From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 11:10:57 +0800
To: hallam@vesuvius.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Kiddie porn on the Internet
In-Reply-To: <9609211734.AA15897@vesuvius.ai.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <32448DF8.5208@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


hallam@vesuvius.ai.mit.edu wrote:
> Go talk to someone who is a member of an organisation like the PLO or
> Hammas and pretty near the top. If you think that they would be
> intimidated for a moment by AP you have another think comming.
> 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. Assasination
> attempts against Castro similarly failed.
> If you care to look at the history of Cambodia you will see that Lon
> Nol assumed the presidency despite the knowledge that there was
> practically no chance of defeating the Khumer Rouge and that he would 
> almost certainly be dead
> in less than a week as a result.
> Both the assumption AP rests on are utterly false. It is neither
> possible to assasinate people at will nor will it intimidate.
> 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 of AP. I would naturally consider it permissable to engage the
> support of others in their suppression. Since we now live in the
> fantasy land of AP I can now wipe out anyone anywhere so I eliminate 
> all AP leaders.
> 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. Probably not Jim Bell, 
> more likely a psychopath who
> lurks on the list but does not post.
> If you call for people to be murdered - and let us not forget that
> this is what AP is about you bear the responsibility when someone acts 
> on it.
> I consider AP to be very close to calling for the assasination of the
> President of the USA. That is a federal crime and there is a law that
> requires the investigation of any such threats. I suggest that people
> think *very* carefully before engaging in this dangerous nonsense any
> further.

Come now, surely you don't think putting assassination into the hands of 
the common people (Democracy, yes?  The same stuff Clinton is preaching 
all the time, remember?) is going to be worse than letting governments 
control all the action?  If you're going to allow governments to do the 
job, you and your fellow citizens should have been more involved in the 
political arena, to monitor these kinds of activities, so the government 
(of the U.S., for example) didn't have to get such a bad reputation.

A few years ago, William Torbitt (pseudonym) wrote in part: "Penal codes 
have had two historic purposes - to deter crime and reform the offender.
.....However, when the head of the National Police agency joins with a 
handful of other govt. leaders, and they both in turn throw in with 
organized crime to murder the president, and the people have an uneasy 
feeling that something of this nature has taken place, it is only 
natural that crime and violence increase, and the basic deterrent to 
crime has broken down." (quote approximate)