While I was reading about NATO’s two new commands to fight ‘Russian Aggression’, a third potential NATO command had popped up: a Space Command. Apparently there’d been a joint US-Soviet Space Treaty with ‘limitations’, but no links had been provided. So I went hunting, a bit in the reverse order, but no matter. A first general bingle popped up both:
JAPCC’s ‘Filling the Vacuum, A Framework for a NATO Space Policy’, which mainly asked…questions in 2015, then in 2016:
#FutureNATO.org, A project of the Atlantic Council : ‘Above the Moon: NATO Space Policy, Pawel Fleicher (FWIW, readers may imagine, decide)
A big bold red Raytheon is on the right sidebar. It reads very sensibly and strategically in his/their opening lines:
“Outer space has been an important area of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union since the Cold War. In the bipolar world, space security was an element of strategic balance, shaping American and Soviet national security policies of the US and the USSR. But it also attracted states that seeking profits from space exploration. The increased presence of governmental agencies and private companies in outer space justifies the necessity of establishing a NATO Space Policy.”
...with this noteworthy paragraph:
“The Alliance space-based surface surveillance systems clearly have an advantage in early warning and intelligence collection for the battlefield. But the undefined rules of engagement in this domain, much like the cyber domain, could lead to much confusion. Member states should clarify that an attack on one country’s satellites may then by interpreted as an attack on all, triggering Article 5. An equivalent response to any attack on a satellite or space-based system must be spelled out in advance. The NATO Space Policy must recognize both kinetic and non-kinetic threats and establish procedures regarding incidents in outer-space.”
Recalling having read a bit about the Atlantic Council from Bruan MacDonald at RT, I went back to his oeuvre there and found:
“Incidentally, aside from Soros, the other big donors to the “European Values” lobby group are the European Commission and Parliament and the embassies of the United States and the United Kingdom. Thus, it doesn’t take a genius to follow the money and see the agendas at play. And it’s instructive that Richter is also connected to the Atlantic Council, a large US political action body, bankrolled by the Ukrainian World Congress, the Lockheed Martin Corporation, the Raytheon Company and the US State Department. All entities that, of course, benefit from strained relations between Russia and the west.”
I did get a boot outta @AtlanticCouncil Tomorrow’s launch of, “Whither America? A Strategy for Repairing America’s Political Culture,” has been postponed. Stay tuned for the new date! @ACScowcroft
Soviet plans for general and complete disarmament between 1960 and 1962 included provisions for ensuring the peaceful use of outer space. The Soviet Union, however, would not separate outer space from other disarmament issues, nor would it agree to restrict outer space to peaceful uses unless U.S. foreign bases at which short-range and medium-range missiles were stationed were eliminated also.
The Western powers declined to accept the Soviet approach; the linkage, they held, would upset the military balance and weaken the security of the West.
After the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, the Soviet Unions position changed. It ceased to link an agreement on outer space with the question of foreign bases. On September 19, 1963, Foreign Minister Gromyko told the General Assembly that the Soviet Union wished to conclude an agreement banning the orbiting of objects carrying nuclear weapons. Ambassador Stevenson stated that the United States had no intention of orbiting weapons of mass destruction, installing them on celestial bodies or stationing them in outer space.” [snip]
“On the 19th of that month the General Assembly approved by acclamation a resolution commending the Treaty. It was opened for signature at Washington, London, and Moscow on January 27, 1967. On April 25 the Senate gave unanimous consent to its ratification, and the Treaty entered into force on October 10, 1967.
The substance of the arms control provisions is in Article IV. This article restricts activities in two ways:
First, it contains an undertaking not to place in orbit around the Earth, install on the moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise station in outer space, nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction.
Second, it limits the use of the moon and other celestial bodies exclusively to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for establishing military bases, installation, or fortifications; testing weapons of any kind; or conducting military maneuvers.”
This is the Space Treaty’s Wiki entry, a bit long and confusing to me, but it does include this:
“However, the Treaty does not prohibit the placement of conventional weapons in orbit and thus some highly destructive attack strategies such as kinetic bombardment are still potentially allowable.”
Paranoia Runs Deep; into Your Life it Will Creep:
‘U.S. Opposes New Draft Treaty from China and Russia Banning Space Weapons; Arms control pact sought as Beijing, Moscow secretly build anti-satellite, space arms’, freebeacon.com
“”All U.S. administrations have rejected space control because there are serious definitional problems, such as what is a space weapon,” Schneider said. “And there are serious verification problems associated with it.
Additionally, the space arms ban treaty is part of Russian and Chinese efforts to attack U.S. and allied missile defenses, which are heavily reliant on space sensors and weapons.
“At some point I believe we should put missile defense into space,” said Schneider who worked in the Pentagon on strategic defense, space, and verification policies.
Additionally, “Russia is certain to cheat on any space treaty,” Schneider said. “They have announced that they are developing ASAT weapons. Moreover, they may be developing space offensive weapons.”
Chinadaily.com’s June 2014 coverage propaganda is quite different of course.
“The updated draft Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects, was presented at a plenary session of the Conference on Disarmament, the world’s sole multilateral forum for disarmament negotiations.
The new draft treaty has supplemented, revised and refined some clauses of the one China and Russia presented in 2008, including definition and scope of the treaty, organizations as well as mechanisms to solve disputes, said Wu Haitao, China’s ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary for disarmament affairs.”
Now in Karl Grossman’ November 14, 2017 ‘The Nuclearization of Space’, at Counterpunch, he has a hella lot to report. He opens:
“The website nuclear-news this month has declared: “Nuclear Power and Space Exploration—theme for November 17.” And, indeed, a desire of nuclear power zealots for decades is, now in 2017 with the Trump administration, poised for possible major implementation.
As nuclear-news says: “Coinciding with the severe downturn in the nuclear industry is the rush for enthusiasm for space exploration—and the goal of ‘putting a man on Mars.’ The nuclear industry must be pleased” now with the focus on nuclear-powered rockets to Mars. The apparent motive? “Space travel might save their industry?” Continues nuclear-news: “The effects of a space craft crash on an Earth city are almost unimaginable, and certainly never properly condemned by the space technocrats and nuclear enthusiasts. To them, this is an ‘accceptable risk.’”[snip]
“Trump’s spaceman,” was the headline in February of a Vice News piece about Trump campaign space advisor Robert Smith Walker, an arch-conservative ex-congressman who had been chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, the panel with NASA oversight.
“Under Trump, missions are expected to be more deep-space-oriented, beginning with robots mining for resources such as Helium 3 on the Moon. Walker foresees human lunar colonies as well as spaceships fueled by nuclear power to cut travel time to Mars from months to weeks.
In July, Scientific American published an article headlined: “NASA Seeks Nuclear Power for Mars.” Its sub-head: “After a half-century hiatus, the agency is reviving its reactor development with a test later this summer.”
It starts: “As NASA makes plans to one day send humans to Mars, one of the key technical gaps the agency is working to fill is how to provide enough power on the Red Planet’s surface for fuel production, habitats and other equipment. One option, small nuclear fission reactors, which work by splitting uranium atoms to generate heat, which is then converted into electric power.”
“NASA’s technology development branch has been funding a project called Kilopower for three years, with the aim of demonstrating the system at the Nevada National Security Site near Las Vegas. Testing is due to start in September and end in January 2018.”
Grossman offers one snafu that Scientific American narrated, but a number of far more FUBAR results of NASA’s SNAP nuclear devices. He offers solar alternatives, if populating and mining on other celestial bodies has much merit whatsover, save for resource mining, Tesla, Brannon, Musk profiteering: as ‘elite getaways from a dying planet’?. But he goes on:
““The weapons industry views space as a market as well,” says (Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of Space4Peace Network. He speaks of the proposal that’s been before Congress to create a “U.S. Space Force” as a separate military branch and described it as “driven by the aerospace industry’s huge appetite for endless war—and space offers bountiful opportunities.”
“Over the years we’ve heard the aerospace industry saying that ‘Star Wars’ would be ‘the largest industrial project in the history of our planet.’ And how would they pay for such an expensive endeavor?” he asks. He speaks of reports about aerosopace lobbyists in Washington seeking “the defunding of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and what is left of the welfare program in order to transfer those funds into creating pyramids to the heavens. The weapons industry are the new pharaohs and we, the taxpayers, are to be their slaves.”
And other victims of the capitalist weapons industry may be… the planets, asteroids, and other heavenly bodies. Rape and assassinate the planet, then ‘Aim for the stars!’
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
The first vote in that massive defunding just took place in the House.
The western media (some SAMP writers) covering OBOR are hitting on the the heavy use of SNAP and Thorium reactors planned for it.
The pressure on the West to reverse their renewable policies is just beginning.
i need you to explain this, thd. defunding of nasa, or nasa’s and noaa’s climate monitoring? and by obor (one belt one road?) i assume you mean the new acronym BRI? yes, it does look quite nuke-heavy, booo… hiss, and some by way of russian money, i just saw at asia times.
i was just checking wsws’s take on the house passage of herr cheeto’s ‘tax reform’, and ….gawd’s blood. laying the groundwork for massive cuts to medicare and further welfare reform…in order to balance the budget they’re nuking by tax cuts?
The huge deficits and the defunding of $25 billion a year in Medicare payments is prologue to the defunding of Social Security. Lots of conservative folks are going to find themselves suddenly caring for mom and dad — or abandoning them, which seems more and more likely. Yep, you got it right.
Oh yes, BRI. That allows countries to keep their fossil fuel reduction commitments but ups their radiation pollution.
thanks. but could you explain what you’d meant here? “The first vote in that massive defunding just took place in the House.”
and do you trust nato’s claim the space command would make sure no one weaponizes space? including nato, that is?
do we trust the senate dems not to sell out the people wholesale once again when they reconcile it? al franken can squawk now, as many of them are, but…in the end?
i was about to ask you which is the fourth nation in a proposed economic alliance to counter obor/bri, but here it is. it was japan, of course. ‘Japan Likely to Engage India, Australia, US to Propose China’s OBOR-like Project
and yes: SS. how many grand bargains’ have the Dems wailed about, but agreed to? “TINA !” #bullshit.
is this triumphalist? but coupled w/ the following tweet…hmmmmm.
According to comments at moonofalabama the army are the good guys but that looks,a bit shoddy.
i did try to follow that thread, even though b had admitted that he isn’t well-versed on zimbabwe, and had invited commenters to bring what they knew. he and some of them had been referring to this twitter account, which rt says is by way of a jest mugabe account; i’m totally agnostic about all of it, but suspicious after reading a glen ford link someone had provided, and these among the many similar ones from my favorite tankie.
on edit: here’s glen ford’s opinion. and of course the western imperium loves paul kagame, which the BAR writers call a ‘genocidaire’.
but i’d like to come back later to ask some questions about any of your opinions on the nato space command as i can find the time. me, i wouldn’t trust nato one jot.
the moon belongs to Amerikkka
to slip the surly bonds of earth and…encircle it with WMD’s! a few of these egghead scientist types, I think, are really giddy about the whiz-bang, Mentos-meets-Pepsi possibilities of doing unbelievably stupid, though technically feasible, shit like using nukes to launch rockets to Mars from earth.
and while we are on NASA, despite all the cool stuff they show for the kids, they are a research wing of the military.
OT, but what do Al Franken & Bill O’Reilly have in common? I mean, beside the obvious that they are both entertainment figures making a living screeching in apocalyptic terms about what the donkeys or elephants are up to? I guess Rush Limbaugh isn’t the only one who’s a big fat-headed dummy, is he Al?
lol on the cartoon, and mentos meet pepsi, too. boom! yep, i confess i’d forgotten that nasa is a branch of the military, i allus think of darpa first. hmmmm, haven’t been there for a while, come to think of it.
now does the other thing they have in common have to do with franken and the young woman he assaulted on the USO tour? but ya see, i was told it was all in fun, he never felt her breasts thru the flak jacket, and besides…she’d posed w/ her breasts uncovered. end of case. oh, and it wasn’t like moore’s rapes, either, so…shut the fuck up. but yeah, wsws is kinda right about the level of morality at play: okay to kill, though; thass okay.
i was trying to think of some of franken’s most egregious votes, though. ooopsie, this may not be what you’re talking about at all. ;-)
i’m about to shut down for the night, and wanted to wish that you all dream instructively, if not well. the world was never changed for the better by happy people, was it? not that their endeavors always ended well…
the shit’s gonna get lots worse before it gets better, but then for millions of our siblings in amerika and around the globe the suffering and oppression have been epic over the past few decades.
yeah, the ‘municpal movements’ roar mag chronicles can help some, but when others suffer, in our solidarity, how much does it really matter? it seems far to late for those lovely movements to catch on wholesale while so many are asleep at the wheel. or under the yoke of the machine, any road.
i had a dream the other night that i was on the dock of a large port, dunno which one, the port of miami’s the only one i’ve ever visited. but the main dockworkers were in wheelchairs, and each and every one of them had somehow been bisected at their waists, so no legs, no pelvises, etc. and yet somehow they grabbed ropes hanging from a ship, and hand over hand, climbed the ropes to do their appointed jobs aboard.
the one man closest to me had kinda curly long dark blond hair…and i watched his face carefully. no self-pity whatsoever, just determination rooted in acceptance as he climbed. i expect for me, the lesson of the dream was akin to: ‘i cried because i had no shoes…until i met a man who had no feet’. dunno how long the lesson might work, but apparently i must have needed it.
love to you all, it’s a new moon tomorrow, whatever that might mean,
wd
The lovely visual you posted at the top of this, wendye, plus the grandeur elicited by the title of your diary, combine with visions of crispy delectable turkey skin and the aroma therefrom past holidays – wot? how? you ask.
The attempts to eliminate Thanksgiving from our consciousness on the part of the ptb – I won’t enumerate them; we all know what they are – such attempts WILL FAIL!
[Okay, that’s not the answer; bear with me.]
Point One: You jokers, it is not humanly possible to ‘command’ space. Nuclear?? You puny little nuclear flies, all it would take is one supernova in not so near proximity and all your nuclear wouldn’t even wind up as space dust contributing to some life form elsewhere in the vast unknowable, beautiful universe that we specks of cosmic dust are privileged to boast presumptuously that we inhabit for one brief moment in time, important only to us, and gone before we even had a chance to tell one another the tiny bits of really important stuff that have been the one claim we might have for being here in the first place. (Present company excluded, of course.)
G’bye Bezos, G’bye Soros – Johnny we hardly knew ye!
Turkey skins, now that’s immortality!
lol. a supernova creating a black hole in space, sucking bezos and soros…and us? i’m ready! transitioning must be a lovely thing to do… but srsly, what a fun take on ‘commanding space’.
and i’m right on track w/ turkey skin, as in: my lower arms. ish, double ish. ;-) but doesn’t a roasting turkey smell yummy? (unless one is a vegetarian or vegan, of course.) sadly, our son’s wife doesn’t like turkey, so they’re bringing a ‘spiral ham’, ugh.
now i dunno which ptb you’re referring to trying to erase the holiday from our consciousnesses, but the main ones who object to it, or at least find extreme irony in it…are the turtle island indigenous and those in solidarity w/ them. it’s likely i won’t find the time to post anything minority report on it this year, but here’s a fairly short explanation by two turtle island indigenous.
‘Decolonizing the History of Thanksgiving’, nov. 2015, counterpunch
“Let’s be honest. On the last Thursday of November, every year, we celebrate the beginning of an European invasion that ends with the death or relocation of millions of native people. While many have tried to redefine the meaning of Thanksgiving into a time wherein we cultivate a sense of gratitude, the undeniable truth is that the blood of native people stains the genesis of the holiday.
The colonial origins of Thanksgiving – or what many natives often refer to as Thankskilling or Thankstaking – is not something to celebrate. While we cannot pinpoint one specific or original “Thanksgiving” celebration, President Abraham Lincoln made it a national holiday in 1863 and conceived it as a national day of thanksgiving. “Pilgrims and Indians” weren’t included in the tradition until 1890. The national mythos surrounding this holiday does not take into consideration the long and violent history of contact between European settlers (in this case English pilgrims – puritans) and indigenous populations that already inhabited the land. It is in these forgotten histories that we see the history of this holiday for what it truly is: English pilgrims, unprepared to survive on the land and unfamiliar with the vegetation, waterways, and others food sources, stranded on Turtle Island who survive those early winters and ultimately engage in a brutal campaign of colonialism and genocidal activity.”
for similar reasons, during Occupy days, some general assemblies honored the wishes of local indigenous and latino/a members and declared themselves: ‘Decolonize ABQ’, etc.
and it is a sublime visual, isn’t it?
on evening edit: i did get to laughing about ‘the ptb’ = the Capitalist Consumer wanting Black Friday (day after TD to be far more important, as it’s the day when, yanno, ‘suffering’ stores in the red and online stores make their biggest bucks of the year).
I don’t agree, dear wendye, with your indigenous friends, much as I respect them. That’s not what we celebrate at all, not what I celebrate, anyway. I celebrate the nobility of one culture’s friendship with another.
In my case, it was the generosity of an Irish American landlady to strangers arriving to her rented house next door – we having never heard of such a feast, and suddenly finding ourselves welcomed into her family, the table laden – and what was this huge bird, this turkey??? We had nothing like it in our country where even the chickens were only raised for eggs till they were old and fit for nothing but the stewpot, if that.
Well, we could perhaps have been feasting on moa – if our own natives hadn’t extinguished that possibility.
I had never heard of Thanksgiving. It was a wonderful experience. And ever since then I thought of the generosity of the indigenous people way back when who had compassion on starving immigrants and brought them food. I honor them, not any conquering brutes who came after. This noble chief, I honor him.
That is the feast to celebrate. Nothing more and nothing less.
the authors were attempting to point out the vast irony of the celebration of the thanksgiving story, as in ‘no good deed goes unpunished’, i think. and how quickly other ‘thanksgiving days’ came not long afterward, like the grotesque pequot massacre.
but sure, i understand that given your introduction to the holiday you’d prefer to celebrate the cultural sharing. i guess i can enjoy the dinner, give thanks for family, friends, and all we have, but with that history embedded in the back of my mind. as with this thanksgiving image from my favorite vintage cartoonist, r cobb.
We had better do the opposite; for the
space programs’ only value so far has been to irrefutably demonstrate, we have literally nowhere else to go but our fragile tiny planet’s thin, life-supporting surface.
two issues here, bruce. one is an imagined/desired nato space command, the other the desire to mine and colonize planetary bodies w/ nuke power. but swear to gawd, the private sector will keep tryin’ to colonize w/ artificial environments and all. then ruin the next heavenly body as well. as far as i can tell, this one’s gravely ill (pun intended).
Hear! Hear!
i had an exhilarating Animal Planet experience yesterday noon-ish. three of the resident bucks who’d disappeared after our neighbor and relatives ‘had ‘harvested’ three of them finally returned from hiding in the morning. two of them sparred and jousted a bit, and i do believe that they are twins, although one’s face is white, the other’s…not quite white. both are magnificent, with the antler configuration i love best: they sweep out broadly to the side, then curve and reach upward as though in praise of the sky.
i’d been dusting beams in our bedroom and had gone to the exterior door to shake the brush off…and found sir white-face and a doe just yards away from me. she was nibbling on fallen birch leaves, and quite aware that he was…in the mood for mating. his sword was unsheathed, let’s say, and when she’d allow it, he would poke his nose toward her bum, and she’d casually walk away a foot or two, not run. as she began to move around the house to the west she squatted and had a wee, which i’m told is a way for her to signal by way of the the scent of her estrogen.
sir white-face stuck his muzzle in the wet leaves, tasted a bit, then raised his head and bared his teeth in a semi-grimace, his black wet nose up in the air trembling with incoming scent. near ecstasy, i assume? i didn’t see them mate, as i screwed up by moving to the front porch, and apparently frightened them off with a sound. but despite my screw-up, i was thrilled. i have one good photo of deer mating in the open, but usually they seek privacy in the row of chokecherry trees down the hill from our hogan.
(and greyson, good on you for responding to bruce. you might want to consider using a commenter’s name in case they’ve signed up for emails of the comments. nice to see you!) ;-)