Decentralism Against Terrorism (2001) | Hacker News Reader

Decentralism Against Terrorism (2001)

catb.org

24 pointsWickyNilliams11 comments

I found this whilst browsing his site looking for an offline copy of Cathedral And The Bazaar.

It's an astute (and as turns out, quite accurate) prediction to have posted hours after the tragedy of 9/11. The rally cry for concealed weapons feels a little discordant however. Though he does address his views on gun control elsewhere on the site (http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/)

Ugh. I don't like the way he panders to an uninformed US population under media manipulation and points at Palestinians, equating them with terrorists.

Respect for ESR minus minus.

You may not remember that, but when he was writing this TV showed Palestinians singing and celebrating in the street the attacks.

While personally I don't think causing, much less celebrating any beings' suffering is a good thing, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that across the world there were many people in many cultures who felt the US had crossed many lines for many decades and had something coming to it. The normal Palestinian people feel the brunt of immense US support for Israel on a daily basis and it is understandable within that light that this rare event gave rise to celebration.

I will also point out that you used the phrase "the TV showed" ... if you look up influences on and historical bias of US television networks, the net change in US international military presence after the event you may find more than one way to explain the visions the US population have been and continue to be spoonfed through the likes of CNN, Fox News, certain computer games and the US military heroism of Hollywood, which are so predictably brought out every time certain topics are discussed.

Maybe because the US funds the weapons that kill them like dogs and deer in the streets and in their homes. Just maybe.

When your only tool is an oversimplified, outdated, bigoted take on libnerdtarianism, every problem probably does look like a shooting range and a "brown people only" lane at the airport.

As a natural skeptic, I would question whether this was really written "hours after" 9/11. Were we referring to it as "the 9/11 terrorist attack" just hours after? I don't know.

The Illuminati invoking pyramid icon throws up red flags for me. Maybe there's a more benign reason for it? Maybe he's an antisemitic conspiracy theorist? If not, why would you invite that kind of perception?

I assumed the note at the top was an addendum to give some historical context for those coming across it at a later date (as we have :). This isn't some random guy spouting questionable views on the internet, Eric Raymond is a respectable (as far as I'm aware) hacker, author of the famous book, The Cathedral And The Bazaar.

Not sure why he's chosen a pyramid insignia, but in and of itself it is a benign symbol. Only when one attaches conspiratorial notions to it (as you have) does it take on more meaning.

I'm not questioning his software guru status, I'm questioning whether or not he wrote this hours after 9/11, as the historical context states. "the 9/11 terrorist attack" is part of the text, not the note at the top.

The Swastika is a similarly benign symbol which people also associate with anti-semitism.

FWIW (not much), document.lastModified gives 11/11/2003 22:43:30.

Here's the Internet Archive version from Oct 10 2003.

https://web.archive.org/web/20031004023100/http://www.catb.o...

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