176 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
176 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 3)
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<p>Substantive changes from version 1 to 2 are <font color="red">marked in red</font>; changes from 2 to 3 are <font color='blue'>marked in blue</font>. I think the changes largely<br />
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speak for themselves. I will say that I think some of the criticisms<br />
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I received reflect a conservative bias in the blogosphere population,<br />
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and that for appeal to a wider audience it <em>is</em> necessary to<br />
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excoriate the Right a little harder than a lot of people here will be<br />
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completely comfortable with.</p>
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<p>I have removed the paragraph about profiling, not out of political<br />
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correctness but because I have been presented with good arguments that<br />
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profiling is easy for terrorists to game against (and apparently they<br />
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have often done so in Israel).</p>
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<p>It has been suggested that I should add the heroes of Flight 93 to<br />
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the list of those we swear shall not have died in vain. But they<br />
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had already achieved that; they saved many lives and provided a<br />
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moral example which shall not be forgotten.</p>
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<p>Congratulations to the trivia spotters who identified “to be dealt<br />
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with as wolves are” as a quote from H. Beam Piper’s <cite>Lord Kalvan<br />
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of Otherwhen</cite>. Jerry Pournelle did, I believe, quote it in<br />
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<cite>Prince Of Sparta</cite>. I had always assumed Piper<br />
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was referring to the Viking sentence of outlawry, in which the outlaw<br />
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was declared a “wolf’s head”. Apparently there is a 1703 historical<br />
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cite from the US as well.</p>
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<hr />
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<p>WHEREAS, the year since the terrible events of 9/11 has exposed<br />
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the vacuity and moral confusion of all too many of the thinkers,<br />
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politicians, and activists operating within conventional political<br />
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categories;</p>
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<p>WHEREAS, the Left has failed us by succumbing to reflexive<br />
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anti-Americanism; by apologizing for terrorist acts; by propounding<br />
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squalid theories of moral equivalence; and by blaming the victims of<br />
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evil for the act of evil;</p>
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<p>WHEREAS, the Right has failed us by pushing `anti-terrorist’<br />
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measures which bid fair to be both ineffective and prejudicial to the<br />
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central liberties of a free society; and in some cases by rhetorically<br />
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descending to almost the same level of <font color="red">bigotry</font> as our enemies;</p>
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<p>WHEREAS, even many of the Libertarians from whom we expected more<br />
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intelligence have retreated into a petulant isolationism, refusing to<br />
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recognize that, at this time, using the state to carry the war to<br />
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the enemy <em>is</em> our only practical instrument of<br />
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self-defense;</p>
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<p>WE THEREFORE ASSERT the following convictions as the basis of<br />
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the anti-idiotarian position:</p>
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<ol>
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<li>
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<p>THAT Western civilization is threatened with the specter of mass death<br />
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perpetrated by nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons placed in the<br />
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hands of terrorists by rogue states;</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>THAT the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attack, and its lesser<br />
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sequels, are motivated by a combination of religious fanaticism and<br />
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a smoldering resentment of the West’s success and Islam’s failures;</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p><font color='blue'>THAT the terrorists have declared and are<br />
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pursuing a war not against the vices of Western civilization but<br />
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against its core virtues; against the freedom of thought and speech<br />
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and conscience, against the life of reason; against the equality of<br />
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women, against pluralism and tolerance; against, indeed, all the<br />
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qualities which separate civilized human beings from bestiality,<br />
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slavery, and fanaticism;</font></p>
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<p>THAT no adjustments of American or Western foreign policy, or<br />
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concessions to the Palestinians, or actions taken against<br />
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globalization, or efforts to alleviate world poverty,<br />
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are of more than incidental interest to these terrorists;</li>
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<li>
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<p>THAT, upon their own representation, they will not by dissuaded from<br />
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their violence by any surrender less extreme than the imposition of Islam<br />
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and shari’a law on the kaffir West;</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>THAT, as said terrorists have demonstrated the willingness to use<br />
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civilian airliners as flying bombs to kill thousands of innocent<br />
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people, we would commit a vast crime of moral negligence if we<br />
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underestimated their future malice <font color='red'>even<br />
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<em>without</em> weapons of mass destruction;</font></p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>THAT they have sought, and on plausible evidence found, alliance<br />
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with rogue states such as Iraq, <font color='red'>Iran,</font> and<br />
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North Korea; states that are known to have active programs working<br />
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towards the development and delivery of weapons of mass destruction<br />
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that would multiply the terrorists’ ability to commit atrocities by a<br />
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thousandfold;</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>THAT Saddam Hussein poses a particularly clear and present danger<br />
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in combination with them, a danger demonstrated by his known efforts<br />
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to develop nuclear weapons, his use of chemical weapons even on his<br />
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own population, his demonstrated willingness to commit aggression<br />
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against peaceful neighbors, and his known links to the Islamic terror<br />
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network in Palestine and elsewhere.</p>
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</li>
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</ol>
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<p>RE AFFIRM that both the terrorists and their state<br />
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sponsors have made themselves outlaws from the moral community of man,<br />
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to be dealt with as <font color="red">feral beasts</font> are.</p>
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<p>WE FURTHER AFFIRM that the `root cause’ of Islamo-fascist terrorism<br />
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lies in the animating politico-religious ideas of fundamentalist Islam<br />
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and not in any signicant respect elsewhere, and that a central aim of<br />
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the war against terror must be to displace, discredit, and destroy<br />
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those animating ideas.</p>
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<p>WE REJECT, as a self-serving power grab by the least trustworthy<br />
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elements of our own side, the theory that terrorist depredations can<br />
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be effectively prevented by further restrictions on the right of free<br />
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speech, or the right of peacible assembly, or the right to bear<br />
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arms in self-defense; and we strenuously oppose police-state measures<br />
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such as the imposition of national ID cards or airport-level<br />
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surveillance of public areas;</p>
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<p><font color="red">IN GRAVE KNOWLEDGE that the state of war brings<br />
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out the worst in both individual human beings and societies, we reject<br />
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the alternative of ceding to the world’s barbarians the exclusive<br />
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privilege of force.</font></p>
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<p>WE SUPPORT the efforts of the United States of America, its allies,<br />
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and the West to hunt down and capture or kill individual members<br />
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of the <font color='red'>Islamo-fascist</font> terror network;</p>
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<p>WE SUPPORT speedy American and allied military action against the<br />
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rogue states that support terrorism, both as a means of alleviating<br />
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the immediate threat and of deterring future state sponsorship of<br />
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terrorism by the threat of war to the knife.</p>
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<p><font color='red'>WE SUPPORT, in recognition of the fact that the<br />
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military and police cannot be everywhere, efforts to meet the<br />
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distributed threat with a distributed response; </font><font color='blue'>to arm airline pilots, and to recognize as well the<br />
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ordinary citizen’s right and obligation to respond to terrorist<br />
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aggression with effective force.</font></p>
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<p>WE SUPPORT, as an alternative greatly preferable to future<br />
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nuclear/chemical/biological blackmail of the West, the forcible <font color='blue'>overthrowing of the governments of Iraq and of other<br />
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nations that combine sponsorship of terrorism with the possession of<br />
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weapons of mass destruction; and the occupation of those<br />
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nations</font> until such time as the root causes of terrorism have<br />
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been eradicated from their societies.</p>
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<p>WE DEFINE IDIOTARIANISM as the species of delusion<br />
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<em>within</em> the moral community of mankind that gives<br />
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aid and comfort to terrorists and dictators operating outside it.</p>
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<p>WE REJECT the idiotarianism of the Left — the moral blindness that<br />
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refuses to recognize that free markets, individual liberty, and<br />
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experimental science have made the West a fundamentally better place<br />
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than any culture in which jihad, ‘honor killings’, and female genital<br />
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mutilation are daily practices approved by a stultifying religion.</p>
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<p>WE REJECT the idiotarianism of the Right — whether it manifests as<br />
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head-in-the-sand isolationism or as a <font color='red'>Christian-identity chauvinism that all but mirrors the<br />
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Islamo-fascist fanaticism of our enemies.</font></p>
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<p>WE ARE MEMBERS OF A CIVILIZATION, and we hold that civilization<br />
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to be worth defending. We have not sought war, but we will fight it<br />
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to the end. We will fight for our civilization in our thoughts, in<br />
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our words, and in our deeds.</p>
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<p>WE HAVE AWAKENED. We have seen the face of evil in the acts of the<br />
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Bin Ladens and Husseins and Arafats of the world; we have seen through<br />
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the lies and self-delusions of the idiotarians, who did so much both to<br />
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make their evil possible before the fact and to deny and excuse it<br />
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afterwards. We shall not flinch from our duty to confront that<br />
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evil.</p>
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<p>WE SHALL SHED the moral cowards and the appeasers and the<br />
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apologists; and we shall fight the barbarians and fanatics, and we<br />
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<em>shall</em> defeat them. We shall defeat them in war, crushing<br />
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their dream of dominion; and we shall defeat them in peace, using our<br />
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wealth and freedoms to <font color='blue'>win</font> their women and<br />
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children to civilized ways, and ultimately wiping their diseased and<br />
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virulent <font color='red'>ideologies</font> from the face of the<br />
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Earth.</p>
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<p>THIS WE SWEAR, on the graves of those who died at the World Trade<br />
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Center; and those who died in the Sari Club in Bali; and those who<br />
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died on U.S.S. Cole; and indeed on the graves of all the nameless<br />
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victims in the Middle East itself who have been slaughtered by<br />
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terrorism and rogue states;</p>
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<p>YOU SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN.</p>
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<pre>
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Eric S. Raymond
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16 October 2002
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____________________
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(your signature here)
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</pre>
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<p><a href="http://enetation.co.uk/comments.php?user=esr&commentid=83141982">Blogspot<br />
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comments</a></p>
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