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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?

rshow55 - 07:46pm Jan 5, 2002 EST (#10658 of 10673)

I'm posting these wonderful links from Dawn Riley, because they are beautiful, and show reasons to preserve the beauty of the world.

MD7747 rshowalt 8/4/01 2:51pm

lchic - 03:05am Jan 6, 2002 EST (#10659 of 10673)

Holistic Accounting

http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/ecommerce/issues/intangibles/Holistic_Accounts.htm http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/ajet/ajet13/wi97p54.html http://www.quaker.ca/qean/sustmin.htm http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/pkt/sep97/0320.html

lchic - 08:03am Jan 6, 2002 EST (#10660 of 10673)

Interesting to see the Pakistan leader initiate the handshake with the Indian leader ... a symbolic gesture .. and message to their peoples not to rush to a Nuke/war footing.

lchic - 08:07am Jan 6, 2002 EST (#10661 of 10673)

On warlords and Afghanistan ... lots of males hanging around with guns .. the BBC run a daily radio program (based upon The Archers - long running radio show UK). The radio program sets the Afghan daily 'thinking' agenda. Were a construtive future National Building Program to be developed - then progams such as this might be used to both inform, educate and entertain and move that Nation forward.

rshow55 - 08:31am Jan 6, 2002 EST (#10662 of 10673)

If Americans and others keep the promises they made to the Afghanis, so that they can be helped in those (relatively few) important areas where they need some external help, the Afghanis themselves should be able to find a lot of ways to make themselves, Afghanistan, and the world better than it is. There's room for improvement. Plenty to do.

One thing Afghanisan needs, and needs badly, is a reduction in the rate of deception, and in the number of ideas, known at one level or another to be wrong by the Afghanis themselves, that stand in the way of progress, and have made the privations and horrors of the past possible. There should be a moral obligation to get right answers and a moral obligation to check consequential facts.

We ought to set an example. In matters of nuclear weapons, and in our "missile defense" posture, there is an almost unbelievable amount of deception, self deception, waffling, and avoidance of fundamentals, both practical and moral. Ugly.

For our own survival, and the world's, we should set a better example.

So the world goes on. Also, so the world can "muddle through" on a somewhat higher level than presently.

rshowalt - 03:00pm Jan 6, 2002 EST (#10663 of 10673)

" The young are naturally romantic, and given to moral absolutes that necessarily make the real world of compromise, half-measures, and self-seeking appear corrupt.

.... Robert H. Bork, SLOUCHING TOWARDS GOMORRAH: Modern Liberalism and American Decline

Not only the young and romantic. We all live in a real world of compromise, half-measures, and an avoidance of too-harsh realities. People couldn't live any other way - and it ought to be no surprise when muddles and messes happen. Most times, moral indignation may not be very useful.

That may be true of politics especially.

But when the stakes are VERY high - as they are about nuclear matters, including matters of missile defense, we need, for practical reasons, to make good decisions.

That means facts have to be right. That means they have to be checked.

Not because it is easy to do so. But because life and death on huge scales are involved -- and if moral obligation matterns anywhere, it ought to matter here.

Decisions need to be be right enough, and safe enough, for us to continue to muddle along.

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