New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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.

lunarchick - 07:35pm Jan 3, 2003 EST (# 7299 of 7308)

Robert Fisk: Journalists are under fire for telling the truth
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=362545

journalistic cowardice?
pro-Israel
falsely accusing reporters of "lazy, sloppy or stupid" journalism

I will tell you. Journalists are being attacked for telling the truth, for trying to tell it how it is. American journalists especially. I urge them to read a remarkable new book published by the New York University Press and edited by John Collins and Ross Glover. It's called Collateral Language and is, in its own words, intended to expose "the tyranny of political rhetoric". Its chapter titles – "Anthrax", "Cowardice", "Evil", "Freedom", Fundamentalism", "Justice", "Terrorism", Vital Interests" and – my favourite – "The War on..." (fill in the missing country) tell it all.

Meanwhile, rest assured, the journalists are getting onside, to tell you the story the government wants you to hear.

rshow55 - 07:59pm Jan 3, 2003 EST (# 7300 of 7308)
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.

116 rshow55 3/2/02 5:34pm 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.

Here are some references, to the Riley-Showalter paradigm thread, Paradigm Shift .... whose getting there? . . . that I think describe, in a new and clearer way, how paradigm conflict works.

306-310: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/360

313-317: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/367

166-167: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/209

" In our interactions, both Russians, and Americans, and others, can have perceptual difficulties that resemble paradigm conflict impasses -- and they can occur, for different reasons, on all sides of a controversy -- so that everybody misunderstands a great deal (and misunderstandings don't match.) I think that is the case on crucial issues involving our military balances, and especially regarding our nuclear balances. I think it is an issue involved very often when things go badly between us. Made worse, whenever deception also occurs.

Here are more links to the "paradigm" thread" -- of lower priority, but perhaps useful:

26: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/33

93-95: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/118

215-217: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/259

221-222: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/265

261-262: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/310

273-274: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/324

and something for academic folk: 295-297: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7726f/349

One point about such problems is basic.

When a lot of change is necessary it takes a lot of feedback -- and the information being fed back into the situation had better be understood, and better be true.

Story telling , to touch both the mind and the heart, is crucial . . and central to human hopes.

So is force enough to get facts straight - - and looked at.

With the stakes as high as they are - nation states and responsible actors need to do what they can to force a situation where key facts, on which decency, safety and function depends - are attended to.

We can work a great deal out - in mutual interest - if we're all "reading from the same page" where facts are concerned.

We need more discussion than we've had about the "right to lie" - when the lies matter to other people - and the "right to check" - - when reasonable order, symmetry, and harmony can only occur when people are working from the same facts.

gisterme - 08:19pm Jan 3, 2003 EST (# 7301 of 7308)

mazza9 1/3/03 7:17pm

"...It is only when the two competing tribes confront each other at the waterhole that the "yelling and screaming" which had sufficed in the past is now replaced by physical mayhem and death!..."

That scene pretty closely fits what the NKs have been doing lately...yelling and screaming and posturing. Apparently they've just gotten around to finding a bone and are trying to figure out how to take over the water hole with it.

Hopefully they'll soon realize that there's plenty of water for everybody if they'll just not demand all of it.

(7 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense