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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.

lchic - 10:05am Mar 15, 2002 EST (#566 of 574)

The Independent

www.independent.co.uk

Thread: World - As Europe fades away, USA will be alone http://forums.indigital.co.uk/id-argument/messages/?msg=14841

U.S. foreign policy is "absolutist and simplistic." America has gone into "unilateralist overdrive,"

Europe — wholly dependent on Arab and Gulf oil, fearful of terrorism from the al-Qaeda cells being unearthed across the continent, aware that Muslim resistance and possibly riots will erupt if it joins a U.S. war on Arab or Islamic nations, its own population aging and vanishing — can never again be relied on to help fight U.S. wars in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf or Central Asia. /Patrick Buchanan

"This is utter humiliation," a well-dressed man said before the queue began to move, and he was prodded forward.

For Israel, the round-up was the defining moment of a strategy of rolling offensives against the Palestinian heartland: the sprawls of cinder-block homes and alleys that are the militants' strongholds.

The high-risk strategy has been criticised by Israeli military commentators who say it is fuelling Palestinian hatred.

" .. US is now talking about using anti-bunker tactical nukes. How on earth can one continue to argue that it is ok for the west to have nukes and not the rest because the west will never use them? This is an incentive to countries to launch nuclear weapons programmes. ..."

lchic - 10:13am Mar 15, 2002 EST (#567 of 574)

We will try to create the same flood like in former East Germany, you remember history, it started with several dozens of refugees in the Czechoslovakian Embassy of West Germany and Prahar [phonetic] and in the end there were hundreds and thousands and it created a flood to West Germany and now we are trying the same here in North Korea to China and then to South Korea. http://www.abc.net.au/am/s505117.htm

rshow55 - 10:15am Mar 15, 2002 EST (#568 of 574)

The "prototypical model of the American white male that we need to win over" needs simple arguments - - and maybe some sense of the reality of suffering - and morality.

But though things may need to be simplified - - some issues of FACT do matter. They are discussed in MD541_544 rshow55 3/14/02 7:16pm . . are basic to this thread.

Something that the "prototypical model of the American white male" likes is a contest - - and especialy an umpired contest.

Maybe we should have one.

I'm getting a feeling that it might just be possible.

lchic - 10:28am Mar 15, 2002 EST (#569 of 574)

EU reform

a potential turning point in the EU's history ... create 20 million new jobs across the continent by 2010 ... discuss the creation of a truly common market .. pushing for economic liberalisation see bbc

mazza9 - 10:38am Mar 15, 2002 EST (#570 of 574)
Louis Mazza

lchic:

You're right. I bore easily. I try to "get to the point" without the extraneous which so often appears at this forum. When simple Yes No questions are answered in 500 words or more you can begin to understand why I skim these long winded dissertations on WWI, Hiroshima, General Custer's treatment of the Dakota Sioux etc etc.

I have always marveled at how oft times scientific advancement occurs "by accident". Somebody "invents" a new aluminum/ceramic material because he, (a grad student), is attempting to melt aluminum. The experiment is unattended and the whole crucible and its contents are found as a puddle on the lab bench. The school eventually patents this new material and the grad student has his doctoral dissertation! Meanwhile this material may solve automotive fuel economy issues since you can build an internal combustion engine that is as light as aluminum and as heat resistant as ceramics.

Might NMD occur the same way?

Here's an interesting take on software that Almarst raised. The Army and CIA wanted to develop a software tool to identify "camoflaged" targets on the battlefield. Surprise! Surprise! This software tool not only finds tanks, rockets, and troop concentrations but when applied to mammograms it can pick out cancerous masses that might otherwise go unseen!

Opinions and political suasion is interesting but it masks the facts at times.

LouMazza

lchic - 10:49am Mar 15, 2002 EST (#571 of 574)

mAzza & Chic in conversation .. is it my birthday?!

You're right. I bore easily. mazza9 3/15/02 10:38am [ False attribution ] but do go on talking about 'yourself' .. which ever 'self' it happens to be.

Serendipity is 'in' [ If it were all then all would have been known in centuries past ]

NMD - found as a puddle on the lab bench [uhmm..]

Opinions and political suasion is interesting but it masks the facts at times. [as does 'diversion']

mazza9 - 11:41am Mar 15, 2002 EST (#572 of 574)
Louis Mazza

lchic:

One person's discourse is another person's diversion. nes pas?

LouMazza

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