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According to a leaked US Air Force document written in August and obtained by The Business, Peter Teets, under-secretary of the US Air Force wrote: "What will we do 10 years from now when American lives are put at risk because an adversary chooses to leverage the global positioning system of perhaps the Galileo constellation to attack American forces with precision?"

The paper also reported a disagreement between EU and US officials this month over Galileo at a London conference which led to the threat to blow up the future satellites.

The European delegates reportedly said they would not turn off or jam signals from their satellites, even if they were used in a war with the United States.

A senior European delegate at the London conference said his US counterparts reacted to the EU position "calmly".

"They made it clear that they would attempt what they called reversible action, but, if necessary, they would use irreversible action," the official was quoted as saying.

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It warned that Britain, Washington's staunchest ally in the Iraq war, would once again find itself trapped between the two camps - and that as a result "the Anglo-American alliance is quietly splitting behind the scenes".

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Frank Sietzen, representing President George W. Bush in an Oct. 14 policy debate, said the administration may review American participation in the 1967 United Nations Treaty on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which prohibits placing nuclear weapons in outer space, claiming sovereignty over celestial bodies, and preserves outer space for peaceful purposes. Sietzen, a UPI journalist who has recused himself from writing about space, said the president was concerned that the treaty might crush the fledgling commercial space industry in its infancy, an event that would hamper the president’s vision of returning Americans to the moon by 2020. He said, “This is another one of these areas that is going to be seriously reviewed by both the Commerce Department and the State Department in due time," and added, “Trying to restrict the military use of space is like trying to shut the barn door after the horse is out,” because the Soviet Union had weaponized space in 1967 when it fired an ICBM over the South Pole to avoid American radar. Sietzen claimed that NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe had personally asked him to participate in the debate, but a NASA spokesman denied this, adding that NASA was unaware of any plans to review participation in the treaty. An anonymous State Department official told Government Executive (Oct. 26, 2004) that the president only objected to new limitations on military space capabilities that other states parties are proposing. Sietzen clarified his remarks last week, saying that “the administration has no plans” to deploy active weapons systems in orbit.

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"has no plans": the classic non-denial denial. What really happened is obvious: Sietzen blundered unthinkingly into stating the obvious, and then later had to "clarify" his remarks.

BTW, those "new limitations" on space weapons opposed by Bush are the ones Bill Graham says Canada will continue to work for after we sign on to NMD. (And the ones we've worked for for years against firm US opposition.)

Link to CDI

The last part of a document here (pdf) has some interesting information on Galileo, though it leans toward the American position that such a system mustn't be allowed to jeopardize American military or other interests.

[ 27 October 2004: Message edited by: sgm ]

And since the Soviets stabbed the MIC in the back by ceding the cold war, now the war mongers have to invent enemies and bogeymen to ensure us all that we are actually threatened. Paul Martin and Stevie Harper were busy wiping off Hershey's chocolate smeared all over their moustaches just before the last election. Both of them pay close attention to what's expected of them as official Canadian lap dogs to the American military chicanery. Paul and Stevie pucker up pretty well for the Washington crowd.

Star Wars is impossible to achieve which the corporate welfare statists are desperately trying to avoid telling us. But that shouldn't stop them from spending billions and billions in taxpayer handouts to their friends only to prove us right in the end. Patriot missiles were not the as accurate against scud missiles during the 91 Gulf War, and the experts who tried to relay that info to the American public were labelled anti-American and all sorts of names. But Gulf War I was an effective shill for accelerating sales of weapons to the Middle East immediately after. American and Canadian arms manufacturers increased sales of all manner of weapons of death and destruction to that part of the world by about five times as a result. Canada makes its own version of the "Patriot" missile and other really stupid things. Peddling them to Iraqi's and enemies surrounding them on all sides doesn't requir a great deal of coercion or sales talent. Not really. Just ask Gerald Bull's family.

So why else was Paul Martin saving up to be rich at the expense of UI-EI-O, an ailing health care system in Canada and deteriorating public education ?.

[ 28 October 2004: Message edited by: Fidel ]

I wouldn't be surprised if the USA planned the destruction of Russia's economy partly to keep its government from maintaining parallel high-technology structures which the nascent EU would then step in and continue to finance.

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Originally posted by stargazer:
I don't understand much of this. Is The Shrub trying to claim that only the US has the right to put weapons in space? What is the true goal of these space systems? Where does Canada sit in this? Are we not already committed by our halfwit Defense Minister to weapons in space? I know they prefer we call it something else but it is weapons in space no?

Can someone explain this to me. I am deeply concerned about the prospect of a global nuclear war.

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stargazer, my understanding after doing a bit of reading on this is that yes, the United States plans to further militarize and eventually weaponize space. Furthermore, the basic American policy, outlined in places like the Rumsfeld report on space management of 2001 and the National Security Strategy of the same year is that the United States will not allow a potential challenger to emerge in space: they will take the measures necessary to eliminate any potential threat to their current strategic and tactical advantage on the space front (for now, largely military intelligence gathering). In a sense, then, yes, the United States reserves to itself the right to monopolize space power.

As for Canada, we have long voiced opposition to space weaponization (space is already militarized by the presence of intelligence-gathering satellites that help ground commanders fight wars), and tried to work through such forums as the UN Conference on Disarmament to stop the eventual weaponization of space. If my memory serves, in 2001 or 2002, Canada voted with 162 other nations in favour of a UN resolution on the prevention of an arms race in outer space. Three nations refused to support the resolution: Micronesia, Israel and the United States, all of which abstained. In the Rumsfeld report of 2001, specific mention is made of these "nearly yearly" efforts by the UN: the report views them as attempts by other states to undermine the US's permanent maintenance of its current domination of space as a military medium. The traditional Canadian position, then, is opposed to the tradtional American position.

Unfortunately, the soon-to-be Canadian position on NMD will fatally compromise our principled opposition to the weaponization of space, because the Americans acknowledge the the missile defence system will evolve over time to involve space-based weapons. (Even leaving aside the missile-defence question, space-based Anti-Satellite weapons will someday form part of the American effort to destroy a potential challenger's intelligence-gathering satellite network.) I don't know if Graham is a halfwit, but I do know that if he says our signing on to NMD won't gravely--perhaps fatally--compromise our principled opposition to space weapons he 1) has been badly briefed'; 2) is dangerously incompetent; 3) (and most likely) is deliberately misleading Canadians because he thinks we don't have any other choice but to go along.

The threat of nuclear war you mention is real, and the trends towards the weaponization of space (including NMD) as well as other moves by the US and other countries make this threat more and more palpable. If you get a chance, check out Karl Grossman's book _Weapons in Space_ (quite short and very readable), and maybe Mel Hurtig's recent _Rushing to Armageddon_, which I recently picked up myself.

PDF on GPS Policy

It was announced this summer that the US and the Europeans had settled their differences over the possibility of an independent European GPS-style satellite system called Galileo.

It may surprise a few people to learn that the GPS-system is essentially military in nature. While OnStar users rely on GPS data to recover from a left turn in Albequerque, military users rely on it to deliver their JDAM bombs to targets in Afghanistan and Iraq. As some see it, the GPS system is a space-weapons system.

Given the GPS's inherent ability to feed targetting info to potential enemies of the US, the Americans have adopted a policy of selectively denying GPS signals to enemies in times of conflict (FWIW, Iraq attempted a crude form of GPS-jamming during the latest conflict--they failed).

Cognizant of the American denial-in-conflict policy and aware of the increasing dependence of civilian commerce on GPS-style data, the Europeans have proposed their own satellite system, called Galileo, which would not be controlled by the US.

Some in America are Not Happy At All.

I know I sound like I'm wearing a tinfoil hat, but I'd encourage anyone reading this to consider the following passages from the December 15 document on GPS policy:

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...we must continue to improve capabilities to deny adversary access to all space-based
positioning, navigation, and timing services, particularly including services that are openly
available and can be readily used by adversaries and/or terrorists to threaten the security of the
United States.

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The US military should

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Improve capabilities to deny hostile use of any space-based positioning, navigation, and
timing services, without unduly disrupting civil and commercial access to civil positioning,
navigation, and timing services outside an area of military operations, or for homeland
security purposes

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(What will count as "unduly"?)

Finally, I would raise a question about the US determination that its GPS "remain the pre-eminent military space-based positioning, navigation, and timing service."

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
The US is currently using satellites as an aid to invade countries and kill defenseless people.

Are you in favour of someone destroying their satellites?

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As a resident of Canada, I generally consider the USA to be on "our side" even if what they do is wrong.

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(1) The US GPS system is a military system. Some civilian/commercial usages have been grafted on to it, but it is military in design, execution and management. The EU Galileo system is a commercial system. Their big argument for it (retailed via EuroNews, see under "Europeans", requires RealPlayer) is that by 2010 they expect EUR300 billion revenues from it on a EUR3 billion investment. Militaries can access its information, but it is civilian in design, execution and management.

(2) That US-EU relations have entered their Cold War phase will be evident to all, but what is the prospect that Galileo could provoke the Hot War phase? There are, of course, still fools out there retailing the theory of the "democratic peace" (also), not least Bushie-boy himself. But what are the conditions that will provide pretext for the US attack on Europe?

[ 18 December 2004: Message edited by: Chris Borst ]