AIR SHOW GIVING US THE BLUES

The Hell's Angels are flying over our heads right now, getting ready for this weekend's "show" here in Brunswick. Our protest plans have been front page in the local papers several times during the past week. The Maine Veterans for Peace protest claims that the airshow is not "clean family entertainment" as it is sold to the public. Instead we claim it is a recruiting gimmick to attract young people into the military at a time they are having more difficulty with enlistment levels. Even the local paper here in Brunswick acknowledged this yesterday when they printed that the Navy flight team was created in 1946 by Adm. Chester Nimitz, then chief of Naval Operations, as a "flashy recruiting tool, particularly in the nation's heartland." Many people are wondering about the massive waste of fuel at the air show, just following the pronouncement by G.W. Bush that we should not "fill our tanks unless we really have to." At this time of imposed austerity, following the tragic hurricane, shouldn't the "Great State of Maine Airshow" be cancelled? The Hell's Angels should be grounded. The Sept 10 protest begins at 9:00 am with a march from the downtown Brunswick gazebo out to the Navy base main gate where a rally will follow.

THE NATURAL GUARD

Experts predict more and harsher natural disasters in coming years - in part because of global warming. Instead of spending over $500 billion a year on endless war to benefit corporate globalization, wouldn't it make more sense to transform our offensive military into "The Natural Guard"? Their job would be to intervene quickly in natural disasters, helping to save folks from calamities like the New Orleans hurricane. Don't you think the troops would feel better about that mission, rather than killing innocent civilians in Iraq on behalf of Haliburton and the oil corporations? As the nation begins to debate "what went wrong" in New Orleans, maybe we should also introduce the notion of The Natural Guard.

TESTING THE NUCLEAR ROCKET?

NASA and the Department of Energy (DoE) are moving forward with plans to develop the nuclear rocket (Project Prometheus). DoE has three sites in mind to field test the nuclear engines - White Sands Missile Base, N.M.; the Nevada Test Site, and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The obvious problem is that radioactive exhaust could be released into the atmosphere after testing. The whole plutonium production process at DoE labs is also problematic. DoE has a horrible track record in this regard. Then finally there is the possibility of a launch failure that could see the nuclear rocket falling back to Earth similar to the Russian Mars '96 mission that never achieved proper orbit and fell back to Earth burning up on reentry. The spacecraft spread deadly plutonium over the mountains of Chile and Bolivia at the time. We say NO to the nuclear rocket!

COMFORTABLE WITH A HORSE'S REAR-END

The three thieves at work - what does Bill Clinton get in return for his endorsement of the Bush hurricane follies?........ It has come to the public's attention, via NBC news last night, that FEMA director Mr. Brown's previous employment was as director of the Arabian horse association. He was quoted on the evening news a couple of days ago saying he knew nothing about the thousands stranded at the New Orleans convention center. No wonder Bush picked him to run the nation's emergency management agency. He's comfortable with a horse's ass.