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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?

gaddissio - 11:54pm Mar 21, 2001 EST (#1289 of 1296)

A disturbing fact remains that even if we spend billions...trillions, or whatever the cost of a missle defense system may be....Perhaps the most wicked threat remains terrorist nuclear activity...bombs and/or bio agents brought in to the states by briefcase and what have you. That is a less visible, less traceable and equally destructive threat. Solution? gosh i hope we get working on some soon.

lunarchick - 06:08am Mar 22, 2001 EST (#1290 of 1296)
lunarchick@www.com

This Canadian guy breezed by. His emphasis relates to environmental disputes .. perhaps keeping MD green, not 'N-winter' - fits into the environmental perspective. http://www.fletcher.tufts.edu/faculty/susskind.html
~ http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/example/suss7541.htm

His approach re any dispute includes for party's to develop a framework to work within that may contain:

a) appologise for past wrongs
b) voice concerns
c) engage in continual dialogue
d) break conflicit down into small steps
e) resolve small area and move to next
f) from dialogue develop/make decisions

The reality is that the parties have to learn to live together and get along after the dispute.

lunarchick - 06:30am Mar 22, 2001 EST (#1291 of 1296)
lunarchick@www.com

"To the beauty of the women gathered here this evening, which outshines the natural splendors of the glade and dale.."

lunarchick - 07:55am Mar 22, 2001 EST (#1292 of 1296)
lunarchick@www.com

Alex re: 'The English is not my first and not even the second language'

I admire people who take on the challenge of a second or third language. Your English is quite good. The only way to improve it, or any other language, is to try to live for a while within the culture of the language, and use it as much as possible.

English is not an easy language because it is a composite of Olde English, Middle English, Germanic, French, Latin; idioms from all the English Speaking cultures; together with the newly developing language.

Some languages are as they read and sound, whereas english has an alphabet of 26 letters, 43 phonetical combinationary sounds, but, over 1000 sounds in all.

English has a vast vocabulary, and often concise structure as compared to other languages ... one notes this re subtitled foreign films.

That the USA has english, along with the former UK-Commonwealth, then the dominance re the internet, the language is premiere - currently. The main thing with language is to 'enjoy' it.

rshowalter - 08:10am Mar 22, 2001 EST (#1293 of 1296)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I've been up for about four hours, but just signed on ---- I was going through some books, and thinking of limitations of diplomacy, and new opportunities, in the new world of the internet.

I recall that Putin once suggested to other leaders that they exchange email adresses, and sometime use them for direct contact. The idea was not accepted. Still less would it be accepted for Putin to email the citizens of another country. There would be suspicion. Suppose, however, that it were done, for particular reasons, to particular people, with copies invariably sent, in clear, to the government of the country. So that there could be no secrecy - so that everything as in clear. If the objective is truth , and clear discussion, clear works. Suppose, in a similar way, that phone calls were made, but with them taped, or directly connected, via a "listen only connection" to people in the government in question. So that there could be no secrecy.

NOW, HOW MUCH OF THE DIPLOMATIC APPARATUS FOR CONSTRAINING INFORMATION FLOWS ACTUALLY STANDS UNDER THESE CONVENTIONS? With the new technology, for purposes such as nuclear disarmament, how strong are any barriers that are actually there?

I don't know that answer, in detail. But I believe it ought to be considered. In general - what are the practical and moral objections to communication, between people in different countries, in clear?

They don't seem very substantial. Am I wrong?

rshowalter - 08:11am Mar 22, 2001 EST (#1294 of 1296)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I've been looking at about 20 of my books, and thinking about movies (including "The Music Man" --- "The Sound of Music" --- "West Side Story" --- and "Best Little Whore House in Texas") but mostly I've been thinking about a book by Paul H. Weaver -- a man with plain connections to the right wing of American government circles -- he taught poly sci at Harvard, was a writer and editor for Fortune, and is a fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford . ... (Around Stanford, a joke is that, no matter which side you look at the Hoover Tower, it leans a little to the right.)

The book is NEWS AND THE CULTURE OF LYING: How Journalism Really Works --- Free Press, 1994.

Inside the dust cover, there's this:

"News is in no way the reflection of reality it claims to be. Nor haev even its most radical critics grasped its true nature. News, Paul H. Weaver argues, is largely a fabrication - a record of the joint performances by which journalists and official sources foist a highly artificial sense of permanent emergency on the public.

"The modern news genre has its origins in a sweeping but little-understood revolution at the turn of the (20th century) by figures like Joseph Pulitzer, Ivy Ledbetter Lee, and Woodrow Wilson, who helped to gut the liberal traditions of American democracy and replace them with a system of constitutional oligarchy based on news, the public-relations oriented corporation, and the activist presidency. The main product and governing instrument of this new "emergency state" is a "culture of lying," which has its sources in the hidden institutional relationships that control the production of news.

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