The Keep Space for Peace Week activities in Omaha, Nebraska last October 4-11 (see report) served as a warm-up act for the 2008 Global Network Space Organizing Conference and Protest that will take place here on April 11-13.

Global Network coordinator Bruce Gagnon and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, the internationally renowned disarmament activist from the Catholic Diocese of Detroit, headlined a weekend of public education events about the threat the Omaha-based U.S. Strategic Command (StratCom) poses to the world. Speaking to over 250 citizens, the pair convincingly stated the case for why StratCom—to borrow the theme for the 2008 Global Network Conference and Protest—is indeed “the most dangerous place on the face of the earth.”

Tapped in the aftermath of 9/11 to wage the Bush/Cheney Administration’s “War on Terror,” StratCom today has a mission array that stretches from directing a dreaded air- and sea-based attack on Iran to the outright domination of space by the Pentagon. StratCom is still performing its historic role as the command center of the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal. But under the White House’s new “Doctrine of Preemption,” the Omaha headquarters is now authorized to offensively attack any place on the planet within one hour—with either conventional or nuclear weapons— if a threat to America’s national interests is simply suspected.

Unilaterally attacking another nation, without provocation, is of course illegal under international law. But scoffl aw behavior has now become the order of the day at StratCom. In addition to its illegal ‘fi rst-strike’ powers (offi cially termed “full-spectrum global strike”), the Omaha command center is tapping our phones and reading our emails with its “warrantless wiretap” program conducted in collaboration with the NSA. It’s undermining what little treaty law on space we’ve got left with its deliberate efforts to militarize the heavens. It’s jeopardizing existing arms control agreements and igniting a new Cold War with Russia by seeking to base “Star Wars” missile defense installations in Eastern Europe. And rather than disarming its nuclear stockpile (as mandated by the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty), Strat- Com is instead actively pursuing a new generation of nuclear weapons— the “bunker buster mini-nuke” and the Reliable Replacement Warhead. This “New StratCom” is fast becoming a law unto to itself, to the point of even circumventing Congress’s authority as the sole agent constitutionally empowered to make war.

The world community, however, is largely unaware of the dizzying and destabilizing changes that have taken place at StratCom the past six years. Things have changed so dramatically and so fast, that even activists working on these issues are unaware that the next war the White House gets the U.S. into—be it against an alleged ‘terrorist state’ like Iran or geo-political rival like China—will be planned, launched and coordinated from StratCom. As the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign on Iraq so hideously demonstrated, space has become the new high ground for waging war on earth. Seventy percent of the armaments fi red at Iraq during that initial aerial assault were directed from space—by StratCom’s Space Command.

And that very same plan of attack is now set to repeat itself in the current showdown with Iran. StratCom planners have been at the drawing board for two years now, devising attack scenarios, and just waiting for a phone call from the White House, to start raining down destruction on Iran’s infrastructure.

Omaha was specifically chosen as the site of the 2008 Global Network Annual Space Organizing Conference and Protest to start alerting the world about this threat from America’s heartland. From Friday, April 11 through Sunday, April 13, there will be plenary discussions, workshops, protests and keynote addresses featuring the best experts in the world on StratCom’s new role and mission (more details here).

On the campus of Creighton University near downtown Omaha, we’ll hear from Col. Ann Wright, who resigned her post in the State Department to protest the 2003 preemptive invasion of Iraq. Bishop Gumbleton, who back in the ’80s committed civil disobedience at StratCom, will return to Omaha to authoritatively spell out the Catholic Church’s doctrine about preemptive war on Creighton’s Jesuit university campus. And Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, Loring Wirbel of Citizens for Peace in Space, Jackie Cabasso of the Western States Legal Foundation, Elizabeth McAlister from Jonah House, Leslie Cagan of United for Peace & Justice, Bal Pinguel from AFSC, Joanne Sheehan from WRL, our own Bruce Gagnon and a host of other key national and international activists (Czech Republic, England, Germany, Diego Garcia, India) will be on hand that weekend to brief us about the StratCom threat and what we can do about it. By the conference’s end, we guarantee you’ll not only know more than virtually anybody else about “the most dangerous place on the face of the earth,” you’ll be equipped to get the word out about this menace to your own network back home. And as knowledge is first step to power, getting the word out to the world community is critical if we’re to stop StratCom from pushing us to the brink.

Tim Rinne,
Nebraskans for Peace

The U.S. Senate’s so-called “compromise” on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has led to unprecedented criticisms in the mainstream press, with The New York Times going so far in an Oct. 20 editorial as to call Democratic positions on intelligence issues indistinguishable from Republican positions.

The dispute is over a revamp to an embarrassingly bad bill passed by Congress Aug. 4 as a stopgap response to President Bush’s illegal bypass of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISC. The dispute centers on how the National Security Agency (NSA), the nation’s second-largest intelligence agency, responsible for electronic snooping, can intercept phone calls and emails within the United States. NSA officials privately let it be known they could live with some changes in the law allowing the monitoring of traffic between two foreign nations, if that traffic temporarily went through routers or switches based in the U.S.

Instead, the Protect America Act passed on Aug. 4 gave George Bush a virtual “get out of jail free” card for every law he had broken in going around the FISC, a secret court that was set up in 1978 to approve the ways in which U.S. citizens can be monitored within the borders of their own country. The new act, meant to override the temporary Protect America Act, would go even further than the Aug. 4 travesty, providing blanket indemnity for telephone and Internet companies that helped the White House and the NSA intercept communications without going through the FISC.

Notice the nature of this whole debate: It stops at the U.S. borders. In the rest of the world, the NSA is not constrained from operating the gargantuan Echelon, or “Platform 215” program, which intercepts all communications globally. Many of the interception platforms used are based in space, highly secret multibillion-dollar interception satellites with names like Misty, Vortex, and Magnum. And despite complaints from the European Parliament and civil liberties groups based in Europe, there is very little the citizens of other nations can do to stop or control Echelon.

In addressing the problems raised in the CIA “rendition” programs of kidnapping people in other nations, the Supreme Court has made clear that U.S. agencies do not have to abide by any restrictions that might be constitutionally imposed within the United States itself. Basically, the court said, when federal agencies operate in other nations, they are only constrained through issues of power and diplomacy, not law.

Notice something else about the way NSA works: Echelon is a global, cover-the-Earth program operated largely from space. There is no magic bubble covering the U.S. landmass that prevents NSA antennas from picking up communications. Therefore, the FISA act and the newer Protect America Act only provide limits to what NSA can do domestically in an acknowledged sense. NSA picks up everything globally, including in this country, but does not acknowledge it does so. Raw intercepts from the agency are never used in court. NSA works with domestic law enforcement agencies to suggest certain traffic patterns that the FBI or police may want to study. NSA sometimes will go to the FISC court itself (no one knows for certain how often, since all court proceedings of FISC are classified), but more often than not, it has a law-enforcement agency like FBI serve as the organization requesting a national security intercept.

This is why it is a foolish and misleading characterization to say that the FISA debate is about “warrantless wiretap.” This is why Salon magazine has ruthlessly attacked Joe Klein at Time magazine, and virtually the entire editorial-page staff of The Washington Post, for using the word “wiretap” and saying things about the FISA law that show a shocking ignorance of interception technology. If you are trying to write about the Bush administration’s violation of national-security laws and you don’t understand the basic concepts, you can let the NSA (and the< White House) get away with murder.

Wiretaps are an ancient technology stemming from the day when all phone calls required a dedicated circuit-based connection between the caller and the person called. They usually required a physical “tap” being placed on the lines, either at the home or office of the person being monitored, or at a telephone company’s central switching offices. Since its creation in 1952, the NSA has only used wiretapping in rare occasions where it is bugging embassies in foreign nations. Wiretaps were widely used in law enforcement, but they are becoming antique and useless.

NSA’s main business has always been broadband interception of communications. In its first two decades of existence, this meant military communications of the Soviet Union and China largely sent over microwave towers. Beginning in the 1970s, NSA expanded its target to include commercial communications of adversaries and allies, and then civilian communications of virtually all-global citizens. It had to expand its technologies to be able to intercept traffic in fiber optic cables and traffic carried by commercial satellites like Intelsat.

NSA was ready for the arrival of the Internet, which is no surprise because the Internet’s predecessor, ARPANET, was funded by the Defense Department. Internet e-mail uses “packet switching,” in which messages are broken up in little packets, and each packet can take a different route to the receiver. Thus, if Joe in Dallas sends e-mail to Jill in Boston, part of the message could go through Atlanta, while another part goes through St. Louis. As packet technology got better and better, even voice calls could be broken up in packets and reassembled. This is how new services like Skype and Vonage can allow you to have free long-distance phone service—the voice calls are broken up into packets and sent over the Internet.

Law enforcement agencies were woefully unprepared for domestic telephone networks first going digital, and then shifting to packet-switching. They asked Congress to pass the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) in 1994, which specified that phone companies could actually charge consumers a tax to make their phone lines capable of being intercepted! The FBI and police agencies now use advanced technologies with names like Carnivore, EtherPeek, and Global Velocity to study phone calls and email, though in principle they must go through the FISC court to do so.

NSA never needed this special assistance because its networks were Internet- ready. It expanded its work with the nation’s largest intelligence agency, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), to shift more antennas to space in the 1980s and 90s. It funded project like Monet in the 1990s to make fiber optic lines more suitable to intercept. And it worked with the Pentagon to make its intelligence more broadly available to small battle groups in foreign nations, the familiar trend described in Vision for 2020 as “serving the war fighter.” For battle management, NSA operates as a functional component of the Strategic Command (StratCom) out of Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. This allows NSA to work directly alongside units responsible for space, global strike, missile defense, and nuclear weapons.

The current Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell (a former NSA director), thought that this worked so well, he wanted to get the NRO and NSA to send more spacebased intelligence to the Department of Homeland Security, for distribution to law-enforcement agencies in the U.S. and worldwide. Luckily, Congress was paying close attention to the formation of the new DHS National Applications Office, and has severely restricted funding for this. If NRO and NSA data could go straight to Interpol or local police, it would represent yet another bypass of FISA legislation.

But Congress has not been so adamant about FISA reform because members do not understand the technology. Many members of Congress think that phone companies are simply “being patriotic” when they allow intelligence agencies access to certain switches and databases without going through legal requirements.

And even those members of Congress who express shock when they find that the NSA was involved with high-level traffic analysis, data mining, and “deep packet inspection,” indicate that they do not understand the technology of global snooping. When space-based antennas are linked to ground-based keyword-search computers and intelligent storage devices, data mining is an automatic fringe benefit. When NSA through its global Echelon and law enforcement through programs like EtherPeek can look inside a packet and examine its content, detailed message analysis can take place before the law can catch up with its ramifications.

It’s important to stress that NSA will never have the budget, the personnel, or the storage capacity to truly analyze every e-mail and phone call taking place around the world. But the agency has the capability to grab it, and analyze what it wants. The August 2007 Protect America Act gives NSA a free hand in conducting this interception, and the extension of that act being debated in Congress this fall seems to be moving in a direction of being as loose as the August bill.

U.S. citizens can only attempt to place limits on NSA by understanding the way U.S. space-based intelligence systems work. And the citizens of every other nation are on their own. Since none of the three branches of the U.S. government are interested in restricting the behavior of federal agencies outside the U.S., citizens of other nations will have to attempt restrictions on the NSA through exposure, through lobbying their own local governments, and through direct action.

Loring Wirbel
Colorado Springs, CO

3) CONVERSION MEETING IN ST. LOUIS

Over the weekend of October 13, the Peace Economy Project (PEP) in St. Louis, Missouri gathered a couple dozen people for a weekend to strategize ways to make general issues of the cost of militarism part of the national debate during the election period— both on the presidential and congressional level.

I attended representing the Global Network. Other attendees included people from the Fellowship of Reconciliation; the Institute for Policy Studies; the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom; the War Resisters League; the National Priorities Project; and the Arms & Security Initiative at the New America Foundation.

The outcome of the meeting was that there would be effort put forth to generate questions that could and should be asked whenever there are opportunities to be present for Presidential and Congressional campaign stops or debates. A good model for these efforts exists with the American Friends Service Committee and its organizing for the New Hampshire and Iowa presidential primary season.

The group itself will work to identify specific questions that address the reality of the permanent war economy, and the need for conversion of our economy to rebuild the infrastructure and create alternative energy systems.

There was also a healthy discussion about where the “conversion” movement is these days. The St. Louis community has been working on this issue for 30 years. The Institute for Policy Studies is committed to this issue and will host the next meeting of this group next fall in Washington, D.C.

Andy Heaslet from PEP and I did an hour-long radio interview on the local National Public Radio station. I also spoke at a public meeting in the evening -- along with Frieda Berrigan from the Arms & Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. I was able to draw connections between Star Wars, the permanent war economy, the Pentagon’s plans for “full spectrum dominance,” and the need for conversion.

Mary Beth Sullivan
GN Outreach Coordinator, Bath, Maine

4) INDIA SPACE WEEK REPORT

J. Narayana Rao from Nagpur, India traveled throughout his country during space week speaking with students about the need to oppose the weaponization of space.

During Keep Space for Peace Week an intensive awareness campaign was undertaken in which I have traveled more than 7,000 kilometers addressing students, faculty members and public figures in four universities (Nagpur, Srinagar, Jalgaon and Andhra) and six colleges in the States of Maharashtra, Andhrapradesh and Jammu-Kashmir) and eight meetings in the colleges at Srinagar, Anantnag in J&K State, Jalgaon and Nagpur in Maharashtra, Parvtipuram, Srikakulam, Veeraghattam and Visakhapatnam in Andhrapradesh. In addition to these two meetings one each organized by the Intellectual Forum at Jammu and one by the Lions Club at Parvatipuram.

In the meetings in the Universities the presence of highly qualified professors and lecturers helped to take the issue of danger of weaponization of space and Missile Defense program into the academic circles. The meeting at the North Maharasshtra University at Jalgaon was presided over by the Vice Chancellor himself. In the Colleges in Andhrapradesh and Jammu-Kashmir the students and the staff members heard for the first time about the issue of weaponization of space and the Missile Defense program. At Parvatipuram, which happens to be my birth place which I left 50 years back, both in the college and in the public meeting organized by the Lions Club I had to speak in my mother tongue and the audience heard with an unbelievable sense of amazement.

In Sringar my meetings were in two Government Women’s Degree colleges at Srinagar and Anantnag. After the meetings students flocked around me and expressed their desire to work with me. I immediately formed two groups of students. The professors and the lecturers at all the places have expressed their desire to be in touch with me and involve in the campaign against weaponization of Space. Brochures and DVDs supplied by the Global Network (GN) office were given at all the places. I am now planning how to consolidate the opportunities this tour provided. I requested them to be in touch with Bruce Gagnon and use the website of the GN.

During this campaign, to involve the students in a large numbers, I have organized a nationwide letter writing campaign for the college students and the subject was a “Letter to U.S. President George W. Bush” urging him to initiate action for abolition of nuclear weapons and stop the weaponization of space. One hundred seventy-five students from different colleges of Goa, Meghalaya, Kashmir, Bengal, Maharashtra, Andhrapradesh, Karnatak, Manipur have responded and the letters were written in English, Hindi, Telugu, Urdu, Bengai, Kannada, Ashmiri and Marathi languages. I had sent the invitation to 300 institutions. Now I am trying to form student groups in some of the colleges.

To consolidate the opportunities I got I am trying to plan the following measurers:

1. 1. Regularly to be in touch with colleges/ Universities which responded.
2. 2. Organize a series of workshops for the students and academicians.
3. 3. Create a band of activists.
4. 4. Regularly publish the bi-monthly “Disarmament & Development” newsletter with material from GN and other international organizations.
5. 5. To sustain the students curiosity and interest organize regular Nationwide Competitions

But there are some hurdles such as the lack of financial support, tedious train and bus traveling, lack of resource persons, and absence of reading material in local languages. Nevertheless seeds are thrown and I have deep convictions these seeds will sprout and grow.

J. Narayana Rao
, Nagpur, India

5) US SPY BASE IN NEW ZEALAND

 New Zealand’s most significant contribution to American wars, including the one in Iraq, is the Waihopai spy base. Waihopai is controlled by the US, with New Zealand (including Parliament and the Prime Minister) having little or no idea what goes on there (let alone any control).

First announced in 1987, it is operated by New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau in the interests of the foreign powers grouped together in the super-secret UKUSA Agreement (which shares global electronic and signals intelligence among the intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ). Its two satellite interception dishes (shielded from public view by giant domes) intercept a huge volume of telephone calls, telexes, faxes, email and computer data communications. It spies on our Asia/Pacific neighbours, and forwards the material on to the major partners in the UKUSA Agreement, specifically the US National Security Agency (NSA).

The codename for this—Echelon— has become notorious worldwide as the vast scope of its spying has become public. New Zealand is an integral, albeit junior, part of a global spying network, a network that is ultimately accountable only to its own constituent agencies, not governments, and certainly not to citizens.

On January 25-27, 2008 a weekend of anti-war protest will be held at the spy base.

Contact Anti-Bases Campaign at cafca@chch.planet.org.nz

6) ALASKA'S ROLE IN THE GLOBAL MI$$ILIZATION OF SPACE

8) STAR WARS IN EUROPE - A REPORT FROM THE UK

The Bush Administration’s plans to position missile defence bases in Europe has attracted a lot of media coverage but little discussion or debate in the parliaments of Europe. The news broadcasts concentrate on plans to install a radar system near Prague in the Czech Republic and missile interceptors at a site in northern Poland while the U.S. phased array radar at Fylingdales in the U.K. has just completed an upgrade that will enable it to be the first European component to be fully integrated into the system. Also, on the brink of the Parliamentary summer recess in July, with no opportunity for democratic debate, consultation or accountability, U.K. Defence Minister Des Browne announced that the U.S. spy base at Menwith Hill will also be used as part of the system. This was hardly a surprise; the relay station for the proposed space-based infrared early warning and tracking system is already in place. However it does highlight that government assurances to Parliament that this was being “dealt with entirely separately from missile defence” were part of the missile defence deception. So, with regard to missile defence, it seems that Prime Minister Gordon Brown is following in Blair’s footsteps—even to the point of suggesting the U.K. could host interceptor missiles if requested.

9) KEEPING SPACE FOR PEACE IN AN ANNIVERSARY YEAR

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the space age, launched with Sputnik on October 4, 1957. It also marks the 40th anniversary of the UN Outer Space Treaty (October 10, 1967), which seeks to ensure the peaceful uses of space for the benefit of all humankind.

While large segments of humanity have enjoyed benefits from peaceful uses of space, millions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Balkans have already experienced death and destruction from its military uses. Now increasingly aggressive U.S. space militarization threatens both the Outer Space treaty and the entire framework of disarmament treaties and international law: indeed the very foundation of the United Nations itself.

So this year hundreds of men and women determined to Keep Space for Peace held public forums, vigils, classroom discussions, rallies and video showings. From Australia to Syria, from the Czech Republic to England, from India to Norway, Kenya to Canada, Germany to Scotland and across the USA they gathered, organized, protested, and offered positive alternatives to war from, in and through space.

Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space (GN) and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) are now collecting reports of these events for publication. We have been invited to share them with the United Nations Agencies that monitor international space laws for their anniversary publication. We also expect to distribute event reports to government officials and the concerned public everywhere. (Read the reports as they come in on the GN web site.)

Reports from WILPF and Global Security Institute at the United Nations

This year in Geneva on October 4, WILPF sent a statement to UN diplomats involved in disarmament negotiations. WILPF called for immediate progress in Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS), deplored continued U.S. blockage of treaty negotiations, and suggested possible ways to end the stalemate.

In New York, October 8-26, the UN General Assembly First Committee considered ways to restart PAROS negotiations and also the Russian proposal for a treaty banning weapons in space. WILPF member Rhianna Tyson, now with the Global Security Institute (GSI), organized a forum for NGOs and diplomats on space law with Russian and Chinese delegates participating, as well as others from European and Middle Powers nations. On October 27 Rhianna delivered the first ever NGO report on space issues to the General Assembly. On behalf of GSI she urged Secretary-General Ban to convene, at the earliest possible date, a high-level expert panel to analyze the present uses, threats, risks and opportunities presented by humanity’s proliferating space capabilities, and to propose ways to prevent space militarization and keep space for peaceful uses.

Actions in Europe, Africa, India and around the world

In Europe the emphasis was on shutting down U.S. bases involved in space militarization, or preventing their spread to additional nations.

During Keep Space for Peace Week a demonstration was held in Warsaw, Poland to protest the planned Bush deployments of missile defense interceptors in their country. MIT professor Ted Postol recently stated that despite claims otherwise by the Pentagon, the missiles in Poland would be able to target Russian nuclear missiles.

At the Global Network annual meeting in Germany last year, Citizens for Peace in Space in Colorado agreed to host some visitors to next years’ GN space conference in Omaha (April 11-13) in the days preceding the annual conference. The U.S. Space Foundation will be holding their 24th annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs April 7 –10.

Our group has been there in protest mode every year since the event has been held. The opening ceremony and banquet will be on the evening of April 7. We’ll plan a demo that day. We have also decided to have a large presence on the day that they open the exhibit hall to local elementary and high school students. That should be on April 9.

Other activities will include possible visits to local military contractor sites, local Space Command bases, the Air Force Academy and other locations of interest. As we confirm who is coming we will try to arrange a forum on local issues, including a proposed expansion of the local Army base, and possibly get some classroom time at the local college. We will plan to make the all day drive to Omaha in time for the GN meeting. A stop on the way will allow for a brief demo at one of Colorado’s 49 Minuteman III nuclear-armed missiles. Home stays can be arranged on a first come, first serve basis.

A bit more background is in order. Retired personnel from the Air Force Space Command started the U.S. Space Foundation 24 years ago. Lockheed Martin has been a big player. The annual symposium features the military developments in U.S. Space activities but also emphasizes the “spin-offs” that benefit the commercial and scientific aspects of space endeavors. In the mid Meet in Colorado before Omaha, Nebraska 90s the symposium featured a number of bombshell revelations about U.S. Space policy. In successive years we got “Vision for 2020” and the “Long Range Plan” while there. Almost every year there is a memorable quote by someone about U.S. space domination plans. It amounts to a huge propaganda fest, and high tech arms bazaar, all in one. Things, which should be shocking, are presented as matter of fact. Those of us who have followed it through the years find ourselves suffering from a kind of “exposure fatigue”. No matter how belligerent or arrogant the rhetoric might be, the public and media reaction is muted.

Until about 5 years ago it was possible for the public to browse through the exhibit hall for a few hours on one of the days of the symposium. That is no longer possible even though the event is heavily subsidized with public money and the Space Foundation is a taxexempt organization. There is a major police presence and protest access has been made more difficult year by year. Picketing can be fun. Street theater is usually worked into our plan. Lots of recognizable dignitaries, generals, and politicians pass by on their way from the hotel to the convention center. It is a very unpredictable time for weather. We are close to beautiful mountain scenery if you need to get away for a time.

Our local community is a case study in the military industrial complex. One can get a look on the ground at all the working parts of the war machine. That complex spreads its tentacles into the religious, educational and political spheres as well. The military has also made major inroads into the local environmental movement. The Army and Air Force now compete in being “green.” Who knew war could be so environmentally friendly? It isn’t, of course, but the spin machine seems to be fooling many of our local “enviros”.

Another theme that gets emphasized is the idea that modern high tech war is surgical. Space assets supposedly make for more precise targeting. Cyber warfare is sold as neat and clean. There may be an announcement of the new location of the Air Force’s Cyber Command in the months before the symposium or the announcement might occur there.

In closing we want to repeat our offer of hospitality. Come before the GN meeting and go with us to Omaha. Maybe this will be the year we make a big breakthrough.

Contact us at (719) 389-0644 or bsulzman@juno.

Bill Sulzman
Colorado Springs, CO

11) ODDS AND ENDS

• AFRICOM
  The strategic importance of Africa and its natural resources is on the rise, and the Defense Department recently created a new unified U.S. military command for the continent called Africom. Many wonder if it is meant to protect America’s competitive stake in African oil and other resources increasingly sought by rising powers like China and India. The continent has surpassed the Persian Gulf as the leading supplier of oil to the United States.
   

• Canada
  Canada’s military exports have more than tripled, a CBC News investigation has learned. Over the past seven years, Canada has exported $3.6 billion in military goods. Canada now exports more arms and military goods than it imports.
   

• Martial Law in Pakistan
  GN member J. Sri Raman from India reports that, “The Musharraf-declared martial law in Pakistan has created a situation full of agonizing uncertainties ahead. The subcontinent, of course, has never been free from nuclear insecurities ever since both India and Pakistan proclaimed themselves nuclear- weapon states in 1998. Reports in the media, reflecting official Western opinion, talk particularly of the opportunity offered by Pakistan’s current instability to al-Qaeda hordes keen to lay their hands on the nuclear weapons. At least some reports, however, now recognize the added threat of nuclearweapon thefts in view of faintly visible rifts in Pakistan’s army. Some see the threat enhanced by the armed ethnic conflicts raging in the country’s tribal areas, which supply about a quarter of Musharraf’s soldiers.”
   

• Lost Nukes in U.S.
  Nukes aren’t much safer in the U.S. Several nuclear bombs were “lost” for 36 hours after taking off August 29–30, 2007 on a “cross-country journey” from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana. According to official reports, the U.S. Air Force pilots did not know that they were carrying nuclear weapons on-board. The Pentagon has stringent nuclear weapons handling procedures. Unauthorized removal of nuclear weapons would be virtually impossible to accomplish unless the chain of command were bypassed, involving, in this case, the deliberate tampering of the paperwork and tracking procedures. Some wonder if the Bush administration was attempting to “remove” some nukes from the “system” to be used in an attack of Iran.  (More details)
   

• WWIII Threatens
  During the course of an October 17, 2007 press conference, George W. Bush threatened World War III if he did not get his way with Iran. The Bush administration’s intentions toward Iran have been the subject of very limited debate in Congress. In October the Senate approved a resolution urging the State Department to label Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia said he feared the measure could be interpreted as authorizing a military strike in Iran, calling it Cheney’s “fondest pipe dream.”
   

• SysAdmin
  Military futurist Thomas Barnett, often called Donald Rumsfeld’s “strategy guy,” argues “that our military will inevitably split into a Leviathan-like combat force and a ‘system administrator’ [sysadmin] force optimized for everything else: postwar stabilization and reconstruction, nation-building, crisis response, and counter-insurgency.” Barnett says, “That gets me to my [latest] sign of progress: the emergence of industry players associated with the sysadmin’s rising profile. Last year Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense corporation, acquired Pacific Architects & Engineers, a long-time contractor to the U.S. State Department. PA&E is essentially State’s version of Kellogg Brown & Root, the Pentagon’s premier contractor for overseas base construction and support services. Lockheed’s purchase was a shot across the bow of the entire defense industry, signaling its historic decision to focus more on serving the U.S. military’s ballooning postwar portfolio. Within a generation, I predict Lockheed will evolve from being primarily a U.S. defense firm to operating as a global security contractor— less Leviathan and far more sysadmin.”
   

• Japan Seeks Superiority
  Japan has said it will not back down on building missile defenses with the Pentagon. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, paying a one-day visit to Tokyo in October, took aim at the missile defense system being built in Japan, saying its goal was “securing military superiority” for the U.S. and Japan in Asia. Japan’s 241,000-member military, though smaller than those of its neighbors, is considered Asia’s most sophisticated.
   

• US gives Israel $155 Million
  The U.S. has given Israel $155 million to develop an advanced missile interception system called David’s Sling. Israel has already successfully tested and deployed its Arrow anti-missile program. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons.
   

• Israeli Anti-Nuclear Foe Jailed Again
  An Israeli court recently gave a six-month jail sentence to Mordechai Vanunu who in 2004 completed an 18- year prison term for telling the world’s media that Israel indeed had nuclear weapons. This time Vanunu was jailed for violating a ban on speaking to foreigners. “All I want to be is to be free, to leave the country,” said Vanunu, who insists he only wants to pursue a peaceful anti-nuclear campaign. In 1986, Vanunu was jailed after telling Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper about his work as a technician at the Dimona nuclear reactor. Israel has restricted Vanunu’s movements and personal contacts since he finished his first jail term.
   

• Navy Test Range in Hawaii
  On September 17, 2007 the Navy closed its public comment period for a major expansion of its test range complex in Hawaii that includes the sky, sea, land and undersea reaches. The military proposes to use more than 2.1 million square miles of sea completely surrounding the entire Hawaiian archipelago. Many of these activities relate to war games and missile defense. The Navy wants to use laser weapons and hypersonic vehicles, unmanned undersea and aerial craft, killer sonar, high energy radar and more. In early October hundreds turned out at public hearings to oppose a Stryker Brigade in Hawaii. Strykers are 20-ton armored “modern chariots” that the Army wants to station and train in Hawaii, which would result in a 25,000-acre land grab.
   

• Pentagon Statistics
  The Pentagon is the world’s largest network, employer, consumer, polluter, and science division. 741 community colleges and universities in the U.S. have contracts with the Department of Defense….155 schools outside the U.S. have contracts with the Pentagon in 32 nations….400,000 to 500,000 companies inside the United States have DoD contracts….67 % of the projected discretionary budget for 2008 is directed to military-related programs (www.thebudgetgraph.com)
   

• CEO Makes Big Bucks
  General Dynamics CEO Nicholas Chabraja tops the list of defense-contractor chiefs who have made the most money during the 2002–2006 military buildup. Between 2002 and 2006, he pocketed $97.9 million, or an average of $19.6 million a year. Sales at General Dynamics have increased 76% from 2002 to 2006.