Warzael Zarcae

[Saoirse Zarcae <Warzaelzarcae@excite.com>]

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                            Hacker Paladins 

"Behold a broken world, we pray, 
Where want and war increase, 
And grant us, Lord, in this our day, 
The ancient dream of peace. 

No force of arms shall there prevail 
Nor Justice cease its sway; 
Nor shall their loftiest visions fail 
The dreamers of the day." 
-"Behold a Broken World"; Christian hymn 

  	Of what benefit is there in fighting darksiders? Of what gain is there in
thwarting their advances into the souls of our people? What use is there in
resisting this element amongst us which rejects honor, which rejects
knowledge, which rejects curiosity; which rejects all that is good, and
clean, and noble and yet allows baseness, corruption and dishonor to flow so
freely amongst the hearts and minds of our people? O my brothers and sisters
in the underground, is this not a disgraceful thing? Through this we have
found dishonor and ill favor among the other people of the world, that our
name is considered a curse on the lips of all who utter it. Our name is that
of the wolf on the lips of the digital lambs. 
	And few care. 
	Few it seems, give a jolly damn about the consequences of their action.
Gone are the days of technical competence to achieve amazing results. Gone
are the days of literature exclaiming the hacker as a good guy, someone who
might just be alright, who is not necessarily the harbinger of doom, the
demon of cyberspace. It's been suggested, half seriously, that the
Anti-Christ just might be himself a hacker. And what of it, my friends? In
our post-modernist society, where pop-culture has the attention span of an
infant, it would seem plausible that such concepts as love, loyalty and
virtuous living play a role in their lives only insomuch as it fails to
inconvenience them. If our current age of people cannot abide such concepts,
how can the hacker underground? For surely, we are nothing but the
cybernetical extension of our surroundings. 
	What has Zarcae to offer that your television does not? We offer the
concepts of love, of ennobling our hacker brethren with those virtues which
have long disappeared from the mainstream culture. There are two conceptions
of the world of cyberspace floating about in the common parlance. One is of
the Wild West, where cigarette champing cowboys roamed over an anarchistic
frontier, where the only law was laid down by whomever had the fastest gun
and most ammunition. What few authorities there were of true law and order
were jokes typically, facsimiles of those virtues. The second main idea of
cyberspace (and less popular one) is that of the medieval era, where the
monarchy being replaced instead with the technocracy of sorts. That is to
say loosely, that the more technical ability a person possesses, the higher
in the social order of his relative society he will be. A main thesis of
Zarcae holds this second main ideal of cyberspace to be the most accurate,
and charges that hackers are the equivalent of knights in the Middle Ages.
With our skills at intrusion, and the ability to wreck concentrated,
disciplined havoc among computer systems, with said skills even possessing
the ability to wreck chaos outside of cyberspace, it could be said that the
possession of such skills is the equivalent, literally, of the militial
skills of those historic knights. 
	The problem with out analogy is that it begs for complicated technical
expertise. This is no longer the case, as lamented by Erik Bloodaxe shortly
before his demise, in his last Phrack editorial. He commented that as the
level of technical competency went down, the quality of hacker went down in
direct proportion, and the quantity of people ABLE to pursue violent action
in cyberspace rose inversely. This is to say, still following our analogy,
that as the level of military training needed went down, and as the level of
technology rose so that even fools could fight skillful battles with
rudimentary muskets and such , the quality of knights went down (where
"quality" is equated with "ethicality") in direct proportion, and the amount
of people able to engage in battle rose inversely. 
	These are simple questions, OBVIOUS questions, but ones rarely asked or
answered. Most people fail to consider the squires and would-be mercenaries
of the underground (i.e., script kiddies, "warez" pirates) as knights, but
this does not necessarily fail to distinguish them from those skilled
cybernetic knights who have wholly sold their skills to the pursuit of
profit or power, whom we call "darksiders". These hacker have given away
their talent, prostituted their ability in the cause of baseness and
immorality. They have betrayed their cultural legacy, and as such, propose a
direct threat to us all. 
 	What then, does Zarcae propose to do about the mercenary class of hacker
which has sprung up in the underground? How do we propose to counter-act the
sea of immorality plaguing our people? What to do? Zarcae proposes to arise
two new ideals of hacker. As I have stated, a basic Zarcae tenet is to hold
hackers as knights; what is needed is to raise that standard further, to
bring home the concept of the ‘paladin hacker', which is to say, the concept
of the hacker who fights with righteousness and the good on his side,
bringing said lost virtues back to his people. To such a hacker, there is no
enemy insurmountable, no evil so great as to not be overcome. Why, then, is
our task called glorious? Because it is the stirring of the human soul
against tyranny, it is the ringing cry to battle which lies in the hearts of
all people, the noble love and fierce loyalty all hold towards family and
people. We are protecting our own. The second concept is that of the
‘scholar hacker'. Too long has the underground languished under a shadow of
ignorance. Too long has communication flowed in tiny spurts among the elite,
so that the gifted beginners in the underground gain knowledge to join their
princely ranks only TO finally join as those jaded members they formerly
swore never to become. Jaded, and incapable of rendering good works unto
their fellow men and women as their high status honorably requires through
moral obligation. Zarcae proposes the establishment of a hacker
intelligentsia. We need an intellectual elite, capable of fielding the
hostile outsider lashings of a world which misunderstands us, which fears
and reviles us. We need hacker apologeticists, who can reasonably combat
these arguments against the very existence of our people. 
	There are scattered individuals who fight against this tide of incompetence
so dominant in our people in the underground today. It is to be hoped that
Zarcae will only be the first of such groups to encourage honest debate and
intellectual argument among the underground, that others may follow, and so
allow their lights to shine even greater than ours. We are the first, but
the first is not necessarily the greatest, and in time. I feel, there will
come others whose light will shine so much as to eclipse Zarcae's very
memory. As to that time, I feel little sorrow, since we will have
accomplished our purpose in igniting the passions of those intellectual
descendants. Let our memory pass away into Time, as we ought to have no need
of the vanities of mortal men. Let our deeds stand as our legacy, aside from
vain words. 
	Combined with the holy righteousness of the paladin, and the thoughtful
pondering of the scholar, we come upon the question as to central
motivation. What WILL be the overriding passion to which will give rise to
all the actions of those who follow the Ethic? The answer to that is: Love.
It is love of our fellow men and women which will inspire us to our acts of
daring in cyberspace. It is through love that we will graciously accept the
persecutions that the federal authorities and our mis-understanding brethren
in the underground will render against us, and it is through love that we
will inspire them to quit their heinous acts, lay down their swords of
injustice, and follow us. Without love, all these virtues of justice,
nobility, honor, would be useless. What use is the dispensing of the actions
of goodness,  without it being tempered with the love of the people
involved? There is no goodness where love is not present. The Ethic forces
our behavior outside of cyberspace to reflect our actions inside of it. The
hacker who has spent his nights away from the modem carousing, drinking,
cursing has no place in the hacker paladin ranks; how could he condemn the
darksider when his soul is half there already?
     
	 "Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good."
-Romans12:9 

     Without love, the eloquence of the greatest prophets ring hollow. There
is no urge to follow noble ideals, only the lust of profit, and for power.
Without love, the great deeds of virtuous men seem empty, and devoid of that
noble spark, crumbling eventually, and sinking back again into the pit where
evil waits patiently for the fall of all things, noble and un-noble alike. 

       "So justice is driven back 
And righteousness stands at a distance; 
Truth has stumbled in the streets, 
Honesty cannot enter. 
Truth is nowhere to be found, 
And whoever shuns evil becomes a prey." 
-Isaiah 59:14-15 
 	
	I have talked in the past of hackers who give lip-service to the ideals we
express, but do nothing. How foolish are they! The ideals we express should
be as a fire in your blood, constantly upon the brain, and a sword upon your
tongue, to go forth and deliver your messages of goodness to the entire
hacker community, that we may reform our manner, and so become true paladins
and knights, and no longer mercenaries or bandits as we have fallen to. 

     "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but no
deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without
clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him “Go, I wish you well; keep
warm and well fed', but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is
it? In that same way, faith by itself, if it is not accomplished by action,
is dead. But someone will say, You have faith; I have deeds.' Show me your
faith without deeds, and I will you my faith by what I do. You believe there
is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that and shudder." 
-James 2:14-19 

 	As such, do we find later in James, another passage about wisdom and
deeds. For a man or woman to be considered wise by Zarcae standards is not
much; it is only to live as a person of faith in the Ethic, and to show that
Ethic through their actions to others, both in cyberspace, and out. Such a
man or woman need not even themself be a hacker, for surely my friends, that
I am not. I have adopted the hacker underground as my own people, and would
hope likewise to have been adopted, but I myself am not of the same stock as
you, I have not learned the same tenants, have little knowledge of the same
technology. This is not to say, friends, that I do not desire it. However, I
have found it hard to find such knowledge, and wish readily enough for
teachings, as I suppose many others of good quality do. This is somewhat
what I mean by an established intelligentsia. It is as of yet too difficult
for the gifted of our people to learn. We must establish some method to
raise our people our of ignorance, raising them in knowledge with the Ethic,
so as to form a community of hacker paladins and scholars. 

"Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life,
by deeds done in the humility which comes from wisdom. But if you harbor
bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or
deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven but is earthly,
unspiritual....[f]or where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you
will find disorder and every evil practice." 
-James 3:13-16 

 	What then, is the quality of those who would follow the Zarcadian Ethic?
It is simply to be loving of all, foe and friend alike. It is nothing to
love your friends, even the worst of your fellow men and women manage that.
If you can curse the feds and love your friends, what is that? You have
failed in the Ethic, and are unworthy to be counted among the ranks of the
paladins. Your sin describes you, and you have shown by your deed that you
are not of our kind. Therefore, to love your foe is not to be submissive to
them. They cannot understand their error so long as they labor under the
clouds of their ignorance and lusts of power and social status. Your must
teach them as you can, the errors of their ways. Failing that, you must hand
them over to their respective justice systems, in the hope that such will
correct their ethic troubles. Many among you will be puzzled by this, but it
remains true. The federal authorities, though they will certainly persecute
you, are nonetheless your allies in your endeavors. They abide by the same
ideals largely, that you do.  Justice is the basic idea of our modern legal
system. Ineffectual or not, it is all we have to go by.       	
	Another reason remains for our assistance of the federal authorities of
their capturing of the most malignant of the darksiders: they simply are
overmanned. It is estimated that the FBI would have to spend every day, of
every year, with every agent, just to keep barely current with computer
crime. Currently, the Computer Crime Unit of the FBI and the computer crime
specialists of the Secret Service is ludicrously small, and inept at any
efforts to stop the waves of attacks that darksiders launch daily on the
digitally innocent. As paladins, we owe it to these authorities to help them
in their quest. 
 	I spoke earlier of envy and ambition. Such is to be avoided at all costs
by the followers of the Ethic. I myself am the leader of Zarcae only by
default; no doubt there are others more eloquent, more impassioned in their
speech, more technically competent to lead than I; surely there are others
beside whom my knowledge and talents are as those of a child. In the absence
of such characters, I believe it my duty to lead the group. Envy is horrible
for paladins; why be jealous of a brother or sister who is better
technically able? This is foolish. The better thing is to ask assistance
from that person on what ails you technically, so that you may better serve
others through your skills. If they are of little help to you, what of it?
There are thousands of areas in electronics, computers, and such, where you
could otherwise occupy and specialize. Even those who know nothing of
hacking at all are useful in their writing talents; they may be hacker
ethicists, who argue for a logical philosophical basis on which we may rest
our actions firmly. 
	With all that said, welcome to the coming Revolution friends, and Godbless.


-Raschid 
*Founder of Warzael Zarcae 

You can reach Raschid at CogitoESum@ yahoo.com, or reach Warzael Zarcae at
WarzaelZarcae@excite.com



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