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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 - 04:49pm Jun 22, 2002 EST (#2675 of 2678)

Monsoon Wedding is a really wonderful film.

In the Middle East, there's what ought to be great progress. Arafat's position of accepting Clinton's old peace deal is sensible -- and if people understood more about how people work - as the very special, very social animals that they are - - there ought to be a lot of hope for peace.

And hope for a lot of other things - if people only understood some simple things about themselves.

I was thinking, watching Monsoon Wedding - - what would the situations and drama have been like if people could read each other's minds?

It would have been different, in some ways - more awkward in spots - - but with a lot more possibility for grace in some others.

I've only met with one NYT reporter in my life - consciously, and with real communication, anyway. That was George Johnson - at the Journalism Department of the U.W. To say our relationship was reserved would be understatement.

He said, simply, as if it was a fact he was sure of, that I was a monster.

I wasn't offended, exactly. I've come upon such reactions too often to be surprised - it is something I've become "used to".

But I'm not.

But such reactions do get in the way of communication, and I think I've been subjected to more of my share of them.

For the life of me, I don't see what's wrong with the simple idea set out in MD2641 rshow55 6/20/02 1:00pm . . . I think a problem may be that people are reluctant to believe my story -- not in terms of checkable facts, but in terms of what I've been able to do.

rshow55 - 04:56pm Jun 22, 2002 EST (#2676 of 2678)

I can read people's minds, and work with their thought processes, well enough so that, when we meet face to face - if they are reasonably open - - I can usually communicate with them, and get honest responses from them. When they lie to me, I can usually see it, and deal with it. When they're afraid, or uncomfortable, I can usually see it, and deal with it.

I'm not especially surprised when they lie to me, when they are afraid, when they act especially "sure" where they are most unsure - or try to set me up, or react in ways they don't want me to know about. These things happens very often.

I've been amazed, all my life, at how often such things "surprise" other people, at one level, while they know these things very well, at another.

rshow55 - 05:01pm Jun 22, 2002 EST (#2677 of 2678)

Within the animal limits, I've been just as reasonable and responsible as I've known how to be, all my life. I've tried hard. I'm sympathetic with the needs of other people. I'm able to do some things that other people find more difficult - though plenty of people do plenty of things that I can't do, and that I admire very much.

I am, in a real sense, cursed. And maybe, in some other ways, blessed. But I don't think anyone has to evoke any supernatural explanation for anything at all that has ever happened to me, or that I've ever done.

And I'm perfectly serious about my concerns about nuclear weapons. And know enough to have a right to be. And I've done what I've regarded as my duty - just exactly what I think Bill Casey would have wanted - and kept the promises I've made as best I can.

rshow55 - 05:07pm Jun 22, 2002 EST (#2678 of 2678)

I've worked hard trying to be a national asset, and it seems to me that if people would work with me reasonably, I could be. I'm having to set some stuff out here that I would have much preferred to communicate on a face to face basis, if anyone had let me.

So much for people having "self control" and having "nothing to hide."

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