From: mcgrew@dropout.rutgers.edu (Charles Mcgrew)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: Re: Government Coverups (Re: Moon Activities?)
Date: 27 Aug 92 06:33:50 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


	jeffp@netcom.com (Jeff Papineau) writes:
	I read a bit about JFK assasination, and most of those authors
	all point to Nixon suddenly giving up, and resigning, so they
	try to come up with evedence to speculate as to why this occured.

... yeah, I've read some of it, and it doesn't ring true for me.  A
conspiracy with Nixon at its core would not have killed JFK and left
Johnson around (the conspirators could not have known that LBJ's
presidency would self-destruct 5 years later - in 1962 Nixon himself
announced the end of his political life; he was only saved by the rise
of Goldwater in 1964 (its complicated.))  A conspiracy to benefit
Nixon in 1963 just doesn't add up -- and making judgements based on
what happened later (things that participants could not have known)
doesn't help the case.  If Nixon was merely "in on it", why would
Nixon join a conspiracy that could not possibly (from his point of
view, in 1963) benefit him?  But enough of this.

	!) We have a world economy based on war/arms/drugs/chemicals
	to a large degree that are all tied together in seemingly
	inseparable relation ships. Until world leaders can stop wars,
	[etc]

... "stopping wars" is a pleasant thing to say, but it is not so easy
to do.  How, for instance, should the war in what was Yugoslavia be
stopped, since none of the participants seem to *want* it to stop?
Impose (by force) a solution?  How is a war to end a war good?
Do we kill for peace?  Shaky ground.  (Convincing anyone that they
have had "enough vengeance" is not easy either.)

	Even our space exploration is little more than sending up
	people in fancy Chineese rockets (invented 1000 years ago)
	with radiosand a sack lunch.

... I think you should perhaps go back and look at how modern rockets
work.   A chinese rocket could get the Voyager to Titan?  Put Viking
on Mars?  Nice trick!

	2) We destroy our home planet with nuclear waste/testing,
	pollution beyond measure, and over-fishing the oceans and over
	cutting of the forests and jungles.  Our president, in his
	infinite wisdom, proclaims we can not stop nuclear weapons
	testing.

... Until something comes along that generates electricity in the
bloody great bunches we use, we're stuck with the technologies at
hand.  (I think in maybe 20 years solar technology will be the
generation-method of choice; we're about one breakthrough away.)
Given that, then we have only a limited set of choices.  Oil is
expensive, coal can be very pollusive, nuclear has its problems too.
But, all of the above are preferrable to the method before that -
wood.  Most of the "small is beautiful" solutions I've seen are from
people who have the money to buy things that are out of most people's
(including me) reach -- which is not really a solution (though I guess
it makes *them* feel better.)

   I note that you said "weapons testing".  This was no small trick
(i.e. only testing.)  That the only two nuclear weapons have ever been
dropped in anger were used over 45 years ago is a pretty amazing
thing, all things considered.  The reasons for testing nukes is mostly
to remind everybody that they still work.  (That's not the official
reason, but its part of the theory of deterrence...  Crude, but
effective.  Some other method might have stopped nuclear war better,
but this method *did* deter nuclear war -- since we haven't had one.
I'd just as soon not "do over" the last 47 years to try something
else.  Besides, what's left of the Soviet Union still has atomic and
hydrogen bombs in abundance, and no one seems to know who they all
actually belong to.)

   Pollution is a byproduct of the lifestyle, and the lifestyle is
evolving.  Maybe its not evolving fast enough to suit you, but
that's another matter.  Pollution, in some form, is a byproduct
of all life.

	3) We have allowed major corporate entities to take over most
	of the true power in this world thru relationships with
	oil/petrochemical operations, banking, , etc. that care only
	about profit, and have ethics that would place secondary the
	well-being of most human beings on the planet.

... and yet these corporate entities create most of the good stuff,
too.  The electric car; solar panels; better and faster and more
computers; Humphrey Bogart movies; and so on and on and on.  Profit
motive, in some form, governs everything we humans do.  That is not
really a byproduct of greed, it is a byproduct of thought.  A
centralized, carefully planned, system of government failed miserably
(in the Soviet Union) to survive, in part because none of the citizens
could see any personal reason to make it work.

	4) All transportations systems currently in use, with few
	exceptions, have been promoted by corporations that care
	little that they are inefficient, or pollute the environment.
	This causes the poisoning of ourselves, our planet and our oceans.

... you have it backwards.  The corporations were able to sell such
vehicles precisely because the people who *buy* them did not care.  A
profit-minded corporation can only sell what its consumers wish to
buy.  Car makers did not sneak 100,000,000 automobiles into
everybody's driveway -- we bought 'em, and we bought 'em because we
wanted to (the automobile did some good things too, you know --
single-handedly put the horse out of business; you might want to 
consider the pollution it *saved*, too.)


	5) All the while, most of us have stood by and done little
	about these problems, and united we could change most of t.

... true enough.  On the other hand, that is what "most of us" have
done throughout our history as a race.   If this is changing, even
slightly, then it is an improvement.  (That "united we could change
it" line is interesting.  Who are we?  How would we unite?  A world
government?  Whose?)

	In fact, i would venture that they feel only that we have done
	very little spiritually, to advance ourselves, we care only
	about material wealth, pleasure, and luxury, and that we have
	not come close to integrating technology with spirituality,
	which is the true challenge to an advancing culture. 

... I suggest you try and teach a starving man about the writings of
Kerouac.  I doubt he'll listen to you very much.  The human race is
really quite new to the idea of having too much of things (in earlier
times, luxury was available only to the very priviliged, not the
average joe in the street.)  I have grown up in a time when I can
obtain many "luxury goods".  My parents did not.  My grandparents did
not.  That means I am from the first generation of my (middle class)
family in which luxury goods were not likely to disappear -- its a new
idea -- it takes some getting used to.  (Likewise, computers are a
complete mystery to my mother -- expecting everyone to 'digest' new
technologies and use them wisely is asking a lot.)


	I doubt we have really lived up to the potential that they
	would see so clearly of us.

... typically, one does not expect a 15-year-old to be as wise as an
adult.   The 15-year-old has to grow, to experiment, to see what
works, before he or she can be expected to act in what we might
call a completely rational being.   Condemning the 15-year-old for not
acting like an adult is short-sighted.  Give him or her time.  That,
in my opinion, is the analogy for the human race.  Collective action
on the world stage has only been tried in this century, and failed
miserably once (the League of Nations); getting everybody to trust
each other is not a simple task.  Give us time.  

   Also, a 13-year-old usually has parent(s) to guide them, the human
race has had to make it up as they go along.  Idealism (or world-weary
cynicism) is easy.  Demanding things be "correct" is easy.  Actually
getting there is not so easy.

Charles
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors