Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Civil Disobedience: Me against the census bureau

6:15 PM 5/19/10

I'm still having hypersomnia. So I was asleep around 5:00 PM, when the attackers zapped me awake. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang a couple times, and then somebody pounded on the door. I listened, but I didn't go answer it.

The census bureau has been knocking on my door for a few weeks now. I didn't fill out the questionnaire. They've been visiting my apartment and leaving notes on my door telling me to call them.
The questionnaire said that if people weren't counted, then they might not get enough representatives in office. They need to know how many people there are for each area, because a certain number of people is supposed to get a certain number of politicians representing them in office.

They also want to know whether I'm harboring illegal aliens, homeless people, or any other unknown people, in my home.

I haven't written much about this yet, but I have been thinking that I want my religious order to NOT give children their social security numbers, birth certificates, or any other government identifications. We would have our own birth records kept in our own offices. I want the religious order to provide support for our people so that the government paperwork isn't needed. You need a social security number to have a job. If the religious order has its own job network, we won't need to get government-approved jobs. If we use our own money, we won't need to get the government's fiat money. If we are self-reliant, we won't need the government's public utilities such as electricity, water, or telephones. Do the Amish people need driver's licenses to operate a horse and carriage on the road? I don't know for sure what kind of license they get, but I know that they have to follow certain rules, like putting reflectors on the back of the carriages. It would be nice if we could live without driver's licenses too.

However, that seems like it would be difficult to do in reality. We might have to compromise somewhat along the way. It is something to move towards, something to try to do as a goal, but we won't be able to do it all at once. It depends on having a large number of members. A large number of members are needed if you want to have any kind of economic system. Right now there is only one member: me.  (That's not entirely true.  If I cooperate with other groups of people who ONLY want to resist the government, but aren't following the other parts of my religious order, then there are LOTS of people doing it.)

Well, about the census, this is what I was thinking. If people don't get counted, then they don't get enough politicians representing them in office. What's the one thing that anarchists and Libertarians want most? To reduce the number of politicians in office! So if I refuse to be counted, that's my way of saying I want fewer politicians representing me.

The politicians already DON'T represent me. The voting system is controlled by unknown computer hackers who change the numbers however they want. It doesn't matter what type of voting machine is used, although I've used the electronic ones, and they're AWFUL if you have to do a write-in vote to write the name of somebody that isn't on the list, which is what I did when I voted a few years ago. Anyway, the voting machine doesn't matter. What the hackers are changing is the numbers that get recorded in an Excel spreadsheet, a file which is stored on an ordinary computer and sent across the net to another ordinary computer. Every one of those computers is open to being attacked.

I know all about computer hackers from my own personal experience of being stalked, spied on, and harassed everywhere I go. So as soon as I heard about vote hacking, I believed it. There is only one news article that I ever read about this, and it's called 'Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked.' It was about the George Bush election.

Some people interviewed voters as they walked out of the building where they voted. A lot of people said that they did NOT vote for George Bush, they voted for someone else. These interviewers got a percentage estimate based on talking to the people leaving the voting station. I'm just making up this number, but let's pretend that 60% of the people interviewed said they voted for someone else.

Meanwhile, the votes on the computer, from the spreadsheet, said that only 30% of the people in that area had voted for someone else. Again, I'm just making up that number. But that is basically what happened.

So this made some people suspicious. They looked into it and found out that the computers were insecure. I don't know whether they actually proved what methods were used to hack into those computers. But they did demonstrate how easy it was to hack into an Excel file and change a couple of numbers.

From then on, I knew that the voting system was completely disconnected from the government. It's only a show. Somebody controls it, and when they change a couple of numbers in a file, my vote gets wiped out in an instant.

And there are lots of other reasons why the government doesn't represent me. There are books that talk about this and explain it better than I can. Once you elect a politician - even if your votes are counted honestly - you still can't control what they do AFTER they get into office. And if you help to get a law passed, you can't control how people ENFORCE that law after it's passed. There is so little control, you basically can't make the government do anything at all that you want - only a few things now and then, for a short period of time. Then they'll do what somebody ELSE wants them to do.

So those are some reasons why I feel that the government doesn't represent me anyway.

That's not the only reason why I haven't answered the census. I am being spied on and attacked by an unknown group of people. They see through the walls of my house. They read my mind. They know more about me than I know about myself. I don't know if this is being done by an organized crime gang, some mentally ill criminal, our government, or a foreign government, but it doesn't matter: the government HAS that same technology, even if they're not the ones harassing and attacking me every day. They, too, are able to see through people's walls and read their minds. They already know the answers to all of the questions on the census questionnaire. Why bother pretending not to know?

The people working for the census are innocent, clueless people. If you told them, 'Somebody sees through the walls of my house and reads my mind, so why bother asking me any questions?' they would say you're crazy. They don't know anything about the surveillance system. The census agents are ordinary people who are working for the census because they want to get paid to do a job. They're NOT the ones spying on me. So I'm not blaming them. So, when I don't answer, they are going to go through whatever process they have of trying to reach me, such as sending people to knock on my door every few days. It's not their fault that they don't understand.

But the other government agencies DO know how to use the surveillance system. The government can just see through the walls of our houses, count the people living there, and write down their numbers. They don't even need to tell us that they're counting us. Maybe they could say, 'Because of economic hardship, we can't afford to hire people to take a census, so we're not doing one this year. If you want one, you'll have to do it yourself using donated money.' If any ordinary people really care about taking a census, they'll do it using private funds.

(The government isn't allowed to admit that they have a surveillance system. They also aren't allowed to admit that they're having 'economic hardship.' Actually, the government's 'economic hardship' began over a century ago, when the government started destroying our money system. Our government has been totally illegitimate for over a century, and it's getting worse over time.)

So this is why I decided to see what would happen if I refused to answer the census. I am not a perfectionist. I don't care if anybody knows the exact number of human beings living on the planet. If someone wants to find out, I'd rather have it be done by a non-government organization. It doesn't bother me too much to imagine that I'm not being counted and the numbers will be wrong because of me.

Eventually, I will answer them, if they threaten me. If they call the police and have me arrested, or if they tell me that I have to pay a fine for not answering the census, then eventually I will pay the fines and answer them. I'm not going to make THAT big of an issue out of it. I'm not going to go to jail over it, if they threaten me with that. But right now, they haven't threatened me yet. They just keep ringing my doorbell every few days.

If you already answered the census, or if somebody else answered it for you, that's okay, you'll get another chance in 2020.

Stand up and be counted! Or, sit down and refuse to be counted.

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