go to Main Page of the Second Amendment SIGThe Armed-M
I am active in the Libertarian Party in New Hanover County, North Carolina. In December we got a copy of the film "Waco:The Rules of Engagement." The film got two thumbs up from Siskel & Ebert. The film runs 136 minutes and contains a lot of information never covered in the media. The Davidians were a break-away from the Seventh Day Adventists in the thirties. The group was multi-racial with members coming from all over the world and included a graduate of the Harvard Law School. The FBI gave a video camera with the Davidians and they filmed comments during the standoff and there was a chance to see and listen to them. The FBI suppressed these films because they were so sympathetic to the Davidians. It is hard to believe that the government would be as stupid as the film shows them acting. Much of what the government agents testified to was a lie. I spent thirty years working for the Air Force and if I had come up with a plan that poor my bosses would have eaten me alive. I tried to write this while viewing the tape of the movie but the film has gotten me so upset I can't continue. We didn't have great success in getting people to the movie but did dominate talk radio locally for two weeks. We have copies of the video that are left over. If you contact ann@Wilmington.net she will send you a copy of the film for a $20.00 contribution to the New Hanover County Libertarian Party. If you have ever felt that standing up for your rights and being an agitator for freedom had too high a price you must buy this tape. A five minute viewing of any part will put steel in your spine and cause a recommitment to a government with powers that flow from the consent of the governed. --- Bob Smith
I found a great Internet site, The National Center for Policy Analysis http://www.ncpa.org
The following article is from them and is at http://www.public-policy.org/~ncpa/studies/s211/s211.htmlBelow are excerpts from "Murder by the State," a study for the National Center for Policy Analysis by Gerald W. Scully, an economist at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Scully looks at more than 30 countries whose governments were said to have each killed 10,000 people or more, and concludes that large-scale, state-sponsored killing appears to exact a heavy price in lost national wealth. Thus, he suggests, the richer a country is, the less inclined it will be to slaughter its people (and many countries have grown richer). "Even ruthless dictators need tax revenue, and you can't collect taxes from dead people," Scully reasons.
Murder
by the State
By GERALD W. SCULLY
In the 20th century, at least 170 million people have been murdered by their own governments. This is more than four times the approximately 42 million deaths from civil and international wars. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the People's Republic of China and Nazi Germany killed on an appalling scale. But state-sponsored murder also is quite common elsewhere. When the state murders some of its general population, it is called democide; when it murders minorities, the term is genocide.
Authoritarian states employ democide to maintain power. Democide has been employed to enforce ideologies (as in the Spanish Inquisition, the Cultural Revolution in China and Muslim fundamentalist states) and policies (as in the liquidation of the Kulaks to facilitate Soviet collectivization). It is not always successful in the long run, as illustrated by the collapse of socialist dictatorships in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. But it often succeeds for a time, as it has in China, Cuba, North Korea, Pinochet's Chile, Haiti, Iraq, Libya and other African nations.
Genocide is typically directed at a group identified by race, religion or ethnicity. It has occurred in places as diverse as Germany, the Soviet Union, Bosnia, Burundi, Rwanda, Paraguay, Iraq, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
This study is concerned only with mass killings practiced by governments: democide, including genocide. For example, the study does not include the approximately 3,400 lynchings of Negroes, mainly in the U.S. South, between 1882 and 1935. Nor does it include casualties of war. It does include deaths from democide and genocide during wartime.
Democracies have not always been averse to democide, but they have usually inflicted it on colonial populations. Democracies account for about 1 percent of the total deaths. The vast majority of 20th century killing has been done by Communist regimes. All Communist states have committed democide and about one-fourth have practiced genocide. Numerically, the Soviet Union and China had the highest levels of killing:
The Soviet Union killed 54.7 million between 1917 and 1987.
China killed 35.6 million between 1949 and 1987.
The Khmer Rouge killed a much larger percentage of its nation's people, liquidating about a third of all Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.
(The statistics on deaths, except for those killed in Rwanda, are attributed to R.J. Rummel, a longtime researcher of such figures at the Haiku Institute of Peace in Hawaii.)Life's Not Always Cheap
Authoritarian regimes and non-Communist totalitarian governments committed a third of the murders. Over all, about a third of non-Communist nations have practiced democide or genocide since World War II. This includes more than a third of the African states, such as Sudan, Uganda, Nigeria and Rwanda, which killed about half a million of its citizens in 1994. Fifteen South and Central American countries are represented, with Brazil, Guatemala and Colombia killing on a large scale. In Asia and the Middle East, 13 nations have committed democide. In Europe, besides Nazi Germany, state-sponsored murder has occurred in France (mainly during the German occupation), Greece, Italy (during the fascist period), Spain and Turkey (mainly against the Armenians, but also the Kurds).
A rough negative correlation exists between the level of state killing and real gross domestic product per capita. For example, the Central and South American nations that have modest levels of democide have higher income levels than many of the African and Asian nations that have killed on a larger scale. This suggests that where per capita income is low, life is viewed by the authorities as cheap. Where per capita income is higher, states may be constrained by the cost of killing their populations.
This suggests that "price," measured as output per person, may restrict the amount of state-sponsored murder. A rational dictator or ruling group will practice democide or genocide up to the point at which the marginal benefit equals the marginal cost. In other words, the dictator or ruling group will weigh the incremental benefit of continued rule and a share in the "rents" (proceeds) that are generated through centralized political and economic control (plus any "pleasure" obtained from inflicting terror) against the "cost" -- the incremental national output lost from the killing.
Civilized people view government-sponsored murder as demented, the murderers as sociopaths. But many aspects of life that are immoral are nevertheless explicable by the amoral apparatus of supply and demand. There is an inverse relationship between the amount of state-sponsored killing of the domestic population and the "value" of the people being killed. A 1 percent increase in real G.D.P. "buys" about a 1.4 percent decline in democide.
There is also some evidence that democidal governments in higher per-capita-income nations exercise some self-restraint. This may even help our understanding of the slowdown in the pace of state killings that occurred in the Soviet Union and China. During the Stalin era in the Soviet Union (1929-53), about 42.7 million people were murdered by the state.
About 8.1 million were killed in the 34-year period after Stalin (1954-87). While the latter number is still large, Stalin's pace of killing would have resulted in 63.5 million deaths. Despite the poor performance of socialism, the Soviet Union had experienced economic growth. Comrades were increasingly expensive to liquidate. Thus the decreased rate of killing seems attributable to economics rather than to any civility of the post-Stalin leadership.
The Mao Factor
The 28-year rule of Mao Zedong in China (1949-76) yielded 34.4 million killed. In the post-Mao era (1977-87), characterized by rapid economic growth, 874,000 were killed. Again, the slowdown in the rate of murder may be due to the economic fact that the population was more productive and thus more valuable.
Presumably, a decline in the tempo of government-sponsored murder can be taken as an index of an upward trend in civilized behavior. For example, governments murdered about 32.2 million in the 13th century, when the world population was about 360 million. Thus the fraction of the population killed by governments in the 13th century was about 8.9 percent. Gunpowder was not yet available, and presumably killing with cruder weapons was more troublesome. In the 17th century, about 25.6 million were murdered by their governments, representing about 4.7 percent of the population. In the 19th century, when guns were highly developed and widely dispersed, about 44.4 million were killed by their governments, representing about 3.7 percent of the world's population.
A resurgence of brutality occurred in the 20th century, raising the democide rate to 7.3 percent of the world's population. But this is mainly due to the domestic terror of the Communists and the genocide of Nazi
Germany.If the murders by the Communist states are subtracted, about 59 million were murdered in this century. Thus state-sponsored killing in the non-Communist world (including the more than 16 million killed by Germany) was about 3.6 percent of the population.
On the whole, although the evidence is very crude, it appears that as per capita incomes have risen with industrialization, the relative incidence of democide has declined.
I hypothesize that this was due to the historical rise in human productivity, which made the cost in terms of lost G.D.P. too high to continue the killing on a grand scale.
The Internet address for the study is http://www.ncpa.org
Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company </NYT_COPYRIGHT
RACIAL
CRIME
another article from NCPA
Those who claim the American justice system is racist because, for example one-in-three black males in their 20s was in prison or on probation or parole last year fail to recognize the implications of the fact that the victims and perpetrators of crime are usually of the same race. Thus, any criminal-justice reform that simply eases up on black criminals will disproportionately harm the majority of law-abiding blacks.
Less than one-fifth of all crimes against whites in 1993 were committed by blacks.
And 80 percent of the 1.3 million violent crimes against blacks that year were committed by other blacks.
For homicide, blacks and whites each killed victims of their own race 93 percent of the time in 1993.
The explosion of urban crime since the introduction of "crack" in the mid-1980s is well documented. And young blacks are the main victims of the drug's popularity.
Before the introduction of crack, juvenile black males were three times as likely to be homicide victims as black females, five times as likely as white males, and nine times as likely as white females of the same age group.
By 1991, the homicide victimization rate for black males was seven times that of black females, eight times that of white males, and 29 times that of white females.
Source: Editorial, "Race & Crime," Investor's Business Daily, February 21, 1996.
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED DEC. 3, 1997
THE LIBERTARIAN
By Vin Suprynowicz
All the News that Goes Our Way
What makes an issue newsworthy? When is it no longer newsworthy? Folks in the news business will tell you they make such decisions objectively, asking: What are the readers or viewers curious about? What developments could impact their lives?
That's the theory. But in real life, how well do reporters ignore their own prejudices and preconceptions, when the populace starts moving en masse in the opposite direction from what the newshound and his social circle expected, predicted, or would prefer?
I'll be writing more soon about the cold shoulder the Nevada press has been giving former Hollywood producer turned 1998 gubernatorial candidate Aaron Russo. Russo can afford to buy TV time out of his own bank account, is mesmerizing on the kind of "throw the feds out" issues that resonate in the West, and turned out 1,000 enthusiastic supporters at a Las Vegas rally two weeks ago. Yet the mainstream press consistently dismisses such enthusiastic support as so many insignificant "talk-radio, black-helicopter gadflies."
But first: Readers and viewers of the nation's most influential newspapers and broadcasts could be forgiven if, this fall, they got the impression the upcoming vote on Washington state's Initiative 676 was likely to be pretty darned important.
Placed on the ballot by those wishing to restrict firearms ownership by potential victims (commonly called "gun control" advocates, though they never seem to call for any new "controls" on government snipers), the measure would have mandated a statewide civilian gun-licensing system, trigger locks on guns (always useful when a woman is fumbling in her purse while being grabbed by a would-be rapist), and expensive, mandatory government safety-training courses ... always useful in discouraging law-abiding racial minorities from legally carrying firearms.
Early polls showed the initiative leading, 60-to-30, with women favoring this new nest of red tape by an even more lopsided 80-20.
With those numbers in hand, The New York Times ran an account of the initiative on its front page Oct. 13, suggesting it would be a significant test of the strength of the nation's largest gun rights lobbying group, the National Rifle Association (NRA.)
"For the gun lobby, there is no bigger battle in 1997," wrote Timesman Timothy Egan.
Three days later, on Oct. 16, "NBC Nightly News" anchorman Tom Brokaw covered the pending vote as a major watershed: "Here in the state of Washington, the front lines have been drawn in the deadly battle over gun control. It started in the grass roots as anger exploded over the hundreds of children in this state killed or hurt by guns. It's now a full-blown political war."
As ever, the "children" named in such statistics turn out to include 18-year-old drug dealers shooting each other in turf battles -- a fine point Mr. Brokaw apparently didn't have time to explain.
"If this measure wins in this gun-friendly state," added reporter Judy Muller on the Nov. 2 broadcast of ABC's "World News Tonight," "it could spell trouble for the NRA elsewhere."
Would that be the "gun-friendly" Washington state where the ownership of machine guns is restricted to peace officers and active duty military personnel -- harsher even than the federal law?
In such lopsided media coverage, "all that was missing was a slick TV graphic showing the NRA's coffin nailed shut," L. Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham of the Northern Virginia-based Media Research Center wrote on the editorial page of the Nov. 21 Wall Street Journal.
"But something went wrong on the way to the funeral." On election day, "A walloping 71 percent of Washington voters rejected the measure," Messrs. Bozell and Graham report.
Suddenly, mysteriously, a story which editors and producers had been gearing up to banner as a death blow to the hated NRA, "became an afterthought on the networks the next day. ... ABC's morning and evening news shows gave the results only brief mention, simply stating that the measure failed. ... The New York Times put the blame on the NRA's cash advantage and the gun controllers' poor strategy -- and buried the story on page A28."
Where were the banner headlines, declaring "Huge majority say 'No more gun laws' in crucial test", Or "Finally, Bill of Rights supporters win one for the Gipper"?
There were none. "After all, after spending years labeling a group as 'extreme,' 'radical' and the like -- how to explain its 71 percent landslide?" ask the Virginia-based media researchers.
These so-called "news" outfits have some serious soul-searching to do, when they can eagerly promote such a test vote as highly significant so long as it appears to be going their way, but suddenly -- days later shrug off the result as meaningless, when the voters' decision fails to match their own pro-government, anti-freedom agenda.
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127.
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams
There is a web site for the Knoxville News (a weekly Newspaper). I found this on it. It is interesting to know I am not the most far out individual around.
THE PROJECT TO RESTORE THE REPUBLIC
Background of the Project
The Project had its beginning in 1976 when the celebration of the Bicentennial of The Declaration of Independence brought focus to our founding document and its origin and purpose and effectiveness. The Bicentennial caused a great renewal of interest in the history and documentation of the early history of the Republic.
The events of the early 1770s such as the Boston Massacre, Shay's Rebellion, and the Boston Tea Party come alive when viewed in the context of the last half of the 20th Century. The parallels and comparisons are astounding and revealing. Even in 1976 anyone who was paying attention could see the horrendous growth of the federal government in expanding its bureaucracy, in extracting money from those who earn it and giving it away to those who vote for more money, in socializing all public institutions, and in the accelerating decline of the Republic.
Today we are in exactly the same dire circumstances the colonists faced in 1775. The attacks on the people in Waco and Ruby Ridge leave us wondering what will happen next. The presence of foreign troops all around the country, with federal government collaboration, is disturbing and threatening. There is daily an uncontrolled invasion of thousands of immigrants diluting our population, wasting our resources, and constituting an invading army in our neighborhoods and towns. The sellout of our sovereignty through the UN establishment spreading through our country. The taking over of our foreign policy by the UN, the CFR and the TLC. The draining of our economic wealth by the international banking establishment.
The corruption of our political parties and elected officials. (You add to this list if you want to or need to.)
What do we do about it? Exactly the same thing the colonists did in 1776. A man named Tom Paine wrote a book and made speeches up and down the country with a simple, common sense, proposal to just declare our independence from the British, tell them we are no longer connected to them, and set up a new government. After a while it caught on with many people, about 30-40%, and groups of people from every colony sent delegates to a meeting in Philadelphia in 1776 to draw up a Declaration and sign it and publish it. They did. The rest is history. And history is repeating itself.
It worked back then. We got freedom and independence and a new nation out of it. We simply need to do it again: Declare our independence from the existing federal government, abolish it, and simultaneously start a new government using exactly the same Constitution and Bill of Rights. It will work again.
The Purpose of the Project
To stop the federal government from any further abuse and further expansion of its jurisdiction and return the federal government to its original size and limitations and jurisdiction.
The Structure of the Project
The structure of the Project is likewise derived from the structure of the first American Revolution:
Independent local committees of correspondence and safety for organization and education and to spread the word. A declaration of our independence by individuals. A central headquarters to receive and certify the declarations and keep records and provide guidance to individuals and committees. A focus on the Second Constitutional Convention on July 4, 2001 or sooner if possible, with a delegate selection process, credentials, and a very simple agenda: Meet in Washington D.C. Have prayer. Verify credentials and a quorum. Rescind the Constitution and simultaneously ratify the same Constitution and Bill of Rights. Pledge allegiance to the restored republic. Celebrate. Go home. Live free. The whole thing will take less than five minutes.
The Legal Foundation of the Project
Our precedent is in our history. What the colonists did in 1776 was legal and proper and effective. We have the right and the duty as stated in the Declaration of Independence to abolish our government when it goes too far in abusing us and usurping our power.
If we the people do it, it is done. We hold all power. We lent a small part of it to the federal government in 1789 and they abused it and usurped more. They ignored all our limitations, especially the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. We just take back our power and give the same small portion of it to the new government. This time we will be more vigilant.
If you abolish or dissolve the Constitution or any other founding document of an institution or government, you also abolish or dissolve or cancel or disempower or render void all the enactments, orders, agencies, treaties, laws, regulations, powers, etc. of that institution or government.
When you ratify a constitution and bill of rights, you instantly empower and initiate the establishment of a new government based on that constitution and bill of rights.
The Second Constitutional Convention, to overcome the reluctance of those who fear a runaway convention, like the First one, will be a reverse convention. All the work in drawing up a document is already done by our Founding Fathers. We will simply rescind it and ratify it again all in the same instant. The delegates will have no power beyond that, and if they do anything beyond that it is void and of no effect. How much can you do in five minutes?
How many people does it take to restore the republic? Again, we look to historical precedent. In 1774, only a few people even thought about declaring our independence from England. In 1775 and 1776 hundreds of thousands read Tom Paine's book and heard lectures on declaring independence. On July 4, 1776 , only 30-40% of the people were for it. When the revolutionary war was over, about 70-80% were convinced. It was only after the new constitution in 1789 that there was essentially complete allegiance to the new government.
The Process
The Personal Declaration of Independence form is now being circulated through local committees, at flea markets, malls, sports events, churches, clubs, and other organizations and places, on the Internet, and direct mail. The signed forms with the $5 registration fee are being collected and certified and filed by zip codes. A computer database is being generated. This database is being kept in greatest confidence and will be used for no other purpose.
Each person filing a Personal Declaration with headquarters will be sent instructions on what to do next. They will be instructed in how to form a committee, how to hold meetings, what to do at the meetings, and how to become a delegate.
Headquarters will certify and credential delegates and coordinate the area and regional meetings where final delegates to the Second Constitutional Convention will be selected.
Eventually each state will have a headquarters when they have enough declarations filed. A State Committee will be franchised to handle the process in their state. National Headquarters in Knoxville will continue to coordinate and oversee the process with visits and audits.
Speakers, videotapes, issue analysis papers, other publications will be developed and put into the process beginning in late 1997.
All individuals, groups, parties, clubs, organizations are invited to pause for a brief moment in their fight against federal abuses and usurpations and declare their independence and participate in the Project To Restore The Republic. We can assure you that whatever your cause, issue, concern, or fight, restoring the republic will accomplish your ultimate objectives.
Restore The Republic Headquarters
530 S. Gay Street #222
Knoxville, Tennessee 37902
PERSONAL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
1. I am a citizen of the United States of America and a registered voter.
2. I have read and understand and fully agree with the 1776 Declaration of Independence. It declares the right and duty of the people to alter or abolish a government that has become destructive of the people's right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, and to institute a new government for their safety and happiness.
3. I am fully convinced by the evidence all around me that the repeated injuries and usurpation of the existing federal government have proved its intention to reduce the American people to absolute despotism and establish an absolute tyranny over the States. I will not allow it to go any further.
4. Accordingly, I hereby declare that I am independent of the existing federal government effective July 4, 2001, and I hereby call for its abolition, and I hereby pledge my allegiance to the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States of America and to the Restored Republic which begins its existence at the same instant on July 4, 2001 replacing the existing federal government.
SIGNATURE_____________________________________________
DATE___________________________________________________
NAME___________________________________________________
ADDRESS________________________________________________
CITY, STATE, ZIP_________________________________________INSTRUCTIONS
Include a check or money order for $5.00, payable to Restore The Republic. You will receive a certified copy of your Declaration along with instructions on what to do next.
[end of newsletter]
go to TOP of page
The Armed-M is a publication of the 2nd Amendment SIG, a special interest group of American Mensa Ltd. Opinions expressed herein are the opinions of the writers, and not of American Mensa, Ltd. which has no opinions.
Editor's disclaimer: The ARMED-M is written for intelligent thinking people. Much of what it contains is "Raw Intelligence" material from a single source that has not or can not be checked for validity. Do not turn off your brain or powers of discrimination when reading this publication, and as a ARMED-M never run off half cocked.
go to Main Page of the Second Amendment SIG