From: TruthMonger <tm@dev.null>
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 1997 20:39:19 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: InfoWar 17 (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet')
Message-ID: <3423BBFB.35DA@dev.null>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html

Title: The True Story of the Internet Part II









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



InfoWar Table of Contents

The Real Solution 
The Solution Within The Solution


The Real Solution


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!"


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.


The Solution Within The Solution


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!
---------------------------------------------------------------------

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



"The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre"

"WebWorld & the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs"

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