[PEN-L:3566] Re: Password: $5

[Gar Lipow <lipowg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Before I answer Valis, I want to second Robert Naiman. U.S. Citizens Please write your Congresscritter supporting the HOPE bill on Africa and opposing the African trade and development act, otherwise know as NAFTA for Africa.

valis wrote:
>
> Gar Lipow remonstrates:
> > Valis, you've pushed this line of chickenshit before. Writing a letter  to your Congresscritter or other politician is not "bow and scrape".  It is a way of pressuring them -- small but vital.  It let's them know  you are watching them.
>
> Well, Gar, you're gonna be a professor someday, or maybe a temp jumping between 2 or 3 campuses;

Umm what makes you think you have any idea about what kind of work I do? Hint: I am not an academic of any kind.

> In either case you might not notice that they're watching us watch them and wondering whether and when to drop all this  silly pretense and just put the whole damn country in a box.  Costs a lot  but someday too many American fartheads could wake up at the same time!

As long as they keep up the effort , it gives us some leverage, which we are fools not to use.  Writing a letter really doesn't cost  us that much effort. As long as congresscritters need votes to stay in office you get results disproportionate to your effort. And note that letter writing does not prevent you from taking more militant action. Call and write your Congresscritter and Senator first thing in the morning.

> Although my civics text has been propping up a table for well over three  decades, I'll even send you a book of stamps if you want to subscribe  to that postal complaint game: that makes me a true democrat.

Fine, my home address is in my sig. I never turn down money (or it's equivalent in stamps).

>
> > MAI was supposed to have been implemented almost a year ago. We may yet
> > defeat it, and will at least continue to delay it. And the Internet
> > activism you consider so imaginary, and the letter writing you consider
> > so dull and worthless has played a big role in this.
>
> I'd put Internet activism in a new category quite separate from letter-
> writing, for reasons that inhere in the very nature of the Net and which > we fondly recall from the campaign against the CDA, but what's spoken of
> now would make the Internet account _per se_ the equipment of an elite
> pastime, its radical/populist career over.

Actually the number of people on the Internet is growing. For the first time women are close to half of the U.S. net community, and working people are close to outnumbering the geeks.

>
> I thought it was wonderful when a Gulf War vet blew up that G-building
> (though he could have proven the same point on a Sunday, when his victims
> were in church praying for extended American hegemony and other heavenly
> signs).  McVeigh taught the big boys some manners, and when those manners
> flag somewhat more than they already have there will be other teachers.
> There are, alas, times when force is necessary to restore to very idea
> of consensus a new core of honesty and respect.

All that McVeigh did for the big boys was give them an excuse for the anti-terrorism act. I always wonder about people who romanticize violence when the other side has all the weapons and most of the popular support as well.

>
> Too many Israelis viewed the Palestinian areas as permanent impoundments  and breeder units for a nation of street-sweepers and busboys; then came > the walking bombs, then Madrid, then Oslo.  The world holds other examples.

>From out in the real world in looks more like a 40 year campaign of trying to use violence against a better armed oppressor won Palestinians the right to a bantustan. No, I'm wrong; it won them the promise of a bantustan which is now being violated.
>                  ..........................................
>
> But I'm not advocating anything so crass, Gar, only saying that if social energy is to deploy itself against this challenge, it should be doing so  to seize both concrete and tactical advantage from capitalist anarchy, > not merely to experience a thankful survival of the _status quo_.

Mmm, I should have mentioned this was a net hoax before Doug did.  It was just that the issue of letter writing struck me as more important. Letter writing is one of the few things any literate U.S. citizen can do -- even if stuck in a backwater like Fall Church, Virginia.  It is not the be all and end all of tactics; but I have never heard anybody suggest it is. Look the elites screw us a thousand different ways. Even those who have time to be active fighting a couple of them can't be involved in everything. Letter writing is one way people can give support to others in areas that are not there main issues.

>
> Otherwise we sooner or later lose the Net, and not only for ourselves
> but for kids in ghettos and on reservations who have yet to lay hands
> on it.  Case closed.


Yes we do face the eventual loss of the net -- not to "net taxes" but to a gradual shift to a high bandwidth advertiser supported model. . Basically, the short version is that if the "standard" site requirement can be driven upwards to the point where every decent site requires a dedicated server then you can end up with a shortage of bandwidth on the Internet backbone - allowing the same kind of shift to a license type system that took place with radio, and which TV (in the U.S.) used from day one.

>                                                                   valis
>
>                "Sacred cows make the best hamburger"
>
>                                      -- Mark Twain
>

--
Gar W. Lipow
815 Dundee RD NW
Olympia, WA 98502
http://www.freetrain.org/