[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Anti-Empire Report, May 12, 2010

[Brussel Morton K.]

The quotation still stands. I've read much of what Chomsky has said and written, especially recently, and his derision of those who deny global warning is undeniable, as the quotation states. 

I am convinced that you know very little about nuclear matters, but are confident in spouting off about them. The fear about the atmosphere igniting is in the same league as the fear that when the new accelerator at CERN gets going colliding particles together, it may cause a mini black hole that will expand and gobble us all up. There are obvious answers to that one based on physics theory and observations. As to the Trinity test, here is a quotation:

 " At the time of the first nuclear test in 1945, there was indeed some speculation that the test could ignite the earth’s atmosphere by causing the fusion of the nitrogen atoms in a reaction that would not stop until the atmosphere had been completely depleted and the earth wiped clean by the massive explosion in the process.   The hypothesis that this could happen was put forward by Edward Teller - a scientist known for having a flare for the dramatic. (he also put on sun tan lotion before the test.) Before the test of the weapon a few simple calculations were done which showed that this reaction could not occur and even if there were some fusion of nitrogen atoms, it could not sustain itself to grow into a major reaction.  Thus the fear was quashed before the test even was conducted. "

Furthermore, here is an intelligent response from (theoretical physicist) Michael Barnett, interviewed about the possibility of the CERN accelerator experiments gobbling up the earth, relevant also to the igniting of the atmosphere by the Trinity test. 

"When I spoke with Michael Barnett about the various worst-case scenarios that had been suggested for the LHC—mini stable black holes, killer strangelets, a cosmic phase shift that evaporates time and space—he was unequivocal in his insistence that the risk posed by the collider is nil. When I gently protested that I had seen other physicists quoted as saying the risk was infinitesimal, but still greater than zero, he stopped me short."

 "OK...this is something in the nature of scientists. There is a possibility that all the air in this room will be moved to that half and there will be none here, and you and I will be dead. It's never going to happen, but there is a possibility.... The problem is, the public can't see the difference. If you say there's a very small chance of something, they're thinking 1 percent, because they can't think of anything smaller. There's 99 percent and there's 1 percent. That's it. And in reality, well...I don't think that way, first of all. I don't think there's a small chance that all the air in the room is going to go to that side and we're going to die. There's never been a room in the history of mankind where that's happened. So, the chance is zero, actually. But if you want to talk about it from a scientist's point of view, they can make up some stupid number which has no meaning."
 
The "stupid number" in the case of the first nuclear test explosion was something like 1/3,000,000 as floated by Teller. In fact it was essentially zero. There are always uncertainties which could make it infinitesimal but not zero, as the example given by Barnett above. 

The abstract written by Teller and coauthors, declassified only in 1979, corroborates this. You can find it under a Wikipedia article on the Manhattan Project, reference number 15..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project 

The bottom line is that there is much ignorant alarmist propaganda about nuclear matters and nuclear power fed by inordinate fear and distrust. 

--mkb

On May 13, 2010, at 2:50 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:


> Are you purposely ignoring what Chomsky said about the the relation of Limbaugh/Palin/et al. to the teaparty movement?  Or didn't you read it?
> 
> The frightening ignorance of American experts on nuclear power from the beginning is a matter of record. On the eve of the Trinity experiment, members of Oppenheimer's crew that thought there was a possibility that it would ignite the atmosphere.  They didn't know, but went ahead with the test.
> 
> But there is a lot of (public) money to be made from nuclear power.  Whom are its promoters paid by?
> 
> On 5/12/10 11:51 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>> If you'll pardon the expression, what is pure crap. The only scientists
>> I know who suggested such things were Edward Teller's acolytes; the
>> great majority of the science experts, physicists, thought it was nutty.
>> And of course, it should be noted that Cockburn thinks the climate issue
>> is a non issue—one of the deniers. Is he paid by Exxon-Mobile or BP or…?
>> 
>> On another line, i thought you, and others, might be interested in what
>> Chomsky has to say about science and a Tea party heroine . Among his
>> comments:
>> 
>> Listen to talk radio sometimes, which I do a lot when I'm driving. It's
>> a segment of popular opinion. I happened to catch Rush Limbaugh
>> interviewing Sarah Palin. For anybody who cares about possible survival,
>> it's pretty frightening. It was all leading questions, "Sarah, what do
>> you think of global warming?" "Oh, that's just made up by elitist
>> liberals who are taking our jobs who don't care about us poor people.
>> It's nothing like that. Look out the window, do you see any palm trees?
>> Well, that takes care of global warming."
>> 
>> For the rest of the Chomsky interview, see
>> 
>> http://www.zcommunications.org/government-involvement-with-science-and-art-by-noam-chomsky
>> 
>> --mkb
>> 
>> P.S., You ignored my question…
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On May 12, 2010, at 11:32 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> 
>>> I think perhaps Cockburn might return the compliment.
>>> 
>>> I'm appalled at the recent liberal cave-in on nuclear power (except
>>> for Iranians) and glad that Cockburn points it out. (As a secondary
>>> school student I interviewed people at the AEC who described how
>>> "experts" would make it possible to dredge harbors with atomic bombs
>>> while providing safe, clean, and virtually free power.) Fool me once,
>>> as G. Bush said...
>>> 
>>> This seems about right to me: <http://www.spectacle.org/0510/seger.html>.
>>> 
>>> On 5/12/10 10:56 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I guess I have used lawyers a couple of times (once when I was
>>>> fighting for
>>>> my job at a research reactor, and then more recently as I'm coming to
>>>> the end
>>>> of my line ):=)), so that makes me a member of the upper middle
>>>> class. But I
>>>> don't believe in rigid demarkations insofar as class is concerned.
>>>> 
>>>> But how about you, Carl?
>>>> 
>>>> And as for Cockburn, he is ignorant about societies' real problems and
>>>> opportunities concerning energy issues and more than ignorant about
>>>> nuclear
>>>> power and its "irrefutable" dangers. I know whereof I speak. Too often,
>>>> Cockburn's just nutty and self absorbed.
>>>> 
>>>> --mkb
>>>> 
>>>> On May 12, 2010, at 10:10 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> ...This brings us to the American class system, which Russell Baker once
>>>>> beautifully defined in terms of access to lawyers. Having a lawyer on
>>>>> permanent retainer "is the very essence of richness." That's the upper
>>>>> class. Those in the upper middle class hire a lawyer when they feel they
>>>>> need one to handle wills, contracts and so forth. Middle-class
>>>>> people know
>>>>> they ought to employ lawyers but can't quite afford them. Members of the
>>>>> lower middle class believe they can defend themselves better than any
>>>>> lawyer, and can't afford one anyway. To lower-class folk, public
>>>>> defender
>>>>> and prosecutor look identical.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The lower middle class is what we're focusing on here, the people
>>>>> who own
>>>>> auto repair shops, bakeries, bicycle shops, plant stores, dry cleaners,
>>>>> fish stores and all the other small businesses across America - in
>>>>> sum, the
>>>>> "petite bourgeoisie," stomped by regulators and bureaucrats while
>>>>> the big
>>>>> fry get zoning variances and special clause exemptions. The left always
>>>>> hated the petite bourgeoisie because it wasn't the urban proletariat and
>>>>> thus the designated agent of revolutionary change. Today's left no
>>>>> longer
>>>>> believes in revolutionary change but despises the petite bourgeoisie
>>>>> out of
>>>>> inherited political disposition and class outlook. Ninety-five
>>>>> percent of
>>>>> all the firms in America hire fewer than ten people. There's your petite
>>>>> bourgeoisie for you: not frightening, not terrifying and in fact quite
>>>>> indispensable.
>>>>> 
>>>>> And the petit bourgeois are legitimately pissed off. Whatever
>>>>> backwash they
>>>>> got from the stimulus often wasn't readily apparent. They can't afford
>>>>> health plans for themselves or their employees. They're three or four
>>>>> payrolls away from the edge of the cliff, and when they read about
>>>>> trillions in handouts for bankers, trillions in impending deficits,
>>>>> blueprints for green energy regs that will put them out of business,
>>>>> what
>>>>> they hear is the ocean surge pounding away at the bottom of that same
>>>>> cliff.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The conventional parties have nothing to offer them. The left disdains
>>>>> them. But here comes the tea party, whose spirit is very well caught by
>>>>> David Barstow, the Times reporter whose long piece on February 16
>>>>> prompted
>>>>> [Frank] Rich's mad column[s].
>>>>> 
>>>>> Rich refers to Barstow's "chilling, months-long investigation of the tea
>>>>> party movement," as though the reporter had gone undercover,
>>>>> watching Klan
>>>>> rituals through binoculars somewhere in a cow pasture. This is a silly
>>>>> mischaracterization of Barstow's perceptive and rather sympathetic
>>>>> account
>>>>> of tea partydom, in which he significantly doesn't quote the SPLC
>>>>> but pops
>>>>> in, right at the end, an obligatory quote from an Idaho lawyer who
>>>>> sued the
>>>>> Hayden Lake Aryans into extinction.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Of course, there are many flavors in the tea party blend. There are nuts
>>>>> and opportunists, as in any political formation. You can trace some
>>>>> of its
>>>>> ideology back to the nineteenth-century Know-Nothings, a typical
>>>>> platform
>>>>> of which, in 1841, called for extending the term of naturalization to
>>>>> twenty-one years, restricting public office to the native-born (there's
>>>>> your birther movement), keeping the Bible in schools and resisting "the
>>>>> encroachment of a foreign civil and spiritual power upon the
>>>>> institutions
>>>>> of our country." Back then this meant the Vatican; today it's Davos,
>>>>> Bilderberg, the UN, the IPCC.
>>>>> 
>>>>> At this point leftists invariably start quoting Richard Hofstadter's
>>>>> 1964
>>>>> essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." They should put
>>>>> aside that
>>>>> snotty essay and reflect on their own dismal failures. Under the
>>>>> leadership
>>>>> of Obama - cheered into office by 99.9 percent of the left - and a
>>>>> Democratic Congress, we have a whole new war and no antiwar movement
>>>>> of any
>>>>> heft; a bailout for Wall Street; an awful health bill connived at by
>>>>> both
>>>>> parties; the prospect of loan guarantees for new nuclear energy
>>>>> plants; a
>>>>> huge hike in defense spending, particularly nuclear weapons; and, at
>>>>> least
>>>>> at the rhetorical level, an impending onslaught on Social Security.
>>>>> Constitutional abuses endorsed or instigated by the White House
>>>>> continue in
>>>>> a straight sequence from the Bush years.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Response from the left? No twitch in the morgue. The AFL-CIO was
>>>>> bought off
>>>>> from resistance to the health bill by getting relief on its Cadillac
>>>>> health
>>>>> plans. Because of alleged anthropologically prompted global warming, the
>>>>> green movement has sat on its hands, hopelessly split on nuclear power,
>>>>> whose real, baneful effects have been irrefutably demonstrated, starting
>>>>> with nuclear waste. There's been near total silence on the huge nuclear
>>>>> weapons budget boost (the largest for Los Alamos since 1944). Total
>>>>> silence
>>>>> on the Patriot Act, reauthorized February 27. What to do? Rally
>>>>> round the
>>>>> flag and scaremonger about the right, where's there's actual political
>>>>> ferment.
>>>>> 
>>>>> [That's Alex Cockburn on class and the tea party. Where do you belong on
>>>>> the class scale by Russell Baker's calculus, Mort? --CGE]
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 5/12/10 9:41 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>>>>>> I would suggest a) that there are similar aspects to the current
>>>>>> situation and what has passed before, but there are also
>>>>>> differences too,
>>>>>> as always — Blum brought out similarities; b) he did not infer or say
>>>>>> that /*all*/ people are stupid (or ignorant), but there are plenty of
>>>>>> them and they come out of the woods periodically. This was his point I
>>>>>> think, and people should understand it.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> As for Chomsky's mistaken? remark: I would say there are /*some*/
>>>>>> grievances which are legitimate, clearly not all, and it is unclear
>>>>>> to me
>>>>>> that those motivating the current movement are legitimate. You can pick
>>>>>> and choose (socialism? government? Obama's birth?, immigration? taxes?
>>>>>> bailouts?…). Mostly, they seem to be missing the boat.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I think a degree of contempt is justifiable, but one should certainly
>>>>>> not dismiss them as a "movement", however illformed and ill informed it
>>>>>> is.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> You mean by "petit bourgeois" that they are mostly shopkeepers, small
>>>>>> business, "middle-class" people? Or are they salaried or
>>>>>> unemployed? How
>>>>>> many union people join them? Immigrants? I suspect that there are even
>>>>>> fairly well off Repubs among them, those who hate Dems, Obama and other
>>>>>> despicables who want to spread their wealth.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Sometimes contempt is appropriate, but, again, one should try to
>>>>>> enlighten and organize for better ends as much as possible. I'm not
>>>>>> optimistic here, but good luck. (Admission: I hung out with them once
>>>>>> with flyers showing that their precious tax dollars were being diverted
>>>>>> to killing, and was ignored for the most part.)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --mkb
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On May 12, 2010, at 8:11 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I think it would be a mistake to include either (a) there's nothing
>>>>>>> unique about the current political situation or (b) it's all because
>>>>>>> people are stupid. There certainly are parallels between
>>>>>>> anti-communism
>>>>>>> and anti-terrorism - but that's because they were both massive
>>>>>>> propaganda enterprises of the American ascendancy.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Chomsky's comments have certainly been misinterpreted. He makes two
>>>>>>> points, both correct it seems to me: (a) the grievances motivating the
>>>>>>> teaparty movement are real; and (b) the Left in this country has
>>>>>>> allowed the Right to offer (mad and dangerous) interpretations of
>>>>>>> those grievances.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Simply ridiculing the teaparty movement - or dismissing it with
>>>>>>> contempt as simply low-class racism - is also mad and dangerous. A
>>>>>>> flood of (quite legitimate) popular distress - dammed up by liberal
>>>>>>> indifference and denied a political spillway - will burst through in
>>>>>>> crazy and far more dangerous ways.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Of course the tea party movement is not a working class uprising. The
>>>>>>> teapartiers are, in classical terms, mainly petty bourgeois - but with
>>>>>>> substantial appeal to the working class, as the Nazis were. The
>>>>>>> crucial point about them is that, while they amount to about 18%
>>>>>>> of the
>>>>>>> population (according to a NYT survey), 48% of the population
>>>>>>> sympathize with their attitudes and beliefs (as compared with 44% for
>>>>>>> Obama).
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> What the left should be doing is what it did in the 1930s, when there
>>>>>>> was also a very dangerous nativist movement, but it was countered by
>>>>>>> working class organizing - not contempt for the stupidity of the
>>>>>>> masses. --CGE
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On 5/12/10 6:19 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>>>>>>>>> ... *Anti-Empire Report *May 12, 2010 William Blum
>>>>>>>>> www.killinghope.org <http://www.killinghope.org>
>>>>>>>>> <http://www.killinghope.org>
>>>>>>>>> <http://www.killinghope.org/> *Terminally-dumb people have always
>>>>>>>>> been with us of course. It can’t be that we’ve suddenly gone
>>>>>>>>> stupid.* ... If you shake your head and roll your eyes at the
>>>>>>>>> nonsense coming out of the Teabagger followers of Sarah “Africa is
>>>>>>>>> a country” Palin and other intellectual giants like Glenn Beck and
>>>>>>>>> Rush Limbaugh ... If you have thoughts of moving abroad after the
>>>>>>>>> latest silly lies and fantasies like “Obama the Marxist” and “Obama
>>>>>>>>> the antichrist” ... If you share Noam Chomsky’s feeling: "I have
>>>>>>>>> never seen anything like this in my lifetime” ... keep in mind that
>>>>>>>>> the right wing has long been at least as stupid and as
>>>>>>>>> mean-spirited...
>>>> 
>> 


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