FREEDOM-OF-THE-LAND  MOVEMENT:  Really  stupid  people

 There are a great many kooks around the world and we often meet them but rarely do you ever meet the kooks who refer to themselves as Freedom-of-the-Land Movement members. According to those fools in Canada, over the past century, Canada went bankrupt and was taken over by a corporation. Ever since, (according to these kooks) the government has had no authority to make laws but these kooks claim that the government doesn’t want you to know that. They even claim that Canada’s been co-opted by criminals.

 One of the bigger kooks in that so-called Movement is a man called Mike Rasila. When this long-haired kook got pulled over by a police officer in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada in 2010 for driving his white Pontiac Montana without licence plates, he was ready with his defence. He claimed that he didn’t need plates because he’s a Freedom on the Land Movement (FLM) member. He said to the officer that pulled him over that a person who is a FLM member is a person who has revoked his consent to be governed.  He said that he had opted out of Canada so the laws in Canada don’t apply to him.

.The Police seized this twerp’s van, arrested him and charged him with six traffic offences, but the incident signaled that the anti-government Freemen on the Land, Movement, of which he is a prominent member, had taken root in Canada.

 Across the country, police and officials have been having similar run-ins with these kooks who are also known as “sovereign citizens,” who are members of this radical movement that does not recognize government authority and consequently refuses to licence their cars, carry government ID or obey the police.

 Canada’s Freedom-of-the-Land Movement members are a loose collection of so-called true believers, ranging from tax protesters to 9/11 conspiracists to fathers whose children have been apprehended by child welfare agencies. What unites them is their dislike of governments—any forms of government. They are self-declared defenders of individual freedom and as such, they are anti-government extremists in the sense that, rather than opposing specific government policies, they prefer to deny that any government has any legitimacy at all and for this reason, they want to be left alone to live their own lives according to their own rules and beliefs.

 Are they harmless fanatics or are they an emerging domestic extremist group? Although police in Ontario say it’s too soon to tell, they are concerned about the potential for violence and have begun sharing information and circulating intelligence reports on the conduct of these people. .

 These kooks are not openly racist, despite the fact that their ideology rests partly on their claim; that Jews secretly control the world through banking and media ownership. If that isn’t a form of racism, what is?  We heard this similar nonsense from Adolf Hitler when he was the dictator of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Millions of Jews were murdered by the dictates of that murderous fanatic because of those beliefs he harboured in his diseased mind.

These kooks further claim that we as Canadians are enslaved by government encroachment but that the Freemen  know the remedy which is to them; anyone can simply opt-out of Canada by severing our “contract” with the government and living instead according to a “common law” enforced by other Freedom-of-the-Land Movement members. The way I interpret that twaddle is that these kooks are saying that we as Canadians shouldn`t obey any legislation and other laws that govern us as a nation but instead we should live by the rules these kooks have created for themselves.

“We have our own police force, we have our own insurance company,” Mr. Rasila said. “But what we don’t have is the compliance of the government, so what they’re doing is they’re sending out their mercenary thugs and their criminal judges.”

What he is really saying is that our police officers are enforcing the laws that govern us so that we can be protected from wrongdoers who would otherwise harm, violate or cheat us and for this reason, he calls them are thugs and he is also saying that the judges who punish wrongdoers who have committed wrongs against us are also thugs.

 What would this stupid man do if someone broke into his home when he was away from it and trashed it? Would he call the police whom he doesn’t recognize as a valid entity or would he on his own volition, try and find out who did the crime. If he didn’t ask the police to find out who trashed his home, how would he compare fingerprints found in the home? If he suddenly was suffering from a heart attack, and needed an ambulance, who would he get to take him to the hospital? If he chose to go in a member’s car and his heart stopped, would the member have life-saving equipment in his car?

Rasila described his activities as “peaceful non-compliance.” On the Internet, however, he doesn’t always sound so peaceful. In a letter he posted on-line, he warned that “there is in fact a war coming and we the people have had enough.”

In a YouTube video, he is seen throwing knives at a painted gunman while captions advise to “be prepared” because the government has been “co-opted by criminals.” In essence, he is actually depicting throwing knives at police officers whom he maintains are thugs. Another post encourages unlicensed gun ownership.

He also claims affiliations with U.S. militias and right wing groups like the Oath Keepers. “It is basically us against the government now,” he said. “If we don’t rein them in then they are just going to take over every possible freedom that we have. I mean if it comes down to defence, we are willing to defend ourselves.”

Asked if he was peaceful, he responded, “I am, yes. But I will defend myself if I have to. I mean, what are we going to do, allow these people to just throw us around? It’s crazy. So we all have to be prepared. We’re not slaves. We are not subject to these laws. We are subject to the laws of nature and the laws of our creator and that’s it.” Alarmingly, certain members of the Freeman-on-the-Land Movement believe they have an unrestricted right to possess and use firearms. That has led in at least once instance of a FLM member being found with a concealed unauthorized handgun; that that person threatened to use the weapon on law enforcement personnel.

Of course, he isn’t the only twerp in that idiotic Movement. After 30 years of marriage and his wife bearing six children, Dennis Larry Meads split up with his wife two years ago. When the divorce proceedings were held in court in Edmonton in June of this 2012, Mr. Meads tried a new tact that the judge called “bluntly idiotic.”

This stupid kook who said that he was a Freedom-of-the Land Movement member, argued that “man’s law” did not apply to him. He claimed the judge only had jurisdiction at sea, not on land. He even said that the Bank of Canada kept a secret account in his name. Why, I am forced to ask, does his judge only have jurisdiction on the sea? I guess you have to find your way through that tangled workings of that man’s ‘mush for brains’ to find out why he made that ridiculous statement.

He isn’t the only FLM twerp in Canada who spouts nonsense. Across Canada, both the courts and police had been dealing with Canadian fools like Mr. Meads (who lives in the province of Alberta) who think that they can evade paying their income taxes, parking fines and spousal support payments by spouting lines from FLM literature. Don’t these fools realize that when they buy anything at a store, they automatically pay taxes on those items?

The judge, who happens to be the Associate Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench, had heard enough from Meads during the latter’s arguments that he didn’t have to pay spousal support.  He decided to turn Mr. Meads’ divorce proceedings into an opportunity to set things straight as to what he thinks of Freemen.

In the judge’s scathing written 185-page decision, he not only dealt with Meads’ divorce, but also eviscerated the Freemen movement Mead represented. He wrote; “These persons employ a collection of techniques and arguments promoted and sold by ‘gurus’ to disrupt court operations and to attempt to frustrate the legal rights of governments, corporations and individuals.”

In the judge’s decision, he wrote about Freedom of the Land Movement by describing them collectively as Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument (FLM) litigants. The judge gave a detailed review of the FLM community, its membership, its Movement, and known history. It sets out the Court’s understanding of persons who affiliate with FLM concepts, what traits they do and do not share, and how they organize themselves. He further wrote that the particular community has “guru” leader, and follower /customer, cohorts—groups of persons who have similar beliefs and who join together into “movements,” Known gurus and various group Movements are identified and described to the Movement’s members. The judge also decried their “legal and intellectual bankruptcy” and called their methods “scams” promoted by “con men.”

The FLM community includes a number of subsets that the judge called Movements. Each Movement includes persons who have adopted similar alternative histories, and hold generally compatible beliefs. Different Movements in many instances use exactly the same FLM strategies. Members of a Movement will often attend one another’s court appearances. They appear to engage in considerable ‘lateral’ discourse, and often seem to be, at a minimum, social acquaintances.

The gurus of the FLM are what we can call “legal alchemists” who promise gold, but give their adherents straw since the guru’s methods are principally intended to impress the gullible, or those who wish to use this useless drivel in hopes that they can beat the court system. The gurus proclaim they know secret principles and law, hidden from the public, but binding on governments, courts, and individuals. And according to these crooks, all these ‘secrets’ can be yours, for a small payment to the guru who made these outlandish claims to you.

According to the World Freeman Society website, which promotes their silly ideas, its members have “revoked consent to be governed by human laws.”

FLM litigants sometimes call themselves students of the law. That is a ridiculous sham because their interest goes no further than finding the proverbial “Gotcha!” exception or loophole that they can spring to defeat government and court authority. So far, it hasn’t worked.

What is crucial is to understand that a FLM litigant in court is likely operating under instructions obtained from a guru, and has been told to conduct and frame his or her court activities in an unnatural, incorrect, and distorted context. The litigant is instructed to follow a script that is, in all probability illogical, and certainly contrary to law. The FLM litigant may not be able to explain his or her actions for the very same reason that a judge is equally confused by the documents, submissions, and in‑court conduct that these silly Freedom-of-the-Land Movement litigants provide and do.

Mr. Mead was not the author of those documents, but rather. he had purchased a kit with those materials and the instructions as to their use. There was a strong American influence in his FLM materials. Evidence of the ‘pre-fab’ nature of the documents was found in their content and format. They came from the United States because there were words that referred to governments that wouldn’t apply in Canada such as the United States Code”, which is the criminal and penal code for the federal government of the United States. Stating the obvious, the court in Mead’s did not apply that legislation in its decision.

I remember years ago when I was the producer and the host of a television talk show and I had as one of my guests on one of my hour-long shows; the head of the Ku Klux Klan in Canada. He was reading from a document and later in the program he admitted that it was a document printed in the United States.

The judge hearing the Mead case further said in his decision that; “The persons who advance these schemes, and particularly those who market and sell these concepts as commercial products, are parasites that must be stopped.”

No Canadian court has ever accepted the KLM concept or approach as being valid since the FLM concept directly attacks the inherent jurisdiction of Canadian courts. That fact that FLM members try to thwart the proceedings with their nonsense is also the reason why FLM schemes are inherently vexatious which then provides the judges with evidence against FLM members that can lead to orders for contempt of court against them.

 Members in the FLM community appear surprisingly unified by their methodology and objectives. They are otherwise diverse. FLM litigants appearing in the courts may be anything from educated professionals to retired senior citizens. They may be wealthy or poor. The famous are not immune. For example, the American action movie actor, Wesley Snipes adopted FLM techniques in an attempt to defeat his income tax obligations in 2008. This particular FLM twerp was found guilty and ended up serving a three-year prison sentence for income tax evasion.

 This silly belief held by these twerps are that the general population has been abused and cheated by a hidden hand that seems to form the basis for FLM community members perceived right to break ‘the system’ and retaliate against ‘their oppressors’. Well, Snipes tried to break the system and the final count was Government, one and Snipes, zero. 

 FLM Gurus claim that their techniques provide easy rewards to their innocent dupes such as not having to pay taxes, pay child and spousal support payments, obey traffic laws, drive without licences to drive or have licence plates attached to their vehicles. In fact they actually create their own licence plates that have the word FREEMEN in large letters on them When you see such a licence plate on a vehicle, you know that the driver is a damned fool. Do you really want to be driving on a highway or street with a damned fool driving a vehicle next to you?  

 These fools further claim that FLM members can make themselves independent of any government obligation if they so desire and that they can unilaterally enforce demands on other persons, institutions, and the governments at any time they wish.  Imagine how these dupes would feel if they built a house without a permit and then watched the government tear in down because they didn`t have a permit to build it in the first place. These claims by these gurus are, of course, pseudolegal nonsense.

When reduced to their conceptual core, most FLM concepts are contemptibly stupid. Mr. Meads, for example, had presented the Court with documents that appeared to be a contract between himself and himself. In one of the documents, Mr. Meads promises to pay for any liability of the other Mr. Meads. One of the Mr. Meads owns all property, the other all the debts. What is the difference between these entities? One of the Mr.Meads spells his name with upper case letters. The other adds spurious and meaningless punctuation to his name. Mr. Meads (with punctuation) is the Mr. Meads who appeared in court. He says the Mr. Meads (all capitals) is the one who should pay child and spousal support. Is this man insane? If so, how did he get released back into society from the loony bin? Perhaps he is a reject from another planet.

 The vast majority of encounters between the courts and FLM litigants are not reported. These litigants and their schemes have been encountered in almost all areas of law. They appear in chambers, in criminal proceedings, initiated civil litigation based on illusionary FLM rights, attempts to evade court and state authority with procedural and defence-based schemes, and interfere with unrelated matters.

 FLM strategies as brought before the courts have proven to be disruptive and as such, they inflict unnecessary expenses on other parties, and are ultimately harmful to the silly persons who appear in court and attempt to invoke these vexatious strategies. Because of the nonsense they argue, FLM litigants are invariably unsuccessful and their positions dismissed, typically without written reasons. Nevertheless, their litigation abuse continues.

 The growing volume of this kind of vexatious litigation is a reason why I am submitting this article to my readers in hopes that none of them will fall victim to the FLM gurus who try to unload this garbage into the brains of people who are susceptible to accepting this kind of nonsense as being valid reasons why they should ignore our customs with respect to our laws.   

The judge in his decision also had a message for those considering using the methods of the FLM. He said they have been proven invalid in law and anyone who tries them could get stuck paying court costs. He urged them to ask their gurus: If these schemes really work, why don’t those who advocate them try them out themselves?

As for the gurus, the judge quoted Dante’s Inferno, which placed those who counsel evil in the eighth circle of hell. “At some basic level, you understand that you are selling lies, or at the very most generous, wildly dubious concepts.”

 Those who fall for these FLM schemes surely deserve our sympathy. Let me quote literally from the Bible. Jesus said while dying on the cross; “Forgive them Lord for they know not what they do.”  I for one am willing on occasion to forgive the sinner once the sinner has been punished and made to pay for his or her sins. No doubt the silly people in the Freedom-of-the-Land Movement are forgiven once they have paid their fines, taxes and other monetary obligations and/or served their time in jail—providing of course that they stop playing the fool again with their Freedom-of-the-Land Movement twaddle.