BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Saturday, February 28, 2004
Censorship, plainly defined.
Need any more proof that the Bush administration has utter contempt
for the First Amendment? The New York Times reports
today that the Treasury Department "has warned publishers that they
may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran
and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering
amounts to trading with the enemy."
The story, by Adam Liptak,
continues:
Adding illustrations is
prohibited, too. To the baffled dismay of publishers, editors and
translators who have been briefed about the policy, only
publication of "camera-ready copies of manuscripts" is
allowed.
The Treasury letters concerned
Iran. But the logic, experts said, would seem to extend to Cuba,
Libya, North Korea and other nations with which most trade is
banned without a government license.
Nahid Mozaffari, an expert on
Iranian literature, tells Liptak: "A story, a poem, an article on
history, archaeology, linguistics, engineering, physics, mathematics,
or any other area of knowledge cannot be translated, and even if
submitted in English, cannot be edited in the US. This means that the
publication of the PEN Anthology of Contemporary Persian
Literature that I have been editing for the last three years
would constitute aiding and abetting the enemy."
Democracy Now did a
segment
on this last Tuesday.
"It does not reflect the facts
of his service." Even after all that's been reported, the
Boston Globe's Walter Robinson finds
that the White House is still puffing George W. Bush's service in the
Texas Air National Guard.
Bush flack Dan Bartlett says it
will be corrected. But it hasn't been as of this morning. The State
Department site that Robinson points
to contains the same
language that he reports in his article:
George W. graduated from
Yale in May of 1968 with a major in history. Two weeks before
graduation, he went to the offices of the Texas Air National Guard
at Ellington Air Force Base outside Houston to sign up for pilot
training. One motivation, he said, was to learn to fly, as his
father had done during World War II. George W. was commissioned as
a second lieutenant and spent two years on active duty, flying
F-102 fighter interceptors. For almost four years after
that [uh, no] he was on a part-time status, flying
occasional missions to help the Air National Guard keep two of its
F-102s on round-the-clock alert.
A disgrace.
posted at 10:14 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
