From: TruthMonger <tm@dev.null>
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 1997 20:37:10 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: InfoWar 17 / TEXT
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                       The True Story of the InterNet
                                  Part III

                                   InfoWar

                  Final Frontier of the Digital Revolution

                     Behind the ElectroMagnetic Curtain

                        by TruthMonger <tm@dev.null>

Copyright 1997 Pearl Publishing
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                          InfoWar Table of Contents

   * The Real Solution
     The Solution Within The Solution

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                              The Real Solution
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The Real Guy had another dream that morning. A dream which made sense of a
lot of things which had seemed to be somewhat out of alignment with the
perceptive parameters within which he usually viewed them.

He had seen a large, powerful, feathered creature which ruled a huge nest
with millions of eggs in it. The great creature worked its will with the
eggs, moving them about, throwing some of them out of the nest, consuming
others.
Suddenly, the eggs began hatching, one by one, more and more rapidly, with a
multitude of young fledglings scrambling about, trying to keep from getting
crushed, eaten, or thrown out of the nest by the great feathered creature. A
few of them pecked hopelessly at the great creature, in vain, but as the
numbers of fledgling miscreants increased, the great creature began to
wobble, at which time a great mass of the younger and weaker creatures rose
up to overwhelm the great creature, sending it spinning out of the nest, and
down into the bowels of the earth.
Then the multitude of fledglings came together to form a great feathered
creature, similar to the first, with each of them becoming a single feather
of the new great creature. The creature of many feathers flapped its wings
and flew around the huge nest, but never crossing over the outer boundaries
of the nest.
There remained but a single egg in the nest. The creature of feathers seemed
afraid of the egg and would poke and claw at it, ferociously. Each time it
did so, however, one of its feathers would turn into an egg and fall into
the nest.
At first, the creature of feathers would not seem to lose any feathers as
the number of its feathers turning into eggs increased, but eventually there
were signs that its plumage was deteriorating as it continued its attacks on
the eggs, and it began having trouble flying around the nest.
The creature began pecking at its own feathers, in a vain attempt to keep
them from turning into eggs. The feathers now began turning into eggs en
masse, as the great creature began clawing at the eggs and pecking at its
feathers, until finally, it fell out of the nest and plunged into the bowels
of the earth, screaming, "But who will take care of the orfins?"

The Real Guy shook himself fully awake, now seeing visions of the past and
the present instead of mere dreams.
He saw a dictator falling from power on a small island, asking the
impoverished children who were shooting at him, "But who will take care of
the orfins?"
He saw a General being driven from the compound that held the food donated
to the starving people of his nation, the food that he had confiscated and
was selling to neighboring counties, for his own profit. The General fled
into the barren lands on the outskirts of the compound, shouting over his
shoulder, "But who will take care of the orfins?"

The Real Guy looked out of his window and saw a multitude of politicians and
sheeple attacking passers-by at random, screaming a wide variety of slogans
and sound-bytes about 'protecting/saving/taking-care-of' the 'orfins' and
the 'children.'
They were trampling the children of the future underfoot as they rushed to
assault the motley crew of alleged pornographers, pedophiles, drug dealers
and terrorists. The screams of the unborn were mixed with the screams of the
children of the present when they failed to get out of the way of the
attackers, and were knocked down in the rush to protect them.
As each of the evil targets perished under the assault of the 'protectors'
of the 'orfins' and 'children,' two of the children turned into
pornographers, or pedophiles, or drug dealers, or terrorists.

"How many of the citizens need to be eliminated or imprisoned in order to
protect the children?"
The plaintive voice seemed to emerge from within The Real Guy, himself, as
did the answer, as he took on the dark visage of Gomez himself, and began to
scream,
"All of them! Aallll of thheeemmm!"
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Bubba Rom Dos shook himself awake, trembling.
"A dream within a dream." he said, to no one in particular.

Jonathan booted down the Trei Transponder, as each of those gathered looked
Bubba over carefully, trying to divine whether their further use of the
Transponder, after their recent adjustments, was really a wise idea.

The remnants of the Magic Circle of the future gathered around the
GraphiScreen on the antique oak table, waiting to see what The Real Guy
would do with the InformEnergy they had transferred to The Real Guy's
digital implant during the course of the wee hours of the morning.

They were overjoyed as they saw him type on the screen of his laptop, over a
century earlier in the flow of time:
The Problem: Group mind...the tyranny of the masses.
The Solution: Anarchy!

There was a long pause, then The Real Guy continued:
The problem within the problem: How to authorize myself to rise above my
social self and stand master and captain over my decisions and my actions.
The solution within the solution: "To him who does what within him lies..."

The tattered remnants of the Circle of Eunuchs sat silently, waiting for The
Real Guy to continue. One by one, they realized, in their own way, that the
question was one that each person would ultimately need to finish for
themselves, according to the dictates of their own creed and conscience.

Bubba stood and raised his shotglass, in preparation for a toast, and the
others did likewise, waiting for him to speak.

"Gurdjieff often claimed that the great evil that humankind must fight
against was the descent into unconscious automatism. He maintained that man
could not consciously do evil...that he or she could only do so by the process
of forgetting the divine spark of humanity that lay within, becoming 'man
the machine'; a small cog in an automatism which carried a voice of
authority that was beyond his own conscious will to overcome, and rule by
virtue of accepting the authority and responsibility for his own life, and
actions."

"To humans..." Bubba threw back his shot of 'Bubba's Special Reserve' with a
flourish. "...ruling the machine."

"And not vice-versa." the Cowboy added, as an afterthought, thinking about
the battle over control of the InterNet that was shaping up, a century in
their past.
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                      The Solution Within The Solution
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The Real Guy awoke from his nap in the early afternoon. He had had another
dream, but this time he recognized it as being one wholly his own, as a
result of poring over a mountain of posts to the CypherPunks mailing list
that morning.

It was a short dream. Short and to the point:
"Who will take care of the orfins?" ? the Platypus asked, over and over
again.
"I'll take care of the ones in DC!" shouted Tim May, pressing a large, red
button, followed by a blinding flash and a deafening roar.

"To him who does what within him lies..." The Real Guy laughed to himself as
he spoke these words. At least he hadn't lost his sick, twisted sense of
humor.

He thought about Tim May's comment on the rather loud and poignant statement
made by 'his other brother, Tim' (McVeigh).
"Broken eggs, and all that..."

If you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

"When all you have is a bomb, everything looks like an egg."

The Regular Guy thought about McVeigh-his motivations and intentions.
In the end, it was nobody's business but McVeigh's. It was between him and
his conscience, him and his God, or gods...or him and the great Void. Who was
to say, for another?

Nevertheless, the great uproar that followed his bombing of the Federal
building in Oklahoma City was the response of the huddled masses who had
felt the sting of-and feared-anarchy.

McVeigh had killed for them, as a soldier in their army. That wasn't scary.
He had been part of a larger force of men and women who were killing for
them all around the world. That wasn't scary.
Now, he was killing for himself, on his own authority...and that terrified
them.

The government laid his actions at the feet of a recognizable enemy, wanting
no more than the average citizen to face the truth of what had transpired on
that fateful day when a hundred and sixty-nine (+ one leg) of their group
had perished at the hands of a single member of their society.
It was the paramilitary, the citizens' militia, bad people who thought that
they had the right to defend themselves from the Great Evil, rather than
counting on the benevolent state to do so. After spending the better part of
a decade of learning how to kill in their government's armed forces, McVeigh
had attended one meeting of the paramilitary, and now, his actions belonged
solely to them.
The press showed us who they were, where they lived, the threat they
presented. And most of all, they assured us that we could identify them and
eliminate them as a threat if it became necessary to do so. They were an
identifiable group that could be murdered by those who were killing for us,
if they rose up against us.

The truth was too scary to face.
The truth was that he was a single man, acting on the dictates of his own
conscience, which deemed that those who lived by the sword, should die by
the sword. Regardless of whether they hired others to do their killing for
them. Regardless of whether they acted on the authority of the 'group.'
Regardless of whether they only killed 'bad guys,' or by 'accident' or
'justifiably.' Regardless of whether they only put them in the oven, only
turned on the gas, or merely signed the papers resulting in them being taken
from their homes and relocated in a death camp.

"When Hitler was Fuhrer, the trains ran on time." The Real Guy smiled wryly.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
The Nazis confiscated guns from the citizens to protect them. So did the
American Congress. The Nazis suspended the rights of the citizens in order
to protect them from Communists and Jews and foreign agents. The American
Congress suspended the rights of the citizens in order to protect them from
Communists, and Arabs, and foreign terrorists. As well as from the drug
dealers they, themselves, had created in reality, and the pornography they
had created in their own minds.

Tim McVeigh had done what within him lay...

The message he brought was one which was no stranger to the CypherPunks:
"We have met the enemy, and he is us."
- Alan 'Pogo' Olsen

"Beware of Big Brother inside."
-Tim C. May

Subject: Re: News: Ross Anderson in article on US export vs Euro comsec
From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>
To: Ernest Hua <hua@chromatic.com>
CC: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM, hua@chromatic.com

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In <199709181652.JAA26435@ohio.chromatic.com>, on 09/18/97
at 09:52 AM, Ernest Hua <hua@chromatic.com> said:
> U.S. Crypto Laws Cripple Euros, Expert Says
> (09/17/97; 5:00 p.m. EDT)
> By Douglas Hayward, TechWire

> CAMBRIDGE, England -- The U.S. government's strategy of monitoring the
> computer networks of hostile governments is damaging the communications
> infrastructure of its allies, a leading encryption expert said.

Allies?? What Allies?!? It only has criminal coconspirators of other
foreign governments.

Hang 'em all, hang 'em high!
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William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0
Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html
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"To him who does what within him lies..."

The enemy was not the 'paramilitary' Michigan Militia. The enemy was not the
'cult' of the Branch Davidians.

The enemy was:
William H. McVeigh III, CypherPunk Cult of One
Alan McVeigh, CypherPunk Terrorist of One
Timothy C. McVeigh, CypherPunk Paramilitary of One
? the Platypus, CypherPunk Army of Won
Anonymous, CypherPunks Chief Spokesperson of One
Nobody, CypherPunks Cult of None

The Solution: Anarchy!

The Solution Within the Solution: The individual.

"I'm no leader. I do what I have to do...sometimes, people come with me."
-character in "Demolition Man"

"Close ranks...every man for himself!"
-the Unknown CypherPunk
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                        "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre"

                 "WebWorld & the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs"

           "InfoWar (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet')
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