“Fish and chips, sandpaper lips and a rainy pavement.
Soho lights, another night thinking of you.
Black cat, sat on a wall, winks at me darkly.
Suggesting ways and means that I might win a smile,
as you leave the place where you work until 12.30
and the policemen nods as you pass along his beat.
Sweaty feet, troubled brow we’re all in the same game, lady.
Life’s no bowl of cherries it’s a black and white strip cartoon…….” Jethro Tull

“An Iranian cartoonist has been sentenced to be 25 lashes for a caricature of a local MP, the semi-official Ilna news agency has reported. Ahmad Lotfi Ashtiani, MP for Arak, took offence to a cartoon published in Nameye Amir, a city newspaper in Arak. The cartoonist, Mahmoud Shokraye, depicted Ashtiani in a football stadium, dressed as a footballer, with a congratulatory letter in one hand and his foot resting on the ball. Iranian politicians, including Ashtiani, have been recently criticised for interferring in the country’s sports………. Shokraye was subsequently sued by the MP for having insulted him. A court in Markazi province, of which Arak is the capital, sentenced the cartoonist to 25 lashes – an unprecedented punishment for an Iranian cartoonist……………”

Cartoons are the cleverest way to needle Arab (and Iranian) rulers and “almost” live to tell the tale. But they have their risks: you never see a cartoon of the Saudi king or princes anywhere inside Saudi Arabia, and you never see a cartoon of the most senior Iranian clerics anywhere inside Iran (Ahmadinejad is neither a senior cleric nor a prince). Some of the more audacious artists have paid with their lives, others have been attacked, imprisoned, and maimed.
For years the great Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali needled the Fatah leadership of Yassir Arafat (as well as Israel) from the relative safety of Kuwait. He created the character of ‘Hindhala. The PLO reportedly applied pressure for him to be deported from Kuwait in the 1980s. Within a short time from his arrival in a second exile in London he was shot in the face and killed. Openly, some Arab media, as hypocritical then as now, claimed the Mossad had killed him. Everybody I asked knew that he was killed by Fatah operatives on order of Arafat. Then there was Syrian Ali Farzat who was attacked last year and nearly crippled most likely by thugs affiliated with the Syrian regime. No doubt there are many others I am not aware of. There is a clever Brazilian cartoonist (Carlos Latuff) whom the Bahrain rulers (and the Saudi security) would love to get their hands on. I doubt Carlos will be visiting Manama or Riyadh anytime soon. (Don’t even think about it: if they let you in that means they have a trumped up charge ready, like drugs or worse. Remember Egyptian lawyer Ahmed Gizawy. Remember Labanese TV magician Ali Sabat who is on Saudi death row for “sorcery”).
Back to Iran: twenty five lashes for a civil case and not a criminal case, and for a mere lowly politician, an MP! I suspect this sentence is very likely against some article of their own constitution (as are other travesties). I wonder what he would get if he had depicted someone higher, much higher and I mean much higher, than that MP? I am not talking about Ahmadinejad.
Cheers
mhg


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