Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1991 02:48:26 -0400 From: Colin Plumb Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: These People and Institutions Were Hurt by Len Message-ID: Organization: Array Systems Computing, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 496, Message 3 of 7 Lines: 47 In article bill@ssbn.wlk.com (Bill Kennedy) writes: > My concern is strictly for the damage that Len did to people and > organizations who were just whooshed into his vortex. [Many Bad Things described happening to people who Len had contact with.] I still can't blame Len for all that. I can blame the spirit of inquisitions, purges, denunciations, and the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee everywhere, but I'm not going to blame Marc Lepine's acquaintances for the deaths of the 14 people he shot, nor will I blame feminists in general for attracting his psychosis, nor will I blame Len for guilty-by-association witch hunts his actions sparked. I'll blame the hunters, especially since Len had reason to believe such trivia as the first, fourth and fifth amendments to the U.S. constitution protected his friends. There are similar applicable sections in the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (particualrly Articles 12, 19 and 20), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (Articles 5 and 7), and the British Magna Carta (Articles 20, 38, and 39). They all say either, I can talk with whoever I like, or, I shall not be persecuted without lawful judgement, and not to a greater degree than the offense warrants. You'd think that after 776 years of nominal allegiance to due process of law, it would have sunk in a little ... on the other hand, the fact that people kept putting it on revolutionary documents is some indication that they felt it needed reinforcing. > Tanner makes my point with precision. Let me enumerate the damage > done which could have been avoided had Len acted more responsibly: This same damage could have been avoided if the more direct agents, namely various law-enforcement and telco authorities, had reacted less hysterically. I hold them immediately responsible. > Don't slather me with "it was the big bad feds"; had he not attracted > their attention they'd have left him (and the rest of us) alone. You think you live in a police state. I wonder if it's true. Colin