In a 1999 report published in the recently released French government UFO files, they come to the conclusion that UFO’s are probably extraterrestrial in nature and that the American government probably has at least one of these ships in custody.
An interesting point they bring up is that of the cover-ups. Why not go public with this information? The document states that if the government had gone public with UFO information in the ’40’s or ‘50’s, it would have meant total chaos and probably the collapse of the United States. This because the first question journalists would have asked is: “if they are hostile, can you protect us?” The answer, obviously, would have been “No”. The public would have panicked. Congress would have asked “Why, when we give you budgets of millions of dollars, and great minds, can you not protect us?” (note: Geipan’s conclusions, not mine.)
This brought me into an interesting line of thought. Now I would like to state right away that I am by no means a UFO researcher. I enjoy the topic and I also believe they are real and of an extraterrestrial origin (well, at least a lot of them are).
The train of thought is this: Suppose there had been no cold war? Suppose the cold war was a smoke screen; something big in which a few countries played a part in, a deception to hide a dangerous truth?
Let’s assume Roswell really happened (I’m not saying it didn’t, I’m just not looking for an argument on this point as it’s irrelevant). Suppose it was discovered the ship was a scout from another planet. And suppose it was hostile. Then what was it looking for? Probably a reason to invade. So the first question is why invade?
What reason could an alien civilisation possibly have for invading us?
1- Colonization.
Ah, the classics! This one makes no sense whatsoever. I’m six feet tall while my wife is five feet tall (I’m actually giving her an extra half-inch here…). This can be really annoying at times. I find the counters in the kitchen are too low; I have to bend my back to cook. She finds them too high and has to tiptoe a lot. She keeps calling me every time she needs something on the second shelf…
Our world (at least our Western world) is built for people who are about five feet six inches tall. How tall is ET? If everything is too high, or too low, then he might want to start by razing our houses.
And do you really believe ET’s electric razor will plug into a 120 volt socket? And what about toilet facilities?
The main problem with the colonization scenario is that ET would have to start off by destroying, then cleaning everything before building. Much simpler to build on an uninhabited planet, don’t you think?
2- Slavery
ET needs slaves, so he comes to Earth, hoards us into space ships in order to work in mines. Cheap labour. Sure, but are we a good build for any of ET’s tools? And what does ET feed us? Does he have any kind of food that we can digest without being very sick or dying? Seems to me it would be easier to create their own race of slaves. Or use machines…
3- Predator
ET likes hunting. He wants to come over and hunt us for the sport. Well, there’s not much we would be able to do against that. But why bother sending scouts ahead? Wouldn’t it be more sporting to simply come over and see what’s there?
4- Natural resources
ET wants what we have. This makes a lot more sense. ET attacks the military. Destroys major cities. Leaves some people to do the manual work and some people to feed them. All the machinery exists and all the slave labour is in place.
The logistics involved mean many years of planning. You need to keep some power plants active. You need to keep some people to work them. You need to keep some farms to feed the workers, and people to work on the farms.
Now if Roswell or some other crash happened in the ‘40’s and the US figured the aliens were hostile, what would be the best, the only line of defence, considering the technology of the times? A doomsday device.
You give nuclear technology to another major power and build as many nukes as you can. Say enough to blow up the planet fifty times. When ET comes back, you tell him: if you launch an attack, we irradiate the planet. This way ET has no access to the natural resources he came to get. Personally, I’d rather die this way than live as a slave to ET or be killed, matter-of-factly, by his weapons.
So while ET is figuring out his next move, we can advance our own weaponry in order to eventually be able to fight him. This would take time. Perhaps a hundred years. Until we built something like a particle beam weapon. Like the SDI or what the Soviets developed in the 1970’s. With a particle beam weapon, nukes become obsolete and we can shoot down ET any time.
Problem after that is leaving the planet. How do we send people out in space without being shot down by ET?
Anyway, in this scenario, a cold war would be set up between the two super powers in order to fool the population and to justify spending billions of dollars in weapons that, they tell us, have never been meant to be used in the first place…
Personally, I can think of no better reason (except stupidity and arrogance) for building so many nukes.
Do I believe this is what actually happened? No. Do I believe it’s a possible scenario? Yes.
that's about
That's about the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Look at eastern europe, what damage was done there by decades of communist regimes.
Look at the hot wars during the cold war - Korea and Vietnam being the biggest. And many little hot wars. Afghanistan was wrecked by the Soviets.
All this was a pretense?
If you have evidence for ETs landing or crashing, find some evidence.
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The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
(Edsger Dijkstra)
The dumbest thing I ever
The dumbest thing I ever read is the quote above your name: sounds profound, but if you actually use your brain and think about it, it makes no sense whatsoever.
Like your comment, it mixes apples with oranges. My article never mentionned anything about hot wars. If you believe Afghanistan (then or now) and Vietnam had anything to with a rivalry between the US and the USSR, you need to do your homework.
name
My name isn't Dijkstra. You can look up the name if you care, he was a very intelligent man.
Afghanistan 1979-1989 was an attempt of the USSR to expand its area of control. And the US attempted to block that expansion. How is that not related to the rivalry between the US and USSR?
In Vietnam, the US tried to stop the forceful unification of Vietnam by the North because they were communists. The USSR helped the North. It doesn't get much more obvious than that.
You can't separate these hot wars from the cold war. They were all part of the same problem. Soviet expansionism was real, ask the people in Eastern Europe. Nuclear weapons were an important tool in the conflict. It's that simple.
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The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
(Edsger Dijkstra)
Roswell and no Cold War?
I think we need to understand just what the Cold War was. First of all, it didn't begin after World War Two. That was simply the last stage.
The process that led to the Cold War began in the 18th century Enlightenment. Philospophy broke into two distinct spheres - English Empiricism, and Continental Rationalism. The former was geared to the indivudal, the latter to community.
Empiricism went on to define the sciences, democracy, pragmatism and capitalism, based on the individual. Continental Rationalism went on to define collectivism, which led to the supremacy of the State in Fascism, and co-ordination of society in Communism.
In other words, two distinct systems of thought had been devised, which would inevitably clash. The First World War was the beginning of the clash, which caused the complication of a difference in collectivism itself - i.e. Fascism and Communism. This complicated matters, leading to a three pronged 'philosophy war' in World War Two. Fascism smashed, this left capitalism and communism to fight for supremacy.
At the moment, it appears Capitalism won. At the moment ..
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All the philosophy in all the world is not worth the spilling of a drop of blood.
Anthony North
in addition
In addition to all that, there was, and still is, good old fationed nationalism. An expression of cultural self-centeredness if you ask me. Pretty much any culture that once controlled 5 square miles believes that they are superior to the rest of the world. An exaggeration I know, but there is truth in it. Emotionally speaking, the Romans still believe they should have their old empire, the Persians believe they are still the most important culture. So do a long list of others, including the English and the Americans. The Canadians believe (again emotionally) that they have the best compromise between US and European world views. Canada doesn't want an empire, yet it is the second-largest country on the planet. Looks like an empire to most people.
Then there are small places like Serbia, or Denmark. Denmark will claim any oil fields close to the north pole. Germany claims the moral high ground in terms of pacifism, while at the same time having a very nice arms industry, including probably the best battle tanks. Which they sell happily, along with possibly the best non-nuclear submarines. Great, isn't it?
Anyone can add to the list, it is very long.
I don't think the nationalism factor will go away soon, it predates the nation states by millenia.
The cold war was just another manifestation of factors like this. It is hard to believe there will be an eventual winner.
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The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
(Edsger Dijkstra)
Earthling: Even the most
Earthling: Even the most intelligent people on the planet say stupid things: That quote just sounds profound and is still quite empty, regardless of who said it.
Canada looks like and empire???????????????????????
It may be the second largest country on the planet, but there are only 31 million people here. The vast majority of the land is unihabitable. Any resemblance to an empire is mind-boggling. To say the least. As for Canada not wanting an empire: I'm not sure we would be able to resist an invasion from a troup of Boy Scouts.
Now as for the cold war: why build an arsenal big enough to destroy the planet 50 times? Calling that an arms race is ridiculous. When you can destroy the planet once or twice, anything above that is irrelevant.
empires and weapons
Empires come in many flavours. Not all are totalitarian.
Canada contains many populations who were ever asked if they wanted to join Canada. Some of the "uninhabitable" parts were inhabited by these populations. As were all of the habitable parts. Canada claims the north pole, and all the water and ice between the pole and Canada's northern lands. Looks like an empire to me.
But it is correct to say that as empires go, this is a weak one. Canada's most effective defense is the USA. Together with our small population (33 million or so, wouldn't matter if it was 44 or 55 million) this makes us a third rate empire.
As for the nuclear weapons, part of the reasoning on both sides was that the enemy could try to strike first, and destroy most of the "friendly" arsenal. In such a case both sides wanted to have enough left for a counter strike.
Another part of the reasoning was that a good part of the nuclear weapons were carried by airplanes. One can't count on bombers to reach their target, so it seemed a good idea to send a lot of them.
The estimates of destroying the planet many times over are somewhat misleading. They counted the weapons possessed by either side. They didn't estimate what percentage could be delivered to enemy territory, and detonated there in a useful way. Having a weapon sitting on top of a long-range missile, on in a bomber, is not necessarily dangerous for the enemy.
Those are some reasons that are more of less rational. Then there were the more irrational reasons - generals just feel safer if they have more troops and material than the enemy side. Useful or not.
Your thesis does not consider any of this, which is one reason why I think your thesis is weak.
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The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
(Edsger Dijkstra)
The philosophy of the cold
Anthony: The philosophy of the cold war is one thing, and you've outlined it very well here. However, I'm talking about the military-only aspect of it.
I believe the two philosophies you talk about, could have lived simultaneously, without building such ridiculously large nuclear arsenals.
Cold War
Hi A-J,
I don't think we can separate military from society, or society from philosophy. Further, I look forward to the day when multiple philosophies can live simultaneously. We've never achieved it yet, and certainly didn't in the 20th century.
Let's continue from my previous post. During WW2 the Eastern Front involved over 300 Soviet divisions. The Second Front in Western Europe involved about 30 - just 30 - Allied divsions.
Why was this? Because Soviet military relied on collectivist masses and brute power, whilst Allied military relied on individuality and science/technology, totally in accord with the various philosophies.
To the west, people mattered, and we didn't want them to die if technology could save them. In the east, they couldn't give a damn - it was the collective that was important.
Nuclear weapons arose because of the fear of Nazism getting them first. The person who convinced the President was actually Einstein, not a military man. Now fast forward to the Cold War, taking the above philosophy with us.
Because of freedom and individuality, it was soon realised, first, that conscript armies could not last forever. And second, the sheer manpower and brute force of the Warsaw Pact would always beat the west in conventional warfare terms. Further, whereas crude factories could continually produce the cheap weapons the Red Army used, the west's more advanced technology meant we could not sustain our weaponry in all-out war.
As such, the alternative was to beat the Soviets with technology - with the ability to deliver a complete and devastating nuclear attack. Hence, the west built lots of nukes, hoping that fear of such an attack would deter.
The Soviets would naturally retaliate, and because their nukes were thought inefficient to the west, they built more - which inevitably brought simple human nature into being, and the west wanted to equalise the numbers.
It is basic oneupmanship, and exists in all areas of life. It is inevitable it would happen in the military.
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Sin is what you've done once you've been caught
Anthony North
Colonization, slavery,
Colonization, slavery, predator, natural resources, come on people trying to relay why ET would want to come here using only these oppostions is bias because all of them say that "they" come here because "they" need to. It's like saying a drug addict does drugs for some specific need other then the most obvious reason, the experience. Ancient cultures and religions all agree, man was created by the gods to serve them, hence the reason they are here is for that reason, the experience of being god, or GOD, what ever flips ya lid. Like the hindu account says they have been doing this and will continue to do this periodically taking breaks before starting all over again.