Fighting Words News: Commercial Art...

Personally, my output of actual artwork is a bit lower than some other cartoonists (they're machines, I tells ya!). However, I have been doing a bit of extra commercial artwork lately in an effort to make ends meet. Here's a sneak preview of some of my work (please excuse the watermarks):

• Here's a T-Shirt design I did for a coffee shop chain and maker of handmade chocolates in Seattle, Chocolati (owned by a friend of mine). Not sure when these are going to be available, but I believe all profits will be going to charity... also they make the best damn truffles on the planet:
  
  (Click on thumbnails)


• I did a couple of shirt designs for another coffee shop in Kingston, WA... not sure when these will be available either, but it's a cool little joint, if you ever find yourself in Kitsap County:
  
  
  Here's a company logo I did for Coastal:
  
  


• I'm doing a whole line of shirts for my pals at Not A Number in Seattle (1905 N. 45th) featuring some of the possible and confirmed Democratic candidates for President in '08. This may be a much bigger line (including some shirts making fun of Republicans), but it looks like we're going to start with a couple out of these:
  
  
  Here's another design for Not A Number, for Hempfest in Seattle:
  


• Here's a couple versions of a highly customized design I did for a gift shop in the Pike Place Market:
  


• I did a shirt design for a big summer seminar hosted by my Aikido dojo. Here are some different backs and fronts:
  


• Some designs I did for a contest held by Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films:
  



• Here's a logo and street sign design that I did for a new restaurant in Kingston, WA called "The Grub Hut":
  



• I'm doing Flash slideshows for clients of my dad, a wedding photographer. These shows are perfect for freelance photographers looking to add a new product or promotional item:
  
  


• MARCH 2009 -- I've moved my design work postings to my website... check them out here from now on!
  

More on detainees, torture...

Quick list of articles for this week's 'toon, as I'm getting ready for a trip to San Francisco on Friday for Alternative Press Expo (more on that later).

If only for a diversion from CNN's increasingly bad coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings:

• The cartoon was mostly brought on by reports that perpetual detainee and U.S. citizen Jose Padilla has been tortured to the point where he can no longer assist his attorneys in his defense. George Monbiot reports that "his mind is no longer there," and that he "appears to have been lobotomized: not medically, but socially." Monbiot also makes an excellent point that I've seen echoed elsewhere:
  

  This has nothing to do with obtaining information: torture of all kinds - physical or mental - produces the result that people will say anything to make it end. It is about power, and the thrilling discovery that in the right conditions one man's power over another is unlimited.

  Every other citizen of this country should be in absolute horror that our own government has done this.


• A funny note on the Wikipedia entry for Padilla that I had never heard before, that Glenn Beck and other right-wing commentators subscribe to a conspiracy theory that Padilla was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing, based almost solely on the fact that Padilla sorta looks like a police sketch of an alleged associate of Timothy McVeigh.
  
  It occurs to me that Padilla also bears a striking resemblance to Detroit Tigers' catcher Ivan Rodriguez... last I heard, though, Beck et al. have not implicated Pudge in the Oklahoma City bombing.


• Sidney Blumenthal gives a good summary of Bush's use of torture and his "Quest For Unfettered Power," and Scott Horton writes about the nationalization of "Texas Justice."


• Check out a particularly interesting article by Stephen Soldz on the use of psychologists by the government to assist in interrogations of detainees, and the resulting split between the professions of psychiatry and psychology. He says that the activities at Guantanamo and other detention centers have effectively turned them into "intentional experimental facilities designed to develop and test new behavior manipulation techniques... designed to break people down, to destroy them, whether they are innocent or guilty, whether they have any intelligence value or not. "

Fighting Words: 4/16/07 Cartoon

"The Total Home Interrogator!"...

Imus

Yet again, Media Matters makes my point for me...

There are about a half-dozen other idiots I'd rather see off the air first. Imus is a "little fish"...

More on media coverage of Iran...

Articles and sources for this week's 'toon:

• On the mainstream media's coverage of Iran, check out: Gal Beckerman, Mark Weisbrot and Robert Naiman, Paul McLeary, Greg Mitchell, FAIR, Glenn Greenwald, and Media Matters. The biggest offender so far has been (surprise!) The New York Times, particularly some earlier reporting by former Judy Miller cohort Michael Gordon. Apparently, they've forgotten all of the lessons from the WMD debacle (enumerated by Dan Froomkin).
  
  Media Matters also has an entry on some weak interviewing by Wolf Blitzer. This week's 'toon was meant to be a shot at all cable and network news, but, of course, the main character resembles Wolf (actually, I meant for him to be a cross between Wolf and Jerry Garcia). Wolf is just so easy to make fun of. The other guy could possibly be CNN goof Rick Sanchez.


• Noam Chomsky gives us a hypothetical: say Iran had invaded Mexico, had sent a massive armada of naval vessels to the Caribbean, and was making all kinds of noise about attacking the U.S. if we didn't terminate our nuclear programs immediately... what would we do? His point is that "the debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds without ridicule on the assumption that the United States owns the world."


• Check out Tony Dokoupil on UW professor Doug Underwood's study on the connection between intoxication and journalism (in this case, good journalism... unlike in the cartoon). In particular, this caught my eye:

  Psychologists have shown that neurotics can make good journalists when they project their inner doubts and dissatisfactions onto the world. This is the energy behind investigative reporting and the source of journalism's vaunted distrust of power, the argument goes. "Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers," (newsman Jimmy) Breslin says.

  
  Well, that sounds like a pretty good description of... umm... never mind.

Fighting Words: 4/9/07 Cartoon

"The Stoned News Network!"...

This one is an extension of "The Drunk Local News"... see those here:

More on Environmentalism...

Not many sources for this week's 'toon... it was mainly based on some of my own older observations and arguments on environmentalism. Often, it seems like the debate gets stuck in the old rut where the pro-environment side will argue that the science is in their favor (which it is), while the pro-business or pro-libertarian or pro-Armageddon crowd (whatever they call themselves to keep from being called anti-environment) reflexively find a way to convince themselves that reductive science is not believable. The end result, of course, is a stalemate... the anti-environmentalists steadfastly cling to their "mind-bottling" ideas about the movement towards conservation, and the environmentalists fail to make the argument in a way that makes a personal connection with the people they are trying to convince. It has occurred to me that there's another aspect of the environmental movement that doesn't get enough attention: the people who act to save it because they simply like to be outside (including a good number of my friends and family). They do so because being in nature provides them with a means for spiritual fulfillment. I believe that our opponents in this fight would be less likely to dismiss the environmentalist position if they were able to substitute the faces and motivations of real people for the "Al Gore political-types" or the "dirty protester hippies" they imagine when they think of "environmentalism."

The quotes of famous naturalist and Sierra Club founder John Muir capture these ideas well.

Anyway, here are some articles:

• Speaking of Gore, check out Robert Parry and Media Matters on the mainstream media's never-ending vendetta against the former veep.


• While James Inhofe and others compare environmentalists to the Nazis, the new/old trend seems to be comparing them (and everyone else who disagrees with you) to communists. Amazing how they can span the entire political spectrum like that with a snap of the fingers.

Fighting Words: 4/2/07 Cartoon

"Fuzzy Fulfillment"...

See the previous FB/HB episodes with Stanley, the Sheep of Piety:

More on Alberto, U.S. Attorney's Scandal...

Short (and late) list of articles for this week's 'toon, since it's a topic that has been rapidly evolving:

• Glenn Greenwald on one of the more objectionable things that Alberto has overseen in his tenure, the FBI's abuse of "national security letters."


• E&P on the rash of editorial pages calling for Alberto's head.


• Speaking of heads: Think Progress on Alberto's head-scratching claim that "there is no express grant of habeas corpus in the Constitution" (it just says you can't take it away). Ummm... what?


• John Dean on Bush's use of executive privilege, which he says illustrates how "a conservative ideology that had always been devoted to limiting government power has been transformed into the largest expansion of executive power since FDR."


• Stephen Crockett's interesting suggestion that "underlying Bush's resistance to a full investigation is evidence of longstanding criminality that borders on racketeering." Ah, such are the days of the Capone administration...


• Check out my previous blog posts on the related subjects of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, domestic surveillance, and executive privilege and the MCA.

And yeah, I know... the caricature of Alberto in this week's 'toon is just about the worst one I've ever done. I'll work on it... but check out a better one that I did of him as Alberto the Torture Turtle.

On a good note, in researching Alberto's "cop persona" for the 'toon, I ran across a great '80's TV show that I had totally forgotten about: Sledge Hammer. It was a Police Squad!-like satire of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, with David Rasche as an over-the-top, hard-as-nails cop who liked to shoot first and ask questions later. I remember specifically the opening sequence with a "near-sensual" panning over Sledge's .44 Magnum as it rested on top of a satin pillow. What a great show that was...

Fighting Words: 3/26/07 Cartoon

"Law & Order: Justice Department"...

Inhofe Smashed...

Lots to blog about this week...

By far the biggest douchebag in Congress is James Inhofe. Okay, that's too bold-- Ted Stevens is a pretty big d-bag, too... so is Tom Coburn... and Duncan Hunter, John Cornyn, Trent Lott... but I digress. Suffice it to say, James Inhofe is a douchebag.

By far the best moment of Al Gore's testimony before the Senate the other day was Inhofe getting smacked down like a bratty child when he kept trying to cut off Gore's answers on global warming. Do yourself a favor and watch it...

Good cartoons...

...that you've probably already seen:

Keith Knight's suggestion to advance the rebuilding of New Orleans.

Ruben Bolling's shocking death of a main character.

More on New Orleans, faulty pumps...

Some must-see sites on this week's 'toon:

• Toni McElroy and Kevin Whelan of ACORN point out that the best way to help New Orleans is to finally have a conversation about poverty in America. They and Gulf Coast Reconstruction watch have proposed some shocking common sense ideas to move the rebuilding process forward, like actually sending some money down to the shattered school system and halting the demolition of livable public housing. Perhaps we might even think about hooking a few people up with some health insurance. The New Agenda for the Gulf Coast report also points out that the amount of spending waste in the rebuilding effort could exceed $1 billion this year due to the awarding of low- or no-bid contracts.


• Of course, I suppose these ideas are only common sense if you're not a dead-hearted Republican "bootstrap" jerkweed like Newt Gingrich, who is so utterly consumed with his own white-bread existence and so completely unaware of the effect that poverty and racism have on society that he makes idiot comments like this.


• So, what really got me pissed off to do this cartoon was the AP story last week that 34 brand-new, heavy-duty pumps built by former Jeb Bush business partner J. David Eller's Moving Waters Industries are... you guessed it... faulty! Not only that, but the Army Corps of Engineers installed the pumps even though they knew the equipment would fail during a storm. And, of course, a story like this would not be complete unless MWI was also under investigation on allegations of fraud and misappropriation of taxpayer money... which they are.
  
  See some of the prior links for more information, and Fix the Pumps has some good info on this insane story.


• NOLA.com has a series on Louisiana's disappearing coastline... I'll come back to that in a later 'toon.


• I've been reading Max Weber's Politics as a Vocation... hadn't read this one before (I do vaguely remember reading The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in college). I'll probably come back to this one in a later 'toon, too.
  
  Anyway, he has the strangest idea that "responsibility" is an important qualification for political leadership, and that the only person who should be allowed to "put his hand on the wheel of history" is one who will "do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon him."
  
  How odd...

Ditto x2...

I should also express my agreement with the prevailing sentiments on the death of King Features' editor Jay Kennedy. As he apparently did often, he was kind enough to take the time to write a very nice note of encouragement on a submission package that I had sent to them once.

Such people are rare in this business...

South Park

I'll register my agreement with Jen on the idiot creators of South Park. I stopped watching that show a while ago, not because it stopped being occasionally funny, but simply because of the narcissistic, comedy-snob attitudes of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I'd differ with Jen on one thing though... I'm not sure their problem is as much a "macho gender" thing as it is just being ipso facto assholes. I guess I'd add to her argument that being FOR the prevailing power establishment (i.e. George Bush) does not make you "funny" and it sure as hell doesn't make you "counter-culture"... it just makes you a freakin' moron who doesn't have the balls to read and inform himself.

Case in point: their episode on Katrina (which I came across after I had written this week's 'toon) called "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow." The targets in this episode are people who suggest that the severity of the storm might have had something to do with global warming, and that George W. Bush might have had something to do with the disastrous failure of leadership in the federal government's response to the tragedy. At the same time, they compare the city's poor blacks to beavers, with the parody exclamation "George Bush doesn't care about beavers."

... cuz there's nothin' funnier than ridiculing global warming and making fun of the victims of centuries of poverty and institutional racism.

Fighting Words: 3/19/07 Cartoon

"The Day After Yesterday"...

See some more movie themes:

In honor of St. Patrick's Day...

So the news broke this week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has confessed to being the mastermind behind "everything ever," a story that most media outlets seem to have accepted as absolute fact. I suppose it's possibly true, but considering the fact that the confession came from a Pentagon transcript taken during a secret hearing at Guantanamo (which means, of course, there is "no way to confirm the testimony as the Bush administration has banned reporters and lawyers from proceedings"), in a manner that conveniently takes some of the attention off of Alberto's U.S. attorney scandal and implicitly justifies his stances on torture and secret military tribunals, my immediate reaction is (to quote one of my favorite movies):

(in Irish accent) "I'll believe that one when me shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet!"

It's not like the Defense Department has used up it's credibility on stuff like this, right?

More on U.S. v. Libby...

For this week's 'toon, I was seriously considering having Libby and some of his criminal cohorts reenact the scene from Goodfellas when they're in prison making pasta sauce. I would've had Abramoff and maybe DeLay there, perhaps Duke Cunningham also... and Cheney as Paulie Vario (who was doing a year for contempt) using a razor blade to "slice the garlic so thin that it liquifies in the pan." Classic scene. (By the way, some people think I'm crazy because I was disappointed by The Departed... I thought it was good, but not a fraction as good as Goodfellas was.)

Two things occurred to me: first, I do a lot of cartoons with gangster themes. Mostly, though, I don't think Libby's ever going to see the inside of a jail cell, minimum security or otherwise...

Anyway, here are some articles:

• Looks like the whole story is old news already with the U.S. attorneys scandal hitting a boil... Arianna Huffington ties the two scandals together.


• The central theme of this scandal (and the cartoon) is lies and liars... so many, in fact, that it often seems like you need a scorecard to keep them straight. Edward Lazarus has a couple of articles on the culture of lies in the current White House.


• On ol' crazy-ass "Rusty Spikes" Cheney's obsession to get even with Joe Wilson, check out columns by Ray McGovern and Sidney Blumenthal. Michael Duffy says that ol' Dick ain't quite done in the White House yet, though...


• Contrary to what anyone says, Libby was not "innocent." The Nation reports on Cathie Martin's testimony that Libby was "intensely engaged" in Cheney's campaign to get vengeance on Wilson. And, it was not "bad memory" on Libby's part... Patrick Fitzgerald maintains that Libby "made time to deal with the Wilson matter day after day after day."
  
  Don't kid yourself, though... his pardon is a done-deal. Most likely, he will appeal until after the 2008 presidential election, and then Dubya will bail him out. William Rivers Pitt agrees, and points out that Libby is a "damned lucky man" considering that "the lies promulgated by Mr. Libby led directly to the deaths of 3,185 American soldiers and the wounding of between 47,000 and 53,000... [which] amounts to between a third and a fourth of the entire active combat force of the United States military." The only question is whether Fitzgerald will push for Libby to begin serving his sentence now, which might force Dubya's hand earlier than expected.


• The mainstream media has been typically fabulous on this story, in particular the Washington Post editorial page. Robert Parry has an excellent column on this. Media Matters also has a roundup of some of the myths and falsehoods that have been coming out of the mainstream press on the Libby verdict.


• Will Karl Rove ever be indicted in this case? Not bloody likely... Fitzgerald says that he's "going back to his day job."

Fighting Words: 3/12/07 Cartoon

"U.S. v. Libby -- The Ballgame"...

More on Terrorism, Hegemony...

Sources and inspirations for this week's 'toon:

• My main inspiration was a quote from Alastair Crooke, who says that "what Muslims hate is the West's monopoly on the socio-economic implementation of values such as justice, freedom, good governance, which all Muslims share. Muslims don't believe simply that the West is the only model of the implementation of these values..."
  
  See also an older Chomsky piece, "Terrorist in the Mirror," where he makes one of his calling-card arguments:
  

  The most elementary [moral principle] is a virtual truism: decent people apply to themselves the same standards that they apply to others, if not more stringent ones...
  
  I have been writing about terror for 25 years, ever since the Reagan administration declared its War on Terror. I've been using definitions that seem to be doubly appropriate: first, they make sense; and second, they are the official definitions of those waging the war. To take one of these official definitions, terrorism is "the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear," typically targeting civilians... These definitions yield an entirely unacceptable consequence: it follows that the US is a leading terrorist state, dramatically so during the Reaganite war on terror.
  
  ...Either the US is part of the civilized world, and must send the US air force to bomb Washington; or it declares itself to be outside the civilized world. The logic is impeccable, but fortunately, logic has been dispatched as deep into the memory hole as moral truisms.

  
  Later, he reminds us that there were a lot of us out there advocating a measured, intelligent response after 9/11... but, of course, that never happened:
  

  With regard to Islamic terror, there is a broad consensus among intelligence agencies and researchers. They identify two categories: the jihadis, who regard themselves as a vanguard, and their audience, which may reject terror but nevertheless regard their cause as just. A serious counter-terror campaign would therefore begin by considering the grievances , and where appropriate, addressing them, as should be done with or without the threat of terror. There is broad agreement among specialists that al-Qaeda-style terror "is today less a product of Islamic fundamentalism than of a simple strategic goal: to compel the United States and its Western allies to withdraw combat forces from the Arabian Peninsula and other Muslim countries"

  
  In this article, Chomsky cites research by Robert Pape, who argues that "suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism."
  
  Check out a blog post by Paul Street, who differentiates the "Iraq war definitions" of terms like "democracy" and "terrorism" from the actual, literal definitions. Lastly, Robert Parry argues that Bush's identified enemy in this war has mutated from "terrorists" into an even more amorphous foe: "radicals and extremists." It would take quite a stretch of the imagination not to label Bush himself a "radical" or "extremist," let alone a terrorist.


• Check out two reports by Syed Saleem Shahzad on the status of al-Qaeda, which note that American operations in the war on terror have only pushed young Muslims to gravitate towards groups like al Qaeda, and to consider Osama bin Laden a "hero."
  
  See also Juan Cole on the estimated 650,000 Iraqi civilians killed during the Iraq War.

Fighting Words: 3/5/07 Cartoon

"Hegemonopoly"...

Please excuse...

...the general lack of noise coming from this blog. In addition to the weekly comic, I'm in the middle of a few ongoing processes (i.e. learning computer stuff) that will hopefully make the Fighting Words world even more kick-ass.

Anyhoo, here's my reaction to the latest Ann Coulter fiasco, which I haven't seen echoed anywhere else: I think what's most objectionable about her comments is, since she is supposed to be nothing more than a professional "humorist," the fact that she can't do any better than resorting to humor at the level of an eighth-grade boy.

Then again, in all fairness, I was reading Jon Stewart's America: The Book the other day, and there's a joke in there that today's Supreme Court has reached a "moderate level of diversity, with two women, one African-American, and one homosexual" (with a footnote saying, "Hint: it rhymes with 'Palia'"). I thought that was pretty funny... so I suppose that makes me a big fat hypocrite or something.

More on Evangelical Extremism...

Sources and inspirations for this week's 'toon:

• The main inspiration was Jesus Camp, which I rented over the weekend. My reaction to this flick?
  
  Yikes.
  
  I usually don't get a visceral fright from horror movies... they're just kinda boring to me. I guess the scene in "The Ring" where the kid crawls out of the TV is pretty scary... and the scene in Hannibal where he feeds Ray Liotta his own brain made it hard for me to stomach food for a while. I also found Requiem for a Dream disturbing on many levels.
  
  But this movie... holy freaking crap. Let's just say I couldn't watch the whole thing all the way through in one sitting. It's that messed up. Of course, mostly because it ain't no horror movie... just the everyday lives of Evangelical extremists in America.
  
  As many have noted, by far the funniest part of the movie is at the beginning of the camp, when the white-bread freakazoid adults are getting their little minions pumped up to a Christian techno-rap tune with lyrics like "J.C.'s in da house!" and "We're kickin' it for CHRIST!"
  
  The laughs stop there, though...


• Check out a couple of articles by Chris Hedges, whose book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America just came out in January. The first is on the radical Christian Right's use of middle and lower-class despair as a recruiting tool; for example, playing on the guilt and shame of women who've had abortions for the purpose of furthering an extremist ideology. In the second, Hedges talks about the radical Christian Right's infiltration of the military and police, which he says "signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign... to dismantle America's open society and build a theocratic state." While this may seem somewhat alarmist on the surface, he does make a compelling point that the "final aesthetic" of the radical Christian Right is violence.


• Check out Susan Jacoby on the plight of atheists in our society.
  
  See also Boltgirl on Makeover Ministries' movement to "inspire women to look good from the inside-out and to be Supermodels for Christ"... according to founder Tammy Bennett, who decks herself out "from head to toe in silver." Wow...

Fighting Words: 2/26/07 Cartoon

"The Evangelical Circus"...

More on Campaign Finance...

Sources and inspirations for this week's 'toon:

• Farhad Manjoo on a proposal by a pair of Yale professors on how to fix campaign finance -- give every American citizen $50 to donate anonymously to candidates of their choice. Among the revelations in this article, the author notes that Hillary Clinton has already announced that she is going to fund her campaign entirely through private contributions, and her rivals are likely to follow suit. Also, Russ Feingold continues to plug away at attempts to fix the system, but his ex-partner in the effort, John McCain (now, of course, himself a candidate for president), seems to have forgotten all about his former crusade.
  
  Check out Russ Baker on the top 10 corporate democratic strategists-for-hire, which shows just how far the Democrats' tentacles reach into the corporate world (despite being the party that is supposed to represent the interests of poor people). See also a couple of FindLaw articles on the Supreme Court's most recent encounters with Buckley and campaign finance reform: McConnell v. FEC and Randall v. Sorrell (with, of course, Scalia and Thomas leading the defense of the "free speech" rights of big money contributors). Finally, some multimedia: check out Bill Moyers' Capitol Crimes, and some NPR reports on campaign finance.


• I've been reading a lot lately about the presidential election of 1896, which many political scientists have considered to be a "realigning" election... I'm going to save most of the links for a later cartoon, but here's a good little article that links it to present-day events. It was the election that marked the birth of modern campaign finance, as William McKinley's campaign manager Mark Hanna appealed heavily to corporations for help in their run against progressive William Jennings Bryan. Hanna's famous quote: "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is."
  
  Shocker of the century: Hanna is Karl Rove's personal hero...


• Some good articles trying to dissect the Obama phenomenon by Matt Taibbi and Patricia Williams, and one on John McCain's problems with Arizona Republicans by Max Blumenthal.


• If you don't already know about these sites, check out Vote-Smart, Politics 1, and (especially) Open Secrets. Lots of good info on all the candidates, including actual important facts beyond what Hillary's wearing or what Obama's middle name is: e.g. voting records, public statements on important issues, contributor info (w/ background on some of the corporations and their interests), and the top industries contributing to each candidate.

Fighting Words: 2/19/07 Cartoon

"Corporations: Protectors of Free Speech and the Electoral Process"...

Check out the previous "Corporation Guys" episodes:

Holy cannoli!!

Rage getting back together?

That would just about make my decade...

Say what?

This story came out last week, but I haven't seen much outrage over it:

Apparently, back in 2003/2004, the Federal Reserve airlifted gigantic shipments of cold, hard cash to the new "government" of Iraq, amounting to $4 billion and weighing 363 tons.

Fast-forward to the present day, as the ever weather-beaten people of New Orleans stand, mouths-agape, asking "are you fucking kidding me?!" while levee repair money gets shifted around to various projects.

But then, they're just being "ungrateful," right?

Holy crap...

More on the military, Watada...

Sources and inspirations:

• This week's 'toon was based largely on the case of Ehren Watada, the Fort Lewis soldier who was court-martialed last week after refusing to be deployed with his unit to Iraq. The prosecutor in the case says that Watada "disgraced himself and the military." Of course, the obvious question is: if Watada has disgraced the military, then what in the effing hell has George W. Bush done?!
  
  This aspect of military law is pretty murky. Of course, soldiers cannot be governed under the same set of laws as the rest of us -- the chain of command has to be preserved. At the same time, soldiers clearly have a duty to refuse unlawful orders, a principle established by the Nuremburg trials. As a result, those soldiers who are men of conscience are put in an impossible position when a reckless and insane Commander-in-Chief orders them to commit illegal actions. And, in the end, the consequences for those actions fall completely on the soldiers' shoulders when the administration leaves them out to dry. "Support the troops" indeed...
  
  Taking all these points into account, Watada probably should go to prison, something he seems entirely willing to do. George W. Bush should go to prison, too, but my psychic tells me that's never gonna happen. My gut tells me that the mistrial was orchestrated by the government, which was faced with a high-profile trial that would put a huge spotlight on the most objectionable aspects of this already unpopular war and turn the kid into a martyr when they sent him to prison. I'm suggesting that the confession was "botched" to make it all go away quietly. I don't really have any "evidence" for this, but that doesn't seem to be a big deal in investigative journalism these days.


• Check out a whole heap 'a older articles from Mother Jones on the military and the Pentagon's recruitment crisis. JoAnn Wypijewski reminds us that "the fundamental lesson [of Vietnam]... is that soldiers forced to become criminals for old men's ambitions won't all come home quietly." David Goodman gives us the backstory on Iraq soldiers who believe that the adventure there is illegal and immoral, including one who has to worry about getting run over on the streets of his hometown because he voiced his belief. See also Jonathan Stein's interview with documentary filmmaker David Zeiger.


• Diane Farsetta on the U.S. Army's new sales tactic for potential recruits: encourage them to ignore their parents and other people who don't think the Iraq War is a very good thing.

Fighting Words: 2/12/07 Cartoon

"Who's the Most Screwed?, #2"...

Previous episode here:

Speaking of "Journalism"...

Here's a question: you guys in the teevee "news" business realize that Anna Nicole Smith was not a former president, right? Or a Supreme Court Justice... or a foreign dignitary... or a Pope... or a Nobel Laureate... or a soldier who died in the line of duty.

I don't want to speak ill of the dead... let's just put it this way: I was not offended or annoyed by the coverage of Barbaro's death. But this is like something out of the freakin' Twilight Zone...

You guys have officially gone 'round the bend...

More on Journalistic Integrity...

Sources and inspirations for this week's 'toon:

• Check out two excellent columns by Matt Taibbi on the right-wing media's formula of "fear, titillation, and self-loathing," and on the conspicuous lack of any legal consequences for their pseudo-journalistic hate speech. See also a post by Glenn Greenwald on right-wing pundits as the world's foremost experts on "what Americans want."


• Robert Parry and Eric Boehlert on the right-wing media's Obama preoccupation, and some unfortunate news for Fox News as their ratings begin to plummet (See this? It's the world's smallest violin playing just for them).


• Satta Sarmah on "The Cowardly Wolf," and Media Matters on CNN's eager-to-please attitude on White House talking points.
  
  See also Michelle Pilecki on another poor excuse for an interview, NPR's Juan Williams with President Lunkhead.


• In case you had any doubt, Molly Ivins was a "swan." Check out a couple of her older terrific columns on Rush Limbaugh's misuse of satire and the Bush administration's treatment of the media.
  
  Matthew Rothschild has a collection of her greatest quotes (my favorite: "The only thing to do is fight harder and smarter."). See also tributes from Paul Krugman and The Nation.

Fighting Words: 2/5/07 Cartoon

"Wild Planet 5: The Ugly Duckling Syndrome"...

See the previous episodes: