From: Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 22:45:54 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: No Subject
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970608215232.1559A-100000@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
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>>In the same way I do not believe that the sheeple who every 5 years go 
>>out and vote in some corrupt and evil party to power commit a crime 
>>against me, even though they are definitely naive, stupid and brainwashed
>> to believe in the process of demoncracy, and particularly in its current
>> flavour. Remember the NAP, direct acts of agression are the only crimes.
>
>Well I for one do not beleive that only direct acts of agression are the
>only crimes. If I hire a hitman to bump off my wife I am as guilty of the
>murder as the one who pulls the trigger. If he kills off 2 or 3 others in
the process of killing her even I only hired him to kill her I am still
>guilty for the other deaths.

If you are in a group of people, and vote for your wife not to be killed, 
but you are outnumbered and the group have her killed, I would not say 
you were guilty. Similarly if everyone else chose to vote in a poll to 
say "do you want to kill William Geigers wife?" and you abstained, I 
would not say you were guilty.

The paralells between this and a political election are easy to draw.

>The same goes true for governments and their citizens. Citizens "hire"
>governments to do their bidding. If the people want their government to do
>"x" and they do "y" and the people let them continue doing "y" then they
>are just as guilt as the officials in the government. Ofcource you have
>the segmant of the population that support "y" but they are obviously
>guilty.

In that case I would say you were guilty of murder. I do take direct 
action against the government, and so do you, because we have not yet 
removed the state does not mean we are murderers.

>> A government can only conduct its activities with the support of its
>> population. This may be active support or support through inactivity (ie
>> shrugging shoulders and doing nothing).

>Shrugging of shoulders is ignorant and reprehensible but not criminally 
>so. To make an analogy, if I see someone in the street who has been run 
>over by a car and is going to die if I do not fetch assistance, to walk 
>on by would certainly be a callous act, but not criminal.

>Also, often there is very little one can do alone, you are starting to 
>apply democratic arguments here, in that you are saying "if the majority 
>of English people support the occupation of NI kill all English people". 

>Yes that is *EXACTLY* what I am saying. :)
>
>It is up to the people to control their governmnet. If their government
>acts illegaly or immorally and the citizens do nothing to stop them (up to
>and including arm revolt against their government) then they are just as
>guilty as the ones pulling the triggers!!

Yes, but there are several reasons why this cannot currently occur:

1. The UK government has systematically taken action to disarm the 
population, of course, this law can be easily circumvented.
2. The majority of people are too cowardly to take any action, and too 
brainwashed to see the governments evils.  
3. The English do not understand the history of NI, although NI is not 
the only issue which should cause public outcry it is the most obvious, 
and most people simply do not even realise the crimes carried out by the 
British in NI.

>Every English man, woman & child is guilty of the crimes against the Irish
>people and as such are fair game for retalition. 

Perhaps this was only a figure of speech and I am replying to a void 
point but I do not believe, even if we accept citizens are responsible 
for the crimes of the government, that children could be guilty, not that 
is if under voting age, and definitely not if under the age of criminal 
responsibility.

>Perhaps if enough good
>Englishmen get blownup the will finally force their government to stop
>their agression against the Irish.

It is better that a lot of bad Englishmen (such as poloticians, police 
etc.) get killed, they provoke more public sympathy that Joe Sixpack.

>Yes, but the only Germans I believe guilty of crimes were those who 
>directly took action in support of the government, "we were just obeying 
>orders" is no excuse, but not taking action to end the holocaust was no 
>crime. Turning a blind eye, and taking no action, are different things, I
> do not turn a blind eye to the problems in northern Ireland, I recognise
> however that there is nothing I can do to solve this problem, so I 
>concentrate on more productive things.

>Well with that attitude, "there is nothing I can do" is why governments
>get away with what they do. 

Of course, but it is very often true. Of course the German people should 
have revolted and deposed Hitler before WWII even began, the reason they 
did not do so was cowardice, the reason the English do not revolt is 
because they *do not see that the government commits crimes*. To English 
people, the governments acts of brutality in NI are just "protecting the 
people" or "keeping the peace" etc. 
There is a vast difference between persuading people who realise they 
should do something to do it, and persuading people to see things a 
different way. 

>You as a citizen of the UK are responcible for
>the actions of your government. This is a responcibility you can not
>ingnore because it is "too hard" or "too incovienant". It is not only your
>right but your duty to do everything possable upto and including the arm
>overthrowing of your government.

I realise that I, as an citizen of the UK should do something 
from a moral point of view, but, this simply does not suggest to me that 
if I do not do anything I am commiting a crime, this is not a logical 
step of reasoning to me. Whatever the case, I do do something, it isn`t 
yet armed revolt, but I wouldn`t rule that out for the future.

>The majority of citizen-units are too cowardly to take any action even 
>when they see the evils of government, this makes it very difficult for 
>the minority to end this evil, there is definitely strenth in numbers.

>Difficult but not impossiable. I am sure that the IRA would like to launch
>an all out invasion of England and put an end to the whole thing. They are
>too small to do so. So they engage in a policy of "terrorism" against the
>citizens of England who are the true powerbase of the English government.

Yes, but to do so would require the belief and support of most of the 
population, a virtually impossible task in a reasonable space of time. I 
am not saying this is an excuse for inaction, merely stating fact. I 
personally see geurilla warfare methods, selective "terrorism" and 
cryptography, as well as info-warfare as the means by which the state 
will be overthrown, there is no longer a need for large armed revolt. 

>I would imagine that a "man on the street" survey would find that most UK
>citizens support the actions of their government which makes them targets
>even more so.

Yes indeed, the average brainwashed citizen-unit thinks any "violent" act 
of self defence is criminal, recall the British public recently signed a 
petition in massive numbers (something like 10% of the population) for 
the banning of *all* handguns, even for sporting purposes. There are also 
laws in the UK which do not allow citizens to carry any defensive weapon 
whatsoever, these laws kill innocent people.

>This is a blatant and misguided overgeneralisation, I realise that 
>sometimes innocents get killed, I do find this understandable and 
>sympathise with those who feel they can excuse their actions in the name 
>of "war", but the actions of those who kill innocent people to get to the
> guilty are still crimes, and should be treated as such.

>No it puts the responcibility of government actions squarely on the
>shoulders of those who are responcible, the citizens. No government wether
>democracy or dictatorship can survive without a minimum of passive support
>of its citizens. Germany never could have commited its crimes without this
>support, the communist in Russia, not the Japanise. As such they are all
>guilty, not just the ones pulling the trigers.

If you come up to me in the street, hold a gun to my head and tell me to 
move so you can shoot someone behind me, I am going to move. The 
government uses force and coercion to compel its citizens to get out of 
its way and allow it to carry on its evil work. Sure, if I move to allow 
you to shoot the guy I may be cowardly, not guilty though, I see these 
two situations as very similar. 

I don`t think however that I personally can be thought of as guilty, even 
if we do accept for a moment that non-action is a form of consent, civil 
disobediance is an excellent tactic to show the violence of the 
government against peaceful protest, "terrorist" acts simply incur the 
displeasure of the sheeple and make them more determined to support the 
government.

>You can see prime examples of this all throughout Eastern Europe & the
>USSR. The old communist regimes lost popular support and their governments
>proptly collapsed.

This is something I was thinking about a while ago, is there any way we 
can vastly accelarate the governments programme of infringment of rights?
The boiling a frog slowly argument currently applies in that people do 
not see the governments evil, if they moved much further more people 
would open their eyes and see what is happening. Exposing the brutality 
of the state, as gandhi did to great effect, is always useful. Recall 
the fracas in NI over a peaceful Orange order march being banned recently 
(in the end the march went ahead but there was a lot of media coverage).

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"