From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 07:12:02 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Minsky skeptical of privacy
Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.19971130230635.0075c5dc@pop.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Monty Cantsin wrote:

>Incidentally, does anybody know what percentage of the research
>funding Marvin Minsky has used in his career was directly or
>indirectly related to the defense establishment?
>
>The interesting thing about the privacy "debate" is that there is an
>exceptionally high correlation between opposition to privacy and the
>consumption of public money.

Monty's customary reasonableness goes bizarro with these statements.

In that direct or indirect defense funding implicates just about every
US citizen, even world denizen, not holed up in a treetop for the last 
half century of national security octopussing.

This is not to say that that's the way it should be, just that defense
funding has been the deep pocket for nearly every commonweal
at least since WW II. 

And the same for the future appears to hold true as every federal
state and local government eagerly calibrate their demands for 
urgent aid according to national and economic security guidelines -- 
dual use brought into the open as heretofore hidden by duplicity.

Under national security programs DoD has funded through its 
pervasive tentacles scientists and mathematicians, libertarians 
and socialists, elite and trailer trash, Wall Street and underworld, 
on and on. Not a chance of stopping it any time soon.

It is doubtful that any other more bountiful and widespread source of 
condoned bribery has ever existed, and it shows no sign of
slackening, in the US or elsewhere, whether democracies, oligarchies, 
communist, or offshore outlaw, even allowing for the burgeoning private
armies, cops, gun faith forces, each loading up with new and "surplus"
arms.

Curiously, when the details of how it all works is pointed out, no one
seems to be bothered by it, except to comlain that others are getting
too much, to wheelle more leads on how to leverage more for their 
affinity gang, and, to conceal sly avarice, to blame the competition
for cheating better.

So, Monty, for comparing to Minsky's well-known federal work at MIT, 
as with many here, how about demonstrating the correlation of your 
work with inescapable defense funding complicity?