I don’t want to creep my friends out too much before our new week begins. But controversial news items keep piling up in my in-box, and they have to be cleared out sooner or later.
ITEM: 30,000 military drones are on their way to law enforcement outfits in America. It won’t be too long before extremely inexpensive drones are available to other government agencies to do aerial inspections of zoning violations. Now the Air Force is developing drones the size of a hummingbird, or even a mosquito. It’s not hard to imagine a mosquito flying through an open door or window and grabbing a microscopic piece of your DNA from bedsheets or clothing.
ITEM: New York City is first on the list to buy a sky full of the new drones. New York is also working with the Microsoft Corporation to develop a 30 million dollar computer/camera system that keeps track of everyone in New York ALL the time!
ITEM: Gary Harrington, of Medford, Oregon, has just begun serving a 30 day jail sentence. His crime? Collecting rainwater and snowmelt that fell on his property. Oregon says it’s illegal to divert streams. Harrington’s argument that “diverting rainfall was not the same as diverting streams” fell on deaf ears in the courts.
ITEM: Martha Boneta owns a 70 acre farm where she grows vegetables. She has a permit to sell from a little farm store on her property. Her mistake is that she sells some souvenirs and trinkets and occasionally has pumpkin carving events and an occasional birthday party for her friend’s kid. But now she’s facing a $5000 fine for selling non farm items and not getting a permit for the birthday party.
CONCLUSION: Government is becoming more and more intrusive. Does it take any kind of imagination to see the day when HOAs can send drones over your property and in through the windows of your home looking for covenant violations? There’s already a case in Texas where an HOA president used a helicopter to photograph a resident’s back yard! Theoretically, we have a Constitution that prohibits unlawful searches of your property and belongings. But HOAs involve private contracts with homeowners. Your HOA doesn’t have to respect the restrictions in the Constitution.
Am I nuts about all of this? Not according to the link below.
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/08/10/domestic-spying-mini-drone-can-watch-neighbors-from-above/
Ward Lucas, author of Neighbors At War! The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association
“ITEM: Gary Harrington, of Medford, Oregon, has just begun serving a 30 day jail sentence. His crime? Collecting rainwater and snowmelt that fell on his property. Oregon says it’s illegal to divert streams. Harrington’s argument that ‘diverting rainfall was not the same as diverting streams’ fell on deaf ears in the courts.”
Watch this 4 minute excerpt — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTKn17uZRAE — from the 2003 documentary “The Corporation”).
Narrator: The prospect that two thirds of the world’s population will have no access to fresh drinking water by 2025, has provoked the initial confrontations in a world-wide battle for control over the planet’s most basic resource. When Bolivia sought to refinance the public water services of its third largest city, the World Bank required that it be privatised, which is how the Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco gained control over all Cochabamba’s water, even that which fell from the sky
Oscar Olivera: All these laws and contracts also prohibited people from gathering rainwater. So rainwater was also privatised. Unpaid bills gave the company rights to repossess debtors’ homes and to auction them off. People had to make choices: from eating less and paying for water and basic services, to not sending their children to school, or not going to the hospital and treating illnesses at home; or, in the case of retired people who have very low incomes, they had to go out and work on the streets. Then, with the slogan: “The Water is Ours, Damn it!” People took to the streets to protest.
Narrator: …Bolivia was determined to defend the corporation’s right to charge families living on two dollars a day as much as one-quarter of their income for water.
I have a friend in Cochabamba. He is a water engineer, and helps the poor dig their own wells for fresh water. I will ask him about this.
Our board president calls herself a conservative, but she would love to control our every move. Why does anyone trust government to be concerned with individual liberty.
ITEM: New York City is first on the list to buy a sky full of the new drones. New York is also working with the Microsoft Corporation to develop a 30 million dollar computer/camera system that keeps track of everyone in New York ALL the time!
Not meaning to make light of the situation, but the people of NY are safe from spy drones if Microsoft is developing the computer/camera system.
What happens if terrorists hack and take control of the drones?
What happens when surplus drones are donated to 300,000 American HOAs?