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Space Alert Videos

Interviews by GN Co-ordinator Bruce Gagnon and produced by Will Griffin.

Note: other GN videos can be found here.

All our videos are available on our Youtube page.

Dangers of Space Ports
26 November 2024

This Space Alert interview is with an impressive young man Daniel Walsh from the UK.

His PhD research is taking a critical look at the development of spaceports around the world. In particular he’s looking at the impacts of these spaceports on indigenous communities and the environment.

During this interview we talked about many spaceports (old or now under consideration) including in Texas, New Mexico, California, Florida, Maine, Alaska, Scotland, New Zealand, Brazil, Sweden, Indonesia, Kenya, Russia, and more.

Daniel also spoke eloquently about the venture capitalists growing ‘financialization of outer space’.

PFAS contamination in Maine & globally at U.S. bases

29 September 2024

Bruce Gagnon interviews expert Pat Elder about PFAS contamination.

There was a recent massive spill of PFAS at the former naval air station here in Brunswick, Maine.

Pat has been helping figure out the dangerous future now faced by local communities.

Pat travels across the US and around the world to active and closed US military bases and has found major PFAS contamination of water, land and fish at each location.

Lou Kimball from Hapswell, Maine – 30 Months of Weekly Vigils for Palestine

24 July 2024

Bruce Gagnon interviews Lou Kimball about the weekly ‘Stop genocide in Gaza’ protests in Brunswick, Maine. Bruce and Lou are regulars at the vigil each Thursday

DARC Radar – The Fight Back
21 June 2024

The radar called DARC would help the US and UK monitor, track and attack satellites in space used by China and Russia. Currently the UK Air Force is practicing flying high into space where during time of war they could launch anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles from the planes to knock out ‘enemy’ satellites.

Local residents in Pembrokeshire are currently organizing to stop the planned facility with 27 radars. The US DARC program would also have similar radars in Texas and Australia giving the Space Force the capability to monitor all the skies above our Mother Earth.

A senior Israeli radiation scientist, Dr. Michael Peleg, a man whose study on highly elevated cancer rates in the very young military personnel operating Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence radar system, stands right now as perhaps the world’s most cutting-edge and renowned study into the subject of military radar.

Dr. Peleg of Technion (the Israeli Institute of Technology) has produced an outstanding video presentation for PARC Against DARC. The video will be presented at the public meeting on June 27th, 7 PM, in Solva Memorial Hall. He will give a vital, behind-the-scenes glimpse into exactly the facts the US—the architect of both the Iron Dome and DARC—refuses to open up for scrutiny by the public, by scientists, and by the medical community.

More information from facebook and their website.

John LaForge on U.S. nukes in Europe
30 April 2024

Will the U.S. & NATO use the nuclear weapons stationed at EU bases against Russia?

This edition of the Global Network’s Space Alert podcast features an interview with John LaForge from Nukewatch and Bruce Gagnon.

They discuss the current deployment and upgrade of Pentagon nuclear weapons at NATO bases throughout Europe. (See map at the top of this email)

John talks about his long participation in protests at these bases in Europe and his recent time in a German jail following his latest arrest for cutting a hole in a fence and entering the base.

Lisa Savage on War$ in Palestine & Ukraine
December 2023

Lisa Savage is a Board Member of the Global Network and its social media coordinator. An antiwar activist, organizer, blogger, and retired teacher from Maine, she ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020 and earned 5% of votes following a strong performance in four televised debates where she shared an anti-imperialist analysis of U.S. foreign policy and domestic priorities. She founded the Maine Natural Guard where many have taken the pledge to point out the enormous role of the U.S military in driving climate crisis.

K.J. Noh on War in Asia
October 2023

K.J. Noh is an journalist, academic, writer and much more. He was born in South Korea and was in the Korean Army and a survivor of three military dictatorships there. Currently living on the west coast of the U.S.A. he is now a member of Veterans for Peace.

The War Machine and Us
July 2023

Joan Roelof is a retired professor of political science at Keene State College in New HampshireMasters in International Politics & Security Studies from the University of Bradford and a Law degree and MBA from Dalhousie University.

Joan is the author of “The Trillion Dollar Silencer – Why there is so little Anti-War Protest in the United States”.

The book investigates the astounding lack of popular protest at the death and destruction that the military industrial complex is inflicting on people, nations, and the environment, and its budget-draining costs. Where is the antiwar protest by progressives, libertarians, environmentalists, civil rights advocates, academics, clergy, community volunteers, artists, et al? It focuses on how military largesse infests such public sectors’ interests.

More about Joan and her work on her website.

The ‘Disinformation” Project: Universities, NATO, and Intelligence Agencies Suppressing Dissent
26 May 2023

Tamara Lorentz is a PhD candidate in Global Governance at the Balsillie School for International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.

She has a Masters in International Politics & Security Studies from the University of Bradford and a Law degree and MBA from Dalhousie University.

She’s a member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Canada.

Tamara is also on the board of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and is involved with World Beyond War, and the No to NATO Network.

She’s a long-time environmentalist, feminist and peace activist.

Space Alert: Bob Anderson on Vietnam, Wounded Knee and space warfare
13 April 2023

Bob Anderson begins this Space Alert interview saying he is an Eastern Tennessee Hillbilly who never finsihed high school due to having to work in order to help his family get by.

He joined the Air Force and was sent to Vietnam and Laos on top secret missions. It was this time that changed the course of his life like many other veterans.

After college Bob got involved with Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and it was while working with that organization he heard about the 1973 American Indian Movement (AIM) occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Bob tells how he and other VVAW members jumped into their cars and drove to Wounded Knee and joined the occupation during a fire fight between the US government (FBI, ranchers and their hired goons) and AIM.

He stayed there for 71 days.

In February of this year there was a 50 year reunion at Wounded Knee that Bob attended. He tells that story as well.

Finally Bob discusses his work with a group called Stop the War Machine where he lives today in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He’s long been a board member of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space and shares how Kirtland AFB in his city is a key research center for space weapons development. Kirtland specializes in space war-fighting laser weapons among other new directed-energy technologies.

Space Alert: Report from Jeju Island on U.S. war preparations with China

21 March 2023

Struggle continues in Gangjeong village on Jeju Island opposing U.S. Navy operations at the new naval base

Global Network Advisory Board member Sung-Hee Choi reports on the latest developments in South Korea as Washington expands military operations throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

‘We are a target’, she says.

This aggressive military expansion, labeled the ‘Asia Pivot’ by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is creating major tensions in the region as the US prepares for war with China, North Korea and Russia.

During the interview Sung-Hee talks about the US Navy destroyer USS Rafael Peralta (DDG-115) that recently ported at the Navy base in Gangjeong village on Jeju. She shares a short video of a protest held at the base as the destroyer crew members were bussed to a hotel outside of the village.

The DDG 115 was built in Bath, Maine and during the ‘Christening’ of the warship in 2015 several members of the peace community from across the state were arrested for non-violently blocking the streets and entrances surrounding the shipyard as the public was invited to attend the ceremony. (Regular peace vigils are held at Bath Iron Works in Maine where these destroyers are built. Currently there are seven more under construction.)

There has long been a connection between Maine and the activists in Gangjeong village. Over the years eight Maine-based activists (as well as hundreds of other international peaceniks) traveled to the village to join protests against the Navy base construction that was forced on South Korea by Washington.

In another part of the interview Sung-Hee reports on recent (and on-going) US-NATO war games aimed at North Korea. She shares a second short video of protests in Seoul opposing these war games.

Near the end of the interview Sung-Hee talks about how the US Space Force has assigned personnel to South Korea and is drawing their nation into the larger US program of militarizing space.

Space Alert: Why is Germany pushing WW3 with Russia?

23 February 2023

Space Alert interview with German activist Heinrich Buecker

In this interview Global Network coordinator Bruce Gagnon speaks with Heinrich Buecker from Berlin.

They discuss the following:

• Germany has been in the news a lot lately for giving tanks to Ukraine and also due to comments by Green Party foreign minister Annalena Baerbock who declared that Europe was ‘at war with Russia’. She has since withdrawn the words but the damage from them still remains.
• Pulitzer prize journalist Seymour Hersh recently released a blockbuster article about how the Biden administration was responsible for the terrorist attack blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. How are the German people reacting to that story?
• How has the shortage of oil and natural gas and inflation impacted life across your country?
• How many American troops are currently deployed in Germany? How would you respond to claims by many people that the US is responsible for forcing Germans into the current anti-Russian hatred?
• Why is it so important for Germans to resist this new wave of anticommunism and Russophobia?
• Were there similar waves of Russophobia in Germany before WW2?

On June 22, 2022 Heinrich Buecker gave a speech at an event hosted by Berlin’s Friedenskoordination (Peace Coordination) at the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park, in which, according to a statement on the antiwar cafe’s website, he said that “… it seems incomprehensible to me that German politics should again support the same chauvinistic and especially Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German Reich found willing helpers in 1941. The SS and Wehrmacht used Ukrainian national-fascist organizations as repressive and murderous squads against their own countrymen, including millions of Jewish men, women and children.”

As a result, he is now facing the possibility of up to three years in prison.

Arguing in favor of sending tanks to Kiev, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Green Party) said EU countries were fighting a war against Russia. US and EU officials have previously gone out of their way to claim they were not a party to the conflict in Ukraine.

“And therefore I’ve said already in the last days – yes, we have to do more to defend Ukraine. Yes, we have to do more also on tanks,” Baerbock said during a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). “But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe, because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.”

Space Alert: Interview with Ken Jones on War Industry Resisters Network

9 February 2023

North Carolina-based peace activist Ken Jones discusses his organizing efforts with Reject Raytheon (Asheville) and the War Industry Resisters Network.

Bruce Gagnon interviews Ken and they also speak about increasingly provocative US imperial policy toward China and North Korea in the Asia-Pacific.

In addition they review some recent developments in Ukraine.

They conclude with a brief discussion on how best to make an impact when Congress and the media are increasingly under corporate oligarch control.

Asia-Pacific: New US-NATO war zone

16 November 2022

Space Alert: Maine vegetable farmer Richard Rhames on the US-NATO war on Russia

1 November 2022

Vegetable farmer Richard Rhames from Biddeford, Maine is interviewed by Bruce Gagnon on the latest Space Alert show.

In addition to running a family farm, Rhames is a long-time public access TV activist in Maine and is a respected commentator on US foreign policy.

He shares his concerns on the alarming possibility of this US-NATO proxy war against Russia (using Ukraine as the hammer) turning nuclear at any moment.

Rhames also discusses the recent letter sent by 30 Democratic party ‘progressives’ calling on President Biden to negotiate with Russia. The following day the Democratic representatives renounced their own letter – ostensibly because party leadership pushed back hard on the admittedly mild communication.

Margaret is interviewed by Global Network coordinator Bruce Gagnon.

Space Alert Interview with Margaret Flowers (Popular Resistance)

23 September 2022

Margaret Flowers is the director of Popular Resistance and host of Clearing the FOG.

She serves on the administrative committee of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) and on the executive committee of the US Peace Council.

Margaret is interviewed by Global Network coordinator Bruce Gagnon.

Why is the US-NATO rushing into war with Russia and China?
Interview with activist & writer John Walsh

18 July 2022 – John Walsh who lives in the Bay area in California.

Until recently John was Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.

He has written on issues of peace and health care for the San Francisco Chronicle, EastBayTimes/San Jose Mercury News, Asia Times, LA Progressive, Antiwar.com, CounterPunch, Consortium News, Scheerpost and others.

John is also an active member of Veterans For Peace Russia Working Group.

He is interviewed by Global Network coordinator Bruce Gagnon who lives in Brunswick, Maine.

Space Alert interview with Canadian activist Tamara Lorincz on NATO

1 July 2022 – Tamara is a member of Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, WILPF Canada, Science for Peace, and is a board member of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

Tamara tells the story of her ‘interrupting’ Ukraine President Zelensky’s live talk to university students in Canada last week where he urged them to push their government to send more weapons to the war front. More weapons from the US-NATO are only prolonging the war and hurting all the people of Ukraine – no matter which side they might be on.

Tamara is a PhD student at the university where she did her action – it had a big impact across Canada and beyond. A real inspiration to many of us.

In the interview we talked about NATO’s plans to build a ‘global NATO’. They want to move into Latin America, Middle East and Asia-Pacific. They are the armed muscle for corporate capitalism.

Tamara comments on NATO’s attempt to ‘greenwash’ their massive carbon bootprint and about the more than a dozen protests held from coast-to-coast in Canada last week against NATO.

Tamara has been working to stop NATO expansion for many years – long before the war in Ukraine began. People like her only come around now and then.

US Withdrawal from Disarmament Treaties with Russia

19 May 2022 – with Scott Ritter.

Scott Ritter is a former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer. He also served with the United Nations implementing arms control treaties

Scott answers questions on why the US is moving away from ‘Arms control’ – particularly with Russia and China; why the US pulled out of the ABM Treaty; the INF Treaty; whether the ‘Aegis Ashore’ missile defense systems in Romania and Poland like a Cuban missile crisis in reverse for Russia?

Space Tourism and Militarization

14 February 2022 – with Dave Webb, Global Network Convenor.

Dr. Dave Webb lives in Leeds, England and is the board convener of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He is an engineer by training. At one time he worked for the British Ministry of Defense (MOD).

For many years Dave served as national chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the UK.

He’s been with the Global Network since the late 1990’s. He also serves as the webmaster for our website.

In this interview Dave talks about the growing damage to Earth and the orbits around our planet by unrestrained and unregulated launches for 5G and other military applications. Tens of thousands of these mini-satellite launches are punching a larger hole in the ozone layer as well as emitting toxic exhaust during rocket launches. Storage of rocket fuels at launch sites often leaks into the local water supply.

He warns about the coming Kessler Syndrome which predicts increasing collisions and creation of more space debris in orbits above the Earth. At some point scientists fear that there will be a cascade of orbital crashes taking out the satellites that bring us GPS, cell phones, Internet banking, weather prediction, air traffic control, cable TV and more. At that point life on Earth could grind to a dark halt.

In fact NASA sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (which is supposed to regulate space launches) on February 8 expressing concerns that the SpaceX plan for 30,000 satellites could endanger astronauts. NASA also says it could endanger people on Earth, too. See more here.

Dave also talks about the many problems associated with the rapidly expanding network of rocket launch facilities in the UK, the US, and other places like New Zealand and beyond. Usually the locals are promised that the launch sites will be for ‘civilian’ purposes only. But in locations like Kodiak, Alaska, Rocket Lab in New Zealand and inside the UK they turn out to be primarily for military uses.

One common denominator appears to be the entry of Lockheed Martin.

Space Alert! 7: Lisa Savage on Climate & Space Technology

Lisa Savage is a retired teacher and organizer, a member of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and a founding member of the Maine Natural Guard.

She recently represented the Global Network on a People’s Summit webinar during the COP26 Glasgow climate summit.

She talks with Bruce Gagnon about the deadly connections between space tech and climate crisis.

She blogs at:
https://went2thebridge.wordpress.com/

Space Alert! 6: The Military Industrial Space Complex

In episode 6 of the Space Alert live stream, Christian Sorensen joins the show to discuss the connections between the military industrial congressional complex and outer space.

Space Alert! 5: The North: Platform for US War Against Russia

With Agneta Norberg & Eva Jonsson from Sweden talking about the growing militarization of the North country (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark) aimed at Russia.

Agneta is a Global Network board member and lives in Stockholm. Eva is a leader of Women for Peace and lives in Kiruna – in the far north of Sweden. Her group hosted our Global Network annual meeting in 2013.

Space Alert 4 – New Treaty Needed to Prevent an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS)

With Journalism Professor Karl Grossman and long-time peace activist Alice Slater. Interviewed by Bruce Gagnon.

Both are on the boards of the Global Network and they discuss PAROS (Prevention of an Arms Space in Outer Space) and the history of the US blocking Russia and China’s many attempts to create a new treaty at the United Nations to ban all weapons in space.

Also discussed is the current drive by the nuclear industry to move their toxic product into space to power mining colonies on the planetary bodies, power rockets to Mars and to provide power for space weapons.

Space Alert! 3: Opposition in New Zealand to Military Space Launches

The latest Global Network Space Alert interview with Professor Kevin Clements from New Zealand about the Rocket Lab campaign opposing U.S. military space launches on indigenous Maori land.

Space Alert! 2: War from Sea and Space: Hiding Empire in the 21st Century

Space Alert, the Global Network’s monthly live stream, interviews guests from a variety of backgrounds to discuss important issues about the militarization of outer space and beyond.

Today’s guest is Koohan Paik-Mander, a board member of the Global Network, discussing the US empire’s strategy of fighting wars from both space and the sea.

Space Alert! 1: US-NATO Space Issues

Board Members of the Global Network launch the first episode of a new monthly live stream, Space Alert! Bruce Gagnon, Tamara Lorincz and Dave Webb from the Global Network discuss US-NATO space issues and more!