God-damn particle

 

THE ABSURD TIMES

 

A pictoral representation of the equation devised by Goins to finally arrive at a mathematical solution to the Higgs Boson -- what he called "The God-Damn" particle.  I found it, of all places, after searching just about anywhere else, on Wikipedia.  It has doubtless been revised and attacked, but that’s your problem.

 

 

 

God-damn

By

Czar Donic

 

 

It is really getting far too weird for me, so I’m going to start with something else than usual.

 

Recently, someone quoted Stephen Hawkings as saying there was no God to create the universe.  Well, it is true, but it takes awhile to get there and, believe me, I’ve simplified this as much as possible.  The math is out and the ideas, still debated, and pared down to the point that we are discussing an Alpha-Romeo by seeing one of its tires. Still, I hope I’ve been able to get across how far the God Squad has to go to establish a viable alternative as to the origin of the universe(s).  It is mind-stretching.

 

We have to start with the Higgs Boson, sometimes called the “God” particle. Well, lets get rid of that idea first.  It come from some physisist/mathemetician (the boundaries have not existed for decades now) who was assigned to work on it and he got so frustrated with the mathematics of it that he called it ‘THE GODDAMN PARTICLE”. So, sorry, there is no real metaphysical significance to that term, (one would suppose).

 

It’s value is that is is the particle that gives mass to all the other subatomic particles, starting with hydrogen for that had been missing since the 50s at least.  Finally, they were able to find it a CERN (still the one superconductingsupercollider of distinction).  Gerogie Bush wanted to build an even bigger one, but would listen to nobody with any knowledge and tried to build it in TEXAS (of course). Well, ants kept eating it, so it never really got built.  (But I digress).

 

So, where does the string theory come into this? Well, before anything else, at the big bang, these strings, not particles, came out and each represented a dimension. The Higgs particle/space generates 30 dimensions in itself.  However, there are other particles and theories, each with their own plethora of dimensions. The easiest to wrap your mind around (you still there? Ok.) is the idea of a two dimensional model that combines all the dimensions but requires a mirror to be understood. (Don’t ask me, I was lost about 2/3rds of the way through this.)  This gives rise to plausible idea of multi-verses.  I’ll just stick with out own and focus on earth. That’s enough for me.

 

All of our ideas, theories, beliefs, etc., depend upon some sort of cause and effect, and that requires the dimension of time.  I started out as  Physics Major in college and had read a great deal about relativity, thought experiments, nuclear reactions, and so forth, but such topics were never even considered in the official classes we took.  All of them, without exception, seemed to be designed for the education of civil engineers. The focus was on Newtonian mechanics with a bit of newer ideas thrown in, but nothing beyond electricity (which they were still debating as to whether is traveled in waves or particles) and related topics. Gauss and then Maxwell seemed to be the most abstract thinkers they could follow – and I mean the "Professors".

 

I remember very vividly once, having heard of the activity of the hyperon where the reaction took place a micro nano second before the action and was eager for direction on where to search for more information.  I raised the question in class and was answered with “when we want to be talking about that stuff, we should all be wearing along beards!” He chuckled, hoping for a class agreement and was greeted with yawns.  Such was the intellectual climate. I also had trouble in a mathematics class because I used a novel solution (I thought) to a Calculus problem and nearly flunked for the sin of reading ahead to the next semester. Naturally, I hadn’t and it was the first time I had ever been attacked for actually reading anything in these textbooks before I absolutely had to and the only thing that kept me awake was looking for spelling errors or omissions of proper exponents.  It was also the last. (I think I had suddenly, with no reasoning at all, applied what was known as “L’Hospital’s Rule, a clever rearrangement of sine and cosine.)  Never mind.  At least this is more intriguing than thinking about Donald Trump.

 

Anyway, now we have the background. The concept of a God or “Creator" relies on our experience in the four, or two, dimensions we confine ourselves to, all of them not in existence until AFTER the big bang. Using the dimensions that we are able to detect and in which we live, we have developed a prejudice in favor of cause and effect, and this idea depends on these dimensions. Essentially, it states tha one thing causes another and that means one thing happened before another, and the relies on the dimension of time.  Space is another dimension, although we usually divide it into three, length, height, and width.  In any case, none of this happened before the dimensions emerged, and the idea of cause and effect only makes use of two or three of them. Thus a “creator" is a ludicrous concept.

 

 So, the Senate Republicans want to confirm someone to make sure that healthcare is more expensive, skip the idea of helping those who are out of work as a result of our mishandling of Covid, and make sure that the current occupant remains in the White House, eh? Let’s have a good laugh at that one!  Then realize tat a majority of our population is stupid enough to vote for him.  Talk about String Theory being a puzzle.

 

 

 Here are a few simplified statements regarding our discussion:

  

 

 

  The Higgs boson is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics, produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field,^[8][9] one of the fields in particle physics theory.^[9] It is named after physicist Peter Higgs, who in 1964, along with five other scientists, proposed the Higgs mechanism to explain why particles have mass. This mechanism implies the existence of the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson was initially discovered as a new particle in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations based on collisions in the LHC at CERN, and the new particle was subsequently confirmed to match the expected properties of a Higgs boson over the following years.

 

String Theory

String theory began as bosonic string theory, whose 26 dimensions act as many fewer. Yet this modeled only bosons, which are energy particles, while omitting fermions, which are matter particles. So bosonic string theory could not explain matter. Yet by adding supersymmetry to bosonic string theory, fermions were achieved, and string theory became superstring theory, explaining matter, too.

(In versions of quantum field theory that include supersymmetry (SUSY), each boson has a corresponding fermion, and vice versa. That is, each energy particle has a corresponding matter particle, and each matter particle has a corresponding energy particle, yet the unobservable partner is more massive and thus super. These superpartners might seem an extravagant prediction, yet many theorists and experimentalists favor supersymmetric versions of the Standard Model, whose equations must otherwise be tweaked extravagantly and sometimes arbitrarily to maintain predictive success or mathematical consistency, but with the superpartners align.

It seems as if some of the devotees of the Abrahamic Religions felt left out, So I conclude with a quote from one of their favorite books, in fact the Bible of the Judeo-Christian ones:

"I saw a pale horse and a pale rider upon it. 

And the name of the horse was Pestilence,

And the name of the rider was death."

So now everyone is is happy?  

[I may add more as new issues concerning this arise, but I have not heard from any pantheists or Buddhists yet.  

Israel the schnorrer

THE ABSURD TIMES

 

Above: Featured and honorable guest.

 

What you can do, above;

 

Illustrations: Some illustrations from Latuff.

We did our best to publish a title "Gaza and Social Media," but the load on the site is simply too great for that.  No matter, if you are on Twitter, all you need to do is type #Gazaunderattack and you will see the images too graphic for our media.  Also some information not designed for the American public.

We do, however, have a discussion of what will happen with this cease-fire and a clear statement of what motivated the slaughter in the first place.   The first person is Jewish, but hunted down by such b***** as Alan Derschowitz.  The second is a scientist with serious credentials who know what HE is talking about, even if our "leader" do not.

Incidentally, I heard that former President Jimmie Carter suggests that Hamas be recognized formally.  I have no real source.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2014

Gaza Ceasefire: After 1,800+ Dead, What Led Israel to Stop the Assault — and What Comes Next?

After a nearly month-long assault that left at least 1,865 Palestinians dead, Israel has pulled its ground forces from the Gaza Strip under the 72-hour ceasefire that went into effect earlier today. Israeli and Palestinian factions have agreed to attend talks in Cairo on a longer-term agreement. Gaza officials say the vast majority of Palestinian victims were civilians in the Israeli offensive that began on July 8. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed. Palestinians are returning to homes and neighborhoods that have seen a massive amount of destruction. Nearly a quarter of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents were displaced during the fighting which destroyed more than 3,000 homes. The ceasefire was reached after international outrage over Palestinian civilian deaths peaked, with even Israel’s chief backer, the United States, criticizing recent Israeli shelling of United Nations shelters that killed scores of displaced Palestinians. To discuss the lead-up to the ceasefire and what to expect from the talks in Cairo, we are joined by author and scholar Norman Finkelstein.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AARON MATÉ: Israel has pulled its ground forces from the Gaza Strip as a 72-hour ceasefire takes hold. In addition, Israeli and Palestinian factions have agreed to attend talks in Cairo on a longer-term agreement. Gaza officials say at least 1,865 Palestinians, most of them civilians, died during Israel’s offensive, which began on July 8th. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed. Nearly a quarter of Gaza’s 1.8 million resident were displaced during the assault, which destroyed more than 3,000 homes.

Earlier today, the Israeli military sent out a message reading, quote: "Mission accomplished: We have destroyed Hamas’ tunnels leading from Gaza into Israel. All of Israel is now safer." Palestinians coming home to their neighborhoods report massive amounts of destruction.

GAZA RESIDENT: [translated] I am destroyed. I’m shocked. I have heart problems, and then I saw our house. We were all shocked. We don’t know what to do. Look at our houses and our children. Everything is destroyed, four apartments. All my children are stranded in the schools. Where are we supposed to go?

AMY GOODMAN: In other developments, a prominent Foreign Office minister in Britain, Sayeeda Warsi, has resigned, saying Britain’s policy on the crisis in Gaza is, quote, "morally indefensible." In an interview with The Huffington Post, Warsi criticized Britain for pressuring Palestinian leadership not to seek justice at the International Criminal Court. On Monday, Human Rights Watch urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to seek ICC jurisdiction over crimes committed on and from Palestinian territory. The group detailed multiple examples of Israeli soldiers shooting and killing fleeing civilians in Gaza.

To talk more about Gaza, we’re joined now by Norman Finkelstein, author and scholar. His most recent books, Old Wine, Broken Bottle: Ari Shavit’s Promised Land and Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End.

So, Norm, the ceasefire has been announced. It’s holding, well, just hours into it. And there is, if it holds, going to be negotiations taking place. Talk about what has happened.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, the first thing is to have clarity about why there is a ceasefire. The last time I was on the program, I mentioned that Prime Minister Netanyahu, he basically operates under two constraints: the international constraint—namely, there are limits to the kinds of death and destruction he can inflict on Gaza—and then there’s the domestic constraint, which is Israeli society doesn’t tolerate a large number of combatant deaths.

He launched the ground invasion for reasons which—no point in going into now—and inflicted massive death and destruction on Gaza, where the main enabler was, of course, President Obama. Each day he came out, he or one of his spokespersons, and said, "Israel has the right to defend itself." Each time he said that, it was the green light to Israel that it can continue with its terror bombing of Gaza. That went on for day after day after day, schools, mosques, hospitals targeted. But then you reached a limit. The limit was when Israel started to target the U.N. shelters—targeted one shelter, there was outrage; targeted a second shelter, there was outrage. And now the pressure began to build up in the United Nations. This is a United Nations—these are U.N. shelters. And the pressure began to build up. It reached a boiling point with the third shelter. And then Ban Ki-moon, the comatose secretary-general of the United Nations and a U.S. puppet, even he was finally forced to say something, saying these are criminal acts. Obama was now cornered. He was looking ridiculous in the world. It was a scandal. Even the U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, was now calling it a criminal act. So finally Obama, the State Department said "unacceptable," "deplorable." And frankly, it’s exactly what happened in 1999 in Timor: The limits had been reached, Clinton said to the Indonesian army, "Time to end the massacre." And exactly happened now: Obama signaled to Netanyahu the terror bombing has to stop. So, Obama—excuse me, Netanyahu had reached the limit of international tolerance, which basically means the United States.

And then there was the domestic issue. Israel had launched a ground invasion ostensibly to stop the so-called rocket attacks, but then it turned into something different: the tunnels. Now, the tunnels had nothing to do with Israel. That’s totally ridiculous. Israel claims there were 12 tunnels that had passed through its border. There were many more tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. The first thing Sisi did when he came into power in Egypt was seal the tunnels. Did he have to destroy all of Gaza to seal the tunnels? Israel couldn’t have done the same thing—seal the tunnels on its side of the border, exactly what Sisi did in Egypt? What did the Hamas have? It had spoons. It had shovels. You’re telling me that Israel didn’t have the earth-moving equipment to build a wall that went deeper than the tunnels? It had nothing to do with the tunnels entering Israel.

The problem was, the tunnels in Gaza, it turned out, they had created a fairly sophisticated network of tunnels, incidentally—I know we’re not allowed to make these comparisons—not unlike the bunkers that were built in the Warsaw Ghetto—primitive, but effective—and the Hamas fighters were able to come out of the tunnels, and they inflicted a significant number of casualties on Israel. During Operation Cast Lead in 2008, '09, 10 Israeli combatants were killed, of which four were from friendly fire. This time it was about 65. Now, during the Lebanon War in 2006, about 120 Israeli combatants were killed, but that was against the Hezbollah, which is a formidable guerrilla army. So, half and more were killed in Gaza this time. So, Israel's aim was not to destroy the tunnels going into Israel. That’s ridiculous. What they wanted to do was destroy the tunnel system inside Gaza, because now an effective—not very effective, but effective—guerrilla force had been created. And Israel, every few years, has to—or less than few years, has to mow the lawn in Gaza. And so, they wanted to make sure the next time they mow the lawn—

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you say "mow the lawn"?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, that’s the Israeli expression. You go in, and you kill a thousand people, destroy everything in sight, and Israel calls that "mowing the lawn." So every few years they have to go into Gaza and mow the lawn. They want to make sure next time they mow the lawn—because if you read the Israeli commentators, who are really a sick bunch of people, all of them are talking now about the next war. Every single commentator is talking about the next war. This one isn’t even over yet. But they want to make sure the next time they go in, there won’t be tunnels. So that was the real aim of the mission.

The problem was, they had reached a certain point in Gaza, and now, if they went further, they would have to enter what are called the built-up areas. And those are very densely populated. Remember, Gaza is six times as densely populated as Manhattan. So if they went into the densely populated areas, we would be talking about thousands and thousands of casualties. And Netanyahu knew the international community wouldn’t accept it, because when Israel goes into a place, it doesn’t want combatant casualties, so it blasts everything in sight. You go into densely populated areas and you blast everything in sight, well, then you’re talking about thousands and thousands of casualties.

The other problem was, these tunnels were actually not vulnerable to aerial bombing and artillery shells. So even if they destroyed everything in sight, the tunnels are still there, Hamas comes out, and significant Israeli casualties. So Netanyahu realized ground invasion is over. There’s no further they can go, because of the domestic Israeli constraint: They don’t tolerate combatant casualties. The international constraint kicked in when Obama said, "It’s over, folks. Have to stop. Killed too many U.N. people this time." And then the ceasefire was signed.

AARON MATÉ: So now we have these talks. The call for Israel is for Hamas to disarm. Hamas’s goal has been for a lifting of the blockade of Gaza. And, of course, they’re being held in Egypt. What do you expect to play out in these talks?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, it’s pretty clear what’s going to happen. And as a matter of fact, already in mid-July I posted something on my website predicting what would happen, exactly what did happen. What’s going to happen now is, for domestic reasons, Netanyahu has to end the projectile attacks on Israel. Hamas says it won’t stop firing its projectiles, quote-unquote, "rockets," until and unless Israel lifts the blockade of Gaza. So what’s going to happen—and it’s exactly what I said, as I said, three weeks ago—what’s going to happen is they’re going to bring in the Palestinian Authority to control the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, lift the blockade partially because of that crossing; then, on the Israeli side, they’re already talking about huge amounts of international donor aid to rebuild Gaza. It’s really a kind of weird conflict. I mean, there are so many weirdnesses about this conflict. Israel blows everything up. Nobody even talks about Israel paying reparations. It’s just taken as a matter of fact that the international community rebuilds after Israel destroys. It’s just a schnorrer state, "schnorrer" being the Yiddish for a sponger. We destroy, they pay. Nobody even discusses the possibility maybe Israel should pay reparations for its death and destruction in Gaza. In any case—

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, Israel would say it was the thousands of Hamas rockets that were shot into Israel that they now feel that they have succeeded in preventing.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Look, there were no Hamas rockets fired into Israel. There were Hamas primitive projectiles fired into Israel. Anybody with a moment’s common sense knows it was impossible—and it’s already been documented by people like Mark Perry. Everyone with a moment’s common sense knows they couldn’t have been firing, quote-unquote, "rockets" into Israel, for an obvious reason. After July 2013 there was a coup in Egypt. The tunnels were sealed after 2013. On the Israeli side, there was a blockade. What could get into Gaza? No military equipment can get into Gaza. No ammunition can get into Gaza. They were firing—as somebody put it in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, they had a guidance system, what they were firing, said it was the equivalent of upgraded fireworks. Now, OK, you could say upgraded—it had no guidance system, but you could say, well, they had a payload, an explosive payload on the fireworks. Where is the evidence for it? Now, I—

AMY GOODMAN: In a moment we’re going to talk with physicist Ted Postol about the Iron Dome system and the rockets.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Yeah, look, I have a high regard for Theodore Postol. However, I don’t accept part of his analysis, because he says that what protected Israel from the Hamas projectiles was not Iron Dome, but, he says, a sophisticated bunker—a sophisticated shelter system and a warning system. But that doesn’t explain another fact: Then why hasn’t there been significant damage to civilian infrastructure? How many schools were destroyed by these rockets? How many hospitals were destroyed? How many government buildings? That can’t be explained by the civilian shelter system.

AMY GOODMAN: Norm Finkelstein, do you think the ceasefire will hold? Do you think talks will take place?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Yeah, because at this point, basically what’s going to happen is it’s over. Obama said it’s over. The ground invasion had reached its limit. And now Netanyahu has the problem that he has to end the rocket—the projectile attacks on Israel. And the only way he can do that is he’s going to have to agree to some lifting of the blockade. So, at this point there’s nothing left that Netanyahu can do. He inflicted the death, the destruction—he mowed the lawn. And now what’s probably going to happen is they’re going to bring in the Palestinian Authority, there will be rebuilding of Gaza, they’ll attempt to disarm Hamas. And I think the finale, the last stage, the coup de grâce, is going to be that Kerry is going to dust off his peace initiative—namely, imposing on the Palestinians a surrender. With Hamas now neutered, Hamas disarmed, they’ll try to impose the Kerry peace initiative on the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority will happily agree. And then there will be, again, a September 1993, a big peace agreement signed, and all the people will celebrate peace.

AARON MATÉ: But someone could say, "Well, that’s great. The blockade’s lifted, so people in Gaza stop suffering. We have peace, and the rocket attacks from Gaza are over."

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, except for one thing: You didn’t have to kill 1,800 people. You didn’t have to level Gaza and reduce it to rubble to lift the blockade. The blockade is illegal. It’s immoral. Why did you have to wait ’til after to do what was demanded under international law before?

AMY GOODMAN: On that note, Norm Finkelstein, I want to thank you for being with us, author and scholar. His most books, Old Wine, Broken Bottle: Ari Shavit’s Promised Land and Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, physicist Ted Postol on the Iron Dome. President Obama has just signed off on a bill giving an additional $225 million in emergency funding for Israel to expand its arsenal of interceptor missiles. Stay with us.

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TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2014

Iron Dome Boondoggle: Has Obama Just Signed a $225M Check for a Defective Israeli Missile Shield?

President Obama signed a bill on Monday granting an additional $225 million in emergency funding for Israel to replenish its arsenal of interceptor missiles for its Iron Dome air defense system. The emergency spending was approved unanimously by the Senate and by a 395-to-8 vote in the House. Amidst universal support of Iron Dome from politicians and the corporate media, one of the country’s leading missile experts, Theodore Postol, says there is no evidence that Iron Dome is actually working. Postol is well known within defense circles for exposing the failures of the Patriot missile system during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. "I have been privy to discussions with members of Congress who have oversight responsibilities, who have acknowledged in those discussions that they have no idea whether Iron Dome is working or not," says Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at MIT. "And I can also tell you that the U.S. government has not been given any information on the performance of Iron Dome."

Click here to watch Part 1 of this interview.

Image Credit: NatanFlayer

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AARON MATÉ: On Monday, President Obama signed a bill granting an additional $225 million in emergency funding for Israel to replenish its arsenal of interceptor missiles for its Iron Dome defense system. The emergency spending was approved unanimously by the Senate and by a 395-to-8 vote in the House.

Well, amidst universal support from politicians and the corporate media, one of the nation’s leading missile experts says there is no evidence Iron Dome is actually working. Theodore Postol is well known within defense circles for exposing the failures of the Patriot missile system during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to part two of our conversation with the MITprofessor. Theodore Postol joined us on the show last week from Boston. He’s a professor of science, technology and national security at MIT. He recently wrote anarticle in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists headlined "The Evidence that Shows Iron Dome Is Not Working." I began by asking Professor Postol if he could compare the previous Israeli assault on Gaza, when there wasn’t any Iron Dome, to what’s happening now.

THEODORE POSTOL: These comparisons are a little tricky, because the defense system that’s saving so many—well, saving lives in Israel is the early warning and sheltering system. And the early warning system has been improved through the use of telephones. So, for example, if you’re in a city somewhere where the Israeli radars determine that an artillery rocket is heading in your direction, you will get an audible signal that says you need to take shelter. And then there’s a shelter system that’s been built in advance all over these areas of Israel, plus you would have a shelter in your home, if you are actually in your home. So all you would need is 10 seconds of warning or less to get in a shelter in your home, and you could actually get to shelters very quickly on the outside, because these shelters are all over the place where the population is dense and the Israeli government has predicted there will be a likely attack.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me quote from Reuters, July 10th: "Israel’s Iron Dome interceptor has shot down some 90 percent of Palestinian rockets it engaged during this week’s surge of Gaza fighting, up from the 85 percent rate in the previous mini-war of 2012." Professor Postol, your response?

THEODORE POSTOL: Well, first of all, I am sorry to say that the press needs to engage in more due diligence on these matters. Where does this number come from? The number comes from an Israeli spokesperson. Now, if I give a number—and, incidentally, I have a long record of being correct on these matters—you don’t hear the press coming to me and asking me, do I believe that number is correct? And if I don’t believe the number is correct, why would I not believe the number is correct? This is really—you can really put this back on the due diligence of the press with regard to this matter. They’re just not—they’re just accepting information from an interested party.

AMY GOODMAN: So can you explain further how this works, how the Iron Dome—how Raytheon built this?

THEODORE POSTOL: Well, the Iron Dome is mostly an Israeli development, although Raytheon is involved. The Iron Dome interceptor has to approach an incoming artillery rocket head-on. So if you saw an Iron Dome interceptor flying a near-vertical trajectory, that would indicate the Iron Dome interceptor is in a near-head-on engagement geometry coming at the artillery rocket. In that geometry, the interceptor has some chance of destroying the artillery rocket warhead. If you see the Iron Dome interceptor engaging the artillery rocket from the side or from the back by chasing it, then it has essentially a zero chance of destroying the artillery rocket warhead. So, if you look up in the sky and you look at the hundreds of videos we now have of the contrails of the—the smoke trails of the Iron Dome interceptors, you can see that almost all the time—there are exceptions, but almost all the time—the Iron Dome interceptors are traveling parallel to the ground, which means that the falling artillery rocket is engaged from the side, or the Iron Domes are—the Iron Dome interceptors are diving to the ground, which means that they are trying to chase artillery rockets from behind. All those engagements are zero probability of intercept. And we’re guessing—we’re guessing, based on what we have, that maybe 10 percent or 15 or 20 percent of the engagements are head-on. Actually, it’s not 20 percent; it’s closer to 10 percent. And when you see so few engagements head on, your conclusion is that the system is not working the vast majority of the time.

AMY GOODMAN: This goes to the issue of the proportionality of the attack on Gaza. You know, more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed. And so often when this issue is raised—and I think it’s three Israeli civilians, and of course every death is horrific on either side. But when this issue is raised, Israel just says, "Well, we have an extremely effective Iron Dome system." If it’s not Iron Dome, is it simply saying that these rockets that Hamas and other groups are firing off, they’re not working? I mean, if their intention is to kill, that they are not lethal weapons, if so few people have died and Iron Dome isn’t working?

THEODORE POSTOL: Well, one has to realize—you know, one has to know some simple technical facts. First of all, most artillery rockets are carrying warheads in the 10-to-20-pound range. So if you’re sitting in a room and the rocket comes through the roof and explodes in the room, it will kill you, and it will kill everybody else in the room. If you have 10 seconds or 20 seconds of warning and you go into the shelter that’s, by law, built in your home, and the rocket happens to hit your home, you won’t be killed. It can even hit the shelter, and you won’t be killed. So, sheltering and early warning are extremely critical to keeping the death toll down. Now, the odds of an artillery rocket going through the roof and into your room are very low. They’re high enough that if I were in Israel, I would advise you, and I would do so myself: I would take shelter, because there’s—you know, the inconvenience is small relative to being killed or injured. But most of these rockets are landing in open areas, landing between buildings, landing outside buildings. And the real danger is that this relatively low-lethality warhead lands within 10 or 20 feet of you.

Now, if you just lie on the ground—let’s say you’re caught in the open, and you can’t go to a shelter—the Israeli government itself will tell you that your chances of being a casualty from a falling artillery rocket are reduced by 80 percent—80 percent—if you simply lie on the ground. And the reason for that is the lethal range of these low-weight warheads is not very large, and they are blowing fragments out sort of like a shotgun, and if you get close to the ground, unless you’re very unlucky and the thing lands on you or lands very close to you, you’re not going to be injured by the explosion. So, although these artillery rockets are fantastically disruptive, with regard to the functioning of Israeli society—and I think that that is true, and because of that, there’s a psychological and political leverage associated with these artillery rocket attacks—they are not killing people, as long as people are taking shelter and sheltering is available.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Postol, I’m looking at a Boston Globepiece on the Iron Dome and Raytheon being a key in the Israeli defense plan. And it says, "For Raytheon, the Israeli contracts—part of a 'coproduction' deal with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems—present a potential financial windfall. Much of the work would be done at Raytheon’s Tucson, Ariz., missile systems plant, as well by subcontractors across the country." Can you talk more about exactly what Raytheon does and if this Iron Dome system is now being sold to other countries?

THEODORE POSTOL: Well, I’m not aware of sales to other countries at this point. I haven’t been following that part of the issue. On the question of foreign aid, in this case to Israel, it’s very common—it’s almost always the United States government requires that foreign aid largely be spent with—using American companies. And in the case of Raytheon, they are the premier company for basically building missiles and interceptors of all kinds. So, it’s a natural business arrangement for Raytheon to be a big beneficiary of an agreement like that, because the money goes to Israel in a virtual way, but it basically is spent in the United States.

Now, this brings—this raises the question of the cost of these interceptors. The Israelis are saying—some Israelis are saying that the interceptors cost $20,000 each. Now, the reason for lowballing this number—I’ll give you a sense of what it could cost—is because the interceptors, the Iron Dome interceptors, are intercepting rockets that might cost $500 or $1,000 each. So there’s an issue of how much you should pay, assuming the system is working, for stopping an artillery rocket, especially if the passive defense, if the taking shelter, saves lives. And, you know, for example, how many artillery shells cause $20,000 or $100,000 worth of damage. And the actual cost of an Iron Dome interceptor is almost certainly well over $100,000, not the $20,000 that some Israeli sources seem to be saying. Now, just to give you a sense of how off the cost could be—again, we don’t know at this point—another interesting fact, there’s so much we don’t know, yet people are throwing money at this. There’s a comparable missile in its cost called the Sidewinder. It’s an air-to-air missile that Raytheon manufactures and sells. The Iron Dome interceptor is very close to an air-to-air missile. It’s a very small missile, weights about 200 pounds, and so does this air-to-air missile—different design, though. That costs $400,000 each. So how is it possible to build an interceptor that has the same advanced technology—it’s not exactly the same, but similar—and roughly the same size, and it only costs $20,000 each? There’s a significant question there about whether the Congress and the American people have accurate information about what this system is really costing.

AMY GOODMAN: So you’re raising very serious questions about the effectiveness of Iron Dome. Hundreds of millions of dollars—in fact, more than the Obama administration has asked for—is being discussed in Congress to pour into this.

THEODORE POSTOL: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Mainly to Raytheon and other U.S. companies. Have you been called by anyone in Congress to testify, to raise your concerns?

THEODORE POSTOL: Of course not. Congress is not interested in information. What I can tell you, I have not been directly involved, but I have been privy to discussions with members of Congress who have oversight responsibilities, who have acknowledged in those discussions that they have no idea whether Iron Dome is working or not. And I can also tell you that the U.S. government has not been given any information on the performance of Iron Dome. So, when Susan Rice, the national security adviser, makes a statement about how well Iron Dome is working, somebody should ask Susan Rice what’s her source, because I can tell you that there—and she should have a source. She should be able to tell you, you know, "We had the following national laboratory take the data from the Israelis. They looked at it. And let me tell you, this thing is working well." Instead, she gets on television and talks about this working well. Somebody should ask her, somebody in the press corps should do their due diligence and ask her, "Where did you get this information?"

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I mean, it’s not just Susan Rice, the national security adviser. It’s President Obama himself. This is what President Obama said.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There’s no country on Earth that can be expected to live under a daily barrage of rockets. And I’m proud that the Iron Dome system that Americans helped Israel develop and fund has saved many Israeli lives.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s President Obama.

THEODORE POSTOL: Again, Mr. Obama should be able to answer the question of which American technical institution has obtained the data from the Israelis and verified the accuracy of the data and verified that the performance levels are what they are. I know that the Israelis have the data. They have radar data. They have video data in the visible. They have video data in the infrared. They have substantial amounts of data that they could and should make available to the United States, to our technical institutions, and have this data reviewed and certified. And any politician, whether it’s the president or his national security adviser, who makes a claim that this system is performing that well, should be able to point a finger at the specific agency that has the technical resources to review this data and has obtained this data from the Israelis. This is just an outrage.

AMY GOODMAN: Physicist Theodore Postol. He’s a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He recently wrote an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistscalled "The Evidence that Shows Iron Dome Is Not Working." This is Democracy Now! To see the first part of that interview, you can go to democracynow.org.

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