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Missile Defense

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?

rshowalter - 09:16pm Mar 26, 2001 EST (#1563 of 1567)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If people, threatened enough, or injured enough, fight to the death -- then we're doing it wrong, very wrong, in our dealings with North Korea, and perhaps in our dealings with Iraq as well. Perhaps the Russians and the Europeans can do better. They could hardly do worse.

lunarchick - 02:13am Mar 27, 2001 EST (#1564 of 1567)
lunarchick@www.com

Speculating here, but, if the linguistic frameworks for the 'fifth estate' of Super-Nations relates still to the cold war. Then, it will be a fossilised inadquate and in part linguistically dead language.

Language and social thinking evolve from the social constructs of the environment the speakers believe they exist within. If the environment they believe they exist within no longer exists in reality, then, the question is, who re-invigorates such bodies, shakes out the fossilised and redundant, and presents them with new concepts, new vocabulary and an understanding of the real (rather than pretend) environment.

That the EC countries aren't flowing with the USA currently suggests that there are TWO environments, and the EC, through their actions, believe they are walking in the REAL environment rather than the defunct and senile.

rshowalter - 06:30am Mar 27, 2001 EST (#1565 of 1567)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick 3/27/01 2:13am

Language and social thinking evolve from the social constructs of the environment the speakers believe they exist within. If the environment they believe they exist within no longer exists in reality, then, the question is, who re-invigorates such bodies, shakes out the fossilised and redundant, and presents them with new concepts, new vocabulary and an understanding of the real (rather than pretend) environment.

And there are mechanisms, that can be very strong, that eliminate checking, eliminate crossreferencing, and make resolutions in terms of fact impossible - especially when a great deal needs to be connected - partly just by raising the price of connection.

The difficulties, on relatively simple matters of technical fact, are difficult. I made a suggestion on how these might be resolved in

and looking at that suggestion, which I believe deals with difficulties now in place, may give a sense of how far we are from being a society where facts are safely and reliably determined.

On issues of national security, where right answers are especially important, the barriers are especially difficult.

North Korea, plainly, now lives in a pathological, humanly tragic, and violently defended angry dream world. rshowalter 3/26/01 8:36pm

But the barriers can be great elsewhere, too, and even when the system looks most open. Even in the same administration, with much conversation, effective barriers may be severe, and different groups may, in fundamental senses, live in different worlds, without any clear way of resolving differences on the basis of fact. Bush Team's Counsel Is Divided on Foreign Policy ...... by JANE PERLEZ ..... March 27, 2001

WASHINGTON, March 26 — Two competing foreign policy camps are emerging in the Bush administration — an ideologically conservative Pentagon and a more moderate State Department — which have already provided President Bush conflicting advice on central issues.

Decisions will NOT be resolved on the basis of common, agreed-upon facts -- but instead, by what CP Snow called "court politics."

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