CDR: Re: Killing Judges

[jim bell]

----- Original Message -----
X-Loop: openpgp.net
From: John Young <jya at pipeline.com>

> What has happened lately in the killing judges world?
> There was a spate of cases and a couple of jokers got
> vised, but any recently?

My theory is that this kind of thing gets covered up whever the govt. can do
this.

It was a little more than a year ago, but it's about time that I tell the CP
group about an incident that occurred the day after (June 3, 1999)  I was
sentenced at Tacoma Federal Court.  I had just "reamed the judge a new
asshole" with my commentary on June 2, and a fellow Seatac FDC inmate was
taken to court the next day (with the same judge, Franklin Burgess,
interestingly enough) to be sentenced for whatever he did (or didn't do,
dependng...)   (He told me what happened the subsequent day; apparently they
were all still in a bad mood because of what I'd said...)

During his proceedings, there was apparently some bomb, or bomb threat.  (He
overheard a couple of US Marshals talking about what was happening; whether
those Marshals were, themselves, well-informed is unknown.  Everyone else
was evacuated from the courtroom, but he was left behind, locked inside.
Naturally, he was pissed for obvious reasons.  (His public-defender lawyer
was Miriam Schwartz, in case anyone wants to hear more about this from a
different perspective.)  What he heard was that there was an explosion of
some kind:  Whether this was a real bomb or just some idiot Feds blowing up
someone's lunch-bucket with a shotgun shell, he didn't know.

Despite careful searching of the two local newspapers, Seattle Times and the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (PI), no indication of this incident could be
found.  Likewise, nobody I talked to ever saw a reference to this incident
on any local TV-news programs.

I made a mental note to myself to look into this when I had an opportunity.
A few weeks ago, I was reminded of this when a nearby (Clark County,
Washington) courthouse was bombed (no, it wasn't me!  (B<O)).  I sent some
email to both the Seattle newspapers, and had some rather unsatisfactory
communication with some idiot assistant editor at the PI.   After a few days
of silence (during which time she was probably enthusiastically violating
any sort of confidentiality she might have reasonably figured I'd expected
from her) she came back with the claim that "there was no bomb."  (but at
the same time, she said little else, even though she would have expected to
be able to say much more if she'd talked to anyone who actually knew enough
to tell her that.)  Whether this meant that there WAS some sort of
bomb-looking object, or a bomb-mistaken object, or a
genuine-bomb-threat-but-no-object-found, or otherwise, she didn't say.  (I
did ask, however.)

She also failed to answer nearly every one of my questions of her, including
"Did the PI hear of this incident?".   (There were presumably at least 100
people in the courthouse or nearby when this incident occurred:  one might
think that it would be very unlikely if ALL of them didn't call the news
media.)   Naturally, she had to point out that they were being "good
citizens" by NOT reporting"every bomb threat".    I should have asked her if
she'd ever read the book, "1984," and pointed out that in this book,
covering up the truth was not merely being a good citizen, but in fact was a
job!  She probably wouldn't have seen the irony in the situation.


About 10 years ago, I speculated that the news media, far from acting like
an independant group of people exposing and publicizing the truth, actually
would eventually have developed tendencies to help cover up embarrassing
and/or incriminating incidents evidencing anger or dissatisfaction of the
public against the government.  (Bomb threats, bombs, threats of various
kinds, claims of responsibility, etc.)   (This would be quite analogous to
the "news media" of the old Soviet Union, which was well-known for ignoring
embarrassing news.)  The purpose of this would be simple:  Cover up
dissatisfaction, and perhaps you can convince dissatisfied people that THEY'
RE the problem, not society as a group.    Control the media, and you can
indeed cover up dissatisfaction to a degree.

Problem is, it's really easy for the "traditional" news media to cover up
this stuff.  By its very nature, anonymous communications are anonymous, so
the decision of some media-type to cover up a mailed-in or called-in bomb
threat would never come back and bite the media.  Who's going to know about
it?  Or talk about it?  And even if the person delivering the message later
claims he did, naturally he will be disbelieved.

At the time, though not publicly, I speculated that to try to counteract
this, a small counter-media organization might be formed, containing as
little as a sole individual..  I figured that it would announce itself as a
sounding-board for this kind of thing.  It would receive, anonymously, any
sort of announcement, statement, threat, promise, warning, etc.  It would
combine these anonymous snippets, and deliver them (quite openly, in a
recorded and documented fashion) to all the various news media organizations
that might otherwise want to ignore what was being said.    Since this
"publicity person" isn't involved in anything he reports, and in fact he
doesn't know who's sending the material, he may reasonably be considered
innocent of any claim of responsibility, although it is obvious that his
actions won't be welcomed in the government or the news media.  Naturally,
the development of the Internet (Thank you Algore!) has made this sort of
thing dramatically easier and more effective.

(Interestingly, within the last year I read of some person who is doing at
least a vaguely similar function, in a limited way, with the Earth First!
people and their activities.  I think there was an article in Time or
Newsweek on it.)

Jim Bell


> I mean in the US, not elsewhere it's acceptable culling.
>
> Is Jeff still here hoping for another gold star, is Tim still being
> bullseyed for "he's gone too far, make him an example."
>
> Crypto-assassin CJ's still emitting judicial mock, with
> filthy, disgusting heavals from Three Rivers, TX. Course,
> the flung bung wads could be Jeff's plying your honor.
>
>
>