SELF-PORTRAIT OF ART SPIEGELMAN FROM HIS AWARD WINNING BOOK " MAUS " (1991 ) ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST( SHOAH ) . BASED ON THE EXPERIENCES OF HIS FATHER WHO SURVIVED TO BECOME A WITNESS OF THE HORROR & MADNESS .
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PANEL FROM ART SPIEGELMAN'S " MAUS " IN WHICH THE JEWS ARE DEPICTED AS MICE & THE NAZIS AS CATS
"MAUS " BY ART SPIEGELMAN
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put more photos here
" IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS " BY ART SPIEGELMAN
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PANEL FROM " IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS " BY ART SPIEGELMAN . 9/11 & THE AFTERMATH . AMERICANS TERRORIZED INTO SUBMISSION TO THE AUTHORITARIAN BUSH REGIME .
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"WAITING FOR THE OTHER SHOE TO DROP " FROM ART SPIEGELMAN'S " IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS " DEALING WITH 9/11 & IT'S AFTERMATH.
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PANEL FROM " IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS " BY CARTOONIST / GRAPHIC NOVELIST ART SPIEGELMAN ( 2004 )
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Here’s a little bio of Art Spiegelman as it were:
from Pantheon Graphic Novels
www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/
graphicnovels/spiegelman.
"Art Spiegelman... to the comics world is a Michelangelo and a Medici both, an influential artist who is also an impresario and an enabler of others." (The New York Times Magazine). Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for his masterful Holocaust narrative Maus, which was followed by Maus II, he is one of the world's best-known graphic artists. "It would be almost impossible to overstate the influence of Maus among other artists" (The New York Times Magazine).
Born in Stockholm in 1948, Spiegelman rejected his parents' aspirations for him to become a dentist, and began to study cartooning in high school and drawing professionally at age 16. He went on to study art and philosophy at Harpur College before joining the underground comics movement. As creative consultant for Topps Candy from 1965-1987, Spiegelman designed Wacky Packages, Garbage Pail Kids and other novelty items, and taught history and aesthetics of comics at the School for Visual Arts in New York from 1979-1986. In 1980, Spiegelman founded RAW, the acclaimed avant-garde comics magazine, with his wife, Francoise Mouly. His work has since been published in many periodicals, including The New Yorker, where he was a staff artist and writer from 1993-2003.”
And further commenting on “ IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS ”;
“Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda.”
I just recently came across these two books by Art Spegelman & they are both worthy of more than just a glance or perusal since that's how most people seem to read these days.
Spiegelman’s book illustrates the horror of the 9/11 attack on the twin towers especially as it is told by an eye-witness living in a neighborhood adjacent to the towers. But like many people Spegelman expresses his anxiety, frustration & growing anger as the Bush regime & its lackeys used the event to push forward their own Neo-Conservative & the Radical Religious Right’s combined agenda under the guise of fighting terrorism .
Now the Bush regime could go after Saddam Hussein who had nothing to do with the attack & was in fact also hated by of Al Qeda.
Hussein also did not have “ Weapons of Mass Destruction ” but the Propaganda war that began within hours after the 9/11 attack has left many with the impression that Hussein did have WMD & was involved with the attack somehow or other. (For instance: some might argue maybe Al Qeda publicly claimed to hate Saddam but really was in cahoots with him in typical conspiracy type fashion. & other fantasies of the followers of Chancellor Bush. & what is disturbing is that there is no way to battle such propaganda as the true believers are convinced that Bush would never lie to them & that he has some “ secret knowledge” about what’s is actually going on .)
But it is like those Americans who believe that the 9/11 terrorists managed to sneak into the US by way of Canada ; though it is not true how does one convince those who have had a steady daily diet of this sort of propaganda .
And now it is getting worse as Chancellor Bush & his cadre of power-hungry fanatics throw around terms like “ Islamo-Fascism ”. So we are now or have been embarking on a new Christian Western Holy Crusade against the ungodly anti-American anti-western anti-democratic evil & Satanic Islamic forces who intend to crush the West & force Islam on the rest of the world.
This is the sort of rhetoric which leads to the death of reason & rational discourse. The Islamic World becomes thereby the Enemy who cannot be reasoned with & faced with such a fanatical enemy any in the West who dare question the policies & tactics of the Bush Regime are therefore enemies of Western Values & should be ignored or even silenced .
So far the silence at times is deafening as most of the Western Media especially in America & Britain & now in Canada have for various reasons decided to become the Voice & Chief Propagandists for Chancellor Bush . The Media acts or actually believes Bush can do no wrong.
As we know imprisoning people without due process & keeping them in jail for years while torturing them & sometimes killing a few prisoners so what we are told all those arrested were guilty of something even when it is discovered they are not guilty of anything.
So we throw out the Geneva Conventions & notions like “ ethical behaviour ”.
( note: according to The Bush Regime “ethical behaviour” is just a way for the liberal elite & other socialist & other anti-Americans to hamstring & undercut the ability & effectiveness of the American military to fight this war. I still believe a lot of the backing for the Iraq War & other wars to come in the Middle East or elsewhere is the unleashing of conservative resentment over how the liberal elite undermined the American war effort in Vietnam. Don’t bother the mainstream mind-set with historical facts about Vietnam for as President Reagan said “ facts are stupid things ”What matters are one’s perception or “ Gut Feelings “ even if they are racist according to some liberal namby-pamby unAmerican “ scum-Bag or a matter of a flawed view of reality seen through the Neoconservative Prism of Reality. I.e. if Jane Fonda had kept her mouth shut America would have won or if Seymour Hersh & other journalists hadn’t been so eager to use incidents like My Li to undermine the American People’s faith in their military or if the military had been allowed to use a few H Bombs on the Viet Cong then America could have triumphed in Vietnam
Naked Force will teach all those Muslims & Arabs & their liberal collaborators a lesson they will not soon forget. This seems to be the reasoning of the present regimes which are influenced by Neocons , The Radical Christian Right & all those closet racist who now get to spew their venom on CNN & other national networks.
Even massacres of innocent Iraqis whole families butchered & young girls raped just instances of the Good Old Boys ( American Soldiers) blowing off some steam just like the good old days in Vietnam or El Salvador or take your pick of unnecessary US interventions. But they did it before & there were no real consequences . In the same way Israeli troops & Police forces can do whatever they wish to Palestinians without any real consequences.
When we dehumanize those on the other side it becomes easier to commit outrageous & unjustified & cruel & inhumane acts against them. All arabs & Muslims according to this thinking are potential terrorists & so even a child killed by Americans is seen as a good thing since that dead child just becomes one less terrorist to worry about.
Anyway in Spiegelman’s “ MAUS “ we get the story of the rise of the Nazis & their descent into madness as they put into policy their plan to wipe out all the Jews in Germany & then in Europe. This evil as such did not arise out of thin air as it were. For ,at least, a thousand years Anti-Semitism was to a great extent fueled by Christian leaders whether Popes or Priests or Protestant leaders or Kings or Queens or Nobles or Knights & many European Intellectuals were often as rabidly anti-Semitic as any of the Popes . This is so if we just date it back to the first Crusade in 1097 when the people of Europe on their way to destroy the Muslims decided first to kill all the Jews they could before taking on the Muslims. So Hitler did not invent Anti-Semitism or the Pogrom IE. The wholesale slaughter of Jews nor was Hitler the first to pass laws to segregate the Jews from the Christian population or to restrict what jobs & professions they could have or where they could live or if they could marry a Christian & that they had no real rights since they were Non-Persons.
The irony is that within the Islamic world until recent times Jews were treated better & were more integrated into Islamic run countries than they were in Christian dominated countries.
In a large part of Spain for instance Jews Muslims & Christians lived side by side with little enmity or suspicion for several centuries until the Great Inquisition was sent to expel all Muslims & Jews or force them to convert to Christianity ( that Religion which professes to be about tolerance & love - well its rarely practiced such ideals )
And those who converted were later accused of being heretics & working somehow to extend Jewish influence into Europe- the same old Anti-Semitic claims which are even today believed in by various racist organizations.
Yet for whatever practical purposes Israel has aligned itself with the Neocons & the Radical Christian Right to obtain more land & power & in return they more aid from America & together they can fight their Holy War against the Islam without any distinction between the radical extremists Islamic minority & the more moderate majority of Islam .
Though the Radical Religious Right which has become more & more the mainstream of Christianity ; they would say that God & Jesus bring not Peace but a Sword & that all heretics & unbelievers must be ousted from all Christian countries but not the Jews since they have a secondary role to play in the Second Coming of Christ the Warrior King .And so here we are just a few short years away from Armageddon or , at least, US hegemony which will be even greater than the Roman Empire or even Hitler’s fantasies about the Third Reich.
So where was I- what is reprehensible is that the present radical right regime in Israel now uses anti-Semitism as a way to undermine the arguments of any who dare question their policies or tactics in relation to the Palestinian people or their invasion of Lebanon. The Holocaust was an unimaginable horror visited upon the Jewish people but has been said by others this does not give Israel a blank cheque to commit immoral acts such as the creation of an Apartheid System in Palestine & all the occupied territories or the imprisonment of ten thousand or so Palestinians or the on-going abuse & torture of thousands of prisoners whether they are Arabs or Muslims or Israeli Jews or secularists who are concerned about the basic human rights of Israel’s citizens or her neighbours. Heaven forbid that one should see those not like ourselves as human or even as our equals .
But it is not surprising since our whole society is based upon inequality the rich & the poor the in-group & out-group, winners & losers , its not how you play the game but whether you win or lose, or “ Snooze you lose ” - or as in New Orleans the Left Behind were just those too stupid or slow or physically unable to get out so Bush had his own little Final Solution-Lite or Glenn Beck called those Left Behind a bunch of “Scum-Bags” so much for Christian charity.
Anyway enough ranting so check out these books by Art Spiegelman and the following websites:
Art spiegelman MAUS
National Museum of American Jewish History
http://www.nmajh.org/index.htm
http://www.nmajh.org/exhibitions/maus/
also check out :
Lambiek.net: Art Spiegelman
lambiek.net/artists/s/spiegelman.htm
And on Israel's Policies & the War IN IRAQ & The Christian Religious Right & ISLAM here are few books which relate to these subjects :
Cramer, Richard Ben : HOW ISRAEL LOST (pub. 2004)
Finkelstein, Norman G.
Wheatcroft, Andrew. Infidels : THE conflict between Christendom and Islam, 638-2002 ,Pub. 2003
Woodward, Bob : Bush At War Simon & Schuster Pub. 2002
Roberts , Paul William: A WAR AGAINST TRUTH an intimate account of the invasion of Iraq, pub. 2004
Shadid , Anthony : Night Draws Near Iraqis in the shadow of America's war
Vidal, Gore : Dreaming War: Blood For Oil And The Cheney-Bush Junta
pub. 2002
Hersh, Seymour M. :CHAIN OF COMMAND: THE ROAD FROM 9/11 TO ABU GHRAIB, PUB. 2004
Carter, GRAYDON : WHAT WE’VE LOST: BUSH’S WAR ON DEMOCRACY & FREEDOM , PUB. 2004
MARTIN , WILLIAM - WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE: THE RISE OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT IN AMERICA ( COMPANION TO THE PBS SERIES)PUB. 1996
REED, RALPH -POLITICALLY INCORRECT: THE EMERGING FAITH FACTOR IN AMERICAN POLITICS; forward by WILLIAM BENNETT,pUB. 1994
FACKRE, GABRIEL : THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT & CHRISTIAN FAITH, PUB. 1982
MARTY, MARTIN E. & APPLEBY, R. SCOTT: THE GLORY AND THE POWER: THE FUNDAMENTALIST CHALLENGE TO THE MODERN WORLD ( COMPANION VOLUME TO THE PBS AND NPR TV SERIES) PUB. 1992
Catherwood, Christopher: CHRISTIANS , MUSLIMS , AND ISLAMIC RAGE pub. 2003
AVERILL, LLOYD J. :RELIGIOUS RIGHT, RELIGIOUS WRONG : A CRITIQUE OF THE FUNDAMENTALIST PHENOMENON, 1989
So GOOD NIGHT & GOOD LUCK
GORD.
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