Odds & Ends

 

• Our newsletter (Space Alert!) printer delivered excess copied to me yesterday.  After they print the paper they also mail it to our US domestic mailing list.  Then I take the extra copies and do the mailing to our international members.  If you'd like to get a copy of the paper just send me an email at globalnet@mindspring.com and I will send you one right away.   You can also view it online here

• I was invited yesterday to speak to a local church committee here in Bath about non-violent direct action.  Rev. Bill Bliss (Neighborhood UCC church) offered the invite.  He (and his two sons) went on our Global Network Russia Study Tour in 2019.  I really enjoyed the discussion and was pleasantly surprised at how many great questions the church members asked.  

• Earlier in the week several of our Global Network board members met on Zoom with the lead lawyer in a pending federal court action that will challenge the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) that is in charge of authorizing satellite launches. Tens of thousands of launches are now planned in the next few years - so many that the aerospace industry and the Pentagon are running around the globe looking to build new spaceports to handle the glut. A couple big problems immediately come to mind when I think of thousands of mini-satellite launches. One would be the toxic rocket exhaust punching a hole in the Earth’s ozone layer thus making our climate crisis worse. The growing space debris problem, with increasingly congested orbits adding to the mess, makes the chances of an accidental avalanche of crashes in space more likely. This could ultimately make it impossible to launch a rocket off Earth due to the ‘minefield’ of space junk circling our already fragile planet. Astronomers are upset about the dark night sky being fouled by legions of new blinking satellites encircling our planet. I'll keep you posted as this legal action moves forward. 

 

• Jonathan Cook writes: “There is a reason that, as we rush lemming-like towards the cliff-edge, urged on by a capitalism that cannot operate at the level of sustainability or even of sanity, the push towards intensified war grows. Wars are the lifeblood of the corporate empire headquartered in the US. Whether public or covert, wars provide an opportunity to remake poorly defended, resistant societies — such as Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria — in ways that allow for resources to be seized, markets to be expanded and the reach of the corporate elite to be extended. War is the ultimate growth industry, limited only by our ability to be persuaded of new enemies and new threats.”

• The Tromsø municipal council in northern Norway has decided to say NO to a port for U.S. nuclear-powered submarines. This prompted the Norwegian Minister of Defense to react:  “Tromsø cannot opt out of NATO”, he said in late 2020. The federal government is pushing hard to override local politicians and public opinion. Tromsø is the third largest urban municipality in Norway, and the seventh in population. Tromsø is the regional civil administration center for the northern area in Norway. Tromso is very close to the Russian border along the Barents Sea. NATO is continually holding war games there (aimed at Russia) and has established a weapons depot in Norway where after each war game is over much of the military hardware is being stored. A similar US weapons hub has also been built in Poland.
  

 

NATO war games in the Nordic region aimed at Russia

• NATO is expanding its military alliance into space, and announced construction of a “space center” at Ramstein AFB, Germany. The new facility will be used as a coordination point for surveillance in space, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung reported.  “This will be a focal point for ensuring space support to NATO operations, sharing information and coordinating our activities,” a NATO official said.  About half of the 2,000 satellites currently in earth orbit are owned by NATO members (mostly US). The action follows a 2019 NATO decision declaring space as a separate area of operations.