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Cartoon Movement, the internet’s #1 platform for high quality political cartoons and comics journalism (and sister site of VJ movement) , is publishing my latest piece on the Sept 2007 shootings that occurred in Nisoor Square, Baghdad – there’s a little taster about it on their blog here. The piece will go up next wednesday, June 15th. In the run up to next week I’ll post some previews of the panels and give more of a sense of how the piece works, and the importance (not to mention the untapped potential) of incorporating interactivity into comics journalism pieces.
For now, let me break down the above screenshot, which is the main viewing area for the piece (which, incidentally, loads in its own window due to sizing constraints). The viewing area is comprised of 3 main parts: the timeline (corresponding to the 15 minutes that the incident took place over), which can be advanced by clicking on the play button, or dragged to a specific point); the background, which is comprised of a satellite picture of Nisoor Square together with an additional layer of brightly coloured icons (corresponding to the various people and vehicles involved in the incident) that move along their respective paths as the incident unfolds; and, of course, the panels, which appear as the user hovers over the said icons, providing an eyewitness account of the event from that specific perspective (the majority of which are taken from direct testimonies).
Former British PM Tony Blair took the stand yesterday to offer an addendum to the comments from his previous appearance at the Iraq inquiry, explaining that:
“At the conclusion of the last hearing, you asked me whether I had any regrets. I took that as a question about the decision to go to war, and I answered that I took responsibility. That was taken as my meaning that I had no regrets about the loss of life and that was never my meaning or my intention. I wanted to make it clear that, of course, I regret deeply and profoundly the loss of life, whether from our own Armed Forces, those of other nations, the civilians who helped people in Iraq or the Iraqis themselves.”
Yet another signup to the “let history be the judge” camp it seems – not least the part of history that saw him planning regime change with Dubya back in 2001 (see 1:13 in the video). But it wasn’t the heckling that best summed up the public’s reaction to Tone, fresh from his book tour – it was the fact that he arrived at the inquiry 2 hours early to avoid the crowds of protestors who set up outside the premises. Watch Sky’s coverage of his testimony here.
Panel from "The Insurgent" by Isaac Goodhart
I stumbled across this gem of an online comics anthology (for sample, see left) put together by students from NYC’s School of Visual Arts under the watchful eye of Nick Bertozzi. The link is to the Act-i-vate website (a great website for free top-notch webcomics) and shows the end result of a project to visually adapt US troops’ combat testimonies during their recent tours in Iraq.
We’ve also published an extract of the first story from Borderland over at borderlandcomics.com, which I’ve added to the ‘Trafficking” page. Other updates include the Honduran Coup: A Graphic History video on the “Honduras” page, so please watch, pass on and leave your comments.
I’m also delighted to announce that I’ll have a comic published in the seminal activist art anthology, World War 3 Illustrated, which should be out later on in the year. It’ll be an extract from an oldie from the 2007 archive chronicling the scandal around Burger King’s exploitation of undocumented central American migrant workers in Florida’s tomato fields. You can read it over at the US Politics page, now with a handy drop-down menu.
As you read each one, think about your reaction to the information, your level of engagement, and the likelihood of you wanting to find out more about this incident. Obviously, the amount of information will provoke a higher level of reader interest, so focus more on what factors are helping you to connect with the story (hint: it’s all about the visuals, as if you didn’t know that from being on this site already). All give different angles on the same incident, which took place almost 3 years ago in Baghdad.
1. From Reuters: July 12 – Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh, both of whom worked for Reuters news agency, are killed in eastern Baghdad during clashes between U.S. forces and militants.
2. From the New York Times: BAGHDAD, July 12 (2007) — Clashes in a southeastern neighborhood here between the American military and Shiite militias on Thursday left at least 16 people dead, including two Reuters journalists who had driven to the area to cover the turbulence, according to an official at the Interior Ministry.
“They had arrived, got out of the car and started taking pictures, and people gathered,” Mr. Sahib said. “It looked like the American helicopters were firing against any gathering in the area, because when I got out of my car and started taking pictures, people gathered and an American helicopter fired a few rounds, but they hit the houses nearby and we ran for cover.”
3. Reuters again:
The last photo taken by Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen before he was killed on July 12, 2007
Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in Baghdad on Thursday in what witnesses said was a U.S. helicopter attack and which police in a preliminary report called “random American bombardment”. The U.S. military in a statement issued just after midnight on Thursday described the incident as a firefight with insurgents. It has said the killings were being investigated.
“Our preliminary investigation raises real questions about whether there was fighting at the time the two men were killed,” said David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief of Reuters. Residents and witnesses interviewed by Reuters said they saw no gunmen in the immediate area where Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh were killed in Baghdad’s al-Amin al-Thaniyah neighborhood. They said they were not aware of any clashes in the area leading up to the Apache helicopter attack around 10.30 am local time. Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh had gone to the area after hearing of a U.S. air strike on a building around dawn that day.
On Sunday, the U.S. military returned to Reuters two digital cameras that belonged to Noor-Eldeen which were taken by American soldiers from the site of the deaths. No pictures taken by Noor-Eldeen on July 12 show clashes between militants and U.S. forces. The pictures show no gunmen, nor residents running for cover.
The U.S. military said last week it had called in “attack aviation reinforcement” after coming under fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. Nine insurgents and two civilians “reported as employees for the Reuters news service” were killed, the statement said.
4. Video, courtesy of Wikileaks (visit their website for more information on their corporate/governmental whistle-blowing). Released earlier today at a press club meeting in Washington DC, the footage reportedly came through a source with connections to the military and has since been verified as legitimate and been broadcast globally (BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera…) – here’s a full video report from Al-Jazeera (plus interview with the editor who published it online).
More on this tomorrow, but please post your comments/reactions – and retweet the link.
News today that the US has decided to rename the Iraq war ‘Operation New Dawn’ to vaunt the US’s evolving relationship with the Government of Iraq. So it’s goodbye “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, hello new dawn. Despite the predictable media fanfare (drowning out the rising death toll, you say?), it seems no one actually did a google search before coining the moniker. Had they done, they’d have seen that amongst the top billings for ‘New Dawn’ is a rehab center for getting people back on the right track. The company’s slogan says it all: “Confidence. Security. Hope. Always” – sounds like a military press release to me. Speaking of which, here’s the original memo from the Dept of Defense suggesting the name change. Lest you commit the social faux pas of mismatching the wrong war to the wrong sobriquet, here are some personal favourites of mine:
“Operation Earnest Will” – no, it’s not the abortive first draft title of Good Will Hunting, it was the 1987-1988 Inter-State War in Iran
“Operation Deliberate Force” – best not to think about the need for the word ‘deliberate’ here – NATO Intervention in Bosnia 1994-1995
Both still sound better than “Operation WTF WMDs”, mind you.
This week’s book review corner features New Orleans: After the Deluge, an amazing piece of comics journalism that recreates the chaos and panic when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. It was originally serialised online, so you can actually read it here. The story focuses on half a dozen characters around the city and their contrasting reactions to the impending disaster. Based on actual testimonies, it’s a towering work that earns Josh Neufeld a place in the comics journalist hall of fame, next to Joe Sacco. Ok, so it’s still a small hall, but you get the idea.
Lastly, the more observant among you will have noticed the chipin widget on the right sidebar has been replaced by a new button, which will take you directly to the paypal checkout for a copy of the Honduran coup comic. Yours for $5 plus $2 shipping to the US, or $4 to the rest of the world. Not only that, but for those of you who are new to the site (welcome) or who haven’t ordered your hard copy of the Honduran Coup: A Graphic History (for shame), I’ve created this new page with all the information, links, quotes and background you could ever want, plus a radio interview thrown in for good measure.
Belated good news from the Obama camp that they will be challenging the acquittal of the Blackwater mercenaries responsible for the Nisour Square massacre of 16 September 2007. For those of you unfamiliar with Blackwater, essentially they’re a private mercenary army for hire, employed as go-to guys by the US government but apparently not bound by its legal or ethical codes. Means less litigation down the line for human rights violations incurred in the field, right? (In the interests of national security, of course). Well it did until now.
Jeremy Scahill has been covering their nefarious involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, summed up in his excellent book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His latest piece for the Nation on the verdict tells the story of the brave man who brought the case against the company after his young son was killed in the massacre. All he wants is an apology, but Blackwater would rather he took the hush money.
Today’s quote comes courtesy of teflon Tony Blair, all the way over in London. No, he’s not talking about forgetting to pay for his TV licence. He’s at the Chilcot Inquiry and he’s talking about forgetting to fact-check the intelligence dossier that convinced him we needed to invade Iraq. Despite gems like these (taken from the Daily Torygraph, I confess) surfacing online today in all the main papers, the headlines make out that he’s a man of decisive action, “not Bush’s poodle” – as if the internecine power dynamic between the two stooges was more important than whether the pair of them should be tried as war criminals. Other heinous admissions dressed up in diplomatic-speak include: “A second resolution was obviously going to make life a lot easier, politically and in every respect” – good to see his reverence for the UN as little more than a rubber-stamp for making life easier.
For more of the same, then why not check out this secret Downing Street Memo from July 2002 (later republished in the Sunday Times), in which Mssrs Blair, Campbell, the Attorney General and John Scarlett (then head of “Intelligence”) all talk more candidly about how they and the US can get the Iraq show on the road, evidence on not:
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
Then there’s the small matter of Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, who wrote Blair a full letter in 2002 outlining the illegality of an Iraq invasion, stating that: there were only three justifications: self-defence, which he did not accept because he did not accept the new US doctrine of expanded pre-emption; averting a humanitarian crisis, which justified the no-fly zones but would not justify war; and UN authorisation, which would require a new resolution.
Blair’s reaction was not only to ignore him (obviously), but to gag and bar him from the Cabinet. Then deny everything. The Daily Mail (hey, at least the sources have some standing) had the full scoop here. Read a blow-by-blow account of Goldsmith’s turn on the stand at Chilcot here.
