A laser weapons system that can shoot down two drones at a distance of over a mile has been demonstrated by Rheinmetall Defence.The German defence firm used the high-energy laser equipment to shoot fast-moving drones at a distance.The system, which uses two laser weapons, was also used to cut through a steel girder a kilometre away.The company plans to make the laser weapons system mobile and to integrate automatic cannon.The 50kW laser weapons system used radar and optical systems to detect and track two incoming drones, the company said. The nose-diving drones were flying at 50 metres per second, and were shot down when they reached a programmed fire sector.
The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate hut at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups—Henry Hazlitt
Thursday, February 07, 2013
German Firm Introduces Anti Drone Laser Weapon System
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Obama’s Push for Gun Prohibition
President Barack Obama unveiled the most ambitious gun-control agenda in decades today, announcing a $500 million package of legislative proposals and executive actions aimed at curbing firearms violence, from mass shootings to street crime.The president, counting on a shift in public opinion since the shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school last month, challenged Congress to mandate background checks for all gun buyers, ban high-capacity ammunition clips, and reinstate a ban on sales of assault weaponsObama signed 23 executive actions aimed at circumventing congressional opposition to new gun restrictions, including several designed to maximize prosecution of gun crimes and improve access to government data for background checks.
The administration also plans to address legal barriers that may prevent states from sharing relevant medical information, to review standards for gun locks, require federal authorities to trace firearms recovered in criminal investigations and direct the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes of gun violence.The new spending would go mostly for training and data- collection programs. Obama wants $10 million for the CDC to conduct further research, “including investigating the relationship between video games, media images, and violence.”Another $20 million would expand a reporting system to gather data when firearms are used in violent deaths, whether homicides or suicides. To encourage states to share criminal and mental health records for the federal background database, Obama proposes spending $20 million this year and $50 million next year.School districts and police departments would get $150 million to hire school resource officers, psychologists and social workers and another $65 million for teacher training.Obama again urged lawmakers to approve an existing request for $4 billion to help communities keep 15,000 police officers on duty.
A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.
“Although we may not know it, we have, in our day, witnessed the birth of the Therapeutic State. This is perhaps the major implication of psychiatry as an institution of social control.”“When I use the term therapeutic state, I use it ironically, it’s therapeutic for the people who are doing the locking up, who are doing the therapy, it’s not therapeutic for the victims, for the patients.”“In the therapeutic state, treatment is contingent on, and justified by, the diagnosis of the patient’s illness and the physician’s prescription of the proper remedy for it… Today, the therapeutic state exercises authority and uses force in the name of health.” The Founding Fathers “could not have anticipated…that an alliance between medicine and the state would then threaten personal liberty and responsibility exactly as they had been threatened by an alliance between church and state.”“Inasmuch as we have words to describe medicine as a healing art, but have none to describe it as a method of social control or political rule, we must first give it a name. I propose that we call it pharmacracy, from the Greek roots pharmakon, for ‘medicine’ or ‘drug,’ and kratein, for ‘to rule’ or ‘to control.’”“Formerly, people rushed to embrace totalitarian states. Now they rush to embrace the therapeutic state. When they discover that the therapeutic state is about tyranny, not therapy, it will be too late.”“This phenomenon illustrates what I call the creeping therapeutic state. I see it as insidious, especially given the cooperation between the government and the media. This is allowed on television. But advertising Scotch, a legal drink, is not allowed. This subtly undermines the rule of law, the principle that if something is legal, then it’s legal, and if it’s illegal, then it’s illegal. A prescription drug is illegal; pharmacists cannot sell it to you unless you have a prescription. These are illegal drugs, but nobody calls them illegal drugs. So I see this as pernicious, as an example of what F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises talked about—that the opposite of freedom is not brutal tyranny but capriciousness.”
F. A. Hayek once warned that Americans are headed towards the road to serfdom. His admonitions appear as becoming a reality with the deepening of America’s police state aside from snowballing political and economic fascism, signs of which the US could be in a slippery slope towards dictatorship.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Infographic:Is the US government preparing for a civil war?
Thursday, October 11, 2012
30,000 Drones to Patrol US Skies for Public Safety
Don’t be surprised if you catch a federal fleet of sneaky spy drones soaring over your head in the near future, but don’t be too terrified — it’s all in the name of public safety.The US Department of Homeland Security is asking the makers of small unmanned aerial vehicles to submit their crafts for consideration as the agency ramps up the construction of a full-fledged surveillance state across America. The DHS plans to soon conduct drone tests over the Fort Sill, Oklahoma US Army base, and they’re already soliciting spy planes from the private sector so they can select what kind of UAV to use.According to a request for information published on the Federal Business Opportunities website recently, the DHS is determined to begin drone tests over the military base soon and is seeking submissions from drone makers that don’t mind making a few bucks by having their products put into the US airspace to conduct sweeping surveillance.The Borders and Maritime Security Division of the DHS “will conduct flight testing and evaluation of airborne sensors and small unmanned aerial systems,” the request reads, and now invites vendors to submit drones to be tested “under a wide variety of simulated but realistic and relevant real-world operation scenarios.”…The Federal Aviation Administration is working towards putting the finishing touches on rules and regulations for widespread domestic drone use, and the agency expects as many as 30,000 UAVs will be in America’s airspace by the decade’s end.
Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one
Friday, September 28, 2012
US Drone Warfare Fuels Arabic and Islamic Hatred
Hilary Clinton said a while ago that Defense and Development were complements.Not so much. A new report from Stanford and NYU (see excellent summary in the Guardian) found that US drone strikes (greatly increased under this administration) in Pakistan were killing and terrorizing civilians, while very few killed their terrorist targets.It would be hard for Development to benefit from “drones hovering 24 hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning.”The report alleges that drones strike areas multiple times, killing rescuers of victims of the first strike.
Is it not more likely that when the West supported toppling Arab strongmen, the rioters in the streets saw that as a signal to express hatred toward the meddling West? Might Obama’s drones, which have fallen all over the Middle East killing innocents in schools and hospitals, at weddings and funerals, and demolishing mosques and homes, be coming back to haunt him?The Arab Spring has become the Western Winter, brought about by two American presidents who thought they could kill without moral justification or painful consequence. We should come home from these barbaric places and leave them alone. We should trade with them, since they want to buy our iPads and washing machines and blue jeans, but let them run their own governments.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Has the US Government been Spying on All Americans?
The US government has reportedly been indiscriminately spying on their citizens according to whistleblowers
From the RT.com (hat tip Sovereign Man) [italics original]
In an interview broadcast on Current TV’s “Viewpoint” program on Monday, former NSA Technical Director William Binney commented on the government’s policy of blanket surveillance, alongside colleagues Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, the agency's respective former Senior Official and Senior Analyst.
The interview comes on the heels of a series of speeches given by Binney, who has quickly become better known for his whistleblowing than his work with the NSA. In their latest appearance this week, though, the three former staffers suggested that America’s spy program is much more dangerous than it seems.
In an interview with “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer, Drake said there was a “key decision made shortly after 9/11, which began to rapidly turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet blanket electronic surveillance.”
These powers have previously defended by claims of national security necessity, but Drake says that it doesn’t stop there. He warns that the government is giving itself the power to gather intel on every American that could be used in future prosecutions unrelated to terrorism.
“When you open up the Pandora’s Box of just getting access to incredible amounts of data, for people that have no reason to be put under suspicion, no reason to have done anything wrong, and just collect all that for potential future use or even current use, it opens up a real danger — and to what else what they could use that data for, particularly when it’s all being hidden behind the mantle of national security,” Drake said.
Although Drake’s accusations seem astounding, they corroborate allegations made by Binney only a week earlier. Speaking at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York City earlier this month, Binney addressed a room of thousands about the NSA’s domestic spying efforts. But in a candid interview with journalist Geoff Shively during HOPE, the ex-NSA official candidly revealed the full extent of the surveillance program.
“Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing. So the government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it's a very dangerous process,” Binney said.
Drake and Binney’s statements follow the revelation that law enforcement officers collected cell phone records on 1.3 million Americans in 2011. More news articles are emerging every day suggesting that the surveillance of Americans — off-the-radar and under wraps — is growing at an exponential rate.
If true, then the US has progressively been marching into a police state.