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Airships to Patrol Venezuela's Skies
bprime writes "The BBC reports that officials in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, have bought three airship UAVs to keep tabs on the local populace. From the article: 'The 15 metre (49 foot) long air ships are emblazoned with government slogans. Written in bright red are the words, We watch over you for your security.' They're not exactly black helicopters, but how long do you think until we see similar measures in high-crime American cities?"
Here's my guess: Better not be until after the repeal of the Second Amendment.
New Socialist government, airships with slogans. The Venezuelans wanted this guy in power, so they got what they wanted.
Hmmm...
The Venezuelan government buys 15 meter long airships for surveillance.
The city of Caracas has the "worlds worst figures for gun death".
So, taking a bit of a leap [jump with me if you wish]... The government of Venezuela is providing expensive 15 meter long floating targets for the people of Caracas to shoot at instead of shooting at each other...
You know, it just might be crazy enough to work...
COPS: Caracas
A high speed chase featuring an airship tracking and a donkey powered wood cart through a shanty-town.
Britain in particular hasn't a leg to stand on when it comes to offering a critical view of others' domestic surveillance.
With all due respect, Mr Chavez is a copycat.
3 144.stm.
. stm.
El presidente Antonio Bliar's big brother government bought Predator UAV for police use in the Tyneside area 2 years before Mr Chavez http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/605
LA Police deployed them 1 year before him: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5051142
And overall we are much closer to the stage of "Blue thunder, do you copy..." than Mr Chavez. You are giving him too much credit.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I thought helium was holding them up.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
This seems to be OK with the people. That just surprises me since it doesn't really add that much to the safety and has the very likely possibility of being abused.
It doesn't surprise me one bit. It's easy to scoff at people willing to give up civil liberties for the prospect of safety from our ivory towers at home. It's an entirely different thing to live it.
I have a friend who immigrated from Peru to the US. She is a staunchly anti-Bush person and considers him an overreaching warmongerer who wishes he was a dictator and is taking steps in that direction. She's a major civil liberties and human rights advocate. Yet, in Peru, she was a supporter of hardline dictator Alberto Fujimori. Knowing just these two facts, one may well say, "what gives?" and see this as contradictory. Yet, when you talk to her about life in Peru when she grew up, it's not hard to understand where she's coming from.
In her early life, she grew up in a town called Tayabamba, out in the Andes. The sort of place for which it was a real journey just to get to the next town. When Shining Path started sweeping across the countryside, this was a real threat -- not a mostly imaginary threat like American paranoia about terrorism. The group kept its membership up by sweeping through villages and rounding up all of the men who could carry a gun; people were terrified of them. Later, she moved to Lima, and there had to worry about the drug lords. They would call "strikes" to punish the country; what this basically meant was that if they saw you going to work, they'd shoot you on the spot.
Fujimori largely changed this. He launched a brutal crackdown on Shining Path. When members fled to the universities, which were constitutionally protected from raids, he ignored the laws and sent in troops anyways (greatly angering the students). When drug lords called "strikes", he essentially declared martial law and dispatched the military to the street. Armored vehicles would pick up anyone who was afraid to work and take them all the way there. Fujimori himself stood in the middle of the street downtown, daring them to shoot him, to demonstrate that they had no power over the city. The same sort of thing happened with corruption and monopolies; he largely disregarded the law in his quest to take down the Peruvian equivalent of our 19th century robber barons. Imagine where, if you wanted to buy a bar of soap, it was not only ridiculously priced, but you had to buy it as part of a "bundle" with other, less popular products that weren't selling. That's the sort of control that these people had over the market. While most of Peru lived in utter poverty, these people lived in obscene luxury.
Then there's just plain regular crime. My friend's brother once had the shoes stolen right off his feet. Literally. People would go around in pairs -- one would grab the victim from behind and lift him up while the other grabbed the legs and untied the shoes. They weren't emotionless thugs, like a lot of American crime seems; they were just desperate people who really needed the money they could get from selling his shoes, simply in order to eat. They even left him a pair of flip flops to wear home. When people would go to parties, they'd often wear cheap shoes and other clothing on the way there, then change into the nicer stuff when they neared or arrived at their destination so that they wouldn't appear rich and get mugged. This sort of crime was everywhere, part of the daily reality you had to consider for everything you did. When she moved to the US, she had to get used to not having to do all of her old anti-theft habits.
If people see a blimp as having the potential to even reduce these sort of crimes, I'm not surprised that they'd welcome them with open arms.
Present day. Present time.
...allegedly, has the top two political parties conspire to not only not include any other candidates on the forum for the so called national and official presidential debate, but actually threatens them with arrest if they have tickets and try to just sit in the audience-I'd call that a dog and pony show. And when the controlled lapdog press goes along with it, another part of the show. When two cooperating parties basically hijack the government and just divide the spoils, and it is clear both of these parties have full compliments of crooks, thieves, liars, bribe takers and assorted scum, yet nothing substantial happens overall, that's a dog and pony show. When both parties are run by globalist millionaires at the top, even to the point of running so called "opposition" candidates from the same billionaire boys club fraternity secret society, that's a joke, a dog and pony show. Candidates who are so far removed from the productive middle class electorate, so much so that they don't even know what a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk really costs-that's a dog and pony show political system, a farce. When elected leaders come from hereditary political dynasties-basically an elite aristocracy- including the ex head of the "secret police", that's a sham, a dog and pony show. When you have overwhelming smoking gun evidence that the "electronic" elections have been hacked and compromised, that quite possibly whomever is in office shouldn't be there, yet nothing happens, and no one gets into any trouble over it-it goes beyond a dog and pony show and starts to look like any other banana republic dictatorship, just with two "wings" instead of one to give the illusion of "free and honest elections". When you have an overwhelmingly large violent "incident", that pushes forth a radical anti freedom agenda, and there is enough credible evidence with literally dozens of quite peculiar characteristics that don't jibe in any manner whatsoever with the "official story of what happened", and there are no actual honest and open investigations, instead they push forth an obvious whitewash/coverup/ignore the evidence that doesn't fit commission-you have to ask yourself, when can a violent coup be called a coup?
The US has been in a slow and steady gradual takeover by shadowy elements very powerful inside and outside of government, ever since an actual brave and thoughtful president-Ike- thought it necessary to warn the people during his retirement speech that it could and would happen if we weren't careful. Later on, the folks he was warning about managed to get rid of one elected person who was getting wise to them and was seeking to limit their power. Then they eliminated his brother, who looked likely to carry the torch on for his fallen sibling-yet nothing has happened about it. It's gotten worse since then, until now, we have only the faintest mirage of real freedom as it was originally designed to be, and that mirage is fading fast, with various "patriotic enabling acts" and "signing statements" that clearly show that only one agenda will go forward and the people and their wishes be damned, with big wars completely based on proven lies, wars which still will not end even when the lies are finally admitted to, and nothing happens to the proven liars.
Calling it a "dog and pony show" is being excessively *polite* and minimalistic near as I can see.