Terrorism is a NON-THREAT (fwd)
Forwarded message:
From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net> Date: Wed, 29 Oct 97 22:46:45 -0600 Subject: Terrorism is a NON-THREAT
I wish for once one of the spineless members of the press would ask:
"How many people have died from Terrorism in the last 10yrs?"
Let's be generious and say 10,000 world wide (more like 2,000 but lets not quibble over numbers).
Bill, more than 2,000 people have dies from planes being blown up by terrorist in the last 10 years alone. Old Prince Ferdinand, you know the bloke whose death started WWI allegedly, had an attempt on his life the morning of his death via bomb. He shrugged it off and got shot. Stalin had millions killed for political reasons. The Isrealis have killed tens of thousands in their expanionisitic, non-survivalist motivated actions. The US backed Central American death squads have killed hundreds of thousands if not millions. People kill for religion, politics, insanity, and fun. Terrorism has a long history in human culture. Yours is a unreasoned view. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage@ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <199710301318.HAA17701@einstein.ssz.com>, on 10/30/97 at 07:18 AM, Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com> said:
Forwarded message:
From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net> Date: Wed, 29 Oct 97 22:46:45 -0600 Subject: Terrorism is a NON-THREAT
I wish for once one of the spineless members of the press would ask:
"How many people have died from Terrorism in the last 10yrs?"
Let's be generious and say 10,000 world wide (more like 2,000 but lets not quibble over numbers).
Bill, more than 2,000 people have dies from planes being blown up by terrorist in the last 10 years alone.
Old Prince Ferdinand, you know the bloke whose death started WWI allegedly, had an attempt on his life the morning of his death via bomb. He shrugged it off and got shot.
Stalin had millions killed for political reasons.
The Isrealis have killed tens of thousands in their expanionisitic, non-survivalist motivated actions.
The US backed Central American death squads have killed hundreds of thousands if not millions.
People kill for religion, politics, insanity, and fun.
Terrorism has a long history in human culture.
Yours is a unreasoned view.
Well THANK YOU Jim for joining forces with the Government NewSpeakers in bastardising the language. Military and Police actions by governments is NOT Terrorism!! Everything bad that happens is NOT Terrorism!! Just because it is politically expediant to call somthing Terrorism does not make it so! If you have a point then do so and let it stand on it's merrits rather than trying to win brownie points by stealing emotional value from an established lable. This is a shallow debating technique of a weak mind. Now back to the featured program: Exactly how many have died from Terrorist acts?? I contend that it is below 10,000 in the past ten years and more than likely closer to 2,000. Even at 10,000 we are only looking at most 50-100 Americans a year!! The whole point of my orriginal message that you seem unable to grasp ("no suprise") is that 50-100 deaths/year does not justify turning this country into a police state!! - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBNFieS49Co1n+aLhhAQEwmgP9HA1/iTnarX3NC9pjlWcCrvzsYxH/Cy5Z cRd3N/H0uFDcgIeInYZR4a1mjEDkjqRkHLUD6vBHmYm0gaxTQQMzxrroKlxWPTPD PypVaATowFBPAh9YAjH+dwFJax/pzyN1BMlXb5iqB1t6+p0K69+IgXvXEu0R68hL Ce6E9fNftf8= =pfxA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Bill wrote:
The whole point of my orriginal message that you seem unable to grasp ("no suprise") is that 50-100 deaths/year does not justify turning this country into a police state!!
- -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Yup, I don't disagree with that. But, I have trouble answering the obvious question, 'well, how many lives _does_ it take before something is done?'. Is there any way to quantify this kind of thing? We hear on TV etc people saying "If this draconian measure saves the life of one innocent child its worth the loss of my right to walk in the park, or whatever". This is clearly shit, but can people suggest a sensible measure of when new legistlation is justified? Tim G -- Tim Griffiths 'There are no honourable agreements that involve the exchange of a quantifiable object, like a sum of money, for qualitative object such as a human soul'. - Bill Burroughs
We hear on TV etc people saying "If this draconian measure saves the life of one innocent child its worth the loss of my right to walk in the park, or whatever". This is clearly shit, but can people suggest a sensible measure of when new legistlation is justified?
When you can figure out a way to fix the problem without stepping on freedoms. Then legislation is justified. Part of the problem is that people _assume_ that legislation fixes problems. It doesn't. Laws just give society permission to punish the offender. In that case we have plenty of laws, it would be rare that we would need another.
My uncle wrote, anonymously:
I don't own any guns, so I guess when the Feds kick my door in, I'll just point at the dog, and hope they go for my clever ruse. Hell, I'm even willing to testify...
"I blamed it on the dog, and all I got was this T-shirt and a spanking!" Human Gus-Peter
Yup, I don't disagree with that. But, I have trouble answering the obvious question, 'well, how many lives _does_ it take before something is done?'. Is there any way to quantify this kind of thing?
We hear on TV etc people saying "If this draconian measure saves the life of one innocent child its worth the loss of my right to walk in the park, or whatever". This is clearly shit, but can people suggest a sensible measure of when new legistlation is justified?
No amount of deaths are adequate cause for suspending the constitutional rights of our citizens. If the Feds can't adequately protect our citizens from criminal activities w/o trampling on our rights then its time for us to reorganize into different geo-political structures which may. Once solutions offered from D.C. include suspension of our civil rights its time to put allt he options on the table, including considering the abandonment of the entire compact. --Steve
At 8:11 AM -0700 10/30/97, Tim Griffiths wrote:
We hear on TV etc people saying "If this draconian measure saves the life of one innocent child its worth the loss of my right to walk in the park, or whatever". This is clearly shit, but can people suggest a sensible measure of when new legistlation is justified?
Is this a trick question, or sumpin'? If not, then the answer is "the Constitution." (I see that T.G.Griffiths@exeter.ac.uk is not an American. I apologize for my U.S.-centric response. Consult your local Charter or whatever to see if similar rights are spelled out. I suspect most adhocracies do not have rights clearly spelled out, modulo the irony that several people's republics have had nominally more rights-ensuring constitutions than the U.S. has had.) The longer version being that the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights clearly enumerates rights held by the people, and there is no mention that such basic rights are to be stripped away because the "life of one innocent child" can be saved. Examples of cases where restricting religions, books, guns, 4th and 5th and nth Amendment rights would save the lives of some children are obvious to all. And yet such restrictions remain unconstitutional. Sure, there are _some_ limits. A church, for example, cannot practice ritual bloodletting, on children or on adults. Nor can a church hand out drugs (the Native American Church and peyote case resolved this). And so on. (And many of us disagree with some or all of these limitations.) In the "right to walk in the park" issue cited above, this gets into distracting issues about whether the park is open at all hours, the rules established by whomever built the park, etc. Curfews are a cleaner example. And courts have generally held curfews unconstitutional, when they've been challenged. Travel permits are also unconstitutional in the U.S. People may travel wherever they wish, associate with whomever they wish, etc. (A very few exceptions, such as felons and child molestors.) When in doubt about trading off rights for security, consult the Constitution. (Yes, I'm aware that it's falling into disrepute and tatters. But it beats most alternatives.) --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."
Tim May wrote:
At 8:11 AM -0700 10/30/97, Tim Griffiths wrote:
We hear on TV etc people saying "If this draconian measure saves the life of one innocent child its worth the loss of my right to walk in the park, or whatever". This is clearly shit, but can people suggest a sensible measure of when new legistlation is justified?
Is this a trick question, or sumpin'?
If not, then the answer is "the Constitution."
I was trying to start from somewhere more fundamental than the Constitution, but if I understand you, you're saying that an arbitary, allbeit 'self-evident', set of limitations are set down (i.e. the US Constitution) at some point in time and no new laws should be made that contradict this set of rules. By doing this, aren't we putting a dictatorial limit on whatever democracy we come up with? In effect saying "we're all equal under God, and God wrote the Constitution"?
(I see that T.G.Griffiths@exeter.ac.uk is not an American. I apologize for my U.S.-centric response. Consult your local Charter or whatever to see if similar rights are spelled out. I suspect most adhocracies do not have rights clearly spelled out, modulo the irony that several people's republics have had nominally more rights-ensuring constitutions than the U.S. has had.)
No, this is the UK, we don't get rights here. Well, not quite true - for example we do get the right to bear arms (1888 - can't recall the Act offhand, but can find it). However, Her Maj. Gov reserves the right to tell us exactly _which_ arms we can bear, which is why I've just handed my beloved handguns in. What we do get is more and more US-style laws being passed here, but without the protection of a Constitution, e.g. looks like we'll get Megan's Law shortly, but without a constitutionally-given right to privacy. Tim G.
participants (7)
-
Human Gus-Peter -
Jim Choate -
snow -
Steve Schear -
Tim Griffiths -
Tim May -
William H. Geiger III