the art of fighting without fighting

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Bruce Lee film.

Scene on a sailing ship headed for island where tournament
is to be held.

Thug karate type hassles Mr Lee, picking a fight.  Thug
asks: "so what kind of karate do you fight."  Mr Lee: "the
art of fighting without fighting."  Thug asks for fight.  Mr
Lee: "not here, on that island over there," points.  OK says
thug eagerly and climbs down into rowing boat.  Mr Lee
unties end of rope and hands to children playing, leaning
over edge of ship.  Thug screams obscenities from row boat,
trys to pull himself in but children threaten to let go of
rope.

Mr Lee walks off camera unperturbed with smug look.

Moral of story: fight smart.  That's what cypherpunks tactic
is.  Multiplies your efficacy.

Anonymous decries talk of violence on list.  Understand
anonymous, we are not the aggressors, we are the aggressed.
It is annoying being on the receiving end of aggression
especially where the aggressor is the local force monopoly
and you have no recourse.  Hence talk of nuking DC, and of
capital punishment for criminal government officials.  There
is certain poetic karmic value to these expressions of
annoyance.  Helps spread the dissatisfaction with
government.

However, the fact that criminal officials deserve punishment
does not mean that any of us are interested to actually
deliver that punishment.  There are more efficient methods
of utilising our available resources: write crypto code,
hasten crypto-anarchy.  Have the government collapse through
lack of funding, have it's power eroded.

Let's get to it.

Amad3us

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At 12:59 PM -0700 11/16/97, Amad3us wrote:

>Anonymous decries talk of violence on list.  Understand
>anonymous, we are not the aggressors, we are the aggressed.
>It is annoying being on the receiving end of aggression
>especially where the aggressor is the local force monopoly
>and you have no recourse.  Hence talk of nuking DC, and of
>capital punishment for criminal government officials.  There
>is certain poetic karmic value to these expressions of
>annoyance.  Helps spread the dissatisfaction with
>government.
>
>However, the fact that criminal officials deserve punishment
>does not mean that any of us are interested to actually
>deliver that punishment.  There are more efficient methods
>of utilising our available resources: write crypto code,
>hasten crypto-anarchy.  Have the government collapse through
>lack of funding, have it's power eroded.

 Just so.

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.

"As if." (to quote the GenXers)

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.

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

Me, my actions have been to move away from "soft targets." Even in a major
nukewar with the Evil Empire, I'm 30 miles _south_ of the major targets in
Silicon Valley, like the Satellite Operations Center at Onizuka/Moffet in
Sunnyvale and Mountain View. (The famed "Blue Cube.") The Blue Cube is now
mirrored at Falcon AFB in Colorado, and may by now even be the main site
for satellite tracking.

Hint: Given the prevailing winds and jet stream in this part of the world,
and given the mountain range between my location and Silicon Valley, I'm
almost certainly completely safe. Except from the aftereffects of a
nukewar, namely, human vermin spreading out through the mountain passes
trying to steal what they can. Hence my "other measures."

A bio weapon is more troublesome, where I am, but I doubt any CBW agent
could have toxicity to cover even those of us in fairly isolated ocean
valleys.

I expect one day to hear that some major world capital has been nuked or
devastated with botulinin toxin. I doubt I'll be crying.

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

--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."

On Sun, Nov 16, 1997 at 12:33:59PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
[...]
> 
> But people like Hettinga and Crispin believe in guilt by viewpoint,

Coming from you this is truly funny statement.

> and in keeping quiet so as not to make the authorities mad.

??Don't believe I ever said anything to that effect...

> Me, my actions have been to move away from "soft targets." 

You're a dead man regardless, Tim, as are we all. It's just a matter of
time. 

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

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/
Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>