Blueprint for the piece of what?

Posted by yanniru on September 23, 2003 at 05:36:31:

In Reply to: SDI(Strtegic Defence Initiative & NUclear Weapon Freeze movement) posted by quantumwhip on September 22, 2003 at 13:43:48:

If you claim authorship of something, you had better know how to spell it.

By the way. I am Swedish American.

Here is a short history of the Nuclear Freeze Movement:

http://www.infomanage.com/nonproliferation/nucfreezone/nucfreeze.htm

NUCLEAR FREEZE - The nuclear freeze movement was spawned out of the antimilitarism and environmental efforts of the 1970s. It was formed in 1980 under the organizational leadership of the American Friends Service Committee, Fellowship of Reconciliation, and Clergy and Laity Concerned. These groups, along with local campaigns against nuclear weapons research, production, and testing facilities, became the social base upon which the national movement was built. The movement reached its peak in 1982-1984 and faded from national visibility soon after the reelection of Ronald Reagan to the White House in November 1984.
The policy proposal for a bilateral, mutual freeze on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems had been proposed by President Lyndon Johnson's administration. Its reintroduction into popular discourse began in 1979 through the discussions and writings of Arthur Macy Cox, Randall Forsberg and Richard Barnet. The freeze movement's support rapidly expanded beyond the antinuclear and antimilitarist nucleus to include prominent citizens and professional and do mestic policy organizations. By April 1982, U S citizens polled eighty-one percent in favor of the proposal.
-------------------------------------------------

Note that it began in Johnson administration. I remember when it started in my home town of Lexington, Massachusetts in the mid- 1970s with the endorsement of Ed Markey, my US Representative then and now. It was opposed by the US government then and now.

SDI as a research program had been going since the late 1950s. It was called BMD at that time- Ballistic Missile Defense. I worked on it starting in 1959 at Raytheon and continued work on it at MIT Lincoln Labs in the late sixties when we almost deployed a ground based system.

The ABM treaty circumvented that deployment and the research was downsized to $1 billion a year. Reagan increased its funding to $3 billion a year in 1984 in answer to the Nuclear Freeze Movement, which was becoming a political threat to him. He then renamed the research effort from BMD to SDI and formed a new organization headed by my Minuteman fifer friend who also worked at MIT Lincoln Labs, Lou Marquet. In 1987 with Lou's encouragement I helped prevent the SDI deployment by pointing out that it was inherently vulnerable.

So SDI research started in the 1950s and the Nuclear Freeze Movement started in the 1970s. The two are not connected except for Raygun using the proposal of a inpenetrable SDI shield to thwart the Freeze movement.

Ameen's (aka Quantumwhip) claims are incorrect. Both BMD and Nuclear Freeze predate his manuscript, which as far as I can tell, has had absoluely no influence on US policy, assuming of course that it actually exists.

Dr. Richard Ruquist
The Yanniru Foundation
Cambridge, Massachusetts

(Report this post to the moderator)

Follow Ups: (Reload page to see most recent)

• Re: Blueprint for the PEACE of what? -- quantumwhip 9/23/03 (6)
  • Give us some evidence -- yanniru 9/24/03 (5)
    • Re: Give us some evidence -- quantumwhip 9/24/03 (4)
      • Re: Give us some evidence -- paultrr 9/24/03 (3)
        • Re: Give us some evidence -- quantumwhip 9/25/03 (2)
          • Re: Give us some evidence -- paultrr 9/25/03 (1)
            • Re: Give us some evidence -- quantumwhip 9/26/03 (0)

Post a Followup

Name    :     (Save your login cookie)
Password  :     (Delete your login cookie)
Subject : 

Comments:

(The following are optional.)
Link URL   : 
Link Title : 
Image URL  :