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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 - 10:23pm Oct 19, 2002 EST (# 5069 of 5081)
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 has been an interesting time on this thread from MD4701 rshow55 10/1/02 6:51pm to MD4739-40 rshow55 10/3/02 9:06am and a very interesting 4 day gap thereafter.

4742 rshow55 10/7/02 9:58pm includes this:

" When National Security Adviser Rice wrote this, I believe she wrote something profound and hopeful. I'm doing the best I can to help make it true.

" Today, the international community has the best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the seventeenth century to build a world where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepare for war. . . . . . The United States will build on these common interests to promote global security. "

" The National Security Strategy of the United States," http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/politics/20STEXT_FULL.html . page 2.

For that to be true - we need to make decisions based on correct information .

For correct information to be determined - in a world where deception is far too easy , responsible leaders of nation states have to ask for sane, factual responses from the United States.

Perhaps that's happening.

We have to be very concerned about the degree to which our press has been for sale - - and Attack on the ad-man seems very much worth posting here.

4136 rshow55 9/2/02 7:28pm

rshow55 - 10:26pm Oct 19, 2002 EST (# 5070 of 5081)
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.

Attack On The Ad-Man

This trumpeter of nothingness, employed
To keep our reason dull and null and void.
This man of wind and froth and flux will sell
The wares of any who reward him well.

Praising whatever he is paid to praise,
He hunts for ever-newer, smarter ways
To make the gilt seen gold; the shoddy, silk;
To cheat us legally; to bluff and bilk
By methods which no jury can prevent
Because the law's not broken, only bent.

This mind for hire, this mental prostitute
Can tell the half-lie hardest to refute;
Knows how to hide an inconvenient fact
And when to leave a doubtful claim unbacked;
Manipulates the truth but not too much,
And if his patter needs the Human Touch,
Skillfully artless, artlessly naive,
Wears his convenient heart upon his sleeve.

He uses words that once were strong and fine,
Primal as sun and moon and bread and wine,
True, honourable, honoured, clear and keen,
And leaves them shabby, worn, diminished, mean.
He takes ideas and trains them to engage
In the long little wars big combines wage…
He keeps his logic loose, his feelings flimsy;
Turns eloquence to cant and wit to whimsy;
Trims language till it fits his clients, pattern
And style's a glossy tart or limping slattern.

He studies our defences, finds the cracks
And where the wall is weak or worn, attacks.
lie finds the fear that's deep, the wound that's tender,
And mastered, outmanouevered, we surrender.
We who have tried to choose accept his choice
And tired succumb to his untiring voice.
The dripping tap makes even granite soften
We trust the brand-name we have heard so often
And join the queue of sheep that flock to buy;
We fools who know our folly, you and I.

A.S.J. Tessimond.

bbbuck - 10:36pm Oct 19, 2002 EST (# 5071 of 5081)
'The scoops are on the way'....

I will post mountains of voluminous slop
I will post and post slop until I drop.
And just when you think I'm just about thru
I will slop I little extra, just for you.

(10 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense