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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?

detroit - 06:44am Jun 24, 2001 EST (#5914 of 5922)

Secretary Powell doesn't "think" Putin will go through with multiple warheads increased arsenal.

But President Bush says that Putin is trustworthy.

If he's trustworthy why wouldn't anyone take him at his word. If we go ahead with missle defense he'll do his thing.

Is our objective another cold war and the profits for what President Eisenhower called "the military industrial complex"?

rshowalter - 06:46am Jun 24, 2001 EST (#5915 of 5922)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Things need to be checked . Patterns, now well entrenched, concerning the "culture of lying" make that "impossible" now, but a change of convention would make is possible indeed.

When it matters enough, checking should be morally forcing.

That's a change from current usages -- but one that needs to be made.

rshowalter - 06:47am Jun 24, 2001 EST (#5916 of 5922)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We can't change the past, though we sometimes cannot tolerate having it hidden either.

But the past is done -- and what counts, in the here and now, is what we can have - a present and a future. We can't change the past, but we can solve problems. I feel these links are important.

MD4624 rshowalter 6/8/01 3:42pm ..... MD4532 rshowalter 6/6/01 1:48pm

" . . . . -- this thread is an attempt at something new -- a format for workable, traceable, checkable communication and negotiation between staffed organizations, with openness, and more effective memory and accomodation of complexity that was possible before.

" There are many horrors. But there is some common ground, and there are some common goods. The good things that Putin hopes for, and the good things that Bush hopes for, even with all the differences, have much common ground, as well. And those good things, in the complex world that permits so much more than the over-simple models we have in our heads - ought to be, and logically can be compatible and not contradictory -- with careful accomodation - and some toughness and honesty sensibly applied by the many capable people, capable of honor, who are involved."

rshowalter - 07:01am Jun 24, 2001 EST (#5917 of 5922)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD1294 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?13@184.DhRLallxqYI^2268306@.f0ce57b/1401.... MD1295 rshowalter 3/22/01 8:22am
MD1296 rshowalter 3/22/01 8:37am ...

" . . . . 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" .)

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.

" The problem begins with the news story and its insistent focus on crisis and emergency response. Newsmakers, seeking publicity, translate themselves into the language of the story. Reporters are aware that newsmakers are posturing, but to uphold the credibility of their work they generally withold that fact. Editors, who ought to put a stop to the practice, usually insist on it. A system of "editocracy" manipulates and browbeats the working reporter into betraying the truth about the fabricated nature of the news event, thereby closing the circle of the culture of lying.

" Journalism has strayed very far from its roots as a liberal calling. Weaver argues that it can only recover its true mission of enabling democratic politics by committing itself to serve the interest of its readers, rather than its managers and advertisers, cutailing "crisis-oriented" stories in favor of "deliberative" formats, and educating journalists as citizens rather than as professionals."

lunarchick - 07:02am Jun 24, 2001 EST (#5918 of 5922)
lunarchick@www.com

Detroit ... I read that Putin would only
go ahead with
mulit-warheads on missiles ...
if he h a d to!

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