From: Hallam-Baker <hallam@ai.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 16:10:11 +0800
To: James Seng <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: DON'T Nuke Singapore Back into the Stone Age
In-Reply-To: <50dcvo$qop@life.ai.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <322B62FD.167E@ai.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


One of the things that you are probably not aware of is that your
government tracks every phone call you make and has a complete list of
everyone who you comunicate with. This information is then used to
identify potential dissidents who can be "monitored" - just like in the
old USSR.

I know that this is a fact because I know people in the business. They
also tell me that they prefer to dissuade people from entertaining
guests at home. The assumption being that the more private conversations
take place the more opportunities to criticise the government there are.

>Now, what makes you think that citizen of Country A has the power or 
>rights to tell politicians of Country B what to do and what they cannot >do?

What makes you think that the concept "country" has any legitimacy
whatsoever?

The Web is not politically neutral. I intended the Web to be an agent of
social change. The corruption of the present social order should be
apparent from the fact that we destroy food while people starve, the
majority of the worlds population have no political rights and political
participation is only available to a tiny minority.

The Web will have an effect whenever there is an internal inconsistency
within a social order. The interaction of opposed cultures via the Web
will reveal these inconsistencies in a manner that requires them to be
resolved. 

The people of Singapore are not going to change their government because
the US people convince them of the superiority of US culture. While it
is patriotic for a US citizen to believe a-priori in US superiority it
is unpatriotic for anyone else. What will change the government of
Singapore is revealing the internal inconsistencies of the governments
claims. 


		Phill