http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/04/09/120.html

'Dark matter'

This summer, the human race will pass a sinister milestone. It will come quietly, creeping like a thief in the night--a starless night, the sky blanked by a minatory shadow.

For while the world's attn will be turned this July toward the bloody carnage erupting in Iraq after the illusory turnover of "sovereignty" by the still-entrenched occupation force, & riveted by the flood of sewage pouring from the WH as the prez campaign reaches critical mass, the US will break a long-held taboo & launch the 1st weapon into the global commons of outer space.

It's a small step, a test satellite called the "Near Field Infrared Experiment," set for launch--by a Minotaur missile, no less--this summer from a NASA base in VA. NFIRE is part of the bush Regime's multibillion-dollar, crony-feeding boondoggle known as "missile defense." The satellite's primary mission is to gather data on the exhaust fumes of rockets in space, info that will then be used to help future space weapons differentiate more clearly between a target & its trailing plume.

But NFIRE is itself weaponized, carrying a projectile-packed "kill vehicle" that can destroy passing missiles--or the satellites of the US' military & commercial rivals, as ABC News reported last wk. This marks the 1st time in history that any nation has put a weapon in space, despite [AmeriCo]'s still-official policy against such a practice. And as Pentagon officials made clear in an eye-opening presentation to Congress in Feb, NFIRE's test is just the 1st spark of a conflagration that will soon set the heavens ablaze with [AmeriCo] weaponry capable of striking--& destroying--any spot on earth. As one top Pentagon official--opposed to this lunatic proliferation, thus remaining anonymous--said: "We're crossing the Rubicon into space weaponization."

The ABC report--largely ignored, except by the Irish Examiner & some specialist web sites--was strangely incomplete, however. It noted only that there is a $68mn appropriation for NFIRE buried in the 2005 military budget--lvg the implication that the proj is still on the drawing board.

But in fact, NFIRE is already operational. It began in 8/02 & has moved steadily toward its long-est'd Summer 2004 launch date, according to NASA & press releases from the private contractors involved. The Pentagon's own published specs for the mission state clearly: "The Generation 2 kill vehicle will be integrated into the near-field experiment payload" when the spacecraft launches in summer 2004. The Minotaur missile that will haul the weapon into orbit was ordered by the Pentagon in 1/03, Orbital Sciences Corpo reports. Doubtless there will more NFIREs burning in 2005 as well, but the weaponization of space is not some distant prospect: That dark future is now.

And the boys in Space Command are just getting warmed up. They wowed the salivating bushist faithful in Congress with highly detailed plans for a whizbang space arsenal led by the "Rods From God" --bundles of tungsten rods fired from orbiting platforms, hurtling toward earth at 3,700 meters/sec, accurate within a range of 8 meters & able to destroy even the most hardened targets, the Center for Def Info reports. They c/b launched at only a few minutes' notice at any target on the planet.

"God's Rods" will be accompanied by orbiting lasers, "hunter-killer" satellites, & space bombers that needn't bother with silly-billy legal worries about "overflight rights" from other countries, but can descend out of the ether to swoop down on any uppity nation that displeases the world-Caesar in Wash.

This belligerent Buck-Rogering, long a gleam in many a militarist's eye, gained relentless momentum with the arrival of rumsfeld as Pentagon war chief. In the late 1990s, while helping cheney & wolfowitz plot their "Project for the New American Century"--wholesale militarization of US policy, aggressive war (incl the invasion of Iraq even if Hussein was no longer there), "global dominance" of "vital energy resources," etc--rumsfeld also headed a "blue-ribbon panel" of the usual Establishment worthies looking into "the role of space in natl sec." Their conclusion? You guessed it: Rummy said [AmeriCo] must garrison the heavens to prevent a--wait for it--"space Pearl Harbor."

Oddly enough, over at PNAC, at about the same time, rummy/cheney were speaking openly about the possibility of a "new Pearl Harbor" that wld "catalyze the American people" into supporting their plans, which were published in 9/00. Space weaponization--via "missile defense"--was an essential part of the scheme. Once in office, they shoveled billions to their favored def cartels & fast-tracked space-weapon programs. Indeed, rice intended to crown these early efforts with a major speech enshrining the bush Regime's "top priority" for natl sec: "missile defense."

Unfortunately, the speech--scheduled for 9/11/01--had to be canceled due to the "new Pearl Harbor" that struck that day, the Wash Post reported last wk. But the plan & its long-standing priorities--invasion of Iraq, military control of Central Asia, space weaponization--con't w/o missing a beat, tho clothed now in the expedient rhetoric of a "global war on terror."

Of course, with each passing day, bush's PNAC centerpiece--the rape of Iraq--is actually breeding more terror, more hatred for [AmeriCo], more risk for the people he rules with such ignorant, blood-flecked insouciance. But this doesn't matter; what matters is the plan, the dominance. And so space too must be conquered, at any cost, until the whole world is under cosmic military occupation--a global Fallujah, seething with chaos & fury.

Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium


Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.