Nexus - 1803 - New Times Magazine-pages

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AMERICA'S EMERGING SPACE WEAPONS ARSENAL AMERICA'S EMERGING ARSENAL SPACE WEAPONS In the United States, missile defence contractors in league with "Space Hawks" and the Pentagon are hell-bent on researching and testing space-based weapons and avoiding signing international treaties that would keep space for peaceful purposes. Part 1 of 2 The Greatest Trojan Horse—Ever? or a year, Bruce Gagnon had the same nagging feeling: that someone was, or some people were, on the edges of his life, trying hard to look in. Were they parked around the block in their black Ford SUV with tinted windows? Or like a cyberspace shadow, could they be following every move he made on the Internet? He just knew it: something wasn't quite right. Or was he just being paranoid? Was his status as the director of one of the world's fastest- growing arms-control movements getting the best of him? Then Gagnon received an unexpected phone call. It was a lawyer from Florida's American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU lawyer right away old him: "You and your family are being spied on by NASA, the Air Force and he Brevard County Sheriff's Department"—basically, a bunch of good ol' boys rom near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida where Gagnon had often protested. He would soon find out that this posse of spies had conducted background checks on him and his son. The spies were also monitoring the arms-control website that he runs, and attending Kennedy Space Center protests incognito—protests that he'd coordinated. Gagnon’s instincts, once again, had warned him correctly: a lot of people out there don't think too highly of him or what he does. The fifty-something Gagnon directs the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space from his office in Maine. The Global Network's aim is to stop all and any weapons, along with any nuclear-powered technology, from ever being deployed past Earth's atmosphere and into space. He established the Global Network in 1992, and today it is considered one of the fastest-growing peace activist groups across the globe, with chapters in 170 countries. Bruce Gagnon's résumé also includes guest lectures at scores of high-profile universities, and his writings have been published in prominent newspapers and magazines. He's also a hero of sorts in parts of Europe and Japan. "We're a small organisation with meagre resources," said Gagnon from his Maine office during an interview for my book Technoir.' "They feel threatened by us? That tells us something.” The ACLU filed a number of Freedom of Information requests seeking records that may reveal the entire scope of the government's probe. "NASA states, in these documents, that they [also] have ‘confidential sources’ in Britain and Belgium monitoring Global Network activities,” said Florida ACLU attorney Kevin Aplin to this reporter.’ Why would the Pentagon, home to the world's greatest and smartest warriors, be so interested in a small, bare-to-the-bones, peace activist group? “Space weapons," said Gagnon, a veteran of the US Air Force. Space is militarised with spy satellites, but space is not weaponised with, for example, "battlesats" or killer satellites loaded with lasers or missiles. Putting weapons into space, or creating weapons that can destroy targets in space, is the arms race for the 21st century, say experts. It's an arms race that Based on chapter three of his 2010 book Technoir APRIL - MAY 2011 NEXUS ° II by John Lasker © 2010-2011 Email: johnlasker@sbcglobal.net www.nexusmagazine.com