Titan Missile -- 1955 Status?
JamesOberg
The Cox Report complains that a Chinese engineer "worked for the Titan missile
program" until he returned to China in 1955 to head up their missile program.
As I recall, Titan did not even fly until 1959, and it was a follow-on to the
USAF's Thor and Atlas so in 1955 it could not have been very far along. Is
there any accessible site with a history of the Titan missile in the 1950s, to
confirm this?
MattWriter
the fall of 1955, so they couldn't have done much more than design studies. I
wonder if the account meant Atlas, which was a little further along. Neither
bird had a launch attempt until 1958, but Atlas design studies went back to
1951. The Titan wasn't even conceived until early '58.
Matt Bille
(MattW...@AOL.com)
OPINIONS IN ALL POSTS ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHOR
Henry Spencer
JamesOberg <james...@aol.com> wrote:
>The Cox Report complains that a Chinese engineer "worked for the Titan missile
>program" until he returned to China in 1955 to head up their missile program.
>As I recall, Titan did not even fly until 1959, and it was a follow-on to the
Bill Gunston's "Illustrated Encyclopedia of the World's Rockets & Missiles"
(which, despite being packaged like a coffee-table book, is a very useful
historical reference), says that the Titan contract was signed in Oct 1955.
That does mean that people were working on it earlier, of course... but the
timing still sounds doubtful.
--
The good old days | Henry Spencer he...@spsystems.net
weren't. | (aka he...@zoo.toronto.edu)
JamesOberg
the late 1950s.
Michael P. Walsh
MattWriter wrote:
------
---
I suspect the reference to the scientist is to Tsien who
returned to China and provided great impetus to their
rocket program.
I don't know if he had any connection to the Titan program.
Mike Walsh
George Herbert
>I suspect the reference to the scientist is to Tsien who
>returned to China and provided great impetus to their
>rocket program.
>I don't know if he had any connection to the Titan program.
As I recall, he was hounded out of the country in the McCarthy
era for what appear now to have been completely trumped-up
charges rather than real espionage activities, and he was forced
to return against his will to mainland China, who promptly put
him to use on their missiles program (for the obvious reasons).
-george william herbert
gher...@crl.com
Giovanni Abrate
activities may deserve another, more benevolent look...
Giovanni
Michael P. Walsh
George Herbert wrote:
> Michael P. Walsh <mp_w...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >I suspect the reference to the scientist is to Tsien who
> >returned to China and provided great impetus to their
> >rocket program.
> >I don't know if he had any connection to the Titan program.
>
> As I recall, he was hounded out of the country in the McCarthy
> era for what appear now to have been completely trumped-up
> charges rather than real espionage activities, and he was forced
> to return against his will to mainland China, who promptly put
> him to use on their missiles program (for the obvious reasons).
>
> -george william herbert
> gher...@crl.com
-------
----
I believe some people have been rewriting history again.
Rather than being hounded out of the U.S. he was prevented
from leaving the U.S. to return to Communist China and my
understanding he was leaving with a large amount of technical
information (this was unclassified, but still important).
Since we never reached the totalitarian depths of our antagonists
he was eventually allowed to return to China where he basically
jump-started their missile program.
Mike Walsh
Patrick Patriarca
Giovanni Abrate <try...@ibm.net> wrote in message
news:374c...@news1.us.ibm.net...
> I think that in view of the recent events, McCarthy's much reviled
> activities may deserve another, more benevolent look...
> Giovanni
McCarthy's activities as you so kindly put it were the same type as
practiced by those supposedly was after. He was so inept he actually
reversed the anti-communist paranoia. He was such a fool he apparently could
not add...ofr perhaps had dyslexia as his tally's of the number of supposed
communists in the State department seemed to occupy virtually every 3 digit
number. As for being benevolent... he stoked inflamatory behavior causing
friends to inform against friends to save their own skin... in virtually all
cases for sympathizing with what I consider a bizarre economic and social
system and philosophy (communism) but which in THIS democracy was not a
crime...especially during the depression and WWII when the US was a staunch
Russian ally.
McCarthy was, is and shall remain an example of how to aid your enemy. How
to bring fascist ideology into a democratic system. How to become the thing
you supposedly hate.
You imply that the alleged spying which began in the most conservative
presidency (Reagan) in modern history, continued in his hand-picked
successor (Bush) and was brought to light in the Clinton presidency is
analogous to what was happening in the McCarthy era? Are you implying there
are communists in the state department? Or in the Department of Energy? Or
are you encouraging we return to McCarthy's tactics of fear, lying,
scattergun accusations. If so.... I humbly suggest we begin with YOUR life.
Your associations. YOUR family. Things YOU said in your youth ... innocent
or otherwise convsations you had with...who?
Beware Giovanni what you wish for.... you will get. We have YOUR name .....
(get the picture?) I see you are perhaps of Italian heritage....doesn't
Italy have the largest communist party in the west? Aren't Italians in the
Mafia .... What about your family?Here's a new angle....perhaps in
association with the Russian mob... secrets to the Chinese?? The last few
ridiculous sentences are McCarthyite tactics.
My point being (relax...I'm of Italian heritage) ... I suggest you chose
another example besides McCarthy to support your arguement. We do not need
another witchhunt.
Patrick Patriarca
Patrick Patriarca
Samuel Paik
> I think that in view of the recent events, McCarthy's much reviled
> activities may deserve another, more benevolent look...
No. Some of his targets were almost certainly guilty, that doesn't
mean that his modus operandi was legitimate and tolerable in a
civil society.
Sam
--
Samuel S. Paik | http://www.webnexus.com/users/paik/
3D and multimedia, architecture and implementation
Solyent Green is kitniyot!
Andrew Higgins
<mp_w...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>I suspect the reference to the scientist is to Tsien who
>returned to China and provided great impetus to their
>rocket program.
>
This may be of special interest to this group, and given recent
developments, of more general interest: there was a decent book on
Tsien Hsue-shen written a few years ago by Iris Chang:
Iris Chang
"Thread of the Silkworm"
Basic Books, 1996
ISBN: 0465006787
still in print
This is the same author who went on to write the controversial "The Rape
of Nanking".
If you want the full story on how China obtained Western missile
technology, this book is an essential and fascinating tale.
--
Andrew J. Higgins Department of Mechanical Eng.
Shock Wave Physics Group McGill University
hig...@mecheng.mcgill.ca Montreal, Quebec
Andrew Higgins
<mp_w...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>George Herbert wrote:
>>
>> As I recall, he was hounded out of the country in the McCarthy
>> era for what appear now to have been completely trumped-up
>> charges rather than real espionage activities, and he was forced
>> to return against his will to mainland China, who promptly put
>> him to use on their missiles program (for the obvious reasons).
>>
>> -george william herbert
>> gher...@crl.com
>
>
>Rather than being hounded out of the U.S. he was prevented
>from leaving the U.S. to return to Communist China and my
>understanding he was leaving with a large amount of technical
>information (this was unclassified, but still important).
>
>Since we never reached the totalitarian depths of our antagonists
>he was eventually allowed to return to China where he basically
>jump-started their missile program.
>
The story is much more complex than either of those accounts.
There were various factions within the U.S. (Depts. of Defense, State,
etc.) in the early 1950's. Some wanted Tsien out: he had loose
Communist Party affiliations in California from the 1930's, his homeland
had just become a Communist state, and he was working on highly
classified defense projects. Some wanted to keep him in: he already
knew too much.
Tsien's stated desire was to return to China for a short visit, but he
also gave indications of wanting to return for good. His true
intentions were unclear. For 5 years, he was in limbo: security
clearance revoked, under constant investigation, unable to work on
defense contracts, but not free to return to China.
The deciding factor was the 1955 U.S.-P.R.C. talks on the return of U.S.
service men being held by the Chinese since the Korean War. The Chinese
negotiated the return of the U.S. service men, with the main condition
being that the U.S. must give Tsien back to China. He went back to
China shortly thereafter.
See "Thread of the Silkworm" by Iris Chang for details.
Filip De Vos
: I think that in view of the recent events, McCarthy's much reviled
: activities may deserve another, more benevolent look...
Funny, I had thought it was the other way around.
: Giovanni
--
Filip De Vos FilipP...@rug.ac.be
There are plenty of ways to empty a solar system.
-- John S. Lewis --
JamesOberg
another witchhunt.>>
Watch out for this trick!
There WERE "witches", as it turned out, contrary to the infinite protestations
of some.
JamesOberg
practiced by those supposedly was after.>>
Hardly. The people he claimed he was after were involved in building up the
nuclear weapons capabilities and world influence of Stalin, who claimed the
loyalty and direct assistence of lots of Americans, including some
highly-placed ones (Alger hiss WAS guilty, you now admit?). Millions died or
lived in terror as a result of these kinds of activities. McCarthy's excesses
forced some people to change jobs. I know that Ted Turner thinks this is moral
equivalence, but I don't.
John Percy Kerslake
(1) When Young he visited several CP meetings.
(2) His anti CP actions made him a confident of
the top brass
(access to top secret data).
(3) He drove many "soft" left people into the hard
left.
etc.
--
John Percy Kerslake B.Sc., F.B.I.S.,
kers...@SEES.bangor.ac.uk
Web Page =
http://www.sees.bangor.ac.uk/~kerslake/welcome.htm
Pager=01426-235878, Work=01248-351151 ext.
2730/2711,
Fax 01248-361429 Dyslexia rules K. O.
Michael P. Walsh
JamesOberg wrote:
------
---
However, we need someone more reliable and less malevolent
than the late Senator Joseph McCarthy who smeared many
innocent people in his red baiting years.
In fact, McCarthy was not the one who uncovered the actual
communist spies in those days. They were uncovered by the
same administration he was attacking as communists. People
such as Dean Acheson, Harry Truman's Secretary of State,
who was doing his best to set up a coalation against an
aggressive Soviet Union.
Acheson's reward was to be called a communist sympathizer
by McCarthyites and to be called a cold warrior who incited
the Soviet Union to "defend" themselves by some of the
more recent crop of left wing apologists.
Mike Walsh
Michael P. Walsh
JamesOberg wrote:
> <<McCarthy's activities as you so kindly put it were the same type as
> practiced by those supposedly was after.>>
>
> Hardly. The people he claimed he was after were involved in building up the
> nuclear weapons capabilities and world influence of Stalin, who claimed the
> loyalty and direct assistence of lots of Americans, including some
> highly-placed ones (Alger hiss WAS guilty, you now admit?). Millions died or
> lived in terror as a result of these kinds of activities. McCarthy's excesses
> forced some people to change jobs. I know that Ted Turner thinks this is moral
> equivalence, but I don't.
------
----
I will agree that Senator McCarthy's power is over-rated and was fueled by
over-reaction to his charges. He was a Senator of the political party that was
not in power, and the historical record shows that his influence ended during
the Eisenhower administration when he became an embarassment to that
Republican administration.
Mr. Oberg you seem somewhat clueless about the actual history and events
of the years of the late 1940's and early 1950's. McCarthy had nothing to
do with uncovering Alger Hiss.
The communists and spies in the U.S. government were uncovered by
the same Democratic administration that McCarthy was accusing
of being soft on communism.
Mike Walsh
Henry Spencer
Giovanni Abrate <try...@ibm.net> wrote:
>I think that in view of the recent events, McCarthy's much reviled
>activities may deserve another, more benevolent look...
Uh, no. While there was a real problem, McCarthy's tactics amounted to
burning down the barn to fix the leaky roof.
Henry Spencer
JamesOberg <james...@aol.com> wrote:
><< We do not need
>another witchhunt.>>
>
>Watch out for this trick!
>There WERE "witches", as it turned out, contrary to the infinite protestations
>of some.
There *were* witches during the witch hunts in Europe, too. The analogy
is quite close, and the original bears study.
Witch hunts had much more to do with the politics of the Church than with
the presence of, or actions of, witches. For centuries, witchcraft was a
crime, but a minor and uncommon one which the Church had no great interest
in pursuing. In particular, it was originally Church dogma that witches
did not really fly through the air, that the witches' sabbat was an
illusion produced by the Devil (in fact, by psychoactive drugs), and most
importantly, that since witches' experiences were illusion, accusations of
witchcraft based on recognizing someone during such an experience had no
validity. Then things changed. To quote anthropologist Marvin Harris:
"There still remains the riddle of why five hundred thousand people had
to die for crimes they committed in someone else's dreams... It is no
accident that witchcraft came into increasing prominence along with
violent messianic protests against social and economic inequities. The
Pope gave permission to use torture against witches shortly before the
Protestant Reformation, and the witch craze peaked during the sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century wars and revolutions that put an end to the era of
Christian unity... The principal result of the witch-hunt system (aside
from charred bodies) was that the poor came to believe that they were
being victimized by witches and devils instead of princes and popes."
The moral of the story is, when people start hunting witches -- seeing
them under every bed, accepting unsupported accusations as proof of guilt,
pressuring suspects into confessions, etc. -- look for the man behind the
curtain, because you can be sure that ulterior motives abound. There
might even be some real witches, and the hunt might accidentally find one
or two, but they are really quite irrelevant to the exercise.
Henry Spencer
JamesOberg <james...@aol.com> wrote:
><<McCarthy's activities as you so kindly put it were the same type as
>practiced by those supposedly was after.>>
>
>Hardly. The people he claimed he was after were involved in building up the
The key word here is "claimed". There is no question that there were some
real Russian spies here and there, and that they did some damage (although
this was, and still is, exaggerated -- for example, the Russians would
have built their own nuclear weapons even without the mass of technical
information they got through espionage, although it would have taken
longer), but McCarthy's cure was as bad as the disease. His tactics were,
quite accurately, Stalinist. He ruined fewer lives because he wasn't as
good at it and he didn't manage to establish a similar power base. Given
a chance, he could have become as big a threat to freedom as Stalin was.
The greatest real risk of the Cold War was not that invincible Soviet
armies would march across Europe and then the world, but that the West
would remake itself into a repressive bureaucratic state -- the mirror
image of what it claimed to oppose -- in the name of military necessity.
The risk was all the greater because the ostensible opposition to the
military necessity, the political left, liked the idea of a bureaucratic
state just fine.
JamesOberg
by McCarthyites and to be called a cold warrior who incited
the Soviet Union to "defend" themselves by some of the
more recent crop of left wing apologists.>>
...He was a big defender of Alger Hiss, wasn't he? Hiss, of course, was caught
by Richard Nixon, for which America's 'intelligentsia' never forgave him.
JamesOberg
one or two, but they are really quite irrelevant to the exercise. >>
Well said. But it's relevance to real damages even under the height of
McCarthyist hysteria is tenuous.
Whether hunting witches in Massachusetts in the 1690s, or in day care centers
in the 1980s, public hysteria is something to resist for the sake of
resistence. Today's witches, I suggest, with no connection to factual
arguments, are the NRA and the tobacco industry.
So keep that hysteria reined in! M<grin>
Wilson, Diane (EXCHANGE:BNRTP:3S11)
>
> In article <374c...@news1.us.ibm.net>,
> Giovanni Abrate <try...@ibm.net> wrote:
> >I think that in view of the recent events, McCarthy's much reviled
> >activities may deserve another, more benevolent look...
>
> Uh, no. While there was a real problem, McCarthy's tactics amounted to
> burning down the barn to fix the leaky roof.
That would imply that (1) McCarthy was aware of the leaky roof,
and (2) that he had any interest at all in fixing it. I
see McCarthyism as nothing more, and nothing less, than a
completely amoral, coldly cynical power grab. Thank &deity; that
it ultimately failed.
ObSpaceHistory: I suppose we *might* credit McCarthy with
further raising sensitivity to Russian space activity, thus
adding further motivation for the space race. But personally,
I don't think even that would be warranted.
--
Diane Wilson (thwi...@nortelnetworks.com)
Nortel Networks, 35 Davis Drive, RTP, NC 27709
+1 919 991 2017 (ESN 351-2017)
Inside Nortel: http://triweb/dewilson/
--------------------------------------------------------------
"What we need is an optimistic Shostakovich."
--Dmitri Shostakovich,
quoting official sources
JamesOberg
<<While there was a real problem, McCarthy's tactics amounted to
burning down the barn to fix the leaky roof.>>
I always feel better when I agree with Henry, as I do here. McCarthy didn't
catch any spies (he made anti-communism seem loathesome) -- the worst spying
occurred in the 1940s by Americans in love with Stalinist Russia, but it died
out mostly through social dynamics by 1950 or so, and really damaging spies
didn't get working again until greed and blackmail got more effective, in the
1970s.
Eric F. Richards
> Henry Spencer wrote:
>> Uh, no. While there was a real problem, McCarthy's tactics amounted to
>> burning down the barn to fix the leaky roof.
> That would imply that (1) McCarthy was aware of the leaky roof,
> and (2) that he had any interest at all in fixing it. I
> see McCarthyism as nothing more, and nothing less, than a
> completely amoral, coldly cynical power grab. Thank &deity; that
> it ultimately failed.
David Brinkley's autobiography says something to that effect. I believe
his source of info was McCarthy's secretary, who happened to be Brinkley's
sister. (I don't have his book at hand to make sure I have the relations
right.)
--
Eric F. Richards
efr...@alumni.cs.colorado.edu
"The weird part is that I can feel productive even when I'm doomed."
- Dilbert
Allen Thomson
>In article <19990526091549...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,
>JamesOberg <james...@aol.com> wrote:
>>The Cox Report complains that a Chinese engineer "worked for the Titan missile
>>program" until he returned to China in 1955 to head up their missile program.
>>As I recall, Titan did not even fly until 1959, and it was a follow-on to the
>>USAF's Thor and Atlas so in 1955 it could not have been very far along...
>
>Bill Gunston's "Illustrated Encyclopedia of the World's Rockets & Missiles"
>(which, despite being packaged like a coffee-table book, is a very useful
>historical reference), says that the Titan contract was signed in Oct 1955.
>
>That does mean that people were working on it earlier, of course... but the
>timing still sounds doubtful.
The guy in question is Dr. Tsien (various other spellings have appeared)
of CalTech, a colleague of Von Karman. He got zapped by the security
mania of the early '50s, sent back to China, and there helped design
the CSS-4 and -5, plus penetration aids. There's a book about him titled,
IIRC, "The Dragon and the Silkworm." I'm not sure what the CSS-2 Silkworm
has to do with it, other than it sounds somewhat Chineseish.
Similarities to current events are purely coincidental.
Michael P. Walsh
JamesOberg wrote:
------
---
Yes, I do remember Dean Acheson's "I will not turn my back on Alger Hiss"
speech that indicates an unwillingness to believe that a friend was a traitor.
If you really have any interest in these matters you might look back at
the record of Dean Acheson ( Sometimes referred to by some of that
era's enemies as "the red Dean" although that title was more commonly
used for an Anglican communist sympathizer.)
Dean Acheson was a prime mover in the establishment of containment
of the Soviet Union, the Marshall Plan, and the Truman Doctrine which
started out with preventing the takeover of Greece by communists.
Yes, I know George Marshall was main architecht of the Marshall
Plan and a later Secretary of State.
Nixon was right on Hiss.
Mike Walsh
Patrick Patriarca
JamesOberg <james...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:19990527091321...@ng-fj1.aol.com...
> <<McCarthy's activities as you so kindly put it were the same type as
> practiced by those supposedly was after.>>
>
> Hardly. The people he claimed he was after were involved in building up
the
the
> loyalty and direct assistence of lots of Americans, including some
> highly-placed ones (Alger hiss WAS guilty, you now admit?). Millions died
or
> lived in terror as a result of these kinds of activities. McCarthy's
excesses
> forced some people to change jobs. I know that Ted Turner thinks this is
moral
> equivalence, but I don't.
No one , certainly not I would suggest McCarthy is the (im) moral equivalent
of Stalin. In his series on the Cold War Turner did not either. However... I
said and stand by the statement that Stalin and other hard line Communists
and McCarthyites use the same type tactics inso far as lying, exaggerating,
forcing/cajoling/frightening people to inform on innocent people all because
their political creed differed. As for Alger Hiss and his ilk.... YOU
arrogantly presume I ever thought him innocent. Wrong . Traitors who perform
specfic acts of treason are of course deserving of vilification and
prosecution. Last time I read the Constitution it was not a crime to belong
to a political party , even on as inept and stupid as the US Communist party
(whose membership seemed to have as many FBI informers and agents as actual
Communists. ). As someone whose family lived under Fascist tyranny in Italy
I am no apologist for Stalin and his evil behavior. McCarthy was not ONLY
after those passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets. He was undertaking a
witchhunt . Worse than that he set the stage and supported those who spread
paranoia and used similar tactics as the Fascists and Communists insofar as
forcing people to inform on others to save their own hide. McCarthy's
tactics did not simply force people to change jobs. Your cavalier attitude
is sad considering people committed suicide, families were ripped apart,
reputations destroyed and our democratic system endangered. Beware of what
you apologize for Jim...turnabout is fair play. Or should such tactics be
used on you?
Patrick Patriarca
Henry Spencer <he...@spsystems.net> wrote in message
news:FCEHs...@spsystems.net...
> >practiced by those supposedly was after.>>
> >
> >Hardly. The people he claimed he was after were involved in building up
the
>
> The key word here is "claimed". There is no question that there were some
> real Russian spies here and there, and that they did some damage (although
> this was, and still is, exaggerated -- for example, the Russians would
> have built their own nuclear weapons even without the mass of technical
> information they got through espionage, although it would have taken
> longer), but McCarthy's cure was as bad as the disease. His tactics were,
> quite accurately, Stalinist. He ruined fewer lives because he wasn't as
> good at it and he didn't manage to establish a similar power base. Given
> a chance, he could have become as big a threat to freedom as Stalin was.
Excellent analysis... the cure being as bad or worse than the disease.
>
> The greatest real risk of the Cold War was not that invincible Soviet
> armies would march across Europe and then the world, but that the West
> would remake itself into a repressive bureaucratic state -- the mirror
> image of what it claimed to oppose -- in the name of military necessity.
Again excellent... a tactic know being used by (some) para-miliatarist
orgs.,
> The risk was all the greater because the ostensible opposition to the
> military necessity, the political left, liked the idea of a bureaucratic
> state just fine.
Precisely. How interesting that these two opposing philosphies actually tend
to the same end.... apologizing for despotic behavior. How sad their
apologists are so blind in their hatred they cannot see this.
Patrick Patriarca
> << We do not need
> another witchhunt.>>
>
> Watch out for this trick!
>
> There WERE "witches", as it turned out, contrary to the infinite
protestations
> of some.
No they were people... many whom practiced or believed in or simply attended
ONE meeting during the depression or WWII when Russia was our ally of an
unpopular but legal philosophy....communism.
You do not use a wide field shotgun where a sniper is needed .... Simply
because there were "some" traitors is no reason to ruin the lives of
thousands. I simply said "We do not need another witch hunt." You said
"Watch out for this trick" ...are you saying we NEED witch hunts similar to
Salem and McCarthy's time. If so I immediately move we begin with you and
your life and family. Fair enough?
Patrick Patriarca
No they are not witches... simply irresponsible people whose reasoning (no
barrier on guns... or tobacco) would lead to the legal ownership of cannon
able to fire tactical nuclear weapons or selling toxic cancer causing
substances to children.
The NRA would have you believe ALL guns will be confiscated. Surely there
are some who want that. Fact is it will never happen. Their abstructionist
behavior has now backfired as they are even against registration of guns or
regulating in almost any way. The NRA is the hysterical party here. The
tobacco magnates are simply crack dealers in suits marketing tobacco.
Patrick Patriarca
Michael P. Walsh <mp_w...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:374D7AAF...@pacbell.net...
>
>
> JamesOberg wrote:
>
> > << We do not need
> > another witchhunt.>>
> >
> > Watch out for this trick!
> >
> > There WERE "witches", as it turned out, contrary to the infinite
protestations
> > of some.
>
> ---
> However, we need someone more reliable and less malevolent
> than the late Senator Joseph McCarthy who smeared many
> innocent people in his red baiting years.
>
> In fact, McCarthy was not the one who uncovered the actual
> communist spies in those days. They were uncovered by the
> same administration he was attacking as communists. People
> such as Dean Acheson, Harry Truman's Secretary of State,
> who was doing his best to set up a coalation against an
> aggressive Soviet Union.
>
> by McCarthyites and to be called a cold warrior who incited
> the Soviet Union to "defend" themselves by some of the
> more recent crop of left wing apologists.
Which...by his statements James oberg apparently feels is OK as long as
"some" witches are found. No offense Jim but if this is your reasoning I
fear your credibility is questionable.
>
> Mike Walsh
>
>
>
Graham Nelson
<URL:mailto:mp_w...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> However, we need someone more reliable and less malevolent
> than the late Senator Joseph McCarthy who smeared many
> innocent people in his red baiting years.
My impression is rather that McCarthy was unscrupulous, certainly,
but deluded. The question to ask is why he was not isolated as
a harmless fruitcake sort of Senator -- every Congress has one:
the sort of dreadful folie a deux, in which McCarthy and Nixon
pumped each other up into worse abuses, is not to the credit
of a Congress which lacked the fibre to stop them.
Nixon, of course, got out before it all became transparently
stupid, and when running for VP was not anxious to be associated
with McCarthyism: but it remains about the least pleasing episode
in Nixon's career -- the suffering caused by his Cambodian policy
was massively worse, but there was at least some coherent
rationale for his actions, however mistaken.
--
Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom
Sven Grahn
resemble maybe started a little later?
Sven Grahn
JamesOberg wrote:
> The Cox Report complains that a Chinese engineer "worked for the Titan missile
> program" until he returned to China in 1955 to head up their missile program.
> As I recall, Titan did not even fly until 1959, and it was a follow-on to the
> USAF's Thor and Atlas so in 1955 it could not have been very far along. Is
> there any accessible site with a history of the Titan missile in the 1950s, to
> confirm this?
Alexey Goldin
>
> The greatest real risk of the Cold War was not that invincible Soviet
> armies would march across Europe and then the world, but that the West
> would remake itself into a repressive bureaucratic state -- the mirror
> image of what it claimed to oppose -- in the name of military necessity.
> The risk was all the greater because the ostensible opposition to the
> military necessity, the political left, liked the idea of a bureaucratic
> state just fine.
> --
!!!!!!!!
I always wandered if anyone else would notice it.
It is not too late, I am afraid.
Patrick Patriarca
> <<Acheson's reward was to be called a communist sympathizer
> by McCarthyites and to be called a cold warrior who incited
> the Soviet Union to "defend" themselves by some of the
> more recent crop of left wing apologists.>>
>
JAmes ..perhaps you do not stand by a friend even when they do something
reprehensible. Ethical people do. You decide. Not turning your back on a
friend in trouble does not mean condoning his behavior. By your reasoning we
should all act like rats leaving a sinking ship when a friend does wrong.
> Hiss, of course, was caught
> by Richard Nixon, for which America's 'intelligentsia' never forgave him.
Nixon had a particulairly wonderful way of drawing the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune to himself. He acted as a lightening rod for people who
if he ignored them would have whithered on the vine. He was an intelligent
but not a wise man politically. You could say JFK was less intelligent but
the wiser politician. In their chosen field it is wisdom which wins. Nixon's
paranoia finally destroyed him. NOT the intelligensia.
Patrick Patriarca
> In article <374c...@news1.us.ibm.net>,
> Giovanni Abrate <try...@ibm.net> wrote:
> >I think that in view of the recent events, McCarthy's much reviled
> >activities may deserve another, more benevolent look...
>
> burning down the barn to fix the leaky roof.
It ended up actually performing the opposite of what he intended. Idiocy no
matter how you look at it.
Patrick Patriarca
>
> <<While there was a real problem, McCarthy's tactics amounted to
> burning down the barn to fix the leaky roof.>>
>
didn't
> catch any spies (he made anti-communism seem loathesome) -- the worst
spying
> occurred in the 1940s by Americans in love with Stalinist Russia, but it
died
> out mostly through social dynamics by 1950 or so, and really damaging
spies
> didn't get working again until greed and blackmail got more effective, in
the
> 1970s.
Ah...Jim...you've made my day by "re-constructing" yourself :-)
Pat
JamesOberg wrote:
> << There might even be some real witches, and the hunt might accidentally find
> one or two, but they are really quite irrelevant to the exercise. >>
>
> Well said. But it's relevance to real damages even under the height of
> McCarthyist hysteria is tenuous.
>
Really? Tenous? Tell that to all the ruined lives of the 50's and the damage
done to the american way of life, by teh secret police.
You can be as fond of Nixon all you want, but he learned his tactics of
burglarizing peoples homes and offices then.
pat
Pat
JamesOberg wrote:
> <<Acheson's reward was to be called a communist sympathizer
> by McCarthyites and to be called a cold warrior who incited
> the Soviet Union to "defend" themselves by some of the
> more recent crop of left wing apologists.>>
>
> ...He was a big defender of Alger Hiss, wasn't he? Hiss, of course, was caught
> by Richard Nixon, for which America's 'intelligentsia' never forgave him.
Really?
I was much more bothered by his burglarizing of a friends house.
I suppose you wouldn't mind Clinton having some thugs rifle your files.
That and sending another 15000 americans to the death in vietnam when
he knew well the war was lost. 7 years and 700 billion went to fight a war
he and his ilk and insisted on being fought. You want to know where
Apollo Applications went? Look in the jungles of vietnam.
pat
Pat
Patrick Patriarca wrote:
> JamesOberg <james...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:19990527091025...@ng-fj1.aol.com...
> > << We do not need
> > another witchhunt.>>
> >
> > Watch out for this trick!
> >
> > There WERE "witches", as it turned out, contrary to the infinite
> protestations
> > of some.
>
> No they were people... many whom practiced or believed in or simply attended
> ONE meeting during the depression or WWII when Russia was our ally of an
> unpopular but legal philosophy....communism.
>
> You do not use a wide field shotgun where a sniper is needed .... Simply
> because there were "some" traitors is no reason to ruin the lives of
> thousands. I simply said "We do not need another witch hunt." You said
> "Watch out for this trick" ...are you saying we NEED witch hunts similar to
> Salem and McCarthy's time. If so I immediately move we begin with you and
> your life and family. Fair enough?
James wrote many articles suggesting we cooperate with the russians on a Mars
program and he's been seen dining at chinese restaurants. He must be an
enemy agent.
;-)
pat
Pat
JamesOberg wrote:
> <<McCarthy's activities as you so kindly put it were the same type as
> practiced by those supposedly was after.>>
>
> Hardly. The people he claimed he was after were involved in building up the
> nuclear weapons capabilities and world influence of Stalin, who claimed the
Stalin, Wasn't that Uncle Joe Stalin, when he was convenient?
I know realpolitik, but still, when Stalin was convenient, he was made
the object of adulation in propoganda, who promptly turned into the enemy
when the situation changed. Rather orwellian, it was.
>
> loyalty and direct assistence of lots of Americans, including some
> highly-placed ones (Alger hiss WAS guilty, you now admit?). Millions died or
> lived in terror as a result of these kinds of activities. McCarthy's excesses
>
Which didn't prevent James Oberg from reccomending joint activities with
the russians somewhat later, so.....
> forced some people to change jobs. I know that Ted Turner thinks this is moral
> equivalence, but I don't.
We ascribe to better. You should ascribe to be better.
pat
Samuel Paik
> the sort of dreadful folie a deux, in which McCarthy and Nixon
> pumped each other up into worse abuses, is not to the credit
> of a Congress which lacked the fibre to stop them.
Nixon was involved with the House Unamerican Activities
Committee, not with Senator McCarthy. They are really
quite separate.
Sam
--
Samuel S. Paik | http://www.webnexus.com/users/paik/
3D and multimedia, architecture and implementation
Solyent Green is kitniyot!
John Beaderstadt
>
> Really? Tenous? Tell that to all the ruined lives of the 50's and the damage
> done to the american way of life, by teh secret police.
*What* secret police? The damage was done by the victims' neighbors and
friends.
And that was the *true* damage.
--
"I tried to imagine the easiest way God could have done it."
--Albert Einstein
***Change "gov" to "net" to send me email***
Jeff Joyce
USAF gave the Martin Company a contract to develop the Titan as a backup to
the Atlas ICBM. You're correct in that Titan was only in an early stage of
technological design in 1955. Here are some on-line details on the Titan I,
though with little on the history before 1959.
http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~mwade/lvs/titan1.htm
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/icbm/index.html
Regards,
Jeff J.
JamesOberg wrote in message
<19990526091549...@ng-fy1.aol.com>...
>...Is there any accessible site with a history of the Titan missile in the
1950s, to confirm this?
JamesOberg
<<Which...by his statements James oberg apparently feels is OK as long as
"some" witches are found. No offense Jim but if this is your reasoning I
fear your credibility is questionable.>>
Nope, you don't get it, and you don't understand my point -- let's discuss off
line, this is off topic.
JamesOberg
<< Tell that to all the ruined lives of the 50's and the damage
done to the american way of life, by teh secret police.>>
'Secret police' has a precise meaning, it's the kind of tactics and policies of
Nazi and Soviet and similar oppressive regimes. To even use that term for
American law-enforcement agencies, however excessive and stupid they get from
time to time, is an insult to all of us and especially to the REAL victims of
REAL secret police. Your use of language is to inflame and confuse, not
elucidate.
JamesOberg
> real Russian spies here and there, and that they did some damage (although
> this was, and still is, exaggerated -- for example, the Russians would
> have built their own nuclear weapons even without the mass of technical
> information they got through espionage, although it would have taken
> longer),>>
"No question", now, but in the 1950s there was PLENTY of question that there
were such spies -- you recall the vigorous defense of the Rosenbergs, of Hiss,
of many, many others.
As for "exaggerated" damage from spying, consider how the USSR might have
behaved if it did NOT have A-bombs and H-bombs for ten or fifteen years more?
Are you suggesting their aid and instigation of foreign wars would have been
unchanged?
This is a good topic for extensive discussion elsewhere, as we approach the
fiftieth anniversary of the first "Soviet" A-bomb (actually, the second US
A-bomb program!). Was the premature possession of nuclear weapons by Moscow a
beneficial or damaging situation?
JamesOberg
to the same end.... apologizing for despotic behavior. How sad their
apologists are so blind in their hatred they cannot see this.>>
Demonizing people who disagree with you? Whose trait is that?
JamesOberg
<<However... I
said and stand by the statement that Stalin and other hard line Communists
and McCarthyites use the same type tactics inso far as lying, exaggerating,
forcing/cajoling/frightening people to inform on innocent people all because
their political creed differed.>>
We disagree.
Under Stalin, if I had power and you disagreed -- or even if I suspected you
disagreed -- you and your family would be dead.
Under a McCarthyist regime, if you disagreed, you wouldn't be able to write
Hollywood scripts and might have to sell refridgerators to make a living.
Your inability to perceive a distinction is min-boggling to me, but hardly
surprising -- lots of people agree with you.
JamesOberg
<<Last time I read the Constitution it was not a crime to belong
to a political party , even on as inept and stupid as the US Communist party
(whose membership seemed to have as many FBI informers and agents as actual
Communists. )>>
Your pretense that the American Communist Party was just a philosophical
society wouldn't stand up to recent books written based on documents released
in Moscow about what the party, its leadership, and any member asked to do so,
really did. Improve your mind by uploading the latest information.
Dave Michelson
>
> This is a good topic for extensive discussion elsewhere, as we approach the
> fiftieth anniversary of the first "Soviet" A-bomb (actually, the second US
> A-bomb program!).
Or, perhaps the third European A-bomb program. (I seem to recall that
most of the key ideas used in the US program came from Europeans
displaced by the rise of fascism.)
--
Dave Michelson
dmich...@home.com
Alexey Goldin
>
> As for "exaggerated" damage from spying, consider how the USSR might have
> behaved if it did NOT have A-bombs and H-bombs for ten or fifteen years more?
> Are you suggesting their aid and instigation of foreign wars would have been
> unchanged?
USSR would probably be bombed.
JamesOberg
By who, and why?
Matt Maurano
holder of nukes for an extended period of time. Nuclear weapons
significantly increased our bluster. Would we have not been more
aggressive? Incidentally, wiping the USSR off the map would not have
been a good or patriotic thing.
On 28 May 1999 14:27:43 GMT, james...@aol.com (JamesOberg) wrote:
>As for "exaggerated" damage from spying, consider how the USSR might have
>behaved if it did NOT have A-bombs and H-bombs for ten or fifteen years more?
>Are you suggesting their aid and instigation of foreign wars would have been
>unchanged?
>
>This is a good topic for extensive discussion elsewhere, as we approach the
>fiftieth anniversary of the first "Soviet" A-bomb (actually, the second US
Giovanni Abrate
Vietnam War. England would still be an Empire and would not be part of the
EU. Communism would have collapsed ten years earlier than it did. China
would be the leading country of Asia, with a strong economy. Europe,
including Russia, would be a healthy,single market and NASA (or the USAF)
would be getting ready to send a man to the Moon for the first time in the
year 2000.
G.
Alexey Goldin <gol...@flight.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:m1vhddu...@flight.uchicago.edu...
Matt Maurano
al to do what they did. Simply because there is a greater evil in the
world does not make McCarthy's evil a null. What McCarthy did was
wrong. We are too recently out of the Cold War to have an entirely
accurate view of it. I don't think that Russia was as bad as we are
supposed to believe, and I know we weren't as angelic as the
government would like us to believe. Its hard to tell, but it appears
that the Cold War was a result of mutual step-by-step escalation. No
matter who started it, both sides willingly responded. We dropped a
nuke on Japan, they build some nukes, we build an H-bomb, they build
missiles, we build bigger missiles, and so on. What started this? We
historically had held a lousy relationship with Russia. Perhaps if we
had been less adherent to our staunch anti-radicalism, we wouldn't
have dumped all our resources into such a useless war.
On 28 May 1999 14:31:09 GMT, james...@aol.com (JamesOberg) wrote:
><<However... I
>said and stand by the statement that Stalin and other hard line Communists
>and McCarthyites use the same type tactics inso far as lying, exaggerating,
>forcing/cajoling/frightening people to inform on innocent people all because
>their political creed differed.>>
>
>We disagree.
>
>Under Stalin, if I had power and you disagreed -- or even if I suspected you
>disagreed -- you and your family would be dead.
>
>Under a McCarthyist regime, if you disagreed, you wouldn't be able to write
>Hollywood scripts and might have to sell refridgerators to make a living.
In the US, if you were a patriot, you put on some sunglasses and died
of cancer a couple decades after exposure to the nuclear bomb which
they told you was safe.
Under a Republican regime, if you were an immigrant, you were given a
sham trial in Massachussetts, did whatever the justice system allowed,
and then executed. Whether or not Sacco and Vanzetti were actuall
guilty is irrelevant. The process that found them to be guilty was
severely flawed. If you had put another person, clearly not guilty,
through this system, they would have been processed as guilty. Judging
someone correctly by accident is no accomplishment. Realize that the
50s anti-communism was not in a vacuum. It had happened before after
WWI.
>Your inability to perceive a distinction is min-boggling to me, but hardly
>surprising -- lots of people agree with you.
I note that you are for developement of space. Some people have noted
that our colonies might revolt against us in the future. Therefore,
you are supporting a revolution against the US.
I note that you are for socialism. Some people have taken socialism
and turned it into what Russia became. Therefore, you are for what
Russia became.
Same reasoning. McCarthy went after socialists, communists, and people
he didn't like. He perfected the multiple untruth. It was a farce so
widespread that when his opponent attempted to refute it he would bore
the viewers. This is not good. I don't care how bad Stalin was.
McCarthy ruined many, many people's lives, and continued the 20th
century tradition of walking all over the principles of the
constitution.
Michael P. Walsh
Pat wrote:
> JamesOberg wrote:
>
> > << There might even be some real witches, and the hunt might accidentally find
> > one or two, but they are really quite irrelevant to the exercise. >>
> >
> > Well said. But it's relevance to real damages even under the height of
> > McCarthyist hysteria is tenuous.
> >
>
> Really? Tenous? Tell that to all the ruined lives of the 50's and the damage
> done to the american way of life, by teh secret police.
>
> You can be as fond of Nixon all you want, but he learned his tactics of
> burglarizing peoples homes and offices then.
>
> pat
------
---
I lived through that era, and I note that the people who have come
along later seem to be working more with entertainment media versions
of what happened then than actual facts.
Joseph McCarthy's malevolence and reputation for charging innocent
people as communists was well earned. His actual power and the
nonsensical idea that he exercised direct influence on the Democratic
administration then in power are more the result of demonization than
fact.
The House Unamerican Activities Committee under J. Parnell Thomas
was the Congressional organization that did more actual evil than
McCarthy and, in turn, some of their targets were indeed apologists
for Stalinist terror in the Soviet Union.
Nixon was a Congressman who won election by smearing the quite
liberal, but non-communist, Helen Gahagan Douglas, in a dirty
election campaign. He was on the committee which uncovered
Alger Hiss complicity with communist espionage and I believe that
vaulted him into the national view and made him the successful
candidate for VP of Eisenhower.
While he may have learned tactics by watching other people,
Nixon had the usual amount of influence (very little) of a
Vice-President where the President remains alive.
Mike Walsh
Michael P. Walsh
Pat wrote:
------
---
Do you really want to reargue the Vietnam War?
The one that ended when a Democratic Congress sold out its
South Vietnamese allies by cutting off their supplies.
I believe Nixon and Kissinger did the best they could with a
bad situation left to them by a Democratic Administration.
Mike Walsh
Michael P. Walsh
Patrick Patriarca wrote:
> Michael P. Walsh <mp_w...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
> news:374D7AAF...@pacbell.net...
> >
> >
> > JamesOberg wrote:
> >
> > > << We do not need
> > > another witchhunt.>>
> > >
> > > Watch out for this trick!
> > >
> > > There WERE "witches", as it turned out, contrary to the infinite
> protestations
> > > of some.
> >
> > ------
> > ---
> > However, we need someone more reliable and less malevolent
> > than the late Senator Joseph McCarthy who smeared many
> > innocent people in his red baiting years.
> >
> > In fact, McCarthy was not the one who uncovered the actual
> > communist spies in those days. They were uncovered by the
> > same administration he was attacking as communists. People
> > such as Dean Acheson, Harry Truman's Secretary of State,
> > who was doing his best to set up a coalation against an
> > aggressive Soviet Union.
> >
> > Acheson's reward was to be called a communist sympathizer
> > by McCarthyites and to be called a cold warrior who incited
> > the Soviet Union to "defend" themselves by some of the
> > more recent crop of left wing apologists.
>
> Which...by his statements James oberg apparently feels is OK as long as
> "some" witches are found. No offense Jim but if this is your reasoning I
> fear your credibility is questionable.
>
> >
> > Mike Walsh
> >
------
---
I will just note that the last set of comments about Oberg were by
Patrick Patriarca,
and not by me.
I made the set of comments about McCarthy and Acheson which
were just after Oberg's "witches" comments.
Mike Walsh
Michael P. Walsh
Dave Michelson wrote:
> JamesOberg wrote:
> >
> > This is a good topic for extensive discussion elsewhere, as we approach the
> > fiftieth anniversary of the first "Soviet" A-bomb (actually, the second US
> > A-bomb program!).
>
> Or, perhaps the third European A-bomb program. (I seem to recall that
> most of the key ideas used in the US program came from Europeans
> displaced by the rise of fascism.)
>
> --
> Dave Michelson
> dmich...@home.com
------
---
OK, we can get right back to the guilty parties who foisted the
entire nuclear mess on the world.
They were the scientists who fled Hitler's Germany and who
used Albert Einstein's letter to Roosevelt to develop an
atomic bomb to prevent Hitler from ruling the world.
Of course, Hitler was defeated before the first atomic
bomb was exploded and was eventually dropped to end
the Pacific War with a Japan that was already near defeat
I do believe that if Japan kept fighting until after an
invasion the casualties would have been greater than those
which occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
However, when we assign the blame for our current modern
condition it must go to those refugee scientists who fled
Europe and developed the atomic bomb.
Mike Walsh
Michael P. Walsh
JamesOberg wrote:
------
---
I agree with Oberg completely on his evaluation of the American Communist
Party which twisted and turned to follow every detail of the latest dictates
of Soviet policy.
The American Communist Party opposed all United States aid to the
countries allied against Nazi Germany during the period of the
Nazi-Soviet alliance before Hitler made his unexpected (to Stalin)
attack on the Soviet Union. Of course, after that happened the
American Communist Party became super patriots.
Mike Walsh
Alexey Goldin
> <<USSR would probably be bombed.>>
>
> By who, and why?
By US. Just for the case. To keep it from violating minorities rights,
for example.
I agree that USSR at the time was evil. However, because my parents
were on receiving end, I tend to see the whole nuclear espionage thing
in a bit different light.
BTW, I do not think it would take 10 years longer for USSR to build
nuclear bomb. May be five. The guys in the program were pretty good.
Tom Billings
> Nobody forced Stalin to do whatever he did, nobody forced McCarthy et
> al to do what they did. Simply because there is a greater evil in the
> world does not make McCarthy's evil a null. What McCarthy did was
> wrong. We are too recently out of the Cold War to have an entirely
> accurate view of it.
No. We have much new information from the
archives of the USSR and the Comintern. The
simple fact is that those archives point out
the strong links between relative Soviet
strength and Soviet willingness to support
the suppression of market freedoms by various
"socialist camp" groups around the world. That
ncludes those groups in the US. McCarthy's
idiocy was to assault the entirety of the political
academic support structure for socialism, when
only a small portion of it was connected to
the USSR directly.
> I don't think that Russia was as bad as we are
> supposed to believe, and I know we weren't as angelic as the
> government would like us to believe.
It doesn' require believing that the US always
acted as angels to believe the testimony of
those who suffered the GULAG and other repression.
It was all quite real, and on a vastly larger
scale than most of academia was willing to state
forthrightly in public. Thus, the assault on so
many there, and associated with academia, who shouldn't
have been harmed.
> Its hard to tell, but it appears
> that the Cold War was a result of mutual step-by-step escalation.
> No matter who started it, both sides willingly responded.
> We dropped a nuke on Japan, they build some nukes, we build an H-bomb,
they build
> missiles, we build bigger missiles, and so on.
No. The archives that were opened in Russia,
and are now closed again, showed that the Soviets
acted through the Comintern in essentially the
same way for many years towards the US _before_ WW II.
Stalin assumed that conflict was inevitable the
moment it became clear he couldn't keep walking
his sphere of ifluence West without conflict after
WW II.
> What started this? We
> historically had held a lousy relationship with Russia. Perhaps if we
> had been less adherent to our staunch anti-radicalism, we wouldn't
> have dumped all our resources into such a useless war.
Well,... now here you have said something almost usefull.
The key here was that many in the US did not, and do _not_
see the so-called "radicalism" of the "socialist camp" as
being anything morally better than the racism that had so
recently begun to shrink in influence. The anti-communist
stance was a response to the moral abhorence of the majority
against those who would destroy the market freedoms needed
for the continuing industrial revolution, among other good
attributes those freedoms have. The "left" that remains
within academia, or attached to it emotionally, has yet
to significantly address the moral abhorrence for their
own desires to restrict freedoms on level of action we call
the marketplace.
That "anti-radicalism" was quite properly the genesis of the
US side of the conflict, since it defined the moral basis
of our side of that conflict.
We had _no_ more reason to be accepting of a foreign power
trying o support the destruction of market freedoms than we
did of Nazi Germany. They were moral equivalents, who thankfully
did not permanently ally with each other.
Regards,
Tom Billings
--
Oregon L5 Society
http://www.teleport.com/rfrederi/L5
Graham Nelson
<URL:mailto:gol...@flight.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> james...@aol.com (JamesOberg) writes:
>
> > <<USSR would probably be bombed.>>
> >
> > By who, and why?
>
> By US. Just for the case. To keep it from violating minorities rights,
> for example.
I think this improbable, because although the US certainly had
its bomb-happy military in the wake of WW2 -- one thinks of
Curtis LeMay, who seems at one point to have advocated a first
strike -- it was also led by practical men who wanted to keep the
cold war cold. The more is revealed of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
the more clear it seems that the two most level-headed people
involved were Kennedy and Khrushchev. The danger existed but
came from local flare-ups: it is alleged that a junior Soviet
officer in Cuba was briefly given permission to use a nuclear
weapon on the battlefield if he had no option.
The same danger exists today in Kashmir, I fear.
--
Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom
Graham Nelson
<URL:mailto:mp_w...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> Joseph McCarthy's malevolence and reputation for charging innocent
> people as communists was well earned. His actual power and the
> nonsensical idea that he exercised direct influence on the Democratic
> administration then in power are more the result of demonization than
> fact.
The historian Hugh Brogan argues that McCarthy did in fact
personally alter the foreign policy of the United States:
"He lied his way into his first public office, that of circuit
judge in Wisconsin; in 1946 he lied his way into the Senate,
partly by accusing his opponent in the Republican primary,
Robert La Follette Jr. of being corrupt, and partly by insisting
that "Congress needs a tail gunner" -- namely McCarthy, who,
apart from sitting in a tail gunner's seat when a passenger, on
a few occasions, on a military plane in the Pacific during the
Second World War, spent his service behind a desk, debriefing
pilots. Never mind: he passed himself off as a wounded
war-hero (having injured his leg when falling downstairs, drunk,
on a troopship) and won the election. Once in the Senate he
pursued his favourite interests, chiefly boozing and gambling,
and financed them by taking bribes from corporations that had
business in Washington: to use the slang phrase, he was a
boodler. He was a palpably unsatisfactory Senator, and by 1950
there were signs that the people of Wisconsin might retire him.
He badly needed an issue, and in a rash moment, which they soon
regretted, some Catholic acquaintances suggested that he
denounce the communist menace. They were thinking of the
international crisis, but McCarthy knew better. "That's it,"
he said. "The government is full of Communists. We can
hammer away at them."
McCarthy knew nothing about communism or the State Department,
but he did know that mud sticks, especially if you throw a
lot of it. It is doubtful if he ever thought he was doing
much harm. He spent his days largely in the company of petty
crooks and swindlers...
His impact on central government is what distinguishes him from
the other heroes of the second Red Scare. While HUAC hounded
private individuals McCarthy took on the State Department,
the army and the Presidency itself. To their eternal shame
he was encouraged by his colleagues in the Republican party,
now desperate for power. Senator Taft was the son of a Chief
Justice of the United States: yet he advised McCarthy, "If one
case doesn't work, try another." Baser, stupider men in the
Senate joined in the cry. [...]
[...] Dean Acheson, especially, understood the importance
of training a generation [of new State Department officials].
All this was destroyed by the anti-communists... the "loss
of China" (a country which America had never owned or
controlled or found it anything but immensely difficult to
influence), was only explicable on the assumption that there
were traitors in high places. Joe McCarthy's service was to
identify them: Owen Lattimore, for instance, a historian of
China, or General Marshall who, said McCarthy, "would sell
his grandmother for any advantage"... No distinctions were
made: liberals, socialists and communists were all alike
fiendish; Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal had been
central agents of the conspiracy (McCarthy talked of "twenty
years of treason"). All opponents of Russia, or of Russia's
allies, must be worthy of America's friendship, and so the
disastrous practice of seeking out and propping up fragile,
cruel and incompetent dictatorships was reaffirmed...
The State Department collapsed under the McCarthyite attack
and the consequence, given the American political system,
was inevitable: everybody got in on the act. Congressmen,
Senators, union leaders (especially George Meany, the
ferociously anti-communist head of the AFL), businessmen,
editors, clergymen: everyone with an axe to grind felt it
his business to settle the foreign policy of the United States
in one respect, or in all. They used every lever at their
disposal and, no longer meeting any significant resistance
except from each other, got their own way far too often."
Eric F. Richards
> In article <374EE233...@pacbell.net>, Michael P. Walsh
> <URL:mailto:mp_w...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> Joseph McCarthy's malevolence and reputation for charging innocent
>> people as communists was well earned. His actual power and the
>> nonsensical idea that he exercised direct influence on the Democratic
>> administration then in power are more the result of demonization than
>> fact.
> The historian Hugh Brogan argues that McCarthy did in fact
> personally alter the foreign policy of the United States:
[big snip]
I'm no McCarthy apologist, but that bit of purple prose didn't read
like history books I've read. I suspect that Mr. Brogan has an axe to
grind.
Yikes!
> --
> Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom
--
Eric F. Richards
efr...@alumni.cs.colorado.edu
"The weird part is that I can feel productive even when I'm doomed."
- Dilbert
George Herbert
>Patrick Patriarca <pale...@citicom.com> wrote:
>>The NRA would have you believe ALL guns will be confiscated. Surely there
>>are some who want that. Fact is it will never happen. Their abstructionist
>>behavior has now backfired as they are even against registration of guns or
>>regulating in almost any way. The NRA is the hysterical party here...
>
>This is getting pretty far afield, but I can't resist commenting briefly.
Ditto...
>I saw an article on the issue, years ago, which made an excellent point:
>*both* sides of the issue have gone hysterical, if not ballistic, and
>there is little prospect of sane firearms laws unless *both* of them can
>be convinced to compromise a bit.
>
>The NRA really has to concede that there are people who shouldn't be
>allowed to own guns.
Well understood already. But that requires enforcement of the laws
that are supposed to keep criminals from buying or owning guns.
Those activities are already very illegal, but aren't prosecuted
nearly as aggressively as they should be.
The end result from the combination of a) making more gun laws
each time something happens and b) not enforcing them much is
to disarm honest people and let criminals be armed criminals
in many cases. This is the result that most far-seeing gun
owners fear... we think that existing laws, coupled with
active prosecution of violations, would solve the problem.
It's hard to see whose long-term agenda is served by the current
approach of legislate-but-don't-enforce-well, except that of the
complete gun banners and of criminals, hence the tendency to
scream and yell about every new law that is proposed...
-george william herbert
gher...@crl.com
Henry Spencer
Patrick Patriarca <pale...@citicom.com> wrote:
>> ...Today's witches, I suggest, with no connection to factual
>> arguments, are the NRA and the tobacco industry...
>
>The NRA would have you believe ALL guns will be confiscated. Surely there
>are some who want that. Fact is it will never happen. Their abstructionist
>behavior has now backfired as they are even against registration of guns or
>regulating in almost any way. The NRA is the hysterical party here...
This is getting pretty far afield, but I can't resist commenting briefly.
I saw an article on the issue, years ago, which made an excellent point:
*both* sides of the issue have gone hysterical, if not ballistic, and
there is little prospect of sane firearms laws unless *both* of them can
be convinced to compromise a bit.
The NRA really has to concede that there are people who shouldn't be
allowed to own guns.
The anti-gun groups really have to concede that honest, law-abiding
citizens *should* be allowed to own guns if they want to.
--
The good old days | Henry Spencer he...@spsystems.net
weren't. | (aka he...@zoo.toronto.edu)
Henry Spencer
JamesOberg <james...@aol.com> wrote:
>As for "exaggerated" damage from spying, consider how the USSR might have
>behaved if it did NOT have A-bombs and H-bombs for ten or fifteen years more?
>Are you suggesting their aid and instigation of foreign wars would have been
>unchanged?
I'm skeptical of any great long-lasting effects, because I don't believe
it would have taken them that long to achieve crude fission bombs. The
basics of how to do that were revealed openly in 1945, not that they were
all that hard to figure out.
om
><<USSR would probably be bombed.>>
>
>By who, and why?
...By us, natch. Word would have eventually gotten ou regarding
Stalin's little 20 million kills record, and we would have gone in to
liberate the various republics "in the name of peace".
OM
Giovanni Abrate
better still refuse to see beyond their ultimate political goal: to register
and eventually confiscate all firearms owned by private citizens.
G.
George Herbert <gher...@crl3.crl.com> wrote in message
news:7io1tn$f...@crl3.crl.com...
>>>are some who want that. Fact is it will never happen. Their
abstructionist
>>>behavior has now backfired as they are even against registration of guns
or
>>>regulating in almost any way. The NRA is the hysterical party here...
>>
>>This is getting pretty far afield, but I can't resist commenting briefly.
>
>
>>I saw an article on the issue, years ago, which made an excellent point:
>>*both* sides of the issue have gone hysterical, if not ballistic, and
>>there is little prospect of sane firearms laws unless *both* of them can
>>be convinced to compromise a bit.
>>
>>The NRA really has to concede that there are people who shouldn't be
>>allowed to own guns.
>
Graham Nelson
<URL:mailto:efr...@flatland.dimensional.com> wrote:
> Graham Nelson <gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > The historian Hugh Brogan argues that McCarthy did in fact
> > personally alter the foreign policy of the United States:
>
> [big snip]
>
> I'm no McCarthy apologist, but that bit of purple prose didn't read
> like history books I've read. I suspect that Mr. Brogan has an axe to
> grind.
I'm tempted to say that you're reading the wrong history books,
then... One of the things I like about Brogan is that he is
unromantic but fair-minded to both political parties in America.
He has a lot of good to speak about Nixon, for instance.
Somebody, and I can't remember who it was, remarked that McCarthy
achieved the distinction of being the first American to be
detested by a large proportion of people outside America.
Graham Nelson
Tom Billings <URL:mailto:it...@teleport.com> wrote:
> Well,... now here you have said something almost usefull.
> The key here was that many in the US did not, and do _not_
> see the so-called "radicalism" of the "socialist camp" as
> being anything morally better than the racism that had so
> recently begun to shrink in influence. The anti-communist
> stance was a response to the moral abhorence of the majority
> against those who would destroy the market freedoms needed
> for the continuing industrial revolution, among other good
> attributes those freedoms have. The "left" that remains
> within academia, or attached to it emotionally, has yet
> to significantly address the moral abhorrence for their
> own desires to restrict freedoms on level of action we call
> the marketplace.
I think this is true, and that the problem has gone away
rather than been solved. The left and right in democracies
had quite different objections to communism -- where the right
objected to the violation of property rights and market freedom,
the left objected to the suppression of free speech and political
expression.
We see this today in attitudes to China, which is well on the
way to market freedoms within a fascist state, so that for the
most part the right is prepared to be more accommodating to
China than the left is. But of course the only feasible policy
is to sit and wait, on the assumption that sufficient economic
modernisation will make democracy inevitable anyway. Let us
hope so.
The left hasn't gone away to quite the extent you suggest, by
the way. Britain, France, Germany and Spain all have socialist
governments, though we vary in the shade of meaning we place
on that word, which means that western Europe is very much on
the left. This is a population and industrial base comparable
to the USA.
Graham Nelson
This is exceptionally unlikely, I think. Apart from the fact that
no state can use an atomic bomb against a state without one --
because any state without one, doesn't pose sufficient threat --
America would become a pariah in Europe for decades to follow.
(Consider that communism, regarded as a disease in post-war America,
was a legitimate political point of view in most European states,
with Italy, France and Germany having substantial sympathies with
eastern Europe's attempt to create a viable socialist state --
Europe opposed the soviet bloc on grounds of human rights, not
political ideology, I think.)
And besides, after the bombing, then what? America would in
effect have been stuck with the duty to govern the entire USSR
with an army of occupation. This would be vastly beyond its
resources.
Finally, the President of the USA has always been a human being,
and as such unwilling to kill ten million people.
JamesOberg
You obviously have. So when the Massachusetts mobs and their representatives
were destroying day care center workers for "witchcraft child abuse" in the
1980s, you were on the front line defending the innocent against "witch hunts",
weren't you? Or did you "go along" with that travesty? Careful where you point
fingers!!
Alexey Goldin
>
> This is exceptionally unlikely, I think. Apart from the fact that
> no state can use an atomic bomb against a state without one --
> because any state without one, doesn't pose sufficient threat --
Yeah, sure, and NATO will never attack country that does not threaten
NATO.
Keep in mind that Milosevic is nice guy compared to Stalin. Therefore
it would be easier to justify bombing of USSR in 1950s then Yugoslavia
now using "humanitarian" justification.
> America would become a pariah in Europe for decades to follow.
> (Consider that communism, regarded as a disease in post-war America,
> was a legitimate political point of view in most European states,
> with Italy, France and Germany having substantial sympathies with
> eastern Europe's attempt to create a viable socialist state --
> Europe opposed the soviet bloc on grounds of human rights, not
> political ideology, I think.)
>
But would US think about it before doing this?
> And besides, after the bombing, then what? America would in
> effect have been stuck with the duty to govern the entire USSR
> with an army of occupation. This would be vastly beyond its
> resources.
>
Exactly. Now what?
> Finally, the President of the USA has always been a human being,
> and as such unwilling to kill ten million people.
>
Sure. Except for the sake of saving them. The only president that I am
confident would not do it was probably Eisenhower.
Henry Spencer
Graham Nelson <gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> ><<USSR would probably be bombed.>>
>> >By who, and why?
>> liberate the various republics "in the name of peace".
>
>no state can use an atomic bomb against a state without one --
That point of view -- that there is a big black dividing line between
conventional and nuclear war, and that crossing it is a grave matter --
was not well established in the 40s and 50s. Remember that the only
actual combat use of atomic bombs *was* against a state without them.
Serious consideration was given to using nuclear weapons in Korea.
There were respectable voices in the US arguing for preemptive nuclear
war against the Soviet Union, even after the USSR had its own bomb.
Henry Spencer
George Herbert <gher...@crl3.crl.com> wrote:
>>*both* sides of the issue have gone hysterical, if not ballistic, and
>>there is little prospect of sane firearms laws unless *both* of them can
>>be convinced to compromise a bit.
>>The NRA really has to concede that there are people who shouldn't be
>>allowed to own guns.
>
>Well understood already. But that requires enforcement of the laws
>that are supposed to keep criminals from buying or owning guns.
I agree that there is a problem with poor and inconsistent enforcement of
existing laws... but the original point was not talking specifically about
convicted criminals. *That* is where compromise is called for on the NRA
side: the requirements probably should go farther than just the absence
of a criminal record.
Unfortunately, it would be stupid for the NRA to offer to compromise on
this in the current situation, where it would only play into the hands of
the opposite extreme, the gun-confiscation people. The only real way out
of the current mess is leadership -- actual leadership, not just in the
sense that a carved figurehead leads a ship -- toward a viable middle
position. That would require highly-placed people who are not beholden to
either side, and who want to resolve the matter badly enough to take some
heat over it. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that.
Michael P. Walsh
Eric F. Richards wrote:
> Graham Nelson <gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > In article <374EE233...@pacbell.net>, Michael P. Walsh
> > <URL:mailto:mp_w...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> Joseph McCarthy's malevolence and reputation for charging innocent
> >> people as communists was well earned. His actual power and the
> >> nonsensical idea that he exercised direct influence on the Democratic
> >> administration then in power are more the result of demonization than
> >> fact.
>
> > The historian Hugh Brogan argues that McCarthy did in fact
> > personally alter the foreign policy of the United States:
>
> [big snip]
>
> I'm no McCarthy apologist, but that bit of purple prose didn't read
> like history books I've read. I suspect that Mr. Brogan has an axe to
> grind.
>
> Yikes!
>
> > --
> > Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom
>
> --
> Eric F. Richards
> efr...@alumni.cs.colorado.edu
> "The weird part is that I can feel productive even when I'm doomed."
> - Dilbert
------
---
The factual material about McCarthy was correct. Speculation on
his motives are probably worthless. I could make a fairly good
case ( strictly from press reports ) that McCarthy could have been
paranoid and delusional as opposed to being an evil power
seeker.
Historian Brogan's analysis of the effect of McCarthy on U.S.
foreign policy is speculation that depends more on the biases of
English historians than on the facts.
Mike Walsh
Patrick Patriarca
Alexey Goldin <gol...@flight.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:m1vhddu...@flight.uchicago.edu...
> james...@aol.com (JamesOberg) writes:
>
> >
have
> > behaved if it did NOT have A-bombs and H-bombs for ten or fifteen years
more?
> > Are you suggesting their aid and instigation of foreign wars would have
been
> > unchanged?
>
>
That is certainly wrong. If so the US (I presume u mean the US) would have
done so by 1949..which we did not. In fact the USSR did not have sufficient
A-bombs for some years after to make a differance and we could have bombed
them after they dropped their first but obviously did not. Your assumption
is invalid.
Patrick Patriarca
JamesOberg <james...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:19990528102829...@ng-ck1.aol.com...
> <<Precisely. How interesting that these two opposing philosphies actually
tend
> to the same end.... apologizing for despotic behavior. How sad their
> apologists are so blind in their hatred they cannot see this.>>
>
> Demonizing people who disagree with you? Whose trait is that?
Yours.
Now you consider disagreeing with you demonizing. Apparently this thread
brings out the worst in everyone.
Patrick Patriarca
>
>
> <<However... I
> said and stand by the statement that Stalin and other hard line Communists
> and McCarthyites use the same type tactics inso far as lying,
exaggerating,
> forcing/cajoling/frightening people to inform on innocent people all
because
> their political creed differed.>>
>
> We disagree.
You are a good writer Jim but apparetly have trouble reading. READ what I
said above...
"...Stalin and other hard line Communists
and McCarthyites use the same type tactics inso far as lying,
exaggerating,
forcing/cajoling/frightening people to inform on innocent people all
because
their political creed differed..."
Period ...End of statement. I never say Stalin's and McCarthy's end result
(death) are the same...simply their tactics of lying, exaggerating
etc....read Jim read.
>
> Under Stalin, if I had power and you disagreed -- or even if I suspected
you
> disagreed -- you and your family would be dead.
No feces Sherlock.
>
> Under a McCarthyist regime, if you disagreed, you wouldn't be able to
write
> Hollywood scripts and might have to sell refridgerators to make a living.
And you would not be able to write on space exploration. What a concept.
How blase of you. Again you ignore (convieniently) the number of people who
committed suicide. Whose families broke up. Who lost their career. I
suggest if YOU lost your career you would be first in line to condemn
McCarthy. Be real.
>
> Your inability to perceive a distinction is min-boggling to me, but hardly
> surprising -- lots of people agree with you.
I do perceive the distinction, my posts prove it and your exaggeration and
distortion of my statements resemble McCarthy's tactics all the more. And
you complain of demonizing ! Ha.
David Joseph Greenbaum
inscribed in fleeting electrons:
: Yeah, sure, and NATO will never attack country that does not threaten
: NATO.
Actually, the rump Yugoslavia *does* present a huge threat to NATO.
How? There is a region known as Vojvodna to the northwest of Serbia
proper which contains a significant Hungarian minority (there were more
before 1945). Hungary is part of NATO. The expulsion of the Albanian
majority from Kossovo has produced streams of folk not only fleeing to
Albania (a nation on the Strait of Otranto, and a possible threat to any
nation whose major trade outlet runs through the Adriatic), but also to
Macedonia, whose territory and independence are jealously resented by
Greece. Greece is a NATO member. The trade of seven nations runs down
the Danube (Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia,
Switzerland, Slovenia). Belgrade lies on the Danube. Belgrade is the
capital of Serbia. Moreover, there is an ugly kind of ethnic fascism in
control of Serbia, of a type all to familiar to those in Croatia, Serbia,
Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Greece, the Czech Republic, and Romania.
Fascism is a militant political ideology that spawns imitators and tends
to incite wars.
: Keep in mind that Milosevic is nice guy compared to Stalin.
Milosevic has far less control over the reins of the Yugoslav state
apparattus. Much more than Stalin, he is beholden to a powerful, vocal,
militant minority to balance himself in power. He's got the wolf by the
ears. Stalin had a bit more control. During the wars in Bosnia and
Croatia, he demonstrably had more control, and (deep breath) the slaughter
in Croatia and Bosnia remains greater than that in Kossovo. Milosevic
needed to loose his militant Serb retainers on the Kossovo Albanians (who
were much less threatening just a year ago), because they felt that
Kossovo needed to be extirpated of Albanians. Had he tried to oppose
this, they would have ditched him and thrown their support to a more
radical political figure (perhaps the current President of the Yugoslav
Federal Republic of Serbia whoe name I forget but who is a rabid foam
frothing at the mouth radical). Since Milosevic's main goal as been to
maintain himself in power, provide favors to his supporters, and enrich
himself and his clique, in that order, he really had no other alternate
strategy. His only hope of survival has been the radical Serbian
militants. And recall, the Communist Party remains quite powerful in
Serbia. Other authoritarian parties exist and garner support. The
democratic opposition on left and right is in a minority, and as it
opposes the Federal policy in Kossovo and works to undermine Milosevic,
it has been smeared as unpatriotic and unnational by the nationalist
parties. Since they are under constant NATO bombing, Serbians might not
be entirely logical with regards to their political decisionmaking, and
the support for the democratic opposition has been decreasing.
And with regards to any presumption that the United States would have
attacked a nuclear-weaponless Soviet Union in roughly the same manner as
the Nazis attacked in 1941? Quatsch. Americans are moral. More
importantly, they tend to be self-absorbed.
Dave G.
--
Such fragrance -
from where,
which tree?
Patrick Patriarca
>
> <<Last time I read the Constitution it was not a crime to belong
> >to a political party , even on as inept and stupid as the US Communist
party
> >(whose membership seemed to have as many FBI informers and agents as
actual
> >Communists. )>>
>
> Your pretense that the American Communist Party was just a philosophical
> society
Again you read too much into what I said.... read Jim...do learn to read. I
said BELONGING to an "inept and stupid" political party as the USCP was not
unconstitutional....NOT that the Party leadership was innocent or harmless.
>wouldn't stand up to recent books written based on documents released
> in Moscow about what the party, its leadership, and any member asked to do
so,
> really did.
So now you say ANY member did all those terrible things the USCP allegedly
did! You know for a fact ANY member asked to did all those terrible things?
Even those who joined just to impress a girl friend?!! Or who joined in the
Depression and never dropped membership? Or who just attended meetings?
Your paranoia knows no bounds. You know Jim.... your writings were
impressive about the Russian space program...I think it's all gone to your
head.
>Improve your mind by uploading the latest information.
Unlike you I do read and comprehend. You insist on presuming things I do not
say. You insist on assuming EVERYONE who happened to make a youthful
indiscretion was an evil Red waiting to get under your bed. You have a
problem Jim. Sad. Real sad.
All I said was it was not unconstitutional to belong to even a ridiculous
group like the USCP and you go ballistic. You really do sound like
McCarthy...
Patrick Patriarca
Henry Spencer <he...@spsystems.net> wrote in message
news:FCH5H...@spsystems.net...
> In article <Wqo33.343$783....@newsfeed.slurp.net>,
> Patrick Patriarca <pale...@citicom.com> wrote:
> >> ...Today's witches, I suggest, with no connection to factual
> >> arguments, are the NRA and the tobacco industry...
> >
> >are some who want that. Fact is it will never happen. Their
abstructionist
> >behavior has now backfired as they are even against registration of guns
or
> >regulating in almost any way. The NRA is the hysterical party here...
>
> This is getting pretty far afield, but I can't resist commenting briefly.
> there is little prospect of sane firearms laws unless *both* of them can
> be convinced to compromise a bit.
>
> The NRA really has to concede that there are people who shouldn't be
> allowed to own guns.
>
> citizens *should* be allowed to own guns if they want to.
No problem here.... I certainly would draw the line on claiming the US
constitution gives me the right to have an tactical nuclear artillery
because the constitution says "firearms." Seriously...I own rifles, shotguns
and have no problem with reasonable registration and safe keeping...
Patrick Patriarca
Giovanni Abrate <try...@ibm.net> wrote in message
news:374f...@news1.us.ibm.net...
> Well said; but some politicians and many, many individuals who should know
> better still refuse to see beyond their ultimate political goal: to
register
> and eventually confiscate all firearms owned by private citizens.
> G.
The confiscation of all guns will never happen . Not in this nation so long
as the constitution allows it. IF that is ever attempted there will be civil
war and that is a fact.
Patrick Patriarca
John Beaderstadt <be...@together.gov> wrote in message
news:374E72...@together.gov...
> Pat wrote:
> >
> > Really? Tenous? Tell that to all the ruined lives of the 50's and the
damage
> > done to the american way of life, by teh secret police.
>
> *What* secret police?
Oh...like the FBI....
>The damage was done by the victims' neighbors and
> friends.
> And that was the *true* damage.
>
> --
> "I tried to imagine the easiest way God could have done it."
> --Albert Einstein
>
> ***Change "gov" to "net" to send me email***
Patrick Patriarca
>
> <<Which...by his statements James oberg apparently feels is OK as long as
> "some" witches are found. No offense Jim but if this is your reasoning I
> fear your credibility is questionable.>>
>
> Nope, you don't get it, and you don't understand my point -- let's discuss
off
> line, this is off topic.
I was about to say this is REALLY off task.... as for discussing it off
line...lets all just coool down first.I think we are all sort of wrapped
tight about this about now. Lets back off and get back to what really
matters. Getting OFF this #$%^ planet and away from this #$%@.
Patrick Patriarca
You know...now u mention it.. I am a Social Worker (MSW) and have almost
always worked direct service unless I was in research.... and when the
McMartin et al stuff (yeah I know it was in Calif. but still) I literally
shuddered when reding this stuff. It is amazing how easily people need to
literally hang someone and forget the presumption of innocense. I think it's
what it all comes down to. My wife and I ran Boy's Town group homes for 5
years/7 days week/24hrs. day/365.... and I cannot tell you how many parents
of otherwise neglected / abused kids would rise up if you did or did not
take them to church...did or did not account for every scratch an active kid
gets...did or did not make sure he had a snack... it's as if the parents
failed and abandoned their kids and upon seeing someone give them a home
attack anything.
Christopher Michael Jones
> In article <7io1tn$f...@crl3.crl.com>,
> George Herbert <gher...@crl3.crl.com> wrote:
> >>there is little prospect of sane firearms laws unless *both* of them can
> >>be convinced to compromise a bit.
> >>The NRA really has to concede that there are people who shouldn't be
> >>allowed to own guns.
> >
> >that are supposed to keep criminals from buying or owning guns.
> I agree that there is a problem with poor and inconsistent enforcement of
> existing laws... but the original point was not talking specifically about
> convicted criminals. *That* is where compromise is called for on the NRA
> side: the requirements probably should go farther than just the absence
> of a criminal record.
Actually, it's more than just denying people who have commited certain
crimes from owning guns, it is prosecuting gun crimes. Stealing guns,
using guns in a crime (for example, armed robbery), owning illegal
guns, etc., are apparently very light weight crimes in the eyes of
DA's and police officers. If such things were prosecuted more there
maybe there would be some deterrent. As it stands now, enforcement
of existing gun laws wrt gun crimes is very lax.
> Unfortunately, it would be stupid for the NRA to offer to compromise on
> this in the current situation, where it would only play into the hands of
> the opposite extreme, the gun-confiscation people. The only real way out
> of the current mess is leadership -- actual leadership, not just in the
> sense that a carved figurehead leads a ship -- toward a viable middle
> position. That would require highly-placed people who are not beholden to
> either side, and who want to resolve the matter badly enough to take some
> heat over it. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that.
Unfortunately the debate is occuring between the rabid extremists
instead of by the vast number of moderates.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Jones
My Web Page - "http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/~cjones/web/"
My Space Page -"http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/~cjones/web/Space.html"
Eric F. Richards
> In article <YPF33.1146$x11....@wormhole.dimensional.com>, Eric F. Richards
> <URL:mailto:efr...@flatland.dimensional.com> wrote:
> > Graham Nelson <gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > > The historian Hugh Brogan argues that McCarthy did in fact
> > > personally alter the foreign policy of the United States:
> >
> > [big snip]
> >
> > I'm no McCarthy apologist, but that bit of purple prose didn't read
> > like history books I've read. I suspect that Mr. Brogan has an axe to
> > grind.
>
> I'm tempted to say that you're reading the wrong history books,
> then... One of the things I like about Brogan is that he is
> unromantic but fair-minded to both political parties in America.
Well, maybe I'm used to dry writing of American historians. :-)
Seriously, and not as a flame-provoking exercise, let's look at
some of those statements.
> "He lied his way into his first public office, that of circuit
> judge in Wisconsin; in 1946 he lied his way into the Senate,
In what way? Misrepresenting his qualifications? Campaign ads that
stretch the truth? *I* don't know, and this doesn't tell me.
Surely you've been overwhelmed by American culture enough to see
how political campaigns here work: lying is part of the "game,"
and is accepted -- reluctantly, cynically, with disgust, but accepted.
I would suggest that he was voted into office by running a
successful, unethical campaign. It's the voter's responsibility
to be aware of who they are voting in. (Even so, what exactly
were his lies?)
> in 1946 he lied his way into the Senate,
> partly by accusing his opponent in the Republican primary,
> Robert La Follette Jr. of being corrupt,
Everyone does that.
> and partly by insisting
> that "Congress needs a tail gunner" -- namely McCarthy, who,
> apart from sitting in a tail gunner's seat when a passenger [...]
"Tail gunner" is a metaphor. At least, I would have taken it that
way. Unless he claimed to be a flight crew member, and your
quote doesn't say that.
> Never mind: he passed himself off as a wounded
> war-hero (having injured his leg when falling downstairs, drunk,
> on a troopship) and won the election.
If he passed himself off as a wounded tail gunner, that's different.
(Call it a coin flip at this point. :-))
> Once in the Senate he
> pursued his favourite interests, chiefly boozing and gambling,
> and financed them by taking bribes from corporations that had
> business in Washington:
...and this is different in what way from the rest?
> Baser, stupider men in the
> Senate joined in the cry. [...]
Or opportunistic, or genuinely scared men, or naturalized
citizens from countries that didn't have a democratic tradition
and really, viscerally understand it. How would a Russian emigree'
feel about McCarthy's statements?
My point isn't to flame on about the quote; I just found it long
on opinion and short on facts and analysis.
John Beaderstadt
>
> No problem here.... I certainly would draw the line on claiming the US
> constitution gives me the right to have an tactical nuclear artillery
> because the constitution says "firearms."
Er, at the risk of starting something up again, the 2nd amendment
*actually* says, "arms," not "firearms."
John Beaderstadt
>
> John Beaderstadt <be...@together.gov> wrote in message
> news:374E72...@together.gov...
>
>
> Oh...like the FBI....
I can only shake my head at this, and move on.
Alexey Goldin
> > USSR would probably be bombed.
>
>
> That is certainly wrong. If so the US (I presume u mean the US) would have
> done so by 1949..which we did not. In fact the USSR did not have sufficient
> A-bombs for some years after to make a differance and we could have bombed
> them after they dropped their first but obviously did not. Your assumption
> is invalid.
US did not have enough bombs to make a difference before 1949. And
public have not managed to convince itself that it is a proper thing
to do by 1949 --- US is a democracy after all.
Jon Krocker
james...@aol.com (JamesOberg) wrote:
><<However... I
>said and stand by the statement that Stalin and other hard line Communists
>and McCarthyites use the same type tactics inso far as lying, exaggerating,
>forcing/cajoling/frightening people to inform on innocent people all because
>their political creed differed.>>
>
>We disagree.
>
>Under Stalin, if I had power and you disagreed -- or even if I suspected you
>disagreed -- you and your family would be dead.
>
>Under a McCarthyist regime, if you disagreed, you wouldn't be able to write
>Hollywood scripts and might have to sell refridgerators to make a living.
>
>Your inability to perceive a distinction is min-boggling to me, but hardly
>surprising -- lots of people agree with you.
I think you diminish the effect of being on a blacklists. I wonder how you
would feel if because of some remark that you once said, you are no longer
allowed to publish your material. Selling fridges is better than being
dead but......
--
Jon Krocker jkro...@magic.mb.ca
Aus des Weltalls Ferne, Funken radiosterne, Quasare und Pulsare
-Kraftwerk.
Pat
John Beaderstadt wrote:
> Pat wrote:
> >
> > Really? Tenous? Tell that to all the ruined lives of the 50's and the damage
> > done to the american way of life, by teh secret police.
>
> *What* secret police? The damage was done by the victims' neighbors and
> friends.
> And that was the *true* damage.
There used to be extremists who would compile lists of communists
and then send letters to their employers and threaten boycotts
if employers didn't knuckle under.
While these people were fairly marginal losers, rather like the sort
you find on AM radio today, they were capable of causing great harm
because of the political climate caused by Sen. McCarthy.
IT wasn't even practical to sue these sorts for libel, because they
lacked any means of substance to make a suit worthwhile.