Good day and welcome to DKos Asheville. This is the weekly DKos Asheville open thread for Saturday, March 7th. We try to get together every weekend to share with everyone what we're all up to in Western North Carolina and beyond. We hope this group serves to invigorate us locally and regionally here on Daily Kos, building on the sense of community that's grown through our online engagement. DKos Asheville can give us all a better sense of connection, a better understanding of who we stand with, work with, and share with. We hope this community can help leverage our orange passion for progressive politics to elect more and better Democrats.
For our next meet up on April 25-26 we will be returning to the theme of our first meet up on 4/20/2013: Meeting, spending time focusing on community and networking and less time with an agenda driven schedule. And this time we will be taking the meet up on the road to Roanoke Virginia in April! Please sign up by dropping me a kosmail. For more information, please drop over to this DKos Asheville diary.
I was listening to our friend Jeff Messer's radio show yesterday on 880 The Revolution when local activist and citizen investigator Barry Summers called into the show. He talked at length about his exploration into the recent development of miltarized drone use in civilian airspace. The list of actors was alarming but unfortunately not surpsrising.
Late in 2013, I was reading a press release from a local state legislator, which publicized his being named chair of a new NC House committee. At the bottom, he listed all the other committees he was currently on, and just on a whim, I compared it to the official list of committees on his legislative website. There was exactly one missing from the press release: “House Committee on Unmanned Aircraft Systems”. That got me curious, and that’s how I eventually came to be the only member of the public sitting in an NCGA hearing room full of military, law enforcement, and drone industry representatives, and being stared at by an angry NSA contractor. Yikes…
Please read Barry's post at
Scrutiny Hooligans, Asheville's great political blog. His article is a real eye opener and traces the history and current state of the military to civilian transition of the U.S. Air Force's drone fleet. It includes images of drones and photos of drone testing sites. Well worth your time if you find yourself one day wondering how that Predator flying over your neighborhood got there.
Thanks for reading, please stop by next Saturday for an update on our upcoming meet up in Roanoke Virginia. We have added several MAYBEES to the attendee list and we are getting excited about this wonderful opportunity to share some Asheville love and activism in Roanoke.
The weather in WNC is delightful today and begins a warming trend that I'm sure most of us in these parts are very happy about. Outdoor chores are at the top of my list, how about you?