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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 - 07:46pm May 26, 2003 EST (# 12070 of 12076)
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've been doing the best I could. Keeping promises.

If you thought you had good reasons to think that, if you could solved problems assigned to you - that you'd promised to "do your damndest to solve" - that you would be able to save millions of lives - and solve the key problems that have frustrated the hopes of many Americans since WWII - and you thought that, with brilliant help from lchic - you had cracked the main problems - wouldn't you work at it?

Delusional? There seems to be a surprising immunity to checking. Checking my background to closure - and checking this thread - would only be so difficult.

11803 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.hpRKbdepbTQ.2073491@.f28e622/13418

"He was a shy and retiring scholar, archaeologist, and philosopher swept by the tide of war in to a position undreamt of.

11805 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.hpRKbdepbTQ.2073491@.f28e622/13420

11759-62 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.hpRKbdepbTQ.2073491@.f28e622/13371

I'm wondering about the legalities of what ought to be a very simple question. Could I talk to - make presentations to - work with Deutshe Bank Securities (a very well placed organization, from my point of view) or talk to other organizations - or people in the United Nations - if the US won't work with me?

After a while, when you work in ways where "it is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission" - and go on a long way, for a long time you have permission.

I'm not quite there - jorian319 took pains to remind me of a "SingSing" problem.

But making headway.

1999 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.hpRKbdepbTQ.2073491@.f28e622/2484 includes this:

"You need as many formats, and as many levels of detail, as you happen to need for the clarifications and explanations that have to occur. We have all the formats we need to deal with many thing much better than we have done, if we use them.

. . .

" I believe that this thread has made a contribution, either as a prototype, or as an actual (though deniable) channel of communication. Last night I saw a fine movie from 2000, Thirteen Days - about the Cuban missile crisis. The level of communication between the US and the USSR during that crisis was paltry -- and perilous. If the evidence from that "open literature" source can be credited as an index of the communication in existence then - and if I'm correct about how little communication improved in the the 30 years thereafter -- then this thread has probably been (or has prototyped) the largest bandwidth, clearest line of political-military communication that has ever existed between the US and Russia. I think I've been doing what Bill Casey would have wanted -- and if you see Thirteen Days , you may have a sense of why the work needs to be done - and some of the difficulties that have been and remain involved with the effort.

"If you see Thirteen Days you may also see how unstable our "strategic balances" have been, and remain. Patterns are coming to being that permit them to be much more stable - but there is a long way to go - and the world could easily end unless we get some of these problems fixed.

"There are some problems that must be defined, and focused, and negotiated in great, clear, and documented detail, if they are to get to workable, sane closure at all. They are too complex and difficult otherwise. That means, for a number of things, closure - and complex cooperation, has been technically impossible. These technical constraints can rather easily be removed now, because of the capabilities of the internet - including some prototyped here.

"Nuclear weapons are an example. The middle east is another example.

"Most of the most important problems in the world today in

rshow55 - 07:49pm May 26, 2003 EST (# 12071 of 12076)
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.

"Most of the most important problems in the world today involve other examples.

Repeat: for a number of things, closure - and complex cooperation, has been technically impossible. These technical constraints can rather easily be removed now - - in large part because of work on this thread - work I did before - and work lchic and I have done together.

I think both Milton and Dwight D. Eisenhower would be proud - and in many ways - though not all - proud of the New York Times.

They only expected normal degrees of courage.

They would have hoped for further progress. I do.

At the same time - I think the whole world of journalism and politics ought to look at this thread - and ask some things about what the current journalistic standards for checking and for cooperation with the government actually are.

jorian319 - 10:56pm May 26, 2003 EST (# 12072 of 12076)

Robert, are you not fearful that when the CIA figgers out how much lchick knows about their inner workings, and particularly the scam to infiltrate NYT, they might take her out? Or ferret her away in some secret room to work on their latest encryption scheme? In Sing Sing even?

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