Attila T. Hun wrote:
as for the great fairweather liberal bigot Blanc's passing it off as tcm's drunken ramblings, I doubt it. war is hell, and "innocents" get wasted --but, a society at war has no innocents. blow 'em all away. scorched earth is inadequate; burnt earth is more effective. if there are no prisoners, there are no complainers. ...............................................................
If we were out in the field, you'd get fragged for calling me that. <g> If this society is at war, it is a Civil War, fighting against itself. In fact, there are many groups fighting against each other, on many different levels: racial, gender-based, religious, economic, philosophical, not to leave out political. Companies are fighting each other "tooth & nail" for survival in marketing turfs, races are still exchanging vicious barbs, homosexuals are under verbal & physical attack by the socially "normed", the poor still envy & disparage the rich, women & children seem more than ever to be at risk to attacks from roving sex perverts, the liberals would love to put the libertarians under, religious groups lecture against the moral depravity of all those "other" people, and half the country is either stocking up for a National Disaster or forming into militia groups or other Think Tanks to fight some sort of government encroachment (even the health food stores where I shop are always posting sign-up sheets to vote against something or another the government wants to ban or some right-of-choice that is being threatened by proposed legislation). There are little battles raging on all around us, not only the fight for privacy-by-encryption which you all are aware of. Some cpunks have stated that "society doesn't know or care what is happening". Some of youall don't know the kinds of battles or other people/groups are having, either with government or with some opposing members of this same society. There is a lot of information out in the world competing for attention and resources - on the net, on the intranet, in the TV, in the newspapers, in magazines, in major newsletters, local newspapers, in posting on kiosks ("Get the US out of Nicaragua! " (sure, when I have a few free minutes and a couple of extra bucks")). How can one keep up with/contribute to all of these? So many times, I will happen to read accounts of people who have got into trouble of some kind, or down on their luck (they lost their job and don't have skills, they need a heart transplant, they got jailed by mistake, the car dealership gave them a bum deal), and they decide that society doesn't really know what is happening and complain that it is unsympathetic and lament "when will society wake up and realize that something needs to be done", etc.. Well, jeez, there's only so much time to spend on everybody else's problems. All these people with their problems would like everyone one else to be aware of their plight and sympathetic to their rights and to contribute to their cause, and get disturbed about being "marginalized". As far as I'm concerned, everyone is "marginalized". But people are behaving as expected: the Waco religious group acted as expected, the BATF acted as expected; government employees behave as expected. The cpunks, who know so much about government, in particular the NSA & certain luminaries related to privacy&encryption, should expect that things will go on as they do - even if they bomb D.C. out of existence. And this is because, apparently, people of this type & kind simply haven't evolved enough to expect anything different. Now, crypto was supposed to allow for the possibility of not having to deal with these people directly; it was supposed to usher in the new technological era whereby one could "route around" and generally avoid messing with Government Mongers, from negotiating for the right to breathe on one's own Maintenance Schedule. Well, so much for an anarchic life of Independent Means. I must say, from the posts I've been reading these past several days, I haven't seen very imaginative ideas for dealing with the problems which dull governments create. It is typical of dull governments that when pressed to the wall they resort to desperate, mediocre ways of dealing with problems - like obfuscation, exaggerated charges of evil intent, physical violence; all signs of a limited intellectual capacity for coming to terms with the facts of reality (the problems they face as Protectors of Goodness & Justice (tm) ). I would have expected newer, more creative ("evolved") ideas from scientists, mathematicians, physicists, computer-savvy members. .. Blanc .. Blanc