The Bloomberg administration wants to make it necessary for you to obtain a permit and $1 million in liability insurance to film and photograph on New York City streets. Well of course they do. We don't want any more Rodney Kings, or images of the attack on the World Trade Center that don't fit the script of the official story, do we?

It's a civil liberties issue that everyone should take note of. Cameras have become the people's weapons of truth—and creativity and humor, which may be the same thing. If the slaves on the plantations could have filmed the master's whippings and put the images on some Civil War era YouTube, the slave trade might have ended a lot sooner.

But unfortunately, a lot of this evil stuff does get out there and still nothing gets done about it. Witness the police attack on innocent protesters in L.A.'s MacArthur Park in May. Witness Katrina. I still can't quite get my mind around the fact that there was this devastating hurricane in New Orleans, one of the greatest cities in world history (its loss like an American clitoridectomy), and we all watched these people perish in the storm and then get treated like animals, criminals, herded by riot police, deprived of food and water for days, and now, almost two years later, many are still homeless, their neigborhoods still devastated... And the people who let it all happen—yes, they did, you know they did—are still in power.

And yet Barack Obama says impeachment is not an option. I'm not sure I get Barack Obama. Well, maybe you should read: "Why Barack Obama Needs a Whuppin'," by Glen Ford, from the Black Agenda Report; see www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=251&Itemid=34.

And: "Lessons from Katrina: How to Destroy an African American City in 33 Steps," by Bill Quigley, at www.counterpunch.org.