AP [was: Re: Kiddie porn on the Internet] [NOISE]

At 01:34 PM 9/21/96 -0400, Phill wrote:
>[AP drivel deleted]

>If it could the US would have assasinated Saddam by now. It can't because it
>is too difficult to find out where exactly a person will be. 

It's perfectly doable, it's just not politically expedient.
One reason is that if they kill Saddam, they no longer have an
excuse to keep threatening and attacking Iraq and making themselves look good.
Another is that National Leaders have a tacit understanding between
themselves never to assassinate other politicians [well, hardly ever....]
If you break the taboo, you're implicitly inviting everyone else
to go gunning for you, and it's too easy to do if there are enough
people who really want you dead, especially well-organized people
like a foreign army or spy service.

If the US _had_ really wanted to assassinate Saddam, they could have
hired professionals to do the job (like Mossad.)  Instead they
killed 200,000 other Iraqis, including civilians, draftees, and a
few tens of thousands of real soldiers.


>In addition *ANYONE* who attempted to implement AP would be someone *I*
>would regard as a tyrant and therefore a legitimate target by the rules

Yup.

>I think that this type of talk is incredibly dangerous. There are plenty of
>people on the net who are psychos and if you spread AP drivel arround someone
>is going to act on it. 

I think a more realistic danger is that the government will use it
as an excuse to attack all the techniques for private communications
that cypherpunks have been suggesting will make AP possible.


>PS it is not censorship to stop people from advocating murder.

Nonsense.  It certainly _is_ censorship, and it's hypocrisy to
suggest otherwise.  You can argue whether it's _justified_ censorship,
just like the AP advocates argue whether assassination is 
justified murder, but censorship it is.

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> 	
# You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

I agree with Bill, AP sounds like a very good club for the Exon types
to beat us with. 

Jim's latest comments sounded no different to me than the mealy mouthed
"understanding" messages that Sinn Fein publish about the IRA. Given
the opportunity to condem any attack on the President under AP rules
we get a non commital non-condemnation. Its the type of thing that Gerry
Adams says after his men have just killed two kids with a bomb in a litterbin
outside a MacDonalds.

Ideology is a powerful political weapon. It simplifies complex political
issues and generates momentum allowing political change. Unfortunately
it also creates bad government as ideology persued for the sake of ideology.
Ideology does not debate, it acts. 

When Marxism was created in the latter half of the 19th century it had
many usefull effects. In particular it definitely assisted the transition 
from monarchy to democracy by creating a widespread belief that the
existing situation was unstable. By the end of the first world war however
this energy had largely served whatever purpose it would, at least in
Europe if not in other parts of the world. Unfortunately a very large number
of people had failed to realise that it was an ideology whose time had come
and gone. The industrial and political situation it addressed no longer
existed. The major left wing movements by that time were socialism and
liberalism, both of which rejected the Marxist extreeme. 

As the Marxist idealogues got frustrated by their evident lack of progress
they turned to terrorism. The Bader Minehof gang believed that they could 
spark the revolution by jolting society out of its complacency. Their
strategy was remarkably like AP. If the heads of large corporations were
likely to be assasinated then noone would want to lead a large firm. In
fact as any person with counter terrorism experience will tell you the
threat of death is remarkably ineffective as a means of intimidation. It
creates the opposite effect, strengthening the resolve of the target. I
discussed this point recently with someone close to Mossad who agreed.

Terrorism is becomming an increasing concern. The amount of damage an 
individual can cause is much greater than that possible in the past. There
are plenty of exhausted ideologies about which can be fashioned into
a justification of murder. Jim's post shows very clearly how Libertarianism
can be converted into a justification for terrorism. Its a very short gap
between being opposed to government and actively fighting against it. 

I see libertarianism as the exhausted remnant of the mercantilism of the 
1980s. As constructed it recognises only those rights which favour the
privileged in society and none of those which benefit the ecconomically 
disadvantaged. Politically it reached its peak influence almost a decade
ago when Regan and Thatcher were at their zenith. The '94 congress will 
probably be seen as the turning point in the political tide with the mainstream
of politics moving back to the left again. There will always be people arround
who conclude that the failure was not being close enough to the ideology.

If the libertarians are not carefull they will be inexorably linked in the public mind 
with the terrorists who act in their name. 

	Phill

In <199609220708.AAA20288@dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com>, on 09/22/96 at 12:09 AM,
   Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com> said:

>>If it could the US would have assasinated Saddam by now. It can't because it
>>is too difficult to find out where exactly a person will be. 

>It's perfectly doable, it's just not politically expedient.
>One reason is that if they kill Saddam, they no longer have an
>excuse to keep threatening and attacking Iraq and making themselves look good.
>Another is that National Leaders have a tacit understanding between themselves never
>to assassinate other politicians [well, hardly ever....] If you break the taboo,
>you're implicitly inviting everyone else
>to go gunning for you, and it's too easy to do if there are enough
>people who really want you dead, especially well-organized people
>like a foreign army or spy service.

>If the US _had_ really wanted to assassinate Saddam, they could have
>hired professionals to do the job (like Mossad.)  Instead they
>killed 200,000 other Iraqis, including civilians, draftees, and a
>few tens of thousands of real soldiers.

You need to take into account the politics of the region. With Saddam gone you have
created a power vaccume that Iran would be all to happy to fill. It was for this
reason that durring the Gulf War the US & its allias (European & Arab) did not go to
Bagdad. They mearly wanted to knock Saddam down a notch or two not take him out.

I will agree with you about the taboo on political assassinations. Even the Mossad
are not involved in assassination of government leaders (they keep such actions to
rather nasty terrorist). The assassinations of government leaders that have taken
place in the region have all been from citizens of their own country.



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