February 15, 2003 was called by many “The Day The World Said ‘No’ To War”, and was reportedly the largest worldwide turnout for a single day of protest in history. Here’s a little “remastered” slice of what went down in New York City that day:

As I recall, the actual rally site and staging area for the march was somewhere around UN Plaza-ish, but owing to the staggering hugeness of the crowds converging — reportedly in the 1.5 million neighborhood — we never quite made it to the actual rally or march, and ended up just kind of flowing with the crowd through the streets, and spending most of the day hanging around East 50th and Third Avenue.

Here’s my friend Marianne from the Washington Action Group and the “Doghouse” puppet workshop in DC, being gratuitously harassed by NYPD goons for using a bamboo stick — apparently considered a “lethal weapon” that day — to hold up her sign. She was helped out by comrades in the crowd with some spare cardboard wrapping paper rolls.

DC anarchists “representing” on Third Avenue. One of the better flag designs of the day.

Some more of our friends from DC, the ever-popular Korean drummers’ group whipping up the crowd.

Just a few weeks before, the then-director of Fatherland Security, a pug-ugly bastard named Tom Ridge (a guy who looked as if he could play a gangster in a ’40s film noir) advised the nation that their best defense against a chemical or biological attack was to — get this — seal off your doors and windows with plastic sheeting and duct tape.

I never could figure out how these people got onto the top of that Fritos truck. It was an oddly inspiring sight, though they seemed oblivious to the shouts of the crowd below to “throw us down a bag of Fritos, man!”

“What are we going to do tonight, Brain?” This had to be my number-one favorite sign of the day. One is a genius; the other’s insane.

The Radical Cheerleaders belt one out towards the end of the afternoon. About this time, a breakaway unpermitted march had forced its way onto the streets and defied the police to march to a point near our location, succeeding by the strength of sheer numbers.

Continue reading "Blast From Yer Past: Feb. 15 2003" »

Never forget how the State used the attacks of September 11, 2001 as a pretext to shred the Constitution and encourage the escalation of police thuggery against citizens.

Never forget how the State used September 11 to encourage profiteering in the “defense” and “security” industries at the expense of citizens.

Never forget how the State used September 11 as a pretext for illegal wars and military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Never forget how the State used September 11 as a pretext for illegal imprisonment, secret courts and torture.

Never forget that the atmosphere of oppression, suspicion, paranoia and racism which has taken root in this country since September 11, 2001 has been fostered and maintained by both Republican and Democratic governments.

And last, but certainly not least…

Never forget how you, the American people, rolled over and allowed yourselves to be bullied and cowed into silence by the likes of Bush, Cheney, Obama, Ridge, Chertoff, Napolitano, Clinton, and Lieberman while they waged wars of aggression, built a gulag, committed genocide and torture and stripped away your liberty and dignity.

Never forget.
Happy Anniversary

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The 9/11 Conspiracists: Vindicated After All These Years? by Alexander Cockburn at CounterPunch.

Continue reading "Never Forget" »

OK, kiddies, time for some more of that good old-fashioned old-skool editorial cartooning.

So, early this past Tuesday morning, while poring over the news, I found the report that shows President Sparkle Pony’s approval rating at an all-time low of 38%. The 5.9 tremor hit at around 1pm-ish, and later that evening, a 4.0 aftershock was reported, although we didn’t feel it here in DC. At around 10pm, as our cat finally decided to come out from under our bed, my mind began to wander from the wretched network TV “coverage” of the quake and back to President Carebear’s tanking approval rating, and reports that he received the news of the quake while playing golf near Martha’s Vineyard, where they presumably couldn’t feel it.

Yesterday morning on MSNBC’s horrid Morning Joe shitfest, they were doing the early segment where they read the op-eds to us on the air, and the morning’s featured op-ed was Thomas Friedman’s latest bilge in the New York Times, this one using a golf analogy, including references to Tiger Woods. They followed up with an interview with Democratic Party punching bag Screamin’ Howard Dean, who pilloried Friedman’s spewage six ways from Sunday. While it was true that yesterday’s Friedman column in the NYT was the lamest piece of crap ever, what was even lamer was The Screamin’ One’s excuse-making and apologia for President Hope, containing all the usual clownshit, such as that people expect the President to be able to solve the problem all by himself, and the all-time classic — Obama inherited this mess from George W. Bush. Yeah, that’s right, here we are going on three years into the Hope’n'Change Administration, and Screamin’ Howard is still blaming everything on the GOP.

Consider this cartoon to be the second aftershock.

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Continue reading "What Was That – An Earthquake?" »

Y’know, I hardly know where to start with this. Perhaps I could start with this gob-smacking foto of ex-Presidents Bubba and Chimp, both smiling their most smarmy and smug smiles as they accept the position of Special Envoys in charge of the Haitian relief effort. That’s right, ex-President I Invaded Haiti In The ’90s and ex-President Heckuva Job Brownie have been placed in charge of Haitian earthquake relief, and the bastards are frickin’ smiling… and President Timberlake, there, seems just barely able to contain himself as well. What perfect cover for a little bit of that “vulture capitalism”.

Or, perhaps this amazingly soulless, brutalist David Brooks column from the New York Times might work for you. In it, he calls for the throwing away of any tolerance or respect for foreign cultures and calls for “intrusive paternalism” at least half a dozen times in a page and a half of thinly-veiled racist spewage. In spirit and letter, it’s really no different from any similar racist spewage about Haiti and the Dominican Republic published in the New York Times a century or so ago; Noam Chomsky writes in Year 501:

Times editors lauded the “unselfish and helpful” attitude that the US had always shown, now once again as it responded “in a fatherly way” as Haiti “sought help here.” Our “unselfish intervention has been moved almost exclusively by a desire to give the benefits of peace to people tormented by repeated revolutions,” with no thought of “preferential advantages, commercial or otherwise,” for ourselves. “The people of the island should realize that [the US government] is their best friend.” The US sought only to ensure that “the people were cured of the habit of insurrection and taught how to work and live”; they “would have to be reformed, guided and educated,” and this “duty was undertaken by the United States.” There is a further benefit for our “black brother”: “To wean these peoples away from their shot-gun habit of government is to safeguard them against our own exasperation,” which might lead to further intervention. “The good-will and unselfish purposes of our own government” are demonstrated by the consequences, the editors wrote in 1922, when they were all too apparent and the Marine atrocities had already aroused a storm of protest.

However, if comic relief is what you’re after, don’t despair; former US Senator John “Senator Goodhair” Edwards is going to Haiti to help out, also — with cameras conveniently present, of course.

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Continue reading "Greetings From Haiti!" »