From: TruthMonger  #-96 <tm96@dev.null>
Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 18:25:56 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Why I think Jim Bell is getting railroaded
Message-ID: <199705221000.EAA16124@wombat.sk.sympatico.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Hallam-Baker, whose posts always seem to read as if they were
written by a government disinformant, wrote:

> Alan Olsen wrote:
> > I think that the Government is trying to make an example of Mr. Bell.  I
> > think that much of the charges reported in the news are false.

> I would not depend on Bell to any extent in any circumstance to
> be reliable.

  That's right. We should not support "wrong" people. So first H-B
needs to demean Jim Bell personally.

> > 3) The suspected crimes list keeps changing.  How many times has the
> > "official" story changed?  Each time it gets more and more lurid.
> 
> Expanding is the word. Put someone under a microscope and you
> are liable to find out quite a bit about them.

  And we should not support "bad" people, so H-B also needs to
criminalize Jim Bell by vague innuendo.

> Bell is not the kind of loon to stick one's neck out for.

  Why risk your own neck supporting a loon?

> It may
> well be that he did not explicitly advocate murder but he danced
> awfully close to that line. 

  Sure, maybe he didn't actually commit a crime, but he pushed
the envelope, so he made his own troubles.
  
> Before charging to the rescue its a good idea to make sure
> that you are rescuing the right person. 

  It's best to do nothing, because it's not you. It's a loon.
It's someone who probably did something illegal, even if it
wasn't what he was charged with (because we're all guilty of
something).
  So now H-B has given the individual cypherpunks "reasons"
not to support Jim Bell, or to protest his persecution.

  So what if Jim Bell is a cypherpunk to the core? So what if
he is being prosecuted for speaking of things that many of us
have spoken about and debated on the list?
  There are sounds of gunfire coming from our neighbor's house.
Let's just close the window and hope that the trouble doesn't
come our way.

TruthMonger #-96