The Global SpyState is moving apace. The Canadian Space Agency has announced its new surveillance satellite Radarsat-2, set to begin "safeguarding Canada's sovereignty" over its Arctic realms.
Jim Prentice, Canada's Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for the Canadian Space Agency said that RADARSAT-2 "will provide improved surveillance and monitoring capabilities that will provide critical data for the active management of natural resources and monitoring of the environment. .. In the event of a disaster, RADARSAT-2 will be an indispensable tool to provide rescue and humanitarian aid to those most in need".
All well and good, but as is well known, Terra's collapsing Arctic ice is opening up industrial access to hitherto unexploited seafloors where riches unknown await--at least Big Industry hopes so. But inconveniently for the exploiter wannabes, amid the ice are the islands and Innuit people of the Nunavut Territory of arctic Canada, 30,000 strong, whose two million square kilometer expanse extends from north of Hudson's Bay to the North Pole. Established in 1999, Nunavut is Canada's newest province. Check out their arctic lights link
With Radarsat-2 however, surveillance of the activity of everyone in Nunavut, from tiny isolated villages to the streets of Iqaluit, the capital, may be carried out from afar, quite as easily as a downtown street in Toronto or Brisbane; bringing the Innuit, like it or not, into the global spystate, from which, one assumes , it'll keep and eye on the non-corpatriotic among the Innuit.
Set to launch December 8, 2007 the from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Radarsat-2 is one of those "unique public-private sector partnerships" ; i.e. another government/industry hybrid where the taxpayers foot the bill and the shareholders get the profit.
7 comments:
"another government/industry hybrid where the taxpayers foot the bill and the shareholders get the profit."
So well put! Just like the nuclear power industry, enforced blanket vaccinations & drugging of children, and flouridation of municipal water supplies...
I guess those Innuits might have to be eventually moved to another -much smaller - area for their 'own good'...
Like the Souix Indian Nation when gold was discovered by American Cavalry anti-hero George Armstrong Custer in their territory. While he shortly went to his demise on the Little Bighorn, the indigenous tribe was forced from its homeland with great violence, to protect the American goldminers who swarmed to the location now called the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Not that I'm not enchanted by the technological achievement of these big steel birds weaving about above us, great herds of Pegasus/Medusa hybrids bringing light and taking away.. ...ah well, to bring light is to cast a shadow, as the wizard of earthsea observed once.
I see this new satellite as far less worrisome than you guys.
BTW Nunavut is a "territory" not a province. An equivilent in the USA would be the "U.S. Virgin Islands" as oppsoed to a "state".
Territory not a province...Quite true, Jesse. Thanks for clarifying!I'll correct the blog entry.
Not against that satellite...just presuming that among its many uses will be the peekaboo stuff.
Ron
Absolutely it will be for surveillance, but I think the the surveillance will like be more along the lines of "protecting Canadian sovereignty" rather than who's smoking dope outside of Iqaluit.
"Protecting Canadian sovereignty" is a big issue in the minds of the Canadian federal government bureaucracy. As the far north of Canada is sparsely populated there is a routine of "sovereignty missions" up there - sending Canadian Naval ships up to figuratively pee in the snow every so often. My assumption is that this new satellite will allow more coverage of territorial infringement by non-canadian ships (many of which have been American Naval ships and subs BTW). ;)
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