It's not a UFO: Tucson tourism/spy balloon company plans Navajo Hopi tourism and views from stratosphere

Arizona-based company World View Enterprises aims to start lofting paying customers on stratospheric balloon rides in 2024, as depicted in this artist's illustration. (Image credit: World View Enterprises)


Photo courtesy World View

Tucson company plans $50,000 rides into stratosphere below elite hot air balloon, including tourism packages on Navajo Hopi lands. In partnership with an international defense contractor, it has already launched intelligence flights over Grand Canyon.

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, August 16, 2023

The hot air balloon over the Grand Canyon today belongs to World View in Tucson, which plans to sell $50,000 rides into the stratosphere next year. The elite tourism packages include trips to Navajo and Hopi lands, World View said.

It's a mix of tourism rides over the Grand Canyon and other top tourist spots in the world, offered by the company, World View, which has partnered with an international defense contractor, Sierra Nevada Corp.

Sierra Nevada said it is already using the balloons for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. It has launched balloons out of Page fulfilling a contract for the U.K. Defense Ministry, the company said.

Forest Protectors Arrested at Fairy Creek

Forest defenders were arrested on Tuesday at Fairy Creek Watershed on Vancouver Island, Canada, northwest of Seattle. They are protecting the old-growth forest from logging by Teal Cedar Products. Still from Twitter video https://twitter.com/i/status/1691545661777539074

Forest Protectors Arrested at Fairy Creek

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, August 16, 2023

VANCOUVER ISLAND, Canada -- Three forest protectors were arrested on Tuesday protecting the old-growth forests west of Victoria, as Canada continues to target Native people with police operatives protecting the interest of destructive industries. The police ops are British Columbia's C-IRG, the Community Industry Response Group.

Mourning the invasion of the militarized police squad who arrested the forest defenders, who were his guests, Pacheedaht First Nation Elder Bill Jones said, "We are at the end times of our great forests."

Democracy Now: Native Hawaiian Noelani Ahia on Loss and Re-Seeding on Maui

More information at Mauna Medic Healers https://www.facebook.com/MaunaMedicHealersHui

Na'Aikane o Maui Cultural Center devastating loss of culture and history

Native Hawaiian Noelani Ahni describes the struggle to bring healing and restoration after the wildfire resulted in widespread loss

Watch Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/11/noelani_ahia_maui_wildfires

In Lahaina, the area in west Maui that is of historical importance to Indigenous people, entire neighborhoods were wiped out by this week’s historic wildfires, including the Na 'Aikane o Maui Cultural Center, which had a massive archive that was lost to the flames. We are joined by Noelani Ahia, a Kanaka Maoli activist, who describes the community's reaction to the destruction of Indigenous cultural documents, art and artifacts. “In the blink of an eye, it was burned to the ground, and all of those things were lost,” says Ahia. She also describes mutual aid efforts now underway and notes, “T​he people on the ground know what the community needs.”

Dangerous Music: Sugar Man, Beatles and Buffy Sainte Marie

Sugar Man, Sixto Rodriquez

How music cracked open the world: Searching for Sugar Man, How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin, and the music of Buffy Sainte Marie

In memory of Sugarman, who passed to the Spirit World this week, we share our article about how music shook the world: Sugarman's sounds opened the door for those locked in Apartheid in South Africa; the Beatles uplifted those who were desperate for freedom in Russia; and the censored words of Buffy Sainte-Marie, describing backstage at Dine' College how the US presidents forced her out of the music business in the US because of her stance against the Vietnam War.

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News

Dec. 16, 2012

Republished Aug. 13, 2023
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Searching for Sugar Man, and How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin, tell the same story, in very different ways. Both films tell how music, forbidden and censored music, transformed lives, instilled hope, moved generations, and brought social change to two countries, South Africa and the Soviet Union.

 

While music instilled the yearning for freedom and liberation in South Africa and the Soviet Union, the leader of the so-called free world, President Lyndon Johnson was putting Cree singer Buffy Sainte Marie, the sound of American Indian resistance, out of business.