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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 - 09:27pm Apr 6, 2001 EST (#2071 of 2075)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/columns/dotmil/A50504-2001Apr6.html "We like to say that there isn't a Cold War anymore, but you'd never know it from the pace of activity."

lunarchick - 10:58pm Apr 6, 2001 EST (#2072 of 2075)
lunarchick@www.com

Heard a science-health item re suicide. Says that in some people there is a genetic factor that limits their ability to make serotonin ..(happiness) .. and checks on suicide victims show many of them have this genetic trend. So, some people have an altogether 'less happy existence' than others .... and then either they perceive others to be doing much better than themselves - comparatively, or, they just get miserable and end life.

In the case above - how would one self-axphixiate ..... pretty hard to acheive!

lunarchick - 11:06pm Apr 6, 2001 EST (#2073 of 2075)
lunarchick@www.com

With regard to the budget for missiles and defence - an open audit - would bring to light all the connective strands .. and make life easier for those working for the public good.

America is an amazing place, as in backwards, i was surprised to learn that the Feds can not organise a national referendum ... and therefore the public is never consulted on a one-one basis re the directions of American Policy ... seems Americans haven't opted into their own democracy - yet.

Of course if they had a referendum (response YES/NO) i'd be surprised if the Americans would have the competency to actually assign the ballots to a 'yes' or a 'no' pile and then actually count the slips! Rogue electioneering is too prevalent a feature of the culture.

rshowalter - 05:35am Apr 7, 2001 EST (#2074 of 2075)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Closed cultures, where dissent is not tolerated, may incorporate "hononorable suicide" into their culture.

The Japanese did so, and they were able to get many, many people, when defeated (including thousands of women, who died and killed their children) to kill themselves during WWII.

Not all these people could have suffered from genetic difficulties -- they killed themselves because that is what the consistency relations in the culture forced upon all concerned. Sometimes they were "helped in suicide" and the death was then assimilated into the culture as suicide, not murder, which was "what everybody wanted or would have wanted."

The logic of "honorable suicide" in a culture where there is no place for dissent is reasonably clear.

It also becomes almost the only form of protest within that culture's rules.

Does not that logic apply, and apply with great force, to the CIA, and especially to the parts of the CIA preoccupied with making nuclear weapons a "useful" means of US policy?

Some of the psychology set out with regard to the recent submarine fiasco-accident in Hawaii illustrated the extreme emotional stress, and the coercive force, built into a naval social system. In the CIA, the coercions are more hidden, involve many more lies, and are much more coercive.

The CIA may be, by now, entirely incapable of honorable conduct, if honorable conduct required it to actually take advantage of opportunities for peace -- it may- my guess is that, by now, it is an organization committed to "the dark side" - built for war, or the threat of war, as the response to every problem.

rshowalter - 05:35am Apr 7, 2001 EST (#2075 of 2075)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

That's the bad news.

The good news is that the CIA is now very inflexible. The military means at the disposal of the USA are very inflexible, -- they reduce,in the end, to use of troops under conditions where US casualties are minimal, under rare conditions, and "easier" threats to use nuclear weapons, and threats, and actual use, of bombing against undefended targets. These are formidible means, for some purposes, but set against the complexity and multiple connection and articulation of the world, limited means, almost helpless in the face of many challenges, including challenges of ideas, both based on fact, and on reasonable senses of human decency.

Morover, nuclear weapons are stigmatized widely in the world, including the world of American culture, and bombing with conventional explosives is very widely reprehended --- especially when, as is usually the case- targets are missed -- almost everywhere outside the US (and a few european countries.)

These forces of evil and rigidity can only survive if they maintain a logically indefensible web of lies in massive dissonance with the body of evidence the lies can be matched to. These forces, and the human beings behind them, are subject to question, all over the world. This is true even if they were sacrosanct in the United States, and they are not. This is true even if the coercive forces built in American society make for an "American catalepsy" here.

The costs that could be imposed on the US, commercially, and as a culture, for resisting the truth too long would be unsustainable, once the truth was fully set out, accessible, and backed by human organization.

If nuclear weapons were understood as well as CocaCola is understood, and realities about them, and the history of their use, were marked internationally with the same skill brought to the marketing of CocaCola, the world would be a far, far safter, more beautiful, more honorable, and more prosperous place.

These people are ugly. That should be pointed out, effectively.

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