Donald J Trump has been on indicted 7 counts.

Quote:Trump attorney John Rowley said he has been indicted on seven counts. People familiar with the matter told the New York Times the charges include willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and an obstruction of justice conspiracy. NBC News has not independently confirmed the charges.

Trump indicted on 7 charges in classified docs probe

Unfortunally one of my favorite alternative researcher is facing censorship and subpoena about his Manchester Arena incident. He published a book about it.

Quote:Greetings,

As you may know, the BBC and all mainstream media have recently produced
further hit pieces against myself and in particular my work covering the
2017 Manchester Arena incident.

The BBC has criticised me for 'profiting' from the Manchester Arena
incident because I published a book about it. I have therefore decided to
give the book away as a free download here …

https://cdn1.richplanet.net/pdf/Night_of_the_Bang.pdf

Please download the book (right click and save link as) from the link and
send it to everyone you think may be interested in the content.

You can find reviews (scroll down) about the free book from this link,

https://www.richplanet.net/amazon

It is clear from their recent articles that the legal action they have
described, which they say has been submitted to the High Court against me
(but I still have not to date yet received notice of), has the intention to
censor/remove my book permanently and remove all my videos on this subject
- as well as attempting to hit me with a 'damages' claim.

The associated films and lecture can be watched from the links below. I
advise you download and re-distribute these also, as it appears that the
intention is to censor all my work on this subject, which consists of no
more than hard evidence and honest opinion.

https://www.richplanet.net/richp_gen...&part=1&gen=99

https://www.richplanet.net/richp_gen...&part=1&gen=99

https://www.richplanet.net/richp_gen...&part=3&gen=99

UK Critical Thinkers videos on the subject can be found here ...

https://www.richplanet.net/richp_gue....php?person=18

If you wish to donate to my impending legal costs, please use this link ...

https://www.richplanet.net/legal.php

Sapere aude,

Richard D. Hall

Quote:Greetings,

Firstly THANK YOU to everyone who has so far donated to my legal fund. I am
very grateful to you.

I have received notification that a legal claim has been filed against me
in the High Court.

The claim is seeking damages and an injunction for harassment and breaches
of the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018.

Note that there is no claim of libel or defamation which has been
incorrectly reported across most of mainstream media.

I have until the 1st of June 2023 to submit my defence.

I am in the process of appointing a solicitor/barrister and am appealing to
you to recommend a reliable, suitably experience and qualified professional
to present my evidence in court.

If you wish to help financially, I have set up a fund to pay for legal
fees, here,

https://www.richplanet.net/legal.php

(Note : the Gofundme funds are being transferred to my bank account daily,
therefore there is no risk of losing the funds).

Iain Davis has written an excellent article covering the issue here,

https://off-guardian.org/2023/04/19/...ll-propaganda/

My book is available free here ...

https://cdn1.richplanet.net/pdf/Night_of_the_Bang.pdf

Thankyou

Richard D. Hall

[Note : do not reply to this email. Use : richard@richplanet.net

This is an art piece I did recently I call, "The Smokies." I didn't see an art forum but I see this is as okay for daily chit chat. 
This was a scene I saw as I was driving up these mountains to my new home. The scene was a sunset on the mountains and this is my best interpretation of what I saw; with a little Bodhi-S twist to it.

Enjoy the colors. I hope they brighten up your day just a bit. There is so much "darkness" in this world that I try and brighten it up a bit when I can.

One Love, Rogue-Nation 

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Another sick dissertation/report about child trafficking. Mel Gibson is supposedly going to do a 4 part series on what he knows so expect a major campaign to destroy his character even more than already. Whistle blowers from the CIA and news reports all agree this is an on going business of the sickest kind. A 34 billion dollars business

Not verified yet !!??

Quote:With the shocking news that the PGA will merge with the Saudi Arabian LIV tour, the game of golf is set for radical change. Check out the new rules that will be adopted for the new tour:

1. Players who hit an errant shot must yell "ALLAHU AKBAR!" instead of "FORE!": We're pretty sure fans will pay a little more attention when someone starts screaming this.
   
2. If you hit a woman with your shot, it's an automatic birdie: Serves them right for attending a golf tournament without their husbands' permission.
   
3. Players will be allowed to eliminate one stroke per round, known as the "Kashoggi rule": Very handy.
   
4. Bunkers will be booby-trapped with mines from the Golan Heights: It will give a whole new meaning to the phrase "explode out of the sand".
   
5. Every tournament will begin with the ceremonial Stoning of the Gay: As is Saudi tradition.
   
6. If players miss a putt less than two feet, guards immediately chop off their hands: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman believes if you miss a putt at that distance, you no longer deserve hands.
   
7. Once per weekend, they will let a suicide bomber loose on the course: Golf will never be boring again.
   
8. Winners will receive a new wife along with their oversized check: Right up Tiger's alley.
   
9. Players will be caned at the end of each round for each stroke over par: No more players cashing it in on a lousy round.
   
10. If a player's tee shot hits a Jew, they are instantly declared tournament champion: Are we sure this merger was a good idea?
    

Quote:PGA Tour agrees to merge with Saudi-backed rival LIV Golf
By Lillian Rizzo, CNBC
 
The PGA Tour has agreed to merge with Saudi-backed rival LIV Golf in a deal that would see the competitors squash pending litigation and move forward as a larger golf enterprise.
The two entities signed an agreement that would combine the PGA Tour’s and LIV Golf’s commercial businesses and rights into a new, yet-to-be-named for-profit company. The agreement includes DP World Tour, also known as the PGA European Tour.
LIV Golf is backed by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, an entity controlled by the Saudi crown prince and has been embroiled in antitrust lawsuits with the PGA Tour in the last year. The deal announced Tuesday would end all pending litigation.
PIF is prepared to invest billions of new capital into the new entity, CNBC’s David Faber reported Tuesday. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
The agreement — the second stunning sports deal in just months, following World Wrestling Entertainment’s merger with Endeavor Group’s UFC — will require the approval of the PGA Tour policy board, Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a memo to players that was obtained by CNBC.
“There is much work to do to get us from a framework agreement to a definitive agreement, but one thing is obvious: through this transformational agreement and with PIF’s collaborative investment, the immeasurable strength of the PGA Tour’s history, legacy and pro-competitive model not only remains intact, but is supercharged for the future,” he wrote in the memo. Deal talks started about seven weeks ago, he said later Tuesday.
Monahan also acknowledged the shock and anger triggered by the deal’s announcement, saying a meeting with PGA Tour players was “intense” and “heated.”
PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that after the merger is finalized, which he expects to be “in a matter of weeks,” the new board is prepared to evaluate every proposal that is presented. Al-Rumayyan is slated to serve as chairman of the board.
“Whatever it takes that’s … what we’re committed for,” Al-Rumayyan told Faber.
LIV didn’t see its matches distributed on TV in the U.S. until a few months ago, when the league signed a deal with the CW Network as the exclusive U.S. broadcast partner. The CW had agreed to air 14 global events, which began in February. Terms of the multiyear deal had not been disclosed.
Nexstar Media Group owns 75% of the CW Network. A representative for the company said in a statement Tuesday there would be no change to the LIV Golf event schedule for 2023.
“This is exciting day to unify and grow the game of golf,” Nexstar said in the statement. “We look forward to broadcasting seven more exciting tournaments this year featuring the world’s best golfers.”
Rival lawsuits
Monahan said the tour looked at the game of golf “on a global basis,” as its seen more growth in the sport outside of the U.S.
Still, he acknowledged Tuesday on CNBC that there has been a lot of tensions between the two organizations, but said “the game of golf is better for what we’ve done today.”
The two organizations had filed a series of antitrust claims against the other in recent months. LIV Golf sued The PGA Tour alleging anti-competitive practices for banning its players. The tour countersued, claiming LIV was stifling competition. Disputes ensued regarding the discovery process for evidence.
The lawsuits were spurred as the upstart league had lured multiple high-profile players, such as Phil Mickelson and Bubba Watson, from the PGA Tour after the tour had banned the players from competing in LIV’s events.
On Tuesday, Mickelson tweeted, “Awesome day today” as part of a post sharing the news of the merger.
The deal comes soon after LIV golfer Brooks Koepka won the PGA Championship, one of four major titles in men’s golf.
As part of the agreement, the groups will establish “a fair and objective process for any players who want to re-apply for membership with the PGA Tour or DP World Tour” following the end of the 2023 season, according to a release.
Growing controversy
LIV Golf, which launched in 2022 and has been spending top dollar to lure golfers, has also been the subject of controversy, criticism and political intrigue in the U.S. PIF has reportedly invested $2 billion into LIV already, and had aspirations of creating franchises and teams that could one day be sold.
Critics of LIV have also accused PIF of “sportswashing” by using the league to distract from the kingdom’s history of human rights violations.
Family members of those who perished in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have protested the league, including outside of events. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were from Saudi Arabia, and Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks, was born in the country. It has been concluded by U.S. officials that Saudi nationals helped fund the terrorist group al-Qaeda, although investigations didn’t find that the Saudi officials were complicit in the attacks.
The group 9/11 Families United said they were “shocked and deeply offended” by the merger in a statement on Tuesday.
“Mr. Monahan talked last summer about knowing people who lost loved ones on 9/11, then wondered aloud on national television whether LIV Golfers ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour. They do now – as does he,” said 9/11 Families United Chair Terry Strada, whose husband Tom died in the World Trade Center’s North Tower. “PGA Tour leaders should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and greed. Our entire 9/11 community has been betrayed by Commissioner Monahan and the PGA as it appears their concern for our loved ones was merely window-dressing in their quest for money – it was never to honor the great game of golf.”
The statement referred to when Monahan said during an interview with CBS Sports that he had discussed these controversies with tour players.
“I think you’d have to be living under a rock not to know there are significant implications,” Monahan said during the interview. “I would ask any player who has left or any player who would consider leaving, ‘Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA tour?’”
Monahan on Tuesday said he expected to be called a hypocrite and that he accepts the criticism.
Former President Donald Trump, who has hosted a number of LIV Golf events at his golf courses, has defended those events, falsely claiming that “nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11.” Last year, Trump also said on Truth Social that a merger between LIV and The PGA Tour was inevitable.
On Tuesday, Trump weighed in on the merger on his Truth Social platform: “Great news from LIV Golf. A big, beautiful, and glamorous deal for the wonderful world of golf. Congrats to all!!!”
– CNBC’s David Faber and Jessica Golden contributed to this article.

June 7, 1981: the Israeli Air Force conducted Operation Opera aka Operation Babylon, was a surprise airstrike using 8 F-16A’s (supported by 6 F-15A’s) to destroy Iraq’s unfinished, French-built Osirak nuclear research reactor 11 miles SE of Baghdad. The airstrike also killed 10 Iraqi soldiers and 1 French civilian engineer.




Operation Opera - history in 5 minutes:

Quote:The attack squadron consisted of eight F-16As, each with two unguided Mark-84 2,000-pound delay-action bombs. A flight of six F-15As was assigned to the operation to provide fighter support. The F-16 pilots were Ze'ev Raz, Amos Yadlin, Dobbi Yaffe, Hagai Katz, Amir Nachumi, Iftach Spector, Relik Shafir, and Ilan Ramon. Raz led the attack, was later decorated by the Chief of Staff for his leadership. Ramon, who was the youngest pilot to participate in the operation, later became the first Israeli astronaut and died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster.

On 7 June 1981, at 15:55 local time (12:55 GMT), the operation was initiated. The Israeli planes left Etzion Airbase, flying unchallenged in Jordanian and Saudi airspace. To avoid detection, the Israeli pilots conversed in Saudi-accented Arabic while in Jordanian airspace and told Jordanian air controllers that they were a Saudi patrol that had gone off course. While flying over Saudi Arabia, they pretended to be Jordanians, using Jordanian radio signals and formations. The Israeli planes were so heavily loaded that the external fuel tanks that had been mounted on the planes were exhausted in-flight. The tanks were jettisoned over the Saudi desert.
....
In 2012, it was similarly argued by scholars at the RAND Corporation that an "Israeli or American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would make it more, not less, likely that the Iranian regime would decide to produce and deploy nuclear weapons. Such an attack would also make it more, not less, difficult to contain Iranian influence."

Following Desert Storm, Dick Cheney thanked the Israeli mission commander for the "outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981". While many scholars debate the value of the bombing, Iraq did not possess nuclear weapons at the outbreak of the Gulf War, and, according to Cheney, the bombing made Desert Storm easier.
Operation Opera Israel airstrike on Iraq nuclear reactor 1981

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Quote:In early April, the Navy announced it was moving its focus of experimentation for unmanned platforms to its Fourth Fleet, which is headquartered in Mayport, Florida, and operates largely in the Caribbean and the South Atlantic. This year’s unmanned experimentation effort will occur during the joint, international, UNITAS 23 exercise this summer and will include nations from across the region. The international exercise will continue the experiments that have been ongoing for the past several years both in the Arabian Gulf, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet did a similar string of international unmanned platform experiments under the leadership of  Task Force 59, and before that in the southern Californian operations area under the direction of Navy Surface Development Squadron ONE.

All three of these examples suggest a strategic assumption that the Navy can test game-changing capabilities in front of the world and yet still create the conditions for a technical leap-ahead. This is a mistake. To make the most of what unmanned and autonomous capabilities promise the warfighter, the Navy needs to take a lesson from the past and create a research, development, and prototyping test range on par with the Air Force’s fabled Area 51. To create the fleet of tomorrow with decisive capabilities, the Navy needs an unmanned “Area 52” where it can build and test breakthrough capabilities away from the prying eyes of competitors.

In 2022, the Navy sent four of its unmanned surface vessels to participate in its largest international exercise in the waters off Hawaii and San Diego. Twenty-six other nations participated, and China was not one of them. However, that did not stop the People’s Liberation Army Navy from sending an intelligence gathering ship to surveil the exercise and learn what it could. In 2022 and 2023, the United States and its partners in the Middle East conducted large exercises focused on unmanned and autonomous platforms with great apparent success. Again, foreign adversaries showed up not only to observe the operations and learn what they could about the United States’ most cutting-edge naval capabilities, but also seized one of those assets. Given that the Caribbean and the South Atlantic are monitored closely by Cuba, Venezuela, and Brazil—countries that have increasingly played host to Russia, China and even Iran—and are home waters of some of the largest criminal drug cartels on the planet, it would be foolish to think that advanced unmanned-autonomous capabilities tested in the region under the Navy’s Fourth Fleet would not be quickly compromised or even seized.

Such attempts at espionage should be expected. The United States has traditionally been the most technologically innovative nation in the world when it comes to its defense. The U.S.  military has made a practice in the post-Vietnam era of investing in advanced capabilities rather than pursuing the sheer numbers associated with raw capacity. U.S. adversaries—including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—have systematically attempted (and often succeeded) to steal U.S. technology, reverse engineer it for themselves, and thus shorten their development time. The classic example of this phenomenon is the extent to which the Soviet Union went to obtain the secrets behind first the atomic bomb, then the hydrogen bomb, and finally guided missiles. It took the Soviet Union just four years after the first U.S. nuclear test at Los Alamos to detonate their first atomic bomb; then just three years after the first U.S. hydrogen bomb test, the Soviets tested their first fusion weapon in late 1952. Ultimately, the Soviets were able to overtake the U.S. in some critical national security technologies because the United States had not appropriately safeguarded its own innovations. 

Properly developed and safeguarded, unmanned/autonomous capabilities could provide war-altering breakthroughs of the same magnitude as those which accompanied the advent of stealth and precision-guided munitions. Not only could unmanned/autonomous platforms extend the range of present sensors and provide additional offboard weapons magazines to supplement manned ships, but these new air, surface, and subsurface platforms could operate beyond the limits of human bodies and at speeds of function and decision-making that exceed human capacity. Lastly, they could extend U.S. military lethality into enemy territory without risking American lives. All told, whoever masters not only the development and design of unmanned/autonomous platforms but also the most effective concepts of operations to employ them will have a significant advantage on any future battlefield—an advantage that can be sustained if properly safeguarded. But, and this is the crucial point, the U.S. will not be able to create and maintain that advantaged trade space if it tests the most important innovations in front of allies, friends, and adversaries. This is why testing in the Fourth Fleet area of operations is strategically unwise. Instead, the Pentagon should take a lesson from the past and develop a new test range for unmanned/autonomous platforms much as it did in the past with its most advanced aviation projects.

Late in 1953, Lockheed’s legendary aircraft designer, Kelly Johnson, approached the Air Force with a design for a high-altitude surveillance aircraft. The Air Force reached out to the CIA, the plane’s other natural customer, and between them they let a contract to Lockheed’s “Skunk Works” team to build twenty aircraft that came to be known as the U-2 Dragon Lady. Neither the Air Force nor the CIA wanted the aircraft to be test flown from an Air Force base, so Johnson sent his company pilot out to survey several potential test sites. He found a dry lake north of Las Vegas within one of the Atomic Energy Commission’s test ranges and requested its use. On the map that test range was denoted as “Area 51,” and hence a legend was born. Johnson’s desire was to test his new aircraft where others could not see its activities, and that’s what he and Skunk Works did. 



During the succeeding decades, other aircraft, to include the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-117 Nighthawk, also emerged from the site. If the Navy wants to capitalize on all the advantages unmanned/autonomous platforms can offer, then it should look to establish a new range in which to research, develop, prototype, and test new air, surface, and subsurface unmanned systems and concepts of operations. Fortunately, there is an ideal location for just such a test range. 

Lake Michigan is the fourth largest lake in the world by volume. It stretches just over 300 miles long and about 120 miles wide. Unlike the other four Great Lakes, all of Lake Michigan lies within U.S. territory, and while there is a diplomatic requirement to consult with the Canadians regarding military operations on the lake, there is historic precedent for such operations: during World War II, the U.S. Navy qualified most of its new aviators on two paddle-wheel aircraft carriers operating on the lake. The Chippewa Basin’s 920-foot depth provides ample room for unmanned underwater testing. For unmanned aviation development and testing, there is already an FAA-designated restricted military airspace over the lake, R-6903, where Air National Guard aircraft from the four adjoining states (Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois) operate. For more than a decade, the Navy has conducted initial sea trials for its littoral combat ships within Green Bay and has gained experience performing surface operations in and around the established normal lake traffic. Finally, the Navy and the broader joint force is already present in the region, and there is ample room for enlargement.

Lake Michigan is large and deep enough to test and develop tactics and operational concepts for naval unmanned/autonomous platforms. (NOAA)

Naval Station Great Lakes, established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905, is in Illinois, some thirty miles north of Chicago. Today its “bootcamp” marks the beginning point in every U.S. sailor’s naval career. The base also has a sea-walled boat basin along with adjacent buildings that could be repurposed to provide maintenance and support for Navy watercraft, including prototype unmanned surface and subsurface craft. 

Experimental unmanned aircraft could be home based in the region at the Virgil Grissom Joint Air Reserve Base, located near Peru, Indiana, just ninety miles from Lake Michigan. Grissom is a former Cold War-era Strategic Air Command bomber base. Today it hosts a squadron of reserve tankers that provide fuel for the joint force all over the world, but it has extensive room for expansion to support Navy unmanned aircraft of all types. Aircraft based at there could be forward detached to other Air Reserve bases in Battle Creek, Michigan, or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to allow them to operate closer to the restricted air space over the lake.

From a technology development standpoint, all Navy unmanned/autonomous development can be programmatically supported from the service’s cutting-edge tech-center at Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, Indiana, thirty miles south of Indianapolis. Crane was established as the Navy’s premier ordnance depot during World War II and today supports electronic warfare, micro-electronics, expeditionary warfare, special warfare, and strategic system programs. Crane also has room for growth, although it already represents one of the greatest concentrations of credentialed scientists and engineers in the Navy’s broad research and development system.

Naval Station Great Lakes has one other potential attraction: its 1,600 acres of land still has room for development, particularly two city blocks of open land on the southern half of the base. There is already an established office building in this area of the base and room for additional construction. The Army has been envisioning its future from its Army Futures Command, a four-star headquarters located in Austin, Texas. Naval Station Great Lakes would be an excellent headquarters for a Navy Futures Command. A three-star staff could be established on Lake Michigan and tasked with guiding the Navy toward its future force structure requirements as well as developing advanced concepts of operations. Not only would it be far away from the prying eyes of adversaries, but also far from distractions of the Pentagon, Norfolk, and San Diego. It could begin initial operations with the people and budgets already assigned to other unmanned initiatives, and then build upward from there.

This midwestern corridor, from southern Indiana to Green Bay, Wisconsin, represents an expanding high-tech region. Beyond industry giants such as Rolls-Royce, Saab, and Fincantieri’s Marinette Marine Group, all of which have recently located industrial manufacturing hubs into the area, it also hosts three of the world’s most advanced research universities—Purdue University, the University of Chicago, and Notre Dame, each of which are making consistent breakthroughs in a wide range of technologies ranging from hypersonics to quantum computing. The corridor is also home to two national labs, the Argonne National Laboratory and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and the federally funded research-and-development center, Draper Labs, recently located a facility in the region. With these research-and- development entities within the local business environment, an Area 52 research, development, and prototyping eco-system focused on developing unmanned/autonomous systems would have great advantages over the Arabian Gulf, Pacific, and Caribbean alternatives.

Critics may argue that activities on Lake Michigan will be no more secure than those carried out in the Caribbean, but such an assertion will not stand up to scrutiny. While overhead satellites and even lower-altitude spy balloons will be able to ascertain some degree of what is occurring on the lake, actions can be taken to limit that surveillance. Testing can be scheduled at times when high-resolution satellites are not overhead. Spy balloons can be shot down before they get over installations crucial to our national security. Foreign entities can be blocked from buying land next to or near critical locations. 

Activities at Area 51 have remained highly obscured for nearly 70 years. An “Area 52” could do the same for unmanned/autonomous naval systems. The potential war-altering capabilities inherent in such systems must be developed with urgency and protected to the greatest extent possible. Lake Michigan and the midwestern tech corridor present the Navy with an ideal location to build a future force that takes full advantage of the technical advances emerging from top universities and industries, away from the eyes and ears of the nation’s adversaries.

The Navy Needs an ‘Area 52’

WELL now!

Our place in the Galaxy and Universe.

Parts of this video gave me Veritgo!

Citizen, you must complete another 37.5 hours of work and purchase 12 carbon credit offsets to fund your VR for the weekend. Please be advised you have until 11:59 pm Thursday to fulfill your obligations and enjoy Virtual Aruba.

Quote:The future of virtual reality is far more than just video games. Silicon Valley sees the creation of virtual worlds as the ultimate free-market solution to a political problem. In a world of increasing wealth inequality, environmental disaster, and political instability, why not sell everyone a device that whisks them away to a virtual world free of pain and suffering?

Tech billionaires aren’t shy about sharing this. “Some people read this the wrong way and react incorrectly to it. The promise of VR is to make the world you wanted. It is not possible, on Earth, to give everyone all that they would want. Not everyone can have Richard Branson’s private island,” Doom co-creator and former CTO of Oculus John Carmack told Joe Rogan during a 2020 interview. “People react negatively to any talk of economics, but it is resource allocation. You have to make decisions about where things go. Economically, you can deliver a lot more value to a lot of people in the virtual sense.”

Virtual reality is an attractive escape, but it’s not a solution to the world’s ills. The problems of the real world will persist beyond the borders of the metaverse created by companies such as Epic, Valve, and Facebook. Without decisive and radical action, our planet will continue to burn, the gap between the rich and poor will grow, and totalitarian political movements will flourish. All while some of us are plugged into a virtual world.

Worse, the virtual world will be one owned and controlled by the companies that create them. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a Facebook-branded set of VR goggles strapped to an emaciated human face—forever.
....
But all these problems can be overcome. As Carmack mentioned in his Rogan interview, tech companies will drive down the cost of the headsets. “Moore's law may be crapping out in terms of absolute performance, but we've still got a lot of price-performance that we can drive out of these things,” he said. “We can have virtual reality devices that can get cheap enough that lots and lots of people will be able to have these.”

Billionaires See VR as a Way to Avoid Radical Social Change

Quote:Carol, tell me how the Institute for Security and Cooperation in Outer Space began.

I formed the institute in 1983 after becoming aware of a few men who intended to escalate the arms race into space. This was before President Reagan announced the Star Wars program. My aim was to educate the public and decision makers about the dangers and alternatives.

I first heard conversations about "seizing the high ground to control earth" when I became the first woman corporate manager of Fairchild Industries, an aerospace defense company.

The late Dr. Werner von Braun, the father of rocketry, advised me to learn about how serious the space weapons game is as I coordinated a youth program and satellite educational programs. Von Braun also urged me to work to transform the game.

Von Braun thought it would be interesting, even funny, if a woman worked to prevent the stationing of weapons in outer space-which he sensed was soon to occur. He believed a woman would be able to get into more doors to discuss the subject. He had worked for Hitler, and understood war and weapons. Being a scientist and engineer, he saw the potential for applying space technology and information services to protecting humanity and the environment.

In 1977, after his death, I was hired as a space and missile defense consultant by such companies as TRW. While working on the MX missile, I learned that the aerospace defense industries were preparing to escalate the arms race into space. The plan is to put hundreds of battle stations in space with thousands of weapons pointed down our throats.

Were you shocked when you first heard about the possibility of weapons in outer space?

I was shocked when von Braun first explained that this was not a game but a dangerous reality that would occur unless someone stopped it and created a new reality. But I was not shocked at all as I got to know the players. It was shocking to have my life threatened by two intelligence agents because I had spoken out publicly about the MX missile.

Fortunately, I have developed a warped sense of humor from appearing on road-tour debates with generals, industry and military reps, and politicians. These include Gen. Daniel Graham, who first introduced the Star Wars program to President Reagan. Graham declared to me, on international CNN-TV, that nuclear weapons and space weapons aren't really so bad. He said that you can walk 4.2 miles from the site of a nuclear blast and be safe if you hide behind a lilac bush!

I am frequently amazed and saddened at the ignorance, closed-mindedness and stubbornness about this subject. I am also disappointed at the lack of nerve among the individuals associated with space and defense programs who agree privately that there should be no weapons in space, but who are afraid to speak out publicly.

I wasn't even shocked that Clinton simply lied about his intention to stop Star Wars. Nor did it surprise me that the Republican majority is committed to deploying space weapons and to ending the ABM Treaty as soon as possible. Or that the "boys" in Washington have renamed the Strategic Defense Initiative; it is now called the Ballistic Missile Defense Program. They don't believe that "Star Wars is dead."

You haven't always been public with your beliefs, have you?

No, I got very quiet after the Gulf War. I was in a 1977 meeting when this war was being planned, and felt devastated when it actually occurred.

What do you mean?

The Gulf War was orchestrated to show why a new phase of weapons in space is necessary. I heard executives say that when there was $25 billion in the space weapons program, making it almost impossible to stop, a war would be fomented in that region to demonstrate why a new phase of weapons [in space] was needed. That's exactly what happened. Patriot missiles knocking down Scuds were used to show why we should advance into space-based weaponry.

I burned out after that experience. However, I am slowly venturing out again because I know we haven't much time to prevent the arming of space. Right now, for example, more plutonium than ever before is scheduled for launch from Florida-enough, if an accident occurs, to give cancer to most of the world's population. I feel a sense of responsibility to sound the alarm and to present an alternative vision.

Carol Rosin on World Law and Peace in Space

Quote:Between 1952 and 1954 Wernher von Braun, the German–American rocket engineer, was the key participant in one of the most influential campaigns to sell spaceflight ever attempted, a series of articles in Collier’s magazine. The subsequent literature on the history of spaceflight, much of it written by von Braun enthusiasts or influenced by their accounts, has depicted this campaign mostly as a forerunner to later programs for the peaceful and scientific exploration of space [1]. Yet the centerpiece of von Braun’s plan for space travel, which he had been developing since at least 1946, was a manned space station which would not only serve as a base for further exploration, but also as an orbiting reconnaissance platform and battle station for achieving "space superiority" over the USSR. One its roles could be the launching of nuclear missiles. When challenged as to the station’s defensibility, von Braun even posited pre-emptive atomic strikes from space as a response to the development of a hostile anti-satellite capability. For von Braun, the space station was the "ultimate weapon" which could impose a pax Americana on the USSR (Fig. 1) [2].

Von Braun may in fact have been the first person to use the term ‘‘space superiority’’ in print, although the absence of any historical literature about pre-Sputnik conceptions and fantasies of space warfare makes it impossible to say for sure. Obviously derived from "air superiority", an air-power concept popularized in World War II, space superiority is now a normal term-of-art among the advocates of "space power" and "space control" centered on the US Air Force (USAF). Ironically, that makes Wernher von Braun a forgotten forerunner to space power theory—ironic because the Army-affiliated von Braun believed that his nuclear-armed space stations would make Air Force strategic bombers obsolete, much to the irritation of that service.



After the US Army transferred his German-led rocket-engineering organization in Huntsville, AL to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1959/60, his focus shifted from weapons to peaceful space exploration. His early cold war past was sanitized by omission, just as was his Nazi one, as it conflicted with his public image and that of NASA. Only in recent years, as historians and political scientists went back and actually read von Braun’s publications of 1952–53, have they begun to take notice of the military and cold war theme, but except for Rainer Eisfeld’s and Johannes Weyer’s short books in German, these works do not mention pre-emptive strikes or the centrality of the military space station to von Braun’s early postwar spaceflight conceptions [4]. What has been lacking, in either English or German, is deep primary research into Wernher von Braun’s original correspondence and papers, which reveal the character and course of that campaign and its origins in earlier space advocacy [5]. This article attempts to redress that balance.

Quote:In response to reader enquiries, he [Hermann Oberth, a Transylvanian Saxon physicist and engineer] also discussed the possibility of intercontinental rockets with poison-gas warheads in his 1929 book Wege zur Raumschiffahrt (Paths to Spaceflight) [6].

That same year, 1929, a book called Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums: Der Raketenmotor (The Problem of Space Travel: The Rocket Motor) appeared under the mysterious pseudonym Hermann Noordung. Noordung was actually Herman Potocnik, a former Austro-Hungarian officer who died about the time the book was published. His book offered no new military ideas beyond what Oberth had discussed in 1923, but it did provide an elaborate description of an inflatable, wheel-shaped space station that used a solar concentrator mirror to generate electricity. Although there is no explicit evidence that the then 17-year-old Wernher von Braun read Noordung’s book, in 1929/30 he wrote a plotless short story, ‘‘Lunetta,’’ about a trip to the space station that sounds very much like Noordung’s. Moreover, the similarity between von Braun’s post-World War II space stations and that of Noordung is too great to be coincidental. A further influence on von Braun may have been Weimar science fiction novels that depicted the space mirror and rocket as superweapons, although this is difficult to prove as he later spoke only in generalities about what fictional works he had read [7].

...
The key to victory, after "the motorized forces of the Western Allies had ground to a solid stop in the vastness of the steppes of Asia," in "the dread winter of 1974/1975" had been the space station "Lunetta"—the name he still treasured from his teenage short-story of 1930. It had served as a battle station for dominating Earth, dropping atomic missiles on Soviet industrial and military facilities until the USSR collapsed [15].

This piece of cold war wishful thinking was rooted in von Braun’s conservative anti-communism, which had only been strengthened by the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, the Berlin Blockade and the ordeal of his parents and other relatives in communist hands. The German catastrophe had
forced him to abandon the German nationalist parts of a conservative world-view he had inherited from his father, but he remained conservative by instinct, now transferring his allegiance to the USA as the "bulwark" of Western culture [16].

In the Preface to the novel, von Braun wrote regarding the military implications of rocket development: "My most earnest hope is that the world may be spared another conflict, but if such a conflict should be inevitable, as appears at times, I want the homeland of my free choice, America, to hold the weapon of rocketry against her adversaries, whoever they may be." [17].

It is interesting that, while von Braun could be a visionary in technologies he really cared about—basically spaceflight—with others he was no more farsighted than anyone else. He did not foresee thermonuclear weapons and the resultant escalation of destructive power to levels suicidal for the human race. Nor did he anticipate the age of ICBMs.

"Space superiority": Wernher von Braun’s campaign for a nuclear-armed space station, 1946–1956 (PDF) by Michael J. Neufeld.