how abpout a piece of fishing? or mabe getting a piece while fishing....
lol fishing with a piece?

i killed (targets)again today, without remorse or actually any feeling
whatsoever except the joy of doing it. 60 rounds downrange in an air
rifle competition. took 2nd.

This thread began with a probing question from Alex: if there were no
guns, would people find other weapons?

I the last weeks I was asked to think a bit about a parallel question:
given the emergence of a new generation of weaponry, what political and
cultural shifts will be required to avoid the massive and unstoppable
destruction that these weapons will be able to inflict?

The traditional answers have been:
1. I'll build even better weapons
2. I will annihilate you if you attack me
3. I will annihilate you before you can annihilate me

In the face of the next generation of weapons, none of these strategies
will work. The next generation will be cheap, easy-to-hide, and mobile.
Some of the weapons will be technically difficult, some
not-so-difficult, and not-so-expensive.

In other words, anyone can have them, and anyone can use them, against
any target they wish.

So what kind of world do we need to create to respond to the challenges
posed by these weapons?



Oceans

why....to create employment? to expand a corrupt industry???

what we need is an independant body to establish a Universal Ethics
Manifesto and branches globally to enforce impartially thru a Global
Tribunal all crimes against humanity.

if it's going to happen then whether we like it or not then we have to
have power to completely control it.

argh

Im going fishing!!!

And whom are you going to trust with creating a body like that?
I don't think you'd find enough people in the world that you can
completely trust.

At least, I would find it hard to believe you could.

As our species struggles to come to the realization that we are all part
of a whole -- and not "Spaniards" or "Americans" or "Texans", or "New
Yorkers", or "black" or "white" or "Episcopalians", or "Tamils" or , or
,or....the kinds of structures Alex points to will almost certain emerge
-- unless we reduce the definition of "human being" to some primitive,
brutish and dysfunctional state before that.

Andrea -- I don't think that finding trustworthy people is hard at all.
For the most part, people want to be 'good', they want to do 'the right
thing', and it is only because they become oppressed in some way or have
a too-narrow view of themselves and the society around them that they
act or speak stupidly.

For example, a lot of good people are in various international NGOs, or
maybe they are running a company sympathetically, or maybe they advance
the causes of human progress through their writings, or maybe they are a
nurse working in the wards of the most destitute, or maybe they are just
'ordinary' people who are simply hoping and waiting for a chance to make
a contribution to the world.



Oceans

Alex, I was rereading your post and don't understand what you mean by
"why....to create employment? to expand a corrupt industry???"

Are you thinking that I am advocating the development of the next
generation of weaponry? I am not. I am just pointing out that it is
happening.

Are you thinking that I am advocating developing better weapons, or
expanding the arms industry? I am not -- on the contrary, I think these
new weapons make further weaponization of our species, at a minimum,
dysfunctional. Instead, our species has to conceive of and pursue an
entirely different way of handling the problem posed by weapons.

my guess is it would have to be a submission from our best minds ,
from all walks of life and every profession.
their essays and perspectives to be collected and reviewed by a
selection of panel representing all nations..maybe nobel laureats
people we have recognized for their brilliance and contribution...it's
still HUGE no matter how i look at it and totally idealistic, and what's
morre scary is what you're telling us....that is basically too
late....

in reply to your questions.... no i was being sarcastic!! i know you
better than that !! sheesh

Whew!!!

I worried that Kafka might have returned

No, I don't think it too late, but we will have to find the leadership
that this will require somewhere. Where and who is our Jean Monet? Our
Benjamin Franklin? Our U Thant?

The new generation weapons if they proliferate will make things very
unpleasnt for any oppressor. They probably won't make things much worse
for the opprressed, who are already overmatched. So the new generation
weapons may have as one of their effects to give those who oppress
pause.

If someone smuggles an 'old' suitcase nuke into Washington or Dallas or
Ithaca or San Diego and sets it off (not too hard to do), it will
certainly make the American people think twice about supporting the kind
of interventionist policies that the US has supported since the 1950s,
and that have now found their most arrogant and confused expression in
the Bush administration.

So while the new generation weapons up the ante in terms of
proliferation and destructiveness, they may also rein in the killer
government, in the same way that the USSR's nuclear arsenal offset that
of the US, and so imposed constraints on the activitites of both.

But that still leaves the enormous task of reorganizng the way our
species acts collectively. In an atmosphere of massive fear and panic,
this will be essentially impossible to do, I would guess.



Oceans

Fishing....good plan...I am so there..

okaaaaay where do i sign up....

For fishing or for world building?

You're the captain Oceans

Where are we meeting, Atlantic coast or Pacific?

Atlantic please, it's nearer to me

On a more serious note, we all know that power can change people, no
matter what kind of power it is. So you have to be very, very sure that
the people you choose can withstand the temptation.

When you say that Oceans, I look up.
I look at our smart bomps, weapons, etc, become absolete, without our
preparedness! Then war will become horriffic! If someone took out 2
satellites in the same area of space. It would create a window of a few
hours, that all our smart weapons will have no usefullness!
Knock out 4 and the window would grow larger! We really have no
conventional weapons in aircraft missles,and the what not! It would be
like putting a muzzle on a pit-bull!
They wouldnt even have to knock the satellite down if they could just
blind it! If it is a major power and done at the right time, we would be
smoke by the time we figured out what happened! They know this too
(military) but they cant get their head out of their ___ long enough to
fund the fix!

alex=o)

fact is guns are never going away... weapons of any kind will alway be a
reality as long as humans have a need for ownership...

Having been on the barrel side of guns, I just don't like them. Also,
having been on the weapons side of penis'. fists, and pure malice...I
don't care much for anything used as a weapon.

I think we have the ability to be and choose to use our talents, yes.
Reality is what it is, and if one comes at me or mine ever again...I may
not have a gun, but there are many weapons of choice...

Nene!

Good to see you back, sweetie!

There are many countries where the people have created a trusting and
trustworthy civilization, and that are essentially devoid of weapons in
terms of self-defense against fears of fellow-citizens. Switzerland,
Costa Rica, Sweden, Egypt, Madagascar, Thailand, Singapore, Canada to
name a few....

It has to do with the character of a people. The US is still an immature
country, powerful but immature. We are still too close to the frontier
days, and have left too many cultural and
political wounds to fester unresolved, unhealed, e.g. the Civil War,
Viet Nam. So the level of self-loathing and mistRust and anger within
the population is high. It takes self-confidence and a feeling of safety
to put aside the toys of war. In the absence of those we puff and we
strut, we bluster and curse, threaten and flare up....



Oceans