-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tim May wrote:

At 6:37 PM -0700 9/24/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:

...

least if you've heard it 17 times in the past few weeks. So today Rep. Oxley whipped out his trump card: if you don't vote for my amendment, you'll get blown up! "How about some terrorist orgainztion acting with impunity because they have the ability to communicate with impunity gets a hold of a Russian nuclear device and threatens to blow up the Capitol of the United States?"

Sounds to me like Oxley is presaging the Reichstag Fire.

Or another Lusitania. The German government during World War I had a policy of sinking any ship carrying armaments to Britain. While the Lusitania was a civilian ship, the allies were secretly loading it with ammunition. This was known to the German government which announced that it would attempt to sink the ship. This was advertised in New York newspapers by the German embassy in the weeks before the Lusitania's departure. The German torpedo appears to have set off the munitions in the hold which caused the ship to sink more quickly, magnifying the loss of life. Ironically, while the allies were responsible for using the civilians on board as shields, the Germans were held responsible for the deaths. This was used as a propaganda tool to persuade the American people that the country should enter World War I. By an odd coincidence, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill worked together on the Lusitania project, foreshadowing their later work together. Many U.S. wars have started with similar incidents. The Spanish-American War started when a U.S. naval ship (The Maine) blew up in Havana harbor. Curiously, no officers were on board at the time. Some suspect Pearl Harbor was managed to maximize the shock of the American people. There was also an incident in the North Atlantic with a German ship which was used to justify U.S. involvement in the European war. And let's not forget the Gulf of Tonkin incident which prompted the Congress to grant the President sweeping powers. The only real question is whether the stakes are high enough at this time to justify some sort of provocative incident. It seems reasonable that the bureacracies of Russia and the United States would recognize their common interest against the people of both countries and the whole world. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNCqtJJaWtjSmRH/5AQGDUAf+M11KrzZs1YNB7Vlp76v3aMUvui3tuOgD 131nI0GNq+risLJ8WPt8ZrRzYQ9yZ4X9KKFFa1okWVyQL7Nii6xMs+rcMG+xqv7/ cMErgdPpbeuwzBTYNZDON0x5JUTcwvqzNZjMpAhaY4fZwHF6s5caArWZDAuAl2gC 2IJY8DDnDmhy9uQwJA/WCxpJi/D9/lJ/gaXY5Y3LMCfK0y7iUaQZH4/cEdupRklq L6MrSvGOn8rNuc+X5PNGDM6FMg6Mv035+tu0or1q07zN3cAnTo1tmXQA0tcp1/Vz SZNsbH7RF9pPTY1mzyWCqxGe8O+/m+CTuI+VeQ0wHPcu15Bg2gS5Hw== =Wvmm -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----