Last week, my daughter Susie Cagle, a journalist and cartoonist, sat down with Cartoonist Rights Network International's Executive Director, Robert Russell, to discuss how she was wrongfully arrested twice by Oakland, California police. In fact, a charge from her first arrest, failing to leave the scene of a riot, has never been dismissed by the Alameda County District Attorney's Office.

Susie also talks about the state of media, and how paid reporters who have been laid off have been replaced by citizen journalists, individuals who are personally passionate about the topics they’re covering and documenting, which allows police and government officials to ignore their rights as journalists.

“The mayor of Oakland in February or March, called them fake journalists, fake media, and we need to figure out a way to separate them from the real journalists,” Susie said. “It really goes to show a deep misunderstanding of what’s happening in media right now.”

I’ll soon be traveling to France for theeditorial cartoon festival at St. Just le Martel, along with our very conservative cartoonist,Eric Allie and my brilliant, cartoonist daughter, Susie Cagle.  I put together an exhibition of cartoons for St. Just, by American cartoonists on the American presidential election, and I’ll be giving a seminar.  I’ll probably sit around and do drawings for the fans too; Eric, Susie and I will be there October 4th through 7th.

See my hour-long seminar on Saturday, October 6th, at 10:00am in the conference room of the “center.”  On Friday, October 5th I’ll lead off a panel on depictions of presidents, translated into French, at 4:00pm in the same conference room.

My cartoon exhibition, featuring over 100 cartoons by myself and 18 more Cagle Cartoons cartoonists, drawing about the presidential election, is in the “lounge,” open from 9:00am to 7:00pm daily from Saturday September 29th through Sunday October 7th.

I’ve heard about St. Just for years, and this is my first time going.  Few American cartoonists go, but the international guys tell me they love it and the festival has gained quite a reputation.  The little town near Limoges just decided that they love editorial cartoons and would have a big cartoon festival every year for political cartoons.  They even built a big museum for editorial cartoons in the middle of a cow pasture.  Families from the small town put the visiting cartoonists up in their homes – the whole town really gets behing this thing.

It is hard to imagine anything like this ever happening in the USA.

My portrait by the brilliant Shri Shankar Parmarthy of the Sakshi newspaper in Hyderabad, India.

The controversial cartoon that was banned from india's textbooks, after a long debate in Parliament.

I was so rushed with the end of my India trip that I neglected to do a post about my visit to Hyderabad, the huge, hi-tech city in the middle of India.  The Hyderabad cartoonists were great, and I enjoyed drinking with them through the night in the backyard of the Press Club, where I had some particularly hot Biriyani that made me sweat and shake, to the amusement of my colleagues.  I especially enjoyed meeting renowned, veteran Hyderabad cartoonist, Mohan, who moved on from being a local, Telegu language political cartoonist for the huge Sakshi newspaper, to running his own animation studio.

The US Consulate put on a lovely show of my work in cooperation with the Muse Art Gallery at the Marriott Hotel in Hyderabad – they did a great job. I was impressed that they included my more edgy cartoons that would have gotten me thrown in jail, if America suffered the same, poor press freedoms as India.

I gave speeches at the Sri Venkateswara College of Fine Arts and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and at each a bunch of girls ran up to me after my talk to tell me how they have known my work for years because my cartoons appeared in their high school textbooks, which was fun.

There has been a lot of talk in India recently about banning some cartoons from high school text books, in particular, this one (below right).

This textbook cartoon controversy was much more interesting to the Indian cartoonists that I met than the brouhaha about the jailing of Aseem Trivedi, which was raging at the time.  The cartoon was the subject of debate in the Indian Parliament, where it was described as racist, for showing former Indian Prime Minister Nehru, supposedly whipping Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a lower caste politician who is riding a snail.  In fact, Nehru is not whipping Ambedkar – both Nehru and Ambedkar are whipping the snail, because they want the process of writing India’s new constitution to go faster.

In America we have idiots who fight to take evolution out of science text books all the time, so the idea that the Indian cartoonists were so invested in this debate,when one of their colleagues was thrown in jail for drawing their Parliament building as a toilet, seemed to be misplaced priorities to me.

I was very impressed by the colored pencil work of Shri Shankar Parmarthy, the staff cartoonist for the Sakshi newspaper, who did this great caricature of me standing in front of Hyderabad’s historic Charminar(top right).

I’ve posted Shankar’s brilliant Mother Teresa and Dalai Lama caricatures below. Impressive stuff.

Dalai Lama by Shri Shankar Parmarthy.

Mother Teresa by Shri Shankar Parmarthy.

Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, who publishes under the pen name "Charb."

Sipa news agency is reporting that French police have detained a man who is suspected of threatening to decapitate Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor-in-chief and cartoonist of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, after publishing naked caricactures of the Prophet Muhammad.

According to the report, the 43-year-old man is suspected of making the threat on an Internet forum, allegedly writing, “The essential thing is not to let him live in peace.”

Speaking about the cartoons, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Obama administration believed they “will be deeply offensive to many and have the potential to be inflammatory.”

“We don’t question the right of something like this to be published,” he said. “We just question the judgment behind the decision to publish it.”

Charbonnier, who goes by the pen name “Charb,” defended the cartoons to the AP in part by telling reporters that Muhammad isn’t sacred to him.

“I don’t blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings,” he said. “I live under French law. I don’t live under Quranic law.”

He also said he doesn’t regret publishing the cartoons, nor does he take responsibility for any violence that may ensue.

“We’ve had 1,000 issues and only three problems, all after front pages about radical Islam.”

Watch the video from the AP here:

Previously: France Closes 20 Embassies Over Naked Muhammad Cartoons

Related: Cartoons about the reaction to drawings of the prophet Muhammad

Daryl Cagle/NBCNews.com, Politicalcartoons.com

Check out our Romney's Gaffes cartoon slideshow.

John Cole/Scranton Times Tribune, Politicalcartoons.com

Check out our Muhammad Cartoon Controversy slideshow.

Less than a year after their offices were firebombed for publishing a caricature of the prophet Muhammad, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has created a controversy in France for publishing cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad naked in their latest issue.

Stephane Charbonnier, the editor of Charlie Hebdo, says the cartoons were an attempt to poke fun at the furor over the anti-Muslim film causing protests throughout the Arab world, and will “shock those who will want to be shocked.”

According to the French newspaper Le Monde, one of the cartoons inside the magazine, entitled “Muhammad: a star is born,” depicts a bearded figure crouching over to display his buttocks and genitals.

The front-page of the magazine features a cartoon of an Orthodox Jew pushing a Muslim man in a wheelchair, who is saying, “You mustn’t mock us!” under the headline “Untouchable 2,” a reference to a popular French film about a paralyzed rich man and his black assistant.

NBCNews.com has reported that France is temporarily closing its embassies and schools in 20 countries, fearing a violent backlash from protestors over the cartoons. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on France Info radio, “Is it relevant and intelligent in this environment to add fuel to the fire?”

Charlie Hebdo is available on news stands all over France and is a top publishing venue for many top, French gag cartoonists. “Hebdo” is French for “weekly” and “Charlie” is a reference to the iconic cartoon character, Charlie Brown.

Charlie Hebdo’s web site went down yesterday because of a hacker attack. Our own site at cagle.com went down for a time yesterday in response to an unusually sophisticated, denial of service attack.

Chris Weyant/The Hill, Politicalcartoons.com

Check out our Romney's 47 Percent cartoon slideshow.

Rob Tornoe/Politicalcartoons.com

Check out our new cartoon slideshow about Romney's Leaked Video.