New New News.
Over the last couple of days, I have inadvertenly uncovered an extremely odd and mysterious fact. The archives for the Cypherpunks list, from about April 1995 through October 1995, make NO (zero; nada) reference to "Jim Bell" or "assassination politics".
Since you won't automatically realize what this all means, I must give you some background events,
I believe I began writing my Assassination Politics essay in about February 1995, having thought of this idea in January 1995, I initially posted Part 1 of that essay on the "Digitaliberty" mail list, run by Bill Frezza. He had started that email list to use technology to promote libertarian, obviously a good goal, but unfortunately he (?) found my AP idea 'too radical'. But, someone who was also aware of the Cypherpunks email list (I don't recall who; I wasn't aware of the existence of the CP list at that time) saw it on Digitaliberty, and cross-posted it onto Cypherpunks. At that point, I was invited to join the CP list, which I did. (remember, thats 24 years ago!!!) There was, as I recall, a HUGE amount of discussion on the subject of AP, since it was clearly a major subject relevant to Cypherpunks.
The CP list has an archive, a database of what , ideally, should have been "all" postings that have appeared on CP. Until a couple of days ago, I suppose that the people on CP thought that the archive contents were probably reasonably complete. I had no reason to doubt that concept, although I had never bothered to access the archive. I had no immediate reason to do so.,
That changed. Talking to you two, Will Stephenson and Brian Merchant, I raised the issue of my long-standing allegation that the Federal Government had its agent, Daniel J. Saban, purchase the home next door to me, 7302 Corregidor, and hired away its previous owner, John Hauer, to the Pacific Northwest National Laboraties in West Richland, Washington. In about 2000 I had first found out that that the Clark County Assessor's office dated the sale on March 1, 1995, but I pointed out to you a few days ago,that this was only roughly accurate: It might have been a date simply selected for tax or other purposes.
I initially did this investigation in about May 2000, because I strongly suspected that the Feds had decided to 'declare war' on me due to my posting of the AP essay around March or April of 1995. At that time, of course, I was entirely unaware of the pre-April-2000 existence of the faked "appeal case" 99-30210. This is a large part of the reason I wrote my lawsuit in 2002-2003, and had this information, having been locked up since November 2000.
If I had known of the illegal pre-April 2000 existence of appeal case 99-30210, I would have virtually been able to "blow the doors off" of my cell: My subsequent "trial" would have been a farce, because I would have been easily able to show that the government guys had been FAKING that appeal case, and in doing do committing literally dozens of felonies.
I did this because since the article you are intending to publish is (you say) on the subject of "assassination markets", term used generally, I think it is highly relevant if the Federal Government is using extraordinarily ILLEGAL tactics to go after people for using their First Amendment rights of free speech to discuss such 'hot' subjects on what was just about the beginning of what I call the "internet era". (Yes, I realize that the "Internet" existed at least as early as about 1975; I used it in 1978 at MIT myself.) I'm talking about the time period where a large proportion of the public started to know about "The Internet" and many of them actually had access to it.
Unfortunately, I don't think the archives for the Digitaliberty list are still available, or perhaps even ever were, so the actual first date of the public appearance of the AP essay, Part 1, probably can't be known precisely. But I do recall that rather quickly, just a few days later, I was told that AP Part 1 had been copied to the CP list, and I was invited there. I showed up at the CP list very quickly, no more than a few days as I recall. So, the first day of appearance of the AP essay on the CP list would rather closely pinpoint the first date of its publication on the Digitaliberty list.
You, as journalists, should consider this very important: I am alleging that the Federal government decided to, virtually instantly, spy on me for no other reason that I had written a short document, an essay, in which I _didn't_ say I intended to do ANYTHING illegal, I merely discussed a theoretical idea. (Hardly worse than others did on similar subjects in the very early period of the Cypherpunks, perhaps 1990, 1991, or 1992., which I wasn't aware of at the time.)
One of the best ways you and Brian Merchant could display extreme bias is if, after being exposed to my numerous well-documented allegations (including described in a 195-page lawsuit, written 2003), you express absolutely no interest in these events and very serious allegations. The reason that I told you about the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case 99-30210, was to reveal how many Federal employees committed dozens of felonies against me by faking an appeal case, nearly two years after they had asked their stooge, Ryan Thomas Lund, assault me on November 25, 1997, in order to force me to accept a phony plea deal.
See my lawsuit, https://cryptome.org/jdb-v-usa-106.htm and its October 2004 Amendment. (The latter discusses very extensively the forged fake appeal, 99-30210, which was mostly missing from the July 2003 lawsuit: I had only found out about the fake-nature of the 99-30210 appeal in about June 20, 2003. http://cryptome.org/jdb/jdb-v-usa-oct2004.pdf ) Prior to that date, June 20, 2003, I had been under the impression that this appeal case had been initiated by MY letter to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
One of my allegations, in my lawsuit Amendmentin about Claim 505 through at least Claim 515, is that shortly after the Ninth Circuit's receipt of my letter to them demanding an appeal, in about March or April 2000, government agents of that court engaged in an extensive effort to RE-forge the contents of that appeal case, 99-30210, which had been phonied-up since at least June 1999. My unexpected letter to them had put them into an extraordinary embarrassing situation: While I was actually 10 months (!!!) LATE to ask for an appeal, it turns out that despite my ignorance of case 99-30210, my "appeal" actually had ALREADY been initiated in June 1999 and had continued, to date, April 2000,.
The personnel of that court, the Ninth Circuit, knew that I DIDN'T know about the appeal, 99-30210, because they had been keeping its existence secret from me since its inception on June 1999. Since I had unexpectedly demanded "an appeal", they couldn't "deny" me the appeal that they had (seemingly) ALREADY 'granted' me, at least the process! This may very well have constituted the weirdest example of court corruption that had ever occurred in the modern era!! At that time, the Ninth Circuit had the terrible problem that _I_ was under the impression that I could demand an appeal, 10 months 'too late', yet they had to 'play along' and find a corrupt attorney who would agree to conceal from me the pre-April 2000 existence of case 99-30210. Which he, Solovy, did.
While I didn't know much law in April 2000, (I heavily started learning Federal law in Decemer 2000) if any of a dozen or so of the usual mailings that would ordinarily be mailed to me during the pendency of that appeal case had actually been delivered to me (they weren't) I would have become instantly aware of enough information to complely expose the ongoing fraud. Each of these letters' existence were recorded on a continuing document called a "docket" associated with that specific case, a document that I actually first saw about June 20, 2003.
Did the Ninth Circuit Court not make the mailings? That would have been "mail fraud", many felonies. Or were the mailings made, and they were waylaid at the mail office at the prison (FCI Phoenix) where I happened to be from about September 7, 1999 through April 2000. That's also mail fraud. Tampering with the docket of the Ninth Circuit is probably one of the most serious felonies they would commit.
I had trained myself to be a 'jailhouse lawyer' during the period of December 2000 through June 2003, and had started my lawsuit in mid-2002. At one point, I began to consider it odd that my appeal case had started with the numbers "99", as in "99-30210. This was odd, because in 2000 I was under the impression that I had started that appeal with my April (?) letter to the Ninth Circuit Court. But I eventually realized that if that that appeal had begun April 2000, the first two digits of that appeal case would have been assigned to be "00", rather than "99". Something, I realized, was quite wrong. I knew I had to see a copy of that docket.
So, I wrote a letter to the Ninth Circuit in early June 2003, asking for a copy of that docket. Once I eventually received that docket, in June 20, 2003 it was obvious what was wrong: Anyone (at least, any lawyer) looking at that docket would have been under the impression that I had been actively aware of, and indeed representing myself ("pro se", as lawyers say). Yet, in June 2003 I knew I had not been doing so, and I further knew that none of the 'docket items' listed on that docket had ever been delivered to me during the peiod of 1999 through April 2000. So it was at this point I understood most of the court-initiated (?) fraud that had been going on since at least 1999, and really since mid 1997, and later the assult by Ryan Thomas Lund.
What I believe happened, subsequent to my letter written to the Ninth Circuit Court in March/April 2000, is that these court people had been maintaining a forged docket, but realize that they were going to have to actually give me the appeal that they couldn't avoid. I believe that they greatly modified the then-existing docket for 99-30210 after receiving my letter, so by the time a lawyer named Jonathan Solovy had been assigned to my case, the docket probably looked entirely different than it had pre-March-2000.
---
However, up until 2 days ago, I was essentially certain that the Cypherpunks email list archives for that period were available, at least in principle. At least, people on CP referred to it, the archive. I believe that the process of converting of the recorded materials to a publicly-accessible archive began just a few years ago, although there may have been partial efforts previous to that.
Well, two days ago I accessed that site, and looking at the 1995 archive, I was quite astonished to discover that contrary to what I thought should have been present, appearances of my name ("jim bell") and ("assassination politics") occurred only as early as November 1995, and certainly not as early as March or April 1995. Yet, the first posting recorded in the 1995 archive was dated January 1, 1995, and they continued solidly, although there were two mysterious omissions duirng the March-July 1995 time frame. So, there were huge numbers of postings, yet none mentioning me, and none mentioning "assassination politics" until about 6 months later. (frequently, even usually shorted to "AP" during this period.)
Tampering with computer records is, no doubt, a serious felony. But given the large number of felonies that Federal government employees had already committed associated with my case, engaging in fakery with the Cypherpunks archive must have seemed minor. At this early date, I am still fairly confident that there will be records to show that the government almost instantly began to spy on me in March or April 1995.
What is very interpreting now is this new discovery, which strongly suggests that there has been forgery of the Cypherpunks list archive, potentially implicating additional conspirators.
I am sure you are glad to receive this fascinating information, which I'm sure will be so useful to your efforts.
Jim Bell
On Thursday, October 31, 2019, 11:07:48 AM PDT, jim bell
Sounds good, here's a list: --We write that you wrote the essay "Assassination Politics" in 1995; is that accurate?
I thought of the idea in about January 1995. I was considering a West Virginia Senator named Robert Byrd,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd who was famous for bringing 'pork barrel' spending back to his state, probably too much I thought. I thought 'the people of 49 states would be better off if Byrd woke up one day dead'. But each person might only benefit a few dollars, which was why Byrd was still alive. This sounded to me like an engineering problem: Could donations from everyone be pooled to be paid to somebody who accomplished the desired task? But shortly, I realized that this concept could also solve many other social problems, mostly concerning government and laws. And then I realized that it would solve a problem that I had long believed existed into the stability of anarchic and libertarian societies. (The rest of the essay was written from July 1995 through about April 1996), I thought about it many weeks, to convince myself that publishing the idea "early" wouldn't let the government (whatever government) prevent its development. Eventually, I was satisfied that publishing Part 1 would not let the government stop it, I published it on a mail list called "Digitaliberty" run by Bill Frezza. Eventually, someone from the Cypherpunks list noticed it and copied it over. (Somebody on Digitaliberty soon decided that my idea, which I called "Assassination Politics" was TOO radical) I was entirely unaware of the Cypherpunks list at that time, Although, I believe I was vaguely aware of the concept of 'hiring people on computer networks to kill others'. Not the actual practice, of course, just the debated idea. Until about April 1995, I had not accessed the Internet, at least not since about 1980, when I was a student at MIT. (BS Chemistry 1980.) The computer network I mainly used from the 1980's until early in 1995 was called FIDOnet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet I probably read of the idea in the few years leading up to 1995, commented by someone who indirectly heard of the disccusion elsewhere, I was also unaware of Tim May's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_May prior discussions of 'assassination markets" prior to 1995,However, I eventually learned that he (and others on Cypherpunks) were discussing the concept of"Anonymous person A" anonymously hires "anonymous person B" to kill named-person C" in the early 1990's. Simple idea with profound implications. I actually worked at Intel during some of the same times as Tim May, but he worked at Santa Clara California, and I worked at Intel in Aloha 3 in Oregon, (I began in July 1980, quit in January 1982 to form my own company, SemiDisk Systems.) I am certain that I never met Time May, he was famous. Yet, I was quite well aware of Tim May at the time: He had become quite famous for his hypothesis that alpha particles (nuclei of helium atoms) impacted the memory cells of dynamic RAMs (DRAMS). http://www.s100computers.com/Hardware%20Folder/SemiDisk/History/History.htm In 1995, and unaware of Tim May's and others' discussions, I added the features: "Thousands of anonymous persons A1, A2, A3..." pool their money, anonymously, to hire "anyone on earth" to kill named person "C", In doing that, I added both "crowdsourcing" and "crowdfunding" to the idea, long before those terms were in use. In making my invention, I eventually realized that I had also solved a problem with the stability of anarchic societies. This was the problem postulated by David Friedman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_D._Friedman in his book The Machinery of Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machinery_of_Freedom written in 1973, republished in 1989, and republished in 2014. But I was not aware of David Friedman or his "Hard Problem" until years after 1995, when I invented AP, I had learned in 1975 that I had always been a libertarian. (The Libertarian Party had been formed in 1972. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(United_States) I saw some of their literature that my late uncle had requested.
--Is it fair to describe you, at the time, as an anarchist and an engineer? Who had studied at MIT and worked at Intel?
From 1975 until early 1995, I classified myself as a 'minarchist libertarian', as opposed to being an 'anarchist libertarian'. The reason is this: I was not specifically aware of David Friedman, or his problem he labelled "The Hard Problem" , described in his book "The Machinery of Freedom". While not aware of that name, "The Hard Problem" I had independently realized that there would be a problem with an independent region, run by libertarian principles, yet unable to tax their own citizens, to defend themselves. Why couldn't such a region be invaded by other nations which operated under 'traditional' principles of taxation, militaries, and war, I was unable to figure out a solution to this problem, so I considered 'anarchism' impractical and felt that without a solution to this problem, it probably wouldn't work. Naturally, I had no idea I would eventually solve Friedman's "The Hard Problem" !!! I was not aware of the existence of David Friedman until years after I joined the Cypherpunks list in about April 1995. Friedman had actually been a participant in the Cypherpunks list, My invention of the AP idea 'fixed' anarchism, making it stable: Long before I had published Part 1 of the AP essay, I realized that people in an anarchistic society could use AP to attack, and kill, the leadership of other nations, It could, and evitably would, be used to attack anyone who possessed nuclear weapons, so that such possessors would have no choice but to publicly dismantle those weapons,
--You write about being inspired by Scientific American's concept of "encrypted signatures." Was the article (or series of articles) in question concerned with "digital cash"? (Is that your coinage?) And was "digital cash" / crypto-currency something that didn't yet exist in any meaningful way, in 1995? No, that article (you should read it!) was by David Chaum, the inventor of the concept of "Digital Cash". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chaum Chaum actually experimentally implemented "Digicash", although it wasn't commercially successful, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash >--We describe you as a member of the "Cypherpunks," which we say was a movement of internet privacy and cryptography advocates that emerged in Silicon Valley in the early 1990s. Does that sound accurate? Yes, at least subsequent to me being invited to join the Cypherpunks mail list in about April 1995. The only way they learned about me was my publication of the Part 1 of AP on the Digitaliberty list, run by Bill Frezza. And the way I learned about Cypherpunks was their discovery of my AP Part 1 essay, and their contacting me.
>(And is it correct to say that John Gilmore and Timothy C. May were as well?) I wonder if the word "member" works in this context? Look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk This list indicates that both Gilmore and May were founders of the list, I don't think "member" was really a concept applicable to Cypherpunks. People who subscribed to the Cypherpunks list, and make postings, were as close to "members" as the concept implies.
--Is it correct to say you were arrested in the 1990s for obstructing IRS agents and using false Social Security numbers? And spent just under a year in prison? Also that, shortly after your release, you were found to have violated your parole after admitting to looking up information at a public library about the FBI agents assigned to tail you? And subsequently spent much of the Aughts in prison? Saying it this way is VERY misleading, Government investigators were ILLEGALLY infiltrating an organization called the Multnomah County Common Law Court in 1996-97, putting one of their number (Steven Walsh, acting under the phony name "Steven Wilson") in a position of power, and causing that organization to take actions that the government later denounced, Do you want to hear more? You need to hear the FULL story! https://cryptome.org/jdb/jdb-v-usa-ric.htm This is the text of the long lawsuit I eventually wrote and published 2002-2003. Look for the Claims, which while not especially 'well-formed' from a lawyer's perspective, amounted to a 'diary' of the events that I was aware of. Basically, MY side of the story, Which the biased news media never cared about, or asked Not just the government's very limited version of it. First off, in about March 1995, very shortly after I posted Part 1 of what eventually became my 10-part AP essay, https://cryptome.org/ap.htm , the house next door (7302 Corregidor, Vancouver Washington 98664; I am at 7214 Corregidor Vancouver) was purchased from its owner, a schoolteacher. He was given a job at the Pacific Northwest National Labs in Richland Washington. The purpose of this ruse was to set up a spying operation next to my house, and it was necessary to accomplish this to attack me. (term "attack" used broadly). This tactic of acquiring a location nearby to do spying is common. Consider what the FBI did to Robert Hanssen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen While I don't see a reference, I believe that part of the surveillance the FBI did to their employee, Hanssen, was to acquire a house nearby to do spying, Now, I'm not claiming that such a tactic is automatically illegitimate. But they used that against me, not because they actually thought I was committing a crime, but instead because they knew they intended to engage in a WAR with me, Not a legal, legitimate war, but instead a secret, underhanded, illegitimate war of their own devising, Do a google search of: 'James dalton bell district courts of tacoma and seattle' Naturally, none of these facts ever came out in a case the Government brought against me, Why? Simple: First, I was assaulted in November 1997 by Ryan Thomas Lund, a government stooge, in order to force me to accept a plea deal that was phony, Secondly, every attorney that ever represented me in a criminal case worked to sabotage my positions, and to help the Government, Do a google search for '99-30210' bell to find out the truth. The government actually forged, faked, concocted a phony 'appeal case' that was ostensibly being run by me during the period June 1999 and May 2000, but was simply faked, If you don't understand this, you need to ask me DOZENS, if not HUNDREDS, of questions, Google ' "99-30210" bell' Do you want to know how Federal government agents committed dozens of felonies?
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.thebird/WbikMZSqOq4/0x3WvQSYK1cJ And no, we aren't done discussing this matter, If you say something like, 'we are done', that will be a signal that you have no intention of covering this issue as it should be covered, Go ahead and write and run your article about "assassination markets". But in fact you have a much larger story, which I am happy to tell you, of a huge amount of government corruption that has long been ignored by the news media. You simply have to decide that you want to make a large amount of publicity against the Federal Government, based on their actions from 1995-late 2001. Do you dare?
--We write that you've been encouraged by the efforts to create actual assassination marketplaces so far?
That's a misleading way to put it. Some things that are labelled 'assassination markets' are not actually that, Etereum and Augur, together, are merely a 'death prediction market', and will not encourage even a single "assassination" to occur, You will not understand why this is, but to learn you will first have to continue to talk to me, and I will have to be given the time to explain why, >And have continued to promote the Assassination Politics idea, giving talks in (for instance) the Czech Republic and at Anarchapulco, a libertarian conference in Mexico? Yes, I did travel to Anarchapulco, twice, and Prague, once, and I discussed the AP concept, Even if they aren't yet aware of it, my solution to David Friedman's "The Hard Problem" is monumental to the anarchist concept, The vast majority of them were, and presumably still are, completely unaware that 'anarchism', as an idea, simply would not work...at least not until I fixed that problem in 1995. I should also mention my belief that a very large fraction of people who call themselves "anarchists", and people who are called "anarchists" by others, are simply died-in-the-wool leftists, Socialist, and Communists, who call themselves "anarchists" simply because their preferred politics was throughly discredited, and ultimately died: Certainly within the last 30 years, but really within the last 100 years, All countries which still claim to be "Communist" are simply totalitarian dictatorships, And I think you need to understand something. The idea, which I labelled Assassination Politics, would continue to 'work' even if I declare it I no longer 'like' it, If I were to stand up and claim that 'Assassination Politics won't work', people who hear that will ask me for proof, and I would be completely unable to supply such proof to them. You simply cannot kill a correct idea. How many clueless people have protested against wars, militaries, and nuclear weapons? Yet none of them have ever proposed a way to get rid of ALL of those things, completely and forever, I did, in 1995, and why is the world not discussing that outcome? Are people simply clueless? If YOU aren't aware of this, you need to learn why I claim this,
Thanks again,
We shall see how much 'thanks' you want to give me, Let's have some more questions!
Jim Bell
On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 8:32 PM jim bell