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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?

possumdag - 08:52am May 7, 2001 EST (#3411 of 3480)
Possumdag@excite.com

When they construct the for/against list for nuclear power a point to note is that when these power stations were offered in the UK to Private buyers .. NO ONE wanted to buy.

The reason is that the costings regarding price per unit of electrical power are a sham! The unit price is set and fixed with little relationship to the fullest economic and environmental and health costing!

The workers in the UK nuclear power plants are drawn from across the UK. After working in the plants they go back to original areas. A lot die of cancer -- but because they are spread across the country they don't create 'statistical blips' that draw attention.

gisterme - 11:56am May 7, 2001 EST (#3412 of 3480)

artemis130 wrote: "...As opposed to the KLA, where the feeding hand can be severed altogether?"

Good point artemis. Let's hope that lessons DO get learned eventually.

gisterme - 12:05pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3413 of 3480)

possumdag wrote: "...After working in the plants they go back to original areas. A lot die of cancer -- but because they are spread across the country they don't create 'statistical blips' that draw attention."

If you know that to be the case based on some data you have, what's to keep you from making a "statistical blip" by making the data public?

gisterme - 12:19pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3414 of 3480)

People need a lot of words to get to focus.

gisterme - 12:34pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3415 of 3480)

Congo - no solution in sight (1997?)

gisterme - 12:38pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3416 of 3480)

Gotta go. I'll try to pop back in later this PM. Hopefully, all the world's problems will be solved by then... :-)

rshowalter - 01:21pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3417 of 3480)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

possumdag and I may be on opposite sides on nuclear power.

These days, I'm very disinclined to trust nuclear engineers, for reasons of culture and history.

At the same time, I believe that the nuclear waste storage problem needs to be solved, and with reasonable actions, will be.

Had Russia's Chernobyl complex been safe it would have been a wonderful thing -- and because of errors, it has been a tragedy and a curse.

I think we must commit to nuclear power as soon as it is safe, but that the risks are high enough, and the history is unsavory enough, that we should check the hell out of it using many statistically and culturally distict means (I'd even advocate different nationality checking teams -- say Russian and American, since Russians and American are sloppy and careful about different things) and get fully safe nuclear power.

Taking our own sweet time, to make sure things were right. That might not be so long, at that, if things were done right.

At the same time, we need to solve the global warming problem -- especially the CO2 end of it. That ought to be a straightforward job that our military-industrial and oil industries were well suited for.

While they're at it, the world needs a lot more food -- especially if standards of living are to rise, as they ought to.

I'm slogging through some library work just now -- Gisterme , good to hear from you .

gisterme - 01:41pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3418 of 3480)

rshowalter wrote: "...But as a matter of aesthetics and practicality, too, there is something missing from arguments that would have made perfect sense to Adolph Hitler... ...Discussion with you on nuclear weapons, and on matters of world stability or morality, can be too much like a discussion with Hitler on the same subject might be..."

Huh??? Are you talking about gisterme, Robert? I hope that everything Hitler would have agreed with is missing from my arguements. How do you know what a discussion with Hitler about anything would have been like? How can you? Are you that old? Don't get paranoid, Robert. You needn't worry about any goon-squads coming to your door just because you disagree with me.

Your tendency to try to imagine posters on this board into specific public personas has been kind of amusing up to now; but don't be insulting. Have I gone from being some ranking official on the Bush administration to some Hitler-like figure? If you equate the two then you really are paranoid. If not, you've got a long way to go in developing your science of "identification by deduction", Holmes. So far you've ignored the greatest statistical probability...that I'm just a member of the "silent majority" who's decided to speak up.

rshowalter - 02:10pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3419 of 3480)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There's no contradiction. From the point of view of a lot of "outsiders" -- people who are not Americans, Americans, especially American officials and military officers, look very much like Major Strasser in Casablanca.

If you can't imagine reasonable people feeling that way -- (about ordinary Americans, or ranking ones such as Bill Clinton, or G.W. Bush, or Condaleeza Rice, or most serving military officers of the U.S. forces) then I think you're missing something very basic.

I don't think you have any reason to be insulted at all.

If you can't imagine people from N. Korea, or China, or Vietnam looking at Americans that way -- then you're missing something basic. If you were in their position -- how would you feel?

And I think I can judge quite a lot about what Hitler would have wanted a victorious Germany to be like 50 years after victory -- he wrote and talked a lot about it.

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