of e-mail
> http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/news/story.jsp?story=484520
>
> A spam-free world by 2006? That's what Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is
> promising.
>
> "Two years from now, spam will be solved," he told a select group of World
> Economic Forum participants in Davis, Switzerland. Gates said his company
> is working on a "magic solution" based on the concept of "proof" -
> identifying the sender of the e-mail.
>
> One method involves requiring the sender to solve a puzzle that only a
> flesh-and-blood person can handle. Another is a "computational puzzle"
that
> a computer sending only a few messages could easily handle, but that would
> be prohibitively expensive for a mass-mailer.
>
> But the most promising, Gates said, was a method that would hit the sender
> of an e-mail in the pocket. People would set a level of monetary risk -
low
> or high, depending on their own choice - for receiving e-mail from
strangers.
>
> If the e-mail turned out to be from a long-lost relative, for example, the
> recipient would charge nothing. But if it is unwanted spam, the sender
> would have to fork out the cash. "In the long run, the monetary [method]
> will be dominant," Gates predicted.
>
> He conceded, however, that his prognostications have not always been on
the
> mark. He misjudged the rising popularity of open-source software,
> epitomised by Linux, and the success of the Google search engine.
>

posted by FLoA  # 2/04/2004 05:35:42 PM