From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 23:01:40 -0700 (PDT)
To: jimbell@pacifier.com
Subject: Re: is there no end to AP & Creative Wiretap Arguments? [RANT]
In-Reply-To: <v02130504ae85133a7ab2@[10.0.2.15]>
Message-ID: <32608444.7E60@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Steve Schear wrote:
> > after months of patient explanations to Jim Bell and sympathizers,
> > going over the same points in 31 flavours, the same arguments of
> > what I would call "respectable" anarchy (well stated by Tim May)
> > rather than the "world at war" anarchy of Jim Bell - where are we?
> > I read Jim's first "manifesto" at least 18 months ago; and, the
> > "refined manifsto" less than a month ago.  I have yet to see an
> > application of civilization which brings AP society up to even the
> > level of Tombstone AZ just prior to the OK Corral.

The difference is, Tombstone people didn't have computers and instant 
communications all over the world.  If the govt. of 1881 were to send 
bunches of troops to Tombstone to raid the place and kill everyone, the 
poor slobs who lived there might not even know in advance to protect 
themselves or run away, save a relatively new invention called the 
telegraph.  We lived with the telegraph and iron horse, and we'll live 
with crypto and AP (some of us, anyway, hee hee).

> How about as a means of coercing war criminals ethnic purgers, as
> those in Bosnia/Serbia, to turn themselves in to proper tribunals for
> judging. Having AP bettors wager $100,000s on your untimely
> retirement, unless you turn yourself in, could induce one to consider
> conventional justice.

I wonder what "proper" tribunals might be.  Ramsey Clark wrote 
extensively about the convictions of Bush, Schwartzkopf, and others, but 
all that happened in the "great white world" was these folks getting 
knighted by Her Majesty.  Try to visualize Bush and Schwartzkopf down on 
their knees with the queen's sword over their heads.  Justice has to 
start at the top, not with Bosnia.

> I find it appalling the duplicity of world government leaders which
> talk frequently of world justice but are only prepared to expend real
> effort to catch the few terrorists attacking their citizens, while
> those who commit genocide on other are given half-hearted slaps of the
> hand and told not to sin again, or less through government inaction.

1. If you find the duplicity appalling, why would you want to invite
   those same lying scum to preside over the "war crimes tribunals"?

2. I don't think those leaders are trying to catch terrorists who might
   attack "their citizens", their concern is to catch terrorists who
   threaten their money directly, and citizens are important to them
   only in the same sense as workers in a corporation to a supervisor:
   The more underlings you have under you, the more you get paid.

> > Jim's theories all hinge on betting pools which supposedly can be
> > run like the lottery where the poor can share a ticket (egalitarian,
> > of course), anonyminity (which as an argument is appropriate, but
> > what for in a selfish immoral act?), and a justice is served
> > attitude, even if there are mistakes.

Every year some 60,000 people die and hundreds of thousands are severely 
injured in the U.S. from traffic "accidents", which are almost totally 
the result of unnecessary acts of aggression by neurotic drivers who 
will not give the proper safe space to others.  And this is deliberate, 
don't forget.  And you worry more about mistakes?

> Just think of it as a sportsbook with different games and players.
> You wouldn't accuse bettors of trying to influence the outcome a
> football game would you?  :-)

> > the whole concept of AP does not even support the concept of
> > "justice is expeditiously served!" it is a resort to the manners
> > of dogs and monkeys sitting at the same table --a spiteful,
> > arrogant player can move the betting pools to assassinate anyone.

Beating up on dogs and monkeys, tsk tsk.  Sounds like speciesism.
Next thing you know, it's racism, sexism, and homophobia. Besides,
what's to fear from spiteful and arrogant players?  You'll know
who they are in advance.

> > In other words, are we planning to use James Caan as the lead
> > runner in "Roller Ball"  --except this time we're playing with a
> > "live" society for which we hold in common the utmost contempt?
> > are we trying to return to the bread and circus mentality of
> > Rome on its deathbed and slide to subjecation by Attila the Hun
> > who was actually stopped from sacking Rome after the Pope so
> > impressed him with his regal robes....  deciding  tribute from an
> > established dictatorship was more reliable?  --and less costly?!?

Gotta give Atilla credit - business is business.  It's not like the Pope 
doesn't know the risks of sitting up there and collecting the glory (and 
the money).

> No, I see it as another possible means of encouraging justice in a
> world where the largest criminals are often beyond the reach of the
> world community due to 'political complications'.

Yeah.  At Nurnburg, how many were tried, and how many were executed? 
Very, very few.  John J. McCloy is reputed to have arranged the trials 
in the first place so we could launder out the guys (and their secrets) 
we needed to keep, to fight the Cold War.  Justice?  Or just us?

> > has anyone seen a single social moral fiber in Jim's often
> > passionate arguments for AP, or even in the "results" in a society
> > which will never breed another leader: religious, secular, or even
> > political?  does AP permit anything except slaves and drones which
> > can just as easily be replaced by robots?  maybe noone will miss
> > news reports (as 'canned' as they are), or movies which entertain or
> > provoke?  or ice cream sundaes at the soda fountain? ...and the
> > disappearance of grocers, and doctors, and dentists bringing forth
> > a new age of subsistence farming and hunting for the lucky few who
> > might live to a readjusted live expectancy point of 30 yrs, burning
> > books and computer printouts for cooking and warmth.

Why do you have to equate what we have now with leaders?  Are you saying 
that Dick Armey, Charles Schumer, Newt Gingrich, Larry Eagleburger, and 
Brent Scowcroft (to name a few) are leaders?  Like Martin Luther King, 
Jr. was a leader?  Surely you jest!

I see here a passionate, emotional, and nostalgic argument for what 
never truly was; an illusion as it were.  We'd be better off with 
reality, and without these parasites.  It's called growing up, getting 
off of the really bad kind of welfare, dependence on lying scummy 
parasitical politicians who'd run over their own grandmother to get 
their man elected.  And BTW, I'm sure the SOB Colson actually said it.

> > why have books or knowledge when there is noone willing to
> > accept the responsibility of educating your children, the instructor
> > waiting for the parent of Dumb Suzy to avenge her failing grade?
> > after all, Suzy does not need to read, not even well enough to
> > take the test for a driver's license --there is no infrastructure;
> > no need to learn math well enough to possibly balance a checkbook
> > --after all, there are no banks...

Gosh darn.  Think of what the world would be like if we had to take Suzy 
down to the independent book store, the one with all those conspiracy 
and new-agey sensitivity books and stuff.  Wouldn't be nearly as comfy 
as the trip to Borders with the Starbucks coffee shop inside.

> I think AP, or its ilk, may be a likely outcome in a would unable or
> unwilling to apply justice even-handedly no matter what a person's
> station. It's a popular rebellion to encourage the 'legal' world
> justice system to have more backbone and care less about politics or
> risk being marginalized.

> > "Assassination Politics" is nothing more than a childish game
> > which 'legalizes' killing anyone you wish.  are AP's proponents so
> > naive they believe the bookies will not have any public person
> > assassinated by rigging the pools for their own profit?

Did you ever think about legality?  Why were the laws developed?  To 
protect us, the little guys?  Please be a little cynical, anyway.  The 
laws were developed to protect the big guys and their investments, be it 
the Constitution (protecting slave owners and the Yankee investors who 
depended on Southern production), the USC and UCC, or NAFTA and GATT.

> Mathematically verifiable safeguards would need be developed so that
> this is minimized or eliminated as a possibility before any
> sportsbooks, what ever the sport, operate.  This is a function the
> community of cypherpunks and professional crypto and security people
> should serve.

Serve the people.  Good idea.  Assassination has been serving the big 
guys essentially unimpeded by public objection or protest, so how can a 
person argue against AP without first applying the objection to govt.?

> > remember, law enforcement ceased with the return of 'law of the
> > jungle'  anarchy.

When the U.S. Justice Dept. can fake evidence to "get" someone they 
don't like (Demjanjuk, for example), and then the Israeli supreme court, 
realizing that the U.S. govt. has far less integrity than they'd 
imagined, had to release the man because of this embarassment, in spite 
of vehement opposition in their own back yard, what do we do then?

> All human rights are Naturally derived as are the 'Laws of the
> Jungle'. Governments instituted among men should derive their rights
> from the soverignty of its citizens.  Unfortunately, many countries
> choose to ignore this.  AP should serve an occassionally competitive
> system to keep the 'duly consistuted' system on its toes lest those in
> authority reap the law of the jungle.

Actually, when the authorities become as corrupt as they have in the 
U.S., the law of the jungle is already applied defacto to the masses 
anyway.  Again, laws mainly protect those the lawmakers serve, and the 
little people get just the crumbs when the system is more-or-less young 
and working.  When the system gets older and more corrupt, even the 
crumbs are hard to come by.  It'll be interesting to see what they'll do 
to pacify Maxine Waters on this CIA/crack cocaine expose.  You just know 
there won't possibly be any real justice, not with the SS/CIA involved.