[Green-Activist] on "BUSH OPENS OUTER SPACE TO COMBAT" - byKarlGrossman

[John Hill]

Dear Frank:

Good to see you back on deck! I see I am 1 year older than you so I shall 
expect due deference and respect from now on!!! ;^)

I was indeed a very fortunate child - first of all for growing up in 
Trinidad in the West Indies with parents who loved to travel and a father 
who was the most sincere humanist atheist I have ever met, with an 
incredible curiosity about almost everything and a very healthy and 
well-trained scientific and sceptical mind .

But one other big advantage I had was that next door to us lived a 
remarkable American woman, Nikki McBride, who had married a local 
Trinidadian. In her previous life she had been the matron of the largest 
hospital in Chicago but after coming to Trinidad (an overpopulated 3rd world 
island even in the 1940s and 50), she realised that she could be most 
effective in getting birth-control centres and education programs up and 
running which, with remarkable persistence and endless effort, she achieved. 
Many of the programs she set up are still active.

I can remember her drumming into my head that as a young lad in the early 
1950s it should be easy for me to see that Trinidad & Tobago were already 
seriously overpopulated (about 650,000 people on an island about 60 X 30 
miles) and the population could be expected to triple by the end of the 
century. She made it perfectly clear that if Trinidad had not had huge 
reserves of petroleum the population would already have been starving.

I was very impressed by these arguments and so were my parents. She also 
made very plain that Trinidad was really a microcosm of the larger world and 
that what we were seeing already happening in Trinidad would soon become a 
worldwide phenomenon.

Because of Nikki I decided way back then (about 1957 or 1958) that I would 
never have children of my own (though very happy to help ones already born 
to others), and as soon as I was able (at 25) I lied my way into getting a 
vasectomy.

In fact, due to her efforts (not forgetting the many good people she 
mobilised) and massive emigration, mainly to the U.K., the U.S.A. and 
Canada, the population of Trinidad & Tobago has "only" doubled since the 
1950s.

Many animals which were plentiful then are completely extinct on the islands 
now - ocean crayfish, manatee, boa constrictors, ocelots, possums, sea 
turtles, etc., etc. In that period though, the world population has gone up 
about 2 and half times (there are almost 7 times as many people now as at 
the beginning of the 20th century - and we are far, far more profligate with 
resources per person).

I, like you have been deeply despairing of our fellow humans waking up to 
all these more than obvious and extremely pressing problems. The last few 
weeks (roughly since the release of "An Inconvenient Truth" in the US of A) 
there seems to be a slight breath of fresh air (dare I hope?) and people 
(and even politicians!!!) seem to be at least talking about them with some 
sense of urgency if, often, without much sense.

I think we who are of like mind should do our best to encourage all this 
debate (even sometimes if we think it is misguided) and make sure it not a 
forgotten issue by the next elections (and the elections after that). In 
fact, we should all do our very best to keep it (and an end to warmongering) 
right at the top of the political agenda as long as we can. I look forward 
to working with you and other listmembers on all of this.

Some good places to start (beyond all the many usual environmental issues) 
would be to put constant pressure on the government to set an example by 
keeping our population down (why, for instance, should couples having kids 
receive big benefits from the public purse?), keeping our military out of 
other countries (and cutting its profligate arms spending), banning all 
nuclear power and arms initiatives and closing down the uranium mining 
industry as quickly as possible.

And that's just for starters,

Cheers,


John Hill




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "frank" <wetherbystn at bigpond.com>
To: "maillist for Green Activists" <green-activist at lists.altnews.com.au>
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 5:08 PM
Subject: Re: [Green-Activist] on "BUSH OPENS OUTER SPACE TO COMBAT" - 
byKarlGrossman


> Dear Anne,
>
> At the age of 32, (1976), i came to the conclusion humans were too stupid 
> to live.  I came to this conclusion after realizing the early green 
> movements were systematically being infiltrated and controlled by people 
> with agendas which were not green.  (I won't elaborate on these agendas. 
> They vary and anyone genuinely working for the environment knows only too 
> well what i'm talking about.)  Plus the average person couldn't really 
> give a stuff.  I've had people end up agreeing with me and say, " I won't 
> be here to see it", like that was all that mattered.  A lot of those who 
> said it are here though.
>
> So i copped out of mainstream environmental activism but continued on my 
> own, or with the help of people i knew were genuine.  However, back in 
> 1976 i predicted that exactly what is happening today would occur.  I used 
> to tell my friends that when global warming became obvious and the powers 
> that be could no longer deny it was happening, they'd run around like 
> chooks with their heads cut off, doing all the wrong things and the planet 
> would still end up "plucked".
>
> I mean, global warming is only an effect, as is species extinction, 
> salinity, tree depletion, erosion and any other environmental problem u 
> can name.  The cause of all of them stems from the egotistical belief that 
> everything must be for the benefit of humanity.
>
> Humanity is the vilest vermin ever to infest anything and i really am 
> disgusted that i am a member of the human race.  Even faced with 
> extinction the vermin will not face the fact that they ARE the problem. 
> Human overpopulation is the single cause of all the planets environmental 
> woes.
>
> Actually it's the cause of most of our social problems too.  But i'll bet 
> u that i'll get replies to this e-mail from people pretending to be 
> greenies telling me i'm wrong.  Population isn't a problem.  We should be 
> trying to get us to breed more as the propaganda machine has been pushing 
> lately!  We should be opening our already overcrowded country to more 
> immigration. Never mind that we already running out of water, we'll just 
> take more and bugger the wild life.  Maybe i won't now that i added that. 
> We'll see.
>
> frank brown
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Anne Goddard" <anne at globalclimatechangeaction.org>
> To: <green-activist at lists.altnews.com.au>; 
> <GreenLocalNews at yahoogroups.com>; <GreenLeft_Discussion at yahoogroups.com>; 
> <editorial at news-mail.com.au>
> Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2006 11:11 PM
> Subject: [Green-Activist] on "BUSH OPENS OUTER SPACE TO COMBAT" - by 
> KarlGrossman
>
>
>> Opening a doorway in space to the suns power... to safely dispose of our
>> stockpiled and festering nuclear waste that we currently and precariously
>> hold, on our planet ...
>> would be a wiser use of such
>> -war mongering,
>> -suffer profiteering,
>> -peoples taxes depleting,
>> -energy wasting,
>> -massive CO2 emitting,
>> -ozone depleting,
>> -homicidal,
>> energy...
>>
>> and the energy expended on such folly is "for the benefit of humanity"?
>>
>> I ask, in who's mind?
>>
>> Anne
>> ------------------------
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "benny zable" <bennyzable at hotmail.com>
>> To: <kagtrip at yahoo.com>
>> Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2006 10:10 PM
>> Subject: BUSH OPENS OUTER SPACE TO COMBAT - by Karl Grossman
>>
>>
>> Sorry folks
>> Some more bad news from the USA
>>
>> From: Global Network [mailto:globalnet at mindspring.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 9:24 AM
>> To: Global Network Against Weapons
>> Subject: Bush Opens Outer Space To Combat
>>
>> BUSH OPENS OUTER SPACE TO COMBAT - by Karl Grossman
>>
>> It was issued quietly: 5 p.m. on the Friday before the long Columbus Day
>> weekend, a release seemingly designed to get little notice. But what it
>> involved deserves major attention: a new U.S. National Space Policy that
>> could set the stage for the heavens being turned into a battleground.
>>
>> For decades, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 has shaped how nations 
>> approach
>> space. Developed by the United States, United Kingdom and Soviet Union 
>> and
>> now ratified essentially by all the world's countries the landmark 
>> agreement
>> sets space aside for peaceful purposes.
>>
>> But the United States became uncomfortable with the treaty in the 1980s
>> during President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program. That discomfort was
>> marked in the 1990s by U.S. opposition to efforts (still ongoing) led by
>> Canada and including Russia and China to ban all weapons in space; the
>> treaty only bans weapons of mass destruction.
>>
>> There were bellicose declarations in the 1990s, too, from the U.S. Space
>> Command speaking of "dominating the space dimension of military 
>> operations
>> to protest U.S. interests and investment."
>>
>> Moreover, as George W. Bush took office, a commission chaired by his 
>> defense
>> secretary-to-be, Donald Rumsfeld, spoke of how "in the coming period the
>> U.S. will conduct operations to, from, in, and through space to support 
>> its
>> national interests."
>>
>> Then the Bush administration began revising the U.S. National Space 
>> Policy
>> as issued by President Bill Clinton. A front-page, lead article in "The 
>> New
>> York Times" last year reported that the U.S. Air Force was "seeking
>> President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could 
>> move
>> the United States closer to fielding offensive and defense space 
>> weapons."
>> It told of how one "Air Force space program, nicknamed Rods from God, 
>> aims
>> to hurl cylinders of tungsten, titanium or uranium from the edge of space 
>> to
>> destroy targets on the ground striking at speeds of about 7,200 miles an
>> hour with the force of a small nuclear weapon."
>>
>> The new policy does not explicitly declare the United States will now 
>> move
>> ahead with such space weapons  but it opens the door.
>>
>> "Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air
>> power and sea power," it asserts in its introduction. Under "National
>> Security Space Guidelines," it says, "United States national security is
>> critically dependent upon space capabilities, and this dependence will
>> grow." So the United States will "develop and deploy space capabilities 
>> that
>> sustain U.S. advantage."
>>
>> Also, the 10-page policy says the United States "will oppose the 
>> development
>> of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit
>> U.S. access to or use of space."
>>
>> Further, the policy authorizes the use of nuclear power overhead to 
>> "enhance
>> space exploration or operational capabilities.The use of space nuclear 
>> power
>> systems shall be consistent with U.S. national and homeland security, and
>> foreign policy interests."
>>
>> Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear
>> Power in Space, speaks of the document's "very provocative language.This 
>> is
>> the kind of talk that will create a new arms race in space, clearly just
>> what the military-industrial complex wants."  And, he says, "Bush's new
>> space policy enshrines the rejection of an international treaty to ban
>> weapons in space."
>>
>> The vision of the Outer Space Treaty to set aside space as a global 
>> commons
>> and to prevent the armed conflict that has marked human history on Earth
>> from extending into the heavens would be altered by the new U.S. policy.
>>
>> The United States sees its potential military supremacy in space and 
>> seeks
>> to take advantage of this. But that's similar to the U.S. attitude in 
>> 1945
>> when we had the atomic bomb and no one else did. It will not take long if
>> space is opened up to war for other nations, notably Russia and China, to
>> meet the United States in kind. We still have an opportunity now to 
>> adhere
>> to and strengthen the Outer Space Treaty and, with verification, continue 
>> to
>> keep space for peaceful purposes.
>>
>> Or we can turn the heavens into a war zone and a place for nuclear 
>> activity.
>> We are at a crossroads. The policy must not be slipped through quietly. 
>> The
>> people of the United States must have a voice and there should be wide
>> public discussion on this fateful decision.
>>
>>
>>
>> Karl Grossman, journalism professor at the State University of New
>> York/College at Old Westbury, wrote and narrated the award-winning TV
>> documentary: "Weapons in Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of 
>> the
>> Heavens" (www.envirovideo.com) - A photo of Karl Grossman is available 
>> CLIC
>>
>> Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
>> PO Box 652
>> Brunswick, ME 04011
>> (207) 729-0517
>> <http://www.space4peace.org>
>> <globalnet at mindspring.com>
>> <http://space4peace.blogspot.com>  (our blog)
>> -----------------------
>> Anne Goddard
>> PO Box 316
>> Gin Gin, 4671
>>
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>>
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>
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