"The survival of the human species is by no means an obvious thing. There are very severe threats to survival. We learn about them all the time. The threat of environmental destruction is much too real to put to the side. The threat of destruction by weapons of mass destruction -- that has come very close many times. We just learned at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, a terminal nuclear war was averted by one word by one submarine commander who countermanded the order to send off nuclear missiles.
Chomsky Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.
Two I can think of immediately are when the USS liberty was attacked off Egypt in '67, it was believed by the US fleet off turkey that it had been the russians. Protocol said the response had to be nuclear. The Admiral refused what was, in effect, a direct order.
In the late 80s the moscow missile defence received cnfirmation of a US missile launch. The man in charge could see no reason why the US would do so and believed it was a technical glitch and so held a response until the point when Moscow should have been hit by a missile. It later turned out it was a US radar test. For saving the world, the commander was demoted in disgrace. keep to the Fen Causeway
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
