Today is World Humanitarian Day. The UN designated this day to commemorate the 2003 bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq, which killed 22 UN staff members. May they RIP but the UN shouldn’t have been there in the first place giving aid & assistance to an occupying army. The UN boasts that only the US deploys more military personnel than them--though they call their occupying armies, “peacekeepers”. That hasn’t fooled the people of Haiti or DR Congo or elsewhere, who want them out. As of May 2012, they had over 121,000 troops deployed in 17 countries on 4 continents (a 9-fold increase since 1999). They also operate “field missions” (like the one in Baghdad) in 15 other countries. They use right-wing movie stars like Angelina Jolie to peddle their propaganda about humanitarian missions. She took time out from her busy schedule of promoting US intervention in Syria to pose--all color-coordinated & in red carpet makeup--for a full gallery of photos so we can see just how much she cares. This is where her acting skills completely fail her since you can’t peddle war out of one side of your mouth & philanthropy out of the other. It might also be said, philanthropy is no substitute for social transformation--but it sure is another good photo op! (Photo from US Embassy New Delhi)
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