Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
Mr Donald wrote... A claim that presupposes that the west is just as totalitarian as its enemies, that well known reality is not to be trusted, that newsmen and historians are servants of the vast capitalist conspiracy, so in place of obvious truths, we can substitute any ridiculous fantasy that we find politically conforting, for example Tyler Durden's fantasy that the US attacked Korea, and attacked to impose poverty on Koreans so that the US can be rich Once again you make the mistake that, because YOU are drinking from a spigot of hype, that because I disagree with you I must be drinking from some other spigot. There are plenty of counter-examples to the benefits of US interventionism, particularly throughout central America. But I don't really want to debate that point, but instead focus on Iraq. In Iraq this philosophy of saving the locals from tyrrany has taken a new turn. In this case, I actually believe that George W, Dick Cheney and the whole cabal believe that: 1. The best thing for the Iraqis would be a western-style free-market economy. (Check?) 2. An Iraqi free market would slowly stabilise the whole middle east region. (Check?) 3. Iraq has resources (ie, oil) that could be utilized to kick-start a true industrialized economy (Check?) 4. The US has the ability to extract that oil and then turn those dollars into local goods-and-services, thus kickstarting forementioned Iraqi industrialization (Check?) 5. Meanwhile, Saddam was really, really bad and a terrorist and he's got all sorts of scary WMDs. 6. It is therefore in everybody's best interests for the US to kick out Saddam and get this party started. 7. Oh, and the US will benefit too (as we should) as we help ole' man Iraq get back on his feet. But apparently, the locals are not particularly happy about the unilateral decisions we've been making in their benefit. Of course, you might chalk this up to fanaticism/Islam or whatever, but I suspect they just don't trust us (Abu Ghraib), and remember the fact that it was the US that propped up Saddam as long as he stuck to the script. Who knows? If Bush Co are able to steal this election, maybe in a year or two (after the death toll hits the 5 digit mark) we'll start hearing about how Saddam wasn't so bad after all, and why don't we give him a second chance? (We'll watch him closely, so don't you worry!) -TD --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG AErjoTRu9URKg4L+F5xjlOq35GQBD2reuyMhDJ5b 46ur5/+9ZCqnZu8EDgtmmeUH93ImKPyfT6+Pj/QUE _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 21:10 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: -- James A. Donald: Moral equivalence, the rationale of those who defend tyranny and slavery. Roy M. Silvernail Moral superiority, the rationale of both sides of any given violent conflict. The winner gets to use the victory to proclaim the correctness of their interpretation. A claim that presupposes that the west is just as totalitarian as its enemies, that well known reality is not to be trusted, that newsmen and historians are servants of the vast capitalist conspiracy, No claim in evidence. Just the observation that any justificaton for a violent conflict is necessarily subjective. -- Roy M. Silvernail is [EMAIL PROTECTED], and you're not It's just this little chromium switch, here. - TFS SpamAssassin-procmail-/dev/null-bliss http://www.rant-central.com
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
-- James A. Donald: Moral equivalence, the rationale of those who defend tyranny and slavery. Roy M. Silvernail Moral superiority, the rationale of both sides of any given violent conflict. The winner gets to use the victory to proclaim the correctness of their interpretation. A claim that presupposes that the west is just as totalitarian as its enemies, that well known reality is not to be trusted, that newsmen and historians are servants of the vast capitalist conspiracy, so in place of obvious truths, we can substitute any ridiculous fantasy that we find politically conforting, for example Tyler Durden's fantasy that the US attacked Korea, and attacked to impose poverty on Koreans so that the US can be rich, or the widely popular fantasy that the CIA trained Osama Bin Laden. Seeing as Bin Laden's contribution to the revolutionary war against the Soviets was merely roadbuilding, did they train him in roadbuilding? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG AErjoTRu9URKg4L+F5xjlOq35GQBD2reuyMhDJ5b 46ur5/+9ZCqnZu8EDgtmmeUH93ImKPyfT6+Pj/QUE
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
At 9:10 PM -0700 10/26/04, James A. Donald wrote: fantasy that the US attacked Korea, and attacked to impose poverty on Koreans so that the US can be rich, This is actually the running fantasy in Marxism since the 1950's, when it turned out that that, instead of the workers eating the bourgeoisie by the firelight or some Glorious Revolution or another, would instead be come bourgeoisie themselves. So, seeing their utter failure to create workers paradise in the industrial West, they decided to change their unit of analysis from people to nation-states. Of course, India, various parts of broken up legislated or forcibly-conquered pseudostates, like Slovenia, the Baltics, even Mongolia and China itself, have shown that capitalism -- Marx's word for economics, or markets, or individual freedom depending on your scale of analysis -- has the same effect there that it did in the US and Europe in the 1950's. Or the 1850's, for that matter. Marxists, and their fellow-travellers of all dilutions, from actual card-carriers to liberals in the US are such worthess assholes, and such state-is-a-person analyses are so much projectile excrement from same. Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 21:10 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: -- James A. Donald: Moral equivalence, the rationale of those who defend tyranny and slavery. Roy M. Silvernail Moral superiority, the rationale of both sides of any given violent conflict. The winner gets to use the victory to proclaim the correctness of their interpretation. A claim that presupposes that the west is just as totalitarian as its enemies, that well known reality is not to be trusted, that newsmen and historians are servants of the vast capitalist conspiracy, No claim in evidence. Just the observation that any justificaton for a violent conflict is necessarily subjective. It does not have to be *true*, you just have to get others to believe it. Of course, the current administration has been handing them example after example to point to to make the point... -- chown -R us ./base
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 27, 2004 9:37 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) .. This is actually the running fantasy in Marxism since the 1950's, when it turned out that that, instead of the workers eating the bourgeoisie by the firelight or some Glorious Revolution or another, would instead be come bourgeoisie themselves. I think this bit gets at the heart of why the Islamic fundamentalists are hard to deal with. For most people I know, some notion of peace and prosperity is the thing we want from our governments. Different people differ on how to do that (like, whether the government should employ most of the doctors or the teachers), but that's the kind of goal that makes sense. And that's largely what the West has to offer. Not membership in a master race, or a date with destiny, or as vision of yourself as part of a great, centuries-old Jihad, but safe streets, working sewers, functioning markets, and a rising tide that promises to life all boats eventually, so that one day, your poor people, like ours, will be overweight from spending too much time sitting in front of the TV in an air conditioned room. The Islamic fundamentalists can't offer that. A country run by these guys is just not going to be in the forefront of technology, its economy will grow slowly, and it's likely to always be close to going to war with some infidels around it. No peace, not much prosperity, but a lot of capital-P Purpose. A place in history, a part of the Jihad. In this sense, it's a lot like Marxism was, back when it had serious adherents; it's a mass movement, like Eric Hoffer talks about. What Hayek called the liberal order (e.g., working minimal government, liberal democracy, rule of law) can't offer any of that. It offers safe streets and working sewers and peace and prosperity, but you have to come up with your own purpose. The irony is that the neocons seemed to be trying to build up a kind of mass movement mentality in the US, which clearly has caught George Bush and his top advisors--this wonderful notion that we're going to go out and civilize these heathens, bring them democracy and free markets, and then they'll stop wanting to be part of crazy mass movements that tell them to strap dynamite to themselves and blow up bus stops full of people. This seems doomed to fail. A lot of people in the Middle East clearly want what we're selling, but it doesn't take many suicide bombers to make that sort of thing break down. --John
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
-- R.A. Hettinga This is actually the running fantasy in Marxism since the 1950's, when it turned out that that, instead of the workers eating the bourgeoisie by the firelight or some Glorious Revolution or another, would instead be come bourgeoisie themselves. John Kelsey I think this bit gets at the heart of why the Islamic fundamentalists are hard to deal with. For most people I know, some notion of peace and prosperity is the thing we want from our governments. [...] The Islamic fundamentalists can't offer that. [...] No peace, not much prosperity, but a lot of capital-P Purpose. A place in history, a part of the Jihad. In this sense, it's a lot like Marxism was, back when it had serious adherents; it's a mass movement, like Eric Hoffer talks about. Mass movements of this kind require the promise of inevitable victory. When communism suffered one decisive, uncomplicated, unambiguous defeat, the dominos fell one after another all the way to Moscow. The remaining communists have made some psychological recovery - see for example Tyler Durden's peculiar version of recent history, where in his universe the communists actually won and are still winning, and similarly the Islamists have made a considerable psychological recovery from Afghanistan, but the ideal of date with destiny tends to lose its appeal when you keep picking yourself off the dirt with a bloody nose. In Iraq we face a guerrila movement, and discover, yet again, that guerrilas can only be defeated by local forces - and the boys from Baghdad are not all that local. This gives the Islamicists renewed hope. So what do you do, if, like Israel, you face terrorists embedded in a local population that supports thems sufficiently they can melt into the people? Withdrawal did not work, for the terrorists keep sending car bombs and the like from their stronghold, as in Fallujah. What worked in Afghanistan was to find some local warlord we could live with, someone in no hurry to get his six pack of virgins, someone who might want to put sacks over the heads of the women of his town, but had no grandiose ambitions to stuff all the women of the world into bags, and then we cut a deal with him - we help him his slay his enemies, he helps us slay our enemies. Unfortunately the US plan to bring democracy to the middle east, and to preserve Iraq as a unitary state, keeps getting in the way of this sort of deal. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG o32eoG4KhmccNjDBkOW9upEtn8Lka3zsooGJn8lY 4dMgCNOmt5z/S3km7vma/L6RECrRaVEmnhEZ4E2hb
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
John Kelsey wrote... The irony is that the neocons seemed to be trying to build up a kind of mass movement mentality in the US, which clearly has caught George Bush and his top advisors--this wonderful notion that we're going to go out and civilize these heathens, bring them democracy and free markets, and then they'll stop wanting to be part of crazy mass movements that tell them to strap dynamite to themselves and blow up bus stops full of people. This seems doomed to fail. A lot of people in the Middle East clearly want what we're selling, but it doesn't take many suicide bombers to make that sort of thing break down. Let's remember that any regime is only temporary, no matter how fundamentalist. The main flaw in the whole save the world logic is that it assumes that some regime (Islamist, Communist or whatever) would actually be able to hold on to everybody in perpetuity, and I think history is now at the point where we have a good indication that this ain't the case. In the case of China, Vietnam and, to some extent, the Islamists, I don't get the impression that a hatred of free markets was he underlying reason for the adoption of commusim (or whatever). Communism was merely a political pole that could be held on to so as to crystallize a movement whereby outside influences could be pushed out, and then the internal issues resolved. I would argue that the more we proclaim ourselves to be the evanglists for free markets throughout the world, and then ram our cocks up Abu Ghraib inmates asses, to the same extent what we have to offer looks tainted and foul. They need to puish us out so they need to reject free markets. They need to reject free markets so a new pole is created. Mr Donald woul think that I argue against free markets, but instead what I am arguing against is methodology which retards free markets. -TD _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
-- On 27 Oct 2004 at 9:55, Tyler Durden wrote: There are plenty of counter-examples to the benefits of US interventionism, particularly throughout central America. We saw that when the Soviet Union fell, the US lost interest in central America, and peace and democracy broke out in central America with the victory of those forces that had formerly received US backing, and the defeat of those forces that had formerly received Soviet backing, showing that US meddling in central America, was, as it was claimed to be, a defensive response to Soviet meddling, a defensive response that had the support of the people of central America, and that the suffering of central America was in substantial part caused by Soviet meddling. But apparently, the locals are not particularly happy about the unilateral decisions we've been making in their benefit. Of course, you might chalk this up to fanaticism/Islam or whatever, but I suspect they just don't trust us (Abu Ghraib), Sure they don't trust us, but observe that in the Afghan election, Karzai got 56% of the vote, and the soft-on-the-taliban guys got much the same vote as the supposed representatives of the oppressed masses in Central America - down in the asterixes. I predict a very similar election outcome in Iraq. Sadr may get a dangerously large vote, possibly as large as the Nazis got in the Weimar republic, but anyone who looks aligned with the car bombers will be down in the asterixes. and remember the fact that it was the US that propped up Saddam as long as he stuck to the script. Another tale from your odd parallel universe where the US attacked Korea. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG zEWlCJhdBBReeJ2Tnl5midyyezqcb0uz+y18EzpX 4OAEBY/Hw5iw7juSxIfTFKJsXQRt7junqQKOiLZ07
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
The remaining communists have made some psychological recovery - see for example Tyler Durden's peculiar version of recent history, where in his universe the communists actually won and are still winning, Again, you live in a world that's evenly divided between black and white. Since I'm not white you figure I must be black. To reiterate a point your world view does not seem prepared to understand, communism (like Whabism these days) is a fleeting ideological counter-pole to the perceived evils of America and capitalism. To make an analogy, let's say someone on the street tried to force-feed you the most healthy food in the world at gun point. There's a good chance that, after that, you will not eat that healthy food any longer because you perceive it to be evil. Likewise with Imperliasm and free markets: The more we try to shove it down the throats of the Islamic world the more they will reject both us as well as whatever we're trying to give 'em. -TD From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:41:39 -0700 -- R.A. Hettinga This is actually the running fantasy in Marxism since the 1950's, when it turned out that that, instead of the workers eating the bourgeoisie by the firelight or some Glorious Revolution or another, would instead be come bourgeoisie themselves. John Kelsey I think this bit gets at the heart of why the Islamic fundamentalists are hard to deal with. For most people I know, some notion of peace and prosperity is the thing we want from our governments. [...] The Islamic fundamentalists can't offer that. [...] No peace, not much prosperity, but a lot of capital-P Purpose. A place in history, a part of the Jihad. In this sense, it's a lot like Marxism was, back when it had serious adherents; it's a mass movement, like Eric Hoffer talks about. Mass movements of this kind require the promise of inevitable victory. When communism suffered one decisive, uncomplicated, unambiguous defeat, the dominos fell one after another all the way to Moscow. The remaining communists have made some psychological recovery - see for example Tyler Durden's peculiar version of recent history, where in his universe the communists actually won and are still winning, and similarly the Islamists have made a considerable psychological recovery from Afghanistan, but the ideal of date with destiny tends to lose its appeal when you keep picking yourself off the dirt with a bloody nose. In Iraq we face a guerrila movement, and discover, yet again, that guerrilas can only be defeated by local forces - and the boys from Baghdad are not all that local. This gives the Islamicists renewed hope. So what do you do, if, like Israel, you face terrorists embedded in a local population that supports thems sufficiently they can melt into the people? Withdrawal did not work, for the terrorists keep sending car bombs and the like from their stronghold, as in Fallujah. What worked in Afghanistan was to find some local warlord we could live with, someone in no hurry to get his six pack of virgins, someone who might want to put sacks over the heads of the women of his town, but had no grandiose ambitions to stuff all the women of the world into bags, and then we cut a deal with him - we help him his slay his enemies, he helps us slay our enemies. Unfortunately the US plan to bring democracy to the middle east, and to preserve Iraq as a unitary state, keeps getting in the way of this sort of deal. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG o32eoG4KhmccNjDBkOW9upEtn8Lka3zsooGJn8lY 4dMgCNOmt5z/S3km7vma/L6RECrRaVEmnhEZ4E2hb _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Inadvertent Iraqi anarchocapitalism (Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity))
At 10:41 AM -0700 10/27/04, James A. Donald wrote: What worked in Afghanistan was to find some local warlord we could live with, someone in no hurry to get his six pack of virgins, someone who might want to put sacks over the heads of the women of his town, but had no grandiose ambitions to stuff all the women of the world into bags, and then we cut a deal with him - we help him his slay his enemies, he helps us slay our enemies. Unfortunately the US plan to bring democracy to the middle east, and to preserve Iraq as a unitary state, keeps getting in the way of this sort of deal. Except, apparently, in Iraqi Kurdistan: http://www.livejournal.com/users/giantlaser/58953.html Wherein Ryan Lackey's boss has left Baghdad for a nice hotel upstate... :-) Ryan, apparently remains downtown where all the fun is... http://www.livejournal.com/users/giantlaser/59447.html page down to see Ryan in all his former dry-suited Sealand glory... I recommend Tyler http://www.livejournal.com/users/giantlaser/ and Jayme's http://www.livejournal.com/users/slownewsday/ Iraq Livejournal blogs as a wonderful example of inadvertant anarchocapitalism in action. Inadvertent, because, of course, they *really* wanna be statists, liberal ones in fact, in spite of evidence all around them to the contrary. I still think they're heroes. Hell, as far as I'm concerned, *Ryan's* a hero at this point. Nick Berg lives. Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
-- James A. Donald: The remaining communists have made some psychological recovery - see for example Tyler Durden's peculiar version of recent history, where in his universe the communists actually won and are still winning, Tyler Durden Again, you live in a world that's evenly divided between black and white. Since I'm not white you figure I must be black. Whatever you are, you have told us a story of the world where the Koreans bravely repelled the evil capitalist American attack, and enjoyed prosperity and progress thereby. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG EqHk0rek72pGIAIvZCiBmJDtn1yvQHDXnJ/0n/ks 4jknM3llghisRUJE2X+8tiw6yn8yqEdesC8+Fy4HC
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
Well, perhaps your comment was made entirely toungue-in-cheek, but I still think you're missing the point. The point is this: Almost and side in this world that has committed or commits atrocities can find a true-believing apolegist. And in most cases the best of these can concoct an answer to anything you throw at him. As far as I'm concerned, that's the whole point of going through this excersize (ie, of finding a way to rationalize pretty much ANY form of violence/terrorism.) The danger comes when a nation (ie, the guys who control the guns) is run by the apolegists, or people who hold similar viewpoints. Put in another way, just because you really really REALLY believe you are right doesn't give anyone the right to create huge amounts of turmoil and death in someone else's country. -TD From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 14:59:56 -0700 -- J.A. Terranson: So if I was to go out tomorrow and spread 2000 curies of Ci into the local subway system As payback for Ruby Ridge, this would not be an act of terrorism? James A. Donald: That would be terrorism, because regardless of what you *said* your intent was, you would not be targeting those responsible for Ruby Ridge. J.A. Terranson: And if the station I chose just happened to be the one servicing ATF? If your intent was to nail passing BATF employees, surely hitting closer to their office would be more effectual. Spray some radioactives in the entrance lobby. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG KWVunJBmZ52AZSOdaQb2Q5Zoz2Crn5g0U31NRSlo 4iLTYoVpo0AgmiEow46ObxjN4dPkqPP6I0kKDTG+9 _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
-- On 25 Oct 2004 at 21:03, Tyler Durden wrote: The point is this: Almost and side in this world that has committed or commits atrocities can find a true-believing apolegist. Moral equivalence, the rationale of those who defend tyranny and slavery. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 9UPtpcIvFgtu2JFnBNLIA/QPpXk7MkK68mtvmQya 45I4CX0wox3d7YrExie7R1Q+2YFGk2ao4amh5DlM6
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
Moral equivalence, the rationale of those who defend tyranny and slavery. Exactly. -TD --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 9UPtpcIvFgtu2JFnBNLIA/QPpXk7MkK68mtvmQya 45I4CX0wox3d7YrExie7R1Q+2YFGk2ao4amh5DlM6 _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
At 6:23 PM -0400 10/26/04, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: Moral superiority, the rationale of both sides of any given violent conflict. The winner gets to use the victory to proclaim the correctness of their interpretation. When the conflict is of a historic scale, the loser is often too dead to object. ..and your point is? :-). Same as it ever was, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 14:19 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: Moral equivalence, the rationale of those who defend tyranny and slavery. Moral superiority, the rationale of both sides of any given violent conflict. The winner gets to use the victory to proclaim the correctness of their interpretation. When the conflict is of a historic scale, the loser is often too dead to object. -- Roy M. Silvernail is [EMAIL PROTECTED], and you're not It's just this little chromium switch, here. - TFS SpamAssassin-procmail-/dev/null-bliss http://www.rant-central.com
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 18:38 -0400, R.A. Hettinga wrote: At 6:23 PM -0400 10/26/04, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: Moral superiority, the rationale of both sides of any given violent conflict. The winner gets to use the victory to proclaim the correctness of their interpretation. When the conflict is of a historic scale, the loser is often too dead to object. ...and your point is? Oh, sorry... I thought we were stating and restating the very obvious. Same as it ever was, Indeed. -- Roy M. Silvernail is [EMAIL PROTECTED], and you're not It's just this little chromium switch, here. - TFS SpamAssassin-procmail-/dev/null-bliss http://www.rant-central.com
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: James A. Donald: McViegh did not target innocents. Bin Laden did target innocents. Roy M. Silvernail I'm confused. Is Mr. Donald saying McVeigh did not surveil his target sufficiently to know that there was a day care center in the damage pattern? Bin Laden's intent was to make anyone in America afraid - thus the use of airliners, rather than truck bombs. McViegh's intent was to make BATF afraid. This is idiotic. You're claiming that the definition of terrorist is dependent not on the act, but on why the act was committed. So if I was to go out tomorrow and spread 2000 curies of Ci into the local subway system As payback for Ruby Ridge, this would not be an act of terrorism? You're a fucking moron. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: James A. Donald: Bin Laden's intent was to make anyone in America afraid - thus the use of airliners, rather than truck bombs. McViegh's intent was to make BATF afraid. J.A. Terranson: This is idiotic. You're claiming that the definition of terrorist is dependent not on the act, but on why the act was committed. Analogously, the definition of murderer depends on why the act was committed. So if I was to go out tomorrow and spread 2000 curies of Ci into the local subway system As payback for Ruby Ridge, this would not be an act of terrorism? That would be terrorism, because regardless of what you *said* your intent was, you would not be targeting those responsible for Ruby Ridge. And if the station I chose just happened to be the one servicing ATF? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 23 Oct 2004 at 23:37, Adam wrote: You know, the more I read posts by Mr. Donald, the more I believe that he is quite possibly the most apt troll I have ever encountered. Why don't you pick one particular factual claim, for example that Bin Laden was a CIA agent, and defend it, instead of confidently asserting all this wild baloney, and deffending past baloney with an endless stream of new baloney, pronounced with equal confidence? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG xOlAusokL6372cJOfxYIKssrD7fRmaOORj2kjput 4y6M4TN/NDS5VmHOHQML2KCnZmUaNTCeosglcxYJE
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
-- James A. Donald: Bin Laden's intent was to make anyone in America afraid - thus the use of airliners, rather than truck bombs. McViegh's intent was to make BATF afraid. J.A. Terranson: This is idiotic. You're claiming that the definition of terrorist is dependent not on the act, but on why the act was committed. Analogously, the definition of murderer depends on why the act was committed. So if I was to go out tomorrow and spread 2000 curies of Ci into the local subway system As payback for Ruby Ridge, this would not be an act of terrorism? That would be terrorism, because regardless of what you *said* your intent was, you would not be targeting those responsible for Ruby Ridge. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG VD3OmstfdjDi423472WFnOcF4OoAi0gOL2FZR45Y 4G2LCL/l1ZIVyRLfDcdladNssQtPhB0PR3mZs2VbO
Re: Airport insanity
-- James A. Donald wrote: You guys just keep making up facts. There were no branches of the armed services in the towers. You are just spouting bullshit, like the story that Osama Bin Laden was trained by the CIA, that Saddam was installed in a CIA coup, and all those similar lies made up to rationalize terror. J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] OK - I'm out of this discussion. This is either just the worlds most elaborate troll, or Donald's brain is dense enough to used when we finally run out of depleted uranium. In other words you are not willing to either disown or defend any of the claims listed above. Like Chomsky, you want to imply they are obviously true, without quite committing yourself to say in so many words that they are true. Nail your colors to the mast. Pick one of the above and defend it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Z+DB496uVoR/FHJetoWJv6cYEL8yFUDYet7Av/Hs 4SdfwHFAFX9A0KROEm1bmE/hxcqwo480srRy24zrC
Re: Airport insanity
Can you guys please take it outside? The majority of us just isn't interested. On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 12:49:52PM -0700, James A. Donald wrote: Nail your colors to the mast. Pick one of the above and defend it. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net pgpt1nBwKP7hO.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
-- James A. Donald: McViegh did not target innocents. Bin Laden did target innocents. Roy M. Silvernail I'm confused. Is Mr. Donald saying McVeigh did not surveil his target sufficiently to know that there was a day care center in the damage pattern? Bin Laden's intent was to make anyone in America afraid - thus the use of airliners, rather than truck bombs. McViegh's intent was to make BATF afraid. Analogously, in Iraq, the murder of schoolchildren for accepting candy from Americans, the use of children as human shields. If group A, acting as an organized cohesive entity with single central will, makes people belonging to group B rationally afraid by violent and evil acts, and someone in group B strikes back at group A in order to make group A afraid to do wrong, this is not terrorism, even if innocents happen to get in the way. If instead he goes after the guy who washes the windows for someone in group A, and the friend of the little sister in someone in group A, and the child who smiled at someone in group A, this is terrorism. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 9z/D+14dhYWqJz3LanaRzjhsYSdPrA+GrFSJrVNJ 4lnTkcOSZD+o/0b5hjEfABYlF305Ice+SWzVDUsTs
Re: Airport insanity
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 9:56 PM +0200 10/24/04, Eugen Leitl wrote: Can you guys please take it outside? The majority of us just isn't interested. Oh, please. TantoWho's this us, white man?/Tanto Personally, I'm having a lot of fun watching this. What amazes me the most is that no matter how finely James cuts his logic, I'm still following him through the changes -- and I end up agreeing with him to boot. Tim McVeigh made a direct attack on his own nation-state because he thought it impeded progress and freedom. Islamist barbarians, and other luddite neo-feudal terrorists, attack the public in order to weaken their resolve to support their nation-state so they can impose, well, luddite neo-feudal barbarism. Fuck that. The libertarian argument against war is the most ethical one that exists, as far as ethics goes, but physics causes philosophy, not the other way around. From where I sit it looks to me that, whether he's trying to or not, James has been making about the best case for classic liberalism -- as opposed to recent cryptocommunist liberalism that can't even use that heisted label anymore -- I've seen in a very long time, and certainly around here. Look, guys, the internal and external use of force is just about the only legitimate act of a state there is anymore, and ethics has almost nothing to do with it. Force monopolies are an *economic* fact of life, no matter how much anarcho-capitalists -- like myself -- wish it weren't so. Call it Coase's revenge, or whatever you want, but transaction costs are sufficiently high in markets for force that they create local monopolies. These monopolies tend to gigantism because high-speed -- but still human-mediated -- communication in those markets causes large information hierarchies and concomitant economies of scale. Modern geodesic communications have started to reverse that, the Afghan war is a case in point, heck, the collapse of the Soviet Union into multiple states, possibly recursively from now on, is a canonical example. China's current cohesivity is a perfect exception to the rule, more a testament to their common 5000-year cultural heritage and their rapid adoption of market economics than anything else, the same as America's, for the time being, though for a much shorter period of time and for entirely different cultural reasons, freedom vs. feudalism, and all that. Nonetheless, humanity is probably a long way from completely *private* markets for force with a collapse to the bottom of recursively smaller nation-state firms in the meantime. My point is, you dance with the girl that brung ya. If the only way to kill barbarians is to kill barbarians in their bed before they kill you in yours, to pave over nation-states that support them, starting with the easiest first, it can't happen fast enough, as far as I'm concerned, and I'll gladly vote my expropriated tax-dollars for the purpose of draining the swamp that is the Middle East. Hell, the fact that every middle-class born-again islamofundamentalist jihadi freedom-fighter in the world is making a beeline for Fallujah, makes me *happy*. They're doing our work for us. Concentrate their forces, go in in force, shoot whoever shoots at you, and let Allah sort 'em out; wait for newbies to fill the bowl again and flush, um, liberally, until they stop clogging the porcelain like so much human excrement. Finally, the more that those expenditures on external force bankrupt the welfare system, and all the other anticoagulant bribes that democratic force-monopolies use to keep the tax-catheter from clotting up, the happier I'll be anyway. That's what Reagan did, deficits and all, and if it puts second-tier genocides out of business the way that he did to the first-tier ones, then America, Fuck Yeah. Finally, apropos of every political development on this list since November 2000, and especially 9/11, doesn't everyone find it positively apocryphal that all the former Republican libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, crypto-anarchists, whatever, reverted instantlyl to Republicans, and the former Democrats doing the same? Even the lifelong Libertarians are positively transparent in their underlying politics at times like these. Binary choices are such a bitch, ¿Si? Cheers, RAH -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQXxftcPxH8jf3ohaEQKPDwCeM5A0xUmU7gsMuhLiGJIHR5xifQQAoJP3 HKxNhnNE0d5OTsCLG59yQ3JH =9NeO -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
-- J.A. Terranson: So if I was to go out tomorrow and spread 2000 curies of Ci into the local subway system As payback for Ruby Ridge, this would not be an act of terrorism? James A. Donald: That would be terrorism, because regardless of what you *said* your intent was, you would not be targeting those responsible for Ruby Ridge. J.A. Terranson: And if the station I chose just happened to be the one servicing ATF? If your intent was to nail passing BATF employees, surely hitting closer to their office would be more effectual. Spray some radioactives in the entrance lobby. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG KWVunJBmZ52AZSOdaQb2Q5Zoz2Crn5g0U31NRSlo 4iLTYoVpo0AgmiEow46ObxjN4dPkqPP6I0kKDTG+9
Re: Airport insanity
On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: James A. Donald All of the terrorists came from countries that were beneficiaries of an immense amount of US help. Saudi Arabia was certainly not under attack. If they were Palestinians, and they hit the Pentagon but not the two towers, then they would be defending themselves. John Kelsey I'm still trying to understand the moral theory on which you differentiate hitting the two towers from the Oklaholma City bombing. The pentagon did not have a branch office in the two towers. BATF had an office in the Murrah building. Bzzzt! Try again. There were a number of federales in the towers, INCLUDING atf, all the various branches of the armed services, and a large number of spook proxy points. So they killed a whole bunch of people, most of whom had nothing to do with what they opposed, but surely including people who were doing business with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Was McViegh targeting people who do business with BATF? Besides which the terrorists did not target them for doing business with Israel, but for World Trade - globalization and all that. Personal knowledge? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 22 Oct 2004 at 11:12, Bill Stewart wrote: James - Many, perhaps most, of the POWs at Gitmo weren't foreigners, they were Afghans. Many of the POWs at Gitmo probably were Al-Qaeda or other organized paramilitary groups. But many of them were described by the US propagandists as Taliban fighters - the military arm of the local central government who were legitimate to the extent that any group of warlords who are the current king of the hill are legitimate, Firstly, much of the Taliban is Pakistani, not Afghan. Secondly, if the Taliban were legitimate, their enemies may lock them up for the duration of the war as POWs, Since some elements of the Taliban have not laid down their arms, Taliban prisoners may held for the duration, as POWs, even if they fought in a manner equivalent to fighting in uniform. The Taliban were illegitimate, not on legal grounds, but because they were evil. If someone was in the Taliban, then those threatened by the Taliban have a strong case for locking him up, just as we locked up nazis. Thirdly a government that systematically depopulates large areas of the territory it supposedly rules is not as legitimate as warlords with genuine local roots and traditional authority, who for the most part came to power through religious or military leadership in a spontaneous revolution against tyranny. No one in the Northern alliance ever controlled territory though ethnic cleansing. I can easily imagine circumstances where ethnic cleansing is a legitimate response to an intransigent enemy with strong roots in the local population - but the fact that the Taliban used such measures shows they did not have strong roots in the local population. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG CDUSjXr1dmDzlVeda1332HqM96GZ31CTX2n8IhAm 4Cc7h7PYP1ZhoxEDC8UNo32CFcXQrpBdEEegTPYZ1
Re: Airport insanity
At 01:03 PM 10/23/04 -0400, John Kelsey wrote: Blowing up a building full of random people because a few of them are associated with some action you really disagree with is just outside the realm of the sort of moral decision I can figure out. Just like flying planes into buildings full of people with almost nothing to do with what you're really getting at. --John Kelsey Osama et al suffer from the belief that Americans chose their leaders and thus are responsible for their actions. They also observe that the only language americans understand is dead civilians inside the CONUS. Ergo WTC feedback. Tim McV may have somewhat analogously assumed that all Feds would take notice of his feedback. (In addition, the WTC demolishion got a disproportionate number of jews, just as Okla did get a few BATF goons. But the message was more generally intended.) Consider: If a crip whacks your homey, you needn't pop *that* crip to make your point. Any crip will do. Snipe a few tax collectors and all Caesar's centurions take note. Capiche?
Re: Airport insanity
-- John Kelsey I'm still trying to understand the moral theory on which you differentiate hitting the two towers from the Oklaholma City bombing. James A. Donald: The pentagon did not have a branch office in the two towers. BATF had an office in the Murrah building. J.A. Terranson Bzzzt! Try again. There were a number of federales in the towers, INCLUDING atf, all the various branches of the armed services, and a large number of spook proxy points. You guys just keep making up facts. There were no branches of the armed services in the towers. You are just spouting bullshit, like the story that Osama Bin Laden was trained by the CIA, that Saddam was installed in a CIA coup, and all those similar lies made up to rationalize terror. Just a few posts ago someone posted that old one that the US started the Korean war by attacking North Korea, in order to make the US rich by imposing poverty on Koreans, despite the fact that we now have the records of Stalin ordering the attack, and despite the obvious and dramatic difference in wealth everywhere between the two sides of the line where the iron curtain used to be - and still is in Korea. The same people spout the new lies in the same breath as they spout the old lies. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG dvBfWIZqEu161Mjru/y6SQOfX5yCTWwAzV2e8e/N 40oki+XXmhK7vuYZqXY+Sr2pWASXQo+gx9TqdXW7/
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 23 Oct 2004 at 19:25, J.A. Terranson wrote: There are all givens to the rest of us - I am trying to fit these arguments into Donald's Reality Distortion Field. Is it also a given to you, as it is to Tyler, that the US attacked North Korea, and that the reason for this attack was to make Koreans poor so that Americans could be rich? Is it also a given to you that the CIA trained Bin Laden? Is it also a given to you that the CIA installed Saddam? Is it a given to you, as it is to Tyler, that the countries on the communist side of the former iron curtain were more successful economically than their neighbors or countrymen on the other side? Is it a given to you that Jews did not turn up for work in the two towers the day they fell? Is it a given to you that Arbenz was democratically elected, and that the guerrilas in Guatemala were an indigenous popular movement that could have won free and fair elections had they been permitted? Is it a given to you that Alger Hiss was framed? Perhaps you need to check some of these givens. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 2xBHaKKtew47vYubi0WVdchRmiM1osWLaPLEM3IJ 4th8Ep6rf2PcPWOoYxyby9cpMSlFehq6Z+8yzjPuc
Re: Airport insanity
On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: The Taliban were illegitimate, not on legal grounds, but because they were evil. Using this line of reasoning, Shrub is ripe for that overdue case of high velocity lead poisoning. If someone was in the Taliban, then those threatened by the Taliban have a strong case for locking him up, just as we locked up nazis. Thirdly a government that systematically depopulates large areas of the territory it supposedly rules is not as legitimate as warlords with genuine local roots and traditional authority, who for the most part came to power through religious or military leadership in a spontaneous revolution against tyranny. And if the local warlords are also participating in a vast depopulation, then what? No one in the Northern alliance ever controlled territory though ethnic cleansing. I can easily imagine circumstances where ethnic cleansing is a legitimate response to an intransigent enemy with strong roots in the local population - but the fact that the Taliban used such measures shows they did not have strong roots in the local population. You don't see a circular problem here? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: Airport insanity
Let us not forget the more tangible 'value' in bombing the WTC and messing up things downtown. First of all, the companies in the WTC were, to say the least, impacted (actually, the company I work for lost 11 people and relocated to NJ for about a year)hitting them (and their workers) was probably not considered collateral damage by Al Qaeda, any more than bombing German or japanese urban production centers was considered that for the allies in WWII. Next comes the financial district and Wall Street as a whole. The third (and as it turned out by far the most impactful) was the destruction of the Telecom Central Office in #4 World Trade Center, along with bringing off-line the big Verizon CO across the street. These actually caused Wall Street to be knocked off line for several days, an impact that is hard to underestimate. And while I suspect that Al-Qaeda were probably unaware in advance of the impact on Telecom, the rest was certainly a conscious decision. -TD From: J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Airport insanity Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 15:14:22 -0500 (CDT) On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: James A. Donald All of the terrorists came from countries that were beneficiaries of an immense amount of US help. Saudi Arabia was certainly not under attack. If they were Palestinians, and they hit the Pentagon but not the two towers, then they would be defending themselves. John Kelsey I'm still trying to understand the moral theory on which you differentiate hitting the two towers from the Oklaholma City bombing. The pentagon did not have a branch office in the two towers. BATF had an office in the Murrah building. Bzzzt! Try again. There were a number of federales in the towers, INCLUDING atf, all the various branches of the armed services, and a large number of spook proxy points. So they killed a whole bunch of people, most of whom had nothing to do with what they opposed, but surely including people who were doing business with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Was McViegh targeting people who do business with BATF? Besides which the terrorists did not target them for doing business with Israel, but for World Trade - globalization and all that. Personal knowledge? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time _ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx
Re: Airport insanity
Steve Furlong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [1] The defensive aspect here is to allow the attackers to attack from distance beyond the reach of the other side's active defenses, thus not risking anything more than a piece of overpriced electronics. If some asshole is coming at you with a knife, it's cowardly to shoot him before he's in range? Dumbass. Except that ol' Sodom didn't come for you...
Re: Airport insanity
On Sat, Oct 23, 2004 at 11:37:02PM -0400, Adam wrote: None-the-less, this has been one of the more inteteresting (and infuriating) threads in recent memory of Cypherpunks. I'm glad we're going through it with such vigor. That thread bores me to tears. I miss technical content. Or, at least, a few pointers of where the action is. I'm tinkering with Nehemiah's RNG (/dev/hw_random is next to useless without a patch), and about to start using PadLock patches, once C5P hardware arrives. I'm also going to look into OpenBSD, once 3.6 is up on mirrors. What is happening in TCP/IP level traffic remixing? P2P apps? Can someone in the know provide a boilerplate, or at least a list of raw URLs? -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net pgpRVFkhn5Xcv.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Airport insanity
-- James A. Donald: The Taliban were illegitimate, not on legal grounds, but because they were evil. J.A. Terranson Using this line of reasoning, Shrub is ripe for that overdue case of high velocity lead poisoning. Doubtless he is, but to suggest that he is comparably evil to the taliban casts doubt on your sanity. James A. Donald: Thirdly a government that systematically depopulates large areas of the territory it supposedly rules is not as legitimate as warlords with genuine local roots and traditional authority, who for the most part came to power through religious or military leadership in a spontaneous revolution against tyranny. J.A. Terranson And if the local warlords are also participating in a vast depopulation, then what? But the Warlords are not. Under the Taliban, huge numbers of people fled Afghanistan, under the Northern alliance, they returned. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG qMEkoNR+blkRZmztAFF4sDeSBoKW6Qe4JhwStmV 4j0SHTtKdNY/S/nI2Tmj5ngKX5y1hL7JFg7xma9t5
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
-- On 23 Oct 2004 at 22:58, Adam wrote: I am curious, Mr. Donald, how exactly you define the word terrorist. I request that your definition be generic; i.e. not a definition like anyone who attacks the US.On 23 Oct 2004 at 22:58, Adam wrote: I am curious, Mr. Donald, how exactly you define the word terrorist. I request that your definition be generic; i.e. not a definition like anyone who attacks the US. Terrorist: One who uses terror as a means of coercion. The word was originally coined to describe the committee of public safety created by the french revolution, and was subsequently used to decribe similar regimes, most of them revolutionary, for example Lenin's. However it is equally applicable to non government groups who use similar measures. The difference between guerrilas and non government terrorists is that terrorists target random innocents - for example blowing up schoolchildren for accepting candy from US soldiers, as recently happened in Iraq. Similarly the deliberately capricious executions by most communist regimes, intended to produce a sense of fear and helplessness in their subjects. McViegh did not target innocents. Bin Laden did target innocents. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Kiq2Py/gfRNvDbIgFETkSh12S9ilsTHs1STZ0G+i 4YtWt9FfhBsS+aa3NSU17iXdsABNEuxtdCDwkYKjY
James may be a dick, but y'all sound like pussies to me...(was Re: Airport insanity)
At 11:37 PM -0400 10/23/04, Adam wrote: You know, the more I read posts by Mr. Donald, the more I believe that he is quite possibly the most apt troll I have ever encountered. No, that was Tim May. The world champion troll if there ever was one -- among other things. :-). James is right, of course. He may be a dick, but you guys are starting to sound an awful lot like assholes. Or maybe just pussies who are full of shit. :-). See below for details, and click the link, if you want more gems. Better yet, go see the movie. I'm still laughing. BTW, the correct response to my argument, above, the one Tim would take, anyway, is that Team America is puerile, and so, he might add in passing, am I for citing it. Don't forget to do Tim May mocking Team America with a perfectly puerile imitation, or something, while you're at it. Don't forget to correct their or my grammar, haircuts, etc., either, for that matter... Cheers, RAH --- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/quotes Memorable Quotes from Team America: World Police (2004) Gary Johnston : We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies dont like dicks because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes. Assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck a asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate. And it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves. Because pussies are a inch and half away from assholes. I don't know much about this crazy crazy world, but I do know this. If you don't let us fuck this asshole we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit. -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Airport insanity
You know, the more I read posts by Mr. Donald, the more I believe that he is quite possibly the most apt troll I have ever encountered. It is quite apparent from reading his responses that he is obviously an exceptionally intelligent (academically anyway) individual. I find it hard to believe that such intelligence could reside in a person with such critically flawed core beliefs. I have a hunch that Mr. Donald is instead playing the role of an elaborate devil's advocate, furiously defending his stance against retaliations by our fellow Cypherpunks. Tyler Durden mentioned this hypothesis many emails ago, and I believe him to be accurate, especially since Mr. Donald never responded to the charge. None-the-less, this has been one of the more inteteresting (and infuriating) threads in recent memory of Cypherpunks. I'm glad we're going through it with such vigor. -Adam On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 09:39:05 -0700, James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: -- Thomas Shaddack: It isn't a problem for you until it happens to you. Who knows when being interested in anon e-cash will become a ground to blacklist *you*. James A. Donald: I know when it will happen. It will happen when people interested in anon ecash go on suicide missions. :-) Bill Stewart More likely, when anon ecash money-launderers start being accused of funding terrorist activities. When e-currency handlers (cambists) are accused of money laundering terrorist's money, the feds steal the money, but they do not obstruct them from travelling, or, surprisingly, even from doing business - well, perhaps not so surprisingly, for if they stopped them from doing business there would be nothing to steal. When the state uses repressive measures against those that seek to murder us, there is still a large gap between that and using repressive measures against everyone. We are not terrorists, we don't look like terrorists, we don't sound like terrorists. Indeed, the more visible real terrorists are, the less even Tim McViegh looks like a terrorist and the more he looks like a patriot. When people are under attack they are going to lash out, to kill and destroy. Lashing out an external enemy, real or imaginary, is a healthy substitute for lashing out at internal enemies. We do not have a choice of peace, merely a choice between war against external or internal enemies. Clearly, war against external enemies is less dangerous to freedom. War is dangerous to freedom, but we do not have a choice of peace. The question is where the war is to be fought - in America, or elsewhere. War within America will surely destroy freedom. What we need to fear is those that talk about the home front and internal security, those who claim that Christians are as big a threat as Muslims - or that black Muslims are as big a threat as Middle Eastern Muslims. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG cGrCJvmIhJnYLWO2RB3qmnqijcHlOOsA7iklRoZD 4Ar75eLN10XbfJw/mqPpGQeUW0SzMlz4CLrpHIeEe
Re: Airport insanity
-- James A. Donald All of the terrorists came from countries that were beneficiaries of an immense amount of US help. Saudi Arabia was certainly not under attack. If they were Palestinians, and they hit the Pentagon but not the two towers, then they would be defending themselves. John Kelsey I'm still trying to understand the moral theory on which you differentiate hitting the two towers from the Oklaholma City bombing. The pentagon did not have a branch office in the two towers. BATF had an office in the Murrah building. So they killed a whole bunch of people, most of whom had nothing to do with what they opposed, but surely including people who were doing business with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Was McViegh targeting people who do business with BATF? Besides which the terrorists did not target them for doing business with Israel, but for World Trade - globalization and all that. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG F1A5ubUDIrbSNLUuleFdhNEKrRgGGTlY3WAjUS9V 4IOaq8sP0KR47YXUJterj5PKXQM9mYdBplIzlApRI
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
I am curious, Mr. Donald, how exactly you define the word terrorist. I request that your definition be generic; i.e. not a definition like anyone who attacks the US. I'd be willing to bet that you cannot provide a clear generic definition of terrorist. Moreover, I can guarantee that you cannot provide a definition that isn't self-contradictory. -Adam On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 09:59:15 -0700, James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: -- On 19 Oct 2004 at 10:23, Tyler Durden wrote: Most Cypherpunks would agree that free markets are a good thing. Basically, if you leave people alone, they'll figure out how to meet the needs that are out in there and, in the process, get a few of the goodies available to us as vapors on this world. I assume you would agree to this. There are however some bad people, who want to conquer and rule. Some of them are nastier than others. Those people need to be killed. Killing some of them is regrettably controversial. Killing terrorists should not be controversial. More than that, some of the countries we've been kicked out or prevented from influencing have been modernizing rapidly, the most obvious example is China and Vietnam. Your history is back to front. China and Vietnam stagnated, until they invited capitalists back in, and promised they could get rich. Mean while the countries that we were not kicked out of for example Taiwan and South Korea, became rich. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG y7IV2I3RzvTRwezbeYDac49MQJFtu4pLd09CpaV1 4wwT8kfGpRCZY7aO/mhgeoOcaR9vYeYFWae8aMM/M
Re: Airport insanity
There are all givens to the rest of us - I am trying to fit these arguments into Donald's Reality Distortion Field. //Alif On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 19:41:45 -0400 From: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Airport insanity Let us not forget the more tangible 'value' in bombing the WTC and messing up things downtown. First of all, the companies in the WTC were, to say the least, impacted (actually, the company I work for lost 11 people and relocated to NJ for about a year)hitting them (and their workers) was probably not considered collateral damage by Al Qaeda, any more than bombing German or japanese urban production centers was considered that for the allies in WWII. Next comes the financial district and Wall Street as a whole. The third (and as it turned out by far the most impactful) was the destruction of the Telecom Central Office in #4 World Trade Center, along with bringing off-line the big Verizon CO across the street. These actually caused Wall Street to be knocked off line for several days, an impact that is hard to underestimate. And while I suspect that Al-Qaeda were probably unaware in advance of the impact on Telecom, the rest was certainly a conscious decision. -TD From: J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Airport insanity Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 15:14:22 -0500 (CDT) On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: James A. Donald All of the terrorists came from countries that were beneficiaries of an immense amount of US help. Saudi Arabia was certainly not under attack. If they were Palestinians, and they hit the Pentagon but not the two towers, then they would be defending themselves. John Kelsey I'm still trying to understand the moral theory on which you differentiate hitting the two towers from the Oklaholma City bombing. The pentagon did not have a branch office in the two towers. BATF had an office in the Murrah building. Bzzzt! Try again. There were a number of federales in the towers, INCLUDING atf, all the various branches of the armed services, and a large number of spook proxy points. So they killed a whole bunch of people, most of whom had nothing to do with what they opposed, but surely including people who were doing business with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Was McViegh targeting people who do business with BATF? Besides which the terrorists did not target them for doing business with Israel, but for World Trade - globalization and all that. Personal knowledge? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time _ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: Airport insanity
There were several USG offices in the Twin Towers, some of them intelligence. In addition, CIA was located in 7 WTC, along with Secret Service and military offices. The military offices were used as cover for the others. There was far more USG in WTC than in Murrah, and the lesson learned in OKC was no doubt useful to the attackers: collateral hurt to innocents is magnitudes more powerful than hitting military targets -- that is what strategic bombing was invented to demonstrate, not to say threatening with WMDs, a practice invented by the US and which remains its primary defense strategy. The cause and effect between USG WMD threats and terrorist attacks is yet to be fully admitted outside military circles: the military accepts that innocents will be slaughtered, and the winner must slaughter the most. Terrorism to the military is a nuisance even when a few of its troops are picked off. The losses in Iraq do not even make a blip on expected casualties of a major war. More military have died in conventional accidents, murders and suicides around the world than have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. But those in the Middle East have greater utility for the military to boost its suck for more funds and more our boys and girls sacrifice and more bawling in congress and the presidential campaign about protecting the nation, defense cut-back not even a dream since ever so convienent 9/11. Murrah bombing helped the battle against homeland militants, and WTC got the ball rolling for battle overseas. Who planned them is yet to be revealed, but the usual suspects don't mean shit.
Re: Airport insanity
On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: You guys just keep making up facts. There were no branches of the armed services in the towers. You are just spouting bullshit, like the story that Osama Bin Laden was trained by the CIA, that Saddam was installed in a CIA coup, and all those similar lies made up to rationalize terror. OK - I'm out of this discussion. This is either just the worlds most elaborate troll, or Donald's brain is dense enough to used when we finally run out of depleted uranium. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: Airport insanity
From: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 23, 2004 7:41 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Airport insanity Let us not forget the more tangible 'value' in bombing the WTC and messing up things downtown. First of all, the companies in the WTC were, to say the least, impacted (actually, the company I work for lost 11 people and relocated to NJ for about a year)hitting them (and their workers) was probably not considered collateral damage by Al Qaeda, any more than bombing German or japanese urban production centers was considered that for the allies in WWII. Right. I don't visualize OBL Co sitting up nights trying to decide whether their next attack needlessly terrorizes civilians, I think that's a decision they already made. I'm pointing out that once you've started justifying acts of terror by people you agree with, it seems to be quite hard to draw any meaningful line between them and Al Qaida. Now, this causes no problem for me--OBL, Tim McVeigh, the Unabomber, they all look like remorseless murderers to me, and I see the differences between them mainly in terms of how effective and dangerous they are. .. And while I suspect that Al-Qaeda were probably unaware in advance of the impact on Telecom, the rest was certainly a conscious decision. I don't know if this was a goal, exactly, but the other thing the 9/11 attacks achieved was to scare the hell out of the power elite in the country, especially the people at the top of government, media, and finance. That made all kinds of dumb responses (some parts of the Patriot act, Bush's breathtaking claim of the power to lock up citizens without trial, his administration's equally breathtaking claim that he could ignore laws and treaties against torture on his authority, the invasion of Iraq) possible. -TD --John
Re: Airport insanity
Adam wrote: You know, the more I read posts by Mr. Donald, the more I believe that he is quite possibly the most apt troll I have ever encountered. It is quite apparent from reading his responses that he is obviously an exceptionally intelligent (academically anyway) individual. I find it hard to believe that such intelligence could reside in a person with such critically flawed core beliefs. You forget SternFud so easily?
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: McViegh did not target innocents. Bin Laden did target innocents. I'm confused. So is Mr. Donald. Is Mr. Donald saying McVeigh did not surveil his target sufficiently to know that there was a day care center in the damage pattern? Or is he saying it only takes one non-innocent in a damage zone to justify an attack? (in which case, how is he privy to Bin Laden's attack plan, such that he can rule out any non-innocent targets) No, Mr. Donald is demonstrating irrational thought processes. You see, McVeigh isn't a terrorist because he had purity of purpose. But Bin Laden IS a terrorist because he had purity of purpose. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
On Sun, 2004-10-24 at 03:43 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: McViegh did not target innocents. Bin Laden did target innocents. I'm confused. Is Mr. Donald saying McVeigh did not surveil his target sufficiently to know that there was a day care center in the damage pattern? Or is he saying it only takes one non-innocent in a damage zone to justify an attack? (in which case, how is he privy to Bin Laden's attack plan, such that he can rule out any non-innocent targets) Or is the problem perhaps that any reasonable definition of terrorist must describe both McVeigh and Bin Laden? Ends do not justify means. A reasonable man would argue that attacking an occupied building with highly destructive weapons is an act intended to incite terror, without needing to even consider the motive. -- Roy M. Silvernail is [EMAIL PROTECTED], and you're not It's just this little chromium switch, here. - TFS SpamAssassin-procmail-/dev/null-bliss http://www.rant-central.com
Re: Airport insanity
From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 22, 2004 12:21 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Airport insanity All of the terrorists came from countries that were beneficiaries of an immense amount of US help. Saudi Arabia was certainly not under attack. If they were Palestinians, and they hit the Pentagon but not the two towers, then they would be defending themselves. I'm still trying to understand the moral theory on which you differentiate hitting the two towers from the Oklaholma City bombing. McVeigh (not a branch davidian) wanted to strike back at the BATF for the Waco massacre, so he killed a whole bunch of people, a few of whom were BATF employees, but not, as far as I know, anyone directly involved in the decisions that led to all the deaths in Waco. The 9/11 hijackers wanted to strike at the US for a variety of reasons, probably mostly that we're a big, visible target, but presumably also that we're propping up states like Saudi Arabia. So they killed a whole bunch of people, most of whom had nothing to do with what they opposed, but surely including people who were doing business with Saudi Arabia and Israel. If McVeigh had used a sniper rifle to kill the specific BATF agent who called for the raid/media event on the Branch Davidians' compound, I'd still think he deserved to either die or spend his life in prison, but at least I could somehow fathom the moral decision to do what he'd done--like the pro-life terrorists (ah, the irony) who assassinate abortionists. They need to be locked up, but you can at least see what they were thinking. Blowing up a building full of random people because a few of them are associated with some action you really disagree with is just outside the realm of the sort of moral decision I can figure out. Just like flying planes into buildings full of people with almost nothing to do with what you're really getting at. James A. Donald --John Kelsey
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
-- On 22 Oct 2004 at 21:08, Tyler Durden wrote: Taiwan is a particularly odd example...it definitely has started forming a modern economy, but then again it had many decades of oppression. It also had swiped billions upon billions of dollars of gold and other substances that backed the Chinese monetary system prior to 1949, so arguably that money had to go somewhere. liar. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Ctgvg/767xVvEfZle9c/+vxKC3xtkjiX3R4NVIxk 4EMcaYvfC/Hefr1mG/wP4lnapr70KOuFu4ofYdQSC
Re: Airport insanity
At 02:20 AM 10/21/2004, James A. Donald wrote: Doubtless there are some innocents in Gautenamo - but the usual reason they are there is for being foreigners in Afghanistan in the middle of a war with no adequate explanation. At 09:21 AM 10/22/2004, James A. Donald wrote: J.A. Terranson No. We are under attack by those DEFENDING THEMSELVES. All of the terrorists came from countries that were beneficiaries of an immense amount of US help. James - Many, perhaps most, of the POWs at Gitmo weren't foreigners, they were Afghans. Many of the POWs at Gitmo probably were Al-Qaeda or other organized paramilitary groups. But many of them were described by the US propagandists as Taliban fighters - the military arm of the local central government who were legitimate to the extent that any group of warlords who are the current king of the hill are legitimate, and not too many months before the invasion, the US government was giving those same Taliban $43million because they were so helpful in our War on Drugs. And sure, they're a nasty bunch, but so are many of the anti-communist military juntas the US supported over the years. It wasn't like the US didn't know the Taliban were tolerating anti-American terrorist groups at the time - Clinton's Pentagon had bombed some of the camps in ~97 as well as the Sudan medical factory in response to bin Laden's bombing of the US embassies in Africa. Also, perhaps you don't realize this, but many countries with central governments do allow foreigners to stay there, whether as immigrants, tourists, guestworkers, businessmen, students, or attendees of terrorist training camps like the School of the Americas or the Osama bin Laden gang. Countries without effective central governments are usually more flexible about such things, and cultures that are tribally organized with colonialist-drawn boundaries are also less likely to be picky about it, though they may be more picky about whose tribal land you're in. Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Airport insanity
On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: On 21 Oct 2004 at 13:41, Sunder wrote: No you imbecile, I'm telling no one anything, other than you to get a clue. Where did I tell people who are under attack to suck it up? When you tell us it is horrible to lock up in Gautenamo people who show every sign of trying to kill us , Which is why your great white leader is releasing them? and that we deserve their past efforts to kill us, We do. efforts that some of them promptly resumed on release. We are under attack, and you are telling us to suck it up. No. We are under attack by those DEFENDING THEMSELVES. We shouldn't be doing anything put putting a bullet into Georgies brain (not that any projectile is likely to find a target consisting entirely of two already deficient cells, but...) and minding our own business. Oh, and cutting off every single nickel of funding to our partners in the mass-murderer olympics - Israel. --digsig James A. Donald -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 21 Oct 2004 at 13:41, Sunder wrote: No you imbecile, I'm telling no one anything, other than you to get a clue. Where did I tell people who are under attack to suck it up? When you tell us it is horrible to lock up in Gautenamo people who show every sign of trying to kill us , and that we deserve their past efforts to kill us, efforts that some of them promptly resumed on release. We are under attack, and you are telling us to suck it up. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG bsIXWc4h29VIJkgExpNjUGgUXb/7oelyrYSTY5hy 4z2stYnmTb7JHw3AHWCBnz9grbOob/owyJwY6xDJS
Re: Airport insanity
-- James A. Donald wrote: We are under attack, and you are telling us to suck it up. J.A. Terranson No. We are under attack by those DEFENDING THEMSELVES. All of the terrorists came from countries that were beneficiaries of an immense amount of US help. Saudi Arabia was certainly not under attack. If they were Palestinians, and they hit the Pentagon but not the two towers, then they would be defending themselves. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG TazBQdvcQ8iq915Dug3d8ZVm8QLxZw7X3TzUYyIl 4DkboB4fOyw1vcB2E48rceVjwQYN583Qs6efqDL8Z
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
From: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 19, 2004 10:23 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) .. In developing markets the US track record is terrible. The more we interfere and set up puppet governments and petty dictators, the result has always been the near elimination of any kind of real modern economy. More than that, some of the countries we've been kicked out or prevented from influencing have been modernizing rapidly, the most obvious example is China and Vietnam. Bolivia is interesting to watch. So, Taiwan and South Korea seem like rather obvious counterexamples. -TD --John (Not a fan of interventionist foreign policy, FWIW)
Re: Airport insanity
From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 20, 2004 3:10 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Airport insanity Lots of murderous terrorists have been released from Guatanamo, and in the nearly all cases the most serious of their complaints make it sound like a beach resort, except for the fact that they could not leave. Maybe I missed that. All but one of the comments I read about involved a lot of complaints about mistreatment, albeit often with the admission that Gitmo was still better than being in an Afghan prison. As a nitpick, though, it's not at all clear that most of the people at Gitmo were really terrorists, or even murderers. None of them has had a trial, few have even had hearings, and many were released as not a threat to us. (They may still be a threat to everyone else around them.) A few have more serious complaints. Either they are lying or, those who say they were well treated apart from being held captive are lying. Surely the other alternative is that only some prisoners are subjected to torture, e.g., the ones that look to have some serious intelligence value. James A. Donald --John
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
Well, yes there are counterexamples I guess. The kind of retardation I'm talking about seems to happen when the influence in through covert, destabilising channels. Taiwan is a particularly odd example...it definitely has started forming a modern economy, but then again it had many decades of oppression. It also had swiped billions upon billions of dollars of gold and other substances that backed the Chinese monetary system prior to 1949, so arguably that money had to go somewhere. -TD From: John Kelsey [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: John Kelsey [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 14:59:26 -0400 (GMT-04:00) From: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 19, 2004 10:23 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) ... In developing markets the US track record is terrible. The more we interfere and set up puppet governments and petty dictators, the result has always been the near elimination of any kind of real modern economy. More than that, some of the countries we've been kicked out or prevented from influencing have been modernizing rapidly, the most obvious example is China and Vietnam. Bolivia is interesting to watch. So, Taiwan and South Korea seem like rather obvious counterexamples. -TD --John (Not a fan of interventionist foreign policy, FWIW) _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 22 Oct 2004 at 0:00, John Kelsey wrote: All but one of the comments I read about involved a lot of complaints about mistreatment, albeit often with the admission that Gitmo was still better than being in an Afghan prison. As a nitpick, though, it's not at all clear that most of the people at Gitmo were really terrorists, or even murderers. Most of them were non Afghans in Afghanistan in the middle of a war and no plausible explanation of their presence, which makes it fairly certain they had signed up Bin Laden and company. So if they had not personally targeted women and children, they had signed up with an organization that they know rapes and murders. Don't give me that moral relativism crap that their view of themselves as heroes is as just as valid as our view of them as vicious subhuman monsters. None of them has had a trial, few have even had hearings, and many were released as not a threat to us. (They may still be a threat to everyone else around them.) Different rules apply in war. Now if the president got away with the principle that an enemy combatant captured in time of war is anyone the president designates as an enemy combatant, *then* I would be worried about the fact that they did not get trials and all that. In a guerilla war or terrorist war, war rules are even more dangerous to liberty than usual since the battlefield is everywhere. However in this case the application of the rules of war, rather than peace, is legitimate. They are for the most part foreigners picked up in Afghanistan, where the usual wartime rule is that if you cannot give a plausible account of yourself, they will skin you. While we should be very concerned that the chronic war on terror may lead to rules of war extending to everyday life, rules of war are still necessary to deal with large scale enemies with the capability to control territory and exclude the forces of justice. We should not apply rules of war to some terrorists snatched in New York - that would be dangerous to the freedom of the ordinary New Yorker, but if the government snatches terrorists in Afghanistan or near Fallujah, rules of war should apply. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG L9l0XwGGAOnDTD1f/nlXg15rkevzTJFhQEhPA0e1 4HxKjMzjQlUTID/enTbsses+z2wda2UXVev2ZKUSS
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 20 Oct 2004 at 21:27, Sunder wrote: I repeat: And you were there and kept an eye on each and every guard, interrogator, and prisoner to make sure that the POW's weren't tortured? We know torture did not occur, because lots of people have been released who were and are extremely hostile to the US, and who do not claim torture. And you were there and witnessed the attrocities that said prisoners committed in order to be placed in Gitmo? Why do you assert that the US must be guilty unless it can be proven innocent by extraordinary evidence, but the detainees must be innocent unless they can be proven guilty by extraordinary evidence? Doubtless there are some innocents in Gautenamo - but the usual reason they are there is for being foreigners in Afghanistan in the middle of a war with no adequate explanation. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG PwxWpHJKrzapMUAE8Xc1hvpY0CWDO780ZY/6zW7b 4b9RBklMS97dzSSANw7jVcZlASDxbNnLMhwLptK+Z
Re: Airport insanity
I made no claims, you did, rather I asked you sarcastically to validate your claims, after which you further assumed on top of other mistaken assumptions, that I made claims countering yours, which I did not. Perhaps you should examine your own words. IMHO, you are a misguided armchair general who sees yourself as equal to those scumbags that have risen in power to lead or enslave nations since you seem to constantly say they should have done X, and not Y and are constantly seeking to go against with reality with W should be the case, not X even though W cannot happen while X does. Yes, that is my unprofessional opinion. And yet, while impotent to achive your views of reality, you insist on sharing it, as if anyone gives a rats ass. It was entertaining, but it's getting old. I doubt that it would be long before you'll be sporting a tin foil hat. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. - On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 20 Oct 2004 at 21:27, Sunder wrote: I repeat: And you were there and kept an eye on each and every guard, interrogator, and prisoner to make sure that the POW's weren't tortured? We know torture did not occur, because lots of people have been released who were and are extremely hostile to the US, and who do not claim torture. And you were there and witnessed the attrocities that said prisoners committed in order to be placed in Gitmo? Why do you assert that the US must be guilty unless it can be proven innocent by extraordinary evidence, but the detainees must be innocent unless they can be proven guilty by extraordinary evidence? Doubtless there are some innocents in Gautenamo - but the usual reason they are there is for being foreigners in Afghanistan in the middle of a war with no adequate explanation. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG PwxWpHJKrzapMUAE8Xc1hvpY0CWDO780ZY/6zW7b 4b9RBklMS97dzSSANw7jVcZlASDxbNnLMhwLptK+Z
Re: Airport insanity
On Thu, Oct 21, 2004 at 09:43:16AM -0700, James A. Donald wrote: When people are under attack, you cannot tell them to suck it up, which is what you are doing. If we had no government, we I'm not under attack. Are you? The Ghengis Khan thing's been a while back. might well be doing pogroms against american muslims - and a good thing to. This ways lies much rotting severed heads on stakes, and screaming. We've been there before. No need for a repetition. War causes governments, and causes governments to gain power, but the US government was not the aggressor in this war. US Your reality model is rather unique. Given that what your alleged representatives are doing results in massive loss of prestige, you don't want to associate with defectors. That stink's going to cling for a while. government meddling in the middle east was unwise and unnecessary, but it did not provoke, nor does it justify, this war. The intent of a large minority of muslims was to start a holy war between the west and Islam, and the majority of muslims The only war there is was started by ShrubCo, and was tacitly approved by about half of your countrymen. This isn't Nuremberg, but I color your guilty. lack the will or courage to stop them, or even criticize them. That was not the intent of Americans, or the American government. They started it, they meant to start it. Americans Ha ha. tried to avoid it, some of them are still trying to avoid it. All Americans are still trying to conduct the war on the smallest possible scale, against the smallest possible subset of Islam, disagreeing only on how small that subset can be. Your reality distortion field manages to make bearded fanatics look good. Quite an accomplishment. Herr Reichspropagandaminister would have been proud. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net pgp6EplBncDIz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 21 Oct 2004 at 10:26, Sunder wrote: IMHO, you are a misguided armchair general who sees yourself as equal to those scumbags that have risen in power to lead or enslave nations since you seem to constantly say they should have done X, and not Y When people are under attack, you cannot tell them to suck it up, which is what you are doing. If we had no government, we might well be doing pogroms against american muslims - and a good thing to. War causes governments, and causes governments to gain power, but the US government was not the aggressor in this war. US government meddling in the middle east was unwise and unnecessary, but it did not provoke, nor does it justify, this war. The intent of a large minority of muslims was to start a holy war between the west and Islam, and the majority of muslims lack the will or courage to stop them, or even criticize them. That was not the intent of Americans, or the American government. They started it, they meant to start it. Americans tried to avoid it, some of them are still trying to avoid it. All Americans are still trying to conduct the war on the smallest possible scale, against the smallest possible subset of Islam, disagreeing only on how small that subset can be. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG YeXgmiDN23gKNejAXLPSgfGxzFPVqFa/9pEDbWNr 41sYVdSvXQCEQniQVEIYWhWw2HjtvpvuHtQ0QXUaI
Re: Airport insanity
No you imbecile, I'm telling no one anything, other than you to get a clue. Where did I tell people who are under attack to suck it up? All I did was point out that you weren't there and therefore any comment you care to make about it is bound to be flawed. Please find yourself a clue store and open your wallet - wide. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. - On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 21 Oct 2004 at 10:26, Sunder wrote: IMHO, you are a misguided armchair general who sees yourself as equal to those scumbags that have risen in power to lead or enslave nations since you seem to constantly say they should have done X, and not Y When people are under attack, you cannot tell them to suck it up, which is what you are doing. If we had no government, we might well be doing pogroms against american muslims - and a good thing to. War causes governments, and causes governments to gain power, but the US government was not the aggressor in this war. US government meddling in the middle east was unwise and unnecessary, but it did not provoke, nor does it justify, this war. The intent of a large minority of muslims was to start a holy war between the west and Islam, and the majority of muslims lack the will or courage to stop them, or even criticize them. That was not the intent of Americans, or the American government. They started it, they meant to start it. Americans tried to avoid it, some of them are still trying to avoid it. All Americans are still trying to conduct the war on the smallest possible scale, against the smallest possible subset of Islam, disagreeing only on how small that subset can be. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG YeXgmiDN23gKNejAXLPSgfGxzFPVqFa/9pEDbWNr 41sYVdSvXQCEQniQVEIYWhWw2HjtvpvuHtQ0QXUaI
Re: Airport insanity
-- James A. Donald wrote: The US government should expose and condemn these objectionable practices, subvert moderately objectionable regimes, and annihilate more objectionable regimes. The pentagon should deprive moderately objectionable regimes of economic resources, by stealing their oil, destroying their water systems, and cutting off their trade and population movements with the outside world. Thomas Shaddack Meanwhile, the world will get pissed, Arabian Bloc will finally agree on the concept of Monetary Jihad and switch from dollar-per-barrel to euro-per-barrel and later perhaps even to a gold-backed Islamic Dinar. If the US has Saudi and Iraqi oil reserves, this would not be any big problem. Arabs have difficulties to agree on something, but give them an enemy and they flock together Like they flocked together over Israel? They unite only in words, not deeds. Look at the civil war now going on Iraq. The Iraqi insurgency has not united, but rather are busy killing each other. Other countries will stop caring about unilateral embargos and will trade with the affected areas anyway, to great dismay of American planners. I had in mind not paper embargos which no one ever observes anyway, least of all those proclaiming them, but rather the mining of ports, and key roads at the borders, the destruction of airports, planes, ships, and vehicles travelling on those roads. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG PqA9fV/rkBDLiQiY7Z7tvI+4ZspciWsOt6Ks6eJs 4QCdWD0mLhMSVH+y9iESXjeIvzTOTeI0fTqxiC5zy
Re: Airport insanity
On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: The US government should expose and condemn these objectionable practices, subvert moderately objectionable regimes, and annihilate more objectionable regimes. The pentagon should deprive moderately objectionable regimes of economic resources, by stealing their oil, destroying their water systems, and cutting off their trade and population movements with the outside world. Meanwhile, the world will get pissed, Arabian Bloc will finally agree on the concept of Monetary Jihad and switch from dollar-per-barrel to euro-per-barrel and later perhaps even to a gold-backed Islamic Dinar. Arabs have difficulties to agree on something, but give them an enemy and they flock together (not entirely unlike Americans) and make decisions. Once the switch is done, there will not be the necessity to keep so high dollar reserves anymore. The USD will lose most of its market power and gradually becomes Just Another Currency. Other countries will stop caring about unilateral embargos and will trade with the affected areas anyway, to great dismay of American planners. US will attempt to retaliate and cut trade with the offenders. However, the world is big and patents on embargoed goods aren't usually respected in the affected areas. Also don't forget that you foolishly offshored most manufacturing years ago, so patents or not, the rest of the world will keep buying Taiwan and China and Malaysia and Japan. And Ireland-made CPUs. The transnational corporations won't have the incentive to respect US-imposed rules, as they will cut into their profit; the ones that didn't made it yet will move outside of the influence of US law, with the corresponding impact on US tax revenue and the ability to finance further military adventures. Hey - even students are already increasingly choosing non-US universities and scientists are in process of moving conferences elsewhere, in long term influencing your ability of weapon research, further weakening you military-wise. Your policies are signing your own demise, and your beloved free market will stab your own back. Meanwhile, the Empire will cut itself off the world, in a failed attempt to punish the world for non-compliance. What will you do then? You can't bomb everyone. The world needs you much less than you like to think. Now, when you see PNAC won't work, what's your revised plan?
Re: Airport insanity
I repeat: And you were there and kept an eye on each and every guard, interrogator, and prisoner to make sure that the POW's weren't tortured? And I add: And you were there and witnessed the attrocities that said prisoners committed in order to be placed in Gitmo? No? to both questions? Then your comment is worthless. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. - On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 20 Oct 2004 at 13:05, Sunder wrote: Re: Gitmo And you were there and kept an eye on each and every guard, interrogator, and prisoner to make sure that the POW's weren't tortured? Lots of murderous terrorists have been released from Guatanamo, and in the nearly all cases the most serious of their complaints make it sound like a beach resort, except for the fact that they could not leave. A few have more serious complaints. Either they are lying or, those who say they were well treated apart from being held captive are lying. It is hard to believe that people like Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane (who after release announced his intention to resume terrorist activities and that he would attempt to murder his hosts who lobbied to get him release) are lying to cover up torture by the US army.
Re: Airport insanity
On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: Here is my prescription for winning the war on terrorism We SHOULD rely on shock and awe, administered by men in white coats far from the scene. SNIP The US government should expose and condemn these objectionable practices, subvert moderately objectionable regimes, and annihilate more objectionable regimes. The pentagon should deprive moderately objectionable regimes of economic resources, by stealing their oil, destroying their water systems, and cutting off their trade and population movements with the outside world. Syria should suffer annihilation, Iran subversion, Sudan some combination of annihilation and subversion, Saudi Arabia and similar less objectionable regimes should suffer confiscation of oil, destruction of water resources, and loss of contact with the outside world. I see. I'm sure that Dubbya has his own agenda filled with Shoulds, as does Bin Ladin, as did Lenin, as did Hitler, as did Nero, as do you. Each saw (or see) their views as the way to Utopia. Trouble is, which one of you megalomaniacs is/was right? Further to the point, reality is, and what clearly should and makes sense to to you, clearly doesn't to another. The only difference between you and the others above is that you lack the power to bend reality to your whims, and IMHO, that is a very good thing. It is sad the the above list contained megalomaniacs who did possess that power and used it to cause great misery to others, and had to be removed from inflicting their whims on the world at great expense. Perhaps in a couple of weeks, US Citizens will vote one of those out the list as he's already done plenty of damage in the last four years, and save us another miserable four years. So yes, perhaps, in the fine tradition of what should be instead of what is, you, sir, should go fuck yourself. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. -
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 20 Oct 2004 at 13:05, Sunder wrote: Re: Gitmo And you were there and kept an eye on each and every guard, interrogator, and prisoner to make sure that the POW's weren't tortured? Lots of murderous terrorists have been released from Guatanamo, and in the nearly all cases the most serious of their complaints make it sound like a beach resort, except for the fact that they could not leave. A few have more serious complaints. Either they are lying or, those who say they were well treated apart from being held captive are lying. It is hard to believe that people like Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane (who after release announced his intention to resume terrorist activities and that he would attempt to murder his hosts who lobbied to get him release) are lying to cover up torture by the US army. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Meu5wR4zsEnwQaSoYnwnxQo72h782HS6ulS1SVk4 4T0/nieL1lPNTnXWv1TDyaVzHPZZ4tnKN/PpnAawT
Re: Airport insanity
Re: Gitmo And you were there and kept an eye on each and every guard, interrogator, and prisoner to make sure that the POW's weren't tortured? Wow, you are good... or phrased another way, what brand of crack are you smokin' 'cause the rest of us thin it's some really good shit and would like to have some too... --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. - On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: I expected them to be KEPT in Guantanamo. Furthermore, they were not tortured, though they should have been.
Re: Airport insanity
Bill Stewart wrote... Unfortunately, the primary algorithm seems to work like this: - Somebody puts a name on some list because it seems like a good idea at the time, and there's no due process required. - Everybody copies lists from everybody else, with minimal attempt to track where the information comes from. - Database corruption propagates rapidly, so anybody who's on any list because of political corruption like Neo-Cointelpro stays there because of database corruption. And if we add local intelligence in the form of allowing airport screeners to act on their hunches, then there's one more step: Airport Screener didn't get her child-support check from the ex and as a result is saving her crack for lunchtime...frisks well-heeled and arguably spolied white-guy with a little 'tude who proceeds to give said screener some 'feedback'...Airport screener figures she'll brighten up her own morning and prevents said white-guy from flying: Hey, something told me this guy was trouble, so fire me and I'll work for Starbucks instead. One day, I may be willing to subscribe to the commonly held cypherpunk belief that any law from a government is basically a bad thing, but AFAIC we don't need to get that far yet. When laws boil down the decision-in-a-vacuum and whim of the enforcer, Break out the Zombie patriots. -TD _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Airport insanity
James, I appreciate your valiant if futile effort to defend honorable militarism, but you appear not to understand that much of current US military doctrine is aimed at terrorizing enemy forces, en masse, into submission, not merely courageously killing each combatant, mano a mano. Carpet bombing, bunker-busting, cruise missles, stealth attacks, artillery barrages, and tactical and strategic attacks with overwhelming forces in multiples of the opposing force, the so-called shock and awe, are intended to demoralize and terrify the opposition including civilian supporters. These attacks require little or no courage to execute, for most are accomplished with stand-off or remote-controlled platforms, guided by long-radar, GPS, and satellites, systems operated by clean-uniformed technicians who don't bear personal arms, even take showers daily and watch TV of their carnage for entertainment. This contrasts with the special forces which do aim at small scale, precision killing, and which does require courage. Not much of that goes on, way too cheap for the military- industrial empire which treasures big iron, gigantic iron, humongous iron, unbelievably expensive metal, costing millions of dollars per kill, rather imaginary deaths in the Cold War manner. Don't mistake the language and literature of war for the real thing. You find yourself 100 yards from a bomb blast, and your organs go into shutdown from the concussion, yours vision blurs, your limbs won't function, you shit and piss your britches, then another bomb falls 50 yards away and blood squirts from ears eyes and gums due to air compression of your veins and arties, you flop senselessly out of control and try to cry for momma, no air in your lungs, skin turning red from heat, then a third bomb hits 25 yards away and your body begins to come apart from the blast or being scythed by shrapnel -- if your head doesn't leave the carcass, it'll be fried by the metal helmet, your skin will sizzle, boiling blood will spray out of all your orifices, but you'll not get to appreciate this sacrifice for your country, you'll be chatting with your maker, the bodybag team scraping you memorial into the barbage bag, heading for the flag-draped tube. Back in the control room which directed the friendly fire, the boys and girls are whooping at the bomb pattern, high-fiving and fist knocking at the perfect fit of thinking machine and killing machine, no risk to the comfy killers manning the mouses, just like the gameboys taught.
Re: Airport insanity
-- Thomas Shaddack: It isn't a problem for you until it happens to you. Who knows when being interested in anon e-cash will become a ground to blacklist *you*. James A. Donald: I know when it will happen. It will happen when people interested in anon ecash go on suicide missions. :-) Bill Stewart More likely, when anon ecash money-launderers start being accused of funding terrorist activities. When e-currency handlers (cambists) are accused of money laundering terrorist's money, the feds steal the money, but they do not obstruct them from travelling, or, surprisingly, even from doing business - well, perhaps not so surprisingly, for if they stopped them from doing business there would be nothing to steal. When the state uses repressive measures against those that seek to murder us, there is still a large gap between that and using repressive measures against everyone. We are not terrorists, we don't look like terrorists, we don't sound like terrorists. Indeed, the more visible real terrorists are, the less even Tim McViegh looks like a terrorist and the more he looks like a patriot. When people are under attack they are going to lash out, to kill and destroy. Lashing out an external enemy, real or imaginary, is a healthy substitute for lashing out at internal enemies. We do not have a choice of peace, merely a choice between war against external or internal enemies. Clearly, war against external enemies is less dangerous to freedom. War is dangerous to freedom, but we do not have a choice of peace. The question is where the war is to be fought - in America, or elsewhere. War within America will surely destroy freedom. What we need to fear is those that talk about the home front and internal security, those who claim that Christians are as big a threat as Muslims - or that black Muslims are as big a threat as Middle Eastern Muslims. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG cGrCJvmIhJnYLWO2RB3qmnqijcHlOOsA7iklRoZD 4Ar75eLN10XbfJw/mqPpGQeUW0SzMlz4CLrpHIeEe
Re: Airport insanity
At 12:18 PM 10/18/2004, James A. Donald wrote: http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041018-124854-2279r.htm : : Despite gaining their freedom by signing pledges to : : renounce violence, at least seven former prisoners : : of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have : : returned to terrorism, at times with deadly : : consequences. : : : : At least two are believed to have died in fighting : : in Afghanistan, and a third was recaptured during a : : raid of a suspected training camp in Afghanistan, : : Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman, said : : last week. Others are at large. : : Additional former detainees have expressed a desire : : to rejoin the fight, be it against U.N. peacekeepers : : in Afghanistan, Americans in Iraq or Russian : : soldiers in Chechnya. None of those things sound like terrorism to me, just basic military violence, though certainly the American and Russian militaries aren't the only ones engaging in terrorist activities in South Asia and some of these ~146 people may be among them. But most of the Warlord-vs-Warlord fighting in Afghanistan isn't terrorism, and most of the Iraqi Resistance isn't either, and I'd have expected that a staunch anti-communist like James wouldn't mind people shooting at Russian soldiers even though they're no longer Soviets. At 11:38 AM 10/18/2004, James A. Donald wrote: Tyler Durden Let's just state the obvious: September 11th occurred not because we had a few crazy Muslim fundamentalists out there that decided they hate our freedoms. The struck us because we've been fuckin' over a large swath of the Muslim (not only Arab) world for 100 years or so And the reason they are murdering Iraqi Christians, Filipinos, Ambionese and Timorese is? While the ones murdering Iraqi Christians may be doing it out of religious hatred as well as the perception that the Americans are running a Christian crusade against the Muslim world, the Indonesian invasions of their neighbors such as East Timor are just good old nationalist expansion - the US has been funding the Indonesian military for ~40 years because they're our Anti-Communist buddies, and who cares about their human rights records. You didn't expect that behaviour to stop just because there were no longer any Commies around, did you?
Re: Airport insanity
Damian Gerow I've had more than one comment about my ID photos that amount to basically: You look like you've just left a terrorist training camp. As Erma Bombeck wrote, by the time you look like your passport photo, it's time to come home from vacation. An extra couple of red-eye flights don't help, either. At 11:27 AM 10/16/2004, James A. Donald wrote: If you really look like the shoe bomber, then you should have to drive, or use public transport. James misspoke here - the only public air transport I'm aware of in the US is run by the military, and or if he meant that people who look like shaggy-haired Brits with real leather shoes should be banned from privately-run transportation systems like airplanes and Greyhound, that pretty much leaves Amtrack as the only long-distance transport option for civilians, since city and county busses normally don't go very far. At 11:27 AM 10/16/2004, James A. Donald wrote: Provided the number of people you throw off planes is rather small, I don't see the problem. Depends a lot on how high up the planes are when you throw them off... There's the concept of due process of law that the Bush administration isn't very familiar with that determines when you're Constitutionally permitted to deprive people of their liberties. At 11:38 AM 10/18/2004, Thomas Shaddack wrote: Personally, as a relatively frequent flyer, I worry much more about things like cutting corners of fuselage and engine maintenance and quality of fuel (and, perhaps even more, the quality of onboard coffee) than about bombers on board. Unfortunately, cutting the quality of the onboard coffee means that you're more likely to look like a shoe-bomber by the time the plane arrives. Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 19 Oct 2004 at 14:46, John Young wrote: you appear not to understand that much of current US military doctrine is aimed at terrorizing enemy forces, en masse, into submission, not merely courageously killing each combatant, mano a mano. Carpet bombing, bunker-busting, cruise missles, stealth attacks, artillery barrages, and tactical and strategic attacks with overwhelming forces in multiples of the opposing force, the so-called shock and awe, are intended to demoralize and terrify the opposition including civilian supporters. These attacks require little or no courage to execute, for most are accomplished with stand-off or remote-controlled platforms, guided by long-radar, GPS, and satellites, systems operated by clean-uniformed technicians who don't bear personal arms, even take showers daily and watch TV of their carnage for entertainment. If only it were true. That is why I recommend readily achievable goals, like stealing the oil, rather than goals that require direct involvment mano a mano. But in reality, the US government is pursuing goals such as building democracy that require Americans to walk the streets of Baghdad, a daily exercise of tremendous courage. Here is my prescription for winning the war on terrorism We SHOULD rely on shock and awe, administered by men in white coats far from the scene. A number of governments are disturbingly tolerant of terror. Usually they are only tolerant of terror against their non Islamic subjects, and disapprove of external terror committed by their subjects against outsiders, but the two cannot readily be separated. One leads to the other. The US government should expose and condemn these objectionable practices, subvert moderately objectionable regimes, and annihilate more objectionable regimes. The pentagon should deprive moderately objectionable regimes of economic resources, by stealing their oil, destroying their water systems, and cutting off their trade and population movements with the outside world. Syria should suffer annihilation, Iran subversion, Sudan some combination of annihilation and subversion, Saudi Arabia and similar less objectionable regimes should suffer confiscation of oil, destruction of water resources, and loss of contact with the outside world. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG e1oHDIrpt6CyLSJ0viuvD+nsJlXpjVCUxG/FZL0R 4eteebtmUGC9WtT7zAMaOVdF81wmFCSz8fug2AQef
Re: Airport insanity..Ethnicity is Bullshit
-- Tyler Durden Let's just state the obvious: September 11th occurred not because we had a few crazy Muslim fundamentalists out there that decided they hate our freedoms. The struck us because we've been fuckin' over a large swath of the Muslim (not only Arab) world for 100 years or so James A. Donald: And the reason they are murdering Iraqi Christians, Filipinos, Ambionese and Timorese is? And I forgot to mention a hundred thousand or more Sudanese, not to mention that Al Quaeda murdered far more Afghans than Americans. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG U7+z5L2eeFW+S1IwpXSNX1hEyOCuQCcGDFWykNQj 4klCW0iUxAJl1ub0DnUbDZKbwXJdS70AuL86+gLTI
Re: Airport insanity
-- Tyler Durden Your statement was that the US took special care in avoiding harm to Muslims. In this case we have Muslims tortured at Guantanamo and now angry as hell. And you expected...what? I expected them to be KEPT in Guantanamo. Furthermore, they were not tortured, though they should have been. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG wCUg52ZJNzaMD0ZPioMTruGISGd3DDwU6jUMELl/ 41LiTXyUsja0zJksTRtCgVaYxSideYIzzbGD/3Qq5
RE: Airport insanity
-- On 18 Oct 2004 at 13:35, John Young wrote: James is wired to be unempathetic about victims, as was McVeigh, as are fearless military and criminal killers, as are national leaders of a yellow stripe who never taste the bitter end of their exculpatory spin. What makes the wire work is that they do not believe that what they do unto others will be done to them. So you think our enemies should try to be even more savage and cruel than they already are? That would be difficult. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 8jFPc5YyznRSoFsz/euu3E71jE/C2JzYp7OIfB5b 4xNxnhSKG4pS9CinRKGV1bL4JQv8SATqhIxtUwoyy
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 18 Oct 2004 at 15:31, Tyler Durden wrote: Aside from that, your posts are completely saturated with the They're more evil than we are therefore it's OK for us to be fuckin them over logic. They are more evil that we are, as demonstrated by their propensity to kill all sorts of people, including each other, and including us. This forces us to do something violent. Imposing democracy on Iraq at gunpoint was probably a bad idea, but it was selected as the option that would raise the least objection. Any more effectual measure is going to piss you lot off even more. A more effectual measure and considerably less costly measure would have been to confiscate Iraq's and Saudi Arabia's oil reserves, and ethnically cleanse all male muslims above the age of puberty from the oil bearing areas. This democracy stuff did not work in Haiti and things look considerably more difficult, and more expensive, in Iraq. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG sN+N7EZrY5IEjAANVirGQOOx7UYwBe9YPumiQ4uI 4PHJIbv0IpxzyH8CXPzWKj/497VCciWU9zZler22L
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
-- On 19 Oct 2004 at 10:23, Tyler Durden wrote: Most Cypherpunks would agree that free markets are a good thing. Basically, if you leave people alone, they'll figure out how to meet the needs that are out in there and, in the process, get a few of the goodies available to us as vapors on this world. I assume you would agree to this. There are however some bad people, who want to conquer and rule. Some of them are nastier than others. Those people need to be killed. Killing some of them is regrettably controversial. Killing terrorists should not be controversial. More than that, some of the countries we've been kicked out or prevented from influencing have been modernizing rapidly, the most obvious example is China and Vietnam. Your history is back to front. China and Vietnam stagnated, until they invited capitalists back in, and promised they could get rich. Mean while the countries that we were not kicked out of for example Taiwan and South Korea, became rich. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG y7IV2I3RzvTRwezbeYDac49MQJFtu4pLd09CpaV1 4wwT8kfGpRCZY7aO/mhgeoOcaR9vYeYFWae8aMM/M
Re: Airport insanity
-- James A. Donald: Sadre protected himself with Iraqi women and young children as human shields, showing that he expected the Pentagon to show more concern for Iraqi lives than he did. Thomas Shaddack Pentagon protects their people by distance - being it by bombing from high altitude, or by using cruise missiles. Everybody uses the technology available to them. What's bad on it? Invariably, the side that uses the defensive measure - being it smart weapons[1] or human shields - classifies it as tactical, while the other side considers it cowardly. But no one would ever use human shields as a protection against Sadr. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG baNQWrpILKDhhFIBGXuMuSPmLUwgDjnVj7KGTDrs 4cKV4IqQITCwrJCTQCt5kQpfh5eiP+IX2EqGFdRA8
RE: Airport insanity
From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 16, 2004 7:01 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Airport insanity .. On 15 Oct 2004 at 16:32, Tyler Durden wrote: .. He might have looked odd from the photo you saw circulated in the press, but I'd bet a lot of money no one would have picked him as looking like a terrorist. But the people sitting beside him did pick him as looking like a terrorist. What's the false positive rate? It's one thing if you see some guy lighting a fuse sticking out of his shoe, and quite another if you say You look kinda terroristy; I'm sending you off the plane. This works as a reasonable strategy only if: a. The probability ratios don't work out so that the overwhelming majority of people you throw off planes are innocent. (They almost certainly will, just because terrorists are so rare.) b. The terrorists can't figure out how to make themselves look less threatening. --digsig James A. Donald --John
RE: Airport insanity
-- Thomas Shaddack: a. The probability ratios don't work out so that the overwhelming majority of people you throw off planes are innocent. James A. Donald: Provided the number of people you throw off planes is rather small, I don't see the problem. Thomas Shaddack wrote: It isn't a problem for you until it happens to you. Who knows when being interested in anon e-cash will become a ground to blacklist *you*. I know when it will happen. It will happen when people interested in anon ecash go on suicide missions. :-) People who are, for the most part, not like us are trying to kill people like us. Let us chuck all those people not-like-us off those planes where most of the passengers are people like us. This really is not rocket science. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG KbVFhnyRmgiunG9XxU98lrDIIf2ZSXYFmkT7Dfe 4TIi2Ou/RGdPMFC3/LaIxWHM688e/B3FsA3jjPjK0
Re: Airport insanity
On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 15:17, Thomas Shaddack wrote: Pentagon protects their people by distance - being it by bombing from high altitude, or by using cruise missiles. Everybody uses the technology available to them. What's bad on it? Invariably, the side that uses the defensive measure - being it smart weapons[1] or human shields - classifies it as tactical, while the other side considers it cowardly. A nice example of symmetry in asymmetry. [1] The defensive aspect here is to allow the attackers to attack from distance beyond the reach of the other side's active defenses, thus not risking anything more than a piece of overpriced electronics. If some asshole is coming at you with a knife, it's cowardly to shoot him before he's in range? Dumbass.
RE: Airport insanity
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: People who are, for the most part, not like us are trying to kill people like us. Let us chuck all those people not-like-us off those planes where most of the passengers are people like us. Thomas Shaddack Define us? Easier to define them Us is those people who do not much resemble them.
RE: Airport insanity
At 12:07 PM -0700 10/18/04, James A. Donald wrote: On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: People who are, for the most part, not like us are trying to kill people like us. Let us chuck all those people not-like-us off those planes where most of the passengers are people like us. Thomas Shaddack Define us? Easier to define them Us is those people who do not much resemble them. Here's *my* current definition of us: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=philodox-20path=tg%2Fdetail%2F-%2F0385720386%2Fqid%3D1098128506%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fref%3Dpd_csp_1%3Fv%3Dglance%26s%3Dbooks%26n%3D507846 A great book. The world's greatest business plan. Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Airport insanity
A very large number of muslims, particularly arab muslims- a small minority in the US, a large minority or substantial majority in many muslim countries, continually seek to confront the infidel in a wide variety of ways, and interpret our politeness and care to avoid harming muslims as weakness and fear. I would bet that statements that sound very, very close to this were uttered prior to Iraq II. Care to Avoid harming Muslims? You are either trolling with better skill than even I, the Great Tyler Durden could muster, or else you are completely and totally ignorant of world history. Go read some history books and you will understand the reason we (the US) has been targeted in particular. You'll quickly find that their hatred of us in not accidental. As for your looks like a mad bomber ideas, are you suggesting that, the day after a militant Indonesian muslim commits an act of terrorism, we should then exclude all asians from our airplanes, buses and subways? I don't think you've thought this out very well. -TD From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Airport insanity Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 10:27:38 -0700 -- James A. Donald: If you really look like the shoe bomber, then you should have to drive. Thomas Shaddack Ever tried to drive to Europe? Or to Hawaii? James A. Donald: Hard biscuit Thomas Shaddack Do I interpret this statement correctly as the endorsement of ethnicity-based travel restrictions? No. You can take a boat, if they will have you, drive to Mexico to fly with people less likely to be the target of mad bombers who look like you, hire a private plane, or take a long swim. Why airplanes don't count as a form of public transport? They do. I am afraid either I don't understand you correctly, or you are contradicting yourself. I was unclear. To clarify: So far the terrorists have not struck at buses outside Israel. When they do start striking at buses, then people who look like mad bombers should not be allowed on buses. Until then, they should be allowed on buses. The proposition that we need to walk delicately for fear of disturbing the tender sensibilities of arabs seems laughable. Being told I can't use some quite common resource, in this case an important means of transportation, because of so irrelevant factor as ethnicity, isn't exactly delicate. A very large number of muslims, particularly arab muslims- a small minority in the US, a large minority or substantial majority in many muslim countries, continually seek to confront the infidel in a wide variety of ways, and interpret our politeness and care to avoid harming muslims as weakness and fear. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Kn476w4tT/gvivWH76W69/lBhHE5o0IKQ1oYJggS 4AiBUDha46+ldVnTeFiyvMwJoG9A/oE/Ac0FEd/uH _ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee® Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
RE: Airport insanity
-- On 16 Oct 2004 at 19:42, Adam wrote: First of all, there were 19 children killed in the OKC bombing. Were these children guilty of some crime worthy of being killed by a truck bomb? He was not targeting children. Second of all, you make it sound like McVeigh was just your average-Joe American. How could a non-fundamentalist knowingly kill 168 people? Osama Bin Laden is not a fundamentalist, yet he killed three thousand people. His religion is more like the Muslim equivalent of liberation theology, which is as far from fundamentalism as you can get. Third, does not being a suicide bomber make your cause more noble? Not being a suicide bomber means there is no need to screen you from flying on planes. Curious why you seem to think McVeigh was justified in his actions. BATF. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG jn1FZy8NQFwnLH6A/ePT+CTiAROr7+lergg2poqX 44kTUpiFNIutpZGh02oJsBCI9pZVnZ/MDSF8OJEsG
RE: Airport insanity
At 04:01 PM 10/16/04 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: Tim McVeigh did not target innocents, nor was he a suicide bomber. Neither did M. Atta et al. target innocents, he targeted those who elected the Caesars. And they were not pursuing suicide (a Moslem sin), since they are enjoying a comfy afterlife for their martyrdom. Nor, incidentally, was he a fundamentalist or a racist. Neither is Osama et al.; only infidels call him a fundie, and the Jihadists have no problem with lighter or asian folks who subscribe. In fact, they can be quite useful, as they don't fit the rascist profiling that the TSA goons practice...
Re: Airport insanity..Ethnicity is Bullshit
-- Tyler Durden Let's just state the obvious: September 11th occurred not because we had a few crazy Muslim fundamentalists out there that decided they hate our freedoms. The struck us because we've been fuckin' over a large swath of the Muslim (not only Arab) world for 100 years or so And the reason they are murdering Iraqi Christians, Filipinos, Ambionese and Timorese is? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG m2hVqEkFSYQ0PKxyclcvEkjwbbFYMElmQS5ao0Uh 47AIr2bZ3JXSCGM1iNSQlysfAVI6XHBVHWeEvaM/E
Re: Airport insanity
There is still of course the matter of the unexploded bombs in that building that were dug out, and that the ATF received a Don't come in to work page on their beepers, and the seize and classification of all surveilance video tapes from things like ATM's across the street. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. - On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: Mc Veigh did not target innocents, and if he did target a plane full of innocents, perhaps in order to kill one guilty man on board, there is no way in hell he himself would be on that plane.
Re: Airport insanity
-- James A. Donald: Mc Veigh did not target innocents, and if he did target a plane full of innocents, perhaps in order to kill one guilty man on board, there is no way in hell he himself would be on that plane. John Kelsey Well, he targeted a building full of innocents, so he could get some BATF people in one part of the building, right? I guess I'm missing the part where he took especial care not to blow up people who had no connection with the Waco disaster. How would you differentiate his target selection from that of the 9/11 attackers who hit the Pentagon? If the 9/11 attackers had *only* targeted the pentagon, that would have been fine by me. I am one of those who cheered in the movie theater when the aliens blow up Washington in the movie Independence day Though you're right, he didn't do the suicide bomber thing. Does that constitute a guarantee that no white terrorist ever will do so? It is a good indication that sufficiently few will ever do so that it is not worth while checking shoes during boarding --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG tvzXxqFqeKwLL20vEBehl+eK0AJ0cAAzrXFkno0 44yKcITMM8GEtW/RIPtI+Em4Ylp7aOgWb/fCmC9AG
Re: Airport insanity
WOW! Let's examine your little clip here. Tyler Durden Care to Avoid harming Muslims? Your statement was that the US took special care in avoiding harm to Muslims. In this case we have Muslims tortured at Guantanamo and now angry as hell. And you expected...what? http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041018-124854-2279r.htm : : Despite gaining their freedom by signing pledges to : : renounce violence, at least seven former prisoners : : of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have : : returned to terrorism, at times with deadly : : consequences. Wow! Tortured prisoners signed statements and then went back on their promises? The nerve! Note the incredible linguistic bias. Returned to terrorism?...That's a laughable statement for people who returned to their own country to fight an invader. And the word Despite it's arguable even more hilarious. And of course, your quote of this piece in this context points to your ever-present logic of They're more evil than we are therefore it's OK if we fuck them over. : : Additional former detainees have expressed a desire : : to rejoin the fight, be it against U.N. peacekeepers : : in Afghanistan, Americans in Iraq or Russian : : soldiers in Chechnya. Hum. Muislims helping Muslims to push the US or Russians out of their occupied countries. I've seen worse uses for religion. But more importantly, are you seeing where this is headed? Let's forget differing ideologies and get really, really practical here. If you or I were grabbed in our own country and brought 7000 miles away, and then tortured for 2 years, wouldn't you most likely become convinced that the torturing nation was a great evil that had to be stopped? Even more, what if your life sucked in your own country and you didn't have a lot to live for anyway? The violence sown by Western powers will continue to result in further Septemeber 11ths. Simply increasing the scope or intensity (a la Iraq II) isn't going to make things better. -TD --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG gZPWnxSpOCzn/7t/pyram/Z9ixbExE1haS5OzFBm 4i6xvRLGqBtHJfp8bm6GLFqF6pwABThwj/PjOpaVx _ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee® Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: Airport insanity
From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 16, 2004 7:22 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Airport insanity .. Oh, and every white American (recall numerous references to Mr. McVeigh) Mc Veigh did not target innocents, and if he did target a plane full of innocents, perhaps in order to kill one guilty man on board, there is no way in hell he himself would be on that plane. Well, he targeted a building full of innocents, so he could get some BATF people in one part of the building, right? I guess I'm missing the part where he took especial care not to blow up people who had no connection with the Waco disaster. How would you differentiate his target selection from that of the 9/11 attackers who hit the Pentagon? Though you're right, he didn't do the suicide bomber thing. Does that constitute a guarantee that no white terrorist ever will do so? (After all, an awful lot of Arab terrorists also plan on living to fight another day.) --digsig James A. Donald --John
Re: Airport insanity
From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 16, 2004 2:27 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Airport insanity For whatever reason, pictures of me always come out looking like some crazed religious fanatic. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to bomb anything. And I sure hope that I'm not going to be detained or denied entry because of how I *look*, alone. If you really look like the shoe bomber, then you should have to drive, or use public transport. --digsig James A. Donald Surely this is a matter best left to the private companies offering transportation, subject only to restrictions to prevent future 9/11 attacks. --John
RE: Airport insanity
I think you need to read this remake of the First they came for the commies poem. Short translation - whenever anyone's rights are being trampled upon, whether it affects you or not, you should protest. Goes along with one of the unsaid credos about cypherpunks: I absolutely disagree with what she said, but I'll defend to the death her right to say it. which along with Cypherpunks write code fell quite short of its goal. http://buffaloreport.com/021123rohde.html Here I'll save you the trouble. - - - They came for the Muslims, and I didn't speak up... By Stephen Rohde (Author's Note: The USA Patriot Act became law a little over one year ago.) First they came for the Muslims, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Muslim. Then they came for the immigrants, detaining them indefinitely solely on the certification of the attorney general, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't an immigrant. Then they came to eavesdrop on suspects consulting with their attorneys, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a suspect. Then they came to prosecute noncitizens before secret military commissions, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a noncitizen. Then they came to enter homes and offices for unannounced sneak and peak searches, and I didn't speak up because I had nothing to hide. Then they came to reinstate Cointelpro and resume the infiltration and surveillance of domestic religious and political groups, and I didn't speak up because I no longer participated in any groups. Then they came to arrest American citizens and hold them indefinitely without any charges and without access to lawyers, and I didn't speak up because I would never be arrested. Then they came to institute TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) recruiting citizens to spy on other citizens and I didn't speak up because I was afraid. Then they came for anyone who objected to government policy because it only aided the terrorists and gave ammunition to America's enemies, and I didn't speak up ... because I didn't speak up. Then they came for me, and by that time, no one was left to speak up. Forum Column (from the Daily Journal, 11/20/02). Stephen Rohde is an attorney. He edited American Words of Freedom and was was president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. Does Rohde's text seem familiar? It should. He based it on one of the web's most widely-circulated texts about silence in the face of evil: In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn't speak up because I was a protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. - On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: I know when it will happen. It will happen when people interested in anon ecash go on suicide missions. :-) People who are, for the most part, not like us are trying to kill people like us. Let us chuck all those people not-like-us off those planes where most of the passengers are people like us. This really is not rocket science.
RE: Airport insanity
At 07:42 PM 10/16/04 -0400, Adam wrote: First of all, there were 19 children killed in the OKC bombing. Were these children guilty of some crime worthy of being killed by a truck bomb? They were being used as human shields by the fedcriminals in the building. They were collateral damage, in the modern parlance. Ask the Iraqis to explain it to you. Second of all, you make it sound like McVeigh was just your average-Joe American. How could a non-fundamentalist knowingly kill 168 people? He was a retired US soldier, carrying out his mission to protect the Constitution.
RE: Airport insanity
James is wired to be unempathetic about victims, as was McVeigh, as are fearless military and criminal killers, as are national leaders of a yellow stripe who never taste the bitter end of their exculpatory spin. What makes the wire work is that they do not believe that what they do unto others will be done to them. This is their faith, blind, cross-eyedly focussed vision which sees a right safe path down the thinnest of righteous tunnels of imagined invulnerability. Call it the armor of cowards. Call it fundamentalism, or patriotism, or pinheads up their tiny assholes. Been there: saw the vision, sniffed the odor, licked the sides of the honey-dripping tunnel, gagged, muttered what the shit is this stuff I've been preached is myrhh out of the backdoors of virgins, yelled, hey, sarge, get me out of my hole. Sarge was long gone, preaching and laughing like the devil. AIDS of the mind is hard to cure.
RE: Airport insanity
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: a. The probability ratios don't work out so that the overwhelming majority of people you throw off planes are innocent. Provided the number of people you throw off planes is rather small, I don't see the problem. It isn't a problem for you until it happens to you. Who knows when being interested in anon e-cash will become a ground to blacklist *you*. Do you propose a way to appeal the decision? Will the flight (and associated losses, eg. lost contract due to a missed meeting, etc.) reimbursed?
