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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 - 08:57am Sep 19, 2001 EST (#9446 of 9454)
lunarchick@www.com

In “The Fall of a Titan”, a novel that Igor published in 1954, he describes a woman called Anna, his pet name for Svetlana.

A dress of dark silk enveloped her graceful figure. Her low-cut bodice emphasised her round shoulders and her high firm breasts. Her shapely arms were bare, and in her hands she held a gossamer scarf. Two heavy braids were wound around her head into a crown.

In wartime Russia Svetlana had served briefly in the army as a sniper. http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=779682

lunarchick - 09:03am Sep 19, 2001 EST (#9447 of 9454)
lunarchick@www.com

cantabb "Science News Poetry" 9/19/01 3:16am

lunarchick - 09:14am Sep 19, 2001 EST (#9448 of 9454)
lunarchick@www.com

Pakistans' reward re OBL http://www.dawn.com/2001/09/19/top7.htm

ledzeppelin - 09:35am Sep 19, 2001 EST (#9449 of 9454)

lunarchick - (#9437)

You state that "Crusade : this noun is the in the linguistic sphere of the guy who dines monthly with the Bwsh family - Billy Graham."

Perhaps you can explain that to the leader of the Taliban Shk Omar whom by the way is also one of bin Ladens fathers in law so Omar can pass on your message to him?

Or try to explain your Billy Graham obfuscation to the likes of the Islamic Jihad or Hamas, be assured they would neither understand nor find it remotley funny, as indeed it is not!

In WW2 there was a saying careless words costs lives? How many lives this time, will this little word cost, who knows!

rshowalter - 09:52am Sep 19, 2001 EST (#9450 of 9454)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

In WWII, and leading up to it, and after it, the thing that cost most lives, and most agony, and cost most overall, was an inability, and unwillingness, to check and face FACTS.

This thread is making a great contribution to the national security of the United States, and the world, by showing how things can be checked.

Just an effort in its infacy? Sure.

But let leaders of nation states, and significant actors in society decide that they want things on which so much depends checked , and we'd all be safer.

And richer.

And cleaner.

. . . . . . . .

Treason? Dereliction of duty?

You might look at the Bush family, and their political allies, and the people prepared, for so long, to subvert the ideals of the United States for money, and corrupt uses of power.

Doubt it?

Think about this question -- which can be checked in significant ways:

. How many times have people plainly connected to the Bush administration been invited to check something, and failed to do so?

You can estimate that, with respect to this thread, by some simple searching.

rshowalter - 11:11am Sep 19, 2001 EST (#9451 of 9454)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The costs and tragedies of secrecy are many. I recite an important one in a thread where Dawn Riley and I have done much hard work, Paradigm Shift .... whose getting there? http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/105 Part of #84 reads:

" Another tragedy-farce-crime, involving science in a classified government discussion, has psychological similarities, and is described in detail by C.P. Snow in Chapters 8, 0 of SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT . That tragedy, again, would have been prevented if a sensible means of umpiring had been in place. Such umpiring, had it existed, might have shortened the "Hitler war" by a year or more, and saved millions of lives.

#85 goes on: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/106

In 1942, Britain made the decision to commit all the manufacturing and manpower resources it could to area bombing, directed to hitting the houses of working-class Germans. (Military targets were not targeted, except in propaganda, because they were too hard to find and hit. The decision was in large part the idea of F.A. Lindemann, Churchill's scientific advisor, who circulated a paper that was accepted as truth. The paper claimed that

" given a total concentration on production and use of bombing aircraft - it would be possible, in all the larger towns of German (that is, those with more than 50,000 inhabitants) to destroy 50% of all houses."

Distribution of the paper went to ministers, and a very few scientists, including Tizard and Blackett, the scientist-administrators most responsible for radar.

Snow goes on:

" The paper went to Tizard. He studied the statistics. He came to the conclusion, quite impregnibly, that Lindemann's estimate of the number of houses that could possibly be destroyed was five times too high." ....."Independently, Blackett came to the conclusion, also quite impregnibly, that Lindemann's estimate was six times too high."

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