Re: Mad as Hell

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

At 11:23 am -0500 on 11/13/97, Tim May wrote:

> >:-). Actually, Tim, I don't think it's dangerous, at least to me
> >personally, and to anyone else on this list, for that matter. What I said
> >was, you're counterproductive to your own cause (you could become a poster
> >for statism, as I said before), and, if you continued to directly threaten
> >the lives of people who had the power to hurt you, in public, with direct
>
> You have now repeated this "Tim has directly threatened the life of a
> federal judge" charge several times.
>
> This is false.


Well, I certainly used two forms of the word 'direct', right there in black
and white, didn't I?

And, having just watched Nat Hentoff say on TV that a threat would be
something where you specified the time and place of some kind of violence
against a person, maybe your saying something like,

> But in many ways, this is good news. The war is coming faster than I
> thought.
>
> The judge in this case has committed a capital crime.

was *not* a threat against a judge?

Right, Tim, if you say so.

I expect that, in the legal, Hentoff sense, it's not a threat. After all,
you didn't specify a date and time, and you didn't even say you,
personally, were going to do anything at all. However, it's probably more
than enough reason for someone with too may kevlar coats back in the office
closet to trump something up and force a confrontation with you, just like
they did with Bell. Well, no. Bell's arrest was just a byproduct of his
car's siezure, like they said in the papers, wasn't it?

Nonetheless, it's  well within conception that, since everyone's breaking
the law somehow, that something you're doing or have done would be used to
cause a percipitating event, which you yourself say you would respond to
with force.

Astoundingly, it also seems like you're *trying* to create a confrontation.
You seem to dare to them to do something so that you can meet them at the
door, Mossberg in hand. "Please don't throw me in that briar patch", in
other words. For instance, just last night, you said,

> And the rumors are mounting about a series of possible raids around the
> holidays this Thanksgiving Day. The FBI has acknowledge the fax sent out as
> legitimate.
>
> While militia members and Cypherpunks may not be able to withstand a full
> out war for very long, the mere willingness to defend oneself can itself
> act as a deterrent. This is basic game theory, basic strategy.

It sounds an awful lot like Fort Apache, Corrolitos, to me, Tim.

> You claim I am doing "the cause" a disservice.

Well, your "cause", whatever it is, certainly. I'm not sure, for instance,
that holing yourself up behind a steel-reinforced door with lots of fun
firepower is doing much for the spread of strong cryptography, I'll grant
you that...

> I claim you are spreading
> misinformation and trumping up a charge which you must hope is being read
> by the Feds.

Right. And when Thanksgiving day comes, Tim, and the no-knock doesn't
happen, or, even more interesting, nothing happens anywhere on Thanksgiving
day, what are you going to say about my "misinformation" attack, then? That
it "failed"?

Remarkable. You win no matter what, right? Prove to me that there is no
conspiracy? Or flying saucers, or whatever else?

:-).


Frankly, Tim, I don't think the Feds really care about you, or anything
you've done, to date. Or at least they wouldn't, if you weren't, like the
forest knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, daring them to hack off
another limb all the time.

It seems to me that, before this little interchange we've been in, where
someone finally stood up and said that the emperor had no clothes (at least
as far as kevlar outerware and the global conspiracy to destroy the
American Way is concerned) you would have continued to try to bait the
federales, imaginary or not, with inflamatory trolls like those above,
apparently in the hope that you could force a showdown with them.

Hell, maybe you'll actually make it happen, someday. I guess I won't be
surprised when it does. Or particularly care, even, given your vitriolic
reception the mirror in your face.

> You sicken me.

Um, well... Take a pill, maybe?

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga


-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 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'
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