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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.

rshow55 - 09:03am Jan 3, 2003 EST (# 7264 of 7270)
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.

Hussein and Jong Il BOTH have a hobby of watching videotaped torture sessions of their poor victims...FOR SHEER ENTERTAINMENT!!!

They would like nothing more than to strap you onto the rack and savor your stereophonic pleadings through wide-range HEADPHONES, you sap!!!

As professionals, going about their particular business - they may have good reasons to be the way they are. Maybe, doing the best they can, they're sorting things out. I was tortured for five days once. By Americans. They did me the professional courtesy of using a torture technique I'd discussed with them at an earlier time. I have mixed feelings about the result - which worked from some professionally important points of view, but not others. But it worked well enough that a lot did sort out after that.

I think Saddam and Jong Il are backwards. They're orderly, a lot of the time. Symmetric. Harmonious the sense that there's consistency within a lot of areas.

Not perfectly orderly, symmetric, and harmonious is the senses they're orderly, symmetric, and harmonious. Lots to be desired in some ways.

But still impressively so, in a lot of spots. Enough that I admire some things about them. For some reasons that make sense to me. But often enough, they're backwards.

If that's true, there is a saving grace. From some perspectives. Things are ready to switch.

If they have enough straight, but backwards, all they have to do is switch signs, in order, and they can get solutions that would be beautiful for them, for their people, and for us.

Getting that so it works for everybody involved looks possible - though some exception handling has to be straight, and some things have to be in place, and calibrated.

The N.Koreans and Iraqis could do with some checking codes. So could we, in spots.

My checking codes are only as good as they are (look how clumsy this thread is, in some sequences) - but I'm pretty sure they are, by a long way, the best on the planet. I've worked on them. I'm keeping my promises as best I can, and I think a lot of things look very good - including a lot of responses in North Korea and Iraq (and other countries.)

Peace - stable win-win peace, looks possible to me. Even likely, if we take our time, keep our heads, and keep a sense of proportion.

Sometimes you need opposites - even "natural enemies" in some ways - for reasons so basic that not even a God (assuming there is/are Gods) could change.

You can be perfectly adapted for one particular defined purpose in a particular spatial-logical-temporal context - - but that guarantees that you're wrong for another context. But you can right in that context, as well, if when conditions change from context to context, things switch.

For stable switching, at the level we're at, you need order, symmettry, harmony - and foresight - - and I think things are going reasonably well.

Right now it is a good time for being careful - and trying to look at both the good and bad of everybody's point of view, from different perspectives.

I'd like to keep things from blowing up - at least until things are in good order. There are pictures, I'm sure you've seen them, of old skyscrapers coming down from carefully placed explosions. For that to work as well as it can (or to work satisfactorily at all) a lot of things have to be clean, neat, and organized.

commondata - 09:14am Jan 3, 2003 EST (# 7265 of 7270)

I'm curious rshow; who tortured you, why and how? Can you prove it or could you have done? Why aren't the courts or media interested, or do you not want them interested?

commondata - 09:30am Jan 3, 2003 EST (# 7266 of 7270)

And why on earth do you say that being tortured worked from some professionally important points of view?

Do you think that torture is a valid weapon in the security services armoury and under what circumstances should it be used?

commondata - 09:35am Jan 3, 2003 EST (# 7267 of 7270)

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/justice/law_background_torture.html

Litigation under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA or sec. 1350) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA) have resulted in billions of dollars in judgments, and have had an important impact on plaintiffs and human rights both in the United States and internationally. Such cases do not require official approval; they can be brought by individuals who have control over the lawsuits and thus are less subject to political vagaries.

Civil remedies include damage awards for injuries and punitive damages meant to deter future abusive conduct as well as send a message to others that such conduct is unacceptable. In addition to any money that can be collected, these cases are important to the victims and their families. Plaintiffs are allowed to tell their stories to a court, can often confront their abusers, and create an official record of their persecutions. This in turn could lead to a criminal prosecution. Filing these civil suits can empower the victims and give them a means of fighting back. It can also help them heal.

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