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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?

lunarchick - 10:46am Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9382 of 9408)
lunarchick@www.com

Nite Shols! Not gone out shopping for patriotic FlagMobelia have you?

rshowalter - 10:52am Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9383 of 9408)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

No, but I'm flying a flag from my porch.

Proudly.

And with concern.

logician3 - 11:52am Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9384 of 9408)
Bush is an idiot.

The reason we might be having a little trouble getting global cooperation in this affair is that we are seen as the world’s ultimate hypocrites. We have stood by day after day and year after year while terrorist acts have been committed elsewhere in the world, and mainly just sent out condolences. The latest round of terrorism in Israel has largely been ignored by Bush, in his “hands-off” policy regarding Israel and the Palestinians.

Now that we have been hit hard, suddenly the world MUST be mobilized against terrorism, like it just started happening.

Maybe the world does need to have a change in attitude towards terrorism, but we need also to have a change in attitude towards the rest of the world.

almarst-2001 - 03:01pm Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9385 of 9408)

Hijackers connected to Albanian terrorist cell - http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010918-91529452.htm

Why am I not surprised?

almarst-2001 - 03:47pm Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9386 of 9408)

"For the past two decades or more, the United States has marked the course of its history through choices made in a fog of propaganda." - http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/091701a.html

rshowalter - 04:37pm Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9387 of 9408)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Yes, almarst (and not just the United States, either).

Part of the problem is a logical one -- we seem to find some basic facts "unthinkable" -- and so propaganda misleads us much more than it otherwise would.

And American propagandists, like some others in history, have been very skilled.

rshowalter - 04:38pm Sep 18, 2001 EST (#9388 of 9408)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We, as a species, are beautiful --- Of Altruism, Heroism and Evolution's Gifts in the Face of Terror By NATALIE ANGIER http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/18/health/psychology/18ALTR.html

MD9299 rshowalter 9/17/01 3:38pm ... MD9300 rshowalter 9/17/01 3:41pm
MD9301 rshowalter 9/17/01 3:41pm ... MD9302 rshowalter 9/17/01 3:47pm

The article discusses beautiful, powerful things, and includes an acknowledgement that conflict and horror exist, too. Angier quotes Dr. Wilson of SUNY:

" "Yet he does not see conflict as inevitable. "It's been shown pretty well that where people place the boundary between us and them is extremely flexible and strategic," he said. "It's possible to widen the moral circle, and I'm optimistic enough to believe it can be done on a worldwide scale."

I've asked, how, as a matter of mechanics, can it be

" possible to widen the moral circle" . . to shift o "the boundary between us and them" in workable ways that permit more "win-win" situations, and less horror?

" How can "widening the moral circle" be done, consistently enough, predictably enough, on the personal levels where it has to happen, so that the widening works on a worldwide scale?

We have to try to find answers that are workable, and to do so, we need to see that people are complex, and though there may be tension, there is no contradiction between man in his kindness to "his own kind" and man's cruelty to "others."

Once one accepts that these seemingly opposite aspects of human behavior are not contradictory, with people as complex as they are, there is more hope of sorting some conflicts out that may be literally unthinkable otherwise.

The following quote haunts me, both for what it says, and for its incompleteness.

(20 following messages)

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