Who knew that Canada was “a world leader in the militarisation of space”? That’s the claim made by an article on the web side of the New Socialist Group, a Canadian group for those people “who wish to replace global capitalism with a genuinely democratic socialism.” And how is Canada helping to militarize space? Through Radarsat, a radar mapping satellite whose imagery is used in part by military forces, including the US. Nevermind that Radarsat has a wide range of commercial and civil applications, or that the US has other radar reconnaissance satellites.
This article is rather surprising because it is well-researched and coherent. Usually far-left groups fail badly when it comes to military space issues because they completely misunderstand the issues and tend to focus on trivial stuff that is not really important, like nuclear power or ASATs. They miss the forest for the trees, which has the effect of making them ineffectual.
A lot of this article, however, makes sense, and they stay away from the hyperventilated rhetoric that typifies this kind of reporting, although they do exaggerate the importance of the Canadian RADARSAT satellite to the U.S. military. Also, although they state that the U.S. military buys a lot of the data, they don’t provide any real numbers. The person who wrote this did a careful media search, but doesn’t have any direct knowledge of the subject.