December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: RTFM-709 / Email Inteception
by Man In The Middle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there anything else you would like to know about email interception? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ joseph gonzales wrote: > > ---------- > > From: Information Server <toto(a)sk.sympatico.ca> > > To: Jason <rennie(a)one.net.au> > > Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > > Subject: Re: Mail interception > > Date: Saturday, November 15, 1997 6:46 PM > > > > For information on the interception of plaintext email, > > send a reply to this message, with an empty message body > > and with a subject line -- "RTFM-709".

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RTFM-709 / Email Interception
by Man In The Middle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there anything else you would like to know about email interception? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tom McCaskill wrote:

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Ataka Dorn
by TruthMailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anonymous screamed: > Tim May writes: <stuff> > You admit here that you've said you hope to see D.C. nuked. > > Do you really hope that D.C. gets nuked? Do other list readers agree? > How many people would this kill? Over half a million live in the city > proper, with millions more in the surrounding areas. You have now said > that you would hope to see many of these millions of people killed. Are you preparing this testimony for the trial, or for the press? I'd be more than happy to kick in some leftover plutonium for you to plant in Tim's home, if you plan on setting him up after I've finished my...uuhhh...home project. > It is this kind of support for depraved violence which has poisoned > discourse on this mailing list. It is unconscionable to support such > an act of cold-blooded terrorism. Most of the "poison" seems to be coming from Tim's detractors, chief of whom is yourself, at present. Why don't you try limiting yourself to 10,000 words of ranting and finger-pointing for every "Nuke DC" statment Tim makes? > You're not even the worst. Other posters have supported this kind of > sickening violence even more openly. No one complains. Apparently > everyone with an ounce of moral sense has left the list long ago. Please give the rest of us credit for being self-willed individuals who are perfectly capable of promoting our own brand of sickening violence, rather than just going along with the suggestions that Tim makes in our late-night secret meetings where we discuss the our plans for the overthrow of anarchy in the world. > You seem to think that the only problem with Waco is that the wrong > innocents were killed. You have no problem taking out innocents > in Washington D.C. if it lets you get at your enemies. You are no > different from the agents who killed the men, women and children in Waco. > You have no right to set yourself apart from them. You are as ruthless > and violent as the worst of them. As Robert Hettinga stated in a previous post, I think that your constant rants about innocent childen betray some kind of sick fixation on them. Please try to keep your hands away from your private body parts when thinking about them. That might help. > This list reeks of death and violence. Apparently there is no problem > which can't be solved by killing. Kill the innocents of D.C. Kill the > children in the day care center in Oklahoma City. Drop more bombs on > Japan. Cheer the cold-blooded murder of a government agent. Kill the > children who scrawl graffiti on your mailbox. Boy, now I'm having problems keeping my hands away from _my_ private parts. Back in a minute... ... > Of course you have the right to post what you like. But when you spew > garbage, I have the right to say it stinks. It seems that other posters > have lost their sense of smell. They say that's what happens when you > spend your time wallowing in sewage. You seem to be the one both pumping most of the sewage and doing most of the wallowing in it. Of course, you're just groping around in it looking for 'bad' people, aren't you? It's not like you get cheap, vicarious thrills dwelling on these kinds of topics. When you testify in court, or give your interviews to the press, remember to keep your hands tucked in your armpits. Folding them together on your lap might prove to be too much of a temptation. TruthMangler BTW, thanks for those pictures of Princess Di's death scene that you sent me. Great closeups!

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[Fwd: RTFM-79 / Email Interception] RTFM-79 / Email Interception
by Louis J. Freeh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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RTFM-709 / Email Interception
by Louis J. Freeh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mr. Belton, Please stop by your local FBI headquarters first thing in the morning. We just need to ask you a few questions. (Bring your passport.) Sincerely, Louis J. Freeh ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ mike belton wrote:

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Re: This judge needs killing
by nobody＠neva.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Anonymous <nobody(a)replay.com> >Paul Bradley writes: >>Judge David Selwood today sentenced 3 writers for the magazine "Green >>Anarchist" to 3 years imprisonment each for their articles in the >>magazine which he concluded incited others to break the law. >>The magazine contained diaries for the previous months animal rights >>activism events and contained articles generally favourable to the cause >>of animal liberation. >> >>Another judge who has richly earned the death penalty. > >Another example of the violent rhetoric which goes without comment on >this list. This is simply untrue. In several instances I have argued against the use of violence as impractical. (It's also distasteful.) Incidentally, who is it that should be creating articles that express your beliefs? Since you haven't seen the quantity of articles opposing violence that you would like, perhaps you wouldn't mind telling us why you haven't been writing them? Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNG47rJaWtjSmRH/5AQElxwf9GKTQLbaNwFiXmM+lxg9u8/cFnT5IV8A8 HdCKtRv2vto7nVMygFkbXa+ROcVl9CCI2sgSoNEbAv0sO9oULMYcBoBfnJJmAM+X TYVWhYKx9dFFsFAO160d9gbsU7wm7Z5wvwZGoKt+Bs9+oW7gFURLEThNXmG54J8t Id6+RvPRHduTJEmGB6Fm9upiuls0NVbxEk6B27EFK9GVqOSEJOBW4AVRb3CaIKlJ Js8nrcZLeCVrrUMViLkkl1BSmh8OfgLf9V2blfr0zVu+x2MRy2QU1N2jywdYKJ+2 3rf0yXgmuU46le0dD5WD/xDoQHcwFP347mdH7HmwdVMmw3zp3h82Gw== =Ys/r -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: This judge needs killing
by nobody＠neva.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Addressing Tim May, Anonymous <nobody(a)replay.com> wrote: >Do you really hope that D.C. gets nuked? Do other list readers >agree? How many people would this kill? Over half a million live in >the city proper, with millions more in the surrounding areas. You >have now said that you would hope to see many of these millions of >people killed. There is probably a double standard in play here. (BTW, one advantage of persistent identity is that it creates a context for the discussion which makes it possible to explore deeper ideas.) Very few people eschew violence completely or are overly troubled by the deaths of innocents in the process... >You're not even the worst. Other posters have supported this kind of >sickening violence even more openly. No one complains. Apparently >everyone with an ounce of moral sense has left the list long ago. ..so when you claim that nobody with any moral sense would favor violence, you have essentially declared that most of the human race is without moral sense. It's an interesting proposition, but it is by no means obvious that it is true. Also, it is puzzling that you have singled out a few subscribers to this list for attention. There are literally millions of people all over the globe who are actively involved with planning and executing horrible acts of violence. In this company, the readers of this list are pretty insignificant. I do not know of a single act of violence associated with any list member. In practice, you would be hard pressed to find a more peaceful group anywhere in the world. One of the things that appeals to me about the tools the cypherpunks are developing is the likelihood that they will end war. What percentage of wars are instigated and organized by governments? That is, how many wars can we think of in which a war originated in the population of country and dragged its unwilling government into the fray? I cannot think of any. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNG5O65aWtjSmRH/5AQEuOgf7BsFl/tp5UljPFWQQZH/hDN5koZkc6Jql NFddGqtcMVBPIumDjO1UuHy/whPmivLVEfsxgjX6LIr8N0eY1FREcJRkdSJKtcim PnbZe0FYcHOlnnBKo6SuA3eZIFrH6/zkcVaw9NaH3ewL3v3WfTnm/tio9nKuuWFc tPmDqRJJpAPhaseID4z9Jxlhb1l6Iq50CxoeD0vvjRkFdkx37bwG6zy/rzLSq7Y+ aX7BKUy5qHunYPHHSSot/qwWqLQByK2hwWR/Gm5mF+dQ7Jf+pC5uWUDHMJWJMyod HE89vd2JBMmOz5v4ar89pWGDNGiu9GJp/dW4F2K0ip/qU8Ktwt4YyA== =B0F/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Apologies to Joichi Ito
by dabi-do＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mr. Ito: Apologies for misspelling your surname. Ito-san was what I had in mind. Dabi-do dabi-do(a)juno.com

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Re: degree of anonymity
by Jenaer Mixmaster Anonserver 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One blithered: >Now maybe everyone will see what I mean when I say that those on this >list now only stand for guns, violence, threats of terrorism and murder, >racism, homophobia. Speak for yourself, mate! The crypto content is still worthwhile, what there is of it.

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InfoWarriors - Alpha / TEXT
by TruthMonger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The True Story of the InterNet Part III InfoWar Final Frontier of the Digital Revolution Behind the ElectroMagnetic Curtain by TruthMonger <tm(a)dev.null> Copyright 1997 Pearl Publishing ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- InfoWar Table of Contents * Predilogue * InfoWarriors ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Predilogue ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prologue to 'WebWorld' The great tragedy of it, is that it didn't have to happen. Not at all...we were warned. And yet, still, it has come to this. I don't know why I feel this overwhelming compulsion to go on and on about it. I could have done something. We all could have done something. Perhaps the final epitaph on the gravestone of Freedom will be, "Why didn't somebody do something?" That seems to be the common battle-cry of the legions of humanity that have been sucked into the vortex of the New World Order. None of the imprisoned seem to know that the very phrase itself is reflective of the source of their imprisonment...that this desperate cry of anguish is in no way an antidote for the terrible disease that has afflicted 'Liberty and Justice', and that it is, rather, merely the final symptom of the cursed blight itself. I can hear the rumbling of the trucks as they come up the street, and soon I will be hearing the thumping of the jackboots storming up the staircase, as I have heard them so many times before. But I suspect that this time, the sound will be different, that it will have an ethereal quality about it, one which conveys greater personal meaning than it did when I heard it on previous occasions. This time, they are coming for me. My only hope, is that I can find the strength of character somewhere inside myself to ask the question which lies at the heart of why there is a 'they' to come for me at all...why, in the end, it has finally come to this for me, as for countless others. The question is, in retrospect, as simple and basic as it is essential for any who still espouse the concepts of freedom and liberty to ask themselves upon finding themselves marveling at the outrageousness being perpetrated upon their neighbors by 'them'...by 'others'...by 'Friends of the Destroyer.' The question is: "Why didn't I do something?" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "... 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' ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- InfoWarriors - Alpha Subject: What Will Revolution Look Like? From: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> To: cypherpunks(a)Algebra.COM Some of the questions by Mark Rogaski and others ask about the nature of the revolution I and others are predicting and encouraging. What will a just revolution, like those anticipated by Jefferson, Franklin, and others, look like? The British thought the colonial rebels were "playing dirty" by shooting from behind trees instead of marching in bright uniforms with drums and bugles to herald their way. Modern armies think freedom fighters are "terrorist scum" for not fighting honestly and fairly in their own M-1 Abrams tanks and aircraft carriers. So, too, will revolutionaries be seen as fighting "unfairly" and being unethical sneaks, child killers, and terrorists. (As if children and other innocents did not die in various incidents in past wars, on all sides.) When Jefferson predicted that a revolution was needed every 20 years or so, he surely was not saying that throwing one party out of leadership and putting the other party in was an example of such a revolution, or that "campaign reform" is such an example. Nor was he saying that the only valid revolution would be when a bunch of citizens or states got together their own army and marched on Washington. (Actually, raising such an army is in violation of numerous laws about heavy weapons, licenses to carry weapons, etc. No doubt illegal. Ironically.) No, the revolution, when it comes, will likely be different from anything quite like we've seen to date. --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." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: What Will Revolution Look Like? From: Blanc <blancw(a)cnw.com> To: cypherpunks(a)Algebra.COM Tim May wrote: >No, the revolution, when it comes, will likely be different from anything >quite like we've seen to date. .................................................... In the revolution against the British, the U.S. was a small colony sitting on a vast "new" land, with the Natives but a minor obstacle to expansion. Presently there is no such unoccupied place which could be claimed for the cause of liberty, and revolutionaries are sitting in the middle of the enemy camp, surrounded everywhere by people who "just want to save lives". You could temporarily send a political message and get your names in the news, but then totally lose the war from being outnumbered and overwhelmed by non-sympathizers. A long time ago it was possible, given the distance of water and land between peoples, to make a break with them physically. The enemy could be driven out, sent "home", and the winners could develop their new living arrangements in the new setting. But there is no new setting to go to, there is nowhere to send the infidels. The life of a new libertarian "society" would have to be created as a virtual one, existing among or in-between the others. Of course the basis of the original setup is still mentioned every once in a while, and so it is still in the minds of everyone, even if only as a dim reference, so it could be said that the most a current revolution could accomplish would be the return of the original ideal to the minds of the population. But I think that it would take much more than a few skirmishes to accomplish that, as it doesn't appear that it carries all that much support. It would be like getting a kid to take down some medicine; many don't really want to live so independently, nor feel the need to identify what kind of life would be the more ideal (i.e. they don't identify precisely the difference between a socialist atmosphere and a libertarian one, nor concern themselves with why they should spend any time worrying about the difference it makes.) An intentional revolution, I fear, would just look like an attempt to make people think. And therefore not taken too seriously. (And if the revolutionaries lose? tough luck. Oh, well. ) .. Blanc ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: What Will Revolution Look Like? From: Adam Shostack <adam(a)homeport.org> To: tcmay(a)got.net (Tim May) CC: cypherpunks(a)toad.com The distinction between civilians and soldiers, which came about in the 17th and 18th centuries, is close to meaningless in the context of a modern revolution. However, this distinction, and the Clausewitzian claim that war is the continuation of politics by other means, underlay the 'law of war.' War as the continuation of politics implies that the State sends soldiers to war against other soldiers to fight for policy rights. War to gain territory, war over insults or honor, religious war, is seen as a thing of the past. Barbaric. Modern warriors can not understand people who play by other rules. To some extent, this has been good for us civilians. The firebombing of German cities were an exception, not the rule. However, as the anti-colonial movement demonstrated, a people can effectively fight a modern army, and win. They are marked as terrorists, defamed for their capitalist activities such as drug smuggling to finance the struggle, and hanged when caught. A modern revolution, as Mao taught, is based on forcing people to decide if they are with you or against you. There are no neutrals who simply want the status quo to continue, because once the revolutionaries have started to do their job, the state lashes out, passing fascist new laws (see Northern Ireland, Peru, the United States). The status quo disappears, and the revolutionaries are committed. It is only by making starkly clear who stands where that enough people to fuel the revolution can have the manpower to succeed. The alternative to the revolution becomes living under the government that killed your family members. In Algeria, once the first few thousands of martyrs died, every additional person the French killed was a new reason to fight. Surrender, to the Algerians, became inconceivable. Life as French was not worth living. So they fought. When the revolution comes to the United States, it will not be a pretty thing. Our best hope is for a rapid surrender of the current government, which is not likely. By deploying now the tools of communication (remailers, strong encryption, directions for building bombs and traps, cheap radio transmitters), as well as the tools for deception (how hard is it to build a fake GPS transmitter?), and the understanding that the US government has grown cancerous, we bring closer the beginning and the end of the revolution. We bring its start closer by forcing the Government to show its true colors, turning more people against it. We bring its finish closer by having ready the tools to render ineffective the large fighting machines we have paid for, by making it clear that the government does not have the support of the people, and by making it clear that once committed, we will have to fight. So, Tim, we disagree that it will be like nothing seen before. It will be like many modern revolutions, because we can't force the government to fight on our terms today. 20 years later, we will look back, and realize that governments have murdered most of the innocents they will ever kill, because will can deploy technology to make government voluntary. But we're not there, and getting there may be bloody. There is, of course, Duncan's Berlin Wall theory, but I fear things will have to get worse before they get better. Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: What Will Revolution Look Like? From: John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Warmaking is ever changing in response to the last wins and losses. However, winners are less likely to change than losers, for why change a successful formula, publish it, or a well-spun dissimulation. As ever, unknown forms of war are in gestation, being tested and debriefed, in military institutions and wargames, in business, in education, in the amorphous culture at large through legal competition and crime and their variable gray areas where fair and unfair, civilized rules and their breaking, are ever in grim and vicious dispute. While there are piles of studies on organized and guerrilla wars of the past, the most provocative are those that attempt to describe what's coming, how to recognize its early warnings and what can be done to head it off or, more likely, advance it. The highest warmaking art is winning without physical fighting, to outfox the enemy by demoralizing, by demonstrating that attack is futile, that there is no chance of defeating a superior force. That's why military exhibitionism and psy war is reputed among military and political leaders to be as vital as that of brute force, as best exemplified by the Cold War 50-year stalemate and psychological "win-win" to a status of Cool War. To get a handle on what's in store, imagine that completely unbelievable methods of warfare, overt and covert, are being concocted now, composed of strategies, tactics, warfighters and armaments never before used -- and will not be revealed and understood until too late for defense. Try to forget everything you know about warfighting, crime fighting, conflict resolution, rules of engagement, black operations, guerrilla tactics, hiding among the people. Assume the enemy knows everything you know and more, is better armed and smarter than you, has more spies among your supporters and in your most intimate circle. Imagine that your toilet, your bed, your fridge, your car, your is triggered to explode by radio or your computer by your password. Consider that there will be no time to reflect and reconsider when things go catastrophically wrong and the enemy is unrelenting attacking with inhuman viciousness, when you're defenses are crumbling and weapons failing, when mates are squealing, dead or run away, when you can't stop shitting yourself, when your legs are buckling, when your minds racing out of control, when you're begging god and mom for mercy and the upraised ax is descending, the barrel back of head is firing. Remember that who the enemy is no secret to either side, on whichever side you're on, and presume that the emery is more ready and able to cook your goose than you are theirs. What actual war carnage teaches, what the current civil war in the US is showing, is what the TV-sofa war does not: nobody wins, ever, except the mindfuckers who've never gone berserk in combat or in the jobplace, killed friend and foe to save own asses. You only win wars by never having to fight them, those started by weakling cowards unable to steal, cheat and lie well enough to satisfy their demonic lusts. Best to outsmart the enemy in war, work and love, so that what you're up to is revealed only years later if ever. For the best won wars are never known at the time, no parades, no medals, no glory, no war stories, no memorial cemeteries and monuments, no veteran hospitals filled with carrion, just peace and tranquillity shooting deer, harpooning dolphins, rip-tearing the landscape for profligate cowboy wargames riding homicidal freeways. We're all gonna lose our civil war in market place killings and road rage, thanks to today's warfighting lesson in free fire criminal enterprise by those who've never been shot and shot and shot, and lost for good -- the vainglorious winners, the losers desperate to regain glory days. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Bell sentencing timed to coincide with raids on militia members? From: "Brian B. Riley" <brianbr(a)together.net> To: "Tim May" <tcmay(a)got.net>, "CypherPunks List" <cypherpunks(a)Algebra.COM> On 10/31/97 3:01 PM, Tim May (tcmay(a)got.net) passed this wisdom: >Get ready, folks. By the way, I'll be at the gun show at the Cow Palace in >San Francisco on the weekend of November 8-9, probably Saturday, the 8th. >Seems I'm running low on certain types of ammo, and I may want to pick up a >couple more assault rifles before Swinestein succeeds in completely banning >them. I used to think that way ... but then I thought, why pay all that money and walk the line of whatever Swinestein et al come up with. Instead I have my deer rifles and a shotgun or two and ammo for both. The way this all is working now, I have more combat experience than 90% of the active duty military and most cops, and every day goes by more and more are retiring. If it ever comes down to that, I'll take down one or two of them with my deer rifle and help myself to their weapons and ammo ... also kind of makes sure I haven't set myself up to depend on an obsolete caliber ... if I am not good enough to take some of them down and take their weapons, no 300 nor 30,000 rounds for my very own Armalite is going to make any difference. Brian B. Riley --> http://www.macconnect.com/~brianbr For PGP Keys <mailto:brianbr@together.net?subject=Get%20PGP%20Key> "Everyone who lives dies; but not everyone who dies has lived" -- No Fear ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: What Will Revolution Look Like? From: Jim Burnes <jim.burnes(a)ssds.com> To: John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> CC: cypherpunks(a)toad.com "To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. jim ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: FEMA site using cookies From: Crisavec <dbrown(a)alaska.net> To: cypherpunks(a)Algebra.COM Attila T. Hun typethed the following... >> The USMC 29 Palms Combat Arms Survey: >>"The U.S. government declares a ban on the possession, sale, >>transportation, and transfer of all non-sporting firearms >>...consider the following statement: >>> I would fire upon U.S. citizens who refuse or >>> resist confiscation of firearms banned by the >>> U.S. government..." > > they were looking for a yes/no answer --no maybes. if anybody thinks >this is a joke --it was not; it was given to most units at 29 Palms, >Pendleton, LeJuene, and Paris Island. the percentage responses were >interesting: men with less than 5 years service were 90% "yes" --grizzled >old NCOMs with 15 or more years were less than 15% "yes." shows what the >federal government educational system is capable of conditioning with a >little help from movies and television. subliminally, was has been >glorified by the merchants of death: arms manufacturers and power hungry >politicians. -- This doesn't surprise me at all Attila. They don't teach the constitution in High School anymore. That accounts for the lower ranks. The NCOM's answers are to be expected, They STRESS Posse Commitais<sp?> and the constitution for ALL noncom's. It's part of the testing for promotion to E-5 and up. Most of the noncom's have been in long enough to be thoroughly disillusioned by the military in general. The only thing keeping a lot of them in is inertia... --Dave Any neural system sufficiently complex to generate the axioms of arithmetic is too complex to be understood by itself. Kaekel's Conjecture ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fwd: psychoceramics: Fighting back against the Government From: Alan Olsen <alan(a)clueserver.org> To: cypherpunks(a)Algebra.COM This is an interesting spin doctoring of Jim Bell's situation. I picked this up off the psychoceramics list. Why it was there is unclear... Terrorism's next wave -- Nerve gas and germs are the new weapons of choice BY DAVID E. KAPLAN Jeff Gordon thought he had seen it all. A veteran IRS investigator, Gordon's job since 1988 had been to probe threats and assaults against his fellow agents. There was no shortage in recent years--stabbings, fires, mortar attacks, and big unexploded bombs outside IRS offices in Los Angeles and Reno, Nevada. But in the first months of this year, Gordon found himself working on the strangest case of his career. From an informant, he had learned of a Portland, Ore., man named James Dalton Bell. Bell owed some $30,000 in back taxes and served as a juror in a local "common law court." Dozens of these self-appointed tribunals have issued "fines" and even death sentences against public officials. Bell was also active in antigovernment forums on the Internet, where he had posted a dark scheme threatening murder of troublesome federal agents. Participants could send encrypted messages to each other, Bell proposed, offering donations to whoever "predicted" how long a targeted official would live. The winner, presumably the assassin, would be rewarded with electronic fund transfers from anonymous donors, he suggested. Gordon checked further. Bell, it turned out, was an electronics engineer at a nearby circuit board manufacturer. He was also an MIT-educated chemist who had been arrested eight years earlier for making methamphetamine, but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. According to court records, Bell had once told a friend: "The first thing to remember is: Never make a chemist angry at you." In February, the IRS docked Bell's wages and seized his 10-year-old car. Inside the vehicle, Gordon found instructions for making bombs and molotov cocktails. There was also far-right literature, a printout listing large amounts of cyanide, and detailed information on fertilizer, a key ingredient in the Oklahoma City bomb. But with no evidence that Bell had hurt anyone, Gordon could not move. A burning stench. Four weeks later, on a Monday morning in March, IRS officials encountered a terrible nose-burning stench as they arrived at their building in Vancouver, the Portland suburb where Bell lived. Investigators traced the smell to a welcome mat dosed with propanethiol. The chemical is used by utilities in minuscule concentrations to give natural gas its noticeable smell. "It's Bell," Gordon told his boss. "I'm sure of it." Bell had attempted twice to buy propanethiol from a chemical-supply company in Milwaukee, Gordon then learned. Worried that the stink bomb was a trial run for something much worse, on April 1, authorities raided Bell's home. They seized five computers and three semiautomatic assault rifles, then opened his garage door. Before them stood dozens of containers filled with chemicals. There were volatile solvents, explosives ingredients, sodium cyanide, nitric acid, and diisopropyl fluorophosphate--one of several ingredients that, if properly mixed, form nerve gas--all in a residential neighborhood. "The level and type of chemicals were extremely unusual," said Leroy Loiselle, who managed the cleanup for the Environmental Protection Agency. "You don't need nitric acid to keep aphids off your flowers." On Bell's computers, Gordon found two other items: the names and home addresses of over 100 public officials--IRS employees, FBI agents, local police officers--and a 169-page document, The Terrorist's Handbook, with detailed instructions for making chemical weapons and high explosives. Bell's friends told investigators that he had tried using green beans to make botulin toxin, which causes botulism, and that he claimed to have successfully made sarin, the nerve gas used by Japanese cultists in their 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway. Bell was arrested. In July he pleaded guilty to charges of obstruction of IRS agents and use of a false Social Security number, and also admitted to the stink bomb attack and the cyberassassination scheme. He faces up to eight years in prison and $500,000 in fines. Bell declined to comment, but he contended earlier that he is merely "a chemical hobbyist" and the assassination scheme only an abstract proposal. "I'm a talker, not a doer," he said. The IRS's Jeff Gordon remains wary. According to court records, after his arrest Bell boasted to a friend that police never found his most dangerous chemical weapons. Gordon believes they could include a secret stockpile of sarin. New generation. Characters like James Dalton Bell are giving federal officials fits these days. Bell, they believe, is one of a new generation of tinkerers and technicians, of college-educated extremists threatening to use biological, chemical, or radiological weapons to achieve their goals. Since the Aum cult's Tokyo nerve gas attack, FBI officials say the number of credible threats to use these weapons has jumped from a handful in 1995, to 20 last year, to twice that number this year. Among the incidents was the 1995 mailing of a videotape to Disneyland, showing two hands mixing chemicals and a note threatening an attack on the theme park. Despite a major investigation, the sender was never caught. Just last April someone sent a petri dish labeled anthrax, an animal disease deadly to humans, to the B'nai B'rith headquarters in Washington, D.C. That proved to be a hoax. But other threats appear to be quite real. Four militia members in Minnesota were convicted recently of planning to assassinate federal agents with a biological toxin. In Ohio in 1995, a white supremacist pleaded guilty to wire fraud in illegally obtaining three vials of bubonic plague bacteria. Investigators have found biochemical agents in the hands of political extremists, extortionists, murderers, and the mentally ill. U.S. News has learned that the FBI has 50 current investigations of individuals suspected of using or planning to use radiological, biological, or chemical agents. Bureau officials say a major attack in the United States no longer seems unlikely. "The consensus of people in the law enforcement and intelligence communities is that it's not a matter of if it's going to happen, it's when," warns Robert Blitzer, head of the FBI's terrorism section. "We are very concerned." To prepare, federal agencies have scrambled to set up new counterterrorism strike forces (story, Page 32). Behind all this is the very real fear that the world has entered a new stage in terrorism. Widespread technical education and high-tech communications have vastly increased the number of people with knowledge of how to synthesize chemicals and culture bacteria. Books and videos on creating these substances--and turning them into weapons--are now available on the Internet, at gun shows and survivalist fairs, and through the mail. While its effects would be the most destructive, a nuclear incident is actually the least likely scenario, according to security experts. More likely, they say, would be a biological weapon attack; a chemical attack is the next likely possibility. The impact could range from the poisoning of an individual to sophisticated attempts at mass murder. So far, the majority have been limited efforts by loners or small groups. Most worrisome to officials is the possible involvement of more established, state-sponsored terrorist organizations--such as Hezbollah--with international reach. While the number of terrorist attacks, both in the United States and abroad, has gone down since the end of the cold war, there is a flip side. Individual acts themselves have grown more deadly, as illustrated by the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings. In its annual terrorism report issued last April, the State Department sees a trend "toward more ruthless attacks on mass civilian targets" and the use of more powerful weapons. Threshold crossed. Until this decade, biological and chemical weapons were the province of superpowers or renegade states like Iraq and North Korea. But all that changed with Aum Supreme Truth, an obscure sect of New Age fanatics based at the foot of Mount Fuji, 70 miles outside Tokyo. Recent court testimony from sect members shows how the cult's young scientists produced not only anthrax and botulin toxin but also various nerve agents, including the sarin used on Tokyo's subway. Later attacks were planned for New York and Washington, D.C. Still, it is one thing to produce deadly agents and another to use them effectively. Aum's attack killed only 12 people of the thousands in the subway system, and on seven other occasions, attempted Aum attacks were dogged by equipment failures and human error. "Trying to produce 100,000 casualties is much more difficult than is often stated," observes Jonathan Tucker of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Tucker notes that problems abound with delivery systems, meteorological conditions, and the agents themselves. Still, he warns that even crude weapons can easily cause mass disruption. Aum's nerve gas, for example, was full of impurities, yet it sent thousands to the hospital. What worries police is growing evidence that others share similar ambitions. In 1993, two years before the Aum attack, Canadian border agents stopped an American electrician named Thomas Lavy and searched his car. They found four guns, 20,000 rounds of ammunition, 13 pounds of gunpowder, neo-Nazi literature, and $80,000 in cash. Lavy also had recipes for biological and chemical weapons and a plastic bag filled with white powder. Had the agents opened the bag, they likely would have died of respiratory failure and paralysis. Tests showed the substance to be ricin, a lethal toxin extracted from the castor bean plant. (Ricin, dabbed on a tiny pellet fired from an umbrella-gun, was used by Soviet agents to murder a Bulgarian in London in 1978.) The poison is 6,000 times more toxic than cyanide, and there is no antidote. Lavy had a quarter pound of the stuff. In 1995, a man named Larry Wayne Harris was arrested after he obtained vials of the bacteria that cause bubonic plague (Page 28). Harris is an Ohio microbiologist and recent member of the white supremacist Aryan Nations. He says his friends will strike at government officials with biochemical weapons, if provoked. "If they arrest a bunch of our guys, they get a test tube in the mail," he told U.S. News. And, he says, far worse could come. "How many cities are you willing to lose before you back off?" he asks. "At what point do you say: `If these guys want to go off to the Northwest and have five states declared to be their own free and independent country, let them do it'?" Authorities take Harris's comments seriously. The recipes for such poison cocktails are available from underground publishers and on the Internet. One popularizer is an Arkansan named Kurt Saxon. Through books and videotapes, Saxon has been putting out ricin recipes for at least nine years. Convinced that the U.S. will be invaded and that the federal government can't be trusted to defend the country, he has fashioned various homemade explosives and poisons, including cyanide grenades and ricin applicators. In one segment of a $19.95 video, Saxon performs like a sinister Julia Child, blending salt water and solvents with castor beans. ("Pour in about 4 ounces of acetone," he says, "and shake it up nice.") "Uncle Fester," another near-legendary figure in the chem-bio underground, has authored such family classics as Silent Death, Improvised Explosives, and a guide to methamphetamine and LSD manufacture. Fester claims degrees in chemistry and biology, and his Silent Death describes how to produce poison gas, botulin and shellfish toxins, and ricin. Similarly, entire manuals for making homemade explosives--TNT, plastic, napalm--can be downloaded from the Net, as well as plans for building triggers, fuses, and timers. At least 11 online vendors offer books with recipes on biological or chemical weapons, including Silent Death and Kurt Saxon's The Poor Man's James Bond. All are based in the United States. Adding to the problem, many of the chemicals used to make nerve gas and other agents have perfectly legitimate uses and are readily available. "The genie has always been out of the bottle," says one intelligence analyst. "People are just discovering it." The genie is also loose in the Middle East. According to intelligence sources, notebooks and computer files recently seized from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Islamic militia, contain information on how to produce chemical agents. Hezbollah has also taken delivery of protective gear, including gas masks and bodysuits, and obtained Katyusha rockets able to deliver chemical warheads to Israel from their base in Lebanon. Hezbollah's interests are shared by at least one other Islamic terrorist, Ramzi Yusef, a trained engineer and reputed mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yusef's organization researched making sarin and reportedly planned to assassinate President Clinton in the Philippines with phosgene gas. The trade center bombers also packed cyanide into the charge that rocked the building; the chemical apparently evaporated in the explosion. Some analysts believe there have been other, unnoticed, attacks in the United States. "It's almost certain there have been uses of biological agents that have gone undetected," says Seth Carus, a proliferation expert at the National Defense University. "Most cases are known because they came to the attention of law enforcement through informants, not because of medical authorities." Health officials, for example, were mystified by a mass outbreak of salmonella poisoning in Oregon in 1984. The cause--an attack by a nearby religious sect--went undetected until the cult's demise a year later. Exotic poisons are attracting not only terrorists but also murderers and extortionists. Several recent trials have featured ricin as a murder weapon. Product tamperers, too, are increasingly turning to biological agents. Says Lori Ericson of Kroll Information Services: "We're seeing E. coli, cholera, salmonella, HIV." In one British case, microbiologist Michael Just threatened to contaminate the products of five food companies with dysentery-causing bacteria. To make his point, he sent the firms test tubes filled with the pathogen. Society can likely tolerate the occasional murderer or extortionist wielding biological or chemical weapons. The greater challenge undoubtedly will come from those with broader grievances, from terrorists steeped in extremism and political hatred. Perhaps scariest of all are the criminally insane, who may bring technical ability, but little judgment, to their homemade laboratories. Last April, authorities raided the house of one Thomas Leahy in Janesville, Wis. Leahy, who takes medication for schizophrenia, was obsessed with creating "killer viruses" to stop his enemies, both real and imagined, according to police. He pleaded guilty to possessing ricin, but a search of his home also found animal viruses and vaccines, staph bacteria culture, fungicides, insecticides, hypodermic needles, and gas masks. As Leahy reportedly told his wife, you can "never have too many poisons." With Douglas Pasternak and Gordon Witkin *********************************************************************** BIOWAR-L Biowar/Bioterrorism/Toxins Mailing List To unsubscribe or subscribe: send a message to majordomo(a)lists.sonic.net with the following text: unsubscribe biowar-l or subscribe biowar-l --- | "That'll make it hot for them!" - Guy Grand | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com/~alan/ |alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" "WebWorld & the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs" "InfoWar (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet') Soviet Union Sickle of Eunuchs Secret WebSite ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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