Computer underground Digest Wed Apr 9, 1997 Volume 9 : Issue 28

Computer underground Digest Wed Apr 9, 1997 Volume 9 : Issue 28
ISSN 1004-042X

Editor: Jim Thomas ([email protected])
News Editor: Gordon Meyer ([email protected])
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest

CONTENTS, #9.28 (Wed, Apr 9, 1997)

File 1--Suicide, The Net and MCI
File 2--Heaven Gate - A Formal (HTML) Autopsy
File 3--"Response to K. Arromdee"
File 4--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 13 Dec, 1996)

CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 03:05:27 -0500 (EST)
From: [email protected](TELECOM Digest Editor)
Subject: File 1--Suicide, The Net and MCI

((MODERATORS' NOTE: For those not familiar with Pat Townson's
TELECOM DIGEST, it's a an exceptional resource. From the header
of TcD:
"TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but
not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is
circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various
telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and
networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also
gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to
qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell
us how you qualify:
* [email protected] * ======" ))

TELECOM Digest Sun, 30 Mar 97 03:05:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 78

From--John Cropper <[email protected]>
Subject--Suicide, The Net and MCI
Date--Fri, 28 Mar 1997 17:34:55 -0500

When the story on the "Young Web Programmers who committed suicide"
broke, the world was shocked ...

But morbid curiousity would turn into a nightmare for the ISP who
provided domain hosting for the cult, and the netowrk providing THEIR
service. Forty hours after the story broke, thousands of hits per
minute are STILL being recorded at their site. Worse still, the
overwhelming volume slammed the Tennessee DNS provider hosting the
site to the point that MCI's links in the southeast were interrupted
for forty-five minutes shortly after 5PM EST Thursday evening. I
personally suffered some major problems with my provider next door in
Kentucky, who himself was isolated for nearly an hour. Calls to MCI
revealed that they were indeed aware of the problem, and 'taking steps
to correct it'.

The process repeated itself again at 8PM EST when the story hit the
west coast television stations, but the outage only lasted for a few
minutes. Regardless ... a moderately heavy amount of volume basically
stormed a small DNS provider, and affected MCI's network service in
four adjacent states, proving that the internet is now pretty close to
capacity, and bandwidth upgrades at ALL points are sorely needed.

Big 'boats' like Sun, Microsoft, and the like can readily handle tens
of thousands of hits per minute, but other sites lack even the simple
infrastructure from the communications companies *themselves* to even
stay afloat should everyone rush to one side of 'their ship'.

An internic search of heavensgate.com revels the following info:

Chris Knight HEAVENSGATE-DOM
25801 W. PCH
Malibu, CA 90265

Domain Name: HEAVENSGATE.COM

Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
Knight, Chris CK1370 [email protected]
310/829-6333
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
craig, holly HC527 [email protected]
615/732-4816

Record last updated on 28-Feb-97.
Record created on 19-Apr-96.

Domain servers in listed order:

DNS.CNAV.COM 206.25.206.16
NS.VALLNET.COM 206.25.206.1

It is unknown whether any of the people shown above were among those
found in the aftermath of the incident.

NS.VALLNET.COM is Valley Internet services in Tennessee, apparently
administrated by Holly Craig (and her husband William) in Dellrose. I
was unable to reach them at their contact number for comment on the
incident, and/or any background info. One thing is certain: their
servers, and MCI will continue to suffer from elevated (morbid) volume
until this thing dies down ...

John Cropper, Webmaster voice: 888.NPA.NFO2
Legacy IS, Networking & Comm. Solutions 609.637.9434
P.O. Box 277 fax: 609.637.9430
Pennington, NJ 08534-0277
Unsolicited commercial e-mail is subject
mailto:[email protected] to a fee as outlined in the agreement at
http://www.lincs.net/ http://www.lincs.net/spamoff.htm

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The news came over the television here
about 8:00 PM and their reference was to 'late this afternoon in
California' meaning, I would guess, about 4:00 pm, a couple hours
earlier by California time.

Already the sick jokes are starting on this one. Every tragedy has to
have a few sick jokes go along with it, and this one was making the
rounds by fax machine on Friday evening:

Name two major milestones in transportation technology which have
occured in the past five hundred years.

In 1492, Columbus sailed the blue ...
In 1997, spaceship rides to Heaven ...

In 1978 at the time of the Jim Jones affair, the jokes dealt with
'Kool Aid Communion'.

The media certainly has messed up this latest story. When they
broke in on the Wheel of Fortune game on ABC with the first
report, it was 'in excess of thirty young men ages 18-24, all
computer web site programmers ...' Later they decided the count
was 39 (which is, admittedly in excess of thirty) but they kept
on saying the ages were 18-24 and all of them were male and that
all were 'internet programmers on the web'. Finally on Saturday
here, they decided that actually 21 were female and 18 were male
and that the ages were middle twenties through (in one case) 72!

Well, I guess they could not have picked a better weekend for it,
this being Easter. Maybe they planned it that way. My wishes for
a happy holiday to those of you who celebrate it. PAT]

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 18:58:24 -0500
From: RMT <[email protected]>
Subject: File 2--Heaven Gate - A Formal (HTML) Autopsy

Thirty-nine lives may be a powerful statement, if their deads and
deeds are clear and pure.

This is the judgement of their Form and Substance.

Specifically, by their works, in this case, the tangible results
are 39 dead bodies and some HTML pages.

With an autopsy, it is appropriate "to see" the objects of which
we speak and thus, here is the complete HTML for the "Heaven's
Gate - How and When It May Be Entered" page
at http://www.heavensgate.com/

---html---

The first formal comment regarding this HTML is that
there is *no* convention regarding the formal distinction
between the formal HTML Tags and substantive content of the
document. Because content may be arbitrarily capitalized,
the optimum convention for facilitating the visual distinction
and recognition between HTML Tags and document content is
to uniformally capitalize the HTML Tags, which are *not*
case sensitive.

And, at a formal level, no DOC HTML Version Tag was included.

So, now we look at the Head of the page and the title is well-formed.
( From this point on, formal comment lines will begin with "***** ". )

<head>

<title>Heaven's Gate - How and When It May Be Entered</title>

***** Okay, these folks are aware of Meta-Tags for facilitating hits
***** and "top-of-the-pile" retreival, hence, more potential customers.
***** The first Meta Tag is for summary descriptions and gives a lot of
***** clues of where these folks are coming from.

<meta name="description" content="How
and When Heaven's Gate, the Door to the Physical Kingdom Level Above
Human,
May Be Entered. Organized Religions Are Killers of Souls. UFOs and
Extraterrestrials - Sorting the Good from the Bad. Final Warning for
Possible Survivors.">

***** Now we get into the keywords and and these folks know how to pack
***** the deck. My favorite reference for how this game of Search Engine
***** registration is at
http://www.digital-cafe.com/~webmaster/set01.html
***** The pure iterative nature of the repetition forces a high score,
***** but is pure formal and represents no additional substance.
***** Cheap, but it works, here and now.

<meta name="keywords" content="Heaven's Gate,

Heaven's Gate, Heaven's Gate, Heaven's Gate, Heaven's Gate, Heaven's
Gate,
ufo, ufo, ufo, ufo, ufo, ufo, space alien, space alien, space alien,
space alien, space alien, space alien, extraterrestrial,
extraterrestrial, extraterrestrial, extraterrestrial,
extraterrestrial, extraterrestrial, millennium, millennium, millennium,
millennium, millennium, millennium, millennium,
misinformation, misinformation,
misinformation, misinformation, misinformation, misinformation,
freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, second coming,
second coming, second coming, second coming, second coming, second
coming, angels, angels, angels,
angels, angels, angels, end times, end times, end times, end times, end
times, end
times, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, God, God, God, God,
God, God">
</head>

***** Okay, so much for the Head portion.
***** Clearly, these folks understand hexadecimal arithmetic,
***** as they must, in order to even be here. Okay.
***** However, there is a horrible flaw here, in that
***** an attempt to print a hardcopy with this color scheme
***** will produce a very light and bearly readable printed page.
***** This is because text colors are quite dim relative to a
***** pure white background, which is what is used in lieu of
***** printing a complete page of black background.
***** Ironic there their work is dim when transformed from
***** the medium of CyberSpace to the medium of the printed page.

<body bgcolor="#000000" background="img/tile.jpg" text="#33ffcc"
link="#cc99ff" vlink="#66cccc" alink="#ff0066">
<center>

***** This is a *cool* graphic, but the IMG SRC Tag is terrible.

<img src="img/redalrt3.gif" alt="Red Alert --">

***** Failure to include the WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes force the
***** browser to wait until the image is downloaded before the
***** browser can lay out the page. With cut and paste, it is so
***** easy to carry allong all the attributes and turn one the
***** one that are appropriate. It is also a constant reminder
***** of what all the options are. For example:

<IMG SRC = "bitmaps/hr_rnbow.gif"
BORDER = 0 ALT = "-------------------------------"
VSPACE = 0 HSPACE = 0 WIDTH = 585 HEIGHT = 2>

***** is a more complete and useful Tag.

 
HALE-BOPP
 Brings Closure to:

***** Playing with the text colors too much obsecures the hyperlinks.
***** This is slick, but not professional.

<img src="img/hbhgtd.jpg" align=center alt=Welcome to Heaven's Gate>
<a name="top"></a>
 

***** This is a relative complex table structure.
***** They have a high knowledge of HTML.
***** Note well that HTML is a "Mark Up" set of Tags,
***** and, that HTML is *not* a programming language
***** such as ALGOL, COBOL, PASCAL, or JAVA.

<table border=0 width=92%><tr>

<td> </td></tr><tr>
<td>Whether Hale-Bopp has a "companion" or not is
irrelevant from our perspective. However, its arrival is joyously very
significant to us at "Heaven's Gate." The joy
is that our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above Human (the
"Kingdom of Heaven") has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp's approach
is the "marker" we've been waiting for -- the time for the arrival of
the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to "Their
World" -- in the literal Heavens. Our 22 years of classroom here on
planet Earth is finally coming to conclusion -- "graduation" from the
Human Evolutionary Level. We are happily prepared to leave "this world"
and go with Ti's crew.

If you study the material on this website you will hopefully understand
our joy and what our purpose here on Earth has been. You may even find
your "boarding pass" to leave with us during this brief "window."

We are so very thankful that we have been recipients of this opportunity
to prepare for membership in Their Kingdom, and to experience Their
boundless Caring and Nurturing.</td>
</tr></table>
</center>

***** In walking through the above Table, the td and tr are
***** not immediately visible. The table is a 1 by 2 matrix.
***** In fact, the first tr entry is unnecessary since the
***** BR can be placed either before the Table, or within
***** the second tr pair.


<center>

***** Turning the center tag off and on is unnecessary.

<hr width=80% size=1>
Keys or Bookmarks to Vital
Information
 
on Our Website
<a name="keys"></a>
<hr width=80% size=1>

***** Here comes the next Table, but the original HTML contains
***** no blank lines or comment dividers used here, such as
***** 
***** to visually partition the internal form of the HTML document,
***** for ease of maintenance and modification in the future.
***** However, there blank lines used to visually distinguish
***** several tr rows which constitute the 1 by 8 Table. Each
***** tr row consists of a a graphic image ( great graphics,
***** a bit sophmoric, but still, dazzling ) and narrative.
***** The above comments regarding IMG SRC Tags again apply.

<table border=0 cellpadding=0 width=100%><tr>

<td><a href="misc/intro.htm">
<img src="img/bttn1.jpg" hspace=25 align=absmiddle
border=0 alt="Do's Intro: Purpose - Belief"></a></td>
<td valign=middle><a href="misc/intro.htm">Do's
Intro: Our Purpose -- The Simple Bottom Line</a> 
(an excerpt from our book 
HEAVEN'S GATE
-- see
below)</td>
</tr><tr>

<td><a href="misc/95upd96.htm"><img src="img/bttn2.jpg" hspace=25
align=absmiddle border=0 alt="Statement by an E.T."></a></td>
<td valign=middle><a
href="misc/95upd96.htm">Statement by
an E.T. Presently Incarnate</a> 
(excerpt from our book)</td>
</tr><tr>

<td><a href="misc/ovrview.htm"><img src="img/bttn4.jpg" hspace=25
align=absmiddle border=0 alt="Overview of Present Mission"></a> </td>
<td valign=middle>
<a href="misc/ovrview.htm">Overview of Present Mission</a>
(excerpt from our book, a student
paper)
</td>
</tr><tr>

<td><a href="misc/lastchnc.htm"><img src="img/bttn5.jpg" hspace=25
align=absmiddle border=0 alt="Last Chance To Advance Beyond Human"></a>
 </td><td valign=middle>
<a href="misc/lastchnc.htm">Last Chance To Advance Beyond Human</a>

(excerpt from our
book)
</td>
</tr><tr>

<td><a href="book/book.htm"><img src="img/bttn6.jpg" hspace=25
align=absmiddle
border=0 alt="To Access Our Book: "Heaven's Gate"></a> </td>
<td valign=middle>To Access Our
Book Online in its Entirety: 
<a href="book/book.htm">How and When HEAVEN'S
GATE May Be Entered</a> 
 </td>
</tr><tr>

<td><a href="misc/latest.htm"><img src="img/bttn7.jpg" hspace=25
align=absmiddle
border=0 alt="Transcripts of 2 videos"></a> </td>
<td valign=middle><a
href="misc/latest.htm">Transcripts
of Two Recent Videos</a></td>
</tr><tr>

<td><a href="misc/letter.htm">
<img src="img/bttn8.jpg" hspace=25 align=absmiddle border=0
alt="Our Position Against Suicide"></a> </td>
<td valign=middle>
<a href="misc/letter.htm">Our Position Against Suicide</a>
</td>
</tr><tr>

<td><a href="misc/member.htm"><img src="img/bttn9.jpg" hspace=25
align=absmiddle
border=0 alt="How a Member of the K.O.H. Might Appear"></a> </td>
<td valign=middle><a href="misc/member.htm">How a
Member of the Kingdom of Heaven Might Appear</a></td>
</tr><tr>
</table>

***** This concludes the Table of links.
***** Recall that a center tag is still in effect.
***** This fanciful use of color will force the
***** surfer to test *everything* on the page as
***** being a possible link. Not real friendly.

 
<hr width=85% align=center size=1>


To Order a Hard Copy of Our Book

<hr width=85% align=center size=1>
</center>

***** This ends the center tag's effect.
***** However, there are no blanks lines anywhere near here.


The following materials are available through TELAH Services:


One of our correspondents from Germany offered to
translate the following two transcripts into German.


***** Ah. The good old Unorder List structure, a workhorse.
***** Nothing original, but a good "grind it out" approach.

<ul>
<li>Videotape 1:
Last Chance To Evacuate Earth Before It's
Recycled 
(Sept. 29, 1996 - 70 min.)
<li><a href="misc/vt092996.htm">Transcript of videotape
1.</a>
......
<a href="misc/vg092996.htm">German translation</a>

<li>Videotape 2:
Planet Earth About To Be Recycled -- Your Only
Chance To Survive -- Leave With Us 
(Oct. 5, 1996 - 58 min.)
<li><a href="misc/vt100596.htm">Transcript of videotape
2.</a>
......
<a href="misc/vg100596.htm">German translation</a>

<a name="book"></a>
<li>Our <a href="book/book.htm">Book</a>, entitled
How and When "Heaven's Gate" May Be Entered
 
(An Anthology
of Our Materials).
</ul>

***** End of the Unordered List, but no blank line.
***** Another unsized image is used and a general mesh
***** of HTML goes on for a bit.


<a name="telah"></a>
 <img src="img/srhg.jpg" align=right border=0 hspace=10 alt="Saturn
Rings">

If you would like to send for videotapes,
there is no charge. If you would like to copy them and
return the originals to us, we will make
them available to someone else. If you choose to assist
with deferring our expenses, those funds would be reinvested towards
getting this information out.

***** The p Tag *begins* a paragraph, after spacing a line,
***** and immediately suggests and identical visual form of the same.
***** Having the p Tag at the end of a paragraph is contrary to
***** the sematics of the Tag and obsecures the Tag further.

The transcripts of videotapes 1 and 2 can be
<a href="misc/latest.htm">viewed online</a>,
<a href="misc/trans.zip">downloaded</a>
or requested through TELAH Services.

***** Again, the p Tag malformality.


Hard copy editions of the book may be ordered through TELAH Services
for $45 US. This includes shipping and handling, via priority mail.
 


***** It is not easy to follow what is Tags are in effect.


Requests For Materials Can Be Emailed To:  
<a href="mailto:[email protected]">
[email protected]</a>
Or Sent Via Postal Service To:


<center>TELAH Services 
4757 E. Greenway Rd. Ste. 103-178 
Phoenix, AZ 85032</center>

***** Okay. This the end of the real substance.
***** Now the "Navigation Bar" links are given.

<a name="navbars"></a>
<h3><center>
| <a href="book/book.htm">To Access Our Online Book</a>
How and When HEAVEN'S GATE May Be Entered
| 
| <a href="misc/intro.htm">Do's Intro: Purpose - Belief</a>
| <a href="misc/95upd96.htm">Statement by an E.T. Presently
Incarnate</a>
| 
| <a href="misc/vt092996.htm">Last Chance To Evacuate Earth</a>
| <a href="misc/vt100596.htm">Planet About To Be Recycled</a>
| 
| <a href="misc/ovrview.htm">Overview of Present Mission</a>
| <a href="misc/lastchnc.htm">Last Chance To Advance Beyond Human</a>
| 
| <a href="misc/letter.htm">Our Position Against Suicide</a>
| <a href="misc/member.htm">How a Member of the Kingdom of Heaven Might
Appear</a>
| 
| <a href="misc/link.htm">Connecting Links</a>
| <a href="misc/secure.htm">Privacy Concerns</a>
| 
| <a href="#keys">Back to Bookmarks</a>
| <a href="#top">Top of this Homepage</a>
|</h3>


***** And this is why there is a great deal of blank space at the
***** bottom of the external form ( browser view ) of the HTML web page.
***** By setting the font size to zero, the text will not appear
***** on the web page, but will occupy lines. Again, the idea here
***** is to choke the serach engines so they will stop on this page.

Heaven's Gate
Heaven's Gate Heaven's Gate Heaven's Gate Heaven's Gate Heaven's Gate
Heaven's Gate Heaven's Gate ufo ufo ufo ufo ufo ufo ufo ufo ufo ufo ufo
ufo
space alien space alien space alien space alien space alien space alien
space alien space alien space alien space alien space alien space alien
extraterrestrial extraterrestrial extraterrestrial extraterrestrial
extraterrestrial extraterrestrial extraterrestrial extraterrestrial
extraterrestrial extraterrestrial extraterrestrial extraterrestrial
extraterrestrial extraterrestrial misinformation misinformation
misinformation misinformation misinformation misinformation
misinformation
misinformation misinformation misinformation misinformation
misinformation
freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom freedom
freedom freedom freedom second coming second coming second coming second
coming second coming second coming second coming second coming second
coming second coming angels angels angels angels angels angels angels
angels angels angels end end times times end times end times end times
end
times end times end times end times end times end times 
Key Words: (for search engines) 144,000,
Abductees, Agnostic, Alien, Allah, Alternative, Angels, Antichrist,
Apocalypse, Armageddon, Ascension, Atheist, Awakening, Away Team, Beyond
Human, Blasphemy, Boddhisattva, Book of Revelation, Buddha, Channeling,
Children of God, Christ, Christ's Teachings, Consciousness, Contactees,
Corruption, Creation, Death, Discarnate, Discarnates, Disciple,
Disciples,
Disinformation, Dying, Ecumenical, End of the Age, End of the World,
Eternal Life, Eunuch, Evolution, Evolutionary, Extraterrestrial,
Freedom,
Fulfilling Prophecy, Genderless, Glorified Body, God, God's Children,
God's
Chosen, God's Heaven, God's Laws, God's Son, Guru, Harvest Time, He's
Back,
Heaven, Heaven's Gate, Heavenly Kingdom, Higher Consciousness, His
Church,
Human Metamorphosis, Human Spirit, Implant, Incarnation, Interfaith,
Jesus,
Jesus' Return, Jesus' Teaching, Kingdom of God, Kingdom of Heaven,
Krishna
Consciousness, Lamb of God, Last Days, Level Above Human, Life After
Death,
Luciferian, Luciferians, Meditation, Members of the Next Level, Messiah,
Metamorphosis, Metaphysical, Millennium, Misinformation, Mothership,
Mystic,
Next Level, Non Perishable, Non Temporal, Older Member, Our Lords
Return,
Out of Body Experience, Overcomers, Overcoming, Past Lives, Prophecy,
Prophecy Fulfillment, Rapture, Reactive Mind, Recycling the Planet,
Reincarnation, Religion, Resurrection, Revelations, Saved, Second
Coming,
Soul, Space Alien, Spacecraft, Spirit, Spirit Filled, Spirit Guide,
Spiritual, Spiritual Awakening, Star People, Super Natural, Telepathy,
The Remnant, The Two, Theosophy, Ti and Do, Truth, Two Witnesses, UFO,
Virginity, Walk-ins, Yahweh, Yeshua, Yoda, Yoga,
</center>
</body></html>

*****
*****
***** End of the Heaven's Gate HTML Source code.
*****
*****

It is difficult to be impressed with this work.
It is that of an apprentice, not The Work of a Master.

Formally yours,
Robert Tufty

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 23:29:39 -0500
From: Paul Kneisel <[email protected]>
Subject: File 3--"Response to K. Arromdee"

Ken Arromdee's defense of the 200+ news groups in <gov.*> centered on one
generic and one specific psychiatric point, specifically that I (as the
leading <gov.*> critic) am "paranoid" and that I somehow believe that the
creation of the groups is a "sinister government conspiracy" directed
against me personally.[1]

Surely the supporters of the 200+ <gov.*> new groups can do better than this!

I believe that Arromdee's personal attack is consistent with the past
approach of the Old Boys Club on Usenet, which is increasingly becoming
irrelevant as the Internet expands. John C. Dvorak of _PC Magazine_ has
described these long-time net residents as the "Newsgroup Charlies" who are
increasingly damaging meaningful discourse on the net with their
unsubstantial charges and off-topic claims. "There is a certain air to
these messages," Dvorak wrote, "as though they'd been written by someone
knowledgable. Unfortunately, it's really the air of authority without any
experience necessarily behind it. And guys like Newsgroup Charlies are
quick to flame others."[2]

In this sense then, I invite him to further develop the analysis he wants
the world to believe. I think it involves three points:

1) He should explain to everyone the education and training that qualifies
him to psychiatrically label those with whom he disagrees politically;

2) He should present the facts observable to the classical "reasonable man
[and woman]" that I am "paranoid" and that justify his conclusion that I
believe that <gov.*> is a "sinister government conspiracy" against me
personally, and;

3) He should explain what possible relevance such psychiatric
material--even if true--has on the real political issues in this case. In
other words, let us imagine that I posted to CuDigest from a hacked
computer inside Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital where I imagine I am the
Queen of England and Napoleon rolled into one. Would this change a single
thing about the nature of <gov.*> or the issues involved in its creation
and functioning?

I think that we will soon discover an additional three points: that
Arromdee has no qualifications behind his claims, that he has no data of
any sort to back his claim that I believe that <gov.*> was aimed at me
personally, and that his whole approach is nothing more than the classic
"Good Ol' Boy" flamefest aimed at critics of the Old Boys (Inter) Network
to suppress rather than expand the political debate.

The issue of "info-warfare" and its economic consequences and purposes is
not new. It existed long before the Internet. The only two basic changes
are that with the demise of the former Soviet Union it is done far more
openly and now--via developments like <gov.*>--it can use the net as a form
of transmission.

The first of these developments is advocated by such conservative thinkers
as Walter Laqueur who wrote in his article "Postmodern Terrorism" that
"America should pursue a vision of benevolent hegemony as bold as Reagan's
in the 1970s and wield its authority unabashedly."[3]

Elsewhere, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and Admiral WIlliam Owens wrote how the
Internet could be incorporated into this process as part of an
international "soft power" strategy.[4]

One need not be paranoid to note this. The _New York Times_ printed the
early pre-net history of such federal info-interventions on its 31 March
front page.[5]

"Congress routinely appropriates tens of millions of dollars in covert and
overt money to use in influencing domestic politics abroad," Broder wrote.
"The National Endowment for Democracy, created 15 years ago to do in the
open what the C.I.A. has done surreptitiously for decades, spends $30
million a year to support things like political parties, labor unions,
dissident movements and the news media in dozens of countries, including
China."

Later in the story, Broder provided a figure of "countless billions [not
millions]" on such acts as "secret support for political parties of close
allies like Japan, fomenting coups, spreading false rumors, and swaying
public opinion."

Why shouldn't the net be used for such things, especially with so many
academics and Pentagon-thinkers advocating exactly this.

So, paranoid? Perhaps so, but then so are the editors of the _Times_. In
one sense, the editors are even more paranoid than I.

I only posted my material to <news.groups> and CuDigest. They posted theirs
to the front page of the _The New York Times_.

FOOTNOTES

[1] "Re: Coup-d-etat on the Internet (CuD 9.24)," CuDigest, 28 Mar 1997,
#9. 25.

[2] "Rude Newsgroups Run Rampant," _PC Magazine_, 5 Nov 1996, Vol. 15, No.
19, p. 85.

[3] _Foreign Affairs Envoy_, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/Envoy/jrl_fa96.
html, in "Foreign Affairs_, Sep/Oct 1996, p. 24ff.

[4] _Foreign Affairs_, Mar/Apr 1996, pp. 20-36. Nye was a past Chairman of
the National Intelligence Council and an Assistant Secretary of Defense for
International Affairs. At present, he is the Dean of Harvard's John F.
Kennedy School of Government. Admiral Owen is a former Vice Chair of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Nye had earlier defined "soft power" in his book _Bound to Lead: The
Changing Nature of Power in America_ as: "the ability to achieve desired
outcomes in international affairs through attraction rather than coercion.
It works by convincing others to follow, or getting them to agree to, norms
and institutions that produce the desired behavior. Soft power can rest on
the appeal of one's ideas or the ability to set the agenda in ways that
shape the preferences of others. If a state can make its power legitimate
in the perception of others and establish international institutions that
encourage them to channel or limit their activities, it may not need to
expend as many of its costly traditional economic or military resources."

[5] John M. Broder, "Political Meddling by Outsiders: Not New for U.S.,"
_The New York Times_, 31 Mar 1997, p. A1.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1996 22:51:01 CST
From: CuD Moderators <[email protected]>
Subject: File 4--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 13 Dec, 1996)

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