Fwd: ZGram - 12/9/2004 - "Book Bans in the US: You thought it
couldn't happen here?" -
zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org
zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org
Fri Dec 10 07:37:56 EST 2004
>
>
>
>ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny: Now more than ever!
>
>December 9, 2004
>
>Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
>
>Censorship coming to America!
>
>[START]
<http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/7652.html#>http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/7652.html#
>
>By Scott Martelle | Associated Press
>December 7, 2004
>
>In the summer of 1956, Russian poet Boris Pasternak -- a favorite of
>the recently deceased Joseph Stalin -- delivered his epic "Doctor
>Zhivago" manuscript to a Soviet publishing house, hoping for a warm
>reception and a fast track to readers who had shared Russia's
>torturous half-century of revolution and war, oppression and terror.
>
>Instead, Pasternak received one of the all-time classic rejection
>letters: A 10,000-word missive that stopped just short of accusing
>him of treason. It was left to foreign publishers to give his
>smuggled manuscript life, offering the West a peek into the soul of
>the Cold War enemy, winning Pasternak the 1958 Nobel in literature
>and providing Hollywood with an epic film.
>
>These days, Pasternak might not have fared so well.
>
>In an apparent reversal of decades of U.S. practice, recent federal
>Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations bar American companies
>from publishing works by dissident writers in countries under
>sanction unless they first obtain U.S. government approval.
>
>The restriction, condemned by critics as a violation of the First
>Amendment, means that books and other works banned by some
>totalitarian regimes cannot be published freely in the United
>States, a country that prides itself as the international beacon of
>free expression.
>
>"It strikes me as very odd," said Douglas Kmiec, a constitutional
>law professor at Pepperdine University and former constitutional
>legal counsel to former Presidents Reagan and Bush. "I think the
>government has an uphill struggle to justify this constitutionally."
>
>Several groups, led by the PEN American Center and including Arcade
>Publishing, have filed suit in U.S. District Court in New York
>seeking to overturn the regulations, which cover writers in Iran,
>Sudan, Cuba, North Korea and, until recently, Iraq.
>
>Violations carry severe reprisals -- publishing houses can be fined
>$1 million and individual violators face up to 10 years in prison
>and a $250,000 fine.
>
>"Historically, the United States has served as a megaphone for
>dissidents from other countries," said Ed Davis of New York, a
>lawyer leading the PEN legal challenge. "Now we're not able to hear
>from dissidents."
>
>Yet more than dissident voices are affected.
>
>The regulations already have led publishers to scrap plans for
>volumes on Cuban architecture and birds, and publishers complain
>that the rules threaten the intellectual breadth and independence of
>academic journals.
>
>Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has joined the
>lawsuit, arguing that the rules preclude American publishers from
>helping craft her memoirs of surviving Iran's Islamic revolution and
>her efforts to defend human rights in Iranian courts.
>
>In a further wrinkle, even if publishers obtain a license for a book
>-- something they are loathe to do -- they believe the regulations
>bar them from advertising it, forcing readers to find the dissident
>works on their own.
>
>"It's absolutely against the First Amendment," fumed Arcade editor
>Richard Seaver, who hopes to publish an anthology of Iranian short
>stories. "We're not going to ask permission (to publish). That reeks
>of censorship. And `censorship' is a word that gets my hackles up
>very quickly."
>
>Officials from the U.S. Treasury Department, which oversees OFAC,
>declined comment on the lawsuit, but spokeswoman Molly Millerwise
>described the sanctions as "a very important part of our overall
>national security."
>
>"These are countries that pose serious threats to the United States,
>to our economy and security and our well being around the globe,"
>Millerwise said, adding that publishers can still bring dissident
>writers to American readers as long as they first apply for a
>license.
>
>"The licensing is a very important part of the sanctions policy
>because it allows people to engage with these countries," Millerwise
>said. "Anyone is free to apply to OFAC for a license."
>
>Critics say they shouldn't have to.
>
>"We have a long tradition of not accepting prior restraint," said
>Wendy Strothman of Boston, who hopes to serve as Ebadi's literary
>agent should the regulations be struck down. "The notion of getting
>a license seems to me to be completely counter to the spirit of the
>First Amendment. ... It's really, for me, mostly about the notion of
>freedom of expression."
>
>The literature that might be lost to American readers is impossible
>to measure, but in recent months the bestseller lists have been
>dominated by Azar Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran," a memoir she
>wrote in exile. And Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel, "Persepolis:
>The Story of a Childhood," written and published after her family
>left Iran for France, has found an international audience.
>
>Tom Miller, author of "Trading With the Enemy: A Yankee Travels
>Through Castro's Cuba," said the regulations not only "nullify the
>First Amendment" but would dampen the hopes of censored Cuban
>writers.
>
>"It would be all the more depressing," said Miller, who travels to
>Cuba several times a year under U.S. licenses for journalistic,
>academic or cultural purposes. "There are two places Cubans get
>published outside of Cuba -- Spain and the States. To cut that short
>list in half is devastating. In the U.S., it means less artistic and
>literary infusion from overseas."
>
>Curt Goering, deputy executive director for the Amnesty
>International human rights monitoring group, criticized the
>regulations as "a violation of some fundamental human rights."
>
>Goering said international covenants recognize the right of people
>to receive and distribute information regardless of political
>boundaries. "It's yet another example of the hypocrisy of this
>administration on human rights," Goering said, adding that while the
>United States defends its role in Iraq as a defense of liberty at
>home it is "blocking" publication of dissident voices.
>
>Kmiec, who is not part of the legal challenge, said the First
>Amendment -- and subsequent court rulings -- generally preclude the
>government from restricting publications before they are made.
>
>"It does allow for limitations where there are clear and present
>dangers and compelling foreign policy or other interests that can be
>tangibly and authentically demonstrated," Kmiec said. "But short of
>that special application and very rare circumstance, government
>censorship is properly off-limits. These efforts to restrain in
>advance are almost sure to fail."
>
>The dispute centers on a Treasury Department interpretation this
>year of regulations rooted in the 1917 "Trading With the Enemy Act,"
>which allows the president to bar transactions with people or
>businesses in nations during times of war or national emergency. A
>1988 amendment by Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif.,relaxed the act to
>effectively give publishers an exemption while maintaining
>restrictions on general trade.
>
>In April, OFAC regulators amended an earlier interpretation to
>advise academic publishers that they can make minor changes to works
>already published in sanctioned countries and reissue them.
>
>But the regulators said editors cannot provide broader services
>considered basic to publishing, such as commissioning works, making
>"substantive" changes to texts, or adding illustrations.
>
>The regulations seem shaded by Joseph Heller's classic novel "Catch-22."
>
>American 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.
>
>In a letter to Treasury officials this past spring, Berman described
>the regulations as "patently absurd" and said they form a "narrow
>and misguided interpretation of the law."
>
>"It is in our national interest to support the dissemination of
>American ideas and values, especially in nations with oppressive
>regimes," Berman said. "At the same time, (the Berman amendment) is
>intended to ensure the right of American citizens to have access to
>a wide range of information and satisfy their curiosity about the
>world around them."
>
>
>[END]
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