Arming the Heavens: The Ultimate U.S. Takeover Saturday August 7th, 2004

On Saturday evening August 7th about 120 people gathered at Macalester Plymouth United Church in St. Paul to hear Bruce Gagnon speak about "Arming the Heavens: The Ultimate US Takeover".

Mr. Gagnon was born into a military family and lived on bases most of his life yet was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He currently lives in Maine. For the last ten years he has devoted his life, full-time, to spreading the word regarding U.S. intentions for space weapons. He is the founder of Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

According to Bruce Gagnon, the beginnings of the U.S. campaign to "arm space" began in the 1940's with the immigration of many of the German scientists who fled Germany during the leadership of Adolph Hitler. Scientists like Werner Von Braun and his team who worked on early rocket and missile tests for Germany came to the U.S. and assisted the U.S. government in developing such weapons.

Mr. Gagnon says the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki served more of a purpose then just ending the war. The bombings also sent a strong message to the world: the U.S. had the capability and would use it. There was also an even more nefarious purpose. He said he has been to Japan and has spoken with survivors of the bombings. The survivors told him that bodies were removed and taken to the U.S. for study and that limbs were removed from survivors for purposes of studying the effects of an atomic weapon on the human body.

It is not easy to listen to Mr. Gagnon's words. He spoke at church on Sunday and a couple of people walked out after he mentioned the studies on Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. One man said he was a veteran of Okinawa and he was upset at what Mr. Gagnon was saying.

Mr. Gagnon said that the number one export of the U.S. is arms and weapons. It behooves us then to make sure they are used and needed. $10 billion U.S. dollars has been appropriated for development of a nuclear weapons in space program.

Mr. Gagnon has obtained, what he says is a Pentagon document, called Vision for 2020. Vision for 2020 says a space weapons program would largely eliminate the need for soldier deployment. Weapons in space can target anyone, anywhere at any time. The Pentagon is trying to ensure that the U.S. would control space by disallowing any other country access.

He predicts that China will be the next big enemy of the U.S. now that the Soviet Union has been eliminated as a threat. The U.S. is positioning itself around China. We now have bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe and the Pacific. Fundamentalist Christian rhetoric is already full of anti-Chinese language. He got the last from a pamphlet, his fundamentalist Christian sister gave to him to read.

In 1982, Gagnon became aware of the threat of the weapons in space program or SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) started by President Reagan when he heard the head of SDI, Graham Rogers, on C-SPAN saying: let the weapons protestors worry about ICBM's. They don't have clue we are going into space.

Can you imagine hundreds or nuclear weapons circling the planet above us? Can you imagine what would happen if a nuclear weapon falls out of orbit?

How will the U.S. pay for the space program since it will cost trillions of dollars? Gagnon says the current Bush administration did not have any success asking other governments for help. Instead, they went to arms dealers in other countries. The arms dealers leaned on their representatives to support the program. Japan, Italy and Canada are now assisting the U.S. government in funding the program.

Gagnon says the nuclear weapons are a pyramid to the heavens, the arms companies are the pharaohs. and we are the slaves.

Janice LaDuke was baptized at St. Joan of Arc but her parents left St. Joan's in the early 70's and went to a "less radical" Catholic church instead. She's very glad to have found her way back to St. Joan's in 1994!! Janice is a librarian by profession and has been working in the library of a healthcare consulting firm since 1997. In her spare time, she enjoys listening to all kinds of music and working on her home near Como Lake in St. Paul. Janice is also Echo Thoren's assistant every Sunday at the 11:00 a.m. service.

For further information: http://www.space4peace.org/ (Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space website). Photos courtesy of the Global Network website.