negative news in orbit
From the EE Times:

Hints of such a policy showed up in the Rumsfeld Commission report of January 2001, which warned of a "space Pearl Harbor" if the United States did not dominate low-earth, geosynchronous and polar orbital planes, as well as all launch facilities and ground stations, to exploit space for battlefield advantage.

The European Union complained in no uncertain terms five years ago that the NRO and National Security Agency were using global electronic-snooping programs like Echelon outside the boundaries of mutual NATO advantage. The European Space Agency chimed in last fall, when the Defense Department tried to bully ESA into changing its design plans for a navigational-satellite system called Galileo.

In the aftermath of the successful Iraq campaign, concern goes much deeper and extends to the heart of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command inside Cheyenne Mountain near here. While Canada is supposed to be an equal member of NORAD, representatives of Canada's military and civilian establishment are complaining that they are not allowed to use space-based communications and intelligence in the same way the United States can.

"We cannot address the way the U.S. views missile defense and weapons in space without dealing with their insistence on space negation head-on," said Lawson of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs.

Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Judd Blaisdell, director of the Air Force Space Operations Office, said recently, "We are so dominant in space that I pity a country that would come up against us."

Oh well, at least George Bush will get a chance to dress up as Luke Skywalker.

Link courtesy of Gyre.