NO DRONE TESTING IN MAINE (OR ANYWHERE ELSE)

Today the newspaper in Brunswick, Maine reported that efforts to turn the closing local Naval Air Station (set to shut down in 2011) into an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flight test training center are moving ahead. The local director of the base redevelopment agency told the paper, “We’re certainly going to look at that,” he said. “They’re looking at that right now, and in an area like this, where it’s much more rural, it makes some more sense for us.”

The article concluded with words from Eric Bleicken from Grifin LLC, the corporation pushing this idea. He told the newspaper, “Let’s say you wanted to track whales along the Maine coast: You put a sensor in a blimp that can stay up there days or weeks at a time, and you simply track the whales and transmit that data to a ship or a computer on land,” he said. “You could be watching for drug traffickers or forest fires. It really opens the door to many, many uses you can’t accomplish today that are non-military. And most of the military uses are non-lethal. There are systems that can fire rockets, but those are the exception, not the rule.”

We are getting reports from all over the world that aerospace corporations are selling drone testing to local communities and in every case are claiming that the drones will be for non-military purposes. These people are lying through their teeth and no one should believe a world of it. Tracking whales - come on......these UAV's are to kill people and to spy on us.

See the full article here

We need to raise $1408.08 for a full page ad in the Brunswick Times Record opposing the testing of drones at the Brunswick Naval Air Station.

Your $20 donation to a signature ad will express your strong opposition to drones in Maine. The language will read something like this:

We strongly oppose turning the Brunswick Naval Air Station into a base or a testing facility for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Drones). These weapons, flown by pilots sitting at consoles in Nevada and New Mexico, kill hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and devastate communities. We the citizen/taxpayers of Maine will be asked to pay to facilitate this technology. We do not want our community involved in this “hands off” way of expanding the war.

People all over the state are worried about this possibility. Please send a check to the address below and include your name, address, town, phone number and e-mail address.

If you cannot afford $20, send what you can.

Come to the Common Ground Fair this weekend and pick up more literature on drones and their role in the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sponsored by Greater Brunswick PeaceWorks, PO Box 652, Brunswick, ME 04011, Christine DeTroy, treasurer.