Items continue steadily appearing in newspapers about Lance Armstrong and his possible involvement in doping. So far as I understand it the argument put forward by the agency that wishes to convict him goes like this. We are certain that Lance Armstrong is a drugs cheat. We can find no proof of this, therefore Mr Armstrong is not only a drugs cheat but also incredibly cunning, hugely organized, unbelievably lucky, and well-protected by his cohorts. Er, pardon? If you can find no proof of this, isn’t it possible that Mr Armstrong isn’t a drugs cheat? Again I have no strong opinion myself as to whether or not he is, but increasingly I am bothered by the arguments that say “he must be because we want him to be we can’t find proof which means that he is but he’s so cunning we can’t prove it, and because he can no longer afford the time and money to fight us so he’s had to cease, he must be guilty”.

Consider this scenario. I open my door to a polite knocking by several police officers.

“We have come to arrest you as being a bank robber involved in the robbery of seven major banks and the theft of tens of thousands of dollars, they say.

“I don’t rob banks and I’ve never had tens of thousands of dollars, I protest.

“We know you don’t have the money and all our investigations can only agree. However the Police Commissioner is adamant that you are a bank robber therefore you are and we must arrest you. Besides, you have been consorting with bank robbers.”

“What bank robbers?”

“Several customers at the bank you use are under suspicion of bank-robbery, several others have in the past been known to commit such crimes. Since you all use the same bank you are an associate of bank-robbers.”

“You mean that because I am involved in a business, and others I may know casually use the same business it is assumed that I am in their line of work? But my vet also uses that bank, as do my minister, my doctor, and my car mechanic. You do not assume that I am a vet, a minister, a doctor or a mechanic?”

“Of course not, they are not criminals and we are not planning to prosecute anyone for being a a vet, a minister, a doctor or a car mechanic. Besides, several of the bank robbers have admitted that you have assisted them in the past.”
     “What?”
    “Well, we had to offer various inducements for them to say so. We’ve promised not to prosecute them, or not so stringently anyway. Some we’ve agreed to allow to go free, or with minor sentences if they would say what we wanted to hear.

“But how could anyone believe what they would say? Haven’t judges in the past agreed that such evidence should be weighed very carefully since criminals will say whatever is demanded if it results in reduced punishment? ”

“That’s all true, however we’re certain that if we bring enough of these bank robbers to testify against you, and if we talk about it in dozens of papers, pointing out over and over that you must be guilty because so many criminals say you are, then the public and ultimately a judge and jury will agree. You must understand that once we have you convicted in the court of public opinion, we can then arbitrarily have you convicted in a real court.

“But you have no actual evidence, nothing other than possibly-coerced testimony and your own obsessive belief that I’m guilty.”
     “That’s irrelevant. We know you to be guilty and we will convict you. Besides which, you must be guilty because we can’t find physical proof, that shows how cunning you are. If you’re that clever you have to be guilty.”

“What?”

“And anyhow once we’ve charged you, you’ll use up all your money on lawyers, and once you are emotionally exhausted by all the legal processes through which we’ll drag you, you’ll decide not to keep fighting and we’ll be able to point to that and say you must be guilty, and that you know it or you’d keep fighting us.”
“But if I’m exhausted and have no more money how CAN I keep fighting.
     “That’s irrelevant and once we’ve pointed it out to the public several dozen times in many venues, they’ll understand that. No, you’re guilty and there’s nothing more to be said.

Except that there is. A citizen is innocent until proven guilty, not by hearsay, but in a court of law. Not because they run out of time, money and energy and stop fighting, but because there is solid proof and they’re convicted on that. Not because a number of those with their asses to protect give testimony – which should be taken apart and tested strand by strand and their reasons for speaking considered very suspiciously – and that testimony tested thoroughly in a court of law. Lance Armstrong may or may not be a drugs cheat, but so far as I can see, the only things against him are the obsessive determination of an agency to convict him, and the possibly coerced testimony of those who already are self-admitted cheats and who may be motivated by inducements or by simple jealousy of a man who has been a giant in their sport. And repeating that he is a drugs cheat in newspapers, magazines, on TV and radio, insisting over and over that he is guilty until he proves he is innocent is contrary to the laws of both our country and the United States. Lance Armstrong may be guilty, but merely saying he is, claiming that his ceasing to fight proves it, that many self-confessed drug cheats say that he’s one of them so he must be, is not evidence! And until someone produces something genuine in that line, if nobody minds, (and even if they do) I’ll continue to assume that Lance Armstrong is innocent until proven guilty. And wonder about the motivations of those who insist so hysterically that he has to be guilty, and that several hundred negative drug tests have had to be faked in some completely undetectable way which only goes to prove what a cheat he is. Yeah, right!

It’s interesting to note how often commonsense predictions in SF come true. Arthur C. Clarke’s predicted satellites for example. The most recent item was a report I saw on TV just the other week, in which they demonstrated a space harpoon. Not for whales, but for space debris floating in an orbit around the Earth and endangering communications satellites, the space station, and shuttles coming and going. Currently we have a huge amount of debris in Earth orbit, and this gadget is designed for someone to harpoon items, and place them in a trajectory into the atmosphere where they’ll burn up, thus reducing the hazards of space.

Of course, the thing that occurred to me was to wonder why this hadn’t been done to start with. SF writers have been using the problems of artificial space debris in earth-orbit for decades for both short stories and books. Why did it never strike scientists and governments, that leaving all sorts of trash to hurtle about around Earth wasn’t a good idea. I’m not altogether certain that sending chunks of it hurtling towards Earth as an alternative may be a good idea either. Depending on just how likely it is for the item to burn up that is. It may be necessary to have some space-going garbage person out there cutting up the items before they’re sent on their way, so that they are of a size to burn up safely rather than braining some unfortunate below. And to think that it could have been avoided if only those putting items into space had read the right SF or used common sense. Creating a band of millions of bits of rubbish presenting a lethal barrier to future space exploration, is, to say the least, counter-productive. They say that what goes up must come down, it looks as if that was a saying to which more of those who sent it up in the first place should have paid heed.