Przydzial filed the Flickr "Obama Joker" image takedown request. Because Przydzial originally made it.

The Obama Joker creator revealed here, wasn't the actual photoshop-King behind the Obama Joker posters that cropped up around LA as it turns out. When we posted about the takedown notice that prompted Flickr to remove the image we wondered who issued it? and it looks like Thomas Hawk found the person: Edward Przydzial says he issued the takedown notice (even if Hawk initially thought that surname was a made up random string of letters and blatantly fake).
Now that Hawk has spoken to Przydzial he has gotten this note where Przydzial explains his p.o.v:

“i do not own the image. time magazine photographer does… i am the “creator” of said image not firas whatever. i posted them in los angeles and they went viral. he is stealing my thunder.

So, no conspiracy then. Just one photoshop happy derivative art maker pissed at another guy for infringing said art. Man, copyrights are hard.

Here's the Livejournal timestamped entry which seems to back up Edward Przydzial claim of being the original poster art creator, first of all he's also made T-shirts and then there are variations of the Obama Joker at the bottom: posted Oct. 9th, 2008, which is three months before Alkhateeb posted his image on Flickr.

Edit PDN weighs in

Update 2, August 28: Thomas Hawk drops the name: Edward Przydzia. [It's Przydzia in the takedown notice Hawk posted, which seems to be a misspelling of Przydzial.] In e-mails to Hawk, Przydzial sounds like he's claiming he created the Obama Joker graphic before Alkhateeb did, though his e-mails are confusing. (We should point out that Hawk, while an avid Flickr user, is also the CEO of a rival photo sharing site called Zooomr.)