Oakland police used tear gas against protesters marching on the streets of the city on May 1.

According to witnesses police arrested at least two protesters and used tasers against them.  Police ordered protesters out of the street after firing the tear gas and flash-bang grenades.

San Francisco Gate news outlet quotes a police spokeswoman Johanna Watson as saying, “When our patrol wagon came to make arrests, they were surrounded.” According to her, officers fired the tear gas and flash-bang grenades “to gain the attention of the crowd and stop them, which was effective. The officers were able to take the arrestees and to leave the area.”

REUTERS/Adrees Latif

However the arrests didn’t stop protesters. They continued marching through the streets of Oakland chanting anti-capitalism slogans. Among them was Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen, who gained international attention when he was shot with a beanbag by an Oakland police officer at a protest last year. This time the former Marine, who suffered a brain injury in the Oct. 25 protest, wore a black helmet to protect his head.

“I am not 100 percent and I still have some problems, hopefully that will go away with time,” he said in an interview to San Francisco Gate. “It is a shame that (the police) are reacting this way. I shouldn’t have to wear a helmet to go out to this, but I do.”

REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

Pssst. Want to buy some Stossels? They’re my own currency with my face on them.

Why should you trust them?

Because I promise to redeem them for gold. And I’m reliable. I have money in the bank and a job that brings in more than I spend.

By contrast, the politicians who back American currency run an unsustainable deficit.

The Federal Reserve prints so much money that since it opened its doors in 1914, the dollar has lost more than 90 percent of its value.

OK, I won’t really sell Stossels. Americans get jailed for offering alternative currencies. The government insists on a monopoly. So even though I am unhappy about holding money whose value evaporates, there’s not much I can do about it. Printing my own dollars would be healthy competition, but the government calls it counterfeiting.

Why? Why must our government make currency competition illegal? If I did print my own money, no one would have to use it. But people could if they wanted to. Competition is generally good. Why not competition in currencies?

Most people I interviewed scoffed at the idea. They said private currency should be illegal.

But impressive thinkers disagree. In 1975, a year after he won the Nobel Prize in economics, F.A. Hayek published “Choice in Currency,”which has inspired a generation of “free banking” economists. Hayek taught us that competition not only respects individual liberty, it produces essential knowledge we cannot obtain any other way. Any central bank is limited in its access to such knowledge, and subject to political pressure, no matter how independent it’s supposed to be.

“This monopoly of government, like the postal monopoly, has its origin not in any benefit it secures for the people but solely in the desire to enhance the coercive powers of government,” Hayek wrote. “I doubt whether it has ever done any good except to the rulers and their favorites. All history contradicts the belief that governments have given us a safer money than we would have had without their claiming an exclusive right to issue it.”

Former Federal Reserve economist David Barker discussed this idea recently with me.

“There are a lot of ways that private money might be better,” Barker said. “It might have embedded chips that would make it easier to count.”

The chips would also prevent counterfeiting.

There used to be private currencies. A businessman who sold iron and tin made coins that advertised his business. The Georgia Railroad Co. also produced its own currency.

This became illegal in 1864 — Abraham Lincoln was a fan of central banking.

People generally assume that government is careful about preserving the value of the dollar. As we’ve seen, that is far from the case. When Franklin Roosevelt became president, he raised the dollar price of gold — from bed.

In his diary, FDR’s Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. wrote, “If anybody ever knew how we really set the gold price … they would be frightened.” One day, Roosevelt was asked how he picked the change in the price of gold, and he said he increased it 21 cents because 7 was a lucky number (3 times 7).

When government monetary policy is too loose, you get hyperinflation, like in Germany in the 1920s. A more recent example is Zimbabwe, where prices rose so fast that the government printed bills with a face value of 100 trillion (Zimbabwean) dollars.

“That has never happened in the case of private competing currencies,” said Barker, who wants to abolish the Fed. “In all of those instances in world history where we’ve had (competition), we have not had rampant runaway inflation.”

Barker said the information age may break down the government’s monopoly on money.

“There are experiments going on. There’s something called Bitcoin (bitcoin.org), which is an electronic money that some people are experimenting with. The legal status is a bit unclear.”

I pointed out the irony of a former Fed economist wanting to close the Fed.

“The Federal Reserve is not the first agency of government that I would get rid of,” he said. “But one thing we’ve learned over the last several decades is that central planning does not work as well as markets.”

I address the nation, alien to it.  With much apprehension I do this for I question the very foundation of its singularity.  I am not impressed by its guns, its agents of enforcement, its character, its “concern” for the “well-being” of its citizens, contortion of economic systems, or its machinations toward those ends.  I do not stand in awe of its wars, protection of illegitimate property, the daily harassment of its citizens, and theft of legitimate property.

What impresses me the most and begs attention are those of its citizens who abide it.  I do not speak of those who would argue for statist solutions but those who see it, know that it is wrong, and say nothing publicly.  I must believe this to constitute a majority of the population because, despite it all, the one thing I have faith in is my fellow human beings.

You, who are “apolitical,” who have grown weary of the two party system.  You, who just wants to be left alone.  Who only pay their taxes so as to mitigate pain and further encroachment by the system, cowering in fear of audit should the IRS catch wind of your rightfully earned yet dwindling wealth.  Those of you who know your votes do not count and, if they did, know the difference between the two choices to be nominal.  Those of you who have the slightest of hope and only vote for the lesser of evils.  You who have little choice but to rely upon government programs to make ends meet.  You who are just trying to find a job to support your families.

You tire of their interference but wish only to live your lives in peace.  Soon this may not be an option.  The days grow shorter with the winter of stagnant civilization.  A new tide has set and your options are being progressively removed.  They are frisking our children in airports when they are not propagandizing them in their schools.  You send your children to private schools but even those are failing them due to a general lack of competition.

They are seeking to remove your means of self-defense while presenting you with pitiful “protection” by hiring more police.  They are arresting your neighbors for ingesting chemicals unapproved while doling out patents and drug approval on dangerous drugs to massive pharma corps.  They may enter your homes for whatever purpose they deem reasonable.  They are laying the legal framework by which they shall dictate your health, regulate your internet content, limit your free speech, and track your movement globally.  They are strengthening the systems by which they maintain the current rate of wealth disparity with the promotion of “intellectual property” and enforcement of oligopolies and monopolies.  Giant husks of empowered multinational corporations and banks are tightening quicker around our collective necks.

Our health system was the envy of the world until government interfered and regulated it.  Every year, medical schools turn away tens of thousands of perfectly qualified medical students who have an ability to pay.  No one is building new schools because of the tight regulations surrounding the industry and the exorbitant fees to do so, despite the demand.  Medical technologies are becoming more and more expensive, locked up in government mandated monopolies.

Our schools were the shining example by which the rest of the world modeled their educational systems until government further centralized it and established caps, standardization, quotas, regulation, and loan programs that did more harm than good.  Standards are lowered in order to graduate more students from high schools.  Universities accept government grants and then teach programs and courses with no applicable industry with artificial demand created by the Universities themselves.

There is certainly no doubt that certain externalities contributed to an extent to the formerly exceptional status of the United States (imperialism) though we are no less interventionist today than we have ever been.  Despite the continued imperialism of the nation, healthcare is suffering and schools are in turmoil.  The primary differences are in centralization, wealth disparity, and corporate empowerment.

For those of you enraged by the rhetoric of “the right” in calling for a “fair flat tax” and arguments that you should pay your fair share into taxes despite being impoverished.  You have every right to be upset, when was the last time the government actually benefited you?  Remember this and keep it in mind.  No one on “the left” is going to change this.  If it were not the case that government benefited the wealthy more, it would soon change.  Recruiting your child into the military, who has limited opportunity otherwise, is not enough for them, they wish to tax the poor only so they may use that money to fight wars overseas and kill poor people there.

I implore you to consider the case of patents, business licenses, and regulations.  These are not detrimental to extant businesses, they are detrimental to you.  Imagine were you to attempt to build a business, all the initial fees for patent licenses, business certification, regulation compliance, et al.  The primary barrier between you and working for yourself is the government itself.  In order to start a business and get out of the system, you have to get a loan from a major bank thereby giving them a say in your business, sublimating you right back into the system once again.  The biggest contributor to both presidential candidates is usually Goldman-Sachs, the epitome of government entitled and massive money manipulators.  Inflation, as artificially instituted by the Federal Reserve, is the quintessential wealth redistribution, it takes money from the poor and middle class and directs it straight into the pockets of the wealthiest corporations.

For those of you disgusted by “the left” and their gun grabbing.  Consider carefully, they will never stop.  Eventually, they will get what they want.  Defeat their bills and another will be introduced in short order.  Every slight victory of theirs brings them a step closer and they will capitalize on every incident and introduce new bill after new bill.

In either of these cases, you cannot stop them so long as government exists.  Government is not society, it is the cancer killing it.  Every major ill and every conceivable problem is reducible in causation or by exacerbation to this malady.  Every year we see new government programs and every year we see new resultant problems needing governmental attention.

It puts to mind a nurse who continuously kicks, prods, and punches her patient in his sleep, to keep him in his bed.  A sick fetish for empowerment is the motivation.  Domination and force are the tools by which they ply their trade.  We are too far gone not to see this, we have got to wake up.

Awaken, stand up, resist, and educate.  The silent majority of disenfranchised need not be silent anymore.

RT broke the news last month that H.R. 347, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011, had overwhelmingly passed the US House of Representatives after only three lawmakers voted against it. On Thursday this week, President Obama inked his name to the legislation and authorized the government to start enforcing a law that has many Americans concerned over how the bill could bury the rights to assemble and protest as guaranteed in the US Constitution.

Under H.R. 347, which has more commonly been labeled the Trespass Bill by Congress, knowingly entering a restricted area that is under the jurisdiction of Secret Service protection can garner an arrest. The law is actually only a slight change to earlier legislation that made it an offense to knowingly and willfully commit such a crime. Under the Trespass Bill’s latest language chance, however, someone could end up in law enforcement custody for entering an area that they don’t realize is Secret Service protected and “engages in disorderly or disruptive conduct” or “impede[s] or disrupt[s] the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.”

The Secret Service serves as the police that protects not just current and former American presidents, but are also dispatched to monitor special events of national significance, a category with a broad cast of qualifiers. In the past, sporting events, state funerals, inaugural addresses and NATO and G-8 Summits have been designated as such by the US Department of Homeland Security, the division that decides when and where the Secret Service are needed outside of their normal coverage.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund tells the International Business Times that the Trespass Bill in its current form “means it’s easier to prosecute under ‘knowingly,’” instead of both knowingly and willfully, “which is an issue because someone could knowingly enter a restricted but not necessarily realize they are committing a crime.” Speaking with IB Times, Verheyden-Hilliard tries to lay to rest claims that the Constitution will be crippled by the Trespass Bill, but acknowledges that it does indeed allow law enforcement to have added incentive to arrest protesters who could be causing a disturbance.

“[HR 347] has been described as a death knell for the First Amendment, but that isn’t supported by the facts,”Verheyden-Hilliard adds. “This has always been a bad law.”

Gabe Rottman of the American Civil Liberties Union adds to IB Times, “Bottom line, it doesn’t create any new violations of the law.” So far, however, it has raised awareness of the levels that the US government are willing to go to in order to make it harder to express ones’ self.

Under the act, protesting in areas covered by Secret Service could land a demonstrator behind bars, and the thing about the Secret Service (in case you couldn’t tell by their name), is that they don’t always make it clear where they are. You could even say that the service they provide, at times, is kept secret.

Presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are now officially covered under Secret Service protection, making it a federal offense to disrupt a campaign stop. That means whether it’s by way of a glitter bomb protest or causing a disturbance on the same Holiday Inn hotel floor that Santorum is staying in, doing such could cause a bit of a legal battle for the persons involved.

Although the G-8 Summit originally scheduled for Chicago this spring would have made much of the Windy City a protected area where crimes could easily be tacked on to arrested protesters, the event was moved this week to the presidential retreat at Camp David. In turn, many have suggested that the White House is only going out of their way to limit protesting rights. While a Chicago summit would have meant the Trespass Bill could have been enforced in the same area where thousands of demonstrators were expected to protest, moving the event to a heavily fortified rural location will instead deter protesters from likely coming close atto the meeting at all.

And before you forget, the president can now detain you for getting too close to his front yard, order your assassinationif the country considers you a threat and lock you away for life with no charge if you’re alleged to be a terrorist. You, on the other hand, can’t yell obscenities at Newt Gingrich without risking arrest.

“[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control… This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase” – CEO George Friedman to Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla on 6 December 2011, on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez.

The material contains privileged information about the US government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. There are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. The emails also expose the revolving door that operates in private intelligence companies in the United States. Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money. The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.

The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients. For example, Stratfor monitored and analysed the online activities of Bhopal activists, including the “Yes Men”, for the US chemical giant Dow Chemical. The activists seek redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. The disaster led to thousands of deaths, injuries in more than half a million people, and lasting environmental damage.

Stratfor has realised that its routine use of secret cash bribes to get information from insiders is risky. In August 2011, Stratfor CEO George Friedman confidentially told his employees : “We are retaining a law firm to create a policy for Stratfor on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. I don’t plan to do the perp walk and I don’t want anyone here doing it either.”

Stratfor’s use of insiders for intelligence soon turned into a money-making scheme of questionable legality. The emails show that in 2009 then-Goldman Sachs Managing Director Shea Morenz and Stratfor CEO George Friedman hatched an idea to “utilise the intelligence” it was pulling in from its insider network to start up a captive strategic investment fund. CEO George Friedman explained in a confidential August 2011 document, marked DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS : “What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor’s intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like”. The emails show that in 2011 Goldman Sach’s Morenz invested “substantially” more than $4million and joined Stratfor’s board of directors. Throughout 2011, a complex offshore share structure extending as far as South Africa was erected, designed to make StratCap appear to be legally independent. But, confidentially, Friedman told StratFor staff : “Do not think of StratCap as an outside organisation. It will be integral… It will be useful to you if, for the sake of convenience, you think of it as another aspect of Stratfor and Shea as another executive in Stratfor… we are already working on mock portfolios and trades”. StratCap is due to launch in 2012.

The Stratfor emails reveal a company that cultivates close ties with US government agencies and employs former US government staff. It is preparing the 3-year Forecast for the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, and it trains US marines and “other government intelligence agencies” in “becoming government Stratfors”. Stratfor’s Vice-President for Intelligence, Fred Burton, was formerly a special agent with the US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and was their Deputy Chief of the counterterrorism division. Despite the governmental ties, Stratfor and similar companies operate in complete secrecy with no political oversight or accountability. Stratfor claims that it operates “without ideology, agenda or national bias”, yet the emails reveal private intelligence staff who align themselves closely with US government policies and channel tips to the Mossad – including through an information mule in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yossi Melman, who conspired with Guardian journalist David Leigh to secretly, and in violation of WikiLeaks’ contract with the Guardian, move WikiLeaks US diplomatic cables to Israel.

Ironically, considering the present circumstances, Stratfor was trying to get into what it called the leak-focused “gravy train” that sprung up after WikiLeaks’ Afghanistan disclosures :

“[Is it] possible for us to get some of that ’leak-focused’ gravy train ? This is an obvious fear sale, so that’s a good thing. And we have something to offer that the IT security companies don’t, mainly our focus on counter-intelligence and surveillance that Fred and Stick know better than anyone on the planet… Could we develop some ideas and procedures on the idea of ´leak-focused’ network security that focuses on preventing one’s own employees from leaking sensitive information… In fact, I’m not so sure this is an IT problem that requires an IT solution.”

Like WikiLeaks’ diplomatic cables, much of the significance of the emails will be revealed over the coming weeks, as our coalition and the public search through them and discover connections. Readers will find that whereas large numbers of Stratfor’s subscribers and clients work in the US military and intelligence agencies, Stratfor gave a complimentary membership to the controversial Pakistan general Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service, who, according to US diplomatic cables, planned an IED attack on international forces in Afghanistan in 2006. Readers will discover Stratfor’s internal email classification system that codes correspondence according to categories such as ’alpha’, ’tactical’ and ’secure’. The correspondence also contains code names for people of particular interest such as ’Hizzies’ (members of Hezbollah), or ’Adogg’ (Mahmoud Ahmedinejad).

Stratfor did secret deals with dozens of media organisations and journalists – from Reuters to the Kiev Post. The list of Stratfor’s “Confederation Partners”, whom Stratfor internally referred to as its “Confed Fuck House” are included in the release. While it is acceptable for journalists to swap information or be paid by other media organisations, because Stratfor is a private intelligence organisation that services governments and private clients these relationships are corrupt or corrupting.

WikiLeaks has also obtained Stratfor’s list of informants and, in many cases, records of its payoffs, including $1,200 a month paid to the informant “Geronimo” , handled by Stratfor’s Former State Department agent Fred Burton.

WikiLeaks has built an investigative partnership with more than 25 media organisations and activists to inform the public about this huge body of documents. The organisations were provided access to a sophisticated investigative database developed by WikiLeaks and together with WikiLeaks are conducting journalistic evaluations of these emails. Important revelations discovered using this system will appear in the media in the coming weeks, together with the gradual release of the source documents.