BACK HOME AND CATCHING UP

Just got home yesterday from the Britain trip and have to admit I am just a bit worn out. Had my plane cancelled in Toronto that was to get me back to Boston so by the time I got there it was too late to catch the bus back to Maine. I had to spend the night in Boston and got back home near noon yesterday. Have been unpacking today and going through hundreds of emails as you can imagine.

The photo above is our meeting with British Commander Nick Loveday at the U.S.-RAF Fylingdales space radar facility in the Moors national park in northern England. Alongside me is Dave Webb (GN Chairperson) and Jackie Fearnley (an activist who lives in the village nearest the base). Cmdr. Loveday gave us a tour of the facility and did a 40-minute presentation on the role of the facility. It's been open for 44 years and was initially a early warning radar base to pick up any Soviet nuclear missiles. Now it is being upgraded for participation in the U.S. "missile defense" scheme. Similar U.S. radar bases like this are also located at Beale AFB, California, Clear AFS, Alaska, Cape Cod AFS, Massachusetts, and Thule Air Base, Greenland. All of them are being upgraded for a role in Star Wars. Other U.S. and NATO radars are also to be brought on-line for space weapons warfare program.

Our meeting with the commander was quite cordial and I was surprised to learn that she was going to come to listen to my talk later that evening (September 7) in the nearby seaside town of Whitby. So indeed later that night the commander did show up and took notes while I spoke. After my talk she was asked by one man in the audience for her reaction to what I had to say. Her answer was, "I did not hear anything I disagree with, but I did not agree with everything he said." I think that meant that she had no disagreement factually with anything I said but then did not necessarily agree with my political analysis of what is going on. Fair enough.

Actually it was good to have the honest and fair dialogue with the commander. She is in a way just doing her job and we commend her for seeing us as equals and not some wild crazy protesters who are the "enemy." That is progress.

Our real disagreement is with the politicians and the aerospace industry who are making the decisions to move the arms race into space. Maybe some people in the military are also concerned about this coming arms race? It would be nice to have them become more vocal about their concerns. After all, when you join the military you really do so because you want to protect your country and the people of your country. At some point, if you see that the leaders of your nation (like George W. Bush and former Prime Minister Tony Blair) are leading you to ruin it is your duty to speak out.

Coming out of WW II it was called Nuremberg Law. It is the duty of a soldier to speak out when they recognize their country is on the wrong course. It is wrong to follow orders that run against maintaining global peace.

(Click on the photo above for a better view of the radar.)