ARE YOU A SUPPORTER OF LAWFARE?

The banner in the photo above was brought to Darmstadt, Germany by our friends from the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition who organize to oppose a U.S. space radar spy base called Pine Gap in the outback of their country.

On the right side of the photo, in the distance just above the banner, you see five round gray big golf ball looking radars. During our conference last weekend in Darmstadt we held a vigil on the outskirts of town at a US spy station, which is part of the global Echelon surveillance system. (While we were protesting at this facility a reporter from the U.S. military newspaper Stars & Stripes took photos and interviewed several of our folks. Click on the link in the headline above for the article.)

These U.S. space radar facilities are now scattered all over the planet and are being upgraded for participation in the Star Wars program. The radar facilities will communicate directly with military war fighting satellites and direct U.S. attack around the world. Much of the growth in membership of our Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space is coming from communities around the world where these installations are built.

During our conference we learned more about how these military space networks, now called Operationally Responsive Space (ORS), are being set up to expand U.S. ability to launch preemptive attack around the world.

We also talked extensively how the U.S. program of expanding Star Wars facilities into Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, and Hungary is part of a strategy to surround Russia. One of our members told us about a Rand Corporation plan now in circulation to break Russia into three separate countries so the oil corporations can better control their resources. (This is the same strategy taken to bust up the former Yugoslavia and which is today underway in Iraq.)

One of our major aims coming out of the conference is to expand our contacts with emerging peace movements in Eastern Europe that are opposing construction of U.S. and NATO Star Wars facilities in their countries - under the guise of "missile defense."

One last thing of interest from our conference. Tim Rinne, Coordinator of Nebraskans for Peace, reported on how the Strategic Command (StratCom) HQ in Omaha is now making efforts to get the University of Nebraska to become a major center for the creation of new space law. Tim recently attended a conference at the university, sponsored by StratCom, and reported how Pentagon officials told the assembled that those who try to use international law to prevent an arms race in space were practicing a new form of warfare. The Pentagon spokesman termed it "lawfare."

So there you have it. Anyone who wants to use the "rule of law" to create global stability is akin to a terrorist. Remember that one - lawfare.