Banned in the USA

Collecting banned books.



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Ah, the American Christian Right: the Not-as-Violent-Anymore Psychos of the Religious World... I Wish They'd Ban My Books

I could use the sales.



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Yeah, That'll Take Care of It

O brave new world! I can already smell the flowers and see the elves dancing. Why hasn't anyone thought of this "censorship" idea before?



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Another Bunch of Small Town American Yokels Lacking Taste, Foresight, and Education...

Poor Judy Blume. 30 Years later and still fighting the same battles. Is there no rest?



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Grendel? I Mean, I Can Understand Banning Where's Waldo, But Grendel?

The Forbidden Library is a nice little resource on banned books. (From Bookslut)



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Imagine! People Caring Enough About Books in Canada to Ban Them!

Feb. 22-28 is Freedom to Read Week in Canada. Celebrate by freeing a book. Or just read about the books that have been banned in Canada (PDF link).



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It infuriates me that a book about racism (like To Kill a Mockingbird) should be banned for using the word "nigger". What are the racist people in the book supposed to say? "African-Americans"? As in "Your father's no better than the African-Americans and trash he works for"? Or should that be "refuse"?

It's not listed here, but a Where's Waldo book was once banned because there was a topless woman sunbathing on the beach.

Reminds me of a huge kafuffle back home on PEI when a local artist started selling t-shirts he'd designed, featuring a painting of a red-haired girl running towards the shoreline, bikini top held aloft. Incredible uproar over that. PEI takes the cake for puritanical stupidity. To bring this back to books, for a long time there was a policy against having schools keep their own textbooks, to be passed on to new students from year to year--on the ground that it might spread germs. I kid you not. Germs.

American Publishers Can Publish Work from the Pentagram of Evil

But if they want to avoid jail, they better not even think about editing it. "The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control recently declared that American publishers cannot edit works authored in nations under trade embargoes, which include, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Cuba. Although publishing the articles is legal, editing is a, quote, service, and the Treasury Department says it's illegal to perform services for embargoed nations. It can be punishable by fines of up to half a million dollars or jail terms as long as ten years." When is someone going to freak out down there and lead the people in a revolt? (Thanks to JLG for the tip.)



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This doesn't make any sense. You'd think the US government would want to be on the side of certain writers and public intellectuals from these countries, who tend to be instrumental in handy little things like revolutions and social change initiatives.

It's funny how the USA gets all upset about poor little countries that don't share their political values, but suddenly American political pride soars out the window when dealing with a marketplace super-power like China. Editing an article by a communist intelligence officer from China is okay, but editing an article by women's rights activist from Iran is punishable under the law.

Nice goin' Dubya. Your adminstration looks dumber everday. I imagine you'll be hearing from PEN about this, maybe Amnesty International, too.

Edited by author 02-26-2004 10:20 PM
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Good evening. As a duly designated representative of the City, County, and State of New York, I order you to cease any, and all, supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place of origin, or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension.

Dr. Peter Venkman: That ought to do it. Thanks very much, Ray.

Edited by author 02-26-2004 10:32 PM
[continued]

Gozer the Destructor: Are you a god?

Dr. Raymon Stantz: [shrugging] No.

Gozer the Destructor: Then....die!

Winston Zedmore: [after Gozer unleashes god-power rays from fingertips, nearly knocking humans from rooftop] Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say YES!



******
(BN: what do the Ghostbusters have to do with the article on editorial restrictions imposed by the US government?)

You're Ray.

:)

Edited by author 02-26-2004 10:39 PM
Oh... I get it.

:)

Wait....

Does this mean George W. Bush is going to transform himself into a 900 foot marshmallow man and try to destroy the world?

Thanks, George.

That just has to find its way to television!

Soon We'll Be Lucky to Have Freedom to Remember Freedom of Speech

Laws that will severely impinge civil liberties are always being passed in the name of security, ethics, and decency. But as of late, things seem particularly dire for "freedom of speech" here in the West. As is often the case, the first targets are creative works by fringe artists. Now, the dude in question here is a fringe of a fringe and only really an artist of self-denial, but the ripple effect is in motion and has serious implications for serious artists. Russell Smith examines bill C-12 and how its impact might be felt in Canada.



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Edited by author 02-27-2004 10:27 PM
"Thus will it be illegal to create, distribute, transmit, access or possess wholly fictitious works of the imagination, such as fiction or painting, which represent characters in sexual situations who are or who seem to be under the age of 18, unless the "public good" is proved to be served. Note that we are not talking about representations of actual children, as one finds in video or photographs."

I wonder how this will effect Japanese cartoons like Sailor Moon?
More importantly, I wonder how this will effect work that is "about" child-abuse? It seems to me that such imprecise wording of the law could actually be used against a victim who, in some artistic way, recounts the horrors of his or her own experience, or any artist who wishes to draw attention to the plight of victims of child abuse. For a victim, the repression of this kind of expression is potentially as psychologically damaging as the abuse itself.

Didn't this happen about ten years ago in Canada? Wasn't there an artist who was charged with producing indecent art for a series of paintings about victimization? Such serious subject matter. Should artists in general be silent, even when advocating victims? I can see how the law could be used to prosecute them as well. I can hardly see, under this law, how it could be possible to discuss the issues at all, except in the most oblique manner.

The use of illicit drugs is also illegal? Is Trainspotting next? I wonder.

"Didn't this happen about ten years ago in Canada? Wasn't there an artist who was charged with producing indecent art for a series of paintings about victimization? "

Claude, yes. His name was Eli Langer. The charges were evetually dropped. The case is outlined at the following link.
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/mercer/348.html

Thanks. Looks like a lot to read through, but I'll have a look.

Poof! There goes Lolita....

Edited by author 02-28-2004 01:00 AM
Not just Lolita.
There goes half of Anais Nin's work.
There goes anything by Margueritte Duras.

But then, what's the average age of sexual active young women in the Bible? I don't think that slave girl that bore Abraham his first son was over the age 18. Bye-bye Bible!

How old is Ophelia in Hamlet? What's the line? Younger women than her are happy mothers made? How old is Juliet? What, 15, maybe? She sleeps with Romeo. Bye-bye Shakespeare.

Shit, there go my memoirs too...

Why 18, I wonder, when the age of consent is 14?

Ew!

Anais, I never said I was the older party...

Still, just "Ew!" Consent laws don't overlap with exploitation laws for a reason.

OK, I give: what reason? (Keeping in mind that there are provisions within consent laws intended to prevent exploitation, and keeping in mind that we're talking about fictional representations here, not actual teenagers engaged in actual sexual acts.)

Let me see, ZW. I just wonder what the "artistic" value is, or, in the terms of the new law, how it could possibly serve the public good. The consent law is the way it so a fifteen or sixteen year old boy won't go to jail for sexual contact with his fourteen or fifteen year old girlfriend, not so adult perverts can take advantage of young girls.

Even in Lolita, there are no actual graphic depictions of sexual acts, only references to them, sometimes suggestive, often oblique, and after the fact at that. But, as readers, we never get to watch. I think that's a significant distinction.

I think the word I'm searching is 'gratuitous'. I fail to see how graphic depictions (and by depiction I mean an image or verbal description in graphic detail) of minors having sex could be anything but gratuitous. What would be the point? To horrify? To titillate? Even veteran writers of horror, erotica, smut, whatever, know is more effective to leave something to the imagination. I can only see the purpose of graphic depictions of minors being used to satisfy perverted fantasies and the impulses of very sick people.

Have you ever Read Anais Nin's "Little Birds"? It's about a man who watches school girls out his window and is excited by their beauty. It only works as a story because he never gets his hands on them. I think Lolita only works because Nabakov only teases, in language, about what happens, but he never actually lets us watch.

In contrast, Henry Miller's Under the Roofs of Paris is no better, probably, except perhaps in the quality of its prose, than whatever that guy in BC was arrested for. Graphic depictions of minors having sex, and with adults no less, for the purpose of sexual titillation...I just can't see a legitimate reason for it. It's socially abhorrent, and I don't see why the law shouldn't be applied.

The Law (here with a capital L) is, in theory, a summery of what a society finds to be permissible and what it finds to be not permissible. In essence, it is the manifestation of a nation’s civic conscience. In practice, however, especially in countries where those who legislate also govern (i.e. most modern nations), the Law is also a manifestation of political consciousness as well as the civic conscience.

The problem, as I see it, with Canada’s age of consent statute is that there’s no tier system in place, there’s no staggering of permissible acts for certain age groups. With the exception of relationships of trust or dependency, the age of consent is 14. That’s it. In my opinion, there should be an addition caveat, as there is in many other societies, that age of consent is 14 so long as the older party is not more than X number of years older than the younger party; for the sake of argument and illustration, let’s say 4 or 5 years older, until such time as both individuals in question reach the legal age of majority.

I can understand Anais Ninja’s reaction to Zach’s question about the age of consent law in /m23, because the question has direct implications for the legal definition of child pornography in Canada. To alter this definition in such a way as to make it analogous with Canada’s age of consent would be, in both the civic and political senses, a legal disaster, and it would have far reaching international implications as well, given that the internet is the primary means of dissemination for such material.

I also believe that it’s important to protect freedom of speech and expression. That said, I don’t believe in the absolute right of anyone to express anything; some things will always be, and should always be, illegal. You may not joke about having a bomb while standing in line at the airport. You may not utter threats of death to a person. You may not share government secrets with another nation. The Law has always placed certain restrictions on freedom of speech, in accordance with social standards and/or for the public safety. These laws do not limit legitimate artistic expression, or legitimate dissent, so there’s no cause for alarm.

The bomb scares, death threats, and acts of treason are all very cut-and-dry examples, but when we wade into the waters of teenage sexuality and sexual development, we are wading into murky waters indeed. Without a doubt, between the ages of 12 and 18, people develop physically, sexually, and mentally at vastly differing rates. It would be impossible to arrive at a concrete definition of sexual maturity, and for this reason, any law applied to the subject of teenage sexuality will be, in large part, arbitrary. The age of consent statue makes this point as well. The development and function of these laws then becomes as mathematical game, a utilitarian application of averages, toward the ultimate end of harm reduction for the most possible citizens.

Making distinctions between real and imagined persons in laws pertaining to the depiction of sexual acts between minors is an abyss of legal nightmares, not the least which is the creation of potential loopholes in existing laws designed to safeguard against the exploitation of minors. Certainly the law can err, as a human invention it is naturally fallible, but in terms of what a society finds permissible, the civic conscience, where the law is designed to protect the weakest and most vulnerable citizens, I believe it is necessary to err on the side of caution. Given that lawyers, judges, and juries will interpret the law on a case-to-case basis, I believe there is little to fear in terms of the repression of legitimate artistic expression. While the creators of highly controversial works may expect to answer difficult questions, they are no doubt aware of the risk.

AN, re /m28

"I just wonder what the "artistic" value is, or, in the terms of the new law, how it could possibly serve the public good. The consent law is the way it so a fifteen or sixteen year old boy won't go to jail for sexual contact with his fourteen or fifteen year old girlfriend, not so adult perverts can take advantage of young girls."

Musings about 'artistic' value and 'public good' are shaky at best as grounds for banning something. I happen to agree with you, about sex scenes in general, be they in books or movies or porn mags; i.e. that 49/50 times, it's pure catchpenny sensationalism, no matter who the participants and what their age. However, to extend this objection to a legal ban is, um, reactionary. Plain and simple. A very fucking (pardon the pun) slippery slope. I don't want to see it, but I'll defend to the end the rights of someone else to write it.

Yeah, Nabokov conveys the relationship between HH and Lolita thru indirection, for the most part, but he is none too subtle about it; there's never any doubt about what's going on there, and I think a zealous 'right-thinking' individual, equipped with a law like the one we're discussing, could easily stretch it to cover a book like Lolita. Or sections of the Bible. Or great chunks of Greek lit (how old was that donkey in the Golden Ass, anyway?). Is teen sex o.k. if it's sufficiently shrouded in metaphor? Careful what you wish for, AN: you might just get it.

Rebel Edit

Want to protest the U.S. Treasury Department's decision that works from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Cuba can be published but not edited, under penalty of imprisonment? Why not edit the work of a writer from one of these countries and post it on Rebel Edit?



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Wasn't sure if I should post this here or on Peter's essay. Just in response to Anais Ninja's

"I fail to see how graphic depictions (and by depiction I mean an image or verbal description in graphic detail) of minors having sex could be anything but gratuitous. What would be the point? To horrify? To titillate? Even veteran writers of horror, erotica, smut, whatever, know is more effective to leave something to the imagination. I can only see the purpose of graphic depictions of minors being used to satisfy perverted fantasies and the impulses of very sick people."

What about teenagers wanting to read sex scenes involving people their age? What's wrong with that? I'm sure most of us were on the hunt for good sex scenes when we were that age. I know that a lot of us thumbed through Valley of the Horses, where a girl gets deflowered by the older professional deflowerer guy (one more for your list, Peter?). Were we perverted and very sick? Teenagers are sexual beings and they have the right to see that reality reflected in books.

Ah, Ignorance and Bigotry - Thy Name is the American South

Mother cries when daughter reads a kiddie book called King and King - citing "God made Adam and Eve -- not two men." Bush rubs hands, twists mustache. The South marches on.



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Vancouver Gay Bookstore Battles Canada Customs

The feds are still at it, legislating taste. And things can only get worse if Bill C-12 goes through. Kudos to Little Sister for having the balls to fight. Now send them some money.



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"It was not even the first story that had somebody slicing off someone's nipples."
A student at a San Francisco school is expelled for writing a violent, sadistic story about a serial killer. Then the teacher is fired. And then Homicide is called in. But apparently everything would have been all right if the student had just written his tale of murder and sexual torture in a more aesthetically pleasing manner, such as in The Lovely Bones.

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First They Came for the Serial Killer Authors, Then They Came for Lemony Snicket
The censorship situation we reported on earlier at the SF Academy of Art University got a little worse when Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) was denied access to a forum on the subject and booted off campus.
"The forum, set up by Kaufman, was to have included Richman and David Greene of the First Amendment Project. Handler says he'd told academy Senior Vice President Sally Huntting by phone that he wanted to discuss the subject instead of turning the dispute nasty, and was hoping to participate. But when Handler showed up on Tuesday morning, security guards told him he was not authorized to attend."

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Hey Ma! Creationists in Cobb County All Go "Ahyuk!" at Same Durned Time

Ah, the religious hillbilly right... Don't these people have anything more important than religion? Aren't there cousins to mate with or something?



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Update: US Govt Says Editors Free to Work Without Being Labelled Terrorists... For Now....

Remember that bit about the US govt trying to ban editors from working on manuscripts from certain axis-of-evil-because-we-says-you-are countries? It's been repealed.



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"The Bill of Rights can be read as a classic expression of the teenage spirit: a powerful imagination reacting to a history of overwhelming institutional repression, hypocrisy, chicanery and weakness."

Michael Chabon writes that kids who write violence* are being harassed in the US. "the threat posed by these prosecutions to civil liberties, to the First Amendment rights of our young people, is grave enough. But as a writer, a parent and a former teenager, I see the workings of something more iniquitous: not merely the denial of teenagers' rights in the name of their own protection, but the denial of their humanity in the name of preserving their innocence."



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This is the Reason Some People In Law Enforcement Get Called Pigs

Wally Lamb, Oprah's pet boy, teaches creative writing to female inmates. When one of his students won a prestigious literary prize prison officials erased all work pertaining to the class -- up to five years of work for some of the women. Um, excuse me, dickwads, but don't they already live behind bars? Isn't punishment enough for your mean spirited power monger asses?



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Since this is the eight straight posting with no reader commentary on this thread (of all threads!), I'd just like to say that I'm shocked and appalled. Well, appalled, anyway. How convenient that a post-facto inquiry is being made. So much easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission, eh?

What was the name of that poet on death row in the states who was featured in the Times a while back? I've been meaning to check out his books.

American Civil Rights Set Back 20 Years...

For the mathematically challenged, that's all the way back to 1984. This 15-year-old kid had the secret service sicced on him when he called Bush a terrorist in his art class notebook by drawing a picture of Wubblewoo dressed as a devil firing a missile. You people are fucking nuts! Nuts I tell you. Except all my friends in New York City and Seattle. And maybe a few others. And wide swaths of Massachusetts. Just vote that dumb-assed, Nazi mofo out of there already!



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Edited by author 04-28-2004 01:24 AM
Oh great, so now the "crown jewel" of the free world is little more than a dictatorial police state where children are grilled by secret police for "doodle" crimes. Tune in next week when G.W. Bush solidifies his plans to make the USA a Christian Fundamentalist Theocracy. When that happens, I'm moving to another planet.

That's right....Bush is a Nazi. Gimme a break. Let us not forget that Saddam was the tyrant in all this. However, the far-left probably would have given Hitler some more time to tinker if it meant not reacting to a situation that could result in some harm as well as good. Your Bush-Nazi barb is an example of why "political commentary" in this day and age is a farce. Please, stick to books.
Oh, and by the way, the left side ain't better. Kerry's notion of separating his religion from his public position is laughable. A Catholic endorsing a pro-abortion rally is a real lie-in-action.

Edited by author 04-28-2004 08:59 AM
Blah blah blah. How much does it cost to buy in these days? You want bland book news, go read the Quill and Quire. You want fair and balanced political commentary, go watch Fox News. Otherwise, welcome.

The division of politics into a "left side" and a "right side" and the belief that the Democrats and Republicans actually represent those sides is the chief reason for the slide of "political commentary" (which is little more than a reflection of political reality) into a squabble that 12 year-olds would be ashamed to take part in. But let us not forget that Saddam was the tyrant in all this...

Isn't a tyrant defined as one who gets into power illegally?

Hmm…

Remember the Alamo! Remember the Alamo! Orange Alert! Orange Alert! Guards! Guards!

however horrible Saddam was to his own people he posed no threat to his neighbours or the US.

Dictators are bad, maybe even evil if elimination of them is fair game then where do we start? Do we start with North Korea where the government has openly stated that it has nuclear weapons and is not shy about using them?

"A catholic supporting a pro abortion rally is a real lie-in-action" ???

Ummmmm, the world isn't so cut and dry... Take a look at: http://www.cath4choice.org/
Group membership, does not always lead to group homogeneity.

Not to mention the fact that there's no such stance as "pro abortion," at least none that I've ever heard of. What do they do at a "pro abortion" rally? Go around with signs saying "Death to the Foetus"; "Get Our Unborn Before They Get You"; "Foeti Are the Root of All Evil"?

A Sorry State, We Are

When our writers are receiving grants for artists working under repressive regimes... "Williams, who wrote Invisible Darkness and Karla: A Pact With the Devil about the couple, was charged by Ontario Provincial Police in October 2003 in connection to a website on which he posted information about the case."



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Nigerian Poet Abducted by Government

For apparently releasing an anti-government album. It goes on, this human ugliness.



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I Can't Believe You Don't Support a War About Freedom -- You're Expelled!
Somebody please tell me this is another fake news story. It just seems too ludicrous to be real.


In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel.

A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy.

The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job.

Bill Nevins was suspended for not censoring the poetry of his students. Remember, there is no obscenity to be found in any of the poetry. He was later fired by the principal.

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Patriot Act vs. Free Speech

A Muslim computer nerd who helped run sites purported to support terrorism is being charged under a nebulous section of the Patriot Act regarding "secondary" terrorists.

The Saudi-born Ph.D. candidate set up and ran Web sites that prosecutors say were used to recruit terrorists, raise money and disseminate inflammatory rhetoric.

His supporters say the government is using vague anti-terrorism laws to prosecute Al-Hussayen for his beliefs.

"To the extent that someone provides guns or money to a group for terrorism, that should be punished," said Kevin Bankston, an attorney for the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "But you can't outlaw advocacy for any group or position, and that seems to be what they are attempting to do."

I wonder, are all terrorists somehow linked to Kevin Bacon?



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Remember, a Vote for the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Anyone Else But the Conservatives Is a Vote for "Artistic Merit" and the "Public Good," I Mean, Child Porn
In the wake of all the election child-porn accusations, the Globe and Mail revisits the Eli Langer case.


What I remember most about that show was a painting dominated by a red-velvet curtain, behind which a diminutive person is trying to hide. The curtain hangs from the ceiling, but is too short to reach the floor or to conceal the skinny little legs shod in a pair of children's black-patent-leather shoes with a strap across the instep. This is a painting depicting a terrified little girl being stalked by a predator, a predator who we sense, as we look on helplessly in horror, is about to pull aside that curtain and grab her. It arouses fear, not rapacious sexual appetites.

"That series was my toughest work," Langer says. Since then, he has moved "into more subtle ways to represent danger, violation and vulnerability." While he doesn't recommend being arrested as a fun activity, he insists the experience didn't muffle his creativity, although it "definitely taught me a different way of understanding language and the implications of language," he says. "It was a learning experience but it didn't chill me.

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Welcome to America, the Year 1984

What a shame. What a crying shame that country is becoming. And now it's making the leap from bully to tyrant.

The Republican-led House bowed to a White House veto threat Thursday and stood by the USA Patriot Act, defeating an effort to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that helps the government investigate people's reading habits.

The effort to defy Bush and bridle the law's powers lost by 210-210, with a majority needed to prevail. The amendment appeared on its way to victory as the roll call's normal 15-minute time limit expired, but Republican leaders kept the vote open for about 20 more minutes as they persuaded about 10 Republicans who initially supported the provision to change their votes.

Note: trawling conservative scumbags looking to pick a fight can save their hate mail. It will go unopened. Your country is falling to pieces - you and your willful ignorance are the reason.



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Hey, remember when we were all young and the cold war was raging... coldly? Remember how the Kremlin would make those hilarious excuses for their evil mysteries and obvious failings? "The former Under-Secretary of the Party is 'not well,' and has been placed in a 'hospital,' etc."

The hilarious part was that these tyrants actually thought an outrageous lie would somehow convince the population they were not living in tyranny.

And, so:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/politics...aign/09records.html

For the last time, "artistic merit" doesn't mean we want to see children peforming unspeakable sex acts... adults, yes, children, no.
A big issue in the recent Canadian election was the proposed reworking of the country's child-porn laws. The debate went something like this: "If you're not against a complete ban of all representations of youth in sexual situations, or hey, even non-sexual situations that some reader/viewer could perceive to be sexual, well, then you must support child porn!"


Unfortunately, in both Canada and the U.S., this has been the position taken by many media types as well, who have written angry editorials about judges defending child pornography by refusing to strike down "artistic merit" laws, etc., without looking critically at the issues. Thankfully, the comics media has understood what's really at stake -- freedom of expression.


Their latest cause has been fighting the Child Online Protection Act, which was intended to protect children from viewing online porn by limiting people's ability to post material online that may cause our children to go astray.


Retailers, publishers, and comic art dealers would have faced potential chill on what kind of work they could show on their sites. Could someone selling an original R. Crumb, Reed Waller, or Milo Manara page depicting sex show that page on their website? Would Last Gasp, which presently requires all browsers to state that they're 18 to enter, need to get a credit card from anyone entering their site or risk prosecution? Could Bud Plant face prosecution because he shows samples and covers of adult products on his website?

The answer is that all of the above examples would be vulnerable to the lines drawn by COPA, and we feel that's unconstitutional. The businesses mentioned above are responsible businesses, and shouldn't have their rights to responsibly sell protected speech chilled by this law. Likewise, creators shouldn't need to worry that they could lose their livelihood and freedom if they post a story speaking to adult themes in a responsible fashion.

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Re /m59, Killer, I am speechless with impotent rage. I trust you've seen this: http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4027&n=3

What a time to be alive!

Gay bookstore gets a break

The judge overseeing the 20 year feud between the knuckledragging bigots at Canada Customs and Vancouver's Little Sisters bookshop has granted "advanced costs" to the bookstore.

In her funding decision, Justice Elizabeth Bennett said advanced costs are ordered in "rare and exceptional circumstances."

She said Customs may not be applying the artistic merit test as decided in the obscenity writings case of B.C.'s John Robin Sharpe when detaining books.

This seems to be a good thing. Can someone explain it to me?



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American civil liberties: finally free for all

You know, like Pepsi Free?*

Congress recently voted against repealing a portion of the USA Patriot Act that allows the government to monitor Americans' reading habits. What clinched the vote was information provided by the Justice Department that a suspected terrorist had used e-mail services at a public library.

As terrifying as this idea might be, what's even more terrifying to former Watergate counsel Samuel Dash are the incursions already made on Americans' rights. Indeed, the Patriot Act allows the government to tap phones and search homes without probable cause. Government agents may also sneak into homes of Americans and seize evidence without telling the residents until the search is over.

And guess what, folks: that's not all. Rambling idiot and quite-likely-psycho, Daniel Rakowitz, had titles from his book collection brought into court as evidence of his likelihood to commit harm if released from prison.

Then the prosecutor cited a list of the books in Rakowitz's library as yet more proof that he was a dangerous maniac, crazy as a loon, a man "fascinated with evil" who would surely be dismembering someone else within half an hour of being released.

Undoubtedly, this one IS a nut, but surely this sets an ugly precedent? (Yeah, New York Press is a rag, but it's a scary article, nonetheless.) (From Maud)



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Code/nut breakers

The meatheads guarding these guys are not...

Serious new allegations about the ill-treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been revealed in a series of letters from a British detainee, who has accused US guards of threatening him with sexual assault and physical violence, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

The letters from Martin Mubanga, one of the last remaining British detainees in Guantanamo Bay, were carefully written to escape the military censors, using a unique mixture of London street slang, Cockney, Jamaican patois and rap lyrics.

A sample goes: "The bully boy loves to be the bully boy, chats enough crap and giving it large. Expecting man n' man to bend over so as them there can give to man n' man real good. Boy must be thinking man n' man is some kind of rent boy." Not that I'm anything but glad these kinds of allegations are being made public, but, man, that reads more like a bad A Clockwork Orange rip off than a viable code. Who's doing the censoring here, an 80 year-old hermit?



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Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Memepool points to the differences between the Kerry and Bush campaigns when it comes trusting the intelligence of their supporters. The Kerry campaign offers a style guide for supporters writing letters to newspapers. The Bush campaign tells people what to write. Actually, you don't even have to write anything -- you can just click on the text you want. At least they have choices....

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File under: only in Kentucky

Read ruminations on banned books, then take this quiz and help determine which books should and shouldn't be banned. Yep, you read that right, Cletus. Ah-yhuk! (Someone should ban the colour-blind moron who designs this site... Yeesh!)



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The books people don't want you to know about
Unfortunately, they're mainly "ungodly" books such as the Harry Potter series.


Banned Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Association and the American Booksellers Association, runs through Saturday and shines a light on a growing controversy in America -- what should our young people read, and who should decide?

Christian groups like Colorado-based Focus on the Family stand on what they consider to be high moral ground and believe groups like the American Library Association undermine parental preferences.

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American publishers get the pitchforks and torches out

Well, the legal forks and torches*... Bravo, regardless.

The regulations, meant to keep Americans from trading with enemies, require anyone who publishes material from a country under trade sanctions to obtain a license before substantively altering the manuscript. The publishers say that keeps them from performing typical editing functions like reordering sentences and paragraphs, correcting grammar and adding illustrations or photographs.

The regulations do not forbid publication of existing works from those countries. They allow publishers to print and distribute materials that come to them in camera-ready form, that is, ready to be published without alteration. But they also restrict marketing materials, which the publishers say essentially prohibits publication.

The publishers argue that the regulations do not allow enough room for them to prepare material from foreign authors for the United States market and create a "chilling effect" on them. "For all practical purposes," the suit states, "that means American publishers simply cannot publish their books."

I was just lamenting with some Random House people yesterday that we Canadians, as a literary culture, don't riot nearly often enough. Where are the lawsuits against Head and her plan to slowly kill the book? In my dreams... (Mind you, now that she's killed off the competition, it would be like suing your own heart. When the publishers have only one customer there just ain't much you can do.)



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Texas: land of the free(-roaming idiots)

Please, people. Please. Please please please. Vote sanely.

In its annual review of state schools and libraries, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas this week identifies 62 titles that were removed from school libraries during the 2003-04 school year following objections from parents or teachers. Restrictions were placed on an additional 33 books, including George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, following objections from the parent of a ninth grade student.

The south is only a brain-ghetto now. Soon it will be a model for the country.



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A bomb in every copy: Tong Ting gets a lesson in paranoia Patriotism

A children's author finds herself in the middle of a terrorism investigation.

Her 3,000 copies of "Tong Ting Finds a Family" were confiscated by the U.S. Customs Department in July because she unknowingly used a Chinese shipper that the Bush administration has barred from doing business in the United States. According to a spokeswoman from the U.S. Treasury Department, the company's parent company is suspected of having shipped missile parts to Iraq to be used in the delivery of weapons of mass destruction.

I'm pretty sure that this just means the book never existed in the first place...



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The Patriot Act

What does it mean for American writers?

In a nutshell, the act gives federal law enforcement agencies (for example, the FBI, Justice Department, U.S. Attorneys) and foreign intelligence surveillance agencies (the CIA, NSA, Pentagon, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS, formerly known as Immigration and Naturalization Service or INS], Secret Service) more tools and greater leeway to spy on citizens (and legal aliens) in national security and criminal investigations. It does so in the following ways (among others):

• Makes it much easier for domestic law enforcement to use tools like roving wiretaps and phone taps
• Lowers the standard needed to convince a court to issue search warrants and subpoenas (probable cause to believe a crime is being committed or planned is no longer needed)
• Greatly expands the scope of third- party records subject to subpoena
• Permits domestic and foreign intelligence agencies to share information gathered about citizens more easily
• Allows individual district courts to issue nationwide search warrants and wiretap orders
• Permits agencies to spy—even to exercise a search warrant without notifying the person being searched
• Expands the type of information subject to surveillance to include e-mail and other online activity
• Forbids citizens subject to surveillance to challenge it in court except after the fact if they are charged with a crime

I've always been amazed at how the simple use of the word "patriot" makes everyone think twice about criticising it. You guys really have to excise that word from your vocabulary. Or at least return it to a station of power and respect by not abusing it so often. (P.S. What I'd like to see around here is an article outlining what the loss of American civil liberties means for us -- the little brother who's always getting the hand-me-downs. As "the land of the free" becomes "the land of the deluded", what happens to us?)



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My question is, who was the bottom?
The Chronicle reports on the rise of censorship in Russia, and a worrisome situation it is. Protesters tearing up books about homosexuality? Good thing that doesn't happen here. They need to adopt some good ol' American values!


The last few years in Russia offer multiple examples of literary censorship on the rise after the "anything goes" spirit of the Yeltsin era. A Russian youth organization allied with Putin, Walking Together, has begun propaganda campaigns against freewheeling and critically acclaimed post-perestroika writers like Victor Pelevin (A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories) and Vladimir Sorokin (Blue Lard). In the case of the postmodern Sorokin, Walking Together protesters publicly tore up copies of Blue Lard (which imagines a homosexual relationship between clones of Stalin and Khrushchev) in downtown Moscow and tossed the remains down a mock toilet bowl. The Moscow prosecutor's office subsequently brought charges against Sorokin of pornography, later dropped, under Article 242 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code.

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All-Mart bans America (the book)
All-Mart has suddenly decided not to carry America (the Book): A Guide to Democracy Inaction</b>, written by Jon Stewart and <i>The Daily Show scribes.


The chain will not be selling the book because it contains a fake photo of the members of the U.S. Supreme Court in the nude. "We were not aware of the image that was in the book [when Wal-Mart ordered it] and we felt the majority of our customers would not be comfortable with it," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Karen Burk told the Associated Press by way of explaining why the corporation had cancelled its order.


Sure... and it had nothing to do with Stewart's recent contentious appearance on Crossfire, where he had it out with Tucker Carlson.

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A ratings system for books?

Speaking of teens... This highschool kid writes to his local paper suggesting that rather than banning books, we should adopt a ratings system not unlike that used for motion pictures. I'm not so sure you're right, junior, but were I your teacher, you'd be getting a big fat A for effort.



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Just throw the settlement debt on the pile...

Last year's Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner is suing the US over sanctions that prohibit her from publishing her memoirs in "the Homeland" of Bubba and Berndine Jones.

The Treasury Department declined to comment on Ms. Ebadi's suit, but spokeswoman Molly Millerwise defended the regulations as "part of the different strategies that make up our national-security policies." The U.S. has 29 sanctions programs in place against various countries, terrorist groups and others considered national-security threats, although the restrictions challenged by Ms. Ebadi apply only to Cuba, Iran and Sudan. Ironically, the way the Treasury Department interprets the trade embargo, Ms. Ebadi would have been free to publish a translation of her book in the U.S. had it originally been issued in Iran. The regulations allow publishers to "reproduce, translate, style and copy-edit" existing works from sanctioned countries, according to a department fact sheet. But they prohibit providing "services" to people or entities in embargoed countries, such as the type of editorial, marketing and translation work needed to publish an original book in the U.S. In a March letter to the Treasury Department, Rep. Howard Berman, the California Democrat who wrote legislation excepting information from the embargo, called the policy "patently absurd."

Don't you know that if we let her publish, her books might explode and unleash nukular catsforfree on one nation under god?



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Hope for America?

That this "article" is appearing in a Texas newspaper gives me hope, though it probably just gives most Texans gas.



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Edited by author 11-12-2004 09:41 PM
Hypocrisy knows no bounds

Actually, I'm tempted to say it knows the 49th parallel, but I'd be lying... An Iowa school board has upheld a teacher's right to include two books dealing with gay issues in her middle school curriculum. But check out this:

Seven parents filed complaints last month, saying Protheroe and the district failed to notify them about the stories, which they consider unsuitable for middle-school students. They say the stories promote gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender themes and use bigoted or racist slang.

How can you complain about both of those things, you bigots? (From Moby)



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Ah, the Canadian West... It's the South of the North

A school board meeting meant to discuss the place of specific queer texts in the school library turns into a bashing scene against a lesbian couple attending in support of the books.

"If people had stood up and made those type of comments regarding race, that we were exposed to regarding sexual orientation, it just wouldn't have been allowed."

They're charming folk out there, eh?



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Hello. My name is Emiko.

Now, I am writing a resarch paper about censorship of the media in English class.
I have to interview to someone.
If you have time, could you answer some questions?

What do you think about censorship of the media when you take a contrary position on the censorship?

What do you think about freedom of speech?

Why is cfreedom of speech important?

Why sould not be censored the media?

What is the relationship between censorship and freedom of speech?

Could you listen your opinions?
Thank you for reading this mail.

Into the jaws of the beast I go

Wubblewoo has enabled this and it will be interesting to watch him ignore it as best he can. Rise up, people.

An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries.

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda."

"Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle," Allen said in a press conference Tuesday.

Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed.

"I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them," he said.

I guess the positive here is that the more empowered these nutbars become, the more they run the risk of showing their true selves and ending up like Allan Keyes. (I really want to make a-yhuk noises about the inbred slackjaws of the south, but Maud and Michael Schaub have shamed me into silence.)



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""Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle," Allen said in a press conference Tuesday."

This would have been such a better soundbyte if he'd added, "including from behind."

America gets some good TV

Hopefully someone from the US will report into our boards to give us some commentary on this documentary,* "The First Amendment"... As the little-brudah country that receives America's legislative hand-me-downs, the information could come in handy in the next few years.



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"Dig a hole and dump them into it"
More on the Alabama monster leading the charge to "protect marriage" by outlawing homosexual propaganda texts such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Colour Purple and even Shakespeare. So I guess Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain" about cowboy lovers is probably out too, huh?

Cutting off funds to theatre departments that put on A Chorus Line or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may look like censorship, and smell like censorship, but "it's not censorship", Allen hastens to explain. "For instance, there's a reason for stop lights. You're driving a vehicle, you see that stop light, and I hope you stop." Who can argue with something as reasonable as stop lights? Of course, if you're gay, this particular traffic light never changes to green.

Unless, perhaps, if you live in Canada.

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Licence to ill

Censors tell publishers to "get a licence" to publish foreign material from countries on the bad side of the Bush junta. PEN and others are going after the regulations with legal challenges.

The regulations seem shaded by Joseph Heller's classic novel "Catch-22."

U.S. publishers are allowed to reissue, for example, Cuban communist propaganda or officially approved books but not original works by writers whom the Cuban government has stifled.



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Holy Shit! Peaceful protest works!

The US backs down from its embargo against foreign authors.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Patriot Act
What exactly does "censorship" mean today?

The definition of censorship has loosened so much that the word has become nearly devoid of meaning. Long gone are the days when the government banned racy books like D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer or James Joyce's Ulysses. When it comes to the written word, censorship debates are no longer about taste and decency -- although those issues are much in the news concerning the visual arts, television and radio. Instead, the debate over books tends to center on geopolitics, national security and foreign policy.

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The purpose of censorship is to "prevent" more than to "ban". Banning is merely a tool. Modern apologists for censorship - and for dissent-prevention tools like the Patriot Act - love to demand concrete examples of how you have been hurt, how you have been punished for the spoken word or written prose.

This angle misses the point. The measure of censorship impact is not how many books have been banned, how many reporters have been canned, how many authors have been blacklisted, or how many artists have been arrested. The true measure is in how many books never got written, how many reports are watered down, how many authors slink into the pablum of historical fiction or pander by delving in non-controversial subject matter.... and most importantly, how many mainstream individuals are isolated from exposure to thought provoking points of view.

In achieving the desired result of censorship, banning is a heavy handed last resort. Banning is a message being sent. It hardly matters whether banning is the product of government edict, corporate activitsts, conservative community groups, or even the response of market forces. The silencing of dissent is the result. And that is the point.

The tragedy of Stalinist censorship was not in the harm perpetrated on dissentors. This was merely a visible symptom of the true illness...the silencing of other voices, the absence of broader dissent, the marginalization of independent thought, the intellectual isolation of the masses.

In 2004, the impact of the Patriot Act, of subtle White House threats, of activist smear campaigns, of challenges to patriotist, of careesr held in the balance, all resonate loudly and widely and instantaneously across a tautly strung web of technology and media.

The "magic" of censorship in 2004 is how it has been accomplished without bonfires to burn books and gulags on which to exile writers.

Make no mistake about the effectiveness of modern censorship. Do not demand photos of inkstained clouds of black smoke or blood smears drawn upon stairscases and concrete sidewalks as the evidence. The lack of physical evidence merely testifies to the insipid effectiveness of the modern program.

Now, kid, it's up to you to not shame him

Coetzee leads a PEN charge for 15-year-old California poet's rights. (From Conversational Reading)



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A different kind of year end review

The top 25 censored stories of 2004. Some interesting stuff in here. (From Bookslut)



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File under: yeah, right

Mississippi libraries ban Jon Stewart's America because of the "nude depictions of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices". Ya-huh.



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Edited by author 01-10-2005 12:32 PM
"nude depictions of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices"...

i'm sorry, but that's a little stomach turning

not saying it should be banned. banning books bad. baaaddd. but "nude depictions of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices" ... ew

We don't need no education
Salon discusses the battle over anti-evolution textbooks in a U.S. school district. Guess who won.

DOVER, Pa. -- It was an ordinary springtime school board meeting in the bedroom community of Dover, Pa. The high school needed new biology textbooks, and the science department had recommended Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine's "Biology." "It was a fantastic text," said Carol "Casey" Brown, 57, a self-described Goldwater Republican and the board's senior member. "It just followed our curriculum so beautifully."

But Bill Buckingham, a new board member who'd recently become chair of the curriculum committee, had an objection. "Biology," he said, was "laced with Darwinism." He wanted a book that balanced theories of evolution with Christian creationism, and he was willing to turn his town into a cultural battlefield to get it.

The article also links to the National Center for Science Education, a handy site detailing the struggle to keep the Taliban out of the classrooms.

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Only the ignorant people called them communists...

The Miss. library system has America at its heart once again. Perhaps the shortest book banning of all time. Except for when I told my wife she could no longer haul that 400 pound Georgia O'Keefe book between houses when we moved. That lasted about 10 seconds.



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" I like mustard on my French Fried Taters Uhh..Huuhhhhh..." - Billy Bob Thornton (in the film "Sling Blade")...... This is the most ridiculuous thing.......... ever.........Long live the Constitution http://www149.pair.com/marilynn/slingb01.jpg