Wednesday, October 9, 2024

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #198, OCTOBER 9, 2024.

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #198, OCTOBER 9, 2024.  Compiled by Dick Bennett

·       This Friday: A Year of Genocide, Silent Vigil

·        Abel Tomlinson’s Reply to the UN’s International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

·       OMNI STOP US MILITARIZATION OF SPACE, ANTHOLOGY #9,  OCTOBER 9, 2024



This Friday: A Year of Genocide, Silent Vigil    
friendsofpalestinenwa AttachmentsOct 8, 2024                    

Hello all,   

As many are aware, October 7th  marks one year of the ongoing genocide in Palestine. This Friday, October 11th, from 6 p.m. - 7 p.m., at the Washington County Courthouse, we will be joining as a community to mourn the lives lost at the hands of Israeli Occupation. There will be a silent protest followed by a candlelight vigil & protest song share. Please wear black.

 

While the total number of deaths from the Ministry of Health in Gaza has remained at 41,000, there are thousands still unaccounted for — buried in unmarked graves, trapped under the rubble, or incinerated in bomb blasts.   A study in the journal Lancet estimates Israel has killed more than 186,000 people, accounting for indirect deaths caused by starvation and the destruction of healthcare facilities. At least 902 families have been completely wiped off of the civil registry.   Toward their goal of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the Israeli occupation forces continue to commit mass atrocities not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank, killing over 700 people, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Israel’s latest assault on Lebanon has killed over 2,000 people according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. 

 

This genocide did not begin on October 7, 2023 — it is a continuation of 76 years of Israeli apartheid.

 

This grief transcends borders because of our country’s complicity in genocide. Arkansas contributes over $19.8 million in federal tax dollars to fund the Israeli military, according to the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. The tax dollars of Fayetteville residents provides over $1.4 million in weapons funding for Israel, the very weapons used to massacre men, women and children in this genocide.

 

Please see attached documents to view the event flyer. Please invite your friends and as always, reach out if you have any questions.

Hope to see you there, Friends of Palestine, NWA

 

(Here is Abel’s reply to the UN’s International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons as celebrated by ICAN and reported in WWW #197, via   Thomas Hardy’s “In Tenebris II”: If way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst .  --Dick)

Hi Dick, 

Nuclear weapons abolition appears ever more like a pipe dream so long as the unaccountable nuclear-armed, war criminal, genocidal U.S. Empire exists. A strong supermajority of Genocidal Democrat Elites & Genocidal Republican Elites strongly support nuclear brinkmamship with Russia & China and support spending nearly $2 trillion on new nuclear weapons. 

 

It's wishful thinking that they would change course with such extreme investment. Abolition is only possible if the US Empire falls, and as many people know the anti-democratic plutocratic authoritarian oligarchy is extremely rigged against 3rd party solutions for peace & disarmament, like Jill Stein who openly seeks the dismantling of US Empire. 

 

How else can Empire fall if the voting system is too rigged against peace? It can only fall if it has inherent structural instability, and internal contradictions, Imperial Hubris that breeds Extreme Stupidity as we see from Biden, Harris, Trump & other neocons (Iraq backfired, Libya backfired, Ukraine war backfired, economic war on Russia backfired, Gaza Genocide is backfiring, etc), and/or outside intervention. 

 

1. Genocidal Republicans are more likely to cause nuclear war for Israel (via Iran) or w/ China

2. Genocidal Democrats are more likely to cause nuclear war over ongoing proxy war w/ Russia.

3. Jill Stein offers peace, but the system is rigged.

4. The Greatest Hope is the Fall of the American Imperium, including its genocidal sidekick Israel, and that greatest Hope lies in Multipolarity, surging expansion of BRICS, de-Dollarization of world trade, the extreme hubristic Stupidity of bipartisan neocons constantly failing with backfiring regime change efforts & backfiring economic warfare, the looming collapse of NATO over Ukraine, and other factors

 

With hope for peace beyond fake rigged Corporate-controlled $elections,

Abel

 

OMNI STOP US MILITARIZATION OF SPACE, ANTHOLOGY #9,  OCTOBER 9, 2024

Keep Space for Peace Week (Oct 5-12, 2024)

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/10/omni-stop-us-militarization-of-space.html
(#1 December 13, 2006; #2 January 24, 2008; #3 October 4, 2008; #4 October 2-9, 2010; #5, October 1-8, 2011; #6, October 6-13, 2012; #7, March 28, 2020; #8, Sept. 20, 2021)

https://omnicenter.org/donate

CONTENTS

  • Bruce Gagnon.  “Keep Space for Peace Week October 5-12, 2024.”
  • Jeremy Kuzmarov. Futuristic Weapons: H. Bruce Franklin.  Ukraine. . .Testing Ground for Space-Based Weapons.” 
  • Caitlin Johnstone.  UFO Narratives and “Race to Weaponize Space.” 
  • Stop US Militarization of Space #8
  • Stop Militarization of Space #1-#7

 

times.

OMNI STOP US MILITARIZATION OF SPACE, ANTHOLOGY #9, OCTOBER 9, 2024

 

OMNI

STOP US MILITARIZATION OF SPACE,

ANTHOLOGY #9,  OCTOBER 9, 2024

Keep Space for Peace Week (Oct 5-12, 2024)

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
(#1 December 13, 2006; #2 January 24, 2008; #3 October 4, 2008; #4 October 2-9, 2010; #5, October 1-8, 2011; #6, October 6-13, 2012; #7, March 28, 2020; #8, Sept. 20, 2021)

https://omnicenter.org/donate

 

 

CONTENTS

·       Bruce Gagnon.  “Keep Space for Peace Week October 5-12, 2024.”

·       Jeremy Kuzmarov. Futuristic Weapons: H. Bruce Franklin.  Ukraine. . .Testing Ground for Space-Based Weapons.” 

·       Caitlin Johnstone.  UFO Narratives and “Race to Weaponize Space.” 

·       Stop US Militarization of Space #8

·       Stop Militarization of Space #1-#7

 

 

TEXTS STOP US MILITARIZATION OF SPACE #9

 

Keep Space for Peace Week Oct 5-12, 2024

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space <info@space4peace.org> 

Save the date:  Keep Space for Peace Week, October 5-12, 2024

 

International week of events to stop the militarization of space.  Each October the Global Network organizes Keep Space for Peace Week to bring attention to the need to stop the ever advancing militarization and nuclearization of space.

 

In 1989 Apollo astronaut (and moon walker) Edgar Mitchell spoke at one of our protests at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and said, 'One war in space will be the one and only. So much space debris would be created that we would not be able to get a rocket off the planet Earth. We'd be entombed to the planet forever. It would be like a mine field not allowing any rocket to get thru the debris field just over our heads'.

 

Today all war on Earth is directed from orbiting military satellites.

 

For many years China and Russia have gone to the United Nations seeking to create a new treaty to ban all weapons in space. (Close the door to the barn before the horse gets out.)    But the US and Israel have been blocking such treaty negotiations for more than 25 years. The US has long maintained, 'There is no problem, there are no weapons in space.' It was obvious that the US intended to develop 'control and domination' of space and didn't want any treaty limitations.

 

Help us during October 5-12 to illuminate this issue for the public who are now massively paying for the militarization of space - what the aerospace industry brags is the 'largest industrial project in human history'.   Check our web site for articles, videos, T-shirts and past events during Keep Space for Peace Week. Click this link

 

Thank you.   

Bruce K. Gagnon, GN Coordinator

 PS Please let us know of any plans you develop during space week.

 [Shortly after OMNI began, thanks to Mark Swaney, Bruce spent a full day with us, including an address at  UAF.  He has never given up his great mission to bring peace on earth and in space.  –Dick] 

 

  

'Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.'  ~ Henry David Thoreau

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
P.O. Box 652, Brunswick, ME 04011    globalnet@mindspring.com    (207) 844-8187 

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

 

Space Week Actions List (October 5-12)  

 

Actions list construction underway

Ethics in Technology: October 1 space issues Webinar with Bruce Gagnon at 6:00 pm PST  vahid.razavi1@gmail.com

Vandenberg Space Force Base, California: October 2 Protest vigil at main gate where nuclear missiles and satellites are launched.  3:45-4:45 pm jdapel2@gmail.com

Bath Iron Works, Maine: October 5 Space week vigil at the General Dynamics Administration building on Washington St. 11:30-12:30. Navy Aegis destroyers are built at BIW that use space satellites to guide the missiles onboard these ships that have been attacking Yemen from the Red Sea. 207-763-4062 globalnet@mindspring.com

Andover, Massachusetts: October 6 space week vigil at intersection of Rt 28 and Rt 133, Noon till 1:00. brian@quirk.ws

Menwith Hill, England: October 8 Join the special Keep Space for Peace Menwith Hill Accountability Campaign protest at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire to highlight the United States surveillance and missile defence activity that makes us a significant military target. 6:00-7.30 pm  dave-webb@outlook.com

Whitehall (opposite Downing Street) London, England: October 9 Ministry of Defence. As part of the global Keep Space for Peace Week and especially in solidarity with PARC Not DARC who are campaigning to stop the Space Radar in Pembrokeshire, join Space Watch UK, CND and others outside the Ministry of Defence main building in Whitehall to call for a halt to the militarisation of space. Join us! Bring placards and banners! More details: 07960 811437. Noon-1:00 pm

St Louis Peace Economy Project: October 10 Space militarization and demilitarization Webinar with Bruce Gagnon at 3:00 pm EST peaceeconomyproject@gmail.com

Andover, Massachusetts: October 10 space week vigil at Raytheon weapons production facility entrance, 2:30 PM till 3:30. brian@quirk.ws


White House, Washington DC: October 11 Keep Space for Peace signs at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker White House peace vigil at noon-1:00 pm. artlaffin@hotmail.com

USAF (RAF) Croughton, England: October 12 Noon-3pm Croughton is one of the largest international intelligence hubs. This major U.S. communication and intelligence base supports many US military sites in Europe and is involved in world-wide war operations. These include space communications, data links, military drone information, bomber guidance, missile defence, diplomatic communications, and command and control war fighting functions. A connected base is at Barford St John, Banbury, Oxfordshire.  oxfordcnd@phonecoop.coop

Global Network Space Issues Webinar: Sunday, Oct 13 at 3:00 pm EST. Speakers include Dave Webb (UK), Tamara Lorincz (Canada), Sung-Hee Choi (South Korea) and Peter Burt (UK) globalnet@mindspring.com

Vilnius, Lithuania: October 13 More info TBA

Creech Killer Drone Base, near Las Vegas: October 13-19 Shut Down Drone Warfare, Full week of Resistance www.ShutDownDroneWarfare.org

National space issues grassroots organizing meeting, Daejeon, South Korea: October 18-20 armha2013@gmail.com

Visakhapatnam, India: Space issues presentation in local schools. Date TBA prabhakar.jalluri@gmail.com

 

· Please let us know ASAP what your local community is organizing for space week.

 

· Help spread our space issues videos from our YouTube library

                                      https://www.youtube.com/@GNspace4peace

 

'Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.'

~ Henry David Thoreau 

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
P.O. Box 652, Brunswick, ME 04011    globalnet@mindspring.com

 

 

CovertAction Magazine covers GN & space  issues:
Ukraine Providing an Important Testing Ground For Space-Based Weapons.”  Weapons Straight Out of a Science Fiction Novel Have Not Been Able to Turn the Tide on the Battlefield By Jeremy Kuzmarov (Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine) .  8-25-23. 

In his 1988 book War Stars: The Superweapon in the American Imagination, H. Bruce Franklin traces a deep-rooted cultural belief in the magic of futuristic weapon systems that would enable the U.S. to defeat any foreign adversary.

A book cover of a space ship

Description automatically generated[Source: amazon.com]

Franklin dates the infatuation to the era of the revolutionary war with the development of the combat submarine by Robert H. Fulton to pulverize the British Navy.  He in turn shows a direct line through World War I and World War II and the development of air power and the atomic bomb, through the Vietnam War where sophisticated U.S. war machines could not defeat the guerrilla warfare tactics of the Vietcong.

Franklin could easily include a new chapter on Ukraine, whose summer counteroffensive has fizzled despite the country’s function as a testing ground for new American weapon systems.  These include space-based satellites and sensors that have been used by the Ukrainians to track Russian troop movements and assist in navigation, mapping and electronic warfare, and positioning systems that guide precision weapons and drones.

A webinar in mid-July hosted by the War Industry Resistance Network placed the U.S. strategy in Ukraine in the context of a broader attempt by the U.S. to militarize space and use it to destroy its leading geopolitical rivals—Russia and China.

 

The first speaker, Dave Webb, a retired engineering and peace studies professor from England, emphasized that the 1991 Operation Desert Storm set the groundwork for Ukraine as the first space war in which the U.S. showed off new satellite and precision guided missiles that wound up devastating Iraq. [Webb is convenor of the Global Network board.]

 

In 1997, the U.S. Space Command outlined its goal of obtaining full-spectrum military dominance over land, sea, air and space by the year 2020—which achieved partial fulfillment with the Trump administration’s creation in 2019 of a new Space Force as a branch of the U.S. military.

 

The second speaker at the webinar, Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, pointed out that, for the last quarter century, Russia has presented its demand for a new cooperative space treaty before the United Nations but has been blocked by the U.S., Israel and a few of their allies.  The Russians have stated unequivocally, as have the Chinese, that they do not want to devote their countries’ resources to a destructive and fruitless arms race in space, though the U.S. believes it can be master in space and has been taken over totally by the military-industrial complex.

 

When the creation of the new Space Force came up for a vote in 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives supported it, though it had wanted to call it Space Corps.

 

Read the entire article here 

 

   

“Crowded orbits = growing danger.”

 

The Global Network is involved in a legal action against the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to pressure them to follow the law and do environmental impact studies before the launching of satellites into space.   Lower Earth orbit (LEO) is becoming dangerously crowded and NASA scientists fear growing space debris and likely cascading collisions in orbit. This, called the Kessler Syndrome, would turn the Earth dark as most technology today uses satellites to function.

 

 

Caitlin A. Johnstone.  Funny How the UFO Narrative Coincides with the Race to Weaponize Space.”  Mronline.org (7-29-23). 

Originally publishedCaitlin A Johnstone Blog  on July 28, 2023 (more by Caitlin A Johnstone Blog)  | 

Culture, Movements, State Repression, StrategyAmericas, United StatesNewswireHouse Oversight, UFO.

These stories about the space militarization race aren’t getting the attention the much more entertaining UFO stories are getting, but it seems likely that those who are responsible for moving the war machinery around are paying a lot more attention to the former than the latter.     If Wednesday’s House Oversight subcommittee hearing on UFOs had happened ten years ago instead of today, it would have shaken the world. Imagine someone from 2013 hearing congressional testimonies about “routine” military pilot encounters with giant flying tic tacs, floating orbs, 300-foot red squares, and cubes in clear spheres zipping around in ways that surpass all known earthly technology by leaps and bounds, or about secret government possession of otherworldly aircraft they’re trying to reverse engineer and the dead bodies of their non-human pilots, or about the possibility that these creatures are not merely extraterrestrial but extra-dimensional. Their jaws would have hit the floor. . . .MORE

 

OMNI STAR WARS PROTEST TO STOP US MILITARIZATION OF SPACE, ANTHOLOGY #8,  September 20, 2021.   Keep Space for Peace Week (Oct 2-9, 2021).

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/09/star-wars-protest-to-stop-us.html

(#1 December 13, 2006; #2 January 24, 2008; #3 October 4, 2008; #4 October 2-9, 2010; #5, October 1-8, 2011; #6, October 6-13, 2012; #7, March 28, 2020; #8, Sept. 20, 2021)

[This is a little book against the militarization of space.  You might start with Karl Grossman on the Space Treaty of 1967 and Bruce Gagnon on Trump’s Space Force. ]

CONTENTS #8 Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space via sendinblue.com

Space Alert!  2021  Contents of Latest Number, edited by Bruce Gagnon

Super-Power Conflict over Bases on Moon, Colonies on Mars, J.Narayana Rao, In Memoriam

Rocket Lab in NZ

Gold Rush Into Space

Karl Grossman.  Space Treaty of 1967 or WWIII

UN Outer Space Treaty

Space Law Treaties and Principles

Five Treaties

 Purpose of Star Trek: US Space Dominance

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Hypersonic Missiles: Need for Skeptical Journalists

Bruce Gagnon, Trump’s Space Force

Book Review: Publisher’s Praise and Critical  Review

Neil Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang.    ACCESSORY TO WAR:  THE UNSPOKEN ALLIANCE BETWEEN ASTROPHYSICS AND THE MILITARY.     2018.

Branko Marcetic, Trump’s Space Force

Back to 1990s: Star Wars: Irrational, Unfeasible, Dangerous

The Leap Manifesto a Way to Peace and Justice

 

#1 (December 2006)

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2006/

#2 (January 2008)

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2008/01/militarization-of-space-usa-and-canada.html

#3  (October 2008)

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2008/10/keep-space-for-peace-week-omni.html

#4  (October 2010)

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2010/10/keep-space-for-peace-week.html

#5 (October 2011)

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2011/10/omni-newsletter-5-on-us-militarization_1.html

#6  (October 2012)

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2012/10/keep-space-for-peace-week-newsletter-6.html

#7  (March 2020)

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/05/omni-star-wars-newsletter-7-march-28.html

#8 (September 2021)

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/09/star-wars-protest-to-stop-us.html

Monday, October 7, 2024

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #199, OCTOBER 7, 2024.

 

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #199,  OCTOBER 7, 2024.  Compiled by Dick Bennett.

Reform Capitalism: Public Citizen
Replace Capitalism:  Ecology

TEXTS

REFORMING CAPITALISM
Public Citizen’s Lawyer’s against Climate Change. 
     Recent numbers of Public Citizen News offer several articles on climate subjects.   The May/June 2024 number of Public Citizen News presents two articles:  One regarding efforts to decarbonize various industries, to create “green steel” for example; the other describing PC’s increasing moves beyond civil prosecution of corporate execs, to criminal.   
   The September/October number has four articles: “Fighting for a Just Transition, Not Another Colonialist Trap,” one half, you will remember, of the Green New Deal’s demand for an equitable energy transition.  (Stop Warming, Transition Justly!)  The transition is requiring a massive minerals-use reorientation that must not exploit workers globally.  “Fighting Joe Manchin’s Latest Dirty Deal”:  his sweeping energy-permitting deregulation bill packed with fossil fuel giveaways.  “Public Citizen Protest Blackrock Takeover of Minnesota Power,” on stopping one of the world’s larges asset management firms from acquiring Duluth, MN Energy utility.  And “Watchdogging Texas’ Environments Watchdog.”  The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is a reluctant regulator because it includes economic development as part of its mission.  Related are three articles on corporate/super-rich criminal behavior, corporate globalization, and rev. of a book on Wall St. titled The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government.  You guessed PC’s power:  10 full-time attorneys working for The People.  Thank you Ralph Nader for starting PC!

REPLACE GROWTH CAPITALISM 
Listen to the Ecologists!  Mronline.org (10-2-24)

Harry Magdoff .  MR (September 7, 2024).                                                                                                                                             

In this reprise from 1992, former MR editors Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy look toward the end of the recession again plaguing the United States, seeing this choice looming on the horizon: Will the progressive left attempt to reform capitalism, or replace it entirely?  Capital’s inexorable thirst for growth beyond natural limits, they write, means we must choose the latter—”if we care about the future of the human species…we had better listen to the ecologists.” | more…     Source