Walmart has reportedly closed a smattering of its stores across the country citing "plumbing problems". The mega-retailer's media cohorts are reporting the mystery but won't say that the closures coincide with stores which have been hardest hit by labor unrest. It turns out, Walmart has opted to close its doors where employees have most successfully organized "Fight For Fifteen" actions. By suddenly closing the stores Walmart preempted further organizing and punished the upstarts by laying off all the store's employees with only a few hours notice. Walmart claims the plumbing problems will take a half year to fix. I think what remains of Walmart's workforce has been given a wonderful opportunity to retaliate in kind. What of these plumbing problems? Are Walmart's other stores showing signs of plumbing problems too? Might a larger wave of plumbing problems be induced? I think Walmart's union-busting advisors have loosed a weapon that will prove more consequential for Walmart than its wage-slave victims. Foisted on their own petard, I believe is the expression. Petard in this case is substituted by toilette. Walmart customers can even get in on the act, err, investigation, for free. Come to Walmart empty handed, find a bag of cement in the hardware aisle, proceed to the public bathroom, flush it presto plumbing problem. Citizen plumbers can turn this plumbing mystery into a plumbing thriller.
Tag: Walmart
Walmart Black Friday Strike Protests
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS- Walmart Express, 3636 N. Broadway, Lakeview
Walmart: Strike you goddamn morons!
Finally, finally Walmart slave-wage workers are marching, on their off hours, picketing their stores. Finally. It's tempting to get out there and hold signs in support, but where were they when we were protesting Walmart ourselves? The pathetic Walmart "associates" couldn't be convinced we weren't jeopardizing the source of their livelihoods. Except their jobs aren't livelihoods. Even as Walmarts in more and more cities face a growing uprising, I'm not convinced that our local workforce can wise up beyond agitating to medicate their lives with pot or jumping at the chance to scab each other's part-time hours.
Facebook advertisers can repost “likes” in your name so you don’t have to
Users of Facebook are accustomed to seeing friends listed in right-column ads, mentioned liking such-and-such a brand, or two or three. It's understood that those friends at some point visited the brand's page and clicked "like", permitting that company, Amazon for example, to pay Facebook to advertise the "like" as frequently as it wishes. It's also understood that when one "likes" a page, a post is simultaneously shared to herald the act and appears on the user's wall unless that feature is turned off. What you may not know is that your initial timeline post can be reposted, in the center-thread, at the advertiser's whim, perhaps limited to when you're online, perhaps triggered when you log on, but not logged on your wall and thus unseen by you. Does it also boost the number of people pretended to be "talking about" that brand? Are 372,523 talking about Starbucks? That could include "you", repeating yourself ad-maybe-nauseum. Or maybe, for a premium, your original "like" is not shared simultaneously, but doled out as each of your friends comes online to guarantee one hundred percent reach. Who knows. As personalized as we know the ads can be, no doubt the algorithm is not calculated for clarity. Do you remember which pages you've liked or not? Perhaps you clicked like to be able to comment on the page, or to monitor a monopolistic miscreant, or perhaps it was before Wells Fargo, Bank of America, or British Petroleum became persons and not-so-grata. Maybe now you'd rather not be said to like Chevron, Monsanto, or killer Coke. You can review your "likes" under INFO, then INTERESTS. Or you can check the list below. On each page, see if beside the LIKE button, you have the option to unlike, for example, Facebook. Here's a quick list of corporate brands which have fallen from fashion among those with fashion sense. You can click on each to check whether you are counted among their unpaid repeated endorsers. Nike Gap Fox News CNN AT&T Caterpillar Disney Walmart Target K-mart Toys-r-us Lowes Ikea Home Depot And the fat merchants: McDonalds Burger King Hardees Carl's Jr Wendy's Taco Bell KFC Pizza Hut Sonic Chick-fil-A Jimmy Johns Subway Outback Dairy Queen Dunkin Donuts Krispy Kreme
Walmart ‘boxes’ lack any sense of ‘integrity’
___Walmart keeps telling its subordinate hourly employees that they need 'integrity' if they are to be allowed to continue to work for Walmart. But how does Walmart itself at its upper levels of management do in the integrity department? Let's look at Walmart in Mexico, for example, where the company is enmeshed in scandal about its corrupt interactions with public officials- Wal-Mart silenced Mexican bribe inquiry ___ Where's the 'integrity'? Well one might say, Walmart is primarily a US outfit, but that's no longer really the case. Go to Walmart Corporate International and check out their huge international outfit, being largest and most dominant in places like Mexico, Chile, and England, and hoping to rapidly expand inside China! Can hardly wait to hear about a Chairman Mao Walmart Store to open up! Wouldn't that be a gas? Walmart everywhere simply lacks INTEGRITY. The owners hate the workers that make them rich even, but hardly ever say such directly. The Walton family certainly is not really a model for integrity in that way. For example, how much have they helped destroy urban planning in this country through their onslaught against having decent and viable public zoning laws in place? Where's the INTEGRITY, Walmart? It's just not there. Your workers would like to live in decent urban communities even as you Waltons live on your landed estates, but you helped destroy all that for them. Where's your INTEGRITY about what you did?
Now MoJo throws Apple critic Mike Daisey under the bus in their exposé of Walmart Chinese shadow factories
Mother Jones is next to discredit Playwright Mike Daisey for his dramatization of Apple's supply line abuses in China, right in the byline of Andy Kroll's piece on Walmart's shadow factory system in China, which they call their, haha, "fiction-free investigation". THEN THEY FALL FOR A GREEN INDUSTRY-STRENGTH CLEANER! MoJo asks: Are Walmart's Chinese Factories as Bad as Apple's? and never really answers. Instead it's a behind the greenwash exposé, and what else is new. AND Kroll falls for a Walmart PR contractor who adversaries of sustainability hacks recognize as the archetypal intelligence fiend, the federal witness protection program hair club for men, biker, treehugger alias. This time in the persona of "Terry Foecke (pronounced FAKE-ee), a consultant spearheading Walmart's factory energy efficiency program in China. In a lobby full of Westerners, Foecke cut an unmistakable figure—thickly bearded, 6-foot-3, with a broad belly and hip square-framed glasses. He was an unlikely Walmart ally: a soft-spoken, almost professorial progressive who quoted George Bernard Shaw and told me he spoke out against runaway consumerism at his Unitarian church back home in Minnesota." Um, yeah Andy. Fake-ee.
Say goodbye to 2011 and bad bad Walmart
OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- Occupy Walmart continues today at Platte and Chelton. JOIN US. Why Walmart -- where have you been?! If the 99% can come together on anything, it's against capitalism's most despotic retailer. Judging by the support from traffic passing on Platte Avenue, 99% agree, this new year will not sustain such a greedy business model. Here are photos from Friday's protest. Friday's action attracted four CSPD cruisers right from the start, followed by periodic drive-bys, videotaping and parking nearby. When the popo try to intimidate us, we occupy them. SATURDAY UPDATE: High winds were a challenge for everything but Jack's snare drum.
PICS: Together we can fight Walmart
OCS- There may be OCCUPIES less recalcitrant, but few more scenic.
Why I Occupy Walmart
MY ENDGAME in occupying Walmart is to rally union members to the Occupy Movement. Union members, not unions. Taking the fight straight to Walmart, one of the most despicable, exploitative despoilers of the world's people and economy is something the big unions should have been doing thirty years ago. Maybe their members will finally see that they've been sold up the river by their supposed representatives. That neither local nor national unions are expressing solidarity with us on the sidewalks of these super centers is proof that the only wages and working conditions they've been protecting are their own.
Tent monster who occupied Walmart
OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- The occupation continued this weekend at the Walmart on Powers & Palmer Park. We took special care not to make shoppers feel guilty, who'd already turned in, or coming out of the store, hurriedly checking items off their to-do lists. Instead we directed our BOYCOTT WALMART banners at the rush of consumers driving by, many of whom gave us honks of support.
PICS: Occupy Walmart 12/12 First of our Twelve Walmart Days of Christmas
OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- Occupy CSprings occupied the Walmart on 8TH STREET for our first of 12 Walmart Days of Christmas. Slogans you can use for your own superstore boycott: WALMART: ROLLING BACK UNION GAINS, ALWAYS -- WALMART KILLS MOM & POPS -- SHOP LOCAL, NOT WALMART and HEALTHCARE FOR CHRISTMAS. Up next: POWERS BLVD! More posters: WALMART SUCKS THE LIFE OUT OF OUR TOWN -- WALMART: BAD JOBS, BAD KARMA -- WALMART: LOW WAGES, NO HEALTH CARE -- DON'T SUPPORT SLAVE LABOR -- BOYCOTT WALMART: COMPANY STORE OF THE GLOBAL PLANTATION. Photos by Roger, Robin, Loring and OCS.
On #D12 #OccupyCS takes on Walmart, company store of the global plantation.
OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- Showing the flag today on the Occupy corner of Acacia Park in advance of tomorrow's 12/12 WALMART BOYCOTT. You might well ask why we passed on a sunny, pre-Chrismas shopping weekend to picket the 8th Street Walmart on a MONDAY. Easy. Our boycott is timed with other OCCUPY actions on #D12, the shutdown of Oakland's port by #OccupyOakland and #OccupyDenver's blocking of the Loveland Colorado Walmart distribution center. Solidarity. So we thought we'd dry our new signs today and recruit for tomorrow's event. The cops came early. In the interest of FULL DISCLOSURE, here's the entirety of what was happening on the corner today. Something Native American, related to Hispanic American culture, involving to a troubling degree a number of Catholic clergy, having to do with what, the first occupation? The motorcycle cops were there to escort their procession along Tejon.
Bad News for the CorpoFascists… Cali woman gasses other shoppers
at a WalMart, scuffling over an X-Box. All the Corporate Goodies in one bag here, pepper spray, Capitalism, WalMart, Microsoft, greed, all in one fell swoop. On the main YouTube video of UC Davis Occupy being peppersprayed, 30 thousand comments and most from a tiny minority of the viewers, Right Wing Retards cheering for violence against their Fellow Americans. Now the Corporate Whores are seeing what their system is promoting in a different light, and I bet none of them like what's happening. They'll try, probably, to blame Occupy, Liberals in general, Hippies, pot smoking, everything other than the greed their corporate Masters need to justify the very existence of Capitalism At another Wally World, a shooting. Merry Christmas you stupid stupid bastards.
Robot Workers
There's a commercial for a well known insurance company that has a woman saying "To save money I enrolled my kids in a day care center run by robots" And one for a hamburger chain which has a robot trying to eat one of their sandwiches "Machines can't eat them, machines shouldn't make them". Noble sentiments that, but for the fact that an auto insurer and fellow earth-rapists like a Fast Food restaurant really aren't doing much for humanity or the rest of the species on the planet either. Like self-checkout machines at stores. Designed to maximize profits by simply not paying humans. Some of them, like the ones at WalMart, go even further and bitch at you if you don't scan or put money in fast enough. Service With A Snarl. Meanwhile the WalMart franchise won yet another worker lawsuit where they fired a man who was hired to do another job, got sentenced to the Greeter Job but, he had suffered a stroke and could not raise the corners of his mouth in a smile so they fired him. It's a diseased system. Knowing it's also a failing system is small comfort, because they'll take the Real People down with them. When a corporate entity says it puts workers first or customers first, the corporate lies through its inhuman teeth. It's sad to see a very customer oriented industry going the way of total rudeness, both in hiring/firing the human beings who do exactly ALL of the work to put money into the bank accounts of the McCorporate McEmpire. And to the people who shop at their stores, pay good money to receive shitty service and shitty merchandise, with fewer and fewer choices of places to shop that aren't wholly owned by the very tiny minority who own the vast majority of the wealth. On the other hand, the Electronic Bitch robot checker actually DOES show the innate nastiness of the Corporate "person". Of course, it's "crazy" or "stupid" to complain about such treatment, we know that because we have asinine comments posted from time to time praising the Capitalist system in the only way possible, not by cheering for any inherent goodness in the system (for there is none), but by making ad hominem attacks against any who dares to criticize. Soylent Green is PEOPLE!
Ikea factory workers organized by IAM, who will unionize the retail employees?
Ikea factory workers in Danville, Virginia, voted to unionize. Did they do it alone? No, they joined the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (Upside for Ikea, its customers can pretend their prefab furniture is tooled by rocket scientists). If Ikea retail employees follow suit, maybe there's hope for organizing the poverty-wage employees of America's largest private retailers: Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, so what current retail unions are recruiting their membership to flier offending locations, circulate among the workers and initiate organizing campaigns?
Store-bought patriotism and the futility of trying to shame the shameless
If you want the image in full-size, it's more than 1400x800. See, I'm not a flag-waver. I DO however know at least Some of the flag code. One is that you're only supposed to display a flag in an environment consistent with the design. That does NOT include displaying a cloth flag from a Motorized Vehicle. The stress from the slipstream-wind will rip it, fray it and eventually break it off. One excuse the faux-patriot, real jackoff had for not retrieving his $1.93 WalMart special store bought "patriotism" might have been that it was lost in the rain. Which is TWO violations for the price of one. Maybe he has one of the Zero Tolerance jobs where the boss would fire him if he took the couple of minutes to stop, retrieve his Fake Patriotism and was thus two minutes late.Who knows? I found one buried half way in Mud at the entrance to the Employee Parking Lot at Bell-Textron in Ft Worth, where all these Super Fakeriots who made their living off other people dying, (war industry) passed it by every day for a week. One I found in Woodland Park in a ratt's nest alongside 24. And knowing FULL WELL that these same Jackoffs would wave it in my face and try to shame me by their fake display of even faker patriotism, because I don't support their war. There's a phrase, "war of convenience", how about a "patriotism of convenience"? Grow some REAL patriotism. Stand up to the Warmongering freaks who are dragging America into the same muddy ditch I found the flag in today. A flag is for one purpose, to allow your comrades to know where you are and not fire on your position. That's why they came into existence. Some flags are designated as "all weather". If you're in a forward post and need your flag to identify your position, day and night and in all weather, that's what you use. Ships at Sea don't even strike their colors when they make port. In Maritime Law you're required to fly a flag designating which nation holds the registration of the ship. I know it's impossible to get further from a shore or other national boundary in America than Colorado Springs. Actually Salinas Kansas. If somebody has made it all the way to Colorado Springs and still doesn't realize he's in the U.S. is too stupid to educate, and no amount of flag waving is going to do him any good. I don't say the idolatrous pledge of allegiance, an oath to a graven image, part of it being "one nation under God" meaning they're blaming GOD for their war crimes.
King Soopers v Unions, just a thought.
I've noticed lately they've got signs up all around the stores saying "Our People Make The Difference" and similar themes, to the effect that they value the workers, really they (say they) do. So why the continual Big Scary Hassle regarding any contract negotiations? I saw something on TV the other day about "How It's Made -- Awards" and the deal was about those plastic Award trophies that large corporations give out at the end of the year... instead of, you know, cash bonuses. I always prefer artwork, like small wallet sized engravings of Dead Presidents, just a personal note. I mean seriously, you bust your balls to make money for The Corporation, and put thousands (or more) in extra profits, above and beyond your stated quota, into the pockets of the Shareholders and they give you a plastic globe with "You Go!" laser inscribed on it that cost The Corporation maybe $20. If you're lucky they don't misspell your name. WalMart puts your picture on the wall. Oh My. That's really an expensive memorial to your service. If you notice the Portrait Studio at the front of the store near the McDumbass "restaurant" where they sell portrait grade photographs for about a buck apiece for the big ones and maybe a nickel apiece for the wallet size... the ones they put on the wall... It could be downright depressing. Scott Adams had his Anti-Hero "Dilbert" lampoon the practice, his boss with the pointy hair put a piece of pocket lint on his shirt and called it a Warm Fuzzy, in recognition of his contributions to The Company. The most telling and realistic memorial to how The Company feels about the Workforce is the maybe 8 open checkout lanes, out of 34 or so, at Wally World, no matter how many customers there are the number of closed lanes relative to open ones is like 2 to one at least. And half the open lanes will be Self Checkout. That and your job interview involves typing your information into a computer.
Is Walmart trademark “Price Rollback” nostalgic for better shopping days?
What is a Walmart "price ROLLBACK" but a way to take credit for sale pricing present and past? You generate goodwill for deals you're advertising, and buttress customer loyalty for savings you offered in bygone times, whether you did or not. Do "rollbacks" recall fond bargain-hunting nostalgia or are they marketer-conjured false memories? By implication likewise, where are the price rollups? Will Walmart's idiot customer base ever hold the covert price tag markups against the evil retail giant? Is "rollback" really a trademarked synonym for the usual markdown? Here's what I really want to know: is the veracity of Walmart's claim to legacy values enforceable? Wonder Bread didn't build bodies 24 ways, if Walmart whatzits didn't sell for $1.53, ever, then they can't say it. Fire sale, liquidating, dumping is acceptable.
You can’t even trust Goobers anymore
By "goobers" I mean Goober Peas. That staple of American Diet in more ways than you can possibly imagine unless you're allergic to them, Once Again being recalled due to bacteria that exist naturally in the digestive tracts of Carnivores. In this case, like the LAST recall, which was only last year, about this time, it's Salmonella. How DOES a bacterium that would ordinarily be found in Dog Poo and in the contaminated meat from improperly slaughtered and mass-production butchered animals (chickens mostly) and from SlaughterFactory companies where the same machines and the same Almost-machine-people employed at the processing plants have to handle the pieces of dead chickens also have to handle the pieces of dead cows, pigs, (who are, like chickens, omnivorous) etc.... How would it get into VEGETABLE Kingdom products like spinach, tomatoes, peppers, Peanut Butter, peanut flour (that last is used in a ghastly huge list of products, I wouldn't be much surprised to find it in Toothpaste next)? Droppings from "Illegal Alien" migrant farm workers, as suggested in the spinach and tomato mayhem? Perhaps the droppings from Tent City but that's another over-hyped non-story... How about this, (which is far and away the most common scenario): Contaminated bins and contaminated machines and processing tables at the Mega Corporate Food Processing Centers? And their delivery vehicles. And places like WalMart and McDonalds and those who follow their corporate model (more than half the Corporations is America) regarding people who have the misfortune of being employed by those Jerkoffs, and not getting paid or even in some cases Unpaid sick leave when they have infectious diseases. The "Migrant Workers shitting in the fields" is easy to believe, (except it wasn't the root cause or even a secondary, nor yet again a Tertiary cause) because it's a backward admission from the Corporations that they still use the old Slave Plantation Model of "how to treat farm laborers". They treat ALL their workers like that. What's distressing is that they treat the PEOPLE who handle food the exact same way. Like to eat at Mickey Dee, drink your favorite cup o' joe at Starbucks? Remember that they FIRE employees who take more than 5 consecutive sick days. That their workweek is all seven days with shortened hours so the company doesn't have to pay overtime. Where you can get fired for actually working overtime, because the "experts" at Corporate Headquarters determined that you could have completed your Underpaid Tasks in the allotted time. If you don't take bathroom breaks or stuff like that. Where if you catch something like Influenza, and you're still contagious 6 days after the symptoms disappear. Where they make boastful commercials like the Halls "Drill Sergeant" commercial, which they've re-introduced, where a Food Worker is encouraged to keep working despite having Respiratory Problems... They've got one like that where a Rambo-Lookalike pops in to a different store. Because "only a wussy wimp liberal would refrain from working around PEOPLE and/or their FOOD while packing a contagious ailment that might spread to the PEOPLE who buy the products
Breaking News!!
News 5 just gave WalMart and Microsoft, two very wealthy companies owned by the wealthiest people in America, FREE advertising. Disguised as News Reports. Said Wally World is Slashing prices and announcing that "most" of the testers for Windows 7 (who got their operating system free from Microsoft, a $100 gift, in other words they're PAID to say nice things about it) liked it. Gee, ya reckon? Meanwhile everybody who PAID for advertising time on the "News" just got ripped off. This equates with Fox running free advertisement for Corporations disguised as News. The Fox people had a several hours long every day for a Week OUTRAGE! segment over MoveOn.org being given a discount on a full-page newspaper advertisement. How much would you bet they're going to do a similar OUTRAGE! rant for this particular Rip-off scam?
Illegal Alien costume has a Green Card
It's called the Illegal Alien Costume, available at Target, Walmart, et al. And look-- he's tendering a Green Card! That means he's overqualified to work the night shift cleaning super center floors. Immigrant rights activists are calling for the retailers to pull the costumes. No human being is illegal, certainly not #1 enemy of the state, which most Americans associate the Gitmo jumpsuit. Halloween party planners say, lighten up! Political Correctness goes too far to ask us to show sensitivity for the thousands of undocumented workers being rounded up by ICE, incarcerated indefinitely in privately operated Wackenhut detention centers, who may or may not be wearing orange Guantanamo prison garb. When Abu Ghraib type snapshots emerge from these DHS funded facilities, next year's Halloween xenophobic gag may be for adults only.
I recognize the voice…
The female voice on the Tea-Party/Konservative Korporate Klan commercials, like “Health Care- Wrong for Colorado, wrong for America, Wrong for YOU”, “Energy Regulation, Wrong for Colorado, Wrong for America, Wrong for YOU!”, “Thinking for yourself – Wrong for Colorado, Wrong for America, Wrong for YOU!” And Demagogues you to Call Senator Udall, tell him not to do anything for anybody but the Corporate Elite Masters. (I can use Demagogue as a verb. I’m from Texas where we make up new words and grammatical rules as we go along. Get used to it) ?It’s the same bitch that does the “Live Crappier, Save Nothing- WalMart” voice-overs. Man, that must suckalot. Her entire career is voiceovers for the Tea Party and other Corporate Whore organizations.
Support Anti-American Domestic Terrorism – Buy a teastained Flag!
From Fake Warrior ChickenHawk Norris! Yes, for about $80 bucks you can buy a Made in China WalMart Flag with tea spilled on it. This from a Martial Arts Professional Athlete who got out of the Draft on a Rich Kid Technicality, just like Bush, Cheney, Rove, Bill O'Reilly, the entire cast and crew of the FORMER Terror Regime... then proceeded to make a Propaganda Movie Career supporting War and glorifying the VietNam War in particular. Just like John Wayne did. Make money off Human Suffering and Shed Human Blood. Just, you know, as long as it's not THEIR suffering or THEIR blood. Now he's making money promoting Murdering Americans for your fun and HIS fun and Profit. That and his party lost and there's now a Black president. Make-a-Buck Norris once again promoting KILLING in the name of God and the name of Patriotism, like his portrayal and glorification on TV of the Murderous Racist Texas Rangers. Promoting the MURDER by Corporate Death Panel of even such Americans who can afford Health "insurance". Promoting the MURDER by Klan/Minutemen Lynching such as what happened in Kentucky, MURDER of AMERICAN CHILDREN by his fellow Hate Freak Extremists such as Adkisson trying to Murder the children in the Unitarian Church in Knoxville, von Brunn attempting to shoot up a museum, the RACIST killings in Aravaca Arizona, by his Minuteman Fellow Travelers. Typical Tea Party Minuteman BITCH. By the way, the Tea Party nationwide, and that includes Colorado Springs, are equally as Guilty of those Murders. They stirred up the Hatred against their Fellow Americans. And they're still doing it.
Speaking of Halls…
Remember this? The whackadoodledoo Corporate Sucks who laughed so hard about this, protesting that it was only "harmless and funny" for Wally World to force their Company Slaves to work even while sick with symptoms of FLU... you remember the flu, right? Deadly, very contagious.yeah... THAT flu. But apparently there's no release of any kind of policy statement from WalMart that says the Manager Drones can't fire or dock the wages of the Regular Associate Drones for refusing to handle the food of the general public while contagious. They did pull the commercial. Maybe those of you who shop at WalMart for your food should remember this.
Attack Drones: Freedom is so fucked
Armchair freedom fighters like me count on there remaining some parity between the forces of oppression and man's inexorable drive to be free. Masses can repel the few, nonviolence can shame the hesitant, terrorism can haunt the genteel, IEDs can pick off the occupiers, training can dispatch the sentries, but how to overcome automatons? We've confronted impregnable drones in scifi movies, and now such drones have become reality. They're bits of nothing in the air really, but a literal boatload of firepower has got their back. The Economist reports that drones can monitor the activity of shoeboxes from an altitude of near-space, beyond the range of an RPG fired from a hot air balloon. A drone's vulnerability remains its communications channels, but even intercepting those is outside the realm of non-military technology. While drones reduce the exposure of real soldiers to harm's way, they increase a military force's effectiveness. Drones are lauded as cheaper to operate as conventional jet fighters, but in reality their functionality draws on greater resources. The Economist writes of a drone the size of a corporate jet called a Global Hawk, which requires a staff of 20 to 30 to operate. Many more than would be necessary inside a C130 gunship, but of course, almost all of them manning new killing devices. So long as the empire has an unlimited budget to spend, Freedom Fighters are fucked, and terrorists will be the only recourse. The only target available to the adversary of a drone, is the command center which controls it. Be it in America, or a distant military base, that's where the enemy will have to strike. Or the American public will have to renounce the budget which affords this technology. You may not be bothered by the notion that remote-operated drones can monitor human activities and rain destruction upon them when appropriate. The old, "what have I to fear if I'm doing nothing wrong?" Wait until you are the wrong side of the oppressors. Coca Cola kills union organizers in Colombia. Walmart would probably like to kill you in their parking lot if you are leaving with a shopping cart filled insufficiently relative to you debit card balance. They already know it, but a drone in their hands will give them the ability to find you.