[Noisebridge-discuss] Sigh -- I'm not helping with Maker Faires this year.

[Wladyslaw Zbikowski]

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 4:56 PM, Jacob Appelbaum <jacob at appelbaum.net> wrote:
> The supreme irony here is that I'm actually interested in exploring the
> DARPA topic because it is relevant to me personally, Noisebridge as a
> group, Maker faires everywhere and because Mitch has really made quite a
> stand that will probably cost him dearly.

OK Jake; I'm very sympathetic to the position you, Mitch, and others
take on DARPA, so I'll oblige. It's clear that the American
military-industrial complex is problematic to say the least.

DARPA is certainly in the business of killing people, by virtue of the
fact that it's an agency of the US government, which, along with a
hundred or so other sovereign entities, makes killing its business.

DARPA doesn't decide what country to invade, or which people to
torture. That would be the White House and Capitol Hill: the very
people we elect through the farcical process we call "democracy".

Blaming DARPA for what Bush did to Iraq, is like blaming some pissant
programmer for the 2000 election fiasco, because that programmer wrote
a device driver which was used in a Diebold voting machine. The
problem is not that voting machines exist, or that people write device
drivers for them. The problem is that we trusted Diebold, and the
leadership of Diebold betrayed us.

By blaming DARPA, who only provides tools and technology to whoever we
elect, we let the real criminals off the hook. It obfuscates the basic
problem, which is our essentially corrupt and morally bankrupt system
of government.

I'd rather boycott the Republican and Democratic parties. I refuse to
acknowledge the legitimacy of a Congress and President put in power by
corporate money. The exact weapon technology which Republicans and
Democrats use to kill people, whether it's rocks or lasers, is nowhere
near the root concern here. Self-defense is a legitimate endeavor;
what our elected officials actually do with the power we've entrusted
them with, is not legitimate.

Of course if you personally find DARPA distasteful, then by all means
don't work with them. But personal revulsion doesn't go very far in
addressing systemic reform. Personally I'd rather have a strong
military with responsible leadership than a military which sets out to
commit atrocities and then can't even execute.