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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?

(5139 previous messages)

rshowalter - 06:16pm Jun 14, 2001 EST (#5140 of 5173)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Directory-linked lists of distinguished efforts, usually long postings, sometimes interesting references, by almarst_2001:
MD4645 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?14@184.hLsEaGUYpui^1186534@.f0ce57b/4961... MD4646 rshowalter 6/9/01 7:20am
MD4647 rshowalter 6/9/01 7:20am ... MD4648 rshowalter 6/9/01 7:21am
MD4649 rshowalter 6/9/01 7:22am ... MD4650 rshowalter 6/9/01 7:22am

And a change-clarification in negotiating position in MD4651 rshowalter 6/9/01 7:32am

rshowalter - 06:16pm Jun 14, 2001 EST (#5141 of 5173)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Much work since.

lunarchick - 07:36pm Jun 14, 2001 EST (#5142 of 5173)
lunarchick@www.com

Noted Euro-Bwsh pulled an anti-crowd of 10,000 ... 200 of whom were arrested ..

rshowalter - 07:36pm Jun 14, 2001 EST (#5143 of 5173)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD5073 rshowalter 6/14/01 7:44am ... A major source of credible information, though only one of many, is the output of THE NEW YORK TIMES.

A sampling, from this source, gives, I believe, a sense of what a challenge it is to consider "all the credible data" -- indeed, what an impossible challenge it is.

Even so, I'm posting places where this thread cites specific New York Times articles -- (which are about 1/3 of total citations on this thread) to give a sense of how much information there is out there to integrate. For each NYT article I posted (135 in the list below) I read perhaps 20 others. These articles linked below are all fine pieces of journalism -- and the comments I made to them seemed constructive to me.

I feel these linked articles, as a corpus, make a point about the extent of information related, in various ways, to ordinary human argument -- and will be useful, I believe, if staffs wish to consider and coordinate arguments here -- or in threads in the future that use some of the crossreferencing techniques this thread shows.

People "make sense" of their world in a kind of statistical way -- and it matters very much, whether the "information" they condense generalizations from is right or wrong. The only way to see is by crossmatching, and a good deal of intellectual work. This is work that all people, everywhere do, and have to do to be human. We make sense of the world, by a lot of talking, and a lot of thinking -- and bring patterns into focus. Often those patterns are wrong -- but when we look at the same information -- organized in a certain way, most of us, most of the time, make the same patterns.

rshowalter - 07:44pm Jun 14, 2001 EST (#5144 of 5173)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick 6/14/01 7:36pm

If Bush found ways to solve problems, rather than create them, people would love him rather than hate him.

The possibilities are there -- he's succeeded in making a pretty rigid situation more flexible -- a point gisterme has made on this thread.

But if the effort is to " dominate the world" rather than work for prosperity and a practical peace - - - he'll fail - - and at every level.

So far, I don't know of a more embarrassing, negative trip a President of the United States has taken abroad in 40 years. --

Can anyone else recall one where a US President has fared worse?

He's had to stay away from the beaten path capitals, and even so, been as close to shunned as a President of the United States can reasonably be by NATO allies of decades standing.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense

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