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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.

commondata - 01:02pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6788 of 6822)

Yes, and an 'official request' on the eve of parliament's Christmas recess. Surely must be cooincidence.

lunarchick - 01:36pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6789 of 6822)

Brazil - no such thing as 'race'

The 'race card' has been used as an excuse for conflict. Brazilian scientists have carried out testing on their people and determined that 'race' is a 'social' construct. Brazil has peoples originating locally, from Europe and from Africa.
Neither Eye nor skin colour were indicators of genetic racial origin in that population. (current news)

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Book 1999 : The Spectacle of Races: Scientists, Institutions, and the Race Question in Brazil, 1870-1930. by Lilia Schwarcz.
Translated by Leland Guyer.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1999, 358 pp. $35.00.

'Brazilian scientists embraced Social Darwinist ideas about innate racial differences despite their fears about the consequences of applying European ideas on race to the complex Brazilian context. Schwarcz shows how these European prejudices became a means for conservatives to preserve traditional social hierarchies.'

If people actually mean socialisation and culture when they use the term 'race', then, rather than 'war', a case can be made for culture reconstruction and modernisation that takes on board the 'findings', 'knowledge' and 'ideas' of this and the twentieth century.

Noted above there was discussion regarding the 'seen need' to set-up competitive educational alternatives to fundamentalist-rote.

Can 'modernisation' occur via restructuring of cultural expectations top-down?

(Looking at the US itself - how sucessful has it been in bringing it's own people into the modern era? Creation v Evolution NYT Thread!)

almarst2002 - 01:47pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6790 of 6822)

American Troops in Korea - http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/12/17/40947.html

lunarchick - 01:53pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6791 of 6822)

The latter joined the war, which resulted in a tie.

Makes 'war' sound like a 'competition'.

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=tie

lunarchick - 01:56pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6792 of 6822)

If the 37,000 US military are taken off intra-Korean border patrol ... will they be re-deployed as 'educators' in the Middle East .... to 'straighten out cultural quirks'?

lunarchick - 02:07pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6793 of 6822)

Senn Penn USA actor has gone to Baghdad to 'find out for himself' what's happening .... he'll be back to the USA to comment soon (GU international Sean Penn in Baghdad 'talk thread ')

almarst2002 - 02:17pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6794 of 6822)

Interestingly,

The N.K. was proclaimed one of the axis of evil BEFORE any nuclear programs where anounced.

The moral: While lighting an open fire upon a gun powder be ready for the consequences.

almarst2002 - 02:44pm Dec 17, 2002 EST (# 6795 of 6822)

"He [Bush] has also said: "We will not allow the world's worst weapons to remain in the hands of the world's worst leaders." Quite right. Look in the mirror, chum. That's you." - http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=2739

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