THE STEPS TO SOVEREIGNTY ------ These are a few messages posted by Paul Campbell to the Frog Farm mailing list. They are somewhat quick and dirty, written as an answer to somebody's question, not as an article. But they are quite informative as to some of the issues and steps involved in re-claiming one's position as a sovereign citizen. However, do your own research, and don't take anything as true before you've checked it out yourself. The messages are posted here with the author's permission. - Flemming ------- Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 15:17:56 -0400 From: Paul Campbell Subject: Sovereignty: the steps To: frogfarm@blizzard.lcs.mit.edu Date: Sun, 25 Sep 94 15:17:54 536913656 We're dealing with a two-pronged problem here. You need to understand both the issues involved and the mechanics (procedure). I can help you a lot with the first and a little with the second since I'm well-grounded in the former and shaky in the latter (the available information for the latter is rather pricey). Okay, first understand that there are MANY ways of accomplishing various parts of each step. I'll try to outline some of the alternatives. First, the big issue: jurisdiction. There are lots of ways to define it but essentially the basics of jurisdiction is that a legal system, entity, court, etc., has to have jurisdiction in order to exercise legitimate power over the matter at hand, whether it is your finances, your life, your house, or your freedom. Jurisdiction includes the proper territory (the one most people are familiar with such as county sheriffs not having authority in adjacent counties), the individual in question (the United States does not have jurisdiction over foreign diplomats in this country), and the case (a federal judge is not allowed to try a state issue in most cases such as a child molestation and murder charge from Waco). There are other parts of jurisdiction, but the list can go on forever. Now, there are alternatives. For instance, you could claim the same privileges as Congressmen get or tax-free status of the "privileged" churches under the Fourteenth Amendment's "equality" and non-discrimination clauses. In this case, you're ignoring the jurisdictional issues like sovereignty and claiming special status within the myriad layers of special privileges Congress has created. For more information on this route (and lots of the others), Lynn Johnston has written a book..still today considered a "bible" by some. I don't have too many other good references is the only reason why I'm mentioning this (somewhat dated) book. The title is _Who's Afraid of the IRS_ and it is on a major publisher's list so you should be able to order it from a decent book store..you could also get it from Loompanics..but I don't have their address handy right now. You can also disclaim the constitution itself as A.J. Teel and good old Spooner (the lawyer of pony-express fame) did. This will also work if you really know your stuff (the mechanics aspect I mentioned). Personally I haven't seen solid results regarding this route..neither successes nor failures. For information on A.J.'s stuff (a lot of it appears to be rants), look on Umich's politics text archive. For the paper by Lysander Spooner, find the local libernet archive (Libertarian goodies) and find "No Treason". You can also play the "technicality" games if you desire..often these come in handy anyways as backup in case your jurisdiction issue fails. The Scripter family in Langsburg, Michigan, has run a machine shop for years simply because the owner nails the IRS on failure to follow procedure every single time and then gets injunctions against them. But, we're after the fundamental issue here, that of sovereignty. You should have a firm philosophical grasp on the concept first before you even CONSIDER taking any legal action. There is a really cheap book which will drill the concept home..the majority of the book is of questionable content..it babbles on about a philosophical war that has gone on for roughly 2-3000 years. Try to ignore that and just understand the conceptual parts. I'll give you an example..another book by the same people is "Sexual Being versus Governments that Promote Homosexuality." The opening paragraph is: "Of all the current governments in the world, the one most aggressively promoting homosexuality is the United States." Later on, the basic thesis of the book comes out as: "The relationship between group-entities and sexual being can be nothing but this: group-entities are the enemies of sexual being." Wierd stuff..I don't have my copy of the book I'm recommending here right now (amazing..it keeps getting borrowed...), or I'd quote some of their silliness. As I said..just ignore the conspiracy stuff and stick with understanding the issue. I can't do their discussion of soverignty justice..anyways, enough babbling.. Book title: _Human History_ Price: 4.00 + sales tax for Washington residents Address: Sovereign Press, 326 Harris Rd., Rochester, WA 98579 Publisher pays postage, including foreign. Minimum foreign order: $10.00. Pay in U.S. funds only. They're a small press so don't worry about order forms and such too much. Now, assuming you have a grasp on the concept of sovereignty (the individual kind), we can move on to political philosophy. I digress this issue to Ian who is so thick into it I don't know if he'll ever come out :). Somebody posted quotes out of an old army manual here some time ago that were beautiful definitions of democracies and republics. I am doing system development right now so my computer is in pieces and the text files are in pieces..so ask for a repost if you need them. Okay, now we need to understand how our current system stands. If you read up on your history, the short history of sovereignty in the U.S. is this: At first, good old George held all the chips. The colonists were isolated enough from George that they got rather pissed off about his ridiculous claims of god-given sovereignty. Maniac editorialists of the time like Pain and Jefferson really kicked over the bee hive. We're all pretty familiar with the result: the colonists said get lost George and George was so busy bickering with his neighbors in France that when he turned around, it was too late and the colonies were already independent enough politically that it wasn't worth the effort anymore. The net effect of this is summarized very well in Chisholm v. Georgia. Read the entire case, but the key parts are: "...at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects...with none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty." CHISHOLM v. GEORGIA (US) 2 Dall 419, 454, 1 L Ed 440, 455 @DALL 1793 pp471-472 After that point, they tried to form a sort of "pact" between the states because the rest of the world was so caught up in the dictatorship game that they couldn't deal with a nation full of sovereigns..the problem with the original pact was that bureacrats started right in taking over the state governments and playing games with their "little kingdoms". So the articles of Confederation was scrapped and the Constitution was written. The Constitution for the States works like this: The individual states made a pact between themselves where the states remained sovereign but a certain minimal government was created as a sort of referee to handle nasty inter-country problems as well as those pesky "stomping on your neighbors feet" squabbles. There are some defects (see _The Law_ by Frederic Bastiat for examples), but overall it was pretty solid. Note: The states RETAINED their sovereignty except in specific LIMITED jurisdictions. This lasted for a few years. Then at some point, certain states got rather overbearing and tried to dictate their whims on the other states. Things got rather ugly and a civil war (okay, the Civil War if you prefer it that way) erupted. The net effect was that a de facto government (a government that has occupied the country but has no lawful basis for existence..the original republic is the de jure/lawful government) stepped into power. At this point, state sovereignty was essentially destroyed (c.f. the 14th amendment which was "ratified" at gun point and by territories which weren't even legitimate states). Of course lots of legal games were played to make it look legitimate, but no matter how hard you try, it is very difficult to legitimize something that is illegal...unless of course you can fool somebody into believing in your smoke and mirrors. At this point, we can look at the issues from a legal perspective. The net effect is that we have an unlawful de facto federation running amok in the country working as fast as possible to steal land, rights, money, whatever it can get its hands on. The federation also introduced a democracy as it's governing form, also known as mob rule and totally disproven time and again to be the worst possible form of government since the time of Plato and probably further back. Needless to say, given over a century of this sort of thing, the result is no real surprise. The only real surprise is that things haven't fallen apart after all this time! How do you recognize the difference? Okay, read Government Code 242 which defines the difference between the de facto and de jure governments. The real problem is they both go by the name of "United States". See also Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 US 652 pp. 672-673: "The term 'United States' may be used in one of several senses. It may be the name of a sovereign occupying the position analogous to that of sovereign in a family of nations. It may designate territory over which sovereignty of the United States extends, or it may be a collective name of the States which are united by and under the Constitution." But wait, there's more. Also see in re Miriam which defines the District of Columbia as a foreign corporation in relation to the 50 states. Also read over Title 4, USC Section 71 which defines the jurisdiction of the United States: "All that part of the territory of the United States included within the present limits of the District of Columbia shall bethe permanent seat of the United States." Section 72 makes it more explicit by restricting all government agents to the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, forts, magazines, etc., within some exception such as exercising interstate constitutional powers. In the 1920's and '30's, they really mucked things up when the federation switched over to admiralty jurisdiction. I won't even get into that.. suffice to say that 99% of your problems probably lie there..I think I've covered admiralty enough in the past. The UCC (codified Admiralty law) 1-103 and 1-207 list the remedy and recourse. Okay, now the federation and the states have been operating in the twilight..err, Admiralty zone for nigh 80 years now. They wouldn't recognize common law unless it walked right up into their faces and bit them (and you're the one going to be doing the biting :( ). The steps you need to take are these: 1. Understand the issue. Understand each of the cases you plan on citing. Understand everything forwards and backwards. I can't stress this enough. There could come a time where you're sitting in jail and you will not have ANY of your resources with you. 2. Decide for yourself what the law says. Understand the procedures necessary for both admiralty and common law. Understand the evidence rules for both. FRCP and FRCrP cover the rules for Admiralty. 3. Now, we come to the crucial point. The rest was the candy-shoppe stuff. You have to decide for yourself the answer to these questions: A. Do I know both what I'm giving up and what I'm gaining? B. Do I know how to go about doing it? C. Do I understand the risks involved, and the odds? Including worst-case scenarios. D. Am I willing to accept the risk? 4. If you've gotten this far, then you don't need a list on what to do. ------------------------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 15:34:37 -0400 From: Paul Campbell Subject: Sovereignty contd. To: frogfarm@blizzard.lcs.mit.edu Okay, we slogged through the issues last time. Now, the procedure... Understand that the mere act of pleading guilty/not-guilty or sometimes even showing up is evidence enough that you VOLUNTEERED into the very jurisdiction you were so busy challenging! The law makes compliance or silence the same as consent! There are several techniques for changing your status. One way is to just begin acting as a sovereign. Don't file income tax, rescind your social security, and so on and so forth. Eventually someone will challenge you in court and you then proceed to beat their pants off. Another way is to write letters asking the various federal agencies for the evidence you will later submit in court to prove your case. Another way is to write letters stating your claims and giving the feds time to respond..and when they fail, you have effectively changed the presumptions about the situation. Regardless, you will probably end up in court at some point at least a couple times before they put something in their files that says "lost cause". See, the feds are so used to being parasites that they will attack with a vengeance when their host tries to get away. But if you are prepared, you will succeed. If you do fail, chances are you will suffer the consequences AND it will be much rougher the next time around. The one thing you have going for you is the immorality and general apathy that is so prevalent in our society that if you even make an attempt at improving your situation, you will find out there is practically no competition to speak of. You can also enlist the aid of lots and lots of groups who will help you out along the way across the board, no matter what your situation is. Ian and I compiled an extensive list a while back and it is the majority of the FAQ. Read it over and write some letters for more information. I plan on joining the NCBA later this year and possibly taking a class at the Barrister's Inne this Spring if I can afford it. Since I'm in college, my financial situation is rather dismal. Okay..one more post, a "quick and dirty" get your feet wet introduction to research. --------------------------------------------- From: Paul Campbell Subject: Researching sovereignty To: frog-farm@blizzard.lcs.mit.edu Date: Sun, 25 Sep 94 16:10:08 536913656 Okay, here's a quick run-down... If you are of the "religious" persusion, take your Bible and flush it down the toilet. That's it, just shred it and pull the handle. There, feel better? Okay, get a copy of the "Geneva" or "Breeches" bible. It doesn't have all the government biased crap in it like the King James version. A source for a good quality one (though rather pricey) is: Mike Brown P.O. Box 25 Pleasant Hope, MO 65725 An alternative is to get "The Life of Jesus of Nazareth", a.k.a. the Jeffersonian Bible. Jefferson meticulously cut apart bibles in 4 different languages and pasted together a complete ethics book dealing with the teachings of Jesus minus the endless Church and government biased taints. If you are *not* religious, I recommend the latter even more. This is merely an ethics book, plain and simple. No silly trappings, no church kissing-up, none. Just a book about the teachings of one of the great thinkers of the times. Scrounge the local used book stores to find Blackstone's Commentaries on English Law. This is the key document used in forming this country's legal system. Read the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers. They discuss the entire constitution and the intent of the authors in great detail. They are relatively "thick" but important for a good understanding. Both are available online, so cost is not an issue. Buy a recent edition of Black's Law Dictionary. This is a specialized dictionary explaining the terms you will be reading. Also buy an old (1914 edition or earlier) copy of Bouvier's Law Dictionary. This is more like a mini-encyclopedia, but it will detail common law for you. It is also useful when comparing the circular-logic mumbo-jumbo legalese that you will find in Black's to the original concise definitions. It is also *the* official Supreme-Court approved dictionary for use when reading the Constitution. Read Anderson's UCC and other copies of legal texts when you can. West publishing is the master of obfuscation and ambivalence. Get a copy of "Legal Research" by Elias, available at most college book stores with a legal department. Get a copy of the Magna Carta, the Constitution, and your state's constitution. Read them all and understand them completely. Oh..while you're at it, buy firearms and gold and silver. Don't sign any paperwork EVER (when things get nasty, the government will just take out their list and come after you), but buy both. Gold has the magic property of not suffering devaluation or collapse of specie currency. Firearms are a "must have" and a "hopefully unecessary" item. If you've gotten this far along, and have the wherewithall to comprehend the non-canned (network "news") version, then these items are self-explanatory. Okay..on to a little research. First, don't worry about finding things. Lots of cases are rather obscure, but everything else is cross-referenced so many times over you can't possibly NOT find what you're looking for, although it might be pricey. Let's say you wanted to find Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, which I mentioned earlier. The notation used is this: Accuser v. Accused, volume reporter page (date) Accuser and accused are also plaintiff and defendant, prosecution and defense, etc., etc. Reporters are volumes of the more interesting cases published for each court. There are also summaries of those summaries, such as the legal edition or the Supreme Court edition of the U.S. Reporter. Reporters contain the summaries of the cases. All have abbreviated names, but the abbreviations are usually listed in the Reporters themselves and other places. Let's look at our case: Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 US 652 pp. 672-673 324 is the volume. US is the code for the "U.S." reporter..that is all the significant cases that make it to the federal level. Now, go find yourself a law library. Most county seats have them as well as some of the older attorney's offices and some universities. You'll be able to recognize the place by the number of hatchet-faced men in sharp cut grey suits cruising around like its feeding time at the aquarium. Since most lawyers now use "Lexus" you might be able to convince one to use this computerized index to give you a copy. It's also possible to order a photocopy at some exhorbitant price of any part of the case from the Supreme Court of Ohio (case number 38, argued November 7, 1944; decided April 9, 1945) as well as any other case, even if it's not in a reporter. Then on the bottom of page 671 the paragraph I quoted earlier. Other material is just as easy to look up..though it is often hard to find the particular case you really wanted if the law library you are using is small. :( Then you have to spend time or money or both to dig it up. ------------------------------------------ From: Paul Campbell Subject: Re: Sovereignty, the steps To: ffunch@netcom.com (Flemming Funch) Date: Sun, 25 Sep 94 18:18:17 536913656 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3.1 PL11] > Very nice overview of the steps to sovereignty on Frog Farm. Wasn't cut and polished..was off the top of my head and long overdue judging by the general response lately. I must be getting better. Thanks. > Would it be ok with you if I put those couple of messages of yours from > today in a file and put them in my WWW area? I am trying to collect a few > things to give people (including myself) an intro to the subject and some > pointers on where to go. Anything that goes to a mailing list or usenet should be by definition public domain. Have at it. One warning: Seperating the wheat from the chaff in this area is rather difficult. Make sure you personally verify everything. I have verified some of the material I have but not nearly all of it. There is almost a megabyte of ZIPped material (and older material at that) sitting on my desk right now. I have probably a foot of paper materials (8.5X11 form factor mostly). My personal history: Various things happened in my life. I got rather disgusted with government in general. No big surprises here. I started collecting research material on offshore and black market financing, and alternate identification (document forgery). A guy by the name of Frog Farmer on a local BBS starts posting the most preposterous things. Took me a while to piece together what he was saying but I eventually got the idea. Essentially, here was a legal and moral route to accomplish what the whole black market/criminal thing was about. Ended up in college. Bang..dead broke. No time either. Continued to collect material passively for the most part. Things were falling into place. Getting hold of all the court cases was difficult though in a lot of cases..since I didn't have access to a good law library either at school or home. Spent more time rereading and thinking about and correlating the material I had collected semi-haphazardly. Also around this time, the Frog Farm first became inaccessible and then defunct. Ian and I kept in touch (more or less) and the Frog Farm thing was hatched as a mailing list (the usenet version didn't get Ian's interest for some reason...it's still there as alt.society.sovereign but not used very often). Also before this, Ian had a run-in with a local judge in his area in which the judge forced Ian to divulge information on a myriad of things that the judge and the prosecutors needed to stack juries. He spent some time in jail and decided he wasn't interested in bashing heads with the courts anymore. Peter Baxter was originally pursuing this monster a while back as well.. same time frame as Ian and I were. Peter was taking a slower methodical pace. Haven't heard from him in a while. I think he dropped it. Ian and I have since diverged as well. I have continued to collect information and pursue sovereignty seriously. Ian has opted to stay on the sidelines and has gone the political route. So, clearly our opinions are going to differ widely in some areas. You wouldn't believe the nasty cat-fight we had over the FAQ for the Frog Farm mailing list. Our differences came out very clear then and we have both since given each other somewhat wider distance..still good friends, but toes were stomped on and it got ugly for a while. We both conceded on it and my name is off the FAQ (Ian left it on but made several changes I didn't approve of..and that's where the fight was), but I also dropped the issue altogether and I will refuse in the future to discuss FAQ changes. So my current goal (as mentioned) is to get procedure honed down to something close to what I've managed for issues. Procedure includes actual court room procedure, document formats, procedural steps, and various techniques for the usual bag of tricks for handling cases like time delays or time accelerators. As of this time, my financial situation has somewhat improved due to grad school..but my boss is a slave driver :). He makes me work hard but I should have a masters in under two years if he has his way. I intend to purpose membership in the NCBA and possibly take a class or two at Barrister's Inne at some point. I'm not being very clear because my job (grad school) is rather demanding right now and I'm not sure I will be able to take off for Idaho for a week or so anytime soon, in addition to the steep 700-1000 FRN price tag for a course. In the future, I intend on starting a couple cases on some minor stuff like parking tickets and driving without a license for practice. I will want to enlist the aid of some "big boys" like NCBA as a sort of insurance policy if things get to be worse than I can handle. In this particular case, you can also publish my E-mail if you so desire. I've looked it over and there's nothing particularly revealing in it.