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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 - 03:14pm Apr 5, 2003 EST (# 11152 of 11156)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

"" Some believe that Iraq is a safer long-term bet than Serbia, because it has oil and is not (yet) hostage to a business mafia.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1683923

See cartoon here --- Artist's take --- so clearcut!

mazza9 - 04:01pm Apr 5, 2003 EST (# 11153 of 11156)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Fredmoore:

The reseach into telomerase reattchment may be the key to "long life". Several years ago Hugh Downs interviewed a research scientist from the Sothwestern Medical Center here in Dallas. The scientist had attached the telomerase enzyme to the end of the DNA strand. Kinda like retreading a tire.

It appears that every time a cell reproduces, (except brain cells), the telomerase at the end of the DNA strand "wears" down aliitle. Speculation is that this enzymene is the "biological clock". When the enzyme wears away the cell can't replicate.

When Hugh owns questioned the Doctor about longevity he used the term immortality. Of course the Doctor, being a scientist, blanched at that term. when Hugh Downs pressed the issue of age "enhancement" the doctored suggested that a lifespan could be increased to say 150 years. Hugh Downs said that such a longevity might be countered productive. the Doctor said "Oh we can allow the patient to choose the way he would like to proceed in his life. Grow till age thirty and then live the next 100 years as a thirty year old! The implications are earth shattering.

Who would control this technology. Imagine a Saddam or Fidel who would not go away! Kinda like a Robert, Alum or Lchic who won't go away.

lchic - 10:38pm Apr 5, 2003 EST (# 11154 of 11156)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Immortal 'NOW'

will be

Immortalised later!

A win-win-win for Chic, Bob et Al

:)

OUT

almarst2003 - 12:09am Apr 6, 2003 EST (# 11155 of 11156)

Bin Laden's laughter echoes across the West - http://paknews.com/headingNews.php?id=1991&date1=2003-03-20

"Osama bin Laden hovers over events in the Gulf as he hovered over Mr Blair’s dispatch box. History will surely rate this stateless psychopath as potent beyond all imaginings. He did not just kill 3,000 people. His single act entered so deep into US psychology as to traumatise its sense of security and well-being. He devastated the economy of a city, New York, and a whole country. He turned Americans in on themselves, fortifying their houses, buying gas masks, fearing dark-skinned foreigners and screaming at the sight of powder. He bankrupted their airline companies. He emptied their office blocks. He made them suspend habeas corpus.

Bin Laden incited one war, of America against Afghanistan. He licensed another, the revived Palestinian suicide intifada and thus Israeli retaliation. He fuelled fundamentalist dissent in Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey. He made every American and Briton in the Middle East fear for his life.

Then early last year the unthinkable became thought, an all-out American war on the quiescent Saddam lest he “might” form an alliance with the Scarlet Pimpernel bin Laden. By an act of psychological transference, fear of bin Laden became fear of Iraq. Washington and London suddenly found themselves expecting attack from bin Laden and, by proxy, Saddam. Tanks raced back and forth to airports. Bunkers were built. Tourists were driven to stay at home. War became a matter of “self-defence”.

Britain and America have now allowed bin Laden to goad them to a conflict that has divided the West more fiercely than the Soviet Union ever did during the Cold War. Bin Laden has split Europe. He has reawakened “ugly American” diplomacy and reopened wounds between the New World and the Old. He has split Europe from America. He has split Russia from America. He has divided America within itself. He has made Iraq’s old friend, Jacques Chirac, a domestic hero unparalleled since de Gaulle.

Bin Laden has left Nato inert as an alliance supposedly under threat. He has destroyed, possibly for ever, the ambition of a common European Union foreign and defence policy. He has also destroyed Tony Blair’s dream of one day leading it. He induced the British to treat the UN first as a validator of war, then as a disposable comfort blanket.

Nor is that all. Nothing can be giving bin Laden greater pleasure than the spectacle of the West going to war to topple his hated foe, the “atheist Satan”, Saddam Hussein. Even in his wildest dreams, he cannot have imagined what has now come to pass, Saddam about to go and Islam radicalised against the West. "

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