There is quite a lot of action against Trump's proposed Space Force on social media. The mainstream media though is lacking critical coverage of this arrogant grab of the heavens by the aerospace industry and their fundamentalist followers. Do they think they will be closer to God - or do they think they are God?
It's been exciting for me to see so much activity because when Obama increased 'missile defense' deployments encircling China and Russia not many people paid any attention. When the X-37 military space plane (a super drone that looks like a mini-space shuttle) flew unmanned orbiting Earth for a full year few complained to Obama about it. Obama was a 'nice guy' and many liberal Dems weren't moved to criticize anything he did or said.
I recall one poll in the Washington Post years back that asked a question about Obama's drone killing program in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Seventy-some percent of self-identified liberals said they supported his program. If it had been George W. Bush or Trump in office the vast majority of those liberals would have been critical of them. Party loyalty trumps key issues and reduces movement building.
So this time when Space Farce comes along the Dem activists are out of power and are paying more attention to any issue they can ride. We are happy to see them and we hope they'll dive into the issue and get their feet wet.
They could learn about the cost, implications to world peace, and environmental effects of the space program. Learn about plans to mine the sky with nuclear-powered colonies on the moon, Mars and asteroids. Ask who would be in charge of all those space operations? Who would make the rules and the $$$$$$? Who is paying for all the military satellites, launch rockets, and various weapons systems now being developed for space? What is not being funded because of all the money wasted on Star Wars?
I spent an hour today being interviewed by J. G. Michael who does a podcast called Parallax Views. He wanted to talk about space and it went well. He knew the right questions to ask. In the end I asked him how he knew about the Global Network. He said at the age of 15 he heard or saw interviews with GN folks and began paying attention to space. He's now 27 years old and is doing his bit to help. Right before he told me this I had responded to his last question: Why do you believe in protest?
I answered that I was freed, mentally liberated, by the small regular protests outside Travis AFB in California in 1971 as folks came to protest the Vietnam War and the role our base played as an airlift operations center for the war. GI's flew to Vietnam and bodies bags came back on the planes. I saw them lined up daily on the flight line across the street from where I worked.
Protests create sparks and from that energy comes reflection and consciousness raising. We have to create experiences for people - that is mostly how people change - it's slow work but important anyway.
During this recent splash about Trump's space force proposal there has been a nice opportunity to do several interviews on alternative radio.
Back in the days (1989-1997) of our campaigns to oppose the launching of plutonium-238 into space (on NASA Galileo, Ulysses and Cassini missions) mainstream radio interviewed us frequently. I remember driving near my home in Orlando, Florida and hearing my interview on CBS radio news opposing a nuclear launch. Independent radio talk shows, in those days flourishing across the nation, would frequently call for half or full hour conversations with callers on the line. These days the corporations have largely consolidated those talk shows into fewer and more conservative hands.
Thanks to committed people like journalism professor Karl Grossman, a founder of the Global Network, we still see some regular writing about space issues. He has a piece in CounterPunch today Turning Space Into a War Zone and here as well.
Thank you for visiting Organizing Notes. With the current crackdown on 'fake news' on social media, and the resulting censorship of many progressive voices, we have to each help spread the word more than ever.
Bruce
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