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Work 4 Peace,Hold All Life Sacred,Eliminate Violence! I am on my mobile version of the door-to-door, going town-to-town holding readings/gatherings/discussions of my book "But What Can I Do?" This is my often neglected blog mostly about my travels since 9/11 as I engage in dialogue and actions. It is steaming with my opinions, insights, analyses toward that end of holding all life sacred, dismantling the empire and eliminating violence while creating the society we want ALL to thrive in

Friday, July 24, 2009

DRONES: Reach Out and KILL Someone

WHAT are they?
Drones are unmanned airplanes, remotely launched from boats and/or one of our 1000 bases around the world, that are controlled by soldiers sitting in front of computer consoles on the ground at Creech AFB or other locations in the U.S.

WHAT do they do?
Armed with bombs, laser weapons, listening and spying devices, and perhaps even biological and chemical warfare, their purpose is to locate, spy on, and then assassinate human beings.

WHO does this?
The soldier at his console operates a joystick and clicks buttons to assassinate people in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan that he is viewing on his screen in Nevada.

WHO suffers?
For every one “bad guy” - identified as such by the military and pentagon – assassinated, FIFTY civilians (often mostly women and children) are murdered. No arrest, no judge, no jury, no trial, no innocent until proven guilty, just dead.

WHEN did this happen?
In 2001, when we invaded Afghanistan, we had around 100 drones; January 2009 when Obama escalated drone attacks against Pakistan, we had 7000 drones; now there are 12,000. The recently passed $106 billion dollar war ‘supplemental’ included hundreds of millions more dollars for drones

HOW is this happening?
War mongers and profiteers, the military industrial complex partnering with hi-tech computer industry have figured out how to unconscionably and immorally murder people without risk to U.S. American lives, for less money than manned bombers cost thereby further removing the “unpleasantries” of war from the U.S. public.

What WILL I do about this?
Drones are not a matter of “what can I do” but what WILL I do? We have military recruiting stations right here in the Bay Area looking for youth that are skilled videogamers. We have Creech AFB a few hours from us. We have a major manufacturer of DRONES in San Diego