Missile Defense

The posting of July 25, 2001 that was deleted from Psychwar . . . was also deleted from Paradigm Shift .... whose getting there?

The posting before that, 08:10pm Jul 18, 2001 BST http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/511 bears rereading, I think. Here is some of it.

Bertotdt Brecht's essay, WRITING THE TRUTH, FIVE DIFFICULTIES is in my version of his play, GALILEO , set into English by Charles Laughton, and includes this:

" It takes courage to say that the good were defeated not because they were good, but because they were weak."

When the truth is too weak, we have to ask: why? Was it indeed the truth? Or were there systematic barriers to the propagation of the truth -- chain breakers? Fear is a problem, and a deeply embedded one, all through the system, for journalists, for members of the government, and for people who depend on the government (that is, all of us.) And reluctance to face new ideas is, as well.

I think some may enjoy Chain Breakers http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/618 in this regard. Some might enjoy it more in terms of the information linked to MD6613 (link deleted)

MD6671 (link deleted) .... contains this phrase:

" Hitler went unchecked. "

Hitler subverted an entire society based on nonsense and lies, many ornately detailed, and destroyed much of the world in doing so. He hoped, in the senses that matter to most of us, to destroy the whole world. In the ways that mattered, he wasn't effectively checked at the level of ideas.

Could the situation be as serious as that now? I think so -- I've long believed that the world could easily end, on the basis of things I believe I understand from a more grounded perspective than many have, that the world could end. I'm not alone in that fear:

. Doomsday by Rebecca Johnson , executive director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4222863,00.html

In MD6024 (link deleted) I asked gisterme , who I believe represents high officers of state, the following question "What have I said that is not in the national interest?" The issue was whether I had committed, or was proposing to commit, treason.

gisterme replied to the question directly in these posting, and doing so conceded that issues of technical feasibility and probablility of projects, based on the open literature, can be discussed in the United States.

MD6028 . . MD6033 . . .MD6060 (links deleted - available on CD)

That concession is important, in part because of the mechanics of discourse in these affairs. The shroud of classification, even when only used as a threat, can slow discourse down to a crawl. For example, the Coyle Report, . . . NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE DEPLOYMENT READINESS REVIEW 10 August 2000 . . . . http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/nmdcoylerep.pdf , though not formally classified, has been restricted informally. It took months for Congressman Tierney to get it released -- something plainly in the public interest. Working outside of classification rules could be much faster -- and could happen in public -- ideally, recorded in streaming video on the net, with key calculations also on the net, and the whole world invited to see and check those calculations.

(more)

rshow55 - 08:38am Oct 16, 2002 EST (# 4935 of 4936)
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.

If this were done, and somehow made public -- some key points, now supressed, might stand out - - and some good decisions might come. I've been trying to find ways to force that checking -- with someone from the administration - with a real name, a real face, and real engineering creditials at risk - on the other side. People often will not attend to fancy arguments -- especially these, where it is so often numbers that are far fetched -- not qualitative ideas alone.

Perhaps, if it could be arranged, more might attend to a umpired fight. I might lose such an umpired, public fight, but I'm prepared to risk that.

(more in http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/511)

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