Talk:Disempowering Terrorists

Please let me hear from you on these ideas.

We are almost certainly about to change the political party in power in America. Our efforts to disempowering the terrorists may change radically. Out of box ideas like buy-in could save our nation. New approaches are desperately needed now.

--Jriley 19:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I have some problems with this article.

My main problem is that while the title leads the reader to believe the article will address the subject of disempowering terrorists, the article doesn't actually address this topic at all. So the title is misleading.

My other problem, which is related to the above, is that as it stands the article is a fairly good essay on buy-in. I think it might be better to merge this article with the Buy-In_Explained article and have a subsection on disempowering terrorists.

The paragraph on disempowering terrorists doesn't actually explain how buy-in can be used to disempower them, only how buy-in is, perhaps, used to recruit and empower them.

To be honest, I am quite uncomfortable discussing the subject at all, but I suppose it needs to be addressed. I'm also really unsure about whether this is a suitable forum for the discussion of such topics. I would prefer to keep our subject matter specific to returning to, and settling/colonizing the Moon and this subject does not fit that description. It also crosses into other areas that are politically and militarily sensitive.

-- Mdelaney 15:24, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Terrorism and returning to the Moon

If this article does not upset you, you simply have not been paying attention to our present reality.

One of the main reasons we do not now have an aggressive Return to the Moon program is the extremely high cost of the War on Terror. Not only are most of the available funds being used up but we are running up high debts what will last for decades.

NASA is being cut back and the number of young people hired and trained is falling off. The period between the retirement of the Shuttle and the first lunar flights will particularly dangerous to our space fairing capabilities.

For our return to the Moon, this war is the elephant in the pallor. If we do not address this problem, we are not going.

An alternative to an endless war must be found. Understanding buy-in to enable disempowerment of terrorist is one possible path. It is one that can be understood and supported by technically trained people. It can be our contribution to this effort. And it is very, very cheap.

Why this approach has a good chance of working is a little more technically and socially complicated. I will take the action item to write up an implementation section for this article next week.

--Jriley 21:21, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

First, I did not say the article upset me I said it made me uncomfortable but needed to be addressed, I didn't attack the subject, I mainly only said I had a problem with the title being misleading relative to the content and suggested merging it with the buy-in article. As an article on disempowerment it isn't very strong as it stood since most of the article was taken up by duplicating the explanation of buy-in that already exists in your other article. You seem to have a major problem with editorial criticism, but this is Lunarpedia, not Rileypedia :-)

Second, I'm very much aware of the current reality and in fact spent most of last week dealing with that current reality while traveling. I have no way of knowing how much of that reality is real and how much is hype though. Nor has anyone outside certain very elevated circles. I've even found that people working in anti terrorism don't know how much of their working knowledge is true, they just take it at face value and do their job. I know how that feels, I've had to deal with it too.

Third, the war on terror can really only be credited for lack of a return to the moon in the last 6 years. The previous 29 years were squandered on the cold war, the shuttle to nowhere, aborted space stations, gulf war 1, the vietnam war, fuel crises, iranian hostage crisis, bombing libya, star wars, lebanon, falklands, grenada, russian invasion of afghanistan, funding mujahedeen, iran contras, war on drugs etc. Basically governments (note the plural) have been getting in the way of space development for 60 years because they want to reserve it for military and use it as a sink for funding so they can take it away from space to give to other fields when they need to. In other words, NASA, the RSA in Russia and ESA have basically been getting in the way by virtue of keeping space as an exclusive club on behalf of their government sponsors. (ESA is a private corporation but is directly funded by European governments).

Fourth, many people have little or no faith in NASA returning to the moon because NASA is an arm of the US government which itself does not seem interested in anything other than raising revenue. There is also the element of corruption that exists within all governments worldwide. Representatives all over the world seem to do very well for themselves while in government, mostly by becoming high paid chairpersons of large corporations.

I personally do not see government or government agencies as the answer to our return to the moon problems. In fact government seems to be causing most of the everyday problems we have in the world today that are stifling growth in many areas.

-- Mdelaney 12:55, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the only terrorists this approach is likely to Disempower are the fairly well educated, fairly well off, which is the minority of the terrorists.

The poor and disenfranchised are going to laugh in your face when you tell them they are going to fail. Their lives are so horrid that the only way out they can see is to earn rewards in the next life, and get there a little early. Since you cannot absolutely prove that they're wrong, you're not going to convince them. Or are you going to override the circuits for religion too?

--Rose/Miros 01:05, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

You are exactly correct. This approach is specifically for technically educated people. Technically educated people can fly airplanes into American buildings. The street poor can throw rocks and bottles in foreign slums. The damage technically educated people can do is exponentially higher than poor people.

--Jriley 12:47, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

A poor person with a plane ticket funded by a rich fanatic could cause all kinds of havoc on arrival, especially if given various materials by an existing cell. Don't discount the poor true believers.

--Rose/Miros 15:31, 16 August 2007 (UTC)