A. Melon wrote... "There are very few in the general population that are cut to be true dissenters and act upon it. Now this age brings in the additional requirement: they have to also be decent engineers. As a result, there are very few left." I agree with this assessment, but would also suggest that Tim May's old-fogeyism has some validity to it. As far as I'm concerned, the state has successfully bonded with big media to pretty much stifle a lot of critical thinking, particularly about what other Americans believe. We saw it with the war protests--despite the fact that the numbers were larger than during Vietnam, the media was successful in (first of all) convincing Americans that the vast majority of Americans supported the war/troops/president. After that, since most Americans believed the right thing was to support the war (because "everybody else supports it"), they then came to quasi-support it, or at least shut up about it. And still, no Osama, no Saddam, and no WMD, but only "kooks" and "commies" are screaming about it. Thus, to go back o your point, you're starting off with a small population of dissenters, so that once you pass down through the needs for engineering and math skills, you're left with very little. On the other hand, the only thing that's stopping me from coding up my "eJector" is a full time job and trying to live in the little spare time I have. So I guess I'm in the population you describe and will be, as long as I remain employed. But then again...if someone I actually know gets tortured or whatever, that could change at any minute. Then I'll be the REAL... -Tyler Durden

From: "A.Melon" <juicy@melontraffickers.com> To: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: Re: All quiet on the western front Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 23:06:14 -0700 (PDT)

Hi, Tim,

I'm glad that you have a bout of lucidity.

The government essentially won the crypto battle, marginalizing crypto proponents, quietly getting media and corporations under control when crypto is concerned, and generally rising the stakes. Those of you who have access to corporate product development documents that relate to communications know what I am talking about. CALEA etcl. It's there, it's real and I think that about 5-10% of development resources are taken by it.

Most cypherpunks were relatively highly paid engineers with comfortable lives and some time on their hands, so while crypto was fashionable it was cool to hang out at meetings and have pipe dreams about taking on the state. Even then, scum like del Torto started to bank ahead and sell to the "freedom fighters" and "good cops".

But then it got much worse. After the WTC theater, being present at essentially anti-state meetings was not considered totally benign. And also the salaries were gone, so this beer and TV Saturday alternative suddenly stopped being alternative at all.

So we're back to the fact that highly paid engineers in crypto field are really not automatically revolutionaries. On the contrary.

There are very few in the general population that are cut to be true dissenters and act upon it. Now this age brings in the additional requirement: they have to also be decent engineers. As a result, there are very few left.

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