Carlos Latuff (born November 30, 1968) is a Brazilian freelance political cartoonist. His works deal with an array of themes, including anti-Zionism, anti-globalization, anti-capitalism, and anti-U.S. military intervention. He is best known for his images depicting the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and, more recently, the Arab Spring events.

Some of Latuff's cartoons comparing Israel to Nazism have been accused of being antisemitic by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and some authors. Latuff has dismissed the charges of antisemitism as "a strategy for discrediting criticism of Israel.", while book reviewer Eddie Portnoy in The Forward has stated that while his message is "furiously critical" of Israel, it is not anti-Semitic.

Latuff was born in the neighborhood of São Cristóvão in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and is of Lebanese ancestry; in his own words he has "Arab roots".

Latuff started as a cartoonist for leftist publications in Brazil. After watching a 1997 documentary about the Zapatistas in Mexico, he sent a couple of cartoons to them, which received a positive response. He stated that after this experience, he decided to start a website and engage in "artistic activism". Graham Fowell, ex-chairman of the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain, compares his work to Banksy, an English-based graffiti artist, political activist and film director.

Latuff has been arrested three times in Brazil for his cartoons about the Brazilian police, in which he criticized police brutality.

In 2011, Latuff was contacted by activists in Egypt. Latuff stated that he was encouraged when he saw some of his cartoons depicted in the January 25 Egyptian protests, a couple of days after he made them. According to Reuters, this helped him become "a hero of the tumultuous Arab Spring with rapid-fire satirical sketches".

Latuff's works have been posted mostly by himself on Indymedia websites and private blogs. However, some of them have been picked up and featured in magazines such as the Brazilian edition of Mad, Le Monde Diplomatique and the The Toronto Star.  In addition, a few of his works were published on Arab websites and publications such as the Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (JAMI) magazine, the Saudi magazine Character, the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, among others.

Themes

A vast number of Latuff's cartoons are related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which according to Latuff : "became important to Latuff after he visited the area in the late 1990s." These cartoons are heavily critical of Israel and have drawn criticism and allegations of uninhibited utilization of "judeophobic stereotypes in the service of the anti-globalisation movement."

In his We are all Palestinians (Arabic: كلنا فلسطينيون‎) cartoon series, various famous oppressed groups, including Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, Black South Africans during Apartheid, Native Americans, and Tibetans in China, are all shown stating "I am Palestinian."

Latuff has also made a series of cartoons that portray Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, United States President George W. Bush, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and British PM Tony Blair among other politicians as monsters and as Nazis.

Latuff is also critical of US military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has made promotional cartoons for anti-US militancy as well as cartoons alleging US actions have been motivated by the chance of making profit from oil. Among the cartoons, there are also some that portray US soldiers as severely wounded, dead, or paraplegic or as harming Iraqi civilians.

In his comic series Tales of Iraq War (Arabic: حكايات من حرب العراق‎) he portrays "Juba, the Baghdad sniper", an Iraqi insurgency character claimed to have shot down several dozen US soldiers, as a "superhero". He has also made a caricature of US President George W. Bush laughing over US casualties.

Since the end of 2010, he has been consistently engaged in producing cartoons about the Arab Spring in which he openly sided with the revolutionaries. After the victory of revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya his cartoons about these countries have focused on the menace of counter-revolution or Western interference. Some of his cartoons have been displayed in mass demonstrations in Arab countries.

Alleged antisemitism

The notability of Latuff and his cartoons has drawn criticism from individuals and organizations, especially in the form of accusations of antisemitism.

His works were criticized by a writer for the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs, part of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (an Israeli NGO), for allegedly containing antisemitism and antisemitic motifs.

In 2002 the Swiss-based Holocaust survivors organization Aktion Kinder des Holocaust sued the Indymedia of Switzerland on the charge of antisemitism for publishing Latuff's cartoon titled We are all Palestinians series in their website, which depicted a Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto saying: "I am Palestinian." The criminal proceedings were suspended by Swiss court.

In their 2003 Annual Report, the Stephen Roth Institute compared Latuff's cartoons of Ariel Sharon to "the antisemitic caricatures of Philipp Rupprecht in Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer." The SRI also complained over a cartoon showing Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara in a Palestinian keffiyeh.

In 2006, Latuff placed second for his cartoon comparing the West Bank barrier with the Nazi concentration camps, in the Iranian 'International Holocaust Cartoon Competition'. Latuff's entry was described as "Holocaust inversion," a "motif" of antisemitism, by Manfred Gerstenfeld.

Joel Kotek, a professor at Belgium’s Free University of Brussels, in his book Cartoons and Extremism calls Latuff “the contemporary Drumont of the internet.” Eddy Portnoy, in The Jewish Daily Forward, reviewing the book, writes that Latuff material is "often terribly obnoxious... but it is a stretch to categorize his cartoons as antisemitic, and it is a disservice to the fight against genuine antisemitism to have included [the Latuff cartoons]".

Latuff's response

In an interview with the Jewish-American weekly newspaper The Forward in December 2008, Latuff responded to charges of antisemitism and the comparisons made between his cartoons and those published in Der Stürmer in Nazi Germany:

My cartoons have no focus on the Jews or on Judaism. My focus is Israel as a political entity, as a government, their armed forces being a satellite of U.S. interests in the Middle East, and especially Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. It happens to be Israeli Jews that are the oppressors of Palestinians... My detractors say that the use of the Magen David in my Israel-related cartoons is irrefutable proof of antisemitism; however, it’s not my fault if Israel chose sacred religious motifs as national symbols, such as the Knesset Menorah or the Star of David in killing-machines like F-16 jets.

Latuff also stated that anti-Semitism is real, that anti-Semites like European neo-Nazis, "hijack" the Palestinian cause to bash Israel. To assert, however, that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic is, in his view, "a well-known tactic of intellectual dishonesty." He said that political cartoonists work by metaphors, and that similarities can be found between the IDF treatment of Palestinians and what Jews experienced under the Nazis. Such comparisons are not created by cartoonists, he added, but are made worldwide. He instanced the fact that a Holocaust survivor like Tommy Lapid reacted to the image of a Palestinian woman foraging in the rubble by thinking of his grandmother who died in Auschwitz. The use of cartoons insulting Muslims by depicting Muhammad as a bomber is defended as "freedom of speech", while using the Holocaust in drawings is deplored as "hatred against the Jews".

Latuff was included in Simon Wiesenthal Center's 2012 Top Ten Anti-Israel/Anti-Semitic Slurs list, which he considered "a joke worthy of a Woody Allen movie". He also claimed that Zionist lobbying groups try to associate him with well-known extremists and racists in order to disqualify his criticism of the Israeli government. According to him, "criticism or even attacks to the polity known as Israel do not mean hatred towards Jews because the Israeli government does not represent the Jewish people just as no government represents the totality of its people". He also pointed out that figures such as José Saramago, Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter were also accused of being antisemitic, saying that he was "in good company".

Andrew D. Basiago, J.D., M.C.R.P. (Dist), M.Phil. (Cantab), the team leader of Project Pegasus and the founder and president of MARS, is an American lawyer, writer, chrononaut, and 21st century visionary.

Andy served in Project Pegasus at the dawn of the Time-Space Age and was one of humanity’s first Mars explorers.

He is a prominent figure in the Truth Movement leading a campaign to lobby the US government to disclose such truths as the fact that the US has achieved “quantum access” to past and future events and has used time travel to place a secret US presence on Mars.

Andy has been identified as the first of two “planetary-level whistle blowers” predicted by the Web Bot, which analyzes the content of the World Wide Web to discern global trends.

His Truth Campaign about time travel and life on Mars is based on direct, personal experience serving on two US defense projects.

In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Andy was a child participant in Project Pegasus, which was the US time-space exploration program at the time of the emergence of time travel in the US defense-technical community.

He was called back into government service in the early 1980’s, when he made numerous visits to Mars after being tapped to join the CIA’s Mars “jump room” program.

For over a decade, Andy has investigated his secret project experiences on a quest to prove them and communicate them to others.

Soon, he will publish a tell-all book that will reveal the true story of his awe-inspiring and terrifying experiences time traveling for the US government.

Andrew D. Basiago was born on September 18, 1961 in Morristown, New Jersey, the youngest of five children, and grew up in Northern New Jersey and Southern California.

Andy was identified in early childhood as an “Indigo” child with special abilities, including the ability to use his mind to levitate small objects and to perform telepathy by reading the minds of others.

A past member of Mensa, the high IQ society, he holds five degrees, including a BA in History from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Master of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge.

While an undergraduate at UCLA, Andy studied American history during the day while attending a night school in strategic intelligence administered by the Naval Postgraduate School.

Upon graduating from UCLA in 1984, he became a journalist and protégé of editor Norman Cousins of the Saturday Review, who once compared him to Robert M. Hutchins and nominated him to be the editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Andy was inspired by a meeting with futurist Buckminster Fuller in 1981 to pursue a career in environmental affairs. After they met, Fuller wrote: “Andrew D. Basiago’s integrity augurs well for humanity’s continuance in (the) Universe.”

He began his public career writing articles about urban affairs for Los Angeles newspapers, national periodicals, and the Cousteau Society journal Calypso Log.

Andy studied environmental law at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, and then went on to design nature friendly urban plans for cities in California and study environmental law with Professor Malcolm Grant at Cambridge.

His scholarly papers about “sustainability” have been published in peer-reviewed academic journals in Australia, Britain, and the United States.

Andy was admitted to the Washington State Bar Association in 1996 and maintains a private practice in Washington.

Recently, he edited several leading works related to humanity's contact with extraterrestrial life.

He was the editor of Alfred Lambremont Webre’s book, Exopolitics: Politics, Government, and Law in the Universe (Universe Books, 2005), which uses as a case study human contact with an advanced civilization on Mars.

He also edited The Fátima Trilogy by Dr. Joaquim Fernandes, Fina d’ Armada, and other scholars (Anomalist Books, 2007), a definitive history of the Fátima Incident of 1917 that explores its extraterrestrial aspects.

Andrew D. Basiago is on a crusade as a lawyer and statesman to have the US government disclose its time travel secrets.

Andy believes that lobbying the US government to declassify its secret teleportation capability, so that teleportation can be adopted globally as the leading form of civilian transport, is the most important environmental cause of our time.

He is calling his truth campaign “Project Pegasus” after the secret US time travel program that he served in during his childhood as one of America’s early time-space explorers.

Andy has enthralled listeners with his accounts of his time travel experiences in numerous television and radio interviews.

His appearances on talk radio’s popular Coast-to-Coast AM with George Noory have been hailed as major “disclosure events” and have been popular broadcasts in the history of that show.

Andy has also described his time travel experiences in Project Pegasus during appearances on mainstream TV broadcasts in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

About his truth campaign as a participant in the US secret space program, he has stated:

"Imagine a world in which one could jump through Grand Central Teleport in New York City, travel through a tunnel in time-space, and emerge several seconds later at Union Teleport in Los Angeles. Such a world has been possible since 1967-68, when teleportation was first achieved by DARPA’s Project Pegasus, only to be suppressed ever since as a secret weapon. When my quest, Project Pegasus, succeeds, such a world will emerge, and human beings linked by teleportation around the globe will proclaim that the Time-Space Age has begun!"

In an effort to establish on Earth that the Mars he visited is inhabited, Andy has also earned distinction as a leading scholar in the Mars anomaly research community.

His paper The Discovery of Life on Mars, published in 2008, was the first work to prove that Mars is an inhabited planet and also the first work ever published on Earth to contain images of humanoid beings on another planet.

After publishing this landmark paper, Andy founded the Mars Anomaly Research Society (MARS), a group that is dedicated to researching, disclosing, and educating the public about life on Mars, revealing the US presence there, and developing the laws and policies that are needed to protect Mars from visitation, exploration, habitation, and colonization by human beings from Earth.

He founded MARS in 2009 after discovering evidence of life in a photograph of the Red Planet beamed back to Earth by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. MARS continues to make breathtaking discoveries of ancient artifacts and biological beings on Mars.

Andy's efforts to prove his Mars findings and bring them to public light have been called “heroic.” Of his Mars anomaly research as the president and founder of MARS, Andy has written:

"I am leading the campaign to achieve political recognition that Mars is inhabited because we must enact an international treaty to protect the ecology and civilization of Mars. We must remember that Mars does not belong to us. Mars belongs to the Martians. If we fail to recognize this, then we will fail our first major test of cosmic citizenship. I believe that the people of the Earth are ready for cosmic citizenship and I believe that they are ready for the truth!"

In 2016, Andrew D. Basiago will be a candidate for President of the United States under the banner "Andy 2016 – A Time for Truth."

Websites:

www.projectmars.net

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Andy2016/

Nicola Tesla's Time Machine: Andy Basaigo, time traveler and Presidential Candidate:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/tom-white/nicola-teslas-time-machine/738375546225008

Andrew D. Basiago - A Time For Truth 2016:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq4ZMRMZDYo

(2045 30:30+, 8 types of teleportation/time travel 41:25 to 44:45, Mars civilization 58:15 to 1:16:33, 2016 Presidential Campaign 1:16:34 to 1:46:25)

Tim Canova has been challenging Wall Street banks and political corruption for most of his adult life.

As an activist, attorney, educator, and frequent commentator on the rigged economic and political systems that put Wall Street and multinational corporations first while leaving ordinary Americans behind, Tim is uniquely positioned to shake up Congress.

“If elected this fall, he would instantly become the strongest advocate in Congress for a people’s Fed.”

Born and raised on Long Island in Merrick, New York, Tim had strong family ties to South Florida before moving to the Sunshine State in the mid-1990s. He is from an immigrant half Italian Catholic, half Jewish family, which taught him the traditional values of honesty and hard work. Tim ran cross-country and track in high school and college, including on his high school varsity state championship cross-country team. As a teenager and young man, he worked in a wide variety of manual labor jobs, from delivering newspapers and cutting lawns to pumping gas, painting houses, loading trucks in a plastics factory, and picking avocados on a kibbutz in northern Israel.

Tim attended public schools K-12, completed his undergraduate studies in government and economics at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, earned a law degree, with honors, at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., and was a Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar at the University of Stockholm.

As a legislative aide to the late U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas (Democrat, Massachusetts), Tim worked on a range of regulatory and human rights issues. While working on Capitol Hill, Tim began warning about the rise of Wall Street special interests and the assault on working families. In the early 1980s, he wrote critically about the deregulation of interest rates and lending standards and the rise of subprime and predatory lending. These practices would eventually have a devastating effect on the people of Florida when real estate markets crashed in 2008. To this day, Florida still has the highest rate of foreclosure in the country, with over 300,000 open foreclosure cases in state courts.

In the 1990s, while an associate attorney at a prominent law firm and then as a visiting professor at the University of Miami, Tim opposed efforts to weaken the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act firewalls that had separated commercial banking from the risky securities markets. He also cautioned about the rise of complex derivative financial instruments that were turning the United States into a “casino” economy. In the early 2000s, Tim warned about the growing bubble in housing prices and called for increased supervision of Wall Street banks and financial markets. He was one of the few law professors in the country who consistently opposed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, including a 1996 op-ed in the New York Times opposing Greenspan’s reappointment.

“But the Florida race [ Tim Canova versus Debbie Wasserman Schultz] could well reveal more about the Democratic Party than any other contest this cycle, including the one for president. . . . It's a test of whether progressive ideas or corporate money are more central to the Democratic Party's future.” 

Tim left Miami for a tenure-track teaching position at the University of New Mexico School of Law, where he was granted early tenure in 2003. While in Albuquerque, Tim spearheaded a successful grassroots lobbying campaign to abolish the state’s felony disenfranchisement law that had barred about 6 percent of the state’s voting age population from voting for life, often for non-violent drug offenses. He argued the hypocrisy of locking people up – disproportionately minority and poor, and depriving them of their voting rights -- for using the same recreational drugs that were used at some point by successive U.S. presidents and about half of all Americans. Ever since, he has opposed the misguided “war on drugs” and the privatization of prisons that has resulted in the perverse incentive of warehousing people for profit.

After New Mexico, Tim taught at Chapman University in Southern California, became an endowed professor in International Economic Law, and served as the academic associate dean, helping Chapman move up significantly in the national rankings. In his teaching and scholarly work, he emerged as a leading critic of the cozy relations between Washington and Wall Street that have corrupted our politics and distorted our economy. He opposed granting China permanent normal trade status and its entry into the World Trade Organization, was critical of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other corporate giveaways, and today is a fierce opponent of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

"And he has vowed to run a campaign based on small-donor support, calling Wasserman Schultz ‘the quintessential corporate machine politician.’”

In 2011, Tim took part in the Occupy Wall Street movement, teaching a workshop on the Federal Reserve at the Occupy Los Angeles encampment. At that time, he was also selected by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders to serve on an advisory committee on Federal Reserve reform along with such leading economists as James Galbraith, Robert Reich, Jeffrey Sachs, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

During his time in New Mexico and California, Tim returned often to South Florida to visit with his many relatives, old friends and colleagues. On South Beach, he became known as “The Hurdler” for hurdling every garbage can – 572 in all – on the 8 mile Raven Run, and earned Run of the Year award two years in a row. He also visited Israel many times during this period, returning to his former kibbutz as a volunteer time and again, and participating in workshops on citizenship, war, and counter-terrorism at Tel Aviv University.

Tim moved back to South Florida in 2012 for a teaching position at the Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law where he is a professor of law and public finance. He lives in Hollywood, and in his spare time he enjoys cooking, movies, Pilates and yoga, as well as running and bicycling on the Hollywood Beach Broadwalk.

Tim remains a leading critic of the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, opposes the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics, and is a strong advocate for programs to help students, working families, and lower- and middle-income folks. He will bring formidable energy, focus, experience, and integrity to Washington on your behalf, providing representation in the true sense of the word for the needs of the local constituents in South Florida’s 23rd Congressional District. Rather than doing the bidding of giant corporations like too many professional politicians these days, Tim asks you to join him to work for the interests of the actual, real people who reside here.

Click on the links below to for essays and videos by Tim:

Videos

Chapman Business Report: Federal Reserve Reform, Tim Canova

Tim Canova - Public Banking 2013: Funding the New Economy

Finally! A Progressive Primary for Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Tim Canova at Florida Atlantic University

Essays

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Shouldn't Be Welcoming Loan Sharks Into the Democratic Party

Trade pacts vs. national sovereignty

Top Economists to Advise Sanders on Fed Reform

Who Runs the Fed?

Helping struggling seniors and disabled

Jennifer Mecozzi is a newly elected member of the Buffalo School Board. She is a parent of four amazing children first and foremost. Beyond that she is a powerful Community Advocate who has worked diligently with many organizations to make the Westside of Buffalo a better place for all residents. Jenn is also a winning softball coach with a passion for developing young girls into empowered women. She has not only coached her girls but mentored them and built lasting relationships with the parents the have improved families in her community. 

There is no one who knows the potential and the challenges in Buffalo's West District better than Jennifer Mecozzi. The School Board is at a point where the issues have distracted the board from the real issue which is the education and betterment of the children who are in the schools. That cannot be accomplished without REAL parent engagement by someone who knows what its like to be a struggling parent trying to do what’s best for their kids.

Jen Mecozzi has the experience and background rooted in work with the community to bring parents, students and teachers together and she will uplift Buffalo Public Schools in her newly elected position.

Elected by the board in Spring 2010 to represent the students and parents in the Ferry District, Sharon hit the deck running, while acknowledging that each of her life experiences have prepared her for this moment in time. Sharon is a product of the WNY educational system, attending Schools #47, Clinton Jr. High, Genesee, Humboldt, East High, Canisius College, and receiving an undergraduate degree at Medaille College.

Sharon’s career has primarily been in insurance, and the banking and financial industries. Currently she works as a licensed Home Mortgage Consultant with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.  Previous careers include being a Substitute Teacher, Insurance Supervisor with Goldome Agency and Empire Realty, an Insurance Consultant with Allstate, Community Lending Officer with Charter One Bank, Loan Officer with Citizens Bank and Community Advocator.  Sharon is a mother, grandmother, and member of True Bethel Baptist Church, Brunswick Block Club, Hamlin Park Tax Payer Association, Women of Worth, and the Erie Niagara Sunrise Exchange Club.

Sharon is an advocate and passionate defender of her district and all the children in the City Of Buffalo. For the first two years of her tenure, Sharon worked as the Chair of Finance and Operations, demanding more transparency and accountability. An avid participate in board committees and task forces within the District, Sharon is committed to improving the educational system in Buffalo. 

Of the Buffalo Public Schools, Sharon has gone on record to state: “We are in a great time in the history of Buffalo Public Schools with all the stakeholders who are interested in assisting us in advancing our district.  We have a wealth of opportunity in a Superintendent who is experienced in turning failing district around, our stakeholders, such as ‘Say Yes To Education’ and other community partners, and a sound school board. The community can be assured that we now have the best opportunity in decades to improve our schools and provide our children with a world-class education!”

Debra Hamilton has spent 30 years as a practicing litigator, but she is now a full-time mediator and conflict coach for people in disputes over animals. She has far-reaching experience in resolving interpersonal conflicts involving animals, and speaks widely on the topic of how mediation techniques can help people address conflicts without going to court. Debra has presented at veterinary school and all kinds of animal interest groups as well as at the American Kennel Club, the American Veterinary Medical Law Association, the Society of Animal Welfare Administrators and state bar association Animal Law Committee meetings.

Over fifty years ago, in Grand Junction, Tennessee, Dr. Cheairs and the Songbirds (formerly The Seven Star Juniors) began as a family-based "Quartet" group. The Songbirds have been blessed to share in ministry with Harvey Watkins & The Canton Spirituals, Lee Williams & The Spiritual QC’s, Rance Allen, Walter and Edwin Hawkins, Pastor Shirley Caesar, The Williams Brothers and many more world reknown gospel artists. The Songbirds are under the direction of acclaimed Gospel songwriter and producer Dr. Andrew Cheairs, Pastor of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Byhalia, Mississippi.

Aurora is a Galactic walk-in and visionary artist. She came into this physical body, and into this world, in 2001 via the Flying Rainbow Lasagne, a hyper-dimensional portal shape she spontaneously invented.

Since then, Aurora has spent her time expressing the concept of the Flying Rainbow Lasagne (FRL) in drawings, paintings, sculptures, animations, and in an online class called Lessons for Full Spectrum Humans. The FRL shape is like "open source code" for your DNA, and it is Aurora's continued intention to teach everyone how to embody it and become the artist of their own reality.

Aurora presently lives in Northern California, where she paints on a daily basis in her art studio, broadcasts her weekly radio show "Birth of a New Dimension", teaches her online class, and gives live performances about harmonics, the intersection of her visual art and overtones singing.  You can also find her uner Aurora, on Facebook!