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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 - 08:02pm Sep 23, 2002 EST (# 4486 of 4496)
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.

We're living in a strange and dangerous time -- with wrenching disproportions, blazing contradictions, great dangers side by side with much that his beautiful, much to hope for. Everything we hold dear depends on reasonable decisions - decisions that make human sense. A lot doesn't.

The United States military budget is now something like 150 times larger than the budget of the UN. The budget of the New York Times is larger than the budget of the U.N., as well. More than 250,000 people die every day - very many of them under wretched circumstances, after wretched lives. There is a great deal of unlovely and crazy human behavior - much of it organized. A Woman's Work by PETER LANDESMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/15/magazine/15RWANDA.html - - - The TIMES does not overstate the tension between idealism and "realism" in The Bush Doctrine http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/22/opinion/22SUN1.html , which deals with President Bush's recent policy statement http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/politics/20STEXT_FULL.html

Things are unstable, dangerous, and ugly in compelling ways. Some of the most basic aspects of international law have been rejected by the Bush administration, and are being renegotiated now. 4468 rshow55 9/21/02 5:06pm The whole world has to be careful about this necesarily complicated and multilateral deal.

A while ago I asked for a chance to give a presentation on a military matter, and wrote this:

"Some explosive instabilities need to be avoided by the people who must make and maintain . . . relevant agreements. The system crafted needs to be workable for what it has to do, have feedback, damping, and dither in the right spots with the right magnitudes. The things that need to be checkable should be.

" Without feedback, damping, and dither in the right spots with the right magnitudes -- a lot of things are unstable - even when those things "look good," "make sense" and there is "good will on all sides."

" . . . . Unless we get some things in better balance - costs in money, blood, and trouble will be much larger than necessary."

Here are discussions of balance. We often don't want things to go off with a "bang."
4427 rshow55 9/19/02 4:34pm ... 4461 rshow55 9/21/02 10:35am

rshow55 - 08:02pm Sep 23, 2002 EST (# 4487 of 4496)
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.

It seems to me and many other people that the situation in the United States is often dangerously out of balance, in vital ways. Lchic and I have been working here for a week short of two years now - working to improve balance, and increase human safety. I've been trying to keep promises I made to Bill Casey, trying to keep faith with some old investors - and working on technical and logical aspects of negotiation for international stability where I've had some special background and interest (for reference, click rshow55 , and look at links to Bill Casey.)

4403 rshow55 9/19/02 9:33am To communicate there must be common ground. A "shared space". http://www.worldtrans.org/TP/TP1/TP1-17.HTML is short, and says the most basic things about what shared space is, and why it is needed.

The same logic and the same detailed solutions have to be explained and discussed in ways where "sender" and "reciever" really have a "shared space" . . . and that communication task is a different task from working out a solution (in isolation) in the first place.

Almost everybody else in the world approaches problems with some big parts of the communication tasks involved included in their work at all times. I've tried to specialize in working out solutions in isolation from these communication issues - in isolation from emotional issues - concentrating as strictly as I can, during this specialized work, on the logical problems that seem to have been stumpers, again and again. I've done so because I've felt (and been told, and seen) that there were very common logical problems when human affairs went wrong. On this thread, I've worked with lchic , the most able communicator I've ever been close to - to solve complicated, unsolved problems in communication and problems solving. Particularly problems with communication between staffed organizations.

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