ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (06/28/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Saturday, June 28, 1986 11:19AM
Volume 6, Issue 114
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
Edward Teller on government secrecy
Re: Space Shuttle Militarism
authoritarian vs. totalitarian governments
Treaty Compliance
practicality of space colonies
Let every woman
Force Ratio NATO/WP
Inquiry / Effect of Counterforce Strike
Life in the Soviet Union
Research programs that pay for themselves
Having an influence from "within the system"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 1986 09:04 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Administrivia
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------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 86 08:50:49 pdt
From: Steve Walton <ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu>
Subject: Edward Teller on government secrecy
The Wall Street Journal published a guest editorial by Edward Teller
last week. Teller, as you all know, is probably the single person who
inspired President Reagan's May 1983 SDI speech. He states that
secrecy is actually harming pro-SDI forces, and that if all the
information which the US government has on Soviet strategic research
were made public, opposition to US efforts in this area would vanish.
[I doubt this, personally. I'm sure most of Congress, including the
48 senators who signed the letter advocating 3% real growth in SDI
funding, are well aware of Soviet efforts in this field.] For
example, Teller advocated giving our European allies control over one
of our reconaissance satellites, rather than giving them CIA-filtered
information. He quoted W. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to the effect
that while one can get by with one eye, two are considered
traditional. His most interesting comment was that it is not illegal
to lie about classified research, it is only illegal to tell the truth
about it. I found these comments most interesting coming from a
strong supporter of SDI.
On another topic: would readers of ARMS-D be interested in SDI-related
excerpts from the Whats New newsletter published by the American
Physical Society? Here's a tidbit from this week's issue: Major
General Abrahamson is about to be given another star and removed as
head of SDI. Rumor has it that he has lost his credibility on Capitol
Hill. (Members of the APS or one of its member societies can read the
newsletter directly on PiNET by connecting to service 516617 on
Telenet.)
Stephen Walton
ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu
ucbvax!sun!megatest!ametek!walton
------------------------------
From: Eugene miya <eugene@ames-aurora.arpa>
Date: 23 Jun 1986 1854-PDT (Monday)
Subject: Re: Space Shuttle Militarism
>Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1986 13:19 EDT
>From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
>Subject: Space Shuttle Militarism
>
> From: decwrl!decvax!utzoo!henry at ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
> > ... Establishing
> > space colonies or homesteading on some heretofore unknown hospitable
> > planet, would require giant leaps in scientific understanding...
>
> Nonsense. Most of what is required is straightforward engineering
> development. That, plus.. money.
>
>By far the most serious problem, which is NOT a straightforward
>engineering problem, is how to maintain a closed sefl-sustaining
>environment over many years. That is NOT well-understood by ANYONE.
Having just come from yet another Station meeting. I can confirm what
Herb said.
From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
--eugene miya
NASA Ames Research Center
eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA
"You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
{hplabs,hao,dual,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix,menlo70}!ames!aurora!eugene
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 86 22:10:09 edt
From: David Rogers <drogers%farg.umich.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: authoritarian vs. totalitarian governments
At the risk of fanning the flames of the rather pointless
"better red than dead" arguments, I felt compelled to comment on one
of Steve Walton's points:
From: Steve Walton <ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu>
My major point was that no change *of any kind* in the government of
a totalitarian state has come about except by the application of
external force.
The real reason has less to do with the nature of the government
(totalitarian vs. authoritarian) than in the nature of @i(external)
forces keeping the governments in power. If it hadn't been for the watchful
eye of the Russians, how many reader believe that the Polish Communist
Party would have survived the Solidarity era intact? Hungary and
Czechoslovakia are even clearer examples of change happening internally,
and external force used to restore the old regime.
Let's not grant certain classes of regimes an immortality that is
not deserved. The attraction of democratic systems is too powerful to
simply accept that some governments would be immune to them, and that
only external intervention can free them from their governments. In
the absence of other external forces, governments, both authoritarian
and totalitarian, have a high mortality to democratic infections.
David Rogers
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 86 17:58 PDT
From: DonSmith.PA@Xerox.COM
Subject: Treaty Compliance
Regarding Lin's query, namely, how do you get the other side to comply
with a treaty and what do you do if they don't, I would say this. Any
treaty will be broken as soon as its compliance is viewed by either
party as no longer being in their own best interest. Clearly it would
be in the best interests of the USSR and the US to dispose of the
present threat of global annihilation and to direct all that money and
talent at other problems. So what is holding it up? Well, we're both
afraid that the other will cheat, leaving us at their mercy. Therefore,
compliance verification is the key. If both sides are sure that the
other would detect any significant violation, both would be foolish to
cheat. With satellite surveillance at two-meter resolution, seismic
sensitivity down to a kiloton, and neutral third parties such as the
Five Continent Peace Initiative offering to carry out on-site
inspections, I view the verification obstacle as being a fabrication at
this point. All we have to do is to get SERIOUS about these
negotiations.
-Don
------------------------------
From: decwrl!decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 86 18:07:33 edt
Subject: practicality of space colonies
> > ... Establishing
> > space colonies or homesteading on some heretofore unknown hospitable
> > planet, would require giant leaps in scientific understanding...
>
> ...Most of what is required is straightforward engineering development...
>
> By far the most serious problem, which is NOT a straightforward
> engineering problem, is how to maintain a closed sefl-sustaining
> environment over many years. That is NOT well-understood by ANYONE.
Stated that way, I agree. It will be a long time before we understand
closed environments well enough to design one that will maintain itself
for many years. But who says it has to be (a) closed, or (b) self-
sustaining? I agree that both are desirable, but neither is needed.
Almost certainly the first extraterrestrial colonies are going to need
continuous input of materials, and both steady human supervision and
occasional human intervention. There is nothing wrong with that; that's
how major artificial environments (e.g. New York City) work today.
I would also admit that establishing a colony right now would be a
high-risk venture, for that reason. But if we aim for habitability,
rather than perfect predictability, and are willing to accept some input
of (extraterrestrial) materials and a certain amount of trial-and-error
in the early stages, I think it could be done. I'd volunteer to try.
(NASA naturally cannot even attempt this, since they too take the view
that their projects cannot contain unpredictable elements.)
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 86 09:55:40 PDT
From: wild@SUN.COM (Will Doherty)
Subject: Let every woman
One arms control perspective I don't see very often is that
of most of the women I know. So I'm posting this poem, which
was written soon after former President Jimmy Carter announced
his intention to register women as well as men for the draft.
I'd like to hear more of the voices of women on this digest,
and I post this poem as a personal invitation to you.
Will Doherty
sun!oscar!wild
Let every woman
We are going to be given equality,
they tell us. Soon
they will draft us
along with the men.
But there is nothing new
in women working for the army.
We have carried, birthed, and suckled sons,
heaped mashed potatoes onto their plates,
fried thousands of hamburgers. Some of us
have grown the potatoes, some have fed the cows,
all have washed the dishes afterward.
We have driven our sons to little league
and paid for the corsages of baby roses
they pinned on dates for proms.
We have worn corsages to proms.
We have kissed good-bye at bus stations
and promised sweethearts to be true.
We have waved good-bye from train platforms,
we have waved good-bye from the windows of airports,
we have kissed
and waved good-bye to our sons, lovers, fathers --
our own, and the fathers of our children.
We have knit socks and rolled bandages.
We have travelled with the troops,
nursing, typing, performing in sequinned gown,
entwining our bodies in the night, raising children.
We have entered the workforce.
We have withdrawn from the workforce.
We have tingled at the sight of a man in uniform.
We have sent tins of sardines, chocolate chip cookies,
smiling photographs, and newsy, perfumed letters.
And some of us have received letters,
on embossed stationery, ``Dear Madam.''
Some of us have received boxes.
Some of the boxes could not be opened.
Our sons have killed the sons of British women,
the sons of British women
have killed the sons of German women,
the sons of German women have killed our sons.
How many mothers
have received their dead?
How many dream he is alive
wake in the night, night after night?
Our sons, our husbands, our lovers
have raped the daughters of Mexican women,
of Japanese women, of Cambodian women,
and their sons, husbands, and lovers have raped others.
How many women have been raped?
Raped at gun-point, knife-point,
tied with ropes, gang-raped,
raped with rifles, raped with bayonets?
How many have been raped beside their children,
children raped beside their mothers?
Our fathers gave blankets
infected with smallpox to the Indians.
Our brothers napalmed Viet Nam,
dropped agent orange on rice paddies.
Our children and the children of the Viet Namese women
are born malformed.
How many children gasp for breath?
How many retarded? How many anesthetized
as surgeons saw their skulls,
bone won't grow, brain pressing?
How many are born without stomach,
without skin? How many
stillborn?
Now, nuclear weapons --
this country can drop bombs on that country.
But wind and rain do not obey a general's orders.
As we kill them, we kill ourselves,
we kill our own children,
we sentence our children's children.
Women mourning, sitting shiva, keening at wakes,
dressing in black, tearing their dresses,
wailing, ululating, voices piercing the toll of bells,
women screaming, women moaning, women
wiping their tears with handkerchiefs, with hands
not bothering.
Women dry-eyed setting breakfast before the rest
of their families.
Women sitting up through the night, maybe sewing.
We grieve, we pay taxes, we give to the Red Cross.
We worked for the army before we got the vote
and after we got the vote,
before we were admitted to schools,
and after we were admitted to schools,
before we were drafted --
there is nothing new
in women working for the army.
Let every woman who loves a woman resist,
every woman who remembers her mother.
her mother's hand
gentle on her brow in fever
cold wet washclothes, sips of 7-up,
who remembers her grandmother,
her grandmother's hands
loose mottled flesh,
holding hers as they jump the waves, singing
*by the sea, by the sea*, resist.
Resist. Let every woman who loves a man resist,
her father pulling her on the sled,
the smell of wet wool, mittens,
her warm breath in the muffler.
Let every woman who remembers her first love resist,
how the leaves blushed that autumn
and the black silhouettes of trees
against the winter twilight
raised an ache so sweet
she did not want to go inside, not ever
Resist. Let every woman resist,
every woman who has opened her bones,
pushed out a new life,
who has suckled a baby in the silent night.
Let every woman who loves a cat resist,
a hawk, a tulip --
nothing is spared --
resist.
Let every woman who has been raped, resist,
abused, resist,
beaten, resist,
who has feared, resist.
Who has met her fury,
who has seen her face reflected in the moon,
let every woman who loves herself, resist,
who has eaten blackberries warm off the bush,
who has felt water pouring into her palm,
who has witnessed the seedling raise green arms
into the sun drenched air,
resist.
Copyright 1980
Ellen Bass
reprinted from
*Resistance News*, March 12, 1981
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 1986 00:47 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
SUBJECT: Force Ratio NATO/WP
From: C-in-C.FARTH-NAG at camelot, 9668970 <stout at camelot>
A few issues back someone wrote to ARMS-D stating that the ratio of
NATO troops to Warsaw Pact troops that could be brought to bear against
each other was 1.06:1 in favor of us...
Specifically, which nations were included in this estimate
and what US forces were assumed to be brought to bear?
NATO forces include: Norway, Denmark, West Germany, Luxembourg,
Netherlands, Belgium, and deployed forces from Britian, Canada, the
US, France, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Portugal.
WP forces include: Poland, East Germany, Czechoslvakia, Hungary,
Romania, Bulgaria, and USSR Western Military District.
Source: IISS Military Balance 1985-6.
.. the number of variables in the problem is large enough that
a simple number just won't do.
Agreed. But it cuts both ways. The whole point of my submission was
that bean counting can enormously misleading; the most usual
application of bean counting is to show that the US is massively
inferior to the Soviet Union in terms of actual military capabilities
as reflected by their military doctrines, and that's just false.
------------------------------
Date: Tuesday, 24 June 1986 17:13-EDT
From: lee%zymacom.uucp at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
To: ARMS-D%xx.lcs.mit.edu.uucp at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
Re: Inquiry / Effect of Counterforce Strike
If this is too elementary, sorry...
The following policy proposal has been attacked in (Use-)net.politics:
to get rid of our land-based missiles to prevent a counterforce attack
from having countervalue effects. (This proposal has been made by
former DOD official Earl Ravenal, among others.) The counter-argument
is that missile sites are generally far away from population centers,
unlike submarine and bomber bases.
For reasons that don't matter here, I have been personally attacked on
this issue. I don't want to have to research it if (as I would expect)
someone in this group already knows.
Are *all* missile sites in extremely isolated areas?
What damage would an all-out counterforce attack on US
land-based missiles, with no accompanying countervalue attack,
do to populations and the economy?
I would of course be interested in anything you have to say about the
proposal or the counterargument, but the above are what I want to know
most.
Lee Webber, at
(moderator)!styx!nike!think!topaz!caip!princeton!allegra!ulysses!burl!
clyde!bonnie!masscomp!zymacom!lee
------------------------------
Date: Friday, 27 June 1986 15:38-EDT
From: ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!mtuxo!pegasus!lzaz!nyb at ucbvax.berkeley.edu
To: pegasus!XX.LCS.MIT.EDU!ARMS-D at ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Re: Life in the Soviet Union
I shall extrapolate from the current situation in the USSR as reported
in the midea and the first hand knowledge I have (I've left in 78).
>
> Subject: Re: Saving 5% (;-]
> Date: Tue, 17 Jun 86 13:08:43 -0800
> From: Tim Shimeall <tim@ICSD.UCI.EDU>
>
> >Date: 13 Jun 86 14:53:29 EDT (Friday)
> >From: MJackson.Wbst@Xerox.COM
> >Subject: Saving 5% (;-]
> > ...
> >Well, let's see. I think most Americans would agree that life in the
> >Soviet Union was worth at least 5% of life in the US, and I doubt that
> >anyone short of the extreme right-wing thinks the Soviets would
> >slaughter more than 19 out of 20 after a takeover.
>
> Sorry, even in jest I can't pass this up. I strongly dispute the
> assertion that life in a Soviet-dominated US is worth 5% of life in
> the current US, at least for me. Let's assume that I'm lucky enough
> to escape the initial purges. In a soviet-dominated US, I would have
> to give up:
> - My intended career (use of computers would be heavily curtailed,
> and teaching becomes a party monopoly)
You are not allowed to own reproducing equipment.
However, I am pretty sure that there hhave not been a purge
of the disc-drive owners.
The networks of this type can't exist because automatic switching
equipment is not installed.
At present Computer Scientists are rather in demand in the USSR (from
what I hear).Teaching positions on the order of assistant/associate
professor do not require a communist affiliation.
> - My leasure activities (travel is highly restricted, backpacking
> forbidden to prevent defectors from escaping; microcomputers would
> restricted to party members (if that); I don't know about Science Fiction,
> but I strongly doubt it would continue except as disguised propaganda)
That is just plain silly.
Travel is allowed within the USSR.You need your internal passport,
a bit more planning has to go into it (shortages of accomodaions and
such), but it is certanly within the means of any average engineere
(or the equivalent).
Computers are very expensive in the USSR, so they naturally go to
the high-payed.
USSR writers have produced a goodly amount of hard science fiction.
I have not come accross any fantasy (but that is probab;y a cultural
thing).
Besides, hardship & repression are catalists for producing great
works of art. 1/2 * ;^) .
> - My religion
People practice their religion. It is not made easy for them,
but they do.
>
> Not much is left -- less than 5% of my time, and much, much less
> than 5% of the things that make life worthwhile. I would suggest
> that you think carefully before making blanket statements.
>
ditto.
My personal feelings are:
between sure death and the live in the USSR, I'd choose life.
(notice, I mean normal life, not gulags).
If the choice includes the possibility of fighting I'll
choose that.
But I was always very uncomfortable with "better dead
than red" and similar pronouncments.
For the record, I beleive, that people in the Soviet Union have it
easier than the original settlers.
Y.Neyer
---
Y.Neyer
ihnp4!lzma!nyb
------------------------------
Date: Thursday, 26 June 1986 00:08-EDT
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN>
To: risks at SRI-CSL.ARPA, arms-d
Re: Research programs that pay for themselves
Let me add a few comments to Bob Estell's point #6:
> "Going to the moon in the '60's cost the USA nothing!...
> The DIFFERENCE between tax dollars paid by those wearing pacemakers, and
> the "aid to their families" that would have been paid had those heart
> patients died or been disabled, is more than $25 billion."
There are two problems with these types of conclusions. First of all,
there are plenty of big non-space or non-military government programs that
we could spend our money on that are equally likely to have spinoffs; there
must be a reason why SDI should be built rather than these projects. But
the classification barriers of SDI will inevitably reduce spinoffs. Not
only that, but some things in SDI will certainly be useless commercially.
Pacemakers don't need to survive nuclear explosions.
Secondly, any government program has an opportunity cost which is not
factored into your calculation: when we devote scientific resources to the
private sector, we lose out on the benefits we would have gained if those
resources weren't used up by the government. An example is mentioned in a
May issue of the weekly trade paper "Electronics News": a Japanese witness
at some hearings on US competitiveness points out that the United States
spends hundreds of millions on high-strength, lightweight carbon materials
for aircraft wings, while the Japanese developed the same materials very
cheaply for golf clubs and tennis racquets.
Are there things which we could use more than we could use SDI? Are
there other government expenditures (perhaps national health insurance)
that would REALLY cost nothing? Well, I recently heard that aside from
public police forces and the military, about $300 billion per year is spent
on security (including locks, alarms, etc.) To get an idea where this
comes from, consider that MIT's police force costs a couple million, and
all universities put together must spend about $1 billion.
Now if businesses instead spent $100 billion of this money on raising the
minimum wage $2, spent $50 billion on reducing unemployment by reducing the
work week, and $20 billion went to the government to improve housing
programs and public facilities to keep young people occupied, then perhaps
the need for so much security would be reduced, because the root causes of
crime would be diminished. It would therefore "cost nothing" for the
private sector to divert $170 billion of its security bill and improve the
social stability and welfare of the country. The problem with such a plan
is that the benefits come only in the long term; only the greater short
term costs are seen on corporate balance sheets.
-rich
------------------------------
Date: Thursday, 26 June 1986 00:11-EDT
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN>
To: risks at SRI-CSL.ARPA, arms-d
Re: Having an influence from "within the system"
And now a few comments on Bob Estell's point 10 on working for SDI:
> "But if we do take the opportunity, then we can use the
> managers' short term interests to an advantage; i.e., we can honestly say
> that "Star Wars" [R2D2 et al] is not possible today; and then diligently
> work to produce what is reasonable."
You have here touched upon what I believe is -- more often than not -- a
delusion: that it is more effective to work within the system to change
it than to protest it from without. In this case, working within the
system means working on Star Wars to demonstrate part of it to be feasible
or infeasible.
There are several problems with this. First, within a large institution
you may be isolated from resources, or a diversity of viewpoints needed to
make an impartial decision. This is less true with Star Wars than with
other programs because there's lots of mainstream publicity. It is also
less true in a university than in a defense contractor.
Second, and more importantly, what an engineer says is likely to get
manipulated for political reasons -- like the ignored warnings before the
space shuttle disaster. If of 10,000 engineers working on SDI, 5000
include negative critical material in their research reports, and the other
5000 are completely uncritical of SDI, what do you think Congress will
hear? Well, I can guarantee that they will hear mostly glowing reports
about research progress from upper-level managers and lobbying
organizations of the companies doing SDI research. If your strategy
to change things is to become one of those upper-level managers, you may
have to compromise your values to achieve promotion, and temper your
criticisms to avoid losing "credibility" once you get there.
Yet Congress is hearing the other side on SDI. How? Because engineers are
not relying on the companies they work for to communicate their insight.
They are going outside the normal channels of communication -- like the
1600 scientists working at government labs who recently petitioned Congress
to curtail SDI spending. And ultimately, communicating one's concerns
directly to people in the community is necessary.
What is unfortunate, and I believe dangerous in a democracy, is that
people working for the government are afraid of speaking out on public
policy issues for fear of reprisal. The recent statements by
Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Donald Hicks may
have heightened this fear. Fortunately, the Pentagon has recently
dissociated itself from Hicks' statements. (Science, May 23)
-rich
------------------------------
End of Arms-Discussion Digest
*****************************