Democide: The Legality of Murder by Government Tyranny

Lately, there have been a great number of outrageous things done by our Government here in the US that’s fueling a fire in the belly of Patriots & lovers of Liberty.  NSA spying.  The ridiculous imprisonment of American hero, Bradley Manning.  IRS attack activity on specific groups of people with specific kinds of political views.  Lies, Lies, & so many more Lies.  All things Americans should be furious about.  However, things are far worse, & have been for many years.  Whether you knew it or not.

I’m talking about Civil Asset Forfeiture.  If you haven’t heard of it, I’ll explain it.  Before I do, I’d like to say a few things.  Firstly, I’m 28 years old & the practice of Civil Asset Forfeiture (I’ll call it CAF from now on to keep it short) has happened for a long time, but it’s heyday came with the start & growth of the “War on Drugs.”  We might as well say it really started in the late 80′s & early 90′s, but continues today.  Why I’m bringing up the time is because I was too young to know it was happening or understand what the gravity of the situation really was.  Secondly, to Americans who were adults at the time:  YOU should be ashamed.  Why?  Because you’re outraged now about the NSA, PRISM, FBI, Obama & his lies, etc… which PALES in comparison to CAF & the damage it actually does & has done for years.  How we’ve let things like CAF to just happen & keep happening should be testament to why things like NSA spying really go floating by.  Because NSA spying isn’t nearly all that bad when you compare it to CAF.

What is CAF?  The short version:  The government can, at any time, take everything you have…. & if you dare try to stop them in any way, they can take your life too.  Let me say this again in maybe a way that sounds worse:  It is COMPLETELY LEGAL for the Government to kill you whenever they want and take everything you had before they killed you & keep it for themselves.

The long version:  The first thing you need to know is that due process of law doesn’t apply to CAF.  It starts when a police officer testifies to a judge that he believes, because a ‘little birdy’ informant told them, they need to seize your home, car, or whatever, because they believe it was used for something unlawful.  You can probably see why it’s connected to the war on drugs now, yes?  After the warrant is issued it equals guilty.  They don’t move to trial.  Now, the weird part is WHO is guilty.  The PROPERTY is the guilty party.  So, no, they’re not charging you with anything.  In fact, you’re free to go.  Just hand over the guilty party.  You might see now, with that wording, how they have authority to kill you, as it’s as if you’re harboring a fugitive.  That fugitive being your house & it’s contents!

Your first wonder may be something like:  don’t they have to have proof?  No.  They do not.  The police officer swore under oath that he believed your house was used for something illegal, as per his informant’s information.  Or your car, or whatever.  That’s all the judge needs.  The judge doesn’t need to know who the informant is or why the cop believes the informant is credible.  Which, by now, I’m sure it’s sounding like why do they actually need an informant anyway when they could just make up a fictional one.  Could the judge deny the warrant?  Absolutely, but what reason does the judge have to believe the cop is lying, if evidence isn’t required?  This is one of the rare cases where hearsay isn’t considered useless & it is in fact the norm for starting a CAF case.

Often times, the informant (if there is one) stands to gain up to 25% of the assets that are seized in the CAF operation!  So, this also stands to benefit this shady-no-evidence-informer guy.  Think about that for a second.  Try to think up the diabolical things you could do as an informant.  You don’t even have to be telling any fraction of the truth for police to do this.

What’s worse is, remember who’s guilty?  Your stuff is guilty.  Since your stuff cannot argue for itself, it can’t be given a trial (obviously).  Since YOU are not on trial, the stuff is inherently guilty.  Even if they did let you argue your side of the situation, you’d be attempting to prove a negative.  For example:  you there.  Yes YOU.  Reading this.  Prove to me that there wasn’t cocaine in your home on the night of October 4th, 1999.  Go ahead.  Prove to me that there wasn’t & you’ll get your house back.  So, it’s almost impossible to get the CAF to be reversed!

Now, if you were thinking you were smart & you rent your living space… sorry, but it’s worse.  How can it be worse?  It’s like so:  law enforcement (HA!) officers would tell your landlord that they’ve got 2 weeks to get their tenants out of the building because they’re seizing it.  The landlord might inform you of this first (if you’re lucky) & you might just be smart enough to get the heck out of there & take your stuff with you.  However, it’s a bit more likely that the landlord would go to their lawyer & ask what to do.  The lawyer will tell them that by law, they’ve got to give their tenants due process of law & can’t just kick them out like that.  By now, they’re giving the tenants even less time to get out, if they tell them at all.  I mean, put yourself in the shoes of the landlord for a second & you might not think they’d tell the tenant.  Why?  It’s most likely that the police are going to tell the landlord that they’re seizing the property because of something drug related.  Now, wouldn’t you kind of hold it against your tenant for supposedly using/selling/making drugs on YOUR property?  It’d kinda make you mad, wouldn’t it?  Even though the whole thing is possibly a lie.

Well, at least your business is safe or your place of employment, right?  WRONG!  If one person ALLEGEDLY did something illegal on/in the property of said business, like say, money laundering, then the police can seize everything.  Their belief is that the alleged tainted money from the one employee contaminates ALL the money & possibly everything in the business (as there’s no way of knowing if the things in the business were purchased with the tainted money).  Again, ALLEGEDLY.  There doesn’t have to be a lick of evidence & proving it didn’t happen is difficult.  Perhaps certain situations may be easier for a business to prove, as there are many businesses that keep very good records as well as security recordings that might absolve them from the CAF.

Although it’s rare & certainly nowhere near the majority of CAF incidents, democide happens.  If you haven’t heard the word, democide means death by government.  It happens when people who are victims of a CAF resist allowing the tyranny to take place.  Whether they fight it non-violently or violently.  Either way, fighting it is understandable, seeing how it’s unjustifiable & near impossible to reverse.

One such case is that of Donald Scott.  He owned a 200 acre ranch that ended up being surrounded by National Park Service park-land.  The Park service repeatedly approached Donald to buy his property, for a large amount of money, and Donald always refused.  Donald Scott predicted that, having been hard pressed to sell so many times, he might end up the victim of a murder plot against him over his land.  Though, it wasn’t the park service that did it.  It was the LA County Sheriff’s Dept.  The LA County received an ‘anonymous tip’ that there were drugs, in some form, on the ranch.  They didn’t go in immediately to seize the land, rather, they did some reconnaissance first.  Scouting the land by air & with dogs.  They found nothing.  Frustrated with this, they decided to go with a made up story about the possibility that Donald Scott was growing pot from vines high up in the trees.  This was apparently good enough to issue the warrant.

Something to remember about the time this took place:  it was 1993 & the Sheriff’s dept was in fiscal crisis.  Scrambling for money.  CAF was a good method for them to make up for revenue that wasn’t allocated to them by the state.  So they’d break into crack houses (or anything anywhere they deemed a good target) & seize the money as well as the drugs.  Now, you might be wondering what the point of that is, as they’re not allowed to keep & use evidence for themselves, right?  WRONG.  Not in the case of CAFs.  They’re free to take it & do what they want with it.  What’s that?  You drive a Bentley?  Well, if officer Bob wants to, he can have it.  Go ahead & prove you never had drugs in it ever.  What do you want to bet that they not only kept whatever money they found, but also sold the drugs as well!?!  That last sentence might be speculation, but I’ll tell you this:  where I grew up, the neighboring town of 6,000+ people had a D.A.R.E. officer who was caught selling drugs to kids.  So I wouldn’t call it crazy in the least.

Back to the Donald Scott CAF incident:  The police moved in on his property, broke into his house & backed his wife into the living room.  As his wife was screaming “Don’t kill me!”  Donald woke up from a nap, grabbed his gun & stepped into the stairway saying “Are you alright?” to his wife, while holding the gun next to his head pointed straight up in the air, as anyone would do who didn’t know if he’d need to use the gun or not.  The police pointed their weapons at him & demanded he lower the weapon.  What happens next could be just a case of jumpy cops, a poor choice of words when they demanded he lower the weapon, or it could’ve been a deliberate order from the cops so they’d have an excuse to kill him.  As he lowered the weapon, it’s obvious it would probably point in the direction of the police in the motion many would use to descend the gun from it’s pointing-straight-up position to a pointing down position, as he’s standing in a stairwell not in an open room.  So the most natural direction you’d move your arm is in front of you & not attempt to lay the gun down at your side, since your in a cramped space such as a stairwell.  While, in my opinion, the cops could’ve just demanded he drop the weapon.  That would’ve involved no possible way the gun would be pointed at them with the man’s finger on or near the trigger.  You see it in movies all the time.  “Drop the weapon” then the person doesn’t move their arms but just lets go of the weapon.

Regardless, the police shot & killed him.  The report claims the weapon was pointed at them when they fired.  You see what I mean?  Move your arm down & in that motion it could be easily contrived that the weapon WAS pointed at them.  Even though the man was doing what they asked.

Later, after killing a man, sheriff’s deputy Gary Spencer and his partner John Cater posed for photographs smiling arm-in-arm outside Scott’s cabin.  As if what they did was great police work.  Which, hey, they just gained the police department a lot of money!  They helped out their police department!  They could sell the land to the Park service!  Yay!  Boy oh boy, killing Americans to take their stuff sure is profitable!  That was in the early 90′s.  Where was the outrage then?  Hmm?  The police call into the station after killing the man used the words “we put him down.”  As if he’s a dog.  A pet.

Let us not forget that our Government has been doing terrible things for a great number of years & we have all just accepted it as normal.  We have just come to terms with “that’s the way it is.”  No IT ISN’T!!!  That’s NOT the way it is.  The way it is, is like this:  YOU OWN YOUR LIFE!!!  You can do WHATEVER YOU WANT!  Nobody can stop you, but you.  So, you have the power to go to your neighbor’s house & beat them to a pulp, but what stops you?  You do.  Because that’s not something you WANT to do.  You don’t desire to just beat a random person who’s done you no harm.  BUT, why do you choose to do NOTHING to those who are causing ALL of us harm, ALL the time?  I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of it.

This past Independence Day, I partook in the Nationwide Protest by protesting in my area.  Do you know how many people joined me?  NONE!  Not a soul.  I was the only one.  There is a video on YouTube about the protest being set up back in January, I think.  Did the guy who made the video show up?  Nope.  It was just me.  It’s not going to get better by HOPING we can MAYBE get honest people into office.  Because even if we do, they’ll be outnumbered by the snakes.  We NEED to take the power in our own hands.

I’m not saying we should violently protest, as we haven’t exhausted all forms of non-violent protest yet.  Namely, an idea I’ve mentioned before.  Filing Tax exempt!  What did the American colonists do when taxes were raised beyond their power to stop it?  They dumped the tea into the harbor.  Well, we have options that harm no living person, yet we haven’t even TRIED to take that route out of fear.  “But we might be arrested!”  So what?  You could have your stuff taken from you at any time for no reason at all & there’s nothing you can do to stop it, yet you’re afraid that if you protest non-violently by filing tax exempt that now you’ve given them a reason to come get you?  Well, then let me inform you of this:  there are currently approximately 65,000,000 Americans that don’t file income taxes & file tax exempt instead.  Even though they’re “supposed” to pay income taxes.  I say, let’s join them.

Please contact me if you care.  I’d like to get organized, whether we make it widely known to the press or do it en-mass underground.  You can reach me on twitter: @BlueVino  On Zurker: www.zurker.com/bluevino  On Reverbnation:  www.reverbnation.com/bluevino On Myspace:  www.myspace.com/bluevinoband  Or on YouTube at my channel:  www.youtube.com/hotchkissrecords

It’s time we actually DO something.

“Doesn’t matter what the press says.  Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mob says.  Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right.  This nation was founded upon one principle above all else:  the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences.  When the mob & the press & the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth & tell the whole world:      NO!  YOU MOVE!” – Captain America