Human being = monster

August 12, 2006 3:10 AM

You are the stock of the corporation known as the U.S.A. Following the recent discussion of a Jordan Maxwell video, colourfully dismissed as "new age sewage", I thought Mefites would like (and/or rather, I would like Mefites) to apply their knowledge and insight to a far more topical example of Mr. Maxwell's work. A jumping off point: The law administered in the courts is maritime law. (Google video @ 1 Hr)
posted by Tarn (15 comments total)

The first and last links go to the same video...was this intentional?
Anyway, my insight is that these people are talking inhoherent gibberish.
posted by Osmanthus at 4:45 AM on August 12, 2006

A jumping off point: The law administered in the courts is maritime law.

you're right - that's where i jump off, right there
posted by pyramid termite at 6:18 AM on August 12, 2006

Trials take place in a court. Tennis is played on a court. Tennis is played with a racquet. Therefore, trials=racket.

Yup. You might as well Ask Manson.
posted by Bookhouse at 6:27 AM on August 12, 2006

ASBout 15:50 in:
"When you were born, your mother's water broke. And when your mother's water broke, you came out, and this is why you have to have a birth certificate. Because you are a maritime admiralty product under international law."
I'm transfixed! Nonplussed! Amazed at this shit.
posted by nj_subgenius at 7:06 AM on August 12, 2006

are people who were born by caesarian section under roman law?
posted by pyramid termite at 7:20 AM on August 12, 2006

ok i gave the first link a shot, i got as far as

"he sits on a 'bench' (a judge) in latin 'bench' means 'bank'. what do you have on the sides of a river? banks. banks help direct the river's current . . .c

this is so wrong on so many levels. i may not be well educated , but please for the love of god tell me , people don't buy this line of bull? right?
posted by nola at 8:55 AM on August 12, 2006

That is hilarious. I've never seen someone say so many patently incorrect things with authority in the span of about 10 minutes. I kept wanting them to pan the camera towards the audience and see who was listening. I have this mental image of like 12 folding chairs with only 3 of them full.

I will say this: that level of legal "analysis" is on par with much of the legal "analysis" here on Metafilter when you see someone complaining about some bill or some ruling. Moreover, you seem the same asinine conspiracy theories here that the nutjobs at "Conspiracy Con" decry.

And it is all deserving of being laughed at.
posted by dios at 9:12 AM on August 12, 2006

Trials take place in a court. Tennis is played on a court. Tennis is played with a racquet. Therefore, trials=racket.

I thought you were taking the piss when you wrote this. Then he actually said it.
posted by cillit bang at 9:25 AM on August 12, 2006

Include here the usual disclaimers here about the possibility that this whole thing is an art project, but there's quite a lot of (less poetic) talk of this nature in the "tax protestor" movement. The "a gold fringe on the flag means it's an Admiralty court and blah blah corporations blah individual sovereignty blah blah" stuff usually ends with "and so you don't have to pay income tax!"

For a selection of the leading lights in this extremely successful field of legal pleading (well, up to the point where they actually attempt to make a case, anyway), see the Quatloos.com Tax Protestors Gallery.
posted by dansdata at 9:29 AM on August 12, 2006 [1 favorite]

>You are the stock of the corporation...

Okay, then, who's the barrel? the trigger? the cartridge? the firing pin?
Or do they cover that in the video?
posted by hank at 9:46 AM on August 12, 2006

If I've understood the presentation correctly it appears that Natalie Merchant has been proved to be a baby sea monster. Or was there another point?
posted by azina at 10:19 AM on August 12, 2006

What I think to be a truly hysterical possibility is that, millennia from now, when our descendants are scattered across the stars and living in worlds unimaginably vast and foreign in comparison to our own, the code of laws, historical legends, and related texts will be seen as laughably obscure, outdated, and irrelevant by all but some small subset of that future's discontents, but for those future left-behinds those texts may have the same strange purchase that desert-dwelling goatherds' heat-addled scribblings have for the left-behinds of our era; and, for those future left behinds, I cannot help but imagine that the vast temporal, cultural, and linguistic gap between them and us will leave them susceptible to finding the reasoning in this sort of video not only not implausible but perhaps even a fascinating conjecture. Today's "were the ancient Hebrews really Egpytian outcasts sent out with rebellious pharaoh Ahkenaten?" or "did black Kushites build the pyramids only to have the subsequent Egyptian civilization take credit?" becoming a distant tomorrow's "were the ancient Americans really British subjects under maritime law?", as it were...ie, theories not considered seriously but not, to someone not deeply invested in the topics they touch upon, so completely outlandish that their presence would ruin an entertainment using them as backstory (as would, for example, a theory that people really have three arms, but most people don't know about the third...).

In which case this video is not only an example of a humorous mix of mild insanity and outsider art but also, perchance, a glimpse at the kind of 'scholarship' that will be respectful among some of the future's discontents, or of the kind of speculation that a future Dan Brown may base a future thriller upon. A humorous prospect, that.

As an aside: much of this sort of inanity -- and much other inanity, in my mind -- could be avoided if lawmakers were obligated not only to write the text of the law but also to provide explanatory annotations describing the intended interpretation, effects, etc.; perhaps some future nation will attempt that program and see how it turns out.
posted by little miss manners at 10:26 AM on August 12, 2006

I was willing to give him a chance right up until the "universal god force" comment. If you can't reason about the world without bringing deities into it, you're lazy, stupid, insane, or possibly all of the above.

And if anyone wishes to interpret this as a veiled political comment about the regime currently in control of the U.S., please do.
posted by bshock at 2:04 PM on August 12, 2006

Call me when he gets to the four-cornered earth.

In the meantime, I'm not sitting through slightly more than an hour of someone else's insanity - I get enough crazed drivel in my regular dose of media without adding a supplement.
posted by FormlessOne at 6:36 PM on August 12, 2006

You are the stock of the corporation...

stock? a liquid broth ? you see where i'm going with this broth is mostly water, law of the 'water' aka 'high seas' seas rhyme with bees , bees have stingers that once used detach from their abdomens, causing death to the bee. you see where i'm heading. bees knees , falls from trees, flees jeez , rubber cheese.
posted by nola at 8:58 PM on August 12, 2006