From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 14:13:28 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: R.I.P Jim Bell
Message-ID: <199707230550.HAA21080@basement.replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




Mike Duvos wrote the stuff appended to this post:

Mike,
  I found this post either really funny or really scary.
  Maybe both.

TruthMonger
-----------
> Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com> writes:
> 
>  > I'll be curious to see what kind of deal he got.  It had
>  > better be an awfully good one (say "time served").  If not
>  > he was as dumb as toast.
> 
> Let's hope it was not the "8 years" I heard on the evening news,
> although I didn't catch whether that was just a possible
> sentence, or the results of the plea bargain negotiations.
> 
>  > He had a perfect chance to rake the Feds over the
>  > coals and try nasty disfavored defenses like
>  > Selective Prosecution.  Hard to win that one but
>  > he had as good a case as any one I've seen for
>  > that defense.  At the most, he would have gotten a
>  > short sentence if convicted.  Big deal.
> 
> Perhaps.  But he would have been tried in the media, and would
> probably have been transformed into "Terrorist Jim Bell" at the
> hands of the spin masters.  In the end, even if he won in court,
> he would have been about as popular as OJ, and the entire
> population of America would have learned to live their lives in
> constant fear of smelly organic chemicals and nickel-plated
> carbon fibers. Parents would be mail-ordering carbon fiber test
> kits to use in their childrens' rooms.
> 
>  > Since he was apparently not doing a great deal with his
>  > life in any case, he could have used it for some good.  Make
>  > the Feds spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on him and
>  > tie up their resources.
> 
> I would certainly try to make any such harrassment of me as
> expensive as possible for those engaging in it.  On the other
> hand, Bell does have living relatives, which makes unilateral
> nose-thumbing at the state apparatus more risky.
> 
>  > Prison is no punishment for those who like to read and write.
> 
> Being bossed around by assholes is always annoying, regardless of
> ones academic interests.
> 
>  > In these political cases where the Feds are clearly
>  > overreaching, those who don't plead do much better than
>  > those who do.  This is the reverse of the situation in
>  > normal criminal cases.
> 
> Tell that to Robert "ream me again, please" Thomas of Amateur
> Action BBS fame, who wasn't even accused of being a potential
> terrorist, much less of trying to overthrow the entire
> government.
> 
>  > Don't plead in political cases.  It's stupid.
> 
> Don't plead in political cases like Steve Jackson Games, PROMIS,
> Operation Sun Devil, etc...  On the other hand, if you are
> accused of being one of the actual Four Horsemen, and the feds
> are holding press conferences on every channel with inflammatory
> voice-over editorials describing the alleged contents of your
> dwelling, some capitulation to the Barbarians may be necessary.
> 
> There are a number of adages which apply to this situation,
> amongst them...
> 
>     Don't get involved in fights you can't win.
> 
>     When you aim for the King, shoot to kill.
> 
>     The goal of war is not to die for your country, but to make
>     sure the enemy dies for theirs.
> 
>     etc...
> 
> Enumerating Bell's violations of these common sense principles is
> left as an exercise to the reader.
> 
> --
>      Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
>      enoch@zipcon.com   $    via Finger                       $
>          {Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}