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InfoWar 17 (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet')



Title: The True Story of the Internet Part II


The True Story of the InterNet
Part III

InfoWar

Final Frontier of the Digital Revolution

Behind the ElectroMagnetic Curtain

by TruthMonger <[email protected]>

Copyright 1997 Pearl Publishing



InfoWar Table of Contents

The Real Solution

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

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

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

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

"How many of the citizens need to be eliminated or imprisoned in order to protect the children?"
The plaintive voice seemed to emerge from within The Real Guy, himself, as did the answer, as he took on the dark visage of Gomez himself, and began to scream,
"All of them! Aallll of thheeemmm!"


Bubba Rom Dos shook himself awake, trembling.
"A dream within a dream." he said, to no one in particular.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And not vice-versa." the Cowboy added, as an afterthought, thinking about the battle over control of the InterNet that was shaping up, a century in their past.


The Solution Within The Solution

The Real Guy awoke from his nap in the early afternoon. He had had another dream, but this time he recognized it as being one wholly his own, as a result of poring over a mountain of posts to the CypherPunks mailing list that morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim McVeigh had done what within him lay…

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

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

Subject: Re: News: Ross Anderson in article on US export vs Euro comsec
From: "William H. Geiger III" <[email protected]>
To: Ernest Hua <[email protected]>
CC: [email protected], [email protected]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In <[email protected]>, on 09/18/97
at 09:52 AM, Ernest Hua <[email protected]> said:
> U.S. Crypto Laws Cripple Euros, Expert Says
> (09/17/97; 5:00 p.m. EDT)
> By Douglas Hayward, TechWire

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

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

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

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

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

The Solution: Anarchy!

The Solution Within the Solution: The individual.

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

"Close ranks…every man for himself!"
-the Unknown CypherPunk


"The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre"

"WebWorld & the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs"

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