Cartoons: keep flapping

No theme today, just some funny and apt glimpses into life and the news...

I can sympathize with Bush calling for the TV controller, but that's about it.

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Chan Lowe, US News

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Cartoonist Sheneman's depicting an IRS operative as a medieval executioner has a ring to it.

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Drew Sheneman, US News

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In keeping with the fairy-tale aspects of the IRS investigation--

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Chip Bok, The Week

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And finally, don't we all have to just keep flapping at times?

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Jack Ohman, US News

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--Marge

Cartoons: We don't need no stinking reform

In the news the topic of immigration reform is back on the table.  Those in the Tea Party appear to be the stumbling block on new legislation.  USA Today in "Immigration activists threaten GOP political payback" says the "hope for immigration reform all but dead."

Time to step back and take a better look --

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Chan Lowe, US News

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David Horsey, US News

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John Darkow, The Week

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David Fitzsimmons, The Week

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BTW, cartoonist David Horsey has an excellent piece titled "Ice storm paradox: It's colder because the Earth is warmer."

--Marge

An oily Friday in cartoons

It's been a month now and I still can't believe that Exxon not only fathered yet another oil spill, but they also suppressed reporting on it.  In fact, according to Grist.org, Exxon took or has taken over the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, as reported in the article, "Arkansas town in lockdown after oil spill nightmare."  If you've never heard of the magazine Grist, neither had I -- here's a list of the funders.

Living in Alaska and having seen how the oil companies operate first-hand (did you know that the U.S. still subsidizes them?), the news about Mayflower really chaps my hide. So I'm applying some cartoon vitriol as lubrication.

On second thought, not.  It seems all of the current oil spill cartoons that I saw earlier are gone.  Googling "oil spill editorial cartoons," I see only ones about the BP Gulf of Mexico spill.  Spooky.

Pulling some cartoons from the U.S. News' 2010 archive and making a few changes (my apologies to the artists for altering their works), I offer you the following:

Adapted from a Jack Ohman cartoon,

Adapted from a Gary Markstein cartoon,

One by Michael Ramirez and in its original form,

The next two are from other sites and specifically address the Mayflower spill.  The first is from  Matt Wuerker at Politico:

And this last one is by Jimmy Margulies; it was found at Cagle:

-- Marge

There be unfriendly forces lurking

Funny, but the title "Hunt for Red October" has been coming to mind lately, then today I came across this headline "Red October Espionage Network Rivals Flame" at Information Week/Security.  In the article author Mathew J. Schwartz states:

Security researchers have uncovered an espionage malware network that's been operating undetected for at least five years and that has likely stolen quantities of data that stretch into the terabytes.

"The campaign, identified as 'Rocra' -- short for 'Red October' -- is currently still active, with data being sent to multiple command-and-control servers, through a configuration which rivals in complexity the infrastructure of the Flame malware," read research published by Kaspersky Lab.

Flame malware was discovered in 2012.  There is an interesting article by Kim Zetter at Wired with the title "Coders Behind the Flame Malware Left Incriminating Clues on Control Servers."  The article ranks Flame third after Stuxnet, then Duqu. 

Sidestepping the hacker vs. cracker debate, I submit that we're really talking about cyberwarfare, whether conducted by a loosely-knit group of collaborators or a country.  In this Wikipedia article is the following:

The Economist describes cyberspace as "the fifth domain of warfare."

In its article defining cyberwarfare, Rand states:

 Cyber warfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation's computers or information networks through, for example, computer viruses or denial-of-service attacks.

That's not quite complete.  Classified information and corporations' intellectual properties are also being targeted as reported by the Los Angeles Times in "U.S. spy agencies to detail cyber-attacks from abroad" by Ken Dilanian, Washington Bureau.

Of course the U.S. and Israel are in the mix too (cartoon by Arend Van Dam at Political Cartoons).

In closing, seems to me -- if you use free antivirus software, it's that same as installing a fox in the henhouse.

-- Marge