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.

rshow55 - 10:20am Nov 11, 2002 EST (# 5580 of 5590)
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.

Weapons and patterns of threats exist in a context. To get things safer, we have to clean some things up.

Iraq Inspections Receive Approval From Arab League By NEIL MacFARQUHAR http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/international/middleeast/11ARAB.html describes some very careful, responsible, perceptive work by some very able people. People who are making good decisions in some ways. But these people are stumped, and in very unstable and unsatisfactory circumstances in some other ways. They need better answers to key questions than they have.

They know it.

These Arab leaders face problems that the Bush administration doesn't have answers to either. Problems that Friedman doesn't have answers to. Problems that neither they nor western advisors have given them solutions to. Problems that need to be understood and solved.

How do the Arab states, as they are, with history as it is, and economic, political and religious relations as they are - accomodate modernity in ways that work in Arab terms?

The power flows, money flows, constraints and challenges are different from any other cases in history in some big ways.

In 5570 rshow55 11/10/02 7:52am I asked the question "could Saddam be stumped?"

Saddam is, to a degree. But Saddam isn't paralyzed. I'm waiting with interest to hear about his speech today.

In 5570 rshow55 11/10/02 7:52am I said I'd like to try a "Saddam briefing" somewhat analogous to one I gave last March. I'd still like to do that - because it does seem to me that there are some basic problems that Saddam has had to struggle with - that have to be resolved at the level of understanding for the sake of all Islamic nations, and the sake of the whole world. Tough, interesting problems connected to some problems that we have as well.

I don't have to like Saddam, or be a "fan." One can admire some things about him. In a similar way, I admire what Ty Cobb did in some respects. But with reservations. ( Cobb , 1994 -- http://www.hollywood.com/movies/detail/movie/183860 . . . http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&id=1800228585&cf=info&intl=us )

The Arab world faces problems that are not easy - and workable solutions to the most basic of their problems do not, so far as I can tell, exist anywhere in usable form.

They need to be worked out - and it seems to me that workable improvements on some current arrangements can be worked out. First some very basic things have to be thought about. What should a modern Arab state look like, realistically. What could it look like - after transitions that could really happen, step by step, from where people are?

Weapons and patterns of threats exist in a context - and some situations really are sticky. To get things safer, to work out patterns of international order that are livable and safe, we have to clean some things up.

lunarchick - 11:51am Nov 11, 2002 EST (# 5581 of 5590)

Iraq
BBC

~~~~~

'The Golden Rule Makers' UN
GU comment

UN operates, by and large, according to the golden rule - that those who have the gold make the rules. Those without are left to fend for themselves. It is the UN's inability to deliver for the poor, on aid, trade, the environment and development, that makes it appear "irrelevant" to most

lunarchick - 12:07pm Nov 11, 2002 EST (# 5582 of 5590)

brain - mind - faith

_{It's all in the mind / Mike Purton
There is, however, one field of endeavour which holds out the hope of solving the problems of physics and religion, and of uniting them. In recent years, neuroscientists and philosophers have been trying to establish the nature of consciousness.
..... significant facts, not least regarding human reaction times .....
school of philosophy called idealism, which claimed mind as the primary reality, and the material world as an effect which it created ....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,837620,00.html}

lunarchick - 12:46pm Nov 11, 2002 EST (# 5583 of 5590)

EU - think they should HELP resolve Chechen situation ... not happy with RU current 'war' responses.

(7 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense