MINING THE TAXPAYERS POCKETBOOK FOR SPACE

Two important developments concerning space this week. First NASA announced that their Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had safely reached the red planet and is now one of four functioning spacecraft in orbit there. The $720 million mission will survey the planet to identify minerals on the Martian surface. Looking for the origins of life you ask? Well no, not really. In fact NASA, doing the bidding for the aerospace industry that hopes to one day mine Mars, is setting up the infrastructure to make it possible in the future to have the industry go in and reap major profit from mining operations. The Halliburton Corporation is today creating a drilling mechanism to do Mars mining. Once NASA has successfully created the ability the mine the skies the entire operation will be privatized. And you know who is paying for it. Understand?

The other big story is Star Wars and the Pentagon. The military is asking Congress for hundreds of millions of extra tax $$$$$ to test weapons in space. According to a story in the Boston Globe today, "The DoD's budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 includes money for a variety of tests on offensive and defensive weapons, including a missile launched at a small satellite in orbit, testing a small space vehicle that could disperse weapons while traveling at 20 times the speed of sound, and determining whether high-powered ground-based lasers can effectively destroy enemy satellites."

So here we go. The veil is off the bride. The Bush team has broken down the door. They are now on record that they intend to move forward with offensive weapons in space. Pentagon spokesman Rick Lerner told the Globe, "We just want to do some experiments" on weapons technology in space. Yeah, just experiments...that's all.

If they were just experiments, why did the Bush administration vote last fall to block a United Nations resolution calling for a ban on weapons in space? Every country in the world (except the U.S. and Israel) are ready to sign an international treaty banning weapons in space. But the U.S. knows that if the Pentagon can put weapons in space, thus dominating space, they can militarily control the Earth on behalf of corporate globalization. No one would be able to stand against the U.S. in times of hostility because all warfare today on the Earth is directed by space technology.

The Pentagon budget for this year is $450 billion. They not only want to control the Earth but now they are moving to control Mars and soon Bush intends to put bases on the Moon. And as you set up mining operations on the planetary bodies the aerospace industry will seek funding to create new military technologies to "protect their assets" on those bodies from other space-faring nations. Imagine the costs involved in this inter-planetary warfare system they are now setting in motion?

It is easy to understand why the corporate elite have made the determination that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, welfare programs, public transit, environmental clean-up, and the like all have to be cut. The enormous fiscal appetite of the Pentagon for space control and domination technology development is going to overwhelm everything else in the national budget.

What do you think? Should we go along with this madness? Is this how you want your tax dollars spent?