🚀 go-pugleaf

Thus Spake russotto@wanda.vf.pond.com (Matthew T. Russotto):


%Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act.  A neat little
%act where if the government asserts that an organization is
%'racketeering influenced', they can seize it and all assets derived
%from it BEFORE your trial.  There's also the variant known as civil
%RICO, where they go and seize your assets but don't bother to try you
%-- and you have to sue (paying your lawyer is your problem, and
%there's also high bond requirements) to get them back.

Oh, yeah.  The law under which they nail Mob dons.  Big deal.

%The question isn't whether I'm offering to start one, it's whether or
%not such a massacre is just cause for starting one.

OK, no.  I don't believe one (or even several) incidents of troops getting out
of hand justifies armed revolt.  And if you look at the writings of the time
(Thomas Paine, especially) the Boston Massacre is almost never mentioned-the
causes for rebellion can be more accurately traced to a long-term British policy
of denying the colonists the inherent human right to self-determination.  

%One who hasn't even heard of RICO, yet is willing to characterize it
%as 'conspiracy-nut right wing bullshit' has a lot of nerve calling others
%"ignorant jackasses".

My statement was not that RICO is the above-mentioned bullshit, but that I was
not always familliar with the buzzwords thrown around the conspiracy-theorist
community.

%"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
%of justice is no virtue." 

I can't recall who said that.  Was it Barry "Nuke North Vietnam" Goldwater or
the cross-dressing FBI chief who though Martin Luther King was communist?


John M. Atkinson
jatkinso@gmu.edu
"A nation which despises its soldiers will all too soon 
have a despicable army
                 --Jerry Pournelle