Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, bgt wrote: > > On Wed, 2004-01-14 at 00:20, bgt wrote: > > > On Tue, 2004-01-13 at 10:48, cubic-dog wrote: > > > > in force, because, we finally get slave, indentured servants who > > > > will either take the 90 cents and hour or be deported. > > > > > > This kind of rhetoric is extremely irritating. If they can > > > be deported, they are neither slaves or indentured servants. > > ... Anyway... "be productive or be deported" does not constitute I don't think I said that, you put it in quotes, implying I did. It's an okay paraphrase though, so we'll take it like that. More like I said, without regard to what you DEALT for, the is no impetus on the "man" to pay what was agreed to. If you don't like it, you will be deported. This does a nice job of creating a new, even lower class. It substantially lowers the bar for wage negotiation. The US Department of Labor has already published guides for business outlining how to avoid paying overtime. http://www.thetip.org/art_689_icle.html This new work of the Bush, just really helps cap the issue. The ditch diggers in question, were -as a group- being paid (I asked) $500 to put in that run of conduit. As there were six of them, and it took a couple of days, well, do the math. Much cheaper than renting a ditchwitch and operator. They had done this before, and would do it again. Some runs go better than others, and I'll be some days they might actually make as much as a 7/11 clerk. But not many. What happens when the "man" arbitrarily decides to stiff them from their payment? Will the labor department come to mitigate? Or will immigration come to deport? What's more likely under the proposed "guest worker" rule? > slavery, and neither does the fact that someone is willing to work > for substantially less than you. In fact, it is only Free people > who can sell their product (including their own labor) for whatever > they want (and, obviously, that someone will pay). Who can sell their labour for whatever they want? I am only aware of folks who can sell their labour for what the market will bear. As long as they only want the status quo, well, then that's fine. When the market will only bear 90p, Well, making the note on the townhouse is gonna be kinda tricky, ain't it? > --bgt
Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
On Thu, 1 Jan 2004, Tim May wrote: > On Jan 1, 2004, at 8:51 AM, Tyler Durden wrote: > > I'll tell you a story. > > > > Back in the late 1980s I taught at a notorious HS in Bedford > >snip >snip > > Second, we are fast-moving toward a society and economy where only > those who _wanted_ to study math and science by the time they were in > high school will have anything more than a menial, makework job. Now > whether they go the full course and get a college degree or advanced > degree is not so much the point as it is that they were intrinsically > interested. Shoot, Sign me UP for that menial, makework job. For the first time in YEARS, I finally saw ditchdiggers at work, Guess it's finally cheaper again to use "guest workers" than to rent a ditchwitch. The equipment rental houses aren't too happy about that I'll bet. So much for the information super-hiway. The "guest workers" were pulling conduit for fiber through the muck. Mom always said I was going to be a ditch digger, I was cool with that. Turns out, that it made more sense to build equipment that did a much better job at ditching in less time than manual ditching. Nearly half a century later, I ended up a network administrator. Kinda like digging ditches, but not as healthy. Now, thanks to the Best and Brightest, The elite, and the fundamental masters of the universe, where all folks get what they deserve, Good honest, hard labor, that was so hard to find, -because it makes so much more sense to take that "can-do" redneck tool-spinning attitude and put it to work building equipment rather than wasting it on the task better served by equipment- is now back, and back in force, because, we finally get slave, indentured servants who will either take the 90 cents and hour or be deported. For a short while, it was almost possible to earn a living wage doing real work. Oh well, that's all over now. As for math and physics, I like to say I "audited Feyman's freshman physics lecture series" because I bought the CDs and listend to them alot, but without a good functional understanding of physics and math, you are not as able to do good, productive physical work, be that swamping, or ditch digging. On the other hand, I have always thought that someone who can sink a 16d nail in 3 swings of a hammer is a damned site more useful in a *society* than yet still another chip designer. We got to the fucking moon without chip designers, and what have we done since? nothing worth remembering.
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, Michael Kalus wrote: > I'll have a look at it. But I guess you also tell me that anything > Michael Moore said in "Bowling for Columbine" is wrong too? Not wrong exactly, just completely biased, wrong headed, snuffling at the ass of anti-gun Hollywood so it would be hailed in the "film" world as a great work. Moore says guns are bad. So fucking what. What could Moore say that would be a suprise? The film is a blow-job for the anti-gun crowd. Nothing more. Moore makes me laugh, because he does have his moments. I really enjoyed Rodger and me. He got a little mean sometimes, but so what? But BfC was a worthless piece of garbage all in all. I'm not a big fan of The Omega Man either. But that crap Moore pulled at Hestons house was inexcuseble. He should have had the shit beat out of him for that.
Re: Sunny Guantanamo (Re: Speaking of the Geneva convention)
On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, Jim Dixon wrote: > The cost for politicians mandating such a policy > would be equally high: they would be out of office and facing criminal > charges themselves. No, I think they would be dead. At first opportunity. Or at least, I like to think so.
Re: (No Subject)
On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, J.A. Terranson wrote: > On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Anatoly Vorobey wrote: > > > On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 12:47:27AM +0100, edo wrote: > > > With the USA > > > becoming the world's most totalitarian state in disguise... > > > > That's a pretty silly thing to say. > > Sure you don't want to educate yourself on those other states in the > > world? > > It's not silly at all: look again. He said "becoming". Agreed. I recall watching the events unfold in Tienamin Square all those years ago on TV, and I thought to myself at the time, within 20 years, China will be the last free place on earth. Clocks ticking, and for once, I might have actually been right. Now that the US has no "other" to compare it self to, it is free to lock it all down with the best totalitarian system in history. There are TRENDS, you see, and the TREND is toward total government domination of all aspects of life. This is the trend, and there is not only no signs of any reversal in the trend, it's building momentum like crazy, down-hill train on greased rails.
Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
On Mon, 8 Dec 2003, James A. Donald wrote: > SNIP > In "austin powers", they make the spy sound sixties by > depicting him as expecting the victory of the Soviet Union, and > perhaps rather favoring that outcome. If they had him quote > Ayn Rand, he would not have sounded sixties. > > When the mass media want to cash in on nostalgia for the > sixties and early seventies, it is the young commies they > remember. That's because the sixties commies sold out as quickly as they could when they were no longer threatened with compulsory military service. The sixties commies are the worst of the "how much is enough" crowd out there whipping slave kids harder to make more nikes and gap clothing. The folks doing the heinlen/randian ranting haven't sold out yet.
Re: e voting
On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Major Variola (ret.) wrote: > Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is expected to announce today that as > of 2006, all electronic voting machines in California must be able to > produce a paper printout that voters can check to make sure their votes > are properly recorded. Great! Now when I sell my vote, I can produce this reciept for payment! What a perfect system! Umm, weren't voter "receipts" outlawed some time back because of this exact issue?
Re: AT&T Patents Trusted Intermediaries, Sues PayPal
On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, R. A. Hettinga wrote: > "PayPal and eBay have infringed AT&T's U.S. patent that covers transactions > in which a trusted intermediary securely processes payments over a > communications system such as the Internet." > > > I wonder what American Express, VISA (and Plus), MasterCard (and Cirrus), > Diner's Club, NASDAQ, Autex, Telerate, and even Quotron -- not to mention > CRESTCo, DTC, and SWIFT -- would have had to say about *that*? They won't say anything. They won't have to. Paypal and eBay are both dangerously close to being an underground economy. One is able to transact business without that transaction being tracked by Visa/mc et al. Just like the new banking moves are aimed at getting rid of "check cashing stores", these legal manuevers are aimed at getting rid of any kind of non-controlled commerce. Since the end of all of this is supposed to be a cashless society and an "end to violence" I wonder when john q public will realize that one can trade goods for crack and no money need change hands, hence these pushes are more likely to cause even worse crime, rather than less.
Re: Political Hyprocrisy in action.
On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Neil Johnson wrote: > I'm surprised no one has commented on Al Gore's speech > (http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech2.html) where he talks about all the evil > things that the Bush administration has done to to undermine our civil > liberties. > > Got two words for ya Al: Clipper Chip Two more, Janet Reno And another two Louis Freeh It just goes on and on. Gore is just jealous. All the totalitarian ambitions dreamed of by the Clinton/Gore/Reno/ dynasty are being realized by the Bush/Cheney/Ascroft/ regime.
Re: Needed a WiFi "FidoNet"
Steve Schear wrote: It would seems that the means may soon be at hand for using WiFi, or WiFi-like, equipment to create ad hoc, meshed, non-commercial networks. The means are at hand, have been at hand for quite a few years in the form of packet radio, and now of course, as you say, wi-fi. Folks an I used to pipedream about a xtra-net or hyper-net that was completely non-commercial, completely censor-free shadow internet running on top of the internet. The idea being to tunnel IPv6 over IPv4 over packet radio and the occasional "real" internet where wireless networks can't span. Running a distributed hack of named and a shared trust base of nic records. This would use the unallocated IP space. In order to host a node you had to relay for all all nodes. In order to participate, you had to actually be familiar with and utilise netiquette. Not a big deal, Linux and FreeBSD make it all completely possible. But like many utopian visions, not too likely.
Re: Something conspicuously missing from the media survival lists
On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Bill Frantz wrote: > At 10:44 AM -0800 2/11/03, Tim May wrote: > >But in postmodern America mentioning guns is simply NOT DONE. Not even > >on the Fox Network, a more rightward network than the others. (Being > >right no longer means mentioning guns, as Ashcroft and Cheney and the > >like would prefer that guns be in the hands of der polizei. There's a > >reason Hitler confiscated guns held privately by Germans.) > > I thought Ashcroft was on record as stating that the second amendment > confered an individual right to own arms. Are his actions are not in > accord with his words? His words are pretty much without meaning. All gun laws are unconstitutional and should be repealed immediately, and all those who have fallen victim to the legal system as a result of the enforcement of these laws should be granted restitution. It is possible that there could be a gun law that would be constitutional, but no such laws currently exist.
Re: Something conspicuously missing from the media survival lists
On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Mike Rosing wrote: > On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Tim May wrote: > > > And so on. He talks the talk, but he and his buddies in HomeSec are > > establishing a national police force, "states rights" be damned. > > He's proof that you can fool just about everyone simultaneously - > the NRA supports him inspite of his lack of of commitment to > the 2nd. The NRA is openly hostile towards the "embarrasing 2nd Amendment". The NRA is mostly all about allowing the weathly wingshooters to be the last to fall. The rest of us, like the armed citizens, get bartered off everytime gun control bill comes to a vote.
Re: Torture done correctly is a terminal process
On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > At 07:40 PM 11/24/02 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: > >Bullshit. I (and several others) built a tank nearly ten years ago. > >No big deal. Note that psychoactives (at least if you have any > experience > >with them) don't modify the experience a great deal either. Certainly > not > >to upset anyone this much, this fast. > > > >The biggest threat is wrinkled skin and bacterial infections. > > > >You've been watching way too many movies, you won't morph into a > proto-ape > >or glow like lave either ;) > > You were using the wrong psychoactives then. > Indeed. Don't think I turned into an ape, but for about 30hrs (reconstructed) I'm not sure what I was. PS, anything less than a full cycle in a tank (16 hrs at least) is a bad place from whence to judge. There were tanks and tanks. I used the one at LSU back in the seventies. It was completely illegal. The tank was properly ventilated, completely mechanically isolated (not easy to accomplish), anechoic and of course dark to the point there was no visible light, even to to the meters. There was some energy being devoted to the concept that folks could set up shop with these things, kinda like gyms. Go to the strip mall and reboot yer head in a hour kinda deal. Didn't really take off. I fasted for a day before entering the tank, I dosed with 300 mikes of LSD, cooked in the LSU labs by buddy chem students in 100 mike doses taken an hour apart, last dose before stepping in. I was already peaking badly when they shut the door. It was a bd weekend, I'll tell ya. Had a friend, aquaintence really, who did the tank at Ga Tech. Yes, there was one. Done on the original Doc John Lilly concept of full imersion with a free flow full face mask with a blacked out face plate. He stayed in for about 22 hours, had a hard time talking coherently about it. He was our inspiration to do our set of experiments. I bailed on the project after my time in.
Re: sleep deprivation was Re: Torture done correctly is a terminal process
On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Steve Mynott wrote: > On Wed, 20 Nov 2002, Adam Shostack wrote: > > > The Russians reputedly used sensory deprivation as a means of > > convincing western spies to talk. 24 to 48 hours in a tank broke > > nearly anyone. > > Noone has mentioned sleep deprivation which is supposed to be extremely > effective, although with the potential for permanent psychological and > physical harm if continued for days. I read an article in Pop Sci (of all places) back in the 60s to the effect of sleep deprivation as being completely effective. *IF* you had the time. Brutality and drugs can break a person in a matter of hours to days at the outside. SD can take weeks, or longer. Though the report thought that results gained by SD were more reliable.
Re: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who's ne
On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, Kevin Elliott wrote: > At 14:06 -0700 on 11/19/02, Mike Diehl wrote: > >> The british got VERY upset with us because of a tendency > >> to shoot officers which was considered very bad "form". I believe it > >> was common practice to hang anyone found armed with a rifle for what > >> amounted to war crimes. But again, very poor rate of fire kept them > >> from replacing the smoothbore. > > > >This probably stemmed from the aristocratic culture of the times? > > It's probably partly historical as well (meaning there used to be a > good reason). Think about a large conscript army, basically > completely undisciplined by todays standard. Very poor > communication, so the officer core on site has nearly complete > autonomy. Killing a large piece of that officer core could very well > remove any constraints on the soldiers behavior. Next thing you know > the orderly army has turned into a marauding barbarian horde. That's > not good for either side. > I always thought this was hype generated by the Officer cadre to cover their butts. Discipline was dolled out by the NCOs, not officers. Killing the officers might piss off a few, but certainly not all, esp in a conscript unit. The NCOs are in charge, the Officers have the agenda. Kill the officer, kill the agenda.
RE: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. W ho's ne
On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, Kevin Elliott wrote: > My original point was about the more general topic of unit tactics > during the revolution. Disciplined formation fighting and volley > fire is THE way to win large scale musket engagements. Any other way > gets you clubbed to death by weight of fire. A pet peeve of mine is > the implicit assumption that seems to have been nailed into out > public school children (including me) that the british tactics in the > revolutionary war basically boiled down to "they were stupid idiots". > A more careful reading of history shows this to be simply untrue. I had a problem with this line since probably about 4th grade. Now, I grew up in the day when it was okay to go run around in the woods divided up into teams of yanks and krauts and reenact our various uncles recollections of the Battle of the Bulge, some of us using using captured Mausers or uncle Bill's Springfield sans bolts as our toys. The rich kids had Johnny Eagle toy guns and some others Mattel. That aside, we'd go out and "re-enact" and come home and ask questions of our warrior fathers and friends warroir fathers and get corrected a lot. Our Dad's Uncles and such told us about smoothbore, some of us got to shoot them. Compared with our .22s at summer camp, you couldn't hit crap with these things. We were told that to use cover and concealment and pick off the enemy was just fine, but in order to Win The Day, you had to go toe to toe with him on the battlefield and beat him down. That in essence, what we were being taught in school was crap. What do kids today do? How do they learn to war?
Re: On alliances and enemies.
On Sat, 10 Aug 2002, Jim Choate wrote: > On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, cubic-dog wrote: > > > I don't see Stalin/Hitler, I see; > > > > Standard Oil/ > > Department of Transporation/ > > Interstate Commerce Commission) > > General Motors/ > > Ford/ > > and so forth. > > It's worth noting that the first two wouldn't have had near the impact > they did if not for the help from entities like the later. I think it's fair to say without cooperation on behalf of all the players, none of them would have been in the posistions of power and influence that they were. (some still are) > You draw a false distinction. > How so?
Re: Why we must stay silent no longer
The overall message isn't all that bad, but the body of the document is so replete with errors, misrepresentations and misconveyance as to be unreadable. I almost gave up on it at the line, "More than 75 per cent of Americans would boycott stores selling goods produced in sweatshops." This isn't even remotely based in reality. Who ever came up with this number, assuming it was sincere, is seriously deluded. There are plenty of other inaccuracies that would have better been left unstated. On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Anonymous wrote: > The death of democracy is at hand. > > http://www.zmag.org/meastwatch/hertz.htm
Re: your mail
Do you have a cigarette? All I have are menthols.
Re: Orange crush
On Tue, 8 Jan 2002, Ken Brown wrote: > I suggest that the author of this insulting piece of nonsense go into > any decent library and pick up a book on the 18th & 19th century > agricultural revolution. Or read any standard account of the life of > Louis Pasteur. Inorganic fungicides, pesticides and herbicides go way > back, scientific study of them comes in in the second half of the 19th > century. > > As for whether "so-called modern chlorinated herbicides have been around > since the late 1800s." that sort of depends on how you define them. Okay, busted. That stuff doesn't really fit the test of "modern". That's what I get for overstating. > Trust me, I'm a botanist :-) (or maybe even a microbiologist these days > if I pull my fingers out & get started on that PhD project) > > Ken Brown
Re: Orange crush
On Mon, 7 Jan 2002, Anonymous wrote: > Total bullshit there crock dog. TCDD is also a breakdown product > of both poly-chlorinated phenols like 2,4,D and 2,4,5-T and poly-chlorinated > bi-phenols (PCBs). It really doesn't matter what level tcdd (dioxin) is at > time of manufacture, even boiling coffee watere with 245T in it can give > you a load of dioxin. Dunno, maybe you're right, I couldn't get it to happen in the lab with phenols when I was a chem student without actually burning it. I tried. (wasn't supposed to but I was curious). Biphenols, yes. Or something close enough to TCDD that I didn't care. Actually burning 245T, and 24D for that matter will indeed produce TCDD. As to whether or not overcooking these phenols produces it, well, I wouldn't doubt it. But overcooking would still be a faulty process. BTW, burning just about ANYTHING with chlorine in it will produce dioxin. I don't know there brother nobody, I just keep reading over and over again, folks using 245T, 24D and TCDD practically interchangably. They are not the same chemicals, not at all. I read things like "245T, a form of dioxin" and "Agent Orange, a strong dioxin". You say TCDD is a breakdown product of 245T, others say it is a manufacturing byproduct, others say it is the same thing. >The agit/prop that we *need* herbicides to produce enough food is > patently absurd. They didn't even exiest 50 years ago, and most farmers > in the world still don't use them. Well, most farmers in the world still don't have nearly the output that the "chemically dependant brainwashed, braindead amerikan farmer" does, except perhaps those other hi output ag industries from Germany, the netherlands and such. All of which are of course, heavily chem dependent. Herbicides have existed a hell of a lot longer than 50 years, even so-called modern chlorinated herbicides have been around since the late 1800s. >Only the chemically dependant > brainwashed, braindead amerikan farmer does, which is why he's quickly > becoming extinct. The reasons the "chemically dependant brainwashed, braindead amerikan farmer" is becomming exinct has a lot more to do with international corporate farming and economics of multinational monopolies like Archer Daniels Midland, the darling of the NPR crowd, than it does the use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilzers. Perhaps you are right on all cases, that agent orange and all phenoxyl herbicides are the devils spawn and the true root of all evil. My imagination balks at it, perhaps because I don't share your clarity of vision. However, I do know some of the chemists at Dow Midland who were directly involved in Dows work with 245T, and to follow your line of thinking is to say that these folks are the fine agents of the great satan himself, heirs to those nice folks who stirred the pot so vigorously in europe back in the 40s. My imagination balks at it, perhaps because these folks simply are not like that, and I have read a lot of the papers, I have done some of the chemistry and have learned in an empirical way that these questions are all a great deal more complicated than these flat statements like "Agent Orange is the blame for all the ''bad things''" suggest. This is all real touchy stuff, I have been around pretty much half a century and have been litterally up to my neck in this stuff. (Yes, this *STUFF*). I don't take it lightly, and I don't buy into any corporate line, as a corporation is almost by definition incapable of telling any truth when there is any bad news. But little snippits that say ag/chem is evil, and we are good because we say it is evil are pretty much a waste of everyones time.
Re: Orange crush
On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, mattd wrote: > Agent orange news in Nam... > http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=01/12/31/3456415 > > Scientists investigating the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam have found > that people living in a so-called hotspot have the highest blood levels of > its poisonous chemical dioxin ever recorded in the country. > Agent Orange, which has the dioxin (TCDD - short for > 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin) as one of its constituents, was last > used in 1973. Agent Orange is a 1-124-1 mixture of n-butyl esters, 245T 2-4-5-trichlorophenoxacetic acid (C8,H5,Cl3,O3), and 24D 2-4-dichloro-phenoxacetic acid (C8,H6,Cl2,O3). TCDD or, 2-3-7-8-tetrachlorodibenzo-P-dioxin (C12,H4,Cl4,O2), is a CONTAMINATE artifact of the heat exchangers used in the reaction process not a constituent as so often stated. None of this stuff is what any of us want in our dinner salad, however the differences between 245T,24D the most researched herbicides in the world and TCDD are huge. Currently, aside from dioxin like pcbs (which are no longer manufactured in the US, and wouldn't be around at all hardly if it weren't for the americans and computer users love of electricity and plastic lawn furniture) the only real use of dioxin is in bleaching paper pulp. The understanding of dioxin is still incomplete and with all the new studies in gene research on, folks are learning some pretty interesting stuff about some theoretical benificial capabilities of dioxin. In the short term, it's abilities to bind up lipophilic chemicals so they can be pissed out as urine, and in the long run, as a vector for non intrusive reprogramming of cells. Chlorinated herbicides have been around since the late 1800s, and have litterally made all the difference in the abilities to produce food in the last century. While the ability to produce food in the 20th century has produced all kinds of new global problems, and food is still used as a political tool, the problems of world wide starvation are problems of politics, not agriculture. The techology exists, and chemicals like 24D and 245T are among the reasons why. Bad shit happened in the land of bad things to a lot of people. I've lost friends, close friends, to health proplems resulting from exposure to agent orange, so I don't take this lightly. If the herbicide had been manufactured with a priority on quality instead of the usual gov focus on low bid and quantity, it is at least conceivable that this horror wouldn't be facing those folks now. As far as I know the only controlled studies done on agent orange were done by the principle contractor Dow chemical, and the studies were done in Midland Michigan. Those studies pointed heavily at TCDD contamination. As far as I know, those studies have not been refuted. I am not a biochemist, and I don't even play one on TV, but I do know how to read, and I wish that if folks wanted to report on this stuff, they would get their facts straight. > But today, some residents of Binh-Hoa, near Ho Chi Minh City, have 200 > times the normal amount of dioxin in their bloodstreams. > Agent Orange was widely used by the US military during the Vietnam War as a > defoliant so that Vietnam's dense jungle could not provide cover for Viet > Cong forces. > 'Startling' results > It was when US veterans started to become ill with a variety of health > problems that investigations suggested that Agent Orange could be involved. > The most dangerous ingredient was the dioxin, a pollutant that stays in the > environment for decades. > There are still about 12 dioxin hotspots in Vietnam, in areas where very > heavy spraying took place. (cont) > > Page 1 breaking news is apparent discovery of highly toxic batch in WA.(ex > vietnam)Deaths suspected.
Re: Who Am I Anyway?
On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Jim Choate wrote: > On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Duncan Frissell wrote: > > > Frissell's Believe it or Not: > > > > WWII was won by soldiers, sailors, and marines who fought, died, flew > > bombers, commanded armies, commanded fleets, and possessed and used nuclear > > weapons without ever having provided the US government with any proof of > > their identity. > > Bullshit, if they had birth certificates they were required to produce > them. And if you worked on the neuclear weapons then the FBI most > certainly did do a background check. That magic word *if*, I think you are right, and it was an *if*. ifnot, so what? if you had no identity (tm) going in, you had one comming out. Not too long ago, I was able to travel within the US on commercial carriers paying cash, with no ID. Why should tha > > > -- > > > Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. > > Bumper Sticker > >The Armadillo Group ,::;::-. James Choate >Austin, Tx /:'/ ``::>/|/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] >www.ssz.com.', `/( e\ 512-451-7087 >-~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- > >
List still alive?
Messages came to a screeching halt on the 10th.
Re: Neverending Cycle ( was : Re: USPS: glowing by leaps and bounds )
On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, F. Marc de Piolenc wrote: > Jim Choate wrote: > > > > > > We need to send a message that "armed propaganda" is not an acceptable > > > form of self-expression, no matter what the alleged cause. > > > > Review the American revolution and the current news before you follow this > > little meme very far. > > ..and your point is...? Self evident.
Re: Retribution not enough
On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Eric Murray wrote: > On Mon, Oct 22, 2001 at 08:44:09AM -0700, Tim May wrote: > > > "Sure, unions are good" is not at all obvious to me. Why do you claim > > this? > > > > Most labor unions are simply rent-seeking clubs designed to cement the > > status quo. Teacher's unions in the U.S. are a prime example: once the > > union got powerful enough, it fought for a tenure-type system which made > > it nearly impossible to remove those who taught poorly and to reward > > those who taught especially well. > > > > I've never belonged to a labor union of any kind, and they are > > essentially absent from the chip and computer industries. > > > > From what I have seen, labor unions are a collectivist evil. > > Same here. > > The union management quickly becomes yet another set of bosses. > You'd have to be an idiot to voluntarily request that you have > TWO sets of bosses instead of one. > True, Unions are idiotic. Being the spawn of the southwest wv coal fields, I can promise that the boss who tries to get you some pay is somewhat better than the boss who just as soon have you machine gunned if you don't want to work for free.
Re: Your papers please
It's dodgy. I wish I could quote chapter and verse, but I don't recall. The closest you could come and /maybe/ get away with it, would be to have a cell activated and your lawyer on the line. LE would still cop a major attitude. They DO NOT like being documented. They have some laws or regulations backing them up on it as well. I looked into this about 5 years ago when a neighboring state was starting to get into the "Papers Please, Ausweiss Controll Bitte" mind set in their "war on drugs". The thought was for me, a clean for many years fellow, to drive a profilable vehicle in profilable manner, while wired through potential drug checkpoint areas trying to attract a bust. Our lawyer decided it was way too dodgy legally. Some folks are going to want to call bullshit on this, and I welcome it. I thought at the time, I could record, video tape, transmit pretty much whatever I wanted. Turned out that there are special "things" involved with surveilling the surveillers. On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, Jamie Lawrence wrote: > Sometime around 02:50 PM 10/18/2001 -0700, Steve Schear opined thusly: > > > >>http://cgi.newcity.com/exitlog/frameset.php?close=http://www.citypaper.net/articles/101801/news.godfrey.shtml&back=http://www.newcity.com > > > Does anyone know the legal issues surrounding the act of taking > a pocket tape recorder and recording at least my side of this sort > of transaction? > > I know what the likely result would be; I wondered if I had any > obligation not to record anything I might happen to say while > interacting with airport authorities. > > -j >
Re: Your papers please
On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, Steve Schear wrote: > Everyone knows it is a bad idea to try and board a plane carrying a box > cutter, a flight manual written in Arabic, or a sack full of mysterious > white powder. But with ultra-tightened airport security, a book could also > prevent you from boarding that plane. > > No kidding. It happened just last week in Philadelphia. > > >http://cgi.newcity.com/exitlog/frameset.php?close=http://www.citypaper.net/articles/101801/news.godfrey.shtml&back=http://www.newcity.com > > steve > Wow! Ed Abby, rest his ill-tempered soul, would be very proud.
Re: Ann Coulter Final Solution?
On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, lizard wrote: > "Colin A. Reed" wrote: > > > > Well here is another moron. From Jerry Fallwell's statements, and Pat > > Robertsons concurrence, > >snip > Just as the terrorists are not representative of all Middle-Easterners, > so Fallwell and company are not representative of all Americans. Indeed. Fallwall, Robertson et all would do well to pay a little attention to the gospel they claim to preach. As a long time "born again" I say that were "Jesus alive today" his focus would be much more along the lines of comming up with the Parable of the Firemen, his actions would be in consoleing those who Fallwell and Robertson so desperatly despise, and his anger would be directed at those pharases long on legality and short on mercy. So his word illustrates. So after these and many other public statements in the past, i say that not only do Fallwell and Robertson not speak for America, neither do they speak for Christ.
RE: Cypherpunks and terrorism
> Many people have made this point, but it is so fundamentally wrong that > it's hard to believe that anyone takes it seriously. No one really does. > Paper, and metal, and knives, and airplanes, and all the other things > which have been compared to anonymity tools, are different in one major > respect: it would be an inconceivable hardship to ban them. > > Can we really say the same thing about cryptography? About steganography > tools? About the anonymous mail services which bin Laden has been > reported to have used (yesterday on TV it was mentioned several times)? What you are really talking about when you talk about cryptography is privacy, is individuality, is self determination. Certainly commerce wouldnt' grind to halt if these trivialities were dispensed with. After all, Commerce really is what it is all about isn't it? With the supreme court of the us making judgements on what is good for the consumer, now that the old term taxpayer,or even the arcane term citizen no longer applies. > Would commerce grind to a halt if we didn't have anonymous remailers? > Of course not. The same with PGP and SSL and other crypto technologies > that are available to everyone. > > The fact is, crypto as we know it is a luxury. It didn't even exist ten > years ago. Many things "didn't exist" 10 years ago. The real ability to completely and totally enumerate and track every single transaction and action of every single person and store them to be used if not right away to punish immoral acts, at least keep them on file so that it can be done when the incarceration system gets streamlined. I've heard many calls for complete biometric id systems to be put in place for airline access over the last few days. With such a system, why just use it for gov building access and airports? Why not for banks, 7/11 phone cards, groceries, rent payment etc ad whatever. As more and more trangressions become felonised, and more and crimes become federalised, soon we should be able to deny anything to anyone on pretty much a whim. Governments go bad. Many believe governments are bad period. Hence, crypto. It is the only technological response to a technological society. > None of the crypto tools we use did. We can hardly make a > case that banning or restricting access to them will send us back into > the stone age. > > Please, let's end these spurious arguments that providers of crypto tools > are no different than the people who make the metal in the airplane wings. > There's a big difference, which anyone with an ounce of sense can see. > Banning airplanes is not an option. Banning crypto is.
Re: MARTIAL LAW Cypherpunks and terrorism
On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, !Dr. Joe Baptista wrote: > Arabs are by default very nobel, trustworthy and honourable people. But > they are not cows. They will not bow their heads as their civilization is > brutalized and raped. They will fight back with the vengence that is > the holy jihad. Not too sure, I certainly agree that these folks are not "cows", but as to rising up in arms when provoked, that takes a specific type. An example would be the so called silent majority of gun owners in America, all of whom expressed outrage over Ruby Ridge, and then later, Waco. A lot of these folks, if you follow the boards, bbses in those days, claimed that after then president G.Bush Sr's assault weapons ban, that further action on behalf of the feds would predicate a call to arms. Well, they all stood by as these events unfolded, and they stood by as the "fed" whitewashed all of it recently. > Kill Osama Bin Ladin and you create another arab saint and many more holy > warriors take his place. That is the nature of the beast. Back to the previous analogy, The silent majority of gun owners had a Bin Ladin in Timmy McVea. They backed away from him as fast as possible after the bombing, and no new Timmy has stepped up to take his place. So, in my ignorance, I think that a few extremists basically screw up the dialogue for everyone involved, the sooner these folks are out of the equation, the better for all parties. I think a lot of "victims of American Policy" believe this as well. It was different for the last 8 years when the commander in chief lacked resolve and seriously emboldened many forigen enemies. These "surgical" air strikes do little more than really piss folks off. A "war" has to be won on the ground. I think there is a certain level of resolve that has galvanised over these last few days. I expect that action, when taken, will be pretty decisive. As to your other points, I belive they are well stated, I just disagree.
RE: Manhattan Mid-Afternoon
-- On Tue, 11 Sep 2001, Normen Nomesco wrote: > Oh and Im sure having guns on board planes would work out great > especially considering the increase of people having huge fucking fits > and having to be held down on planes, yeah, lets arm people on planes. > Have you ever fucking even been on a plan? I wouldn't trust most of my fellow > monkeys with a sharp edge on the free peanuts. -- Hi Normesco; If you had ever lived in an armed society, you would understand why this isn't the case. I've lived where pretty much everyone was armed pretty much all of the time. I can promise you that this bad, childish behavior simply doesn't occur. Even when folks get very cranked up at one another, the arguments, while heated tend to stay somewhat civil. These reasons you cite for not allowing folks to be armed go away very quickly when the sheepish victim mentality that is inherit in the powerless is removed. When folks are held accountable for their behavior, they behave better.
Re: Lawyers, Guns, and Money
On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote: > On Sun, Aug 26, 2001 at 10:15:19PM -0400, Faustine wrote, quoting Tim: > > > > >Do you think you are preparing to have "enormous influence" on policy? > > > > I'm preparing to try. > > If you want to have "enormous influence" on policy, you'd be well advised > to spend your time flirting with a member of the appropriate sex in > the administration, or perhaps the Senate leadership, offering the > appropriate sexual favors, then vie for a position as a policy aide > somewhere. A law degree will be a big help. > > Not entirely joking, > Declan And don't forget, you must have and give up in addition to sexual favors, lots and lots and lots and lots of money in 2, 3 and 4 thousand dollar chunks totalling a few hundred thousand a year.
Red Light Cameras, I don't get it.
years ago, when I was a MP in Germany, I used to chuckle over the red light cameras and camera speed traps used by the Polizei. Neat idea, never work in the states, we have a 4th amendment after all. Then the technology started moving over here. I was suprised at first, but then, I though about how many bank cameras had been used to build cases against bank robbers, and no one ever fussed about it. I wasn't very happy about this, but again, no one ever fussed about cameras in banks, or convience stores et al. I still don't like it, years ago, when these things started showing up in Alexandria Va, someone posted to the list about it, and no one even commented. So I figgured it was a non issue. Now, for some reason, folks are getting their panties in a knot over this. What's the big deal? Yeah, big brother has a new surveillence tool, so what?
