Re: Declan as a Crime Beat Reporter

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 11:37 AM -0700 6/18/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>At 20:34 -0700 6/17/97, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
>>hee, hee, I hope that Declan comes up with an amusing mishmash of your
>>own life. turnabout is fair play. maybe if he doesn't, someone else
>>can take a stab at satirizing mr. debauched millionaire playboy
>>who dabbles in cryptography theory.
>
>I was far from offended by Tim's post; in fact, I thought it was hilarious.

And I took pains to make sure it was not taken as a malicious attack. It
was, if anything, a reflection of my realization (known before, but not in
this version) that Washington is literally nothing more than just the
world's largest shakedown racket, with taxpayers being extorted amounts of
money probably unprecedented in world history (*), with various factions
dispensing favors to some and punishing others.

Bruce Sterling, at CFP '97, had an awe-inspiring rant about this essential
criminality of governments around the world, how they use their powers to
shake down businessmen and citizens, how they are complicit in the drug
trade, how, of course, the drug trade wouldn't even exist in its current
criminal form if governments did not collude to criminalize drugs and then
run drugs in to their customers in the CIA's C-5 cargo planes. Sterling
discussed the "government as biggest crime syndicate" situtations in
several major countries, including Mexico, where the "Institutionalized
Revolutionary Party" (I'm not making that up, a la Orwell) kills its
opponents and runs the drug economy, Russia ('nuff said), Turkey (right
wing Pope killers, CIA station chiefs, and drug lords riding in the same
crashed car), and, last but not least, the United States of America.

(I hope a transcript is somewhere available on the Web, but his delivery
was done to perfection, so I hope a video of it is someday realeased.
Airing his 10-minute (I think) speech would be vastly more helpful to the
anti-fascist cause than all the meaningless "I take the Pledge" PR stuff.)


>But perhaps I will come up with a "Day in the Life of Tim 'Lock and Load'
>May, renegade cypherpunk, millionaire playboy, and curmudgeonly
>crypto-anarchist." Anyone want to join me in writing it?

No skin off my nose. Some good satire would be refreshing. Whomever was
doing the "Cypherpunks Enquirer" has apparently moved on to other things.
Neither Vulis' robograms nor Detweiler's foamings are very interesting.

--Tim May


There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."