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Blog Syndicate

Saudi Resignation

It seems that we get news of editorial cartoonists being laid off from newspaper jobs every couple of weeks, but it is unusual to hear of a cartoonist resigning from a rare newspaper job.

This week, our own Stephane Peray resigned from his job as the editorial cartoonist for the “Arab News” newspaper – a major daily newspaper in Saudi Arabia. Here is his letter of resignation, along with some of his cartoons that could not or would not run in Saudi Arabia. Some samples of Stephff’s cartoons about Saudi Arabia are below  

–Daryl

 

To the management of the Arab News and to my readers, from Stephane “Stephff” Peray,

I’ve been very happy to work for the past 10 years with the Arab News, the leading daily English language newspaper in Saudi Arabia. Today I made a decision to resign with the newspaper because, since the Khashoggi scandal, I have a problem with the moral issues involved with the cartoons that are allowed to reprinted in Saudi Arabia.

Of course, my editors at the Arab News are not responsible for the war in Yemen, or for the assassination of a Saudi dissident journalist, still I face a difficult dilemma in deciding if I should continue to work with any media in Saudi Arabia.

For the past months, for obvious reasons, the Arab News couldn’t use any of my cartoons that were relevant to the Khashoggi affair and couldn’t publish any of my cartoons that relate to the war in Yemen – a war that killed thousands of innocent Yemeni children. In recent days, the Arab News cannot use any of my cartoons about the Saudi teenage girl, Rahaf, who escaped from Saudi Arabia and asked for asylum in Australia.

Sometimes I draw cartoons about my French government that has no problem with selling weapons to the Saudi government, exposing the double standard of western countries when it comes to choosing between human rights and lucrative defense contracts. If I keep publishing cartoons in a Saudi newspaper that will never publish any controversial cartoons, am I not guilty of hypocrisy myself?

I am just a cartoonist. I do not earn much money and taking the decision to resign from the Arab News was painful because I need the income, but I firmly believe that I must resign.

So I tender my immediate resignation from my collaboration with Arab News and ask my editors to please accept my apologies for any inconvenience I am causing to them by my abrupt departure. Please understand this has nothing to do with editors at the Arab News.

Best,
Stephff



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Blog Syndicate

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Gets the Boot

I’m not too happy with my Putin and Bernie in this one, but Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is great fun to draw. Her hair is fun. Somehow I’m guessing she’s be around for a while in one way or another.

Here I am drawing this one live (as of 1:00pm Pacific Time Tuesday, this had another hour to finish uploading – come back later if you are early!)

And here I color it in real time …

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Blog Cartoons Syndicate

John Boehner – No Mas!

House Speaker, John Boehner, just announced his resignation. I’m sorry to see him go, he’s a great character, although I didn’t draw him very often. Most of the cartoonists color him orange because of his unnatural tan, and I jumped on the bandwagon with that. Lucha Libre! (The color here is off, he’s not really that day-glow orange in the print version – I have a little compassion, at least in print.)

I also notice that politicians who are heavy smokers do a good job hiding their cigarettes whenever the cameras are around, so I make a point of giving those guys a cigarette in my cartoons. I did that for a while with Obama, but since he’s made an effort to quit, I quit giving him cigarettes also – although I notice that some conservative cartoonists still give him cigarettes.

The other thing to do with Boehner is to draw him crying. I suppose I should have given him a tear in his eye – just as I should do with the Statue of Liberty. Here’s a crying, quitting Boehner by my buddy, Rick McKee.

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Cartoons

Secretary Sebelius Resigns

147003 600 Secretary Sebelius Resigns cartoons

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Cartoons

Rove Resigns

Rove Resigns Color © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Karl Rove, Bush, brain, President, resignation, resign

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Cartoons

DeLay Falls

DeLay Falls © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,Tom DeLay, statue,Napoleon,donkey,conservative,house,congress,Texas,fall down, hurt, campaign finance laws, violate, resignation, resign

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Cartoons

Miers Squished

Miers Squished © Daryl Cagle,MSNBC.com,dog, harriet miers, tie, track, Bush, Charlie Brown, Peanuts, car, Associate Justice, resignation, White House Counsel, squished, ran over