THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
THE TUSTIN NEWS
PROFESSOR DAVE WELLINGTON'S NEWSLETTER
Orange County, California - Monday July 1, 1996
Article transcribed directly from O.C. Register Newspaper
STUDENTS LEARN TO LET THE LAW SET THEM FREE
The Freedom Law School isn't about law firms. Peyman Mottahedeh teaches students " why natural law will always be supreme against the Legislature's attempts to deny your rights, what the hated income tax is really all about, and how to use the law library. We have to use their law against them," he says.
Barefoot scholars looking for truth
SOCIAL ISSUES: The Freedom Law School, in an apartment living room, is sympathetic to the Patriot movement.
By: Teri Sforza By: Orange County Register
TUSTIN-There are bare feet and cold toes at the Freedom Law School.
A small price to pay for emancipation, the students figure - and hey, the carpet is clean.
Well-worn footwear in various stages of exhaustion pile up at the front door of this offbeat bastion of higher learning - which also happens to be Peymon Mottahedeh's apartment. A barefoot Mottahedeh stands in the book lined living room, scribbling on a blackboard while his 12 barefoot pupils sit on folding chairs and carefully scratch important words such as "natural law" and "fixed truth" in their notebooks.
Eyes wander to the floral bedspread in the next room, to the red plastic poinsettia plant, and to the poster of a wineglass full of strawberries.
Harvard Law it's not.
These dozen "truth seekers" are planting those bare feet firmly on what Mottahedeh calls "A Practical Road to Freedom." They're paying $130 for his nine part course on how to rid themselves of "oppressive taxation and control." They'll learn "why natural law will always be supreme against the Legislature's. --(Please see LAW below)
Photo taken by MARK RIGHTMIRE / The Orange County Register
LEARNING THE NATURAL LAW
Peymon Mottahedeh teaches 'A Practical Road to Freedom,' a nine- part course on how students can rid themselves of 'oppressive taxation and control.'
Photo take by MARK RIGHTMIRE / The Orange County Register
WHERE TO LOOK IT UP
Peymon Mottahedeh explains to his class at the Orange County Law Library what the various law books contain.
LAW
attempts to deny your rights, what the hated income tax is really all about, how to use the law library, how to win traffic tickets - and even basic trial procedures from oral arguments to appeals.
"We have to use their law against them," says Mottahedeh
These folks sympathize,to some degree with the Montana Freemen, whose attempts to reject the government recently landed them in jail awaiting trial. They're all part of what's popularly known as the Patriot movement - a loose umbrella of people fed up with an overbearing government.
Mottahedeh cuts a sharp figure in a starched white shirt, dark pinstriped pants, and gray dress socks. "I'm from Iran," he says, toes embedded in pristine beige carpet. "We take the shoes off before we go in the house. It's more sanitary."
Call this the Patriot movement Mottahedeh-style.
The classes take place here, in his anonymous condominium in the shadow of the Tustin Market Place. Everywhere, book spines sparkle with glossy gold words such as United States Code. There's the California Penal Code, the Persian-English Dictionary -- rows of books stacked on bookshelves
Mottahedeh fled Iran in 1977, as the shah's reign gave way too the ayatollah's. He landed in Orange County, attended Tustin High School and then California State University, Long Beach. He studied economics and business, became a citizen in 1989, and was working in retail four years ago when someone told him "the secret:
The income tax is VOLUNTARY!!"
"I am not an attorney," Mottahedeh says, a slight accent revealing his childhood in Tehran. "I don't give out what they call technical legal advice. We are speaking together and sharing information that we have a legal right to do, as guaranteed by natural law and the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution."
As an Iranian Jew with African-American women in his classes, Mottahedeh hates that the Patriot movement is branded as a hotbed for white supremists. "We're being demonized," he said. "Calling the Freedom movement racist is an attempt by big-government socialists to discredit the movement and expand big government."
Mottahedeh's approach is distinctive. He doesn't preach rejection or overthrow of the government, as the Freemen do. He votes and unabashedly declares that America is the greatest country in the world.
His beliefs are simple but revolutionary. He says: "true laws, like the laws that govern gravity and physics, don't change on a legislature's whim."
And true law can be boiled down to this: Don't violate other peoples rights, and don't break agreements. "The rest is window dressing," he says.
The Patriot movement, some scholars say, reflects a deep dissatisfaction between government and the governed.
"The one truth these people have fastened onto is that since the New Deal, the federal government has incredibly exceeded the power that the Founding Fathers intended it to have," says Stephen Presser, a professor of legal history at Northwestern University School of Law. "The federal government is obliterating the power of the states - and that is a very real, and very tragic, problem.
" The First Amendment gives Mottahedeh the right to say whatever he wants - and the 16th Amendment gives the government the right to collect taxes," the Internal Revenue Service says.
"When it comes to taxes, people seem to want to believe these fantastic claims," IRS spokeswoman Judith Golden says. "People have to pay their taxes."
Cassandra Bach disagrees. "I haven't filed income-tax returns for years and I don't intend to," she says, standing barefoot in Mottahedeh's kitchen. "But oooh, my feet are cold."
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Tustin, California Thursday Jan. 22, 1998
Article transcribed directly from Tustin Newspaper
Tustin Ranch man foments legal rebellion
By George Stewart The Tustin News
Within the unlikely confines of a Tustin Ranch apartment is the home and headquarters of a freedom fighter.
There, groups of up to 25 people assemble at night around long tables with a wall of shelved law books overlooking them, while Peymon Mottahedeh teaches them how to stand up against government oppression.
"I'm hoping to train an army of freedom fighters armed with the knowledge and proper assertion of the law," says Mottahedeh. "I'm not advocating armed revolution or violence - I renounce violence."
Mottahedeh, 35, is referring to his Freedom Law School where he estimates he has had about 300 graduates since he started it in his living room in January of 1996.
He is not an attorney, nor can his school offer any accredited degree. But for $150 just plain folks can take a course of nine three-hour classes in subjects like how to beat the IRS and state income tax agencies, how to use a law library, how to respond to harassing letters from government, how to read and write effective court documents, and basic trial procedures and techniques and strategies for free living.
"It is about education and results," Mottahedeh said. "for people who are wrongfully convicted, victimized by the IRS and unjust traffic tickets, and other oppression by other beaurocracies."
"The government has unlimited money to come after you. The average individual has little money and no knowledge. Even when he is in the right he has no chance."
Mottahedeh is of Jewish descent and fled Iran for the United States in 1977, when he was 14, just before the ayatollah came to power. He attended Tustin High School and got a degree in business administration from California State University, Long Beach.
In the early 1980s an uncle visited --Please see FIGHTER below
FREEDOM FIGHTER
Peymon Mottahedeh studies one of the law books in his Freedom Law School, which he operates out of his apartment in Tustin Ranch. He teaches the average person about his legal rights and how not to be taken advantage of by the government.
FIGHTER
him and told him of how he was tortured back in Iran, of how another relative was tortured and executed under a bogus charge of being a Zionist spy.
"I was so glad to be here in America, but I realized we have given up so many of our freedoms for government's fake security. Government is making so many laws that are trifling - like not smoking in bars, traffic violations and zoning violations. They are not going after the real criminals. Criminal are taking over the government itself."
He got a job interpreting Persian for the courts in Orange County, where he got a chance to see bureaucracy and the court systems in action.
"I got involved with the Freedom movement and I got to know about our rights and how they work - how to work within our constitutional system to get our freedoms and rights back."
After the debacle at Waco, Texas, and President Clinton's efforts to get government control of medicine, he and a couple of friends started the Freedom Law School as part of the Freedom movement.
Relying on word of mouth, advertising flyers, and mailers, the school has grown and even offers at-home courses through audio cassettes in the mail.
The Piecemakers, a religious group in Costa Mesa that believes God's law supersedes that of man, took his course for help in their battles against the city and the county.
But most of his students are less high-profile.
"It gives you more confidence when dealing with governmental agencies," said Dan Scott, A Tustin graduate who does tax work.
"He gives a very detailed course in the different aspects of the law for people who don't want to use a lawyer if they don't have to," said Richard Forest, a Costa Mesa computer programmer.
Mottahaedeh's latest cause is a voter initiative he has authored, hoping to get it on the November ballot. It would allow jurors to acquit a defendant if they deem a law unjust.
He wrote it in response to the conviction of Rev. Wiley Drake for illegally housing the homeless at his church in Buena Park. Drake said he later talked to jurors who told him they only voted against him because the judge instructed them they could not consider his motivation or intent.
"The problem is judges are lying to jurors about their powers to veto the law," Mottahedeh said.
In order to get his initiative on the ballot, he must get 433,000 signatures of registered voters by May 30.
"There's always a chance with these things," he said. "You never know until you try."
He said he will try to raise enough money to hire professional signature gatherers, but if anyone wants information, he can call the Jury Education Initiative Committee at (714) 838-2896.
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Professor Dave Wellington's Newsletter
Professor Dave Wellington is one of our teachers here at Freedom Law School. He has conducted a couple of courses such as: BEAT THE IRS NOW! and GET YOUR SSN OF GOVERNMENT COMPUTERS. Dave will be writing more informative and liberating freedom articles which we will post below for your enlightenment and education in the future.
You will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view this newsletter, which you can find at Adobe Systems. Read his newsletter here!
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Last Updated on Thursday, 06 October 2011 08:26
