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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?

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lchic - 05:46am May 28, 2003 EST (# 12112 of 12130)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

"Flee-fight syndrome"

When man or animal is unexpectedly presented with a situation that involves either of the two basic fears that they are born with, that of falling or loud noises, their basic pattern matching system within the brain, instinctively sees the situation as a potentially life threatening one and the chemically encoded emotional envelope that encapsulates that thought, is employed to program the entire chemical control system within their body. It programs their body chemically, for one of two eventualities, run away, or stand and fight.

As result of the "Flee-fight syndrome" action, the body's systems that are nonessential for immediate survival, such as the digestive system is put stopped and put on "hold." At this time, massive amounts of different chemicals are pumped into the blood stream, one of these is adrenaline, which heightens awareness, gives muscles more strength and quickens reaction time. Along with the adrenaline, massive amounts of the brain chemical, Beta endorphin floods the blood stream. This is the pain killing, morphine-like chemical that the brain produces, so that you won't feel pain during the impending fight. Remember the times in your life when you had a small family emergency, after which you discovered a cut that you have no idea how you got, that is because your Beta endorphin level was up and you felt no pain when it happened.

This "Flee-fight" reaction, or instinct, is what makes your hand fly up when something is thrown at your face, you don't "think" your hand up there, it just goes up there by itself, the same way you have trouble not blinking, when something comes to close to your eyes. These instinctive reactions are what has kept mankind alive throughout his troubled history.

Although the Flee-fight action can save your life, to much time spent in this situation can also cost you dearly.

If the brain is kept in this heightened state of activity for too long a period, unable to analyze the situation that is occurring another normal brain function occurs, that of "sensory overload."

This fear-desire factor is the basic value that the human mind relies on in decision making. Regardless of the intellectual processes used to reach a decision, the bottom line a always falls within this fear-desire balance. The great decision makers in the world rely heavily on this phenomena. They train themselves to trust their "gut feelings" more than logic. http://www.georgerabe.com/mysite1/noveltys/hypmothb/motive03.htm

lchic - 05:56am May 28, 2003 EST (# 12113 of 12130)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

The Bush administration is a threat to international security because the president comes from Texas. Put simply, the Stetson is the problem. Michael Lind is an American polemicist and the author of a controversial new book, Made in Texas: George W Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics, which has been greeted with outrage in the US.

He is also a former member of the neo-conservatives, a small group of rightwingers currently shaping US foreign policy and sparking alarm on the international left. Lind walked out of the neo-conservatives in the 1990s ...

In his first UK appearance, he said Mr Bush's Texan brand of conservatism had been labouring to take over the US administration for the past 30 years.

Lind, a fifth-generation Texan with a ranch near the president's Prairie Chapel holding, believes that Mr Bush's "hillbilly image" is unfair and popularly held views of Texas are wrong. The Lone Star state is not a western enclave dominated by cattle ranching, it is a southern state - the westernmost tip of the American Deep South. Texas is a society built on cotton plantations, a "toxic byproduct" of the rigid segregation of low-waged, low-skilled workers dominated by a deeply religious oligarchy of rich white families.

Lind claimed Mr Bush's values were those of southern conservatism - "extremely pro-military, suspicious of diplomatic and international organisations and deeply religious in the fundamental sense".

He argued that southern conservatism was "a menace to the prosperity and security of the world as much as to that of the US". He said: "Domestically the south has the most backward economy and regressive social system of any region in the US."

More worryingly, it had a disdain for international alliances and organisations.

Asked why debates at the festival were becoming more and more focused on anti-Americanism, Lind said: "The world supported the US immediately after September 11 and Bush squandered that repeatedly and unnecessarily by his belligerent approach."

Elsewhere, harsh critiques of the US continued to flow. The American literary legend Don DeLillo laboured for an hour to avoid being drawn on his politics, at one point asking an audience member to answer a question on Tony Blair and Iraq, rather than add his view to the bubbling cauldron.

But the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood did not shrink from comment. She said of US politics: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely," she said. "Democracy is the hardest form of government to maintain."

She said US politicians had strayed from the ideal that religion and politics should be kept separate and individual freedoms were being encroached upon. http://books.guardian.co.uk/guardianhayfestival2003/story/0,12863,963661,00.html

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