Terrorism is a NON-THREAT (fwd)

Forwarded message:

> From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>
> Date: Wed, 29 Oct 97 22:46:45 -0600
> Subject: Terrorism is a NON-THREAT

> I wish for once one of the spineless members of the press would ask:
> 
> "How many people have died from Terrorism in the last 10yrs?"
> 
> Let's be generious and say 10,000 world wide (more like 2,000 but lets not
> quibble over numbers).

Bill, more than 2,000 people have dies from planes being blown up by
terrorist in the last 10 years alone.

Old Prince Ferdinand, you know the bloke whose death started WWI allegedly,
had an attempt on his life the morning of his death via bomb. He shrugged it
off and got shot.

Stalin had millions killed for political reasons.

The Isrealis have killed tens of thousands in their expanionisitic,
non-survivalist motivated actions.

The US backed Central American death squads have killed hundreds of
thousands if not millions.

People kill for religion, politics, insanity, and fun.

Terrorism has a long history in human culture.

Yours is a unreasoned view.


    ____________________________________________________________________
   |                                                                    |
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   |                                                                    |
   |                                       -Alan Greenspan-             |
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   |  -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-                         Jim Choate       |
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In <199710301318.HAA17701@einstein.ssz.com>, on 10/30/97 
   at 07:18 AM, Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com> said:

>Forwarded message:

>> From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>
>> Date: Wed, 29 Oct 97 22:46:45 -0600
>> Subject: Terrorism is a NON-THREAT

>> I wish for once one of the spineless members of the press would ask:
>> 
>> "How many people have died from Terrorism in the last 10yrs?"
>> 
>> Let's be generious and say 10,000 world wide (more like 2,000 but lets not
>> quibble over numbers).

>Bill, more than 2,000 people have dies from planes being blown up by
>terrorist in the last 10 years alone.

>Old Prince Ferdinand, you know the bloke whose death started WWI
>allegedly, had an attempt on his life the morning of his death via bomb.
>He shrugged it off and got shot.

>Stalin had millions killed for political reasons.

>The Isrealis have killed tens of thousands in their expanionisitic,
>non-survivalist motivated actions.

>The US backed Central American death squads have killed hundreds of
>thousands if not millions.

>People kill for religion, politics, insanity, and fun.

>Terrorism has a long history in human culture.

>Yours is a unreasoned view.


Well THANK YOU Jim for joining forces with the Government NewSpeakers in
bastardising the language. Military and Police actions by governments is
NOT Terrorism!! Everything bad that happens is NOT Terrorism!! Just
because it is politically expediant to call somthing Terrorism does not
make it so! If you have a point then do so and let it stand on it's
merrits rather than trying to win brownie points by stealing emotional
value from an established lable. This is a shallow debating technique of a
weak mind.

Now back to the featured program:

Exactly how many have died from Terrorist acts?? I contend that it is
below 10,000 in the past ten years and more than likely closer to 2,000.
Even at 10,000 we are only looking at most 50-100 Americans a year!!

The whole point of my orriginal message that you seem unable to grasp ("no
suprise") is that 50-100 deaths/year does not justify turning this country
into a police state!!

- -- 
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
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> Yup, I don't disagree with that. But, I have trouble answering the
> obvious question, 'well, how many lives _does_ it take before something
> is done?'. Is there any way to quantify this kind of thing?
>
> We hear on TV etc people saying "If this draconian measure saves the
> life of one innocent child its worth the loss of my right to walk in
> the park, or whatever". This is clearly shit, but can people suggest a
> sensible measure of when new legistlation is justified?
>

No amount of deaths are adequate cause for suspending the constitutional
rights of our citizens.  If the Feds can't adequately protect our citizens
from criminal activities w/o trampling on our rights then its time for us
to reorganize into different geo-political structures which may.  Once
solutions offered from D.C. include suspension of our civil rights its time
to put allt he options on the table, including considering the abandonment
of the entire compact.

--Steve

At 8:11 AM -0700 10/30/97, Tim Griffiths wrote:

> We hear on TV etc people saying "If this draconian measure saves the
> life of one innocent child its worth the loss of my right to walk in
> the park, or whatever". This is clearly shit, but can people suggest a
> sensible measure of when new legistlation is justified?

Is this a trick question, or sumpin'?

If not, then the answer is "the Constitution."

(I see that T.G.Griffiths@exeter.ac.uk is not an American. I apologize for
my U.S.-centric response. Consult your local Charter or whatever to see if
similar rights are spelled out. I suspect most adhocracies do not have
rights clearly spelled out, modulo the irony that several people's
republics have had nominally more rights-ensuring constitutions than the
U.S. has had.)

The longer version being that the Constitution and especially the Bill of
Rights clearly enumerates rights held by the people, and there is no
mention that such basic rights are to be stripped away because the "life of
one innocent child" can be saved. Examples of cases where restricting
religions, books, guns, 4th and 5th and nth Amendment rights would save the
lives of some children are obvious to all. And yet such restrictions remain
unconstitutional. Sure, there are _some_ limits. A church, for example,
cannot practice ritual bloodletting, on children or on adults.  Nor can a
church hand out drugs (the Native American Church and peyote case resolved
this). And so on.

(And many of us disagree with some or all of these limitations.)

In the "right to walk in the park" issue cited above, this gets into
distracting issues about whether the park is open at all hours, the rules
established by whomever built the park, etc.

Curfews are a cleaner example. And courts have generally held curfews
unconstitutional, when they've been challenged.

Travel permits are also unconstitutional in the U.S. People may travel
wherever they wish, associate with whomever they wish, etc. (A very few
exceptions, such as felons and child molestors.)

When in doubt about trading off rights for security, consult the Constitution.

(Yes, I'm aware that it's falling into disrepute and tatters. But it beats
most alternatives.)

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Tim May wrote:

> At 8:11 AM -0700 10/30/97, Tim Griffiths wrote:
> 
> > We hear on TV etc people saying "If this draconian measure saves the
> > life of one innocent child its worth the loss of my right to walk in
> > the park, or whatever". This is clearly shit, but can people suggest a
> > sensible measure of when new legistlation is justified?
> 
> Is this a trick question, or sumpin'?
> 
> If not, then the answer is "the Constitution."

 I was trying to start from somewhere more fundamental than the
 Constitution, but if I understand you, you're saying that an arbitary, 
 allbeit 'self-evident', set of limitations are set down (i.e. the US
 Constitution) at some point in time and no new laws should be made that
 contradict this set of rules.
 By doing this, aren't we putting a dictatorial limit on whatever
 democracy we come up with? In effect saying "we're all equal under God,
 and God wrote the Constitution"?                            
 
> (I see that T.G.Griffiths@exeter.ac.uk is not an American. I apologize for
> my U.S.-centric response. Consult your local Charter or whatever to see if
> similar rights are spelled out. I suspect most adhocracies do not have
> rights clearly spelled out, modulo the irony that several people's
> republics have had nominally more rights-ensuring constitutions than the
> U.S. has had.)

No, this is the UK, we don't get rights here. Well, not quite true - for
example we do get the right to bear arms (1888 - can't recall the Act
offhand, but can find it). However, Her Maj. Gov reserves the right to tell
us exactly _which_ arms we can bear, which is why I've just handed my
beloved handguns in.
What we do get is more and more US-style laws being passed here, but
without the protection of a Constitution, e.g. looks like we'll get
Megan's Law shortly, but without a constitutionally-given right to privacy.

Tim G.

Bill wrote:

> The whole point of my orriginal message that you seem unable to grasp ("no
> suprise") is that 50-100 deaths/year does not justify turning this country
> into a police state!!
> 
> - -- 
> - ---------------------------------------------------------------
> William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii


 Yup, I don't disagree with that. But, I have trouble answering the
 obvious question, 'well, how many lives _does_ it take before something
 is done?'. Is there any way to quantify this kind of thing? 
 
 We hear on TV etc people saying "If this draconian measure saves the
 life of one innocent child its worth the loss of my right to walk in
 the park, or whatever". This is clearly shit, but can people suggest a
 sensible measure of when new legistlation is justified?
 
 
 Tim G
 --
 Tim Griffiths
 'There are no honourable agreements that involve the exchange of a 
 quantifiable object, like a sum of money, for qualitative object such as
 a human soul'. - Bill Burroughs

>  We hear on TV etc people saying "If this draconian measure saves the
>  life of one innocent child its worth the loss of my right to walk in
>  the park, or whatever". This is clearly shit, but can people suggest a
>  sensible measure of when new legistlation is justified?

	When you can figure out a way to fix the problem without 
stepping on freedoms. Then legislation is justified. 

	Part of the problem is that people _assume_ that legislation fixes
problems. It doesn't. Laws just give society permission to punish the 
offender. In that case we have plenty of laws, it would be rare that we 
would need another.

My uncle wrote, anonymously:
>   I don't own any guns, so I guess when the Feds kick my door in,
> I'll just point at the dog, and hope they go for my clever ruse.
>   Hell, I'm even willing to testify...

"I blamed it on the dog, and all I got was this T-shirt and a spanking!"

Human Gus-Peter

> People kill for religion, politics, insanity, and fun.

	Nope. Economics, survival, revenge, and insanity.