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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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rshow55 - 09:36am Jul 11, 2003 EST (# 12941 of 12946)
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.

Greenspan Says Natural Gas Prices Are a Threat By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 11:40 a.m. ET yesterday http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Greenspan-Natural-Gas.html

The constraint of energy scarcity is a basic limitation on economic function all over the world - it weighs far more heavily on the poor countries than it does on us - and we need to do much better.

When Eisenhower and others responded to the immense world response to C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution - which proposed that the poor countries could be helped to be much richer in a few decades - they were very sympathetic - but the staffing showed that energy supplies were a big constraint - probably the biggest. That's still true. We should fix it.

lchic - 09:50am Jul 11, 2003 EST (# 12942 of 12946)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Democracy --- "The Third Way ... progressive politics that wants change, gives an economic Efficient Society and is Socially Just.

Driving ideas necessary

What sort of a country do politicians want their country to be?"

LSE Prof Anthony Giddens

Giddens was the 1999 BBC Reith Lecturer. His Reith Lectures were subsequently published under the title Runaway World. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_99/default.htm

Martin Kettle - GU

http://www.progressive-governance.net/php/article.php?aid=100&sid=8

lchic - 10:05am Jul 11, 2003 EST (# 12943 of 12946)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

"" ... the need to move from the politics of triangulation to what he dubbed the politics of transformation, of the need to abandon defensiveness and the mantras of the past, and to be more positive about designing and achieving progressive goals.

It was even more evident in the comments of Professor Anthony Giddens, sometime guru of the third way, who called for greater ideological breakout, and for the need not to be constrained by reference points set by the right, in particular by the American business model. Empowerment is not enough, Giddens argued. It is not enough for a progressive government to think of itself as releasing people to survive in the world. The consumerist model of citizenship, based on the apotheosising of choice rather than quality, was not enough either.

These stirrings of greater radicalism, though, do not seem to signify a reversion towards more traditional politics. They coexist with a very hard-edged perception about the modern world, in which there is no automatic place for the old solutions. Most of the discussion at Warren House focused on three questions: how to deal with American power, how to deal with international migration, and how to deal with the relationship between government and markets. In each case, the starting point was the same. Do not pretend that these realities do not exist. Do not pretend that these realities do not shape the limits of the possible.

Which brings us back to Kay's concept of disciplined pluralism. The American business model has failed, he says. But we must never slip back into the pretence that centralised structures or big policy responses, universally applied by individuals and agencies who necessarily lack the information to understand the complexity of things, can solve anything either. Gordon Brown, please note.

What works, Kay argues, is "regulated self-regulation", a culture of audited experimentation, which accepts that some experiments will fail. Kay favours a culture which recognises both that government is a key agent and that it cannot control the process - and should therefore not seek to. His big idea, to put it another way, is that there is no big idea. Kay makes an awful lot of sense about the limits of modern government. But he also paints a gloomy picture about the limits of modern politics, which will help to explain, if nothing else, why so few people seem likely to bother to vote in Thursday's elections.

http://www.progressive-governance.net/php/article.php?aid=100&sid=8

martin.kettle@guardian.co.uk

lchic - 10:07am Jul 11, 2003 EST (# 12944 of 12946)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

African Union Summit, Maputo, Mozambique, 4-12 July 2003

http://www.au2003.gov.mz/speeches.htm

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