Goodbye, Blue Sky: 03.20.03

Sorry, gang; the YouTube copyright police are jerking me around again on account of the old Pink Floyd tracks I used in this piece. You can download a copy of the mpeg4 with the sound track intact (05:39, 66.3mb) from archive.org. Sic semper tyrannis.

Oh say, can you see
on the bridge named for Key
where the “Aqua Team” marched,
and a bunch were arrested…!

It was bone cold, rainy, sloppy, and miserable only a day before the official beginning of spring — in other words, your typical mid-March morning in DC. It was also a morning full of coordinated disobedience actions across DC marking the first day of Iraq War v2.0. Our group, nicknamed “Aqua Team”, was given the plum job of mobbing aboard a Metro to Rosslyn and taking Key Bridge early during rush hour.

Things turned out quite nicely. All the color-nicknamed groups gathered for their rallies at designated points around DC, not knowing where they were headed until it was actually time to go — a brilliant piece of strategy which greatly reduced the chances of any snitches in the crowd getting the word ahead to the cops — in our case, it was a meetup at Eastern Market, right in my backyard, then onto an Orange Line all the way across town to Rosslyn, where hilarity ensued…

Greetings From Haiti!

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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First Insurgent Aerial Attack Squadron Gear

Are you getting pissed? I mean, really, REALLY pissed? Well, don't just sit there doing bong hits and watching "Adult Swim" -- ­get up, rise up, and show 'em your shoes! Show your solidarity with the Iraqi shoe-throwing reporter! Let 'em know you're ready to "keep 'em flying"!



Black Cotton t-shirt, $20.99;
3.5" button, 10-pack, $24.99;
2.25" button, 10-pack, $15.99

...and, check out more Official FIAAS Gear here!

Mission Accomplished!

So, I'm poring over the Drudge Report in my daily search for cheap laffs, and finding out what the Enemy is up to, and I come across this Associated Press dispatch from Baghdad reporting on the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at President Chimp, and thinking "whoa, that's some cheap laffs – and he almost hit the sonofabitch, too! Sweet!" and move on with whatever I was doing...



Later that day, I go by Drudge again, and find another story from Agencie France-Presse noting that the perpetrator of this "shoe-icide attack" is being hailed as a hero in most of the Arab World, and the next thing I know the whole world's raising hell to get the guy out of prison, it's being reported that he's being beaten in custody, there are demonstrations and rallies all over in solidarity, and I'm thinking...holy shit, this story's really grown some legs, man!

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Decision 2008

So, I wake up early one morning recently; as usual, my wife's already awake and has MSNBC's "Morning Joe" babbling on the TV. In the thinning fog of my fading Rapid Eye Movement state I hear Barack Obama telling us how he plans to continue upholding the corporate/military agenda, after which I can just make out some unhinged rightist nutcake denouncing John McCain for being too Liberal. A gaggle of pundits ranging from tepid centrist to shrieking fascist have a bitching, shouting argument over who'll do the best job of bombing and torturing for the next four years. One pundit calls McCain a closet Liberal, another calls Obama a Socialist, and I think: jeezus, it's too goddamn' early for this shit. It's only 7am, and my brain is already hurting.

Then, I realize that this has been going on for over a year and will continue until November, and I think, "oh, Jeezus, no. Please. Somebody, stop this goddamn' torture. Somebody make it stop. Somebody, anybody -- make...it...STOP...!"

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Remember Our MIAs!

And so, another year has gone, and it's fitting, I think, for us to remember The Missing, the MIAs. At every challenge to the Constitution and Liberty, The Missing were...MIA. When the time came to stand and fight for what was right, the MIAs were Missing, but not forgotten. Even today, with Freedom on attack from all sides, you can count on The Missing to be...MIAs. So, now, let us pause and Remember The Missing.



Indeed, remember the MIAs, so that they may never be forgotten, especially for those of you planning on participating in the next "election" -- if they think they "don't have the votes" now, just wait until next November. That's right, November, ten months away -- ten...long...MONTHS.

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A Fox Five Exclusive!

So, while I'm just finishing choking down the news about the DC Gummint -- at the urging of Fox Channel 5 News -- trying to sock the ANSWER Coalition with a fine for exercising basic Constitutional rights, I get a mailing from Rob Naiman's "Just Foreign Policy" list mentioning that their Iraqi Deaths Estimator has just rolled over a million. That's right, a million Iraqi dead since the "Shock'n'Awe" of March 2003 -- or 1,012,979, to be exact, as I write this.

That's right, one Friggin' MILLION. Jesus Herbert Walker Christ. And that's not counting the million and a half or more Iraqis this nation murdered with sanctions throughout the 1990s (nobody died when Clinton lied? My ass.).

I'd been noticing lately that Fox News hasn't spent a whole lot of time reporting on Iraq because, y'know, there just isn't any goddamn' good news coming out of that goddamn' place, unless you count some oft-repeated DoD press release mentioning that the Army has rebuilt some goddamn' stretch of highway from the airport (that they bombed the piss out of just a while back).

Yeah, when your Empire's crumbling, the outrage and dissatisfaction are so palpable you can cut 'em with a goddamn' knife, the one thing you need your press to be doing is exposing the nefarious doings of bands of left-wing wheatpasters defacing the Seat Of Our Empire with free expression.

Left-wing posters? In OUR Capital?

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Payback's A Bitch

So, anyway, I see last week where Congress approves another million billion zillion dollars for President Chimp's War in Iraq. No surprises there. Then, this bridge collapses in Minnesota, to much wailing and voyeurism from the press, and the predictable calls for us to send our prayers to Minneapolis -- even though no prayer requests were forthcoming for the victims of similar bridge collapses caused by US bombing of Iraqi civilians.

Shortly afterwards though, Congress somehow manages to find another few hundred mil or so under their sofa cushions -- a huge-ass surprise, to see that anything was left after the million billion zillion they just poured into the friggin' war.

Then, this past weekend, as reported so gloriously on AP, President Chimp himself pays a visit to the collapse site and casts his own personal eyeballs on the scene, allows himself to be personally spoken to by a common, ordinary worker, makes a big fat promise about repair and restoration -- but, get this, he says "I make no promises on the timetable"; he never was much on timetables, was he -- has his picture taken in a hardhat surveying the devestation, gets back onto the helicopter, and flies home.

So, all this stuff starts crashing together in my head -- fat wads of cash pissed away on an illegal war, public works budgets going begging, bridges collapsing in the USA -- at which point the conceptual collisions build to critical mass and, just as the pile detonates, my first thought out loud is, "whoa, payback's a bitch!"

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Deportation: the Day After

So, it seems a bunch of yahoos in various state and county legislatures are bound and determined to rid the place of "illegal" immigrants -- "illegal", that is, in the sense of legality randomly pulled out of some racist politician's ass about a century or so ago. Of course, "illegal immigration" probably ranks right up there with "intellectual property" on the all-time list of concepts totally pulled out of the asses of politicians.



So, Fine. Just fine. Go ahead, make life so miserable for them that they leave. Hell, why not just deport 'em while you're at it, if it'll make you feel better...?

Great. They're gone. Congratulations. So, who's going to build your houses and fix your streets? Who's going to clean your office building at night? Who's going to do your landscaping work? Who's going to be your nanny -- especially at the wages they're paid for these jobs, and considering the crap they have to put up with from employers. Most of your average Americans sure wouldn't take those jobs because of that; either that, or -- more likely -- they're all on their sofas waiting for their phones to ring with an offer to be Donald Trump's Apprentice, or perhaps keeping their options flexible in case that lucrative position as an American Idol Winner comes open.

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A Year After Katrina...

Ahh, it's "election" season once again! This one slammed head-on into my brain after reading little bits of Dubya's speech on the Katrina anniversary, after seeing the montage of drowning victims in Spike Lee's documentary, and after reading in various news reports that a year after the hurricane, corpses were still being found.



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"Birth Pangs of a New Middle East"

Is it just me, or did Secretary Of Snake Condolee-ee-ee-eezza Rice make one of her weirdest statements ever last weekend -- even weirder than that NBC "Today" interview where she said "freedom is on the march" about half a dozen times? Oh, and I love the part where she says that "We're going through a very violent time." "WE"? What do you mean "we", white woman?



All in all, though, quite a bout of birth pangs, there; shame it couldn't have been a more quiet, serene and peaceful birthing experience, like Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise's baby.

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Nuclear Threat

I saw on the morning news the footage of the first successful synthesis of uranium by the Iranians. I saw a scientist holding up this little capsule of radioactive gas with this theatrically triumphant attitude. As I heard the pundits clucking on TV, I reminded myself, "OK, Iran's finally gone nuclear, but who's the real nuclear threat in the Middle East?" Every time I asked myself this, I kept coming up with the same answer:



BIG HINT: it begins with an "I", ends with an "L", and has "S-R-A-E" in the middle. Has anyone else noticed how the US Press and the State are shitting themselves over Iran finally managing to produce some crummy-assed smidgen of enriched uranium, while failing to point out that Israel has enough nukes to make a ring of craters around itself?

Let's take a calm, close look, here. On the one hand, we have a nation that's just now reached the Pinky And The Brain stage of nuclear development; on the other, a nation with at least 200 functional nuclear weapons of various types -- most of which were supplied by the USA -- on standby, ready to light the place up. Those of us out here who aren't profoundly retarded can see who the real nuclear threat is here, and would really appreciate it if the US Media would quit jerking us around.

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Out of Iraq, Into Darfur

Did anyone else here see those Liberals at the April 29th New York City peace mobe toting signs sponsored by Working Assets reading "Out Of Iraq, Into Darfur"? Yeah, it sounded pretty damn' whacked to me, too.



I mean, c'mon...can you believe that Amnesty International is supporting military intervention in Darfur? Yeah, that sounds even more whacked than a rally of 10,000 Liberals on the Mall a couple of weeks ago yelling for President Chimp to invade... uh, that is, "save" Darfur. Y'know, through the past decade and a half at least, I haven't seen a single "humanitarian" crisis -- real or perceived -- that the US State hasn't tried to exploit for either resource extraction or imperial expansion: Somalia, Kosovo, the Sudan, you name it. If anything about Darfur is "saved", it's going to be the big-assed puddle of oil sitting underneath Sudanese soil.

Imperialism and militarism aren't tools for solving problems -- they are the problems. Even the quickest examination of US foreign policy and behavior over the past fifteen years would show you why "Out Of Iraq, Into Darfur" is about the most cockamamie idea to come along since "Anybody But Bush".

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Stay the Course!

Finally, a Plan For Victory! Oh, sure, the GOP may not have any real plan -- and the Democrats may be even worse -- but at least the Bushites have the good sense to put up big signs all around the stage reading "Plan For Victory" whenever President Chimp gives a speech. All the Democrats have is Howard The Duck, living in a party he never made.

Seriously, the Bush Regime flacks must have assumed Americans are even stupider than they actually are to serve up that old Reagan-era bromide "Stay The Course" when, in fact, there were a goodly number of us who remember that load of bullshit from back when it was still fresh and steaming. The war in Iraq is shaping up to be a Fail even more epic than Vietnam, and all President Chimp can think of is to say "Stay The Course". What was that old Pete Seeger song... "waist-deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool says..."



In 1989, one Dr. Francis Fukuyama penned what had to be one of the most conceited loads of triumphalist blathering ever, The End Of History, in which he claims that the fall of the USSR and its satellite regimes in Eastern Europe heralded the end of the struggle between Good and Evil (aka Capitalism and Socialism, or the absurdly distorted, simplistic media images thereof). What I found especially laughable was Fukuyama's treatment of the USA as a state that was somehow immune to collapse and above it all, the "winner" of the aforementioned struggle when, in fact, even as US politicians and pro-capitalist idealogues celebrated the victory of "freedom", the first rumblings of the collapse of the USA could be heard in the form of NAFTA and George I's initiation of renewed imperialist adventurism in Panama, Iraq, and Somalia.

The end of history? No, sorry, Dr. Fukuyama, what you heard in '89 was just the first shoe dropping. Seriously, Dr. F, didn't you realize that if a regime the size of the USSR could end up as historical roadkill, it could just as easily happen to the USA? Jeezus, what is it with these goddamn' Harvard jerks?

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169,000 New Jobs!

Almost as if on cue, USA Today, in its classic "everything's OK, don't worry, be happy, nothing to see here" fashion, ran a big-ass front-page story this week trumpeting in its headline that the economy was "surging". Now, if you know anything at all about USA Today -- or, as some of us wags call it, USA Hooray -- when you see them using words like "surging" in a headline on an economic news story, you can be sure it's 99 & 44/100% pure bullshit.



But, anyway, assuming you believe USA Today, the economy's surging again! And, if you checked out the actual breakdown yourself at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you'd see that a pretty good chunk of them are rock-bottom-wage "service" jobs, not including the handful of "freelance" categories you see here -- including a newly-emerging job category showing a huge upswing at the end of the month, shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coasts of Mississippi and Alabama.

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Katrina Marches on Washington

As public outrage over the Bush Regime's handling of the humanitarian disaster in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina began to grow and spread, I thought it might be a good idea to create a second poster for the upcoming national antiwar mobe based on this theme, to tap into that sentiment and spur more intense involvement in the demonstrations.

At last, here was one that President Chimp and his lapdog Congress and media couldn't spin their way out of. "I didn't expect the levees to break", easily one of the most incredible whopping lame-assed "dog ate my homework" excuses ever, was a comment I couldn't help laughing at in spite of everything because it was just too damn' much like watching Saturday Night Live.

So, to help juice up peoples' attitude at the upcoming events in DC, a little something in solidarity with the dispossessed in Fallujah, Iraq, and her sister city, New Orleans.

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Fallujah Minuteman

God damn, well, I declare! Have you seen the like?
Their walls are built of cannonballs,
their motto is 'Don't Tread On Me'!
--grateful dead.



In 1776, gangs of raggedy-assed guerrilla resistance fighters took on the largest, best-equipped, best-trained Imperial Army on the planet, and dished them out a harder licking than they ever expected...and you know the rest. So it is in 2004, when gangs of raggedy-assed guerrilla resistance fighters take on the largest, best-equipped, best-trained Imperial Army on the planet, it's looking once again like King George's goons are going to get a worse whuppin' than they ever expected. Seems as if even as they crow about how much of Fallujah they "control", the largest, best-equipped etc. Imperial Army is actually being surrounded, jumped, and sucker-punched every time they turn around by the aforementioned raggedy-assed guerrillas, as the Resistance spreads across Iraq, and King George's boys are left "squeezing Jello" in Fallujah. And it's to them, the Iraqi resistance, the "Minutemen" of Fallujah, I dedicate this cartoon. Viva la Fallujah!

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Turn Your Back on Bush

Another personal favorite, this was commissioned by The Progressive magazine for a Counterinaugural event they were sponsoring as part of the weekend of protests coinciding with the Second Chimp Coronation.



Truthfully, though, I have to confess to not having been in DC during the Chimp's Second Coronation as my wife and I decided we weren't into hanging around here in the miserable depths of January, freezing our asses off in some fenced-off "free speech zone", and chose instead to spend the week in relatively balmy New Orleans, watching our comrades shivering in bone-cold Washington on TV. Let's face it, it was a helluva lot more fun hanging out in little jazz dives drinking beer until closing time, then stumbling down to Cafè duMonde for black coffee and beignets at 3am. Happily, though, we managed to find ourselves in a big, healthy, counterinaugural protest anyway -- the Jazz Funeral For Democracy, held on a sunny, dry, 70-degree day, featuring a couple of real live New Orleans marching jazz bands in a traditional funeral parade that started at Congo Square and marched through downtown to a rally at Jackson Square, followed by a "second line" that marched through the French Quarter, finishing off at a gig at this cool little joint with a mean-assed blues band and the all-important cheap beer. God damn, they really do know how to throw a protest down there in the Big Easy.

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Four More Years, no.2

So, here we are: four more years of George W. Chimp. Of course, predictably, all the Democrats and Liberals were howling about how they lost because of all those terrible people who voted for Ralph Nader. Never mind that the Democrats chose to nominate the most bland, uninspiring ticket ever; never mind that the Democratic nominee supported pretty much everything Bush did (except, of course when he opposed it). Never mind that John Kerry just sat there like a goddamn' lump while the Bush campaign slapped him around, kicked him in the nuts and accused him of falsifying his war record -- not that it didn't serve Kerry right for bragging about his goddamn' war record, and assuming for just a moment that a willingness to follow orders to kill and die unquestioningly somehow qualifies one to hold public office. Naahh, it was those mean old Nader supporters that cost 'em the election; the Democrats remain convinced of that. Of course, the Democrats also remain convinced that things would've been different under a Kerry Administration, so there you are.

This series of posters promoted the Counterinaugural activities scheduled to coincide with the Second Coronation of George W. Chimp; they illustrate what we were in for four more years of Bush. To be honest, despite these being some of the best pieces I've done, I felt rather awkward doing them, as I worried they'd convey the impression that I believed things would've been substantially different had Kerry been "elected" when in fact, given Kerry's record, they wouldn't have -- except, perhaps, for the delicious irony of hearing protesting crowds in the streets chanting "Hey, Hey, JFK! How many kids did you kill today?"

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New York City 2004 GOP Convention Protest Poster

Here's another one of those gags that pretty much drew itself. On hearing the news that New York City would have the dubious honor of hosting the 2004 Republican Convention, this image slammed into my head like a runaway train and refused to go away:



This was my part towards inspiring locals and visitors alike to hit the streets and give the GOP a good old-fashioned New York City welcome, and to let the Bush Mob know that the people of NYC weren't going to allow themselves to be cast as "extras" in a fascist corporate infomercial (which is basically what the Republicratic and Demopublican Conventions had become by this time).

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