Don't miss the feature article: Drawing Conclusions: The Editorial Cartoon Of course my web mail makes all graphics, attachments, sorry. You can get your own intact copies here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/libertyunderground/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
*ROCK ON* ** *Since the U.S. has claimed the right to kill anybody, anywhere, anytime, when it deems said killing is "in the interests of national security," nobody should act surprised when other nations claim the same thing. Oh, but we're a Democracy! We believe in Freedom! And Justice!* * * *Glenn Greenwald points out<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/19/benghazi-attack-suspects-drones>how we can expect that American brand of "justice" to show up in all sorts of places.* ** ------------------------------ *US LEGACY IN IRAQ* ** *The U.S. invaded a country, slaughtered its people, and polluted its lands with poisons. Depleted uranium, white phosphorous, mercury, lead, and god knows what else was used in the bombardment of Iraqi towns, especially Fallujah and Basra. Our legacy is widespread birth defects and generations of misery. <http://en.ammonnews.net/article.aspx?articleNO=18428> * * * *It's really hard sometimes to wake up in the morning and have to say, "I'm an American."* ** ------------------------------ ** *UNCLE SAM PLAYS US FOR FOOLS* ** *Pro Publica<http://www.propublica.org/article/tsa-removes-x-ray-body-scanners-from-major-airports>, Huffington Post, and others are reporting a story we at TSA News reported 6 weeks ago<http://tsanewsblog.com/5688/news/tsa-eliminating-backscatter-scanners/>-- the TSA is quietly removing the radiation-emitting backscatter (x-ray) scanners from major airports and replacing them with MMW (millimeter wave) scanners. Meanwhile, the backscatter scanners are being fobbed off on small airports. Why? Because too many people are complaining about the fact that the backscatters are dangerous (the EU banned them long ago) and are opting out, thus slowing down the line, thus delaying flights, thus costing the airlines money. As always, it's not about security, it's about money. (Those of you at small airports can continue to get irradiated. Uncle Sam cares even less about you.)* * * *The scanners are a billion-dollar boondoggle for the so-called security industry ($150,000-$200,000 per scanner -- your tax dollars at work). And snake oil for a credulous population that thinks "The Terrorists Are Everywhere!" Oh, and the MMW scanners have never been tested for safety, either. And they still have a 54% false-positive rate. They alarm on pleats, on sweat. But that's okay. Being microwaved and groped is a small price to pay for "safety," don'tchya think?* * * *Meanwhile, propaganda for another boondoggle, Pre-Check<http://tsanewsblog.com/6652/news/tsa-continues-to-trumpet-pre-check-boondoggle/>, continues apace.* ** ------------------------------ *Cartoonist Mr. Fish (aka Dwayne Booth) creates, along with Ted Rall, some of the most biting, in-your-face political cartoons in the U.S. Both men regularly infuriate readers, even those on the left, because they're uncompromisingly truthful. Here, Mr. Fish offers a meditation on the role of editorial cartoons in the national discourse. -Lisa Simeone* Drawing Conclusions: The Editorial Cartoon<http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/drawing_conclusions_the_editorial_cartoon_20121019/> By Mr. Fish <http://www.truthdig.com/mr_fish/> *Mr. Fish is the curator of Drawing Conclusions, an exhibit exploring the history of editorial cartooning on display at USC Annenbergs Second Floor Gallery and Room 207 from Oct. 24 to May 13, 2013. It is co-sponsored by The Future of Journalism Foundation, a project of Community Partners.**** * *I have no idea what readership is of written editorials, but it doesnt come anywhere close to the readership of editorial cartoons.* Paul Conrad, editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times**** *Stop them damned pictures! I dont care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents dont know how to read, but they cant help seeing them damned pictures!* William Boss Tweed, discredited New York politician responding to editorial cartoons by Thomas Nast**** *Art is a finger up the bourgeoisie ass.* Pablo Picasso**** For reasons that may have to do only with the perfunctory indifference that comes with incuriosity, there has never been a precise understanding by the dominant culture of what an editorial cartoonist is. Having been inexorably linked to journalism because their work has traditionally been published in daily newspapers, the value and professional integrity of editorial cartoonists have been unfairly forced to rise and fall with the health of the Fourth Estate.**** Thus, with the steady disintegration of the print media and the pandemic elimination of staff cartoonist positions from periodicals everywhere, the question has become: Without an industry to sustain the definition of what an editorial cartoonist has come to mean to the public mind, what will happen to those men and women who draw pictures containing a political or social message? When circumstances in a society shift dramatically enough to make extinct a profession so narrowly defined by myopic and mainstream ideas, does this mean the end of the activity previously exercised within that profession, or does it merely demand a reconfiguration of consciousness allowing for the emergence of a more enlightened understanding of what the editorial cartoonists job is and where it might best find support, institutional or otherwise? In other words, is cartooning a vocation or a calling?**** Its arguable that editorial cartooning, in one form or another, has been with us ever since, in the words of Mark Twain, God made the mistake of preserving sin by not forbidding Eve to devour the snake, an act of bureaucratic mismanagement so fundamentally destructive that our sense of moral self-determinism has never been the same. Nor has our belief in the absolute wisdom of our authority figures.**** But editorial cartooning has been around even longer than that. In fact, it is not beyond comprehension that we have never been without it, particularly if we are to define the word editorial as the exposition of a personal opinion and cartooning merely as the rendering of that opinion in pictorial form. Given such a description, we come to find that the earliest practitioners of the art form were editorializing on the walls of limestone caves in the south of France some 33,000 years ago, eons before the Bible places the events that took place in the Garden of Eden. Of even greater significance is how these cave drawings predate the invention of the written word by the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia by 30,000 years, proof that when it comes to the mode of communication upon which human beings have historically most relied, it is the visual depiction of our lifes experiences, rather than phonetic symbols arranged on a straight line, that have proven themselves most deeply meaningful.**** Other examples through history of editorial cartooning must include the ancient Chinese wall scrolls from the Han Dynasty (206 BCE 220 CE), which were, put simply, captioned drawings commenting on life, politics, and philosophy, a format that every contemporary cartoonist considers absolutely essential. Then there are the Japanese Shunga prints from the Heian period (794 1185), which depict sexual scandals of the imperial courts and monasteries, not to condemn those portrayed, but to celebrate both eroticism and how deliciously lascivious the private experience of sex can appear when entertained by those whose public persona is typically considered beyond the lure and lurch of such naked passion an aesthetic that we see repeated most notably by the Underground Comix movement of the 1960s and 70s by such artists as Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. There is also the Egyptian storyboarding carved into the tombs and monuments of pharaohs, members of the nobility, and government officials, each carving little more than serialized comic strips designed to comment on ones interaction with the celestial power structure and ethereal elite. There is street graffiti from Pompeii that complains about lifes daily grind and Grecian urns that explore the relationship between man and mythology. There are prayer books from the Middle Ages that extol the questionable virtues of succumbing to the most brutally simplistic notions of good and evil, and there are cartoons (the origin of the term meaning preparatory drawing for a painting or piece of sculpture) from Leonardo da Vinci and Honore´ Daumier and Auguste Rodin that rejoice in human expression, delight in the poetics of anatomy, and refine the art of caricature, our first emoticons.**** Then there are the cartoonists from the modern age who, with pen and ink, pencil and paper, Illustrator and Photoshop, produce their work for magazines and newspapers and websites, their subject matter having mostly to do with the cultural, political, and religious incongruities that we modern people find most inconsistent with what we consider to be good citizenship, fair and honest self-criticism, and an uncompromising intolerance for social and civic injustice. These are cartoonists who, in the interest of advancing the ideas that they have about how best to enable communal preservation and individual freedom, will either vilify those in power, ridicule those apologists for oligarchic or theocratic or corporatocratic tribalism, or will target those who, through apathy or active resistance or democratic idealism, threaten the benign and saintly work of a given power structure that they believe was devised by enlightened functionaries to save the world, advance truth and beauty and, in most circumstances, the right to turn a profit for God and country.**** And, like their predecessors, these cartoonists will make diligent use of the age-old vocabulary of visual imagery and continue creating works of commentary art regardless of whether the society or the age in which they live supports, encourages, or appreciates them.**** And, as its always been, snakes everywhere will be eaten alive, bred in captivity, obliterated in nature, and spared by cock-eyed optimists, and the cartoonist will be there to document the whole magnificent charade.**** *The exhibit for which this text was written features original work from 16 of the nations most celebrated editorial cartoonists working today, plus works from artists who most influence their creative process. Additionally, 54 cartoons and illustrations were chosen for their ability to arouse curiosity about the purpose of both the contemplative and jeering sides of uncensored free expression, to educate those unaware of the art forms ancient and storied history, and, finally, to inspire belief in the future of the cartoonists job to test and deepen the integrity of our democracy.* ** http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/drawing_conclusions_the_editorial_cartoon_20121019/ ------------------------------ *If you wish to be removed from this list, please let us know* ** *To join the Liberty Underground News service email libert...@hotmail.com with "join" for a subject* ** *You may also join our talk group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/libertyundergroundtalk/ if you would like to participate* * * *or join our Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/461619557192964/* ** *email: libert...@hotmail.com* ** *Tell your friends about LUV News because some people just don't get it* [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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