God Forbid We Should Let Any Foreign Ideas Enter the Country
It appears that, not only can Americans not be trusted to make up their own minds about literature that touches on homosexual themes; we cannot be trusted to read materials by authors from countries that the U.S. does not like.
Excerpts from The Seattle Times article follow:
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.
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.
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.
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."
“We have a long tradition of not accepting prior restraint," said Wendy Strothman of Boston "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."
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.
Excerpts from The Seattle Times article follow:
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.
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.
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.
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."
“We have a long tradition of not accepting prior restraint," said Wendy Strothman of Boston "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."
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.
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