>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,
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).
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.
>--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?
>--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?
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?
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