Cartoon for May 31

Who else will Barack Obama talk to without preconditions?

Cartoon for May 29

It happens after every natural disaster: images of Jesus survive. It's a miracle--if you believe in a narcissistic God.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: KIDS IN AMERICA(N TORTURE CAMPS)

Why Does the Media Cover Up War Crimes?

In last week's column I cited New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau as a prime example of what ails us: reporters who don't report, a.k.a. journalists who love the government too much.

When Lichtblau found out that the Bush Administration was listening to Americans' phone calls and reading their e-mail, he decided to hold the story. Instead of fulfilling his duty to the Times' readers and running with it, he asked the White House for permission. By the time the NSA domestic surveillance story finally ran, 14 months had passed--and Bush had won the 2004 election.

Again, in a May 17th piece bearing the headline "FBI Gets Mixed Review in Interrogation Report," Lichtblau is running interference for the government. "A new Justice Department report praises the refusal of FBI agents to take part in the military's abusive questioning of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan," begins the article, "but it also finds fault with the bureau's slow response to complaints about the tactics from its own agents."

"Abusive questioning." "Harsh interrogation tactics."

According to the Justice Department report, "routine" treatment of Guantánamo prisoners--witnessed by the FBI--includes "bending the detainee's thumbs back and grabbing his genitals." Military and CIA torturers chained detainees' hands and feet together for as long as a full day, "left to defecate on themselves." They terrorized them with dogs, stripped them and made them wear women's underwear and subjected them to blaring music, freezing cold and searing heat.

Torture. Such a simple word. Why not use it?

Lichtblau's "mixed review" appellation notwithstanding, the report by the Justice Department paints a shocking, uniformly negative portrait of a federal law enforcement agency whose officers react to appalling conduct with the Nuremberg defense--"I was just following orders."

"Indeed," reported U.S. News & World Report, "time after time, the report concludes that FBI agents saw or heard about numerous interrogation methods--from sleep deprivation to duct-taping detainees' mouths to scaring them with dogs--that plainly violated their own agency's code of conduct." (Not to mention the Geneva Conventions.) Rather than report their scruples to someone who might raise hell and put a stop to the systemic torture at Gitmo and other U.S. concentration camps--i.e., the public--FBI agents turned to the criminals. Just like Lichtblau did with domestic spying.

"When [one] agent mentioned [a torture] incident to the general [at Guantánamo], the general's response…was 'Thank you, gentlemen, but my boys know what they're doing.'" Ultimately the FBI, worried that agents could be charged with war crimes if they continued to witness the torture by CIA operatives and mercenaries, pulled its employees out of Gitmo and other camps. No one called a Congressman. None called a press conference.

FBI agents kept quiet--even when the CIA frat-boy-style torture tactics screwed up their interrogations.

In 2003 one FBI agent had "begin building a rapport" with Yussef Mohammed Mubarak al-Shihri, a Saudi citizen. Al-Shihri told the agent that female CIA agents had "forced to listen to the 'meow mix' jingle for cat food for hours and had a women's dress 'draped' on him." As usual, the agent turned to the torturer. "The agent said he confronted a female military intelligence interrogator who admitted to 'poaching' his detainee, but there was little more the agent could do. Following the incident, al-Shihri became uncooperative, and the agent said he never bothered to tell his superiors about the military interrogator's actions."

Turning a blind eye to torture. Watching passively as CIA goons destroy the trust of a possible material witness to terrorism. What "mixed review"?

As usual, the Newspaper of Record's worst sins in Gitmogate are those of omission--the really weird stuff that could deprive the Administration of its few remaining supporters. "Buried in a Department of Justice report," reported ABC News, "are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantánamo and interrogate Chinese Uyghurs held there."

Like their Tibetan neighbors, the Uyghurs of western China are victims of government oppression, including mass executions. Throughout the 1990s, U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia urged Uyghurs to revolt against Chinese occupation. After 9/11, however, the U.S. agreed to help China capture and torture Uyghur independence activists--as a quid pro quo for not using its U.N. veto to stop the American invasion of Afghanistan. (There's more about the U.S. betrayal of the Uyghurs in my book "Silk Road to Ruin.")

"Uyghur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators," said ABC. "When Uyghur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment."

It's a tale bizarre enough to make Rush Limbaugh blush: intelligence agents from communist China invited to an American military base, where they're allowed to torture political dissidents in American custody, with American soldiers as their sidekicks. In light of China's crackdown on Tibet during the run-up to the Olympics, it's a tasty news tidbit. But it didn't run in The Times--as far as I can tell, it only ran in one newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor.

At the same time journo-wimp Lichtblau was penning his "balanced" take on the Justice Department's bombshell report, the U.S. government admitted that it has more than 500 children in its torture and concentration camps. More than 2,500 children have gone through U.S. secret prisons since 2002, including at least eight at Guantánamo.

I know a lot of right-wing conservatives. We don't share much political common ground, but it's hard to imagine any of them thinking the indefinite detention and torture of children, against whom there is no evidence whatsoever of wrongdoing, is anything other than the behavior of a monster.

That's the U.S. government, especially after 2001--criminal, corrupt and psychotic. But few Americans know the full extent of "their" government's misdeeds, because state-controlled media chooses not to report them.

If a man screams in a government torture chamber, does he make a sound? Not if the only one who hears him is an American reporter.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Ted Rall Radio Interview

KBOO radio in Portland, Oregon will air an interview with me about everything from Art Spiegelman to Azerbaijan tomorrow, Tuesday, May 27, from 9:30 to 10:00 am Pacific (that's West Coast!) time.KBOO's live audio stream can be tuned in on the web (through iTunes or Abacast) at http://kboo.fm/listen

And there'll be an extended webcast version of the show available on the KBOO website after the broadcast version airs. Just go to http://kboo.fm/WordsandPictures

Cartoon for May 26

George Bush killed more than a million people and got away with it. One of his soldiers shot a Koran for target practice, however, and he was prompted to formally apologize.

Cartoon for May 24

Drawn largely in response to Hillary Clinton's victories in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Cartoon for May 22

Hillary Rodham Clinton's quest for the Democratic nomination appears doomed, and I can't say she didn't deserve it after voting for the Iran war resolution (an act that proves she didn't learn anything from her vote to invade Iraq). Still, one can't help but feel sad about the message this sends to women.

test

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: PROPAGANDISTS FIRST, JOURNALISTS SECOND

How the New York Times Won 2004 for Bush

Should the news media be patriotic? When a journalist uncovers a government secret, which comes first--national security or the public's right to know?

In the United States, reporters consider themselves Americans first, journalists second. That means consulting the government before going public with a state secret. "When I was at ABC," James Bamford told Time in 2006, "we always checked with the Administration in power when we thought we had something of concern, and there was usually some way to work it out."

In a new book about the Bush Administration's efforts to expand the president's powers at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches, the assumption that the press shouldn't publish security-sensitive stories is so hard-wired that New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau accepts it as a given. But it's a very American concept, and one that relies on the presumption that the U.S. government may make mistakes, but is largely a force for good. In other countries, the relationship between rulers and the press is strictly adversarial.

In "Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice" Lichtblau unwittingly relates a depressing parable--his seeming obliviousness to conflict of interest is a bummer--describing the nation's most prominent newspaper's willingness to keep secrets for government officials, who turn out to be (shocker alert-->) lying. It's a cautionary tale about journalistic nationalism, one of many (Judith Miller, anyone?) in which the Times transformed itself into Bush's political slut.

A whore, at least, would have demanded money.

In 2004 Lichtblau and fellow Times reporter Jim Risen learned that the National Security Agency was spying domestically, on American citizens. The NSA, which uses sophisticated voice-recognition software and computer programs to intercept phone calls, fax transmissions, e-mail and even bank wire transfers, was supposed to limit its activities to foreign countries. Illegally expanding beyond its Congressionally-authorized mandate, Lichtblau writes, "the NSA had essentially gained access to the biggest telecom 'switches' in the country, using the agency's data-mining technology to comb the huge trunks carrying massive volumes of traffic, in order to zero in on suspected dirty numbers and eavesdrop on them without warrants."

It was a big story. Or it would have been, had the newspaper chosen to run it when it learned of it.

Naturally, it triggered alarms in official Washington when another Times reporter called the NSA for comment. Soon the agency's director, General Michael Hayden, was calling the Times, asking it to censor itself. "Don't run this story," Administration honchos begged.

"The Times," Lichtblau says, "had been through many contretemps in its long history over whether or not to publish newsworthy stories involving sensitive national security information and, despite the vitriolic charges from its critics, it was never a decision the paper made with reckless abandon. In more than a few cases, it has decided not to publish anything at all."

Suckers.

For over a year, Lichtblau explains in an apparent attempt to justify himself and his employer to conservative critics, Times editors and reporters met repeatedly with White House officials to ask them why they shouldn't spill the beans on the NSA's domestic spying operation. That the program was illegal was pretty obvious. (Congress acknowledged as much by later voting to retroactively legalize it.) So was the lameness of the government's argument against making the NSA's activities public.

Declaring the Bush Administration "unpersuasive," Lichtblau said: "To me, it was never clear what Osama bin Laden and his henchmen would learn--confirming, really--that the United States spy services were listening to them." But the White House kept calling meetings, playing for time. Meanwhile, every morning, the Times came out without important news that its readers would care about--that their phone calls and e-mails were being monitored.

"Bush and ten senior advisors in the White House and the intelligence community would make personal pleas not to run the story in a series of meetings spanning 14 months, beginning in October of 2004 weeks before the presidential election," Lichtblau says.
Weeks before the presidential election. You'd think the timing of the Administration's pleas for self-censorship might have tipped off the Times' editors that they were being used in order to ensure that Bush and the Republican Party won the election. Moreover, Lichtblau wrote, "We had reason to suspect that the White House was actively misleading us and that its impassioned pleas might have less to do with concern over national security harm than with the legal and political fallout that the story might trigger." Gee, you think? And yet the paper's editors refused to print it.

The Bush Administration, he argues, "had not yet suffered the kind of crippling body blows to its credibility that it would [by late 2005]." Yeah, well, not really.
Remember, this was late 2004. The U.S. had invaded Iraq in March 2003, a year and a half earlier, but the WMDs had never turned up. The paper's own editorial page had been ranting on and on about the Administration's perfidy. Credibility? What credibility? Besides, it wasn't as if Bush was the first First Fibber. All presidents are serial liars. So are their subordinates. Why would the Times, or anyone else, believe them about anything?

As I read on, I kept thinking about an exchange I'd had with a fellow American reporter in Afghanistan in 2001. "Are you going to the press conference?" he asked me. A local warlord, part of the incoming Karzai regime, was about to give an update on the battle for Kunduz. "What for?" I asked him. "To get news," he replied. "A press conference," I shot back, "is the one place where you're guaranteed not to learn anything. It is a vacuum-packed, perfectly news-free zone." I spent the morning at the bazaar interviewing refugees, figuring they had less reason to lie than the Afghan official.

Anyway, the internal debate over whether to run the NSA domestic surveillance story came to an end in December 2005. Lichtblau, Washington bureau chief Phil Taubman and executive editor Bill Keller went to the White House, where they met with Condi Rice, General Hayden and a few other characters whom, if there's any justice, will soon be in prison. This was followed by another rendezvous between the Big Dog himself, George W. Bush, and Taubman, Keller, and publisher Arthur Sulzberger. (Despite the obvious conflict of interest--readers who pay newspapers for the truth vs. government officials paid to lie--there's no evidence that they considered refusing these meetings.) Deciding that they had been played long enough, Sulzberger and his lieutenants green-lit the piece.

By then, of course, Bush had won a second term. To some extent, he owed his victory to the "liberal" New York Times more than to Karl Rove. The Times, Extra! Magazine reported later, had also sat on another late-breaking "October Surprise" story that might have caused enough voters to change their minds to vote for Democrat John Kerry in 2004. That suspicious rectangular bulge in Bush's jacket during his debate with Kerry, a NASA scientist who is an expert on such things had told the Times, was indeed an electronic transmitter that allowed Bush to receive remote coaching from Rove or someone else.

"A Times journalist, who said that Times staffers were 'pretty upset' about the killing of the story, claims the senior editors felt [it] was 'too close' to the election to run such a piece," reported Extra!.

The government doesn't tell the truth to reporters, even on "background." Why shouldn't the media tell the truth to the American people?

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for May 19

Based on a strange, but true, story. Bush killed their kid. They sued the T-shirt guy.

Cartoon for May 17

"We'll get used to it." That's what the airlines say. But I still miss not having to check out my own groceries.

Cartoon for May 15

Twenty-five states require voters to show ID at the polls. Now some states want to require a birth certificate to prove you're a citizen.

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: THE SILVER LINING OF ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

Student Loans Crunch Starves Greedy Colleges

First came school vouchers, subsidizing private schools with public money. Now, as the economy contracts, the government faces mounting pressure to pour increasing amounts of our tax dollars into private colleges and universities as well.

The push comes from two fronts: a desire to make sure that student loans keep flowing in spite of the credit crunch, and to raise benefits for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who are guaranteed an education under the GI Bill.

Student loans are a big segment of the banking industry, amounting to about $85 billion last year. Until recently, they were also hugely profitable. But the credit crunch has caused some lenders to pull out of the federal program. As a result, the pool of money for college loans available has fallen 13 percent.

Congress is considering various ways to make sure students can continue to borrow the money they need. The Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008 (ECASLA) would increase the amount lent directly by the government. Another Senate bill, supported by Bush, would let the government buy student loans from banks to free up capital for additional loans.

Other bills seek to make college more affordable for veterans, many of whom say they are getting screwed. "They were rather good at saying, 'Join the Marines and get an education; you'll have an opportunity to go to college,'" recalls Kevin Grafeld, 23, a part-time student from Long Island, New York. Despite serving five years in Iraq, he gets a mere $875 per month--not even enough to pay for the community college he attends as a part-time student. "I was 18 and a little naïve," Grafeld told Newsday. A bill sponsored by Jim Webb of Virginia, a Democrat, would pay for tuition up to the cost of the most expensive public university in a veteran's home state, plus room and board.

How much would these bills cost? It's like Iraq: no one knows. Sponsors say the feds would actually come out ahead on ECASLA, earning a cool $450 million a year in interest and fees on the backs of college kids.

I have a better idea. Do nothing.

Student loans aren't a solution to skyrocketing tuition. They're its cause.
The economy may suck, but the last thing the nation's colleges and universities need is more money. There are exceptions, but most are awash in cash.
It's easy to see why: since 1980, tuition at private institutions has gone up at triple the rate of inflation, and twice the rate of people's salaries. As Timothy Egan noted in The Times, "If the cost of milk had risen as fast as college since 1980…a gallon would be $15."

Private schools, especially the elite, are getting an enviable return on their misbegotten windfall profits. Seventy-six colleges hold endowments over $1 billion. Harvard has $35 billion--more than the GDP of 100 of the world's 179 nations.

Nationally, colleges got a 17.2 percent return on their investments in 2007--while spending a mere 4.6 percent of that tsunami of cash on their students.

Public schools are nearly as greedy. Over the last five years, they've hiked tuition 31 percent faster than inflation. According to the AP, it's "the worst record on college prices of any five-year period covered by the survey dating back 30 years."
Why do colleges raise tuition so much faster than the inflation rate? Because they can.

Since 1981, when President Reagan got rid of a financial aid system mostly based on grants (which don't have to be repaid), easy credit on student loans has made it possible for any student to borrow as much as he or she needs--or, to put it another way, however much a college decides to charge. It's simple supply and demand; with no downward pressure on tuition, the warlords of college have an overwhelming temptation to gouge.

And gouge they do.

No one seems to question the wisdom of lending tens of thousands of dollars at above-market compound interest rates to children whose employment history amounts to, at most, a year at Burger King. 17-year-old borrowers have no idea what they're getting into; parents imagine (usually wrongly) that kids' college degree will guarantee them high enough wages to pay it all off and then some.

The average college graduate comes out owing $24,200 in student loans. And that's an average. Many owe more--much more--in a non-existent job market. Saddled with crushing monthly payments as high as a home mortgage in some areas, millions of young people are forced to move back home. According to a 2002 study for the student lender Nellie Mae, student loan debt forced 38 percent of college graduates to delay buying their first house, 14 percent to get married later, and 21 percent to wait until they're older to have children.

Bankruptcy rates among young adults in their 20s are soaring, but default rates on student loans remain relatively low, under five percent. (Laws have been changed so that bankruptcy doesn't relieve your obligation to repay student loans).
Students and taxpayers get poorer. Colleges get richer.

But what if the worst fears of the credit crunch worrywarts came to pass? What if the student loan system collapsed entirely?

For several years, few poor and middle-class kids would be able to afford college. To be sure, it would be a painful transition. Millions of kids would drop out, forced to defer their dreams. But it would be good in the long run--for the country and even for them.

College CEOs (let's not call the heads of these mega-for-profit vampire capitalism firms mere "presidents") who wanted their companies to survive would be forced to recognize the new market reality. They would streamline their operations and reduce wasteful spending so they could cut tuition and other expenses. As Harvard and other Ivy League schools have already begun to do, they'd dip into the hundreds of billions of dollars currently sitting idly and uselessly in endowment investment accounts. And tuition would drop.

The collapse of the student loan racket--banning them entirely would be ideal--could be one of the best results of the recession. But only if we let it happen.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Jen Sorensen and Ruben Bolling in NYC

Fans of modern political cartoons in the NYC area may want to check out a "Laughing Liberally" event featuring Slowpoke creator Jen Sorensen and Tom the Dancing Bug creator Ruben Bolling this Wednesday, May 14, at the Tank. 279 Church St, 8pm.

Cartoon for May 12

John McCain owes more than his belly to beer.

Fuck the Election
posted by Susan Stark


I have cared very little for elections ever since I realized that (1) they can be stolen, and that (2) even if my candidate wins, they don't necessarily do what I voted for them to do.

But since this is election year, I thought I would give a present to all of you reading this blog. This is an article by a man named Joe Carpenter that I think every working and poor person on this planet should read. It is as follows:


I’ve never understood the idea of speaking truth to power. The truth, surely, is that in almost all countries of the world, political and economic systems are designed to benefit only the rich and powerful, at the expense of those with less money and power. This is how the world works, and I see no reason to think that the powerful don’t already understand that. After all, they designed it; they maintain it.

They steal our money, sacrifice our children in their wars, send the poorest and most victimized among us off to jail for petty mistakes, and crush those of us who might present a real threat to the arrangement. They know we don’t like it. They don’t care. They don’t need to care. They also control most of our avenues of dissent. It’s a very simple, very elegant design.

Meanwhile, we get angry and toddle off to tell the truth to the powerful. We have been telling them the truth for centuries. We travel to their great palaces by the hundreds of thousands, to express our anger and despair. We shout and sing and stomp and whine. We threaten. We plead. Sometimes we’re beaten up, or sent to jail. It’s a tradition of great courage and personal sacrifice, no doubt.

We go to tell them to stop using our money and our children and our energy and intelligence to further rob and rape and murder us. We tell them to be more respectful and compassionate. We’re like angry but terrorized children, anxiously scolding our stern, all-powerful parents. And, in the end, we look to the Democrats or to some congressional panel or to the Supreme Court and demand that they come to our aid. As my friend Harry puts it: "We’re left in the terrible position of trying to decide which elite group will be less likely to prey on us."

Well, the government and their pals are not going to stop using and abusing us. They’re not going to stop preying on us. They cannot stop! Republican or Democrat, they are rich and powerful precisely because they prey on us. They are rich because they rob us. They’re robbing us right this minute. They are powerful because they dominate every aspect of our lives, because they’ve taken control of all the major social, political, economic, and communication systems in the world. These systems were designed to increase their wealth and power by taking both from all the rest of us.

But, we are not children, and they are not our parents. We’re not little people and they are not big people. We’re not insignificant and they are not significant. In fact, we do not need them.

They are very few and we, here in the US alone, are roughly 300 million. We don’t need to rush out to tell the few that they are abusing the many. They already know that. We need to stand upright and walk out to tell the many that they are being slowly devoured by the few, for -- incredibly, they do not know. We need to look to our next door neighbors, and to their next door neighbors and to the folks all along the block. We need to tell the truth to each other -- for we are the answer.

While hundreds of thousands of anti-war demonstrators gathered in Washington, DC, back in September, hundreds of millions of American citizens went about their business without even a vague awareness of the protests. The media to which most of them attend barely mention such things -- obviously. And, most Americans don’t live in the DC area, so they didn’t see a thing.

Most Americans live in my neighborhood, or in your neighborhood. Most Americans eat breakfast right next to you in the local café. Most Americans get their car fixed at the same garage as you and I do. Most Americans visit my library, my bookstore, my grocery store, my local park -- or yours.

But the rich and powerful have convinced us that we cannot -- we must not -- communicate with the people we can see and hear and touch, right here, right now. They have convinced us that we need to travel to some government office to persuade elected officials and bureaucrats to change our world for us. The government and media drone on, endlessly, hypnotically, and convince us that if we just elect the right leaders, they’ll talk to our next door neighbor for us.

Government programs, they promise us, will fix that gaping hole in the pavement right out beyond your driveway. Government will help poor Mrs. Wilson, languishing in the old, dilapidated house right across the street. Government will settle your dispute with that family right down the block. Government will take care of your neighbors who can’t escape the hurricane:

"It’s OK, just hop in the SUV and go, we’ll take care of everything!" Government will help; government will heal; government will bring us together.

That’s not going to happen, of course. The elites are too busy dividing us, setting us against each other, exacerbating every animosity, every misgiving, every anxiety, however slight. They insinuate themselves into every new crack and crevice and offer convoluted, expensive legislation and bureaucracies to bring us back together again. "There oughta be a law," says the old complaint. Well, there will be, to be sure -- but it will just make things worse.

We’re all looking in the wrong place for reason and compassion and justice. It’s not anywhere to be found in Washington, DC. It’s not in governments or state houses. It’s not there in that prestigious gathering of experts and big brains.

It’s right here. It’s wherever you are, and it’s right next door and it’s everywhere along your street and all around your neighborhood. It’s in the cars that pass you on the roadways and in the shops where you buy your dog or cat food. There’s no need to travel a thousand or even a hundred miles. It’s not necessary to make the climb up to the penthouse. Our hope, our possibility -- our only hope, our only possibility, lies in the ordinary people who compose our world, who are the very stuff of our lives.

Want to change the world? Tell the truth to the plumber. Begin with the lady who hands you the stamps at the post office. Talk with the checkout people at the grocery store. Chat with the waiter at your favorite café. Speak with the cops who sit down at the next table. Gab for a few minutes with the guy who changes your oil or with the elementary school teacher with whom you’ve been discussing your child’s future. Lean out of your window while stopped at the light and tell the truck driver some truth he’s certain to recall and ponder.

Feel the need to march? Gather a bunch of folks and wander about your neighborhoods with signs and leaflets. When people walk by, stop and gab with them. When that huge guy with the Hemi-powered Ram pulls alongside and tells you to "love it or leave it," ask him to stay and talk. Smile, offer your hand, make nice. He’s one of us. He’d make a wonderful ally. When a carload of high school jocks slows to offer some single-fingered communication, hand them some cold colas and tell them about the probability of a draft. They’re our people, too. Convince yourself that this is so, then convince them.

Get together with like-minded people and think of simple, brief, meaningful ways to communicate with the folks all around you. Think about little things, easy things, immediate things. Think about what you can do together, and what you might accomplish alone. Think about your real day-to-day life, and how many opportunities there are to educate and enlighten, every day. Blab and babble and blunder and tell the truth, one ordinary person at a time. We’re all ordinary people, and we are our only hope. Tell the truth to the guy who pumps out the septic tank -- he’s one of us! Forget about telling the government, forget about the hot shots.

To the extent that we believe we need them, exactly to that extent will we continue our dependence upon ruthless, murderous plunderers, people entirely opposed to our needs and deepest longings. As long as we believe we need them, exactly that long will we live life on our knees, begging -- as Mickey Z. says -- for crumbs from their table.

The depth of our apparent need is the measure of their height above us. The nightmare of our poverty is our dream that they have a right to take our money. The illusion of our impotence is the chimera of their monstrous strength. We shall be slaves as long as we’re convinced that we have masters, and not one moment longer.

Time to wake up, time to grow up. We’re not children. We do not need to ask permission to live like sane, reasonable, thoughtful, compassionate human beings. We do not need to beg or bow or kneel. We do not need to look to government or to experts or to the rich and famous. Whatever we need, we can get it ourselves. Whatever we want to stop -- we can stop it ourselves. Whatever must be done, we can do it ourselves. We do not need them; we need each other.

All else is distraction and delusion.

Joe Carpenter is a guy living in Southern Oregon who has traveled extensively and kept his eyes open. He can be reached at: joecarpenter@charter.net.


And now that you've read this article, I'd like you to send it to every friend, co-worker, family member, and neighbor you can think of. http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Carpenter1102.htm

Cartoon for May 10

Barack Obama delivers an amazing speech--when he reads it. When he talks off the cuff, however, it's a painful experience. He...just...seems...so...desperate...not...to...risk...making...a...mistake.

Cartoon for May 8

What the hell is going on with voters?

THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: OBAMA: THE OTHER WHITE MEAT

Wright Fuss Weakens Dems, Squanders Chance to Get Serious

I argue with my friends. Some of them thought invading Iraq was a good idea. Almost all believed that Afghanistan was "the good war," the one from which Iraq distracted us. (They're starting to come around.) A few are even bigots. We disagree about these issues, often vehemently. But we're still friends. I would never diss a friend in public (or, in politicalese, "distance myself"). Even a former friend deserves respect.

Crisis reveals character. In politics, it reveals judgment.

Barack "Uniter Not Divider, This Time We Really Mean It" Obama was praised for dumping ("distancing himself from") Reverend Jeremiah Wright. ("What Barack Obama did was a profile in courage," said the Reverend Al Sharpton.) But the McCain campaign's silence indicates that it is quietly editing its fall attack ads. Obama's apology, they'll say, came too little, too late. Obama has fallen for one of the hoariest old tricks in the political playbook: guilt by association.

Republicans are smart. They close ranks behind a senator caught trolling for gay sex in an airport restroom, ignoring the homophobic platform of their own party. Mr. Wide Stance keeps his job; they keep his vote. In contrast, when New York's governor hooks up with a prostitute, the Dems--whose politics, after all, are sex-positive--sell one of their brightest lights down the river.

You'd think Democrats would have learned a big lesson in 1972. It seems quaint in this age of Zoloft, but when it came out that vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton had been treated for depression (with electroshock treatment, standard care at the time), the media went nuts. If George McGovern had stood by his running mate, the issue would soon have died. There were, after all, plenty of other stories to talk about--say, Vietnam and Watergate. But McGovern got spooked. He dumped Eagleton. Voters asked themselves: If a guy throws his own running mate under the bus, how will he defend the United States? McGovern lost by a landslide.

Rule One of political survival: Never, ever apologize. Even when you're wrong. Especially when you're wrong. Rule Two: Don't comment. Defending yourself keeps the story going. Corollary One to Rule One: Stand up for your friends. Especially when they're wrong.

But what if they're right?

"You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you," Reverend Wright said in his appearance at the National Press Club.
Pronouncing himself "offended" by such "ridiculous propositions" as "when [Wright] equates the United States' wartime efforts with terrorism--there are no excuses," Obama said the next day.

What is truly ridiculous is that, six and a half years after 9/11, many Americans still think the attacks were motivated by crazy freedom-haters out to forcibly convert them to Islam. The rise of radical Islam resulted from what Chalmers Johnson termed "Blowback"--CIA jargon for the unintended consequences, in this case of arming and funding Islamist fighters against the Soviet Union. But Wright was right. "America's chickens are coming home to roost," the Reverend said after 9/11.
It wasn't an original thought. Ward Churchill said the same thing. So have countless analysts in other countries. Only in the U.S. is it prohibited to say something so obvious--particularly in a public forum.

Osama bin Laden and the 19 hijackers didn't think flying planes into buildings would make Americans join the local mosque. They were motivated by a desire to bring America's wars home to its people, to ensure that it would suffer the consequences for having "supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans," as Wright said. Like Wright, bin Laden has referenced these issues.

The Al Qaeda founder has also talked about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, one of the greatest war crimes in history.

"Bin Laden has said several times that he is seeking to acquire and use nuclear weapons not only because it is God's will, but because he wants to do to American foreign policy what the United States did to Japanese imperial surrender policy," the Washington Post noted in 2005.

9/11 wasn't an attack on a legitimate target. It wasn't justifiable. Except for the Pentagon, the victims were civilians: clerks, cooks, office managers and bike messengers, the vast majority of whom probably opposed such foreign policies as the trade sanctions that killed 100,000 Iraqi children during the 1990s. But pretending that the killers of 9/11 were driven by motives other than to avenge American foreign policy in the Muslim world further delays a conversation we needed to have ages ago, and increases the likelihood of more attacks.

One of Wright's most bizarre statements concerns his "suggestion that the United States might have invented H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS," in the words of The New York Times. There is no evidence to support this accusation. Yet paranoia can reveal truth.

"Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," Wright told the NAACP last week. (In Tuskegee from 1932 to 1972, illiterate sharecroppers with syphilis were left untreated so that white doctors could observe the progress of the disease.) "In fact, one of the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a non-question, because all we had to do was check the sales records. We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people. So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable."

It shouldn't come as any surprise, given what the U.S. government has done and continues to do to African-Americans--a recent study shows, for example, that blacks are 12 times more likely than whites to be sent to prison for the same drug offenses as whites--that many of them consider it "capable of doing anything." What is surprising is that African-Americans--or anyone else--still believes the government.

The Wright controversy offered us an opportunity to talk about the need to create a government that tells the truth, that doesn't torture or kidnap or wage unjustifiable wars--a government worthy of its people and its trust. What we got instead, courtesy of Mr. Change We Can Believe In, was the usual pablum. "They offend me," Obama said of Wright's comments. "They rightly offend all Americans."

Let us all hold hands and be offended. Whatever it takes to stop us from thinking.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Cartoon for May 5

Hillary Clinton's waning presidential campaign claims that she is in the lead. But you have to use her "New Math," which doesn't count delegates. It counts the total primary popular vote, and includes the states of Michigan and Florida, neither of which count. In Michigan, Obama wasn't even on the ballot.

Cartoon for May 3

The most recently leaked Bush Administration memos rely on a novel argument: something that's illegal won't be punished if the person committing the crime says he was trying to stop a terrorist attack. You could be appalled--or you could use this legal nonsense yourself.

Hate Mail

After a year or two of relative silence, the right-wingers are at it again. Here, for your weekend reading pleasure, are two choice entries from today's mail bag:

First, from "Mike Crowe" at crondo1@sbcglobal.net:

I HOPE YOU GET IN THE WAY OF A BOMB THAT WAS PLANTED TO KILL AMEARICANS.
BETTER YET, I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU GET WATERBOARDED.
IT MIGHT GET SOME OF THAT LIBERAL SHIT OUT OF YOUR HEAD.
FUCK YOU!

I'm confused. I am an "Amearican." So if the bomb planted to kill "Amearicans" went off, I wouldn't so much as be getting in its way as...never mind. Also, how would getting waterboarded make me more politically conservative? Is conservativism literally watered-down liberalism? And if it works that way, aren't all the Gitmo detainees Republicans by now, which means it's safe to release them?

Then, from WolverB@aol.com, there's:

Ted, You should be shot. You are a worthless person taking up good air that someone else could use. It's people like you that have caused this nation to be the cesspool that it has become. Leftists have no discipline, no logic, no sense of right and wrong. You think its wrong to force a killer to give us important information that might save lives but you don't have a problem with murdering millions of unborn babies every year on a whim.

Again, I'm confused. Who are these "killers" who are being waterboaded? They're not convicted murderers--they haven't seen a lawyer, much less a judge or a jury. So they're innocent, right? Also, I'm wondering where I ever wrote that abortion was awesome.

Oh, and note that this rightie things this nation has become a cesspool. He hates America!

P.S. A reminder to right-wingers about my E-mail Rules: anything you send me can and will, especially if it's obnoxious, appear in the Rallblog. Including your email address.

Cartoon for May 1

My apologies for the late posting.

Barack Obama is bending over backwards to suck up to his Republican enemies...or just bending over. Why not go all the way?

Shoutout to Angelenos

If you want me to give a talk or sign books in the L.A. area, please get in touch at chet@rall.com. I'll be there in a few weeks.