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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 - 10:40am Nov 19, 2002 EST (# 5959 of 5969)
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.

Looking at the situation in the world, ugly as it is in spots, I find myself in a cheerful mood.

For us to lessen inhumanity in the future - - we have to deal with things that have happened - within the limitations that we can actually make work - as things are.

I believe these postings from February 27th, 2001 - a few days before almarst was invited on the board - are worth citing again. I appreciate the chance to do so.

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/401 #s 358-367 - including a posting from "BadNewsWade" http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/408

For more than fifty years, and especially since the late 1950s, we've had large groups of people knowingly acting to make it possible to reduce large populations, almost all innocent in military terms, into masses of rotting unburied corpses. http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20001203mag-osborne.html

There is no reason to think that the US population, or the Russian population, was in any substantial doubt about what was being done, and threatened, by our military forces. rshowalter "Science in the News" 8/29/00 7:26am

Even today, people deny crucial aspects of the holocaust in part for intellectual reasons. What they know of it seems not to fit what they "know" about what human beings do. Some of the actions and intentions of our own military forces are denied, or suppressed from consciousness, due to similar "ignorances."

To the degree that people were responsible members of German society during the Nazi years, they needed to know enough for the complex cooperation, and focused and mutual coercion, that they actually showed. (That is, everybody had to know practically everything, except for details of execution.) The same holds for us. rshowalter "Science in the News" 8/29/00 8:03am

But were the American and NATO forces using or threatening to use nuclear weapons aggressors or defenders? What about the Russians? There can be MANY views of this, and most people, from most positions, have reasons to be give credence, in one way or another, to several perspectives.

5912 rshow55 11/18/02 11:49am ... 5912 rshow55 11/18/02 11:49am
5912 rshow55 11/18/02 11:49am ... 5912 rshow55 11/18/02 11:49am

My own view is that the Americans, at most times, were the agressors, though they had good reasons to do what they did. Perhaps they had no choice, in term of the imperatives they faced, until after the fall of the Soviet Union.

But the Cold War is over now, nuclear weapons should be taken down, and they should be prohibited.

I don't think the mechanics of doing this are difficult, setting the costs and challenges against the needs.

I set out one possible way of proceeding in an all-day web meeting with "becq" on Sept 25, 2000 rshow55 4/21/02 2:14pm Once the inescapable reality of fear and mistrust is recognized, there may be many ways.

There are messes that should have been solved honestly just after the fall of the Soviet Union. Tragically, they weren't. We have to sort some things out now, and we can.

Steps in Iraq, now in process, could be a major part of that - if people have good sense. If not - it will be a great chance wasted.

We also have some problems to clean up about Korea - and the difficulties don't look insurmountable, or even so difficult - if people take their time, remember limitations that are actually there, and remember the humanity of everybody involved.

We need more of some of the things that have been working well lately.

lunarchick - 10:56am Nov 19, 2002 EST (# 5960 of 5969)

Convergence ~ Zone :-

(In media) Definition of convergence:
“The strategic operational and cultural union of print, audio, video and interactive digital media organisations.” ^{http://www.wan-press.org/ce/previous/2001/congress.forum/forum/nachison.html}

Winds - http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002_142.html

1998 Convergence & Contention in the Persian Gulf - Report http://reports.stanleyfdn.org/SPC98C.pdf

http://www.commercialdiplomacy.org/Glossary.pdf

~~~~~~~~~

lunarchick - 11:13am Nov 19, 2002 EST (# 5961 of 5969)

StanleyFoundation Report 1998 (above) is interesting

Cautions that the US has
'too little factual information' on Iraq Iran
and to be aware of this when making policies

Note the embargos on IRAN were :
- of personal benefit to Saddam&Son
- to the detriment of the Iraqi population

Report offers background to current Gulf thought processes

~~~~~~~~~~

The StanleyFoudation's http://worldpress.org/ carries issues of interest to this board.

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