From: mporter@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mitchell Porter)
Subject: Re: Conspiracy to Destroy the Earth?
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 03:35:32 GMT

I am posting, with the author's permission, a detailed response to my
original "Conspiracy to Destroy the Earth?" posting which I received via
email; I am posting it on Usenet because I think it is a very good
exposition of all the reasons to be *extremely* skeptical about the
story I was told, and similar tall tales.

Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 16:54:06 -0800
From: Cosma R. Shalizi <lizi@ocf.Berkeley.EDU>
To: mporter@nyx.cs.du.edu

Article 1049 of alt.destroy.the.earth:
From: mporter@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mitchell Porter)
Subject: Conspiracy to Destroy the Earth?
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 00:32:54 GMT

I started writing this article about the events of last night intending to
send it off to a mailing list to which I subscribe, but I am posting it to
Usenet News instead because it's not really on-topic for the list, whereas
here I think it is. I am not a regular reader of alt.conspiracy or
alt.destroy.the.earth, so perhaps these topics have come up here before.
Anyhow, on with the story...


Before I read this morning's mail I want to have a go at describing some
strange things that happened last night. I was walking home from the train
station and overtook a guy who had been walking along slowly ahead of me
(it was about 12.30 am). He said a few things by way of talking a little,
but I was thinking about net-related matters and it was damn cold anyway,
so I said I wanted to keep going.. so then he pulled out a $10 note and
gave it to me. This slowed me down a bit. We did end up talking for a few
minutes, in the course of which he told me a bit about his life: briefly,
he was born in Algeria just before the Revolution, a "pied-noir", so
neither the French nor the revolutionary Algerians would accept his
generation; he went to Europe as a young man - said he knew London and
Paris like the back of his hand; now he was here in Australia, married
with five children, and his advice to me was 'to follow your mind, not the
money or the carrot'.
  Anyhow, after we separated, a few minutes later I ran into *another*
guy, who was hurrying past until he saw me and stopped to say hello. I
recognized him after a few moments: we had spoken in a cafe a few times -
then he was telling me of the necessity of space colonization, so the
human species doesn't have all of its eggs in one basket. We talked a bit,
and then a bit longer (but it was mostly him talking and me listening),
and I will have a go at summarizing what he told me:
  He is now homeless - but he has a list of dozens of addresses that he
tries to visit every day. Basically his aim is still to try to save some
fraction of the human race from extinction, but his preferred means have
changed and this time I got to hear more of his worldview. He began by
saying how we're all living in a sick society, citing as an example an
incident within the last few days where he had seen a street kid carrying
several ?ounces of pure speed, who was handing it out to anybody who
wanted it. "Now how do you think that sort of stuff gets on the streets?"
he asked.
	1. Even if this happened, there is an exceedingly simple explanation.
	   Selling drugs makes lots of money. Giving away free samples, as
	   laundry-detergent makers know, can be quite effective - especially
	   when the product is addictive. In other words, the answer to his
	   question is, "Free enterprise at work."
 After a few other examples, he went on to say that this overall
sickness was largely attributable to universal corruption - "the police,
the government minister, the US senate". "Kids don't believe the teacher,
they don't believe the minister, they don't believe their parents. If you
lie to a five or six-year-old, they may not really have an idea of what a
lie is just yet, but they know they're being deceived."
	"Overall sickness ... attributable to universal corruption?" Hogwash.
	I could just as plausibly say that universal corruption is
	attributable to society's overall sickness, or attribute both to a
	"degenerative virtue." ("Virtue" in the now archaic sense of "specific
	property.") Most five or six year olds _very well indeed_ what a lie
	is - certainly I and my friends did.
  He went on to say that a state of massive denial is near-universal -
people don't want to see how bad things are, how bad they are getting, or
what is just around the corner - which, he said, is nuclear Armageddon. He
recounted a few stories about the way geopolitics supposedly really works;
eg the Russians saying to the US, "OK, we give in, we surrender, just so
we don't have to fight a war. But as the price you're going to have to
support all these people that *we've* been supporting" - (I think he was
talking about ex-Soviet Central Asia here) - "that's the price *you'll*
have to pay for getting us to drink Coca-Cola and accept the rest of your
shit." 
	This story in re the Russians is, to be blunt, bullshit. Certainly, for
	a long time the US more or less implied that, if, by some miracle,
	Communism "withered away" in a Soviet-bloc country, then the Marshall
	plan would be repeated, but by the time the Cold War ended, the US was
	too poor to follow up on this. We sure as Hell aren't supporting Soviet
	Central Asia. Mind you, this was how the sharper people on the US side
	predicted the Cold War would end from the beginning - that the US would
	win because Russia would go broke first. They neglected to consider
	that the US might also be broke. The Soviet government couldn't even
	keep itself fed, much less make deals with the US.
  For me the most interesting geopolitical story he told was his version
of China 1989. The US began by trying to entice China, with things like
aerospace technology transfer, and later exchange student programs, all
carefully calculated to try to spread the American system. "Several
thousand exchange students were sent to China, and there were no
restrictions on what they could take - sports cars, flashy clothes - and
of course your ordinary Chinese hasn't seen anything like this..." (This
is all meant to suggest what he said of course - it's not a word-for-word
quote, I didn't have a tape recorder running.) Essentially, their presence
was such a stimulus to the Chinese students, who in turn were a stimulus
to the urban workers, that the 1949 "democracy movement" turns out to have
been the result of American conspiracy. So *then*, the Chinese government
"made a really heavy decision: they sent in the tanks, and they shot their
own children, in order to send the message, that they were prepared to use
the bomb." (ie "if they were prepared to do that to their own children,
what would they do to America?") This action apparently reined in the
interference of the American government in China.
	Urk. Taking "sports cars" from the US to _China_? _Exchange
	students_? No. What happened was that, following the power struggles
	after Mao's death, the Chinese leadership fell to people who recogn-
	ized that capitalism is a very good way indeed of industrializing -
	after all, it grew up with it. So they set up parts of the economy
	as more or less capitalist, and it worked. People got richer.
	Rich people - especially rich, young, highly educated people - tend
	to demand a voice in the government. You may have noticed that many
	of the Tiananmen protesters carried placards of Mao - lots of them
	were people who believed the rhetoric about a _people's_ republic,
	etc. The message the Chinese government sent was to its own people:
	Dissent and be crushed. In re the exchange students: Many more Chinese
	students went and studied in the West than Westerns went to China.
	On their return, these may well have had some ideological influence -
	but the 1989 movement was not brought on by Americans flashing
	their Levis and trolling in their Pontiacs. (The idea that "the
	average Chinese" has never seen anything like a motor car is so
	incredibly wrong-headed and patronizing that I won't bother to
	comment.)
  Later on he briefly praised the virtues of Chinese civilization - "4000
years; America is just 200 years old, it's just a little brat", and
"they've never invaded or raped and plundered another people, they've been
nonaggressive for four thousand years"; he even advised me to go to the
library today and read some books on Chinese history. He then contrasted
East with West, saying "the fucking American government, it's out of
control..."
	5. China has a fascinating civilization and history. He doesn't know
	   squat about it. 4,000 years is _barely_ defensible if you count
	   illiterate villagers with semi-interesting pots as civilized.
	   Try more like 3,500 - whereas Europe, dating from Crete, can claim
	   at least 4,500. But that, and the fact that "American civilization,"
	   as opposed to a subspecies of Europe, doesn't exist, is a tangent.
	   The main point is that Chinese culture originated in a region much
	   smaller than the present main-land China, and it spread by the
	   usual methods - invasion, rape and plunder. The classical age of
	   Chinese philosophy was the Warring States period (c. -700 (memory
	   fades) to -221). During this time China was, in fact, a bunch of
	   warring feudal states, the rulers of which filled their time much
	   as rulers always have - with depravity, taxation, war and general
	   cruelty to commoners. Chinese schools of philosophy - at least the
	   ones which prospered - all claimed to have ways out of the chaos.
	   The school whih got itself put into practice was the Legalists,
	   who were, after Plato, the second group of people to elaborate
	   a totalitarian ideology. It delivered what it promised, and unified
	   China as a vast prison-camp. There was a revolt, a brief relapse
	   into anarchy, and what emerged was the Han empire. This based it-
	   self on a mixture of Confucianism and as much Legalism as it
	   could get away with. Chinese history is a succession of dynasties,
	   between which it was divided into squabbling principalities that
	   set their people to killing each other with as much gusto as any
	   other section of the human race.
	   As to their not being imperialistic, it is worth noting that
	   (as always, through the usual methods) the Tang dynasty ruled, in
	   addition to modern China (not including Tibet) modern Indo-China,
	   Korea, and so much of Central Asia that Li Po, the second greatest
	   poet of the dynasty, was in all probability born in Afghanistan.
	   It took the trauma of the Mongols to turn the Chinese even temp-
	   orarily isolationist. No doubt they will recover from this fairly
	   soon.
	   As to the East vs. the West - modern Europe (including its colonies,
	   such as the Americas and Oz) is the spoiled grand-child of old Asia.
	   It owes a lot to China and India and Mesopotamia and Egypt and
	   Persia. But it has definitely made its own, unique contributions:
	   modern science and its application to technology; the ideals of
	   representative democracy, the secular state and toleration; the
	   creation of truly global civilization. Some other ideas, which I
	   consider truly and deeply bad, it must take the blame for: nation-
	   alism and Marxism, for instance. But the fact is that not one of
	   the older nations is as it was. The Islamic world today, for in-
	   stance, is not the unified empire from which the West learned
	   mathematics, science, philosophy and even theology, but a fragmented
	   bunch of dirt-poor countries wasting themselves in ridiculous and
	   bloody quarrels, and a handful of oil principalities maintained by
	   the West. China today, certainly, is _not_ the China that was.
  I don't know how clear all this sounds, but anyhow, his essential
allegation is that there is an inner core of extremely powerful people in
America who are planning to launch the missiles soon (when he mentioned
this he would look at his watch, and say things like, "I hope we have at
least two years" - I don't know why he looked to the watch, perhaps for
dramatic emphasis).
	For the love of Cthulhu, WHY??? If the US launches, everyone else with
	nukes launches too - AT US!!! Power-hungry people are not usually
	thrilled by the prospect of ruling of radioactive rubble while watching
	their thyroids swell. And why not know, why wait two years? Why not
	wait eight? Or have done it the moment Ronnie came into office?
	(Of course, I can here the answer: "I don't know why they set their
	time-table like they do...")
He told me that because of a 50-year secrecy act of
some sort, you can't find out, say, who the first 300 people in the CIA
were, since it is held to be a matter of national security.
	Again, false. The political appointees - Director, Assistant
	Directors, etc., are matters of public record - they are appointed
	by the President and confirmed (or not confirmed) by the Senate.
	Requests for the "first three hundred people in the CIA" under the
	Freedom of Information Act _might_ be turned down on the grounds of
	national security. For a wonder, he's right about the 50 year limit
	on this - but as the CIA was founded in 1947, if he can hold out
	five more years, he can know for certain. Since it _was_ so long ago,
	they might give the names to him anyhow. Definitely they couldn't
	hide behind the national security clauses for the first 300 in the
	Office of Strategic Services, the precursor agency of the CIA, since
	that _was_ founded more than fifty years ago.
(This is where
he gave me a recap of Oliver North's appearance before the US Senate -
saying how North had said he was ordered to do what he did, but he
couldn't say who gave him his orders, since he would then be executed for
treason, and so the Senate agreed because North was thus following the
letter of the law stating that you can't divulge these names.)
	This is false - utterly, utterly false. North claimed that some of
	his orders came from his immediate superior, Admiral Pointdexter;
	others he refused to say. He didn't have to say he'd be shot for
	treason if he revealed them, for two reasons: A. The fifth amendment
	to the U.S. Constitution gives any person the right to refuse to
	testify if testifying would incriminate him, and B. The Congress
	(not just the Senate) granted North immunity to prosecution on
	the basis of his testimony _before_ he began to testify. Certainly,
	no Senator with half a brain _approved_ of North's actions, or his
	hiding them. Sen. Inoyue (?sp?) compared him to the defendants at
	Nuremberg. I can say all this with utter certainty, because, like
	anyone else with half a brain in this country (not many, alas) I
	watched the hearings as they were broadcast. Unless your friend
	cares to claim those were all a show, the real hearings were quite
	different, and he just _happened_ to find out about them...
And
presumably it is these people who are the only ones who have the capacity
to launch the missiles - and I think he assumes that they intend to do so
because he can't see any other reason for continuing to produce them. And
the fact that nobody even *knows* who the power-wielders are - he said -
was why he was looking for schemes to make a safe haven for part of
humanity to make it through a nuclear apocalypse, rather than trying to
avert the missile-firing altogether.
	"Presumably," indeed. The only person with missile-launching
	capability in the US is the President - though I've no doubt there
	are some fall-back arrangements in case he's in Washington when it
	gets vaporized. Of course, the elaborate apparatus of cyphered codes
	and keys and all _could_ just be a ruse, but he hasn't given us any
	reason to think so.
	There are two reasons the bombs keep getting made. First, the military
	budget in this country is a gigantic - if not terribly productive -
	jobs program. There are communities, and definitely companies, whose
	livelihoods depend on new bombs, new missiles, new bombers and new
	submarines. Until someone finds a way to effectively convert them
	to civilian production, any US government which makes serious cuts
	in "defense" risks loosing the next election ignominously. Second,
	bombs are made of radiocative materials. They decay. Fifty, even
	twenty year old nukes aren't reliably usable, and must be replaced,
	if arsenals are to be kept up to strength. (Personally, I see _no_
	reason not to let them wither away, but...)
  He used the phrase "the serpent's head" a few times, as in "You have to
find the serpent's head and chop it off,
	At least he knows his Mao: "Though a serpent be a thousand (meters?)
	long, to kill it one need only chop of the head." (Quoting from
	memory, and no doubt distorting it.)
if you want to do it that way."
	This is either ungrammatical or meaningless.
He said thousands of people around the world were trying to find out who
these top people were, but "they went underground 20 years ago... And
these are really ruthless people. They shot their own president on TV,
after all!"
	"20 years ago" means 1972 or thereabout. Kennedy - he was bound to
	show up here, wasn't he? - was shot in 1963, i.e., they were "above
	ground" when they orchestrated the assassination of the President.
	This seems improbable. So does their date of disappearence - a cabal
	running the US could _never_ afford to be visible; certainly if they
	could have managed this for the first 25 years (counting from the
	start of the CIA), there was no reason for them to hide in the age
	of Nixon.
I am pretty sure he said at one point that he knew seven
people who had been shot dead in the course of such investigations (as he
was talking, he was contantly looking around us to see if anyone was
approaching). Whether these seven were people he knew personally, I'm not
sure. 
	Indeed.
  I briefly mentioned the Internet, saying "couldn't you reach all these
millions of people you say you can't work out how to reach, by putting
your information out there". In trying to explain the net, I said that it
was a computer network linking mostly universities all over the world. He
said, in effect, that it was still probably not enough - that you could
tell all the college students the truth, and people would just panic
	Of course. I saw this coming, too. There's never anything sensible
	and construcive you can do against Them, and people are such insecure
	and feeble little sheep that a conspiracy theory (!!!) will send them
	raving off into the night.
("You'll probably start to panic when you realize how bad thngs are", he
warned me at the beginning; and indeed I was shivering violently
throughout a lot of the conversation, but I think that was because I was
standing there in the cold in just shirt, shorts and thongs.)
	Glad to see you, at least, had a firm grip on reality...
"The
students might try to start a revolution, but in that case the people who
run the show would just go ahead with their plans now, rather than later."
	Indeed - why _not_ now, rather than later? Why wait? So there can be
	a few million more people in the Third World to kill?
"On the bases where they have these weapons stationed, once they're
getting ready to launch, those places are completely sealed off - no
communications from the outside world. They wouldn't know what was going on."
	No. They are in communication with the NATO command centers - places
	like NORAD and SAC and so forth. This is essential - command _must_
	be able to give orders and get feedback, and for this reason we can
	say that the same is true of the Russians and Chinese.
This is why he emphasized the necessity of finding "the head of the
serpent" - if you knew who the conspirators were, and got the names to the
right people, they could perhaps stage a coup and head the thing off. But
he saw no way of finding out who they were. When I said, well isn't it
better to give it a go, rather than say, I can't stop the bombs from going
off, I'll try to save a few at least; he said no - if people are gong to
die, you should let them die peacefully, rather than have them spend their
last days in panic and terror.
	How considerate of him. So he goes and talks about this horrible
	conspiracy to a person who just explained to him that he can reach
	nearly every technogeek on the planet...
After all, when "5000" bombs went off it
would be "like the planet passing through the sun" 
	Wrong. Bombs are big, destructive things, but _anything_ humans
	can do at this point pales to insignificance beside, say, a big solar
 	flare. If we were to somehow drop the planet into the Sun, the atmo-
	sphere would go, as would the oceans, soil and rock would melt if not
	vaporize, etc. If every nuclear bomb were to explode simultaneously
	with every reactor melting down, we wouldn't get anywhere near there.
	From the alt.destroy.the.earth point of view, this is a crying shame,
	but it is true. 
- "all the oxygen in the atmosphere being destroyed".
	This is, as we say in the trade, lizardshit. Oxygen - and every other
	kind of atom - would have some interesting things done to it in the
	immediate vicinity of a blast, but even a few miles away the chances
	of it getting "transmuted" are very, very low. You'd have to worry much
	more about getting engulfed in a firestorm - and no, the bombs would
	not set off enough fires to burn up all the oxygen.
I had to this point not expressed any
criticisms of what he had said, simply in order to find out what he might
say, but the idea that after such an event everything would be over and
done with stuck me as absurd. "It might be over quickly in the major
population centres, where the bombs go off directly overhead, but if
you're outside..."
	It is absurd. You're right. (You had me worried, though, Mitch...)
In any case, I didn't get much of a chance to argue
this, because at this point *another* guy happened along, who overheard us
talking about bombs, and said "You have more to worry about than atomic
bombs these days... There's the electromagnetic bomb." When I asked him
what that might be, he said it "used" electromagnetic radiation to "turn
one atom into another". "It's a bit like alchemy." I asked him for
details, and he said "It changes the number of electrons that the atom can
hold... You happen to have run into a drunken physicist."
	There isn't an electromagnetic bomb. There certainly can't be one
	that does what he described. Electromagnetism is the force that
	holds the electrons in the atom, and governs interactions between
	atoms, but the number of electrons an atom can hold is determined
	solely by the number of protons in its nucleus, and is, in fact, equal
	to the number of protons in its nucleus. This number gets changed in
	one of three ways: A. Radiocative decay, B. Nuclear fission or
	C. Nuclear fusion. Electromagnetism is so much weaker than the
	intra-nuclear forces as to make it impossible to change nuclei with
	it. If this person was a physicist, it was either only in the sense
	an incompetent hack like Fritjof Capra can be considered a physicist,
	or he making fun of you and your friend to the point where he probably
	ruptured his lungs laughing afterwards. (I have serious problems
	restraining my sarcasm - no real offense intended. May I recommend
	J. Trefil's _From Atoms to Quarks_ as a nice, non-technical intro-
	duction to the wonderful world of atomic and subatomic physics? It
	got me interested in this business in the first place...)
	Now this "electromagnetic bomb" idea might be defended by the usual
	"Oh, that's the _old_ theory. In my new one it is clear that-" But
	it so happens that the current theory of electromagnetism, quantum
	electrodynamics, is the single most successful theory in physics
	today. There is a wonderful and not at all technical explication
	of it by one of its founders: R. Feynmann's _QED: The Strange Theory
	of Light and Matter_. The evidence needed to abandon it would have
	to be compelling indeed - and it's not forthcoming.
The first guy said, "Oh well, I don't want to hear about it if there's
something even worse,
	Typical.
 it doesn't change our situation..." and said something about the
importance of dealing with the conspiracy behind the weapons machine. The
second guy said, "Oh well, if you're talking about conspiracies, the
military-industrial complex isn't the *real* one", and I said, "So what
is? The Committee of 300?" but it turned out he just meant the Masons.
"You don't get anywhere in US politics without being a Mason.
	In re the Masons: crap.
(The first
guy had already said that *they* have lookouts everywhere, in the fof
organizations which are backing or banking the group which is planning to
use the bombs: such groups include the Illuminati, the Masons, the Roman
Catholic Church...)
	Of coure. Just how far back does this merry little cabal go, and
	what were they planning to do _before_ nukes were invented? This
	couldn't, by any conceivable stretch of the imagination, predate
	the discovery of the nucleus in 190-something. (THE ILLUMINATI???)
  At this point I coldn't stand the cold any more and didn't want to
pursue any of these matters right there and then, partly because I wasn't
sure *where* I would want to start asking for clarifications,
justifications, etc. So I simply got the second guy's number (I haven't
yet phoned him; it's now only 9 am); and I may well run into the first guy
again, if I keep my eyes open.
  Okay. I have basically attempted to describe what I heard without
inserting too many critical comments. About the only factor I haven't
mentioned so far, I think, is that the first guy also said a few times that
he thought the whole thing was probably Satanic ("this is the devil's
planet now"), which I guess means that he has an outlook similar to that
expressed in (for example) the Australian book "The Cosmic Conspiracy",
which alleges that human geopolitics is a battleground for cosmic forces
of Good and Evil (not a rare claim, actually).
	Indeed. This is probably one of the most blatant and disgusting
	forms of human _hubris_ - the idea that a bunch of plains apes are
	the focus of the Power That Be, who have nothing better to do than
	intervene in our sensely and bloody quarrels. It was marginally
	defensible to to hold such views in the time of Augustine; by the
	time of Hegel and Marx it had become embarassing to persons of
	sense; today it is probably pathological. (N.B. people holding
	such views _never_ think the world is in the hands of Good at the
	moment.)
Anyhow, if you inhabit a
reality-tunnel anywhere near that of consensus reality, you can probably
think of lots of reasons not to believe this world-picture. I know I can
think of all sorts of arguments against the idea of a (possibly satanic)
conspiracy to bring about a nuclear apocalypse.
	"Reality-tunnel" seems altogether appropriate for such world-views
	as his: Narrow, blinkered and dark.
But, I also recognize that
my major motivation in thinking up counter-arguments is simply that I do
not *want* to believe in such a conspiracy, since to put it mildly it
makes life somewhat more difficult.
	True enough, but that doesn't invalidate the arguments. The fact that
	geometry originated in measuring land for taxation purposes does not
	make geometry invalid for anarchists or objectors to taxation. Your
	friend's statements of fact have proven either false, dubious on the
	basis of other evidence, or simply lunatic.
What future for extropian hopes such
as indefinite life extension wheneverything's gong to go up in a few years
anyway? And the problem is, how can anyone who is *not* a member of the
hypothetical conspiracy prove that the conspiracy is *not* there, unless
they actually are part of the "inner core"?
	Proving such negatives is indeed difficult. But consider this: How
	can you prove that invisible, intangible pink furry gremlins that
	feed on petroleum aren't what _really_ make cars go, and that they
	live in the cylinders of the engine? Is there any reason to believe
	in this conspiracy? No. Is there reason to think this conspiracy
	is a piece of paranoid raving? Yes. Would it be rational to believe
	in it? Only if you have a preference for more rather than less
	falsehood and insanity.
  You can remove the part about Satanism and still retain the idea of a
conspiracy whose aim is global genocide. This idea I have actually seen
expressed before,
	It's not _that_ uncommon. At least a few science fiction novels on
	this theme, besides the usual paranoid screeds...
in the final chapter of "High Weirdness by Mail", of all
places. In stark contrast to the cuttingly sarcastic reviews which make up
90% of the rest of the book, that whole last chapter is devoted to
excerpts from a newsletter called "Further Connections" put out by Waves
Forest (PO Box 768, Monterey CA 93940, USA). Here are Ivan Stang's comments:
  "One of the Robin Hoods of suppressed data. Anyone who wants to
seriously look into the possibility that major scientific breakthroughs
ARE being hidden by THEM owe it to themselves to send for his info, which
includes listings and addresses for many fringe research groups not
covered in this book. Not funny at all... horrifying, yes;
outlandish-sounding, HELL yes; but funny, no. Very persuasive, sobering,
almost poetic essay/rants with attached bibliographies on the various
technologies and metaphysical discoveries. Be prepared, however, for some
real shocks to your programming. $4 should cover expenses for the first
mailing, which contains more than 400 sources. A penny a source, folks.
You gonna pass it up? *Huh, boy?*" (I have sent away for this mailing
myself; no response so far.)
	Some technological innovations might well be surpressed. But as a 
	test, when this mailing arrives, see if there are any references
	to the "gasoline pill" story. If so, Mr. Forest (or Ms. Forest)
	is one of those wonderful, gullible cranks this country produces
	so well...
  And some words from Waves Forest:
  Imagine you are among only a few hundred masters of a whole planet's
resources, with five billion slaves surronding you, many in bad shape
because you've mishandled some resources, many others starting to wake up
to the situation. In your attempts to strengthen your psition you have
seriously mistreated a lot of them, or hired others to do so, and you are
slowly losing the struggle to keep the extent of your crimes and cruelties
a secret.
  If you were in such a position, would it feel safe to share with all
citizens the advanced technolgies developed in your top-secret "defense"
laboratories? Some of these discoveries could free mankind from dependence
on your resource monopolies, and provide tools for a mass uprising and
overthrow of your regimes.
	Why would the defense laboratories work on such things _in_the_first_
	place_? Fortuitous (?sp) discoveries are not as common in science as
	the mythology makes them out to be - and notice that now, mind you,
	you have to rope in hundreds or thousands of scientists, engineers
	and technicians into the conspiracy. Not just ones working on, say,
	refinements in bomb technology, but alternate energy sources, advanced
	communications, etc., etc. 
  When a man does something his fellows would strongly object to, and
decides to keep the misdeed a secret, he mentally withdraws somewhat from
the others, because now he has to watch himself to make sure doesn't
mention what he did. More misdeeds bring on further withdrawal. The
intensity of the misdeeds and the secrecy surrounding them can increase to
astonishing proprtions.
  It has actually reached the point where certain very powerful men, to
ensure their presonal safety and the perpetuation of their empires, plan
to kill off two thirds of the world's population and overtly enslave the rest.
  Since most of the general public just somehow doesn't feel right about
genocide, the blatant exterminations of the '30s and '40s have been
replaced by artificially induced wars, plagues, accidents, and "natural"
disasters.
	What's a naturally induced war? An example of a artificially induced
	plague? (Forest says "AIDS," then we shouldn't worry because Their
	genetic engineers are incompetent - it's hard to catch and takes years
	to kill. If you really want a planet-killer, look to the pneumonic
	plague or influenza. I worked out a scheme for that once, and would
	be happy to send you the details.) Now, about those natural
	disasters...
  Earhquakes can be induced artificially by precise placement and timing
of nuclear "tests". The shock waves sprad out over the globe, then
recombine at various harmonic intervals around the sphere to deliver a
strong jolt at the desired location within forty-eight hours of the
initial blast.
	The physics of this is so utterly horrible I'm at a loss for words...
	There's not enough energy in bombs, the shock waves don't "recombine
	at various harmonic intervals" and they definitely don't delay 48
	hrs. This seems like a descendant of Tesla's shake-the-earth-to-bits
	scheme...
  So there it is again, the idea that "certain very powerful men... plan
to kill off two thirds of the world's population and overtly enslave the
rest." Hell, I recall a similar idea - although the motivation here was a
religious/occult hope of achieving immortality - on the part of the Saures
in "Illuminatus!"
	This is very different from blowing the world to smithereens with
	nukes. I find it less incredible (in the litteral sense, i.e.,
	unbelievable) but by no stretch of the imagination persuasive.
	As you point out, it is not an uncommon idea, certainly not
	in the fringe culture - which includes thee and me and he.
  So what I want to know is this. Where did this idea originate? Does
anyone know more about Waves Forest, about the secret 600 at the top of
the CIA, about the logistical problems of organizing such a conspiracy, of
what forms this idea has taken, who communicates it, who argues against it?
	I know nothing about Waves Forest; the secret 600 at the top of the
	CIA are, to the best of my knowledge, the creation of his fevered
	brain; the logistical problems are immense - the cabal must be at
	once everyhwere, omnipotent, omniscient, indiscoverable and its
	goals and structure intimately known to the conspiracy theorist.
	This is a tall order to fill.
PS: If the "first guy" of my story is in fact wholly correct, and some
member of the Conspiracy reads this post, then according to the argument
he gave the bombs will be set off now rather than later...
	If the conspiracy can't prevent a homeless religious fanatic
	(i.e., someone who litterally believes in Satan) from finding out
	about its existence, goals and methods, and can't keep a stray
	technogeek & known extropian from spreading the news across the Net,
	what CAN they accomplish.
PPS: I have just recalled another anecdote from the same guy's monologue.
He said he approached a few US sailors (on shore leave here, I presume)
with a similar set of claims and ideas, and asked what they thought of it;
and one guy said, "Well, if I was to give you my opinion I would probably
agree, and probably so wold my friends, but we can't give you opinions
because when we join the Navy we sign a little piece of paper that
forbids us from expressing political opinions, and we'll get shot for
treason if we violate that paper..." This is one claim (amongst many!) of
which I am sceptical - can anyone confirm or deny this? I can imagine a
courtmartial, dishonourable discharge, etc - but execution?
	Sailors on shore leave are not noted for sobriety or seriousness.
	Some people humor cranks like your friend, others tell them they are
	lunatics. This depends on how violent-seeming the crank is, how
	entertaining the rant, etc. Which is more likely: That They are
	known to every grunt in the Navy, or that some drunken sailors
	were having fun with a semi-entertaining lunatic?
	Government employees are restricted in their expression of political
	opinions - a bizarre and senseless piece of law, but there nonetheless.
	(They can vote, but not volunteer for campgains, donate more than nom-
	inal sums, etc.) The penalties are not, of course, execution for
 	treason, but getting fired - in the military, a dishonorable
	discharge, I suppose. (My mother is a biochemist at the National
	Institutes of Health & an ex-Trotskyite - every four years the law gets
        her _extremely_ upset...). BTW, in the United States "treason" is
	defined in the Constitution, and consists _solely_ of providing aid
 	and comfort to the enemies of the repbulic, punishable not by execution
	but by imprisonment - admittedly for a fairly lengthy number of years.
	Your friend might mean simply "get shot" when he says "get shot for
	treason," but it does little to bolster my confidence in his accuracy
	as to fact.


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