we are under attack

Fermi acted suspiciously to delay the discovery of nuclear fission:

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.2817
    When Fermi published the results of his uranium experiments in 1934, his transuranic interpretation was almost universally accepted. However, almost immediately a German chemist, Ida Noddack, pointed out that he had not eliminated the possibility that the bombarded uranium was breaking up into two or more comparably sized nuclei.15 Fermi was aware of her suggestion, and though he never published a refutation, he certainly declined to act on it.

    Postwar reminiscences of Segrè and Amaldi confirm that there was some discussion of Noddack’s paper within Fermi’s group, but there is no clear recollection of why Fermi decided to ignore it.2 In a 1967 interview for the American Institute of Physics, Segrè suggests a personal motive: Although Noddack and her husband, Walter Noddack, enjoyed a solid reputation as the codiscoverers of rhenium, the couple’s incorrect claim to have discovered element 43, technetium, raised suspicion that they were prone to making premature claims in the hope of eventually establishing priority.

    Even more remarkable in Fermi’s indifference to the Noddack proposal was his apparent failure to consider the energetics of a possible uranium fission reaction. Those energetics had already been well established by the time Fermi began bombarding uranium.8 Had he considered them, he would have seen that a fissioning nucleus should release not only an enormous amount of energy but also some free neutrons. The prospect of a fission chain reaction sustained by neutrons would surely have motivated Fermi to pay a little more attention to the Noddack paper.


Fermi was also fingered as helping the Soviets get the atom bomb, setting up the nuclear brinkmanship of the Cold War:

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/28/world/pavel-sudoplatov-89-dies-top-soviet-spy-who-accused-oppenheimer.html
    Published by Little, Brown & Company in 1994, ''Special Tasks'' caused a sensation because of the general's detailed assertions that the Soviet Union had obtained atomic secrets with the aid of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project's laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., and Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, three other physicists with central roles in the development of the atomic bomb.


Fermi helped convinced Truman to sign off on the much more destructive H-Bomb as well. The main objection to the H-Bomb was that it was pointless--any use would all but necessarily result in the end of the world. Oppenheimer, the most famous nuclear scientist, backed the "majority report", which laid out a case against the H-Bomb with logic and restrained language. For some reason Fermi decided to create a separate report, the "minority report," which was excessive in its moralizing language to the point of being nonsensical--sure to annoy Truman, who had called Oppenheimer's earlier opposition to employing the atomic bomb "hand-wringing" from a "cry-baby scientist." Truman ended up signing off on the H-Bomb.

https://www.osti.gov/includes/opennet/includes/Oppenheimer%20hearings/Vol%20IIb%20Oppenheimer.pdf
    The real reason, the weight, behind the report is, in my opinion, a failing of the existence of these weapons would be a disadvantageous thing. It says this over and over again. I may read, which I am sure has no security value, from the so-called Minority Report, Fermi and Rabi.

    "The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons, we believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public and the world that we think it wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon."

    In the report which got to be known as the Majority Report, which Conant wrote, DuBridge, Buckley and I signed, things are not quite so ethical and fundamental, but it says in the final paragraph:

    "In determining not to proceed to develop the Super bomb, we see a unique opportunity of providing by example some limitations on the totality of war and thus of eliminating the fear and arousing the hope of mankind." I think it is very clear that the objection was that we did not like the weapon, not that it couldn't be made.


If Fermi hadn't delayed the discovery of fission, World War II and the Cold War would have happened very differently, if at all. If the bomb had developed earlier, MAD would have dissuaded Germany from invading the rest of Europe. Without German expansion, the Soviets would not have been able to "liberate" half of Europe and become as powerful as they did, splitting the world between two warring nuclear superpowers. That fission and the bomb were discovered during the war is significant too--all the more likely that one country would have the bomb before the others, removing the threat of atomic retaliation and making World War II a nuclear war, which is essentially what happened with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The bombings were the centerpiece of Soviet propaganda painting Americans as lunatics who would launch a nuclear first strike at a moments notice. Unlike Americans, Soviets were taught the bombings were completely unnecessary; basically, they thought the Americans would nuke you for no reason.

All this came to play in the mind of Soviet ballistics officer Stanislav Petrov the night of September 26 1983, when a false alarm told him five nuclear missiles were headed for the Soviet Union. He distrusted the alarm not because an American first strike was implausible, but because he thought they would have started with more. If a different man were on duty and more missiles were on the screen, things might have gone very differently for the world.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/stanislav-petrov-true-story-grumpy-russian-singlehandedly-stopped/
    A military man to the end, Petrov is perhaps the first visitor to actively admire the preserved missile – “beautiful, like a woman with a tight waist”. But he brands the museum’s tour guide a “brainless goat” when he suggests that only the Soviets would have launched a pre-emptive first strike.

    “Where did you get the idea that we wanted to attack? We too only had weapons for defence,” Petrov tells him. “Damn the politicians – we all want to live without fear that this world can be destroyed. Galina, translate that please.”


Fermi is also famous for the "Fermi Paradox," which is the question why, if interstellar travel is possible, haven't we been visited by intelligent life?

https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/la-10311-ms.pdf
    Fermi became engrossed in a calculation and suddenly asked "Well, if you are right, then where is everybody?" The modern implication is that if interstellar travel is feasible then the Solar System ought to have been visited and settled many times in the past, something we see no convincing evidence of.


One solution to the Fermi Paradox is that intelligent life usually destroys itself before becoming capable of interstellar travel.


...


Leo Szliard also suspiciously delayed the discovery of Nuclear Fission:

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.2817
    Actually, preoccupied with the potentialities of the neutron, Hungarian-born physicist Leo Szilard had been searching, unsuccessfully, for just such a chain reaction. When he heard about the experiment of Hahn and Strassmann in 1939, he understood at once the implications, and he and Fermi went on to lead the development of the first nuclear reactor. Had Szilard heard of the Noddack paper in 1934, he would surely have pursued it.


Szilard is the guy who convinced Einstein to sign the letter asking the U.S. government to create the atomic bomb:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_letter
    ...On July 12, 1939, Szilárd and Wigner drove in Wigner's car to Cutchogue on New York's Long Island, where Einstein was staying.[9] When they explained about the possibility of atomic bombs, Einstein replied: Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht (I did not even think about that).[10] Szilárd dictated a letter in German to the Belgian Ambassador to the United States. Wigner wrote it down, and Einstein signed it. At Wigner's suggestion, they also prepared a letter for the State Department explaining what they were doing and why, giving it two weeks to respond if it had any objections.[9]


Szilard did a lot of sketchy things, like write letters that sort-of “blackmailed” the U.S. government: https://www.space.com/25692-manhattan-project-einstein-szilard-blackmail.html

He was also accused of being a spy for the Soviets:

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/28/world/pavel-sudoplatov-89-dies-top-soviet-spy-who-accused-oppenheimer.html
    Lieut. Gen. Pavel A. Sudoplatov, a legendary Soviet spymaster who plotted and carried out assassinations with cold-blooded efficiency and claimed to have engineered the theft of atomic secrets from the United States with the aid of four eminent scientists, died Tuesday at his home in Moscow. He was 89.

    ...Published by Little, Brown & Company in 1994, ''Special Tasks'' caused a sensation because of the general's detailed assertions that the Soviet Union had obtained atomic secrets with the aid of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project's laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., and Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, three other physicists with central roles in the development of the atomic bomb.


According to this weird Scientific American journalist named Ashutosh Jogalekar, Szliard also got the idea for nuclear fission from a "genie":

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/why-the-world-needs-more-leo-szilards/
    Why the world needs more Leo Szilards

    By Ashutosh Jogalekar

    ...The project may have been the product of this sprawling hive mind, but one man saw both the essence and the implications of the bomb, in both science and politics, long before anyone else. Stepping off the curb at a traffic light across from the British Museum in London in 1933, Leo Szilard saw the true nature and the consequences of the chain reaction six years before reality breathed heft and energy into its abstract soul.

    ...After playing a key role in the founding of the Salk Institute in California, Szilard died peacefully in his sleep in 1964, hoping that the genie whose face he had seen at the traffic light in 1933 would treat human beings with kindness.


...


John Dee, the man who came up with the idea of the British empire, also had his own run-in with "genies", which he called "spirits":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee
    John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an English/Welsh mathematician, astronomer, astrologer and occult philosopher,[5] and an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. He spent much time studying alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. He also advocated turning England's imperial expansion into a "British Empire", a term he is generally credited with coining.


https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/John_Dee
    In this role, he provided both technical assistance in navigation and ideological backing in the creation of a "British Empire" (a term that he coined).[14] Pursuant to this experience, in 1577 Dee published General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation, a visionary work that set out his vision of a British maritime empire and asserted England's territorial claims on the New World.


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/the-man-who-spoke-to-angels/
    Born to a merchant family in London and educated at Cambridge, he rose to eminence during the rule of Elizabeth I, when he became one of the few commoners to be honoured with personal visits from the queen. He was also intimate with the major figures of her court, such as Sir Walter Raleigh and the spymasters Walsingham and Cecil.

    ...Although Elizabeth was fascinated by his astrological methods, he also corresponded with her intelligencers on cryptography, advised her explorers on navigation and travelled throughout Europe to meet the greatest scholars of his era.


https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/tech-journals/john-dee.pdf
    I suppose you're wondering what Dee was in fact doing, as a government consultant all this time. But you must remember we're talking about the government service. Whatever he did that was significant has no doubt gone into the classified files of Elizabeth's ministers, and from there to complete oblivion.


http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Archive/Dee.html


https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/john-dee-thought-he-could-talk-to-angels-using-medieval-computer-technology/
    John Dee thought he could talk to angels using medieval computer technology

    But as this new exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians shows, he was much more than just a loony witch

    ...He explained his intentions in a little speech to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II on a visit to Prague in 1584, saying that he had spent 40 years in study ‘to come by the best knowledge that man might attain unto in the world’, but had found that no book could teach him the truths he longed for, and so he had prayed to God, whose ‘holy Angels for these two years and a half, have used to inform me’.

    ...These angelic conversations went on for more than two decades, at first when Dee was trying to interest the Emperor and the King of Poland in the transmutation of base metals into gold. It might be expected that Kelley was a con man taking advantage of Dee. But it was Kelly who was frightened to go on. The fear was that the messages came not from benign angels but from wicked spirits intent on the damnation of these arrogant magi.


The British Empire is responsible for many of the atrocities of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/23/british-empire-crimes-ignore-atrocities
    Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them

    ...Elkins reveals that the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died.

    The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as "Labour and freedom" and "He who helps himself will also be helped". Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled. Unless you have a strong stomach I advise you to skip the next paragraph.

    Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates' ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound.

    Elkins provides a wealth of evidence to show that the horrors of the camps were endorsed at the highest levels. The governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice. The colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to the House of Commons. This is a vast, systematic crime for which there has been no reckoning.


https://www.ourtimebd.com/beta/2019/10/09/winston-churchill-starved-3-million-indians-to-death-in-the-man-made-bengal-famine-of-1943/
    Winston Churchill starved 3 million Indians to death in the man-made bengal famine of 1943

    ...The loss of Burmese rice imports to India was not made up by imports from elsewhere, nor was India’s obligation to supply British Indian troops abroad lessened. Instead, India was made to cover the loss of Burmese rice imports to Ceylon, Arabia and South Africa even though these territories were already better provisioned with food than India.Albeit in the years before WWII India had become a net importer of food, importing at least one million tons of cereal per year — a figure that was not actually sufficient to cover its needs, but represented what it could afford to import after paying the Home Charge — the British now undertook to export food from India.

    Anticipating food shortages that were certain to follow colonial administration moved to protect the strata of society most useful to the British Empire — administrators, soldiers and industrial workers. It set out to buy up huge quantities of grain and store it for their use. It would pay for these stocks in the same way it acquired supplies for the war effort — by printing money.

    The government acquired some grain by requisitioning, but for the most part it simply bought it. Some purchases it made on its own, others it contracted out to private traders. Big merchant companies were given advances of vast sums of money and instructed to purchase grain at any price for the government.The price of already precious grain skyrocketed and the Bengal peasant was priced out of the market. Between the purchases of the Bengal administration, the Government of India, the army and the industries which were recipients of government largesse, grain was sucked out from rural areas. Departments of government and industries crucial for the war effort secured huge stocks of grain — part of which would end up rotting as millions starved.


https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/was-the-famine-genocide-by-the-british-28954929.html
    Was the Famine genocide by the British?

    The Famine was our Holocaust. During the mid-19th Century, Ireland experienced the worst social and economic disaster a nation could suffer. A quarter of the island's population starved to death or emigrated to escape truly appalling conditions.

    ...The maxim of the Young Ireland leader John Mitchell was that "God sent the potato blight but the English created the Famine".

    ...Feeding so many was already a problem before the Famine with bulk of the Irish population surviving on a subsistence diet.

    Coogan demonstrates that the British government was not oblivious to the plight of Ireland. The Whatley Commission on Irish poverty in 1833 had suggested that large-scale emigration to the colonies be encouraged and proposed that fisheries be developed and land be reclaimed among other measures.

    Had these recommendations been implemented, it would have done much to mitigate against the scale of the disaster which engulfed Ireland just over a decade later.

    Coogan's research gives credence to this view and he expertly catalogues a shocking combination of ambivalence, incompetence and malignance on the part of British policymakers.

    ...Laissez-faire economics argued against the morality of assisting the poor because of the consequent risk of stultifying initiative and self-help among the Irish peasantry. One of laissez-faire's most influential proponents, Thomas Malthus, warned that extending relief would swallow the resources of the entire nation and consequently the poor had "no claim of right to the smallest portion of food".

    Coogan's research shows how too often British policymakers put an adherence to a callous economic theory above their humanitarian responsibilities.

    It would be a mistake to dismiss Coogan's work as a green-tinted history. He is not ungenerous to Robert Peel, the British prime minister at the time of the outbreak of the Famine and for so long the bête noire of Irish nationalists.

    ...Coogan suggests that Peel did, in fact, attempt to alleviate the horrific situation in Ireland by facing up to the challenge of Corn Law reform and by making £100,000 available for the secret purchase of Indian corn in America.

    Coogan also points out that Peel's successor, John Russell, was outraged by the "lynch law of Irish landlords" in ruthlessly pursuing evictions at a time when this was akin to a sentence of death.

    Russell's efforts to offer legislative protection to Irish cottiers were, however, stymied by a powerful cabal in his own cabinet of Lord Palmerstown, the Marquis of Clanricarde and Lord Lansdowne, all of whom owned huge estates in Ireland.

    ...Coogan's work is a damning indictment of Charles Trevelyan, the assistant secretary to the Treasury, who was effectively in charge of Famine relief in Ireland.

    Trevelyan, today, is remembered more in sorrow than in anger in the classic song 'The Fields of Athenry', but he surely ranks alongside Cromwell as one of the greatest villains in Irish history.

    Trevelyan was motivated by racialism, laissez-faire dogmatism and anti-Catholicism. Coogan highlights in a variety of ways how Trevelyan's policies consigned a generation of Irish people to death or exile.

    But Trevelyan is most conclusively condemned in the dock of history by his own words.

    The man whose policies held sway over the fate of a starving population wrote : "The judgment of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated . . . the real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
    The First Opium War, fought over illegal opium trade,[7] financial reparations,[8] and diplomatic status,[9] began in 1839.

    In the late 18th century, the British East India Company or EIC, contravening Chinese laws, began smuggling Indian opium to China through various means, and became the leading suppliers by 1773.[10] By 1787, the Company was illegally sending 4,000 chests of opium to China a year, each chest weighing 170 lbs or 77 kilos.[11]

    The Chinese Jiaqing Emperor passed many decrees/edicts making opium trade illegal in 1729, 1799, 1814 and 1831, but smuggling still occurred as the British paid smugglers to take opium into China, causing the population to become more and more addicted.

    ...China initially attempted to get foreign companies to forfeit their opium stores in exchange for tea, but this ultimately failed too. Then China resorted to using force in the western merchants' enclave. Forces confiscated all supplies and ordered a blockade of foreign ships to get them to surrender their illegal opium supply.

    The British trade commissioner in Canton, Captain Charles Elliot, wrote to London advising the use of military force against the Chinese. Almost a year passed before the British government decided, in May 1840, to send troops to impose reparations for the economic losses of the British illegal traders in Canton including financial compensation, and to guarantee future security for smugglers. However, the first hostilities had occurred some months earlier with a skirmish between British and Chinese vessels in the Kowloon Estuary on 4 September 1839.[15] On 21 June 1840 a British naval force arrived off Macao then moving to bombard the port of Ting-ha. In the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its naval and gunnery power to inflict a series of decisive defeats on the Chinese Empire,[16] a tactic later referred to as gunboat diplomacy.


https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/black-concentration-camps-during-anglo-boer-war-2-1900-1902
    The rural economy was destroyed as crops were ravaged and livestock butchered. Displaced and captured civilians were forced into 'refugee camps', a total misnomer, because more often they did not seek refuge in the camps, but were rounded up by the British forces and forced into the camps, which soon became known as 'concentration camps'. Field-Marshal Lord Roberts had an ulterior motive in putting Blacks into camps, namely to make them work, either to grow crops for the troops or to dig trenches, be wagon drivers or work as miners once the gold mines became partly operational again. They did not receive rations, hardly any medical support or shelter and were expected to grow their own crops.

    ...The average official death rate, caused by medical neglect, exposure, infectious diseases and malnutrition inside the camps was 350 per thousand per annum, peaking at 436 per thousand per annum in certain Free State camps. Eighty-one percent of the fatalities were children.


http://mortenjerven.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/AfricanPopulation.Methods.pdf
    Northern Africa and Southern Africa grew as a proportion of continental population, while West Africa and especially Central Africa declined as a proportion of continental population

    ...External Slave Trade as a factor in African population(Manning 1979, 1982).For the Bight of Benin 1690 –1740, estimates in this work suggested that captive exports averaged over 2% of the regional population per year, which surely brought population decline. This raised the question of the demographic effects of enslavement more generally in Africa.


...


Hitler claimed he heard voices which gave him advice, once saving him from death:

https://books.google.com/books?id=lcy_BAAAQBAJ&pg=PT54&lpg=PT54
    Hitler braved daunting perils at the front. He narrowly escaped death on November 15, 1914 when a French artillery shell landed nearby.

        "I was eating my dinner in a trench with several comrades. Suddenly, a voice seemed to be saying to me: 'get up and go over there.' It was so clear and insistent that I obeyed automatically as if it had been a military order. I rose at once to my feet and walked twenty meters along the trench carrying my dinner can with me. Then I sat down to go on eating, my mind once more at rest. Hardly had I done so when a flash and deafening report came from the part of the trench I had just left. A stray shell had burst over the group in which I had been sitting, and every member of it was killed."

    The same voice--Which he called "Providence"--would later give him political counsel.


...


In the mid 16th century, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro lead a small band of mercenaries to what is now known as Peru. Pizarro’s arrival preceded the end of the Incan empire and the mass death of its citizens:

http://users.pop.umn.edu/~rmccaa/aha2004/whypox.htm
    Why Blame Smallpox?
    The Death of the Inca Huayna Capac and the Demographic Destruction of Tawantinsuyu (Ancient Peru)

    Robert McCaa, Aleta Nimlos, and Teodoro Hampe Martínez

    ...Smallpox is widely blamed for the death of the Inca Huayna Capac and blamed as well for the enormous demographic catastrophe which enveloped Ancient Peru (Tawantinsuyu).  The historical canon now teaches that smallpox ravaged this virgin soil population before 1530, that is, before Francisco Pizarro and his band of adventurers established a base on the South American continent.[2]  Nevertheless the documentary evidence for the existence of a smallpox epidemic in this region before 1558 is both thin and contradictory.  In contrast to Mexico, where there is a broad range of sources documenting the first outbreak and the death of the Aztec ruler Cuitlahuatzin from smallpox in 1520, for Peru, the evidence rests almost entirely on rather brief references in chronicles, few of which state unequivocally that Huayna Capac died of the disease.

    ...From our re-examination of early chronicles (see table 1), linguistic evidence in three early dictionaries (table 3), physical descriptions of pock marked native peoples (or the lack thereof before 1558), we conclude that, as in the Caribbean also in the Andean region, the preponderance of the evidence points to a late introduction of smallpox—a quarter center after initial contact (in 1518 and 1558, respectively), after an enormous demographic devastation had already occurred.


http://paititieldorado.fr/en/paititi-eldorado/lhistoire-inca
    The Genocide

    Viceroy Toledo instituted a reform of the indigenous habitat which made it possible to regroup the useful “mass of work”, subjected to compulsory labor, without remuneration, so to speak clearly reduced in slavery. The entire Inca agricultural system, very productive, is annihilated to favor productions destined for export. The organization of farms in gigantic plantations drastically reduces yield, leading to terrible famines in the population.

    Indigenous slaves are especially affected in the terrible mines, where it is estimated that out of 12 million inhabitants, 5 million men, women and children perish in 25 years, victims of the insatiable thirst for gold and the inhumanity shown by the Spaniards towards them. In some provinces rich in gold or silver, two-thirds of the population is enslaved in the mines and perishes there. So much so that the Spaniards will finally have to bring “cargoes” of black slaves to replace them ...


https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-01-31/european-colonization-americas-killed-10-percent-world-population-and-caused
    Our new data-driven best estimate is a death toll of 56 million by the beginning of the 1600s — 90 percent of the pre-Columbian Indigenous population and around 10 percent of the global population at the time. This makes the “Great Dying” the largest human mortality event in proportion to the global population, putting it second in absolute terms only to World War II, in which 80 million people died — 3% of the world’s population at the time.


Though they outnumbered the Spanish by more than a factor of 100 to one, the Incans did not fight back. Some stood where they were as they were hacked to pieces:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015054032365;view=1up;seq=9
    The conquest of Peru as recorded by a member of the Pizarro expedition.

    Sinclair, Joseph H

    ...The New York Public Library possesses in the anonymous "La Conquista del Peru" an exceedingly rare and valuable printed book -- one of the two known copies.

    ..."La Conquista del Peru" was printed in Seville in the month of April, 1534, by the printer Bartolome Perez, and the author is unknown. He states that he embarked with Francisco Pizarro in Panama, February, 1531, and accompanied him during the stirring events which termined in the execution of the last Incao ruler, Atahuallpa, and was one of the twenty-five permitted to return to Spain shortly after that event.

    ...Hernando Pizarro and Hermando de Soto asked permission of the Governor to let them go with five or six horsemen and with an interpreter to speak with the Cacique Atabalip and to see how he had arranged his camp. The Governor allowed them to go but much against his will. They went to the camp which was a league distant. The entire plain where the Cacique was camped was closed from one side to the other by squadrons of pikemen and halberdiers and bowmen, and there was another squadron of Indians with arrows and slings, and others with clubs and sticks shod with metal. The Christians passed in the midst of those who stood as statues. And they arrived in the presence of the Cacique and they found that he was seated at the door of his house with many women around him for no man dared to be near. And Hernando de Soto rode to him horseback and he [the Cacique] was like a statue and he rode so near that the royal headdress which the Cacique wore on his forehead touched the horse's nose. And even then the Cacique did not move. Then Captain Hernando do Soto took from his finger a ring and gave it to him as a token of peace and love from the Christians. He acceted this with little sign of appreciation. Then Hernando Pizarro who had remained in the background to place three or four horsemen at a gate where there was a bad passage arrived and brought at the haunches of him [the cacique] and all his army came close to the Cacique and told him to raise his head which he kept bowed low and to speak to him for he was his friend and he had come to see him and begged him to come tommorrow to see the Governor who was very anxious to see him. The Cacique replied with his head [still] bowed that he would go to see him to-morrow.

    ...Hernando de Soto ran his horse many times full speed toward a squadron of pikemen and these stepped back a step. After the Chrsitians had departed, these [pikemen] paid dearly for the movement, for the Cacique ordered them and all their wives and children to be beheaded, saying that they should move forward and not back and that the same punishment would be handed out to all who retreated. The Captains returned to the Governor and they told him all that had taken place with the Cacique and that it seemed to them that there were 40,000 fighting men and they told this to encourage their forces for in reality there were more than 80,000 and they related what the Cacique had told them.

    ...The next morning there was nothing but the coming and going of messengers to the camp of Atabalipa. And one time it was said he was to come armed, another time they said he was to come unarmed. The Governor sent word that he should come as he wished, that his men looked well with their arms.

    At noon Atabalipa began to leave his camp accompanied by so many people that the whole plain was filled with them and all those Indians wore a kind of crown of gold and silver on their heads. It seemed that all were coming in their gala clothes. At the moment of Vespers they began their entry into the village and there the Cacique waited a little while for his people so that all should come together. When all had arrived and his commands were obeyed, he moved at the head and he arrived [seated] on his palanquin in the center of the square although with considerable misgivings. The governor then sent a man to him asking him to come to where he was, assuring him that he would suffer no harm of any kind nor insult, that he should come without fear although the Cacique did not seem afraid.

    The Cacique had in front of him dressed in livery 400 Indians removing from his path all the stones and sticks which they found in the road along which they were carrying the Cacique in his palanquin and these 400 men carried secretly under their livery clubs with a thick knob at the end, and even doublets [jubones] of strong arms and slings with selected stones to be used in these. The Governor had his men stationed in three large houses each one of which had more than 200 windows and 20 doors. In one of these houses was stationed Hernando Pizarro with 14 or 15 horsement; in another Captain Hernando do Soto with another 15 or 16 horsemen and in another house Benalcazar with as many more or less. In another house was the Governor with two or three horsemen and 20 or 25 footsoldiers. All the other men were on guard at the doors so that no one could enter a very strong fort in the middle of the square in which was stationed Pedro de Candia, captain of His Majesty, with 8 or 9 musketeers and 4 small cannon because he was guarding the fort at the command of the GOvernor. The Governor commanded that if as many as ten Indians should ascend to it to permit them but no more.

    When the Cacique arrived in that place he asked where the Christians were for all were concealed and not a man was in sight. At this moment 7 or 8 Indians ascended to the fort. And a captain with a very long spear on which was a flag made a sign to bring the arms because the pikeman who was coming behind was carrying the spears of those who were ahead. In this way they seemed to be without arms and yet had them. And a priest of the order of Santo Domingo with a crucifix in his hands desiring to speak to him of the things of God went to speak to him and told him that the Christians were his friends and that the Governor loved him very much and that he should enter his house to see him. The Cacique replied that he would advance no further until the Christians had returned all they had taken in his country and after that he would do waht he wished. The priest, not paying any attention to this remark, with a book which he held in his hands began to say the things of God which seemed fitting to him; but he did not care to listen and asking for the book the priest gave it to him thinking he would like to kiss it. And he took it and threw it over his retinue and the boy who acted as interpreter and was there translating these remarks ran after it and took it and gave it to the priest; and the priest turned then, calling and crying out "Come out, come out, Christians, and attend to these unfriendly dogs who do not care for the things of God. That Cacique has thrown on the ground the book of our sacred law." And in this moment a signal was given to the artillerymen to fire into the midst of them and they let go two salvos all they could do and the Indians who had climbed to the fort did not descend in the way they had ascended but rather jumped down. The cavalrymen who were in the three houses seeing this came out as if at a given signal and so also the Governor with the infantrymen who were with him and he went straight to the palanquin on which the Cacique was seated. And many of the infantry men who were with him withdrew a little from him, seeing that the Indians against him were very numerous. And in order to avenge himself more on them with the few men at his disposal, the Governor came to the palanquin although they did not let him reach it [without opposition] and many Indians had their hands cut off and with their shoulders were supporting the palanquin of their master. His body guard did not profit him because soon all were dead and their master a prisoner of the Governor.

    With the few infantrymen that he had and with the cavalry, he sallied out into the plain and many of them fell upon the Indians who were in flight and who were so numerous that in their flight they knocked down a wall 6 feet wide and more than 15 feet long and of the height of a man. Here many horsemen fell and in a space of two hours (during which night had fallen) all of the mass of Indians were routed. And in truth it was not by means of our forces for we were few in number but by the grace of God which is great.

    That day the dead in the plain amounted to six or seven thousand Indians not counting the many others who had their arms cut off and other wounds and that night the cavalry and infantry marched through the village because we saw five or six thousand Indians on a mountain which rose above the village and we kept on guard against them. In order that the Christians should collect in the camp, the Governor ordered the artillery to give a salvo and soon there collected the cavalry which was moving about on the plain thinking the Indians were attacking the camp and the infantry likewise, more than four or five hours of the night having passed by.

    The Governor was very pleased over the victory which God our Lord had given us and he asked the Cacique why he was sad and told him not to be sorrowful because we Christians had not been born in his country but far from it and that in all the lands through which we had come there were very great men and all these had been made friends and subjects of the Emperor for war and peace and that he should not be frightened at having been taken prisoner by us. He answered half-smiling that he was not sad about that, but because he had expected to make the Governor a prisoner and that the reverse had come true and for this reason he was sad. But as a favor of the Governor asked that if there was nearby one of his Indians to order him to come as he would like to speak to him. The Governor soon ordered two Indians to be brought, the leading ones of those captured in the battle. The Cacique asked them if there were many dead. They replied that the plain was covered with the dead. Then he sent word to his people not to flee but to come and serve him because he was not dead but was in the power of the Christians and it seemed to him that the Christians were good people and therefore he commanded that they should come to serve them. The Governor asked the interpreter what he had said. The interpreter told him all he had said. The Governor said he had more to say to them, and making a Cross he gave it to the Cacique saying that all his people both those here and far distant should take each one in his hands a cross like that and that the Christian cavalry and infantry to-morrow would march out into the plain and would kill all they found without the sign of the cross. And the next morning all marched out into the plain in great good order and found many squadrons of Indians. The nearest of these in very great fear carried crosses in their hands.


It defies explanation that the Inca did not fight back and that Pizarro felt confident he could win against such overwhelming numbers.


...


https://spacepolicyonline.com/pages/images/stories/List%20of%20Russian%20Space%20Launch%20Failures%20Since%20Dec%202010%20as%20of%20May%2016%202015.pdf
    Russia’s once reliable fleet of space launch vehicles began a string of failures beginning in December 2010 that has created significant consternation in Russia’s space program and brought about firings and reorganizations, but the failures continue.


https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/russia-suffers-another-soyuz-rocket-failure/
    ...This is Russia’s fifth launch failure in 2011, a surprising number given the usual reliability of Russian rockets.


https://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=https://iz.ru/news/511258
    [Izvestia:] **This year, Russia had four accidents at launches, according to which a lot was said about insufficient control of the quality of products. What did Roskosmos do to reverse the trend towards a decrease in the reliability of missile technology?**

    [Vladimir Popovkin, head of Federal Space Agency:] Firstly, we have at times increased the list of operations subject to triple control, including objective, through photography and video recording. Secondly, created operational groups, which now before each launch look at the documentation for the manufacture, literally looking for deviations from the technological processes. And sometimes interesting things are found out: there they retreated a little, here they did not even twist it. There are significant deviations, which the designer did not evaluate in the complex.


https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/roscosmos-official-confirms-proton-sensors-upside-down-flights-may-resume-in-september/
    Despite skepticism from a Russian Deputy Prime Minister, an official with Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, confirms that the recent Proton-M launch failure was caused by sensors that were installed upside down.

    Alexander Lopatin, a deputy director of Roscosmos, is quoted today by Russia’s official news agency, Itar-Tass, as confirming earlier reports that angular rate sensors were installed “head over heels.”  Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin disputed the earlier reports saying that installation of the sensors was virtually foolproof.

    Nonetheless, that is what happened according to Lopatin.  “The cause was an industrial process violation, the human factor,” he said.  The six angular rate sensors themselves were fine and passed all tests, but three of them were installed “head over heels” by workers at Khrunichev, the rocket’s manufacturer.


https://www.rt.com/news/162228-proton-rocket-failure-sabotage/
    Sabotage considered in Proton rocket crash – investigator

    The botched launch of the Proton-M rocket this month may have been caused by sabotage, the chair of the investigating commission said.


https://www.rt.com/news/165024-proton-booster-sabotage-investigation/
    Intentional damage to a Proton rocket booster was reportedly established by a polygraph and a criminal case has been initiated, Izvestia daily quotes the Ministry of Interior. Previously sabotage was considered an unlikely option.

    ...when the FSB was informed about the incident, it launched a lie detector probe of about 15 assemblers who could have been in physical contact with the duct during the assembly, a source at the Khrunichev Center told Izvestia.

    The results of the FSB investigation were delivered to the Ministry of Interior and became the basis for the criminal case. The names of the established suspects have not been made public for legal reasons, a source in the ministry informed Izvestia.


http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45943952/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/russian-space-chief-claims-space-failures-may-be-sabotage/
    Russian space chief claims space failures may be sabotage

    1/10/2012

    ...MOSCOW — Some recent Russian satellite failures may have been the result of sabotage by foreign forces, Russia's space chief said Tuesday, in comments apparently aimed at the United States.

    Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin stopped short of accusing any specific country of disabling Russian satellites, but in an interview in the daily Izvestia he noted that some Russian craft had suffered "unexplained" malfunctions while flying over another side of the globe beyond the reach of his nation's tracking facilities.

    Popovkin spoke when asked about the failure of the $170 million unmanned Phobos-Grunt probe, which was to explore one of Mars' two moons, Phobos, but became stranded while orbiting Earth after its Nov. 9 launch. Engineers in Russia and the European Space Agency have failed to propel the spacecraft toward Mars, and it is expected to fall back to Earth around Jan. 15.


https://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=https://iz.ru/news/511258
    [Izvestia:] **That is, the degree of risk to the mission of "Phobos" was clear, but there was nowhere to go?**

    [Popovkin:] There was simply no other way. Today, it is not clear why the Phobos-Grunt propulsion system was not started. There are also incomprehensible frequent failures with our devices during the period when they are flying over the shady side of the Earth for Russia - where we do not see the apparatus and do not receive telemetry from it.

     ...I do not want to blame anyone, but today there are very powerful means of impact on space vehicles, the possibilities of using which can not be ruled out.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Popovkin
    [Popovkin] was admitted to Burdenko Military Hospital in Moscow on 7 March 2012 because of "physical and emotional exhaustion."  Kommersant claimed that he fainted on the stairs outside the agency  and Russian tabloid Life News claimed he was hospitalised with head injuries. Other media claims that he was hospitalised after being struck on the head with a bottle during a fight, and that the fight was over his press secretary and former model Anna Vedicheva.

    When Popovkin returned to work on 19 March 2012 he gave an interview with Izvestia in which he vehemently denied some of the stories about the reasons for his hospitalisation, which he blamed on sections of the Russian space industry who are threatened by his attempts to counter corruption.


http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34984.0
    Vladimir Popovkin has died

    ...

    Izvestiya quotes a Roskosmos official (Denis Lyskov) as saying that Popovkin’s disease (cancer) was most likely brought on by his exposure to toxic fumes after the Proton crash last July.

    http://izvestia.ru/news/572644

    “At the moment of the launch we were in a bunker several hundred kilometers from the launch pad. After the explosion of the rocket we remained in the bunker for a while until we received information that the air outside was safe to breathe. Vladimir Aleksandrovich [Popovkin] was the first to leave the bunker, he ordered his driver out of the car,  jumped in the car himself and drove to the crash site without taking any protective measures. He felt personally responsible for what had happened and simply didn’t think of protecting himself.
    ...
    When Vladimir Aleksandrovich got ill, doctors concluded that the disease had been triggered by the hydrazine cloud. ...”


https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=499&tid=89
    The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) currently lists hydrazine and 1,1-dimethylhydrazine as suspected human carcinogens, but has recently recommended that the listing of hydrazine be changed to that of animal carcinogen, not likely to cause cancer to people under normal exposure conditions.


http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0138884
    Occupational Exposure to Hydrazine and Subsequent Risk of Lung Cancer: 50-Year Follow-Up

    ...Hydrazine is carcinogenic in animals, but there is inadequate evidence to determine if it is carcinogenic in humans. This study aimed to evaluate the association between hydrazine exposure and the risk of lung cancer.

    ...Conclusions

    After 50 years of follow up, the results provide no evidence of an increased risk of death from lung cancer or death from any other cause.


http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Hydrazine
    Case Study of Hydrazine Poisoning

    In a 1965 correspondence from F. James Reid to the British Medical Journal, the effects of accidental hydrazine ingestion can be seen.

    A young English sailor had been drinking beer during the afternoon before being placed on duty in the evening. He was considered to be fit for duty and competent until the accident. While working in his ship's engine room, the young sailor ingestion between a mouthful and a cupful of concentrated Hydrazine believing it was water.

    ...Immediately upon drinking the chemical, the sailor vomited and returned to the deck to report to his superior officer at 11:30pm. After having been given a raw egg and milk, he vomited once more and collapsed, unconscious onto the floor.

    Upon admission in a West African Hospital at midnight he was flushed, afebrile, unconscious, continent, and vomiting. His pupils were dilated, central and reacted to light; however, there were no chemical burns on his lips or mouth and he was able to swallow. At this time the respiratory and central nervous systems were normal upon clinical examination.

    ...The patient improved hour by hour, though the main concern was for his neurological state. His psyche, memory, voluntary motor skills, and higher functions were normal. However, he had ataxia even with his eyes open, a lateral nystagmus to the right, and a loss of vibration sense. ...Fortunately, the ataxia was improving to the point that the sailor would able to travel unescorted by air to England, only two weeks after leaving Africa.

    The final condition of the young man is not known.


http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34984.0
    The same day Popovkin died, a 53-year old Khrunichev quality control manager (Gennadiy Lashkov) apparently committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the mechanical shop where he worked.  Inevitably, at least one Russian media outlet has linked both events :

    http://www.kp.ru/daily/26245.4/3126245/

    However, it would appear the suicide took place several hours before news of Popovkin's death broke.   Other reports link the suicide to wage cuts at Khrunichev in the wake of recent Proton failures.


...


https://web.archive.org/web/20170302062327/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/WALLENBERG,%20RAOUL%20%20%20VOL.%203_0101.pdf
    HEADQUARTERS COMMENT ON OR FOLLOWUP QUESTIONS FOR WALK-IN DMITRIY ALEKSANDROVICH ((DRUZHININ)) (SUBJECT).

    ...SUBJECT HAS NO INFORMATION ON SABOTAGE OF U.S. SPACE PROGRAMS OR VEHICLES


http://articles.latimes.com/1986-07-06/opinion/op-23298_1_u-s-air-force
    In a departure from its public position, the French government has concluded that the explosion of its Ariane rocket at the Kourou launch site in French Guinea on May 30 may have been due to sabotage. According to French intelligence officials, the investigation into the Ariane accident has been secretly reopened because, "Initially we had no reason to raise the question of sabotage, but now we have reason to ask that question."

    France has shared its concerns and suspicions about Ariane with the highest levels of U.S. intelligence--French Defense Minister Andre Giraud is believed to have touched on this topic when he visited Washington last Tuesday and Wednesday--because of the series of catastrophes involving American space launches this year. The French and American accidents are adding up to a bizarre pattern, surrounded by strange coincidences and unexplained events, deeply preoccupying Western intelligence. These include the apparent defection to the Soviet Union in 1983 of the U.S. Air Force's leading expert on rocket self-destruct procedures.

    ...French intelligence officials say that while the report is technically correct (the 1985 Ariane accident had the same cause), "it is very easy to perform sabotage in this context by one very well-placed person."


https://www.quora.com/Did-the-USSR-ever-try-to-sabotage-the-Apollo-program
    " 'Doc' Tripp, who was then working on America's first space telescope, recalls, 'Those batteries were shepherded around, I swear, just as though it was a Brink's truck full of gold.  I was aware that we were competing very strongly with the Russians, and one way to beat us, of course, was to sabotage our effort here.  I don't know how many saboteurs there were on the program.  I never met one, as far as I know, but apparently there were.  And one of the places I remember where we got really involved with protection and security was with the batteries.'"


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster
    The disaster resulted in a 32-month hiatus in the shuttle program and the formation of the Rogers Commission, a special commission appointed by United States President Ronald Reagan to investigate the accident. The Rogers Commission found NASA's organizational culture and decision-making processes had been key contributing factors to the accident,[4] with the agency violating its own safety rules. NASA managers had known since 1977 that contractor Morton-Thiokol's design of the SRBs contained a potentially catastrophic flaw in the O-rings, but they had failed to address this problem properly. NASA managers also disregarded warnings from engineers about the dangers of launching posed by the low temperatures of that morning, and failed to adequately report these technical concerns to their superiors.


https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2007-07-27-voa2-66781427/565173.html
    NASA Finds Evidence of Sabotaged Computer Bound for Space Station

    Two weeks before the US space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to lift-off, the US space agency NASA says a piece of equipment that was to fly on the mission was deliberately sabotaged.

    During a briefing on launch preparations for space shuttle Endeavour, NASA officials revealed that a space program worker deliberately damaged a piece of equipment that is scheduled to fly aboard the space craft.

    The tampered device was due to be delivered to the International Space Station by Endeavour. It measures strain on a space station beam and relays the information to controllers on the ground.

    NASA's chief of space operations, Bill Gersteinmaier, says the space agency was notified of the sabotage by the company servicing the mission.

    "We then inspected the flight unit and determined that some wires were cut on the inside of that unit. It's a subcontractor on the space station side," he said. "We'll fix the hardware. We'll get [it] ready to go fly. I can't really discuss that and won't discuss that much more at this point."

    Gerstenmaier says the sabotage is under investigation and officials declined to speculate on a motive.


...


https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/21/european-schiaparelli-mars-lander-exploded-on-impact-nasa-images-suggest
    Prof David Southwood, a space scientist at Imperial College London, noted that Mars missions seem particularly prone to mishap. “If one were superstitious, one would say it is a return of the Mars gremlin.”


https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/20/total-recall-of-unsuccessful-mars-lander-schiaparelli-exomars
    Many spacecraft built by the US or the Soviet Union failed to even reach orbit around Mars. In 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter became the Mars Collider and a case study for students of planetary exploration. The spacecraft was meant to be the first to observe the weather on another planet, but instead slammed into the atmosphere and tore apart. An investigation panel found the glitch in the spacecraft’s software. The force delivered by onboard thrusters was coded in imperial pounds instead of metric Newtons.


https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/38186/D-18441.pdf?sequence=1
    ...Lockheed-Martin Astronautics (LMA) reported that the files containing the magnitudes of the small forces impulses applied to the spacecraft had been delivered in English units (pounds-force seconds) instead of metric units (Newton-seconds). The interface agreements specify metric units.

    ...The third causative factor was the decision not to execute TCM-5. The mission plan called for the execution of a fifth contingency maneuver (TCM-5) in case of trajectory errors following TCM-4. However, this maneuver was never executed. In spite of anomalous orbit determination results following TCM-4, the mission managers decided not to execute TCM-5, the risk-reduction contingency maneuver. Again, a major factor in this decision was project management's lack of knowledge of the true trajectory uncertainty. The other major factor in deciding not to execute TCM-5 was project management's decision to change the baseline risk-management strategy in the days immediately preceding Mars orbit insertion.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/us/politics/dana-rohrabacher-putin-trump-kremlin-under-fire.html
    ...For two decades, Representative Dana Rohrabacher has been of value to the Kremlin, so valuable in recent years that the F.B.I. warned him in 2012 that Russia regarded him as an intelligence source worthy of a Kremlin code name.


https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg81194/pdf/CHRG-113hhrg81194.pdf
    Mr. ROHRABACHER. Holy cow. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair-man.

    I have been—I would just like to ask a fundamental question here because we have been talking about mission to Mars, okay, mission to Mars and different approaches to mission to Mars and what—I would like to ask the panel whether or not they think a mission to Mars is worth the cost or not. I mean if we do a mission to Mars—and correct me if I am wrong—we will have to defund most of the—I mean if we are going to do it now, start now and go directly into a mission to Mars, we are going to have to defund, you know, asteroid detection and then deflection. I mean we might as well forget that. I mean that is expensive. Debris cleanup which unless we don’t—unless we clean up the debris, of course, we may end up having our own use of near space being cut off from the future satellites because debris is knocking our satellites out of the air, no more GPS communication satellites, et cetera. Or how about space astronomy, which we know there is some very important projects moving forward with various telescopes that could give us a really in-depth view of the universe.

    You know, reading the—I mean unless we think that the tooth fairy is going to leave all the money under the pillow in order to accomplish a mission to Mars, is it really worthwhile, the vast expense and the canceling of programs like this in order for us to take off and start heading on a Mars mission now?


...


https://books.google.com/books?id=qCAVQ_cdomcC&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179
    ...Born Isidor Feinstein in Philadelphia in 1907 to Jewish immigrants from Russia, Stone dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania to become a journalist. After several years as the youngest editorial writer for a major metropolitan newspaper, the *Philadelphia Inquirer*, he moved to the *New York Post* with instructions from its owner, J. David Stern, to transform it into a champion of New Deal liberalism. ...In June 1933 he declared that a "Soviet America" was "the one way out that could make a real difference to the working classes"

    ...I.F. Stone assisted in recruiting William Dodd Jr., as a KGB agent in 1936


http://www.ifstone.org/weekly/IFStonesWeekly-1957oct14.pdf
    I. F. Stone's Weekly

    October 14, 1957

    A Terrifying Stranger Knocks at Heaven's Gate

    With the launching of the first artificial moon into the skies, man stands at last on the threshold of the universe. Outside takes on a new meaning. There new worlds beckon a new Columbus. The Infinite, on which mystics brooded, may become the playground of the astronaut and man roam where God is supposed to have presided.

    Like any other stranger, knocking at a new door, Man must nervously adjust his tie and give himself a quick once-over, hoping to make a good impression. The self-inventory is not reassuring. To a fresh eye at the outer world's window, the newcomer may seem a creature of terrifying habits.

    Only the Excuses Change

    Wherever man goes, he brings with him war. His poets glorify it. Each generation's healthiest youth is trained for it. Any difference within the human species is enough to serve as excuse for it. Religion, coloring, national jealousy, capitalist competition for markets, deviations of dogma among communists—the excuses vary, the behavior remains the same. One may easily imagine the anxious debates of an interstellar conference called to consider the danger. What if men transplant their feuds, as Spaniards and Englishmen did after crossing the Atlantic? Theological gibberish was imposed by fire and sword on the bewildered Indian. What if the Russians reach the far side of the moon and demand that its creatures eschew bourgeois ideas? What if we Americans, suspicious of uncommitted neutrals, land atom-armed on Mars and insist that the inhabitants adopt free enterprise? The human race may seem a pest which has suddenly appeared out of one small planet, making unsafe the highways among the stars.

    A Heterogeneous Horde

    Were some flying saucer to land cosmic investigators for a closer look, they would be startled to find that mentally men live centuries apart. Here are men with modern instruments so fine they can plot the course of the most distant suns. Next door to them may live men who turn for guidance, in their daily newspapers, to horoscopes like those cast by Babylonian astrologers millennia earlier. Here walk men brooding on the new multi-dimensional geometries. Past them in the same streets walk others who cross themselves when they see a black cat. Some men seem the harbingers of a new race; others seem fresh from the cave. Little wonder that so heterogeneous a mass is swept from time to time by outbreaks of madness, from the St. Vitus dance of the Middle Ages to those furnaces into which some human beings shovelled several million others only yesterday. Ours may not seem a wholesome breed for stellar immigration.

    A gleaming metal ball hurtling regularly around our planet may be the first signal of intelligent life on earth to observers elsewhere who could not see into the murky depths of our aerial ocean. They might be surprised to learn that the minds which have made such wonders possible nowhere rule the human societies of which they are a part. Whatever the ostensible form of the society, everywhere the cunning govern. Here the ruler may be a Tammany-style politician, there a Commissar. The finer minds everywhere are subordinate to the inferior.

    ...Objectively speaking, it would probably be better for the universe if man remained earthbound. In the wake of the first satellite, we give no sign of closing ranks and facing out- ward as a united species. There is no sudden sense of how petty has become all that once divided us. There is little reverent wonder for the adventures which could lie ahead. Instead there is intensified fear, and a demand to step up preparations for the next war, which must now be fought in the upper skies as well. Missile stocks are up. Nothing has changed but the magnitude of our potential for mass murder.

    As the sky fills with satellites and the sky platforms are manned and armed, will Americans and Russians shoot it out in the wild yonder, destroying each other and the world with them? It might be better, after all, if space were left to a newer species, bred to live in peace and to take joy in diversity. Our first reactions, like all our past, show how unfit men are for the heavens. We would only stain red the Milky Way.