2011-10-13

Stop the Pentagon's 51st State!

Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 18:37:53 -0400
From: codepink@mail.democracyinaction.org
September 27, 2011
Stop the Pentagon's 51st State!

NM / CO Residents: Turn out to OPPOSE Air Force Special Operations' plans to militarize northern New Mexico and southern Colorado airspace.

Allies everywhere: tweet your protest to #stopthe51state or email them to mailto:news@not1moreacre.net?subject=I%20want%20to%20go%20to%20the%20meeting%21%20

(For times and locations of meeting times click here.)

Air Force Special Operations has announced 17 public meetings to present an inadequate impact study of their plan to militarize over 94,000 square miles of civilian airspace for high-tech lethal aviation assets maneuvering as low as 200' above-ground-level. The plan covers all of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The first two meetings, announced only last week, were held last night in Taos and the night before in Albuquerque.   In Taos, over two hundred people turned out to oppose the plan.

 The Air Force Special Operations proposal is part of a Pentagon plan to establish the largest Joint Forces Training Center for robotic warfare in the world. See map at http://codepink.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=hEZlni0GdKfT7Z6bx8d1ZCyvIXNIfRhy. (VN:  Robotic warefare against whom???  Like Libya, against unarmed protesting civilians in the United States???  A much less subtle depopulation plan?)

In 2010 Cannon Special Operations Command in Clovis, NM proposed to establish a low altitude tactical navigation ("LATN") area covering over 60 million acres of land in the civilian region for Special Operations Forces ("SOF") manned and unmanned aerial weapons systems training including the Osprey CV-22.

The Osprey was terminated by the Department of Defense in 1989 as a failure but has been continued by Congress. Each Osprey CV-22 costs $76 million to build and $11,000 per flying hour to operate. The Pentagon currently has 450 more Ospreys on order.

Air Force Special Operations is aggressively moving ahead in tandem with Army at its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in southeastern Colorado to militarize the region with multibillion dollar high-tech research, development and training programs dedicated to "modernized" warfare including manned and unmanned weaponized aerial vehicles (drones); hand-held drones; unattended ground sensors; helicopters; aviation assets including CV-22 and C-130 aircraft; persistent surveillance (RAID) systems; advanced precision mortars; human terrain teams; tracked ground vehicles and munitions linked together by extensive communications and information networks.

Stop the Pentagon's 51st State!

                                                                                     
Meetings to attend in NEW MEXICO:
Española: Wed., 9/21; Santa Fe: Thurs., 9/22; Raton: Tue., 10/4; Farmington: Fri., 10/15; Santa Rosa: Mon., 10/17; Las Vegas: Tue., 10/18; Clayton: Wed., 10/19; Tucumcari: Thu., 10/20

and

Meetings to attend in COLORADO:
Alamosa: 10/3; Pueblo: 10/5; Colorado Springs: 10/6; Aspen: 10/10; Durango: 10/11; Montrose: 10/12; Gunnison: 10/13.


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