New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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 - 10:36pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3473 of 3489)

From the Observer:

Bush ready to declare war Split opens between Britain and US as White House targets dictator http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,769064,00.html The determination of Bush and his closest officials to go ahead with a war has also come amid growing evidence of splits within his own administration.

Senior officials, however, anticipate that Bush will bring an end to the debate by ordering the Pentagon to prepare for war. Most in the administration expect a fairly swift victory.

'I'm absolutely convinced the President will settle on a war plan that brings about regime change,'

[Gosh what if it's 'The WhiteHouse Regime' that is changed!]

Among the clouds of deception, US speeds along road to war / http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,769042,00.html / Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor, says that beyond the black arts of propaganda it is just a question of picking the right time for an invasion of Iraq.

Cambridge has come under fierce pressure to curb the freedoms of its more creative academics http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,768430,00.html

Enron | ethics | Skilling replied: 'I'd keep making and selling the product. My job as a businessman is to maximise return to the shareholders. It's the government's job to step in if the product is dangerous.' No wonder his colleagues called him Darth Vader .. http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,764248,00.html .... Twice a year, 15 per cent of the workforce was ritually sacked, to be replaced by new arrivals, and a further 30 per cent warned to improve. Employees were usually young, inexperienced and lacking in job options, since they lived in Houston, where Enron had few rivals. The company's cut-throat working culture destroyed morale and internal cohesion but also made workers afraid to question their superiors Since the beginning it had used loopholes in the accounting system to make its assets and revenues seem as large as possible. Andrew Fastow, the chief financial officer, allegedly pushed this practice into wild rule-breaking, with the creation of a number of offshore entities - including the now-notorious LJM and LJM2 - where he is said to have hidden more than $1bn of Enron's losses.

Peter Fusaro and Ross Miller, What Went Wrong at Enron (Wiley).

lchic - 10:40pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3474 of 3489)

So much sky - so many air traffic control problems - UK

Leaked papers from the London Area Control Centre at Swanwick revealed that Nats has already filed double the number of "overload" reports it made for the whole of 2001. The reports are made when controllers believe safety is being compromised because they have too many planes to deal with. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/story.jsp?story=321354

lchic - 10:44pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3475 of 3489)

IRAQ | UK CHURCH | tell BLAIR to distance himself from Bush http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=321346

Thousands of UK groups

" ... claim .. US threats to invade Iraq without UN authority are "deplorable" and violate UN conventions and Christian moral teachings "

lchic - 10:46pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3476 of 3489)

http://www.economist.com/

wrcooper - 11:50pm Aug 3, 2002 EST (#3477 of 3489)

rshow55 8/3/02 9:39pm

It wasn't reasonable, unless perhaps you and Ichic are illiterate. Are you incapable of understanding plainly written English?

I wrote:

And I am William Cooper, Chicago, IL, wcooper@21stcentury.com, a subdivision of RCN Chicago. You can check that."

So you think it was reasonable to conclude after reading this phrase that I worked at RCN Chicago? What, are you mentally challenged? Did you finish grade school?

The phrase, "a subdivision of RCN Chicago," clearly was used appositively, referring to my email address. Do you think a person, me, could be a subdivision of a company? It makes no sense whatsoever to conclude from this phrase that I worked at RCN Chicago. None. To paranoiac, you've now added "linguistically challenged" to your list of disabilities.

lchic - 04:41am Aug 4, 2002 EST (#3478 of 3489)

Another posting in the Johnstonian tradition of non-content-twaddle!

Twaddle used to separate thread readers from postings (above) that may have significance ... a signal to backpeddle up the thread for the postings 'they' don't want read.

lchic - 04:44am Aug 4, 2002 EST (#3479 of 3489)

FRIEDMAN "" Watching the pathetic, mealy-mouthed response of President Bush and his State Department to Egypt's decision to sentence the leading Egyptian democracy advocate to seven years in prison leaves one wondering whether the whole Bush foreign policy team isn't just a big bunch of phonies. Shame on all of them.

Since Sept. 11 all we've heard out of this Bush team is how illegitimate violence is as a tool of diplomacy or politics, and how critical it is to oust Saddam Hussein in order to bring democracy to the Arab world. Yet last week, when a kangaroo court in Egypt, apparently acting on orders from President Hosni Mubarak, sentenced an ill, 63-year-old Saad Eddin Ibrahim to seven years at "hard labor" for promoting democracy — for promoting the peaceful alternative to fundamentalist violence — the Bush-Cheney team sat on its hands. ^{http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/opinion/04FRIE.html}

lchic - 05:32am Aug 4, 2002 EST (#3480 of 3489)

Dark - Early am still connecting the dots :)
^{http://lakecam.engr.wisc.edu/Lakecam.html}

(9 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense