poli-sci@ucbvax.ARPA (03/02/85)
From: JoSH <JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Poli-Sci Digest Sat 2 Mar 85 Volume 5 Number 7
Contents: Abortion etc
Minor Parties
Federal Budget
shhhh!
Space
Race
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 85 17:34:42 pst
From: upstill%ucbdegas@Berkeley (Steve Upstill)
Subject: Poli-Sci Submission Predicts Reality (ex post facto)
From: DIETZ@RUTGERS.ARPA
Subject: Abortion and Murder
...also suggests a strategy anti-abortion forces
might use: try to reduce this perceived "distance" by getting people to
identify with fetuses. Advertisements with adult actors playing fetuses
would be effective, if nightmare producing...
You apparently haven't heard about "The Silent Scream". This is a
26-minute (to fit into commercial TV time slots) film in which a doctor
describes a sonogram of a fetus (I don't know what week) being aborted,
interpreting the sonogram as showing the fetus shrinking from the suction
tube and "opening its mouth in what I have come to call a silent scream."
Apparently the doctor's interpretation adds a lot to the drama of the
situation, but the point is, you're exactly right.
Steve Upstill
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Rights
Date: 10 Feb 85 19:12:05 PST (Sun)
From: "Tim Shimeall" <tim@uci-icsd>
I take issue with your argument. I feel that your central thesis:
"Rights serve primarily as a definition of 'right
relationship', and it is the desired and current relationship we
must look to."
is incorrect. Rights don't have anything to do with relationships. In
fact, rights could be viewed as the capabilities one retains IRRESPECTIVE
of any relationship. If a relationship is needed, then the whole concept
of rights, most especially civil rights, falls apart. Do I have any
relationship to any arbitrary member of the human race? No, and I definitely
don't have a relationship sufficiently strong to warrent my support of
that member's free speech, or (at least minimal) education,
etc. What I do have under our system of government is the
obligation to grant, and even pay for, that individual's capabilities
in those areas, totally without regard to whether or not I have
any relationship whatsoever to that individual. I choose to respect
that obligation for many reasons, primary among which is the knowlege that
I gain in so doing; the major reason our country has achieved so much is
the provision for individual rights without reguard to individual
characteristics or relationships. Once I respect these obligations I do
indeed have a relationship, in the most abstract sense, but the rights
came first and ONLY THEN came the relationship.
Now, given that I disagree with the starting point of your argument, it
is not at all suprising that I disagree with its conclusion. Given that
rights are capabilities granted through the process of governmental
obligation to individuals without reguard to individual characteristics
or relationships, it is clear that a human fetus does indeed have rights,
if only the right to not be killed because it is inconvinient. I would
proceed further with extoling of fetal rights, but I've a feeling it would
gain little at this point. I welcome replies. I found your statement
to be the clearest on the subject I've seen in memory and I hope that we
can do more than "agree to disagree".
Tim
[Moderator: Please place your comments only at the end of this message]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 85 12:56 MST
From: Paul Benjamin <Benjamin%PCO@CISL-SERVICE-MULTICS.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Minor Parties -- '84 election results
> I'm not sure what all this means, except maybe bad news for the
> diversity of opinion that formerly strengthened American politics.
If you look at the candidates (and the movements) of the last few
presidential elections, it should be fairly obvious. The 1984 election
had neither a strong candidate nor a strong movement in the 3rd party
department. Each of the last few elections had just that (or nearly
that). In each of the elections starting with 1968 there was a single
candidate that outpolled this year's 3rd party field. In 1968, George
Wallace received 9,906,473 votes. Carrying the banner that Wallace had
fashioned, John Schmitz received 1,101,052 (movement but no candidate)
in 1972. In '76, Gene McCarthy got 739,256 as an independent (candidate
but no movement), and, as the article mentioned, John Anderson turned
out 5,719,437 in 1980. I don't have numbers on the Libertarian
candidate in 1980, but McBride got 171,818 in 1976 so it would appear
that the Libertarians, at least, are on the upswing. All that the
article really shows is that no single third party candidate was
successful in capturing enough publicity to attract many voters. If you
look at history, those that do generally do not come from existing third
parties such as the Libertarians or the Socialist Workers but rather are
candidates that either run as independents or form a party to support
their candidacy.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 85 09:43:31 PST
From: Richard Foy <foy@AEROSPACE>
Subject: Budget
The Presidents budget message got my attention more than usual this year.
I didn't realize how rapidly the interest on the debt is growing until I saw
some of the detailed analyses. Even with the most optimistic projections
of the President and assuming that the Congress goes along with the many cuts
proposed including farm price supports, the interest will be as large as the currents total deficit by the end of his term. No one seems to be paying more than lip service to this serious problem. It seems to me that if the interest
during the second term of one of the most conservative presidents we have had
in a number of years, it can only grow more rapidly after he is out of office.
The most critical critics of the Presidents budget only recommend this which
slightly reduce this deficit, things which of course would also be hard to
get passed by the Congress. It seems to me that we are very rapidly heading
for economic disaster. Does anyone have any thoughts on what will happened when
the interest payments rise from their current level of about ten percent of the
federal budget to 20, 30 50 percent or more which according to simple
extrapolations will r in the next 5 or 10 years? Does anyone have any
analysis which shows why the simple extrapolations are wrong and the interest
payments won't grow so rapidly.
------------------------------
Date: 20 Feb 1985 00:59:45 PST
Subject: Classification Glossary for next article
From: David Booth <DBOOTH@USC-ISIF.ARPA>
[The New Republic, February 18, 1985, p21]
A GLOSSARY OF TERMS
The argot of classification requires a glossary for the
uninitiated. The following is an explanation of only the most
frequently used terms.
(C) Confidential: information the unauthorized disclosure of which
reasonably could be expected to cause damage to national security.
(S) Secret: disclosure would cause "serious" damage.
(TS) Top Secret: disclosure would cause "exceptionally grave" damage.
(SCI) Sensitive Compartmented Information of "code word" intelligence
designated by words such as "Umbra" and "Ruff" intended to limit access
to special intelligence more sensitive than Top Secret.
(WNINTEL) Warning Notice: Sensitive Intelligence Sources and Methods
Involved.
(NC or NOCONTRACT) Information not releasable to government contractors
or consultants.
(OR or ORCON) The originator of the classified report alone controls
its dissemination or information extracted from it.
(NFD, NF, or NOFORN) "No Foreign Dissemination" or "Not Releasable to
Foreign Nationals." Exceptions for release to specific countries are
noted on the document, the most frequent exceptions being Great
Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel.
(RD) Restricted Data: a Department of Energy designation regarding the
(1.) design, manufacture, or utilization of atomic weapons, (2.)
production of special nuclear material, or (3.) use of special nuclear
material in the production of energy.
(FRD) Formerly Restricted Data: information which the D.O.E. and
Department of Defense jointly determine relates primarily to the
military use of atomic weapons and can be adequately safeguarded as
defense information.
(NODIS) No Distribution to other than the addressee without the
approval of the executive secretary of the State Department.
(EXDIS) Exclusive Distribution in State Department to persons with an
essential "need to know".
(LIMDIS) Limited Distribution to offices and agencies with a "need to
know".
(FOR YOUR EYES ONLY) Only the person intended to receive the report may
read it -- a charming James Bondish stamp but not a national security
designation.
(OUO, LUO, and BUO) Official Use Only, Limited Official use and
Background Use Only -- not national security designations.
------------------------------
Date: 20 Feb 1985 01:01:01 PST
Subject: Article: The Death of the State Secret
From: David Booth <DBOOTH@USC-ISIF.ARPA>
[The New Republic, February 18, 1985, p20-23]
For your (and everyone else's) eyes only.
THE DEATH OF THE STATE SECRET
By Dale Van Atta
No more hypocritical hokum has made the headlines recently than Defense
Secretary Caspar Weinberger's charge that a Washington Post scoop last
December on the military's space shuttle launch of a spy satellite gave
"aid and comfort to the enemy". There was nothing in the Post article
the KGB could not have discovered form public sources and its own
intelligence-gathering satellites. On the other hand, Weinberger
himself on any number of occasions has been known to override the
"national security" arguments of intelligence analysts, and to publicly
release "Top Secret" information on Soviet military capabilities.
The state secret is dying, and although Weinberger would like to
believer that irresponsible journalists have hastened the process, the
truth is that federal officials -- and President Reagan himself -- must
share a large part of the blame. More than any other president in
recent history, Reagan has presided over a hemorrhage of "national
security" disclosures, in television speeches, official publications,
and leaks. For all of his professed concerns about guarding state
secrets and his efforts to muzzle overly talkative government
employees, the president has displayed overhead U.S. spy photos of
other countries and approved the publication of at least 25 drawings
and doctored satellite photographs.
To be sure, there are other reasons for the waning of the state secret
than the calculated indiscretions of policymakers. First, classified
information is poorly protected. Although millions of dollars have
been spent in background investigations on persons who seek clearances,
and millions more to physically secure intelligence documents, the
government is powerless to prevent an individual from selling secrets,
nor can it make up for human absent-mindedness or tension under
duress. Second, a growing number of people share the secrets, which of
course diminishes the value and protection of them. The General
Accounting Office, in a series of little-noticed reports since 1979 on
the management fo classified information, has estimated that as of
January 1, 1983, at least four million federal and civilian contractor
employees held clearances to see classified information. This doesn't
count CIA and National Security Agency employees, nor does it include
those -- like me, an investigative reporter -- who have "unauthorized
access" to classified documents. Third, and most significant, the
rubber stamp has been widely misused for millions of bits of
information that have no business being classified, which erodes
respect for real secrets. In a 1981 study, the GAO reported that a
randomly selected sample of 496 documents included 444 -- or about 90
percent -- that were marked improperly in one or more ways.
Amid the tens of thousands of secret items to which I have had access,
very few of those classified "Confidential" or "Secret" appeared to
contain national security information. Most of the thousands of "Top
Secret" pages I perused did contain at least one hot item. In this
category are specially classified documents delineated by code words
after the TS -- "Top Secret" -- marking. There are hundreds of code
words, and though their very existence is classified, the cover on a
number of them has been blown. At one U.S. spy trial, both "Umbra" and
"Ruff", referring to communications and satellite intelligence, were
acknowledged. TK, or "Talent Keyhole", denotes information from the
KH, or "Keyhole", series of satellites; "Chess" marks U-2 and SR-71
overhead photographs; and "Epsilon" is attached to information gleaned
by bugging the foreign embassies fo allies like Great Britain, France,
Canada, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia.
However, bonafide super secrets are rare. Of 18 million
"classification decisions" in 1983, it is estimated that only 3 percent
were classified "Top Secret". The other 97 percent were classified
"Confidential" and "Secret", and probably do not deserve the national
security classifications they bear, nor the attendant threat that
unauthorized disclosure "could result in criminal sanctions". But such
an overload of classified nonsense is inevitable in a system that
empowers two-and-a-half million federal employees to classify
documents.
I have identified six ways that the rubber stamp is abused. They bring
to mind the words of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in the
Pentagon Papers decision: "When everything is classified, then nothing
is classified, and the system becomes one to be disregarded by the
cynical or the careless, and to be manipulated by those intent on
self-protection or self-promotion."
(1.) Embarrassing Omissions. Despite executive orders that have
banned classifying information "to prevent embarrassment to a person,
organization or agency", this abuse continues. For instance, in August
1982, the CIA completed a report, "Outlook for the Siberia-to-Western
Europe Natural Gas Pipeline" (S/NF/NC), which was rather ticklish for
President Reagan. It said, in effect, that Reagan's sanctions against
the pipeline's construction represented a policy of impotence. "We
believe", the CIA concluded, "using some combination of Soviet and West
European equipment, deliveries through the new export pipeline could
probably begin . . . about one year later than if the sanctions had not
been imposed." The report was kept tightly guarded for fear that
Congress or our European allies, who had been hurt by the sanctions,
might use it to force Reagan to back down.
Many Pentagon reports address the abysmal readiness of the U.S.
military, but few are available for public consumption. Examples
include Pentagon reports that nine out of 16 active Army divisions in
1981 were rated marginally combat-ready or not combat-ready at all (C
-- "Confidential"); that 90 percent of the men and women who maintain
and operate the Army's nuclear weapons in Europe flunked basic skills
tests (S -- "Secret"); or that "overall readiness of the Pacific Fleet
is assessed as marginally combat-ready and declining" (S). My favorite
is a Pentagon war game report (TS), in which every possible favorable
advantage for NATO was programmed into a computer. Yet by the fifth
day of the imaginary war, "the Warsaw Pact had penetrated past the NATO
forward general defense positions. On Day 19, the Warsaw Pact broke
through NATO's rear defensive line and started moving rapidly
westward. Finally, the war game was terminated on Day 24 when NATO was
unable to maintain a cohesive defense."
(2.) Illusions of Importance. Ego is often a reason for abusing the
rubber stamp. What U.S. official involved in foreign policy or
military matters does not think what he is doing is somehow vital to
national security and should be classified? William Safire once
jokingly confessed that, when he served as a speechwriter for President
Richard Nixon, he typed "TS/Sensitive/NC/NF" across the top of his
draft of a 1969 speech on Vietnam. He explained that this was "to keep
every staff aid and his brother from fiddling with my prose". but the
plot backfired. Three days after Safire sent the speech to Nixon,
Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman called and said the speech needed work,
"but we can't let you have it. You're not cleared for Top
Secret/Sensitive/Nocontract/Noforn."
Secrecy lures the mighty and the humble to imbue their thoughts and
actions with an extra aura of classified importance. Former Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger, the man who ordered wiretaps on his closest
aides to track down "leaks", frequently used the "Roger Channel", a
heavily encrypted communications system which neither the CIA nor the
State Department hierarchy could read. He often sprinkled the holy
water of secrecy on the most meaningless and inconsequential
information. Ten "Memorandums of Conversation of the Secretary of
State" from 1976 remain classified. Kissinger restricted access to the
"Memcons" to only two of his subordinates. Here is a sampling:
To Morocco's Special Emissary of the King, Mohamed Karim
Lamrani, On January 29: ". . . many of our Congressmen . . .
remind me of the sophomores I had in my classes when I was a
professor. . . . I had a Senator today who asked me why we
could not tell the Soviets that we would defend Europe and
Japan and forget the rest of the world. . . . The man who said
that was an idiot." (S/NODIS)
To U.S. Ambassador to Ghana Shirley Temple Black, March 3:
"Twelve days in Africa will drive me to drink. I have yet to
meet a Foreign Minister with whom I have more than 45 minutes
of real conversation. . . . [After Mrs. Black mentioned
several Ford administration luminaries] I told the President
this morning that never has history been made by so many
mediocrities. Well, if that is our style that is what we must
do. . . . I am a Gemini . . . that means I am two-faces."
(C/NODIS)
(3.) After the Talking's Over. When diplomatic negotiations are
conducted publicly, they often disintegrate into propaganda and
posturing. But once the agreement has been completed, why keep them
secret? The letters and exchanges between the United States and the
Soviet Union in 1962 following the Cuban missile crisis have been
locked up so tight at the State Department that until recently,
requests for full disclosure by Congress and even several presidential
administrations were never honored. The only sensitive fact -- and a
historical one at that -- which emerges from reading the documents is
that President John F. Kennedy did not obtain an airtight agreement
from the Soviets about nuclear weapons deployment in Cuba. It is
inexcusable to continue to hide as "Top Secret" these documents on a
22-year-old agreement to which the United States and its people may be
bound.
The same is true for the SALT I and SALT II negotiations, and others of
their kind. Some of the same TS information I have been leaded was
freely given to "the enemy" across the table during arms control
negotiations. The U.S. negotiators argue that providing the CIA's best
estimate of Russian weapons systems is essential to reaching an
agreement on the nature and number of Soviet arms which need limiting.
(As a final irony, senior Soviet negotiators have considered the CIA
intelligence so accurate that they would sometimes ask their juniors to
leave the room -- the underlings were not cleared to know the detains
of their own forces.)
(4.) Sibling Rivalry. The different American intelligence services
compete for espionage coups, budget, and attention from the president
with such fervor that some documents are generously decorated with
special classifications designed to keep competing agencies from seeing
them.
The director of the CIA is supposed to convince the different agencies
to pull together. But unless he comes up from the CIA ranks, he is
unlikely even to know what's going on in his own agency. The CIA's
clandestine services division so severly restricts its operational
information from CIA intelligence analysts that it is not unusual to
have a CIA-instigated event in a foreign country be reported by CIA
analysts as if it was a spontaneously indigenous occurrence.
While the Air Force fights a turf battle with the CIA over control of
spy satellites, the Army is at odds with the agency over who has the
exclusive right to run commando-style covert action. Only the Navy has
a close relationship with the CIA, occasionally doing the CIA's dirty
work. The reward has been access to special intelligence and
programs. For instance, when the 1960s secret war against Cuban
Premier Fidel Castro ran down, the CIA gave the Navy cost-free both its
newly developed speedboats and the "Day of the Dolphin" program that
trained dolphins to place explosives under enemy ships. This is still
classified.
(5.) Fiscal Foolishness. Far too much fraud, waste, and abuse in
military and intelligence programs is swept under the national security
carpet. "It's classified" is the favorite "no comment" of the Pentagon
when asked about failed American weapons, other waste, or even general
budgetary information. Nearly every expenditure of intelligence
agencies, from buildings to bug sprays, is classified. In fact, the
very existence of some intelligence units or agencies (like the Air
Force's spy-satellite-operating National Reconnaissance Office) is
classified.
From the few examples reported by whistle-blowers willing to risk jail
(because the information is classified), it can be inferred that there
is tremendous waste. For instance, there was the intelligence
community's attempt in the early 1970s to find out the caliber of the
cannon on the Soviets' latest tank, the T-72. Knowledgeable
intelligence sources report that the CIA, DIA, and NSA shelled out $18
million in salaries, satellite, and spy money -- before the British
provided the DIA with the answer, after expending a mere $400. (This
was the cost of a replacement lock they installed as they were secretly
exiting an East German tank storage depot after they had gauged the gun
caliber, and also lifted the T-72's operating manual.) One French
military attache' in Moscow accomplished nearly as much at no cost. He
simply told a Soviet military officer how much he admired the new T-72
tank. The chest-swelling Russian gave the French attache' a VIP tour
of a tank base, showed him the gun, the ammunition, and even the inside
of the cockpit, and then took the Frenchman to dinner.
(6.) Out-of-Sight Slights. Diplomatic sensitivity accounts for the
classification of many reports which are not more secret than a report
filed the same day from the same foreign capital by a correspondent for
The New York Times. The members of the "U.S. Embassy Intelligence
Group" meeting on November 3, 1983, in Buenos Aires offered no
surprises about the post-election future of Argentina in their
discussion (S). But the Argentines might have been touchy about the
American analysts' predictions being made public. For the same reason,
according to a sampling of classified reports, there was no sense in
publicly stating that Peking was turning to the West "for technological
assistance to modernize its armed forces" (S), that Australia, "in
support of U.S. policies . . . contributes naval deployments and
aviation patrols in the Indian Ocean" (C), or that "French
nuclear-strike aircraft . . . might be committed to NATO" (S).
One of the most revealing examples appears in the transcript of a
meeting Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had with Argentine Foreign
Minister Raul Quijano on February 12, 1976, at Argentina's embassy in
Washington. In it Kissinger referred to the famous interview he had
with the Italian Journalist Oriana Fallaci ("Kissinger", The New
Republic, December 16, 1972), in which he likened himself to "the
cowboy entering a village or city alone on a horse." Headline writers
began referring to Kissinger as the "lone cowboy", and cartoonists
played with the image of the portly statesman as the Lone Ranger of the
Nixon administration. At the time, Kissinger told reporters he had
agreed to the rare on-the-record session because of Fallaci's
impressive interviews with Indira Gandhi, King Hussein, and Vietnamese
General Vo Nguyen Giap. But this was not the story he told Quijano,
according to the transcript (C/NODIS): "The only reason I agreed to
the interview was that I saw a picture of her in a book and she looked
attractive, so I wanted to meet her." He was disappointed for two
reasons. One was that Fallaci had not described him as "a combination
of Charles de Gaulle and Disreali". The second was that he found her
"a dumpy little girl, totally unattractive."
Still, all of this said, there seems to be little question that one of
the most flagrant abusers of the rubber stamp is the man who is
ostensibly most concerned about that abuse: President Reagan. At the
same time that Reagan is issuing stern proclamations about
unauthorized disclosures, he is himself authorizing what ex-Senator
Walter D. Huddleston of Kentucky correctly labeled "selective
disclosure of national security information to promote one side of the
debate." Examples include the release of raw intelligence in the early
1981 "white paper" on El Salvador, allegedly demonstrating that the
Cubans were supplying arms to Salvadoran guerrillas; a December 1981
television speech in which he revealed that the proclamations for
martial law in Poland were printed in the Soviet Union the previous
September; the State Department reports in 1982 and 1983 declassifying
sensitive intelligence on "yellow rain" attacks in Southeast Asia; and
the March 1983 television address in which Reagan displayed four aerial
photographs taken over Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada to prove that the
Communist threat was growing in Central America and the Caribbean.
The worst examples of Reagan's selective disclosure are a series of
slick booklets called "Soviet Military Power", published by the
Pentagon, in part to influence military appropriations requests in
Congress. A month before the 1983 issue came out, the Joint Chiefs
finished a classified "military posture" statement, containing national
security information about the Soviets. By definition, its premature
disclosure would cause "serious" damage to national security. Yet most
of the "secrets" were disclosed less than a month later in the slick
March 1983 SMP.
For example, the JCS report classified the numbers of each specific
intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile the Soviets had deployed.
But a month later, the SMP public document included not only the same
numbers but two convenient maps showing the residence by city name of
most of these missiles. The JCS report labeled "Secret" an increasing
emphasis in the Soviet bloc on the ground attack role of new aircraft
"such as the SU-25". A month later, SMP publicly referred to "the
formidable SU-25/Frogfoot ground attack aircraft" on five separate
pages, providing details on the plane's speed, radius, wingspan, and
armament -- and including a two-page color drawing of the plane in
action over Afghanistan.
These revelations come at a time when Secretary of State George Shultz
is publicly stating that people who reveal "highly classified,
sensitive information should be tossed in jail" because the leaks
"sometimes make it difficult for the government to execute its policies
successfully." Reagan is now attempting to impose a new regime of
secrecy on unauthorized declassifications. He has issued a new, more
restrictive executive order, promoted new laws to punish the publishers
of secrets, applauded underlings in the executive branch who find
crafty ways to slip and slide around the Freedom of Information Act,
and wired up dozens to lie detectors. Finally, as a condition of
government employment, he has forced tens of thousands of the secrets'
caretakers to sign away their free speech rights for life in
"nondisclosure statements".
The contrast between these new regulations and Reagan's own offhand
leaks has angered dozens of government employees enough that they now
dial a reporter and let the "secrets" flow. Some have been calling me,
disclosing to a journalist they don't even know what they once wouldn't
whisper to their spouse in the privacy of their own bedroom at night.
-------------------------
Dale Van Atta is an associate of Jack Anderson's specializing in
national security issues. He has been cleared for leaks.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 85 11:11:27 PST
From: Richard Foy <foy@AEROSPACE.ARPA>
Subject: Hazard Criteria
The current issue of Discover, a lay science magazine, has an article titled
"Coke: the Random Killer". The article paints a grim picture of cocaine use.
If I didn't already belief that cocaine use was not a cost effective form of
entertainment I think it would convince me. I think however it leaves something
to be desired from the standpoint of scientific objectivity. It mostly consists
of anecdotal statements such as, "..the movie star died of an overdose...",
80 percent of the cocaine users who called a drug abuse hot line said that
they were having problems, etc.
I am convinced that with a little bit of library research one could
write equally scientifically accurate articles titled; "Acid Rain: the
Silent Killer", or "Industrial Waste: the Underground Killer", or
"Smog: the Choking Killer".
I don't believe that I have ever seen articles with such titles. I
have thought a lot about the reasons for the difference in treatment
of the two types of subjects. It is easy to come up with superficial
explanations but they all seem to fall apart on close examination.
The onely one that I have come up with that I can't find logic holes in is
one that I find emotionally unacceptable. That one is that our society is
more of a masochistic society than it is a hedonistic society.
Can someone please help me to find some better reasons for the difference?
richard foy
------------------------------
Date: Thu 28 Feb 85 09:13:55-PST
From: Terry C. Savage <TCS@USC-ECL.ARPA>
Subject: [Bruce Bon <BON@JPL-VLSI.ARPA>: TSS attempt from JPL-VLSI]
Attached is the first issue of a new journal from the Space Pioneer
Society:
THE SPACE SETTLER
Newsletter of the Space Pioneer Society
Volume I, Number 1
First Quarter 1985
Who We Are
The Space Pioneer Society is an organization, currently
consisting primarily of successful young professionals, whose
goal is the realization of the dream of living in an
independent, free society beyond the turmoil of earth. The
two things that all SPS members have in common are a
desire for humans to have the option of living in space and a
belief in individual freedom.
Like many great organizations (and even more
insignificant ones), the Space Pioneer Society began with a
few friends getting together to discuss matters of common
interest. That first meeting, held on October 14, 1983,
produced the following "Statement of Purpose":
I. SPS is formed for the purpose of developing the
material, economic, and social tools necessary to
construct, operate, and populate a space habitat. To
this end, SPS will form an open corporate structure
in which voting authority will be based upon
contribution.
II. The society will locate the habitat outside the
Earth's atmosphere in order to use the resources of
that environment.
III. The economic system will be generally free and
unrestricted.
IV. The social system will grant to all citizens the rights
to life, individual liberty, and private property.
V. In this system, the activities of the citizens will not
be regulated except when absolutely necessary for
the preservation of the society or the safety of the
citizens.
Since then SPS has held monthly meetings to decide how
to achieve the purpose and to begin the process of achieving
the goals of the Society. We have established a set of
Structural Agreements which serve as the constitution of SPS
and a set of Operating Agreements which are the current
operating rules of the Society.
A number of projects have been undertaken to study
SPS organizational structure, social systems for SPS habitats,
the scenario/timeline for achieving SPS goals, etc. Near-term
management milestones have been set for the expansion of
the assets and membership of the Society. Terry Savage, our
largest shareholder, has defined a five-phase scenario whose
outcome would be an independent space habitat in the
asteroids or elsewhere beyond earth orbit (see following
article). Bob Hillhouse, our president for 1985, is studying
the options for the legal status of SPS and will report on his
findings in a later issue.
Finally, we have begun to publish The Space Settler.
The purpose of TSS is to provide an effective means of
giving current and prospective members information about
who we are and what we do. TSS will be particularly
important as we expand beyond southern California, in order
to keep more remote members informed.
If you are not yet a member of SPS, take a look at what
we want to do and decide whether you would like to be a
part of it. If so, then attend a meeting or fill out and return
the membership form toward the end of this issue.
Whether or not you are a member, let us know how you like
TSS and how we might improve it. Correspondence may be
sent to TSS Editor at the SPS address, also listed toward
the end of this issue.
The SPS Master Plan
The Five Phase Scenario
by Terry Savage
In a previous analysis (Claustrophobia, Oct. 84, Nov. 84),
I have shown that the cost of building a habitat for 5000
people is on the order of $100B-150B (in 1985 dollars),
assuming a cost of $500/lb to low earth orbit, and an
additional $200/lb from LEO to the asteroids (the proposed
habitat site). What SPS intends to provide is a plausible
scenario from the present time (early 1985) to the
construction and occupation of the habitat (roughly 2025).
To the best of my knowledge, no other organization has
directly addressed this issue.
For ease of analysis, the scenario has been divided into
five phases (disregarding the organizational "Phase zero",
which is now completed). Each phase represents an
increasing level of complexity, cost, difficulty, and
independence. The intention is to "make each phase pay", or
in other words, each phase is designed to provide desirable
ends in itself, in addition to contributing to the long range
goal of an independent culture in space.
It should be emphasized that this scenario is pessimistic
in a number of ways:
1) It assumes a very modest improvement in the current
cost of putting things in orbit by the year 2010, an
improvement by a factor of only 3-5.
2) It assumes minimal economic return from each phase.
3) It assumes slow growth of the organization, with a
minimal "bandwagon" effect after initial success.
This pessimism is intentional -- the objective is to
develop a plan that is VERY likely to succeed. If conditions
prove to be more favorable than the assumptions, the plan
can be accelerated. This is much more desirable than
counting on a miracle, and being forced to scale back when
it doesn't happen. Following is a brief description of each of
the five phases:
Phase I -- The Urban Phase
During this phase, members of SPS will acquire property
and live within a specific city, probably Redondo Beach,
California. The organization itself, using proceeds from the
purchase of SPS units by members, will also become a
property owner. One scenario puts much of this property in
a condominium complex, so that we can gain experience with
administering an actual community. Given the many
opportunities for employment in the aerospace industry, and
rising property values in the area, this phase can be
accomplished with a minimum disruption in the lives of the
participating members. This is the current phase, and it is
expected that we will have 1000 people within the urban
community within 7 years.
Phase II -- The Ex-Urban Phase
This phase will take place in a city that is close to a
major city (e.g. Los Angeles or San Francisco), but not within
its boundaries. The current likely candidate is Big Bear.
During this phase the SPS community will be somewhat
more isolated than Phase I, but will remain close enough to
an urban center to make commuting to "mainstream" jobs
possible. Due to the relative isolation and small size of the
surrounding community, the SPS members will be more
closely knit, and will take an active role in the operation of
the local government. It is anticipated that the ex-urban
community will have 1000 members by the year 1995.
Phase III -- The Isolated-Earth Phase
During this phase of our development, SPS will build a
city in a currently uninhabited (or abandoned) location. It
will be at least 200 miles from a major (>1 million people)
population center. The current candidate is somewhere
within the desert regions of the US, but other options are
being considered. During this phase, we will need to develop
a fully functional society, without the benefits (and costs!) of
an existing social/governmental structure. We will need to
establish a viable economic system. This is essentially the
"dry run" for building a community in space, with the
safeguard that we're not facing vacuum if we make a
mistake.
Phase IV -- The Near-Earth/Space Phase
Costs will get large when we begin the move into space.
Phases I-III will probably cost less than $500M combined,
while even the early stages of Phase IV, putting only 100 or
so people in space, will cost on the order of $10B. The
objective will be to establish a habitat in space for the first
time, entirely under the control of the organization. The
target for completion of the initial habitat is 2010. One of the
possible revenues for the facility will be satellite servicing.
Others include materials processing and tourism.
Phase V -- The "Free Space" Phase
This is the final goal of SPS, a fully functioning, fully
independent society in space. The current favored location is
the asteroids, due to the presence of valuable resources and
the absence of intrusions by existing governments. Although
it is expected that there will be extensive commerce with the
Earth and various near-Earth facilities, the settlement will be
entirely self-governing.
Since we're not going to fund this settlement with
government subsidies, the obvious question is: Where is the
money going to come from?? There are no existing
corporations with this kind of capital available. Historically,
this magnitude of venture has only been an option for
governments and religions, or, frequently, a religious
government.
Our approach will be somewhat different. Essentially,
the objective is to form a corporate-type society around the
philosophy of individual freedom. The influence that each
person has will be directly proportional to his/her
contribution to the society. This is a very long term project,
and will require the magnitude and duration of commitment
that usually accompanies dedication to some religious or
philosophical cause. In our case, the "cause" will be the
construction of a free society in space.
This new, free culture will be the focal point for the
resources to build the settlement. It can be done on a private
basis if roughly 250,000 people (a community on the order
of Santa Barbara, California), with average net worth of
$500,000, commit their fortunes to the venture. The
mechanism will be for people to hold an increasing fraction
of their net worth as an ownership share in the society. The
society will invest these funds in ways that are both
economically desirable in the near term, and lead toward the
final goal in the long term. The more an individual invests in
the society, the more that individual will profit from the
investments (initially in real estate), and the more influence
he/she will have in the direction of the society.
Since the activities of SPS have been largely
organizational in nature up to this point, very little money
has been invested. With the election of the current Board of
Directors and Officers, however, this will rapidly change
during 1985. It is almost certain that SPS members will buy
their first residence in Redondo Beach in 1985. The
organization itself will probably have sufficient resources to
begin buying residential real estate in 1986. The current
situation presents an unusual opportunity -- the "grunt
work" of developing the organization has been largely
completed, but it is still small enough that an energetic
and/or wealthy individual can gain significant influence in a
short period of time. This state of affairs will gradually
erode from this point onward, and by late 1986 it will be
fairly difficult to significantly change the organization in a
short period of time.
The year 1985 will see the dream of a free society begin
to become a reality. If you want to be a part of it, checking
out the possibilities is costless -- there is no initial
investment required, and after 6 months the investment
required to stay informed is trivial, on the order of $10/year
to receive "The Space Settler" and retain your voting rights.
Of course, your influence at that level of investment will also
be trivial, but the option to expand it will always be
available. So what are you waiting for? Join the organization
with the objective of putting YOU into a free society in space!
Organization Profile: L-5/OASIS
In each issue of TSS we will describe an organization
which may be of interest to our members and give an
address to write for further information. The L-5 Society is
one of the oldest space advocacy groups and has spawned
from its ranks many related organizations, including SPS! As
such it is fitting that L-5 should be one of the focuses of our
first issue.
The L-5 Society was formed shortly after the historic
conference organized by Dr. Gerard O'Neill in Princeton in
1975. Its purpose is to promote space development leading
to colonies of 10,000 or more people in space. The L-5
Society gets its name from La Grange point 5 of the
earth-moon system, a location favored for space settlements
because of its stability. Since its founding the L-5 Society
has become the most vocal and arguably the most effective
of the space advocacy organizations. It was instrumental in
preventing U.S. approval of the U.N. Moon Treaty, an
agreement which would have put a damper on space
development. The dream of living in space which was a
wild-eyed fantasy in 1975 has become respectable -- L-5
counts among its governing boards U.S. Senators and
Representatives, industry leaders and prominent futurists,
as well as science fiction writers and enthusiasts who simply
want to go.
The Organization for the Advancement of Space
Industrialization and Settlement (OASIS) was formed in
1978 as the southern California chapter of the L-5 Society.
It is one of the most active chapters, with its own newsletter
and monthly public meetings and parties. L-5 members who
live in southern California automatically become members of
OASIS.
Membership in the L-5 Society is $25 per year or $15
per year for full-time students. The mailing address is 1060
E. Elm, Tucson, AZ 85719. If you live in southern California,
you will get on the OASIS mailing list more quickly by
joining L-5 through OASIS. The OASIS address is P.O. Box
1231, Redondo Beach, CA 90278.
Events of Interest to SPS Members
SPS Board of Directors meetings are usually held at 7:30 p.m.
and SPS general meetings at 8:30 p.m. at the home of Terry Savage.
Meeting dates for the next 2 months are March 8 and April 12 at
Terry's. Call 213 374-4248 for information on all upcoming SPS events.
------------------------------
Date: Fri 1 Mar 85 15:22:52-PDT
From: DANTE@EDWARDS-2060.ARPA
Subject: Defn of racist
Since there is no scientific definition of a human race, why cannot
I define the race of people different from me, the race of people with blue
eyes, the race of people who conform, etc.? We already talk about the race
of people who live in certain countries (the Slavic race), the race of
people who practice a certain religion (the Jewish race), the race of people
who have a certain skin color (the Black race), and so forth. In every case
the definition of who is or who is not in a certain race is arbitrary (e.g.
a Chicano is black, brown, or white depending upon what horse you are beating.)
Or am I missing the point David is trying to make?
Mike
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End of POLI-SCI Digest
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