CONTENTS:

New Novel a Sensation
Introductions .. Suprynowicz & Zychik
Letters to the Editor
News From Across The US
Special Forces Underground
Communications Decency Act
Libertarian Movie Reviews
The Perils of Jury Duty
International Report
Libertarians in New Zealand
Classified Advertising
Book Catalog Section

FREEDOM NETWORK NEWS

February 1996

Editor: Vincent H. Miller
Assistant Editors: James R. Elwood, Anton Sherwood, Tim Starr, Mark Valverde
1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102 • Tel: (415) 864-0952 Fax: (415) 864-7506 • CompuServe 71034,2711 • BBS (415) 864-0908

DOWNLOAD IN .PDF

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

The International Society for Individual Liberty is an association of

individuals and organizations dedicated to building a free and peaceful

world, respect for individual rights and liberties, and an open and

competitive economic system based on voluntary exchange and free trade.

Members and affiliated organizations pursue this goal thorugh

independent action, using their freely chosen strategies. The

association exists to promote the exchange of information and ideas, to

study diverse strategies and to foster fellowship.

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

Unintended Consequences by novelist John Ross a sensation
NOVEL WARNS OF IMPENDING REVOLUTION IN AMERICA

Unintended Consequences, an epic novel by John Ross, an investment broker and financial adviser from St. Louis, Missouri, has just exploded upon the American scene. A mere month after its release, Unintended Consequences has already been compared to great classics like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

Following up on glowing reports flowing into ISIL from many of our members over the last month, I finally tracked down the author, John Ross, on the phone and after a pleasant conversation, ordered a review copy of Unintended Consequences.

At first glance the cover gives one a not-so-subtle hint of what to expect inside. Against a background of the US Bill of Rights in flames, we see “Lady Justice” being savaged by a very menacing-looking storm trooper.

Unintended Consequences addresses the fundamental question in society today. Shall the people or the State reign supreme? Ross takes this question and weaves a story that seamlessly includes the watershed events in history which have shaped both federal policy and the public’s resistance to it: The federal government’s fiery assault on destitute WWI veterans, the National Firearms Act of 1934, the U.S. vs Miller Supreme Court case, the Jews’ heroic resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto, and the exponential growth of government power in modern-day America are all used to set the stage for what is to come.

As Mr. Ross says in his author’s notes, “Today in America, honest, successful, talented, productive, motivated people are being stripped of their freedom and dignity and having their noses rubbed in it. The conflict has been building for over half a century, and once again warning flags are frantically waving, while the instigators rush headlong towards the abyss, and their doom.”

Aaron Zelman, Executive Director of the Jewish civil rights organization, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Owner-ship, says “If you read only one piece of fiction in the coming year, it should be Unintended Consequences.

Publisher’s Weekly calls Unintended Consequences “action packed”, and says it “seethes . . . against a government that has persecuted praiseworthy citizens who merely want to exercise their civil rights.”… [It] shows an America rushing headlong towards civil war. As you watch what unfolds, you will find yourself more and more amazed that these fictional events haven’t already happened. This book is fascinating, horrifying, and ultimately inspiring. Read it!”

Libertarian Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, reports that in the final third of the book, set after Waco and Ruby Ridge, the corrupt authorities finally go too far. At this point, individually, and without forming any giant conspiracy, the people spontaneously start killing their oppressors. A few at first . . . then by the hundreds. As one of the characters in Unintended Consequences says, “When the United States government suspects a citizen has failed to pay a five dollar federal tax and then spends more manpower and more money spying on that citizen then it spent on surveillance before the invasion of Haiti, there is something wrong. When government tax agents carry guns and wear black ski masks to hide their faces, the evil has become institutionalized. And when those government agents shoot nursing mothers and burn women and children alive over $200 tax matters, then you have a government that is out of control.”

Suprynowicz summarizes his review with the words: “I have rarely been as moved by any work of fiction as I was by John Ross’ Unintended Consequences. It is a masterwork. (And mind you, I’m saying this about the work of an Amherst man). Anyone who cares about the Sec-ond Amendment – or any of the Bill of Rights – must read it.”

When authoress Ayn Rand was asked if the events of her similarly apocalyptic novel Atlas Shrugged were meant to be prophetic, she replied that by dramatically focussing on these events in a fictional medium she hoped it would prevent them from actually occuring. Here too John Ross (and certainly ISIL) does not advocate that anyone go out and shoot government officials – although Ross’s fictional characters do. Unintended Consequences serves as a warning to an out-of-control government that should it continue on its present disastrous course the horrifying fictional events in his novel will probably become a reality.

It is doubtful that this magnificent novel will be an overnight best-seller without the kind of PR campaign it would get from a major publisher. But neither was Atlas Shrugged. Sales of Ayn Rand’s master-piece just kept growing by word of mouth, until it became this century’s classic novel of liberty – never out of print in 40 years.

Now it has company.

Editors note: This novel is about the “gun culture” in America. For firearms aficion-ados like myself the first part of the novel is quite engrossing. For others the technical descriptions may not be quite so interes-ting. My advice? Bear with it – the pace quickens and the plots heats up drama-tically after the first 200 pages. You won’t be sorry. Libertarians will find a goldmine of libertarian ideas and illustrations of how government interventions always create “unintended consequences” woven seamlessly into the plot.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
863 pages (hardcover). $28.95
+ $5.00 priority shipping & handling.

ATLAS SHRUGGED
$7.99 + $3.00 shipping & handling.
Available from Freedom’s Forum Books, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102 ISIL members may claim a 10% discount. Visa & MasterCard accepted.

ISIL 1996 World Conference
August 19 – 24, 1996
Whistler, BC, Canada

In the face of an increasingly volatile and dangerous political environment in North America – and indeed in many other parts of the world, this year’s ISIL World Conference may just be at the right place at the right time. At the
spectacularly scenic Whistler resort just north of Vancouver, Canada, a meeting of the world’s foremost authorities on devolution of power, local sovereignty and alternative constitutional models will be gathering.

Devolving power away from-out-of-control central governments is important – but it is even more important to challenge the basic functions of govern-ment itself – at all levels. Foremost authorities in these areas will address the conference.

We will be taking a close look at the New Zealand “miracle”, and the Swiss Cantonal model. A member from Somalia will explain the virtues of native “kritarch-ies”. A member of Parliament from Canada’s Reform Party will address our group.

With this issue of the Freedom Net-work News we have included a copy of the Whistler Conference pamphlet and regis-tration form. If you require more copies you may order them from the address shown or from ISIL HQ in San Francisco.

We also highly recommend that you register early as space is limited. We expect a large crowd.

We hope to have major television network coverage of this event. Will keep you posted in upcoming FNN’s.

INTRODUCING . . .

Vin Suprynowicz

We have been enjoying and circulating columns by ISIL member Vin Suprynowicz for several months now since we discovered him – and he ISIL. Vin is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at [email protected]. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at: http://www. nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndica-tions, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127.

We like his style. Look him up.

Joe Zychik

The Zychik Chronicles are the never-ending weekday work of ISIL member Joe Zychik. This “work `em over with a rubber hose” libertarian-oriented politi-cal commentary comes in two flavors, one via e-mail ([email protected]) and one via his World Wide Web page (http: //www.via.net/~jzychik).

Zychik condenses daily news stories using the style of an AP writer. Then the next to the last sentence or so transitions into Mr. Zychik’s punch line. Sometimes Zychik’s humor is subtle and clean, like a taste of white wine or a dagger. Some-times Zychik’s humor is as direct as a broadax dripping gore (often this, ed.). But in all cases, Mr. Zychik always makes his points about the folly of big government and the value of human beings living in freedom.

Letters to the Editor

POLISH FREE MARKET STUDENT ORGANIZATION SEEKS CONTACTS

We are a student’s organization of the Union of Real Politics in Poland. Our objective is to popularize the ideas of private property, individual liberty, and the free market economy. Our members are students of many Kracovian universities, colleges and academies. We also have a Youth Section which includes pupils from secondary schools, etc. We’ve begun publishing a magazine Czas Akademicki (The Academic Time), which is a forum for the exchange of rightist opinions. It is our contribution to a transformation of social morale. We have a lot to do in a post-communist country, governed by socialists. We have to recover the influences of the rightist ideology in Poland (especially the role of privately-owned firms and local communities).

We would like to come into contact with similar organizations in the USA. We would like to ask you to send us any helpful materials (leaflets, publications, addresses, etc.), or anything else that might help with our work.

Aleksander Glogowski. Unia Polityki Realnej
ul. Lobzowska 8, 31-140 Krakow, Poland

LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND DECENTRALIZATION IN LATIN AMERICA

Golde is an unmoderated discussion list devoted to the development of Local Government and Decentralisation issues in Latin America. The list is addressed to local authorities at any level in Latin America; members of municipal development agencies and projects in the region; ngo’s and international development agencies staff; researchers and scholars.

Golde promotes the exchange of information about municipal development, local delivery of services, international programmes, training, books, technical assistance, seminars, events, books, publications, consultancy, horizontal cooperation and decentralization programs. We encourage practitioners and academic staff from other regions of the world interested in the development of Latin America to subscribe. The main languages are Spanish, English and Portuguese. Other languages are permitted.

We anticipate discussions on what to do to improve decentralisation processes in a wide range of sectors considering political, economic, and technical aspects of the process. An important aim of the list is to promote the strengthening of local government, at any level, in Latin America. We encourage the exchange of information on organisational, administrative, financial and human-resources aspects of local government, as well as issues concerned with privatization, contracting-out of services, local tax reform, cooperation with the private sector, citizen’s participation, accountability, environment and gender, good government and democracy.

To subscribe, send a message to [email protected] with no subject line, and the following in the body, without quotation:

Subscribe golde <your electronic address> <your name>

For more information, please e-mail [email protected]
Owners: Andrew Nickson [email protected] and
Lenni Montiel [email protected]

News From Across the U.S.

“All the news the establishment media won’t print”

POLICE OFFICERS BLAST CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

“AID & ABET” — POLICE NEWSLETTER ROASTS CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Police Officer R. Stevens of New York State reports: “Not a day goes by that we (police officers) don’t bear witness to the manipulation of juries, and their decisions, by members of the Judiciary.”

Another Police officer, Sgt. M.T. from Texas (a 14 year veteran) has expressed his concerns as follows:

“Some of us (Officers) have quietly discussed this activity on several occasions, but must confess that we have never understood why a Judge is allowed to jury tamper. For example, they regularly withhold crucial evidence, deny important testimony of witnesses in a case, and employ other devious tactics which of course directly effect the outcome of the jury decision. Our main question should be, `Why is this not considered a crime for a judge when it is considered so for all other people?’ Also, if it is a crime, to whom would we go in reporting a judge’s unlawful activities, . . . to another judge who is engaged in the very same activity? They all do it! It is a unanimous conscience here that, regardless of how right and legal our protests might be, any officers involved in bringing public attention to such powerful, clandestine, political controls, would probably be the only ones punished. What we need is mass support for such changes.”

Police Officer Jack McLamb states that many police officers strongly consider a judge’s secret control of the jury as a serious crime against the People. It is reportedly the most consistent question that comes up on this issue from his fellow officers: “Why should we law enforcers be sworn to arrest all those we see committing such infractions as `misdemeanors’ and then be restrained from taking action against a judge for regularly committing felonies in our presence.”

JUDGES AS GOVERNMENT AGENTS

Aid and Abet reports: “Police officers who witness judicial activities in courtrooms today, can attest to the fact that a judge can, at will, decide the outcome of any jury trial that comes before him in which he or his political benefactors have a special interest. Many Police officers understand that today it is a fact – unspoken and unholy as it is! that generally speaking, `his Honor’s first duty, as a purely political appointee, and government agent, is to protect the government’s philosophies and political agenda from the Public. And yet the poor misled Public is kept uninformed and forever fed the lie that `Judges are there to protect the Citizen’s right to a fair trial.’ Give us a break!'”

One of the solutions proposed by Jack McLamb and other peace officers is jury nullification – often referred to as “Jury Lawlessness” by the Evil Empire. If people are made aware of their rights as jurors, they can prevent many of the unholy miscarriages of justice that are occurring now on a daily basis. For more information on fully-informed juries contact:

FIJA, P.O.Box 59, Helmville, MT. 59843 (406) 793-5550.
[email protected]
[email protected]

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
=====================

DISTRUST OF GOVERNMENT REACHES RECORD HIGHS

WASHINGTON, DC – According to a new public opinion study by the Washington Post, 75% of Americans no longer “trust the government in Washington to do the right thing most of the time.”

By contrast, a mere 24% didn’t trust the government in 1964.

But the distrust isn’t just general – it’s also specific. For example:

–> 34% say government programs have worsened “the rate of violent crime.”

–> 37% believe government has increased “the chances that children will grow up in single-parent families.”

–>Almost 50% say government has worsened “the income gap between wealthy and middle-class Americans.”

On those three issues, only about 10% said the federal government “helped make things better.” (they were probably civil serpents – ed)

In the words of the Post, “Sub-stantial segments of the public believe the federal government has hurt the economy and society in general.”

What’s the result of all these governmental failures? “The public is increasingly . . . ready to believe that raising taxes to pay for federal programs is a wasteful strategy that may do more harm than good,” said the Post.

HARE-BRAINED LAW MANDATES “V-CHIPS” IN EVERY TV

There is a government Bill in the works that would require all television manufacturers to incorporate a special chip, called the V-chip, into each new TV set they produce. This V-chip is intended to give parents the ability to program their TV sets to exclude shows they think may be too violent for their children to see. To help parents make that decision, the broadcasting and entertainment industry will have one year to come up with an effective rating system. If they can’t, the Federal Communications Commission will do it for them. Now there’s a scary thought.

First of all, any parent who takes an interest in what their children watch doesn’t need a V-chip; that’s what the channel button is for. Those who don’t care won’t use the V-chip anyway, so what’s the point? And tell me something, who’s going to teach all of those people who can’t even set the clocks on their VCRs how to program a V-chip? Probably the same people who wind up programming their VCRs for them . . . their kids! Yeah, I can see this plan working.

Here’s another question for you to ponder. Assuming they pass this law, who decides what is obscene and what isn’t? As I recall, the Supreme Court tied the determination of obscenity to the moral standards of the community. In cyberspace, what constitutes a “community?” I’ve explored the Net and there is a lot of stuff out there I don’t want my children to see. Is it obscene? Some of it perhaps, at least by my standards. But what if your standards are different? Should my opinion deprive you of the right to judge that material for yourself? No. That is why governments cannot legislate morality; only parents can.

Don’t let anybody kid you; this bill isn’t about protecting the moral fiber of America’s youth. If it were, the folks in Washington would be the last people qualified to do that job. No, this is about power, the power to limit and control your access to information. It’s an attempt at censorship and in a free society, there is nothing more obscene or immoral than that.

From an editorial by Bruce A. Bennett, which appeared in EDN Products Edition (an electronics industry trade publication).

NEW MEXICO
===========

INDIANS THREATEN WAR WITH FEDERAL AGENTS

ALBUQUERQUE – A battle is raging between Indian tribes and the federal and state governments over the right to run gambling casinos on Indian territory.

New Mexico’s new governor, the businessman with a libertarian streak, had originally approved Indian casinos and at least ten tribes on reservations stretching from Ruidoso to Taos have been operating casino games. But last summer the state Supreme court declared high-stakes gambling illegal.

US Attorney John Kelly has demanded that Indian tribes shut down their casinos or face police raids and seizure of slot machines and other gambling devices.

Tribal representatives, bristling at this affront to their alleged sovereignty, retorted that casinos would remain open, a move which set the stage for a showdown in federal court and possibly on the reservations themselves.

Pojoaque Pueblo Gov. Jacob Viarrial said his pueblo would defy any court-ordered forfeiture order and if necessary they were prepared to mount armed resistance against federal agents.

Tribes have since purchased a TV ad showing treaties going up in flames and Isleta Pueblo warriors have moved concrete dividers to the highway shoulders in preparation for possible roadblocks.

Viarrial asserted that the tribes are separate governments: “We should have the right to do whatever we want . . . the state should leave us alone.”

There’s a word for it, he says: “Sovereignty.”

Tribal members call it the right to determine who they are and who they want to be. They tend to speak of their sovereign powers as absolute. But state and federal governments have other ideas.

The revenues from casinos give the tribes more than the right to govern themselves – it gives them the money to do so. An estimated $200 million in annual revenues provides money for tribal programs, employs about 3000 people and purchases tens of millions of dollars in goods and services from off-reservation contractors.

But, for a paternalistic “Big Brother” state, with a long history of running rough-shod over native rights, self-reli-ance is not an acceptable state of affairs.

Excerpted from articles in the Albuquerque Journal
Submitted by Ron Romero, Albuquerque

MASSACHUSETTS

POLICE BRUTALIZE WOMAN FOR TAKING PICTURES OF HER 4-YEAR-OLD IN BATHTUB

CAMBRIDGE – On November 2, 1995, Toni Marie Angeli was arrested at Zona Photographic Labs, ostensibly for child pornography, as she tried to pick up pictures she had taken of her 4-year-old son Nico getting out of a bathtub in their home. The photos were to be part of her project: a study of child innocence for an Introduction to Photography course taught by Professor John Leuders-Booth at Harvard University.

At this point no charges of child pornography have been laid. Instead, Mrs. Angeli has been charged with disorderly conduct, assault and battery, and alleged malicious destruction of property during a scuffle in which police threatened to take her 4-year-old son away from her.

Detective W. Phillips of Cambridge, who was investigating this “crime” told Mrs. Angeli that he had already notified the Department of Social Services of her criminal activity as a child pornographer and, poking his finger in her face in a threatening gesture said, “if you don’t cooperate, I will take that kid away from you on the spot.” Hearing the threat, young Nico began clutching his mother. Ms. Angeli, at that point, ceased to be polite. She said, “Haven’t you something better to do with your time? Why don’t you go to the schoolyard and find some crack dealers?”

Police then started to move in on Mrs. Angeli so, fearing for her child’s safety she called her husband to take the baby.

Ms. Angeli was then dragged to the back of the store by Detective Phillips who during the scuffle took Ms. Angeli’s head and slammed it into a door jamb, dazing her temporarily.

A female officer then held Ms. Angeli by the handcuffs behind her back, pulling up on them brutally. Ms. Angeli began screamed for her husband “Luke, they are breaking my arms!”

Hearing the ongoing struggle, Luke Angeli rushed into the back room and told the detectives to leave Ms. Angeli alone. Policemen then lunged at Luke Angeli knocking him to the ground. Four-year old Nico followed his father into the back room. Seeing his mother being choked, and his father on the ground with the police on top of him he began screaming uncontrollably.

Despite her requests to say goodbye to her son, the police refused. They escorted Ms. Angeli past her son and out to a police van which took her to the Cambridge Police Station. Ms. Angeli remained in police custody for several hours until a bail bondsman arrived and her husband was allowed to bail her out.

Posted to the Internet by:
Matthew Gaylor, Columbus, OH
[email protected]

Take those baby pictures off of your web pages, folks. And burn those “kiddie porn” photos of your kid in a wash tub unless you want a puritan police swat team smashing your door down in the middle of the night.
Pennsylvania

FDA RAIDS OXYGEN/OZONE THERAPY CENTER

On January 4 at about 8:30 AM, ten FDA agents and 2 state troopers with guns drawn raided the Lazare Clinic and the home of the owner.

Co-owner Jackie Kube described in detail the terrifying experience of looking down the barrels of the guns of 5 armed agents and 2 state troopers. They came in, took over her house, yanked her son out of the shower, and herded everyone into the dining room while they rummaged through the house. On arriving at her office she found the same scenario repeated.

The warrant for this gestapo-like raid described the property to be seized – including ozone/oxygen therapy devices and all accessories, topozone oil and any materials used to manufacture it, records, files, documents, receipts. Ms. Kube complained that they even seized the olive oil with which she cooks her meals. Everything went, including computers and all peripherals, client records, all sales brochures, personal records – everything.

At this date no charges have been filed.

Before opening in September 1995, Lazare received approval from the State of Pennsylvania and had a letter of assurance from the Department of Health and Human Services, project title “Center for Alternative Medicine Research in HIV/AIDS.” The people at Lazare are bewildered. They had gone to great lengths to comply with all the regulations.

We are informed that libertarian Dr. Nancy Lord has taken on the case. In a recent communique Dr. Lord reported that calls to the Assistant Attorney General have not been returned – nor has information as to what testimony or affidavit(s) were used to establish probable cause been made available. Dr. Lord, the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate in the last federal elections is both an M.D. and an attorney and is in a unique position to defend clients such as Lazare from federal abuses of power.

The FDA has launched paramilitary SWAT team raids on literally hundreds of alternative health clinics and supplement providers in recent years. Guns against vitamins? This type of suppression of health- care alternatives cannot be tolerated in a free society. The FDA and its gangs of jackbooted thugs is long overdue for the chopping block.- along with the ATF and other tyrannical federal agencies.

TEXAS
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TEXAS REPUBLIC SOVEREIGNTY MOVEMENT SURFACES

FORT DAVIS – For many years there have been rumblings of secession in the State of Texas. “Secede” and “Lone Star” bumper stickers have been around for decades. But after the siege and massacre at Waco, relations between Texans and the Feds have been strained to the limit. Now a new movement has emerged which claims to have a binding legal claim to sovereign-ty. We have seen postings on the Internet by Robert Kesterson, received faxes on the fax networks as well as e-mail on the subject. There have also been faxes and e-mail messages circulating which claim that the Texas Republic’s assertions are fraudulent – and others that affirm their claims.

Whatever the case may be, there seems to be a fair amount of smoke here – with a distinct possibility of fire. The group appears to have some substance – including an attractive world wide web site.

The following information was gleaned from postings by Kesterson:
“Through diligent research, a para-legal in Fort Davis, Texas discovered that the State of Texas had not been properly annexed into the union of States. With that as a beginning, the Republic was re-born.

“Richard `Rick’ McLaren, working on freeing the Davis County Land Commission from the grasp of the EPA, discovered that Texas was not lawfully annexed or inducted into the United States. Through a Joint Resolution the Legislature of 1845 annexed the State without the requisite number of votes. Through this action, the Republic of Texas was set aside and became the State of Texas.

“At this time the Republic of Texas was a sovereign nation completely separated from the United States. There was no provision in the Constitution of the United States, nor in the laws of the United States to annex a foreign nation into the Union. To accomplish this, the legislature of the United States made a Joint Resolution to accept the State of Texas into the Union. Although there was not a quorum to vote on the matter, it was accepted. Through chicanery and deceit the Republic was set aside, but through the diligence in research of one man, the Republic is reborn.

We have done all the legal footwork to accomplish the rebirth of the Republic. The State of Texas Supreme Court has ruled that it has no jurisdiction in the matter, the State Department of the United States has declared that it is an internal matter, so we took the problem to the International Court in Hague, Netherlands.

There has been a Provisional Government elected, from the delegates to the Constitution Convention, to provide the required governing body for the Republic. This Provisional Government will be in place only as long as it takes to bring about the transition from the State of Texas to the Republic of Texas. Since we didn’t have the blessings or support of the news media, the only way we could reach anyone was by word of mouth, so very few people were aware of what was going on.

We are now in the process of setting up a Republic and we would wish that every citizen of the U.S. that is living in Texas would desire to become Citizens of the Republic. We need all the help and expertise we can get in this monumental task. At this point we are forging ahead as quickly as we can. There will be information packets available as soon as we can get them printed. If you would like to volunteer your help in this by serving on a committee, you can contact any member of the Council by mail at the following address: The Republic of Texas, c/o PO Box 460554, San Antonio, Texas 78246. Or you may check out the Texas Republic Web Site:

http://www.flash.net/~robertk
or e-mail – [email protected].

WASHINGTON STATE
==================

LIBERTARIAN TALK SHOW HOST GENERATES HIGH RATINGS IN SEATTLE MARKET

SEATTLE – ISIL member Tom Isenberg has the second-highest rated show on Seattle radio station KVI, trailing only America’s most famous rotund conservative talkmeister, Rush Limbaugh (ac-cording to recent Arbitron ratings).

Isenberg hosts the weekly “Tom’s Diner” talk show on Tuesdays from 9-11 pm on KVI 570 AM.

“Libertarian ideas are very sexy now,” said Isenberg, explaining the success of the show. “People want to discuss them, especially younger adults, who want dramatically less government interference in their personal and professional lives. They know that big government is dangerous and doesn’t work, and they suspect that neither the Republicans nor Democrats will make the bold reductions needed.”

To meet this demand for libertarian ideas, Isenberg said he exposes his growing audience “to a libertarian analysis of current events by libertarian authors, policy analysts, and politicians – including guests from the Libertarian Party and libertarian think-tanks like the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation.

“People know that they’re going to get spicy libertarian food for thought at Tom’s Diner,” he said.

In addition to high ratings, Isenberg’s radio show has also been the subject of several television and newspaper stories since it debuted in March 1995.

KVI radio, with its conservative/liber-tarian talk-radio format, is one of the three highest-rated radio stations in the Seattle market, which covers all of western Washington. The station also carries John Carlson, Michael Reagan, Mike Siegel, Kirby Wilbur and other popular local and national hosts.

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When the subject of a monument to Franklin D. Roosevelt came up, Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, said:
“No, his memorial IS Washington, D.C., a bloated parasite, sucking the wealth and health out of the rest of the country. Isn’t it enough that his likeness is on the dime, which, thanks to him, is worth about two cents!” Seen in Orlando Sentinel

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

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===============================================================
U.S. religious fanatics declare war on free speech on the Internet
COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT PASSED
commentary by Bob Bickford

Score another victory for bigotry and intolerance. The radical Christian Right has used manufactured paranoia about pornography on the Internet (which is at most a small problem that has been well addressed by existing laws and software solutions) to get some of the most sweeping censorship legislation ever passed in the United States signed into law.

Make no mistake about it, they have their boot planted firmly on the face of your First Amendment rights, and they re about to start grinding it down. Under this new law, anything you say or do in cyberspace that could be found indecent even in the most primitive and backward jurisdiction to be found in the U.S. could land you in jail for 2 years and net you a $250,000 fine.

How did this happen??

On February 1st, 1995, Senators Exon (D-NE) and Gorton (R-WA) introduced S.314 , which they called The Communications Decency Act . At the same time, an obscure engineering student at Carnegie Mellon University, Marty Rimm, was putting the finishing touches on an alleged study of pornography in cyberspace . (It has since been revealed that both of these apparently unrelated events were orchestrated by the radical right-wing people at the Christian Coalition , notably Ralph Reed). In reaction to the legislation, which proposed to censor all content of cyber-space down to the level of what would be acceptable for small children, a coalition of civil-liberties groups was rapidly formed; which included the US National Libertarian Party (a member of that coalition since March 20th, 1995).

Rimm s study eventually became the basis for a lurid TIME magazine front-page article. However, once copies of the actual document were made available for analysis, it rapidly fell apart. TIME immediately ran a retraction, and Rimm was disinvited from a Congressional hearing on the subject of pornography on the Internet. Even TIME s Philip Elmer-DeWitt, the author of the article, has recently admitted publically that I agree that there were elements of fraud to the Rimm study. Meanwhile, the legislative juggernaut rolled onward, in spite of heroic efforts by Senator Leahy (D-VT). Leahy spoke out against the censorship and introduced alternative legislation (S.714) to have the Justice Department examine the problem and determine if any additional laws were even needed. (People have been for years, and continue to be, prosecuted for crimes related to pornography on computer networks, including providing same to children, so there does not appear to be a need for new legislation if the issue was really a concern for children).

The Stop 314 Coalition organized an extremely effective on-line petition drive against the bill, collecting an unprecedented one hundred and ten thousand signatures, which were printed out and delivered to Congress. Later in the year, a letter-writing campaign was rapidly organized and over 20,000 persons participated in just a couple of days (each sending at least one letter in opposition to the bill). These efforts fell on deaf ears in Congress.

From the start, this act was a fully bi-partisan effort in both houses of Congress. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) at one point voiced his vehement opposition to the censorship legislation, and the House overwhelmingly passed the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act (HR 1978) introduced by Reps. Cox (R-CA) and Wyden (D-OR), a much better bill. Unfortunately, Gingrich’s verbal support evaporated when the time came for the conference committee to resolve the differences between the House and Senate bills. The committee made the result much worse in several ways, most notably by substituting the vague (and legally undefined) word indecent for the phrase harmful to minors in an important section of the bill. It turns out that the Christian Coalition people were behind this change, once again proving that their agenda was never about children, but instead was about control. Language was also inserted to modify an old law so as to make it illegal to discuss abortion on computer networks again prompted by the right-wing zealots at the Christian Coalition.

When the conference committee was through, both houses of Congress (with their eyes firmly on the corporate welfare represented by the overall Telecom Bill) passed the final bill overwhelmingly. Clinton signed the result into law on February 8th, 1996.

On the Internet s World-Wide Web, tens of thousands of pages were turned black for 48 hours to protest the censorship legislation; many pages were reduced to nothing more than the words this is what censorship looks like. Steve Russell, a trial judge for 16 years in Texas and now retired, wrote a blistering article filled with foul language for a national newsletter as a deliberate violation of the law (for a test case), as the only definitively-known example of indecency in federal court cases are George Carlin s infamous Seven Dirty Words .

The ACLU, EPIC, EFF, VTW, and several other plaintiffs joined forces to file suit against the new law within hours of its being signed. Justice Buckwalter, in the US District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, granted a Temporary Restraining Order against one piece of the CDA on Feb 15th. Another suit was filed by NARAL and others against the provisions which censor discussion of abortion, although the DOJ has claimed in a letter that it believes that portion of the law to be unconstitutional on its face.

Heroes and Villains

There have been many heroes and villains over the past year. Some of the people that deserve the most praise are: Mike Godwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation for his tireless efforts to tear away the layers of lies and deceptions surrounding the Rimm study and the CDA; Donna Hoffman of Vanderbilt University for her amazing work on the Rimm study; and Shabbir Safdar of VTW for endlessly coordinating the huge coalition against censorship (and for writing most of the alerts).

The villains include Senator Exon, Marty Rimm, and especially Ralph Reed and Cathleen Cleaver of the Christian Coalition . The latter three have proved themselves to be both very dangerous, not to mention being pathological liars of the worst sort. Despite the ready availability of the text of the law as passed, Cleaver in particular continues to make claims which are totally and completely false regarding what the bill does. They, and many others, claim to be concerned about children, but refuse to acknowledge that existing commercial software packages such as SurfWatch and NetNanny are completely effective against any accidental exposure to potentially offensive materials on the Internet.

Another set of villains has, unfortunately, been the national media, which almost totally ignored the issue until the black-web-pages protest, at which point the law had already been signed. When they did report on the subject, they most commonly regurgitated the propoganda of the Christian Coalition uncritically, and further confused the public about just what is available on-line. (In actual fact, there is some indecent material out there just as there is in any bookstore or library. But just as in a library, the books don t jump down off the shelves at you: you have to go actively looking for such material in order to find them).

What You Can Do

Most important is to stay informed! Look at the text of the law (available from all of the web sites listed below), read the many excellent legal analyses available, stay informed and form your own opinions rather than accepting what the news media tell you. Use the Internet yourself, and learn about the incredible wealth of excellent information which exists out there (one count indicates that there are over five million web pages alone!).

Some important web sites include:

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) http://www.eff.org/

Voter’s Telecom Watch (VTW) http://www.vtw.org/

Center for Democracy and Technology http://www.cdt.org/

Each of these has many links to other resources, including EPIC, ACLU, etc.

The next most important thing to do is to counter the nonsense and hysteria whenever you hear it. If someone at the supermarket worries aloud about the porn on the Net , tell them that you use the Net every day (if you do) and tell them about something valuable or interesting that you found there (that obscure recipe, perhaps, or a source for those old automotive parts you wanted). If you re like me, you can tell them that you ve met dozens of friends, two lovers, and a wife on the Net (married for 7 years).

It is often said that the remedy for bad speech is not censorship, but good speech. Nowhere is this more true than on the Net, where absolutely everyone is equally powerful and equally able to say his or her piece, and where nobody ever has to listen to anyone who distresses or offends them. Unlike the television, it is neither a one-way medium, nor is it broadcast into your home whether you want it or not: the net is totally under your individual control for you. Take control!

Bob Bickford is the National Libertarian Party’s Coordinator for the Anti-CDA Coalition

Robert Bickford [email protected]

“Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary”

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U.S. religious fanatics declare war on free speech on the Internet
COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT PASSED
commentary by Bob Bickford

How did this happen??

Heroes and Villains

What You Can Do

Some important web sites include:

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) http://www.eff.org/

Voter’s Telecom Watch (VTW) http://www.vtw.org/

Center for Democracy and Technology http://www.cdt.org/

Each of these has many links to other resources, including EPIC, ACLU, etc.

Bob Bickford is the National Libertarian Party’s Coordinator for the Anti-CDA Coalition

Robert Bickford [email protected]

“Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary”

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(Many not listed in previous Freedom’s Forum Bookstore catalogs)

THE POWER IN THE PEOPLE by Felix Morley A classic treatise on the formation and nature of the American Republic. Morley, who was a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the Washington Post, a college president and award-winning historian, describes why the Republic is unique in history, in that “its government assumes, and is designed to strengthen, a moral code of honorable individual conduct.” Morley describes in great detail how the Founding Fathers saw the challenges of designing a government that would respect the rights of the citizens, and why they designed the federal system with a clear separation of powers. Morley also discusses fundamental questions such the difference and relationship of liberty and freedom. The chapter on “State and Society” is worth the price of the book, showing the difference between the coercive nature of government versus the voluntary arrangements between individuals operating in a moral manner (Morley makes the case that religion buttresses this moral be-havior). A classical liberal often associated with the “Old Right”, Morley eloquently warns against the centralization of government power in Washington, using examples ranging from the decline of Rome to the brutality of modern communism to show how this would destroy individual liberty. This book is beautifully written with an elegance of prose that is rarely seen today. Highly recommended. We have limited stock of this fine, but out-of-print book, so get it while you can!
293 pg. (paperback) $5.95 (hardcover).. $12.95

RADICAL LIBERTARIANISM by Jerome Tuccille . . . This early movement book (1970) gives a rollicking account of the famous split between the libertarians and conservatives at the 1969 Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) convention in St. Louis. A snappy writer, Tuccille also gives an overview of libertarian writings of Murray Rothbard, Karl Hess and other radicals in support of individualist anarchism that began the paradigm shift from the liberal-conservative dichotomy to that of individualism vs. authoritarianism. (paperback) 109 pg… $4.95

LIBERTY RECLAIMED: A New Look at American Politics by Jim Lewis with Jim Peron A dandy little introduction to the ideas of liberty. Good overview on American history, showing how the progressive movement and legal positivism led to the rampant growth of government and the destruction of liberty. Also has a good section on actions individuals can take to lead the fight for liberty.
(paperback) 81 pg. …………………………….. $1.95

WHY JOHNNY CAN’T RUN, SWIM, PULL, DIG, SLITHER, ETC, by Jason Alexander
A novel that Randians will like. A back-to-nature movement sponsored by the ruling elites gradually transforms the human race into animals. The main character, Johnny Eagle, struggles with this condition and rediscovers reason. After much persecution, he and a few fellow creatures escape to a far-away land and recreate Man. Heavily illustrated.
(paperback) 206 pg. …………………………… $9.95

FORTY CENTURIES OF WAGE & PRICE CONTROLS: How Not to Fight Inflation, by Robert Schuettinger & Eamonn Butler. This book is still relevant today, since the government is imposing a form of wage and price controls on the medical industry to cut the inflation of costs that it caused. The authors cite example after example of governments inflating the money supply for their own benefit of higher spending, then trying controls to stop rising prices and wages (and government expenses). You name a place, they’ve tried it. Examples in this fine book include ancient Egypt, Babylon, China, Rome (includes the text of Diocletian’s Edict), several spots in Europe in the Middle Ages, Canada and the American colonies, the Confederate States of America, the various powers in the World Wars, and more. The authors show how the regulatory institutions created by the social democrats of the Weimar Republic provided Hitler’s National Socialist regime with the bureaucratic machinery to enforce the most comprehensive and brutal economic controls of modern times. Post-war controls in several countries are examined, including New York’s rent controls and Richard Nixon’s fiasco with wage and price controls in the early ’70s. The book closes with a good summary discussion of the real causes of inflation and its cure. (paperback) 186 pg. $4.95

THE RIGHT & WRONG OF COMPULSION BY THE STATE and Other Essays by Auberon Herbert . . . Herbert’s essays and speeches make a very eloquent and radical case for individual liberty, including the right of peaceful individuals to withold support from the state. He felt that compulsory taxation was never justified. Auberon Herbert’s writings were influenced by his contemporary Herbert Spencer, but Herbert remained more optimistic about human nature and the prospects for liberty. Writing around the turn of the century, he was perhaps the first to use the term “voluntaryist” to describe his radical libertarian philosophy, disdaining the term “anarchist”. This book is now out-of-print at the publisher, and is thus becoming rare. First come, first served!
(paperback) 425 pg. ………………………….. $6.95

BETTER GOVERNMENT AT HALF THE PRICE: Private Productions of Public Services by James T. Bennett and Manuel H. Johnson . . . A fine overview of the necessity and benefits of privatization. Discusses the growing tax burden. A good public-choice analyst re the high cost of government services, and the serious threat of unfunded government pensions and other liablilties. Has numerous cost-benefit comparisons of government vs. private provision of services such as trash collections, fire-fighting, ship maintenance, debt collections, schools, ambulance services, airlines, and many more. Quite readable, and for a public-policy book has the unusual treat of several humorous cartoons by Pulitzer-Prize political cartoonist Jeff MacNelly.
(paperback) 115 pg. ………………………….. $5.95

COMPETE OR CAPITULATE: A Citizens Challenge to Political Medicine and Bad Government by Michael R. Saxon, M.D.
A libertarian-oriented doctor describes the proper form of private patient-doctor relationship and how it leads to the best quality of medical care at the lowest cost. Shows how socialized medicine is destructive of this relationship, costs a fortune, and destroys liberty in general. Offers a nuts-and-bolts plan for private insur-ance options that would compete with govern-ment medicine or government-sanctioned cartels, and decentralization of medical decision-making power to free doctors from the dogma of the AMA, FDA, etc. Good general discussion relating the health-care issue with the general ideas of liberty and the state of the
country. (hardcover) 174 pg. ……………… $7.95

POWER & MARKET: Government & the Economy, by Murray Rothbard
This is Rothbard’s (once known as “Mr. Libertarian) most radical economics, going beyond his Man, Economy & State. He lays out his theory on how private protection agencies could provide defense and police functions, and adjudication of disputes, without the coercion of government. This book systematically analyizes and condemns all forms of political intervention in the economy, contrasting them with the voluntary nature of the free market. Finally, Murray rebuts a long series of arguments put forward by statists against the free market. 304 pg. (paperback) $9.95. (hardcover – very limited supply) $19.95

RESOLVING THE HOUSING CRISIS: Gov-ernment Policy, Decontrol, and the Public Interest edited by M. Bruce Johnson
Wonder why most Americans can longer afford to buy a house? The authors describe in detail how every direction you turn, government policies restrict housing supply and raise costs. Essays, charts and graphs describe how zoning laws exclude the poor from good hous-ing, how excessive building codes raise costs far beyond safety benefits, how rent controls reduce the supply of affordable rental prop-erties, how environmental regulations and set-asides are used by the rich to coercively stop competing development in highly desirable coastal and other scenic areas – jacking up their own property values. One study even shows how these policies wreak havoc with local government finance! Several of the studies focus on California – the state with the most “progressive” (read restrictive) housing policies – and for some strange reason – the highest real estate costs in the country. This book will be valuable for those seeking to preserve property rights and stop the adoption of similar policies elsewhere.
(paperback) 426 pg. Original publishers price $12.95. …………………………… FFB price $8.95

PERSPECTIVES ON RIGHTS (Georgia Law Review Vol. 13/4)
An outstanding collection of articles on the subject of human rights, organized by Roger Pilon (constitutional scholar at the Cato Insti-tute). Articles include “What is a Right” by the British libertarian philosopher Prof. Antony Flew, “Possesion As the Root of Title” by premier legal scholar Richard Epstein, “Corporations and Rights” by Roger Pilon, “Rights and the United States Constitution: The Declension from Natural Law to Legal Positivism” by legal and monetary author Edwin Vieira, Jr., and more.
(paperback) 450 pg. Supplies limited! …. $8.00

RIGHTS AND REGULATION: Ethical, Political, and Economic Issues edited by Tibor R. Machan & M. Bruce Johnson
The book goes far beyond the usual cost/benefits criticisms of government regula-tion to examine the moral premises of regu-lation and its effects on justice, human rights and individual liberty. Essays come from economists, legal scholars and philosophers, showing how it is destructive of the rule of law and how it is counterproductive even to its stated goals of increasing safety.
(paperback) Original publishers price $12.95. FFB price just $8.95.

WATERSHED OF EMPIRE: Essays on New Deal Foreign Policy edited by Leonard P. Liggio and James J. Martin . . . These essays describe how the liberal concept of domestic government economic interventionism that powered the New Deal led to a belief that the U.S. should intervene around the world to achieve a desirable results in the affairs of other nations. Murray Rothbard shows that this was not all merely misguided idealism. His essay shows how the U.S. officials in the `30s planned for a U.S.- dominated world economic order, and how they manipulated Britain’s bankruptcy even as they aided them militarily. The authors also show how Roosevelt’s pattern of deceiving the American public and sidelining Congress on foreign policy decision-making became standard procedures for Presidents ever since. Historical discussions on the unsuccessful attempts of the isola-tionists to keep America out of World War II, and the heavy-handed suppression of dissent by the mainstream liberal media of the time. Does this sound familiar somehow? This book will give you a greatly-improved understanding of the dynamics of the “New World Order”.
(paperback) 219 pg. ………………………… $4.95

SOCIALISM AND INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER by Elisabeth L. Tamedly
Would a one-world government promote peace and prosperity? The author, an Austrian economist who grew up in Nazi Germany and communist Hungary before living in Switzer-land and the U.S., examines the impact of socialism within nation-states, and using the socialist’s own literature, describes their ambition to create a one-world centralized state. However, the inherent contradictions of the socialist economic system and its grasp for total power would create poverty and conflict.
(hardcover) 302 pg. ………………………… $12.95

PROPHETS ON THE RIGHT: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism, by Ronald Radosh . . . Radosh examines the development of five prominent men who opposed U.S. involvement in World War II and the early Cold War: Senator Robert Taft, John T. Flynn, Oswald Villard, Lawrence Dennis, and Charles A. Beard. Although these men came from widely-differing ideological back-grounds, they all came to oppose the development of the American empire by name and by its fascist nature. They were the first to raise the issues later raised by liberals during Vietnam: the power of the President to carry out secret war by deception, the erosion of congressional power in foreign policy, the need for debate on foreign policy, the menace of crusades and holy wars, the erosion of political and civil liberties; and the ominous connections between a permanent war economy, industry, and the state. Their warnings against the interventionist liberals of their day bear a shocking resemblence to the circumstances of today. (paperback) 351 pg. ……………….. $5.95

ECONOMIC CALCULATION IN THE SOCIALIST SOCIETY by Trygve J. B. Hoff
An exhaustive but quite readable scholarly study of the debate between the Austrians and the socialists on the problem of determining the value of goods and services in socialist economies that attempt to abolish the market pricing system. Many excerpts from writings on both sides. Hoff, originally a socialist, came over to the Austrian side through his thorough research for this book, and went on to edit Norway’s top business journal Farmand.
(paperback) 405 pg. …………………………. $4.00

SCIENTISM AND VALUES edited by Helmut Schoeck and James Wiggins
The twelve contributors to this book, including Murray Rothbard and Richard Weaver, attack the growing tendency of academics and social planners to apply quantitative and experimental methods of the natural sciences to the social sciences. The results of this trend are a belief that men are like animals or machines with characteristics that can be predicted and/or controlled by technocratic elites, leading to an extremely coercive collective system where the government stifles individuality for the benefit of “society”. (Bill Clinton has publicly endorsed this socialist “organic” theory of society). This book’s writers, who include some natural scientists, analyze and reject this view in favor of free will and individual liberty.
(cloth) 270 pg. ………………………………… $9.95

RENT CONTROL AND THE WAR AGAINST THE POOR: Ideology, the Poor, and the Role of Political Force
by R.W. Grant . . . A feisty book that attacks numerous government programs which hurt the poor and benefit the left-wing political class. Grant tackles not only rent controls, but also government schools, inflation and numerous other subjects. He describes the welfare-statists such as Tom Hayden as “big-nurse fascists” and has many other good hard-hitting lines. (paperback) 202 pg. …………………. $4.95

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1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102 Tel: (415) 864-0952 Fax: (415) 864-7506 CompuServe 71034,2711 URL http://www.isil.org

Editor: Vincent H. Miller * Assistant Editors: James R. Elwood, Anton Sherwood, Tim Starr, Mark Valverde * Feb/Mar 1996

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed persons can change the world.
Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has . . . Margaret Mead

The International Society for Individual Liberty is an association of individuals and organizations dedicated to building a free and peaceful world, respect for individual rights and liberties, and an open and competitive economic system based on voluntary exchange and free trade. Members and affiliated organizations pursue this goal thorugh independent action, using their freely chosen strategies. The association exists to promote the exchange of information and ideas, to study diverse strategies and to foster fellowship.

CONTENTS
New Novel a Sensation
Introductions .. Suprynowicz & Zychik
Letters to the Editor
News From Across The US
Special Forces Underground
Communications Decency Act
Libertarian Movie Reviews
The Perils of Jury Duty
International Report
Libertarians in New Zealand
Classified Advertising
Book Catalog Section

Unintended Consequences by novelist John Ross a sensation
NOVEL WARNS OF IMPENDING REVOLUTION IN AMERICA

Now it has company.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
863 pages (hardcover). $28.95
+ $5.00 priority shipping & handling.

ISIL 1996 World Conference
August 19 – 24, 1996
Whistler, BC, Canada

We also highly recommend that you register early as space is limited. We expect a large crowd.

We hope to have major television network coverage of this event. Will keep you posted in upcoming FNN’s.

ISIL INTERNATIONAL REPORT

CANADA
========

“ATLAS IS SHRUGGING” – WEALTHY PROFESSIONALS FLEE

In the face of escalating taxes, and a plummeting dollar that threatens to go into free-fall, plus the ominous sign of state liquidation of gold reserves, Canadian entre-preneurs are jumping ship in droves, seeking safer climes and they are taking their money with them. According to investment & tax counsellor Alex Doulis, what is at stake could be literally trillions in fleeing capital and millions in unpaid taxes.

Doulis, playing the role of John Galt in Ayn Rand s Atlas Shrugged, pulls no punches: I m in confrontation with the government, he says. I m going to move all the large money out of Canada. I m saying to the government you cut the debt, the expenditures, the tax rate and I ll come home and bring my money with me. But if you continue to act irresponsibly, I m sorry, I can t finance that.

Clients who have read his book Take Your Money and Run continue to flock to his office for advice on moving offshore: Before 1990 we had 20 new clients a year for offshore tax advice. Now we see 20 a week.

The Turks and Caicos are crawling with ex-pat Canadians, Doulis says. On islands like that, 80% of their GDP is made from offshore schemes. When entire countries can live on tax avoidance schemes, you know it s a big thing.

In recent years the number of offshore trusts in the Turks and Caicos has swelled from 8,000 to 16,000. In 1993 alone there were 28,000 new incorporations in the British Virgin Islands.
Doulis currently has money administered by an offshore company in a tax haven and lives in his white yacht Freedom in Greece (a country which does not tax offshore income).

Seen in the Toronto Sun

“LET’S RE-INVENT THE CONSTITUTION” SAYS REFORM PARTY LEADER

CALGARY Reform Party leader Preston Manning has called for a conference to redefine the terms of Canadian confederation a meeting which would exclude the federal government in Ottawa and include provincial leaders. He asserted that the intellectual bankruptcy and leadership vacuum in Ottawa has lead to an impasse regarding national unity. An absent federal government faced with widespread mutiny would be obligated to consider any resolutions coming from this conference.

Manning has suggested excluding Quebec from this event, but Alberta Premier Ralph Klein who, together with Saskat-chewan Premier Roy Romanow, had already planned a similar collective confron-tation with Ottawa, strongly suggested that Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau should be invited.

It was concluded Quebec might have some interest in making things work because the same abuses of federal power that have been frustrating Quebec are also frustrating other provinces.

RUMBLINGS FOR PARTITION IN QUEBEC — BEFORE SECESSION

MONTREAL A new partition movement is gaining steam in Quebec by individuals who point out that Quebec itself is not a homogeneous francophone community.

In the October 95 referendum, residents of Montreal, the Ottawa valley, Eastern townships and aboriginal lands voted overwhelmingly to stay in Canada.

Those occupying a small sausage-shaped region from the easternmost end of Montreal through dairy farmlands to Quebec City voted overwhelmingly to separate.

It has been suggested that these people should negotiate a homeland which could be called Nouveau Qu bec or Laurentia. Canada s Reform Party endorses this approach if and when there is another referendum.

Loyalist Canadians such as Montreal lawyer Brent Tyler and Equality Party head Keith Henderson have been popularizing the partition idea (actually it was discussed in ISIL member and Reform Party Research Director Scott Reid’s book Canada Remapped). Their view is that a plebiscite should be held in Quebec before the next referendum to determine which portions of the province s population want to stay and which want to go.

Mark Kotler, a Montreal businessman feels the secessionists movement has reached critical mass and will eventually succeed, so he has formed a tiny grassroots organization calling itself the Citizens Committee for a New Province. It has thousands of members.

Other groups in Gatineau and Montreal are quietly forming. Cardiologist Roopnarine Singh is raising money to bring about a change to the Constitution to make Montreal into a separate new province.

It is interesting that the subject of what to do about ethnic enclaves, such as the English in Westmount (a suburb of Montreal) or native peoples, is being addressed now before secession occurs. A solution could prevent considerable conflict later on down the line.

Excerpted from an article by Diane Francis which appeared in the January 13thToronto SUN. Submitted by Bruce Evoy Toronto, Canada

CYBERSPACE: PROTECTING THE FRINGES

OTTAWA Cyberspace junkies across North America are going on line to say they are repelled by Canadian Ernst Zundel s Holocaust revisionist writings. But in order to protect freedom of expression on the Internet, they re battling German government efforts to censor him.

Their weapon of choice? Proving to Germany that censoring the net is impossible. Zundel s material has found new Internet sites that aren’t blocked by the German ban.

Last week, the German phone giant Deutsche Telekom AG blocked access to Web Communication in California. It carries Zundel s material, but under German law his writings are outlawed.

A day after access was blocked, a student at Carnegie-Mellon picked up Zundel’s material and put it on Internet sites at the university Germans still have access to.

[The] protest quickly spread to Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, [U of Mass] where computer users created Zundel sites. Germany now has to ban access to all these sites to censor Zundel.

Citizens worldwide are beginning to realize they need to offer shelter to persecuted and suppressed ideas, Zundel said in an interview.

Rod Guelphman, a spokesman for Web Communications, said Germany s move has made Zundel s pages so popular [that] there is an overload, making it difficult to even call them up.

Victoria Times Colonist (Feb 3) Submitted by Marco Den Ouden, Vancouver, BC

NEW GUN-CONTROL LAWS FUEL WESTERN SEPARATISM

OTTAWA A draconian 1,000 page gun-control law just enacted by Ottawa allows, among a myriad of fascist examples, federal agents to break into someone’s home without a search warrant on the mere suspicion of unauthorized gun possession. The new law is infuriating millions of Canadians in the Western provinces such as British Columbia and Alberta. Since Quebec s eventual departure from Canada is now seen as inevitable, the law in energizing movements for these Western provinces to declare independence as well.

Seen in Strategic Investment Newsletter.

MIDDLE CLASS FEARS POVERTY

OTTAWA A comprehensive new poll by Southam News-CTV has found middle-class Canadians living in fear of being dragged into the ranks of the poor. Large numbers of the group that makes up three-quarters of Canadian society believe that even though they are working harder than ever, virtually everything about their lives is worse than in the past taxes, their shrinking paychecks, their job security, their chances at getting ahead, and their ability to do anything about it.

As a result they believe the middle class is shrinking and most of those falling away are slipping into a growing legion of impoverished Canadians.

Unfortunately the poll found that Canadians are looking to government to help stop the freefall not seeming to realize that it is government which has destroyed the economy in the first place.

FRANCE
=======

LIBERTARIAN MAYOR ELECTED

75 miles south of Bordeaux and just a few miles east of Mugron, where Frederic Bastiat lived, lies the small town of Saint-Loubouer. Last year Saint-Loubouer elected a new Mayor, our friend and fellow ISIL member M. Jacques de Guenin.

Jacques also founded the Cercle Bastiat, an organization formed to promote the works of this great 19th Century French Classical Liberal.

Congratulations, Jacques.

Our thanks to Trude Blomsoy of Coos Bay, Oregon for sharing this good news with us.

GERMANY
=========

DANGER: UN WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION ATTACKS HEALTH FREEDOM

BONN Your freedom to take vitamin and other dietary health supplements is under a concerted attack by authoritarians in the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO).

A German delegate to the WHO s Codex Alimentarius Commission s Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses has proposed a very restrictive provision governing dietary supplements that would reduce the whole world to the RDA levels mandated in Norway (in the late 1980 s, draconian regulations were rammed through the Norwegian parliament that have outlawed most dietary supplements and which have allowed only a handful to be sold and only at RDA levels).

Efforts are being made internationally to establish mandatory guidelines for dosages and then harmonize the world market via Codex. In the last Codex meeting, the German delegate s proposal was accepted by 16 out of 18 delegates present. Only the US and UK delegates opposed it. At the next Codex meeting in October, the US is very likely to be outvoted on this issue, and the UN will then attempt to force the US and UK into compliance via trade sanctions using the World Trade Organization as its agency.

The strategy is to get the Codex limits passed and then use them as the mandatory guidelines to be used for countries to harmonize the many supplement regulations which are concurrently scheduled or will be initiated or up for revision in many countries later this year.

Already France is buckling under. A French court in a case against the supermarket Carrefour for selling 800mg Vitamin C tablets has ruled that the product is a medicine by function. This has established a new precedent. The court then ruled that Vitamin C in dosages of 250mg and 500mg is a DRUG. The point at which it became a NON-medicine was around 100mg – 150mg a day. Carrefour was found guilty and fined 20,000 French Fr. (About $4000).

In the US the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already been conducting waves of paramilitary SWAT team raids on vitamin stores and alternative medicine health clinics. If Codex standards are enforced, and vitamin C is declared a drug, you may expect gangs of jackbooted DEA agents in ski masks and assault rifles to be smashing your door down in the middle of the night to seize your 1000mg vitamin C capsules.

John Hammell, Political Coordinator for the Life Extension Foundation is calling for the US and UK to withdraw with the UN World Health Organization in protest over their heavy-handed tactics.

Why not withdraw from the UN completely it is nothing more than an international crime syndicate. Ed.

John Hammell, Political Coordinator, The Life Extension Foundation
Tel: 800-333-2553, 305-929-2905
Fax: 305-929-0507
E-mail: [email protected]
World Wide Web: http://www.lef.org/lef/index.html

GERMAN TAXMEN CONDUCT BANK RAIDS

BONN Straining under the ever-increasing costs of unification, the German government and its tax officials have turned their attention to neighboring Luxembourg and its offshore banking system. Though offshore transactions are perfectly legal under German law, a citizen’s failure to disclose the existence of any funds held offshore is considered indicative of tax dodging. German tax authorities are annoyed with Luxembourg’s banks, which they feel encourage German investors looking for a way to thwart the taxman.

In the latest moves, tax officials have raided the homes of any Luxembourg bank employees living in Germany. Investigators seized a large amount of documents in the hope that employees had brought bank paperwork over the border to work on after office hours.

The aggressive German manoeuvre is based partly in response to the Luxembourg banking community s continued unwillingness to assist with German tax office inquiries. The Germans want details of German account holders. Luxembourg s banks won’t hear of it.

Source: The Mouse Monitor, The International Journal of Bureau-Rat Control, a periodical published by Scope International for its customers. Scope International is on the Worldwide Web at http:/www. britnet.co.uk/Scope/

JUSTICE MINISTER QUITS IN PROTEST OVER MASSIVE STATE EAVESDROPPING

BONN German justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger has quit the government on the heels of a decision by her party, the FDP, to authorize government spies to engage in massive eavesdropping in private residences throughout the country.

With tears in her eyes, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger declared the decision to be a decisive step away from the concept of a liberal nation under the rule of law.

The former minister’s analysis was shared by observers both in Germany and abroad, who feared that Germany has started to slide down on a very slippery slope in disregard of human and civil rights, a dramatic retreat from principles which guided the country until a surge of nationalism took hold in recent years.

Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger received high marks abroad for her devotion to democratic values and her crack down against the neo-Nazi extreme right.

From Germany Alert

INDIA
=====

TAX OFFICIALS ATTACKED BY BANDS OF IRATE CITIZENS

BOMBAY Income tax officials in major cities have been holding meetings to protest a brutal attack on their officials which occurred during a raid on three firms at Modinagar in Uttar Pradesh last December. According to senior tax officials, the most shocking aspect of the raid was that police and other authorities who were present at the scene stood by passively and refused to intervene.

They further pointed out that the beating of officials from the income tax and other regulatory agencies, while on search and seizure missions, has become a regular phenomenon in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. In fact, these officials maintain that there are regular citizen brigades rounded up specifically to attack government raiding parties.

Tax officials around the country now say that unless they are assured of police protection, it may be impossible to conduct raids nation-wide.

They added that tax evaders may increasingly resort to such violence unless they are sent a clear signal that no interference in the activities of the investigative agencies will be allowed.

From Bombay Business Times
Submitted by ISIL Rep Firdos Mubaraki

LIBYA
======

COLONEL KHADAFY PRIVATIZES CAMEL MARKET

Everyone seems to be getting in on the privatization act these days. We just learned that Libya s Colonel Muammar Khadafy, a repentant socialist, has privatized his country s camel industry. According to Reason Foundation privatization experts William Eggers and John O’Leary in their new book, Revolution at the Roots, the transferring of 6,000 government-owned camels to the private sector is expected to save millions of dollars per year in subsidy costs.

Khadafy s surprise move in the dromedary market was a bold example of refocusing government on its core competencies and shedding jobs that go beyond their mission.

Note: Revolution at the Roots is available from Freedom’s Forum Books (1800 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102) for $24.95 + $4.00 shipping & handling. ISIL members may claim a 10% discount.

NEW ZEALAND
=============

“THE KIWI THAT ROARED”
New Zealand Radically Deregulates Teleommunications Industry

WELLINGTON What would happen if all government regulations on telecommunications just went away? New Zealand may just give us a clue. In this small country both communications and broadcasting have been radically deregulated. Anybody including foreign telcos and cable operators can do anything they like in these areas. If you own spectrum, which you can purchase in a government-run auction, you can use it for cellular phones, TV, radio, whatever just you and the market decide.

Bob Johnstone in an article in WIRED magazine reports that this freedom from red tape puts New Zealand, in the words of Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media Lab, so far ahead of the US that it is the mouse that roared.

. . . Make that the kiwi that roared Johnstone quipped humorously.

In the wake of radical deregulation, telcos have flocked to New Zealand. Ameritech and Bell Atlantic own just over half of Telecom Corp of New Zealand, Ltd., a former government monopoly. MCI and Bell Canada are backing a long-distance competitor to Telecom NZ.

It s an experience our own government should look at carefully, affirms Bell Atlantic CEO Ray Smith, especially as Congress rewrites the United States telecommunications law.

Here s some advice for Newt and Company from Roderick Deane, CEO of Telecom New Zealand, on what to do with the FCC: Put a bomb under it, blow it up, Deane says. Regulations slow the pace of competition.

According to Minister of Communications Maurice Williamson, there are no specific restrictions on the introduction of new broadcasting technologies. There are no restrictions on the level of overseas ownerships. There are no must carry rules for cable operators. Essentially, the government aims to encourage investment in the industry. You are free to prosper in the broadcasting indutry. You are equally free to misjudge the market and go broke.”

How does the former state monopoly Telecom Corp. handle the freeing of the industry? Theresa Gattung, the company s 33-year old general manager of marketing, remarked: Telecom is coming to grips with what it means to be a market-led organization. Now when the company proposes the introduction of a new service, instead of wondering what the regulators will say, everyone asks, What will the customers say?

Excerpted from the November 1995 issue of WIRED magazine.

NORWAY
========

NORWEGIAN ACTIVISTS ATTACK STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM

OSLO ISIL member Jon Henrik Gilhus, International Secretary of the Free Democrats of Norway, reports that his group has launched a campaign to inform parents of their rights to take their children out of public schools and teach them at home. There are actually provisions in the law which say you can do this. One has only to notify his or her local school board, who then have to prove that the children will get substantially worse education by not attending regular school.

There s been a lot of press about poor conditions in the government-owned schools, and some (leftist!) professors have said that many children would be better off being taught at home. (They quote the fact that experiences from the U.S. show no lack of development of social skills among children who do not attend regular schools.)

The Free Democrats, incidentally, is composed largely of libertarians who defected from the Progress Party when it turned sharply right-wing populist.

POLAND
=======

POLISH ELECTION IMPRESSIONS

Question: How many Walesa supporters does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: None. They all think it’s dark because the world is coming to an end.

Poland has followed the lead of a number of other former Communist countries and voted former Communists back into power. With the election of Alexander Kwasniewski as President, the parliament and the presidency is now controlled by former members of the Communist elites.

However there s something funny going on here, the new President swears that he will: speed up market reforms (and make them painless), get Poland into NATO within five years, and he promises that he will not to try to expand the powers of the presidency. The last item was the only point of disagreement with Walesa that I could discern, the incumbent favoring a strong presidential style of government, rather like the U.S..

So what was the election all about?

A student of mine put it to me this way: The election didn t seem to be for anybody. It seemed more like a fight between two factions Anybody-But-Kwasniewski vs. Anybody-But-Walesa. Kwasniewski s supporters portrayed him as a man who became a Communist to reform from within. His detractors call him a traitor to Poland. Cynics point out that he lied about his education, and that his wife made a fortune in financial speculation in a sector of the economy that he was supposedly regulating.

People outside Poland who are stuck with the image of Walesa as the hero of Solidarity have no idea how much he is despised by the intellectuals of Poland for his bumpkin manners and his painfully bad Polish. (When I make particularly bad mistakes in Polish grammar and pronunciation, my friends sometimes say, Don’t talk like our President! )

During the debates on television, Walesa came off a poor second by not addressing any real issues and limiting himself to attacking Kwasniewski’s background. Kwasniewski in fact came off fairly well in debate, only seeming evasive when questioned about his wife’s fortune.

In the end the vote was extremely close, the difference (around 2 to 3%) was probably about the number of people who can change their minds before breakfast. There were charges of election fraud, however the Supreme Court ruled the election valid.

A remark made by the Warsaw Voice (the English language weekly) was that Poles were ready for a real substantive debate about real issues and didn t get it.

I myself have been getting a lot of mileage out of a joke I adapted from the last election in the U.S.:

Question: If Walesa, Kwasniewski, and Pawlak run for President, who will lose? The answer: Poland.

Stephen Brown, ISIL Correspondent, Warsaw, Poland

SINGAPORE
==========

SINGAPORE’S AUTHORITARIAN “CAPITALISM” BASED ON POLITICAL INTIMIDATION

Christopher Lingle, ISIL s former Rep for Luxembourg, and currently an economist and Visiting Scholar at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has published a new book entitled: Singapore’s Authoritarian Capitalism: Asian Values, Free Market Illusions, and Political Dependency.

Unlike communist devotees who foresaw the withering of the state or Western thinkers who hail the retreat of the welfare state, Singapore s PAP regime sees itself as a permanent fixture. Despite its grip on all organs of political power, the record clearly shows a continual decline in its margins of victory at the polls. Increasingly, voters indicate that material gains are not adequate compensation for the nanny-state nagging of an arrogant political leadership.

To shore up flagging electoral fortunes, the regime s most prominent spokespersons seek to deflect moves towards multi-party democracy. Their principal vehicle has been to promote a contrived set of Asian values as the underpinning of the country s economic success. The PAP’s commitment to devel-opment before rights remains unchallenged at home due to obsessive control over the media and vigorous suppression of dissent. A peculiar aspect of Singaporean politics is the system of phobocracy (rule by fear) where loyalty to the regime is imposed by intimidation.

From a perspective gained from his service as a Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore, Dr. Lingle applies authoritarian capitalism as a description of Singapore s regime. This hybrid combines selective economic freedoms and private-property rights with strict control over political life. In such a system, political loyalty replaces the efficient use of resources as the determinant of success, while sycophantic business relations replace the growth-inducing actions of true entrepreneurs.

Singapore s Authoritarian Capitalism questions the sustainability of this miracle economy due to internal contractions arising from imposed institutional arrangements. By applying this analysis to other East Asian economies, it appears that the Pacific Century may be stillborn.

Singapore’s Authoritarian Capitalism is available through Freedom’s Forum Books for $19.95 + shipping & handling. 1800 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102.

SOUTH AFRICA
=============

NEW BOOK: “EXPLODING POPULATION MYTHS” GETS EXCELLENT REVIEWS

JOHANNESBURG ISIL member and South African Correspondent Jim Peron recently appeared on a 20-minute debate on the national morning television news show with a governmnent official who deals with population issues to discuss his new book and controversial book Exploding Population Myths. Shortly after this appearance he appeared on a one-hour local radio show, for 3 hours on the biggest independent radio talk show in the country and another 1-hour on a national radio station.

Beeld, which is the largest Afrikaans newspaper in the country ran a long editorial in which they stated: The world needs more people who are willing to take popular myths and stereotyped cliches and stand them on their head.

Peron attacked the futility of government programs to limit birth rates and points out that the world agricultural production is far outreaching population growth anyway.

Peron believes that population growth must be left to market forces: socialist governments which keep people at subsistance levels encourage large families. Let people accumulate wealth and they have fewer children it’s as simple as that.
Exploding Population Myths is available through Freedom’s Forum Books for $4.95 + shipping & handling.

ANC ADVANCES COMMUNISM BY STEALTH MEASURES

PRETORIA The ANC government has started to expand government powers in ways which won’t immediately attract the attention of the foreign press. Recently they announced that all water supplies in the country will be nationalized. Even lakes on farms or private property will become government property. The government will then dole out water according to its central plan. This is being done because of the drought which has damaged the country. In fact the drought has been over for several months and the entire country is faced with a crisis in the form of floods which have killed dozens. Every water system in the country is now overflowing.

The government has also decided to strip the judiciary of its independence from parliament. Where magistrates and judges once sat on a committee to determine ethical standards and appoint new members of the court, the new bill will give all these powers to individuals appointed by the ANC-controlled parliament.

Another measure which the government is considering is a body to control non-profit and non-governmental organizations. The new body would have the powers to demand all financial records. It would also have the authority to determine whether the organization is acting in the public interest. If it decides that an NGO is not acting in the public interest, it will have the power to forbid it to engage in actions so determined. It would also have the power to fire all individuals running the NGO and appoint new officers. In other words this measure would give the ANC total control over all NGOs in South Africa.

Recently Nelson Mandela had public meetings with Louis Farrakan, the leader of the racist Black Muslims. Mandela has also announced that Mohamar Khaddafi and Fidel Castro have been invited to South Africa to meet with him so he can personally thank them for being defenders of democracy.

By Jim Peron, ISIL African Correspondent Johannesburg, South Africa

INTRODUCING . . .

Vin Suprynowicz

We like his style. Look him up.

Joe Zychik

ISIL INTERNATIONAL REPORT

CANADA
========

“ATLAS IS SHRUGGING” – WEALTHY PROFESSIONALS FLEE

Seen in the Toronto Sun

“LET’S RE-INVENT THE CONSTITUTION” SAYS REFORM PARTY LEADER

It was concluded Quebec might have some interest in making things work because the same abuses of federal power that have been frustrating Quebec are also frustrating other provinces.

RUMBLINGS FOR PARTITION IN QUEBEC — BEFORE SECESSION

MONTREAL A new partition movement is gaining steam in Quebec by individuals who point out that Quebec itself is not a homogeneous francophone community.

In the October 95 referendum, residents of Montreal, the Ottawa valley, Eastern townships and aboriginal lands voted overwhelmingly to stay in Canada.

Those occupying a small sausage-shaped region from the easternmost end of Montreal through dairy farmlands to Quebec City voted overwhelmingly to separate.

Other groups in Gatineau and Montreal are quietly forming. Cardiologist Roopnarine Singh is raising money to bring about a change to the Constitution to make Montreal into a separate new province.

Excerpted from an article by Diane Francis which appeared in the January 13thToronto SUN. Submitted by Bruce Evoy Toronto, Canada

CYBERSPACE: PROTECTING THE FRINGES

Their weapon of choice? Proving to Germany that censoring the net is impossible. Zundel s material has found new Internet sites that aren’t blocked by the German ban.

Last week, the German phone giant Deutsche Telekom AG blocked access to Web Communication in California. It carries Zundel s material, but under German law his writings are outlawed.

A day after access was blocked, a student at Carnegie-Mellon picked up Zundel’s material and put it on Internet sites at the university Germans still have access to.

Citizens worldwide are beginning to realize they need to offer shelter to persecuted and suppressed ideas, Zundel said in an interview.

Rod Guelphman, a spokesman for Web Communications, said Germany s move has made Zundel s pages so popular [that] there is an overload, making it difficult to even call them up.

Victoria Times Colonist (Feb 3) Submitted by Marco Den Ouden, Vancouver, BC

NEW GUN-CONTROL LAWS FUEL WESTERN SEPARATISM

Seen in Strategic Investment Newsletter.

MIDDLE CLASS FEARS POVERTY

As a result they believe the middle class is shrinking and most of those falling away are slipping into a growing legion of impoverished Canadians.

Unfortunately the poll found that Canadians are looking to government to help stop the freefall not seeming to realize that it is government which has destroyed the economy in the first place.

FRANCE
=======

LIBERTARIAN MAYOR ELECTED

Jacques also founded the Cercle Bastiat, an organization formed to promote the works of this great 19th Century French Classical Liberal.

Congratulations, Jacques.

Our thanks to Trude Blomsoy of Coos Bay, Oregon for sharing this good news with us.

GERMANY
=========

DANGER: UN WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION ATTACKS HEALTH FREEDOM

BONN Your freedom to take vitamin and other dietary health supplements is under a concerted attack by authoritarians in the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO).

John Hammell, Political Coordinator for the Life Extension Foundation is calling for the US and UK to withdraw with the UN World Health Organization in protest over their heavy-handed tactics.

Why not withdraw from the UN completely it is nothing more than an international crime syndicate. Ed.

John Hammell, Political Coordinator, The Life Extension Foundation
Tel: 800-333-2553, 305-929-2905
Fax: 305-929-0507
E-mail: [email protected]
World Wide Web: http://www.lef.org/lef/index.html

GERMAN TAXMEN CONDUCT BANK RAIDS

JUSTICE MINISTER QUITS IN PROTEST OVER MASSIVE STATE EAVESDROPPING

With tears in her eyes, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger declared the decision to be a decisive step away from the concept of a liberal nation under the rule of law.

Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger received high marks abroad for her devotion to democratic values and her crack down against the neo-Nazi extreme right.

From Germany Alert

INDIA
=====

TAX OFFICIALS ATTACKED BY BANDS OF IRATE CITIZENS

Tax officials around the country now say that unless they are assured of police protection, it may be impossible to conduct raids nation-wide.

They added that tax evaders may increasingly resort to such violence unless they are sent a clear signal that no interference in the activities of the investigative agencies will be allowed.

From Bombay Business Times
Submitted by ISIL Rep Firdos Mubaraki

LIBYA
======

COLONEL KHADAFY PRIVATIZES CAMEL MARKET

Khadafy s surprise move in the dromedary market was a bold example of refocusing government on its core competencies and shedding jobs that go beyond their mission.

Note: Revolution at the Roots is available from Freedom’s Forum Books (1800 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102) for $24.95 + $4.00 shipping & handling. ISIL members may claim a 10% discount.

NEW ZEALAND
=============

“THE KIWI THAT ROARED”
New Zealand Radically Deregulates Teleommunications Industry

. . . Make that the kiwi that roared Johnstone quipped humorously.

It s an experience our own government should look at carefully, affirms Bell Atlantic CEO Ray Smith, especially as Congress rewrites the United States telecommunications law.

Excerpted from the November 1995 issue of WIRED magazine.

NORWAY
========

NORWEGIAN ACTIVISTS ATTACK STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM

The Free Democrats, incidentally, is composed largely of libertarians who defected from the Progress Party when it turned sharply right-wing populist.

POLAND
=======

POLISH ELECTION IMPRESSIONS

Question: How many Walesa supporters does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: None. They all think it’s dark because the world is coming to an end.

So what was the election all about?

A remark made by the Warsaw Voice (the English language weekly) was that Poles were ready for a real substantive debate about real issues and didn t get it.

I myself have been getting a lot of mileage out of a joke I adapted from the last election in the U.S.:

Question: If Walesa, Kwasniewski, and Pawlak run for President, who will lose? The answer: Poland.

Stephen Brown, ISIL Correspondent, Warsaw, Poland

SINGAPORE
==========

SINGAPORE’S AUTHORITARIAN “CAPITALISM” BASED ON POLITICAL INTIMIDATION

Singapore’s Authoritarian Capitalism is available through Freedom’s Forum Books for $19.95 + shipping & handling. 1800 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102.

SOUTH AFRICA
=============

NEW BOOK: “EXPLODING POPULATION MYTHS” GETS EXCELLENT REVIEWS

Peron attacked the futility of government programs to limit birth rates and points out that the world agricultural production is far outreaching population growth anyway.
MOVIE REVIEWS

AN EYE FOR AN EYE
LEGENDS OF THE FALL
BRAVEHEARD

by Tim Starr

“There have been some remarkably good movies with strong individualist/libertarian themes made over the past year.”

AN EYE FOR AN EYE, based upon the book by Erika Holzer (wife of Henry Mark Holzer, Ayn Rand’s attorney). Erika Holzer, herself a lawyer as well as the author of several books, asks the question I’ve often asked people myself: what would you do if your virgin daughter was raped and murdered, and the scumbag who did it got away with it?

Sally Field plays the mother of such an unfortunate girl; Kiefer Sutherland plays the villain. Field does a good job of showing how having a traumatic experience like that can make you paranoid about everyone and outraged at the “criminal justice” system for failing to do what it’s supposed to do. She goes to a support group for the families of murder victims, flirts with vigilantism, stalks her daughter’s murderer, and ends up in a climactic confrontation with him.

Sutherland has played many villains before, but all of them have been sympathetic, tragic characters. Not so this time. His character, Robert Doob, is as thoroughly evil as they come. He kills without exhibiting the slightest shred of remorse. Truly frightening to behold, I barely recognized him. His was easily the best performance of the film. He did a wonderful job of tapping into the primal nature of sexual violence. For once I knew exactly what feminists are talking about when they say rape isn’t about sex.

Viewers who are easily disturbed by such scenes should be warned. The violence in these scenes aren’t gratuitous in any way – the first one makes the evil of the villain inescapably clear, while the second one confirms how irredeemably evil he is – but they might be a bit too much for some people.

Unfortunately, I found the story a bit wanting. First of all, if I’d written the story it would have been over with a very different ending in the first half-hour: the villain’s intended victim would have given him the death penalty with her trusty .45 the moment he attacked her. Still, I suppose that’s a bit much to expect from Hollywood.

Secondly, I found the ending a bit too ambiguous. Without giving it away, it ends without clarity about whether the heroine’s chosen course of action is right or wrong. This has the advantage of leaving it up to the audience to decide, but for those of us who think that she sure as hell did the right thing, a stronger affirmation would have been nice. Still, I’d say this was easily one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long while.

LEGENDS OF THE FALL is a family saga that begins right before WWI, when Samuel, the youngest of 3 brothers brings his fianc�, Susanna, back home from boarding school to meet his family at their ranch in Montana.

Brad Pitt’s presence as the middle brother, Tristan, led a lot of people to think this movie was just a vehicle for Hollywood’s latest teen heartthrob, but they were wrong. It has one of the most original storylines to come out of Hollywood in a long, long time – far too complicated to even attempt to sum-marize here. Let’s just say that it covers WWI, the recession right afterwards, alcohol prohibition, the Indian Wars, and many other things – while never straying from its basic storyline themes – which are anti-war, anti-prohibition, anti-authoritarian. Pitt shows that he can really act, in addition to looking pretty. Anthony Hopkins puts in a stellar performance as the boys’ father, a former Colonel in the U.S. Cavalry and veteran of the Indian Wars who quit in disgust over government treatment of the Indians to take up ranching .

Julia Ormond, as Susanna, the fianc�, deserves special mention. This was only her second film, and she proves that she’s also talented as well as beautiful. I still haven’t seen her first film, but her third one was the Arthurian remake First Knight, in which she played Guinivere to Sean Connery’s Arthur and Richard Gere’s Lancelot (terrible movie – I only saw it because it was shown on my flight back from the ISIL conference in Athens, Greece). Her Guinivere was two-dimen-sional, but her stellar performance in Legends makes it clear that this was the director’s fault, not hers. When given a chance to show her dramatic range with a character that has some depth to it, she can do the job very well.

I recently watched this movie again, and kept wanting to say “This is the best part!” to the people who were watching it with me. It’s a good thing I didn’t, because otherwise it would’ve had about a dozen “best parts”! (a showdown with the evil BATF was mine, ed.)

BRAVEHEART is the only one of these three movies that looks as though it’ll get the attention it deserves. Mel Gibson both starred in and directed this film about the exploits of the legendary medieval Scot rebel freedom fighter, William Wallace. Nominated for 10 different Academy Awards, it deserves all of them. Gibson plays Wallace, a yeoman farmer whose father is betrayed and killed by King Edward the Longshanks of England (played by Patrick McGoohan of The Prisoner) along with a bunch of others who came unarmed to negotiate. Wallace then goes to live with his uncle Argyll, who educates him. One of the best lines in the movie is when Argyll comes to take Wallace to live with him. William looks longingly at Argyll’s sword, and Argyll says something like: “Before you learn to use this,” pointing to the sword, “first, learn to use this,” pointing to William’s forehead. As William’s father told him a bit earlier, “It’s our wits that make us men.” Braveheart is an intelligent action film.

Wallace ends up marrying his childhood sweetheart, and wants nothing more than to settle down with her to farm and raise a family in peace – until one of the King’s magistrates executes his wife for the “crime” of not submitting to the advances of some of his soldiers. Wallace goes on the rampage, exacts his revenge upon the magistrate, and decides that he might as well fight the King’s men when they come to get him rather than quit. His successes end up gaining him followers, as well as winning him the loyalty of the people. All sorts of complications involving relations between the Scot nobility, Wallace, the peasantry, and the British Crown follow. Through it all, the message is clear: in order to really live, you have to be free, you have to think for yourself, and you have to resist injustice – no matter what it costs.

Gibson’s portrayal of Wallace is most credible, playing him as a man who’s afraid to die, but prefers death to life under tyranny, a warrior who knows the importance of using his head, a man who hates injustice. McGoohan is wonderful as the King. The various sub-plots dovetail nicely, and the supporting characters fill in the gaps with plenty of comic relief and romance.

The battle scenes in Braveheart were very well-done. I’ve never seen better recreations of what medieval battles must have been like – hard, brutal, sweaty things in which strength, speed, and endurance mattered – and not much else. Again, not for the squeamish, even though I didn’t think there was any gratuitous gore. Just enough to make you never want to be in such a mess, but not too much to make it impossible to watch. Fascinating insights into the strategy and tactics of the period.

Apparently, the Scots Nationalist Party has been using this movie as a recruiting tool, leafleting moviegoers after they see it with pamphlets that say “You’ve seen the movie – now face the reality.” According to an article in Time magazine last fall, this has led the Scots Nats to become the 2nd most popular party in Scotland.

This was also Gibson’s first directoral effort, which he pulls off pretty well. It could probably have been cleaned up a little bit by cutting some of the more extraneous bits, which would’ve made it flow better, but this flaw is more than made up for by its strengths. If only all directors made films this good their first time out!

ANC ADVANCES COMMUNISM BY STEALTH MEASURES

By Jim Peron, ISIL African Correspondent Johannesburg, South Africa

NEW ZEALAND: LAND OF OPPORTUNITY?
Enter Radio Liberty & Libertarianz

by Ian Fraser – ISIL Correspondent/New Zealand

During the last 12 years a small revolution has been taking place in an even smaller country. A country many think is part of Australia! I’m talking about New Zealand, that far-flung ex-British colony near the bottom of the world.

Prior to 1984, New Zealand was a sort of “fools paradise”. A place known mainly for its sheep – and its welfare state. In fact, New Zealanders were proud of their welfare system (and their sheep!) – a sentiment which extended from the lowliest unemployed to the landed farmers. And nearly everything we produced was exported to a guaranteed market in Great Britain. Then came the then-called E.E.C.

By 1984 New Zealand was in deep trouble. A vastly over-protected economy and authoritarian government had literally driven the country to the very brink of bankruptcy.

In 1984, a Labor government was elected into power and to everybody’s amazement, they began a massive dismantling of the state apparatus. Within three years, the Labor government – lead by Finance Minister Roger Douglas – had whittled away tariffs, introduced tax cuts, introduced a sales tax, did away with privilege and privatized much of what government used to do.

In 1987 they were returned with an even greater majority. People were caught up in the excitement of something being done. Even more radical things were planned. In December of that year, Roger Douglas announced a blockbuster – a flat tax package. He hinted that this would start at 23% and reduce over time to 15%. But this announcement finally undermined the wavering support of his own supposedly socialist party. A couple of months later the Labor Party was in disarray. Shortly thereafter Roger Douglas resigned. They lost the next election.

Then the National Party came to power, chastened by Labor’s adoption of a free- market program that traditionally was supposed to be their domain. Not to be outdone, they responded with welfare cuts and a drastic reform of the industrial-relations laws. The latter effectively emasculated the union monopolies and did away with compulsory membership – in favor of individual employment contracts.

Since then, New Zealand’s economic performance has definitely improved: Low inflation; a government with a budget surplus; a progressive repayment of national debt approaching 30% of GDP; and a rapid fall in unemployment levels. This July the National government will reduce the lowest rate of income tax from 24% to around 20%. (The top rate being 33%) With further reductions planned for next year.

Are New Zealanders happy? Many are. However, the media continues to nurture and support those who disagree. We have a substantial opposition party that would like to return New Zealand to the “good old days” of isolationism, protectionism and welfarism.

We’ve seen definite economic improvements, but many people, grown accustomed to dependence on Big Brother, simply aren’t comfortable with a capitalist economy. We’ve made great gains, but it’s too soon to sit back and congratulate ourselves.

Enter libertarianism. Nearly one year ago New Zealand’s first nation-wide libertarian radio station, Radio Liberty, run by Lindsay Perigo, went on the air. What a breath of fresh air! Instead of the plethora of talk shows and their whining callers, here was a station proudly standing up for freedom and individual responsibility – a station committed to getting the state out of our business and personal lives. It received rave reviews from across the land. The National Business Review in August of 1995 reported: “A breath of fresh air is flowing over the air waves. Since its launch, Radio Liberty has gone from gawky newcomer to a sophisticated alternative to the state-run commercial-free National network. Its treatment of current affairs and news has an enthusiasm and purpose rarely heard in broadcasting.” The Listener in June 1995 reported: “Radio Liberty is commercial radio aimed at thinking adults, which, until now, has been a contradiction in terms.”

And out of that has emerged New Zealand’s first libertarian political party – the Libertarianz.

It’s in its early days yet, and we have a long way to go to change the fundamental attitudes of so many New Zealanders. But the ground is definitely shifting – in our direction. Even Roger Douglas (now “Sir”) has reemerged with a new political party (ACT) and an even more radical plan – the complete abolition of the income tax and the introduction of privately-funded health and education.

The changes that began 12 years ago have made an almost irreversible change to the psyches of many New Zealanders. And it’s my guess that this process can only continue.

By Ian Fraser, Founder of the Libertarianz, and ISIL Correspondent for New Zealand (email: [email protected])

NOW AVAILABLE!
New Zealand Video with Interview of
Sir Roger Douglas.
This blockbuster interview from Canada’s CTV W5 show will blow your socks off. It is a video that no serious student of devolution should be with-out. Douglas tells how he dismantled the New Zealand welfare state amid the screams of the vested interests.
$29.95 + $4.00 shipping & handling. Order from Freedom’s Forum Books
SEE AD IN BOOK SUPPLEMENT SECTION

DIVISION IN THE RANKS?

Special Forces Underground “Resister” Speaks Out

By Vincent H. Miller

ABC News last year interviewed a number of shocked Green Berets regarding training they had been given to prepare them for 1996 gun seizure raids.

In the face of the spectre of disarmament of the American public by military force, the big question now is whether military personnel would fire on American citizens who resisted. In a survey circulated within the military last year, it was found that only 20% would follow orders to fire on Americans during gun seizure raids. On radio talk shows, military officers stated outright that they would be much more inclined to fire on superiors who gave such an order.

The big question is how much a criminal Congress can count on the military to do its dirty work for them. During the past year there have been indications that military personnel are not thrilled. Some insiders have gone so far as to divert heavy military materiel into the hands of citizen militias. There are other signs of flies in the ointment for Washington’s power brokers.

ENTER THE SPECIAL FORCES UNDERGROUND

The latest development regarding a division in the ranks comes from within the U.S. Army’s elite Special Forces Units. A group of soldiers called “The Special Forces Underground” has been publishing a radical newsletter called The Resister. With a revolutionary war “Don’t Tread On Me” coiled rattlesnake symbol on its masthead, The Resister has inveighed against Joint Task Force 6, which employs the US military as combattants in the ill-fated war on drugs. They have also warned of government plots to use the Army in gun-confiscation raids.

The big surprise comes upon examining The Resister’s principles and its views on US foreign policy. Here there are buzz words and phrases that hint strongly of libertarian/Objectivist influence.

Indeed, in a description of their philosophy which appeared in its first issue in the summer of 1994, The Resister said it favored: “strict constitutionalism, isolationism, laissez-faire capitalism, individual rights, limited government and republicanism,” and opposed “statism, liberalism, tribalism, socialism, collectivism, internationalism, democracy, altruism, pull politics and the New World Order.”

Soldiers publishing The Resister are highly critical of U.S. peacekeeping efforts. In a past issue of The Resister they editorialized: “The U.S. military has become a slave service for the wealth redistribution schemes of internationalists and gangs of weeping do-gooder mystics. One need simply note the circling of media carrion-eaters to predict in which Third World toilet these altruists will flush hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars and the lives of U.S. servicemen. Peacekeeping is a monumental fraud.”

The Resister vehemently opposed U.S. military involvement in Haiti, and claimed that its adherents among Green Berets sent to Haiti were subverting U.S. policy by telling supporters of the ousted military junta how to hide their weapons and themselves. They also reportedly identified supporters of the restored (communist) President Jean-Bertrand Aristide for future retribution.

Needless to say the government is more than just a little concerned by this apparent revolt in the ranks. A researcher who has been tracking the group lamented: “This is very dangerous. These are individuals trained in insurgency warfare and they are the best in the world. They have access to weaponry. If they become more involved with underground paramilitary extremists this is a very bad sign.” (emphasis ours)

On a CBS News “60 Minutes” show last year two Green Beret Resister editors appeared. With their faces hidden in shadows and their voices altered to disguise their true identities, they fielded questions from reporter Steve Kroft. After the broadcast Army special operations technicians worked feverishly to “demask” the altered voices by repeated computer analysis and processing. This was defeated by “white noise” and other precautionary electronic countermeasures (we are, after all, dealing with professionals here). One humorous question posed by Kroft was: “The commander says you don’t exist.” The answer? “Excellent!”

The Army, its nose severely out of joint, has called on non other than Command Sergeant Major William H. Rambo Jr. to conduct an investigation to ferret out this blatant exhibition of non-political-correctness.

This task has not proved to be an easy one as The Register staff has exhibited an uncanny ability to avoid detection. According to the February 1996 issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine they have done so by “using the same tradecraft and counterinsurgency skills to avoid detection that they were taught as covert operators by the Army and the Central Intelligence Agency.”

However in order to save face, Army brass has been engaged in an intensive witch hunt, rounding up suspects (any suspect/victim) and making examples of them.

Curiously, the publication of The Resister is not illegal – so long as it is not publishing on government time or with government equipment and materials. It reportedly satisfies these requirements. So what’s the problem?

In a recent interview a SOF journalist observed: “Some Army spokesmen, and some people on Capitol Hill, have described The Resister as an extremist (there’s that word again) publication.

The reply from from The Register editor was: “What they mean is that The Resister is anti-socialist, anti-Communist, and anti-United Nations.”

Excerpted from an article by John Kifner (New York Times News Service) and an article by James L. Pate in Soldier of Fortune magazine.

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