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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 - 09:41pm May 4, 2003 EST (# 11468 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Economies of scale - notes on

http://www.essaybank.co.uk/free_coursework/233.html

Improving 'life quality' for individuals, via the big_scheme may have a daunting start-up cost ... and yet ... averaged out per head of population the effective optimum solution may be the most cost efficient.

lchic - 09:52pm May 4, 2003 EST (# 11469 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Showalter i read your refs (above) wrt Iraq.

I's say that the secular state to study is Germany - here they collect a tax per head - and forward it to religious body of payee's choice. They have overcome the horrors of a tyrant, they have acknowledged them, and have moved on .... and help people in many places in the world.

The point about a secular state is that people have the freedom to live within many varied closed religious models ... or live outside them and have religious and intellectual freedom ... have their own 'thinking space'.

The religious cultures are religious_power cultures ... someone pays, others get the power and use the payments ... along with this goes a little cerimonial housekeeping.

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On the nuclear issue --- the term FIFTH RATE country could be applied to those that look to having nukes as a final solution.

The solution is to involve the people in statehood, have truth, and using it, build an economy with the capacity to look after the people.

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Saddam --- he was an opportunist and bully who modelled himself on disgraced tyrants --- and 'the people' of Iraq were conned and brutalised .... their religion was of little assistance in the provision of freedom and a decent life.

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lchic - 10:00pm May 4, 2003 EST (# 11470 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Aussie PM made it to the USA these past days ...

• Free trade agreement
• David Hicks (Cuba) not mentioned
• Photo opportunity backed by ..
• Round bales of lucerne -- a Crawford_beast's banquet!

http://gotexas.about.com/library/blgwbush_guide_crawford.htm

lchic - 10:06pm May 4, 2003 EST (# 11471 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Firm in Florida election fiasco earns millions from files on foreigners

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,949709,00.html

A data-gathering company that was embroiled in the Florida 2000 election fiasco is being paid millions of dollars by the Bush administration to collect detailed personal information on the populations of foreign countries, enraging several governments who say the records may have been illegally obtained. US government purchasing documents show that the company, ChoicePoint, received at least $11m (£6.86m) from the department of justice last year to supply data - mainly on Latin Americans .......... its commitment to ChoicePoint is long-term: last year's $11m payment was part of a contract worth $67m that runs until 2005.

ChoicePoint denied breaking any laws. "All information collected by ChoicePoint on foreign citizens is obtained legally from public agencies or private vendors," it said. It also denied purchasing "election registry information" from Mexico.

lchic - 04:19am May 5, 2003 EST (# 11472 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

"" A multipolar world is the third way between resistance and domination

Simon Tisdall

A curious reticence pervades the broader post-Iraq debate. Yet what happens next in terms of the relationship between American hyperpower and Europe, the UN and a seriously battered world order is of vastly greater significance than the specifics of Iraq's rehabilitation. So how to explain this quietude, this almost embarrassed silence?

- One answer is that, to varying degrees, leading anti-war states like Germany and France are now engaged in pragmatic repairs

- it may be that the war's wider implications are not being fully discussed and explored

- moral suasion, humanitarian imperatives and intense diplomatic lobbying were overwhelmed and swept aside by

- Bush is not America any more than Saddam was Iraq

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,949594,00.html

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