Citizens for Peace in Space Newsletter

March 2004

Bill Sulzman
P.O. Box 915
Colorado Springs, CO 80901
Ph 719 389 0644

This report comes on the one year anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. As we know U.S. Aerospace forces conducted a 3 week blitzkrieg which led to the early surrender of the outgunned Iraqi forces. The country that spent $1.8 billion annually on its military forces and had no weapons of mass destruction lost to the country that spends $450 billion annually on its military forces and has thousands of weapons of mass destruction . Tens of thousands of Iraqi military forces likely lost their lives in the aerial bombardment and there were at least 3 thousand civilian fatalities according to an AP survey. As might be expected the ensuing year has been a disaster for all concerned, with no end to casualties in sight.

Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares II defendants Srs Jackie Hudson, Carol Gilbert and Ardeth Platte have until April 8 to file their appeal. Their legal team is putting the finishing touches on the appeal briefs in close consultation with the defendants.

CPIS is involved locally in carrying forward their arguments about the illegality of US Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Air Force Space Command under the leadership of General Lance Lord and Col. Rick Patenaude has been advancing a program to develop the successor to the Minuteman III nuclear armed missile. The goal of the program for the so-called Minuteman IV is to have it up and running by 2020 and for it to last until at least 2040. This, of course, makes a total mockery of the nuclear Nonproliferation treaty(NPT)  and all other international law banning nuclear weapons.

On March 11 Citizens for Peace in Space and eleven named individuals filed a complaint in Federal District Court in Denver seeking a Restraining Order "enjoining" Donald Rumsfeld and General Lance Lord, Commander of the Air Force Space Command: "from continuing work on the planning, development or use of existing or new nuclear armed ICBMs at Peterson AFB under the direction of the Air Force Space Command, a subdivision of the United States Department of defense located in Colorado Springs, Colorado."

Eight exhibits accompanied the filing. On March 15 the assistant US attorney in charge of responding to the motion told our attorney Bill Durland that she would be filing a counter motion for dismissal. He expected to then have the opportunity to make further legal arguments for the motion. But instead U.S. Judge Zita Weinshank sent a dismissal notice on her own without waiting on the U.S. attorney’s office to request one. A request for reconsideration will be filed soon and we plan to continue challenging this grossly illegal nuclear weapons policy.

Other research programs of the U.S. military/space establishment continue. By this summer it is expected that the first stages of a flawed anti-ballistic missile system will be in place in Alaska with deployment at Vandenberg AFB, California to follow shortly thereafter. Expensive research on space based weapons continues. A renewed effort for nuclear powered space missions is gaining momentum. Sometimes it is difficult to know where NASA ends and Space Command begins.

Several events on the horizon will get our attention.:

  • The week of March 29 will bring the annual US Space Symposium to the Broadmoor Hotel convention center. We will be doing research at the week long event and plan an informational picket.
     
  • Loring Wirbel and Bill Sulzman will be participating in the annual meeting of the Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, April 23-25 in Portland, Maine. Bill will then go on to New York to take part in panel discussions at the NPT review conference at the UN.
  • CPIS will be hosting the national conference and meeting of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee , May 7-9. Call or write for details.
     
  • Loring Wirbel of CPIS will be  participating in a two day program focused on Air Force Space Command’s Vandenberg AFB, CA:

    May 15 rally at Vandenberg  main gate,
    May 16 West Coast organizing conference.
    For more details, check the web site at www.vpeaceldf.org
    We hope to work more closely with a newly formed group there.

In closing we wish to bring attention to other recent happenings. In February Bev Jahn and Rick Bickhart represented CPIS at the WRL meeting in New York and brought back the latest about the structural changes there.

We have some copies of Loring’s new book: Star Wars - US Tools of Space Supremacy,  which is also available on the web from Amazon. We are using The Global Network’s new video: Arsenal of Hypocrisy and can arrange for discussions on both the book and video. One can order copies of the video from www.space4peace.org

On March 15 the ACLU of Colorado filed a lawsuit against the City of Colorado Springs on behalf of Citizens for Peace in Space, challenging the security zone established by the city during the NATO conference last October. The suit filed in Denver Federal District Court contends that the City violated the First Amendment rights of the 6 named individuals. Denver attorneys Ed Ramey and Mari Newman are working with the ACLU on the case.

Finally we can't sign off without a fund appeal. The regular bills have to be paid. And both of the legal matters mentioned in this newsletter have expenses attached even though the attorneys are generously volunteering their services. We can’t do this work without your help and without your commitment to the cause.

 


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