Author: James Bovard

LewRockell.com linked to an article of mine today on the servile atmosphere in DC think tanks.  The piece is at the Globalist.com website but, since yesterday, the page with my article has been converted into a membership/registration required page.

Here’s the core:

Many think tanks have become as servile as military bases, as far as providing applause for lies from the highest level of government. Two decades ago, many people expected think tanks to revolutionize politics in Washington, bringing ideas and principles to sordid political clashes. Instead, some think tanks have become nothing more than props for politicians.

The article contrasts the courage of New York organizations fighting U.S. torture with the docility  of Washington think tanks on the same issue.

The full text of the piece is at my blog, where comments and cavilings are welcome.

I was subwaying into Washington last night when I learned of a grave new terrorist peril.

The train’s driver kept repeating, “For safety and security reasons, please do not take pictures or video recordings of Metro trains and buses.”  He recited this core message with often  mystifying enunciation after each subway station.

To jazz up the rendition, he occasionally added ominously at the end of the announcement: “POLICE WILL BE NOTIFIED.”

If that actually happened, it could wake up Metro police, putting them in a more surly mood than usual. The subway police are renown for their heroics in  arresting 12 year old girls criminally consuming French Fries within Metro confines.  But in recent years, they have broadened their hassle-outreach.

I took some photos of a subway train entering the Tenleytown  station a few weeks ago.  To my untrained eye, the photos all looked like crap, thanks to my camera savvy and the dim lighting in the station.   But to experts at Homeland Security, the blurs might contain a secret message for Al Qaeda.

I was not surprised to learn of my terrorist tendencies, since people have been emailing me such accusations IN ALL CAPS for the last 4 years.  But I did a quick Google search and found heaps of clear photos of the Washington subway.

Even worse, the subway system itself has created and released photographs of trains.   Terrorist infiltration of the subway system might but probably doesn’t explain all the recent train breakdowns and delays.

Unfortunately, I was the only person on the train who snorted loudly when the driver announced the photo ban and the police warning.  Perhaps people in Washington are more docile than elsewhere – perhaps some people are comforted by the endless halfwit bans.

At least in Washington, antiterrorism BS still sells.

Comments & cavils on this post welcome at my blog here.

I appreciate LewRockwell.com and Antiwar.com posting my article on “Every Day is 1956: The Hungarian Revolution Today.”

Hungarians have taken to the streets this past week to denounce a lying government.  The Socialist Prime Minister confessed grossly deceiving voters in election last April, and many Hungarians got mad as hell.

There is a debate going on at my blog site over whether Hungarian protestors are standing up for freedom – or are merely a reflection of the dark side of Hungary’s past.

Add your comments or insights on this controversy at my blog here.

Newsday’s Walt Handelsman, aided by Roy Furchgott, has a wonderful animated cartoon featuring singing spies.  The cartoon is here.

This makes the National Security Agency wiretap issue so simple even a congressman might be able to get the point.  Perhaps congressmen will respond by merely adding an amendment to a “spying legalization” bill to prohibit the feds from tapping the phones of congressmen, their children, and their mistresses and/or personal pages.

Derisory comments on NSA etc. welcome at my blog here.            

[hat tip to Sheldon Richman]

The feds have become super vigilant in tapping our phone calls, tracing our movements, and intruding into our lives over the last 5 years.

Wouldn’t it be great to have hidden microphones around the White House this morning to hear what was said by dignitaries, congressmen, and other sociopaths invited for the signing ceremony of the torture/dictatorship law?

The microphones could capture the gloating  – the  gleeful hand rubbing over the coming suffering of Muslim detainees – the macho strutting about their courage in sanctifying barbarism in the name of freedom.  We would likely hear about how the Republicans plan to hype the signing ceremony in the final weeks of the congressional campaign – the ultimate sign of the GOP’s respect for average voters.

If Bush often sounds insipid and mildly deranged when the television cameras are on him, one can only imagine how inspiring he is off the cuff. And many of the congressmen who championed this bill are as blackhearted as Cheney himself.

On the other hand, Bush and his supporters have made so many false and bloodthirsty comments already regarding torture and other atrocities of the war on terror.  Perhaps nothing Bush could say at this point would wake Americans from their slumber.

Comments on this post and on the signing ceremony are welcome over at my blog here.  Also, if people hear interesting comments by politicians or others on the signing ceremony today,  that would also be most interesting…

UPDATE: The White House posted Bush’s signing statement here.

One highlight: Bush promised, “The passage of time will not dull our memory or sap our nerve.”

Who had the bright idea to have Bush mention “dull” and “sap” in his wrapup?

Some of the nation’s best antiwar cartoonists will be appearing this weekend at the Small Press Expo – America’s premier cartooning and comic arts festival -  in Bethesda, Maryland this Friday and Saturday.  

Many of the cartoonists appeared at a book event last night for  Attitude 3 – a collection of the work of “the New Subversive Online Cartoonists.”  The book was edited and features questions and commentary throughout by Ted Rall. Torture is a frequent target of their pens. This is refreshing, considering how much of the mainstream media have thumbtwisted themselves away from the subject.

August Pollack showed a great cartoon he penned with a country singer talking about his new song denouncing those “Saddam-fellating liberals.”

One of the cartoonists on the panel, Stephanie McMillan, has a new book – Minimum Security -  with her own columns.  She has the greatest author photo ever – showing her bent over a police car surrounded by cops with her hands handcuffed behind her back.

In the Q&A, I chucked in a question about the cartoonists’ perception of whether editors had been more cowardly or fearful of controversy since 9/11.

Rall replied, “Editors have become incredible cowards – and they never had a lot of balls to begin with.”  Rall was one of the cartoonists most often reprinted in the New York Times in 1997 and 1999.  But they have ceased using his work.

Rall related how he was almost hired in the 1990s as a cartoonist for a newspaper in Asbury, New Jersey.  He sensed the interview had gone very well – and then came one last question.  The editor pointed out the window to the large parking lot and asked: “Am I ever going to look at that window and see someone protesting some cartoon that you drew?”
 So much for that job.

Mikhaela Reid, a red-haired former Teamster/Harvard grad, commented,”The cartoons that stay in the newspapers are those that generate the least angry mail… Editors respond to a few cranky letters as if the business is going under.”

Cartoonists are doing some of the finest political commentary in the nation these days.  It is unfortunate that so few respectable columnists have as much gumption.

Other details on the cartoonists’ presentation last night are on my blog – where comments/ condemnations are welcome.