Alex Jones
GCN Live.com
March 7, 2013
Alex breaks down how the media is denying the existence of a domestic government arms build-up against the American people while it simultaneously manifests itself via the drone program and the huge DHS ammo purchases.
RELATED: Media Portrays DHS Ammo Purchases as Conspiracy Theory
As U.S. authorities grapple with how to regulate the use of unarmed drones in U.S. skies, a small network of police, first responders and experts is already flying unmanned aircraft.
These operators say rapidly evolving drone technology is already reshaping disaster response, crime scene reconstruction, crisis management and tactical operations.
Critics of U.S. domestic drone use worry about privacy and safety.
Several dozen local police departments, federal agencies and universities have special FAA permits to fly drones in U.S. airspace.
“Like a lot of law enforcement agencies, our first thoughts were, ‘Cool! Let’s use it for tactical missions – for chasing bad guys across the county,”‘ said Ben Miller, a Mesa County, Colorado, sheriff’s deputy.
“But the reality is you’ll have a mission like that once or twice a year,” he said. “The real utility of unmanned aerial systems is not the sexy stuff. It’s the crime scene and accident reconstruction.”
Miller’s department in rural western Colorado has the widest approval to fly drones of any local law enforcement agency in the U.S.
Mesa has flown 40 missions in just over three years, “none of them surveillance,” said Miller, who crafted the department’s drone program and spent a year devising training protocol for fellow deputies before receiving FAA approval.
“We can now bring the crime scene right into the jury box, and literally re-enact the crime for jurors,” he said.
Miller can program the department’s GPS-enabled, 3.5-pound DraganflyerX6 quad copter to fly two concentric circles, at two elevations, capturing about 70 photos, for about $25 an hour. He then feeds those images into online digital mapping software, which creates a virtual crime scene that he uploads to his iPad.
Holding the iPad with one hand, Miller recently demonstrated for Reuters how 3-D digital reconstruction can serve as a road map for investigators, and, soon, for juries.
Miller said the same technique can often eliminate the need to shut down highways after accidents so investigators can take accurate measurements.
“For most small law enforcement agencies like ours, the revolution is not in the equipment, but in the cost,” he said.
Recent applications to the FAA, obtained by the civil liberties group Electronic Freedom Foundation, indicate many police want drones for drug investigations, covert surveillance and high-risk tactical operations.
Domestic drones currently cost anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 for a small system like the DraganflyerX6, which stays aloft only 15 minutes, to more than $1 million for sophisticated fixed-wing drones that can remain aloft for hours.
Military models are also being used by the Department of Homeland Security, which has a fleet of at least 10 unarmed Predator drones, powerful enough to identify a tennis shoe from 60,000 feet up.
First-generation drones can’t yet carry an onboard sense-and-avoid system, a requirement of manned aircraft. Experts said mass-produced, drone-mounted sense-and-avoid technology is still two to five years away.
FAA officials are required to open U.S. skies in 2015 to widespread use of unmanned aircraft by public agencies and private industry.
Pressing the Boundaries
Texas pilot Gene Robinson has been designing and flying domestic drone systems custom-made for disaster and emergency response for more than a decade.
Robinson said his drone has flown dozens of search missions for law enforcement agencies in 29 states and four countries, locating 10 missing persons after traditional search-and-rescue resources were exhausted.
When the FAA formally banned commercial drone use in the U.S. in 2007, Robinson registered his company as a 501(c)3 nonprofit to sidestep the ban on commercial drone use.
“That drives the FAA nuts,” Miller said.
As far as Robinson is concerned, the feeling is mutual.
FAA officials continued to deny his requests for emergency approval, Robinson said.
He reached a breaking point with the FAA in 2010, in a field outside Dallas, Texas. Standing beside the frantic father of a missing 7-year-old, Robinson received a call from an FAA official who, he said, denied his request to use his drone to search for the child.
He refused to relay the information to the father.
“I’m not going to tell the father,” he said he told the official. “You are.”
He handed the phone to the father and was “lucky to get that phone back in one piece.”
Weeks later, Robinson said, local authorities who had sought his assistance located the child’s body.
Robinson said he no longer seeks FAA permission for emergency response.
After that incident, “I decided it was going to be easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”
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By Brian Vastag
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Vowing to inspire “all Americans,” the world’s first space tourist, Dennis Tito, is set to announce a plan Wednesday for a “high risk” human mission to Mars. It would launch, by necessity of orbital mechanics, in January 2018.
Now all Tito needs is a billion dollars, give or take. And a big rocket. And a spaceship.
“It’s not nuts,” said one of Tito’s team of aerospace industry advisers ahead of an afternoon press briefing in Washington. “This is possible.”
The “Mission for America” would be a two-person, budget-class fly-by of the red planet. There will be no landing. No footprints and flags in ruddy soil, no rock-grabbing, no search for fossils.
This is strictly a blink-and-you-miss-it trip to Earth’s neighbor and back again. The 501-day journey would be about the quickest available with current rockets.
Only celestial harmony makes such a plan feasible: A once-every-15-years alignment of Earth and Mars. With the two planets’ orbits pinching as close as they ever do, a so-called low-energy trajectory could shoot a modest craft to Mars and back with minimal fuel.
Tito, 72, won’t fly the mission. Instead, he will send a man and woman — preferably married — to fairly represent humanity, said a person familiar with the plan who asked for anonymity because the public announcement has not yet been made.
A news release announcing the mission said the first human trip beyond the moon would “encourage all Americans to believe again in doing the hard things that make our nation great.”
The hardware required includes a capsule for launching and landing, a habitat module and a big rocket or several small ones.
Industry experts said Tito’s team has been in talks with several “new space” companies such as Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, as well as established aerospace contractors such as Boeing to supply the rocket and spaceship.
Tito has assembled a team that includes experts in life support systems and space medicine. A team at NASA Ames Research Center in California has already begun work on a heat shield to protect the Mars ship from the fastest atmospheric reentry ever attempted.
A technical paper Tito and his team will present at an aerospace conference next week suggests flying a modified Dragon capsule built by SpaceX, the commercial company set to launch its third non-crewed supply run to the space station on Friday. A human-rated Dragon may be available as soon as 2015, but a company spokeswoman said there was no deal in place with Tito’s group.
The mission — if Tito can pull it off — would break the deep-space barrier for the first time and reshuffle the possibilities for human space travel. The last time humans sailed beyond Earth orbit was the final Apollo moon mission in 1972.
“If you have a billion or two dollars, it’s technically feasible,” said Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society and a longtime proponent of colonizing that planet. “My main point of skepticism is not technical, it’s, ‘Do these guys have a billion dollars?’ ”
They apparently do not. Tito did not crack the Forbes 500 billionaires list, and on Wednesday he will announce the nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation to begin fundraising for this “philanthropic” flight. The foundation is in talks with the National Geographic Society and the Challenger Center for Space Science Education to bring the mission into classrooms and otherwise broadcast it.
Tito began his career as a rocket scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, plotting trajectories of NASA’s first robotic missions to Mars and Venus. He then made a fortune as one of the first “quants,” who apply hard math to soft markets. He has skirted skeptics and broken the Earth-bound rules of spaceflight before. In 2001, Tito paid Russia a reported $20 million to vacation at the international space station. NASA refused to sign off on the trip until four days before launch.
In 2010, President Obama set NASA’s sights on a human Mars landing — a much more difficult mission than the one Tito plans — in the 2030s. But that mission is largely notional and unfunded.
At closest approach, Tito’s crew won’t even peep Mars’s volcanoes and valleys below. Mars itself will block their view as they slingshot around the far side — the dark side — of the planet.
Risks include deep-space radiation, missing a small “keyhole” in space near Mars and shooting out to infinity and vaporizing upon reentry. But a private venture can afford bigger risks than a taxpayer-funded NASA mission, said Roger Launius, a historian at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. “They don’t need permission from anybody for an interplanetary trip.”
Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon and author of the upcoming book “Mission to Mars,” said: “I’ve talked to Dennis, and I’ve strongly encouraged him. The purpose is to inspire, to say we’re going to do something and then we do it.”
NASA’s support for tracking the Mars ship and communicating with its crew is crucial, Aldrin said.
He noted the mission would return to Earth in May 2019 — just in time for the 50th anniversary of his Apollo 11 moonwalk.
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Zero Dark Thirty wins no major awards
Paul Joseph Watson
GCN Live.com
February 25, 2013
The Obama administration-backed, torture advocating propaganda film Zero Dark Thirty flopped at the Oscars last night, failing to pick up any major awards in what critics said was a backlash against the movie’s politically-driven narrative.
“The film, which has sparked outrage among both Democrats and Republicans in Washington over its depiction of torture, and allegations that the Obama administration leaked classified intelligence to help the making of the film, won no major Oscars on Sunday and only one award overall,” reports Reuters.
The movie, which is a dramatization of the alleged assassination of Osama Bin Laden, was castigated by lawmakers, including torture victim John McCain, as “grossly inaccurate and misleading” for its suggestion that torture aided in the discovery of Bin Laden’s compound.
Promotional material for the movie began circulating before last year’s presidential election, leading some to accuse the Obama administration, which had worked closely with film makers, of trying to regurgitate the Bin Laden assassination for political points scoring.
The CIA directly authorized the movie’s writer Mark Boal to conduct interviews with CIA officers, military officers, and White House officials about the raid during which Boal was allegedly given classified information, “apparently in the belief that the public would appreciate the movie that resulted.” While constantly citing “national security threats” as a justification to become more and more secretive, the CIA was apparently carefree about handing out sensitive intelligence to a movie writer as part of a PR coup for the agency.
Despite advocating torture, many on the left praised the film, including Michael Moore, who claimed that the movie did not in fact advocate torture, an assertion debunked by the fact that the characters who carried it out in the film are not punished and are in fact venerated in the storyline.
Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal claimed they based the movie “on first hand accounts of actual events,” which is dubious given that the narrative surrounding the Bin Laden raid has changed numerous times. Earlier this month, the Navy SEAL who claims he shot Bin Laden said the terror leader did use his “wife” as a human shield, despite the White House acknowledging that the woman was not Osama’s wife and was not used by him as a human shield.
Numerous other inconsistencies surrounding the event, including the inability of Obama and Hillary Clinton to have watched the raid “live,” as the infamous situation room photos depicted, also emerged in the days following the announcement of Bin Laden’s demise.
The torture-advocating narrative of the film contradicts the exhaustively documented fact that torture does not work and in fact harms terror investigations by producing false leads.
“The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world,” Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said in 2009. “The damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”
In addition, former US Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander warns that torture creates more terrorists.
“When we torture somebody, it hardens their resolve,” Alexander explained. “The information that you get is unreliable. … And even if you do get reliable information, you’re able to stop a terrorist attack, al Qaeda’s then going to use the fact that we torture people to recruit new members,”said Alexander.
Numerous other political and academic experts have publicly attacked torture methods as ineffective, counter-productive and dangerous.
The rejection of Zero Dark Thirty at the Oscars last night will hopefully go some way to solidifying the view that torture is a method reserved for barbaric dictatorships and is completely abhorrent to the very principles on which the United States of America was founded.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.
Mac Slavo
SHTFPlan.com
February 22, 2013
Steve Vaus is a musician, writer, producer and Grammy award winner who has worked with musical legends that include Willie Nelson, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Kenny Loggins.
In January, responding to the latest assaults on our Second Amendment, Vaus composed and produced “Come and Take It,” a ballad that takes aim at those who would strip Americans of their right to bear arms.
“We want the freedom that God gave us,” the lyrics declare, “so you best not cross that line. If you want this gun you gotta to come through us and take it, one shot at a time.”
The slogan, “Come and take it,” became the battle cry and banner of the Texas Revolution after the 1835 Battle of Gonzalez, in which Texans defied the Mexican government’s demand to return a cannon that had been given them for self-defense. Rather than surrender the cannon to Mexican dragoons, Texans stormed the Mexican camp and drove the soldiers away.(WND)
When Vaus contacted various local and national media outlets in an attempt to air his song as a way to counter the Hollywood and Washington media blitz targeting gun owners, he was denied.
We reached out to Mr. Vaus about his experience and he confirmed the reports.
“Clear Channel refused to allow me to buy time on all of their DC area stations,” said a frustrated but undeterred Vaus.
“On the TV side, the video version has been refused by the two major cable TV carriers in DC – Comcast and ViaMedia. Finally I have attempted to buy time on MSNBC nationally and they have been unresponsive.”
Here is the video that the mainstream media and DC politicians don’t want you to see:
‘Come and Take It’
Watch at the Official Youtube Channel
The very same media that deny Mr. Vaus a voice about a key piece of American history that’s relevant to a heated national conversation have no qualms about playing commercials depicting adults having an intense ‘make-out session’ during prime time sporting events while families and their children watch on with discomfort and disgust. Likewise, the media will happily play commercials that involve Hollywood celebrities and DC politicians who are calling for what essentially amounts to nothing short of supplanting the 2nd Amendment.
Vaus also points out that, while his requests for paid airtime have been denied, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords purchased and was allotted TV time for her anti-gun spot that bookended the President’s State of the Union address, and progressive propaganda machine MoveOn.org has been given widespread national airtime for theirlatest gun control campaign titled The NRA doesn’t Speak for Me.
Given the brick walls facing Mr. Vaus at every turn, it should be clear that the media is complicit in silencing the voices of millions of Americans who support gun ownership. In his State of the Union address President Obama suggested that there is overwhelming support for gun control in this country. So, too, is there overwhelming support for gun rights, something you wouldn’t know if your only avenue for news and entertainment was your local cable TV provider or radio station.
As evidenced by Mr. Vaus’ experience, any voice contradicting the official narrative is silenced.
The President and D.C. politicians can fly around in their tax payer funded jets to attend political functions advocating gun control on our dime, yet Steve Vaus can’t buy time, with his own money, for a pro-Second Amendment spot supporting one of America’s most fundamental Constitutional protections.
“It’s Unthinkable,” says Vaus.
Official Website: OurGuns.org, Official Video Spot on Youtube, Audio clip at Sound Cloud
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