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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.

lchic - 06:06am Jul 5, 2003 EST (# 12852 of 12855)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

" .. Bush's decision to "designate" six inmates of the maximum security Camp Delta - including the Britons, an Australian, and three others - to face the military hearings sparked worldwide condemnation, and lawyers accused the US of devising a process that was loaded ..." http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,992033,00.html

WRT David Hicks the Aussie - he seems an interesting guy who worked around Australia, worked in Japan, and gravitated to Pakistan-Afghanistan ... was loosely connected to the American approved Gvt of Afghanistan - Taliban, who were the ruling party. David has Parents and his young kids are in school they must worry about him and the 'Loco-Bush-entis' he's suffering. David's been described here as an embarassment to the US ... who don't want him, but our 'little Johnny' wouldn't take him home because he wasn't 'cleared' to come as a free man. Neither the EU nor Australia are keen on inhuman treatment or condemnation of their people .... as said previously ... the real nutters were the Saudi mob.

----

An Aussie has just come back from there (Saudi) ... he a MedicalTechi ... a woman he married there was accused of stealing hospital equipment ... because she wouldn't admit to it (well did she?) he also was taken to prison ... the 'Religious Police' stood over as a prescribed 300 lashes slashed into his skin in installments ...

seems 'the religious police' of these Arab countries have set themselves up as non-logical power bases --- what do they have to gain by thrashing INNOCENT people ?!?

That two 'iffy' nations have so much control over world energy resources suggests the need to look to alterative sources of energy and discipate that stranglehold.

rshow55 - 07:46am Jul 5, 2003 EST (# 12853 of 12855)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

"That two 'iffy' nations have so much control over world energy resources suggests the need to look to alterative sources of energy and discipate that stranglehold."

Getting those alternative sources worked out and on line is a socio-technical problem. Technical solutions need to be crafted and fit into workable social (including political) arrangements.

Technologies that solve the problems they deal with uniquely and well (like the railroad) are needed in the fields of

energy, food, water supply

and in some general problems of complex cooperation.

I think there's good reason to hope for a lot of progress, in practical terms, pretty soon. http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.5eZFbuNtnSj.454462@.f28e622/13626

12738 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.5eZFbuNtnSj.454462@.f28e622/14406

Some suggestions for such solutions are being blocked out here. Solutions have to happen in stages. If a permanent solution to the world energy problem was pretty certain after a few hundred thousand bucks, nearly certain after a million or two - and very certain at all technical levels after a billion dollars was spent - but then required a very large investment (fully amortized in a few years) would it be worth doing? And actually doable?

Perhaps the answer is "yes."

But such a solution has to be orderly - and involve governments - and stable agreements.

I'm continuing to work to get a presentation together that might actually motivate action in the real world. Continuing to have some fun working out the engineering details. My guess is that, if someone with REAL power wanted the world energy problem solved - and wanted to get global warming solved as part of the same technical organizational solution - we could be CERTAIN that these job could be done within 12 months of today - have hydrogen on line at significant volume in 3 years - and have as much hydrogen as the market could reasonably absorb within a decade. And be reversing global warming within that same period - on a basis that is both sustainable and under controls the great majority of the people in the world would call just, and even beautiful.

To do it - there would have to be an orderly industry - on equatorial oceans - with safety standards and environmental concerns adressed - and it would need to pay taxes to the United Nations - according to patterns consistent with the Law of the Sea - or a modified Law of the Sea.

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