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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?

lunarchick - 10:31pm Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8401 of 8410)
lunarchick@www.com

Aussie Professor Ball of Canberra, has concerns that the Australians have given Singapore 'Cart Blanche' to access (monitor) Australian communications network.

Australian National University visiting fellow Roger Clarke points out that unencrypted data comminications packets can be intercepted ... packet by packet by packet.

Singapore have been known to show interest in these matters - in the past. Yet, they (singtel)say they will bind to Australian telecommications law! The Australian - IT section Tues4Sept2001 p33

So it seems that USA classified information will be flying AirSingapore and thence to ..... where ever - even though it is, of course, denied.

Won't be long before the Singapore flag features on the Aussie flag - they have communications, and in the IN_THE_AIR sense ... they have (UK)Richard Branstons' VirginBlue air lines.

Seems that if life is so intermixed and complex then 'peace' is a better option than 'non-peace'.

rshowalter - 10:40pm Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8402 of 8410)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Deception on large things is getting harder than it used to be.

One consequence is that masses of old deceptions, "concealed" on the assumption that human beings could only handle a little complexity -- are now, with a little effort, open to view.

Because, with the internet, and computer searching, human ability to handle complexity, and to remember, has been technically augmented.

It is harder to lie than it used to be.

That's hopeful.

Truth is safer than lies. We should send in clear. rshowalter "Science News Poetry" 2/14/01 7:18am

In clear: Lying is more dangerous than people think, and soaks up more attention than people know. We can do less of it. We can send in clear - the message, almost always, will be peaceful. And complex cooperation, now so often terminated with deceptive sequences, could happen more often.

MD686 rshowalter 2/14/01 7:36am

lunarchick - 10:42pm Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8403 of 8410)
lunarchick@www.com

lunarchick 9/3/01 10:21pm Clarification: all international calls are kept for 60days in Singapore -- 'internet wanned data_packages put back together again' and monitored. Asia is labour_rich, it used to be capital poor, and has a different (is it?) spy-culture to the West. Seems like a way of wasting a lot of MONEY and TIME on useless exercises!

rshowalter - 10:46pm Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8404 of 8410)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

To see how useless, see rshowalter "Science News Poetry" 2/14/01 7:18am .

For purposes of the proposal in MD266-269 rshowalt 9/25/00 7:32am .. you'd need a "moderately encrypted clear" that eavesdroppers couldn't safely interpret under complex circumstances.

Ordinary language is pretty encrypted - and with a little thought, and a few signal-switches, devastatingly so.

rshowalter - 10:50pm Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8405 of 8410)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Out.

Let me leave with a simple message.

Nuclear weapons are obsolete menaces that could easily destroy the world , and we should take the damn things down.

We can.

We should have the wit to threaten each other in other ways.

And maybe even enough wit to get along better.

rshowalter - 10:57pm Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8406 of 8410)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Wisconsin Alumni Research Fund (WARF) invested a lot of money in me, and lost it. Perhaps, I now think, with "help" from the government in a few decisive spots. (Amazing what a decisively placed phone call to an investment banker before a private placement can do.)

But WARF, an institution that makes the University of Wisconsin an especially creative place, doesn't always lose.

Team Says It Coaxed Human Stem Cells to Produce Blood By NICHOLAS WADE http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/health/genetics/04STEM.html

I hope there are many more breakthroughs from stem cell research.

rshowalter - 11:02pm Sep 3, 2001 EST (#8407 of 8410)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

This stinks, and shows, as many other things do, the degree of trust the United States military deserves from other nations. Tbings have to be checked. Not only by "enemies." If the other NATO nations did a careful job, they might be amazed at how consistently they've been lied to, when it seemed to some American military officers expeditious to lie.

. In Secretly Fighting Germ Warfare, U.S. Tests Limits of a 1972 Treaty by THE NEW YORK TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/international/04GERM.html?pagewanted=all

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