Bangladesh isn’t some crappy Third World country like the United States, where capitalists can crash the economy and get away clean – and loaded.
Hanging Around in Bangladesh
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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What do I need to do to get a share of the pillage????
Dickens, Charles accepted the futility of continuing the campaign against hanging and campaigned against public hanging.
I hope to be able to afford to move to Bangladesh, so that my inevitable death can be responded to with legal action
If the media had ever bought into and brought 24/7 constant coverage of Cheney and Bush’s lies and had constantly updated the death toll from their actions, who knows what might have happened? If a call for responsibility for what they actually did had ever fully materialized, maybe something would have been done? Instead, the USA went into “support the troops” mode, and blind patriotism superceded. We pushed Clinton towards impeachment for lying about an affair, and the next president got a pass on lying about an entire war – heck, 2 wars!!
@rikster: One of the things that really bothers me about the new media environment is the total failure of 99% of so-called journalists or reporters to ask follow-up questions, especially after they have just been blown off or been answered by a brazen lie. The other day I watched New York Republican congressman Peter King, chairman of the Homeland security committee, brazenly lie to an interviewer on Sunday morning television. But she didn’t even bother to question him.
Ted, I always like your stuff, but that first panel. Those bubbles. Just fucking hilarious. I about died. Perfect caption too. Great to know we are outclassed by Bangladesh.
Rikster, thanks for that link to the Wolf Blitzer interview that I was too lazy to Google I guess. It wasn’t so bad as I thought.
sfiller, It would really be something if people could only support what they were FORCED to witness. They should have to see the torture and Hellfire strikes…
Absolutely. No society should ever allow anything to be done in its name that it isn’t willing to watch on national television or in person.
One of the reasons I come to this site, read it, and make comments, is that outside of this blog and others like it, I can’t talk about these views to many other people. All my friends and family, with the exception of one or 2 other people, don’t want to hear anything like this. They are a mixture of Dums and Repugs and pretty much follow their party lines. If this is really the attitude of most Americans, I can’t see Ted, Mr.Fish, etc. ever really becoming more accepted by such a blind, apathetic, politically correct crowd. I even received very negative responses from suggesting that my friends or family watch Bill Maher, because he “makes such terrible filthy comments”.
Oh, it can and will happen. I am always widely accepted by the mainstream liberals and Democrats out there. When? When a Republican is in the White House. As soon as the GOP returns to power, just watch. All of my principled criticisms – mostly directed at the right-wingers then – will suddenly seem like a breath of fresh air.
Ted,
Time for another of my quibbles. You talk of the 99% “so-called journalists.” Ted, although that is a phrase that I’ve probably used a lot myself, I realize now that part of the problem is the phrase itself. By associating the shitty end-product with “journalists,” you are contaminating the notion of what a journalist ought to be.
In the 1950s, the phrase was “card-carrying communist.” In the 1980s, the Republicans repurposed it to “card-carrying liberal.” At the time, this resonated with a large portion of the voters.
We need a new turn for these hacks.
Absolutely fantastic, Ted…this needs to go in your Greatest Hits collection. I 100% agree that societies should witness, and have their children witness, what is done in their name. If they cannot do this, they need to reevaluate their support for said policies. Surprisingly, the first time I saw this attitude articulated by a public official was an old TV broadcast showing a young Assist. DA Rudy Guiliani stating his view on public broadcast of capital punishment. For all his other evils, he nailed that one on the head.
Beyond just the heads of businesses being responsible, I have always been disturbed by the fact that stockholders are shielded from the consequences of their investments. If someone buys stock in Coca-Cola, who then hires goon squads to bust up unions and murder union organizers in Latin America, the stockholder is not on the hook…they simply reap the proceeds and sell off the stock when prudent.
I also agree with Alex on the “journalist” comment. It’s like the term junk food….the problem isn’t that it’s junk, the problem is that it isn’t food. The talking heads of the media are commentators, not journalists. In that vein, only part of what Ted does is investigative journalism, much of it is also commentary. However, at least Ted does do SOME journalism as well. I think it’s important to separate the two….”Journalism” in America has moved from being a critical liberal pursuit to being a positivist pursuit….accept the apparent at face value….don’t look behind the curtain. Hell, you can’t even have anonymous sources anymore. Basically….investigation itself is becoming illegal.
All of that gets back to the problem of absentee ownership…that the bosses are politically, legally, physically and geographically shielded from the consequences of their profiteering.
I’m not sure, Ted, that what we are seeing here demonstrates that the authorities in Bangladesh are better (or worse) than their counterparts in the US – admittedly, the public outcry after the collapse of the Rana Plaza has been so strong that the authorities in the former country seem willing to throw Mr Rana and others under the bus, but the same thing (not hanging, but a long prison term) would probably have happened to Kenneth Lee «Kenny boy» Lay, had not death (heart attack ?) intervened first. The real problem is while that there was an outcry that couldn’t be feinted in Bangladesh, in the United States, with few exceptions (Enron), it’s almost always possible for the authorities and the corporate media to displace the outrage onto a more convenient target. Or the outrage never really gets going ; consider the coup d’état of 2000, when the US Supreme Court illegally selected George Walker Bush as US president. How many people blocked the streets in wild protest over this all-to-evident crime at the highest levels of government ?…
Henri
Of course, my cartoon is highly tongue in cheek. Not for one moment do I think that the government of Bangladesh is an example to emulate. Although, in this one instance, I think there’s a lot to be said for holding business owners accountable for their malfeasance. We still haven’t seen anyone be prosecuted for the 2008 financial scandals.