From: an12070@anon.penet.fi (The Executioner)
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 93 04:04:07 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Ways to Die
Message-ID: <9311271200.AA07846@anon.penet.fi>
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Many psychopunks, particularly T.C.May, E.Hughes, and D.Barnes, have
been upset by my latest name variation, `The Executioner', supposing in
their sweaty desperation at exposure for their crimes that it
represents some kind of insinuated threat. Nothing could be further
from the truth. The obvious meaning of `execute' in this context is `to
carry out a plan', as in `execute a program,' as in `elicit the truth'.
The connotation is completely harmless. I have no idea why anyone could
construe it negatively, unless, as the saying goes, they have something
to hide! Sorry, but I can't be responsible for tormented psyches and
consciences in the face of Truth! I don't understand why these master
pseudospoofers should be upset by a trivial name change. In fact, in
the face of their own plethora of faces, it seems quite hypocritical!
It would be like taking the words, `I'm going to come kill your family
with a rusty razor blade' seriously.

This idea of `execution' reminds me of historical cases of execution.
There are very many variations. One of the best and my favorite is that
by a lynch mob, led by a corrupt leader. The lucky criminals get hung,
with their faces bulging around, and legs dangling below, a
constricting, unremitting noose, sort of like a poisonous snake around
the neck. `Brave New World' ends with a delightfully novel description
of a hanging: NE, N, NE, N, NW, W, SW, ... (paraphrase!) I imagine that
hanging is not a very bad way to die, of all the ways invented and
experienced by man. Traitors were often hung by the noose in the Civil
War, as I understand it, when our country turned in on itself in
disunity. Who was it who was executed with the words, `I regret I have
but one life to give to my country'? The infamous spy Benedict Arnold
(who put on one face to the British, and another to the Americans,
quite the ingenious pseudospoofer!) was hung, I understand.

Other cases of execution, of course, are more grisly. We have the
Inquisition to thank for some of the more hideous variations. I don't
know if Poe's Pit and the Pendulum was ever really in use, but what a
fantastic way to die! The shining, razor sharp blade gently swaying to
and fro, hypnotically mesmerizing, swish, swosh, subtly, imperceptibly
lower, approaching like a whisper in one's ear by Death. The victim in
the tale faced anonymous black judges in a dark courtroom, as they
handed down the sentence, described like a druglike stuporous
hallucination. As I recall the protagonist in Poe's tale had his
stomache glanced by the blade, dark red blood slowly oozing forth, but
he was ingenious and saved himself by turning the vicious rats in the
dungeon into a useful tool! Ah, what fantastic literary irony. The Pit
and the Pendulum is a sort of mental and psychic torture. I wonder how
many days the blade was descending over? The end could certainly not be
as painful as compared with other physical torture devices, like the
rack, used to elicit confessions. Who can forget that wacky human
enclosure with spikes on the door? What amazing creativity.

I've always been fascinated by the Guillotine in use during the French
revolution. The doctor Guillotine was very humane and was tormented by
the visions of humans who had a few moments of discomfort and
displeasure ensuing after failing to perfectly align their necks with
the executioner's blade. Of course, one swift and single CHOP! was
ideal, but sometimes the executioner was drunk, or maybe his mask was
in the way, and it took more than one CHOP! CHOP! CHOP! over a period
of a few seconds to dispatch the soul on its merry journey. Guillotine
invented his ingenious device, and executions were very rapidly
improved in reliability and accuracy. This was very useful because all
kinds of terrorists, counterrevolutionaries, and criminals had hidden
themselves in the guise of the Victorious Revolution, and the public
turned on itself after all the discredited leaders had been accounted
for (in--what else?--a `head count').

The Guillotine was really unsurpassed in its efficiency at the time, a
real technological marvel. I'm sure there were many people at the time
who were quite impressed by it, and said that it was a fine piece of
machinery, and that even though it could be put to evil uses,
`Guillotines don't kill people, people kill people' and therefore no
one should have any qualms about its existence and continued use, or
safeguards and restrictions and regulations governing the authority of
its operation by naive and unskilled unprofessionals, or even
criminals, themselves ready amateur Executioners. One said, `yes,
surprising as it sounds, I'm coming out in favor of the Guillotine.'
The people got what they wanted. They weren't about to let some
sinister, evil, oppressive government stand in their way of exercising
their true glorious birthright freedoms, like killing each other.

One of the things that really fascinates me is the possibility of
cyberspatial-oriented murder. It seems to me that in a CryptoAnarchic
society where there is no government or social order, things like hired
assassins will be more readily hired, and certainly more abundant. What
do you do when you are robbed or harassed? Call the police? Ha, ha,
there are none of those annoying, meddlesome, timeconsuming and
troublesome Social Justice Farces in our Private Utopia. Imagine the
delight of hiring hitmen with completely untraceable cash, and
communicating with them with Chaum style DC nets to describe the victim
and pinpoint one's enemies for execution.

That reminds me of the Focaultian idea that punishment and torture is
related to the human body. The theory is, if you don't have a physical
body, you can't experience pain. Some pseudospoofers in the psychopunk
cult have suggested that they are unaccountable in this fashion --
pseudospoofing allows them to achieve a sort of godlike omnipresence
and transcendance through their myriads of ephemeral identities.
Actually, this philosophy appears to originate with one of the leaders
and is a central tenet of their idolatry. The `fluidity of identity'
exists in Cyberspace, to some extent, but all the pseudospoofers I know
still have a real-world body that bleeds like any other, and all their
tricky circumventions of its existence are no match for superior
technology. That's The Truth!

``Any sufficiently evil machination is indistinguishable from murder.'' --S.Boxx
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