Copyright (c) 2000

From: Russell Hoffman, founder and editor

Re: Welcome, Comrades, to a new Russian winter: STOP CASSINI #252

Date: January 18th, 2000

Today's topics:

• (1) Putin: Scary, crafty, nuts (and so are we)
• (2) Michio Kaku to appear on Art Bell this Thursday (January 20th, 2000)
• (3) Sign a petition (or two), feel like you've done something
• (4) Bruce Gagnon: A history of disinformation
• (5) Unfinished business list
• (6) Official government contact points
• (7) Newsletter subscription information

(1) Putin: Scary, crafty, nuts (and so are we)

IS IT COLD ENOUGH FOR YOU?

Boris Yeltzin is OUT, Vladimir Putin is IN -- welcome to a new Russian winter!

It is most unfortunate that, according to polls, 70% of the Russian people support Putin and thus a continuation of the very policies that made them the environmental, political and economical disaster they are today -- the military policies of the Cold War!

Space News (January 17th, 2000) didn't think their own article about Putin's mad attitude was front page news -- it started on page 3 ("Yeltzin Successor Expected To Support Space, Defense").

In fact, from the title of the article and the opening lines it would appear that SPACE NEWS thinks Putin is good news since, after all, he'll revive the Russian space industry (where, according to the article, wages average a little under $60.00 a month, about 10% above average in Russia). The article, by Simon Saradzhyan, begins, "MOSCOW -- Russia's space and defense industries likely will benefit from the rise of Premier Vladimir Putin as Russia's acting president, independent experts and government insiders said."

PUTIN IS BAD NEWS:

Putin is a former KGB officer who has already "vowed to revive the country's military-industrial complex" according to these same experts and government insiders.

This is exactly the opposite of what Mr. Putin should be doing! Furthermore his KGB background is more than just terrifying -- it guarantees that he can control huge operations entirely without public/media/fellow elected officials' ability to detect that the operations are even going on! Glasnost, the policy of media openness that supposedly came about in Russia following the Chernobyl media disaster for Russia (it was an environmental disaster too) is surely out the window now, as if it wasn't already.

According to the SPACE NEWS article, Putin thinks that reviving the Russian space and defense industries will revive the entire Russian economy. He's got his head up his ass. There is no recovery possible from building useless weapons of mass destruction! It is a waste of money to spend billions of dollars on defense based on ridiculous paranoia!

A BETTER WAY TO SPEND HIS BILLIONS:

If Putin wants to ensure that America will never attack Russia, all he really needs to do is spend those same billions of dollars on building an infrastructure which allows THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA to intermingle and co-exist with THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA, and stop the senseless idea that we are or might be some day, at war with one another. Just stop it. In San Diego, for example, there is a program which brings a few dozen Russian children who live near Chernobyl to live with families who can take in an extra child for a few months here in California (some of my subscribers may have gotten holiday greeting cards with photos of drawings done by children of Chernobyl; these were purchased from the Children of Chernobyl foundation.) Such exchanges can be increased 100-fold.

It is these types of cultural exchanges which are needed, as well as sports exchanges, and technological exchanges, including fiber-optic Internet cable connections between America and Russia. Another good cultural exchange are museum exhibit exchanges (such as the traveling exhibit WWII THROUGH RUSSIAN EYES, which was in San Diego for most of 1999, and contains some awesome paintings and artifacts (although this author questioned the authenticity of a number of the major items in that exhibit!)).

(Note: Fiber-optic cabling is much more ecologically friendly and provides vastly more bandwidth than satellite solutions in the long run, although the satellite solutions remain more "sexy", because they involve a rocket launch which is always fun to watch (there's one scheduled for 6:01 pm tonight from VAFB; it may be visible in as many as 8 states), and also because they can generally be brought online (for a select few) faster and cheaper. They are NOT the best solution to communications bottlenecks, and hopefully before Putin gets to far with his mad-scientist, Cold War histrionics, someone will explain to him that political solutions are far cheaper, and do not require billions invested in space war toys, which by their very nature are secretive and expensive -- the opposite of what good science needs.)

LET THE WAR GAMES BEGIN

Yeltzin is out, Putin is in, and a new Russian Winter has begun. We will undoubtedly answer this madman's actions just as if he had been placed there for the benefit of our own bottom lines (which for all I know, he might have been) -- we will demand that we begin building our own bigger and better space war machines, and we will continue to pour our own billions down the war toy drain, where no child is educated (except by silly and offensive "outreach programs") and where in fact, little or no social gain is accomplished whatsoever.

-- rdh

(Note: Our thanks to Jim Spellman for information about the VAFB launch tonight.)

(2) Michio Kaku to appear on Art Bell this Thursday:

(Kaku also has his own show, which airs weekly on Pacifica stations. -- rdh)

----- INCOMING EMAIL FROM BILL SMIRNOW: -----

From: smirnowb@ix.netcom.com
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 01:24:10 -0500 (EST)
To: rosin@west.net
To: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
To: MBSULL@aol.com
To: marvlewis@juno.com
To: lanny@ilhawaii.net
To: johnsrud@csrlink.net
To: happen@pipeline.com
To: CarolMoore@kreative.net
Subject: Michio Kaku on Art Bell This Thursday Nite/Friday Morning

Friends,

Art Bell http://www.artbell.com will have Michio Kaku on live this Thursday night/Friday morning. If you can't be up, maybe you can tape it. Might be Kaku's Birthday present. Kaku's great on a variety of material from science to politics to environment as I'm sure you all know.

-Bill

----- END OF INCOMING EMAIL -----

(3) Sign a petition (or two), feel like you've done something:

----- EMAIL POSTED TO THE Y2K NUCLEAR LIST BY PAUL SWANN: -----

At 08:38 PM 1/17/00 +0000, Paul Swann wrote:
Delivered-To: pswann
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 06:25:28 -0500
To: NucNews@onelist.com (NucNews)
From: Peace through Reason
Subject: Please sign online petition - "Abolish Nuclear Weapons"

Dear Friends,

We have just posted the online petition:

"Abolish Nuclear Weapons"

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/prop1/petition.html

If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider signing yourself.

A note like this sent from you to your friends can make an especially effective contribution to the petition. A successful petition is a grassroots collaborative effort, and now it's your turn. The power of the Internet is in your hands -- so spread the word!

Be sure you also check out the petition posted by Bruce Gagnon to stop U.S. current plans for weapons in space. (Bruce will be speaking here in D.C. on January 19th, hope you can make it! See http://prop1.org/currevnt.htm for details.)

----- END OF INCOMING EMAIL FORWARDED BY PAUL SWANN -----

(4) Bruce Gagnon: A history of disinformation:

This newsletter was originally founded in part because the author learned "the hard way" that the environmental organization which was handling space issues was utterly corrupted at the top, and it was impossible to join them and speak out effectively. So I went out on my own with this newsletter. The name of the most utterly corrupt environmentalist/activist?

Bruce Gagnon.

And now, nearly three years and over 250 issues later, we see that corrupted power still rules the movement against nukes in space (but it really is no surprise; corruption rules in Government and just about everywhere else).

We expect a lot of our readers have no idea what happened between Gagnon and this editor, having not had a chance to read all the issues of this newsletter which discuss it. Even a brief summary would be difficult, but readers can see the following newsletters (and others) for details:

#28: Bruce cuts links to our STOP CASSINI web site
#35: Shrimp boat protest (guess who wouldn't want to get involved?)
#38: DC Press Conference (guess who wasn't invited!)
#58: Gagnon's utterly absurd defense of his actions
#87, #88, #90, #92, #93: Back-and-forth regarding Gagnon's activities
#102: "The Spook who acts like a kook"
#103: Ross McCluney responds to #102
#133: Cassini protest schedule with incorrect/missing information
#147: Real activists aren't satisfied by simply raising the flyby height
#173: "The black hole of anti-Cassini information"
#190: Gagnon's most ridiculous protest ever?
#221: Stupidity wins out in the United Nations

-- rdh

(5) Unfinished business list:

Since we are taking a break of some sort from doing these newsletters, we would like to note that we have several issues outstanding at this time which will (presumably) appear in upcoming STOP CASSINI newsletter issues. These include a detailed answer from a subscriber to our comments about the use of radioactive materials in smoke detectors and elsewhere, a discussion of the Pentagon Y2K glitch (what is there to say, though, since we have a lot of trouble believing it even really happened?), a review of the recent TLC show on space debris, Depleted Uranium news, and a few other matters. -- rdh

(6) Newsletter subscription information:

Thanks for reading! Welcome new subscribers!

Home page of our STOP CASSINI movement:
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Published by Russell D. Hoffman electronically.
Written in the United States of America.
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The opinions expressed are those of the individual authors.
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The Animated Software Company

rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com