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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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commondata - 02:55pm Dec 11, 2002 EST (# 6486 of 6506)

mazza9 12/11/02 1:47pm - In today's world if we are to establish peace and tranquility then someone has to take on the parenting role. The UN has failed in this respect. It ignores the human rights violations that are occurring in Africa and yet finds Israel guilty of racism! The Iraq issue is a no brainer and yet a 17th resolution was needed to communicate to Iraq it's non compliance with the first 16 resolutions regarding their invasion of a soverign nation were not heeded to.

This whole paragraph stands testament to the error of rshow's repeated optimism. The UN is not a democratic organisation - the big powers want and get monopoly and it's they you should blame for any failures you percieve. And if you want to talk about hipocracy, Mazza, why do you worry about Yemen's 12 old scuds but not object to the US selling nearly a billion dollars' worth of military equipment to another 12th century social system in Saudi Arabia? I've just read through the list of weapons that the USA exported in 2001 - the file was 4.6 megabytes.

During the two and a half years of this thread, militarism increased, inequality increased, dependence on oil remained total, civil liberties suffered, ecological degradation continued at pace, a crazy cult declared war on the Western world, the "missile defense idea" is spreading and growing, and we never did quite manage to get rid of nukes by Christmas 2000, did we rshow?

rshow55 - 03:14pm Dec 11, 2002 EST (# 6487 of 6506)
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.

During the two and a half years of this thread, militarism increased, inequality increased, dependence on oil remained total, civil liberties suffered, ecological degradation continued at pace, a crazy cult declared war on the Western world, the "missile defense idea" is spreading and growing, and we never did quite manage to get rid of nukes by Christmas 2000, did we rshow?

I don't see it quite that way - though I can't dispute your points entirely, either. I'm feeling optimistic, even after reading your paragraph. Let me repeat a very optimistic set of posts, for background - and then get back to the indented paragraph above - point for point.

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