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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 - 03:06pm Aug 27, 2002 EST (# 4000 of 17697)
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.

Most problems in the world that are really important - most I can think about anyway - can be explained clearly, in ways that work for almost everybody, once they are fully understood.

Once they are really understood, they can probably be explained, in a clear, intellectually solid, beautiful and entertaining way in a good cartoon using Disney characters - - http://www.whom.co.uk/squelch/world_disney.htm A cartoon that can be understood and enjoyed by everybody involved.

For reading instruction - that would have to include the teachers, the parents, and the kids.

The key issues in missile defense are simple, too - - and ought to be explainable to the same people.

The "Mickey Mouse" test is a very tough standard. One I can't meet, so far. But it is the right one to shoot for, for things that really matter, and are really fundamental.

The reasons why things go wrong would often stand out - if more people looked at what was going on with the sharp eyes it took to make these characters. http://www.whom.co.uk/squelch/world_disney.htm

Why, exactly, is it that problems don't get fixed? Often enough, though the answers are ugly - they are also "obvious."

3794 lchic 8/18/02 9:40am

3796 lchic 8/18/02 10:01am to 3800 rshow55 8/18/02 12:43pm

Does anybody really doubt that N! and N!/2 are concepts that Mickey Mouse could effectively explain? And explain gracefully, at enough mutually consistent levels to work for both kids and adults?

Somebody needs to explain what hope means - - and what hopeless means - - when we face the statistical choices that we often do.

Teenagers who could never learn to read would have something to teach about that. And if we as a culture understood their problems - we'd have something to teach them back.

almarst2002 - 03:14pm Aug 28, 2002 EST (# 4001 of 17697)

Swapping Justice for US Exceptionalism http://www.somalilandnet.com/somaliland_news/somaliland/2002/may/10959.shtml

Jul 26 2002 (The Nation/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- By voting unanimously to exempt American peacekeepers from prosecution by the International Criminal Court for 12 months, the UN Security Council swapped justice for American exceptionalism.

This is a dangerous precedent

First the UN has made a serious blunder because it is not the mandate of the Security Council to interpret treaties that are negotiated somewhere else. But the Security Council has passed a resolution that bars the court from investigating or prosecuting members of UN-authorised missions for one year, subject to renewal. A d v e r t i s e m e n t --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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In effect the body has amended an international treaty ratified by nearly 80 countries. If you think UN peacekeepers are angels read on:

In September 1993, the world reacted with horror when pictures of how Italian and Belgian soldiers on a peacekeeping operation in Somalia treated the locals were shown.

Blue helmets put hoods on Somali heads

The blue helmets put hoods over Somali heads, then tied their legs and hands and left them in the scorching sun without food or water for God knows how long.

If the International Criminal Court had been there the so-called peacekeepers would have been charged.

Luckily, a clever lawyer said that the UN was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention on war crimes and the soldiers were tried in their respective countries with little coverage of the cases and few got to know about them.

There was also the case of two Belgian paratroopers - Privates Claude Baert and Kurt Coelus - who were caught on camera roasting a Somali youth over a flaming brazier. There were also reports that at a UN base in southern Somalia some Belgian troops locked a child in a metal container, in the blazing sun, after he was caught stealing food from the base. The child did not survive the ordeal.

This shows that peacekeeping operations can at times turn to be basis of war crimes and that is what the United States does not want its soldiers tried for - just in case they are caught in the wrong.

The US says it is determined to prevent any detention of Americans by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

It has even passed the American Servicemen's Protection Act (ASPA) that provides for the invasion of ICC centres to release detained US citizens.

For starters, the ICC is not a Kangaroo court but an institution that will hold perpetrators responsible for crimes against humanity and break the cycle of atrocity and revenge.

Over the years, we have seen temporary tribunals established to deal with the genocide in Rwanda and in former Yugoslavia, but the ICC would be permanent.

It represents an acid test of America's commitment to international and universal concepts of justice and human rights - its willingness to be bound by the rule it establishes for others.

America is, no doubt, an exceptional nation. It is rich and powerful and can impose on others standards and strictures it evades. But America should not only see justice and irreproachable rectitude in the mirror.

First it must agree to change its exceptionalism face, which now threatens to scupper both the court and, failing that, UN peacekeeping operations in future.

In the new world order, certain laws must guide wars and peacekeeping operations and America should do away with its age-old resistance, where the country does not want to see its troops being vulnerable to any foreigner's jurisdiction.

It is also the height of arrogance where the US polity thinks that its officials should not be charged of war crimes, genocide or serious

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