Sir Roger Casement

[tomtucson]

Mary Spring-Rice with Molly Childers, smuggling 900 German Mauser M1871 11 mm calibre single shot rifles and 29,000 rounds of blackpowder cartridges on board the Asgard, 1914. These rifles were later used in the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin.

Today is the anniversary of the conviction of Sir Roger Casement on 29 June 1916 of the charge of treason to the British Empire, specifically of bringing German arms to Ireland with the aim of stirring an armed uprising.

Here is Casement's speech.

Since arms were so necessary to make our organization a reality and to give to the minds of Irishmen menaced with the most outrageous threats a sense of security, it was our bounden duty to get arms before all else. . . But let me say that I am prouder to stand here today in the traitor's dock to answer this impeachment than to fill the place of my accusers. If there be no right of rebellion against a state of things that no savage tribe would endure without resistance, then am I sure that it is better for men to fight and die without right than to live in such a state of right as this.

Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruit of their own labours - and even while they beg to see these things inexorably withdrawn from them - then surely it is a braver, a saner, and a truer thing to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as this than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.

 

[Tony Shelton]

And now we are hunting down a whistleblower calling him a traitor for doing a job the free press used to do before it became the fourth branch of government.

In the 1800's juries effectively nullified the laws against harboring slaves by refusing to convict. This in turn stopped politically motivated prosecutors from prosecuting that "offense" and eventually stopped the authorities from arresting for it. The same thing happened with adultery and "buggery" laws.

If only 8% of jurors would refuse to convict on unconstitutional drug laws, gun laws and other "offenses" where there is no discernable victim we could win back our individual rights without a revolution and without bloodshed.

Remember that the next time you are tempted to try and get out of jury duty. We have made a family pact to never try to get out of jury duty again and to do our part when the opportunity arises.

Since we made this pact we have gone every time we were called for jury duty. We are studying to determine how God would feel about our lying about our convictions when asked because telling the truth always gets us dismissed.

There are instances in the bible of lying during war. Is this takeover of our country by forces determined to overthrow our highest law a war that would justify deception on our part?

I don't know the answer to that question. We are going to keep praying about it and meanwhile hope to get on a jury without being asked.

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