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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

rshowalter - 10:34am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10144 of 10155)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

possumdag 10/6/01 9:17am

Comments would influence and discipline coverage. If the comments to the articles were "open" for people who identified themselves they would involve many little correctives - - and maybe some big ones. Writers on the same subject, in different papers, and from different countries, could check on each other.

And the credibility of an article would be higher, if the person written about did not contest something. Not hugely higher, but higher.

Statements made in one year might be revealing in the context of some other time.

Costs would be very low.

rshowalter - 10:37am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10145 of 10155)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

possumdag 10/6/01 10:24am

I think that it would be found that, in the 12th century, Europeans and Arabs would have thought similarly in some important ways. And Arab culture today, in some important ways, is much the same as it was then. Some of those old ways of thinking stand in the way of modernizations that the ordinary people of many islamic countries want badly for themselves and their families.

possumdag - 10:48am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10146 of 10155)
OUT - click moniker for urls

Necessary to consider the environment(s) people live within, the way they survive, the 'order' and 'ranking' and prioritisation of activity.

rshowalter - 10:55am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10147 of 10155)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Dawn does beautiful work - - I've got my hands full with the good references she's just cited ! !

rshowalter - 10:59am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10148 of 10155)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD1290 lunarchick 3/22/01 6:08am ... classic on dispute resolution. . . . With an eye on the "end game" worth noting.

jorian_s - 11:37am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10149 of 10155)

I still say we could eventually defuse this whole Islamic rule thing by immediately beginning to deliver all of our third class mail (catalogs, samples of l'eggs, superwhitening crest, alkaseltzer etc.) to Kabul and Baghdad by high altitude bomber.

rshowalter - 11:41am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10150 of 10155)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

That might be a part of the solution -- or something like it - - because with the rigidities of their medieval patterns (patterns NOT validly traceable to Mohammed himself) they can never get societies with high standards of living, except from windfalls such as oil. And that doesn't last.

rshowalter - 11:43am Oct 6, 2001 EST (#10151 of 10155)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD1293 rshowalter 3/22/01 8:10am

Often, when people have to communicate -- openness is suggested. It works. We need a reframing where much more happens "in clear" - - because the alternative used now, of covering up, and restricting communication, is intolerably awkward and expensive - - and obviously so, once people recognize how much communication people actually need to work together.

Want to ASSURE misunderstandings between groups - - enough so that they cannot really cooperate, except in very minimal ways?

. Restrict conversation.

To see how very completely this can be done, here is a document that many people think is very beautiful - - as an example of how to "manage" information flows. I think it is starkly ugly, but explains a great many of the procedures and ways of thought that we must get away from, for our own sakes, and the sakes of many others in the world.

. NUNN-WOLFOWITZ TASK FORCE REPORT: INDUSTRY "BEST PRACTICES" REGARDING EXPORT COMPLIANCE PROGRAMS http://164.109.59.52/library/pdf/nunnwolfowitz.pdf July 25, 2000

The Nunn-Wolfowitz document doesn't show "oppression" or "exploitation" - - but it does show, in detail, how to "keep people out of the loop."

At the levels required for decent economic function, and the most basic kinds of military cooperation, many more people have to be "in the loop."

Our patterns for excluding communication have become terribly cumbersome, all over the world, and we have to open up. Very many of our most basic challenges, missile threats among them, are not really cleanly soluble unless this is done.

These patterns are possible because of some very serious problems in American and world press practice, that Weaver speaks of as a "culture of lying." The "culture of lying" -- which devalues the press. That needs reform as well. With the internet, the reform wouldn't be hard. But let me review what Weaver means by the "culture of lying."

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