The Oil Drum

Alfred: You mean it is like saying Goldman Sachs is a capitalist enterprise?

i find anti-semetism offensive. You really need to go find a neo-nazi website Bob Ebersole

The ethnicity or religion of the oligarchs is one thing, the economic system they have in Russia is another. There is no doubt that it is capitalism, whether the capital is in the hands of the oligarchs or in the hands of the bureaucrat capitalists around Putin.

I laugh at people who think the Jews control everything. My wife is Jewish, as is my son's wife and her family. Her mother works as a sales clerk and her father as a security guard. He was UPS driver before he retired.

There are certainly rich Jews, but at the very top of the heap here you mostly find my people -- WASPs. Unless Cheney converted? But this is all quite beside the point. Capitalism isn't about religion or ethnicity -- it's about money. The billionaires of whatever background love to stir animosities between people. Cheney has no affinity whatsoever for his Appalachian kinfolk, nor does the elite of any backrgound.

A lot of anti-semitism is aroused by Israel's criminal actions just as a lot of anti-American sentiment is aroused by the US gov't bombing the crap out of anything or - one that moves. But the Israelis are pawns in the hands of their elite just as we are of ours. Norman Finkestein points out that a lot of the Russian "Jews" in Israel are not even Jewish!

Think interests, think economics -- don't think ethnicity or religion. End of rant.

The original poster (TrueKaiser) implied that, that is already obvious, i.e., it is easy to kinetically destroy satellites and create space debris. The folks in the armed forces know it - was the intent to also make it obvious to Joe Blow on main street?? - and how about the 2200 pieces of space debris that was created and will be around for 100s of years?

Was the intent to make space unusable for others?

As far as a shooting war goes - ICBMs have inertial guidance systems and are independent of Satellites and GPS. The Chinese have many of these, as do many others in the rest of the world. So destroying satellites will not prevent retaliation.

Below is a link on inertial guidance of ICBMs.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Airs.html

The Chinese aren't trying to project force over the entire world, only the US is. They would be quite content for now just to sweep the US away from their periphery. Thus, they really don't need to know the exact location of something in Germany or Peru or Cameroon -- just in China proper or a few hundred miles beyond their border. Thus, they could get along just fine with every GPS satellite knocked out; it is the US that would be in trouble. Ditto with the spy satellites. They would probably like to spy on the US via satellite, but they undoubtedly have more and better human intelligence over here than we have over there, so they could get by without their spy satellites if need be.

The only satellites that the Chinese really need are their geostationary ones. It is a little harder to knock those out, for they are a lot farther away. The funny thing is, though, that you could do so without putting most other satellites in geostationary orbit at risk - partially because there is considerable distance separating each, but mostly because the debris would be blown into a non-geostationary orbit.

Knock out our cable TV -- now there's the ultimate weapon for you; hit the US where it REALLY hurts!