The Office Worker War.

        Something that we don't read a lot about in our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is the war being waged by America in different parts of the world, by means of drones. This office worker war, where the perpetrators of the violence sit comfortable, miles away from the havoc and destruction that they dispatch on persons unknown, could be, and should be, categorised as war crimes. In war, the combatants are supposed to differentiate from legitimate combatant targets and civilians, drones fail miserably in this respect. 

      A new analysis of the data available to the public about drone strikes, conducted by the human-rights group Reprieve, indicates that even when operators target specific individuals – the most focused effort of what Barack Obama calls “targeted killing” – they kill vastly more people than their targets, often needing to strike multiple times. Attempts to kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people, as of 24 November.

       This type of warfare is the preferred option, as it can be sold to the public easier than boots on the ground, with such illusionary labels as “clean” “surgical” and “accurate”, all lies, as the above information makes clear. It is not going to go away as America has seen a forty fold increase in its drone capacity 

According to the GAO report, "From 2002 to 2010, the number of unmanned aerial systems in DOD's [Department of Defense] inventory has increased about forty fold, from about 170 to 7,500 aircraft." The CIA has over 80 Predator drones, while the Air Force has 468 Predators and the Army has 110, according to an October 2014 War Is Boring piece - based on General Atomics' (company that makes Predator drones) numbers - on drone fleet figures.

       Pakistan has suffered drone strikes on a vast scale which increased massively after Obama came to office. In that country since 2004, over 3,000 people have been killed by drones, with an estimated mere 2% being high ranking combatants and almost 200 were children. America is not at war with Pakistan, but attacks and kills the people of that country on a regular basis.
       What other country regularly bombs another “friendly” country, and gets away with it, with no questions asked by the international community? The same is happening in Yemen and Somalia, attacks on other nations without any declaration of war. This is the new American imperialism, brutal and indiscriminate attacks around the world, all done from the comfort of an office thousands of miles from the death and destruction.

        Of course the UK state is not innocent in this office worker warfare, as of 2013, the UK state has 500 drones.

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Mutual Aid, Not Charity.

         All of us with some political awareness, understand that large charities are not the answer, in this economic system, they are part of the problem. I have no doubt that some do great work, but collecting money from the people, to go and buy goods from the corporate world, is hardly anything approaching mutual aid. They help feed the banks, and big business, as well as paying fat salaries to CEO. They help oil the wheels of commerce with public money. Charities are in fact a symbol of system failure.

        When they do good work, that's a bonus, but mostly the fail miserable through a mixture of red tape, ineptitude, corruption and simply because economics is not the right tool in an emergency. 

         If the following report is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, then this must be the biggest example of that red tape, ineptitude, corruption and economic greed and madness, and further proof, that it is the entire system that has to be scrapped, and a system of true mutual aid built in its place.

This from Truth Out:

      The neighborhood of Campeche sprawls up a steep hillside in Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince. Goats rustle in trash that goes forever uncollected. Children kick a deflated volleyball in a dusty lot below a wall with a hand-painted logo of the American Red Cross.
       In late 2011, the Red Cross launched a multimillion-dollar project to transform the desperately poor area, which was hit hard by the earthquake that struck Haiti the year before. The main focus of the project — called LAMIKA, an acronym in Creole for “A Better Life in My Neighborhood” — was building hundreds of permanent homes.
     Today, not one home has been built in Campeche. Many residents live in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. When it rains, their homes flood and residents bail out mud and water.
      The Red Cross received an outpouring of donations after the quake, nearly half a billion dollars.
       The group has publicly celebrated its work. But in fact, the Red Cross has repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti. Confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, and accounts of a dozen frustrated and disappointed insiders show the charity has broken promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims of success.
      The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six.

Read the full article HERE:

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