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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?

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rshow55 - 03:11pm Apr 26, 2002 EST (#1794 of 1805)

MD1704 rshow55 4/23/02 10:34am includes this:

There are many technical problems for the global village to adress - for people to address. Some of the barriers to addressing them are getting less. The tactics for frustrating closure about facts, and reasonable actions -- those tactics are getting clearer and much harder to disguise.

I think the world is a considerably safer place than it was, even just a year ago, because people are looking at these sort of problems. There is a much broader consensus, among more people in more nations -- about what the problems are.

A key problem, again and again and again and again, is that people can't make good decisions - can't take actions that work -- without clear information, available, understood, and trustworthy (checkable) -- to work from.

. . . . .

A key question - that illuminates some others, is this.

" When large news organizations such as The New York Times cannot solve problems by covering the facts about them -- why don't the solutions happen, when they often seem very clear?

If people could answer that question in detail, with balance -- a lot that is ugly now would clean up - in ways that both almarst and most literate people, all over the world, would approve of.

- - - -

The MD boondoggle would be a good place to adress this question, because it is simpler than the issues in the middle east. But all the problems that make the MD boondoggle hard to tackle make the problems of the middle east hard, too.

lchic - 03:21pm Apr 26, 2002 EST (#1795 of 1805)
Mix a little GU.com with NYT.com - NET the wider perspective!

GU Thread Poster on American ME psychology:

You tell them that the IDF shot a monk, a bellringer and a pregnant woman and what do they say? 'Mistakes do happen'.

When you really put them into a corner with hard facts, then they will call you an 'anti-Semite' before clearing off to the game or the mall. _{http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?50@@.eea4d9a/9}

lchic - 03:36pm Apr 26, 2002 EST (#1796 of 1805)
Mix a little GU.com with NYT.com - NET the wider perspective!

unequivocal

""Israeli troops today re-entered a Palestinian town in the West Bank and fired upon protesters in Ramallah.

lchic - 03:42pm Apr 26, 2002 EST (#1797 of 1805)
Mix a little GU.com with NYT.com - NET the wider perspective!

Americans have funded IRA TERROR for decades:

"" The party's big problem, and the substantial positive outcome from the Congressional report, lies in the transformation of US attitudes towards Irish republicanism. This began on 11 September, and now the Colombian rebels' quasi-state is increasingly regarded as the next great entrepôt of global terrorism after Afghanistan.

almarst2020 - 03:44pm Apr 26, 2002 EST (#1798 of 1805)

Former CIA and FBI director William Webster said Thursday that the United States should consider administering "truth drugs" to uncooperative al-Qaeda and Taliban captives at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere to try to obtain more details about terrorist operations. - http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/04/26/torture.htm

"U.S. officials hope to benefit from interrogations by other governments that might not adhere to such guidelines. One of the most cooperative al-Qaeda leaders captured since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, has been held by Egyptian authorities. A Defense Department source said this week that the Egyptians might be using interrogation methods on al-Libi that would not be available to U.S. questioners.

"Egyptian jails," former CIA counterterrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro said, are "full of guys who are missing toenails and fingernails."

Isn't it fortunate to have some less "democratic" friends?

rshow55 - 03:45pm Apr 26, 2002 EST (#1799 of 1805)

re almarst2020 4/26/02 10:06am :

AMERICAN WAY: A World Seeking Security Is Told There's Just One Shield By MICHAEL WINES http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/weekinreview/22WINE.html starts:

" Moscow GEOPOLITICS needn't be mind- bending. Think of a centuries-long floating poker game in which the lead keeps changing hands, from Greece to Rome, Spain to Britain, France to Prussia. These days, one player not only holds the chips and a stack of i.o.u.'s; he has most of his rivals' clothes, too. . . "

The stack of i.o.u.'s is getting to be worth less than it used to be. Other nations are changing the game.

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