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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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rshow55 - 06:53pm Jan 23, 2003 EST (# 7952 of 7955)
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.

At a time where a great many people in many nations, including many in the Bush administration - are working hard for peaceful accomodations of difficult and significant problems, this is a superbly clear and important piece.

I think that it gets to the core of a problem that needs to be solved - and a nexus of misunderstandings that need to be adressed.

Why We Know Iraq Is Lying By CONDOLEEZZA RICE http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/opinion/23RICE.html

Instead of implementing national initiatives to disarm, Iraq maintains institutions whose sole purpose is to thwart the work of the inspectors.

Is that the purpose of these institutions? Or are these institutions, clumsy and ugly as they may be - set up to defend primary interests of Islamic culture - as it now is in Iraq, with the compromises in place? The issue is important - central, I think, to the problems we face with Iraq - and have had over a decade where a nation that shows some bureaucratic competence has been firing off air-air missiles without turning on guidance radars.

That is a message that we should, it seems to me -have read as a message, rather than a "simple" mistake.

There are problems here involving two extremely touchy subjects -- sex and religion. And, in the Islamic case, some fundamental interactions between sex and religion where the Islamic world is very different from the West.

Win-win solutions to the North Korean mess are well underway, it seems to me. That's because the problems, difficult as they are - are reasonably well understood.

To get win-win solutions to the messes in or involving the Middle East - Iraq, the Palestinian-Israeli tragedy, and Islamic terrorism - we need to have some things understood.

I'm hesitating a good deal before going more deeply into this subject matter - but hope I can collect my courage and logic enough to do it well - because the core problems in the Middle East involve sex and religion - in ways that have gone very badly, in human terms, for a long time. Solutions that work have to make aesthetic, moral and practical sense to the real people and nations involved.

Gisterme , pardon me for not responding to you as fast as you'd like - but Bush administration actions vis-a-vis N. Korea tell me that you already know what is most important about getting oscillatory solutions to problems that are well defined where, without some negotiating care - "ideal" solutions are also unstable.

In the Middle East, some key problems aren't workably defined yet - so that everyone involved can agree on what the difficulties are .

Why We Know Iraq Is Lying By CONDOLEEZZA RICE http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/opinion/23RICE.html

is a fine piece with the great virtue that she makes some of the key assumptions that have to be adressed clear.

Pardon me for moving slowly enough to be careful -when the issues are sex and religion - and a very destabilizing war is looming - there's reason enough to be careful. The Bush administration is to be commended for setting up pressures that may, at long last, get people scared enough to look clearly at the problems they actually have.

Win-win solutions that can be clearly defined can be made stable and practical.

That is a significant advance on the work of Nash - something I've worked long and hard on - and I'm doing the best I can, within my limitations - to convey the information on a basis where it can be heard under somewhat constrained personal circumstances.

Almarst - if Russia, and some other nation states actually asked that some key points be checked to closure that would help. But it might turn out that your favorite explaination of American behavior - that Americans are insenstitive and evil - might be subje

rshow55 - 06:56pm Jan 23, 2003 EST (# 7953 of 7955)
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.

Almarst - if Russia, and some other nation states actually asked that some key points be checked to closure that would help. But it might turn out that your favorite explaination of American behavior - that Americans are insenstitive and evil - might be subject to at least some qualifications.

Maybe some judgements might be more severe, if some facts were clearer. Others would be less so.

People are trying to get some things solved - and personally I'm very hopeful.

lchic - 07:09pm Jan 23, 2003 EST (# 7954 of 7955)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

NASH - Games Theory

REITH LECTURE 2002 BBC

games theory looks at situations where two (or more) participants have a range of possible choices that they can take

each decides which choice to make in the light of others' choices, since the outcome is produced by the particular combination of their choices

the 'Nash Equilibrium' is the outcome which would be produced by each making the best choice, given their knowledge of others' choices

http://www.open2.net/trust/hall_of_fame/nash1.htm

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