Re: the art of fighting without fighting

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

I'm wading through this queue of all this cypherpunks mail about me on a
FIFO basis, when I have the time to do so...

At 2:33 pm -0500 on 11/16/97, Tim May wrote:


> Hettinga seems to think I am criminally liable in case some terrorist
> decides to spend $10 million or so (the going rate, I hear) to buy a nuke
> so that he can make me happy in my, Hettinga claims, "will no one rid me of
> this city of pesitlence and vermin" entreaties.

Criminally liable to the extent that some guys with uniforms would bang on
your door someday about it, yeah, probably. Whether your lawyers could get
you out of it, is a matter between your lawyers and theirs, Tim. Certainly
if you show up at the door and, um, put a gun up someone's nose, you'll
have a harder time arguing your case in court. :-).


Besides, I think you're just doing all this to *get* that knock on the
door. Which, I guess, is your own business.

However, I reserve the right to criticize you about it, because, frankly,
when you're not looking like you're grandstanding, you look like a loon,
Tim.

> While I believe the odds are increasing that a nuclear or biological weapon
> will be used against the centers of oppression--Washington, New York, Tel
> Aviv, etc.--I certainly can't imagine any self-respecting member of Abu
> Nidal's team, for example, spending this kind of bread just to make Tim May
> happy.

It's amazing how much of this I agree with. It's what I meant at the
beginning, with the "soft targets" remark, before I started to tear you a
new asshole for being such a yutz. Clearly, someday, some idiot is going to
frag a major city on principle. Hope I'm not there when it happens. And,
when it happens, I'm obviously in the wrong part of the country. :-).

And, again, I don't think Abu Nidal, etc., *is* listening to you at all,
Tim, but I bet in your finer moments, you hope someone like them will, and,
if people *won't* pay attention to you, then you're going to get closer and
closer to *making* them pay attention to you, even physically, someday.

I expect that you're going to force a physical confrontation with the law,
with almost the same certainty that some idiot will frag a big city someday.

At this point, I'd consider it evolution in action. However, I reserve the
right to call you a loon for it, Tim, because, when you talk like that, you
*are* acting loony.


> But people like Hettinga and Crispin believe in guilt by viewpoint, and in
> keeping quiet so as not to make the authorities mad.

No. I believe that you have the right to say anything you want. So do I,
modulo the occasional charge of cypher-apostasy. :-). I'm not saying that
you should keep your mouth shut, Tim. I'm pointing out that you're
threatening a federal judge, and some people won't take kindly to that. Jim
Bell is a prime example of what happens, and I'll talk about that in
another post.

Word to the wise, in other words. If you want to martyr yourself, it's your
business, I guess. I just think it's a waste of your talents, and I think
you're inspiring other people to waste their talents as well. Kind of like
putting Oppenheimer or Von Braun in a trench.

The war, if it ever comes at all, and, frankly, I your think delusions of
impending civil war are exactly that, ain't gonna be fought, much less
start, in Corrolitos, Tim. Get over it.


> (Hettinga plans to call the cops because of this comment.)

That, of course, is a crock of shit, and I won't dignify it with any other
response.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
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