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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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lunarchick - 07:33pm Dec 31, 2002 EST (# 7175 of 7184)

Were the emphasis on benchmarking rather than 'nations' ... then the marchers might be chanting ...

"Improve and upgrade Iraq - we the people CAN"

A safer perspective for the world than international HATE!

lunarchick - 08:13pm Dec 31, 2002 EST (# 7176 of 7184)

US UN AUS

The UN's made it!

^{http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,5773135%5E7583,00.html}

rshow55 - 08:20am Jan 1, 2003 EST (# 7177 of 7184)
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.

I think this is a year where some lessons are going to have to be learned about stability and function of international systems, in terms of basic requirements of order , symmetry , and harmony - at the levels that make sense - and learned clearly and explicitly enough to produce systems that have these properties by design, not by chance.

The lessons are fairly easy, I believe, though not difficult to screw up. A problem is that perfect stability - and complete instability - are mirror images - and issues of balance and correct signs can be, in a plain sense, matters of life and death. And cost. For individuals, and whole systems.

Outfoxed by North Korea By LEON FUERTH http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/01/opinion/01FUER.html

"In view of the alternatives, it would be wise for the Bush administration to reverse course and engage North Korea in negotiations."

There is some motion in that direction. I think that the administration is working hard, and becoming sensitive and sophisticated about a number of things - and this is a very hopeful time.

With a large potential for (relatively small) disasters. The world as a whole isn't going to blow up really soon, for forseeable reasons - as it easily could have at a time when US - Russian communication was much less than it is today. But some millions of avoidable deaths - and ugly reverberations - could easily happen - and happen soon.

I think all these disasters could be avoided, and that good things are in motion that could and should avoid the bad, and bring in much safer, more prosperous, humanly more flexible times.

To do it, it seems to me this is the year where some lessons are going to have to be learned about stability and function of international systems, in terms of basic requirements of order , symmetry , and harmony . In the ways, and at the levels, that can work for the people and organizations involved. Lessons will have to be learned clearly and explicitly enough so that such systems can be developed - partly by evolution - but with a lot of specific design and crosschecking, as well. People always have to muddle through - but the muddling has to be better informed, about key issues of stability and function - or we're in trouble.

Maybe things are neither as hopeful nor as dangerous as I think. But that's how it looks to me.

I sent a postcard to a leader in November 2001, and I wish some of the specific, personal requests - that don't seem to me to involve much money or inconvenience, would be reconsidered. But maybe I'm wrong asking to talk to someone capable and connected face to face.

I am sure that some patterns of communication need to be improved - so that people can "connect the dots" better than they now do. Collecting the dots better, in ways people can more easily use. Finding ways to make the evidence more ordered, symmetric, and harmonious so that it can be used to find "good solutions." Sometimes organized in several ways.

Just now, I'm really hopeful.

lunarchick - 09:27am Jan 1, 2003 EST (# 7178 of 7184)

If the 'future' can be seen to be fine .... what went wrong with the present?

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