Another Asteroid Close Call 453
james was one of a number of people that submitted the news that
the earth has had another near miss, this time with an asteroid. This particular one is thought to be about 300 meters in length, meaning that if it had struck the earth, it would have destroyed an area of say...South Africa. Not to mention the fall out. But
we don't need
a
better system
for watching the stars. Nope. Obviously not.
No, don't watch the stars... (Score:2, Funny)
The stars shouldn't be coming to visit, unless you live in Hollywood, and for most of us, not even then.
Re:No, don't watch the stars... (Score:2)
Re:No, don't watch the stars... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're looking for moderately large dark bodies in space, you do it by watching the stars. Dark bodies like asteroids and comets are, surprisingly enough, dark (and generally opaque). Stars, on the other hand, are bright and have a tendency to not flicker out.
What all this means is that the way you find dark bodies in space is by comparing lots of pictures of starfields and looking for stars that go out and come back. Since it's unlikely that the star flickered, if it seems to do so then there's a good chance something passed between you and it.
Simple survival system (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Simple survival system (Score:4, Funny)
Duck _and_ cover. Otherwise you're toast!!
Re:Simple survival system (Score:2, Funny)
quackquackquackquack
Duck!
quackquackquackquack
Duck!
All right I've had about enough of this....
BOOM!
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Re:Simple survival system (Score:5, Funny)
But that's not all. (Score:2)
Johnny! What do you do when you see that flash?
DUCK AND COVER!
Where's Cecil the Air-Raid Turtle when you need him?
Re:But that's not all. (Score:2)
Re:But that's not all. (Score:4, Informative)
http://ftp.archive.org/html/list_C-E.html
Scroll down until you find:
Duck and Cover 1951
Producer: Archer Productions, Inc.
Sponsor: U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration
Famous Civil Defense film for children in which Bert the Turtle shows what to do in case of atomic attack.
Descriptors: Atomic/nuclear: Civil defense; Animation
Run time: 9:15
Re:?!? (Score:3, Informative)
So what does this mean? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:So what does this mean? (Score:2)
I believe he's referring to Steve Buscemi [imdb.com]
He's an entertaining actor, but his teeth are not pretty.
The end is near? (Score:2, Funny)
Make up your mind!
Re:The end is near? (Score:2)
A reason for funding? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sorry to say it but, I beleive that a direct hit it what is needed to force our governments to take action. Hopefully it will be not too big and in an unpopulated area, but statistically we are bound to get wacked at somepoint.
I know the PERFECT target! (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:A reason for funding? (Score:4, Informative)
Hmm... that old chestnut. Missile defense was supposed to take care of asteroids AND missiles, as mentioned in this [fas.org] and this [ceip.org] article. Somewhere along the line, the populist (and governmental - often one and the same, but that's another article) opinion was that the system would point in more than out. That's where the problem lies.
Now big tents on the other hand...
Re:A reason for funding? (Score:2)
Re:A reason for funding? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A reason for funding? (Score:2)
Chris Beckenbach
The next Tunguska (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The next Tunguska (Score:4, Insightful)
My favoutie target would be the moon man that would look awesome for a big explosion facing us
Re:The next Tunguska (Score:2)
Re:The next Tunguska (Score:2)
a choice of catastrophes (Score:2)
Re:a choice of catastrophes (Score:4, Interesting)
isaac asimov wrote a neat book called a choice of catastrophes he addresses being hit by an asteroid while it is statistically possible it is highly unlikely.
Remember, Asimov was writing (in 1980) before Gene Shoemaker's work from the 60s and after became fully accepted. It really wasn't until all the work identifying impact craters on the earth that was inspired at least in part by Shoemaker's work, and by the Alvarez hypothesis on the K-T extinction (i.e., the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs), got underway that astronomers and geologists took the idea of large impacts seriously (most scientists thought that Meteor Crater was an extinct caldera before Shoemaker, despite the name). Also, Sagan et al.'s work on sandstorms in the Martian atmosphere in the 1970s, which helped to provide a possible mechanism for global effects from local impacts, wouldn't have been completely digested by the time Asimov was writing. Though Asimov was right that overpopulation is the most serious of the issues he deals with in the book (and of course few countries outside Asia take the problem seriously), it would be foolish to dismiss the threat of an impact.
Re:a choice of catastrophes (Score:2)
However, I think that it's more likely that it would be used as a doomsday weapon by some lunatic group or country by pushing an asteroid towards the earth. Given mankind's track record at handling powerful new technologies over the last few thousand years, I'd rather go with the natural odds.
Re:A reason for funding? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd script it this way:
Bruce Willis: "On average? What does that mean?"
Jeff Goldblum: "It means we're about due for three of these."
Bruce Willis: "Oh."
Re:A reason for funding? (Score:2)
I imagine that the best strategy we would be able to implement would be total evacuation of the expected area of destruction. And if we're talking about entire nations being wiped out, i doubt that you could evacuate more than 10% of the population(no doubt the ten richest percent), even with a decades notice. Really, all that an expensive asteroid observation system would give us is advance notice of the date of our death... and really, who wants that?
After all, look how much good the dinosaurs asteroid observation system did THEM.
can anyone calculate the damage (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:can anyone calculate the damage (Score:5, Informative)
It's not _quite_ the same as a nuclear explosion, but if you get the energy level high enough, then the effects are similar enough that it doesnt matter.
A kiloton is define as 10^12 calories which is about 4 x 10 ^ 12 joules.
A 1000 tons of rock would have to hit the earth at about 1 kilometer per second to have a similar effect - which is quite a small speed if you are talking about relative speeds in space... (escape velocity is 7km/sec IIRC)
Don't know what the mass of that rock would have been, but a 300 metre sphere of rock is going to be _fairly_ heavy. Take some averages, and count a few fingers, and you start realising that several megatonnes of energy are comparatively easy to come by if you're hit by a big chunk of rock travelling at significant speeds.
(This is, assuming I can count of course.)
Re:can anyone calculate the damage (Score:5, Informative)
Now you have: a 300 m sphere rock at about 3 grams/cm3, which is about 42.000.000 tons. Speeds are in the 10-70 km/sec range, let's take 30km/s, or 30.000 m/s
The total energy is (1/2)* 4,2*10^12 (grams) * 30.000^2 (m/s)
or 1,2* 10^22 joules (!)
if a kiloton is 4*10^12 joules, we have that this asteroid impact has an energy of about 3*10^9 kilotons, or 3 MILLION MEGATONS, all of them released on a single point.
I hope that my calculations are not too way off...
Re:can anyone calculate the damage (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, depending on the composition, the asteroid might disintegrate into smaller fragments -- this would also reduce the impact energy to some extent as the atmosphere would then break down each fragment better than it would the whole.
Regardless, it would make Fat Man and Little Boy look like roman candles by comparison, I think...
Re:can anyone calculate the damage (Score:2)
Actually, for impacts of this size, the atmosphere has only a very minor effect. The asteroid would speed through the most dense part (the last 50 km) in a second or two. I would be surprised if this makes more than a 5-10% difference.
Re:can anyone calculate the damage (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:can anyone calculate the damage (Score:2)
Re:can anyone calculate the damage (Score:2, Funny)
How do you calculate the damage?
You take a 1d10 roll per metric ton of impactor, and the resultant number is the number of square meters, in thousands, of surface land that is flattened/destroyed. If the impactor is above 1000 metric tons, you need a additional rolls to determine volume of matter thrown into the atmosphere, length of time before the matter settles back out, how far the matter spreads, and how much the Earth's albedo might change - but it starts getting complicated...
This Just In (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This Just In (Score:4, Funny)
More Information (Score:5, Interesting)
"The End Not As Near As We Thought" (Score:2, Funny)
So which is it?
Why watch? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why: (Score:2)
The amount of money required to identify asteroids that might hit Earth isn't that great. And IF one is identified as posing a potential hazard, it gives us the opportunity to think about how we could do something.
Anything else is like sticking your head in the sand, and hoping it will go away.
Re:Why watch? (Score:3, Funny)
Next, we'll spend billions of dollars implanting GPS locators into any comet/asteroid that could possibly come near the earth. For extra credit, we'll even give the asteroids a fighting chance by installing a decoy balloon to try and trick us.
Then, we'll just use our trusty missle defense system. No problems...
Re:Why watch? (Score:2)
That's chicken and egg logic. You watch to see if something is coming knowing full well that we've been hit in the past and will be in the future.
So maybe you can't do anything if you only get a month's warning like we did this time. But if you find something that just missed this time but will hit us on the next orbit, say 3 years from now, well then... you just might be able to do something about it.
I can't think of a more useful government activity than figuring out when and where the next Tunguska is going to be.
Re:Why watch? (Score:2)
Re:Why watch? (Score:2)
This is a huge constraint. When Mir was deorbited it was under control, and only from LEO, yet the debris was still over an area of 6000x500 km. An uncontrolled asteroid hitting earth could hit almost any part of the earth.
Re:Why watch? (Score:2)
Between the four you have 34,000,000 people in a month. With international military aid, I'm assuming you could move at least another 15 million from all the other airports. Hence under logistically ideal conditions, you could evacuate England in a little over a month. Since it's unlikely to be ideal, let's say 8-10 weeks warning is needed.
We are a long way from having the infrastructure and funding to be able to expect that kind of a warning from rocks we don't yet know about, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say we could have such a system.
Re:Why watch? (Score:2)
And large cruise ships could easily take several thousand.
The problem is that people will get greedy and want to take bags and bags of stuff with them. If everybody just walked away with whatever they could fit in a small backpack, it could probably be done, but probably too many people would freak out and clog things up.
Dumb, panicky, dangerous animals.
System (Score:2)
Another missed opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn! There went another asteroid we could have exploited for natural resources, thus making a space-based economy viable. This would contribute to the benefit of mankind by improving the standard of living and also making it more likely we can do something about future potential planet-killers.
He knows what inertia is (Score:2)
Only thing a better monitoring system would do... (Score:5, Insightful)
We only get about a months notice of such close passes anyway and there is no way we're going to be able to get a 'Bruce Willis and mates' crew up into orbit in 30 days. A proper asteroid defence system is likely to be at least a decade away, as it is likely to require a number of hefty nukes to persuade an oncoming 300m+ asteroid that it doesn't have right of way.
Besides, I'd feel distinctly nervous about having a space based system loaded with a several very big nukes right above our heads; just imagine what could happen if a very small object hit the system and destroyed it, knocking the bits back into earths gravity......whilst I know you wouldn't get a nuclear explosion, what chances fallout in a similar manner to a "dirty" sub-nuclear weapon ?
Re:Only thing a better monitoring system would do. (Score:2, Interesting)
From Nasa's FAQs About NEO Impacts [nasa.gov]:
How much warning will we have?
With at least half of even the larger NEOs remaining undiscovered, the most likely warning today would be zero -- the first indication of a collision would be the flash of light and the shaking of the ground as it hit. In contrast, if the current surveys actually discover a NEO on a collision course, we would expect many decades of warning. Any NEO that is going to hit the Earth will swing near our planet many times before it hits, and it should be discovered by comprehensive sky searches. This is the purpose of the Spaceguard Survey. In almost all cases, we will either have a long lead time or none at all.
Re:Only thing a better monitoring system would do. (Score:2)
Yogic Flying [yogicflying.org] my friend! A month is plenty time for us to get out our mats and simply wish the asteroid away with our bubbling happiness and baggy trousers.
Re:Only thing a better monitoring system would do. (Score:2)
Doesn't have to be in earth orbit, for fast deliver it might be best to have it in moon orbit, or leading or trailing the earth in solar orbit.
Anyway, if we had a decent sky survey system, we wouldn't have them just haning around, they'd be off deflecting the rocks we know will hit the Earth in a few hundred years.
Re:Only thing a better monitoring system would do. (Score:2)
Re:Only thing a better monitoring system would do. (Score:5, Insightful)
Find a tile floor. Drop 500 marbles, all at once. Now try dropping a bowling ball.
Obviously, you're not a golfer.
Asteroid structure (Score:2)
Ice balls would tend to melt and blow up into a many little pieces just nicely
Rocky asteroids also tend to shatter into lots of pieces, but are a bit tougher.
Metallic asteroids tend to stay solid, and are a bit of a pain.
Re:Only thing a better monitoring system would do. (Score:5, Informative)
Problem is that all the kinetic energy still ends up in our system. One big piece is bad. Split that one big piece into several smaller pieces, and it's even worse. But take things to an arbitrary limit, where you pulverize the entire asteroid down to dust.
Now all that dust impacts the atmosphere, heats to incandescence, and vaporizes. Do *you* want to be in the hemisphere where *that* happens? Imagine New York City under the glare of 70 trillion E-Z-Bake Ovens.
If the asteroid's big enough to have a significant negative impact on human civilization, breaking it up/pulverizing it will not help us. It must be diverted so that it doesn't intersect Earth at all.
Re:Only thing a better monitoring system would do. (Score:2)
One big piece is bad, a bijillion smaller peices is better. The reason is that while the kinetic energy of the asteroid does not change, the surface area available for the atmosphere to work on does. A million smaller pieces have much more surface area so the characteristic size of the asteroid shrinks at least a hundredfold (cube root of a million). This is important because you want the atmosphere to vaporize the meteor before it actually hits something because even a small mass making it to the surface can do a lot of damage.
Breaking the asteroid up into smaller piece means that you get a lot heat generated in the atmosphere, but little real damage because you lack a ballistic impact. Its just a little warmer over the atmospheric entry site until diffusion spreads that heat over enough of the planet that it becomes background noise. You get a local temperature spike not serious damage. This is good.
Depends on distance. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now all that dust impacts the atmosphere, heats to incandescence, and vaporizes. Do *you* want to be in the hemisphere where *that* happens? Imagine New York City under the glare of 70 trillion E-Z-Bake Ovens.
If you fragment the asteroid when it's far enough away from Earth (months earlier in its orbit), and give the fragments enough energy that they're not going to just drift back together, then most of the fragments would likely miss Earth.
The key is fragmenting it when it's far enough away, so that the fragments have time to spread.
Re:Only thing a better monitoring system would do. (Score:2)
Re:Only thing a better monitoring system would do. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not trying to be a troll, but it does cite a past real world situation.
Re:Only thing a better monitoring system would do. (Score:2)
The actual path is very hard to predict for an object at the mercy of atmosphere. A big enough asteroid will not even notice.
Money doesn't solve all problems (Score:2)
Why? It's simple. I don't want to divert money allocated to other basic research projects... projects that can significantly help this effort. If we increase funding for basic science research, we'll have two longer term positives:
1. Basic science money can have immediate benefits today.
- There are lots of critical problems on earth now, above and beyond asteroid impacts. Many of these problems need research dollars now.
- Asking for a billion now to watch for something that may or may not happen any time soon isn't going to please a lot of people, especially where there are more immediate issues on the table.
2. The money dedicated to basic research can effectively accomplish the goal of watching for and (hopefully) averting a long-term disaster.
- Money spent on science research today can help build more effective, lower cost, and more technically able solutions to the problem.
Spend a dumb billion today, or a smarter million tomorrow. That's the choice.
chances (Score:3, Interesting)
"Large" and "barely missing" (Score:4, Interesting)
First, we're doing pretty well at tracking the really large earth-grazing asteroids now - for rocks at least a kilometer in diameter (picture the "little guy" that hit at the end of Deep Impact) we're tracking an estimated ~90% instead of 10% of them now, and the big improvement has come in the last five years or so.
For the stuff smaller than a kilometer (which don't threaten civilization, but can still be large enough to make much of New York City a memory), I don't know that we're doing much tracking at all. So what's your definition of "large"? Thanks to the heavy ocean cover and relatively sparse city covering of the land, odds are we'll get hit in a nice relatively non-fatal location before a city-buster earns its name. And we'll get hundreds or thousands of near misses before then. What's your definition of "barely missing"? I've heard it to refer to anything passing inside the moon's orbit, which is a target with 3,600 times the cross section of Earth. That's a near miss on a cosmic scale, not on a human one.
It's hard to set odds on something like this, but the most informed I've seen would give us about even odds of having a populated area smashed up (damage as much as a trillion dollars) sometime in the next millenium. Not such bad odds that we want to start putting up an "asteroid defense shield", but bad enough that some other valuable activities (pointing more telescopes at the sky, cataloguing asteroids, improving launch vehicle technology) become more valuable for this secondary reason.
Re:"Large" and "barely missing" (Score:2)
Well, from what I can imagine, we would be much more lucky if the asteroid hit a big city, than if it hit the ocean. Imagine the waves! Now consider the fact that most people live somewhat close to the sea...
I think a large unpopulated land-based area such as Antarctica might be the best. An additional benefit might be that most of the stuff that would be thrown into the atmoshpere would be ice instead of dirt, thus not totally blocking the sun.
But of course, I'm just speculating, I have neither the time, interest or knowledge to do real calculations.
But what to do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nasa knows [nasa.gov] about 47 1km asteroids in near-earth orbits, any of which could make bickering about the RIAA rather short-lived. Their website claims that the best reason to study NEO's, as we don't have an active defense, is to "allow us to store food and supplies and to evacuate regions near ground zero." This is not the sort of confidence that inspires politicians to open their wallet, nor should it.
India and Pakistan are on the brink of bringing the world into a nuclear holocost. Our supplies of oil are depleting while our energy usage goes up. Ebola has broken out in another african village, and Aids rates worldwide are up to 1 in 100 with some areas reaching 1 in 3. Until such a time as there is something realistic we can do about near earth asteroids, that money is better focused on more pressing forms of armageddon.
Re:But what to do? (Score:4, Insightful)
No they are not. This is merely the American media's penchant for hyperbole. Why don't they, for example, say "nuclear armed nation" in a hushed tone whenever they refer to the USA?
Yes, India and Pakistan exchange fire at the border every day. That doesn't mean they are about to nuke each other. Now, if Taliban-type religious psychos get hold of Pakistan's arsenal... That's why the US government is working on a contingency plan to neutralize them.
Re:But what to do? (Score:2)
Yeah
procrastinating (Score:3, Insightful)
Why we should start looking now (Score:2, Interesting)
Wrong. We will have a means some day, in the meantime, it's important to start the funding process, then the building of the observatories, so we can start cataloging the asteroids which are candidates to wipe us out.
Doing nothing with the assumption we can never do anything is against all evidence of progress in our history...
Rather end wars (Score:4, Insightful)
Being an astronomer I probably shouldn't say this, because a pile of cash would rain down on me if somebody decided we needed to monitor the skies 24/7, but what the heck:
The risk isn't that high. Really.
We should rather spend our time ending wars. You may say, we can never end wars. Actually, all the nobel peace prize winners I've talked to think we can, so! ;-)
But on the other hand, I'd really like to monitor the skies 24/7, but such a system should not be designed with one application in mind, it should be designed with the goal of enabling all kinds of projects. For example, I'd like to see a global, dense network of Liquid Mirror Telescopes. That could be used to look for NEOs too.
Re:Rather end wars (Score:2)
The issue is one of world view. The folks that bombed the US earnestly believed that they were doing the right thing. Their world view teaches that elimination of those who refuse to adopt their world view is appropriate.
You could then argue that the problem is one of religion - merely eliminate religion and the problem is resolved.
However, if one chooses an atheistic world view, it is not illogical to act in one's perceived best interest to the detriment of others.
I'm not accusing atheists of selfishly abusing others, I'm just suggesting that behavior of that sort is not entirely inconsistent with the lack of objective measurements of right and wrong.
And finally, the existance of playground bullies tells us that there will be those who choose force to accomplish their goals regardless of whether it can be morally justified.
Sometimes force is the only way to stop people bent on forcing their world view on others. Neville Chamberlain believed that peace could be accomplished through appeasement. He was wrong.
Today we have Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and dozens of others whose lusts will not be satisfied through negotiations. Tomorrow there will be more.
BTW - I don't buy lottery tickets
Re:Rather end wars (Score:2)
Religion is only a small component of world view. The basic environment plays a significant part. Every country on earth teaches a selective view of history. Japanese children have only the vaguest notion of Japan's role in WWII but know a lot about Hiroshima. Most Americans are only taught details for periods of American history which reflect will upon America, and it's the same everywhere.
> Today we have Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and dozens
Exactly. Your example illustrates differences in world view. There are many people in the world would put Dubya above those two in a top ten list of dangerous morons who will gladly use violence to further their aims. For the average person on the planet, the chance of being harmed by a stupid decision from Bush is far greater than the threat posed by CNN's villain de jour.
The Truth (Score:3, Insightful)
The New War Against Terror
Noam Chomsky October 18, 2001 - Transcribed from audio recorded at
The Technology & Culture Forum at MIT
Everyone knows it's the TV people who run the world [crowd laugher].
I just got orders that I'm supposed to be here, not there. Well
the last talk I gave at this forum was on a light pleasant topic.
It was about how humans are an endangered species and given the
nature of their institutions they are likely to destroy themselves
in a fairly short time. So this time there is a little relief and
we have a pleasant topic instead, the new war on terror. Unfortunately,
the world keeps coming up with things that make it more and more
horrible as we proceed.
Assume 2 Conditions for this Talk
I'm going to assume 2 conditions for this talk.
The first one is just what I assume to be recognition of fact. That
is that the events of September 11 were a horrendous atrocity
probably the most devastating instant human toll of any crime in
history, outside of war.
The second assumption has to do with the goals. I'm assuming that
our goal is that we are interested in reducing the likelihood of
such crimes whether they are against us or against someone else.
If you don't accept those two assumptions, then what I say will
not be addressed to you. If we do accept them, then a number of
questions arise, closely related ones, which merit a good deal of
thought.
The 5 Questions
One question, and by far the most important one is what is happening
right now? Implicit in that is what can we do about it? The 2nd
has to do with the very common assumption that what happened on
September 11 is a historic event, one which will change history.
I tend to agree with that. I think it's true. It was a historic
event and the question we should be asking is exactly why? The 3rd
question has to do with the title, The War Against Terrorism.
Exactly what is it? And there is a related question, namely what
is terrorism? The 4th question which is narrower but important has
to do with the origins of the crimes of September 11th. And the
5th question that I want to talk a little about is what policy
options there are in fighting this war against terrorism and dealing
with the situations that led to it.
I'll say a few things about each. Glad to go beyond in discussion
and don't hesitate to bring up other questions. These are ones that
come to my mind as prominent but you may easily and plausibly have
other choices.
1. What's Happening Right Now?
Starvation of 3 to 4 Million People
Well let's start with right now. I'll talk about the situation in
Afghanistan. I'll just keep to uncontroversial sources like the
New York Times [crowd laughter]. According to the New York Times
there are 7 to 8 million people in Afghanistan on the verge of
starvation. That was true actually before September 11th. They were
surviving on international aid. On September 16th, the Times
reported, I'm quoting it, that the United States demanded from
Pakistan the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the
food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population. As
far as I could determine there was no reaction in the United States
or for that matter in Europe. I was on national radio all over
Europe the next day.
There was no reaction in the United States or in Europe to my
knowledge to the demand to impose massive starvation on millions
of people. The threat of military strikes right after September..around
that time forced the removal of international aid workers that
crippled the assistance programs.
Actually, I am quoting again from the New York Times. Refugees
reaching Pakistan after arduous journeys from AF are describing
scenes of desperation and fear at home as the threat of American
led military attacks turns their long running misery into a potential
catastrophe. The country was on a lifeline and we just cut the
line. Quoting an evacuated aid worker, in the New York Times
Magazine.
The World Food Program, the UN program, which is the main one by
far, were able to resume after 3 weeks in early October, they began
to resume at a lower level, resume food shipments. They don't have
international aid workers within, so the distribution system is
hampered. That was suspended as soon as the bombing began. They
then resumed but at a lower pace while aid agencies leveled scathing
condemnations of US airdrops, condemning them as propaganda tools
which are probably doing more harm than good. That happens to be
quoting the London Financial Times but it is easy to continue.
After the first week of bombing, the New York Times reported on a
back page inside a column on something else, that by the arithmetic
of the United Nations there will soon be 7.5 million Afghans in
acute need of even a loaf of bread and there are only a few weeks
left before the harsh winter will make deliveries to many areas
totally impossible, continuing to quote, but with bombs falling
the delivery rate is down to = of what is needed. Casual comment.
Which tells us that Western civilization is anticipating the
slaughter of, well do the arithmetic, 3-4 million people or something
like that. On the same day, the leader of Western civilization
dismissed with contempt, once again, offers of negotiation for
delivery of the alleged target, Osama bin Laden, and a request for
some evidence to substantiate the demand for total capitulation.
It was dismissed. On the same day the Special Rapporteur of the UN
in charge of food pleaded with the United States to stop the bombing
to try to save millions of victims. As far as I'm aware that was
unreported. That was Monday. Yesterday the major aid agencies OXFAM
and Christian Aid and others joined in that plea. You can't find
a report in the New York Times. There was a line in the Boston
Globe, hidden in a story about another topic, Kashmir.
Silent Genocide
Well we could easily go on.but all of that.first of all indicates
to us what's happening. Looks like what's happening is some sort
of silent genocide. It also gives a good deal of insight into the
elite culture, the culture that we are part of. It indicates that
whatever, what will happen we don't know, but plans are being made
and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to
the death of several million people in the next couple of weeks.very
casually with no comment, no particular thought about it, that's
just kind of normal, here and in a good part of Europe. Not in the
rest of the world. In fact not even in much of Europe. So if you
read the Irish press or the press in Scotlandthat close, reactions
are very different. Well that's what's happening now. What's
happening now is very much under our control. We can do a lot to
affect what's happening. And that's roughly it.
2. Why was it a Historic Event?
National Territory Attacked
Alright let's turn to the slightly more abstract question, forgetting
for the moment that we are in the midst of apparently trying to
murder 3 or 4 million people, not Taliban of course, their victims.
Let's go backturn to the question of the historic event that took
place on September 11th. As I said, I think that's correct. It was
a historic event. Not unfortunately because of its scale, unpleasant
to think about, but in terms of the scale it's not that unusual.
I did say it's the worstprobably the worst instant human toll of
any crime. And that may be true. But there are terrorist crimes
with effects a bit more drawn out that are more extreme, unfortunately.
Nevertheless, it's a historic event because there was a change.
The change was the direction in which the guns were pointed. That's
new. Radically new. So, take US history.
The last time that the national territory of the United States was
under attack, or for that matter, even threatened was when the
British burned down Washington in 1814. There have been manyit was
common to bring up Pearl Harbor but that's not a good analogy. The
Japanese, what ever you think about it, the Japanese bombed military
bases in 2 US colonies not the national territory; colonies which
had been taken from their inhabitants in not a very pretty way.
This is the national territory that's been attacked on a large
scale, you can find a few fringe examples but this is unique.
During these close to 200 years, we, the United States expelled or
mostly exterminated the indigenous population, that's many millions
of people, conquered half of Mexico, carried out depredations all
over the region, Caribbean and Central America, sometimes beyond,
conquered Hawaii and the Philippines, killing several hundred
thousand Filipinos in the process.
Since the Second World War, it has extended its reach around the
world in ways I don't have to describe. But it was always killing
someone else, the fighting was somewhere else, it was others who
were getting slaughtered. Not here. Not the national territory.
Europe
In the case of Europe, the change is even more dramatic because
its history is even more horrendous than ours. We are an offshoot
of Europe, basically.
For hundreds of years, Europe has been casually slaughtering people
all over the world. That's how they conquered the world, not by
handing out candy to babies. During this period, Europe did suffer
murderous wars, but that was European killers murdering one another.
The main sport of Europe for hundreds of years was slaughtering
one another. The only reason that it came to an end in 1945, was.it
had nothing to do with Democracy or not making war with each other
and other fashionable notions. It had to do with the fact that
everyone understood that the next time they play the game it was
going to be the end for the world. Because the Europeans, including
us, had developed such massive weapons of destruction that that
game just had to be over. And it goes back hundreds of years. In
the 17th century, about probably 40% of the entire population of
Germany was wiped out in one war.
But during this whole bloody murderous period, it was Europeans
slaughtering each other, and Europeans slaughtering people elsewhere.
The Congo didn't attack Belgium, India didn't attack England,
Algeria didn't attack France.
It's uniform. There are again small exceptions, but pretty small
in scale, certainly invisible in the scale of what Europe and us
were doing to the rest of the world. This is the first change. The
first time that the guns have been pointed the other way. And in
my opinion that's probably why you see such different reactions on
the two sides of the Irish Sea which I have noticed, incidentally,
in many interviews on both sides, national radio on both sides.
The world looks very different depending on whether you are holding
the leash or whether you are being whipped by it for hundreds of
years, very different. So I think the shock and surprise in Europe
and its offshoots, like here, is very understandable. It is a
historic event but regrettably not in scale, in something else and
a reason why the rest of the worldmost of the rest of the world
looks at it quite differently. Not lacking sympathy for the victims
of the atrocity or being horrified by them, that's almost uniform,
but viewing it from a different perspective.
Something we might want to understand.
3. What is the War Against Terrorism?
Well, let's go to the third question, 'What is the war against
terrorism?' and a side question, 'What's terrorism?'. The war
against terrorism has been described in high places as a struggle
against a plague, a cancer which is spread by barbarians, by
"depraved opponents of civilization itself." That's a feeling that
I share. The words I'm quoting, however, happen to be from 20 years
ago. Those arethat's President Reagan and his Secretary of State.
The Reagan administration came into office 20 years ago declaring
that the war against international terrorism would be the core of
our foreign policy.describing it in terms of the kind I just
mentioned and others. And it was the core of our foreign policy.
The Reagan administration responded to this plague spread by depraved
opponents of civilization itself by creating an extraordinary
international terrorist network, totally unprecedented in scale,
which carried out massive atrocities all over the world, primarily.well,
partly nearby, but not only there. I won't run through the record,
you're all educated people, so I'm sure you learned about it in
High School. [crowd laughter]
Reagan-US War Against Nicaragua
But I'll just mention one case which is totally uncontroversial,
so we might as well not argue about it, by no means the most extreme
but uncontroversial. It's uncontroversial because of the judgments
of the highest international authorities the International Court
of Justice, the World Court, and the UN Security Council. So this
one is uncontroversial, at least among people who have some minimal
concern for international law, human rights, justice and other
things like that. And now I'll leave you an exercise. You can
estimate the size of that category by simply asking how often this
uncontroversial case has been mentioned in the commentary of the
last month. And it's a particularly relevant one, not only because
it is uncontroversial, but because it does offer a precedent as to
how a law abiding state would respond todid respond in fact to
international terrorism, which is uncontroversial. And was even
more extreme than the events of September 11th. I'm talking about
the Reagan-US war against Nicaragua which left tens of thousands
of people dead, the country ruined, perhaps beyond recovery.
Nicaragua's Response
Nicaragua did respond. They didn't respond by setting off bombs in
Washington. They responded by taking it to the World Court, presenting
a case, they had no problem putting together evidence. The World
Court accepted their case, ruled in their favor, condemned what
they called the "unlawful use of force," which is another word for
international terrorism, by the United States, ordered the United
States to terminate the crime and to pay massive reparations. The
United States, of course, dismissed the court judgment with total
contempt and announced that it would not accept the jurisdiction
of the court henceforth. Then Nicaragua went to the UN Security
Council which considered a resolution calling on all states to
observe international law. No one was mentioned but everyone
understood. The United States vetoed the resolution. It now stands
as the only state on record which has both been condemned by the
World Court for international terrorism and has vetoed a Security
Council resolution calling on states to observe international law.
Nicaragua then went to the General Assembly where there is technically
no veto but a negative US vote amounts to a veto. It passed a
similar resolution with only the United States, Israel, and El
Salvador opposed. The following year again, this time the United
States could only rally Israel to the cause, so 2 votes opposed to
observing international law. At that point, Nicaragua couldn't do
anything lawful. It tried all the measures. They don't work in a
world that is ruled by force.
This case is uncontroversial but it's by no means the most extreme.
We gain a lot of insight into our own culture and society and what's
happening now by asking 'how much we know about all this? How much
we talk about it? How much you learn about it in school? How much
it's all over the front pages?' And this is only the beginning.
The United States responded to the World Court and the Security
Council by immediately escalating the war very quickly, that was
a bipartisan decision incidentally. The terms of the war were also
changed. For the first time there were official orders givenofficial
orders to the terrorist army to attack what are called "soft
targets," meaning undefended civilian targets, and to keep away
from the Nicaraguan army. They were able to do that because the
United States had total control of the air over Nicaragua and the
mercenary army was supplied with advanced communication equipment,
it wasn't a guerilla army in the normal sense and could get
instructions about the disposition of the Nicaraguan army forces
so they could attack agricultural collectives, health clinics, and
so onsoft targets with impunity. Those were the official orders.
What was the Reaction Here?
What was the reaction? It was known. There was a reaction to it.
The policy was regarded as sensible by left liberal opinion. So
Michael Kinsley who represents the left in mainstream discussion,
wrote an article in which he said that we shouldn't be too quick
to criticize this policy as Human Rights Watch had just done. He
said a "sensible policy" must "meet the test of cost benefit
analysis" -- that is, I'm quoting now, that is the analysis of "the
amount of blood and misery that will be poured in, and the likelihood
that democracy will emerge at the other end." Democracy as the US
understands the term, which is graphically illustrated in the
surrounding countries. Notice that it is axiomatic that the United
States, US elites, have the right to conduct the analysis and to
pursue the project if it passes their tests. And it did pass their
tests. It worked. When Nicaragua finally succumbed to superpower
assault, commentators openly and cheerfully lauded the success of
the methods that were adopted and described them accurately. So
I'll quote Time Magazine just to pick one. They lauded the success
of the methods adopted: "to wreck the economy and prosecute a long
and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives overthrow the
unwanted government themselves,"
with a cost to us that is "minimal," and leaving the victims "with
wrecked bridges, sabotaged power stations, and ruined farms," and
thus providing the US candidate with a "winning issue": "ending
the impoverishment of the people of Nicaragua." The New York Times
had a headline saying "Americans United in Joy" at this outcome.
Terrorism Works - Terrorism is not the Weapon of the Weak
That is the culture in which we live and it reveals several facts.
One is the fact that terrorism works. It doesn't fail. It works.
Violence usually works. That's world history. Secondly, it's a very
serious analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism
is the weapon of the weak. Like other means of violence, it's
primarily a weapon of the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is
held to be a weapon of the weak because the strong also control
the doctrinal systems and their terror doesn't count as terror.
Now that's close to universal. I can't think of a historical
exception, even the worst mass murderers view the world that way.
So pick the Nazis. They weren't carrying out terror in occupied
Europe. They were protecting the local population from the terrorisms
of the partisans. And like other resistance movements, there was
terrorism. The Nazis were carrying out counter terror. Furthermore,
the United States essentially agreed with that. After the war, the
US army did extensive studies of Nazi counter terror operations in
Europe. First I should say that the US picked them up and began
carrying them out itself, often against the same targets, the former
resistance. But the military also studied the Nazi methods published
interesting studies, sometimes critical of them because they were
inefficiently carried out, so a critical analysis, you didn't do
this right, you did that right, but those methods with the advice
of Wermacht officers who were brought over here became the manuals
of counter insurgency, of counter terror, of low intensity conflict,
as it is called, and are the manuals, and are the procedures that
are being used. So it's not just that the Nazis did it. It's that
it was regarded as the right thing to do by the leaders of western
civilization, that is us, who then proceeded to do it themselves.
Terrorism is not the weapon of the weak. It is the weapon of those
who are against 'us' whoever 'us' happens to be. And if you can
find a historical exception to that, I'd be interested in seeing
it.
Nature of our Culture - How We Regard Terrorism
Well, an interesting indication of the nature of our culture, our
high culture, is the way in which all of this is regarded. One way
it's regarded is just suppressing it. So almost nobody has ever
heard of it. And the power of American propaganda and doctrine is
so strong that even among the victims it's barely known. I mean,
when you talk about this to people in Argentina, you have to remind
them. Oh, yeah, that happened, we forgot about it. It's deeply
suppressed. The sheer consequences of the monopoly of violence can
be very powerful in ideological and other terms.
The Idea that Nicaragua Might Have The Right To Defend Itself
Well, one illuminating aspect of our own attitude toward terrorism
is the reaction to the idea that Nicaragua might have the right to
defend itself.
Actually I went through this in some detail with database searches
and that sort of thing. The idea that Nicaragua might have the
right to defend itself was considered outrageous. There is virtually
nothing in mainstream commentary indicating that Nicaragua might
have that right. And that fact was exploited by the Reagan
administration and its propaganda in an interesting way. Those of
you who were around in that time will remember that they periodically
floated rumors that the Nicaraguans were getting MIG jets, jets
from Russia. At that point the hawks and the doves split. The hawks
said, 'ok, let's bomb 'em.' The doves said, `wait a minute, let's
see if the rumors are true. And if the rumors are true, then let's
bomb them.
Because they are a threat to the United States.' Why, incidentally
were they getting MIGs? Well they tried to get jet planes from
European countries but the United States put pressure on its allies
so that it wouldn't send them means of defense because they wanted
them to turn to the Russians. That's good for propaganda purposes.
Then they become a threat to us. Remember, they were just 2 days
march from Harlingen, Texas. We actually declared a national
emergency in 1985 to protect the country from the threat of Nicaragua.
And it stayed in force. So it was much better for them to get arms
from the Russians. Why would they want jet planes? Well, for the
reasons I already mentioned. The United States had total control
over their airspace, and was using that to provide instructions to
the terrorist army to enable them to attack soft targets without
running into the army that might defend them. Everyone knew that
that was the reason.
They are not going to use their jet planes for anything else. But
the idea that Nicaragua should be permitted to defend its airspace
against a superpower attack that is directing terrorist forces to
attack undefended civilian targets, that was considered in the
United States as outrageous and uniformly so. Exceptions are so
slight, you know I can practically list them. I don't suggest that
you take my word for this. Have a look. That includes our own
senators, incidentally.
Honduras - The Appointment of John Negroponte as Ambassador to the
United Nations
Another illustration of how we regard terrorism is happening right
now. The US has just appointed an ambassador to the United Nations
to lead the war against terrorism a couple weeks ago. Who is he?
Well, his name is John Negroponte. He was the US ambassador in the
fiefdom, which is what it is, of Honduras in the early 1980's.
There was a little fuss made about the fact that he must have been
aware, as he certainly was, of the large-scale murders and other
atrocities that were being carried out by the security forces in
Honduras that we were supporting. But that's a small part of it.
As proconsul of Honduras, as he was called there, he was the local
supervisor for the terrorist war based in Honduras, for which his
government was condemned by the world court and then the Security
Council in a vetoed resolution. And he was just appointed as the
UN Ambassador to lead the war against terror. Another small experiment
you can do is check and see what the reaction was to this. Well,
I will tell you what you are going to find, but find it for yourself.
Now that tells us a lot about the war against terrorism and a lot
about ourselves.
After the United States took over the country again under the
conditions that were so graphically described by the press, the
country was pretty much destroyed in the 1980's, but it has totally
collapsed since in every respect just about. Economically it has
declined sharply since the US take over, democratically and in
every other respect. It's now the second poorest country in the
Hemisphere. I should say.I'm not going to talk about it, but I
mentioned that I picked up Nicaragua because it is an uncontroversial
case. If you look at the other states in the region, the state
terror was far more extreme and it again traces back to Washington
and that's by no means all.
Re:The Truth (part II) (Score:3, Insightful)
US & UK Backed South African Attacks
It was happening elsewhere in the world too, take say Africa. During
the Reagan years alone, South African attacks, backed by the United
States and Britain, US/UK-backed South African attacks against the
neighboring countries killed about a million and a half people and
left 60 billion dollars in damage and countries destroyed. And if
we go around the world, we can add more examples.
Now that was the first war against terror of which I've given a
small sample. Are we supposed to pay attention to that? Or kind of
think that that might be relevant? After all it's not exactly
ancient history. Well, evidently not as you can tell by looking at
the current discussion of the war on terror which has been the
leading topic for the last month.
Haiti, Guatemala, and Nicaragua
I mentioned that Nicaragua has now become the 2nd poorest country
in the hemisphere. What's the poorest country? Well that's of course
Haiti which also happens to be the victim of most US intervention
in the 20th century by a long shot. We left it totally devastated.
It's the poorest country.
Nicaragua is second ranked in degree of US intervention in the 20th
century.
It is the 2nd poorest. Actually, it is vying with Guatemala. They
interchange every year or two as to who's the second poorest. And
they also vie as to who is the leading target of US military
intervention. We're supposed to think that all of this is some sort
of accident. That is has nothing to do with anything that happened
in history. Maybe.
Colombia and Turkey
The worst human rights violator in the 1990's is Colombia, by a
long shot.
It's also, by far, the leading recipient of US military aid in the
1990's maintaining the terror and human rights violations. In 1999,
Colombia replaced Turkey as the leading recipient of US arms
worldwide, that is excluding Israel and Egypt which are a separate
category. And that tells us a lot more about the war on terror
right now, in fact.
Why was Turkey getting such a huge flow of US arms? Well if you
take a look at the flow of US arms to Turkey, Turkey always got a
lot of US arms. It's strategically placed, a member of NATO, and
so on. But the arms flow to Turkey went up very sharply in 1984.
It didn't have anything to do with the cold war. I mean Russian
was collapsing. And it stayed high from 1984 to 1999 when it reduced
and it was replaced in the lead by Colombia. What happened from
1984 to 1999? Well, in 1984, [Turkey] launched a major terrorist
war against Kurds in southeastern Turkey. And that's when US aid
went up, military aid. And this was not pistols. This was jet
planes, tanks, military training, and so on. And it stayed high as
the atrocities escalated through the 1990's. Aid followed it. The
peak year was 1997. In 1997, US military aid to Turkey was more
than in the entire period 1950 to 1983, that is the cold war period,
which is an indication of how much the cold war has affected policy.
And the results were awesome. This led to 2-3 million refugees.
Some of the worst ethnic cleansing of the late 1990's. Tens of
thousands of people killed, 3500 towns and villages destroyed, way
more than Kosovo, even under NATO bombs. And the United States was
providing 80% of the arms, increasing as the atrocities increased,
peaking in 1997. It declined in 1999 because, once again, terror
worked as it usually does when carried out by its major agents,
mainly the powerful. So by 1999, Turkish terror, called of course
counter-terror, but as I said, that's universal, it worked. Therefore
Turkey was replaced by Colombia which had not yet succeeded in its
terrorist war. And therefore had to move into first place as
recipient of US arms.
Self Congratulation on the Part of Western Intellectuals
Well, what makes this all particularly striking is that all of this
was taking place right in the midst of a huge flood of self-congratulation
on the part of Western intellectuals which probably has no counterpart
in history. I mean you all remember it. It was just a couple years
ago. Massive self-adulation about how for the first time in history
we are so magnificent; that we are standing up for principles and
values; dedicated to ending inhumanity everywhere in the new era
of this-and-that, and so-on-and-so-forth. And we certainly can't
tolerate atrocities right near the borders of NATO. That was repeated
over and over. Only within the borders of NATO where we can not
only can tolerate much worse atrocities but contribute to them.
Another insight into Western civilization and our own, is how often
was this brought up? Try to look. I won't repeat it. But it's
instructive. It's a pretty impressive feat for a propaganda system
to carry this off in a free society. It's pretty amazing. I don't
think you could do this in a totalitarian state.
Turkey is Very Grateful
And Turkey is very grateful. Just a few days ago, Prime Minister
Ecevit announced that Turkey would join the coalition against
terror, very enthusiastically, even more so than others. In fact,
he said they would contribute troops which others have not willing
to do. And he explained why.
He said, We owe a debt of gratitude to the United States because
the United States was the only country that was willing to contribute
so massively to our own, in his words "counter-terrorist" war, that
is to our own massive ethnic cleansing and atrocities and terror.
Other countries helped a little, but they stayed back. The United
States, on the other hand, contributed enthusiastically and decisively
and was able to do so because of the silence, servility might be
the right word, of the educated classes who could easily find out
about it. It's a free country after all. You can read human rights
reports. You can read all sorts of stuff. But we chose to contribute
to the atrocities and Turkey is very happy, they owe us a debt of
gratitude for that and therefore will contribute troops just as
during the war in Serbia. Turkey was very much praised for using
its F-16's which we supplied it to bomb Serbia exactly as it had
been doing with the same planes against its own population up until
the time when it finally succeeded in crushing internal terror as
they called it. And as usual, as always, resistance does include
terror. Its true of the American Revolution. That's true of every
case I know. Just as its true that those who have a monopoly of
violence talk about themselves as carrying out counter terror.
The Coalition - Including Algeria, Russia, China, Indonesia
Now that's pretty impressive and that has to do with the coalition
that is now being organized to fight the war against terror. And
it's very interesting to see how that coalition is being described.
So have a look at this morning's Christian Science Monitor. That's
a good newspaper. One of the best international newspapers, with
real coverage of the world. The lead story, the front-page story,
is about how the United States, you know people used to dislike
the United States but now they are beginning to respect it, and
they are very happy about the way that the US is leading the war
against terror. And the prime example, well in fact the only serious
example, the others are a joke, is Algeria. Turns out that Algeria
is very enthusiastic about the US war against terror. The person
who wrote the article is an expert on Africa. He must know that
Algeria is one of the most vicious terrorist states in the world
and has been carrying out horrendous terror against its own population
in the past couple of years, in fact. For a while, this was under
wraps. But it was finally exposed in France by defectors from the
Algerian army. It's all over the place there and in England and so
on. But here, we're very proud because one of the worst terrorist
states in the world is now enthusiastically welcoming the US war
on terror and in fact is cheering on the United States to lead the
war. That shows how popular we are getting.
And if you look at the coalition that is being formed against terror
it tells you a lot more. A leading member of the coalition is Russia
which is delighted to have the United States support its murderous
terrorist war in Chechnya instead of occasionally criticizing it
in the background. China is joining enthusiastically. It's delighted
to have support for the atrocities it's carrying out in western
China against, what it called, Muslim secessionists. Turkey, as I
mentioned, is very happy with the war against terror. They are
experts. Algeria, Indonesia delighted to have even more US support
for atrocities it is carrying out in Ache and elsewhere. Now we
can run through the list, the list of the states that have joined
the coalition against terror is quite impressive. They have a
characteristic in common.
They are certainly among the leading terrorist states in the world.
And they happen to be led by the world champion.
What is Terrorism?
Well that brings us back to the question, what is terrorism? I have
been assuming we understand it. Well, what is it? Well, there happen
to be some easy answers to this. There is an official definition.
You can find it in the US code or in US army manuals. A brief
statement of it taken from a US army manual, is fair enough, is
that terror is the calculated use of violence or the threat of
violence to attain political or religious ideological goals through
intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear. That's terrorism. That's
a fair enough definition. I think it is reasonable to accept that.
The problem is that it can't be accepted because if you accept
that, all the wrong consequences follow. For example, all the
consequences I have just been reviewing. Now there is a major effort
right now at the UN to try to develop a comprehensive treaty on
terrorism. When Kofi Annan got the Nobel prize the other day, you
will notice he was reported as saying that we should stop wasting
time on this and really get down to it.
But there's a problem. If you use the official definition of
terrorism in the comprehensive treaty you are going to get completely
the wrong results.
So that can't be done. In fact, it is even worse than that. If you
take a look at the definition of Low Intensity Warfare which is
official US policy you find that it is a very close paraphrase of
what I just read. In fact, Low Intensity Conflict is just another
name for terrorism. That's why all countries, as far as I know,
call whatever horrendous acts they are carrying out, counter
terrorism. We happen to call it Counter Insurgency or Low Intensity
Conflict. So that's a serious problem. You can't use the actual
definitions. You've got to carefully find a definition that doesn't
have all the wrong consequences.
Why did the United States and Israel Vote Against a Major Resolution
Condemning Terrorism?
There are some other problems. Some of them came up in December
1987, at the peak of the first war on terrorism, that's when the
furor over the plague was peaking. The United Nations General
Assembly passed a very strong resolution against terrorism, condemning
the plague in the strongest terms, calling on every state to fight
against it in every possible way. It passed unanimously. One country,
Honduras abstained. Two votes against; the usual two, United States
and Israel. Why should the United States and Israel vote against
a major resolution condemning terrorism in the strongest terms, in
fact pretty much the terms that the Reagan administration was using?
Well, there is a reason. There is one paragraph in that long
resolution which says that nothing in this resolution infringes on
the rights of people struggling against racist and colonialist
regimes or foreign military occupation to continue with their
resistance with the assistance of others, other states, states
outside in their just cause. Well, the United States and Israel
can't accept that. The main reason that they couldn't at the time
was because of South Africa. South Africa was an ally, officially
called an ally. There was a terrorist force in South Africa. It
was called the African National Congress. They were a terrorist
force officially. South Africa in contrast was an ally and we
certainly couldn't support actions by a terrorist group struggling
against a racist regime. That would be impossible.
And of course there is another one. Namely the Israeli occupied
territories, now going into its 35th year. Supported primarily by
the United States in blocking a diplomatic settlement for 30 years
now, still is. And you can't have that. There is another one at
the time. Israel was occupying Southern Lebanon and was being
combated by what the US calls a terrorist force, Hizbullah, which
in fact succeeded in driving Israel out of Lebanon. And we can't
allow anyone to struggle against a military occupation when it is
one that we support so therefore the US and Israel had to vote
against the major UN resolution on terrorism. And I mentioned before
that a US vote againstis essentially a veto. Which is only half
the story. It also vetoes it from history. So none of this was ever
reported and none of it appeared in the annals of terrorism. If
you look at the scholarly work on terrorism and so on, nothing that
I just mentioned appears. The reason is that it has got the wrong
people holding the guns. You have to carefully hone the definitions
and the scholarship and so on so that you come out with the right
conclusions; otherwise it is not respectable scholarship and
honorable journalism. Well, these are some of problems that are
hampering the effort to develop a comprehensive treaty against
terrorism. Maybe we should have an academic conference or something
to try to see if we can figure out a way of defining terrorism so
that it comes out with just the right answers, not the wrong answers.
That won't be easy.
4. What are the Origins of the September 11 Crime?
Well, let's drop that and turn to the 4th question, What are the
origins of the September 11 crimes? Here we have to make a distinction
between 2 categories which shouldn't be run together. One is the
actual agents of the crime, the other is kind of a reservoir of at
least sympathy, sometimes support that they appeal to even among
people who very much oppose the criminals and the actions. And
those are 2 different things.
Category 1: The Likely Perpetrators
Well, with regard to the perpetrators, in a certain sense we are
not really clear. The United States either is unable or unwilling
to provide any evidence, any meaningful evidence. There was a sort
of a play a week or two ago when Tony Blair was set up to try to
present it. I don't exactly know what the purpose of this was.
Maybe so that the US could look as though it's holding back on some
secret evidence that it can't reveal or that Tony Blair could strike
proper Churchillian poses or something or other. Whatever the PR
[public relations] reasons were, he gave a presentation which was
in serious circles considered so absurd that it was barely even
mentioned. So the Wall Street Journal, for example, one of the more
serious papers had a small story on page 12, I think, in which they
pointed out that there was not much evidence and then they quoted
some high US official as saying that it didn't matter whether there
was any evidence because they were going to do it anyway. So why
bother with the evidence? The more ideological press, like the New
York Times and others, they had big front-page headlines. But the
Wall Street Journal reaction was reasonable and if you look at the
so-called evidence you can see why. But let's assume that it's
true. It is astonishing to me how weak the evidence was. I sort of
thought you could do better than that without any intelligence
service [audience laughter]. In fact, remember this was after weeks
of the most intensive investigation in history of all the intelligence
services of the western world working overtime trying to put
something together. And it was a prima facie, it was a very strong
case even before you had anything. And it ended up about where it
started, with a prima facie case. So let's assume that it is true.
So let's assume that, it looked obvious the first day, still does,
that the actual perpetrators come from the radical Islamic, here
called, fundamentalist networks of which the bin Laden network is
undoubtedly a significant part. Whether they were involved or not
nobody knows. It doesn't really matter much.
Where did they come from?
That's the background, those networks. Well, where do they come
from? We know all about that. Nobody knows about that better than
the CIA because it helped organize them and it nurtured them for
a long time. They were brought together in the 1980's actually by
the CIA and its associates elsewhere:
Pakistan, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China was involved,
they may have been involved a little bit earlier, maybe by 1978.
The idea was to try to harass the Russians, the common enemy.
According to President Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, the US got involved in mid 1979. Do you remember, just
to put the dates right, that Russia invaded Afghanistan in December
1979. Ok. According to Brzezinski, the US support for the mujahedin
fighting against the government began 6 months earlier. He is very
proud of that. He says we drew the Russians into, in his words, an
Afghan trap, by supporting the mujahedin, getting them to invade,
getting them into the trap. Now then we could develop this terrific
mercenary army.
Not a small one, maybe 100,000 men or so bringing together the best
killers they could find, who were radical Islamist fanatics from
around North Africa, Saudi Arabia.anywhere they could find them.
They were often called the Afghanis but many of them, like bin
Laden, were not Afghans. They were brought by the CIA and its
friends from elsewhere. Whether Brzezinski is telling the truth or
not, I don't know. He may have been bragging, he is apparently very
proud of it, knowing the consequences incidentally. But maybe it's
true. We'll know someday if the documents are ever released.
Anyway, that's his perception. By January 1980 it is not even in
doubt that the US was organizing the Afghanis and this massive
military force to try to cause the Russians maximal trouble. It
was a legitimate thing for the Afghans to fight the Russian invasion.
But the US intervention was not helping the Afghans. In fact, it
helped destroy the country and much more.
The Afghanis, so called, had their own...it did force the Russians
to withdrew, finally. Although many analysts believe that it probably
delayed their withdrawal because they were trying to get out of
it. Anyway, whatever, they did withdraw.
Meanwhile, the terrorist forces that the CIA was organizing, arming,
and training were pursuing their own agenda, right away. It was no
secret. One of the first acts was in 1981 when they assassinated
the President of Egypt, who was one of the most enthusiastic of
their creators. In 1983, one suicide bomber, who may or may not
have been connected, it's pretty shadowy, nobody knows. But one
suicide bomber drove the US army-military out of Lebanon.
And it continued. They have their own agenda. The US was happy to
mobilize them to fight its cause but meanwhile they are doing their
own thing. They were clear very about it. After 1989, when the
Russians had withdrawn, they simply turned elsewhere. Since then
they have been fighting in Chechnya, Western China, Bosnia, Kashmir,
South East Asia, North Africa, all over the place.
The Are Telling Us What They Think
They are telling us just what they think. The United States wants
to silence the one free television channel in the Arab world because
it's broadcasting a whole range of things from Powell over to Osama
bin Laden. So the US is now joining the repressive regimes of the
Arab world that try to shut it up.
But if you listen to it, if you listen to what bin Laden says, it's
worth it. There is plenty of interviews. And there are plenty of
interviews by leading Western reporters, if you don't want to listen
to his own voice, Robert Fisk and others. And what he has been
saying is pretty consistent for a long time. He's not the only one
but maybe he is the most eloquent. It's not only consistent over
a long time, it is consistent with their actions.
So there is every reason to take it seriously. Their prime enemy
is what they call the corrupt and oppressive authoritarian brutal
regimes of the Arab world and when the say that they get quite a
resonance in the region.
They also want to defend and they want to replace them by properly
Islamist governments. That's where they lose the people of the
region. But up till then, they are with them. From their point of
view, even Saudi Arabia, the most extreme fundamentalist state in
the world, I suppose, short of the Taliban, which is an offshoot,
even that's not Islamist enough for them. Ok, at that point, they
get very little support, but up until that point they get plenty
of support. Also they want to defend Muslims elsewhere. They hate
the Russians like poison, but as soon as the Russians pulled out
of Afghanistan, they stopped carrying out terrorist acts in Russia
as they had been doing with CIA backing before that within Russia,
not just in Afghanistan. They did move over to Chechnya. But there
they are defending Muslims against a Russian invasion. Same with
all the other places I mentioned. From their point of view, they
are defending the Muslims against the infidels. And they are very
clear about it and that is what they have been doing.
Why did they turn against the United States?
Now why did they turn against the United States? Well that had to
do with what they call the US invasion of Saudi Arabia. In 1990,
the US established permanent military bases in Saudi Arabia which
from their point of view is comparable to a Russian invasion of
Afghanistan except that Saudi Arabia is way more important. That's
the home of the holiest sites of Islam. And that is when their
activities turned against the Unites States. If you recall, in 1993
they tried to blow up the World Trade Center. Got part of the way,
but not the whole way and that was only part of it. The plans were
to blow up the UN building, the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, the
FBI building. I think there were others on the list. Well, they
sort of got part way, but not all the way. One person who is jailed
for that, finally, among the people who were jailed, was a Egyptian
cleric who had been brought into the United States over the objections
of the Immigration Service, thanks to the intervention of the CIA
which wanted to help out their friend. A couple years later he was
blowing up the World Trade Center. And this has been going on all
over. I'm not going to run through the list but it's, if you want
to understand it, it's consistent. It's a consistent picture. It's
described in words. It's revealed in practice for 20 years. There
is no reason not to take it seriously. That's the first category,
the likely perpetrators.
Category 2: What about the reservoir of support?
What about the reservoir of support? Well, it's not hard to find
out what that is. One of the good things that has happened since
September 11 is that some of the press and some of the discussion
has begun to open up to some of these things. The best one to my
knowledge is the Wall Street Journal which right away began to run,
within a couple of days, serious reports, searching serious reports,
on the reasons why the people of the region, even though they hate
bin Laden and despise everything he is doing, nevertheless support
him in many ways and even regard him as the conscience of Islam,
as one said. Now the Wall Street Journal and others, they are not
surveying public opinion. They are surveying the opinion of their
friends: bankers, professionals, international lawyers, businessmen
tied to the United States, people who they interview in McDonalds
restaurant, which is an elegant restaurant there, wearing fancy
American clothes. That's the people they are interviewing because
they want to find out what their attitudes are. And their attitudes
are very explicit and very clear and in many ways consonant with
the message of bin Laden and others. They are very angry at the
United States because of its support of authoritarian and brutal
regimes; its intervention to block any move towards democracy; its
intervention to stop economic development; its policies of devastating
the civilian societies of Iraq while strengthening Saddam Hussein;
and they remember, even if we prefer not to, that the United States
and Britain supported Saddam Hussein right through his worst
atrocities, including the gassing of the Kurds, bin Laden brings
that up constantly, and they know it even if we don't want to.
And of course their support for the Israeli military occupation
which is harsh and brutal. It is now in its 35th year. The US has
been providing the overwhelming economic, military, and diplomatic
support for it, and still does. And they know that and they don't
like it. Especially when that is paired with US policy towards
Iraq, towards the Iraqi civilian society which is getting destroyed.
Ok, those are the reasons roughly. And when bin Laden gives those
reasons, people recognize it and support it.
Now that's not the way people here like to think about it, at least
educated liberal opinion. They like the following line which has
been all over the press, mostly from left liberals, incidentally.
I have not done a real study but I think right wing opinion has
generally been more honest. But if you look at say at the New York
Times at the first op-ed they ran by Ronald Steel, serious left
liberal intellectual. He asks Why do they hate us? This is the same
day, I think, that the Wall Street Journal was running the survey
on why they hate us. So he says "They hate us because we champion
a new world order of capitalism, individualism, secularism, and
democracy that should be the norm everywhere." That's why they hate
us. The same day the Wall Street Journal is surveying the opinions
of bankers, professionals, international lawyers and saying `look,
we hate you because you are blocking democracy, you are preventing
economic development, you are supporting brutal regimes, terrorist
regimes and you are doing these horrible things in the region.' A
couple days later, Anthony Lewis, way out on the left, explained
that the terrorist seek only "apocalyptic nihilism," nothing more
and nothing we do matters. The only consequence of our actions, he
says, that could be harmful is that it makes it harder for Arabs
to join in the coalition's anti-terrorism effort. But beyond that,
everything we do is irrelevant.
Well, you know, that's got the advantage of being sort of comforting.
It makes you feel good about yourself, and how wonderful you are.
It enables us to evade the consequences of our actions. It has a
couple of defects. One is it is at total variance with everything
we know. And another defect is that it is a perfect way to ensure
that you escalate the cycle of violence. If you want to live with
your head buried in the sand and pretend they hate us because
they're opposed to globalization, that's why they killed Sadat 20
years ago, and fought the Russians, tried to blow up the World
Trade Center in 1993. And these are all people who are in the midst
of corporate globalization but if you want to believe that,
yehcomforting. And it is a great way to make sure that violence
escalates. That's tribal violence. You did something to me, I'll
do something worse to you. I don't care what the reasons are. We
just keep going that way. And that's a way to do it. Pretty much
straight, left-liberal opinion.
Über Bitchslap (Score:5, Insightful)
Russia's 100-Megaton nukes; the most powerful ever built.
One was detonated half-yield at Novaya Zemlya on October 30th 1961.
It was hypothesized that if one placed enough of these nukes in one spot, and detonated them simultaneously, one could knock the Earth of its axis.
It should make short work of a measely asteroid.
Knunov
Re:Über Bitchslap (Score:3, Interesting)
Mass of spherical 300 meter diameter chondrite: ~4g/cc * 1.4E13cc ~= 5.6E10kg
Velocity: ~20000mps
Kinetic Energy of asteroid: 1.13E19 J
One megaton = 4.19E15 J
Energy of a 100 megaton bomb as a fraction of the kinetic energy of this asteroid: 1/27th
Hardly a bitch-slap. More of an abject whine.
Then there's the little matter of actually getting the Tsar Bomba to the asteroid. Hopefully in enough time to actually be able to steer the asteroid away, instead of fragmenting it into 5 chunks each of about 1E10 kg.
Nukes in Space (Score:3, Interesting)
richter scale (Score:2, Insightful)
First intuition: large longitudinal component.
Enough of these nukes in one spot
Surprised if there isn't ALREADY a system in place (Score:4, Funny)
Now, see that raises an interesting point.
Anarchy scares the controlling players of any political power structure, so who's to say that those in charge would share sky-watch information with the populace if they had it?
NASA, back during the Reagan years, had this really low profile military mirror version of itself; A whole second program complete with it's own shuttles which made space runs to plant military satellites in orbit. There's a lot of very expensive & very powerful junk up there which uses classified technologies far in advance of what John Q. Private Sector is allowed to sell in his hard drives. I'd be pretty surprised if there wasn't already enough hardware up there to do decent asteroid surveillance. --In fact, while it might seem like a long shot, I don't think it's that long a shot. . . I'd be willing to gamble that the American government knows a whole lot more about what's going on in Earth's vicinity than they talk about.
Of course, the way things seem to be run on this planet, I'd also be willing to gamble that even with the right hardware and regular reports, wishful thinking is far more pleasing to the mind, and far more distracting. Probably something along the lines of; "Yech! I don't want to worry about this asteroid stuff. I'm sure I'll be okay. I just need to make a pile of luxury resources for my wife and kids before the planet becomes a toxic waste land. This asteroid stuff only happens to poor people. Or at least, I'm sure it's possible to arrange it so it works out that way. .
-Fantastic Lad
Re:Surprised if there isn't ALREADY a system in pl (Score:2)
It would have to be pretty damn advanced if they were able to conceal shuttle re-entry... as in, beyond what's even theoretically possible according to the laws of physics as we understand them,
Re:You're joking, right? (Score:2)
Wait.. does this mean you normally schedule demonstrations about obscuring the truth?
So was your first message scheduled, or not?
[OT] Near miss? Reminds me of George Carlin (Score:4, Funny)
Near miss? It's not a near miss - it's a near HIT!
If it had hit the earth, it would have nearly missed...
The LINEAR Project (Score:4, Informative)
near miss is a relative term (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's sort of in the nature of these things that "near misses" will be very common compared to actual hits. Let's look at the numbers:
If we divide these numbers, we find that an object will be this close to earth on the average something a bit more than 2 million times as often as it actually hits the earth.
So, if an asteroid this size hits earth on the average once every 500000 years, then we should expect that one comes this close to earth on the average 4 times a year.
Offcourse I'm simplifying a lot here, and offcourse this is statistics, we migth just as well be hit one month from now. All I'm saying is that it's not very surprising that something comes "this close" fairly often.
Re:near miss is a relative term (Score:3, Insightful)
The earth isn't just sitting there, it is also actively attracting them to some extent.
nuclear plants meltdown is the real problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Today, however, a special kind of landmines endangers the continuity of any, let's say vertebrates, after the next big impact. Our nuclear facilities all over the planet are only safe as long as their cooling systems are working. The statics of these facilities are set to withstand the strongest 'natural' earthquakes.
Unfortunately an impact of an asteroid of decent size causes much stronger quakes. Depending on its energy, incoming angle, hit area etc. this will cause from just a few to complete worldwide nuclear meltdowns.
Any solution how to defuse this minefield should get you at least a Nobel prize.
Even more important... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, once they launch an attack, what will the rest of the nations of the world do? By the time everyone figures out exactly what happened, half a dozen nations might be actively involved in a nuclear war. Of course, this seems a bit paranoid, but this is the world we live in.
Its very possible that a 100 meter asteroid could sneak up on us and hit with little or no warning. At least if we have a few days warning, we can evacuate ground zero and all affected nations will know what is REALLY happening and won't panic and create more problems in the process.
Should we invest trillions of $$$ in defensive measures against this type of threat? Not now. We aren't even sure exactly what the threat would be. A rocky asteroid would present a different threat, and therefore a different solution compared to one comprised primarily of metal. We would require a different approach to deflecting them. And if we only discover them a month before impact, there is nothing we could do anyways, unless its a VERY small asteroid, and even then, the most we could probably do is adjust the location of ground zero, and not miss the earth entirely. Any solution will require the cumulative effects of time to work properly.
-Restil
Re:First nitpick post! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Asteroid defense shield, anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A near miss?!? (Score:2)
Perhaps they mean "near miss" as in a miss that was near, as compared to a "far miss" which would be a miss that was far away. Who says "near miss" is the same as "nearly miss" after all?
Re:Bitchslap (Score:2)
Ever seen The Day The Earth Caught Fire [imdb.com]?
Re:Bitchslap (Score:2)
If you placed enough custard powder in one place and detonated it simultaneously, one could knock the earth off its axis. What's your point?
The problem with shooting asteroids is that they're very small, in relation to space, which is very big. You have to hit them while they're a long way off and deflect their trajectories, rather than trying to shatter them, because the bits might still hit us. Note that we can't even target ICBMs particularly accurately here on Earth, so we rely on the fact that you can be a couple of miles off, but shockwaves, heat and radiation will do the damage anyway - and they won't if there's no atmosphere.
It should make short work of a measely asteroid.
What good is a thermonuclear warhead, Mr Andersen, if you don't have any way to get it onto the target?
Re:Then don't knock missile defense. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm one of those morons who thinks asteroids can't drive nuke-laden-Ryder trucks or steer a rusty old nuke-bearing freighter into a harbor. Moreover, I so stupid I don't believe asteroids will take evasive maneuvers to avoid being intercepted. I'm even stupider in that I don't believe spending $200 billion on Star Wars - The Sequel, would have saved the WTC.
The only reason Star Wars is back is there are plenty of hogs and Bush has rung the Treasury's dinner bell announcing the pig trough is full.
Re:As if we could anything about it! (Score:2)
It should be no coincidence, then, that the majority of collisions of asteroids and comets with Earth occured before the dawn of Mankind.
Chew on that. :P