'Every time we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act we become a party to injustice. Those who are repeatedly passive in the face of injustice soon find their character corroded into servility. Most witnessed acts of injustice are associated with bad governance, since when governance is good, unanswered injustice is rare. By the progressive diminution of a people's character, the impact of reported but unanswered injustice is far greater than it may initially seem. Modern communications states through their scale, homogeneity, and excesses provide their populace with an unprecedented deluge of witnessed, but seemingly unanswerable injustices.'
'The more secretive or unjust an organisation is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimisation of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive 'secrecy tax') and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open just systems. Since unjust systems by their nature induce opponents and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance. Only revealed injustice can be answered: for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what's actually going on.'
'Did I ever tell you about the time Nataliya took me out to go get a drink with her? We go off looking for a bar and we can't find one. Finally Nataliya takes me to a vacant lot and says *here we are*. We sat there for a year and a half until, sure enough, someone constructs a bar around us. Well, the day they opened we ordered a shot, drank it, and then burned the place to the ground. Nataliya yelled over the roar of the flames: *always leave things the way you found 'em!*'
'If it's worth writing, it's worth keeping. If it can be kept, it might be worth writing. Would you store your brain in a startup company's vault? If you store your writing on a third party site like Blogger, LiveJournal, or even on your own site, in the complex format used by blog/wiki software de jour you will lose it forever as soon as hypersonic wings of Internet labour flows direct people's energies elsewhere. For most information published on the Internet, perhaps that is not a moment too soon, but how can the muse of originality soar when immolating transience brushes every feather?'
'To radically shift regime behaviour we must think clearly and boldly. For if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed.'
'Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes, we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite, not merely for preferment or favor within the regime, but as the primary planning methodology behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.'
'If all conspirators are assassinated or all the links between them are destroyed, then a conspiracy no longer exists. This usually requires more resources than we can deploy, so we ask our first question: what is the minimum number of links that must be cut to separate the conspiracy into two groups of equal number?'
'Since a conspiracy is a type of cognitive device that acts on information acquired from its environment, distorting or restricting these inputs means acts based on them are likely to be misplaced. Programmers call this effect 'garbage in, garbage out'. Usually the effect runs the other way: it is conspiracy that is the agent of deception and information restriction. In the US the programmer's aphorism is sometimes called the Fox News Effect.'
'A man in chains knows he should have acted sooner, for his ability to influence the actions of the state is near its end. To deal with powerful conspiratorial actions we must think ahead and attack the process that leads to them since the actions themselves can not be dealt with. We can deceive or blind a conspiracy by distorting or restricting the information available to it. We can reduce total conspiratorial power via unstructured attacks on links or through throttling and separating. A conspiracy sufficiently engaged in this manner is no longer able to comprehend its environment and plan robust action.'
'Real hacktivism is at least as old as October 1989 when DOE (US Deptartment of Energy) HEPNET and SPAN (NASA) connected VMS machines worldwide were penetrated by the anti-nuclear WANK worm, which changed the system announcement banner to be:'
'In our book, Suelette Dreyfus and I track the source of the worm to Melbourne. At the time there was considerable anti-nuclear sentiment in the country. Australia had (and still has) a number of US spy, early warning, and nuclear submarine communications bases, most of which were first and second strike Soviet targets. (Australia would not otherwise be a nuclear target.)'
'Additionally in 1984, New Zealand, a country with which Australians feel a special affinity, had under Labour prime minister David Lange made NZ a nuclear free territory, precluding the admission of nuclear armed or powered warships into NZ ports. The US in response rescinded its defence treaty obligations to NZ, cut intelligence ties (or at least pretended to, see Nicky Hager's excellent book 'Secret Power' for further details) and instigated a number of trade sanctions against the country.'
'But New Zealand's nuclear woes were not to end there. At 11:59 PM on the night of 10 July 1985 the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior, docked in Auckland harbour preparing to sail in three days' time to Mururoa Atoll to demonstrate against French nuclear tests, was blown up by amphibious DGSE (French secret service) agents, killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira. Within days, two DGSE agents Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur were arrested, following an investigation by Australian journalist Chris Masters, plead guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced by the NZ high court to 10 years. The other DGSE agents escaped via a French nuclear sub off the NZ coast. The French, a significant NZ trade partner, immediately instigated trade sanctions against the country. In June 1986, a political deal was struck: France would lift sanctions, pay a few million in blood money, and the two agents would be transferred to Hao Atoll, a French military base in the Pacific, where they would supposedly serve out the remainder of their sentences. However by May 1988 both had been smuggled back to France.'
You the mothers who sent your sons: wipe away your tears
For those who fought and those who fell become our sons as well
You the warriors with your words: throw away your spears
You talk of times of peace for all and then prepare for war
All people with dreams, all mothers with sons
All people with dreams never woken at night by the sound of guns
Like a child that's born on a moonless night
Like a child that's born we parachute down to an unknown fight
This city of blossom and blood
This city suffered more than it should
These sidewalk silhouettes not washed away, not washed away
Whatever you've done, whatever you've done
Whatever you've done there's a hope in the heart says never again
Whatever you say, whatever you say
Whatever you say it's the price of peace to remember that day
This city of blossom and blood
This city suffered more than it should
These sidewalk silhouettes not washed away, not washed away
My life is a valuable thing, I wan't to keep it that way
I won't cry
My life's such a valuable thing, some things don't fade away
I don't mind
We give the best we can give, we won't forget, we can't forgive
Keep us radioactive free
Strike a bell in Hiroshima park, you know that we can't see in the dark
We try and we try and we try
Who waits for the planes to come when everybody's got you on the run?
South Pacific carry on
It seems to me that what we're saying nobody really wants to talk about it
This is no time to be wondering why
I do the best I can do, the human jungle and the global zoo
I'll find my way it's a very special way
Why wait for the planes to come when everybody's got us on the run?
South Pacific carry on
Here come the Hercules, here come the submarines, sinking South Pacific dreams