Not all lives are equal

From Glenn Greenwald:

It is hard not to notice, and be disturbed by, the vastly different reactions whenever innocent Americans are killed, as opposed to when Americans are doing the killing of innocents. All the rage and denunciations of these murders in Benghazi are fully justified, but one wishes that even a fraction of that rage would be expressed when the US kills innocent men, women and children in the Muslim world, as it frequently does. Typically, though, those deaths are ignored, or at best justified with amoral bureaucratic phrases ("collateral damage") or self-justifying cliches ("war is hell"), which Americans have been trained to recite. It is understandable that the senseless killing of an ambassador is bigger news than the senseless killing of an unknown, obscure Yemeni or Pakistani child. But it's anything but understandable to regard the former as more tragic than the latter. Yet there's no denying that the same people today most vocally condemning the Benghazi killings are quick and eager to find justification when the killing of innocents is done by their government, rather than aimed at it.
Americans and their media simply don't care about people being killed in the Middle East, unless they happen to be American. I suppose this is to be expected because we tend to have more in common with Americans. But why isn't that our media simply don't try to delve into the deaths we cause with our weapons? This is what we should be striving for: "The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." Thomas Paine

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A thought experiment regarding Iran and Israel

Imagine reversing the situation between Iran and Israel. Noam Chomsky sketches it out:

Iran is carrying out a murderous and destructive low-level war against Israel with great-power participation. Its leaders announce that negotiations are going nowhere. Israel refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and allow inspections, as Iran has done. Israel continues to defy the overwhelming international call for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region. Throughout, Iran enjoys the support of its superpower patron. Iranian leaders are therefore announcing their intention to bomb Israel, and prominent Iranian military analysts report that the attack may happen before the U.S. elections. Iran can use its powerful air force and new submarines sent by Germany, armed with nuclear missiles and stationed off the coast of Israel. Whatever the timetable, Iran is counting on its superpower backer to join if not lead the assault. U.S. defense secretary Leon Panetta says that while we do not favor such an attack, as a sovereign country Iran will act in its best interests.

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A few agitated thoughts about the Republican Convention

I'm really getting sick of this Republican BS. They are so incredibly ashamed of their extended recent track record that they have banished George W. Bush from the convention, lest he remind us what their program really amounts to, even though he was the President for eight fucking years of lies, waste, ignorance, secrecy, torture, naivete and corruption. Further, they banish Sarah Palin from the stage because even they know that she is a ill-informed PR craving clown. Look, I'm not a big fan of the Democrats these days either, but there is something surreal about this Republican party, a syndicate that plunges us into huge debt with their two non-ending corrupt miserable wars that have no defined objective and then they further plunge us into debt with non-stop tax cuts for the rich (and no, the war continues in Iraq--we just aren't officially there). And then they cart out a candidate who hides his money in Swiss banks after making his multi-millions by plunging vulnerable companies into massive debt using third party money. And now their plan is to have more of the same: Destroy our last functioning social institutions, redirecting those tax dollars to their uber-rich friends too and then the victims--and many of people are truly innocent victims of this insanity--will be showered with unrelenting blame. This Republican Convention is nothing but an hyper-orgy of social darwinism where the corporate media will mostly (luckily there are a few exceptions) pretend that this star-studded stunt is part of normal functioning democracy. No thanks. This is the party of Goldman Sachs--this is the party of big money in search of nothing by more money. They will NEVER have enough. What is being paraded in front of us is actually Oligarchs at Work and their followers who want to believe more than anything else that sucking the treasury dry and otherwise doing NOTHING will somehow make the nation highly functional. Doing nothing does not make for a garden--it makes for a twisted tangled jungle. THAT is the plan. In the meantime, most of those thousands of corporate media reporters in attendance have no damned idea about how to ask a meaningful question, even though 90% of those attending are one half-baked question from being exposed as fear-peddling criminals and chumps parading as paragons of morality. This is shameful, dangerous and sick. The only quick remedy I can think of for what's going on is mass derision. Those of us who are self-critical and informed need to talk up. We need to call and write and make lots of noise, in email, on websites, in newspapers, to our representatives, to our neighbors and to anyone who listens. We need to establish that the new growing trend is that we are not buying any of this. Urge your friends and family to turn off their TVs, to really get informed and join this movement.

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Cartoons of J. Jonik

I recently stumbled across some cartoons by J. Jonik. Here's how he describes his work:

Many, or most, of these cartoons have been published in periodicals and leaflets and web-sites, etc., around the USA, and some in Germany, the UK and Australia...and beyond. Publications have included Z Magazine, Extra! (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), Public Citizen, Earth First! Journal, POCLAD, Food and Water, Solidarity, Synthesis-Regeneration, Compost Dispatch, Philadelphia Daily News, University City Review (Phila.), Green Left Weekly (Australia), Green Pages, Hawaii Island Journal, Funny Times, Wild Earth, Dollars and Sense, Dissent, Earth Island Journal, North Coast Xpress, Anderson Valley Advertiser, The Prism, The Partisan, Orion, Tox CAT (UK- Communities Against Toxics), Boycott Quarterly, Friends of the Earth, and others that I will add to this list when I remember them. Cartoons have been, or still are, also used at web sites of various activist groups such as NORML, and various Single Payer health care advocates. A bunch of cartoons were scattered throughout "Censored 2008" Project Censored's 2008 annual collection of top 25 Censored Stories, and in Teishan Latner's "The Quotable Rebel", an invaluable book of quotes that are especially usable by political activists.
Jonik makes his cartoons available to non-commercial sites. Thus, I'm going to share a few of my favorites:   [More . . . ]

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