Criminal Editing of the Enemy

[queerbychoice]

"The federal government has recently . . . warned publishers 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. . . .

Nahid Mozaffari, a scholar and editor specializing in literature from Iran, called the implications staggering. '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 U.S.,' she said.

'This means that the publication of the PEN Anthology of Contemporary Persian Literature that I have been editing for the last three years,' she said, 'would constitute aiding and abetting the enemy.'"

     from "Treasury Department Is Warning Publishers of the Perils of Criminal Editing of the Enemy" by Adam Liptak, in The New York Times, February 28, 2004

There are so many things insane about this that I'm not even going to try to summarize them all.

Thanks to joxn for the link.

Comments

ostrich time?

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Right now it feels as if this one's the one that's going to put me over the edge. Silly, maybe, and probably more about my emotional state today than about the load of this crap we've had to bear, but it's so far beyond what I had ever imagined the government would come to while I was still alive---I don't know if I can take following it any more. I mean, the news could be a nice distraction from my personal life if it weren't this kind of scary nonsense.

Already I don't have the cable television. Now must I not wander the internet as well? Is it just going to be borrowing old movies from the library from now on? There are only so many old movies out there.