

Pravda's opinion of Slobodan Miloshevich Pravda's opinion of Slobodan Miloshevich

Quote

“If you agree with my points of views and want to support me, please, don't waste your precious time in useless discussions with right-wingers. Don't feed flame wars with trolls.



You are fighting the fleas instead to fight the dog. Let's keep our focus on BIG dogs only.



The best thing you can do is to save my artworks, reproduce and forward them to other people. And let those right-wingers speaking alone... That's called STRATEGY!”

The word wide web has come of age with an estimated one billion users around the globe. Advances in computer technology allow almost anyone with the right software and creativity to produce impression digital art. Throw a political agenda into the mix and you have a Webagandist.During the 1999 NATO war with Serbia, USENET groups and websites were flooded with political debate and propaganda. One effort that particularly caught my eye was the digital art produced by someone calling himself “Pravda” (Truth). Pravda produced imaginative anti-Miloshevich propaganda and was no doubt a skilled Photoshop artist. The messages may have been crude but the design demonstrated skill using the technology of the time with the internet providing a means to disseminate it to a global audience.Today a very talented Brazilian left-wing liberal artist named Carlos Latuff produces extreme anti-US and pro-Palestinian cartoons and caricatures. His level of creativity is astounding even if his messages are abhorrent. Occasionally he uses pornography, more often his work is ghoulish, and generally is amusing. He attacks Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and is violently anti-American. He pays particular attention to the war in Iraq and to capitalism. Latuff must be a Pepsi drinker, as he constantly snipes at Coco Cola by showing that the company is the root of all evil. McDonalds receives similar treatment. One of his cartoons fuels the ridiculous conspiracy theory that the US engineered the AIDS virus, with others furthering the myth that 9/11 was orchestrated by the CIA.Latuff says his images are “copyleft” meaning he actively encourages his fellow “brothers and sisters-in-arts” to freely disseminate his propaganda around the internet, to reproduce it on t-shirts, as leaflets, in newspapers, and even on walls.In his own words,Latuff hero-worships the photo-montage satirist John Heartfield whose legendary work ridiculed Hitler and the Third Reich. Latuff’s artistic ability may approach that of Heartfield but mainly falls well short of the mark with his political message. He sees himself as a subversive and has faked a US Customs wanted poster with his own picture on it. However, I’m sure there’s few in the US Administration that take his work too seriously.