Governments and repression

jamesd@netcom.com:
> Obviously most people do not call MIT a government.
>
> And if MIT built some prison cells under the Admin building and started
> locking people up in the dungeons for long periods, then people would
> call MIT a government.

Hezbollah, Hamas, the IRA, the Khmers Rouges lock people up. You may not
believe it but there are those who accept their 'rules' under the threat of
violence. I suppose 'most people' call _them_ governments?

I'm amazed at the way some of you keep screaming about the violence of 
governments. Maybe you need to experience some _real_ repression.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh             "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind!
rishab@dxm.ernet.in                   take stone from stone and wash them..."
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On Wed, 31 Aug 1994 rishab@dxm.ernet.in wrote:

> jamesd@netcom.com:
> > Obviously most people do not call MIT a government.
> >
> > And if MIT built some prison cells under the Admin building and started
> > locking people up in the dungeons for long periods, then people would
> > call MIT a government.
> 
> Hezbollah, Hamas, the IRA, the Khmers Rouges lock people up. You may not
> believe it but there are those who accept their 'rules' under the threat of
> violence. I suppose 'most people' call _them_ governments?
> 
> I'm amazed at the way some of you keep screaming about the violence of 
> governments. Maybe you need to experience some _real_ repression.

I see. It's the ole "It's worse in other places so quit bitching." Sure, 
it's worse in a lot of places. This is the U.S.A. (or it is where I am). 
We use most of the world's resources and we are leaders in quite a few 
technologies (or close to it). That doesn't mean that when things are 
getting shitty here I have to tolerate it because "it could be worse" or 
"you could live under a REALLY repressive government." I don't want to 
live under ANY repressive government, period.

rishab@dxm.ernet.in says:
> Hezbollah, Hamas, the IRA, the Khmers Rouges lock people up. You may not
> believe it but there are those who accept their 'rules' under the threat of
> violence. I suppose 'most people' call _them_ governments?

I would refer to most governments as being no more than large
organized gangs, differing from the Mafia or Hezbollah only in so far
as they have convinced large numbers of people of their legitimacy.

> I'm amazed at the way some of you keep screaming about the violence of 
> governments. Maybe you need to experience some _real_ repression.

The vast majority of people killed in acts of violence this century
have been killed by governments, often their own. I am no less
concerned about being killed by non-governmental force, but the
governmental forces stop me from doing things to lower my risk of
being killed by non-governmental forces.

Perry