Friday, February 4, 2011

Poster of the Week



Walk Like an Egyptian
Mr. Fish
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/?tn
Reprinted by permission of Truthdig
2011

CSPG’s Poster-of-the-Week celebrates the courage, determination and optimism of the Egyptian people as they continue to fight against the 30 year long dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Mansoura, Sharqiya and elsewhere, in an unprecedented display of popular protest. After days of primarily peaceful…and hopeful…protest, the Mubarek regime’s secret police began attacking the demonstrators this week.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, can’t decide whether to continue supporting a long-time ally, although brutal and corrupt, or support the secular democracy movement. Egypt is the second largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world—only Israel receives more—and the bullets, tear gas and other weapons being used against the Egyptian people were made in the U.S.A.

Walk Like an Egyptian by Mr. Fish, gives the revolutionary Che Guevara an Egyptian focus by giving Alberto Korda’s icon photo of Che the face of Pharoah Tutankhamun— popularly known as “King Tut.” Mr. Fish is the pen name for Dwayne Booth, whose brilliant editorial cartoons appear in Truthdig.org., LA Weekly, MSNBC, and Harper’s Magazine.

For those of you who haven’t been glued to Aljazeera English, the events in Egypt were inspired by the overthrow last month of Tunisia’s President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali following 23 years of iron-fisted rule. Virtually unprecedented in modern Arab history, the populist uprising sent an ominous message to authoritarian governments that dominate the region. His ouster continues to inspire the pro-democracy demonstrations that are spreading across the Middle East. In addition to Egypt, popular revolts and demonstrations are also taking place in Algeria, Jordan, Syria, and Yemen.

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