Part 2 of another comic from the upcoming human trafficking comic, Borderland. Featuring 7 true stories told by human trafficking victims in comics format. Now at 1/3 of our goal! Please order your comic via Kickstarter here – $5 for a digital version, $10 for a hard copy, as well as more luxurious options like signed posters, behind the scenes views of the project’s artwork, and the chance to sponsor a copy for a Ukrainian school or NGO. More news on yesterday’s SF Zine fest journalism panel below.

My haul from yesterday's Zinefest

I’m glad to say that the panel I was on at yesterday’s Zinefest provoked a predictably lively debate about the future of journalism and print publishing. Shockingly (to me, at least) only about 2 people in the audience had even heard of sites like Kickstarter or Chipin – not what I was expecting from the most creative, indie-minded spirits in the bay area.

To those of you unfamiliar with the fest, I’d say it’s like a more adult version of APE – same DIY/punk spirit, but fewer zombie comics and more socially conscious creators. Highlights from a few laps of the County Fair Building were: the Zines on Toast peeps from the UK, currently on a nationwide comics tour; Susie Cagle, fellow Bay Area comics journalist, whose comics on Food Not Bombs (9 Gallons, see left from my pile) and a recent trip to Israel were must buys; radical stalwarts AK Press, who hopefully will carry the Honduran coup comic (news on that when I have it); and Sparkplug books, who might do too. Rummaging around in various piles I also found some vintage Seth Tobocman (Squatter comics, see left), as well as a vegan cookery zine that looks interesting.

I’ve also been excitedly looking through the online Stanford Uni course catalog to choose my courses for the upcoming year – one of the many myriad perks of being a Knight Fellow. So far I’m leaning towards the Art and Communication depts, though there were a few neuroscience courses that took my fancy…One of the many innovative Stanford-related websites I came across was the Persuasive Tech Lab, which focuses on the interaction between decision-making and technology, and other behavioral connundrums. Currently they’re linking to this amazing audiovisual mashup of a song comprised of various different would-be youtube stars’ voices/tunes. Check it out below, it’s the future of creative collaboration (and music):

First panels from one of the stories featured in my upcoming Borderland comic – featuring 7 true stories told by human trafficking victims. I’ll be posting the next panels over the next week, but please order your own copy of the comic through our Kickstarter page to help us raise money towards printing and distribution costs. You can also help us out by sharing the link on FB, Twitter, Digg etc – thanks for your support!

This is MTV EXIT’s first forray into animation: a stunning piece of socially-minded animation from JM Animation Studio, telling the story of one girl’s descent into human trafficking and the overlap with the various people involved in the ring. There are 3 parts, with a total run time of 25 mins – well worth your time (not to mention the fact that the soundtrack’s provided by Radiohead). Share and comment on how effective a means of raising awareness/storytelling you think it is.

Turns out Colombia is quite the hotspot for US military action of late (not least Plan Colombia, starting in 1999) with a recent $42m civil settlement against everyone’s favourite military contractor, Blackwater (sorry, Xe services) from the State Dept, who apparently had no idea the company was providing combat training to groups in Colombia:

What is known is that the 2005 training was related to an agreement between Blackwater and the agency in Colombia, where “foreign persons were trained and deployed as third-country nationals in support of a contract with the US Department of State.” Blackwater responded to the State Department by stating that the training was held without the agency’s permission due to a “general misunderstanding” over licensing, although the department notes that there were many violations committed while Blackwater was “servicing US Government programs or providing training to US allies.”

What’s a little misunderstood paramilitary training between friends? More importantly, who knows how many of these “general misunderstandings” have led to the training of paramilitary groups in the region, trained under the guise of US foreign policy, that are impossible to hold accountable for their actions? Narco News has the full story here. And I may be a little late to the party on this one, but news is out that Blackwater is actually up for sale – though you can bet its Director Erik Prince will be keen to rebrand his paramilitaries-on-demand offering in the United Arab Emirates, where apparently he has skipped the country to in the wake of further scandals and mounting legal cases against his company. Serendipitously enough for Prince, the UAE doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US either.

[Reminder: check out the Knight Project page for the first report on my latest animation project.]

EA games made the headlines last week with the announcement that the latest version of its Medal of Honor series would allow gamers to play as the Taliban and, of course, kill American soldiers. Click here to watch the Linkin Park-backed trailer in all of its bodycounting glory.

This comes fresh on the back of the announcement that Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 is officially the best-selling game of all time in the UK. Fox News jumped feet first into the melee, bringing a grieving Gold Star Mother into the studio to comment (watch the video here), but enough people have commented on the polemic for me not to go into a equally predictable defense of art imitating life. Instead, what I want to focus on here is the rise of the videogame as an increasingly sophisticated (not to mention supremely lucrative) art form. And most importantly, ask why we aren’t waking up to the potential that video games like Modern Warfare or Medal of Honor represent for news reporting? Scrolling through the comment thread at Gamrfeed’s original article on the issue, Puffy’s comment says it all:

I really don’t understand the argument here.. I mean this is a purely fictional piece of entertainment that is based on real events. Do these media types this that when people play these games in multiplyer [sic] they think, oh good, I wanna be the Taliban and kill some Americans? It’s just a name and outfit to distinguish your teammates from the enemy team, gamers don’t give a shit who they’re playing as in these titles.

What we need to do is redress the balance of this sort of technology being used for pure entertainment purposes and think about how an interactive, immersive digital environment would be the ideal way to introduce students/viewers to the reality of what life is like on the ground in Afghanistan/Iraq/ war zones. Patrick Farley’s doing a similar, albeit deliberately hyper-fictionalised and stylised version of Afghanistan (using 3D rendering tools) over at electricsheepcomix, which I highly recommend. Gamrfeed later ran an excellent piece featuring interviews with US military personnel on the issue, which you can read here. Just as we’ve seen with comics, too many of the supposed gatekeepers of culture see videogames as just another form of lowbrow entertainment and not a state of the art opportunity to engage with an audience on a totally new level. To that end, what do you think is the average age of a videogamer? Answers in the comments section…

“As a candidate for president, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end. Shortly after taking office, I announced our new strategy for Iraq and for a transition to full Iraqi responsibility. I made it clear that by August 31, America’s combat mission in Iraq would end. And that is exactly what we are doing – as promised and on schedule”

However, the definition of troop withdrawal gets a little murky when you consider how many US personnel will remain in Iraq after the last “military” units leave. Here are 5 Iraq troop withdrawal myths from the Washington Post that get to the nub of the issue. For more information about the nature of the troops who will remain in Iraq, watch this video interview [from 2:34mins in]  with Jeremy Scahill, who has been investigating the US’s increasing reliance on Private Armies (such as Xe Services, the rechristened company once known as Blackwater) in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. I’m currently reading his excellent book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army , so will post my review once I’ve finished it.

For the scoop on last night’s talk at IDEO Palo Alto, go to my Knight Project page.

This brings my wordless comic on the economic meltdown to a close, but feel free to click here to read it from the start, tier by tier.

News below the fold, so scroll down. Today’s bulletins: the Iraq withdrawal and a report back on a talk at IDEO Palo Alto on the future of news and storytelling, given by Neal Baer, executive producer of ER and Law and Order, Special Victims Unit.

Please support my human trafficking comic on the crowdsourcing site Kickstarter.com if you haven’t already! Here’s the link to the pledge page, currently at 21% of our goal. Also checkout my new sketchbook uploads to Flickr (right hand sidebar).

News, as ever, below the fold, so scroll down. Please support my human trafficking comic on Kickstarter if you haven’t! Link is below on the right, currently at 21% of our goal.

Further to my post of August 9th, the Colombian Constitutional Court ruled yesterday that the proposed plan to extend US military operations throughout Colombia by sharing the Colombian military infrastructure was indeed illegal. Ex-President Alvaro Ulribe attempted to push it through without bothering to run it by lawyers, claiming it was just an extension of previous accords, but the court disagreed by 6 votes to 3. While that jettisons the 2009 accord’s plans, it doesn’t affect previous accords for now – until new President Santos takes the accords to Congress.