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November 2012
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January 2013

Employment Is a Human Right

We're starting he second month of 360 Degrees For three months, our cartoonists will be drawing cartoons based on your tweet on a certain theme. Check out the cartoons that were selected in the previous week here. This week's theme is:

Employment is a human right.

Cesar1
Tweet your perspective including the hashtag #360D, and your tweet will appear in our project newsroom, and could be the made into a cartoon by our professional cartoonists. Every week the two best cartoons will be published on our homepage, and by Radio Netherlands Worldwide, as well as various media partners in the Middle East. If the cartoon based on your tweet wins, you win a high quality art print of the cartoon, or a t-shirt with the winning cartoon.

Cesar2                                        'Queues' by Daniel Clós Cesar


A Turn for the Worse

Eladl

It seems that freedom of expression is really taking a turn for the worse in Egypt. And, as is often the case, it's cartoonists who feel the tightening of the noose of censorship first. Earlier this month, we reported that Amr Okasha has been threatened because of his cartoons that criticize the Muslim Brotherhood and now Doaa Eladl is suid by the National Centre for Defence of Freedoms (oh, the irony) for overstepping the freedom of expression:

The secretary-general of the National Centre for Defence of Freedoms has filed a lawsuit against Naguib Sawiris, the owner of Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper, and their cartoonist Doaa El-Adl. The lawsuit, filed on Sunday, is in response to a cartoon depicting Adam and Eve, which the Secretary-General of the centre, Salafist lawyer Khaled El-Masry said was insulting of the prophet.

The cartoon depicts Adam and Eve standing beneath an apple tree on a cloud. Before them stands an Egyptian man with angel wings and a halo, who declares the couple would have never been expelled from heaven had they voted in favour of the referendum.

Read the entire article on the website of Daily News Egypt.


New Shirt Design: Vicious Circle

Vicious Circle

Mankind is caught in a vicious circle of war and destruction.

We have added a new design to our t-shirt webshop. This cartoon about war is by German artist Rainer Ehrt. By ordering this shirt, or any other items, you're helping us to build a sustainable future for editorial cartooning:

EU shop
UK shop
US shop

Don't like the shirts we picked? You can design a product yourself with this cartoon. And if you'd like to have a specific cartoon (over 800 available) to put on a shirt, bag or hoodie, drop us a line by email, and we'll be happy to help.

Democracy and Equality in the Arab World

360 Degrees: week four. For three months, our cartoonists will be drawing cartoons based on your tweet on a certain theme. This week's theme is:

Is 2013 going to be the year of democracy and equality in the Arab world?

Tweet your perspective including the hashtag #360D, and your tweet will appear in our project newsroom, and could be the made into a cartoon by our professional cartoonists. Every week the two best cartoons will be published on our homepage, and by Radio Netherlands Worldwide, as well as various media partners in the Middle East. If the cartoon based on your tweet wins, you win a high quality art print of the cartoon, or a t-shirt with the winning cartoon.

Foroutanian
Cartoon by Farhad Foroutanian


David Axe: 'My New Graphic Novel is a … Terrorist Organization?'

David Axe, author of Army of God, a graphic novel that was published online on Cartoon Movement throughout 2012, writes that advance payment for the book publication of the comic  was confiscated by the federal Office of Foreign Assets Control, claiming suspected ties a terrorist organization:

In 2010 I went to the Democratic Republic of Congo to report on the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group. In 2011 I wrote a graphic novel script based on my reporting and artist Tim Hamilton agreed to draw it. Cartoonist Matt Bors edited the story and early this year the Dutch Website Cartoon Movement serialized the art online, following which book publisher Public Affairs acquired the paperback rights. And last month, the federal Office of Foreign Assets Control confiscated the majority of the advance payment, claiming that we were laundering the money for onward transfer to a terrorist organization.

Yes, you read that right: the feds believe Tim and I are terror financiers.

Read the entire article here.

ArmyofGod-cover-final


On Freedom and Religion

Radio Netherlands Worldwide writes about this week of our joint project 360 Degrees. Read the original article in Arbic  on the website of RNW.

For our 360 Degrees project, RNW asked people this week to tweet about the question: Freedom and religion – do they clash? Cartoonists from the Cartoon Movement network are drawing cartoons based on the tweets. The question was answered in many different ways.

Some people got angry with RNW for the first cartoon we posted on Facebook to invite reactions: a vote box surrounded by a crowd. “You are insulting the Ka’ba,” said one Facebook commenter. Turkish cartoonist Eray Özbek tells RNW why he drew this cartoon.


0623-111203 Islam (Ozbek)_small “I drew the cartoon in December 2011, because I shared the people's excitement with the expected  democratic voting in the Islamic world,” he says. The artist, who is a Muslim himself, was surprised by the negative reactions. “It was not drawn to belittle anything, but to glorify democracy,” he explains. “The voting box itself is a respectable symbol, too. There is a referral to Ka'ba here for sure, but its surrounding doesn't look like Mecca; Casablanca was taken as the example.”

To this week’s question, Özbek answers that all disciplines clash with freedom, “from ideologies to religions, from ethic rules to kinds of education. It does even more if there is no tolerance.”

@MostafaAbdelf18 finds an easy way out:  It might not clash and they might not even meet each other at all if we considered graffiti freedom and the eating of sheep religion.

Sure they do clash, says Nidal Fuad Abu-Younis: Religion is compliance and restriction and freedom is letting go… they surely contradict!

To Nada Younis, the boundaries of your freedom are the religion. It inspired Greek cartoonist Spiros Derveniotis to a cartoon he called “Ruligion”:
Spiros
Other people say religion and freedom don’t clash at all. On the contrary, freedom is a genuine part of religion, say several commenters. Mustafa Elamin adds that Islam calls on freedom and justice and equality between people even if their religion or group are different.

Bouton

The problem comes not with religion but with religious leaders, says Yehia Alkattan. Bernard Bouton then drew a “religious extremist busy removing dangerous branches in his garden” to this tweet.

Baher Emad even puts it sharper: The extremists are the ones who convinced people that there is a clash between freedom and religion! In reality the extremists fear that people free themselves and will start thinking and alienate from their extremism. This fitted with Saad Murtadha’s cartoon about East and West relations:
Murtadha
Emad is not the only one unhappy with extremists. ‏@yehiazak says: Your freedom of expression is granted but if your opinion is to terrorize and kill me, just go to hell with your opinion. Another commenter thinks hell is not such a bad place: If paradise is in the company of Bin Laden and Zawahiri and the Brothers and the Salafis, please reserve me the worst place in hell.

Agra

Religious leaders? According to @delomb, you don’t need them at all 'as long as you’ve got a brain'. Cartoonist Emilio Agra took @delomb’s thought and expanded it: he built the following thesis: “A brain immersed in religion experiences a loss or rationality proportional to the time of immersion. 

Elchicotriste

 

 

And cartoonist Elchicotriste does not even see the necessity of a brain: love is all you need!

What do you think of it? You can still tweet your views about freedom and religion under the hashtag #360D and your tweet may become a cartoon too.


New Cartoonist: Emmanuel Letouzé

Manu

Emmanuel “Manu” Letouzé is a French-born, New York-based, political cartoonist who also works as a regular consultant to the United Nations and pursues his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. He contributes cartoons to various publications, including the satirical blog Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like and Rue89, France’s leading news website.

He contributed editorial cartoons to French regional daily L'Union as well as national weekly Politis for several years, and recently illustrated the Management Handbook for UN Field Missions produced by the International Peace Institute. His most recent cartoons are available on his public Manu Cartoons Facebook page, and archived on his personal website. His current projects include a comic strip about the UN, another about New York city, and a 2nd exhibition at the Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn scheduled for september 2013.


New Shirt Design: Egypt & Morsi

Morsi

Based on a tweet by ‏@sae3dali: 'Morsi don’t forget that who brought down Mubarak is the people…that voted for you…and that will bring you down if it wants to. #360D'

We have added a new design to our t-shirt webshop. This cartoon about Egypt is by Nicaraguan artist Pedro X. Molina; it was made for the special project 360 Degrees. By ordering this shirt, or any other items, you're helping us to build a sustainable future for editorial cartooning:

EU shop
UK shop
US shop

Don't like the shirts we picked? You can design a product yourself with this cartoon. And if you'd like to have a specific cartoon (over 800 available) to put on a shirt, bag or hoodie, drop us a line by email, and we'll be happy to help.