ICE Iced

Comic

This article first appeared on Substack

 

I started working on this cartoon before the events unfolded in Minnesota today. In case you haven't heard yet, ICE has shot a third person today. This is another fatal shooting.

I did not get to dive into the story until after I had completed this cartoon. I had something else occupying my time today as well. When I was finally able to look up, I watched the video.

I saw the video after hearing that the man who was shot had a weapon. At the start of the video, it resembled the Rodney King beating, except Rodney King wasn't shot at the end. It looked like a gang of ICE thugs was holding the man down and beating him. At the end, while still being held down, one of the agents shoots the guy.

“Earth's Greatest Enemy” Columbus Premiere and Q&A with Director Abby Martin

Movie poster

See the Columbus Free Press Calendar for more activist events

Saturday, January 24, 5:30pm
WOSU, 1800 North Pearl Street, Columbus, OH 4320

5:30 PM - 6:00 PM - Doors open
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM - Show starts
8:00 PM - 8:30 PM - Q&A with Abby Martin

Join Abby Martin for the Columbus premiere of her feature documentary film on the environmental impact of the US military!

Earth's Greatest Enemy uncovers a shocking blind spot in the climate conversation: the U.S. military.

Exempt from international climate agreements and rarely scrutinized in mainstream reporting, the Pentagon is revealed here as the world’s single largest institutional polluter—spewing carbon, contaminating water, and scarring landscapes across the globe. Combining investigative journalism, striking visuals, and stories from impacted communities, the film challenges audiences to rethink the hidden costs of a global military empire and its planetary consequences. Provocative, urgent, and eye-opening, this is a documentary that will change how you see both the military and environmentalism.

The Intertwining of Earth and Humans

Let’s put ICE and, indeed, war itself –the smugly violent certainty of militarism – into the largest perspective possible. I suggest this as the only way to maintain my sanity: to believe that we, that our children, actually have a future.

This is one planet. Every living being, every pulse of life, every molecule of existence, is intertwined. I’m not in any way suggesting I understand what this means. I simply see it as our starting point, as we acknowledge and embrace the Anthropocene: the current global era, basically as old as I am, in which natural and human forces are intertwined. The fate of one determines the fate of the other.

Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk

ICE OUT! National Day of Truth and Freedom - Columbus, Ohio

Details about event

Friday, January 23, 1 – 2pm EST
Ohio Statehouse, 1 Capitol Sq, Columbus, OH 43215

ICE has been inflicting a reign of terror in our communities. They are showing us, in real time, what their power looks like: masked agents, raids in our neighborhoods, our families terrorized, and our allies and leaders targeted for standing with immigrant workers. This is not “enforcement.” It’s intimidation. It’s state violence designed to make people keep their heads down and accept the unacceptable.

Join SEIU District 1199 WV/KY/OH, Common Cause Ohio, Indivisible Central Ohio, Ohioans Against Extremism, Ohio Families Unite for Political Action and Change (OFUPAC), other allies and partners, and community members at the High Street side of the Ohio Statehouse at 1 PM to meet history where it stands. We can mourn publicly and organize relentlessly. We can resist authoritarianism without apology, and we can win.

Let’s make it clear to all that when ICE comes for one of us, they answer to all of us.

He Did It All For The Nuuky

Comic

This article first appeared on Substack

I do not know why, but this one makes me laugh.

Trump lived up to his reputation of chickening out after threatening to raise tariffs on a nation. It is the reason for the TACO acronym: Trump Always Chickens Out.

Trump threatened to raise tariffs on eight NATO nations unless they would allow Denmark to sell Greenland to him. Never mind that seven of these nations don't have any say in what Denmark does with Greenland, he's gonna punish them anyway. If you ever figure out Trump logic, let me know.

But yesterday, after giving that horrible speech at Davos and proclaiming time and time again that he would settle for nothing less than absolute and outright ownership of Greenland, Donald Trump caved. He lifted the tariffs on the eight nations, saying there is a framework of a deal involving Greenland.

After the Headlines Fade: Gaza, Abandoned While the Genocide Persists

A colleague, an editor at a widely read outlet that centered Gaza throughout the two-year genocide, recently voiced his frustration that Gaza is no longer a main focus in the news.

He hardly needed to say it. It is evident that Gaza has already been pushed to the margins of coverage — not only by mainstream Western media, long known for its structural bias in Israel’s favor, but also by outlets often described, accurately or not, as ‘pro-Palestine.’

At first glance, this retreat may appear routine. Gaza during the height of the genocide demanded constant attention; Gaza after the genocide, less so.

But this assumption collapses under scrutiny, because the genocide in Gaza has not ended.

Arctic Madness

What happened to the Epstein scandal? You are gone. Wipe you out of my eyes. Hocuspocus, evaporated with a magic wand move. It seems that the master of illusions, Donald Trump, managed to escape this deadly blow, at least for the moment.

Trump's attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president, Maduro, a former bus driver, got Epstein out of the headlines. Now Trump and his cronies are beating the drums for his aims of world greatness, announced in Davos, Switzerland. This alpine resort, ugly enough — and not strong enough for skiing — was the perfect scene for Trump's show. Davos' annual carnival is the world stage of big egos, swindlers and braggers.

Leading among them was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a politician with unparalleled bendability and ability to sugarcoat lies and half-truths. Blair has just agreed to join Trump's so-called Peace Board, a bunch of shady politicians. The participation fee is $1 billion, a typical Trump fundraiser.

Filling Greenland with U.S. Bases Would Not Be a Win for Peace

Trump’s approach to Greenland has something in common with his (Cutting-)Board of Peace approach to Palestine: not even the slightest pretense of involving the people impacted. The residents of Kalaallit Nunaat were never asked about the existing permissions for the U.S. military to build bases in their land and are not being asked now about a “deal” made between Trump and, not even Denmark but, Trump’s servant, the Secretary General of NATO.

“Oh, what a relief to have a deal,” shout the corporate media, after Trump yet again threatens WWIII and then proposes something else. The something else has yet to ever be anything actually desirable.

The people of neither Greenland nor the Earth as a whole have been asked whether, as fossil fuel consumption and other human activities heat the planet and melt the ice, the U.S. military should seek out newly exposed Arctic areas in which to find more fossil fuels with which to finish the job.

Davos High Finance vs. America’s Farm Economy: Growing Capital and Power While the Heartland Goes Broke

In his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Trump painted a picture of economic resurgence. The U.S. economy, he declared, is booming. Inflation has been defeated. Investment is pouring back into the country. His administration, he said, has delivered the fastest and most dramatic economic turnaround in American history.

For the global financiers, executives, and investors gathered in the Alps, the message was clear. Capital is winning again.

But that story collapses when viewed from farm coWhat Trump celebrated in Davos was an economy measured almost entirely through the lens of high finance. Asset values. Financial inflows. Market confidence. Investment velocity. Corporate and brand expansion. These are the indicators that matter in global economic forums. They are also the indicators that bypass the lived economy of farmers.

A farm economy is not measured by capital velocity. It is measured by input costs versus crop value, soil fertility over time, access to affordable credit, resilience to droughts and floods, seed sovereignty, and what remains after debt service is paid and another season has been survived.

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