[news] Fw: [Ceasefire.ca] Opposition crossing party lines

[Paul Browning]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: NewsLetter at ceasefire.ca 
To: pnbrown at telus.net 
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 2:22 PM
Subject: [Ceasefire.ca] Opposition crossing party lines


           
            Steven Staples, 
            Polaris Institute & Founder of ceasefire.ca. 
      August 27, 2004 
      Dear Paul Browning,

      Wow! It has been a bad week for Prime Minister Paul Martin - it started with Jack Layton saying the NDP won't back down from its opposition to Star Wars, and then ended with his own caucus deeply divided over the issue and some brutally frank comments by Carolyn Parrish on front pages and TV screens across the country.

      Opposition to Canada joining missile defence has crossed party lines, and is not going to go away.

      And now it threatens to derail the government's agenda for the coming session of Parliament. Martin is going to find it virtually impossible to manage a minority government with so many of his own MPs opposed to Canada joining missile defence.

      Here is what you can do right now to help keep Canada out of Star Wars:

      First, if you have not yet sent a letter of support to the Liberal MPs who are speaking out against the government's slide into the US missile shield, then I urge you to go to ceasefire.ca right now. 

      We've updated the web site today so you can send a note of support to the nearly dozen Liberal MPs who have spoken out this week, and copy it to the Prime Minister, all in just a few clicks.

      Second, if you can, please help us raise money to wage the campaign that lies ahead by making your contribution. We need to raise $20,000 to ensure that missile defence is an issue when Parliament sits in October. Click here to make your donation. If you have already made a donation, then accept my thanks, and watch for a note from me in the mail in the coming days.

                                          Thank you for your support, 
                                          Steven Staples 

     

                   
                 
                  Explosions in the Sky: 
                  Impolitic MP Carolyn Parrish has become the favourite traget of pro-Bush forces in Canada for her denunciation of the U.S. administration -- even though she's proven right on Iraq.  
                  The Ottawa Sun, Aug 17, 2004 
                  by MICHAEL HARRIS, TORONTO SUN 


                  You have to hand it to Carolyn Parrish: the Toronto MP is a weapon of mass hysteria. 

                  Ever since she gave a ringing backhander to George Bush over his administration's bellyflop in Iraq, Parrish has been the whipping girl of pro-Bush supporters in this country. They see her as an uncouth, national embarrassment for calling the president names. Yes, while Iraq churns and burns, and the number of terrorist attacks around the world has actually gone up since Bush's reaction to 9/11, some people take pleasure in trashing a backbench Liberal MP for the high crime dissing the world's most powerful man in a scrum. Hmmm. 

                  In my books, Carolyn Parrish is A-okay. She might have said it better, but at least she said it, which is more than I can say for some of her craven male counterparts in the government who like to pretend that three-quarters of Canadians aren't opposed to President Bush and his mother of all boondoggles. I don't know if the supporters of Star Wars are a coalition of idiots, but I do know that a coalition of people who are definitely not idiots have taken the same stand on this desperately important issue as our naughty 905 Grit. 

                  Take the case of Richard Garwin, a brilliant American physicist who got a medal last November from President Bush for his scientific advice to the administration. Garwin has now publicly condemned Bush for "misusing, suppressing and distorting scientific advice." He is not alone. Four thousand top U.S. scientists have signed a petition to register their opposition to Bush policies, including Star Wars. Forty-eight of them happen to be Nobel Prize winners. Like Ms. Parrish, they are not anti-American, but merely in profound disagreement with President Bush. 

                  They are not the only ones. In March 2004, President Bush received a letter signed by 49 U.S. generals and admirals recommending that he "postpone operational deployment" of this son of Star Wars and use the money to secure facilities containing nuclear weapons and to protect America's ports and borders. That, they say, is the real danger to the U.S., not non-existent ballistic missile threats from so-called rogue states. Are these generals and admirals un- or anti-American or just more alive to the follies of Star Wars? 

                  I would argue the latter. The deployment of anything that is untested and unproven is objectionable on a pragmatic level. So far, the missiles only hit their targets five times out of eight. Even at that, the Pentagon has admitted that it has conducted tests where targets were fitted out with homing devices! I doubt that a real enemy would be so accommodating. Here is what James Albaugh, president of Boeing Corp. defense business said about the reliability of the system. "We know we have not fully tested the system, but it's our view that it is better to have a system deployed that is not fully tested than to not have a system at all." 

                  The missile defence shield may not work, but it has certainly got the rest of the world worked up. The Russians are accusing Washington of starting a new arms race, in light of a U.S. deal with Denmark that allows the Americans to upgrade a radar station in north-western Greenland. Although Bush has assured the Russians that his missile defence system will not be targeted against Russia, the move into Greenland suggests otherwise. So too does a U.S. plan to deploy elements of its missile shield on the territories of new NATO allies in eastern and central Europe. 

                  It may not work, it threatens a new arms race, but is it really the weaponization of space? The answer is yes. Although a lot of people wrote about the deployment of America's first ground-based missile interceptor at Fort Greely in Alaska on July 22, few people noticed that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also earmarked $70 million for Nfire -- an acronym for the near field infrared experiment. 

                  This project, originally scheduled for launch this year, involves a series of low-Earth orbit satellites equipped with infrared sensors. Their initial job will be to allow the U.S. military to distinguish between a rocket plume or exhaust of an enemy missile and the missile itself. But Nfire is also designed to carry a "kinetic kill vehicle" that would intercept a missile after it has been tracked -- the first weapon in space. 

                  What Carolyn Parrish and colleagues like Anita Neville and Sarmite Bulta know is two-fold. If security is your goal, spooking countries all around the world by further weaponizing earth and space is not the way to go. For real peace and security, disarmament and diplomacy is the better road. 

                  Paul Martin should remember that Canadians want to take it.

                  The Ottawa Sun

                 
           
           
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