Lampooning U.S. views of Iraqi Army, yesterday & today

(click to enlarge)

h/t informed comment, political cartoon via Otherwords.org

Iranian freedom of press in action--paper shut down

Photos source: jaras

In keeping with the Iranian tradition of freedom of the press, the Iranian "Press Supervisory Board", best described as a "censorship bureau", ordered the daily independent paper "Shargh" closed today. The news was announced by Pars news (Only on the Persian version of the site).

The reason for the closure was the publication of the cartoon shown in the photo above. The regime claims that the cartoon represents an insult to the Iranian war veterans. I assume that the timing of publication and the similarity of the blindfolds in the cartoon to the basij bandanas is used as an excuse to attack this hard hitting political cartoon, which has nothing to do with the 1980s war and tons to do with the current social and political environment in Iran. 

In addition to the closure of the paper, the editor was arrested and was send to prison to join dozens of other journalists already there. More on the plight of Iran's jailed journalists you can go to: http://cpj.org/2012/02/attacks-on-the-press-in-2011-iran.php

For those who like to compare Iran to the USA, I would say that cartoons critical of the US president, the US wars, etc. are a google search away. Oops, sorry, google is also blocked by the censors this week in Iran. In any case, the US government has no mechanism to censor the press and does not have the power to shut any publication down.  

Below is another cartoon by the same paper from 2006 which depicted Ahmadinejad as a donkey in a chess board (see below). Needless to say that that cartoon also resulted in a shutdown of this paper.

This is the main portion of the original post on pars news:

با نظر هیئت نظارت بر مطبوعات"

روزنامه شرق توقیف شد

خبرگزاری فارس: روزنامه شرق به دنبال انتشار کاریکاتوری توهینآمیز علیه رزمندگان و بسیجیان دفاع مقدس، از سوی هیئت نظارت بر مطبوعات توقیف شد.

به گزارش خبرنگار جامعه خبرگزاری فارس، به دنبال انتشار کاریکاتوری توهینآمیز در روزنامه شرق(چاپ روز گذشته) هیئت نظارت جلسهای اضطراری تشکیل داد.

در پایان این جلسه اعضای هیئت نظارت بر مطبوعات بر اساس بند 8 ماده 6 و تبصره ماده قانون مطبوعات تصمیم به توقیف انتشار روزنامه شرق گرفتند و پرونده آن را به دادگاه ارسال کردند.

مهدی رحمانیان مدیرمسئول این روزنامه، امروز برای ادای توضیحات درباره انتشار این کاریکاتور به دادسرای عمومی و انقلاب تهران احضار گردید و در نهایت با نظر بازپرس شعبه 9 دادسرای فرهنگ و رسانه، قرار بازداشت برای وی صادر شد."

Older Cartoon:

Photo credit: flicker

Political cartoon by Sajjad Jafari

Illustration published at Fars News Agency

Iran related political cartoons

Below is a sample of political cartoons by Fahd Bahady from Syria (click images to enlarge). His many other works can be found here.

The Nuclear Club

Between Iran and Turkey
The decrepit Arab establishment gets jealous as Iran and Turkey woo the Arab people.

Nuclear Fuel Swap Offer, October 2009
The fox (the West) tells the skeptical raven (Iran) it must be trusted with a portion of its capture.