Click on photo of mural for a larger view* We had a great time in Quebec. The old city is just the most beautiful place and the food was a special treat. I wanted to eat every 2-3 hours. One of the great scenes is the mural that tells the history of the city. One of the more interesting stories was that by the mid-1600s there were only 3,000 people in Quebec, mostly men. The British military were banging on the city walls. The king of France emptied out the Paris orphanages that were run by Catholic nuns and sent about 800 young women to Quebec to become brides for the men. They were well educated by the nuns so they ensured that the French language and culture would be entrenched in the new world. The men in Quebec were lined up and required by law to pick a wife. A priest and a couple nuns were on hand and the women were "allowed" to reject a husband if they suspected he might be a drinker ..... but they likely had little power in that moment. Today the woman are called the mothers of the nation.
* It now appears that we have won a victory as the Obama administration is reportedly going to scrap Bush plans to deploy missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. This is a big win for the activists in both those countries and for those of us around the world who have been working for years to limit the spread of these provocative systems. But the downside is that the US is likely to now deploy the systems instead in Israel and Turkey and at the present time the Pentagon is expanding missile defense deployments in Japan, South Korea and Australia. So we win one but we still have to press on to ensure that we shut down all of these space technology systems that are a part of the US first-strike planning program.
* NASA launched a rocket on Tuesday that was to be used to create artificial clouds from polluting rocket exhaust at the outermost layers of Earth's atmosphere. The mission was clearly a military space technology test as it is a project of the Naval Research Laboratory and the Department of Defense Space Test Program. This test shows again how military science today is a closed system because it does not concern itself with how their projects impact humans or the web of life on our Mother Earth. We know that for years the Pentagon and NASA have been testing technologies to change weather, interrupt global communications, and more. Since the use of poison gas and the explosion of the atomic bomb military scientists have attempted to recreate the power of God to allow themselves greater ability to control the world and our environment. The public allows them to get away with these programs because they are the "rocket scientists" and we are just the "little people". The time has come though for us to say enough is enough and demand that our tax dollars stop being used for these purposes. There needs to be more debate about science ethics and more scientists need to help the public understand, and be able to speak about, these programs that we are all paying for. It is not about being a Luddite but just trying to get a handle on the out-of-control nature of military science today. We can't have a democratic society when the people don't have a clue what is really going on inside the bowels of the military industrial complex.
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