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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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rshow55 - 01:53pm Aug 1, 2002 EST (#3404 of 3404)

rshowalter - 01:05pm Jun 10, 2001 EST (#4691 Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

In the December 19, 1999 WEEK IN REVIEW there was this:

Ideas & Trends; Insurers Come in From The Cold on Cancer by GINA KOLATA and KURT EICHENWALD

Abstract: Growing number of insurance companies agree to pay for experimental cancer treatments administered to policyholders who participate in clinical trials sanctioned by federal health agencies; experts call development momentous; for almost two decades, cancer researchers have been fighting over inadequate federal payments for clinical trials; change has come as courts and state legislatures, faced with desperate patients, have begun to require insurers to pay for experimental therapies . . . .

The phrase "come in from the cold" is used in the paper from time to time - and was used today. For reasons that made sense in context, after this article I asked a NYT writer, writing under a pseudonym rather easily breached - if that was a signal to me to debrief -- and was led to believe that it was. The debriefing, by email correspondence, took my full attention for some months, and much of that writer's time, for some months. I was led to believe that the CIA was involved -- and at the end of the debriefing, after an enormous amount of work, I was told that the mathematical research unit with which I'd been associated had been disbanded, and there was no place for me. I would have appreciated being told that before spending months of intense effort.

I feel sure, for what I believe are good reasons, that the NYT writer involved then is also "dirac" MD4639 rshowalter 6/8/01 10:27pm . . . MD4627 rshowalter 6/8/01 5:16pm . . . MD1742 rshowalter 3/29/01 8:09pm

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I believe that Dirac is one of George Johnson's pseudonyms. Now, it seems to me that this is a point about the "debriefing" is worth reviewing now, because it deals with what I can reasonably ask, and what I can reasonably assume the government and the NYT know.

All the same, what was done, and the decisions made by "Johnson" and "CIA" involving the debriefing may have been entirely understandable, based on what they knew.

Under the circumstances involved I did not feel able to broach certain key points to "Dirac." I was communicating through a pseudonymous, utterly deniable, channel. People looking at the corresponse may understand my reasons. My reasons to keep from dealing with certains subjects made sense to me in light of circumstances described in MD2769 rshow55 6/29/02 7:59am , though perhaps others might think I was inept or unduly cautious in making that judgement. Perhaps I should have shown more courage.

One reason I didn't communicate some things was that I hadn't finished a key part of the job I'd been set. I hadn't met Casey's criteria for coming in through the New York Times. Casey had been clear that, before I could expect the NYT channel to function well, I had to have my ideas clear enough so that they could propagate through the culture -- or at least had a chance of doing so. Then, I had to meet face to face. Until my work on paradigm conflict with lchic - - I didn't have things to that point. When I did have explanations at a level where I thought they fit Casey's criteria - in September 2000 - I did make an effort to come in throught the NYT - with consequences I did not anticipate, which have occupied me and others since.

The awkwardnesses with that effort to come in may have occurred because I'd "jumped the gun" with Dirac. But at the time my debriefing with Dirac started, it seemed reasonable - and as it proceeded without communication channels opening, I did the best I could. Johnson may have done so, as well.

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