Our high north space organizing conference in Kiruna, Sweden is now in its third day.
My suitcase didn't arrive with me on the plane and I had to borrow some clothes from my host family. Finally it was delivered to me last evening and we learned that the bag had made a trip to Hawaii instead of being sent to Sweden. One woman at the conference remarked that "Americans don't know much about Europe so that explains why the bag was sent to Hawaii."
Yesterday we loaded on a bus and made the one hour trip to the Esrange Space Center where they launch rockets and serve as a downlink ground station for images from satellites. The public relations person told us that they only do civilian space operations there but our group of 50 people from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Russia, Japan, Mexico and the US had earlier listened to a presentation by Norwegian journalist Bard Wormdal provide conclusive evidence that in fact Esrange downloads many images for military operations. It was a real pleasure to witness the strong response from the conference participants to the evasiveness of the Esrange public relations officer.
Just listened to an excellent visual presentation by Global Network board convener Dave Webb from England who showed how the Pentagon's "missile defense" system works and is being used to surround Russia and China today. He also had some great photos from the many years of Global Network meetings in various countries during our 21 years of organizing.
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