RENOUNCE- A GROWING movement!!

Nation/State Citizenship = Slavery
Renounce U.S. Citizenship and/or Become a World Citizen
by the Peoples Awareness Coalition

Most Americans do not understand that the organic Constitution [of the federal government] did not house citizens. Its purpose was to govern world trade and protect the American republics militarily.

Moreover, the organic Constitution does not confer rights to Americans, it protects their God given natural rights; it also inherently guarantees the common law as the civil law. Such civil law is based on the customs and usage's of a society/nation; the society is not subordinate to the will of their state legislature; to clarify, the society is self-governing through traditions, no authoritarian law is used.

Furthermore, under the organic Constitution, one is considered a national of his country or state. He owes political allegiance to his country, and accordingly he is subject to the laws of his state as to being a citizen (statute) or freeman (common law) of the country.

Under the organic Constitution, the federal government generally had nothing to do with a state national, hence the federal laws did not apply to such people.

However, all this has been changed. . . After the Civil War a new governmental system was installed by the fourteenth amendment. The governments under this system are referred to as government de factos.

Below is the amendment which fundamentally creates a new governmental system which operates under private law:

AMENDMENT XIV Instituted July 9, 1868

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

The United States of America under the 'organic' Constitution
Illustrated below in diagram 1: All states, which are also properly termed American republics, are considered all separate sovereign nations and/or countries unto themselves under the organic Constitution. What is meant by organic is: real; original; in full uniformity with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Under the organic Constitution, an American is a national of one of the American states/republics/nations.

The United States of America under the '14th Amendment' Constitution
Illustrated below in diagram 2: Under the legal effects of the fourteenth amendment constitution, one "Super State/Nation" is fictionally formulated by the unification of the [U]nited States of America.
The sum of American states are considered to be each a political subdivision of the United States or Washington DC i.e. federal areas or states. To further clarify: The American states are quasi-counties of sorts, because Washington DC is acting as a State or "national government" for citizens of the United States, or U.S. or federal citizens see also dual citizenship.

The Accomplishments of the 14th Amendment
Illustrated below in diagram 3: The fourteenth amendment (in an operation of law) takes Americans out of their native states at birth; Americans are then citizens and nationals of the United States i.e. DC citizens or federal citizens.

Moreover, the fourteenth amendment installs a new governmental system under a new constitution, which in deception runs concurrent with the organic Constitution.

The Law of Nations
Under the Law of Nations, based on principles of natural law: one is a national of the 'state' in which he was born; such state is his native 'country' and nation; accordingly, he owes allegiance to his state/nation/country/government.
Under the Law of Nations: a 'national' is not a resident of his state/country, just a national; moreover, when one lives in a state in which he is not a national member, he is a 'resident' or an alien; a resident alien. Accordingly one is an 'alien' to every other state/nation/country/government. /1
Under the Law of Nations: the term human being means a man, women or child; however, the term 'person' is a national of a society and/or nation. As a national, this occasions one to be under the protection of the government of such nation. The term 'national' differs from the term 'citizen'. In American law, the term we know as 'citizen' relates to political rights or being a 'subject'.

Under the Law of Nations: the term 'nationality' is the status of belonging to a particular nation by origin, birth, or naturalization [origin = native]. A 'nation' is a society of people bound in unity under a particular government by its mutual consent. The term 'naturalization' is the legal process of changing one's nation (or country) to be a member citizen of another; in other words to grant nationality to (one of foreign birth). Today, nationality has little to do with ethnic origin.

Under the Law of Nations: nationality can be changed: it is a natural right; such right is legally called expatriation: The changing of one's country; and accordingly his nationality and citizenship. One's native country is referred to as a natural domicile or domicile of origin; and, if one has changed his country, it is referred to as an acquired domicile i.e. one's 'domicile' = a permanent "natural born (native) national" or "non-native national" of a nation or country.

Under the Law of Nations: the term 'citizen' is in reference to being a 'subject of a sovereign or subject to a government. In American law, the term 'citizen' refers to political rights. One's political rights are protected under the original Constitution. Generally, the term 'national' and 'citizen' go hand-in-hand, that is to say, when one is naturalized he is a national and also has political rights.

Under the Law of Nations: the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group is referred to as genocide. This is a crime under international law.

Legal Information in this particular section is taken from the following sources: Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, 1856; De Vattel's, Law of Nations; and, American Heritage Dictionary.

The Fourteenth Amendment Is A Political Cabal
The United States (federal government) was getting little support during its short period of existence. If you would investigate there were few people voting just prior to the Civil War. The 14th amendment is the instrument that had established the support for the United States through an alternate political system.

Aside the force of the Civil War, the people could not be continually forced into supporting the United States so they had to be tricked into supporting it.

As many have heard "Governments are instituted by the consent of the governed", for the United States to get support a "mobocracy" had to be created. However, due to the American states being that of a sovereign autonomous capacity this could not be accomplished unless they were taken over.

Unknown to most people the fourteenth amendment is the device and artifice that deceives them to surrender their national sovereignty. Section 2 of the amendment is where the operation of law is found that executes the act of sedition against the sovereignty of the state. Understand that this had all been sold as an act of rights and humanity. However you must further understand that the main objective was just to get enough "bodies" or "persons" to elect the officials so there was legal justification for the laws established be the United States to have some force and effect.

Section 3 of the amendment installs the insurgent government[s] and also preserves the organic Constitution; section 2 of the amendment empowers it; section 1 of the amendment naturalizes all Americans as nationals of the United States at birth; the legal language in section 1 actually creates a dual-citizenship on Americans; such Americans are United States citizens i.e. federal citizens/U.S. persons /2\ and citizens of the state in which they reside [see diagram 3 above]. This in turn negates the natural rights of Americans [unalienable rights] held under the Law of Nations.

How the 14th Amendment Works. Section 2 of the fourteenth amendment induces a voting American to tacitly throw off his primary political allegiance to his rightful state government; this causes a breach of allegiance to his government: This is sedition and hence treason. /3\ His allegiance is then given to the de facto governmental system over his state or country's lawful government; he is then politically bound to the federal government and he is now a 'resident' (thing) of the state and is no longer a national of his country.

14th Amendment Citizenship. A United States citizen and national is considered a resident alien in every "State" (i.e. country) in which he chooses to live; he does not have natural rights which are conferred by God and protected by the original Constitution. He has rights which are granted by the federal and state governments at will, not God; accordingly, he is subject to both federal and state laws.

Due to the legal contrivance induced by section 2 of the fourteenth amendment, all the states are in war mode; the civil law (common law i.e. custom and usage) has virtually been suspended for anyone that participates; all U.S. citizens are subordinate to the de facto state legislatures and basically treated as enemies of the republic of which they reside. Such treatment is due to their presumed breach of allegiance to their lawful state governments under the law of nations.

The fourteenth amendment is actually a cabal. It is of purpose to pull all Americans into a foreign jurisdiction (the federal government)—to impose on them—what they are constitutionally protected from. It makes all Americans who condone and participate in this system a resident: A "thing" of the State i.e. the federal and state governments. /4
The scheme is three pronged: 1) It is a mechanism for government control; 2) It enables the federal government to implement an income tax for the World Banking Elite; 3) It allows both the de facto federal government and the de facto state governments to do business with/on Americans e.g. licensing; traffic fines; social security; etc., etc.

Simply put: The 14th amendment is a subversive political cabal that is of purpose to usurp the sovereignty of the American nations by the ignorant consent of the people.

The Remedy To The Fourteenth Amendment: The Expatriation Act
The day before the fourteenth amendment was announced purportedly ratified, an act was passed by a somewhat rogue Congress. The act was Public Law; 15 United States Statutes at Large, Chapter 249, pps 223-224 (1868). Most people refer to this Act as the "Expatriation Act." The Act is as follows:

CHAP. CCXLIX - - An Act concerning the Rights of American Citizens in foreign States.

PREAMBLE - Rights of American citizens in foreign states. WHEREAS the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and whereas in the recognition of this principle this government has freely received emigrants from all nations, and invested them with the rights of citizenship; and whereas it is claimed that such American citizens, with their descendants, are subjects of foreign states, owing allegiance to the governments thereof; and whereas it is necessary to the maintenance of public peace that this claim of foreign allegiance should be promptly and finally disavowed.

SECTION I - Right of expatriation declared. THEREFORE, Be it enacted by the Senate of the and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any declaration, instruction, opinion, order, or decision of any officers of this government which denies, restricts, impairs, or questions the right of expatriation, is hereby declared inconsistent with the fundamental principles of this government.

SECTION II - Protection to naturalized citizens in foreign states. And it is further enacted, That all naturalized citizens of the United States, while in foreign states, shall be entitled to, and shall receive from this government, the same protection of persons and property that is accorded to native born citizens in like situations and circumstances.

SECTION III - Release of citizens imprisoned by foreign governments to be demanded. And it is further enacted, That whenever it shall be made known to the President that any citizen of the United States has been unjustly deprived of his liberty by or under the authority of any foreign government, it shall be the duty of the President forthwith to demand of that government the reasons for such imprisonment, and if it appears to be wrongful and in the violation of the rights of American citizenship, the President shall forthwith demand the release of such citizen, and if the release so demanded is unreasonably delayed or refused, it shall be the duty of the President to use such means, not amounting to acts of war, as he may think necessary and proper to obtain or effectuate such release, and all the facts and proceedings relative thereto shall as soon as practicable be communicated by the President to Congress.

Approved, July 27, 1868.

The “Expatriation Act” Explained

Now this "piece of work" explained. . .

The Preamble—which has no effect of law—is stealthily stating that the state governments were going to be usurped by the 14th amendment political mandates. Mind you: The 14th amendment was set into action the day after said Act was passed. The purported reason was to keep “peace” under the totalitarian style socialist governmental system of which has been in the works since just after the Civil War.

The last 2 sections are just congressional babbling that set forth that the new “citizens of the United States” are going to be protected as if they were natural born or of a de jure character. To enforce this fact there are United States Attorney General opinions that reflect the language of those 2 sections that were written during the Civil War.

The Preamble of the “Expatriation Act” is simply stating: Because the United States gave such people the right of citizenship, the people that were not natural born Americans should—NOT MUST—give up their political allegiance to the several state governments of their states of domicile.

Because Congress can only control what it has constitutional control of:

As Congress did not have the authority over people before the Constitution was enacted: Could Congress make this statement about any American that was natural born, which would include all his descendants?—NO. It has no authority to do so. Could those said people—along with all others that were not pre-Constitution descendants of natural born Americans—be tricked into giving up their de jure (rightful) political allegiance by participating in an alternate body politic set forth by an operation of law under the 14th amendment of the United States?—YES.

Section 1of the Act—being the most important—is stating that one can remove himself or herself from any body politic, country or nation, as it is a natural right of every man and woman. As the fourteenth amendment creates a body politic de facto and a false nation, this Act is pertinent to one just saying no to the governmental system as it exists in America, and is a remedy to remove oneself from that system.

And, it should be noted that this Act does not point out that such citizens are going to be subject to the law of Congress and that all their natural rights are going to be taken away for acting in sedition to the law that is inherent in the original constitutional system. Moreover, as there are some that profess that the term citizen of the United States and American citizen are different in their meaning. In rebuttal of this, one should note that a derivative of the term American citizen is used in section 3 synonymously with the term citizen of the United States from section 2, hence they are the same. /5
Legal Fraud Caused By The Fourteenth Amendment
LEGAL FRAUD as defined by Black's Law Dictionary, sixth edition:

"Acts as though not originating in actual evil design to perpetrate fraud, yet by their tendency to mislead others or to violate confidence, are prohibited by law. Misrepresentation of a material fact made willfully to deceive and acted on by the opposite party to his damages constitutes 'legal fraud'."

The fourteenth amendment of the U.S. Constitution has fundamentally negated the Ninth Amendment in the Bill of Rights for Americans. This has been noted in cases such as U.S. v Cruikshank. Although the justices in cases such as Cruikshank do not clearly come out and say it, it is understood that the nations of the several American republics are in fact not politically autonomous as they once were.

THE FRAUD IS, the several American nations still exist under the fourteenth amendment, however it has been kept a secret from Americans. There has been no public notice given to Americans that U.S. citizenship is voluntary, nor that the several American republics do not maintain lawful national governments as they held under the organic (original) federal constitution. /6\ The scheme has been accomplished with newspeak, which is the clever manipulation and changing of words.

The scheme is commercially based and it is termed: Statism:

"The practice or doctrine of giving a centralized government control over economic planning and policy."

Statism is just another name for Communism.

As the foregoing exposed legal scam is fundamentally an act of genocide, they have protected themselves. Accordingly there are congressionally provided methods to absolve the federal citizenship. You must use such legal methods to Emancipate yourself from the feudal system created by the 14th amendment. If you do not claim one of the several American republics as your country and nation, you will continue to be oppressed by the Elitists' nation which has been created by the cabal. . .

THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT !

For more information on how and why this was done, and also legal information on the emancipation of federal status you may acquire a copy of The Red Amendment from PAC. It goes over the history, purpose and legal effects of the 14th amendment in vivid detail. For more advanced studies, you may acquire the series "Congratulations, you have been well conditioned" from PAC. It is a good primer for people who are new to the movement; moreover, it also furnishes pertinent information for the seasoned veterans.

Become a World Citizen at http://www.worldgovernment.org/reg.html

The UNIVERSAL KINSHIP SOCIETY is most grateful to the Peoples Awareness Coalition for the content above. This information is most powerful and will be a liberator to those with the wisdom and strength to apply it. For more detailed information on how to renounce nation/state citizenship about this empowering organization visit http://www.pacinlaw.org/index.htm

The way out for all honest people in the country?

CITIZENS OF NO COUNTRY

by

John Brant
Worth Magazine
September 1996


Are taxes actually
voluntary? Are licenses
unnecessary? Is
democracy itself illegal?
Yes, yes, and hell yes,
say the people who call
themselves sovereign.

Since I still choose to be enslaved, Richard McDonald suggests,
then I might as well drive. Actually, McDonald doesn't use the
word "drive." Sovereign citizens don't "drive." They "travel"
in their "personal property." The distinction is crucial,
McDonald insists; all words are crucial. It is by paying
fervid, hairsplitting, unending attention to words, he explains,
that sovereign citizens lift free of contractual entanglements
with the slave masters. Entanglements, such as paying income
taxes. Contracts, like a driver's license and license plates.

"The sheriff's deputies all know my car, but I don't get stopped
much anymore," McDonald says amiably, rising from one of his
house's two computer terminals. All around, stacked floor-to-
ceiling in this quirky, rambling compound in the rugged canyons
near Simi Valley in an unincorporated area of Ventura County,
California, are thousands of law and reference books. They give
off a pleasantly musty odor, which overpowers competing essences
of house cat. Symphony music issues from speakers wired above
the labyrinthine floors. Live oaks grow through the middle of
rooms. Jeremiads against gun control glower from the knotty-pine
walls.

"It's been a long time since they tried to give me a ticket,"
McDonald goes on, "but sometimes they like to get up real close
behind me and let me know they're there." He grins foxily. "So,
we might as well use your car."

We leave the dank gloom of the main building, crossing a rickety
foot bridge over a bone-dry gully. McDonald turns back to the
house. "Back in the '40s, a religious cult built this place as
their church," he explains. "Abbott and Costello and other
Hollywood stars used to come out here." He gestures beyond the
house, to the baked vacant hills swelling south toward Topanga
Canyon. "Charles Manson did his thing on Sharon Tate the next
canyon over," he says with a glimmer of proprietary pride.
"Sometimes I look up from my desk and see a bobcat walking
through the yard. At night we get coyotes. It's a nice quiet
place to study and do research."


Citizens of No Country:
Page 1 of 15


From early morning to late at night, 12 to 14 hours a day,
McDonald carries on his research. Sitting at his computers,
studying the old law books he buys by the lot at auctions and
estate sales, pouring out his interpretations in cranky,
obsessively referenced essays that run over the Internet, he
works at promulgating the radical, confounding, darkly seductive
concept of sovereign citizenship. "Once in a great while, I'll
call Richard at two in the morning with a question and catch him
playing solitaire," says Jeffrey Thayer, a sovereign-citizenship
advocate in Austin, Texas. "But mostly he's always working."

Sovereign, or state, citizenship is the fastest-growing,
potentially most far-reaching, yet least publicized arm of the
antigovernment patriots' movement. Sovereigns share the central
tenets of militant groups such as the Montana Freemen -- that the
federal government is inherently, premeditatively, and
malevolently corrupt and waging veiled but remorseless war
against the American people -- but differ sharply in their means
of resistance. Although sovereigns vehemently oppose any form of
gun control, and most own guns themselves, they deny affiliation
with paramilitary groups. They insist they are dedicated to
peaceful achievement of their aims. State citizenship draws its
adherents mainly from the cities and suburbs and appeals to
increasing numbers of women and minorities. It is the vehicle by
which thousands of disaffected yet engaged Americans -- most of
whom are considerably removed from the gun-nut, white-
supremacist stereotype -- wage jihad against the federal mammon.

Seen through the sovereign lens, each service, regulation,
enfranchisement, law, or levy the government offers or exacts is
not a term of the social contract but a gambit by which the
government deviously seeks to extend its power and subjugate the
individual to its criminal will. The sovereign citizen combats
this by severing virtually all ties to government and disclaiming
virtually all sources of official documentation. The struggle is
carried out publicly, first through exhaustive study of the legal
foundations of the perceived tyranny and then through the
exploitation of every loophole and means of redress that that
legal system offers. Due process is played out to the furthest
possible extent. A massive, ongoing battle of paperwork is
joined with federal, state, and local officials.

Most often working under the guidance of an experienced sovereign
mentor, the fledgling state citizen attempts to renounce income
taxes, a driver's license and license plates, vehicle
registration, zip codes, a Social Security number, voter
registration, credit cards, insurance policies, interest-bearing
bank accounts, Federal Reserve notes, "usurious" investments in
securities, even the common phrasing of names and addresses --
any conceivable wedge the government might drive into one's life.
Once these bonds are carefully broken, the argument runs, the
sovereign's civic identity resembles that envisioned by the
framers of the Constitution. His "status" has become that of a
"state" rather than a "U.S." citizen.


Citizens of No Country:
Page 2 of 15


Sovereign citizens defend their actions by citing a mountain of
generally obscure, dated, tortuously interpreted legal statutes.
Even the most modestly educated sovereign becomes a rabid, self-
styled legal scholar, tapping out voluminous, arcanely phrased
writs on his word processor and downloading fellow state
citizens' documents from the Internet. The most articulate and
closely reasoned of this research arouses increasingly frequent
headaches among judges, assessors, and prosecuting attorneys.
The great bulk of it, however, gets dismissed by those same
officials as unintelligible rant.

"I don't know of any U.S. Supreme Court decision that's upheld
anything they stand by," says Jesse Choper, the Earl Warren
Professor of Public Law at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the
University of California at Berkeley. "The opening lines of the
14th Amendment make it very clear: All native-born or
naturalized persons are citizens both of the nation and of the
state where they reside. Sure, it's possible for them to
renounce citizenship. They can even try to move to another
country, if another country would have them. But ultimately, so
what? What are the consequences of what they do? Whether alien
or not, they're still subject to the laws of the country."

But to an astonishing degree, sovereigns defy what they consider
the vain warnings and unlawful judgments of the establishment.
Resourcefully employing computer networks, self-published
newsletters and magazines, shortwave radio, and community-access
cable television, they completely bypass traditional media and
political institutions. State citizens inhabit a sprawling,
intellectually crude, but technologically sophisticated
underground, where far right meets far left, radical
environmentalists find common ground with radical gun-rights
advocates, and New Age healers research conspiracy theories
alongside evangelical home schoolers.

No accurate head count of sovereign citizens is available, but
sovereigns claim that "jural societies" -- self-governing state-
citizen communities -- are now chartered in every county in
California. Active communities of a thousand or more are
thriving in the Los Angeles area and in New York City. "Common-
law" courts -- self-styled juries of sovereigns passing judgment
on what they hold to be criminal incursions by government on
their rights -- have been established in 30 states.

"In California alone, I'd say there are over 100,000 people
actively practicing sovereignty," says Jeffrey Thayer. "I've
presented the material to groups in just about every part of the
country -- every place from Hopi reservations, to Amish farms, to
Marin County in the suburbs of San Francisco. I've turned down
several offers to franchise my instruction. Over the last year,
it has grown beyond my wildest expectations."

"We get all kinds," agrees McDonald as we continue down Box
Canyon toward lunch in a Canoga Park coffee shop. Carefully
braking down the switchback curves, I darkly imagine McDonald's
"status" to be infectious; I keep tensely checking the rearview
mirror for sheriff's deputies. "We get bankers, we get dentists,
we get computer programmers, we get long-haul truck drivers." He
shrugs, gazing absently down to the vast, smog-smudged plain of
the northern San Fernando Valley. "Everybody knows something's
wrong."


Citizens of No Country:
Page 3 of 15


In a few hours, McDonald will board a plane for Dallas, where he
is to conduct a weekend introductory seminar on state
citizenship. He appears regularly on a local cable-TV program.
He hosts radio shows, writes magazine articles, debates publicly,
and conducts a booming Internet business. In the Los Angeles
area alone, hundreds of people have paid nearly $800 a head for
his state-citizenship kits, which consist of a copy of the state
constitution, hundreds of pages of laws and statutes deemed
pertinent to the sovereign cause, dozens of essays and
commentaries on those laws, and copies of the scores of forms and
letters that the aspiring sovereign must file with various
government agencies. Unlike Thayer, McDonald has fashioned a
kind of franchise for his instruction, establishing a network of
20 "state-citizen service centers" staffed by former students in
California, Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania,
Washington State, and Wyoming.

A gnome like, 67-year-old ex-security guard who dropped out of
school in the eighth grade, an autodidact from Chicago whose
conversation is larded with "ya know?'s" and "ya follow me?'s,"
McDonald makes an emphatically unlikely godfather to any
movement. One telling measure of sovereign citizenship's appeal
is that so many workaday folks are willing to look beyond this
raffish teacher, his Adams Family house, and his difficult,
convoluted pedagogy; that so many mall-wandering, Net-surfing,
freeway-cruising Americans hunger to enlist in an arduous,
unremitting war of attrition against their own government.

"The powers that be are infinitely intelligent," McDonald says.
"They know the American people are incredibly gullible and
sheeplike, but they also know there's a limit to how far they'll
be pushed. They know exactly how hard to tighten the screws and
still leave room to let off the pressure. That's why the laws
are written the way they are: to give people who want it an
avenue of escape. But you have to make the effort. Ignorance is
no excuse. Everything they tell you in the courtroom is true,"
McDonald concludes with a smirking grin. "They just don't tell
you the whole truth."

Other than signing up with the Austin board of realtors and a
support group for macrobiotic vegetarians, Cathy Leman had never
been much of a joiner. Growing up in Louisiana, she'd always
felt a little alienated, a little distanced from what her friends
were doing. Not that she wasn't popular or couldn't blend in
when she wanted to. She was smart, she was attractive in a dark-
eyed, leggy way, and she'd never been afraid of standing on her
own. She just always liked playing the edges.

Hitting the wild early '70's in her wild early 20's, Leman moved
to Texas and took a job dancing at an exclusive gentlemen's club.
Her first week she made $1,100, with nothing withheld, nothing
declared. The IRS seemed as irrelevant to her as the Campfire
Girls, as distant as the day she'd collect Social Security. And
the job didn't scare her, not even that endless moment before the
music started, when she stood alone on the stage, sensing all
those men's eyes raking her. She always liked playing the edges.


Citizens of No Country:
Page 4 of 15


Before long she left the club, but she never got around to paying
her income taxes. She always meant to, but could never quite
pull it together. She moved a lot -- San Antonio, Dallas, then
Austin. She began to settle down. She got her real-estate
license and was doing okay, moving houses in the booming Texas
hill country, but she still never got to those 1040s. Each day,
she went to her mailbox with a wiggle of anxiety. But her luck
held. They hadn't caught up with her. She kept working, kept
vaguely worrying, kept looking around and thinking. Gradually,
her anxiety over taxes boiled into anger.

Something had gone terribly wrong with America. It was so
obvious her hard-earned dollars wouldn't go to pay for anything
real; they would just go to pay the interest on the debt
criminally created by the Federal Reserve, none of whose members
any American citizen had ever voted into power and which was
really run by a secret group of international bankers. Leman
understood how it worked. Back in her club days, she'd watched
the local cops roust the girls. She remembered the look in the
cops' eyes, knowing that these little dancers in G-strings were
making twice as much money as they ever would. So the cops had
helped themselves to the girls' cash. Who was going to stop
them? That was how it worked. If it was happening on the local
level, Leman thought, imagine what was going on in Washington.

She started looking into conspiracy theories. She read the
Constitution and saw how the nation was designed to be a republic
in which individual rights were always paramount and
representatives served at the will of the electorate -- not a
democracy, in which majority rule inevitably slid into mob rule
and demagogues found the masses easy to manipulate and subjugate.
Democracy had been foisted on America by the illuminati. The
illuminati were this secret society of European bankers who at
the time of the American Revolution saw that something powerful
and dangerous was happening in the colonies and sent this German,
Adam Weishaupt, over to subvert it .... She didn't sweat the
details, but it had all been fully researched and documented.

She learned how things really headed down the tubes around the
time of the Civil War. The 14th Amendment, supposedly giving the
former slaves citizenship, was really a setup, a power grab by
the federal government and the same international bankers -- the
Rothschilds, most prominently -- who'd been pulling the strings
all along. After the 14th Amendment, it was just one sorry
development after another: going off the gold standard, which
doomed the nation to eventual bankruptcy; the Federal Reserve
Act; income tax; the Social Security Act; the Buck Act; the
United Nations; gun control. They just kept tightening the
screws. It was all there in the books, if anybody looked up from
their TV's long enough to bother reading them.


Citizens of No Country:
Page 5 of 15


But what scared her the most was how they had everybody off doing
their little jobs in their little boxes. No one person had the
consciousness to see the whole picture. Why not? Because the
corporation, the state, wouldn't let them. People got into this
machine state of mind. No one really looked at one another
anymore; no one really listened. Everybody was caught in the
steel jaws of the machine.

Leman decided to dance clear of those jaws. She started
attending de-taxing meetings at Rocky Bruno's house. Rocky was a
kindred spirit, a New Age healer, into colonic irrigation. Rocky
had had a moment of clarity when a neighbor called child
protective services on him and his wife, saying they had withheld
medical treatment from their kid. There was nothing to the
charge. Rocky started holding meetings at his house. A lot of
good people came from all over the Austin area.

There were the Lusks, Tom and LaVerne, who were totally committed
to the movement. Tom was a veteran airline pilot, LaVerne a
flight attendant with 20 years' seniority. It would have been
easy for the Lusks to shut their eyes and pay their taxes, but
for years they'd refused to play along with the IRS. Now they
were facing foreclosure on their lovely home in northwest Austin.
"I've been to the Libertarian meetings," Tom would say in
disgust. "The Libertarians want to work within the system and
fix it. The only thing I want to do is take the system out
around back and shoot it."

And there were the Murrills: James Willard, Lucille, and their
grown son James Reginald. The group's only black family, they
were churchgoing, spiritual people. James Willard had worked for
the government all his life -- an Air Force career man, then the
post office and the prison system. He'd seen all the waste and
deceit firsthand. "Divide and conquer," James Willard would say.
"That's what they're always putting over on us. White against
black, man against woman, Democrat against Republican. Why is
that?, you wonder."

Leman could share her outrage at the system with these people.
They'd discuss principled, constructive ways to resist. They
were maybe a shade too straight and old-time religious for her
taste -- she was more into Native American-style spirituality --
but they were definitely on the beam as far as the government was
concerned. Most important, they weren't a bunch of macho jerks,
running around the hills with guns, talking about overthrowing
the government when they didn't even have the brains to complete
their own tax forms, let alone figure out that income taxes were
illegal in the first place.

The group would get together at Rocky's and talk, kick around
ideas. But it all might have just stayed talk, and they might
have all fragged off into their own little worlds, if Jeffrey
Thayer hadn't arrived in Austin in the summer of 1994.


Citizens of No Country:
Page 6 of 15


Thayer was one of the hottest speakers on the sovereign lecture
circuit. It was Thayer, a Dartmouth grad and former top gun
lawyer in L.A., who'd helped formulate the elaborate language
state citizens use to ward off the feds. "Jeffrey ben-Richard,
House of Thayer, Sui Juris, Ingenuitas juris et de jure" was how
his business card read. It might be flowery and stilted, he
explained, but in the shadowy world of laws and contracts, the
specific meaning of each word, each letter, was crucial. The so-
called normal phrasing of names and addresses and zip codes was
in fact a lure to suck unwitting U.S. citizens deeper into a web
of lies, deceit, control, and slavery. This language explicitly,
unequivocally declared your status to be sovereign. It served
notice to the authorities that you weren't buying into their word
games.

Thayer had also helped devise the idea of jural societies or
townships, chartered communities of sovereigns that were totally
self-governing and truly republican -- all decisions were made by
unanimous vote. In 1992, he'd left L.A. for Santa Fe, New
Mexico, where he'd organized one of the country's most successful
jural societies. Ultra-enlightened, cosmic-muffin Santa Fe was
the furthest possible psychic distance from Bo Gritz territory.
Now Thayer wanted to start a township in similarly progressive
Austin.

Leman and the group went to hear him talk. He looked like an
Austin guitar player, with his long gray-streaked brown hair tied
back in a neat ponytail, his well kept spade of a goatee, his hip
vest, and his easy manner. Thayer started out by attacking the
stereotypes. "We're not gun nuts," he said. "We're not white
supremacists. We're not woman-haters or -subjugators. We're not
evangelical Christians. We're not even America-firsters. Is a
black kid in South Africa sovereign? You bet he is. I'm not
interested in continuing something that isn't more inclusive.
I'm not interested in being angry or confrontational. I'm not
interested in running around waving guns. There are too many
people waving guns around already.

"Have you ever noticed that it's the men who are all gung ho on
state citizenship, who make a show of giving up their license
plates?" Thayer said. "But that it's usually the wife driving
home with a bunch of screaming kids who gets stopped by the
police and has the car towed out from under her?"

Talk like that persuaded Leman to spend $2,000 on Thayer's House
of Common Law course. He handed out a six-inch-thick stack of
laws to read, letters to write, forms to file. Thayer said that
if it looked difficult and imposing, good. It was imposing. It
was difficult and could even be dangerous, if you made a mistake,
if you left an opening for the government to come and get you.
Sovereign citizenship wasn't for everybody, he warned. He quoted
Carlos Castenada: You had to be impeccable. A warrior. You had
to follow a path with heart. You had to adopt a different state
of mind. You had to realize that you weren't disobeying any
laws. You were simply declaring that, through a careful reading
of the government's own codes and statutes, you had determined
that the laws duplicitously enslaving 14th Amendment, corporate,
U.S. citizens simply didn't apply to you. By rejecting a Social
Security card, voter registration, a driver's license, a marriage
license, a regular bank account, a credit card -- all of it --
you were declaring yourself beyond them.


Citizens of No Country:
Page 7 of 15


But it was frightening, the idea of cutting loose -- although
Leman, of course, was much less hooked in than others in the
group. She was single, had no kids, was not paying income taxes,
and had never vested herself in the Social Security scam. She
wasn't like the Lusks with their house and legal troubles, or
Rocky with his family, or the Murrills with their disability
pensions and advancing age. If they had the guts to do it, why
shouldn't she?

She found the sovereign life in general exhilarating and
interesting. It was like a knob had turned in her brain, and
every thing that had been murky and confusing suddenly snapped
into focus. Oklahoma City, for example. There was no question
in her mind that Oklahoma City was a giant, ghastly setup by the
feds. How else could you explain all the FBI and Treasury
agents' being "out of the office" that morning? It had all been
orchestrated to discredit the movement, to make the mainstream
think that they were all gun nuts. Leman still wasn't drawn
toward the militia, but the idea didn't intimidate her either.
She wasn't afraid of guns. She owned guns herself, a shotgun and
a pistol. If more people had guns, like in Switzerland, then
people would act better toward one another. They'd show more
respect.

So now, on a cold Friday evening in early spring, Leman sits in
an office-park conference room with Rocky and the Lusks and the
Murrills and Jeff Thayer and the other 20 members of the Austin
township. They've reached a crucial point in the community's
development: their first common-law jury trial. A common-law
jury, Thayer explains, is a rightful function of a free-standing
township. It's a jury of peers -- real peers, personal
acquaintances of the party involved, not the sullen, sad-sack
crew of distracted strangers that lawyers stacked in supposedly
legitimate courtrooms.

Their first case involves the Lusks. Over the past year, the
Lusks' legal problems have deepened. The IRS foreclosed on their
house and sold it at auction. They impounded Tom's car. These
actions were blatant crimes against the jural society's common
law, of course -- theft and trespassing, as clear as cable
reception or a baby's conscience. The IRS had no jurisdiction,
because the Lusks weren't U.S. citizens. They'd declared
themselves outside the federal district.

Of course, so had the Freemen in Montana. The Lusks were in the
same situation as those cowboys, really: rightfully occupying
property unlawfully foreclosed. Unlike the Freemen, however, the
Austin township wasn't going to seize TV cameras or frighten
reporters -- as much as those lying lackeys deserved it -- or
antagonize their neighbors. No, they were going to respond in a
principled manner, according to the Old Testament Mosaic law, in
the true spirit of the Constitution. They would use words as
weapons.


Citizens of No Country:
Page 8 of 15


For hours on end, the words flow. Computer engineers, yoga
teachers, a former attorney, a retired civil servant, a real-
estate agent all weighing and parsing and polishing and chiseling
the words, hammering out unanimously agreed upon republican
truths instead of coerced, diluted, democratic "justice." Leman,
characteristically, sits at the edge of the room, away from the
table, letting Thayer and the others do most of the talking.
Every now and then, she chips in with a bit of real-estate
expertise.

Break times come and go, and not until Rocky's kid comes in with
a pizza does Leman realize nobody's bothered with dinner. Now
they're discussing damages -- to be paid out by the criminal
government in troy ounces of gold, not the Monopoly money printed
by the Federal Reserve -- when suddenly Leman remembers her early
days as a sovereign, when she was still haunted by doubts about
the path she'd chosen.

For an instant, she even imagines how this trial might appear to
an outsider: a bunch of lunatics arguing about what Solomon
would've done if his house had been foreclosed on. Grown women
and men demanding with straight faces that the government own up
to its sins and pay for them in gold. Who are they trying to
kid? Some bought-and-paid-for judge would take one glance at
this writ they were slaving over, laugh, and toss it into the
trash. They might as well be home with the rest of the losers in
front of their V-chipped TV's.

What's going to happen to the Lusks? What's going to happen to
all of us?

But Thayer keeps taking them through the writ, word by word. "If
the judge refuses us, we'll just take it to the Court of
Appeals," he says quietly. "If Appellate won't hear us, we'll
take it to the Supreme Court. And if the Supreme Court refuses
to hear us, we'll just keep going. We'll go to the World Court
at the Hague, if we have to. We have the law on our side. We
will be heard."

Leman relaxes, letting herself fall back under the spell of the
words. For a fleeting moment, it's as if she were back at the
club, waiting to step onto the stage, sensing the eyes raking
her, pushing the edges, tasting pure freedom building into pure
energy, no one else to hang onto, no one else to blame.

A bitter, massive, mutual denial fuels the war between the
sovereigns and the government. Just as sovereign citizens refuse
to acknowledge the legitimacy of the federal government, so the
government refuses to acknowledge the sovereigns' very existence.
In the taxonomy of the IRS, for example, state citizens don't
rate their own category but are lumped in with the larger
classification of tax protesters. And tax protesters, IRS
spokesman Anthony Burke insists, raise barely a blip on the
agency's screen.

"Over and over, the courts have held that the tax protesters'
arguments are spurious and without merit," Burke says. "And
traditionally, tax protesters have represented a very small,
almost minuscule percentage of the tax gap -- the difference
between what taxpayers owe and what the service collects."


Citizens of No Country:
Page 9 of 15


When I describe the extent of the sovereign operations in Austin
and Los Angeles and how rapidly the movement appears to be
growing, Burke seems unimpressed. "You can lose perspective," he
cautions. "It even happens with our own agents sometimes. They
get wrapped up in an especially challenging case, and they come
running to tell us we've got to put together a task force to deal
with this huge, urgent, nationwide problem. But then they calm
down and examine the facts. They see that, when you take a
national perspective, as the service must, their case isn't
really such a huge problem after all."

Sovereigns respond to the government's seeming dismissal with
increasing boldness. In general, state citizens regard
government representatives less as bogeymen to be feared than as
symbols of a beleaguered, fraying, surprisingly ineffectual
empire. A rapidly widening gulf separates the sovereign island
from the establishment mainland. "One of my big challenges,"
says Steve Jones, a state citizen who works closely with Richard
McDonald in Los Angeles, "is not to be too condescending toward
people who, whether out of ignorance or fear, still choose to be
U.S. citizens."

This growing contempt, ironically, has led to a decline in what
has been state citizens' signature characteristic: paranoia.
Sovereigns, for instance, despise reporters nearly as much as
they do IRS auditors. They assume that mainstream journalists
serve as direct mouthpieces for the establishment and that if by
some miracle an unbiased story got written -- if a reporter told
"truth" -- it would never get published or broadcast. Yet,
throughout my travels in sovereign country, sources spoke with
unvarying candor about their flouting of the law. In dozens of
interviews, my credentials as a journalist were challenged only
once.

"I never lock my doors," Richard McDonald says. "Why should I?
I've got nothing to hide. Everything we're doing is perfectly
lawful. I'd say the same thing to you whether you're an
undercover agent or a reporter or someone who's really interested
in becoming a state citizen."

"We don't waste a lot of energy looking up in the sky for black
helicopters," agrees Alan Bird, a close associate of McDonald's
in Los Angeles County. "Personally, I've gotten away from
worrying about conspiracies or trying to puzzle out the big
picture. I don't know if we're in this mess due to people being
deliberately evil or if it's just been a matter of business as
usual, of people in power naturally wanting to perpetuate their
power. What difference does it make? I'm not concerned about how
well organized the cabal is. I'm just concerned about my own
response."


Citizens of No Country:
Page 10 of 15


Alan Bird is a 39-year-old husband and father of three young
children. He is crisply articulate and has a sharp, analytic
turn of mind. The rigidity in his character is softened by his
surfer's dirty-blond hair and the offhand ease of a longtime
Californian. In 1993, he abandoned a prosperous career in
mortgage banking to commit himself to the sovereign movement.

Bird graduated from Pepperdine University and worked in the
aerospace industry before moving into mortgage banking. He
married and started a family. All the while he felt a political
restlessness, a dissatisfaction that led him to study but
ultimately reject mainstream conservatism, the John Birch
Society, and the Libertarian Party. "I swore to myself if I ever
found a system of beliefs that answered all my questions, that
provided a legal basis for effective action, that I knew in my
heart to be true, then I would follow it completely, no matter
what the consequences," Bird says. "I've found that system in
state citizenship."

Bird began studying with Richard McDonald. He quickly became
fascinated by the intricate workings of the law and by McDonald's
rough-hewn but seemingly brilliant grasp of it. He even
developed a fondness for McDonald's ornery style. When Bird had
a question, McDonald would answer by throwing a law book at him
and snarling, "Here, look it up yourself!" Undaunted, Bird kept
grilling his mentor. He felt at times like a squirrel gathering
nuts. But the nuts, Bird soon became convinced, had sprouted
into a towering forest of deceit, coercion, and encroaching
enslavement.

Bird makes his specific stand on the most hallowed of Southern
California ground: the highway. In 1992, he mailed his driver's
license and plates back to the Department of Motor Vehicles. For
two years, he roamed the roads and freeways like a sovereign
Flying Dutchman, with a bill of sale displayed in the window of
his '65 Mustang in lieu of license plates. He says he was
stopped twice by the authorities but never ticketed or arrested.
Finally, in September 1994, Bird was driving in Ventura County.
In his rear view mirror, he watched a patrol car do a U-turn,
hustle up on his tail, and follow him for seven miles. Finally,
the siren blipped and the roof light began to spin.

"Sorry, I don't have one," Bird said when the deputy asked for
his license. "I sent it back to the DMV. Would you like to see
the documentation?"

The deputy smiled as he wrote out the citation. "No thanks." He
ripped off the ticket and handed it to Bird "Sign this, please."

"If I don't, will you take me to jail?"

The deputy's eyes flickered as he checked the angles of the
windows and the positioning of hands, trying to guess Bird's
intent. "If it comes to that, sir."

"Very well. I'll affix my seal to it" -- only unwitting United
States citizens "sign" documents, thereby surrendering their
rights -- "but I am only doing so under duress."

The deputy relaxed. "Tell it to the judge, sir."


Citizens of No Country:
Page 11 of 15


Bird, who had studied every California motor-vehicle law dating
from the turn of the century, did so. He argued that the state
required a Social Security number for an individual to be issued
a driver's license, but that the Social Security system was
voluntary. Therefore, if he declined a Social Security number
because of his political and religious convictions, it was a
legal impossibility for him to be penalized for not carrying a
driver's license. To his amazement and delight, the court
agreed. After a half-day trial, Ventura Municipal Court judge
Thomas Hutchins found Bird not guilty -- on grounds of
insufficient evidence -- of driving without a license, driving
without registration, and having no registration in his
possession. The acquittal made news throughout Southern
California and raised jubilation in state-citizen communities
nationwide.

"The district attorney tried to shrug it off, saying that an
inexperienced, overworked prosecutor got sandbagged and made a
technical error," says Bird proudly. "They wanted to contain the
damage by writing me off as a loose cannon, a guy with too much
time on his hands. They tried to trivialize what had happened.
But that prosecutor never proved I needed a license. The truth
was I simply argued my case better."

Four months later, Bird was again cited. This time he was
convicted of failing to display front and rear license plates,
and his car was impounded. Heartened by his earlier victory and
still flushed from facing down the prosecutor in his own
courtroom, Bird appealed the judgment. He lost again. He is
appealing to a higher court.

Alan Bird's existential leap against the Power seems in some ways
admirable; his dedication, high-mindedness, and rigor represents
whatever good sovereign citizenship might have to offer. But, at
the same time, he represents what's most pernicious and wildly
wrongheaded about the movement. Bird claims little interest in
conspiracies, for instance, when in fact his tacit faith in the
Big Evil informs all his actions. For without that evil -- the
existence of which can ultimately be neither proved nor disproved
-- Bird's resistance loses all honor and validity. He becomes
just another cranky citizen with a grievance, taking easy,
constitutionally guaranteed shots at a sprawling system deeply,
perhaps inherently, but not criminally flawed.

As with fundamentalist Christians whose love of God is rooted in
hatred of the devil, state citizens stake their salvation on the
presence of a shadow. And, as with many fundamentalists, the
sovereigns' image of hell is far more vivid than their conception
of heaven. State citizens spit out rapid, well-prepared ripostes
to every challenge I threw at their teachings. When I asked what
the world would look like if they prevailed, however, they turned
strangely tongue-tied. Some stammered platitudes about small
utopian communities in which untrammeled personal freedom would
be balanced by unending personal responsibility. They were
clearly relieved, however, when the conversation returned to the
abominations of government, against which they were pitted in a
grim yet glorious holy war. Hell seemed infinitely more
familiar, authentic, and interesting.


Citizens of No Country:
Page 12 of 15


Jared Held, a 42-year-old recording engineer and Internet
consultant in Studio City, California, tells a state-citizen
bedtime story.

A genially schizoid blend of music industry longhair and
practicing Mormon, Held claims not to have paid federal taxes
since 1974. The story starts with Held sitting in his apartment
one day in 1993, talking with a friend. Suddenly his door buzzer
sounds.

"I press the intercom, and it's officer so-and-so from the
Internal Revenue Service," recalls Held with a gleeful glint.
"My friend says, `I better go,' but I tell him, `No, no, it's
okay.' I say into the intercom, `Please state your business in
writing and mail it properly. I will read it and make a timely
and appropriate response.'

"A minute later, the buzzer rings again. I push the button.
`Mr. Held, I am here on extremely urgent IRS business, and it
would be very much within your best interest if you come down and
discuss it with me.' I say no again. But by now, my friend is
getting really uncomfortable and wants to leave.

"So we're walking downstairs, and there's this agent. The
building manager has buzzed him in. My friend leaves. The
agent's confident, he's coming on strong. I tell him I want to
tape-record our conversation. He says, `You have to notify us
ten days in advance if you want to tape-record our
conversation.'"

Held slaps his knees and rocks forward, laughing. "So, of
course, I answer, `How can I notify you ten days in advance if
you show up unannounced?' Then he changes his tack. `Is that
your Volvo parked in front?' I say, yes, that's my Volvo, but
it's not registered in my name. That quiets him down. Then I
start playing with him a little.

"'You've sworn to uphold and defend democracy, right?' The guy
puffs up his chest and says, yeah, sure, damn straight. And I
say, `Have you read the Constitution lately? Our form of
government is a republic, not a democracy. It looks like you've
been defending the wrong government.' The guy backed off after
that. Before he left, he told me that I'd be dealing with
another agent from then on. He said he was going to resign from
the service. I haven't heard a word from the IRS since."

A sovereign citizen could delightedly imagine the loutish evil
revenuer and Jared Held as Grasshopper. The evil man attacks,
and Grasshopper, the sovereign, uses nifty kung-fu moves to
induce the revenuer to defeat himself with his own dark energy.
Afterward, Grasshopper kindly and humorously instructs his
vanquished opponent. The revenuer goes away enlightened.
Grasshopper bows and walks back upstairs to his computer.


Citizens of No Country:
Page 13 of 15


A burdened, tax paying, fully licensed, and insured U.S. citizen
might envision a different script. In this version, the action
is ongoing. Jared Held is still living on borrowed -- more
accurately, stolen -- time. A better-prepared IRS agent simply
hasn't gotten around to him yet. The story ends not with
Grasshopper bowing and heading back up to his computer but with a
tax chiseler being led off in handcuffs, watching his Volvo
slowly rise on the tow-truck hook.

"Our government's gotten so big," says Gail Reese, deputy
secretary of taxation and revenue for the state of New Mexico,
"that if you decide you don't want to play along with it, you can
go for a long time before anybody catches on."

Reese has recently begun the protracted, delicate, and difficult
process of settling New Mexico's business with the Santa Fe
jural-society township. She explains that she's received a
respectful letter from the township requesting a "dialogue" with
her agency.

"Maybe the most sincere and ethical of these people really
consider themselves utopians, not so different from the Amish or
Quakers," she muses. "They picture themselves living out on the
frontier, taking care of themselves and each other, neither
expecting anything from the government nor owing it anything. A
nice picture. Except where's the frontier today? America used
to have all this room. We just don't have that much room
anymore."

Kristi Daniell, a 40-year-old telemarketing executive for a major
West Coast bank, drives up Box Canyon Road on a bright Sunday
morning in midwinter, bound for the weekly state citizens'
introductory meeting at Richard McDonald's house. The gleaming
flagships of the great retail chains are just opening for
business on Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Along the arroyos and dry
washes, soft-bellied middle-aged men in blinding shades of Lycra
pedal thousand-dollar mountain bikes. High above, hawks drift
the thermals, and coyotes drowse on ridgelines in the early sun.

Daniell drives distractedly, trying to follow the cryptic
directions she scribbled down the day before. Follow Box Canyon
Road to the carcass of the old school bus parked on the right
....

There's the bus, and there's the rutted dirt road, the oak trees
tucked into a cleavage between steep brown bluffs. A long, low
stone-and-beam building pokes out from the trees. Daniell's
throat tightens as she climbs out of her car. The enormity of
what she's considering -- giving up the taxes, the licenses, the
Social Security, the whole tangled nest of plastic and
accreditation and identification that she knows is the problem,
but from which she also draws such comfort, such deep American
confidence that everything ultimately will be all right --
suddenly strikes.


Citizens of No Country:
Page 14 of 15


In her mind's eye, she jumps back into her car, cranks into
reverse, and fishtails away from this whole creepy scene.
Tomorrow morning it'll all just be a funny story she can tell her
friends at the office.

Daniell shakes off the vision and continues walking tentatively
across the dry creek bed to the spooky sign -- YOU ARE ENTERING A
SACRED PLACE -- and into the, well, compound. She keeps walking
because everything isn't all right. Because the Stars and
Stripes that John Wayne died for in all those late shows flies,
in fact, over a land of shadows.

Daniell enters the dark book-lined house to meet Citizen Richard
J. McDonald, Sui Juris -- to take her first free, halting steps
toward certainty and sovereignty.



# # #


[This essay was sent by Richard McDonald to Paul Andrew
Mitchell, who edited the essay for punctuation and spelling by
carefully comparing the electronic version with the hard-copy
original as found in Worth magazine, September 1996 issue.

For more information on this subject, on taxes, and on the sickening state of our country, and what the real country should look like go here.

Thanks J from San Angelo for turning me on to this information...

Depth in the youth today..

Many today feel as if the youth is hopeless, and does not care anylonger. I know not, for many reasons, but here is a good example from a 18 year old named Larry that has much depth and reason, this being self evident by this video that he made. Yes, our youth do hold much promise, and many of them have emotional depth beyond many older ones today.

All you young ones out there, it is time for you to stand as well, to take your place amongst the change, for you are needed to...


Yes, "Apathy is our war", sadly....

'Self Defense' Blinds Us - Israel Involved In 911?

'Self Defense'
Blinds Us - Israel
Involved In 911?
By Henry Makow PhD
8-13-6

Governments have always invented threats in order to pursue aggression and make their people sacrifice their lives, wealth and freedom.

If you believe Israel and the West are under attack by Islamic extremism, you are being fooled. There is growing evidence that Israel was involved in the 9-11 attack and is plotting new terror scares to keep the GOP in power.

A Report of the German Intelligence Service (BND) says Israel's Mossad helped the "Arab terrorists." Germany has not denied that this report is authentic and no one has been able to refute it.

"These investigations disclosed in late May of 2001 that an attack was to be made against certain specified targets in the American cities of Washington and New York. But it was apparent that the Mossad was not only fully aware of these attacks well in advance but actually, though their own agents inside these Arab groups, assisted in the planning and the eventual execution of the attacks.

That the Israeli government was fully aware of these attack is absolutely certain and proven. Diplomatic traffic between the Israeli Embassy in the Federal Republic and the Israeli Foreign Office made it very clear that Minister President Sharon was fully aware of this pending attack and urgently wished that no attempt was made to prevent the attacks."

On August 6,2001, the German ambassador Ischinger informed George W. Bush of the exact time and place of the attack. Bush thanked the ambassador and said he was aware of it. Later the US Government demanded that Germany keep this warning secret. This report has been around since 2002 but I was just made aware of it. (http://www.physics911.net/germanintel.htm)

The "Voice of the White House" Friday produced a transcript of a telephone conversation between the Israeli Embassy and AIPAC, the Israel lobby. The speakers discuss fabricating terror attacks and scares in order to influence the November elections:

"B. Well then, why not have these attacks aimed at American aircraft? Where would they attack from?

A. Say at the perimeter fence lines at airports. Or better still, why not a plan cooked up to smuggle explosives on board transatlantic flights to or from America? Something clever that will catch the public imagination.

B. That stupid bomb in the shoe routine?

A. Don't knock it. It worked, didn't it? We can always find some suckers with a bent to this we can fill up with real enthusiasm and then turn them in, complete with plans. They actually believe they are going to paradise and fuck virgins and we have another propaganda coup. Let's give this some effort. You know, a terrified public will not want to change horses in midstream. So far, the Rove people have a good line: If you're against the Republicans, you're encouraging the evil terrorists shtick."

http://www.rense.com//general73/red.htm

I know this transcript sounds comical and contrived and is too good to be true. Some people think it is a forgery and they might be right. I believe it is a smoking gun. Israelis can be very arrogant and careless. (See Victor Ostrovsky's book, "The Other Side of Deception") Make up your own mind.

LEBANON

According to a recent editorial in "The Jerusalem Post," Israel "is fighting the terrorist arm of the megalomaniacal regime in Iran, which has openly proclaimed its ambition to commit genocide against the Jewish nation. If this were not enough, the same regime wants to dominate the Muslim world, and from that base, subdue the entire West."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? cid=1154525841985&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Zionists can repeat the mantras "terrorist" and "right to self defense" but who are they fooling but themselves?

Self defense? Israel has lost about six people a year to Hezbollah since leaving Lebanon in May 2000. It loses almost 500 people to traffic accidents annually. They exchanged prisoner with Hezbollah in 2004. Why not now?

Because this war is designed to create the conditions for the bogus "Clash of Civilizations" that the Zio cons have been demanding. Israeli war crimes and atrocities are designed to fan the flames.

Lebanon is another front in the Iraq War that the Zio Cons think needs to be expanded. Prime Minister Olmert even says, "We are fighting Iran and Syria."

Young Americans and Israelis are cannon fodder for globalist plans to build a "new Middle East," one that may not even include Israel.

Iran probably has nuclear weapons. If they don't, they are guilty of criminal negligence. Iraq was invaded because it didn't have WMD's.

In 2002, a Russian general said Iran has nuclear weapons. http://cuttingedge.org/news/n1660.cfm

China and Russia are behind Hezbollah and Iran. The transcript above confirms this. There is no way this is going to turn out well for Israel. Some believe Tel Aviv and Haifa may be sacrificed as an excuse to nuke Iran.

ISRAEL'S DELUSION OF "SELF DEFENSE"

A 63-page on line monograph *"Israel's Sacred Terrorism" (1980) by Livia Rokach, http://abbc.com/historia/zionism/rokach.html*
suggests that Israel's defensive posture is a ruse.

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/essays/rokach.html

Rokach's monograph is based on revelations from the personal diary of Moshe Sharett, who was Israeli's first Foreign Minister from 1948-1956, and Prime Minister from 1954-1956.

According to this diary, which Israel tried to suppress, the "Jewish state" always planned to become the dominant power in the region, and "invented dangers" in order to dupe its citizens and provoke war.

Sharett writes: "The state.... must see the sword as the main if not the only instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may -- */no it MUST -- invent dangers/*, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation and revenge.... And above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space." (41, emphasis mine)

In 2002 Arab nations proposed to recognize Israel within the 1967 boundaries. Iran agreed. But Israel preferred to ignore this and other peace overtures.


THE HARSH REALITY

People would rather believe a lie than admit they have been deceived, even if their pigheadedness may have fatal consequences.

Israel was not created so Jews can have a "national homeland."

The Rothschilds who are Freemasons created Israel in order to advance their plan for world dictatorship. They tipped their hand with the new Israeli Supreme Court building, which they designed and funded. It is full of Masonic symbolism bewildering to most Jews. Obviously it is intended to be the Supreme Court of the New World Order rising in our midst. http://www.cephas-library.com/israel/israel_roots_of_evil/ israel_roots_of_evil.html

The Rothschild's emblem is on the Israeli flag. Their image is on the currency. They financed the Knesset building, just like their henchmen the Rockefellers donated the land for the UN.

The hardest part for Jews to admit is that the Rothschilds financed Hitler through intermediaries, partly to motivate Jews to start a "Jewish" state. http://www.savethemales.ca/000369.html

The reason that Israel enjoys a blank cheque with the US Treasury is that the Rothschilds control the credit of the US and Europe and every country except Iran and North Korea. I'm not sure about China.

The whole point of the world government dictatorship (i.e. globalization) is to translate this control of credit into total political and social control.

Albert Pike, the Freemason Grand Commander wrote to Giuseppe Mazzini in 1871 that the Third World War would be between supporters of Zionism and Islam, and that both will be destroyed. That could include the US and China.

http://www.savethemales.ca/000546.html

NO THANKS MR. OLMERT


Olmert pleaded for support from the Jewish Diaspora, saying, "We're fighting for you."

http://www.jewishtelegraph.co.uk/world_2.html

No, through your war crimes and atrocities, which I do not have the stomach to list, you are an embarrassment to all Jews. You are creating the anti Semitism that you Zionists seem to thrive on.

Americans are not going to fall into this trap. They are not going to be fooled into thinking they are under attack by Islam. They are not going to be pawns in the Illuminati's monstrous game. They won't be ritual human sacrifices to its evil god. --

See also my "Zionism: Compulsory Suicide for Jews"
http://www.savethemales.ca/091202.html

and "The Zionist Protection Racket"
http://www.savethemales.ca/000889.html ------

Henry Makow Ph.D. is the author of "A Long Way to go for a Date." His articles exposing fe-manism and the New World Order can be found at his web site www.savethemales.ca He enjoys receiving comments, some of which he posts on his site using first names only. hmakow@gmail.com

9/11 Detainee Released After Nearly Five Years

9/11 Detainee Released After Nearly Five Years

By TOM HAYS, AP

TORONTO (Aug. 13) - The date was Sept. 12, 2001, but Benemar "Ben" Benatta was clueless about the death and destruction one day earlier.

About a week before, Canadian officials had stopped Benatta as he entered the country from Buffalo to seek political asylum. On that Sept. 11, he was quietly transferred to a U.S. immigration lockup where a day passed before sullen FBI agents told him what the rest of the world already knew: terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

It slowly dawned on Benatta that his pedigree - a Muslim man with a military background - made him a target in the frenzied national dragnet that soon followed. The FBI didn't accuse him of being a terrorist, at least not outright. But agents kept asking if he could fly an airplane.

He told them he couldn't. It made no difference.

"They gave me a feeling that I was Suspect No. 1," he said in a recent interview.

The veiled accusations and vehement denials would continue for nearly five years - despite official findings in 2001 that he had no terrorist links and in 2003 that authorities had violated his rights by colluding to keep him in custody.

Of the estimated 1,200 mostly Arab and Muslim men detained nationwide as potential suspects or witnesses in the Sept. 11 investigation, Benatta would earn a dubious distinction: Human rights groups say the former Algerian air force lieutenant was locked up the longest.

His Kafkaesque journey through the American justice system concluded July 20 when a deal was finalized for his return to Canada. In the words of his lawyer, the idea was to "turn back the clock" to when he first crossed the border.

But time did not stand still for Benatta: The clock ran for 1,780 days. The man detained at 27 was now 32.

"I say to myself from time to time, maybe what happened ... it was some kind of dream," he said. "I never believed things like that could happen in the United States."

In a nation reeling from unthinkable horrors inflicted by an unconventional enemy, it could. And did.

Sporting a gray T-shirt and cargo shorts on a sizzling summer day, Benatta eased his muscular frame into a white plastic chair in the backyard of a Toronto halfway house for immigrant asylum-seekers. He sipped lemonade, then paused to taste freedom.

"You start to look around and take in everything - the wind in your face, the breeze - everything," he said.

The youngest of 10 children in a middle-class family, Benatta recalled always wanting to be military man like his father. But after he joined the air force, he grew disillusioned. Algerian soldiers, he said, were abusive toward civilians. And militant Muslims were out for blood.

"I was in harm's way in my country," he said.

Benatta entered a six-month training program for foreign air force engineers in Virginia in December 2000, plotting from the start to desert and flee to Canada. In June 2001, he stole out of a hotel the night before his scheduled flight back to Algeria. He lived briefly in New York before arriving Sept. 5 on Canada's doorstep.

A week later, Canadian authorities were escorting him back over the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, where they turned him over to U.S. immigration officers. On Sept. 16, U.S. marshals took him into custody, put him on a small jet and flew him to a federal jail in Brooklyn that became a clearing house for detainees who were labeled "of interest" to the FBI following the Sept. 11 attacks.

One remark by a marshal stuck in his head: "Where you're going, you won't need shoes anymore."

In Brooklyn, he was locked down - minus his shoes - 24 hours a day between FBI interrogations. When he continued to deny any involvement in the attacks, agents threatened to send him back to Algeria. As a deserter, he was certain he would be tortured.

"That was all my thinking all of the time - they were signing my execution warrant," he said.

Prison guards, he said, dispensed humiliation in steady doses - rapping on his cell door every half hour to interrupt his sleep, stepping on his leg shackles hard enough to scar his ankles, locking him in an outdoor exercise cage despite freezing temperatures, conducting arbitrary strip searches.

The alleged abuses would have been bad enough.

But as a judge eventually pointed out, something else was amiss: Benatta was never charged with a crime.

The FBI grillings stopped sometime in November 2001, when an internal report was prepared saying he was cleared. On paper, he was no longer a terror suspect.

No one bothered to tell him.

December turned to March with Benatta still under lockdown in Brooklyn, without any contact with the outside world. "Each day, with that kind of conditions, is like a year," he said.

Finally, in April, he received word that he would be transferred to Buffalo to face federal charges of carrying a phony ID when first detained. Benatta was denied bail while he fought the case. But for the first time he was allowed into the general population of federal defendants housed at an immigration detention center.

He also had access to the news, and was shocked by the images accompanying anniversary stories about the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It was the first time I'd really seen what happened," he said.

It wasn't until the second anniversary of the attacks that U.S. Magistrate H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr., in a bluntly worded ruling, found that Benatta's detainment for a deportation hearing was "a charade."

Though terrible, the Sept. 11 attacks "do not constitute an acceptable basis for abandoning our constitutional principles and rule of law by adopting an 'end justifies the means' philosophy," Schroeder wrote. Based on that decision, another judge tossed out the case on Oct. 3, 2003.

"That gave me so much hope," Benatta said. "For me, it's like (the judge) had so much nerves. He gave me some kind of hope in the judicial system all over again."

His hopes were dashed by an ensuing standoff: Benatta demanded asylum. Immigration authorities wanted him deported for overstaying his visa.

An immigration court first set bail at $25,000, then ruled he should stay behind bars indefinitely - a situation a United Nations human rights group decried as a "de facto prison sentence." Most asylum seekers are released pending the outcome of their cases.

It took another two years before a Manhattan attorney, Catherine M. Amirfar, found a solution: She convinced Canadian authorities to let her client apply for asylum there without jailing him.

"Canada was willing to take him back and turn back the clock five years," she said. "Of course, Benemar will never get those five years back."

The last detainee was deported in his prison smock without an apology. He remembers cold stares when he ate his first meal at Wendy's and went to a mall to buy clothes.

Today, there's no more soul-numbing confinement. But he's still caught in waiting game, this time to see whether Canada will grant him asylum - a decision at least six months away. He also wonders if he can regain enough spirit to start a new life.

"Now I'm not the same person," he said. "When I came to the United States, I was optimistic. I had so much energy. That's not the case now."