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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.

supersnooper58 - 01:33am Jun 14, 2002 EST (#2521 of 2529)

mazza9 6/14/02 12:46am

Was just curious Lou, was hoping to touch base with old friends, since I moved out of that area back in 91. Nothing to do with missle defense at all.

Seems like your family tree has long roots too, do you know if any of the many Mazzas are related to you? My family is quite large too, except the family doesn't talk about the side from Sicily, just the one's from Naples. Gee I wonder what the family did to get kicked off of the island and to stop talking to one another. Must be something big, and I will have to wait till I die and find out the facts on the other side, since the family is so closed-mouthed about the subject. For now I leave that one alone. Any such BS in your family tree?

lchic - 04:15am Jun 14, 2002 EST (#2522 of 2529)

Almarst2020 had this to say almarst2002 6/13/02 6:21pm

Got mAzzA out of bed!

lchic - 04:21am Jun 14, 2002 EST (#2523 of 2529)

What a week for America .... Johnny Howard (Aussie PrimeMinister) stopped off at the WhiteHouse to lick GWB's boots clean ... but no .. GWB didn't give Aussies any concessions re Primary Industry (Agri) trade --- but we're all the VERY BEST OF FRIENDS and that's official!

Mr Howard has denied he did not speak out strongly enough against United States farm subsidies during his five-day trip.

rshow55 - 08:39am Jun 14, 2002 EST (#2524 of 2529)

My fast modem connection got cut off when I tried to post a message -- and a message that I thought was entirely reasonable. Back later.

lchic - 09:13am Jun 14, 2002 EST (#2525 of 2529)

Run virus check - new bug around

lchic - 09:15am Jun 14, 2002 EST (#2526 of 2529)

World Food Summit branded a waste of time

17:45 13 April 02

NewScientist.com news service

Politicians today called the World Food Summit, which ended in Rome, a waste of time. But scientists were quietly heralding at least one positive development from the meeting at the headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

The final hours saw the launch of a global fund, backed by the World Bank, to preserve the planet's crop biodiversity. The fund aims to raise a quarter of a billion dollars for a permanent endowment to fund an existing cash-strapped network of the 16 international crop gene banks.

"The world's diversity of crop plants is one of the most important tools we have to combat poverty and hunger," said Geoff Hawtin, head of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, which will oversee the project.

In recent years, the gene banks have cut back their collections of rare crop varieties. Meanwhile thousands of traditional plant varieties, many with unique traits that could be bred into modern varieties, are being lost forever as farmers replace them with a handful of modern varieties.

World Cup

Backers of the project believe a revival of plant collecting and traditional breeding could have more impact on future harvests than any number of political declarations.

The summit, which otherwise agreed little, was boycotted by Western leaders. "I'm not sending a minister because I don't expect it to be an effective summit," Britain's overseas development secretary Clare Short said from London.

And it ended in farce, with claims that the closing ceremony had been brought forward two hours to allow its chairman, the Italian president Silvio Berlusconi, to watch his country's World Cup match with Mexico on TV.

Robert Mugabe

The summit was held to assess progress on a target, made at a similar meeting six years ago, to halve world hunger by 2015. It heard that progress was slow. The world's hungry now number 815 million, just 3 per cent down on the 1996 figure.

At the meeting, developing nations called for an end to subsidies on food production in the rich world. They claimed that the subsidies are producing a flood of cheap produce on the international market that is undermining their own farmers.

Rich nations, meanwhile, chided African governments in particular for undermining local food production through corruption and short-sighted policies.

The presence of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe at the conference acted as a focus for these criticisms. His controversial land reform policies are widely blamed for exacerbating the effects of the current southern African drought.

Fred Pearce

lchic - 09:33am Jun 14, 2002 EST (#2527 of 2529)

New World Order .. re World Cup ... it's only a game ...

Didn't realise that the USA has more folks in soccer clubs than actually populations of Australia and NewZealand combined (26m members)!

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