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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 - 01:38pm May 2, 2002 EST (#1960 of 1974)

Army Digs in Its Heels and Saves Howitzer Plan, for Now By THOM SHANKER and JAMES DAO http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/politics/02PENT.html includes the news that the ABL (airborne lasar) program is taking a cut - at a time when very little else in the arsenal is being touched. Perhaps a sign of sanity - and things coming into focus.

Could information worked out at length on this thread before March 2, and summarized in MD14-15 rshow55 3/1/02 7:07pm have made a difference?

rshow55 - 02:20pm May 2, 2002 EST (#1961 of 1974)

Bush Hosts European Union Summit at White House By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-EU-Summit.html includes this:

"Recent U.S. diplomatic efforts to diffuse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are likely to get an endorsement from the European leaders as well as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, all of whom are in Washington for talks at the State Department."

If the people involved, and their staffs, used the internet to facilitate focusing and clarity --that would be useful. Useful for getting clear definitions and summaries - and for documentation and clear statement at all levels of detail that matter. This could be done in ways that seemed comfortable to the leaders involved, with some specialists actually assigned to assist so that the internet could be used for clarity.

New clarity could be found, and explained effectively in this way. I believe that would be useful, in the particular negotiations involved today, and a major step toward setting many of the world's other problems right, as well.
MD1956 rshow55 5/2/02 11:24am

Some muddles and outrages can only persist because people don't look at them. The internet makes it easy to "collect the dots" and "connect the dots" so that new clarity can be achieved.

Clarifying where agreement is real, and cooperation can be facile. And clarifying areas where there are disagreements, which need to be understood and accomodated, so that cooperation can be possible whenever cooperation has to occur.

In cases where disagreements about fact are strong and worth resolving, patterns analogous to some suggested on this thread could be set up - whenever good faith between the parties was actually real, or real enough with power relations considered. MD1896-1897 rshow55 4/30/02 10:10am . An "engineers court" can resolve questions of fact, when data is available, no matter how anybody happens to feel about those facts. Other questions of fact (and many of interpretation) can be resolved also. Sometimes, there's no alternative to persuasion at the level of

"Look for yourself.

It is easier to present information at that level of clarity than it used to be. Both when the situation is complex, and when it is simple.

Complexity often comes first. When a scientific fact is discovered, and worked out among scientists, the literature is sometimes voluminous, and the conversation moreso. Once that work is done, and the situation is clear, the result can often be set out fully in a few lines of a textbook.

People need to do better getting to closure than we have done. On many things. We can.

It seems to me that progress is being made.

rshow55 - 02:54pm May 2, 2002 EST (#1962 of 1974)

MD1786 rshow55 4/26/02 11:19am ... MD1791 rshow55 4/26/02 2:57pm
MD1793 rshow55 4/26/02 3:05pm ... MD1794 rshow55 4/26/02 3:11pm

rshow55 - 07:57pm May 2, 2002 EST (#1963 of 1974)

Powell Says Mideast Conference Is Planned for This Summer By DAVID STOUT http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/politics/02CND-PREX.html

What would it take to make it work?

lchic - 10:32pm May 2, 2002 EST (#1964 of 1974)

Turn the whole lot into one trade block and adopt EU legal quality upgrade along with improved human rights for all people and a determined investment in education/training to enhance Human Capital ... this would lead to greater distributed wealth and improved well-being together with jobs/satisfaction ..

(... you did ask!)

lchic - 10:55pm May 2, 2002 EST (#1965 of 1974)

As seen in the NYT today

If there was a form of government that produced autocrats who sponsored terrorism, stole millions of dollars while impoverishing their citizens, shredded public education and health, permitted child bondage, tortured dissidents and tolerated pogroms against minorities, then we would all condemn it. Except that in ______________________ such a system is called democracy.

^{Put USA into the blank and it works equally well - don't you think?}

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