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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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lunarchick - 01:34am Mar 24, 2001 EST (#1419 of 11890)
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BLUNDER BUS

Bush lamblasted by former Missile Dealer for mishandling N Korean Missile situation.

lunarchick - 01:40am Mar 24, 2001 EST (#1420 of 11890)
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US changes defence focus from Europe to Asia

The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has indicated there is to be a shift of the focus of American strategy away from Europe to Asia.

The proposed new direction in US defence policy is the result of a review ordered by President George W Bush.

The BBC reports, US officials have confirmed a report in the Washington Post, which said the current review of defence policy could lead to dramatic reforms in the armed forces and the weapons they use.

President Bush ordered the review after making a pledge in his election campaign to shift the American military out of its cold war thinking, towards a more flexible policy.

Mr Rumsfeld has apparently accepted this new approach, though no decisions have yet been taken.

He reported to the President that there should be a shift in policy from Europe to Asia, where China is seen as a growing threat. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/nat/newsnat-24mar2001-27.htm

lunarchick - 01:41am Mar 24, 2001 EST (#1421 of 11890)
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???? 'could lead to dramatic reforms in the armed forces and the weapons they use. ' ????

lunarchick - 01:46am Mar 24, 2001 EST (#1422 of 11890)
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Greenpeace co-founder dies in car crash

Last updated: 24 Mar 2001 03:25 GMT+00:00 (Reuters)

By Gideon Long

ROME (Reuters) - David McTaggart, the Canadian co-founder of the environmental pressure group Greenpeace, has died in a car crash in Italy.

McTaggart, 69, died after his car was involved in a collision with another vehicle in Castiglione del Lago, near the central Italian city of Perugia.

"We don't have many details at the moment. All we know is he was in a car accident and he's dead. We're all very shocked at the moment," a Greenpeace worker in Rome told Reuters.

McTaggart helped found Greenpeace in the early 1970s and was its chairman for over a decade until 1991.

He led the group through what many consider to be its vintage years, spearheading protests against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.

He continued to be Greenpeace's honorary chairman in the 1990s, but with his health failing, he retired to Umbria to live on a farm producing olive oil.

"He was an iconic figure and one of those people you could say helped the world," said Jo Dufay, the Campaign Director for Greenpeace Canada.

"People are shocked and in a sense of disbelief. He was a man so full of life and it's hard to believe he's not alive," she said, adding that McTaggart was known as being a "difficult yet inspiring man."

McTaggart was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1932. He left school at 17 and became a Canadian national badminton champion before starting a construction company.

An accidental explosion in 1969 at a ski lodge he had built in California left him with a big bill for damages and prompted him to turn his back on business.

He bought a boat, the Vega, and sailed the South Pacific islands until 1972, when a chance sighting of a Canadian newspaper advertisement changed his life.

The ad, placed by the tiny "Don't Make a Wave" committee, later renamed Greenpeace, called for volunteers to sail to the Polynesian atoll of Mururoa in a bid to stop French atmospheric tests of nuclear warheads.

McTaggart, outraged by the French government's decision to close off vast areas of the Pacific, responded to the appeal, renamed his boat Greenpeace III, and sailed to Mururoa.

He anchored his boat downwind from the planned test, forcing the French to halt the first test and prompting the French navy to ram his vessel.

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