America is not free.

[Trip06]

You have no right to anything, Your born into a world where you have no rights. Rights are just something you settle/agree to have imposed on yourself to be given a handout/acknowledgement by the guberment. Survival is everything. Think about your rights and ask yourself are they really needs or wants. There is a difference.

[Trip06]

A right is something you believe is Owed to you. The right to eat, the right to drink, the right to go to work and live a happy life. You may think you have these rights but they are just wants. Your rights are only wants fullfilled if the second party your trying to convince agrees with you.

[fakefakerson]

How free are we ?

Let's see. When you can be arrested for INTENT. How free are you ?

That's just thinking. Not a conspiracy that's making plans just thinking about something.

You can have your gun but just don't think about using them.

Oh, they convicted me of not growing. That was not enough. They convicted me of INTENT to sell and that's it. What I never intended to do but is the worst they can put on you. Intent to sell to little kids and that makes you a terrorist too.

Not to be a dick, but we are still free. I am high as hell. Fuck yeah!!!!! Read my other threads. Hell yeah.

[LOC NAR on probation]

Not to be a dick, but we are still free. I am high as hell. Fuck yeah!!!!! Read my other threads. Hell yeah.

No offence taken.

What kind of job do you have that doesn't test ?
There are not many of those left.

You may be high but it is illeagle so we can not go out in public and enjoy. Or we would be sitting down burning now, not just paranoid that the other guy is a narc or worse a mooch.. lol.

I guess all I'm saying is the only right I have is to the pursuit of happiness.
As long as we don't hurt anyone in the process.

Wish we could all just sit down and burn one and talk. It's what the world need right now.

[palerider7777]

No offence taken.

What kind of job do you have that doesn't test ?
There are not many of those left.

You may be high but it is illeagle so we can not go out in public and enjoy. Or we would be sitting down burning now, not just paranoid that the other guy is a narc or worse a mooch.. lol.

I guess all I'm saying is the only right I have is to the pursuit of happiness.
As long as we don't hurt anyone in the process.

Wish we could all just sit down and burn one and talk. It's what the world need right now.

it's all smoke and mirrors.they say you have freedom,saying it and having it are 2 diffrent things.you say atleast you have the right still to the pursuit of happiness.key word "pursuit of" but what people don't know is that the gov"leaders that be" put so many road blocks in place that 9 out of 10 times you will never reach that goal.let alone any others that would give you any kind of power over your own life.

they have america on lock down and everytime an american finds a way thats not covered in so much red tape to do something in his.her life it's not long b4 big brother steps in and regulates the hell out of it so you can'nt go anywhere with it.american freedom is a hoax.yea your free to pick up the scraps thats it.you think that the gov and big players would ever let you get anywhere close to the same power they have?

here's alil story that just happened not to long ago.

So much for land of the free and home of the brave. This is a perfect example of how America has gone wrong. A 63 year old man with no ill will towards anyone is arrested for living on Public Forest Land. He may spend two years of his life in jail for what? Being poor and wanting to live a different life. Please Read the following article and think about what freedom really means!!!


Charlie Toups is Colorado's ultimate ski bum and a relic of a fading era.

Since 1976, the 63-year-old has skied 120 days a season, shoveling snow and doing other odd jobs for a few bucks and skiing every day. What affirms his title as ski bum supreme is the fact that at night he retired to his car, parked close to the lifts.

But now Toups' brawny 6-foot frame is wedged in a jail cell in Georgetown, imprisoned for the past 57 days on misdemeanor federal charges of camping on public land, possessing marijuana and assaulting a Forest Service officer.

He could walk free with time served if he admitted his guilt. But Toups won't do that.

"I've lived this life for 33 years and now all the sudden I'm supposed to admit I'm guilty? I can't do that," he said from jail last week. "I don't know what changed after the Forest Service tolerated me for all these years. I thought we were just respecting each other. Let me ask you, is it snowing?"

Toups' tale is the embodiment of ski bumdom. Since the 1970s, he has bummed at Mammoth in California, Snowbird in Utah, Oregon's Mount Hood, Aspen Highlands and all the ski areas in Summit County. His home â?? for nearly a decade â?? was a Volks wagen Beetle, the passenger seat torn out so he could sleep.

"He had a little tunnel down to it like a snow cave," said Halsted Morris, a longtime Loveland skier.

"He was the real deal"

After a few years at Loveland, where Toups worked in the ski area's kitchen, he moved on to Aspen Highlands, where every morning he stomped steep snow as part of the ski patrol's avalanche mitigation. A few hours bootpacking earned him a day's lift ticket. He haunted the mid-mountain cafeteria, munching food from abandoned trays. He stocked shelves at the local grocery at night.

"He was the epitome of ski bums. He was the real deal," said Mike Tierney, a veteran ski patroller at Highlands. "He was just a totally eccentric individual who was here to ski. We don't see those kinds of ski bums anymore. And that's kind of sad."

Mac Smith, the longtime director of the Highlands patrol, spent a few seasons in the 1970s camping at the base of the ski hill. He remembers Toups with fondness, as a "gentle giant."

"He was a really intelligent person," Smith said. "He just had a different drum beat, and he followed it."

Toups first ran afoul of the Forest Service, which prohibits living on public land, in 2007 when he was back living in Loveland in the ski area parking lot.

So, he fired up his most recent home â?? a tired Ford, its hood and doors closed with ropes, its bed topped with a dilapidated camper. He rattled over Loveland Pass, towing a trailer full of old skis and a rusting Honda motorcycle. He landed in the Colorado Department of Transportation utility lot on Forest Service land next to Arapahoe Basin ski area.

On Nov. 14, five months after a Forest Service cop issued Toups a ticket for camping on public land in the CDOT lot, they came for him with a warrant for his arrest.

Toups had missed two mailed summonses, sent to an Aspen-area post office box he never visited.

Forest Service law enforcement officer Jill Wick and a Summit County sheriff's deputy found him, naturally, skiing. He grew irate when told he was under arrest.

At a Nov. 20 detention hearing in federal court in Grand Junction, Forest Service special agent Travis Lunders testified that Toups "became actively resistant in the sense that he tensed up."

"Officer Wick described Mr. Toups as shrugging his shoulders, bending his arms, flexing and putting his knuckles together near his stomach, at which time both officers took Mr. Toups to the ground, the snow covered ground, and placed him face-first down," Lunders testified, according to court transcripts.

Toups said he was trying to make a call on his cellphone before he was taken away. He said he was under the impression he had a "gentleman's agreement" to stay near the CDOT utility shed, based upon his camaraderie with CDOT employees.

When officers searched his pockets, according to Lunders' testimony, they found "misdemeanor level paraphernalia and marijuana."

The day after Toups' arrest, Lunders testified that Wick suffered a "post traumatic condition or disorder . . . that caused her heart to enlarge after the arrest." Doctors later told her, Lunders testified, "she did not suffer a heart attack and her arteries were in fact good."

Lunders wrote in his report detailing the arrest: "At no time was she (Wick) struck by Toups, nor did he attempt to kick, punch or strike either officer."

Still, Toups is facing charges that he "did forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate and interfere with an officer." Add the illegal camping and marijuana charge, and Toups is facing more than two years in federal prison and $250,000 in fines.

Toups is scheduled for a jury trial in Denver District Court this month.

Toups' attorney declined to comment, but Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the Colorado U.S. attorney, said the charges are appropriate, "given his conduct."

"Danger to this community"

U.S. Attorney Michelle Heldmyer is prosecuting the case against Toups. At his November detention hearing, she argued successfully that Toups be held without bail on three misdemeanor counts.

"This defendant has shown he is dangerous, that he has no place to go," she said. "Being that he â?? all he wants to do is apparently ski and not work and live this alternative lifestyle, makes him a prime candidate for flight, not to mention he has exhibited himself now as a danger to this community, openly hostile to the government."

Calling Toups "hostile" and "dangerous" dismays Toups' friends.

"Charlie has been harassed most of his life, but even though he can be a bit of a curmudgeon, he's a really sweet guy," said Michael Cleveland, who has known Toups for 30 years and paid $1,700 to get his friend's truck out of impoundment. "He's just a ski bum who never grew up."

Toups proudly explains that in all his years of homelessness, he has never collected any public money. In the past three years, he's earned about $20,000, mostly from shoveling snow and moving furniture.

Still, he admits he has struggled to keep jobs.

"I guess I have a personality that conflicts with some tenets of management," he said.

Decades of negotiating (or violating, say the feds) federal, state, county and municipal boundaries and rules has taken its toll on Toups. When he parked near A Basin in 2007, he was at the end of his rope. He needed to be close to his work shoveling â?? where his boss, Bob Towne, said he never missed a day in two winters. He could no longer keep his truck running to move it daily. And he needed to be close to his beloved ski hill.

"I ski because it is a portal, a gateway to health," he said, noting that in all his years on skis he has never been injured. "But when I moved into that lot, I was desperate. Sure, I may live like a bum, but I do not behave like one."

[palerider7777]

As an Australian. I cant really comment on America. I dont really want to comment at all.

All i really want to say is:

If someone is prepared to stand up, take control, be prepared for a bloody hard fight and most of all, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. They would have my vote.

Complaining on a forum of how we arent free is B/S...remember you are free to run for Presidency / Prime Minister if you do really want to make a change.

Maybe run for Member of Parliament for your area. That vote is down to the Local People and they will decide upon what you tell them if your who they want.

Ill put my hand up now. I have a perfect solution. Instead of working for money to get what you need. How about cutting a step out and working for what you need? If you have a farm of corn,i will help you sow the seeds. We all eat corn. If i have cattle,help me milk them,we will all have milk.

Its the simple,help yourself to help others. If you can only help yourself than it must not be worth doing.

If 10 people help you,it takes a 10th of the time. Sooner or later we all have so much time,well be looking to help each other. As it is now. People have no time on their hands so pretty much everyone cops an F YOU! That continues in a big loop til everyones rooting each other...pretty much where we are now.

My bottom line is. Unless you are pro actively doing something to change this,you cant exactly complain. And complaining only makes things worse...

Start looking for change and actually looking. Scratch the surface and start to dig...it goes so deep.
I hope to see you on the other side

let me ask you this,since you believe that the people are the ones electing these people in power.in your parliament over there name me anybody in the high office that was just part of the common folk b4 they made office??im just going by what you said above about people need to stop talking and go run for pm or the like.

[Trip06]

Your sposed to get active, Organize with your community. Get to know your neighbors, discuss how things are going you know. By forming those bonds if things go to hell everybody will be there together helping out instead of wigging out alone. The first thing to do Is become self sufficent. Not to the effect that you have to move to the country and become a farmer. But to have food for 6 months on hand and a firearm to protect yourself against other people who have not prepared. If you arent self suffiecent then they can threatn you by taken away your suport. The next step is to demand change politicaly, If enouf people gathar outside the federal reserve they will have to listen to us. But to be truely awake you will realise that they might change things to keep controll but nothing will ever be really changed unless you vote them ALL out and start over. Knowing that they will not give it up you have to be safe in your own in case the system does not hand it back over so nicely. Then again you might need to just endure hard times. Think about it. If they do impose on us to far, we will have to fight in defence to take our country back. So vote and protest till they push WAY to far.