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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 - 08:03am Apr 7, 2002 EST (#1164 of 1171)

Often, for hope, matters of clear definition are vital in every sense. ...

Lifelines to the Future By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/07/opinion/07FRIE.html

MD1127 rshow55 4/5/02 6:25pm includes this:

Not so very long ago, smallpox was one of the great killers of all time - - and now, it is gone. Could war become extinct - or at least the worst kinds of war?

Plenty to fear, but still, it seems possible -- and maybe possible pretty soon.

"All" we'd really have to do (not that it would be easy) would be

1. to get better about "connecting the dots" - since most wars occur, escalate, and go out of control in ways that require fictions.

and

2. to really learn how dangerous people really are, and how they are dangerous - so we could know enough to avoid putting individuals and groups into "fight to the death" modes.

I think what Friedman has to say about the emotional immediacy that comes from our new communication links is important, and hopeful. We're being wrenched when we should be wrenched -- and that may help us make sane, decent decisions.

It would help, as we learn to make sane, decent decisions, for us to come to understand how incredible messes, like the "missile defense" boondoggle, and like the Enron mess, actually happen. The more clearly we understand these things, the better we can do in the future.

MD1075 rshow55 4/4/02 12:17pm ... MD1076 rshow55 4/4/02 12:20pm

lchic - 08:53am Apr 7, 2002 EST (#1165 of 1171)

Read Friedman piece. A question to ask is 'who pays the rent' and if they don't why not? A further thought is why should areas be run by cult rather than civillian government. The value of a cult culture may be that it gives guidelines to live by, but when that's failing, then why would people want to stay with these cults .. Abraham 101, 102, 103 ?

lchic - 09:38am Apr 7, 2002 EST (#1166 of 1171)

Send : Receive Net & Communication

lchic - 02:45pm Apr 7, 2002 EST (#1167 of 1171)

Peace now By IGNACIO RAMONET LeMondeDiplomatic ^Translation

Peace, all peace, counters the territories, all the territories. Proposed last February by prince Abdallah and subjected to the Arab top of Beirut, the saoudien plan has the merit of simplicity. Israel withdraws itself on its borders of June 4, 1967, Syria recovers Golan, a Palestinian State is created in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem-Is, and, in exchange, the twenty-two States of the Arab League establish diplomatic relations and commercial complete with Israel, from which they are committed guaranteeing safety (1).

Total withdrawal counters total peace. This limpid equation aroused in the whole of the international chancelleries an impassioned interest. The proposal however is not new: the principle of exchange of peace against territories is registered in the resolutions 242 (of 1967) and 338 (of 1973) adopted by the Security Council of the United Nations. A precedent exists besides, because this principle was already applied between Israel and Egypt after the historical voyage of Anouar Al-Sadate in Jerusalem in 1977 and the signature of peace between the two countries. Israel restored the peninsula of the Sinai and, in spite of the opposition of the extreme right-hand side, dismantled the colonies which had been established there.

It is also on the basis of this postulate that were led the Conference of Madrid in 1991 and signed the agreement of Oslo, from now on torn, between Israéliens and Palestinians. Negotiations of Camp David July 2000, right before the explosion of second Intifada, then those known as of the "last chance" with Taba (2), in January 2001, also rested on this principle.

Why this initiative saoudienne raise does nevertheless a so great hope? Because it arrives at the good moment. When simultaneously three dynamic becomes exhausted which suddenly finds in the saoudien plan a pretext to mask their respective failure.

Initially, strategy of violence chosen by the General Ariel Sharon to make fold the Palestinians and force them to accept, in the name of "Large Israel", the final colonization (3) of part of the territories internationally recognized like pertaining to Palestine. The exaggerated use of the force, with use of disproportionate means of combat (warships, F16 hunters, helicopters armoured, heavy tanks) against a largely disarmed civil population did not produce the required effect. On the contrary. Never the Israelis had as many human losses (4), never the insecurity, inside even of Israel, was not also tall.

In addition, the crimes committed by the army at the time of the occupations of the towns of the West Bank degraded much, on an international scale, the image of Israel, nauseating even its own citizens (5). The humane organization B' Tselem, for example, declared on March 12 last: "In each city or refugee camp whom they entered, the Israeli soldiers repeated the same acts: to draw without reserve and to kill out of civil innocent, intentionally to destroy the drinkable water pipelines and the infrastructures of electricity and telephone, to invade and damage private houses, to draw on ambulances and to prevent from carrying care to wounded... " Within the army, the number of courageous officers who say" not "does not cease growing (6). Lastly, the public opinion polls confirm that 60 % of the Israelis are in favour of the evacuation of certain colonies, 63 % for the establishment of a Palestinian State, and 67 % dissatisfied with the General Sharon (7).

The second dynamics which becomes exhausted, the resistance of the Palestinians. Even if she does not want to admit it, the population is with end. The received blows were considerable, of many leaders of armed organizations were liquidated, victims D ' "executions targeted", and the infrastructures of the embryo of Palestinian State are in ruin. Despair thus sown feeds the criminal strategy of the attack-sui

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