Tag Archives: drones

A Tangled Web

Leave a reply

It has emerged that the NSA has been intercepting phone and text messages by the billions, including listening in on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s iPhone. Obama has apologized to Merkel and promised to never do it again, but can he be believed? I think not. He likes the NSA and what they’re doing. Privately he says they’re the only government agency that really listens.

Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to receive
All mail and text from mobile phones
Across the world so that our drones
May climb aloft with good Intel
A thing we can’t get from Ma Bell
The down side is we cross our friends
Who then demand we make amends
Obama calls and quite contrite
Insists he’ll set the matter right
Then with a smile hangs up the phone
And orders up another drone

Airships

Leave a reply

Count von Zeppelin flies again. The Department of Defense is sending drones to Afghanistan that can take pictures of an area half the size of Manhattan.  Airships that stay aloft for weeks, taking full color panoramic 3D pictures of vast expanses of trackless waste, all without human intervention.  Or maybe it’s more Jules Verne than Count von Zeppelin.  Or maybe James Thurber and his immortal Walter Mitty, captaining the giant airship in his daydreaming imagination.

 

 

In the Thirties we had Thurber

Not to mention Edna Thurber

Walter Mitty had his dreams but don’t we all

Mitty’s daydreams were fantastic

Always fanciful, elastic

Flying zeppelins to foreign ports of call

Now we don’t need Walter Mitty

We can photograph a city

Seeing cars collide and people come and go

Watching vendors on the corners

Tracking down illegal forners

Just downloading it would make a TV show

So no w thanks to old James Thurber

We can spy upon our nerber

And we don’t need goofy guys like Walter Mitty

We’ve got airships now we’re riding

Leaving us no place for hiding

When they turn on us they’re showing us no pity

Yes right now I know they’re after

If you please just hold the laughter

Guys in robes and turbans hiding in the bush

But with cameras this pervasive

The Feds will be more invasive

Is Obama testing in the Hindu Kush?

Is the TSA on order

To fly Gorgon on the border

Keeping track of where you are and where you’ve been?

Is a fence the next big issue

‘Round each city lest they miss you

Fences not to keep them out but keep you in

 

My novels on Amazon, paperback and Kindle, can be found HERE

 

  

A Pattern Of Life

Leave a reply

The CIA now has the capability of tracking enemy combatants by the manner in which they spend their days. The CIA calls this The Pattern Of Life. No one is safe from the drones and the satellites. Lead an ordinary, everyday existence and you are safe, but repeatedly do something that raises a red flag, and the next drone you don’t see will have a missile for you. For now it is only used in Afghanistan, but who knows what the future holds? Luckily for me I don’t have a life, so I don’t have a pattern.

 

 

I fear not the drones

For my pattern of life

Is completely flatlined

You can just ask my wife

I sit at my desk

Little mouse in my hand

Staring at a flat screen

While the hour glass sand

Flows so swiftly it seems

That the days turn to night

With a wild rushing wind

Strong enough to give fright

No I fear not the drone

Nor the missiles it brings

For the CIA strikes

Only poor men, not kings

I sleep well at night

I know I’m not alone

For the UAVs know

That I too am a drone

 

 

Grabbing Some Sky

Leave a reply

It has been revealed that Iran has provided to terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan a handy and inexpensive device called a SkyGrabber, and trained them in its use. SkyGrabber can download pictures from American drones, thereby allowing terrorists to track the drones as the drones fly around tracking them. In theory this will enable Commander Ahmed to see his house on his laptop and thereby know a drone has him in its sights. There has been much wringing of hands over this revelation, with cries for investigations and screams that the drones should not broadcast in the clear. This misses the point. If Ahmed decides to stay in his house, he dies in his house. If he jumps in his car and runs for it, he dies in his car. 

 

 

A drone’s a bee that has no sting

And gathers him no honey

Or parasite who knows one thing

Like spending others’ money

Now sound can be a kind of drone

Like buzzing or like humming

Or talking in a dull like moan

Or fixed incessant drumming

Another drone, like bees, can fly

Much higher though, and stealthy

They fly in loops around the sky

And if you’re seen? Not healthy

The terrorist’s a stingless drone

A parasite who’s humming

And just because he taps our phone

He won’t know when it’s coming