From: hallam@w3.org
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 95 08:35:49 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Code of Law
In-Reply-To: <199509181425.HAA13003@infinity.c2.org>
Message-ID: <9509181534.AA10941@zorch.w3.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>Another
>court offered $1 million bounties for the arrest of local
>officials and threatened to hang them. Garfield County
>Attorney Nick Murnion charged some members of the Common
>Law court with "criminal syndicalism," alleging that the
>group had advocated acts of violence for political
>purposes. One court member was sentenced to 10 years in
>prison. Others received smaller sentences.

This sort of thing can become very dangerous very quickly. In the
UK there was a publicity seeking shyster who decided to make a
political career out of attacking a book he didn't like. The
authorities didn't want to risk getting involved so they let the
guy go round calling for the author to be murdered. He has been in
hiding since the Ayatoloah issued a death threat.


>"The basic idea behind the movement," says
>University of Oregon history professor Richard Brown, "is
>'popular sovereignty,' that people are above the law.
>These people are alienated from the legal system. To some
>extent it sounds like they're also trying to settle
>personal scores."

Sounds like they don't like the democracy so they are setting
up their own lynch law. It dosen't sound all that different from
fascism. First they start saying that a group of people are evil, 
once they have convinced each other that this is the case they take
the logical next step of murdering them.


Another reason why we need cryptography, to protect ourseles against 
such self appointed lynch mobs.


		Phill H-B