SELLING 'MISSILE DEFENSE' BASE TO MAINE

Today a friend emailed me about a radio program that played yesterday across Maine on the public radio network.  The show was supposed to be about 'solar storms' and the damage they could do to the electric grid.  So I listened to the show and came away outraged and motivated to learn more about the scam that is behind this story.

Our old nemesis Frank Gaffney (longtime weaponization of space advocate) is linked to this Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) story and is once again promoting fear and the interests of the military industrial complex.

His crew are working on a scare-campaign about space induced EMP taking out our electrical grid.  They've failed in Congress so are picking states one-by-one to join in the program to fund the 'protection of our grid'.

The Washington Congressional bill is called "Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage (SHIELD) Act" – legislation designed to ensure that, at a minimum, the roughly 300 transformers that make up the backbone of America’s electric grid are quickly hardened against electromagnetic pulse effects. Newt Gingrich is one of the key promoters.

Gaffney reports that, "In Maine a Democratic politician [Rep. Andrea Boland from Sanford] is pushing the state to adopt legislation calling for the 'islanding' of its grid, so as to ensure its continued viability in the event EMP takes down the rest of New England’s electric infrastructure.  It is to be earnestly hoped that, once again, 'as Maine goes', so goes the nation with other states emulating this effort to adopt grid-hardening measures that the federal government has failed to date to inaugurate."

The talking heads on the Maine radio program yesterday made the outrageous case that possible nuclear attacks from Iran and North Korea are key reasons for needing this protection.  And they made them sound imminent.

During this program one of the men was from EMPACT America, an organization “concerned about protecting the American people” from a nuclear or natural electromagnetic pulse (EMP) catastrophe. One of their "missions" listed on their web site is to "Organize the American people to act effectively in furtherance of their security from the EMP threat at the federal, state, local, and individual levels." 

The EMPACT speaker talked about a possible east coast mid-course missile defense base coming to western Maine and said the state would be more likely to get it if the local grid was hardened so that the base could survive any EMP 'disruption'.  "State's have to take things into their own hands," he claimed.

Looking closely at EMPACT's board of advisors you find present and past right-wing members of Congress, retired military, weapons industry, Heritage Foundation, Navy nuclear program, and missile defense operatives.   

After the show got going they didn't talk much about solar storms and mostly talked about how we need to get Maine and Congress to quickly move and protect the grid - and mostly from Iran and North Korea. (Great geomagnetic storms have occurred in the past, but not since the advent of the modern electronic age.) 

According to Robert Farley, assistant professor at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, "The central political purpose of the EMP awareness movement appears to be advancement of the cause of missile defense. The most extreme estimates of the effect of EMP restore the Cold War-era existential fears of nuclear war... The fact that EMP is poorly researched and not well understood works in its favor as a scare tactic. Since evidence of EMP’s allegedly lasting impact is purely theoretical, EMP awareness advocates can make outlandish claims regarding the threat that even the smallest nuclear arsenal poses." See more here

It should be noted that the Pentagon has long been planning to use "missile defense" programs as key elements in their first-strike attack planning on Russia and China.  (The missile defense systems would pick-off a countries retaliatory strikes after the Pentagon hit them first.  The US Space Command runs computer war games on this first-strike program each year. StratCom in Nebraska is in charge of this program.)

The thought of a national campaign to "harden the grid" can only lead one to remember similar programs in the past for fallout shelters that would give the public reassurance and the Pentagon confidence to follow through with its first-strike planning.  

It's very sad to hear one whole hour on Maine's top public radio station promoting this right wing, corporate first-strike attack program.  They promote fear and attempt to hijack already financially strapped Mainers with this boondoggle. Not one whisper of questioning was heard on this MPBN “missile defense” promotion program.  The corporate control of media is so intense now that even Maine public radio is corrupted.

In the end we should be working to create a solar society so we can get off the centralized corporate dominated grid.  A decentralized more simple lifestyle is the answer to the potential solar storm problem.  Hardening the grid so it can survive a nuclear war is playing the current insane power game that must be rejected.