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    Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (208 previous messages)

lchic - 12:36am Mar 5, 2002 EST (#209 of 216)

US soft-pedals on allies' human rights record

    Annual report slates Russia and China, but tones down criticism of countries vital to war on terror

lchic - 06:41am Mar 5, 2002 EST (#210 of 216)

Invest in a sustainable world

    Good News for a Change : Hope for a Troubled Planet by David Suzuki, Holly Dressel Hardcover - 272 pages (February 2002) Stoddart Pub; ISBN: 0773733078
    In this book David demonstrates that the public will regarding sustainabilty can be undertaken by former 'old style' companies and systems. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/s497116.htm (transcript)

lchic - 06:58am Mar 5, 2002 EST (#211 of 216)

This Media 'LAW MAN' would be quite capable of running a debate on taking the Missiles down. Hypotheticals (his program) took senarios as in a court:

    Hypotheticals
    ... the BBC TV series "Hypotheticals". It was a program in which situations with a lot of ethical dilemmas were presented. The dilemmas often called for controversial decisions, and these decisions were then examined. A group of experts and other involved parties were assembled.
    The host (Geoffrey Robertson, BBC) asked the questions and controlled the situation. The unwritten rules constantly changed, because new information constantly came forward. No one but the program host had a comprehensive view of the whole situation in advance. It got revealed slowly, with many surprising twists and turns, with questions such as: “Would you lie, cheat or steal in this or that situation?” “Would you condemn the one that did?” And so on.

lchic - 08:05am Mar 5, 2002 EST (#212 of 216)

1. Noted Robertson was slated by the far|left|left press for views on Yugoslavia.
2. A Novel - author visualises a nuclear future gone wrong 'AMERICAN ARMAGEDDON - WHEN THE UNITED STATES LOST WORLD WAR ... ' http://members.tripod.com/~djkuba/index-4.html

rshow55 - 10:11am Mar 5, 2002 EST (#213 of 216) Delete Message

last year, almarst made this excellent post, asking a key question:

almarst-2001 - 10:56pm Mar 14, 2001 EST (#998

I think today, after the Cold War, we may indulge ourselve in asking the most basic question - What are the reasons today for hostility between nations?

Today we lost the luxery option of hiding behind the great ideological war of Communism vs. Capitalism, where the "aims justified the means" and where the victory was all importand.

What I would suggest is to try and create a list of existing hot-spots, the players involved and the possible reasons for hostility, including official versions. If you agree, I would exclude what I call "internal problems" of a terrorism/nacionalism/separatism. I also don't know enough about African wars to effectively discuss them.

I would start with a list and we can expand/modify it as we go and discuss it.

Cuba vs. US

Iraq vs. Kuwait/Saudi Arabia/US/Britain

Iraq vs. Israel

Iraq vs. Iran ?

Iran vs. US

Iran vs. Israel

Libia vs. US/Britain

Sudan vs. US

Serbia vs. NATO

Greece vs. Turkey (over Cyprus)

N. Korea vs. S. Korea/US

N. Korea vs. Japan

China vs. Taiwan/US

Total of 13 hot spots, where US is involved in at least 7 of them.

  • *********

    the question "What are the reasons today for hostility between nations? is an absolutely fundamental one - and it is becoming clear that we don't know enough, now, to answer it in the detail we need for decent action.

    rshow55 - 10:38am Mar 5, 2002 EST (#214 of 216) Delete Message

    If we knew the answer to almarst's question, we could do a lot of things better than we do.

    The Angola Mirror By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/05/opinion/05KRIS.html is a wrenching, impressive, problematic piece. It includes lessons which, in detail, the human race is not clear how to keep.

    Lesson No. 1: Be wary of warlords who parrot back our own lines.

    Lesson No. 2: Support democracy as a whole, not simply elections.

    Lesson No. 3: Land mines often last longer than our alliances.

    . . . We should be twisting arms to try to bring about peace in Angola.

    Kristof ends with this

    . . . . And rather than just anointing a winner, let's promote institutional changes — like schools, liberties and free markets — that are the third world's real freedom fighters and "authentic heroes."

    Americans don't know how to do this, in the step-by-step details needed to help real societies. They've given up trying. A key reason is that they haven't been able to make humanitarian interventions work. Some things, that we need to understand, we dont. And because we don't, we don't know how to make peace - or build societies according to humane values.

    The problem is connected to morality, but I'm especially concerned about the purely intellectual part of it. Even if we wanted to do good things, quite often we don't know how. We don't know enough about how our own systems work, and malfunction-- or about the human systems we are interacting with.

    We don't know how to make peace. We need to learn.

    Some of the things we do poorly, the Communists knew how to do fairly well. And vice versa. Many, many matters of life and death, and matters of human comfort hinge on this.

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