June 01, 2009

From earliest times, we know from oral traditions of tribal cultures where disputes were settled by each side choosing five people. These ten people were responsible for delivering a verdict based on fairness and justice, tempered with mercy. Because tribal peace and restoring the damaged party were the goals, all ten jurors were aware that their verdict must meet the approval of everyone, even the relatives of the loser of the dispute. Justice, fairness, and mercy were required of early jurors. Verdicts were public, as were the arguments presented. Juries have been considered fair deciders of justice in tribal cultures, churches, temples, governments, states, families, nations, and sometimes, in simple groups of nomadic peoples seeking a fair mechanism for social balance. Again, jurors have always functioned for justice, but not always from within other institutions.

FIJA's mission is to enlighten - and thus empower - the individual juror. Based on the shared concept that no human should be beholden to any government for liberty, justice, or life, FIJA works to liberate, and therefore restore, the role of the juror from being agents of government, back to the role of the autonomous, independent juror. A juror can render a verdict based on justice and fairness, tempered with mercy. This is a verdict of individual thinking and conscience.

Rather than pleading with government agents for what we know to be our inherent rights as humans, we teach jurors that their most powerful vote in defense of human rights is a "not guilty" verdict against government tyranny expressed through bad laws. We teach that the Constitution, through its articulation of the right to trial by jury, guarantees that government must bring its case before The People any time - and every time! - government tries to deprive anyone of life, liberty, or property. Jurors protect our inherent, sacred human rights.

The concept of the juror long has been held captive by government schools and judges, and by government-licensed lawyers and media. If it is not a vast conspiracy, then it is a vast and horrible ignorance. FIJA does not seek to restore justice or liberty through appeal to power-damaged individuals who constitute these government-controlled groups. FIJA seeks to restore justice and liberty through thinking, independent, individual jurors.

Remember, the jury is not an institution of government, although it has been usurped by kings, priests, dictators, presidents, and prime ministers during some of human history. The jury functions whether initiated by an independent group of people or by a society, or by a Church, or by a government agency. The function of the jury remains the same in all venues: to render justice.

FIJA has worked with GOA, ASA, NORML, Liberty Belles, Pink Pistols, Oath Keepers, Tea Party organizers, tax protest groups, Sport Shooting groups, JPFO, Catholic Peace Workers, property rights groups, and other groups and individuals too numerous to mention.

FIJA has no formal membership, but rather relies on unique, individual initiative and thinking from volunteers and supporters who cooperatively support our educational efforts. Volunteers make videos, publish web sites, hold forum discussions, speak, give interviews, create works of art, design posters or advertisements, purchase advertising, and a myriad of other creative projects.

There is no formal structure or titles, other than the one I use on ceremonial occasions. We here at FIJA are all state contacts, volunteers, writers, speakers, artists, or other labels that suit us. We are all in this together, and we all do everything.

Across the country, you will find thinking, honest, enthusiastic, bright, creative people handing out FIJA literature, making movies, giving talks, and sharing the message of the impressive role and authority of the juror to defend liberty and do justice.

Across this country, people who have learned the power of the juror to veto bad laws and government tyranny serve on juries, and refuse to convict harmless, productive, good people for breaking the king's stupid and vicious laws. Many, many people have not gone to prison because of informed jurors who read FIJA literature or listened to a FIJA speaker.

Across this country, FIJA teaches people to think - and act, each as an individual - for those ideas of life, liberty, property, and justice that are the living expression of the founding concept of this nation: that each individual is a sacred sovereign; that all humans are created equal, endowed with the same rights; and that government has no legitimate authority to interfere with our human rights.

Across this country, FIJA teaches the concept that one person, acting alone, can make a huge difference for another person, and for this country, by the verdict they give as a juror.

Across this country, FIJA teaches the concept that we are equal as humans, with equal ethical rights, equal access to reason, and equal contributions to make as jurors and as members of society. A juror does not have an ethical compass inferior to that of the government-paid, power-damaged judge, prosecutor, or attorney. Quite the contrary, in fact. ☺

FIJA encourages all honest people to stand against government tyranny; to use their individual juror authority to protect our rights, and to see government as the instrument of taxation, war, murder, captivity, slavery, and oppression that it is.

We encourage each person to use every peaceful means to be an example of their best vision of the new cultural paradigm which demonstrates the rights of each human to own their body, and to control their life and the products of that life.

FIJA works to educate and empower the individual, so that no matter how venal, vicious, or insane government actions may become, jurors can refuse to enforce the laws which government creates to protect its power and abuse the rights of mankind. It is possible the present government will collapse.

We must be prepared to provide a peaceful, non-coercive transitional government in its place. No matter what, if government crumbles under the weight of its own ignorance, or stumbles on for years to come, the function of the juror remains the same: to render justice.

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(I was asked to make some comments concerning reforming our present Constitution. These comments are from me, individually and personally, and are not a part of FIJA's primary efforts nor of its mission, but rather are associated with www.meansofinquiry.org.)

• Recognize that it is the time in human history for coercive, violent, power-based governments to stand down, including the one in this nation. Now is the time to introduce a transitional structure to peacefully move from coercive governments to other forms of societal structures.*


• Be among the vanguard who will institute voluntary cooperation among people; free from coercion, force, fraud or threats. Let this Nation's direction once again lead toward human freedom. We are a very young species, we humans: let us, through our thinking and our deeds, assist in our evolution to a peaceful species on this planet Earth.*


• Acknowledge that we can manifest innovative organizations, more beneficial for human society than these old organizations, including government, which gain power over people through force and fraud. Cooperation can be won with reason, rather than force.*


• Acknowledge that any government granted the power to levy taxes thus has legitimacy for the initiation of violence against individual humans as the means to collect those taxes.


• Institute a government existing only on voluntary contributions. For humans, now must be the age when cooperation replaces coercion as a survival tool. It is the time in the history of humans when we must replace coercion with cooperation if we are to survive as a species.


• Grant the government no power to make war. We can defend ourselves, we individuals, with our personal weapons.


• Grant the government no power to invade the privacy of individual humans.


• Close government schools, we can teach our own children, and save their minds, too.


• Remove permissions and licenses from the list of activities government may practice or administer or control - and these include marriage, driver's licenses, vehicle licenses, professional licenses, and permissions to enter or leave our country. Leave these functions to the Church, insurance companies, private road owners, or voluntary private contracts.


• Introduce and practice a new cultural ethic: that each individual, once they are old enough to leave the shelter of their parents' care, is responsible for that life, individual self-governance, self-responsibility, and self-actualization, as well as responsible, until they in turn leave the shelter of their parents' care, of those children they manifest. These are new, cultural ethics which humans must adopt as they have adopted taboos against other forms of parasitism and slavery.


• Provide for the Zero Aggression Principle, and prohibit any form of taxation, and you might get something that will work during the transition period.

If we continue to accept and promote the contradiction that government may legitimately initiate violence, make wars, tax and regulate us, or enforce other than the common law, then we will have as much of a new mess in any new government as the mess that this last Constitution has not prevented. We must set aside the notion that any human, no matter their agency or reason, may initiate violence against any other human.*

By now we have learned through observation that an institution based on the contradiction that it can protect itself through force and fraud will not long survive. We know that power-damaged minds only perceive the utility of force: they do not realize that the use of force cannot be sustained against thinking minds. Force stifles individual human creativity, cooperation, voluntary effort, and demeans the human spirit.*

We are each a thinking, problem-solving unique individual. It is time we looked beyond the present political structure of taxation and theft, fraud and favoritism, to a new concept for your individual role in a just, fair, and merciful society. For humans, coercive government is merely a passing fad. The days of the bully are over. Reason must prevail.

Don't you think it is time we individual thinkers evolved to a better cultural and ethical concept of human society?

I do.

Thank you.

Peace.

~ Iloilo Marguerite Jones

*Please also read www.Think.ws for more information on many of the concepts I have presented in Comments section. Thank you.

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The Courage We Need Today
� MeansofInquiry.org January 1, 2009

It is not the courage of war we need today.
It is not the soldiers we need.
It is not the tanks and grenades.

We cannot heal this world with blood.
We cannot mend the wounds with hatred.
We cannot save ourselves with violence.

It is not the courage of power we need today.
It is not the politicians that we need.
It is not the taxes and the corruption.

We cannot heal our planet with politics.
We cannot mend the rifts with legislation.
We cannot save ourselves with debt.

It is the courage of truth we need today.
It is integrity that we need.
It is honesty and courage.

We can heal our existence with honesty and courage.
We can mend the contradictions with reasoning.
We can save ourselves with peace.

We know the magnitude of these concepts:
Truth requires courage;
Integrity requires courage.

It is this courage that we need today.

~toward entelechy,
Iloilo Marguerite Jones
Helena, Montana

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Prosecutorial Misconduct Cannot be Dismissed or Forgotten

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