Support Ted’s Work

Signed Copies of “Anti-American Manifesto” On Sale Now

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Ted Rall

On sale for a limited time only: Copies of my Anti-American Manifesto dedicated to you or a friend. Total price includes shipping, handling, and the price I paid to get the books shipped to me in the first place. Yes, it’s cheaper to buy elsewhere. Or from me at a public event. But here’s a great option to support my work if you want it.

Click below to get the one book that could land you on a government watch list:


Shipped Where?
Want It Dedicated? To Whom?




If you don’t use PayPal, send $25 total (in the U.S., contact me directly for foreign sales) along with your mailing address and how you’d like it signed to:

Ted Rall
PO Box 2760
New York NY 10163

SYNDICATED COLUMN: The New Pessimism

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Ted Rall

Will Americans Act To Prevent Economic and Environmental Collapse?

I am touring to promote my new book. “The Anti-American Manifesto” lays out America’s biggest problems and what we can do to fix them.

Before I started out, I knew that Americans were angry. With a real unemployment rate of 20-plus percent and a government that gave $1.4 trillion to banks instead of people in need, how could they not be?

Americans have lost faith in “their” government’s willingness or ability to address their needs and concerns. But Americans’ pessimism is deeper and broader than I thought. And their rage is burning white hot.

At the beginning of each event I ask attendees to answer two questions:

Question One: What is the worst problem that you face? Something the government could solve or at least mitigate? The top response is healthcare; either or they or someone they know can’t afford to see a doctor. Other answers include making college affordable and improving mass transit. Some are arcane: at the top of one man’s wish list is the metric system.

Question Two: What is the biggest problem the world faces today? Whether or not it personally affects you, what should be job one for government? Most people say global warming or ecocide in general. Many complain about poverty and income inequality.

“Now think about your two top issues,” I ask them. “Do you think there’s any chance—not a high chance, not even a 50 percent chance, but any significant chance whatsoever—that this system, our American capitalist system and the two-party political structure that supports it, will impact either one of those two issues?”

I reset for clarity. “Do you think you will see any improvement, on even one of those two problems, in your lifetime?” I ask for a show of hands. “Raise your hand if you have any faith, any optimism at all.”

Depending on the city, between 10 and 30 percent of my audiences raise their hands.

Bear in mind, these are Ted Rall readers. Few if any voted for John McCain. So when the man they did vote for urges Americans of all political stripes “to stick with me, you can’t lose heart,” as he did in Madison recently, he’s wasting his time.

According to the latest Gallup poll 54 percent of Americans expect the economy to be the same or worse by this time next year.

If you’re one of those 54 percent of Americans (or 70 to 90 percent of Ted Rall fans) who see the government as unwilling and/or unable to alleviate their suffering, what should you do?

In my “Anti-American Manifesto” I argue that the time has come to stop putting up with a regime so incompetent that it can’t protect us from 19 clowns with boxcutters, who are allowed to fly around the nation’s airspace for two and a half hours because our military prioritizes killing Muslims over defending the United States. I say that it’s insane for the citizens of the richest nation in history to watch their living standards shrink while lawless corporations and a tiny cabal of ultrarich pigs feed off the public trough. Why should we accept a $1.4 trillion handout to wealthy bankers, while the unemployed are told to pack up their children and get out of their homes?

If you don’t think the government will do anything for you, why not get rid of it?

There is one logical answer: because it could be reformed. Well? Could it?

Barack Obama is living proof that it cannot, that the system is broken beyond repair. Because, like him or not, this system is never going to give us a better president. We will not end up with a smarter, more well-intentioned person in charge. He’s the best they’ve got.

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen since he took office almost two years ago, he’s not good enough. As I wrote in my book, there’s only one difference between Bush’s policies and Obama’s: opposition. Under Bush, there was a semblance of a Left.

So now Americans are faced with a choice. They can accept that nothing will ever get better, watch the rich get richer while they get poorer, sit on their butts as the planet heats up and the coral reefs die off.

Or they can act.

(Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto,” now in stores. His website is tedrall.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL

Anti-American Radio Marathon

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Ted Rall

I’m doing six interviews in two days about the Manifesto. Most of these are streamable online. Make sure to note timezones!

Thursday, September 30th

Radio Interview No. 1
WSBA Morning Show, York PA
8:10-8:51am Eastern time

Radio Interview No. 2
KPFA Uprising Radio, Los Angeles
8:40-8:55am Pacific time

Radio Interview No. 3
WRIF, Detroit
Peter Werbe “Night Call”
1pm Eastern time

Friday, October 1st

Radio Interview No. 1
KPFT, Houston (Pacifica)
12:00-12:30 Central time

Radio Interview No. 2
“News Dissector” Radio Show with Danny Schecter
1:30-1:50 pm Eastern time

Radio Interview No. 3
WEOS
Tish Pearlman Out of Bounds
2:00-2:30 Eastern time

David Swanson Has Issues (with my Manifesto)

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Ted Rall

Blogger David Swanson has penned the first full-length analysis of the Anti-American Manifesto.

Swanson likes my analysis of the situation:

Rall’s book is packed with great analysis of our current state and appropriate moral outrage. I highly recommend it for the clear-eyed survey of the tides in this giant pot of slowly boiling water where we float and kick about like frogs.

But he takes issue with me on the issue of violence:

From these statements, scattered throughout the manifesto, one would have no idea that anyone else believed there was a third choice beyond violence or doing nothing. There is no indication here of the role of nonviolence in evicting the British from India or overthrowing the ruler of El Salvador in 1944, or even in ending Jim Crow in the United States and Apartheid in South Africa, in the popular removal of the ruler of the Philippines in 1986, in the largely nonviolent Iranian Revolution of 1979, in the dismantling of the Soviet Union in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, in the resistance to a stolen election in the Ukraine in 2004-2005, and in hundreds of other examples from around the world.

The thing is, all of the events mentioned above involved violence on the part of the oppressed against their oppressors. Yes, those who carried out violent acts against the British had the non-violent Ghandi as an ally—but that doesn’t make the Indian independence movement a non-violent one.

He concludes:

I share with Rall his concern that people think they have no choices and his conviction that something must be done. If it were impossible to organize committed, independent, uncorrupted nonviolent resistance with the dedication necessary to succeed, if violence were our only option, we’d certainly have to look into it. But I suspect organized violence would be even harder to bring forth than organized nonviolence. Rall attempts no argument to the contrary. He predicts a hellish nightmare with or without his violent revolution. I predict peace, sustainability, and justice if we nonviolently resist. A deeper debate is needed.

Certainly, a deeper debate is needed. A debate that, before the publication of this book, was not occurring. So, in a sense, I already feel proud of my work.

As for the prediction of peace, etc. as the result of nonviolent resistance—well, it’s never worked before.

On the Air at 1 pm

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Ted Rall

I’ll be interviewed by Barry Lynn for his radio show “Culture Shocks” at 1 pm Eastern time today. Listen at http://www.cultureshocks.com/

Good/Bad News re: Al Jazeera

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Ted Rall

My TV appearance on Al Jazeera English has been rescheduled from today until October 21st. Check the Events tab on the for updates on all appearances.

The good news: I’ll be co-guesting with P.J. O’Rourke! Very cool.

Ted Rall in the Washington Express

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Ted Rall

There’s a piece in today’s Washington Post Express about the Manifesto:

Back in 2008, President Barack Obama was elected by a tidal wave of Americans looking for change. Two years later, editorial cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall doesn’t think Obama has held up his end of the bargain — and he’s calling for desperate measures.

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