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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 12:13pm Mar 11, 2002 EST (#382 of 387)

almarst , I think you're doing great posting.

I found your reference http://www.bernal.co.uk/Research/Racak.html in almarst-2001 3/10/02 12:54am very interesting. Compelling. Disturbing.

A central question is how we check facts (including some in the reference you posted) how we relate facts together, and how we fit those facts into ideas and patterns that matter to us, for understanding, for ordering of relationships, and for justification of what we do.

"Facts" alone, whether they are right or wrong can't do anything. They are inputs into decisions by people who have power of decision about something.

Facts and ideas, combined together in space and time so that people can "connect the dots", as Erica Goode says in Finding Answers In Secret Plots http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/weekinreview/10GOOD.html form the ideas that people and groups have. -- These ideas are patterns, which work well enough to sustain action and belief in some ways, though they may be totally invalid otherwise. These ideas, constructed by "connecting the dots" may produce grossly pathological results -- fueling hatred, wars, and cycles of poverty. Or they may be correct.

To judge that, one checks the "facts" "connected together" and one sees if the pattern conjured up fits more facts - - including many more facts. The process of judging this, like the process of putting the "explanation" together - happens in people's minds - and can't be forced. But the matching process -- the "connecting of the dots" -- is what effective persuasion is all about. And the internet offers new ways, some shown here, of connecting information in space and time that would otherwise be diffused and unconnectable. That's a source of new opportunities.

In the case of Missile Defense, facts and relations set out and referenced in MD84 rshow55 3/2/02 10:52am can be connected up to show how much fraud, how much muddle, has motivated much of American defense policy. Setting out the facts, and discussing connection of the dots, takes work -- and is important to the extent that people with power care about the answers, and follow the logic.

The more well validated "dots" -- the more valid, checkable things that have to fit together at the same time, the less the chances for horror.

Some of the most horrible things in history - most perhaps, and most now, are based on "ideas" that have been crazy - grossly out of proportion -- ideas that neglect important things -- among them the humanity of real human beings.

We're living in a terrible time. Facts alone aren't going to solve anything. But facts, considered together, and considered, may help solve a great deal.

But it seems to me that if enough people, including leaders, get concerned enough, we have some soluble problems here. If they do not, we don't.

It also seems to me that there's great stuff in the TIMES today.

I find this image, which accompanies Goode's piece, terribly haunting. We need to understand, and deal with, irrational forces and emotions -- lest manageable, modifiable stresses between civilizations become causes for massive injury and death. http://graphics4.nytimes.com/images/2002/03/10/weekinreview/10good.1.jpg

Here's another image I find haunting - of a man reduced to selling a child . . . http://graphics4.nytimes.com/images/2002/03/08/international/08hung.1.jpg from Children as Barter in a Famished Land By BARRY BEARAK http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/08/international/asia/08HUNG.html

Many horrors seem not only terrible, but strange , and stupid . Including many of the worst horrors. Maybe there's some hope.

almarst-2001 - 12:15pm Mar 11, 2002 EST (#383 of 387)

The democratic principle of open government is under pressure from a US administration obsessed with secrecy and media manipulation, writes Julian Borger - http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,662807,00.html

almarst-2001 - 12:29pm Mar 11, 2002 EST (#384 of 387)

"Finding Answers In Secret Plots"

It may be a paranoya. But, looking back at the history, its undeniably was used by no other then the US in a great scale. Among those,

The falsified "facts" used as a reason for agression against many nations (cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, even Serbia and Iraq)

The hysterical theories of Communist/Leftist/Jewish conspiracy against the US.

And the current hystery of terrorism to prepeare the public for any, however crazy, undemocratic and irrational, actions at home and abroad.

PLEASE, SHOW ME THE DIFFERENCE.

lchic - 12:37pm Mar 11, 2002 EST (#385 of 387)

Bedtime for mAzzA ?

almarst-2001 - 12:54pm Mar 11, 2002 EST (#386 of 387)

Jordan warns of "catastrophe" if U.S. attacks Iraq - http://webcenter.newssearch.netscape.com/aolns_display.adp?key=200203100922000230539_aolns.src

almarst-2001 - 01:00pm Mar 11, 2002 EST (#387 of 387)

"It remains more than ever the task of moderate people, the vast majority of us, of all faiths and creeds, to speak out against the extremists." - Prince Charles - http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/11/02/nmus02.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/11/02/ixhome.html

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