http://www.space4peace.org/ Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1450

[Doug Millison]

I heard one of the folks from the Global Network Against Weapons and 
Nuclear Power on KPFA radio earlier today; they're calling for an 
international day of protest, October 7, 2000. Details at 
http://www.space4peace.org/

Thanks, Keith Obye, for that pointer to 
http://www.fair.org/extra/9905/phantom-menace.html re "Some people 
don't want to hear this, and it sure isn't in vogue, 
but--absolutely--we're going to fight in space. We're going to fight 
from space and we're going to fight into space? We will engage 
terrestrial targets someday--ships, airplanes, land targets--from 
space." -U.S. space commander in chief John W. Ashy.

Here's a bit more from the FAIR site:

"In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of 
space-based weapons of devastating effectiveness to be used to 
deliver energy and mass as force projection in tactical and strategic 
conflict," stated New World Vistas: Air And Space Power For The 2lst 
Century, a 1996 U.S. Air Force board report. "These advances will 
enable lasers with reasonable mass and cost to effect very many 
kills."  Not only are there to be weapons in space, but they will 
likely need nuclear power as their energy source. As New World Vistas 
notes, "power limitations impose restrictions" on high-power weapons 
systems such as lasers, making them "relatively unfeasible," but "a 
natural technology to enable high power is nuclear power in space." 
Says the report: "Setting the emotional issues of nuclear power 
aside, this technology offers a viable alternative for large amounts 
of power in space."

Scary stuff, indeed. Tell me again how Pynchon's space program parody 
-- Blicero the Nazi's plans to spread his gnostic anti-life gospel 
beyond the Earth plus his first step, Spam-in-a-can implementation of 
same -- doesn't amount to a moral judgement on the missile defense 
and military use of space programs that were underway and under 
discussion at the time he was writing GR. Yeah, it's funny, too. 
Black humor always is.
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