September 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

US on the move
by citizenq＠hushmail.com 16 Sep '01

16 Sep '01

C-130s or equivalent passing overhead nearby on northerly course, about one every 2 minutes. thrum thrum beat the drum.

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Re: SYMBOL
by Jim Windle 16 Sep '01

16 Sep '01

On Sun, 16 Sep 2001 15:42:57 Bill Stewart wrote: > > >Donald Trump is a capitalist - if building his proposed >kilometer-high New Trump Tower would have made sense without >the subsidies he's been so good at talking New York into giving him, >it'd probably be built by now. It's not. > I agree completely that the real issue will be economics. Though, as I remeber, like most Manhattanites I try to tune "the Donald" out when he started spouting, the issue wil Trumps proposal to build the world's tallest building in the old railroad yards he is developing on the West Side was not the economics of the building, which he thought worked, but rather his inability to get the necessary zoning approvals. Another developer, Silvestein, had a 99 year lease on the WTC while the Port Authority continued to own the property. Siverstien has already called for the site to be redeveloped, though what if any rights he enjoys to do so under the 99 year lease on now non-existent buildings I don't know. As Trump seems at the moment at least to be syclically solvent I am sure he will make a high profile proposal to redevelop the site as well. Jim Windle >Rebuilding it doesn't make sense, though I did enjoy the picture >that's been floating around the net of the replacement building, >four towers shaped like a hand with the middle finger extended. :-) >If it weren't for the near-infinite value of land in Manhattan, >I'd say it would be better to build your basic eternal-flame monument there. > >At 09:47 AM 09/16/2001 -0700, Tim May wrote: >>The looming Bauhaus boxes of the World Trade Center never inspired me >>in the slightest way. > >Agreed - the Empire State building and Chrysler Building are cool, >but the WTC was ugly, though the view from the restaurant was impressive. > >(...and the John Hancock tower in Boston at least had the entertainment value >of guessing where the next glass window was going to fall off...) > > >>By contrast, the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis in Athens >>really _did_ inspire me. I guess this is why I like the Getty Center so much. > >And the Parthenon lasted over 2000 years - it didn't turn into a ruin >until the Turks blew up the ammunition storage there in the ~1850s. > >>Some years ago (mid 1960s), IBM decided to move the bulk of its >>headquarters operations _out_ of Manhattan to places like Armonk and >>Yorktown Heights, north of NYC. They found many of their execs were >>already living in those areas, and younger workers could buy actual homes >>in the suburban areas. Likewise, my old company, Intel, decided ... > >The Internet makes it possible for anybody to work from anywhere they want. >Of course, that's why everybody moved to the San Francisco Bay Area >to be near the action :-) > > Join 18 million Eudora users by signing up for a free Eudora Web-Mail account at http://www.eudoramail.com

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RE: CNN disinformation? (fwd)
by Jei 16 Sep '01

16 Sep '01

I hate to point out the obvious, but doesn't this whole WTC thing seems to be like it's a mossad operation to others? I have no proof, of course, but the economics and the reverse-engineering of the logics of the whole events point to this conclusion. 1) Israel has been very well prepared in that the current and ex-prime ministers have been very well available and have been talking on international television about this incident from the moment it started. 2) The below news is very beneficial to Israel 3) Israel benefits the most from this incident politically 4) They have the resources to do something like this 5) Their politicians don't care about killing innocent people 6) They have done it before to the Americans (Sinking one of their ships) 7) The Mossad recruit palestinians for suicide missions and kill the volunteers before they commit a bombing -> a short extention would be to use them for their own benefit by having them do suicide attacks in the US to gain support for their policies in the middle east, and have US attack the neighboring arab countries threatening Israel. 8) Osama has denied responsibility, yes he is "implicated" somehow by the evidence. 9) Osama would not seem to benefit from this politically or economically, or gain any support by doing this in the Arab countries, as has been made clear 10) Iraelis' claim to have warned USA before hand... etc. etc. etc. Tons of coincidences and reportings of facts about this whole incident in the news. Israel is very prominently playing this for all it's worth, and seems incredibly very well prepared. Of course, this does not mean that they had anything to do with it. I'm just pointing out that they are getting the biggest benefit, together with the military-industrial and spy-complexes of the USA. Certainly a nice conspiracy theory? ;-) On Sat, 15 Sep 2001, [anton.raath] wrote: > :- anybody could confirm the following? > > The authenticity of the "Palestinians celebrating footage dates back to > 1991" meme has been hotly debated on the Net over the last few days, and > last I heard nobody reputable was able to confirm that CNN was faking it. > Personally, I take CNN reports with a pinch of salt, but this might just be > a little too obvious to be true. > > For more speculation on this topic, there's a discussion at Plastic: > http://www.plastic.com/article.pl?sid=01/09/15/0020252&mode=thread > > A! > ====================================================== > anton l. raath > > > > Intelligence Forum (http://www.intelforum.org) is sponsored by Intelligence > and National Security, a Frank Cass journal (http://www.frankcass.com/jnls/ins.htm) >

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The Assault on Civilization by David Kelley
by Matthew Gaylor 16 Sep '01

16 Sep '01

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/pubs/dk_assault_on_civilization.asp The Assault on Civilization by David Kelley, Executive Director Most of us still find it impossible to grasp the destruction of the World Trade Center. It was real, we saw it, but it does not belong in any reality we can understand. We saw the airliners, full of people who might have been us, streak incomprehensibly toward the walls of steel and glass. We saw them morph into fireballs that trapped thousands of people, working at their desks on a routine morning, in an inferno that killed most of them. We saw the shimmering towers collapse, and the towers of volcanic smoke that rose to take their place in the New York skyline. The images have been imprinted on our minds, never to be forgotten, but they will not compute. In that sense, the terrorists succeeded. They have rocked our sense of reality. They have confronted us with a horror we could not have imagined, and may never assimilate. But they have also revealed, for everyone to see, the real nature of their cause. The assault is being described as an act of war against America, and it is. But unlike the Pentagon, the World Trade Center had no military significance. Unlike the White House--which the fourth, unsuccessful plane had apparently targeted--it had no political significance for U.S. policy in the Middle East, or anywhere else. The attack on the twin towers cannot be seen as an effort, even a twisted effort, to redress the grievances of people who feel dispossessed. It was an act of sheer destruction, for the sake of destruction. With rare unity, Americans have grasped that this was an assault on their values, and it was. The buildings were obviously chosen as symbolic targets. But the values are not uniquely American, or even uniquely Western. They are the values of civilized life anywhere. This was an assault on civilization as such. When it was built in 1973, the World Trade Center was an engineering marvel, innovative in structural design and in the construction techniques invented to erect the towers on that site. Though larger, taller structures have since been erected, New Yorkers were justly proud of these towering symbols of technical, industrial audacity. The buildings' tenants were a cross-section of a productive economy: insurance companies, engineers, banks and investment houses, law firms, educators, employment agencies, construction companies, travel agencies. The tenants included great names in American finance--Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Lehman Brothers. They included Empire Health Choice, which provides health insurance and medical services to millions of people in New York State. Dow Jones, one of the world's great publishing companies, had offices in the South Tower. The top floors of the North Tower housed the transmitting facilities for the major broadcasters in New York. Fuji Bank of Japan occupied three floors, and scores of businesses from other countries had offices in the building. Befitting its name and the intent of the builders, it was a crossroads of international commerce, a symbol not only of wealth but of trade as the civilized mode of human interaction. "World trade means world peace," said the chief architect, Minoru Yamasaki. "The World Trade Center buildings in New York had a bigger purpose than just to provide room for tenants. The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace. The World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness." These towers became landmark of the skyline of New York City, which has always been a powerful symbol in its own right, a beacon of freedom and opportunity. From the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building, that skyline was forged from the melting pot where the best in man is refined from the accidents of race and nationality. In Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, the famous novel of a New York architect, one character says that when he sees the city, "I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body." Many of us wished we could have done just that when we saw the towers finally crumple and collapse. Technology, achievement, trade, law, peace, freedom-these were the values under attack. They are not American values but human values, the values of civilized life. Though it is not yet known for certain which particular terrorist band committed the atrocity, we have every reason to believe they sprang from a fanatical subculture of Islamic fundamentalism. But our enemy is not Islam, which created one of the world's great civilizations, nor is it the Arab or Iranian or Afghani peoples. Our enemy is the nihilism of this subculture. The terrorist leaders claim to speak for Palestinians. But the grievances of that people, even if legitimate, cannot explain the motivation for this act, much less justify it. The terrorists claim to speak for the victims of Western imperialism. But any literal imperialism is a thing of the past, long since redressed by the wealth that Europe and America have showered on these countries. It is clearly not the military or political power but the cultural power of the West that they resent. What makes them denounce America as the great Satan is nothing as superficial as Coca-Cola or blue jeans. It is our secular culture of freedom, reason, and the pursuit of happiness. They hate our individualism; what they want is an authoritarian society where thought and behavior are controlled by true believers. They hate capitalism as a system of trade, production, innovation, and progress; what they want is a return to a primitive mode of existence from which these "materialist" aspirations have been banished. They hate the political system of individual rights, the rule of law, and secular government; what they want is a tribal society ruled by command. The nihilist subculture is a worldwide phenomenon. We see it in the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo sect that released poison gas in the Tokyo subways. We see it in the hate-filled eyes of Christian killers in Northern Ireland. We see it in the eco-terrorists who spike trees and blow up electrical transmission towers. We see it in less murderous forms in the anti-globalization protesters who want to stifle international trade. We see it in the theorists of primitivism from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the Unabomber. Civilization has always attracted parasites who wanted to steal wealth from those who produce it. But this phenomenon is different. The nihilists do not seek wealth for themselves. They want to destroy the wealth of others. They do not seek freedom from domination. They want to abolish freedom. They do not seek a place at the table of world commerce. They want to smash the table. They do not seek a better life. They glory in death. They represent the worst form of envy, the most vicious form of human evil. They hate us not for our sins but for our virtues, and they will not be appeased. The United States and its allies must cease the policy of trying to counter terrorism by negotiation. Negotiation is an exercise of reason that civilized people use to resolve their differences. We are not dealing with civilized people. We must cease the policy of excusing their violence by their poverty and trying to buy them off with subsidies. We are not dealing with people who seek such gain. We must declare war on the terrorists and use whatever force it takes to render them incapable of posing any further threat. In the early 1800s, Thomas Jefferson sent the United States navy to rid the Barbary coast of pirates. We urge President Bush and the Congress to undertake a similar campaign not merely against the perpetrators of this outrage but against every nest of terrorists who have declared themselves, by the death and destruction they have wrought, to be enemies of mankind. In doing so, we will be acting in our own self-defense, with the moral authority of those who have been attacked. But we should understand and declare to the world that we are acting to preserve a world order on which civilized values depend, and civilized peoples everywhere must join in this cause. * * * ) 2001 The Objectivist Center Formerly the Institute for Objectivist Studies For inquires about The Objectivist Center or sample copies of our brochure, catalog or newsletter, please send your postal address to toc(a)objectivistcenter.org. Please send comments, questions, and suggestions about the website to webmaster Shawn Klein. The Objectivist Center 11 Raymond Ave., Suite 31 Poughkeepsie, NY 12603 845-471-6100 (voice) 845-471-6195 (fax) toc(a)objectivistcenter.org __________________________________________________________________________ Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. --- ************************************************************************** Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues Send a blank message to: freematt(a)coil.com with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week) Matthew Gaylor, (614) 313-5722 ICQ: 106212065 Archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/ **************************************************************************

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Re: Pakistan's Price: $30bbn per trick
by Subcommander Bob 16 Sep '01

16 Sep '01

At 12:18 PM 9/16/01 -0500, measl(a)mfn.org wrote: >It appears Pakistan has closed the deal: we retire thirty billion in their >debt, and they agree to act as our proxy. Damn they're cheap! > >Personally, I would have held out for a *lot* more... > They should get the Serbs to negotiate; they got $100 million for turning in Milosevic to the US. But with CI chiefs in FBI, CIA coming in at around a million each, they may have gone for the easy deal... ........ Fox News just interviewed a Catholic priest who blessed the future violence.

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Re: The Enemies List
by Nomen Nescio 16 Sep '01

16 Sep '01

Chefren - On behalf of the civilized readers of the cypherpunks list, please accept our apology for the implied threats of violence against you by Tim May. He is by no means representative of the larger readership. He is alone in calling for the death of those who hold views different from his own. You and other critics have every right to speak your mind and make your position known. Indeed, the cypherpunks were founded on the principle of advancing freedom of speech. It is a sad and tragic irony that one of the founders of that group has descended into a despicable allegiance to violence. Long-term subscribers have seen it happen gradually over the years. It seemed to many that the Y2K non-disaster was the last straw. Tim May was one of the worst of the Y2K paranoids, spewing hostility at anyone who dared to suggest that the event might not be a catastrophe, that the government was not engaging in a cover-up or planning to install itself as a dictatorship. The original purpose of the cypherpunks mailing list was forgotten as Tim May turned it into a forum for discussing gun ownership, preparations for disaster, and mechanisms for revenge. Many of us have been forced to use the shield of anonymity so that our voices may be heard without fear of the violent retribution that Tim May so often threatens. His frequent boasts of carrying weapons, his talk of a large arsenal, his calls for bloody revenge, all instill a genuine fear in those who would disagree with him. Very few list members have ever dared to speak up in opposition to even the most outrageous statements made by Tim May. When he said that he was becoming convinced that Tim McVeigh had done the right thing in killing hundreds of innocents, only an anonymous poster was willing to take him sharply to task. When he wrote that what he calls "the colored race" was heading for "the trash heap of history", adding "fuck 'em", only an anonymous poster spoke out against this outrageous demonstration of racism. Why? Is it because all list subscribers agree with terrorist actions like McVeigh's? (Tim May has even hinted that he welcomes the recent WTC attack!) Is it because all list subscribers are racists who wish to see their own race rise to dominance? Surely not. Rather, most readers are intimidated into silence. They don't speak up because they fear the consequences. Tim May has shown all too many times how sensitive he is to even the slightest criticism. He has a furious temper, as you, Chefren, have discovered. And he does not hesitate to threaten death. So please, don't imagine that because Tim May has added you to his enemies list, you are in any danger from the thousands of cypherpunks who subscribe to the mailing list. The vast majority abhor intimidation and threats. Indeed, most readers came to the cypherpunks out of a desire to build a society where speech would always be free, where violence would be impotent. This is why we have worked on the technologies of cryptography and anonymity. It is sad and ironic that we are forced to resort to these methods, which were intended as a shield against a hostile outside world, here on our own list. It is the only way that many of us can speak openly and freely and without fear. This is the injury which Tim May has inflicted upon the group. Fortunately the tools are available, and even his violent threats, his rants and his rage cannot silence those who would speak their minds. Again, on behalf of those of us who do not believe in violent revenge, who believe in freedom of speech for all, please accept this apology.

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I hope this war puts an end to PC nonsense
by Tim May 16 Sep '01

16 Sep '01

I was flipping through the channels and came across a Peter Jennings/ABC show, something about "Talk Back America" or "Our Children Speak Out" or somesuch PC gobbledegook. Predictably, an Oriental girl of about 12-14 was "sharing": "We need to understand that terrorism comes from the hatred within our hearts." I think even normally-PC Jennings saw the brainwashed stupidity in this and moved on to the next child...a second later I flipped the channel. That so many millions of children are programmed to mutter about how "bigotry is our most important problem" and "terrorism comes from our hearts" shows how far we've sunk into the miasma of political correctness. I hope if nothing else good comes from recent events, at least we see the death of crap like this. --Tim May

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Palestinian celebration videos censored
by Subcommander Bob 16 Sep '01

16 Sep '01

http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/09/16/News/News.34869.html JERUSALEM (September 16) - About 1,500 Palestinians, many supporters of Hamas, marched in a Gaza Strip refugee camp Friday, burning Israeli flags and carrying a large poster of Osama bin Laden, an exiled Saudi millionaire who US Secretary of State Colin Powell has named a key suspect in last week's terror attacks in the United States. After the rally, plainclothes Palestinian policemen questioned several journalists, including members of foreign news agencies, and confiscated videotape, film, and other camera equipment. An Associated Press Television News video was among the materials taken, and an AP photographer was warned by officials not to publish pictures of the bin Laden poster. AP protested and demanded the return of the video and other material. The journalists were told police would review the material before deciding whether or not to release it. Palestinian Authority officials refused to comment on the record and did not respond immediately to AP's protest. The Palestinian Police said in a statement that the rally in the Nusseirat refugee camp took place without a permit. "The Palestinian Police confiscated media material which documented illegal acts," the statement said. Earlier last week, Palestinian Police stopped camera teams and photographers from covering a rally in Nablus in which several thousand Palestinians celebrated the attacks in the US. Palestinian officials said the demonstration did not represent widespread Palestinian opinion. According to one source, the Reuters correspondent in Nablus not only agreed to the PA demand not to document the rally, but attempted to press his AP counterpart to follow suit. He was unable to reach him in time. The AP cameraman later received death threats.

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Frank Sudia's proposal: Let's revive encryption key escrow
by Declan McCullagh 16 Sep '01

16 Sep '01

----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> -----

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RE: SYMBOL
by Nomen Nescio 16 Sep '01

16 Sep '01

The movement to rebuild the World Trade Center towers is gaining momentum, and American capitalism is stepping up to the plate. The latest corporate giant to sign on as a sponsor is Target Stores. Their only requirement is that their corporate logo be painted high on each tower. The Target logo is a gigantic red bullseye.

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