It’s often been said, ever since the days of Usenet and Tiananmen Square, that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. As it was in those bygone days, so it is today, as the US State pressures Wikileaks’ “cloud” provider and DNS service to take steps in an attempt to silence dissent.

The problem is — at least, if you’re the US State, it’s a problem — Wikileaks can still be reached on the Web via any number of alternate links, such as through its numeric “dotted quad” IP addresses here and here. It can also be reached through its alternate domains in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

I’d like to encourage everyone reading this to follow that grand old Web censorship-defeating tradition of “mirroring” and passing alternate links around, and post these links to your blog or Web site:

http://213.251.145.96/
http://46.59.1.2/
http://wikileaks.ch/
http://www.wikileaks.nl/

Wikileaks is also mirrored at over 200 sites worldwide.

Tough luck, Barack. Better luck next time, Hillary.

Continue reading "Wikileaks Alternate Links Available!" »

“You’re obsolete, my baby–my poor, unfaithful baby,
I said, baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time!”
–Rolling Stones

A couple of weeks or so ago, Vice Emperor Joe Biden went on TV and called the American Left “whiners” for daring to complain about the abject failure of the Democratic Party to enact any truly progressive reforms while at about the same time, Boy Emperor Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One gave a bitchy interview to Rolling Stone in which he slags the Left six ways from Sunday for complaining about the Democrats sucking so badly, pretty much doing everything but pissing on us and giving us the finger in what was the first round of “hippie bashing” by the Democrats — followed by his remarks at a posh fundraising dinner in Connecticut attended by a buttload of rich people, in which he spits on the Left yet again while bowing and scraping to “the people who write the checks”. That’s sure a helluva way to convince your progressive “base” to support you, isn’t it? You go back on every promise you ever made during the ’08 campaign, you retain and expand on Bush’s policies on imperialist war and the national security state, you enrich the banks and Wall Street while leaving the unemployed and homeowners facing foreclosure to twist in the wind, you sit by while economies and ecosystems are destroyed on the Gulf Coast, you legislate sweetheart deals with the health-insurance and pharmaceutical industries under the guise of “reform”, you exhibit the most craven behavior possible in the face of rightists and fascists — and when the people who helped elect you dare to complain about it and threaten to withhold their support in the midterm “elections”, you go on TV and insult them to their faces? There’s some real out-of-the-box thinking for you. Is your party and its leadership an abysmal failure? No problem, just blame those fucking hippies for complaining, and announce that the beatings will continue until morale improves.

In the meantime, Democratic Party mouthpieces in the blogozone are going into full-tilt pants-crapping panic mode, with Robert Parry at consortiumnews.com spewing a page full of the most weak-assed, warmed-over, shopworn scaremongering and excuse-making possible, complete with that good old Nader Hate. Trouble is, in the course of trying to make a case of supporting the Democrats no matter what, he makes a case for staying home — or even voting Republican, seeing as how even with the Democrats in power, we’re still being saddled with Republican policies which, more often than not, are being enabled by the Democrats. Parry might as well have cut’n’pasted an old column from 2000, begging and pleading with us not to vote Green in response to the cowardice and hypocrisy of the Clinton Regime, threatening us with calamity and disaster, guilt-tripping us with that tired old bullshit about how “a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush”. Hell, even the Communist Party USA is getting in on the action, with Comrade Chairman Sam Webb posting a whiny-assed screed pleading with us to not sit this one out. Jeezus, who’d have thought that even the geezing old cranks at the CPUSA were fronting for the Democrats these days?

Eight or ten years ago, this kind of behavior by the Democrats and their mouthpieces would’ve made me livid, but nowadays it just fills me with delight; I can’t begin to tell you how liberating it was to finally quit giving a shit about what happens to the Democrats. Sure, on the one hand its really piss-poor the way Biden and the Boy Emperor are dissing us, but what do you expect? These are Democrats we’re talking about here, y’know. I become flat-out ecstatic every time I hear either of these two — not to mention the likes of Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and Ed “I Know No-THING!” Schultz blustering and kvetching and pleading for us to come out and vote for their miserable-assed party, because I know that every time they do this, they’re showing us just how truly weak, ineffectual and entirely unworthy of our support they are. “Pleee-eeease vote for us! Pretty please? We only suck ass a little less than the GOP! C’monnnn, pleeee-eeaase?” P’wahh ha ha ha ha ha hahhh. Take a goddamn’ hike, assholes. It’s popcorn time. You want to pander to me, exploit me, guilt-trip me, lie to me, insult me to my face on TV? Kiss my ass goodbye.

I plan on staying home on “Election” Day, withholding my support for a bunch of cowardly corporate tools, refusing my consent for a system that doesn’t work in my interests — and doing it without shame, regret or apology. Seriously, folks — there’s no shame in staying home on “Election” Day if none of the walking wastes of DNA seeking your vote are representing your values or standing up for what you believe in. C’mon, take a chance. Stay home. Don’t participate in the cheap-assed kabuki theater that passes for “democracy” in this country. See how liberating it is.

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Continue reading "Füçking Hippies" »

Though I could not caution all, I yet may warn a few:
Don’t lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools!
–grateful dead.

Y’know, I’ve been hearing a lot of desperate yammering lately from shit-scared Liberals and Fauxgressives about how I need to support our Boy Emperor Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One and the Noble Democratic Party in their struggle against the Evil Rethuglicans. They agonize over the Tea Party freaks and their horrible lack of “civility”, although whenever I try to point out how the Democrats have either cut and run or else actively enabled the Evil Rethuglicans’ takeover on just about every issue — Iraq, Afghanistan, the banks, healthcare, the economy, the environment, you name it — the Fauxgressives promptly proceed to pitch a fit (how uncivil of them) and only seem to be able to respond with mindless chants of “Yes, We Can!”.

Indeed — Yes, They Can:
Bomb civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan with robotic drone aircraft. This has to be the most pussified way to fight a war you could think of. They’re using “Predator” drones to bomb homes, schools, weddings, and funerals. Funerals, f’crissake. So, where the hell are the Liberals and Fauxgressives while this shit is going on? When George W. Bush was doing it, they filled the streets; where the hell are they now that Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One is the one dropping the bombs?

Wiretap the Internet. It’s been reported this past summer that Boy Emperor Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One wants to make it easier for the FBI to obtain information about your private emails and Web surfing history as well as enable direct surveillance of Internet traffic in what is a 180° about-face from his lofty campaign promises of 2008, a return to Bill Clinton’s odious “Echelon” program defended by Democrats as “a necessary evil” (yeah, that’s right — Democrats). When George W. Bush wanted to do this, Liberals and Fauxgressives screamed so loudly you could hardly hear yourself think; where the hell are they now that Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One wants to spy on American citizens and suppress dissent?

Prop up the banks: Liberals and Fauxgressives like to claim that this was George W. Bush’s doing, but they conveniently forget that it was then-Senator Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One who was being the good “house negro” by helping round up the votes authorizing the biggest transfer of wealth from the People to the Rich in this nation’s history. The Liberals and Fauxgressives raised holy hell about this when it was going on towards the twilight of the Bush Regime; where the hell are they now that President Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One — with the assistance of the Democratic Party — has continued enriching the banks and Wall Street brokerages at the expense of the foreclosed-on and unemployed?

Let the Gulf Coast die: Back towards the end of last March, President Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One served up his “Drill, Baby, Drill” speech — although, of course, he couched it in his classic pompous professorial speaking style, not actually using the GOP faithful’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” phrase in order to avoid freaking out the Liberals and environmentalists (who supported him in ’08 anyway despite his stated support for offshore oil drilling). Then, as BP’s Deepwater Horizon well catastrophe unfolded, the number-one recipient of campaign contributions from BP sat by and let it happen, even as BP’s attempts to stop the gusher resulted in one pathetic FAIL after another, and BP worked itself to death to keep reporters and news photographers from reporting the extent of the devestation — hell, The Boy Emperor even helped BP suppress reporters by lending the services of the Coast Guard. When George W. Bush sat on his ass and allowed the near-total destruction of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, the Liberals and Fauxgressives were howling at full throat; where the hell are they now that Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One has allowed the decimation of ecosystems and economies all over the Gulf Coast, and allowed BP to escape punishment?

Appease the Right: From Israel to trade policy to financial “reform” to healthcare, Barack Obama’s your go-to guy for pandering to rightists and Teabaggers. I’ll keep it brief here and concentrate on the prime example: the alleged healthcare “reform” which basically leaves the criminals responsible for our problems in charge. There was endless sound and fury in the media about the healthcare “debate”. Huh, some debate; nurses and activists demanding the inclusion of single-payer healthcare — the system favored by a majority of Americans — in Senate hearings on Capitol Hill were ordered ejected from the hearing room and arrested by Senator Max Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Obama and his Donkeycratic cronies were so utterly desperate to pass a bill — any bill would do — that they legislated bailouts for insurance and pharmaceutical companies, sweetheart deals with the hospital industry, the compromising away of abortion rights and the supposedly-more-important-than-anything “public option” (a shallow mockery of single-payer) and a measure which forces citizens to become customers of the insurance industry no matter how broke and/or unemployed they are. Meanwhile, at the Democrats’ phony town-hall meetings where they pimped their worthless healthcare “reform”, the places were overrun with Teabaggers busting up the scene — while the Liberals and Fauxgressives just sat on their asses and whined about those mean old Teabaggers. Hell, they knew this bill was a piece of shit; why the hell weren’t they out in the streets and busting up the Democrats’ cheesy dog’n’pony shows? If George W. Bush were putting over a sham like this, you can bet the Liberals and Fauxgressives would be out for blood; where the hell are they now that this same corporate-backed fraud is being perpetrated by Mr. Hope’n’Change?

Bully the Left: I thought I’d save the best for last. During the 2008 campaign, delusional Liberals ranging all the way from United For Peace And Justice to Code Pink were drooling all over Barack Obama, a supposed “peace candidate”, based on one single weak-assed speech he gave at an anti-war rally just before the US invaded Iraq — a speech in which he said he wasn’t opposed to all wars, just “dumb wars”. WTFF? This is a peace candidate? …Fast-forward to this past September 24, when Obama’s FBI conducted raids on the homes of antiwar activists in Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan, issuing grand jury subpoenas to at least a dozen activists. Remember, this was our peace candidate — President Hope’n’Change, the man who emitted a vile “just war” speech when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. If George W. Bush was pulling this crap, the Liberals and Fauxgressives would be busting blood vessels all over the place, but now all they can say is that we have to support the Democrats, no matter what. No matter what.

Where the hell are they now? I’ll tell you. They’re flailing and failing, able to offer nothing but warmed-over excuses and apologia for Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One and the Democrats, telling us that we have to support the Democrats because the Evil Rethuglicans would be worse — yeah, that’s right, we have to support the Democrats because while the GOP sucks, the Democrats suck just a little less, an excuse so lame and tired that it’s gone from amusing to annoying — and that to stay home and not vote in this, The Most Important Election Since The Earth Accreted Enough Material For Gravity To Compress It Into A Sphere, would be to invite disaster.

What, you mean we’re not in a goddamn’ disaster now?

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Continue reading "Yes, We Can!" »

I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I still want to be an astronaut when I grow up.

Ask anyone who knows me really well, and they’ll tell you that I’m a huge space geek, and a really huge fan of human expansion off the Earth. Normally, though, spaceflight issues these days aren’t normally big on the mainstream media radar — save the occasional catastrophic Space Shuttle failure — and haven’t been since the last Apollo crew came home. In fact, the last space-related cartoon I did was about nine years ago. Still, once in a great while a cartoon-worthy space policy issue will bubble up into the MSM, such as the current partial privatization/funding brouhaha going on over the late Constellation/Orion program and the future of US manned spaceflight As We Know It™ with regard to President The One’s Vision For Space Exploration. So, while it’s a bit of a geeky issue, I thought this might be a good time to take the opportunity — while I’m still struggling for good immigration cartoon ideas — to knock out this piece that’s been rattling around in my head since I read about the current House version of the NASA appropriation:

So, the crew module that was supposed to be capable of ferrying astronauts to the Moon (the Moon? What’s that?) and to Mars-bound spacecraft has been reduced to an ISS lifeboat, and President The One is talking up that old chestnut, the Public-Private Partnership™, to take up the slack of building and launching cargo and man-rated vehicles to ISS. Needless to say, Elon Musk’s nipples are exploding with delight. Oh, and they’ve also directed NASA to get down to building a heavy-lift booster by the end of the decade. I’d just love to know how the hell they’re going to pull that off when their program is getting be as cash-starved as the xUSSR’s N1 heavy-lift lunar booster program was in the 1960s. Here’s a look at the outcome of one of their many test launches which, to the last, was made of FAIL:

The thing that really irks the hell out of me is that this is just the icing on the cake, after seeing pretty much every other important program — healthcare, housing, education, Social Security — having to go begging because of the stonking huge wads of cash being pissed away on two wars, neither of which is particularly beloved among the public, and the equally stonking amount of cash being blown on building a massive security state. We’ve got no problems throwing away money on Predator drones and bunker busters and upgrading the phone networks to allow easier tapping, but when it suddenly comes time to fund a national healthcare system, or keep Social Security out of trouble, or help humanity expand off the planet, it’s like they’re suddenly all tapped out. But, they’ve always got money to pay for their goddamn’ wars.

But, wait! There’s more! Now, after the Constellation Program’s gone, all that promise out the window, and we’re reduced to buying rides with the Russians and waiting around for half a dozen spaceflight-contract wannabes to get their ducks together, NASA’s added insult to injury by releasing a video game version. Yeah, that’s right, a goddamn’ video game. Mind you, being an artist as well as an old space geek, I certainly loves me some tasty CGI concept art as much as the next guy, but this kind of bugged me somehow, coming as it did so soon after the program meant to replace the Shuttle went from its first test launches to just the latest addition to NASA’s Awesome Concept Art Gallery. I mean, that’s just depressing (besides the fact that they haven’t even developed a Mac version, losers).

What’s really sad, though, is the fact that I still want to be an astronaut when I grow up.

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Continue reading "Happy Apollo 11 Anniversary, Everybody!" »