From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 17:16:09 +0800
To: hallam@ai.mit.edu
Subject: AP [was: Re: Kiddie porn on the Internet] [NOISE]
Message-ID: <199609220708.AAA20288@dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 01:34 PM 9/21/96 -0400, Phill wrote:
>[AP drivel deleted]

>If it could the US would have assasinated Saddam by now. It can't because it
>is too difficult to find out where exactly a person will be. 

It's perfectly doable, it's just not politically expedient.
One reason is that if they kill Saddam, they no longer have an
excuse to keep threatening and attacking Iraq and making themselves look good.
Another is that National Leaders have a tacit understanding between
themselves never to assassinate other politicians [well, hardly ever....]
If you break the taboo, you're implicitly inviting everyone else
to go gunning for you, and it's too easy to do if there are enough
people who really want you dead, especially well-organized people
like a foreign army or spy service.

If the US _had_ really wanted to assassinate Saddam, they could have
hired professionals to do the job (like Mossad.)  Instead they
killed 200,000 other Iraqis, including civilians, draftees, and a
few tens of thousands of real soldiers.


>In addition *ANYONE* who attempted to implement AP would be someone *I*
>would regard as a tyrant and therefore a legitimate target by the rules

Yup.

>I think that this type of talk is incredibly dangerous. There are plenty of
>people on the net who are psychos and if you spread AP drivel arround someone
>is going to act on it. 

I think a more realistic danger is that the government will use it
as an excuse to attack all the techniques for private communications
that cypherpunks have been suggesting will make AP possible.


>PS it is not censorship to stop people from advocating murder.

Nonsense.  It certainly _is_ censorship, and it's hypocrisy to
suggest otherwise.  You can argue whether it's _justified_ censorship,
just like the AP advocates argue whether assassination is 
justified murder, but censorship it is.

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> 	
# You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto