Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!XX.LCS.MIT.EDU!ARMS-D-Request From: ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) Newsgroups: mod.politics.arms-d Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest V6 #122 Message-ID: <8607191533.AA13424@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: Sat, 19-Jul-86 10:36:00 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8607191533.AA13424 Posted: Sat Jul 19 10:36:00 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 20-Jul-86 05:59:21 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: ARMS-D@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 325 Approved: arms-d@xx.lcs.mit.edu Arms-Discussion Digest Saturday, July 19, 1986 10:36AM Volume 6, Issue 122 Today's Topics: administrivia alternatives to "yet more hardware" for defense farm subsidies SDI performance requirments - who said what? Women, Science, and Nuclear Policy Preparing for war Ten Warheads SDI and the ICBM threat emotional non-factual poem by some random uncommon woman 10 warheads ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1986 01:17 EDT From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: administrivia The following address is not recognized by my mailer. Please send this person a note to give me another address. Psychnet ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 86 11:15:59 MDT From: b-davis@utah-cs.arpa (Brad Davis) Subject: Re: alternatives to "yet more hardware" for defense In Reply To: estell%143c.decnet@nwc-143b.ARPA >I have often wondered in my non-professional way WHY we pay American farmers >to NOT grow foods, when it seems that much of the world needs food. [I say >"non professional" because perhaps if I were an economist or such I would >know the answer.] Sad to say but the arms race is not limited to the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Most places in the world that need food will buy all the arms that they can get their hands on but not the food that they need. In other words, there is no market for excess American food among the starving third- world nations. Many countries have been known to sell the food that the U.S. sent as foreign aid (at below market rates) and use the money to buy arms (usually Eastern Block). Brad Davis ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 86 13:56:02 pdt From: weemba@brahms.berkeley.edu (Wimpy Math Grad Student) Subject: farm subsidies >I have often wondered in my non-professional way WHY we pay American farmers >to NOT grow foods, when it seems that much of the world needs food. [Bob] To prevent overfarming and consequent long term destruction of the land. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Wimpy Grad Student/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 86 22:48:06 PDT From: jon@uw-june.arpa (Jon Jacky) Subject: SDI performance requirments - who said what? > Henry Spencer writes: > > Far too much of the anti-SDI rhetoric scores "crucial" points by assuming > that SDI must be held to far stricter standards than any other defence > system ... > Who is guilty of such rhetoric? The most hyperbolic promises on behalf of SDI that I am aware of are by proponents. Last October 21 at MIT James Ionson of the SDIO repeated the old business about "if we have three levels which are at least 90% effective, then the total system will be 99% effective" (or whatever - maybe there were four layers). Reagan's views are on the record and are well known. A July 2 UPI story (Seattle PI, p. A2) quotes Weinberger, "A myopic focus on terminal defense can ... possibly lead us to mistake something less than total defense as sufficient for our requirements." What do you think he meant? How do you think the average person who listens to a news broadcast is supposed to interpret this? In fact, any system intended to defend populations from nuclear weapons really must be held to far stricter standards than any other defense system. Conventional defense (or hard-point nuclear defense) works by attrition: England won the Battle of Britain by knocking out 10% of each raid. Clearly, the Germans would have lost their whole air force before very much of London was destroyed, so they quit. On the other hand, a 75% effective nuclear defense is not very interesting, given the size of today's offensive arsenals. SDI proponents like to say "It needn't be 99.99% effective..." but never respond in the obvious way. Well, how about it? How effective does it have to be? Complete this sentence: "SDI won't be worth building unless it can stop at least X percent of the Soviet missile force." (Or, X percent per billion dollars. Or, any other metric of your choice). -Jonathan Jacky University of Washington ------------------------------ From: decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.berkeley.edu Date: Sat, 12 Jul 86 01:21:15 edt Subject: Women, Science, and Nuclear Policy Richard Cowan writes: > ...The article focuses on the attitudes of female scientists who do not > wish to conform to male standards, and who therefore wish to transform > the current culture of science. My first reaction to this was "this sounds like sexist bigotry". My second reaction was "there is some point to it, but it *still* sounds like sexist bigotry". Most downtrodden groups (which women definitely are) claim to be noble, pure of heart, morally superior to their oppressors, etc etc. It seldom works out that way when they actually get a chance to take over. > It contrasts average women's attitudes > with the attitudes of the male policymakers who have brought us nuclear > pumped X-ray lasers and nuclear waste. This sentence still makes its point if you change "women's" to "people's" and delete "male" altogether, which makes the sex-based distinction dubious. Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry ------------------------------ From: decwrl!decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.berkeley.edu Date: Sat, 12 Jul 86 22:30:32 edt Subject: Preparing for war Don Smith writes: > I recently stated "When you prepare for war, war is what you will get.", > and Henry Spencer complained "Historically this is not necessarily true, > and I wish people would stop citing it as a fundamental axiom." Perhaps > he would feel better if I had said "... are LIKELY to get." ... On the whole I agree with this, and with Don's further comments about investing resources in military preparations or peaceful coexistence. I would add a couple of reservations. One is the obvious problem with not preparing for war when your neighbor is busily doing so. The other is the case of Switzerland, which didn't get its peaceful reputation (and other related benefits, like surviving as an independent nation in the middle of Nazi-occupied Europe) by being unarmed or unprepared. Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Subject: Ten Warheads Date: 14 Jul 86 11:02:46 PDT (Mon) From: foy@aerospace.ARPA Henry Spencer says, "I don't mind 10 warheads getting through..." I would mind if 10 warheads exploded over Antartica. Perhaps not as much as 1 each on the 10 largest cities in the US. Or perhaps more because I prbably wouldn't be here to cope with the problems. It disturbs me when people dismiss the death and distruction relusting from the use of nuclear weapons. Richard Foy, Redondo Beach, CA The opinions I have expressed are the result of many years in the school of hard knocks. Thus they are my own. ------------------------------ From: decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.berkeley.edu Date: Tue, 15 Jul 86 20:35:26 edt Subject: SDI and the ICBM threat Herb writes: > I beg to differ, but the Navy never said it would protect the > population against battleships... I'm sure if one had asked them at the right time, circa 1930 say, they would have been pleased to tell you about how they would protect the US coastline from attacks by foreign battle fleets. Battleships were primarily designed to fight other battleships, but they had a major shore-bombardment role too. (In fact, most of the shots fired in anger by US battleships in WW2 were against shore targets.) This is what "gunboat diplomacy" was all about, after all. > The difference between most > conventional weaponry and strategic nuclear missiles is that the > former are aimed at each other, while the latter are aimed at people. My recollection is that a lot of the current strategic nuclear missiles are at least supposedly aimed at each other. And conventional weapons do/did a lot of civilian-bashing too. > It is tolerable to have less than perfect defense against other > weapons, if you are trying to protect weapons. It isn't if you're > trying to protect people. Considering that virtually every defense system in history -- for an example, take British air defences circa 1940 -- has been imperfect, I see not the slightest shred of justification for this. An imperfect defence is intolerable only if you yourself happen to be on the receiving end of that part of the attack that it didn't stop. The vast majority of the population, i.e. the ones who got missed, will agree that it is very valuable and not at all intolerable. > If DoD said the goal of SDI were only to protect missiles, none of > this nonsense about perfect defense would be relevant... This is true but unrelated to the issue, which is whether perfection is a reasonable criterion for population defence. > I think it was McGeorge Bundy that said that 10 warheads on a modern > city would be a catastrophe beyond human comprehension, and even one > warhead would be a political blunder never before seen in human > history. This is rhetoric, not reasoning. I agree that it would be a tremendous disaster, although tremendous disasters are far from unknown in human history and do not appear to be "beyond human comprehension". By several reasonable criteria, the First World War was a far worse political blunder than a few warheads on one North American city would be. The later stages of World War II levelled virtually every German and Japanese city almost as thoroughly as a warhead or two would; today those two nations are among the world's greatest industrial powers. Ten warheads would be a disaster, yes... but it would be neither beyond human comprehension nor beyond our ability to cope. > I think 10 warheads would be utterly intolerable. It depends on what you mean by "tolerable". Considering alternatives like the utter destruction of Western civilization, hundreds of millions dead, and possibly a nuclear winter on top of it all, I would find 10 warheads eminently tolerable. Society would survive it, and any individual member of society (e.g. me) would have a high probability of surviving it. Not exactly an *attractive* prospect, but far superior to some alternatives. "Do not let the difference between `good' and `bad' blind you to the difference between `bad' and `worse'." Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 11 July 1986 14:48-EDT From: Jan Steinman To: hplabs!XX.LCS.MIT.EDU!ARMS-D-Request at ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Subject:emotional non-factual poem by some random uncommon woman Newsgroups: mod.politics.arms-d Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville, OR >Date: 1986 July 08 11:16:47 PST (=GMT-8hr) >From: Robert Elton Maas >Subject:emotional non-factual poem by some random uncommon 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... > >>Our children and the children of the Viet Namese women >>are born malformed. > >Please name one American woman who has children born malformed due to >the VietNam war. These things are not easy to come by, and are routinely supressed by the government. Although not pertaining to the Viet Nam War, see "Killing Our Own" for documentary evidence collected by responsible journalists about the damage done to many Americans of all ages by radioactivity, including deformed babies in Utah downwind of nuclear weapons tests, and an estimated 260 excess infant deaths in the Harrisburg area during the TMI accident. I would not be suprised if the VA has deep in its vaults complaints from mothers of deformed children. Of course, each file is stamped "TOP SECRET". -- :::::: Artificial Intelligence Machines --- Smalltalk Project :::::: :::::: Jan Steinman Box 1000, MS 60-405 (w)503/685-2956 :::::: :::::: tektronix!tekecs!jans Wilsonville, OR 97070 (h)503/657-7703 :::::: ------------------------------ Date: Saturday, 12 July 1986 12:25-EDT From: hplabs!pyramid!decwrl!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard.harvard.edu!maynard!campbell at ucbvax.berkeley.edu To: arms-dXX.LCS.MIT.EDU re: 10 warheads Newsgroups: mod.politics.arms-d Organization: The Boston Software Works, Inc. > ...Just >what constitutes "extensive protection" against ICBMs (personally I don't >mind 10 warheads getting through but would object to 1000) and just how >likely SDI is to achieve it is a different question. ... > > Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology > {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry Gee, Henry, I don't know about you, but 10 warheads would definitely ruin MY day. Seriously, what bothers me most about SDI is that it attempts to solve what is essentially a POLITICAL problem with TECHNICAL means. This is compounded by the Reagan administration's demonstrated contempt for political solutions. It's much better to simply prevent the missiles from ever being fired than it is to attempt to construct untestable defenses which by their nature require a level of performance that most workers in the field publicly state is impossible to achieve. -- Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc. ARPA: campbell%maynard.uucp@harvard.ARPA 120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109 UUCP: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell (617) 367-6846 ------------------------------ End of Arms-Discussion Digest *****************************