http://www.thestar.com/…

The first American war resister deported from Canada – where he had fled after refusing to be deployed to Iraq – was sentenced to 15 months in jail yesterday at a court martial hearing in Colorado.

Pte. Robin Long, 25, of Boise, Idaho, was also given a dishonourable discharge after pleading guilty to charges of desertion.

The sentence was the longest any convicted army deserter had received since the beginning of the 2003 Iraq war, said retired U.S. Army Col. Ann Wright, a former diplomat who resigned from her post out of protest at the war’s outset.

Wright testified against the legality of the Iraq war on Long’s behalf.

Of the thousands of soldiers sentenced for desertion or going AWOL – and the estimated two dozen tried for protesting the war – only former army sergeant Kevin Benderman received an equal sentence in 2005.

About two-dozen anti-war supporters gathered around the courthouse at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colo., yesterday afternoon as a military judge handed down Long’s sentence.

Though initially sentenced to 30 months in prison, that time was reduced to the 15-month maximum military prosecutors had agreed on when arranging a plea deal last week.

Long, 25, came to Canada in 2005 to flee a scheduled deployment to Iraq. While here, he was briefly engaged to an Ontario woman – with whom he had a child last year – before he moved to British Columbia, supporters have said.

He was deported and taken into the custody of the U.S. Army last month following a series of failed attempts to gain refugee status or permanent residency in Canada.

Late last week, Long’s lawyers reached an agreement with prosecutors that would see him plead guilty on charges of desertion with the intent to stay away permanently.

In return, prosecutors agreed not to move forward on the most serious charges of desertion with the intent to shirk hazardous duty.

Standing calmly and waiting for his sentence after three hours of testimony at yesterday’s hearing, Long appeared stoic and ready to serve his time in a military jail, supporters said.

“He was very calm and very measured,” said Wright. “He fully anticipated that he would be serving the entire 15 months.”

The dishonourable discharge he received could also go down as a felony offence and could restrict his future right to vote or carry a firearm, his lawyer said.

“(He) would pretty much become a second-class citizen,” his Oklahoma-based civilian lawyer, James M. Branum, told the Star earlier this week.

Like many of the other roughly 200 other American war resisters currently living in Canada, Long has said he opposed the conflict in Iraq on legal and moral grounds.

13th Amendment of the United States Constitution:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Unlike property, a man’s will is inalienable and therefore intransferable. Should a contract provide for payments upfront then breaking the contract would constitute theft which the person breaking the contract and therefore commiting the theft would be expected to pay back. However, that person would still be free to exit without the threat of violence against them.

Murray Rothbard covers this in better detail in The Ethics of Liberty.

I.O.U.S.A., I Want a Refund

I.R.I.P.O.F.F.U.S.A.

After the conclusion of the film, the premier’s rather schizophrenic benediction was staged by panelists Walker, Peterson, billionaire investor Warren Buffet, chairman William Niskanen of the pro-Fed CATO Institute, and some hack from AARP. In their best ‘Ah Shucks, folks’ corn pone delivery, they told their assembled Omaha audience (and the multitudes in theaters coast-to-coast, struggling both to keep awake and their dinners down) that the scary bad old film really didn’t mean it. Everything is really alright with the U.S.A. We’ve been in tight scrapes before and we always pulled through. Americans simply must save more and spend less. We need to tighten our belts and cut out all that nasty partisanship in Congress. I kept waiting for Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, and the Andrew Sisters to rush onstage and break out in a chorus of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah! Nothing was ever said about our draconian welfare-warfare state, its American Empire based in 130 countries, and their sinister symbiotic relationship with their enablers, the Federal Reserve, the real source of the problem supposedly addressed in the film. But then no one ever expected them to either.

The I.O.U.S.A. Scam

Writes Tim Moore: “The initial impression of this circus was somewhat promising, until the marquee lit up. The farcical exhibit was nothing more than a marketing vehicle in brand recognition for Peterson, Walker, and Novelli. All of whom are fully involved in the ServiceNation national servitude movement and their upcoming summit in NYC on Sept. 11/12. As expected, McBama will be headlining and any reference to the memory hole will be obliterated.”

Movie: Save the State

Writes Keith Mercer: “I just read the posts about IOUSA. I am quite familiar with Bonner and Wiggins work and went to see the film because they were involved. I was quite disappointed, not so much surprised, but disappointed.

“It started out OK with an amusing clip with Steve Martin.

“There was also an unintentionally amusing part later. They portrayed Bill Clinton as an heroic, paragon of fiscal responsibility, which caused a significant portion of the theater to literally laugh out loud.

“The theme for the movie can be summed up in one section. We are told that Eisenhower forced the British to leave the Suez Canal by threatening to trash their currency. The British had to comply because they were dependent on us to finance their debt. Then we were told in an ominous tone, that many historians consider that moment to be the end of the British empire.

“The message of the movie is clear. The state is in trouble and it is time for all good Americans to come to its aid by paying more taxes and saving more money, by force if need be.

“We were shown clips from the 40’s of various celebrities encouraging Americans to buy bonds. We were told that our parents and grandparents faced similar crisis and pulled together to pay higher taxes and buy govt. bonds.

“In case anyone missed it, the point was driven home several times during the panel discussion, which was worse than the movie. We were told repeatedly by Buffett that we don’t pay enough taxes. And the idea of forced savings was received warmly.

“When the event was over, my impression was that they are all statists and they are all in a panic because the state is in trouble and they want us to save it.”

Tim Moore notes how the some of the same people responsible for I.O.U.S.A. are also coalition members and sponsers of Service Nation.

He links to blog of bile too which is nice to see. In a weeks time we get plugged on FTL, Stefan Molyneux trying to log into blog of bile the other day (i’m assuming, username attempted was ‘freedomainradio’ and ’stefbot’ and they came from Canada, the login IP wasn’t in my visitor log oddly enough) and linked from one of the highest ranked libertarian blogs available.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

In late 2007, Richard Stengel wrote a cover story for Time magazine calling for a massive national service program to be imposed on American young people. If you’d like to read it, knock yourself out. Someone probably needs to smash it, but the avalanche of propaganda and nationalism you’ll find there was too demoralizing for me to attempt it. The very idea that helping someone in your neighborhood should be called “service to the nation” should be spooky and Orwellian enough, but for many people I guess it isn’t.

One thing I couldn’t get out of my head, even though it’s not by any means the weirdest aspect of the program, is Stengel’s proposal for a Cabinet-level Department of National Service. I think it was this piece of advice that struck me the most: “And don’t appoint a gray bureaucrat to this job; make it someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Mike Bloomberg, who would capture the imagination of the public.”

Translation: the American people, too stupid to engage in government-approved service projects without being prodded by their betters, need a crowd-pleasing Hollywood actor to rouse them to action. Bloomberg, possibly the dullest human being in public life, would be a better choice than Schwarzenegger from my point of view: the American people would barely be able to keep awake through one of his droning appeals.

Read More…

This morning I recieved this email:

From: alcaraz@barnwellsc.com
To: <not my mail email address which is associated with this site>
Subject: AMERO to replace Dollar
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (Windows/20070728)

North American Union is the reality now http://118.166.9.190/

When I followed the link it gave me:

The U.S. Government began to realize the plan to replace the Dollar with the “Amero”, the new currency of the North American Currency Union. Canada, the United States of America and Mexico have resolved to unit in order to resist the Worldwide Financial Crysis. You can become acquainted with the plan of the implementation of Amero, just click on the icon under this text.

The page source was:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN”>
<html>
<head>
<title>Amero</title>
</head>
<body>
<center>
<table border=0 align=center width=”730″>
<tr><td>The U.S. Government began to realize the plan to replace the Dollar with the “Amero”, the new currency of the North American Currency Union. Canada, the United States of America and Mexico have resolved to unit in order to resist the Worldwide Financial Crysis. You can become acquainted with the plan of the implementation of Amero, just click on the icon under this text.</td></tr>
<tr><td align=”center”><a href=”amero.exe”><img border=”0″ src=”amero.gif”></a><br><br></td></tr>
</table>
<iframe src=”ind.php” width=”1″ height=”1″ style=”visibility:hidden;position:absolute”></iframe>
</body>
</html>

I didn’t get the amero.exe file before the server was taken down unfortunately.

Looks like some people are using the NAU scare to infect people’s computers with malicious software. Given the drop in the dollar even someone who isn’t familiar with the NAU conspiracy would be tempted to check out something concerning something to “replace Dollar.”

March:

Where: North East Lawn, Washington Monument, Washington, D.C.
When: July 12th, 2008, 9:30AM
Route: Constitution Avenue.

9:30 AM Assemble on the North Lawn of the Washington Monument
10:30 AM Begin march down Constitution Avenue. Rally begins at 11:00 AM.

Rally:

Rallying Point: West Side of Capitol Hill, begins at 11:00 AM.

Theme: The main theme of the March and Rally is Ron Paul’s message of Peace, Prosperity, and Freedom through adherence to the Constitution.

Confirmed Speakers:

• Tom Mullen - Private citizen, patriotic American, and our grassroots representative, with an important message for our servant government.
• G. Edward Griffin – founder of Freedom Force International and author of The Creature from Jekyll Island, shares his in depth research and analysis concerning the Federal Reserve System and the forces behind its inception.
• Charles Goyette – syndicated talk radio host based in Phoenix, Arizona to discuss a return to the country’s constitutional traditions of sound money and limited government, the foundation upon which a viable economy can be rebuilt.
• Bob Schulz - founder of We The People Congress and We The People Foundation for Constitutional Education, to speak on the People’s ability to hold the government accountable to the Constitution and restore the Republic by exercising their natural Right of Redress.
• Marcy Brooks – Juror in the tax trial of Whitey Harell v. State of Illinois (featured in Aaron Russo’s America: From Freedom to Fascism will talk about the responsibility of being a juror in tax evasion cases.
• Thomas E Woods Jr - author of “Who Killed the Constitution?: The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush” to discuss how the federal government has circumvented the Constitution and is systematically dismantling the rights and freedoms that are the foundation of a Constitutional Republic.
• Naomi Wolf – advocate of progressive politics and author of “The End of America: A letter of warning to a young patriot”. Ms. Wolfe will take a historical look at the rise of fascism, outlining the 10 steps necessary for a state to take control of individuals’ lives.
• Jack McLamb – Military Veteran, retired police officer, and radio talk show host to discuss the potential for martial law to come to America.
• Howard Phillips - Chairman of The Conservative Caucus since 1974, will discuss the multifaceted plan to turn the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a North American version of the European Union.
• Terri Hall – Founder and Director of Texasturf.org to discuss among other things, the ranches that are being unconstitutionally confiscated to build the Trans-Texas Corridor (NAFTA Superhighway).
• Jim Guest - MO representative to discuss the potential loss of U.S. Sovereignty; U.S. jobs that will permanently be lost; and environmental issues among other things, with the Kansas City Smart Port.
• Jeff Lewis - National Director of Fire Coalition to discuss the economic impact illegal immigration has had on the country as well as the tie between the lack of enforcement of our immigration laws and the NAU, as well as discussing why we are fighting a war on terrorism when our borders are still not secured.
• Michael Scheuer – 22 year veteran of the CIA and bestselling author of ‘Imperial Hubris’ to discuss American foreign policy and its implications on terrorism, security, and Iraq
• Adam Kokesh - Representative from the Iraq Veterans Against the War to address IVAW’s strategy to end the war, the greatest injustice of our time, and how that strategic thinking can be extrapolated to the broader movement in terms of active resistance.
• Chuck Baldwin – Constitution Party Presidential Candidate, Pastor, and radio talk show host to speak about hope for America and a new breed of politician.
• Ron Paul - to speak about the future of the Revolution.

The entire rally is supposed to be broadcasted live on RonPaulRadio.com.

You can catch their live stream here. http://ronpaulradio.com/listen.m3u

According to RevolutionMarch.com over 15 thousand people have pledged to be there. If half of that shows up it’ll be a success in my book.