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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.

commondata - 10:31am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4406 of 4411)

Is Disney along with Starbucks and McDonalds a potent symbol of US cultural imperialism?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,794029,00.html

Are you pouring comic book gasoline on the comic book fire?

commondata - 10:39am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4407 of 4411)

The moral case against disney.

http://falcon.laker.net/webpage/aamoral.htm

Oh dear, they're exposing children to witchcraft. What could a Christian fundamentalist learn from contemplating Disney? How could this conflict be resolved?

rshow55 - 10:41am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4408 of 4411)
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.

commondata 9/19/02 10:02am

Very interesting question!

And of course, some bloody fights are unavoidable.

Fine rhetoric in

Is it naive to imagine that many bloody fights are avoidable by contemplating Disney?

and contemplating Disney can never be more than part of the story.

But I believe that problems with communication - and problems about facts - are big contributors to situations that lead to fights.

A lot of other people, who have known a lot about fighting, have thought so, too. FDR was one of them. Eisenhower was another.

FDR: 4297 rshow55 9/13/02 6:15pm

rshow55 - 10:48am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4409 of 4411)
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.

commondata 9/19/02 10:39am

How could this conflict be resolved?

It is neither necessary nor desireable for all conflicts and disagreements to be "resolved" in every sense of the word. But they can be contained. They can stop short of violence.

Killing isn't always necessary - and it isn't naive to believe that.

Killing is usually not necessary.

Fighting is not the first thing to try.

For instance Arming the Arms Inspectors By JESSICA T. MATHEWS and CHARLES G. BOYD http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/19/opinion/19MATH.html is a fine suggestion - that could and should be built on - - and not naive at all.

commondata - 11:00am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4410 of 4411)

Thankyou Robert and of course I agree with you. I just wonder whether you can pursuade everyone else. Re. Arming the Arms Inspectors; the US will not earn much respect anywhere whilst it is spending more money on weapons than the next 9 countries put together, while it flouts international treaties on justice and the environment, while it preaches free trade but is protectionist, and while its pitiful 0.1% foreign aid budget goes mostly to Israel.

They cannot take a moral lead, they cannot make the world a better place.

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