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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 - 10:24pm Sep 11, 2002 EST (# 4265 of 4273)

"" The danger of the anniversary is that, out of respect for the dead and through a revisitation of shock, they will become, once again, reverently muffled. The administration is counting on just such a pious hush to bestow on its adventurism the odour of sanctity.

Apparently, the dead are owed another war. But they are not. What they are owed is a good, stand-up, bruising row over the fate of America; just who determines it and for what end?

The first and greatest weapon a democracy has for its own defence is the assumption of common equity; of shared sacrifice. That was what got us through the Blitz. It is, however, otherwise in oligarchic America. Those who are most eager to put young American lives on the line happen to be precisely those who have been greediest for the spoils.

The company run by the Vietnam draft-dodging ("I had other priorities") Cheney, Halliburton, has told the employees of one of its subsidiary companies (resold by Cheney) that the pension plans it was supposed to honour, are now worth a fraction of what the workers had been counting on. On leaving the company in 2000 to run for vice-president, however, Cheney himself was deemed to have "retired" rather than resigned, thus walking away with a multimillion pension deal. So long, suckers.

Never have the ordinary people of America, the decent, working stiffs whose bodies lay in the hecatomb of Ground Zero, needed and deserved a great tribune more urgently. The greatest honour we could do them is to take back the voice of democracy from the plutocrats.

So it is altogether too bad that this Wednesday, Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki, both liberal Republicans, both decent enough men, shrinking from the challenge to articulate such a debate, have decided instead to read from the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address and Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech. Those words - often sublime - derived their power from the urgency of the moment. To reiterate them merely to produce a moment of dependable veneration, is to short-change both history and the present.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/oneyearon/story/0,12361,789978,00.html

Feeding Iraq - related to a post indicating Iraq told Australia to 'tone down' their comment or Iraq would not accept our wheat - thereupon the farming lobby told the government to quieten .... so as not to disrupt trade.

'the Poster' (above) likens Saudi Royal family's holiday jaunt to a

satyr play

n : an ancient Greek burlesque with a chorus of satyrs

On Sheriffs - a lyric

I shot the sheriff
But I did not shoot the deputy

Takes us right back to

M I N D S

Over the past decade, or even since 1947 ...
Had the USA put money into Palestine to GROW rather than eliminate the people, to grow a democracy, to grow an educated, functional, population - to put in infrastructure, to augment it with all necessary sectors of an economy ....

Had the USA been 'smart' not 'stupid' in it's foreign policy ....

Then today the Arab nations might have tried to emulate that example ....

Meantimes back at the munitions factory, back in the silo, back in the dark ages .... life goes on, and on, and on ... and on !

When will they ever learn?

lchic - 12:47am Sep 12, 2002 EST (# 4266 of 4273)

September 11, 2002 - Terror Debate

The planes that carried out al- Qa`ida`s terrorist attack 12 months ago triggered not only a chain of suffering and grief but also a furious international debate. Was there a legitimate grievance driving the terrorists? What kind of response was justified? Two thinkers who enter the debate from opposite ends, join us tonight.

From London, writer Tariq Ali, a stringent critic of the US and its foreign policy, and

from Philadelphia, American policy specialist, Daniel Pipes who believes that Islamism, like Fascism and Communism before it, must be defeated.

JANA WENDT:

Tariq Ali and Daniel Pipes, welcome to you both. Tariq Ali, what do you believe is the historical significance of what happened on September 11?

TARIQ ALI, WRITER:

Well, the historical significance is that it's the first time since 1812 that the American mainland has been subjected to violence by persons from outside. I don't think it was an act of war, but it certainly was a very serious act of terror and its significance lies in, for me, not so much in the actual effects it had - 'cause, economically and militarily, it was even less than a ....

http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/dateline_set.html

lchic - 12:59am Sep 12, 2002 EST (# 4267 of 4273)

BAE flies into more flak UK arms GU.com

"" ... poor sales of its Hawk training aircraft, the rundown of its al-Yamamah scheme in Saudi Arabia and the slower than expected speed of US defence spending have all hit the group.

The Nimrod early warning aircraft also caused BAE difficulties and it has since argued that it does not want to bid for fixed price defence contracts unless the government stumps up for some of the early development costs.

BAE is no stranger to upsetting the market, having issued a profits warning last November on the back of falling sales at its aerospace arm.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,790501,00.html

BAE was alleged to have paid £7m into the Jersey bank account owned by the foreign minister of Qatar.

This was not illegal and the minister, Sheikh Hamad, has denied wrongdoing. Nonetheless, it led to an investigation

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