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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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cantabb - 08:27pm Sep 27, 2003 EST (# 14062 of 14065)

rshow55 - 06:02pm Sep 27, 2003 EST (# 14058 of 14061)

Another series of confused, irrelevant digressive posts ! Another set of highly strained rationalizations:

Here's something else obvious .

People know very well how to convert disagreements into escalatory fights.

Cantabb is a master of that.

Asking you to clarify your posts is NOT a ‘fight’, nor pursuing such an answer, an ‘escalation’ of it. You seem incapable of giving a clear, specific answer to straightforward questions -- and fail to understand the main thrust of my posts and my questions, stated again in my last post. Entangled, as usual, in your own diversionary ways and baseless personal assessments [“Cantabb is a master of that”].

Since you still have not told me in clear terms what specifically you are working on this Forum on MD and the purpose of your innumerable posts (before Sept 17), the question of agreement/disagreement does NOT even arise. You’re imagining things, again.

rshow55 - 06:06pm Sep 27, 2003 EST (# 14059 of 14061)

Cantabb's last post asks some superb questions - but I have to evaluate them in terms of the sixty-plus other postings cantabb has put on this thread in the last few weeks. I would love a chance to answer these questions in a way that could illustrate both how to produce stable.......- but I'd like a chance to illustrate issues involved with resolution, as well.

First, let me set the facts straight. It's only about ONE WEEK (not weeks, as you say), I've been on this forum. My “sixty-plus” posts were in response to the posts addressed to me by about half-a-dozen ‘regulars’ including you -- all essentially on issues raised in my very FIRST post. Characteristically, you own posts in the same period are more than that.

Asking questions IS NOT a “fight” ! Asking you to clarify your statements and position is NOT a “fight” or its “escalation.” Get your terms right.

As to your response to my questions: Again, nothing specific. Nothing on-topic. Nothing clear. Let’s see:

Here are the questions - with very short and necessarily incomplete answers:

cantabb: (i) what is it specifically that you have been "working on" on this thread

rshow55: Generally - I've been working with lchic to clarify the patterns of good reasoning and good negotiation that people have been using successfully as long as the human race has been in existence - using new internet tools that make a degree of crossreferencing possible that hasn't been possible before - and in interaction with the most skilled wordsmiths and intellectuals I could find.

On anything specific, at all ? What “patterns of good reasoning and good negotiation” [admittedly used so successfully for so long]have YOU and lchic “clarified” yet ? On anything specific at all ? You think “internet tools” that YOU two now use, or have used, are so unique, and NOT available to the most unsophisticated internet user (let alone the governments and the think-tanks involved) ?

Do you and the “most skilled wordsmiths and intellectuals [you] could find” have access to information and necessary expertise, NOT accessible to OTHER mortals elsewhere [in teeming abundance] ?

Also in interaction with gisterme and almarst - who have represented, at least roughly - the Bush administration and Russian point of view in areas where communication and understanding have been dangerously deficient.

Back to your ridiculously naïve poster-identity speculations !

Another major objective has been to try to work out and teach enough so t

cantabb - 08:28pm Sep 27, 2003 EST (# 14063 of 14065)

rshow55 - 06:06pm Sep 27, 2003 EST (# 14059 of 14061)

continued with overlap....

Another major objective has been to try to work out and teach enough so that people could avoid mistakes and fights that now go on with monotonous and lethal regularity - and endanger the world. I've had other objectives, too - some set out in passages that I think are the more important the more "obvious" they are.

Have you tried to ‘teach” these naïve generalities to those involved in decision making ?

This continued delusion -- highly preposterous in light of what your postings.

Cantabb: (ii) do you have access to any relevant information, other than what's been public and easily accessible to anyone.

rshow55: How should I know? I've heard that everything is available on the net, these days . ..... Though there can be challenges of collection and organization. I've said some things from time to time on this thread - and I'm not denying a single thing I've said here.

Meaning: NO ACCESS whatsoever to the privileged information that may be available on routine to others !

Cantabb: (iii) what do you think you have achieved so far, using whatever approach you say you have been using, and

It seems to me that the most tangible achievement has been the corpus itself - and the degree of thought from gisterme and almarst that the corpus shows. I've assumed (some would think wrongly) ..... that people can learn how to agree to disagree clearly, without fighting, comfortably, so that they can cooperate ……

The “corpus” of your own posts is NOT an ‘achievement’ of anything. YOu achieved NOTHING new, original or specific, nor were you trying to achieve them. And as to your innumerable posts: pretty naïve and diffused -- using easily accessible material. On nothing specific.

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