From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 12:07:35 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Canada Imprisons People For Human Rights Activity
In-Reply-To: <ae40f6b0130210045167@[205.199.118.202]>
Message-ID: <v03007808ae415e2722da@[206.119.69.46]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 8:18 PM -0400 8/21/96, Timothy C. May wrote:

> Almost certainly nothing. I believe there is an active secessionist
> movement in Alaska, and nothing has happened to them.

Depends on what you call "active".

Say, five? ten? years ago, the Alaska Independence Party (all of about 12
people at the time) got hijacked by Wally Hickell in his second run for the
Alaska Governor's office. He had to do it that way, because he had pissed
off the Republican party regulars. And it worked. The hijacking, I mean. He
actually got elected. For his one (1) remaining legal term.  (Remember
Wally? Hotel Owner. Former Alaska Governor in the late 1960's. He was
Nixon's Interior Secretary. For a while, anyway. A few bricks shy of a
load, Wally was, and that's from someone who actually met him.)

The liberal jokesters called AIP "Rent-A-Party" after that. Their founder
and patron saint, Joe Vogler, died under mysterious circumstances a couple
of years ago. Turns out he was murdered by a follower. (Other people say it
was Donna Rice operating under orders from George Bush. ;-).) Joe was a
quite few bricks shy, himself.

However, I expect my old man probably would have flown up from retirement
in New Mexico to old Joe's funeral, if Pop was alive to do it, of course.
Alaska attracts people like Joe and Wally and my old man. (No stranger to
bricklessness, himself, Pop was a founder of the El Paso John Birch Society
chapter. He dragged us all up to Anchorage on a whim to build a whole bunch
of 12-plexes after I finished 6th grade. Just before the pipline started.
Then retired on it all. OK, scratch the "bricklessness" bit...)

Old Joe used to tool around on his homestead in an old bulldozer, randomly
plowing under the spruce trees and filling in the muskeg "wetlands", just
to have fun with the press and give the tree-huggers apoplexy. Wanted to
create some kind of libertarian utopia up in in Alaska, where if you wanted
to exterminate all the biomass on your property one sunny summer afternoon,
you were welcome to, as long as you had clear title.

My kind of guy. :-).

AIP got all of 2% in the last election, I think.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.


So, they were "active" (past tense) and I guess you could say something
"happened" to them, too...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga
(Just some more pipline trash...)

-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)
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