Great cartoon moments 2006 # 1 (Mr Fish)
Mr Fish captures it well with one sentence. Like others, I watched the bombings of Lebanon and its civilian infrastructure, the deaths of hundreds and the oil spill disaster with disbelief, not to mention the atrocity at Qana revisited. I just went numb. My two aunts and their families live in Northern Lebanon, and my uncle, a Catholic Maronite priest lives in Beirut with his wife and daughter (only Catholic priests ordained outside the Occident can marry, I understand). I remember text messaging my rather cool uncle, who helped raise me when he spent eight years in Australia, to see that they were alright. My phone flickered strangely for the first time after I’d sent the message. I realized that it was probably due to the fact that I had put Lebanon, Israel and Hezbollah in the same sentence, might’ve registered somewhere from use of subversive words (like ‘peace’ and ‘justice’). We all know that an unfortunate combination of words may result in the Police State taking action, so do be careful and speak in code, otherwise they’ll come to take you awayyyyyyyyyyy …….
Two more from Mr Fish. The one below is a nice reminder to humanise people, that it is the system we are against, not individual soldiers who are often as much in the victim-space we are all applying efforts to reconfigure and transform, as others are. Dehumanizing even the “enemy” (for the enemy is us) in any military force lets the discourse of hatred eclipse one of inclusivity, love and compassion, its most potent antidote.
And this one leaves little to be said:
Coming soon: spotlight on Leunig, an Australian cartoonist.
Here in the US, El Shrubbo has also done a pretty effective job of dehumanizing even domestic dissenters. He has drilled a “bunker mentality” into his hardcore followers (who I call Chimpletons) and I believe a lot of them would be just as happy to shoot me as they would a Al Qaeda follower.
Gazounds, wish the Chimpletons would just go live in their gated communities and leave everyone else be. It seems to be bunker mentality at home, and frontier mentality everywhere else.