In 1983 Edward Teller, “the father of the H-bomb,” spoke privately with President Reagan and convinced him to support a scheme to shoot down other countries’ missiles, and Reagan publicly announced that he would build such a system. Unfortunately, the scheme was TOTALLY UNWORKABLE, and Reagan publicly committed himself to that screwy scheme WITHOUT CONSULTING WITH ANY SCIENTISTS.
Critics lambasted the “Strategic Defense Initiative” (SDI) as ridiculously unrealistic and horribly expensive. They derisively called it “Star Wars.”
For all of the decades since then, presidents and Congresses of BOTH political parties have lavishly funded this scheme, which has REPEATEDLY FAILED to pass tests. Military weapons manufacturers have raked in many billions of dollars, even though the tests kept failing. In order to claim success, they actually put homing devices on the “targets” and they rigged the tests in other ways.
Now Trump — always a sucker for huge, reckless, egocentric scams — is calling for a new branch of the U.S. military to focus on fighting wars in space (even though the Outer Space Treaty prohibits it), and he is supporting a scam similar to SDI, but with the U.S. stationing our attack weapons permanently in space instead of shooting them from the ground.
An amazingly thorough source of information on these kinds of issues is the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space (http://www.space4peace.org). I recommend them highly, and I support them financially.
Here are some recent articles about this from other sources:
On January 17, 2019, the Arms Control Association released this information: https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2019-01/trumps-dangerous-missile-defense-buildup
Here is an article from the January 16, 2019, Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-seeks-to-expand-scope-and-sophistication-of-us-missile-defenses/2019/01/16/35c86a28-19d9-11e9-a804-c35766b9f234_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_campaign=thisweek&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ak&utm_term=.b463c8a8d367
On January 18, 2019, Counterpunch posted this news about Trump’s new scheme for militarizing space by escalating Reagan’s “Star Wars” scheme: https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/18/star-wars-revisited-one-more-nightmare-from-trump/
SIGN THIS PETITION to oppose Trump’s expensive, ridiculous space weapon scam:
When I signed this petition I added this comment: Trump’s reckless proposal is yet one more scam for an expensive high-tech gimmick that would not work anyway. Instead of wasting more billions of our tax dollars on the military-industrial complex, the U.S. should practice honest diplomacy and ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS, as the United Nations General Assembly has decided must be done. HERE IS THE PETITION: https://act.winwithoutwar.org/act/tell-house-dont-rubber-stamp-laser-drones?source=em20190119&t=5&akid=3108%2E372126%2EeDClxU