Jouni Valkonen <jounivalko...@gmail.com> wrote: There is one thing good to remember that we are not living nowhere near > laissez-faire capitalism. If any company would be exposed in any attempt to > hinder the development of viable cold fusion technology, it would > considered the worst economic crime in the history. And it would lead into > huge monetary penalties and compensations.
Never! Not in the U.S. Corporations do this sort of thing all the time. There are no laws against bad mouthing the competition, or tell the public or the Congress that your competition's product is inferior. As I said, the coal industry has a vigorous PR program to tell the public that wind turbines do not work, they are a waste of money, they kill birds, and they should be made illegal. The coal and oil industry spend millions telling people that global warming does not exist or that it is not caused by CO2. Every Republican member of Congress and candidate for president agrees with them. It is difficult for people in other countries to realize how strong the anti-science, anti-intellectual trend is in the U.S. We have never been an intellectual country. We have never had much respect for scholars or scientists, or "eggheads" as they used to be called. Lately, however, the antipathy has risen to heights not seen since the 1950s, just before the Sputnik scare. Eventually, this will die down, but a present any Republican who admitted that global warming might be real, or even that the world is older than 6,000 years old and Darwin might be right, will be booted out of office. 68% of Republican voters believe in creationism, along with 40% of the U.S. public. In his book, Obama said clearly that he believes in evolution, but I have never heard him say that in public, and I would advise him not to. Why alienate 40% of the voters? I am sure the oil companies will tell the public and Congress that cold fusion is nuclear, it is probably dangerous, it produces neutrons, it is unproven, it can never be scaled up, and so on. That is what the skeptics have been saying all along: "even if it is true it will never work." I expect that every member of the Republican party will agree with them, just as they agree about global warming, and just as they all agreed that BP was victimized by the Obama administration when it paid a huge fine after the spill. Those people are predictably anti-science and in favor of established industry. The fight will probably fall along party lines in the U.S. > E.g. it would be considered as stock exchange rate manipulation, that is > already one of the most severely punished crimes. > This is definitely not stock market manipulation. Especially if it done publicly with advertisements on TV and "contributions" to members of Congress (bribery) -- as I am sure it will be. Also you cannot make something a crime after the fact. In the U.S. that violates the Constitution. There is no law against lying about cold fusion, or any other physics or chemistry. People do it all the time, in every major newspaper! Also any such law would violate freedom of the press. In any case, no tobacco executive was ever convicted of a crime; no executive was convicted in the Dalkon Shield scandal which rendered thousands of women infertile or in pain; and no one from Wall Street went to jail after the 2008 crash. You can steal, rape and murder all you like in the U.S. as long as you are working for a corporation. As one judge said to the Dalkon executives, if a street gang had gone around doing this to thousands of women, they would be in prison for the rest of their lives, but we have to let you off. The company did have to pay into a trust fund for victims. This kind of suppression would also be impossible to keep inside a company > . . . > I am sure they will make it as public as they can. Companies do not hide their attacks on global warming. The coal companies kill 20,000 people a year from particulate pollution. They do not hide that fact. They practically brag about it at stockholders meetings. They call it "keeping down costs by sticking to tried and true technology" meaning they can't be bothered to install scrubbers that would add a fraction of a penny per kilowatt hour. > We must remember that the economic value of the knowledge on cold fusion > technology is billions of dollars . . . > Trillions. And that is why it is likely to succeed despite opposition. It all depends on the public. If the public can be educated and made enthusiastic in favor of it, then the oil companies and other opponents will be swept aside. The main message we want to tell the public is that this breakthrough will save you $2000 a year per person. People don't care about the environment. They don't believe in science . . . really, most of them hate it. But they also hate oil companies and OPEC. When you tell them the oil companies want to rip you off for $2000 a year indefinitely, they will be angry. They will demand the Congress fund the research and allow the technology. That is our best hope. Maybe our only hope. If the public continues to believe the anti-cold fusion propaganda that has saturated the mass media since 1989, then we will lose, and this technology will never see the light of day. - Jed
