"In February of 2012 a write-up to http://CopBlock.org titled, 'Frustrated, Detroit Residents Compete with Police' included a picture of Dale Brown, founder of the Threat Management Center. In early 2013 when Pete Eyre visited Detroit as part of the http://copblock.org/tour he reached-out to Brown, who graciously welcomed Eyre at his facility." Continue reading →
"In public, the pseudonymous Internet drug czar known as the Dread Pirate Roberts doesn’t say much. But within the community that the Dread Pirate Roberts has created, Silk Road’s founder is hardly so shy. On the Tor-hidden online forums associated with Silk Road, Roberts posts long manifestos, philosophical and political musings, love letters to Silk Road’s users, and even hosts the Dread Pirate Roberts Book Club, a reading and discussion group devoted to 'agorism, counter-economics, anarcho-capitalism, Austrian economics, political philosophy, freedom issues and related topics.'" Continue reading →
"Police in Port St. Lucie, Florida announced on Wednesday that they had arrested a couple on charges related to a 'weapons manufacturing warehouse' and a marijuana growing operations, according to TCPalm. WPTV reported that a traffic stop made by the Martin County Sheriff’s Office earlier in the week led to a marijuana grow house, which then led to a warehouse facility where 'high-end' weapons were being manufactured. At a warehouse on Northwest Settle Avenue, investigators found about 150 marijuana plants and ten guns, including an AK-47 military-style assault rifle." Continue reading →
"Mobile phones are kicking off a revolution in Africa, with everyone from farmers to villagers relying on apps to make electronic payments, check on expiration dates for medicine, and predict future storms or the best prices for produce. More kids in Africa have access to the Internet than consistent electricity. Nobody owns a PC or can access a fixed-line telephone, so mobile phones are a conduit for everything from email to news to making payments via SMS. Many people on the continent also own phones equipped with flashlights and radios and the percentage of the population equipped with mobile devices is primed to explode over the next few years." Continue reading →
"Apparently the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been trying very, very hard to infiltrate the KAC, judging from this account of the arrest of one of the club’s members, Rich Paul, on marijuana charges. Paul is going on trial for petty marijuana distribution offenses pursuant to testimony by an undercover FBI informant. It looks as if the trial is on state charges, but what’s interesting and disturbing is the interest the federal government has taken in the case. FBI agent Phillip Christiana apparently tried to pressure Paul into wearing a wire into the KAC and luring people into pot transactions, offering him immunity from prosecution in exchange." Continue reading →
"After people in Oakland’s wealthy enclaves like Oakmore or Piedmont Pines head to work, security companies take over, cruising the quiet streets to ward off burglars looking to take advantage of unattended homes. Long known for patrolling shopping malls and gated communities, private security firms are beginning to spread into city streets. While private security has long been contracted by homeowners associations and commercial districts, the trend of groups of neighbors pooling money to contract private security for their streets is something new." Continue reading →
"Hundreds of armed vigilantes have taken control of a town on a major highway in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, arresting local police officers and searching homes after a vigilante leader was killed. Members of the area's self-described 'community police' say more than 1,500 members of the force were stopping traffic Wednesday at improvised checkpoints in the town of Tierra Colorado, which sits on the highway connecting Mexico City to Acapulco. They arrested 12 police and the former director of public security in the town after a leader of the state's vigilante movement was slain on Monday." Continue reading →
"Everyone, at least sometimes, is an anarchist. Consider Cambodia in the late 1970s. The Khmer Rouge government intentionally killed more than two million of its own citizens. That’s an average of 8 percent of the population killed each year while government simultaneously inflicted countless other horrors. Do you think the Cambodian people, faced with that government, would have been better off with no government at all? Congratulations. You are, sometimes, an anarchist. The real issue is found in an area economists call 'comparative institutions.' That is, in a specific time and place, how well would anarchy work compared to an actual obtainable state?" Continue reading →
"The Cyprus disaster sets in place an incredible precedent: Bank deposits will hereafter be treated as government property first and belong to the depositors only at the discretion of the masters of the money. It’s no wonder that Bitcoins are being brought from locales all over Europe, including Spain, Greece, Italy, and beyond. This also accounts for why mainstream news outlets are starting to write about Bitcoin as if it were the real thing, something serious, something that really matters on the world stage. Meanwhile, Bitcoin applications are flourishing all over the Web." Continue reading →
"The history of Sealand is a story of a struggle for liberty. Sealand was founded on the principle that any group of people dissatisfied with the oppressive laws and restrictions of existing nation states may declare independence in any place not claimed to be under the jurisdiction of another sovereign entity. The location chosen was Roughs Tower, an island fortress created in World War II by Britain and subsequently abandoned to the jurisdiction of the High Seas. The independence of Sealand was upheld in a 1968 British court decision where the judge held that Roughs Tower stood in international waters and did not fall under the legal jurisdiction of the United Kingdom." Continue reading →