October 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
by John Kelsey 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

>From: Tyler Durden <camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com> >Sent: Oct 19, 2004 10:23 AM >To: jamesd(a)echeque.com, cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) ... >In developing markets the US track record is terrible. The more we interfere >and set up puppet governments and petty dictators, the result has always >been the near elimination of any kind of real modern economy. >More than that, some of the countries we've been kicked out or prevented >from influencing have been modernizing rapidly, the most obvious example is >China and Vietnam. Bolivia is interesting to watch. So, Taiwan and South Korea seem like rather obvious counterexamples. >-TD --John (Not a fan of interventionist foreign policy, FWIW)

3 2

Suprynowicz: Why isn't Kerry way ahead?
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

>Bush and Kerry: Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Brie. :-) Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Oct-24-Sun-2004/opinion/2502279…> Sunday, October 24, 2004 Las Vegas Review-Journal Why isn't Kerry way ahead? Most liberals think those stupid heartland voters just don't get it By VIN SUPRYNOWICZ REVIEW-JOURNAL I was reminded why I usually don't bother with the canned PBS "Washington Week" program when I accidentally tuned it in last Sunday. (OK, I found it shamefully riveting -- like slowing down to inspect the carnage of a traffic accident.) In an attempt to assemble an even-handed panel to discuss how George Bush and John Kerry did in the debates, host Gwen Ifill and her tax-funded PBS producers assembled four folks, one each from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine and National Public Radio. Jim Bovard and Doug Bandow and Walter Williams and Bumper Hornberger were all out on the tennis court? PBS can't afford to fly in a single token conservative or libertarian from the Orange County Register, the Colorado Springs Gazette or even the Detroit News? Are any of these people likely to discuss (or even grasp) what a Kerry administration would do to the business environment in this country? Has any of them (or Sen. Kerry, for that matter) ever run or even worked for a small business? Ms. Ifill even fed her panel a line straight out of those hundreds of spam e-mail letters we received -- generally beginning some hours before the debates -- saying, "What I saw tonight was John Kerry looking presidential." Listen up, gang: This isn't 1960. No one was watching to see if the "young, callow" Sen. John Kennedy -- er, Kerry -- could hold his own against that master of political minutiae on the global stage, eight-year veteran Vice President Richard Nixon. John Kerry was cast in the role (I use the verb advisedly) by the chiefs of the military-industrial status quo (gotta discredit that Howard Dean; he might actually cut off the Halliburton contracts) because he looks like someone swiped the audio-animatronic Lincoln from Disneyland and shaved off his beard. Of course he looks presidential. No one ever doubted John Kerry studied harder in prep school and is more likely to speak in complete sentences than former longtime heavy drinker George Bush. What people wonder about the guy is whether, if he's elected, he wouldn't be likely to pull on a striped jersey and a black beret, light up a Gauloise and promptly go sell us out to Jacques Chirac, who loaned and sold billions worth of stuff to Saddam Hussein after Sept. 11, and to Kofi Annan, who with his son is currently up to his ears in the crooked Iraq oil-for-food cash diversion scandal. Ms. Ifill, who is about as likely to ever vote for George Bush as she is to request major dental surgery without an anaesthetic, seemed genuinely puzzled as she asked her panelists about the undecided voters, again and again, "Who are these people?" After all, folks of Ms. Ifill's intellectual stature decided how to vote in this election back in November 2000. What kind of unwashed snake-handling Bible-thumpers could still be undecided? They still out at the stock car races, or what? Two to 4 percent of the populace will indeed decide this election, which looks close as to the popular vote. But frankly, I doubt the Electoral College vote will look that close -- precisely because the Electoral College was designed to protect small rural states from having our national elections decided in a few corrupt urban cesspools. The socialists in California, Daleytown, New York and New England have convinced themselves -- with the co-dependent aid of the thoroughly left-leaning bicoastal press that I saw on display on PBS last Sunday -- that this election is a close call. But why then is John Kerry, who they're bugling as having "won every debate by a landslide," still running behind? Remember, this is the bunch who couldn't imagine how their hero, Adlai Stevenson, could possibly lose to that slow-talking dimwit, Dwight D. Eisenhower -- twice. And they only beat the skulking Richard Nixon in 1960 by outright union-run vote fraud in West Virginia and Illinois. No, as the Electoral College votes are tallied Nov. 2, I think it may be clearer that there are now (again?) two Americas: a "sophisticated" urban kleptocracy made up of California and Hawaii, Daleyville and New York and New England, still moaning that our tax rates lag behind those of "progressive" Europe and Japan, and the rest, a huge red mass of pickups with dogs in the back, shouting "Yahoo" and -- I'm not saying this doesn't make me a bit uneasy, mind you -- anxious to go kick some serious A-rab ass. The reason these leftist spinmeisters can't seem to parse the thoughts of the "undecided voters" is that they're asking the wrong question. These voters are not trying to make a decision between George Bush and John Kerry. About two-thirds of this "final 4 percent" are trying to decide whether to go with their lower-tax, less-government principles and vote for Libertarian Michael Badnarik, or whether John Kerry and his "internationalist" socialist pals are so truly dangerous that these final holdouts should hold their noses and vote for simpleminded warmonger George Bush and his hideous Patriot Act. The remaining one-third of this "final 4 percent" are trying to decide whether to vote their pacifist principles and cast a ballot for Ralph Nader or the Greens -- or whether George Bush and his hideous Patriot Act are so dangerous that they should hold their noses and vote for John Kerry -- who, after all, voted for the war in Iraq, and for the hideous Patriot Act. Evidence of how large this unreported phenomenon has become arises now in the form of Web sites such as www.votepair.org, which seeks to "pair up" Kerry voters in states that are not in play in this election, with third-party voters in battleground states. Goal? The Kerryites in New York and California (Massachusetts? Illinois?) offer to vote for Nader, Cobb or Badnarik (in states that Kerry will win, anyway), thus assuring these third-party candidates of the same nationwide totals, "freeing up" third-party voters in the swing states to cast a vote for John Kerry. I'm not saying such technically illegal schemes will work, mind you -- just that they recognize the real conundrum the truly undecided voter now faces. No, in the end, George Bush is likely to win because Americans prefer "the devil they know"; because Bush at least talks about leaving us in control of some part of our lives; because Americans rarely elect U.S. senators; because Americans rarely elect "progressive liberals" (the preferred modern euphemism for socialists); because Americans never elect anyone who admits he's going to raise our taxes (where's the Walter Mondale Presidential Library?); and because Americans have never changed presidents in the middle of a war. What's that? It's "not a real war"? Howard Dean could have made that case, as do Mr. Badnarik and Mr. Nader. But Kerry voted for the war in Iraq ... and for the hideous Patriot Act, while he was at it. Bush and Kerry: Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Brie. None of this is to deny George Bush is inarticulate and has done little or nothing to downsize government. But does anyone think John Kerry would do better at that task, simply because he's a better public speaker? If that were the case, wouldn't Jesse Jackson already be president? George Bush is likely to win a substantial Electoral College victory in part because Americans figure he comes by his simple-minded (but still, in the end, right and decent) principles of honestly and sincerely, whereas John Kerry's only known principle, his sole anchor of conscience, was his belief that interventionist, "unwinnable" foreign wars such as Vietnam were bad. He has now abandoned that anchor and principle in vowing to continue the war in Iraq, because the focus groups told him so. And George Bush is also likely to win because John Kerry really is dangerous. Remember, the Clinton-Gore ticket won election only because they claimed to be "new Democrats" from conservative small Southern states who would downsize government and "end welfare as we know it." When Al Gore showed his true colors four years ago -- especially on gun control and socialized medicine -- he went down in flames, even in the South. Bush is actually likely to run more strongly this time -- especially as Iraq is a wash, what with Kerry absurdly promising to win it with his friends, the French. Why? Americans have no intention of turning tail and running from Iraq, and thus handing Islam a huge recruiting victory in the Arab heartland -- which is precisely what we all know John Kerry really wants to do, despite his absurd contention that Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan will pull on their hip boots and wade in to save our bacon. But more importantly, John Kerry served as lieutenant governor of "Have a Gun, Go to Jail" Massachusetts. Hello? I know retired servicemen who get from New Hampshire to New York by driving around Massachusetts so they won't be jailed for possession of a self-defense weapon -- they don't want to pay the governor of that state $5 in taxes on a dinner and gas. John Kerry would hand over one-seventh of the American economy to Hillary Clinton and her socialized medicine scheme. He would embrace the crippling Kyoto Treaty (he blamed George Bush, during the debates, for "distancing our allies" by refusing to sign) and put the Derek Shearer-Roberta Achtenburg gang back in charge of environmental and workplace regulation. (You think American factory jobs are fleeing overseas now? Elect this guy and it would be, "Last person out of the Rust Belt, please turn out the light.") John Harris of the Post told Ms. Ifill that John Kerry has never led in the polls because "he has a problem connecting personally with the voters." Well, that's true. But couldn't it also be because they can clearly see he's lying about all that "job creation" -- that in fact he can't wait to turn over the country to a bunch of regulation-happy socialist academics out of Harvard, Columbia and the People's Republic of Santa Monica? Nah. Voters out in the heartland couldn't be concerned about that. Them tobacco-chewing cowboys is too dumb. Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Every election is a sort of advance auction of stolen goods." -- H.L. Mencken

1 0

E-Vote Vendors Hand Over Software
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

<http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,65490,00.html> Wired News E-Vote Vendors Hand Over Software By Kim Zetter? Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65490,00.html 03:00 PM Oct. 26, 2004 PT In an effort to increase the integrity of next week's presidential election, five voting machine makers agreed for the first time to submit their software to the National Software Reference Library for safekeeping, federal officials said on Tuesday. The stored software will serve as a comparison tool for election officials should they need to determine whether anyone tampered with programs installed on voting equipment. The National Software Reference Library is part of an election security initiative launched by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a new federal entity that Congress created after the Florida 2000 election problems. The EAC is the first federal entity established to improve the integrity and efficiency of elections. DeForest Soaries, chairman of the EAC, in June requested software from the largest voting companies, which provide 90 percent of the software to be used in computerized voting machines on Tuesday. The EAC will eventually ask all voting companies, even those that produce counting software for punch card machines, to submit their software. Soaries called the library a major step and praised the vendors for their willingness to increase the transparency of elections. "Their acceptance of our request to submit their software begins the process that assures the country that we will have (a) higher level of security and therefore confidence in e-voting than we have ever had before," Soaries said in a press conference. The National Institute of Standards and Technology -- the agency that sets official measurements and defines standards for all kinds of commercial products -- will maintain the voting software library. NIST already manages a library of other types of software, like the Windows 2000 operating system, to help law enforcement investigate crimes involving computers. Doug White, the library's project leader, said NIST stores applications on CDs in a room that is similar to a criminal investigator's evidence locker, which means the software can be used as evidence in a court. Counties and states will eventually be able to use the library to verify that they are using a certified version of software. This is good news to Scott Konopasek, the registrar of voters for San Bernardino County in California. In September, after California certified a new version of software for his county's voting system, the vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems, sent Konopasek the software to load on his machines. But when Konopasek asked the state to verify that the software the vendor gave him was unchanged from the version the state certified, state officials told him they had no means to verify it and that Konopasek would have to trust the vendor. Vendor trust was precisely the measure of verification the state was using last November when it discovered that Diebold Election Systems had installed uncertified software on machines in 17 California counties without telling the state. NIST's voting software library was established too late this year to examine software that has already been loaded onto locked voting machines, so election officials won't be able to verify that they have unchanged, certified software before Tuesday's election. But if questions about the veracity of a voting system arise after the election, computer forensic experts will be able to compare the software used on machines with the software in the NIST library to see if the software was altered. They can do this by comparing hash files, which are digital fingerprints that identify the integrity of software. The hash is a mathematical sum derived from the software code. If someone changes the software, the mathematical sum changes as well. "This gives us one more mechanism for assuring voters that their votes have been recorded and reported correctly and haven't been tampered with," Konopasek said. "There's no one single thing that election officials will ever be able to do to convince everyone. But the more we can add to our inventory of audits and controls, the more we can establish confidence of voters -- not just the technically savvy voters, but all voters." Soaries acknowledged that the library alone can't secure elections and voting systems but can only work in concert with other procedures. And the EAC still has to work out several issues related to the library, such as who will be responsible for checking hashes before an election if county election officials don't have someone knowledgeable on staff to do so. EAC has to determine how best to handle patches, or last-minute fixes and upgrades to machines. Currently, it will be up to the county and vendor to decide whether to resubmit that software to the library before an election. And the EAC has to establish a policy for dealing with false positives -- that is, when a hash check indicates that software has changed when it actually hasn't. In addition to the library, the Commission has instigated several measures to increase the integrity of elections. These include developing new voting machine standards that would require voting machine companies to make machines that are more secure. The commission is also looking at developing national standards for election procedures to establish uniform methods for physically securing voting machines and providing checks and balances to prevent and catch voter fraud. Additionally, the commission has been speaking about creating a clearinghouse to gather reports from states and counties about problems they encounter with voting equipment. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'

2 1

Doubt
by Tyler Durden 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

Peter Capelli wrote... >Yet what of your blindness, which doubts *everything* the current >administration does? 1. Abu Ghraib 2. WMD in Iraq 3. Patriot Act 4. Countless ties between this administration and the major contract winners in Iraq Hum. Seems a decent amount of doubt is called for. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

4 3

The Big Rig
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

<http://www.bostonmagazine.com/ArticleDisplay.php?id=454&print=yes> www.bostonmagazine.com Archives The Big Rig by Jake Halpern Copyright October 2004. Could someone steal your vote on election day? Let us count the ways. Lately it seems that virtually everyone I know -- Democrats, Republicans, and Naderites alike -- is espousing outlandish theories about plots to sway, postpone, or outright steal next month's election. "You just watch," a normally levelheaded friend of mine told me. "Three days before election day they're going to bring Osama out of his subterranean cell and parade him around like the Republican mascot." Of course, I realize that we are a nation of X-Files-watching, Art Bell-listening, wigged-out paranoiacs, but it's really getting to me, and this is why I decided to visit Ben Adida, who is a star Ph.D. student at MIT in the field of cryptography and information security. Adida's area of focus is voting machines and processes, and his specialty is breaking into them. It's his job, as part of the Caltech-MIT/Voting Technology Project, to determine the ways in which an election can be stolen right out of the ballot box. When I meet Adida at his cubbyhole of an office on the MIT campus, he is wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, and a pair of blue Puma sneakers. In short, he has the look of your classic twentysomething hacker from the movies, though he is quick to point out that the proper term for cyber-scoundrels is "cracker." "Technically, a hacker is simply a clever programmer, whereas a cracker is someone who actually breaks into systems," Adida explains. When it comes to voting machines, he is emphatic. "Every machine can be cracked into," he says. These days, most of the publicized concerns about voting machines involve the direct-recording electric (DRE) models-generally, touch-screen systems that resemble ATMs. The chief problem with these is that they leave no paper trail, and this could create quite a ruckus when George W. Bush and/or John Kerry demand recounts. If you haven't heard much about DREs in the Boston press, that's because they are not currently approved for use in Massachusetts. This doesn't mean you'll be using the punch cards that caused so much trouble in Florida; that system has been banned in this state since 1997. Those creaky old mechanical-lever machines once commonplace here, meanwhile, also have been outlawed effective with next month's election. As a result, if you live in Massachusetts, you will likely be voting via the optical scanner system, which requires you to indicate your choices by filling in the bubbles on a sheet of paper, much like on the SAT. This method will be used by 55 million people, or 32 percent of voters, in the United States and is generally regarded as the most reliable. Time to breathe easy? Not exactly. According to Adida, "No one will be able to crack into the [optical scanning] system via the Internet from their basement and skew the results. However, the crackers can succeed if they have hands-on access to the actual machine." Here is one possible scenario for how this could be done: Several weeks before the election, a cracker might gain access to an optical scanning device and reprogram it to favor a particular candidate. This is where things get interesting. Because the list of candidates is often not entered into the system until hours before an election, the crackers have no way of knowing which candidate to pick -- A, B, or C. So they program the machine to favor the candidate who gets the most votes between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., then tell their supporters to vote first thing in the morning. "Usually, when people hear this type of scenario for the first time they freak out," Adida says with a mischievous smile. There are simpler methods, too. For example, many optical scanning machines use red lasers to scan, which means that they cannot read red ink. Theoretically, someone could pass out red pens at a voting station in a precinct known to vote a certain way, invalidating many of that precinct's votes. As Adida continues to ramble about potential weaknesses in our voting system, I can't help but feel that some amount of paranoia is justified. According to the Caltech-MIT/Voting Technology Project, some 120,000 votes by Massachusetts residents were not counted in the 2000 presidential election. You have to wonder whether all of these invalidated ballots were the result of simple errors. Perhaps this is why at least 12 members of Congress have signed a letter asking the United Nations to monitor this year's election. Perhaps it is time to get nervous. When I express this to Adida, he nods somberly. "It's my job to be completely paranoid about elections," he tells me with a heavy sigh. "Because the stakes in presidential elections are so high, the motivation to do evil is also quite high, and so we have a plan for every possible scenario." This is all good and fine, I tell him. Plan, plan, plan away. What I wanted to know was whether any of this might really happen. What I wanted was peace of mind. "I don't know of any optical scanning system being cracked," Adida says finally. "But then again, it's conceivable that someone could alter the results discreetly enough that no one would ever know until it was too late." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'

1 0

Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
by Tyler Durden 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

"The remaining communists have made some psychological recovery - see for example Tyler Durden's peculiar version of recent history, where in his universe the communists actually won and are still winning," Again, you live in a world that's evenly divided between black and white. Since I'm not white you figure I must be black. To reiterate a point your world view does not seem prepared to understand, communism (like Whabism these days) is a fleeting ideological counter-pole to the perceived evils of America and capitalism. To make an analogy, let's say someone on the street tried to force-feed you the most healthy food in the world at gun point. There's a good chance that, after that, you will not eat that healthy food any longer because you perceive it to be "evil". Likewise with Imperliasm and free markets: The more we try to shove it down the throats of the Islamic world the more they will reject both us as well as whatever we're trying to give 'em. -TD >From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd(a)echeque.com> >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) >Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:41:39 -0700 > > -- >"R.A. Hettinga" > > > This is actually the running fantasy in Marxism since the > > > 1950's, when it turned out that that, instead of the > > > "workers" eating the "bourgeoisie" by the firelight or some > > > Glorious Revolution or another, would instead be come > > > "bourgeoisie" themselves. > >John Kelsey > > I think this bit gets at the heart of why the Islamic > > fundamentalists are hard to deal with. For most people I > > know, some notion of peace and prosperity is the thing we > > want from our governments. [...] > > > > The Islamic fundamentalists can't offer that. [...] No > > peace, not much prosperity, but a lot of capital-P Purpose. > > A place in history, a part of the Jihad. In this sense, it's > > a lot like Marxism was, back when it had serious adherents; > > it's a mass movement, like Eric Hoffer talks about. > >Mass movements of this kind require the promise of inevitable >victory. When communism suffered one decisive, uncomplicated, >unambiguous defeat, the dominos fell one after another all the >way to Moscow. The remaining communists have made some >psychological recovery - see for example Tyler Durden's >peculiar version of recent history, where in his universe the >communists actually won and are still winning, and similarly >the Islamists have made a considerable psychological recovery >from Afghanistan, but the ideal of date with destiny tends to >lose its appeal when you keep picking yourself off the dirt >with a bloody nose. > >In Iraq we face a guerrila movement, and discover, yet again, >that guerrilas can only be defeated by local forces - and the >boys from Baghdad are not all that local. This gives the >Islamicists renewed hope. > >So what do you do, if, like Israel, you face terrorists >embedded in a local population that supports thems sufficiently >they can melt into the people? Withdrawal did not work, for >the terrorists keep sending car bombs and the like from their >stronghold, as in Fallujah. > >What worked in Afghanistan was to find some local warlord we >could live with, someone in no hurry to get his six pack of >virgins, someone who might want to put sacks over the heads of >the women of his town, but had no grandiose ambitions to stuff >all the women of the world into bags, and then we cut a deal >with him - we help him his slay his enemies, he helps us slay >our enemies. > >Unfortunately the US plan to bring democracy to the middle >east, and to preserve Iraq as a unitary state, keeps getting in >the way of this sort of deal. > > --digsig > James A. Donald > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG > o32eoG4KhmccNjDBkOW9upEtn8Lka3zsooGJn8lY > 4dMgCNOmt5z/S3km7vma/L6RECrRaVEmnhEZ4E2hb _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

2 1

Fwd: the simian unelected is blocking the world
by Chris Kuethe 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

meant to send this to the list too.... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Chris Kuethe <chris.kuethe(a)gmail.com> Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 08:56:45 -0600 Subject: Re: the simian unelected is blocking the world X-Approval-Subject: BOUNCE cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net: Non-member submission from [Chris Kuethe <chris.kuethe(a)gmail.com>] To: Eugen Leitl <eugen(a)leitl.org> On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 12:11:59 +0200, Eugen Leitl <eugen(a)leitl.org> wrote: > > Access to http://www.georgewbush.com/ is blocked but from US IP address > space. > > Access Denied > You don't have permission to access "http://www.georgewbush.com/" on this > server. Hrmmmmm. Shrub a) has now disabled the geo-ip test or b) considers .ca to be part of .us because from my cable modem (rDNS = .net) I can get to the site just fine, and I can also get to it from work (rDNS = .ca) > ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org Germany, no? Have your politicians pissed of Shrub lately? I'm surprised I can see the site, what with various provincial governments tossing around memos referring to him as "Shrub". -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too? -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?

1 0

Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
by Tyler Durden 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

John Kelsey wrote... >The irony is that the neocons seemed to be trying to build up a kind of >mass movement mentality >in the US, which clearly has caught George Bush >and his top advisors--this wonderful notion that >we're going to go out and >civilize these heathens, bring them democracy and free markets, and >then >they'll stop wanting to be part of crazy mass movements that tell them to >strap dynamite to >themselves and blow up bus stops full of people. This >seems doomed to fail. A lot of people in >the Middle East clearly want >what we're selling, but it doesn't take many suicide bombers to make >that >sort of thing break down. Let's remember that any regime is only temporary, no matter how fundamentalist. The main flaw in the whole "save the world" logic is that it assumes that some regime (Islamist, Communist or whatever) would actually be able to hold on to everybody in perpetuity, and I think history is now at the point where we have a good indication that this ain't the case. In the case of China, Vietnam and, to some extent, the Islamists, I don't get the impression that a hatred of free markets was he underlying reason for the adoption of commusim (or whatever). Communism was merely a political pole that could be held on to so as to crystallize a movement whereby outside influences could be pushed out, and then the internal issues resolved. I would argue that the more we proclaim ourselves to be the evanglists for free markets throughout the world, and then ram our cocks up Abu Ghraib inmates asses, to the same extent what we have to offer looks tainted and foul. They need to puish us out so they need to reject free markets. They need to reject free markets so a new "pole" is created. Mr Donald woul think that I argue against free markets, but instead what I am arguing against is methodology which retards free markets. -TD _________________________________________________________________ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/

1 0

Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
by Tyler Durden 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

Mr Donald wrote... >A claim that presupposes that the west is just as totalitarian >as its enemies, that well known reality is not to be trusted, >that newsmen and historians are servants of the vast capitalist >conspiracy, so in place of obvious truths, we can substitute >any ridiculous fantasy that we find politically conforting, for >example Tyler Durden's fantasy that the US attacked Korea, and >attacked to impose poverty on Koreans so that the US can be >rich Once again you make the mistake that, because YOU are drinking from a spigot of hype, that because I disagree with you I must be drinking from some other spigot. There are plenty of counter-examples to the "benefits" of US interventionism, particularly throughout central America. But I don't really want to debate that point, but instead focus on Iraq. In Iraq this philosophy of "saving the locals from tyrrany" has taken a new turn. In this case, I actually believe that George W, Dick Cheney and the whole cabal believe that: 1. The best thing for the Iraqis would be a western-style free-market economy. (Check?) 2. An Iraqi free market would slowly stabilise the whole middle east region. (Check?) 3. Iraq has resources (ie, oil) that could be utilized to kick-start a true industrialized economy (Check?) 4. The US has the ability to extract that oil and then turn those dollars into local goods-and-services, thus kickstarting forementioned Iraqi industrialization (Check?) 5. Meanwhile, Saddam was really, really bad and a terrorist and he's got all sorts of scary WMDs. 6. It is therefore in everybody's best interests for the US to kick out Saddam and get this party started. 7. Oh, and the US will benefit too (as we should) as we help ole' man Iraq get back on his feet. But apparently, the locals are not particularly happy about the unilateral decisions we've been making in their benefit. Of course, you might chalk this up to fanaticism/Islam or whatever, but I suspect they just don't trust us (Abu Ghraib), and remember the fact that it was the US that propped up Saddam as long as he stuck to the script. Who knows? If Bush & Co are able to steal this election, maybe in a year or two (after the death toll hits the 5 digit mark) we'll start hearing about how Saddam wasn't so bad after all, and why don't we give him a second chance? (We'll watch him closely, so don't you worry!) -TD > --digsig > James A. Donald > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG > AErjoTRu9URKg4L+F5xjlOq35GQBD2reuyMhDJ5b > 46ur5/+9ZCqnZu8EDgtmmeUH93ImKPyfT6+Pj/QUE _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

2 1

Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
by John Kelsey 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

>From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> >Sent: Oct 27, 2004 9:37 AM >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) ... >This is actually the running fantasy in Marxism since the 1950's, when it >turned out that that, instead of the "workers" eating the "bourgeoisie" by >the firelight or some Glorious Revolution or another, would instead be come >"bourgeoisie" themselves. I think this bit gets at the heart of why the Islamic fundamentalists are hard to deal with. For most people I know, some notion of peace and prosperity is the thing we want from our governments. Different people differ on how to do that (like, whether the government should employ most of the doctors or the teachers), but that's the kind of goal that makes sense. And that's largely what the West has to offer. Not membership in a master race, or a date with destiny, or as vision of yourself as part of a great, centuries-old Jihad, but safe streets, working sewers, functioning markets, and a rising tide that promises to life all boats eventually, so that one day, your poor people, like ours, will be overweight from spending too much time sitting in front of the TV in an air conditioned room. The Islamic fundamentalists can't offer that. A country run by these guys is just not going to be in the forefront of technology, its economy will grow slowly, and it's likely to always be close to going to war with some infidels around it. No peace, not much prosperity, but a lot of capital-P Purpose. A place in history, a part of the Jihad. In this sense, it's a lot like Marxism was, back when it had serious adherents; it's a mass movement, like Eric Hoffer talks about. What Hayek called the liberal order (e.g., working minimal government, liberal democracy, rule of law) can't offer any of that. It offers safe streets and working sewers and peace and prosperity, but you have to come up with your own purpose. The irony is that the neocons seemed to be trying to build up a kind of mass movement mentality in the US, which clearly has caught George Bush and his top advisors--this wonderful notion that we're going to go out and civilize these heathens, bring them democracy and free markets, and then they'll stop wanting to be part of crazy mass movements that tell them to strap dynamite to themselves and blow up bus stops full of people. This seems doomed to fail. A lot of people in the Middle East clearly want what we're selling, but it doesn't take many suicide bombers to make that sort of thing break down. --John

3 2