His name was J. Patrick Bedell, if you don't know by now, and he was killed yesterday in a shootout with police at the Pentagon. What was his beef? This heavily-hyperlinked post that he wrote, pulled from Wikipedia, provides a clue:
My hope is to use the creativity of markets and advanced technology to transcend the destructive regimes that have fastened themselves upon the world. I have dreamed for an number of years of creating v:production econosystems, which I hope to apply to the creation of v:security service econosystems using new and economic mechanisms and information technology.
I have a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and studied biochemistry at San Jose State University. I've studied electrical engineering with the goal of creating microsystems for molecular analysis.[1][2][3][4] You can see a proposal to use aluminum anodization as an adsorption method for DNA molecules on CMOS chips at v:DNA_integrated_circuit/proposal_import_2007 (which originates from an unsuccessful DARPA proposal to create a "microMIRV" interoperable with standard firearms ammunition), and a proposal to use xenon difluoride to create a picoliter-scale computer-controlled device for sorting biomolecules (available at v:Capillary_electrode_array/proposal_import_2007), including DNA and protein molecules. My goals include the discovery of a protein sequence for the diamondase enzyme, enabling the creation of macroscale diamond structures, and the creation of self-assembled macrosystems with CMOS DNA-integrated circuits. The scale of these and other projects have led me to develop financial instruments representing information as a tool to manage large projects that are very knowledge-intensive.
I am determined to see that justice is served in the death of Colonel James Sabow, as a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions and institutions such as the coup regime of 1963 that maintains itself in power through the global drug trade, financial corruption, and murder, among other crimes. My work to develop information currency is an effort to create a framework for information management that uses financial markets to create the economic signals (prices) that will effect complex human actions in the real world based on specified information. My desire for justice led me to violate what I think is one of the most unjust laws, cannabis prohibition, by growing 16 cannabis plants on my balcony in Irvine, CA from March 2006 to June 2006. I've posted the Orange County, CA District Attorney's complaint for this offense at http://cannabis.wikia.com/wiki/JPatrickBedell_2006-06-06_cannabis_felony_complaint .
One desired result of my effort is (will be) billions and billions of carefully cultivated, highly valuable cannabis plants growing throughout the United States with complete security of property. I have posted the image to the right in order to illustrate the use of cannabis as a monetary system using digital financial instruments. There are two information currency units in each of the PDF417 codes pictured. One of the information currency units is drawn from a series with "one gram cannabis" with the underlying asset, and the second ICU in each code has as its underlying asset the URL http://www.mises.org/humanaction/pdf/humanaction.pdf and the SHA-1 digest value of the file at that location (fd8205cb8b4793d43b57ba6f6c7367aa700c307a). This is a way of associating the work of Ludwig von Mises with financial value, which may be a tool to implement his ideas in reality. I hope someday to see full-reserve banking and observance of Article One, Section 10 of the US Constitution.
I apologize for the graphic content of some of my contributions, but detailed evidence is sometimes necessary to address important matters. I am very disturbed by the fact that Col. Sabow's civilian superiors and their successors have been able to continue their narco-mercantilism. For historical comparison, I might resemble the odd German still complaining about the murders of the Night of the Long Knives in 1938(?). Of course, Wikipedia didn't exist in 1938!
I am looking for collaborators for ongoing commercial and intellectual efforts. Email to jpbedell at mises.com is welcome!
Here is the full transcript of an audio manifesto. Again, this is from December 2006, during the presidency of George W. Bush:
Hello, and thank you for listening.
Justice is a universal desire of conscious individuals. In modern society, critically important organizations work to ensure that justice is established and preserved. Those individuals who work to uphold justice deserve our thanks, our gratitude, and our support. My purpose in this message is to support those who work for justice by addressing matters that any individual within our existing institutions of justice would find difficult or impossible to address.
The most basic principle of economic justice is the protection of private property and the protection of the right to freely exchange that property. Modern governments, however, consistently and routinely violate the rights of property owners with the assumption – the incorrect assumption – that government can utilize property more efficiently than its lawful owners can.
As institutionalized theft by property violation becomes increasingly routine and accepted, it has far-reaching consequences for the character and morality of society as a whole. The injustice of that permeates society and creates disrespect for the law. On the part of ruling elites, the perception is created that society is to be exploited for the benefit of the rulers. Incentives are created to generate and promote ignorance throughout society to conceal the injustice of that. As the institutionalized violence of government is used to violate the rights of individuals to keep and trade their own property, the violation of economic justice inevitably results in the undermining of justice in every other part of society.
Although the establishment of justice and order is a key responsibility of the United States government, the sheer size of the United States economy and the enormous wealth that is devoted to government, makes the United States government a tempting prize for any organization or collection of bandits ruthless and clever enough to seize it. A criminal organization able to conduct its activities from within the center of power of the United States government would have powerful advantages over other criminal groups.
Such an organization, having seized control of the United States government, would derive enormous power from the taxes extracted from the wealthiest society in the history of the world. Such an organization would be able to manage present objections to its corruption with lavish promises of future benefits in a form of generalized bribery. Such an organization, which would necessarily have great financial sophistication, would be able to use the credit of the United States government to issue trillions of dollars of debt to fund its corrupt activities and neutralize objections to its illegitimacy and in so doing, burden the responsible citizens among its victims with crushing financial obligations.
Very importantly, this criminal group could use its control of the United States monetary system to print money to advance its own purposes of theft, control and enslavement. Such an organization would be able to protect its shipments of illicit drugs into the United States while using the power of law enforcement organization to imprison their would-be competitors, and would subsequently be able to distribute those illicit drugs and launder the enormous profits in the huge and minutely-regulated financial markets of the United States. This criminal organization would use its powers to convert military, intelligence and law enforcement bureaucracies into instruments for political control and the domination and subjection of society while discrediting, destroying and murdering honest individuals within those services that work to root out corruption and faithfully serve their fellow citizens.
This organization, like so many murderous governments throughout history, would see the sacrifice of thousands of its citizens in an event such as the September 11th attacks, as a small cost in order to perpetuate its barbaric control. This collection of gangsters would find it in their interests to foment conflict and initiate wars throughout the world in order to divert attention from their misconduct and criminality. The true nature of such a regime would find its clearest expression in Satanic violence currently ongoing in Iraq.
Perhaps worst of all, such an organization would usurp and destroy the historical leadership of the United States toward human freedom and would, while constantly and loudly preaching the glory of liberty, work to lead the world into a new dark age of slavery and terror.
This seizure of the United States government by an international criminal conspiracy is a long-established reality. The murder of the United States President in 1963, the associated murders and institutional subversion, and the manipulation of official inquiries and public opinion was effected by individuals within organizational structures that play a central role in the United States government up to the present day. The coup regime founded with the murder of President John Kennedy utilizes a number of mechanisms to perpetuate its criminal rule.
The most important of these mechanisms is government control of the economy. Government’s enormous tax revenues and even larger government spending give to the coup regime the means and motivation to sustain its rule. The constantly expanding regulation of business makes it possible for the coup regime to further impose its will on private economic activity and conditions the people under its rule to accept whatever totalitarian measures the regime deems necessary. The policies and actions of the coup regime are constantly masked by official deception, as well as the subversion of the free press through infiltration and secret manipulations.
On a deeper level, however, the deceit that the coup regime utilizes to justify its policies is intimately linked with the deceit that is inherent in policies that seize the property of individuals for the benefit of the politically powerful. The most subtle and dangerous of these policies, and therefore most similar rule of the coup regime itself, is the imposition of a paper monetary system throughout the United States. This far-reaching violation of property rights undermines the security of property in a way that works to the benefit of the politically powerful individuals that control the monetary system.
The political and military disasters such as the wars in Vietnam and Iraq that an illegitimate coup regime uses against the people who pay its bills are closely tied to the effects of inflationary paper monetary systems which are themselves intimately linked with financial and political disasters throughout history. The blatant violations of the constitution of limitations on the economic role of the government accomplished through many subtle usurpations over many decades are perhaps even more pernicious than, and are certainly a key motivation for, the violent seizure of the United States government.
In order to establish a firm and lasting basis for justice and sound government, the economic role of the government must be re-examined in every detail. It must be recognized that arguments for government control of the economy and government redistribution of economic resources are generally misguided … or even shameless lies to advance enslavement and conceal theft and murder. Furthermore, it must, once again, be recognized that the most successful means to ensure justice, secure domestic tranquility, and promote prosperity is to ensure the protection of private property.
Thank you for listening.
Loooooooon.