Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Mutatis Mutandis
Mutatis Mutandis's Journal
Mutatis Mutandis's Journal
March 10, 2013
Message auto-removed
March 6, 2013
US corporate-financier funded think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), declared in its "post-Chávez checklist for US policymakers," that the US must move quickly to reorganize Venezuela according to US interests. Upon its checklist were "key demands":
The ouster of narco-kingpins who now hold senior posts in government
The respect for a constitutional succession
The adoption of meaningful electoral reforms to ensure a fair campaign environment and a transparent vote count in expected presidential elections; and
The dismantling of Iranian and Hezbollah networks in Venezuela
In reality, AEI is talking about dismantling entirely the obstacles that have prevented the US and the corporate-financier interests that direct it, from installing a client regime and extracting entirely Venezuela's wealth while obstructing, even dismantling the progress and geopolitical influence achieved by the late President Hugo Chavez throughout South America and beyond.
The AEI "checklist" continues by stating:
Of course, by "Venezuelan democrats," AEI means Wall Street-backed proxies like Henrique Capriles Radonski and his Primero Justicia (Justice First) political front, two entities the Western media is already gearing up to support ahead of anticipated elections.
West Has Positioned Proxies to Strip Venezuela to the Bones After Chavez' Passing
Primero Justicia (Justice First) was co-founded by Leopoldo Lopez and Julio Borges, who like Radonski, have been backed for nearly a decade by the US State Department. Primero Justicia and the network of foreign-funded NGOs that support it have been recipients of both direct and indirect foreign support for at least just as long.
Image: US State Department document (archived) illustrating the role National Endowment for Democracy (NED)-funded NGOs play in supporting US-backed opposition figures in Venezuela. The US regularly fails to transparently list who is included in extensive funding NED provides opposition groups in Venezeula, so documents like this give a rare glimpse into the names and dynamics actually involved. As was suspected, NED money is going into networks providing support for current presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski. In this particular document, NED-funded Sumate's legal trouble is described in relation to its attempted defense of Radonski. At the time this document was written, Radonski was in jail pending trial for his role in facilitating the 2002 US-backed failed coup against President Hugo Chavez. The document may still be online at the US State Department's official website here.
clip
-----------------------
much much more, all hyperlinked and documented, at the original article link at the top
also, see
Lawmakers, "Experts" Spin Tales of Iranian Terror in Latin America
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30439.htm
US Plots Conquest of Venezuela in Wake of Chavez' Death (AEI, National Endowment for Democracy, etc)
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.se/2013/03/us-plots-conquest-of-venezuela-in-wake.htmlUS corporate-financier funded think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), declared in its "post-Chávez checklist for US policymakers," that the US must move quickly to reorganize Venezuela according to US interests. Upon its checklist were "key demands":
The ouster of narco-kingpins who now hold senior posts in government
The respect for a constitutional succession
The adoption of meaningful electoral reforms to ensure a fair campaign environment and a transparent vote count in expected presidential elections; and
The dismantling of Iranian and Hezbollah networks in Venezuela
In reality, AEI is talking about dismantling entirely the obstacles that have prevented the US and the corporate-financier interests that direct it, from installing a client regime and extracting entirely Venezuela's wealth while obstructing, even dismantling the progress and geopolitical influence achieved by the late President Hugo Chavez throughout South America and beyond.
The AEI "checklist" continues by stating:
Now is the time for US diplomats to begin a quiet dialogue with key regional powers to explain the high cost of Chávez’s criminal regime, including the impact of chavista complicity with narcotraffickers who sow mayhem in Colombia, Central America, and Mexico. Perhaps then we can convince regional leaders to show solidarity with Venezuelan democrats who want to restore a commitment to the rule of law and to rebuild an economy that can be an engine for growth in South America.
Of course, by "Venezuelan democrats," AEI means Wall Street-backed proxies like Henrique Capriles Radonski and his Primero Justicia (Justice First) political front, two entities the Western media is already gearing up to support ahead of anticipated elections.
West Has Positioned Proxies to Strip Venezuela to the Bones After Chavez' Passing
Primero Justicia (Justice First) was co-founded by Leopoldo Lopez and Julio Borges, who like Radonski, have been backed for nearly a decade by the US State Department. Primero Justicia and the network of foreign-funded NGOs that support it have been recipients of both direct and indirect foreign support for at least just as long.
Image: US State Department document (archived) illustrating the role National Endowment for Democracy (NED)-funded NGOs play in supporting US-backed opposition figures in Venezuela. The US regularly fails to transparently list who is included in extensive funding NED provides opposition groups in Venezeula, so documents like this give a rare glimpse into the names and dynamics actually involved. As was suspected, NED money is going into networks providing support for current presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski. In this particular document, NED-funded Sumate's legal trouble is described in relation to its attempted defense of Radonski. At the time this document was written, Radonski was in jail pending trial for his role in facilitating the 2002 US-backed failed coup against President Hugo Chavez. The document may still be online at the US State Department's official website here.
clip
-----------------------
much much more, all hyperlinked and documented, at the original article link at the top
also, see
Lawmakers, "Experts" Spin Tales of Iranian Terror in Latin America
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30439.htm
February 28, 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/28/bob-woodward-obama-military-sequester
Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that it would deploy "only" one aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, rather than the customary two. This move, said the Pentagon, was in preparation for the so-called "sequestration", scheduled to take effect this week, that mandates spending cuts for all agencies, including the Pentagon. This aircraft carrier announcement was all part of the White House's campaign to scare the public into believing that sequestration, which Democrats blame on Republicans, will result in serious harm to national security. Shortly before this cut was announced, then-defense Secretary Leon Panetta said:
That the Obama administration might actually honor the budget cuts mandated by a law enacted by Congress and signed by Obama infuriates Bob Woodward, Washington's most celebrated journalist. He appeared this week on the "Morning Joe" program to excoriate Obama for withholding a second aircraft carrier in the Gulf, saying:
As Brian Beutler points out: "the obscure type of budget document Woodward's referring to is called a duly enacted law — passed by Congress, signed by the President — and the only ways around it are for Congress to change it. . . . or for Obama to break it." But that's exactly what Woodward is demanding: that Obama trumpet his status as Commander-in-Chief in order to simply ignore - i.e. break - the law, just like those wonderful men before him would have done. Woodward derides the law as some petty, trivial annoyance ("this piece of paper"
and thus mocks Obama's weakness for the crime of suggesting that the law is something he actually has to obey.
snip
Bob Woodward embodies US political culture in a single outburst
Washington's most celebrated journalist hails the values of militarism, lawlessness, and presidential omnipotencehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/28/bob-woodward-obama-military-sequester
Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that it would deploy "only" one aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, rather than the customary two. This move, said the Pentagon, was in preparation for the so-called "sequestration", scheduled to take effect this week, that mandates spending cuts for all agencies, including the Pentagon. This aircraft carrier announcement was all part of the White House's campaign to scare the public into believing that sequestration, which Democrats blame on Republicans, will result in serious harm to national security. Shortly before this cut was announced, then-defense Secretary Leon Panetta said:
"With another trigger for sequestration approaching on March 1st, the Department of Defense is facing the most serious readiness crisis in over a decade . . . . Make no mistake, if these cuts happen there will be a serious disruption in defense programs and a sharp decline in military readiness."
That the Obama administration might actually honor the budget cuts mandated by a law enacted by Congress and signed by Obama infuriates Bob Woodward, Washington's most celebrated journalist. He appeared this week on the "Morning Joe" program to excoriate Obama for withholding a second aircraft carrier in the Gulf, saying:
"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?' Or George W Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need' or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters,' as he did when Clinton was president, because of some budget document. "Under the Constitution, the president is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the president going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement, I can't do what I need to do to protect the country. That's a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time."
As Brian Beutler points out: "the obscure type of budget document Woodward's referring to is called a duly enacted law — passed by Congress, signed by the President — and the only ways around it are for Congress to change it. . . . or for Obama to break it." But that's exactly what Woodward is demanding: that Obama trumpet his status as Commander-in-Chief in order to simply ignore - i.e. break - the law, just like those wonderful men before him would have done. Woodward derides the law as some petty, trivial annoyance ("this piece of paper"
and thus mocks Obama's weakness for the crime of suggesting that the law is something he actually has to obey.
snip
February 28, 2013
Those who have been following our year-long series exposing the student debt bubble are by now well aware that this latest $1 trillion+ reincarnation of subprime will have a very unhappy ending. Which is why today's release of the quarterly Fed report on household debt and credit will hold few surprises for them. There is however, one data point which is notable: as of December 31, 2012, the soaring delinquency rate on student loans (first reported here, and subsequently confirmed by the Fed itself), has surpassed that of credit card debt.
Which makes perfect sense: because as consumers are still aggressively deleveraging their revolving balances, they are simply replacing them with far cheaper, Federally-funded credit in the form of non-revolving student debt, which as all know, is used for most other purposes but paying down study-related expenses. And why not: since the government is providing a cheap credit subsidy to the big banks, why should consumers not find the cheapest cost of funding. That everyone else will have to pay for this blow up when it ineivtably does happen, as every credit bubble always ends, is a different story.
And as a tangent, these three charts should effectively explain why the "Housing recovery", i.e., the second housing bubble is in full force in California and Nevada.
The epic California debt balance per capita:
snip
Delinquencies On Student Loans Surpass Those On Credit Card Debt
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-28/delinquencies-student-loans-surpass-those-credit-card-debtThose who have been following our year-long series exposing the student debt bubble are by now well aware that this latest $1 trillion+ reincarnation of subprime will have a very unhappy ending. Which is why today's release of the quarterly Fed report on household debt and credit will hold few surprises for them. There is however, one data point which is notable: as of December 31, 2012, the soaring delinquency rate on student loans (first reported here, and subsequently confirmed by the Fed itself), has surpassed that of credit card debt.
Which makes perfect sense: because as consumers are still aggressively deleveraging their revolving balances, they are simply replacing them with far cheaper, Federally-funded credit in the form of non-revolving student debt, which as all know, is used for most other purposes but paying down study-related expenses. And why not: since the government is providing a cheap credit subsidy to the big banks, why should consumers not find the cheapest cost of funding. That everyone else will have to pay for this blow up when it ineivtably does happen, as every credit bubble always ends, is a different story.
And as a tangent, these three charts should effectively explain why the "Housing recovery", i.e., the second housing bubble is in full force in California and Nevada.
The epic California debt balance per capita:
snip
February 6, 2013
In the years after 9/11, the CIA ran a worldwide program to hold and interrogate suspected members of al-Qaida, sometimes brutally. It wasn’t alone: The agency had literally dozens of partners that helped in ways large and small. Only it’s never been clear just how many nations enabled CIA capture and torture; cooperated with it; or carried it out on behalf of the U.S. — until now. A new report from the Open Society Foundation details the CIA’s effort to outsource torture since 9/11 in excruciating detail. Known as “extraordinary rendition,” the practice concerns taking detainees to and from U.S. custody without a legal process — think of it like an off-the-books extradition — and often entailed handing detainees over to countries that practiced torture. The Open Society Foundation found that 136 people went through the post-9/11 extraordinary rendition, and 54 countries were complicit in it.
Some were official U.S. adversaries, like Iran and Syria, brought together with the CIA by the shared interest of combating terrorism. “By engaging in torture and other abuses associated with secret detention and extraordinary rendition,” writes chief Open Society Foundation investigator Amrit Singh in a report released early Tuesday, “the U.S. government violated domestic and international law, thereby diminishing its moral standing and eroding support for its counterterrorism efforts worldwide as these abuses came to light.”
Iran didn’t do any torturing on behalf of the CIA. Instead, it quietly transferred at least 15 of its own detainees to Afghan custody in March 2002. Six of those found their way into the CIA’s secret prisons. “Because the hand-over happened soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan,” Singh writes, “Iran was aware that the United States would have effective control over any detainees handed over to Afghan authorities.” At least one of those detainees, Tawfik al-Bihani, ended up at Guantanamo Bay, where his official file makes no mention of his time with the CIA.
Iran’s proxy Syria did torture on behalf of the United States. The most famous case involves Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen snatched in 2002 by the U.S. at John F. Kennedy International Airport before the CIA sent him to Syria under the mistaken impression he was a terrorist. In Syrian custody, Arar was “imprisoned for more than ten months in a tiny grave-like cell, beaten with cables, and threatened with electric shocks by the Syrian government,” Singh writes.
clip
-------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------
Renditions continue under Obama, despite due-process concerns
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-01/world/36323571_1_obama-administration-interrogation-drone-strikes
The three European men with Somali roots were arrested on a murky pretext in August as they passed through the small African country of Djibouti. But the reason soon became clear when they were visited in their jail cells by a succession of American interrogators.
U.S. agents accused the men — two of them Swedes, the other a longtime resident of Britain — of supporting al-Shabab, an Islamist militia in Somalia that Washington considers a terrorist group. Two months after their arrest, the prisoners were secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York, then clandestinely taken into custody by the FBI and flown to the United States to face trial.
The secret arrests and detentions came to light Dec. 21 when the suspects made a brief appearance in a Brooklyn courtroom.
The men are the latest example of how the Obama administration has embraced rendition — the practice of holding and interrogating terrorism suspects in other countries without due process — despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
clip
More Than 50 Countries Helped the CIA Outsource Torture + Renditions continue under Obama
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/54-countries-rendition/In the years after 9/11, the CIA ran a worldwide program to hold and interrogate suspected members of al-Qaida, sometimes brutally. It wasn’t alone: The agency had literally dozens of partners that helped in ways large and small. Only it’s never been clear just how many nations enabled CIA capture and torture; cooperated with it; or carried it out on behalf of the U.S. — until now. A new report from the Open Society Foundation details the CIA’s effort to outsource torture since 9/11 in excruciating detail. Known as “extraordinary rendition,” the practice concerns taking detainees to and from U.S. custody without a legal process — think of it like an off-the-books extradition — and often entailed handing detainees over to countries that practiced torture. The Open Society Foundation found that 136 people went through the post-9/11 extraordinary rendition, and 54 countries were complicit in it.
Some were official U.S. adversaries, like Iran and Syria, brought together with the CIA by the shared interest of combating terrorism. “By engaging in torture and other abuses associated with secret detention and extraordinary rendition,” writes chief Open Society Foundation investigator Amrit Singh in a report released early Tuesday, “the U.S. government violated domestic and international law, thereby diminishing its moral standing and eroding support for its counterterrorism efforts worldwide as these abuses came to light.”
Iran didn’t do any torturing on behalf of the CIA. Instead, it quietly transferred at least 15 of its own detainees to Afghan custody in March 2002. Six of those found their way into the CIA’s secret prisons. “Because the hand-over happened soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan,” Singh writes, “Iran was aware that the United States would have effective control over any detainees handed over to Afghan authorities.” At least one of those detainees, Tawfik al-Bihani, ended up at Guantanamo Bay, where his official file makes no mention of his time with the CIA.
Iran’s proxy Syria did torture on behalf of the United States. The most famous case involves Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen snatched in 2002 by the U.S. at John F. Kennedy International Airport before the CIA sent him to Syria under the mistaken impression he was a terrorist. In Syrian custody, Arar was “imprisoned for more than ten months in a tiny grave-like cell, beaten with cables, and threatened with electric shocks by the Syrian government,” Singh writes.
clip
-------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------
Renditions continue under Obama, despite due-process concerns
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-01/world/36323571_1_obama-administration-interrogation-drone-strikes
The three European men with Somali roots were arrested on a murky pretext in August as they passed through the small African country of Djibouti. But the reason soon became clear when they were visited in their jail cells by a succession of American interrogators.
U.S. agents accused the men — two of them Swedes, the other a longtime resident of Britain — of supporting al-Shabab, an Islamist militia in Somalia that Washington considers a terrorist group. Two months after their arrest, the prisoners were secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York, then clandestinely taken into custody by the FBI and flown to the United States to face trial.
The secret arrests and detentions came to light Dec. 21 when the suspects made a brief appearance in a Brooklyn courtroom.
The men are the latest example of how the Obama administration has embraced rendition — the practice of holding and interrogating terrorism suspects in other countries without due process — despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
clip
February 5, 2013
Randal Franzen was 53, unemployed and nearly broke when his brother, a tool designer at Boeing, mentioned that pilots for remotely piloted aircraft – more commonly known as drones – were in high demand. Franzen, a former professional skier and trucking company owner who had flown planes as a hobby, started calling manufacturers and found three schools that offer bachelor’s degrees for would-be feet-on-the-ground fliers: Kansas State University, the University of North Dakota and the private Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.
He landed at Kansas State, where he maintained a 4.0 grade point average for four years and accumulated $60,000 in student loan debt before graduating in 2011. It was a gamble, but one that paid off with an offer “well into the six figures” as a flight operator for a military contractor in Afghanistan. Franzen, who dreams of one day piloting drones over forest fires in the U.S., believes he is at the forefront of a watershed moment in aviation, one in which manned flight takes a jumpseat to the remote-controlled variety.
While most jobs flying drones currently are military-related, universities and colleges expect that to change by 2015, when the Federal Aviation Administration is due to release regulations for unmanned aircraft in domestic airspace. Once those regulations are in place, the FAA predicts that 10,000 commercial drones will be operating in the U.S. within five years.
Although just three schools currently offer degrees in piloting unmanned aircraft, many others – including community colleges – offer training for remote pilots. And those numbers figure are set to increase, with some aviation industry analysts predicting drones will eventually come to dominate the U.S. skies in terms of jobs. At the moment, 358 public institutions – including 14 universities and colleges – have permits from the FAA to fly unmanned aircraft. Those permits became public last summer after the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
snip
-----------------------------------------------------------------
related new articles and some older flashbacks
Send In The Drones: The Predator State Goes Domestic
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2011/12/send-in-drones-predator-state-goes.html
“Eventually, we’ll have to put an end to this, one way or another.”
Sheriff Kelly Janke of North Dakota’s Nelson County http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/rural-north-dakota-agencies-question-homeland-security-grants/article_f1dc8d8e-17ea-11df-bb45-001cc4c002e0.html uttered that ominous sentence in mid-September, http://www.valleynewslive.com/story/15463154/lakota-familys-ties-to-radical-group during what the local media giddily described as a stand-off with local farmer Rodney Brossart and his family. By that time, Sheriff Janke, with the help of the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Air Force, had already run the table where “non-lethal” means of compelling the family to surrender were concerned. This included everything from the Taser used during Brossart’s June 23 arrest to the precedent-setting use of a Predator-B drone to conduct surveillance of the home several days later to facilitate the arrest of the farmer’s three sons.
The most recent conflict between Janke’s department and Brossart began when a half-dozen stray cattle wandered onto the family’s farm, which is located near the tiny village of Lakota (roughly 100 miles northwest of Fargo). Brossart, who reportedly believed that the cattle were unclaimed and thus belonged to him under a disputed interpretation of open-range law, refused to turn them over to the Sheriff.
A team of deputies tasered the 55-year-old farmer and took him into custody. His daughter Abby, frantic for the safety of her father, tried to intervene; for “striking” the sanctified personage of a deputy, she was arrested and charged with assault. When Brossart’s wife Susan refused to help the deputies locate what they described as “illegal” firearms, she, too, was arrested and charged with lying to law enforcement officers (who are trained to lie http://www.officer.com/article/10233095/training-cops-to-lie-pt-1 and can do so without legal consequence). http://www.republicmagazine.com/news/dont-help-the-police-put-you-in-jail.html When deputies returned the following day, they were reportedly confronted by Brossart’s three sons – Jacob, Alex, and Thomas -- who were allegedly carrying the rifles the police had tried to confiscate the previous day.
This led Sheriff Janke to escalate the confrontation to a full-spectrum military response – including, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211,0,324348.story elements “from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances, and deputy sheriffs from three other counties. He also called in a Predator B drone.” That unmanned aerial vehicle, identical to those used in CIA-directed missions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, was supplied by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency http://www.uasvision.com/2011/06/06/u-s-customs-and-border-protection-agency-predators-exceed-10000-flight-hours/ (CBP), an affiliate of the Department of Homeland Security. http://www.cbp.gov/
snip
---------------------------------------------------------
Congress Passes Bill to Proliferate Drone Use in US Airspace (FAA says up to 30,000 by 2020)
http://techland.time.com/2012/02/08/congress-paves-way-for-unmanned-drones-in-u-s-commercial-airspace/
Ready to see drones flying over your house? A new bill passed by Congress will give commercial, private and military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) greatly increased access to U.S. airspace that’s currently reserved only for manned planes. Right now drones are mostly limited to the U.S.-Mexico border and military airspace, as well as use by around 300 public agencies located far away from cities and airports. That is now scheduled to change by September 30, 2015.
The main focus of the bill is the FAA’s adoption of NextGen, a program that will allow commercial aircraft to install and use GPS technology for steeper, more efficient take-offs and landings instead of the ridiculously outdated way things are done now. All in all, this should help make air travel a lot more time efficient. We shouldn’t, however, ignore the implications of letting drones into airspace that was previously off-limits. While the military and local police forces have long been able to use UAVs in operations on U.S. soil, the prospect of commercial and privately owned drones presents plenty of new questions.
First, there’s the issue of privacy. Rigging a cheap drone with a video camera was no problem for an Occupy protestor; http://techland.time.com/2011/12/21/occupy-wall-streets-new-drone-the-occucopter/ how hard would it be for someone with deeper pockets to finance a drone with even more powerful surveillance equipment to monitor, well, who knows what? How will we know what purposes any private citizen has for deploying a drone overhead?
Then there are the corporations. Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/07/congress-welcomes-the-drones/ points out that companies like Google could ditch their Street View cars and start deploying advanced, autonomous drones to roam the country for incredibly thorough mapping. If the idea of fleets of corporate-owned drones monitoring us from above doesn’t scare you, then you are a much less paranoid person than I.
snip
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interactive map reveals where drones are being flown inside the US right now
http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/6/3735976/interactive-map-domestic-drones-eff
Thanks to new documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we're starting to see a clearer picture of the rapid deployment of unmanned aerial drones by military, state and local law enforcement inside the domestic United States. Using data obtained through their Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FAA, the EFF have constructed an interactive map https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?viz=MAP&q=select+col2+from+1WuTyH62PmUF97oxo6IreT1BL_aw9HJN5pocwmwg&h=false&lat=44.08758502824518&lng=-85.5615234375&z=4&t=1&l=col2&y=1&tmplt=2 showing the locations where police, military, and others are currently authorized to fly drones in national airspace, as well as some details on the drones themselves and how they're being used.
Civil rights groups have been trying to obtain as much of this information as possible after a Congressional mandate and a Department of Homeland Security initiative earlier this year made clear the US government's intent to "facilitate and accelerate the adoption" of drones by public and private entities on US soil, including police. Use of drones has already been documented in several places, including local police in areas of Texas and Florida. But the new data reveals that both police and military drone flights have become a regular occurrence in many areas of the country, and many more public and private entities are still hoping to get in on the game.
snip
------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/argus-drone-spots-you-20-000-feet-camera-phone-sensors-1C8149730#/technology/futureoftech/argus-drone-spots-you-20-000-feet-camera-phone-sensors-1C8149730
NBC News ARGUS drone spots you from 20,000 feet — with camera-phone sensors
Paranoid delusions about black helicopters hovering over an area will soon be out of date: The latest scary spy apparatus lives 20,000 feet up, turning 30 or more square miles into live video sharp enough to spot individual people walking around.
The system is called ARGUS, after the 100-eyed god of Greek myth, and fittingly, it works by hooking together hundreds of inexpensive image sensors like those found in mobile phones. The non-classified parts were featured last week in an episode of the PBS show "Nova" all about drones and surveillance (the ARGUS segment starts at the half-hour mark).
ARGUS has appeared in earlier reports, but in a much less detailed fashion. The "Nova" program shows how it might actually appear in action.
Yiannis Antoniades of BAE Systems, the British company that makes the ARGUS system (with help and funding from DARPA), told PBS that although BAE would have liked to design a whole new sensor, it was cheaper and more practical to use an array of smaller, off-the-shelf ones.
snip
PBS Nova Rise of the Drones
snip
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BTW, I despise how the NBC article tries to slam anything to do with 'black helicopters' and military force used inside the USA as 'paranoid delusions'. Pure rot and psy-ops as these news reports of this exact thing in drill form show.
NOT a Dupe, another one just last week
NBC News: Anticipating domestic boom, colleges rev up drone piloting programs + more
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/29/16726198-anticipating-domestic-boom-colleges-rev-up-drone-piloting-programsRandal Franzen was 53, unemployed and nearly broke when his brother, a tool designer at Boeing, mentioned that pilots for remotely piloted aircraft – more commonly known as drones – were in high demand. Franzen, a former professional skier and trucking company owner who had flown planes as a hobby, started calling manufacturers and found three schools that offer bachelor’s degrees for would-be feet-on-the-ground fliers: Kansas State University, the University of North Dakota and the private Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.
He landed at Kansas State, where he maintained a 4.0 grade point average for four years and accumulated $60,000 in student loan debt before graduating in 2011. It was a gamble, but one that paid off with an offer “well into the six figures” as a flight operator for a military contractor in Afghanistan. Franzen, who dreams of one day piloting drones over forest fires in the U.S., believes he is at the forefront of a watershed moment in aviation, one in which manned flight takes a jumpseat to the remote-controlled variety.
While most jobs flying drones currently are military-related, universities and colleges expect that to change by 2015, when the Federal Aviation Administration is due to release regulations for unmanned aircraft in domestic airspace. Once those regulations are in place, the FAA predicts that 10,000 commercial drones will be operating in the U.S. within five years.
Although just three schools currently offer degrees in piloting unmanned aircraft, many others – including community colleges – offer training for remote pilots. And those numbers figure are set to increase, with some aviation industry analysts predicting drones will eventually come to dominate the U.S. skies in terms of jobs. At the moment, 358 public institutions – including 14 universities and colleges – have permits from the FAA to fly unmanned aircraft. Those permits became public last summer after the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
snip
-----------------------------------------------------------------
related new articles and some older flashbacks
Send In The Drones: The Predator State Goes Domestic
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2011/12/send-in-drones-predator-state-goes.html
“Eventually, we’ll have to put an end to this, one way or another.”
Sheriff Kelly Janke of North Dakota’s Nelson County http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/rural-north-dakota-agencies-question-homeland-security-grants/article_f1dc8d8e-17ea-11df-bb45-001cc4c002e0.html uttered that ominous sentence in mid-September, http://www.valleynewslive.com/story/15463154/lakota-familys-ties-to-radical-group during what the local media giddily described as a stand-off with local farmer Rodney Brossart and his family. By that time, Sheriff Janke, with the help of the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Air Force, had already run the table where “non-lethal” means of compelling the family to surrender were concerned. This included everything from the Taser used during Brossart’s June 23 arrest to the precedent-setting use of a Predator-B drone to conduct surveillance of the home several days later to facilitate the arrest of the farmer’s three sons.
The most recent conflict between Janke’s department and Brossart began when a half-dozen stray cattle wandered onto the family’s farm, which is located near the tiny village of Lakota (roughly 100 miles northwest of Fargo). Brossart, who reportedly believed that the cattle were unclaimed and thus belonged to him under a disputed interpretation of open-range law, refused to turn them over to the Sheriff.
A team of deputies tasered the 55-year-old farmer and took him into custody. His daughter Abby, frantic for the safety of her father, tried to intervene; for “striking” the sanctified personage of a deputy, she was arrested and charged with assault. When Brossart’s wife Susan refused to help the deputies locate what they described as “illegal” firearms, she, too, was arrested and charged with lying to law enforcement officers (who are trained to lie http://www.officer.com/article/10233095/training-cops-to-lie-pt-1 and can do so without legal consequence). http://www.republicmagazine.com/news/dont-help-the-police-put-you-in-jail.html When deputies returned the following day, they were reportedly confronted by Brossart’s three sons – Jacob, Alex, and Thomas -- who were allegedly carrying the rifles the police had tried to confiscate the previous day.
This led Sheriff Janke to escalate the confrontation to a full-spectrum military response – including, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211,0,324348.story elements “from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances, and deputy sheriffs from three other counties. He also called in a Predator B drone.” That unmanned aerial vehicle, identical to those used in CIA-directed missions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, was supplied by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency http://www.uasvision.com/2011/06/06/u-s-customs-and-border-protection-agency-predators-exceed-10000-flight-hours/ (CBP), an affiliate of the Department of Homeland Security. http://www.cbp.gov/
snip
---------------------------------------------------------
Congress Passes Bill to Proliferate Drone Use in US Airspace (FAA says up to 30,000 by 2020)
http://techland.time.com/2012/02/08/congress-paves-way-for-unmanned-drones-in-u-s-commercial-airspace/
Ready to see drones flying over your house? A new bill passed by Congress will give commercial, private and military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) greatly increased access to U.S. airspace that’s currently reserved only for manned planes. Right now drones are mostly limited to the U.S.-Mexico border and military airspace, as well as use by around 300 public agencies located far away from cities and airports. That is now scheduled to change by September 30, 2015.
The main focus of the bill is the FAA’s adoption of NextGen, a program that will allow commercial aircraft to install and use GPS technology for steeper, more efficient take-offs and landings instead of the ridiculously outdated way things are done now. All in all, this should help make air travel a lot more time efficient. We shouldn’t, however, ignore the implications of letting drones into airspace that was previously off-limits. While the military and local police forces have long been able to use UAVs in operations on U.S. soil, the prospect of commercial and privately owned drones presents plenty of new questions.
First, there’s the issue of privacy. Rigging a cheap drone with a video camera was no problem for an Occupy protestor; http://techland.time.com/2011/12/21/occupy-wall-streets-new-drone-the-occucopter/ how hard would it be for someone with deeper pockets to finance a drone with even more powerful surveillance equipment to monitor, well, who knows what? How will we know what purposes any private citizen has for deploying a drone overhead?
Then there are the corporations. Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/07/congress-welcomes-the-drones/ points out that companies like Google could ditch their Street View cars and start deploying advanced, autonomous drones to roam the country for incredibly thorough mapping. If the idea of fleets of corporate-owned drones monitoring us from above doesn’t scare you, then you are a much less paranoid person than I.
snip
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interactive map reveals where drones are being flown inside the US right now
http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/6/3735976/interactive-map-domestic-drones-eff
Thanks to new documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we're starting to see a clearer picture of the rapid deployment of unmanned aerial drones by military, state and local law enforcement inside the domestic United States. Using data obtained through their Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FAA, the EFF have constructed an interactive map https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?viz=MAP&q=select+col2+from+1WuTyH62PmUF97oxo6IreT1BL_aw9HJN5pocwmwg&h=false&lat=44.08758502824518&lng=-85.5615234375&z=4&t=1&l=col2&y=1&tmplt=2 showing the locations where police, military, and others are currently authorized to fly drones in national airspace, as well as some details on the drones themselves and how they're being used.
Civil rights groups have been trying to obtain as much of this information as possible after a Congressional mandate and a Department of Homeland Security initiative earlier this year made clear the US government's intent to "facilitate and accelerate the adoption" of drones by public and private entities on US soil, including police. Use of drones has already been documented in several places, including local police in areas of Texas and Florida. But the new data reveals that both police and military drone flights have become a regular occurrence in many areas of the country, and many more public and private entities are still hoping to get in on the game.
snip
------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/argus-drone-spots-you-20-000-feet-camera-phone-sensors-1C8149730#/technology/futureoftech/argus-drone-spots-you-20-000-feet-camera-phone-sensors-1C8149730
NBC News ARGUS drone spots you from 20,000 feet — with camera-phone sensors
Paranoid delusions about black helicopters hovering over an area will soon be out of date: The latest scary spy apparatus lives 20,000 feet up, turning 30 or more square miles into live video sharp enough to spot individual people walking around.
The system is called ARGUS, after the 100-eyed god of Greek myth, and fittingly, it works by hooking together hundreds of inexpensive image sensors like those found in mobile phones. The non-classified parts were featured last week in an episode of the PBS show "Nova" all about drones and surveillance (the ARGUS segment starts at the half-hour mark).
ARGUS has appeared in earlier reports, but in a much less detailed fashion. The "Nova" program shows how it might actually appear in action.
Yiannis Antoniades of BAE Systems, the British company that makes the ARGUS system (with help and funding from DARPA), told PBS that although BAE would have liked to design a whole new sensor, it was cheaper and more practical to use an array of smaller, off-the-shelf ones.
snip
PBS Nova Rise of the Drones
snip
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BTW, I despise how the NBC article tries to slam anything to do with 'black helicopters' and military force used inside the USA as 'paranoid delusions'. Pure rot and psy-ops as these news reports of this exact thing in drill form show.
NOT a Dupe, another one just last week
January 27, 2013
CLICK ON THE SUBTITLE ICON for the TRANSLATION in ENGLISH.
Belgian MP LAURENT LOUIS stands against war in Mali and exposes the international neo-colonial plot at the Belgian Parliament.
On January the 17th, 32 year old Belgiam MP Laurent Louis, one of the most controversial and demonized national political figures in Belgium, explained why he voted against the Belgian support for war in Mali. Meanwhile, he expressed his disgust and wrath against the criminal foreign policies of the Belgian elite and its submission to foreign financial and interests groups.
Please share this exceptional moment of truth. There were other interventions as powerful from that man regarding the necessity to re-open the DUTROUX CASE, since he has been confronted to official pictures of the pedophile's little victims that dramatically contradicted the official version of the cause of their death.
I'll translate his intervention on that subject within the next days because too many dark secrets are poisoning our democracies, and because it seems like in the heart of EUROPE, dark secrets have become a raw material.
Thank's for sharing. This man needs and deserve our support.
Belgian MP Laurent Louis stands against war in Mali and exposes the international neo-colonial plot
CLICK ON THE SUBTITLE ICON for the TRANSLATION in ENGLISH.
Belgian MP LAURENT LOUIS stands against war in Mali and exposes the international neo-colonial plot at the Belgian Parliament.
On January the 17th, 32 year old Belgiam MP Laurent Louis, one of the most controversial and demonized national political figures in Belgium, explained why he voted against the Belgian support for war in Mali. Meanwhile, he expressed his disgust and wrath against the criminal foreign policies of the Belgian elite and its submission to foreign financial and interests groups.
Please share this exceptional moment of truth. There were other interventions as powerful from that man regarding the necessity to re-open the DUTROUX CASE, since he has been confronted to official pictures of the pedophile's little victims that dramatically contradicted the official version of the cause of their death.
I'll translate his intervention on that subject within the next days because too many dark secrets are poisoning our democracies, and because it seems like in the heart of EUROPE, dark secrets have become a raw material.
Thank's for sharing. This man needs and deserve our support.
January 25, 2013
The story of the Israeli elections is not, as was expected, the dominance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud-Beiteinu coalition with former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. Instead, it is the unlikely triumph of Yair Lapid, a media celebrity who managed to secure nineteen seats in the next Knesset, making his newly formed Yesh Atid, or There Is a Future, the second-largest party in Israel. In the coming days, Lapid will play a pivotal role in the formation of the next governing coalition, and he is certain to receive a ministerial role in any future administration.
The results were a stinging rebuke to Netanyahu, who had expected over forty seats and wound up with only thirty-one. But what do they mean for the status quo of the Israeli occupation and the slow-motion dispossession of the Palestinians? Lapid has been cast in mainstream US media accounts as a “centrist,” a label that carries moderate connotations. According to the Washington Post, his success could “signal more flexibility in peace negotiations with the Palestinians.” But Lapid is, in fact, a politically vague media celebrity presiding over a party comprising random figures he personally selected—“as much a mystery as the future the party claims to be fighting for,” as the Times of Israel described him. As a potential coalition partner, the vapid broadcast personality seems like a perfect tool for Netanyahu; he is far more refined than Lieberman, who has consistently verged on bellicose incitement, but has no clear ideological core.
What’s more, Lapid has offered scant evidence that he views the Palestinian issue any differently than Netanyahu does. When he unveiled his foreign policy platform last year, Lapid chose to do so at a university inside the illegal mega-settlement of Ariel. Israel “must at last get rid of the Palestinians and put a fence between us,” he declared, explaining that he chose to launch his campaign at the settlement because “there is no map on which Ariel isn’t a part of the state of Israel.” Like Netanyahu, he says he strongly opposes the division of Jerusalem, an implicit rejection of the international consensus for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. (The Labor Party, which won fifteen seats and is generally labeled center-left, also supports annexing the major settlement blocs.)
In a 2007 column for the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonoth, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3411227,00.html Lapid insisted that ending the occupation would mean certain death for himself and fellow Israeli Jews. He wrote, “It may be true that the humane thing is to remove the roadblocks and checkpoints, to stop the occupation immediately, to enable the Palestinians freedom of movement in the territories, to tear down the bloody inhumane wall, to promise them the basic rights ensured to every individual. It’s just that I will end up paying for this with my life.… Call me a weakling; call me thickheaded—I don’t want to die.”
clip
-------------------------------------------------------------------
good interview with Max Blumenthal
http://dissentradio.com/radio/13_01_23_blumenthal.mp3 (right click, save as)
The Nation: Why the Israeli Elections Were a Victory for the Right
http://www.thenation.com/article/172398/why-israeli-elections-were-victory-rightThe story of the Israeli elections is not, as was expected, the dominance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud-Beiteinu coalition with former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. Instead, it is the unlikely triumph of Yair Lapid, a media celebrity who managed to secure nineteen seats in the next Knesset, making his newly formed Yesh Atid, or There Is a Future, the second-largest party in Israel. In the coming days, Lapid will play a pivotal role in the formation of the next governing coalition, and he is certain to receive a ministerial role in any future administration.
The results were a stinging rebuke to Netanyahu, who had expected over forty seats and wound up with only thirty-one. But what do they mean for the status quo of the Israeli occupation and the slow-motion dispossession of the Palestinians? Lapid has been cast in mainstream US media accounts as a “centrist,” a label that carries moderate connotations. According to the Washington Post, his success could “signal more flexibility in peace negotiations with the Palestinians.” But Lapid is, in fact, a politically vague media celebrity presiding over a party comprising random figures he personally selected—“as much a mystery as the future the party claims to be fighting for,” as the Times of Israel described him. As a potential coalition partner, the vapid broadcast personality seems like a perfect tool for Netanyahu; he is far more refined than Lieberman, who has consistently verged on bellicose incitement, but has no clear ideological core.
What’s more, Lapid has offered scant evidence that he views the Palestinian issue any differently than Netanyahu does. When he unveiled his foreign policy platform last year, Lapid chose to do so at a university inside the illegal mega-settlement of Ariel. Israel “must at last get rid of the Palestinians and put a fence between us,” he declared, explaining that he chose to launch his campaign at the settlement because “there is no map on which Ariel isn’t a part of the state of Israel.” Like Netanyahu, he says he strongly opposes the division of Jerusalem, an implicit rejection of the international consensus for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. (The Labor Party, which won fifteen seats and is generally labeled center-left, also supports annexing the major settlement blocs.)
In a 2007 column for the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonoth, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3411227,00.html Lapid insisted that ending the occupation would mean certain death for himself and fellow Israeli Jews. He wrote, “It may be true that the humane thing is to remove the roadblocks and checkpoints, to stop the occupation immediately, to enable the Palestinians freedom of movement in the territories, to tear down the bloody inhumane wall, to promise them the basic rights ensured to every individual. It’s just that I will end up paying for this with my life.… Call me a weakling; call me thickheaded—I don’t want to die.”
clip
-------------------------------------------------------------------
good interview with Max Blumenthal
http://dissentradio.com/radio/13_01_23_blumenthal.mp3 (right click, save as)
Profile Information
Member since: Wed Jan 9, 2013, 08:13 AMNumber of posts: 90