[ by Charles Cameron — taking a break from my pressing writerly duties ]
.

I wouldn’t have noticed these two offerings quite so clearly if I hadn’t been pointed to each of them in the last couple of days. Both look to be of considerable interest:

Artur Beifuss & Francesco Trivini Bellini, Branding Terror: The Logotypes and Iconography of Insurgent Groups and Terrorist Organizations
Asiem El Difraoui, The Jihad of Images

Hat-tip Nico Prucha at Jihadica, and who or whatever pointed me to HuffPo — idenitfy yourselves and be saluted!

**

The first image in the HuffPo slideshow for Branding Terror (lower image, below, AQIM) really hit me square between the eyes, because when I was in Mashhad, Iran, in the early seventies, I snarfed up a postcard with a very similar design — Shi’ite rather than Sunni, and not so distinctly violent (upper image):

Some things just don’t seem to change.