Well, here‘s what Little Green Footballs has to say on this issue. Fairly predictable, I suppose. Read it and make up your own mind.
Do you think that this means the Rittenhouse Review will never link to me?
Tag Archives: Civil Liberties
Mass Arrests in US
Reports are appearing everywhere of mass arrests of Muslims in the US. Here is the BBC’s. It appears that people from certain (predictable) countries living in the States but without full residence rights were required to report for “registration” – and many were promptly arrested when they obeyed. Comparisons with tactics employed by a certain European country in the mid twentieth century are inevitable.
Needless to say there is already a lot of coverage in the blogosphere. Demosthenes says this and Atrios says this. I’m off to see if any of the rightwingnuts and warbloggers have had anything to say on this issue. Especially Steven Den Beste – he’s always castigating the left for not shouting down their more rabid members, so lets see what he has to say about this one.
Censoring Adverts
The BBC reports that an advert for a satirical cartoon, 2DTV, has been banned for being insulting to President Bush. To my mind this is utterly ridiculous. I’m sure that President Bush isn’t going to lose a great deal of sleep over what a few satirists in the UK have to say about him – I imagine that he’s got more important things on his mind.
Not to mention the fact that public figures are by their very occupations open to ridicule – This is one of the things which marks a free society. You do not seek to become a high profile politician, a movie star, musician or sportsman without some expectation that someone out there will end up taking the piss out of you. This is fundamentally different to libel or slander.
The Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC), the body responsible for clearing ads for broadcast, argue that President Bush hasn’t granted his permission for his appearance in the ad, and so it can be banned. If this is indeed the letter of the law, then I suggest that it’s a bad law, and I’d argue that in essence he has granted this “permission” purely by seeking to occupy the role that he does. It goes with the territory. (Note that ads are apparently subject to stricter regulation than actual TV shows.)
There might be some mileage in having guidelines which discourage the mocking portrayal of people in adverts where the context doesn’t fit, but in this case the show in question is a satire and the context couldn’t be more appropriate.
Homeland Security?
Bush signs the Homeland Security Act.
I’ll be reading the US sections of the blogosphere with interest for some analysis of this, although it’s obviously had plenty of coverage already. This is not irrelevant for those of us on this side of the Pond either, as there have been calls for similar measures here, and despite Blair’s rejection of the idea, it’s something to watch.