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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?

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lchic - 05:43am Apr 15, 2003 EST (# 11296 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Poor choice of words Mazza

The people of Iraq - Fisk's mice - have been released from their traps - liberated

... the question now is 'how forward'

lchic - 05:51am Apr 15, 2003 EST (# 11297 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Blair's Tony

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,937179,00.html

rshow55 - 06:38am Apr 15, 2003 EST (# 11298 of 11500)
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.

my web site http://www.mrshowalter.net/ is now a bit more readable.

MISSILE DEFENSE Archive - by distinguished anonymous posters and M. Robert Showalter . . . May 25, 2000 to March , 2003 NEW YORK TIMES on the web SCIENCE forum

Important excerpts with links

Summary Page for "rshow55" - nyt MISSILE DEFENSE forum

Key Story from Psychwarfare, Casablance, and Terror

The story of my relation to Bill Casey

A "briefing" intended for Vladimir Putin - March 2001

"Disciplined Beauty" - a pattern for aesthetic and intellectual common ground

For hope to be real - we have to find practical, workable ways to treat one another.

The need for "redemptive solutions" when "justice" is undefinable.

Key Guardian Talk threads

Psychwarfare, Casablanca . . . and terror

Paradigm Shift - whose getting there?

Mankind's Inhumanity to Man

Detail, and the Golden Rule

Calendar of NYTimes Missile Defense Discussion - links by date, to July 2002

files of archived NYT Missile Defense postings

Directories to the New York Times - Science - Missile Defense thread since March 1, 2002

rshow55 - 01:33pm Apr 15, 2003 EST (# 11299 of 11500)
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.

I'm going to be posting less this next week - going on a trip.

Sometimes, it seems to me that the Bush administration might be attending to this board - and trying to be careful and open in ways suggested. Whether that's so or not - they've got a lot of sorting to do now - and they are having to act - more than I'm sure they like, in public.

Some things are working. I'm glad - proud of some of the things that are happening.

All the same, there are problems.

Fredmoore raised the idea that forums like this are important evidence of free speech. They are.

But there are all sort of ways to limit and penalize speech - and in the United States, people are in fragile positions - as many find out when they lose their jobs.

Fragile in all sorts of ways. I have some e-mail boxes - and for the last week and more - I've been able to open them, to use their files - but unable to either send or recieve messages from them.

Maybe that's just a coincidence - but some coincidences like that have happened to me before.

Things like that can be more than expensive. They can happen for reasons other than coincidence. They can actually be dangerous.

(A while ago, I took a trip, and in route neither my phone card nor my credit cards work.)

How many people in America could be hurt, and hurt badly, by a phone call, or a simple manipulation from someone in power? Maybe an untraceable manipulation?

Many - and most have reason to fear such things.

In every other country there are similar limitations - constraints on independence and freedom. For reasons that can't be entirely changed. That means that problems with freedom - freedom of speech - and constraints on the freedom of people in power to lie - will be problems forever.

We could do better than we're doing now - in a lot of places.

Most times, I'm feeling optimistic.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense