From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:arms-d Newsgroups: fa.arms-d Title: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #125 Article-I.D.: ucb.1391 Posted: Sat Jun 19 21:32:18 1982 Received: Mon Jun 21 05:07:30 1982 >From HGA@MIT-MC Sat Jun 19 21:27:30 1982 Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 0 : Issue 125 Today's Topics: AFSC and subversion Pacifists not informed about military options? Risking death Stellar fusion Miscellaneous points ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 19 Jun 1982 07:42:08-PDT From: decvax!minow at Berkeley Subject: AFSC and subversion At the demonstration last week, AFSC showed that they can run a bus system. This, to my mind, suggests that they are a revolutionary organization, and a threat to our existing institutions (such as Boston's MBTA). But, being able to organize an effective "government" and being against nuclear war hardly qualify them for the exalted status of "Soviet Front." In fact, if you listen to Russian propoganda, you can easily come to the conclusion that the USSR is a Quaker front. Martin Minow decvax!minow @ Berkeley ------------------------------ Date: Saturday, 19 June 1982 10:56-EDT From: Jon WebbSubject: Pacifists not informed about military options? A clear example of a country which has been occupied for centuries and which has only rarely been able to expel the occupying force is Poland. Intervention by a third country has usually been the explanation of the expulsion those few times it has occurred. The Polish people have always been resistant to the occupations. Hmmm... I think you are confusing politics with geography. Poland has been occupied, it is true, but it is necessarily difficult to defend Poland from invaders, simply because of its location. If you want to claim the analogy applies to the U.S., you'll have to take into account its geography, which makes it practically impossible to invade: a huge country separated by oceans from any militarily significant nation. I think the U.S. could be defended by non-violent methods (e.g., by absorption of the invading force into the general population). At the same time, Poland probably could not be defended by any means, except really extreme military methods that would sap the country's strength before long. Maybe Switzerland is a good example of what you want; the country is defensible, because of the mountains, but at the same time defense is necessary, because of the presence of powerful neighbors. I think the best analogy for the U.S. is China, which has existed more or less intact for thousands of years, occasionally absorbing foreign invasions, sometimes defending against them. Jon ------------------------------ Date: 19 June 1982 14:29-EDT From: Oded Anoaf Feingold Subject: Pacifists not informed about military options? Fooey yet more - until recent times the Chinese simply absorbed their conquerors. The Poland example is bad because Poland has no natural barriers to invasion and is small enough that Germany (once upon a time) and Russia (including today) is able to overcome resistance at acceptable cost. You want a counterexample - Vietnam. I seriously doubt there is any country interested in or capable of swallowing the US, nukes or no. ------------------------------ Date: 19 June 1982 14:42-EDT From: Gene Salamin Subject: Risking death [From CAULKINS] One of my big problems with nuclear war is that a very small group imposes death, disease, malnutrition, etc. on a much larger group that never had any choice at all. The typical Soviet slave prefers to toil for his masters rather than risk his life even for his own freedom. From the great physicist Sakharov, who educated a bunch of thugs how to build the hydrogen bomb, to the ignorant peasant whose taxes finance the Communist war machine, there are few Soviets who can justifiably claim to be innocent bystanders when the Bomb is dropped on them. And what about the innocent Americans and Western Europeans? Let's not mention the loans to the Communists so they can buy the food their economy can't grow and to build the industries that somehow cannot be assembled by the "will of the people". And then let's not mention the tax subsidized loan guarantees so the Western bankers won't ever have to face the reality of default. And also let's not talk about the beautiful people from Silicon Valley who happily sell integrated circuit technology to those who will return the favor by using those integrated circuits to guide missiles back to them. Nor shall we besmirch the halls of Stanford University, duty bound, according to its president Donald Kennedy, to provide unrestricted access by Soviet agents to their robotics technology. Well, maybe CAULKINS is right after all. There still are large groups of people somewhere in the world who aren't actively working for their own death by nuclear war. ------------------------------ Date: 19 June 1982 15:22-EDT From: Gene Salamin Subject: Stellar fusion Fusion reactions in stars proceed at a much slower rate than the fusion in a hydrogen bomb. That is why stars last for millions to billions of years. The fusion of hydrogen nuclei (protons) into helium-4 requires the conversion of protons into neutrons via beta decay, and this is slow. Furthermore, stellar temperatures (20 million degrees at the center of the sun) are much lower than the temperature of a nuclear explosion (around 1 billion degrees). The most energetically stable nucleus is iron-56. Heavier nuclei can be produced in supernova explosions because the high density of baryons shifts the equilibrium towards a more neutron rich mixture. The stellar core remaining after a supernova is a neutron star, whose interior is one huge nucleus. I don't quite understand how all this astrophysics got to be a discussion topic on ARMS-D. Imitating stellar fusion is more germane to the ENERGY mailing list. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Jun 1982 18:52:24-PDT From: CSVAX.upstill at Berkeley Subject: Miscellaneous points Just a few comments on a recent APPLE message. From: James A. Cox Subject: Risking death From CAULKINS at USC-ECL: .... One of my big problems with nuclear war is that a very small group imposes death, disease, malnutrition, etc. on a much larger group that never had any choice at all. Apparently, you are not talking about this country but about the Soviet Union. Do you forget that the American people elected, if not all the members of your "small group," at least the ones with the real power? I wonder, APPLE, did you mean to say that, in the event of a nuclear conflict, you will believe yourself to have voted for it? If not, then your point is ill-taken. If so, then I have no doubt that you are in a minority. Voting is such a low-bandwidth medium that it is impossible to sustain the notion that the majority of people have much say in the matter. Please let us try to remember that no one wants nuclear war. With your talk of a small group "imposing" death, et cetera, upon the population, you ignore that fact. Once we agree on the necessity for risking death to preserve our freedoms (and we apparently do agree), we can then argue whether this strategy or that one guarantees those freedoms best while minimizing the danger of war. Let us not forget that everyone knows that no-one wants nuclear war, any more than anyone prefers servitude to freedom. The question is not whether a person is willing to claim devotion to an ideal. The question is, how important is it to him/her? Is freedom from radiation-induced cancer more valuable than freedom of speech? These are serious questions. But that is not what I am trying to say when I march in a demonstration. If you thump a military skeptic, you will find somewhere inside the conviction that, to our leadership, the non-occurence of war is worth risking to maintain the freedom of American business to operate unimpeded overseas, to maintain the "leadership status" of the United States, and so on. You may believe that the president prefers non-war to war. But what steps, what effort is he willing to undergo to get there? I don't see a man fervently committed to peace and bound by the circumstances of an imperfect world. I see a man who has many things he wants to accomplish, some of which are of indifferent importance to me. Among the former is peace, if not to costly in terms of other things. The second betrayal of values a typical military sceptic might point out is in the operation of the military itself. I don't expect to prove this assertion to anyone, but when I look at the military and its doings, I don't see a dedicated machine striving its best to secure freedom, I see a deluded, self-satisfied giant thrashing about trying to do several things at once, among them: secure the peace, satisfy the industrial friends of the administration, play politics both intra- and extra-fraternally. I object to this because I care about exactly one thing from the military: that it make itself redundant. I am indeed sceptical about this coming to pass. It is silly to assert than anyone is going to "impose" nuclear war on anyone else. Under one definition of "anyone" i.e. the local government in charge, this may be silly. After all, war is always the other guys' fault. But if the definition of "anyone" includes the governments of the warring powers acting in unconscious, implicit collusion to drive each other toward war, it becomes more plausible. Steve ------------------------------ End of Arms-D Digest ********************