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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?

rshowalter - 08:20pm Jul 17, 2001 EST (#7148 of 7168)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD7046 rshowalter 7/15/01 10:35am ... MD7047 rshowalter 7/15/01 10:35am
MD7048 rshowalter 7/15/01 10:51am ... MD7049 rshowalter 7/15/01 10:56am
MD7050 rshowalter 7/15/01 11:07am ... MD7052 rshowalter 7/15/01 12:22pm
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MD7057 rshowalter 7/15/01 1:18pm

To clean up the messes left by the Cold War, and make better security possible, communication has to happen between the staffs of nation states. This thread is built as an example of what would be required to meet the needs of this staffed communication.

Both gisterme and I have agreed that "missile defense" -- even as a "potempkin village" never deployed, would be worthwhile if it decentered a previously frozen situation, and led to a workable , big reduction of world risks and military problems.

That's still true - but for results to be peaceful -- rather than force a new arms race -- the Bush administration has to act in ways that make real peace possible, for the real people involved, in the situation as it is.

lunarchick - 10:35pm Jul 17, 2001 EST (#7149 of 7168)
lunarchick@www.com

Potemkin: Twirling DNA this word - potemkin - awakened it!

~ Film 1925 Battleship Potemkin In a 1958 survey of film historians, POTEMKIN was chosen as the best film of all time; and in international surveys of film directors and of film critics through the years, it has continued to rank in the top six of the greatest films ever made.

NOTES: The film is based upon an actual incident in 1905, but certain liberties were taken with the facts to make the film a more powerful patriotic and visual statement.

REVIEWS: New York Times.
Variety: December 8, 1926, p. 17.

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~ "I overdosed in Central and South America. When a media representative from Alabama asked me how things were in Panama, I quoted a senior US Southern Command official who alluded to Potemkin's false images built to convince Catherine the Great that the conquered people were happy to be under her auspices: "Nothing is as it seems in Panama," I said. Those words produced a tremendous backlash of administrative displeasure when they appeared back home in a wire service story and attributed to me. George Bush, whose war of information was the one in which I had been engaged, was a candidate for President of the United States. Although, given his own gift for real faux paux, I would have thought he/his supporters should have been a bit more understanding. I forever lost the power of the public forum.

~ As a Star Wars Ship:
http://members.aol.com/USFSierra/Akira.gif http://members.aol.com/USFSierra/akira2.gif http://members.aol.com/USFSierra/bridgevu.gif
And those who served.

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~ A query re spelling Potemkin/Potempkin here.

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http://www.britannica.com/search?query=potemkin%20&ct=eb " exaggeration in all his enterprises. He spared neither men, money, nor himself in attempting to carry out a gigantic scheme for the colonization of the Ukrainian steppe; but he never calculated the cost, and most of the plan had to be abandoned when but half accomplished. Even so, Catherine's tour of the south in 1787 was a triumph for Potemkin, for he disguised all the weak points of his administration—hence the apocryphal tale of his erecting artificial villages to be seen by the empress in passing. (“Potemkin village” came to denote any pretentious facade designed to cover up a shabby or undesirable condition.) "

lunarchick - 10:49pm Jul 17, 2001 EST (#7150 of 7168)
lunarchick@www.com

Ah! Enlightenment ... had i been over 25 i would have known this .... so the difference between Bwsh and Don Quixote is simply this - in the latter case the Windmills were real -- the King of Spain should have told him!

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