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Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

lunarchick - 05:14am Mar 15, 2001 EST (#1007 of 1010)
lunarchick@www.com

The above http://www.dawn.com/2001/03/15/top15.htm was worth printing in full

Were bribes to be offered by arms manufacturers, to decision makers within the US system ... paragraphs above would transfer easily to the US culture.

- People making do on very basic pay .. while the 'higher ups' already priviliged are on the take.

- Officials happy to bias their judgements to accommodate the needs of a bribing-selling company.

"It was a saga of pure greed," Tejpal said in a discussion on an Indian TV channel. "It's amazing, I mean, that it's a miracle that the investigation lasted for seven months and their cover didn't get blown. It didn't get blown because there was so much greed. These guys were blinded with greed at every step. I mean, these two guys were largely amateurs. They didn't understand weapons; they didn't understand equipment. They knew nothing about financial transactions. But nobody caught them because the people were only focussed on money."

EVEN SO: The above barely mentions LAXMAN. <<President Bangaru Laxman, who resigned on Tuesday>>

rshowalter - 06:53am Mar 15, 2001 EST (#1008 of 1010)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Wonderful posts.

Are the forces of greed, blind inertia, and death invincible?

One can construct an argument that says yes.

But I think, though I'm sometimes so afraid that I shake, that there's reason for hope.

Maybe very great, and fairly immediate hope.

The forces of death, and military coercion beyond reason, have to lie. And if lies go on for many years, and cover up MANY things that "could not stand the light of day" people committed to those are immobilized. They seem, over the past decade especially, to have put most of their faith in the notion that they can "hide things in plain sight" and no one can "put the pieces together."

Such "perfect defenses" can indeed be formidable - and may indeed seem perfect for a while. But the sociotechnical circumstances can shift. With the internet, and the end of the Cold War, they have. After a shift, and some human discipline, it has happened that these kinds of defenses go down. In military parlance "go down in order."

Alexander the Great was perhaps the last commander to consistently put other forces "down in order" in this classical Aristotelean sense. But the vulnerabilities of the current forces of death and deception, world wide, look, at the level of logical structure, and reflexive inflexibility, very similar to the vulnerabilities Alexander faced, and handled consistently.

This time, these primative forces, facing new circumstances, and tactics that can move faster than they can repond to or defend against, may go down in order, too.

This time, rather than the horror of Alexander, it may be the forces of peace, honor, and prosperity that win.

rshowalter - 07:01am Mar 15, 2001 EST (#1009 of 1010)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalter 3/9/01 7:30pm

The appearance of impropriety certainly exists. Semantic usages and evasions that would be hard to explain to a school class seem well entrenched. And the amounts of money involved are amply large to produce either conscious or unconscious corruption, or both.

Elder Bush in Big G.O.P. Cast Toiling for Top Equity Firm .... by By LESLIE WAYNE ..... NYT . . . . March 5, 2001

That equity firm specializes in the defense industry, which depends on government decisions. And reports say the the average partner in the firm may have made more than a hundred million dollars from their roles as "investment advisors."

One also wonders about other coincidences

lunarchick - 07:06am Mar 15, 2001 EST (#1010 of 1010)
lunarchick@www.com

http://www.dawn.com/2001/03/15/cart.htm

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