If You Talk about Israel’s Hostages, You’re an Antisemite

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas related to the hostage exchange reveals the Israeli secret of “administrative detention,” in which thousands of innocent men, women and children are tortured and jailed in Israel, simply for the crime of being Palestinian.

Maybe DeSantis Can Torture His Way to the White House

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will tout his military experience in his race for President. But his experience at Guantanamo torture camp includes highly credible allegations that he volunteered to watch brutal torture and approved of what he saw.

Ron DeSantis, Torturer and Future President

Hello. I’m Ron DeSantis and I approve of the following message.

As you may have heard, I’m running for President of the United States. You could only have heard it because I announced it on an audio-only platform called Twitter Spaces, which my friend Elon Musk assured my staff is futuristic and will therefore appeal to hipster kids. We also like it because no one got to see my face and my face scares people.

I own it: I have the face of a torturer. That’s because I am a torturer.

If you see my face, there’s a chance you are being tortured.

So audio is better.

Some guys say they didn’t choose the torture lifestyle, torture chose them, but that’s not true about me. I was obsessed with the movie “A Few Good Men,” which takes place at Guantánamo. When Jack Nicholson barked at Tom Cruise, “you can’t handle the truth!” I was hooked. Like Tom Cruise, I became a JAG and volunteered to go to Gitmo. But I was more into the Jack Nicholson character. His character carefully cultivated a culture of abuse I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into. Evil is so cool.

When I got to Gitmo, hundreds of terrorist Muslim scumbags—OK, they’ve pretty much all been released because none of them actually did anything, but whatever—were on hunger strike. My C.O. asked me: “How do I combat this?” I was, like: “Hey, you actually can force-feed. Here’s what you can do. Here’s kind of the rules for that.”

It was awesome! They strapped the dudes into a chair. Then they stuffed a rubber tube down their nose and poured down two cans of some protein drink. (There was also “rectal rehydration” but I officially didn’t get to see that, wink wink, “would” have been so rad!)

I watched this terrorist dude—OK, they never charged him and the wusses at the Pentagon he was “innocent” or whatever—named Mansoor Adayfi getting force-fed. He wrote that “a male nurse forced that huge tube into my nose. No numbing spray. No lubricant. Raw rubber and metal sliced the inside of my nose and throat. Pain shot through my sinuses and I thought my head would explode.” Hilarious! He totally remembered me, especially me grinning and making fun of him.

            Like I said: if you see my face, you might be getting the hardcore business end of Uncle Sam.

            If elected, I will personally torture anyone who annoys me, even if they are innocent —especially if they are innocent. I will torture migrants and gays and abortion sluts. I will torture Mickey Mouse.

            I won’t lie: it’s not going to be easy. Trump is ahead of me among Republican primary voters 58% to 16%, and his lead keeps increasing. My plan is to let Trump get up to 100%. He has nowhere to go but down after that.

            My other plan is to spend $200 million on my campaign. If nothing else, I’ll stimulate the economy in the crucial campaign worker sector. Maybe my campaign workers will repay my generosity by voting for me.

            If those don’t work, I’ve got my ace in the hole: torture.

            I’m an outstanding torturer, but I’m only one man. I can’t torture all the voters I need to become the Republican nominee, much less all the swing voters in key states I’ll need in the general election while evading process servers from the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. But I don’t need to torture everyone in order to win.

            If you’re thinking about voting for someone else, however, consider this: I may torture you. Do you want to wake up in the middle of the night, strapped to a chair rubber hose, jammed down your throat? Do you want to gag and scream, then catch a glance of my smirking face with my dead piggy eyes and bloated cheeks and realize you could have avoided all this pain by donating generously to my campaign and wearing nothing but my T-shirts, and covering your car with my stickers and voting for me? Believe me, the answer is no.

            Do not make me torture you. Actually, go ahead.

            It’s more fun than being president.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

Would Default Really Be so Bad?

Unless congress raises the debt ceiling, the government will run out of money and be unable to pay its bills as early as June 1, according to Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen. Would it really be so bad?

Operation Point and Click

Since they are short-staffed at the US border with Mexico, Biden is sending 1500 armed soldiers to help out. Among other tasks, they will do data entry.

An Officer and a War Criminal

The Washington Post ran a shocking expose revealing that Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a possible candidate for the presidency, participated and legally justified war crimes including torture after having volunteered to serve at the Guantánamo concentration camp. Even more shocking than his disgusting actions, which should have landed him in prison for the rest of his life, is the lack of reaction by politicians of both political parties as well as other media outlets. A nation that normalizes torture to the point of shrugging its collective shoulders has lost its moral compass.

DMZ America Podcast #95: Senate Votes to Deauthorize Iraq War, DeSantis the Gitmo Torturer, Reparations to Black Americans

 Two of America’s top political analysts, left-wing cartoonist Ted Rall and right-wing cartoonist Scott Stantis, discuss the week’s events and cultural happenings on the DMZ America podcast.

In a surprising move, the United States Senate has voted to revoke the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force legislation that presidents beginning with George W. Bush relied upon in order to invade and occupy Iraq, as well as a number of other military conflicts. Will the House of Representatives follow suit? The answer is more complex than you might expect. Will Congress reassert its Constitutional exclusive right to wage war?

The Washington Post revealed that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a possible top contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, enthusiastically participated in torture as a JAG at Guantánamo Bay concentration camp in 2006, where he suggested that hunger-striking inmates be force-fed and personally supervised and smiled while observing what international human rights organizations universally describe as torture. DeSantis hasn’t denied the shocking charges. Will Trump make it an issue? Would a Democratic challenger? What does it say about the United States that the story doesn’t seem to be catching on?

San Francisco and the State of California are contemplating the issue of reparations to Black American descendants of slaves in order to compensate them for being the victims of systemic racism. Setting aside the issue of the vast amount of money involved, who would qualify? What would be the practical considerations of such a program? Is it even possible to compensate for such enormous injustice that is baked into the American economic and political system?

Watch the Video Versions of DMZ America Podcast #95:

DMZ America Podcast Ep 95 Sec 1: Senate Votes to Deauthorize Iraq War

DMZ America Podcast Ep 95 Sec 2: DeSantis the Gitmo Torturer

DMZ America Podcast Ep 95 Sec 3: Reparations to Black Americans

 

The Only Thing Necessary for Evil to Triumph

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” That statement is often misattributed to Edmund Burke. After Russia invaded Ukraine, many Americans who didn’t have anything to say about the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, much less torture at Guantánamo and elsewhere, or Yemen, or Palestine, suddenly started wearing blue and yellow flags. They weren’t good before, so how can these self-serving souls think they are suddenly being good now?

The Secret Sauce of American Exceptionalism

Nothing that Russia is doing in Ukraine is something that the United States has done many times elsewhere over the years. But there’s a big difference in the way that these events get covered. When the US does something horrible, it is dismissed as an incongruous departure from standard American values or simply not covered at all.

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