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  Tuesday  August 13  2002    10: 40 AM

We are the Space Invaders

Space Weapons and World Empire

VISION for 2020 is a mission statement of the U.S. Space Command which was published in 1997.1 Since 1997, it has been joined by further documents fleshing out more details of the plan, such as a "Long Range Plan". (Note the date, 2020, which gives a time scale for our concerns.)

Vision for 2020 sees outer space under the unilateral control of the United States and filled with weapons able to maintain this control and also able to attack the earth below. The stated purpose is "dominating space" to "protect U.S. interests and investment" (perhaps not so very lofty). This involves "control of space", meaning "access to space, freedom of operations within space, and an ability to deny others the use of space", and also "global engagement", which is "the application of precision force from, to, and through space" as "an active warfighter" with "space-based earth strike weapons". Apparently, then, we are all meant to live not only under constant U.S. surveillance, but under constant threat of violence from a blanket of space weapons — most of us would consider this an indignity too great to be supported. [read more]