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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  /

    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 (10075 previous messages)

rshow55 - 03:47pm Mar 16, 2003 EST (# 10076 of 10082) Delete Message
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

In 10072 above, I've said that, based on some assumptions about facts and relations - Bush, Blair, and Aznar may have made decisions and made a presentation of disciplined beauty . That is, that fit a set body of "facts" and relations.

What of the validity of those facts and relations?

It is very easy to make the case that they are perpetrating a travesty - on other assumptions.

What's right?

This is a fundamental question - and under current Treaty of Westphalia rules - we have chaos - and sometimes perverse results even worse than chaos. When a time comes to get closure on facts - we have no workable rules especially when it matters most. This thread has largely been about that.

9771 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.J3Sca7gK5us.2217022@.f28e622/11313

International law is being renegotiated - and when agreements are in the process of being renegotiated - they are also in temporary or partial abeyance

To do much better than we're doing - we have to find ways to get facts straight - when it matters enough - against the inclination of power holders. Unless this is done, there is no solution to some of our most key problems. Good, stable closures simply are not possible.

Here is Berle: ( Power - Chapter II )

In the hands or mind of an individual, the impulse toward power is not inherently limited. Limits are imposed by extraneous fact and usually also by conscience and intellectual restraint. Capacity to make others do what you wish knows only those limitations.

That's plain and straight. Power holders want to limit the ability of others to determine facts because that extends their power. It is in the overwhelming collective interest to see that facts that matter enough are determined - both so that power can be reasonably limited - and because human beings have to make decisions on what they believe to be true.

If leaders of nation states had the wisdom, fortitude and courage to face the fact that there have to be limits on the right of people in power to decieve themselves and others, we'd live in a much more hopeful world. Limits that put some limits on personal political power and on sovereignty.

Maybe not severe limits. Maybe not limits applied with great consistency. But some limits. Enforced sometimes. When it matters enough.

If that were faced, the US would have to deal with some embarrassments. But an index of how much is screwed up, misunderstood, and deceptive is how well national groups treat their own citizens - and get along in the worldr - how well their cooperation works in human terms.

The US needs to do some thinking. The rest of the world should do a lot of thinking, too.

Most things look to me like they are going well - ugly as they are - wonderfully well, by historical standards - subject to the terrible constraint that we don't have key facts straight nearly often enough.

We're making mistakes of a few serious kinds with monotonous, lethal regularity. All linked to deception, and self deception - both conscious and unconsious - that is not effectively checked.

9534 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.J3Sca7gK5us.2217022@.f28e622/11073

Odds are that a lot of people are going to die because it hasn't been possible to get key facts and relationships that are worth checking actually checked. Either we find a way to do so (and the technical problems aren't hard - what is hard is the recognition and the will) or people are going to go on dying - and the whole world could be destroyed - because we now live in a situation that is inherently unstable - potentially explosively unstable unless we do a better job than we've been doing about checking things that matter enough.

lchic - 03:55pm Mar 16, 2003 EST (# 10077 of 10082)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

M East -- links to documents -- see

http://www.mideastweb.org/history.htm

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