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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.

rshow55 - 08:36pm Mar 25, 2002 EST (#827 of 835)

Maybe, if it is smart, it won't have to spend much on defense.

almarst:

" It is quite possible the US's MD will force China and Russia to join into common deterrance aliance and military/space technology development. If they have a slightest belief the MD may work to some degree."

That cooperation would make some sense. It would ALSO make sense for Russia, China, and all other nations (including especially the NATO nations) to get as clear as they can about what degree of technical effectiveness MD might have.

lchic - 08:43pm Mar 25, 2002 EST (#828 of 835)

These instances come to mind:

Current public demonstrations in the north east ... the solution has been to arrest the leaders and throw them in jail and then 'pay' something to the general protesters. The question is - if labour sackings are larger and larger 'large scale' .. what are they to be paid off with - when the country doesn't collect in taxes. (It does have a compulsory trade union fund )

The second issue with China has been the creation of vast dams along the Yellow River and the flooding of areas of former settlements. The people are said not to receive adequate compensation to resettle.

Bejing Olympic preparations have seen the bulldozing of vast areas - with a 'pot luck' attitude towards resettlement.

lchic - 08:56pm Mar 25, 2002 EST (#829 of 835)

Tens of thousands of workers have stepped up protests in the industrial north-east of China, angry at job-losses, unpaid wages and employer corruption. Labour protests have become an almost daily occurrences as millions of workers continue to lose their jobs under China's push for reform of state-owned industires

Transcript:

LOPRESTI: Every working day this month, tens of thousands of labourers in China's industrial heartland have gathered outside their company's headquarters to do something extraordinary in China - protest.

In the north-eastern cities of Daching and Liaoyang, numbers have swelled to as many as 50-thousand some days, prompting officials to despatch soldiers and police to block company gates and arrest a half a dozen labour leaders.

As Elizabeth Tang from the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions explains desperate times equals desperate measures.

TANG: This is a very, very common and very, very big problem now happening with workers in China. A lot of them have not been paid wages, even up to 10 months, 12 months. Having no pay for six months is very, very common. And you know when workers do not have the wages you know they just feel they can't stand anymore, but you know (they) go out on the street.

LOPRESTI: Daching is a sprawling company town of two-point-four-million people, built by and for the oil industry. It was once hailed as a national model of fortitude and self-sufficiency, but today communist slogans are all that's left. Since 1999 the Daching Petroleum Administration has laid off 86-thousand workers, that's a third of its entire workforce, and the numbers continue to grow.

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