Dear Friends:

This letter comes to you as we close a difficult and heart-rending year.  The Bush war and occupation of Iraq is not only illegal and immoral, it has cost us our national treasury, and has in fact made all of our lives more insecure.

We look to 2004 with hope that the Bush team will be sent packing from Washington.  But, even before the election is held, there is something very important (some would say sinister) that George W. Bush is planning to do.

At the end of September, just weeks before the 2004 election, Bush intends to ceremoniously deploy the first “missile defense” interceptors at Ft. Greely, Alaska and Vandenberg AFB, California. These are the missiles that are supposed  to "protect" the continental U.S. from attack by “rogue” states.  Having unilaterally abandoned the important ABM Treaty that outlawed such deployments, the Pentagon will put 15 interceptors (that have yet to be proven effective) into the ground at Ft. Greely and Vandenberg.  Ultimately 100 interceptors are envisioned for deployment in Alaska.  The Bush administration will claim the systems are “operational,”  and avoid mentioning that other critical components of the program, including the tracking of incoming missiles, are not even in place.

 

I think we all understand Bush’s reasons for rushing these deployments before election day.  If he were to lose the election, Bush and his aerospace industry cronies will still ensure the new Star Wars round of the arms race is locked in place.  Even a new Democratic president would be hard pressed to back away from these deployments.  In Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike have annually given Bush (and Clinton before him) virtually every penny requested for Star Wars research and development.  Both political parties continue to stuff their pockets with big campaign donations from the military-industrial complex. 

We in the Global Network will continue our efforts in 2004 to build an international response to U.S. escalation of the arms race into the heavens.  We will continue our work to educate, mobilize,  and connect space issues to the larger agenda of the growing global peace movement. 

Our efforts to expand space organizing will be a key feature of our 12^th annual international conference to be held on April 23-25 in Portland, Maine.  The event will be called Resisting Empire: Understanding the Role of Space in U.S. Global Domination.  We hope many of you will attend.

For the past several years our successful Keep Space for Peace Week has taken this issue into local communities all across this planet, helping to create a new consciousness about how U.S. war-making today is directed by space technology.  In 2004, we will hold the week of local actions at the same time Bush’s “missile defense” deployments are scheduled to occur.  During the period of September 25 – October 2, we plan to focus global attention on Bush’s Star Wars  deployments, and show that people around the world are outraged by this and other dangerous and destabilizing moves.  These kind of protests can be effective.  Similar international organizing around the 1983 U.S. Pershing and Cruise missile deployments in Europe eventually led to their pull-back.

In order to do this work, we must ask for financial help from our friends and supporters.  Your donation will give us the ability to spread the word – and the resistance – to the aggressive Pentagon and weapons industry plans for global domination (and the enormous profits that go with it).

While things do look difficult at this moment, we know people everywhere are awakening to the tragic results of the take-over of U.S. foreign policy by the corrupt and mean-spirited Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Rice-Powell cabal.  We see enormous evidence that people are becoming outraged over the unnecessary loss of life in Iraq and the horrifying waste of taxpayer dollars better spent on education, health care, public transit, child care, Social Security, and environmental programs.

Only hard work and effective organizing by all of us will turn things back toward sanity.  Help us make Bush’s plans for full spectrum dominance one more important reason people have for getting active before the 2004 elections.  Your support can ensure the Global Network will play its vital role during this critical period.

Thanks once again for your support and efforts.  May you and your family have a happy and peaceful holiday season.

In peace,

Bruce K. Gagnon

Coordinator

PS  If you’d like to make a contribution with your credit card just go to our web site home page and scroll down to the red Donate Now! button.  This secure link will allow you to make an on-line gift to the Global Network.  http://www.space4peace.org