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JAXA is developing SPS with success.

Nilay Patel, 2/7/2008, http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/07/japans-space-agency-planning-space-based-solar-power-arrays/

We've seen some pretty out there solar installations, but JAXA, the Japanese space agency, is about to get really far out with its
latest project: a space-based solar array that beams power back to Earth. The agency is set to begin testing on the microwave
power transmission system on February 20th, with an attempt to beam enough power over the 2.4GHz band to power a household
heater at 50 meters (164 feet). That's certainly not the sort of large-scale sci-fi power system we were hoping for, but fret not -- if the
tests are successful, JAXA's plan is to eventually launch a constellation of solar satellites, each beaming power to a 1.8-mile
wide receiving station that'll produce 1 gigawatt of electricity and power 500,000 homes.

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JAXA is already working on SPS, years ahead of the US.

Sarah Gingichashvili, 10/1/2007, http://thefutureofthings.com/news/1013/generating-power-in-space.html

JAXA researchers are planning on putting a prototype of the system in geosynchronous orbit approximately 36,000 km above
the equator. A laser beam will be used to transfer the energy collected by the space-based solar panels to an intermediary or
terrestrial power station, where its energy will be used to generate electricity or hydrogen. The Japanese scientists are using solar
plates made from chromium, a ceramic material that absorbs the sunlight, and neodymium, which converts it into laser light. These
solar panels demonstrated a 42% solar-to-laser energy conversion efficiency – an impressive figure that outperforms previous
technology by a factor of four.

Since this innovative system will be situated in space, it will be able to collect sunlight 24 hours a day, circumventing problems
affecting ground-based solar energy systems, such as cloudy skies and darkness. The Sun’s energy is eight times greater outside
Earth’s atmosphere. Therefore, it is estimated that a single satellite-mounted solar panel site will have a power output
equivalent to a 1 GW nuclear power plant.

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Colanization is near impossible in our current technological state, lack of


extraterrestial contact proves.

Peter Ulmschneider, science author, 2/23/2005, http://www.springerlink.com/content/12kd8xy4trn8apq1/

The questions “Why don’t we have contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life?” and “How will mankind evolve in the near
future?” are intimately connected. Clearly, civilizations that are far behind our technological state would not be capable of
communicating with us. But even societies more advanced than us would have difficulties in making contact, as radio waves or
spacecraft take a long time to cross the huge distances in our galaxy. In addition, such advanced societies might no longer exist.
They could have fallen victim to external or internal dangers, or they might not wish to communicate with us. The only way to gain
some insights into the possible dangers afflicting extraterrestrial intelligent societies and their likely mode of behavior is to consider
our own future development, because these civilizations are expected to have gone through our own technological state long ago.

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Space will be where future wars are fought.

Joseph Gerson, Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee's New England Regional Office, Z magazine,
July/August 2001, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_Space/Dark_Times.html

One doesn't have to be a Naderite to know that even with the Democratic Party having recaptured control of the Senate and the
Bush administration in disarray, these remain dark and dangerous times. The Bush-Cheney administration's assaults on the
environment, the judiciary, and economic security have been widely reported and analyzed. Less well understood is the
integrated fast track campaign to consolidate U.S. military hegemony for the first decades of the 21st century: the race
to deploy so-called "missile defenses," to scrap or mangle the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) beyond recognition, to
transform China into the new "enemy," and to begin the weaponization of space. As President Bush's first trip to Europe and
meeting with President Putin demonstrated, his Administration remains adamant in its campaign to abrogate or de-fang the
ABM Treaty. They are desperate to have the initial, if incredible, "missile defense" deployments in place for the 2004 election
campaign. Vice-President Cheney was recently asked if there is a main organizing event or dynamic at work in the world
today. He answered that "the arrangement [for] the twenty-first century is most assuredly being shaped right now,"
that "the United States will continue to be the dominant political, economic and military power in the world." The
principle vehicles involved in shaping Cheney's "arrangement" are the revolution in Military Affairs and related changes in
U.S. military doctrine signaled in President Bush's May 1 Star Wars speech and the many leaked reports about the
recommendations of a second Marshall Plan. (Andrew W. Marshall is the 79-year-old Pentagon analyst who is
conducting Secretary of War Rumsfeld's strategic review.) To the degree that Marshall's plan is actually implemented,
the new doctrine will shift the focus of U.S. military planning and war preparations from Europe to the Asia-Pacific
region, away from the Army's ground forces toward the Navy, Air Force, and weaponization of space. Instead of ostensibly
preparing to fight two near-simultaneous wars in different regions of the planet, the plan asserts that the "U.S. must
have the military capability to act at any time, anywhere, in defense of what it sees as its global interests." The fine print
of the Marshall-Rumsfeld plan gives lie to the Bush rhetoric that "missile defenses" are needed to deter attacks by so-called
outlaw nations such as Iraq and North Korea. Instead, Marshall is explicit that Washington's primary concern is Chinese
military modernization and the belief that in the not too distant future Beijing will have missile forces capable of intimidating
and destroying the hundreds of U.S. military bases and the 100,000 forward deployed U.S. troops in East Asia and the Pacific.
If they can ever make missile defenses work-and the U.S. is much closer to being able to deploy so-called Theater
Missile Defenses (TMD) than Reagan's grand vision National Missile Defenses (NMD)-their primary military mission
will be to neutralize China's relatively small nuclear deterrent force (now, an estimated 18-20 ICBMs with the
theoretical capability of reaching the United States) and to destroy Chinese satellites needed for missile guidance. The
accelerated Star Wars campaign, which Daschle, Levin, and many other Senate Democrats say they will support with "robust"
multi-billion dollar research and development funding, serves many "interests," and its target list extends far beyond China.
But, dominance-not defense-is its strategic purpose. Nuclear War and Missile Defense Secretary of Defense (War) Rumsfeld
was not being entirely illogical when he urged "missile defenses" "need not be 100 percent perfect" to be deployed. The Bush
administration may be clumsy, immoral, and dangerous, but it is clear on its priorities. Their agendas include fattening
corporate profits, subsidizing high-tech research, and providing a cover for the weaponization of space. Hearkening
back to the Reagan-era vision of successful nuclear warfighting, these right-wing Republicans believe that even if it
takes decades, they can eventually make the world safe for U.S. first-strike nuclear and high-tech warfighting.

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Space weaponization and colonization is only being used to spur the military
industrial complex, and U.S. Hegemony

Joseph Gerson, Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee's New England Regional Office, Z magazine,
July/August 2001,
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_Space/Dark_Times.html

Since the end of the Cold War, the words "nuclear weapons" and "nuclear war" have become disembodied from their
cataclysmic meanings. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were decimated half a century ago, and since the collapse of the Berlin Wall
there has been little public debate about the dangers of nuclear weapons and war. For many, nuclear weapons are abstract and
dated. But, nuclear weapons-some 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs-are not
abstractions. They are built and deployed to be used, and despite arms control agreements, an estimated 32,000 fission
and fusion warheads remain deployed or in the nuclear power's stockpiles. Only one nation-the United States-has ever
crossed the moral and legal boundary of launching a nuclear attack against human beings. Yet, on more than 20 occasions since
the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and at least 5 times since the end of the Cold War, U.S. presidents have prepared and
threatened to initiate nuclear war during international crises and wars. So-called "missile defenses" have been conceived to
make it safe to threaten or initiate nuclear war. The plan is to develop and deploy technologies and weapons that can detect and
destroy enemy missiles in their boost, flight, and re-entry phases, and to knock out the satellites that missiles rely on for in-
flight guidance. In the tradition of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, what were formerly called "National" Missile
Defenses (NMD) are being developed to shield all of the United States from missile attacks, while shorter range weapons
which were formerly called "Theater" Missile Defenses (TMD) are designed to raise a protective umbrella over smaller
"theaters" of conflict, East Asia and Israel for example. Nations targeted by credible missile defenses will, at least
theoretically, be unable to rely on their retaliatory and deterrent second-strike arsenals. As a result, their range of
options during crises and confrontations with Washington will be limited and stark: accede to Washington's demands
or suffer cataclysmic nuclear war. "Missile defense" architecture includes interceptor missiles, airborne lasers, ballistic
missile earlywarning radars, and multi-purpose satellites. These are to be deployed on the ground, at sea, in the air, and in
outer space-an approach that is based on politics as well as on anticipated technological requirements. With this
strategy, the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and their political and corporate allies, each get a share in Star Wars' spoils
and power. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld approach to Star Wars may be reckless, but it is also consistent with important strains
of U.S. Cold War and Post-Cold War strategic thinking and action. Fifty years after European and Japanese post-war
reconstruction, Bill Clinton put it this way: "We have 4 percent of the world's population, and we want to keep 22 percent of
the world's wealth. There is also recent precedent for the Bush team's disregard for the ABM Treaty. Shortly after he returned
to academia, Clinton's first CIA Director, John Deutch, said the United States "never intended, nor does it now intend, to
implement" its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty commitment to complete nuclear disarmament." That, he explained,
'was just one of those things you have to say to get what you want out of a conference." The Agendas George W. Bush is
famous for being inarticulate, but it is becoming increasingly clear that his words have little integrity. In his May 1 speech, he
again insisted that "missile defenses" are necessary to defend the U. S. against attacks by so-called rogue states and against
accidental missile launches. But, for most of the past decade North Korea has been anxious to normalize relations with
Washington. It was the Bush administration, not Kim Jong II, who earlier this year derailed the Korean peace process.
Moreover, Richard Butler, who oversaw the UN's dismantling of Iraq's nuclear weapons infrastructure, has reconfirmed that
dangers of Iraqi missile attacks are "remote." Even Thomas Friedman, of the New York Times' op-ed page, has been clear that
Osama Bin Laden, similar forces, and their allies are "rational actors." They don't attack the U.S. and the West with missiles
because they know the U.S. response will be devastating. Instead, they resist U.S. hegemony through a form of guerrilla
warfare. Senator Levin was correct when he pointed to the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York and the attack on
the USS Cole in Yemen as being more typical of U.S. vulnerabilities to attack. These post-modern guerrillas rely on secretive,
cheap, and if possible, untraceable methods. As Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, and the American Friends Service
Committee pointed out in the early 1960s, if such "rogue" forces had the means to attack a U.S. city with a nuclear weapon,
they would likely smuggle it into New York or Los Angeles in a suitcase or aboard a luxury liner. The fear of accidental
launches is also largely manufactured. As former CIA Director Stansfield Turner and others explain, this potential danger
can be prevented by the cheaper and more effective method of "de-alerting" the world's nuclear arsenals, separating
nuclear warheads from the missiles designed to carry them. They don't need to be on hair-trigger alert. Clearly,
Washington's "missile defense' and Star Wars advocates have other agendas, some of which have been alluded to but
will not be discussed here in detail: a unilateralist U.S. foreign and military policy; harvesting votes at election time;

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profits for Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and other munitions and high tech industries; and creating a vehicle to
reinforce the bureaucratic and political fiefdoms of the U.S. military's competing military services.

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Space colonization causes competition and war.

Joseph Gerson, Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee's New England Regional Office, Z magazine,
July/August 2001, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_Space/Dark_Times.html

As Princeton physicist Zia Mian critically observes, leading U.S. planners appear to be deliberately "giving supremacy to
the cult of U.S. technological supremacy" in order to communicate that "there is no point in even thinking about
putting up a fight [with the U.S.] because the U.S. is so technologically far ahead of everyone else." This perspective
illuminates at least four additional goals of the accelerated Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld "missile defense"/Star Wars
campaign:(1) to subsidize development of new weapons related technologies, regardless of whether "missile defenses"
work or are deployed (2) to subsidize military related research and development that can lead to new commercial
technologies to compete in (or dominate) the world market (3) to fatten corporate profits (4) to help ensure continued
U.S. privileged access to the world's limited resources. Washington used the wars against Iraq and Serbia to
demonstrate its lead in, and the capabilities of, high-tech warfare. In the 1980s Reagan's Star Wars' spending helped U.
S. -based corporations win the super computer race. There's also the mercantile theory of history, which was a part of the
ideology that fueled European, and later U.S. and Japanese, conquest and colonialism. This theory holds that the world's
material resources are limited, and that the country controlling the largest share of essential resources will be the world's most
powerful nation. Reality is somewhat more complicated than this, but it is also true that World War I was largely fought to
defend British (and to a lesser extent French) control of Middle East oil reserves against the German challenge. Since the
passing of the British Empire "political axiom number one" of U.S. foreign and military policy has been to ensure that
neither its enemies nor its allies gain independent access to those Middle Eastern oil reserves. President Kennedy's chair
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff termed Middle East oil the "jugular vein of Western capitalism." Things have changed over
40 years and those reserves now also serve as the "jugular vein" of East Asian capitalism. It is no mere coincidence
that, in the course of at least eight wars and crises that challenged U.S. Middle East hegemony, Washington prepared or
threatened to initiate nuclear war. "Missile defenses" are designed to reinforce ultimate U.S. control on the flow of oil
that fuels the world's economies.

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Space colonization destroy relations with Russia and China and increase tensions with
the rest of the world.

Joseph Gerson, Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee's New England Regional Office, Z magazine,
July/August 2001, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_Space/Dark_Times.html

In recent years, Russia and China have established a weak "strategic partnership" to counter Washington's
increasingly aggressive hegemony. However, because both nations are anxious for U.S., European, and Japanese
technologies and investments, their quasi-alliance is tenuous. Indeed, since the establishment of the People's Republic of China,
Washington has sought to divide Moscow from Beijing and to play one against the other. In an era when Japanese leaders
point to China and wonder aloud to their Russian counterparts who will populate and control eastern Siberia in the coming
decades, it is no wonder that Russia's foreign minister has been clear that his government is "ready to be constructive in talks
with the United States on missile defense." In terms of Europe and Japan, it is important to remember that since the last
years of the Reagan era, U.S. military doctrines have been clear that Washington's "first objective" is to "prevent the
re-emergence of a new rival" or "peer competitor," including the "discouragement" of "friendly nations....from
challenging our leadership." This includes Reagan's Discriminate Deterrence; the elder Bush's 1992 initial Pentagon Draft
Defense Planning Guidance written under Paul Wolfowitz's (now Assistant Secretary of Defense) direction, and the Clinton
Administration's Joint Vision 2020 which defined the Pentagon's mission as worldwide "full spectrum dominance." This helps
explain the staggering (il)logic of U.S. military spending that for most of the past decade has equaled that of the world's
nine next biggest military spenders combined. The rogue state rhetoric reflects the tradition of most U.S. wars being
fought in and against Third World nations. But, it is also true that NATO was created to contain Germany as well as Russia,
and the U.S.-Japan alliance was imposed to "cap" and co-opt Japanese militarism in addition to "containing" Russia and China.
In addition to creating and preserving a "good business climate" and stanching Third World rebellions, U.S. strategic
planners have learned from their studies of the British and other empires. They want to be in a position to contain, and
if necessary defeat, inevitable challenges by emerging powers to its hegemonic global dominance .The European Union is
an economic and potential military superpower. Recently there have been tensions between the U.S. and the European Union
over trade, human rights, influence in Asia, and the proposed creation of an independent European Rapid Deployment Force.
These developments point to the possibility that U.S. and EU elite interests and ambitions may in time diverge substantially.
The U.S. and Europe could theoretically-but will not necessarily-become military as well as economic "peer competitors."
Similarly, although Japan is now wracked by economic, political, and social turmoil, Japanese power is such that U. S. officials
have boasted that one way they discipline China is by occasionally threatening to spin Japan off as an independent power. This
Asian nightmare has been given new life by the nationalist and militarist commitments of Prime Minister Koizumi and Foreign
Minister Tanaka's vision of Japan becoming a major power independent of the United States. Japan is still the world's second
richest nation and its economic power continues to far exceed China's. Despite its peace constitution, Japan is the world's third
greatest military spender and a near-nuclear power. The "missile defense"/Star Wars programs are, in part, designed to
remind the EU and Japan who is really in charge. In the tradition of Joint Vision 2020, many in Washington believe
that "missile defenses" can serve as a hedge against "uncertainty." At the same time, as with Russia, Washington wants
to further integrate European and Japanese science and technology into U.S. dominated systems. Finally, Star Wars
research and development will be expensive. Financial burden-sharing by Europe and Japan could ease the pain and
possibly increase U.S. taxpayers' and voters' patience and support. Ambiguous policy statements now emanating from
Berlin, London, and Paris seem to reflect that European corporations, scientific and military establishments, and
politicians want their multi-billion dollar share of the Star Wars' pie. Meanwhile, the widely reported strife between
Foreign Minister Tanaka and the Ministry's bureaucracy is partly due to profound differences over whether Japan should
support the Bush administration's "missile defense" program.

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Space tech destroys relations.

Joseph Gerson, Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee's New England Regional Office, Z magazine,
July/August 2001 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_Space/Dark_Times.html

On May 8 Secretary Rumsfeld gave the world something else to worry about. As senior Bush administration officials traveled
to Europe and Asia to calm global fears of the "missile defense" program, Rumsfeld held a press conference to announce the
reorganization of the Pentagon's space programs. The heart of his announcement was that "the Air Force will be assigned
responsibility to organize, train, and equip for prompt and sustained offensive and defensive space operations." Three
days later, Lt. General Robert Foglesong, deputy chief of staff of air and space operations, confirmed that the Air Force was
prepared "to take our guns into space" when given the order to do so. Rumsfeld's press conference was surprising only in
its timing-in the midst of the Administration's high-powered "charm offensive." In January, as chair of the
Congressional Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, Rumsfeld
had publicly announced the Commission's recommendations which emphasized that it is time to move to weaponize
space. The U. S ., the Commission insisted, must "have the option to deploy weapons in space to deter threats and, if
necessary, defend against attacks on U.S. interests. " Secretary Rumsfeld's press conference was the first step in
institutionalizing his Commission's Report. The report was a rehash of already published Space Command reports.
Vision for 2020, for example, is illustrated with pictures of space-based lasers eliminating earth-bound targets and it
describes the Space Command's role as "dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests
and investments." Think in terms of Middle East oil and U. S. automotive factories in China. Like the anti-globalization
movement, Vision for 2020 points to the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. But, instead of seeking to
rectify the situation, it proposes preserving these disparities, through the "control [ofl space" to "dominate" the earth.
China and Russia have more immediate concerns. They fear U.S. "missile defense" systems may soon be able to destroy
their satellites, wiping out essential command, control, communication, and intelligence functions for their missile and
conventional forces, leaving them completely vulnerable to U.S. first strike attacks. With China in the lead, and with
powerful support from Canada and other U.S. allies, the world's nations have repeatedly and overwhelmingly adopted
resolutions opposing the weaponization of space. The most recent General Assembly vote was 163 states voting for the
resolution and three abstaining: the U.S., Israel, and Micronesia.

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The affirmative is creating a new arms race in hopes of continuing U.S. heg.

Jeffrey St. Clair, investigative journalist, These Times magazine, June 2000, Star Wars: Episode Two The Pentagon's Latest
Missile Defense Fantasy http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pentagon_military/StarWars_EpisodeTwo.html

Now the Pentagon is seeking approval to put part of its system into operation. The first phase is a ground-based system of 100
Interceptor missiles and a ring of new radar stations, both to be based in the Alaskan tundra. Clinton has said he will make a
final decision on the system this summer. All indications are that he will give it the green light. Of course, there are problems.
Namely, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and corporate America's coddling of China, why in the world would the United
States need to deploy such a system? Such questions prompt the most absurd frenzy of threat-inflation since the notion that the
Marxist government of Grenada posed a grave danger to the Western Hemisphere. A coven of atomic warriors has been
rolled out to fulminate about "rogue nations" and "global terrorists" who threaten what the Pentagon brass calls the
"early post-Cold War paradigm." Of course, if Osama Bin Laden ever decides to strike back at his former friends in the U.S.
government, his payload is much more likely to be delivered via FedEx in a Louis Vuitton suitcase than a rocket launched from
his camp in the Hindu Kush. Another stumbling block is the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that flatly prohibits such a
system, which the architects of the ABM treaty rightly saw as a destabilizing force that would spur proliferation and
stockpiling of weapons. But the Clinton-Gore administration views the ABM treaty as outmoded and, in a now
customary display of hubris, on April 25, U.S. Ambassador James Collins delivered a draft copy of proposed changes to
Moscow. The tenor of the U.S. rewrite didn't sit well with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who warned it could
prove a "fatal mistake." "Everyone should be aware that the collapse of the ABM treaty would have a destructive
domino effect for the existing system of disarmament agreements," he said. "We would be back in an era of suspicion
and confrontation." New Russian President Vladimir Putin has already upped the nuclear ante by authorizing changes in
Russia's military doctrine that would allow it to launch a "first strike" nuclear attack. Anti-nuclear activist Daniel Ellsberg, the
former government researcher who leaked the Pentagon Papers, says that may have been the bizarre intention of the
Pentagon all along. "In order to advance a domestic political agenda," he says, "the United States is encouraging the
Russians to remain on and advance a launch-on-warning system." It's the old game of escalating threats. The
cheerleaders for the new Star Wars system now realize that the "rogue state" threat isn't credible. For one thing, North Korea,
nearly crippled by drought and economic isolation, seems ready to consider a rapprochement with the South. Iran, the
Pentagon's other favorite devil, doesn't have missiles that could reach the United States. And Iraq, still smoldering from years
of unceasing U.S. air strikes, is barely able to maintain its water supply system, never mind construct a fleet of transcontinental
ballistic missiles. Even that normally reliable intermediary for U.S. strategic interests, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, has publicly voiced his doubts about the new Star Wars scheme, saying it could reignite a global arms race.
Even some unrepentant cold warriors chafed at this chilling dialogue. North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, who rules the Foreign
Relations Committee, vowed that any changes to the ABM Treaty agreed to by Russia would be "dead on arrival." The
Republicans have a political motive to drag their feet. They don't want to give Al Gore a "hawkish" victory on the eve
of the election or allow Clinton to add some more military luster to his legacy. "So, Mr. Clinton is in search of a
legacy," Helms blustered. "La-de-da, he already has one. The Russian government should not be under any illusion
whatsoever that any commitments made by this lame-duck administration will be binding on the next administration."

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The United States refuses to head the calls against space militarization, it
instead acts out of its own interest concerning space. This will have disastrous
consequences for the rest of the Earth.

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, The Progressive magazine,
January 2000, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pentagon_military/MasterofSpace.html

On November 1, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted to reaffirm the Outer Space Treaty-the fundamental
international law that establishes that space should be reserved for peaceful uses. Almost 140 nations voted for the resolution
entitled "Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space." It recognizes "the common interest of all mankind in the
exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes," reaffirms the will of all states that the exploration and use of
outer space "shall be for peaceful purposes and shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries,"
and declares "that prevention of an arms race in outer space would avert a grave danger for international peace and
security." Only two nations declined to support this bill-the United States and Israel. Both abstained. For the United
States, the issue goes way beyond missile defense. The U.S. military explicitly says it wants to "control" space to protect its
economic interests and establish superiority over the world. Several documents reveal the plans. Take Vision for 2020, a
1996 report of the U.S. Space Command, which "coordinates the use of Army, Navy, and Air Force space forces" and
was set up in 1985 to "help institutionalize the use of space." The multicolored cover of Vision for 2020 shows a weapon
shooting a laser beam from space and zapping a target below. The report opens with the following: "U.S. Space Command-
dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment. Integrating Space
Forces into war fighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict." A century ago, Nations built navies to protect
and enhance their commercial interests" by ruling the seas, the report notes. Now it is time to rule space. "The medium
of space is the fourth medium of warfare-along with land, sea, and air," it proclaims on page three. "The emerging synergy of
space superiority with land, sea, and air superiority will lead to Full Spectrum Dominance." The Air Force publishes similar
pamphlets. "Space is the ultimate' high ground," declares Guardians of the High Frontier, a 1997 report by the Air Force Space
Command. Proudly displayed in that report is a Space Command uniform patch and motto: MASTER OF SPACE.
Nuclear power is crucial to this scenario. "In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of space-based
weapons of devastating effectiveness to be used to deliver energy and mass as force projection in tactical and strategic
conflict," says New World Vistas: Air and Space Power for the 21st Century, a 1996 U.S. Air Force board report. "These
advances will enable lasers with reasonable mass and cost to effect very many kills.... Setting the emotional issues of
nuclear power aside, this technology offers a viable alternative for large amounts of power in space." Corporate
interests are directly involved in helping set the U.S. space doctrine-a fact the military flaunts. In its 1998 "Long Range
Plan," the U.S. Space Command acknowledges seventy-five participating corporations-including Aerojet, Hughes
Space, Lockheed Martin, and TRW. The PR. spin is that the U.S. military push into space is about "missile defense" or
defense of U.S. space satellites. But the volumes of material coming out of the military are concerned mainly with
offense-with using space to establish military domination over the world below. "It's politically sensitive, but it's going to
happen. Some people don't want to hear this, and it sure isn't in vogue, but-absolutely-we're going to fight in space," General
Joseph W. Ashy, the former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Space Command told Aviation Week and Space Technology in
1996. "We're going to fight from space, and we're going to fight into space. That's why the U.S. has development programs in
directed energy and hit-to-kill mechanisms. We will engage terrestrial targets someday-ships, airplanes, land targets-from
space." Space is "increasingly at the center of our national and economic security," agreed General Richard B. Myers, current
commander-in-chief of the U.S. Space Command, in a speech entitled "Implementing Our Vision for Space Control," which he
delivered in April 1999 to the U.S. Space Foundation in Colorado Springs, Colorado. "The threat, ladies and gentlemen, I
believe is real," he said. "It's a threat to our economic well-being. This is why we must work together to find common ground
between commercial imperatives and the President's tasking to me for space control and protection." "With regard to space
dominance, we have it, we like it, and we're going to keep it," said Keith Hall, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for
Space, in a 1997 speech to the National Space Club. "Space is in the nation's economic interest." In Congress, one avid
booster of U.S. space dominance is Senator Bob Smith, Republican of New Hampshire. Smith believes that national security
depends on "space supremacy" He is interested in breaking up the Air Force and creating a "Space Force." Even the Council on
Foreign Relations-usually characterized as centrist- has come on board. In 1998, it published a booklet entitled Space,
Commerce, and National Security, written by Air Force Colonel Frank Klotz, a military fellow at the council. "The most
immediate task of the United States in the years ahead is to sustain and extend its leadership in the increasingly
intertwined fields of military and commercial space. This requires a robust and continuous presence in space," says the
report. The U.S. government is pouring massive amounts of public money-an estimated $6 billion a year, not counting
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what is secretly spent-into the military development of space. And the United States has signed a multimillion dollar
contract with TRW and Boeing to build a Space-Based Laser Readiness Demonstrator. The military's poster for this laser
shows it firing a ray into space while above it an American flag somehow manages to wave. The Global Network Against
Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space is challenging these plans. Next April, the Global Network will come to Washington,
D.C., for a protest, including a demonstration at the U.S. Treasury to stress how much money is being spent by the United
States on military activities in space. "If the U.S. is allowed to move the arms race into space, there will be no return," says
Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network, based in Gainesville, Florida. "We have this one chance, this one moment
in history, to stop the weaponization of space from happening. The peace movement must move quickly, boldly, and publicly."
"Above all, we must guard against the misuse of outer space," said Kofi Annan as he opened the 1999 U.N. conference
on space militarization in Vienna. "We must not allow this century, so plagued with war and suffering, to pass on its
legacy, when the technology at our disposal will be even more awesome. We cannot view the expanse of space as another
battleground for our Earthly conflicts." But, as the new century dawns, that is exactly what the U.S. military is doing.

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Instead of accepting the dominant nature of Space colonization it is more


important to talk about its consequences and what it means for us as people.

Bruce Gagnon, the director of Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Resist newsletter. October 2001,
Missile Defense is a Trojan Horse
Control and Domination the Reality of Space Program,
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Militarization_Space/MissileDefense_TrojanHorse.html

The underlying issue at hand is corporate global control and domination. The US Space Command is viewed as the new
military arm of the corporate globalization effort. The Vision for 2020 states that due to current economic realities the gap
between "haves and have nots" will be widening in coming years. As a result, the Space Command maintains that there will
be more regional instability as workers organize to oppose slave labor working conditions and a loss of democratic
rights. By developing the new program of "control and domination" from space, the US Pentagon intends to suppress
any "regional" hotspot without having to commit major troop deployments. All warfare on the Earth is now coordinated
from space. Those who control space will be in a position to be the Masters of Space and the Earth. The Global Network
Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space has called for an "International Day of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space"
on October 13. Local actions are being planned in over 17 countries and at nearly 100 sites including US military bases,
aerospace corporation facilities, federal buildings, and embassies. We must create a global debate about the real intentions
of U.S. Star Wars plans. Missile defense must be revealed for the sham that it is. We must show the public documents
like Vision for 2020 and make the case that the weaponization of space will create more global instability rather than
make us more secure. And we must remind the public that our government will not be able to deliver on social spending
promises while paying for space weapons research and development. More than a technical question, the whole Star Wars
program being promoted by both major parties is a moral and ethical issue. What right does the US have to move the
arms race into the heavens? What will be the environmental consequences when space-based lasers, powered with
nuclear reactors, tumble back to Earth and spread deadly plutonium worldwide as the satellite burns up upon hitting
the atmosphere? This debate must be taken into our local communities, to the very front door of those who are working
to create a new arms race in space. We must move now to keep space for peace.

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Space colonization is not going to get large numbers of people off the rock.

Morton Klass, professor of Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University, Futures


Volume 32, Issue 8, October 2000, Pages 739-748, Recruiting new “huddled masses” and “wretched refuse”: a prolegomenon to the
human colonization of space http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V65-410MFY2-
3&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md
5=2ceec1e07cc59e974a2b5fc63f2a8eb7

But when it comes to the peopling of colonies—when what we are talking about is not so much recruitment of initial
technicians as the movement of large numbers of settlers who are willing to leave Earth permanently or at least for the
foreseeable future—it won't be that simple; I think there are serious problems ahead as we move out into space, and we had better
start thinking about them now. In my view, these problems reflect a number of unwarranted assumptions about the nature and
sources of recruitment of colonists. Perhaps potentially even more serious, they also appear to reflect the belief that those who
will plan for the colonization of space, and who will be in charge of the construction of space colonies, will be able to exercise
substantial control over who may come and who may not. And, finally, there seems to be little awareness of some of the wrenching
moral problems that almost invariably attend massive movement of peoples.2 Let us begin by focusing on the forecasted size of
proposed colonies. Gerard K. O'Neill [2], on whose work most discussion of habitats, or colonies in space, is based, proposed that a
first colony—“Island One”—could be built swiftly3 and could hold 10,000 people (p. 122). He suggested they live in three distinct
“villages,” each holding upwards of 3000 settlers (p. 127). Once “Island One” was running and economically successful,
O'Neill believed, the construction of “Island Two,” or even of a number of “Twos,” each capable of holding 140,000
inhabitants, would take place in fifteen years or less (p. 175). And, he envisaged, within a half-century from the onset of
construction of space colonies one would see the completion of one or more “Island Threes,” each “quite easily” capable of
supporting a population of ten million people living in numerous distinct villages of about 25,000 inhabitants established in
different eco-settings (p. 64). Despite the hopes and writings of O'Neill and those who followed him enthusiastically,
construction of even the first “Island One” has not yet begun. But if it should begin, sometime early in the twenty-first
century, and if O'Neill's projections of habitat size and of construction timetables are even partially achieved in the years that
follow, we are talking big numbers!

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Amassing space weaponry leads to a catastrophic international exchange

Gordon Mitchell, Associate Professor and Dir Debate – U Pittsburgh, Et al., ISIS Briefing on Ballistic Missile Defense, July 2001,
http://www.isisuk.demon.co.uk/0811/isis/uk/bmd/no6.html

A buildup of space weapons might begin with noble intentions of 'peace through strength' deterrence, but
this rationale glosses over the tendency that '… the presence of space weapons…will result in the
increased likelihood of their use'.33 This drift toward usage is strengthened by a strategic fact elucidated by
Frank Barnaby: when it comes to arming the heavens, 'anti-ballistic missiles and anti-satellite warfare
technologies go hand-in-hand'.34 The interlocking nature of offense and defense in military space technology stems from the
inherent 'dual capability' of spaceborne weapon components. As Marc Vidricaire, Delegation of Canada to the UN Conference on
Disarmament, explains: 'If you want to intercept something in space, you could use the same capability to
target something on land'. 35 To the extent that ballistic missile interceptors based in space can knock
out enemy missiles in mid-flight, such interceptors can also be used as orbiting 'Death Stars', capable of
sending munitions hurtling through the Earth's atmosphere. The dizzying speed of space warfare would introduce
intense 'use or lose' pressure into strategic calculations, with the spectre of split-second attacks creating
incentives to rig orbiting Death Stars with automated 'hair trigger' devices. In theory, this automation would
enhance survivability of vulnerable space weapon platforms. However, by taking the decision to commit violence out of
human hands and endowing computers with authority to make war, military planners could sow
insidious seeds of accidental conflict. Yale sociologist Charles Perrow has analyzed 'complexly interactive, tightly coupled'
industrial systems such as space weapons, which have many sophisticated components that all depend on each other's flawless
performance. According to Perrow, this interlocking complexity makes it impossible to foresee all the different
ways such systems could fail. As Perrow explains, '[t]he odd term "normal accident" is meant to signal that, given the system
characteristics, multiple and unexpected interactions of failures are inevitable'.36 Deployment of space weapons with pre-
delegated authority to fire death rays or unleash killer projectiles would likely make war itself inevitable,
given the susceptibility of such systems to 'normal accidents'. It is chilling to contemplate the possible
effects of a space war. According to retired Lt. Col. Robert M. Bowman, 'even a tiny projectile reentering from
space strikes the earth with such high velocity that it can do enormous damage — even more than would
be done by a nuclear weapon of the same size!'. 37 In the same Star Wars technology touted as a quintessential tool of
peace, defence analyst David Langford sees one of the most destabilizing offensive weapons ever conceived: 'One imagines dead
cities of microwave-grilled people'.38 Given this unique potential for destruction, it is not hard to imagine that
any nation subjected to space weapon attack would retaliate with maximum force, including use of
nuclear, biological, and/or chemical weapons. An accidental war sparked by a computer glitch in space
could plunge the world into the most destructive military conflict ever seen.

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Our “gift” to the world, is the continuation of U.S. hegemony O and maybe the
extinction of our planet.

Noam Chomsky, (From 1972 to 1992, Professor Chomsky was cited 7,449 times), Hegemony Or Survival,
2003. Pp-237-238

China's interpretation of BMD is shared by US strategic analysts, in virtually the same words: BMD "is not simply a shield
but an enabler of U.S. action," a Rand Corporation study observed. Others agree. BMD "will facilitate the more effective
application of U.S. military power abroad," Andrew Bacevich writes in the conservative National Interest: "by insulating the
homeland from reprisal-albeit in a limited way-missile defense will underwrite the capacity and willingness of the
United States to 'shape' the environment elsewhere." He cites approvingly the conclusion of Lawrence Kaplan in the
liberal New Republic that "missile defense isn't really meant to protect America. It's a tool for global dominance." In
Kaplan's own words, missile defense is "not about defense. It's about offense. And that's exactly why we need it. "26 BMD will
provide the US with "absolute freedom in using or threatening to use force in international relations" (China's complaint, which
Kaplan quotes approvingly). It will "cement U.S. hegemony and make Americans 'masters of the world.' "The background
assumption is the contemporary version of Wilsonian idealism, a doctrine taken to be "so authoritative as to be virtually
immune from challenge": America is the "historical vanguard" and must therefore maintain its global dominance and military
supremacy forever and without challenge, for the benefit of all.27 It also follows that "the absolute freedom in using or
threatening to use force" to be conferred on the US by BMD is a precious gift we offer to mankind. Who can fail to
perceive the impeccable logic? It is well understood that BMD, even if technically feasible, must, rely on satellite
communication, and destroying satellites is far easier than shooting down missiles. Anti satellite weapons, banned by
treaties that the Bush administration is dismantling, are readily available even to lesser powers. This paradox of the
BMD program has been prominently discussed. But there is a possible solution, at least in some imagined world. Advocates of
BMD place their faith in "full spectrum dominance," such overwhelming control of space (and the world in general) that even
the poor man's weapons will be of no use to an adversary. That requires offensive space-based capacities, including
immensely destructive weapons, "death stars" as they are sometimes called, possibly nuclear-powered, ready for launch
with computer-controlled reaction. Such weapons systems greatly increase the risk of vast slaughter and devastation, if
only because if what are called in the trade "normal accidents"-the unpredictable accidents to which complex systems
are subject.2

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U.S. expansion into space is the next step to continue our domination of the world, we
must do this or we will collapse were are not weighing the risks of what space
militarization might mean.

Noam Chomsky, Professor Chomsky was cited 7,449 times), Hegemony Or Survival, 2003. Pp-238-240
The need for full-spectrum dominance will increase as a result of the "globalization of the world economy," the Space
Command explains. The reason is that "globalization" is expected to bring about "a widening between 'haves' and 'have-nots.'''
Like the National Intelligence Council,32 military planners recognize that the "widening economic divide" that they too
anticipate, with its "deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation, "will lead to unrest and
violence among the "have-nots, "much of it directed against the US. That provides a further rationale for expanding
offensive military capacities into space. Monopolizing this domain of warfare, the US must be ready to control disorder
by "using space systems and planning for precision strike from space [as a] counter to the worldwide proliferation of
WMD" by unruly elements, a likely consequence of the recommended programs, just as the "widening divide" is an
anticipated consequence of the preferred form of "globalization." The Space Command could have usefully extended its
analogy to the military forces of earlier years. These have played a prominent role in technological and industrial
development throughout the modern era. That includes major advances in metallurgy, electronics, machine tools, and
manufacturing processes, including the American system of mass production that astounded nineteenth-century competitors
and set the stage for the automotive industry and other manufacturing achievements, based on many years of investment, R&D,
and experience in weapons production within US Army arsenals. There was a qualitative leap forward after World War II, this
time primarily in the US, as the military provided a cover for creation of the core of the modern high-tech economy:
computers and electronics generally, telecommunications and the Internet, automation, lasers, the commercial aviation
industry, and much else, now extending to nanotechnology, biotechnology, neuroengineering, and other new frontiers.
Economic historians have pointed out that the technical problems of naval armament a century ago were roughly
comparable to manufacture of space vehicles, and the enormous impact on the civilian economy might be duplicated as
well, enhanced by the space militarization projects. One effect of incorporating national security exemptions in the
mislabeled "free trade agreements" is that the leading industrial societies, primarily the US, can maintain the state sector on
which the economy substantially relies to socialize cost and risk while privatizing profit. Others understand this as well.
Retreating from his earlier critical stance regarding BMD, German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder observed that Germany has a
"vital economic interest" in developing missile defense technology, and must be sure it is "not excluded" from
technological and scientific work in the field. Participation in BMD programs is expected to strengthen the domestic
industrial base generally in Europe. Similarly, the US BMD Organization advised Japanese officials in 1995 that Theater
Missile Defense is "the last military business opportunity for this century." Japan is being drawn in not only to exploit its
manufacturing expertise but also to deepen the commitment of the industrial world to the militarization of space, "locking the
programs in," to borrow a standard phrase of policy-makers and analysts.33 Throughout history it has been recognized
that such steps are dangerous. By now the danger has reached the level of a threat to human survival. But as observed
earlier, it is rational to proceed nonetheless on the assumptions of the prevailing value system, which are deeply rooted
in existing institutions. The basic principle is that hegemony is more important than survival. Hardly novel, the
principle has been amply illustrated in the past half-century. For such reasons, the US has refused to join the test of the
world in reaffirming and strengthening the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 to reserve space for peaceful purposes. The concern
for such action, articulated in UN resolutions calling for "Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space," is motivated by
widespread recognition that Washington intends to breach this barrier, so far maintained. The US was joined in its
abstention in 1999 by Israel, in 2000 by Micronesia as well. As noted earlier, immediately after it was learned that the
world had barely been saved from a war that might have" destroyed the Northern Hemisphere," the Bush
administration effectively vetoed yet another international effort to prevent the militarization of space. For the same
reasons, Washington blocked negotiations at the UN Conference on Disarmament during the sessions that opened in January
2001, rejecting the call of Secretary General Kofi Annan that member states overcome their lack of "political will" and work
toward a comprehensive accord to bar militarization of space. "The U.S. remains the only one of the 66 member states to
oppose launching formal negotiations on outer space," Reuters reported in February. In June, China again called for banning of
weapons in outer space, but the US again blocked negotiations.34 Again, that makes good sense if hegemony, with its
short-term benefits to elite interests, is ranked above survival in the scale of operative values, in accord with the
historical standard for dominant states and other systems of concentrated power.

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Space colonalism means the moving of people, but who will get to go? What
will they act like one they get there. Instead of being concerned with these
kinds of questions they are blindly getting off the rock.

Morton Klass, professor of Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University, Futures


Volume 32, Issue 8, October 2000, Pages 739-748, Recruiting new “huddled masses” and “wretched refuse”: a prolegomenon to the
human colonization of space http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V65-410MFY2-
3&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md
5=2ceec1e07cc59e974a2b5fc63f2a8eb7

The United States, in the nineteenth century, welcomed immigrants—but not the Irish, the Jews, the Italians or the Chinese. But still
they came, in overwhelming numbers, with all their customs so distressing to their horrified but helpless hosts. This phenomenon—of
undesired and unwelcome but desperate immigrants who find their way in despite all efforts to keep them out—has been repeated
again and again, in North and South America, in Europe and Asia.9 It is as much an issue of contention today as it was a century
ago [18], and those who plan the colonization of space had better prepare for the fact that it will not be easy to control who is
admitted and who is barred. And that of course raises some interesting, though not necessarily insoluble, problems. If
substantial numbers of colonists are made up of those who are desperate to leave their impoverished or bloody homelands,
and who won’t be kept out, we may have to redraw our plans for the colonies. Today, and in the foreseeable future, such people
are likely to come from the most impoverished regions of Asia, Africa, southern Europe and South America. The planners of
colonies have assumed that the colonists will live in “villages” that reflect essentially North American or European (mostly
North European) patterns of settlement, activity and concern. May it not be necessary to modify those colonies to permit rice
agriculture, the herding of goats, the care of water buffalo? What kind of neighborhoods will our colonists prefer— the
compact Western-style “villages” currently being designed for them, or some other community structure, such as dispersed
farmsteads? What kind of sanitary and cooking facilities will they require—or refuse to use? How might we provide for their
religious needs, their forms of entertainment? Shall we permit them, if they so desire, to perform animal sacrifice, to sequester
their women, to dispose of their dead by exposure in trees or by keeping parts of their bodies around the house?10 “Permit” is
of course a tricky word. We know from the behavior of those who founded earlier colonies that “permission” is an issue only in the
early days: once the colonists have a going colony they tend to do what they want and not worry about some outsider’s “permission.”
Still, attention can be given to such matters, if you so wish, before the colonists find their strength: to what extent, therefore, do you
want them to behave according to your rules of propriety? This issue becomes even more complicated when we recognize that
behavior in the colony cannot always be predicted on the basis of behavior back home: that is, people are going to adapt to new
circumstances by adopting new practices or modifying old ones. In a preceding paragraph, for example, there is the implication that in
many societies from which future space colonists may be drawn it is the practice to limit severely the movement of women. Such a
practice reflects such underlying beliefs as that of the urgent need to maintain premarital female virginity, and to prevent post-marital
female adultery. Among the assumptions buttressing such beliefs and practices are: “women are incapable of resisting male advances”
and/or “women are sexually insatiable.” How will people—men and women—who hold such views respond to a situation in
which there is a pronounced shortage of women, something that is of course true of new colonies almost without exception?
During the nineteenth-century movement of people from South Asia to Trinidad, British Guiana, Fiji, Natal, etc., hitherto
peaceful Hindus and Muslims gained a reputation for ferocity and bloodthirstiness as men who had wives and daughters
carved up both women less men and their own straying womenfolk ([14], p. 19; [19]) The science-fiction writer Robert A.
Heinlein [20] has suggested that such a shortage of women in future colonies might result in women acquiring the sole right to
make sexual advances. Maybe, but on the other hand might there be instead a return to massive prostitution, to mail-order
brides . . . even, perhaps, to slavery and indenture?

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Who will get to go to space? What will their colonies look like? We must answer these questions before we
think we can set up European version of towns, for the worlds poor who will probably be living in these towns.

Morton Klass, professor of Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University, Futures


Volume 32, Issue 8, October 2000, Pages 739-748, Recruiting new “huddled masses” and “wretched refuse”: a prolegomenon to the
human colonization of space http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V65-410MFY2-
3&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md
5=2ceec1e07cc59e974a2b5fc63f2a8eb7

And that question brings me to the last, and most uncomfortable, observation about the problems that may lie ahead.
Discussions of the benefits of relief of “overpopulation” tend to forget or ignore the anguish of those taken forcibly, and
those who are ejected against their wishes. The movement of large numbers of people in the past centuries has, among
all else, frequently been characterized by horrendous cruelty. People who see themselves as in need of labor all too often
go after it with little or no regard for the well-being of the members of that labor force. Indeed, moral and even
theological justifications of enslavement have been accepted with almost astonishing ease by most of the members of the
nations where it was practiced. And, under the pressure of new demands for labor in sugar-producing colonies, the
semi-slavery system known as “indenture” was revived by many European nations in their colonies after slavery itself
was finally ended, and that cruel system lasted well into the twentieth century. Remember also that the colonization of
Australia began with the transport of criminals. Let us therefore observe that our prisons are currently overflowing:
would anyone reading this care to propose the transferring of the inmates to space colonies? No? Just a moment:
someone in the rear is rising to his feet. . . . Is it really beyond the bounds of possibility that, once the colonies are there
and are in need of people to fill them, governments might give such a proposal serious consideration? Might some
officials, even in our own country, go even further—by turning their attention to people (considered so “undesirable” by many
today) who are homeless or on welfare? And in other countries capable of building such colonies—or of acquiring access to
them, say, through the United Nations—might there not be all sorts of obstreperous and otherwise undesired minorities
(“dissidents,” “aliens”) who would be perceived as ideal, if unwilling, candidates for transporting? It is my own pious
hope that slavery will play no part in the colonization of space, but “hope” is a poorer basis for prediction than is
“history” and as Finney and James have observed, in a mordant revision of Santayana’s comment about history:
“Those who cannot remember our migratory past will be condemned to repeat its mistakes as we expand into space”
([5], p. 159). So maybe we can avoid the mistakes of the past by both reading history and preparing for the problems
that may await us. How may it be possible to avoid interference with potential colonists who crowd in without regard to the
plans and wishes of the builders of the colonies? How can the emergence of avaricious recruiting agencies be prevented? How
can we prepare to frustrate governments with expulsion agendas? And, since it may well be that colonies in space are clearly
not going to be colonized exclusively by people like “us”—perhaps more attention should be given to the possibility of “open-
ended” patterns of settlement and lifestyle, so that the colonists, whoever they turn out to be, will not be frustrated in their
efforts to create comfortable and familiar communities. Again, somewhere along the line we are going to have to start
considering the question of how much external control over life in the colonies is possible—or advisable. What I am
suggesting is that we think out in advance how far we are prepared to go along the cultural relativistic continuum that
stretches from “Every place should look like Kansas” to “Do as you please—just keep going.” Such debate, such
discussion, of course leads inevitably to contemplation of the kinds of societies likely to be formed by the kind of
colonists likely to be recruited and maybe mixed together. Will there be room for monastic retreats? How will desires
for exogamic or endogamic marriages be met, both within colonies and between colonies? Is nomadic pastoralism
possible in a space colony? Is feuding preventable? But those are all properly questions for consideration in the volumes to
come: this, after all, is only a prolegomenon!

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The Affirmative plays into a narrative of a “great” American empire one that
saves and helps the world.

Amy Kaplan, professor at University of Pennsylvania Violent Belongings and the Question of Empire Today Presidential Address
to the American Studies Association, October 17, 2003 pp.4-5

This coming-out narrative, associated primarily with neoconservatives, aggressively celebrates the United States as
finally revealing its true essence—its manifest destiny—on a global stage. We won the Cold War, so the story goes, and as
the only superpower, we will maintain global supremacy primarily by military means, by preemptive strikes against any
potential rivals, and by a perpetual war against terror, defined primarily as the Muslim world. We need to remain vigilant
against those rogue states and terrorists who resist not our power but the universal human values that we embody. This
narrative is about time as well as space. It imagines an empire in perpetuity, one that beats back the question haunting all
empires in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians: “One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire:
how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era.”9 In this hyper masculine narrative there’s a paradoxical sense
of invincibility and unparalleled power and at the same time utter and incomprehensible vulnerability—a lethal
combination, which reminds us that the word vulnerable once also referred to the capacity to harm. Another dominant
narrative about empire today, told by liberal interventionists, is that of the “reluctant imperialist.”10 In this version,
the United States never sought an empire and may even be constitutionally unsuited to rule one, but it had the burden
thrust upon it by the fall of earlier empires and the failures of modern states, which abuse the human rights of their
own people and spawn terrorism. The United States is the only power in the world with the capacity and the moral
authority to act as military policeman and economic manager to bring order to the world. Benevolence and self-interest
merge in this narrative; backed by unparalleled force, the United States can save the people of the world from their own
anarchy, their descent into an uncivilized state. As Robert Kaplan writes—not reluctantly at all—in “Supremacy by Stealth:
Ten Rules for Managing the World”: “The purpose of power is not power itself; it is a fundamentally liberal purpose of
sustaining the key characteristics of an orderly world. Those characteristics include basic political stability, the idea of liberty,
pragmatically conceived; respect for property; economic freedom; and representative government, culturally understood. At
this moment in time it is American power, and American power only, that can serve as an organizing principle for the
worldwide expansion of liberal civil society.”11 This narrative does imagine limits to empire, yet primarily in the selfish
refusal of U.S. citizens to sacrifice and shoulder the burden for others, as though sacrifices have not already been
imposed on them by the state. The temporal dimension of this narrative entails the aborted effort of other nations and
peoples to enter modernity, and its view of the future projects the end of empire only when the world is remade in our
image. This is also a narrative about race. The images of an unruly world, of anarchy and chaos, of failed modernity,
recycle stereotypes of racial inferiority from earlier colonial discourses about races who are incapable of governing
themselves, Kipling’s “lesser breeds without the law,” or Roosevelt’s “loosening ties of civilized society,” in his corollary
to the Monroe Doctrine. In his much-noted article in the New York Times Magazine entitled “The American Empire,” Michael
Ignatieff appended the subtitle “The Burden” but insisted that “America’s empire is not like empires of times past, built on
colonies, conquest and the white man’s burden.”12 Denial and exceptionalism are apparently alive and well. In American
studies we need to go beyond simply exposing the racism of empire and examine the dynamics by which Arabs and the
religion of Islam are becoming racialized through the interplay of templates of U.S. racial codes and colonial
Orientalism

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Our want to control the stars as part of our grand destiny will ultimately lead
to a backlash that will destroy us.

Helen Caldicott, founder of Women’s Association for Nuclear Disarmament, and Craig Eisendrath, senior fellow at the
Center for International Policy, War in Heaven: The Arms Race in Outer Space

The strongest argument against putting American weapons in space is that it will weaken rather than enhance our
national security. American weapons in space will incite other countries, such as China and Russia, to take
countermeasures, including placing their own weapons in space. This will, of course, justify still further
expensivedeployments to "protect" U.S. assets from this "new threat." The ensuing arms race in outer space will
obviously create still another area in which miscalculation, competition, and aggressive deployment can lead to war.
With thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert in the United States and Russia, a catastrophic nuclear war could
easily ensue.43 The weaponization of space could put the United States into direct diplomatic confrontation with the rest
of the world. Recent unilateral military actions by the United States have already taken their toll. Authoritative Pew
polls show that the United States has slipped badly in its standing with the rest of the world.44 The United States is now
considered by hundreds of millions of people to be the most dangerous country on the planet. This suspicion could
descend to genuine hatred if the United States took the position of dominating outer space, and leaving to itself the option
of terrorizing the planet by orbiting bombardment satellites. What an extraordinary change in perception from the years
after World War II when the United States was seen by most people in the world as the beacon of hope for world peace
and economic prosperity! It championed the United Nations; it supported multilateral control of nuclear weapons, generous
foreign aid, and international standards for human rights. Now, the United States has fallen from grace, and the price will
be enormous-in international cooperation on vital issues such as terrorism, in countries like Iraq or Afghanistan, and in
the handling of international trade and currency issues. The effects are often not immediately apparent states people
from other countries do not necessarily issue overt denunciations-but they are real as the United States scrambles for
allies in Iraq and other areas of the Middle East, as the dollar falls in relation to other currencies, and a." America
faces hostile competition in the trading of key commodities.

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