From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!ucbvax!C70:arms-d Newsgroups: fa.arms-d Title: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #148 Article-I.D.: ucb.1613 Posted: Tue Jul 27 01:29:08 1982 Received: Sat Jul 31 08:10:25 1982 >From HGA@MIT-MC Tue Jul 27 01:22:30 1982 Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 0 : Issue 148 Today's Topics: India's food production Palestinian state on the West Bank "Social History of the Machine Gun" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jul 25 16:00:12 1982 From: decvax!utzoo!watmath!pcmcgeer at Berkeley Subject: India's food production Eric Strobell doubts Sesh.Murthy's contention that India produces most of the food it requires. That's not surprising, given what we hear about India. Nevertheless (surprise!) Murthy's contention is correct, if it's more precisely stated as "averaged over a ten-year period, India's food production is sufficient to feed her population". There are two difficulties: (1) Insects and vermin get more of those crops than India harvests; and (2) the averaging hides an awful lot of awfully bad years. We get around both those difficulties in the West with high technology: insecticides and poisons to get pests and vermin, and a transport and storage system to make the annual production very nearly the average production. I might add that a free-enterprise economic system with such modern conveniences as a futures market doesn't hurt with the latter, either. Ref: everything except the last sentence was liberally cribbed from Jerry Pournelle's "A Step Farther Out", chapter 1. $5.95 when I got it, a superb book, read it...you won't weep. The last sentence of paragraph 2 is from the Gospel According to Friedman... Rick. ------------------------------ Date: 26 July 1982 10:15-EDT From: Zigurd R. MednieksSubject: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #147 As is increasingly apperant, the majority of Palestineans are moderates that do not desire the destruction of Israel. They would probably be more than content with a Gaza/West Bank state, even with lots of strings attached, like no heavy arms. But what about the fanatics who will continue to mount terrorist attacks against Isreal? Will Isreal respond by strafing this hypothetical, unarmed state? What about the question of "defensible borders"? It seems that the imposed peace would have to extend to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria if Israel is to accept such a setup. Geographically, the Palestinean state would be a nightmare, separating Jerusalem from the rest of Isreal and being divided itself. I argee that we probably have the means to impose such a solution, but we don't have the will. Cheers, Zig ------------------------------ Date: 27 July 1982 00:07-EDT (Tuesday) From: Robert A. Carter Subject: Palestinian state on the West Bank... Date: Saturday, 24 July 1982 04:18-EDT From: Herb Lin * * * 1. Allow the estabilishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank, subject to the condition that no heavy weapons be deployed there. * * * 3. Clobber any indication of heavy weapon deployment. * * * Precedent exists for a similar arrangement - the post-war Japanese constitution excludes capital military equipment. The Treaty of Versailles prohibited Germany a wide variety of military equipment, and that condition was not enforced too well. No one supposes that the U.S. could or would respond to an alteration of the Japanese Constitution with armed force. The problem is not technological, I think, but legal. There is no such thing as a "state" subject to subsequent clobbering rights. Clobbering is possible, but in modern international law, not clobbering of a state one recognizes. Unless, of course, the clobberor is one of the "socialist community." _R. Carter ------------------------------ Date: 26 Jul 82 13:08:32-EDT (Mon) From: Will Martin (DRXAL-FD) Subject: "Social History of the Machine Gun" Reference the discussion on the subject topic in Number 142, sent in by Joseph Boyle, 14 July 82: For the amusement of those who haven't heard it before, here is a little couplet elegantly summarizing the relationship between the colonial powers and the natives at the turn of the century: Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not. (I may have the opening clause wrong, but the rest is the heart of the matter.) Regards, Will Martin (Sorry I cannot supply the attribution of the quote ... WM) [ Note from the Moderator: I've seen that quote in the book "The Weapons of World War III", a middle-late sixties book on military technology and procurement with some very interesting points (I highly recommend it.) It supposedly was some Victorian piece of drivel that refered to the Germans. The most amusing thing about it was the fact that the German Army had many more Maxims than the British did then (before WWI.) - Harold ] ------------------------------ End of Arms-D Digest ********************