New York Times on the Web Forums Resource Area for Forum Hosts and Moderators

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 - 08:26am Oct 23, 2002 EST (# 5146 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.

The search capacity on this thread is not available now. I hope it returns.

If people want to judge my work - by looking at a lot of it, with many links to this thread - they could click the links accessed by clicking rshow55 - - or look at postings I've done in the Guardian Talk threads. I'm proud of a lot of that work - - all that is posted from September on in Mankind's Inhumanity to Man and Woman - As Natural as human goodness http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/365

from #340 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/383 to #356 there is a reproduction of a posting I did in March of 2001 that I'm very proud of - and that I think people involved in decisions about war and peace might reasonably attend to. #340 starts:

Sometime on October 15th, a posting I made on July 25, 2001 in the Guardian Talk threads Psychwarfare, Casablanca . . . and terror - International and Paradigm Shift. . whose getting there? - Science was deleted by someone else. I believe that the posts were deleted to alter the record of the work lchic and I have been doing on the NYT Missile Defense board and here for more than two years. The deleted link described, with many citations, a detailed briefing that I'd given almarst - - the MD board's "Putin stand-in" in March of 2001.

I personally hope, and tend to believe, that Putin took time out of his schedule to attend to that briefing - a time-out referred to in Muddle in Moscow http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=533129

We need solutions that are, in a technical sense I try to explain in two poems "redemptive and detonative."

Secular Redemption http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/619

Chain Breakers http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/618

- -

Mushy idealism? I think not. I think that a lot of good redemptive and detonative solutions happen in the United States of America, and all over the world, every day. They are the solutions, I think, that work best.

We are living in a dangerous but hopeful time - - and things are so complicated that anything but the truth, and balanced right answers, are prohibitively expensive and dangerous. We should face the truth.

Even people with terrible pasts are making efforts at accomodation and improvement.

Other people and nations should, too.

When the United States avoids the truth, as it sometimes does, I believe other nations ought to ask questions. I believe that a great deal would happen, in the service of the common interest, if they did.

rshow55 - 11:18am Oct 23, 2002 EST (# 5147 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.

W.House Says End in Sight on U.N. Iraq Debate http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-un-bush.html Filed at 11:53 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A White House official said on Wednesday that a U.N. Security Council debate over a new resolution against Iraq was coming to an end and that there is a possibility of a failure to reach agreement.

I wonder how difficult it would be to reach an agreement acceptable to everybody else on the Security Council except for the US (or, perhaps, except for the US and GB.)

Sometimes diplomats can only be so diplomatic. It seems to me like it might be time to put some things on the record - and to circulate a proposal making clear what the US was unwilling to accept.

Records matter. Justifications of "moral superiority" also need to be discussed - for stability in this situation, and in the future.

5116 rshow55 10/22/02 4:21pm ... 5117 rshow55 10/22/02 4:22pm
5118 rshow55 10/22/02 5:27pm

Sometimes compulsion is necessary. I wonder how difficult it would be to force the United States to acknowledge some of the key things that it has done?

Missile Defense might be a good place to start. A related issue is the "good faith" the United States has shown in its negotiations and signed statements about nuclear weapons.

If people faced facts - - a lot of things could sort out. Either international law is being renegotiated - - or it is being negated. It should be the former, not that latter. But if it is the latter - it will be important to have that clear.

bbbuck - 11:42am Oct 23, 2002 EST (# 5148 of 17697)

The amazing part is, they tab, track and harass ... and yet .... can't get themselves sufficiently together to drop Showalter that note in writing that frees him to move on, and lay out his important contributions to society.

Hmmmm. looneychic sure likes rshow55.

Hey commondata my mission here is to taunt looneychic and rshow55 and anyone else who posts mountains of slop.
But thanks for the mention.

(12549 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Resource Area for Forum Hosts and Moderators Missile Defense