03/25/11 – George Donnelly – The Scott Horton Show

All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest on the show is George Donnelly.
He's a libertarian activist, organized the We Won't Fly protest against the TSA, is a radio host, blogger, and creator of the Agorist Unconference, which he very pleasantly invited me to be a part of this Saturday at 2 o'clock, but I still don't know, I don't think, whether that's 2 o'clock East Coast time or 2 o'clock LA time or what.
Welcome to the show, George.
How's things?
Hey Scott, thanks for having me on.
It's a real pleasure.
All times Eastern, right?
That would make sense.
That's right, Eastern time, yes.
Okay, so 11 my time.
I better get up early and write something.
All right, so now hang on a second here because I want to tell people about some websites.
There's georgedonnelly.com and also thoroughmedia.com, concepts that strike the root.
I like that.
And you're the guy that got arrested for filming outside while some fully informed jurors were trying to pass out some pamphlets and got the beat down, right?
That's right, that was me last May.
I was with Jim Babb and Julian Heiklin.
They were handing out the pamphlets saying how juries can judge not just the facts of a case, but also the law itself.
And some marshals didn't take well to me filming them.
They just attacked me and charged me with assaulting them.
So it was pretty insane.
My favorite part, I was reading the piece that you wrote on it this morning, and I like where he talked about, well, so I broke out the law and I started reading it to them, and they didn't care.
They didn't like that.
I just made them angry.
Yeah, there's a Homeland Security bulletin that specifically says that you're allowed to film at federal buildings.
But yeah, I broke that right out after they let me get up and I started reading them their own rules.
And yeah, they didn't take well to it.
Well, and you know what?
This reminds me of a very important story I forgot to cover this week.
Bomb undiscovered for weeks at Detroit Federal Building.
And it was a package found by a security guard.
It was a bomb, they say.
And it was sat there for weeks.
These are the people in charge of protecting us and persecuting you, George.
Wow.
You can't take pictures, but there's a bomb in a suitcase sitting there for weeks.
Okay, different federal buildings, same difference.
That's what I'm saying.
All right.
So first of all, tell me what's agorism?
Well, I guess it's second of all.
Now tell me what's agorism?
Or am I even saying it right?
Yeah, sure.
That's the right way to say it.
Agorism is the idea that we're going to achieve liberty and independence in our own personal lives by trading with each other outside the purview of the state.
So as much as possible, we won't pay so much attention to the state limit.
And we'll try to use free markets of money like silver.
And we'll just live free, you know, as much as we can.
Well, give us some examples other than, you know, trading in silver coins or something.
Well, for example, the other day, my wife had to take a bus home, but the bus was sold out.
And why?
Probably because you have to get a license to operate a bus system and you have to pay all these taxes.
And so what did she do?
She found a lady who was heading in her direction anyway.
And she paid her a few bucks and the lady drove her home in her private car.
Yeah, well, you better look out because you can get in deep trouble for that.
In fact, there are cops who set people up, pretend to be gypsy cabs, just to prosecute people for taking them.
I've seen it on TV.
They call it law enforcement.
You know, they've got things for everything now.
I mean, pretty soon, they're going to set you up to think wrong thoughts, you know, and it'll be a thought crime.
Yeah.
Well, you know, can't be too careful, I guess.
All right.
So let's talk a little bit about this unconference that I am taking part in tomorrow.
Absolutely.
It's called Agora.io.
It's going on all weekend.
It started this morning.
You can see it at agora.io.
It's agora.io.
That's the website address.
And it's freedom at work.
It's a non-hierarchical, free market conference where anybody can participate.
You don't have to travel.
You don't have to go through a TSA checkpoint.
You don't have to pay anything.
It's completely free.
And right now, over 200 people are participating in it.
Over 200 people are actually giving talks for it.
Well, about 75 amazing speakers are participating.
Wow.
Yeah.
And about 200 people are actually watching the talks right now and chatting with the speakers.
Oh, I see.
And so that's how it works.
There's kind of a chat room going on during the whole presentation.
That's right.
Yes.
You can see the speaker and you can hear the speaker.
It's live streaming video.
And then there's a little chat room next to the video box.
And you can chat there with the other participants and the speaker can read your chat messages and reply to your questions.
Okay.
Good deal.
So I guess it's an hour for each one?
Yeah.
It's about 45 or 55 minutes, roughly in that range.
Okay.
So try to keep it quick and leave plenty of time for questions.
I'll keep that in mind.
So far, there have been so many questions we've run out of time on all the sessions.
Right.
Well, that's great.
And now there's what, three or four different channels going on simultaneously too, right?
That's right.
That's how you fit 75 speeches in one weekend.
That's right.
This conference is unlimited and anybody can participate and we organize it by channels.
So we have the algorithm channel, we have the peaceful evolution channel, the creative media channel, and the NCAP entrepreneur network channel.
And at any given time, you can find two, three, or four speakers presenting concurrently.
So you have a lot of choices.
And now, so give us some examples of who all are giving talks and what kind of things.
I mean, obviously it's a very wide ranging thing, but we've got plenty of time too.
Okay.
Excellent.
Yeah.
We have Mary Ruehrig.
She's going to talk about how to achieve freedom without elections, outside the election process.
I really like her.
She's extremely libertarian.
In fact, I guess I haven't done this in a while, but for anybody out there who has a lot of lefty leaning friends or kind of a touchy feely yoga practicing type leaning friends, Mary Ruehrig's book, which the name of it escapes me all of a sudden.
Healing Our World.
Healing Our World.
Exactly.
That is the perfect libertarian primer for somebody who leans in a sort of bleeding heart direction for sure.
Yeah.
So I'm looking forward to that.
And we have Stefan Molyneux, the philosopher, and he's going to talk about, he's going to do a question and answer session about objections to anarchy.
We have Angela Keaton of anti-war.
And of course, yourself, you're going to talk about central banking and war.
That's the same thing.
Those are actually synonyms for each other.
Yeah, I agree.
And what's Angela's talk about?
She's going to talk about feminism.
It's called the, you can't win the permanent pathological of female sexuality.
Wow.
Heavy.
And right now there's a talk going on by Neil Curtin.
He's talking about the resource-based economy, which is kind of a new idea, at least new to me, that was explored in the Zeitgeist movies.
Ilo Ilo Jones of the Fully Informed Jury Institute just gave a talk about cooperative community schooling.
And under the archives, it was a very well-received talk.
And under the archives section of our website, you can find the recording there.
Oh, that's good.
That's a very important subject.
And more and more people, especially, even people I know who are not ideological types at all, are now just taking their kids out of school and homeschooling them themselves.
One parent quitting the job and staying at home because what are you going to do?
Turn your kids over to the government to learn how the world is?
To learn their ABCs?
Bad idea.
Everybody knows that.
So very important subject.
We'll be right back with George Donnelly right after this.
He'll tell us more about some of the speakers at this great conference.
It's Agora.io.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with George Donnelly.
He's a dad, a blogger, an entrepreneur, and media junkie, and libertarian activist.
And he and his buddies at Agora.io are throwing a gigantic libertarian shindig all weekend long.
It's already started.
And it's going on right now at Agora.io.
And we're talking now about some of the other speakers who are going to be there besides myself.
I'll be on tomorrow at two o'clock Eastern time at Agora.io.
So George, can you please continue telling us about some of the great people you've invited to speak here?
Absolutely.
We have David Derby giving a talk right now about creating a free food system in the mainstream, which is so important these days when we have genetically modified food.
We've got Roundup being tossed around all these farms.
The farm topsoil is being depleted by these very poor farming practices.
And we have a couple other talks about food as well, another one about an open source food system, and another about doing agricultural stuff outside the state's jurisdiction by a gentleman who runs a goat dairy farm.
As we know, we've seen those videos recently of, for example, cops raiding a raw milk dairy with guns drawn even.
It's practically a war on our food now.
Yeah, well, that's true.
I think, you know, it's not something I've paid a lot of attention to, but I have seen things like that where they have, you know, actual SWAT style raids against what raw milk producers, things like that, people that sell vitamins.
Yeah, it's insane.
FDA SWAT teams.
That's hilarious.
I hope that gets a little section in the history books in the future.
At one point, the Americans militarized themselves so much that they actually had the FDA people with SWAT teams raiding dairy farms.
I mean, it's so ridiculous.
We've also got a really great presentation coming up on Sunday at 3 p.m.
Eastern about unschooling by Debbie Harbison, who's a columnist out in Indiana.
Let's see, we've got Steve Horowitz, who's a professor at St. Lawrence University, a very well-respected academic on the topic of free market.
He's going to talk about how to engage with critics of markets.
Let's see, we have Thomas K. I don't know if you've heard of this.
He did a really nice animation.
He's from the Netherlands, called George Ought to Help, and basically kind of taking the Philosophy of Liberty video and giving it an upgrade, just explaining the basic principles of basic human rights and liberty.
That one should be really good.
Karen Kwiatkowski, who you've probably heard of, a retired Air Force colonel and a Pentagon whistleblower, is going to talk about how we can be free in an unfree world.
That's also on Sunday.
That's great.
Yeah, she's a great writer.
I actually just interviewed her on the show two days ago.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that talk.
We have several talks about silver.
In the agorist community, in this community where we trade amongst ourselves outside the purview of the state, we often use silver as our money, because as you know, the Federal Reserve notes, otherwise known as dollars, the value is being inflated away.
And this has been so noticeable the last 40 years in the stagnant wages, in the inflation, in all the cost of living.
And so we're going to have a talk, I believe, Sunday about the Shire Exchange, which is a way to trade in silver.
Karen Emery, who runs Dell Valley Silver, which is a really great place to buy your silver, because her premiums on the silver are really low, she's going to give a talk about bartering networks.
Ron Helwick, who runs Shire Silver, he's out in New Hampshire, he's going to talk about his currency, basically what he's done, and he's taken grams of silver and embedded them in laminated cards.
So it's much easier to carry around than a one ounce round coin, and in much smaller denominations than you usually find.
Plus, we've got a couple talks about technology.
William Pearson, who's out in Oregon, he's going to talk about information security and privacy for activists.
You know, given all the wiretapping and all these invasions of privacy, people, the border agents, when you enter the country, taking your laptop, this kind of stuff is really important.
And Eric Johnson on Sunday is going to talk about using technology to advance liberty.
This is going to be really cutting edge.
He's going to be talking about Bitcoin, which is an online digital currency, and other really almost bleeding edge technology that you can use online to trade and live freer.
Man, I have to interrupt you here to tell you, this whole thing sounds really cool.
All right, go ahead.
I'm having a blast.
We've got Carla Garicchi, who's the president of the Free State Project.
She's going to talk about liberty in our lifetime and how to achieve it.
The Free State Project is a group of activists out in New Hampshire who are asking people across the country to move to New Hampshire and to work together to really make New Hampshire kind of a laboratory for liberty.
Already, they have made great strides.
They are working right now that the house, the New Hampshire house, has passed medical marijuana, constitutional carry.
And either they already have opened up marriage to state approved marriage to other than just heterosexual couples, or it's going to happen any moment now.
They've been making great work.
And Patrick Friedman of the Seasteading Institute is going to talk later today, actually in a few minutes, and seasteading is basically the idea that...
That's Milton Friedman's grandson, right?
That's right, that's right.
Seasteading is the idea that we can set up communities out in the international waters of the ocean and there have radical amounts of liberty.
Sounds good.
Does that mean just what, gambling?
It could mean anything.
It could mean running an offshore bank that deals in gold and silver, could mean intentional communities of people who are not feeling well received in today's overly homogenous society.
Now, they've already kind of done a practice run at that on some giant barge or something, right?
Yeah, that's right.
I believe they did it off of the California coast maybe a year ago.
Yeah, yeah, that's something I'd like to learn more about.
That sounds fun.
And Ian Freeman of Liberty Radio Network, he's going to talk about pirate radio tomorrow afternoon at 4pm.
Right on.
I got a thing or two to say about that myself, but I guess it'll have to wait.
And Zaida Dinia, who's from Southern California, she's going to talk about rave, underground culture, and Niagara tomorrow at noon.
We've got Michael Dean, who made the documentary Guns and Weed.
He's going to give a talk tomorrow at 5pm.
Guns and Weed is how he said?
Yeah.
It's a bunch of commentary and libertarian ideas mixed in with video of people harvesting and packaging marijuana and firing rifles and pistols and stuff.
It's really pretty funny.
And we've got James Cox this afternoon.
He's from Florida.
He's talking about the Fully Informed Jury Association.
And what these folks do is they hand out flyers outside of courthouses to inform jury members and potential jury members that they have the right to judge, not just the facts of a given case, but also the law.
And now what's your talk going to be about, George?
I'm going to talk about open source peaceful evolution for fun and profit.
And what time is that?
That is 4pm Eastern on Sunday.
Okay, great.
Now, look, we can't continue with the list here because we're coming up against the time wall here.
And I want to give you the last few seconds to tell people again, all about the conference, you know, in general, where they can witness all of this from their computer screen, the YouTube archives later, etc.
Real quick.
It's all on our website at agra.io.
Agra.io.
And you'll have all the YouTubes and everything there too?
Absolutely.
It's all going to be archived right there on that website.
All right, everybody.
That's George Donnelly.
He's one hell of a libertarian activist by the look of this thing.
Agra.io.
75 speeches at the Agorist Unconference this weekend.
Check it out.
Thanks.
Thank you.