I’m off on holiday for Christmas and New Year. If only those who know better than us and would like to tell us how to think and what to say would do the same…
I’ll be back in mid-January. Between now and then blogging will be intermittent at best. Until then, have a good break and see you back here in the New Year.
Bernard Darnton (bernard.darnton@freespeech.org.nz)
Bluebirds Foods has withdrawn an advertisment for its potato chips after a compaint to the Advertising Standards Authority by the Obesity Action Coalition.
Not happy with this victory, the OAC is saying that the current system doesn’t work and is demanding that advertising be regulated.
Among its failures is the fact that action is only taken to review an ad once a complaint has been made. This means that vulnerable consumers are always exposed to the irresponsible and misleading ads for some time before they are withdrawn. The ASA say that complaints are dealt with in about 24 days from the time they are received. So, at best, it is weeks before an offending ad is withdrawn.
Like all those who would regulate our speech, they know best and they’re willing to prevent us, the poor “vulnerable consumers” from hearing “irresponsible” information that might lead us to make a choice that they disapprove of.
Holocaust denier David Irving has been released from prison in Austria. Irving was imprisoned in February this year and sentenced to three years for saying that the gas chambers at Auschwitz didn’t exist. (He later recanted.)
At the time, a number of people showed their true illiberal colours:
We must learn the lessons of the past to built a decent society for the future. Irving’s conviction, especially in Austria which was a former Nazi country, is important and appropriate. - Lord Janner, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust
Today’s sentencing confirms David Irving as a bigot and an anti-Semite and also serves a direct challenge to the Iranian regime’s embrace of Holocaust denial. - Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center
However, others had a much better attitude:
“This is a silly law by silly people for silly people,” [Lothar Hobelt, associate professor of history at the University of Vienna] said.
“In fact, having a law that says you mustn’t question a particular historical instance, if anything, creates doubt about it, because if an argument has to be protected by the force of law, it means it’s a weak argument.”
Hobelt has it exactly right. If bad ideas are going to be defeated it must be with better ideas. Imprisoning a person for the ideas they express does nothing to defeat the idea. It is by evidence and debate that we must come to the truth. See for example chapters 12 to 14 of Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things, which deal with pseudo-history in general and holocaust denial in particular.
U.S. Supreme Court judge and American Zionist leader Louis “Sunshine is the best disinfectant” Brandeis would have agreed.
Hat tip: Foreign Policy.
Mozart’s Idomeneo was performed at Deutsche Oper Berlin last night after being cancelled in September due to fears of violent reprisals from Muslims upset by the opera’s depiction of a decapitated Mohammed.
Deutsche-Welle reported in September:
The Deutsche Oper in Berlin announced Monday “with great regret” that it had scratched Hans Neuenfels’ version of the Mozart opera “Idomeneo” from the program this season because certain scenes presented an “incalculable security risk” for the theater.
“To avoid endangering the public and its employees, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin has decided to refrain from showing “Idomeneo” in November,” the opera house said.
Last night the opera opened to heavy security and there was only a minor disturbance during the scene in question.
After a great deal of sturm and drang about artistic freedom, opera fans and politicians attended the controversial Hans Neuenfels production of Mozart’s Idomeneo opera. The holy heads rolled, but the night was otherwise peaceful.
Let’s hope others take strength from this decision and choose not to be cowed by hyperbolically violent, thin-skinned Islamic protesters.
Yesterday’s Dominion Post front page was dominated by a photograph of astronauts working on the International Space Station with Canterbury, Marlborough and Wellington gliding past below them.
Understandably, the newspaper was “swamped” with requests to buy the photograph and you can do so by calling the Dom Post on (04) 474 0204.
What’s also worth knowing is that all photographs taken by NASA (and many other US government agencies) are placed in the public domain. No copyright applies so you can reproduce the photograph for yourself at no cost. Download from the STS-116 flight day 4 photo archive - in low res or high res - and print at will.
The Fijian military has arrested the editor of the Fiji Daily Post and ordered his immediate deportation to Australia. (Hat tip: No Right Turn)
[Editor-in-Chief Robert] Wolfgramm said his removal was probably because the paper was “a voice for democracy” in the 20 months he held the post.
He continued to maintain “it is not the place of the military to have a political role”.
The deportation followed a meeting when staff were warned to tone down the content of images and anti-military sentiment it had been publishing.
This attack on Fiji’s press freedom is just the latest in a series of crackdowns the military has launched since the coup.
Update 16/12/06: Wolfgramm is back at work after complaining to the Fiji Human Rights Commission. (Hat tip: Anonymous comment on the NRT post.)
Close on Auckland’s heels, Wellington City Council is also considering cracking down on capitalism’s colour. (Dominion Post, p.A8, Billboard backlash hits capital). Urban planning director Ernst Zollner says, “increasing complaints about billboards meant Wellington bylaws would be revisited early next year.” Whether that’s because there are more billboards or just more whining isn’t clear.
A European city with no billboards.
Reporters Without Borders’ cyber-freedom prize for 2006 has gone to Cuba’s Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, head of the independent news agency Cubanacán Press. Hernández went on hunger strike from February to August this year to campaign for the right of all Cubans to have unrestricted Internet access.
In Cuba, private Internet connections are effectively banned and all computers in Internet cafes have software installed to track “subversive” activity. Penalties are so severe - 5 years prison for unauthorised Internet access, 20 years for “counter-revolutionary” activity - that there’s a large measure of self-censorship in effect.
Hernández is one of Cuba’s leading opposition journalists. None of Cubanacán’s journalists are allowed to use the Internet or fax machines.
Police in Christchurch want a bylaw to ban gang colours in Christchurch and mayor Garry Moore is behind the move “150 percent”.
“I would do everything in my power to rip every gang patch off in the city.
“Gang patches are disgusting. All power to the police,” he said.
“If the civil libertarians want to stand around selling drugs and killing our kids, then I’m in a different camp,” he said.
Council of Civil Liberties chairman Tony Ellis said, “People have freedom of expression and freedom of movement, and those are quite fundamental human rights.” He didn’t mention whether or not he wanted to stand round selling drugs and killing kids.
Mayor Garry Moore and his friends in the Christchurch Police might like to know that we already have a Crimes Act to deal with all of the actually bad things that these wannabe gangsters get up to. As Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn points out, something else Moore should know is that the Local Government Act requires all bylaws to be consistent with the NZ Bill Of Rights Act.
Wearing a particular style of clothes is a form of expression and should be protected no matter how unpleasant that expression is. We should allow people to express their views on race, we should allow them to burn flags, we should allow them to say what a top chap they think Satan is, we should allow music that promotes the lifestyle of tough Los Angeles gangsters - we should certainly allow people to dress like their unsavoury role models.
If these kids are going to get prosecuted for anything it should be lack of imagination - the Crips and the Bloods? How Ali G.
Moore’s solution to his inner city problems is to treat everyone like criminals. Literally. Department of Corrections rules ban the wearing of gang colours in prison. No prisoner is permitted to wear predominantly red (Mongrel Mob) or predominantly black (Black Power) clothing. How would Christchurch’s rules work? Are they going to ban red and black?
The Crips and Bloods don’t wear patches; they just wear predominantly blue (Crips) or red (Blood) clothing. It is unfathomable how this ban might work in a non-prison setting. Is Moore planning to skip out the police state and go straight to the prison state?
In Los Angeles, the (real) Crips and Bloods have largely stopped wearing gang colours because of police attention. Presumably Moore will want to ban gang hand signals next. Watch out all you Freemasons.
Auckland City Council is proposing to ban billboards from the inner city. (Hat tip: Kiwiblog)
Auckland City Council plans to ban billboards in the Queen St valley - from Hobson St across to Anzac Ave - including Britomart, Karangahape Rd and the Viaduct Harbour. It is argued the ban will help to make Auckland an “international city”.
If you’ve seen the wonderful film Good Bye Lenin!, you will remember the statues of Lenin being removed from East Berlin and replaced with enormous Coca-Cola banners. It seems Auckland would much rather travel in the opposite direction.
Is this a free speech question? The argument will be made that the proposed regulations are intended to preserve “heritage” buildings and that the restriction of speech is incidental. More likely is that this is a deliberate attempt to restrict a certain class of speech - commercial speech - because some councillors find capitalism distasteful. If that is the case this is most certainly a form of politically motivated censorship.
Ms Fryer said the ban would bring Auckland into line with other “main international cities with European influences”.
I can only assume “European influences” is secret code for socialism.
UPDATE 15/12/06: Auckland City Council last night voted in favour of the ban, which now goes to public consultation.
Julian Pistorius, deputy leader of Libertarianz, has written letters to various Auckland councillors and posted their replies.
Iran yesterday opened a conference questioning the Holocaust. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has tried to claim that the conference makes Iran a champion of free speech, inviting speakers who have served jail time in Europe for expressing their opinion that the Holocaust did not occur or has been exaggerated.
As discussed at Not PC last week, the state sponsorship of a particular point of view at the expense of others can be just as damaging to free expression as state censorship. While France and Germany’s laws that punish holocaust denial are reprehensible, state-sponsored anti-Semitism in Iran is hardly the answer.
The real free speech lesson in Iran yesterday came from Ahmadinejad’s opponents.
Dozens of Iranian students burnt pictures of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and chanted “death to the dictator” as he gave a speech at a university inTehran.
The protest, during a speech at Amir Tabir University unrelated to the Holocaust meeting, will be embarrassing for Mr Ahmadinejad. He has portrayed Iran as a champion of free speech in hosting the two-day Holocaust conference, which has attracted revisionist historians who have served jail sentences in Europe, and American David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader.
But the conference has embarrassed many ordinary Iranians who are aware of the damage such events are inflicting on their country’s image. Some Iranians point out that they have much less freedom to debate pressing issues such as Iran’s nuclear program, which has brought the threat of international sanctions.
Despite being a total Islamic state Iran has an active reform movement, although its strength has waned since Ahmadinejad came to power with several opposition newspapers closed down, increased restrictions on Internet use, and continued arrests of journalists and bloggers. It’s very encouraging to see active opposition to the regime from inside the country.
Trey Park and Matt Stone feature in this month’s Reason magazine talking about South Park with a big emphasis on religion, free speech and censorship.
The interview was held as part of a conference Reason held in Amsterdam to explore the future of free expression and free markets in Europe. Amsterdam was specifically chosen because it was “the site of one of the most brutal crimes related to free speech in recent memory: the 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.”
On religion:
Reason: What’s more terrifying, crossing Islam or crossing Scientology?
Trey Parker: They’re really the same people. This is what happened. I was on my honeymoon in Disney World. I turned on the television, and there were thousands of rioting Muslims, and the caption said, “Muslims enraged over cartoon.” And I said, “Oh, shit. What did we do?”
On free expression:
Reason: This is a bizarre time to be alive. You have places like YouTube, where you can createwhatever you want and disseminate it. At the same time you have lawsuits, and you have people literally being killed. So what’s the state of free expression?
Matt Stone: Basically all we’ve ever done is said what we wanted to say, and people have thrown money at us. […] It’s pretty good, you know? We can say whatever we want. […] It doesn’t mean that we don’t have battles like we did this year, where you get really frustrated with the fact that Mission Impossible: 3’s bigger than South Park and they can shut you down.
A few days late - the shouting happened on Thursday - but still worth a mention. (Hat tip: Lyndon Hood, offline prodding.)
Gerry Brownlee demanded to know why TVNZ turned up to Commodore Bainimarama’s press conference on Tuesday night at which he announced that the military had taken control of Fiji.
“This is not a question about whether the Commodore’s threats were news. They were. This is a question about whether, without TVNZ’s satellite assistance, the Commodore would have been as effective in his campaign of fear.”
Almost all political activity happens today with half an eye on the television camera. To suggest that a news organisation shouldn’t cover the news because the subjects of the news story might be trying to promote themselves is ridiculous. If we’re going to play that game we should start by not showing anyone grandstanding during Parliamentary question time.
How far do you take this argument? The most spectacular television event of the last few years was the attack on the World Trade Center. It was an attack perfectly devised to take advantage of the 24-hour live network news world. Would Brownlee suggest that a news network refuse to report the event because showing that gripping horror live was part of al-Qaeda’s propaganda?
Andrew Little, national secretary of the EPMU (which represents journalists) got it spot on:
“Television New Zealand news is run by professional journalists and has a duty to cover news of major significance,” he said.
“They and they alone should decide what should be covered. The day that a politician decides what the state broadcaster covers will be a sad day for the integrity of New Zealand democracy.
“The union is seeking an assurance from the National Party that media censorship is not National Party policy.”
Where I’m sure I would part company with Little is in thinking that there should be no such thing as a “state broadcaster”. Political interference is far more likely when the state owns a major news broadcaster. If TV3 had made the broadcast, it couldn’t have been used by Brownlee to try and score points in his role as State Owned Enterprises spokesman. The state has no role either owning a television station or telling it what to broadcast.
The proposed ban on direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising has not materialised. (Hat tip: Kiwiblog)
There had been rumbling that the new Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill would include a ban on advertising prescription drugs on television. That ban has not eventuated - not because the government has suddenly developed a respect for free speech, but because they couldn’t guarantee the numbers to pass the law.
The bill, expected to have its first reading next week, had been expected to curtail the advertising of prescription medicines.
However, widespread political opposition has forced Labour to scrap any attempt at a ban.
State Services Minister Annette King said the Government’s preference was to ban prescription medicine advertisements but “the necessary support within Parliament” was not there.
Congratulations to all those members who failed to provide that necessary support.
The threat of censorship still exists with Health Minister Annette King showing her anti-speech colours by promising “better controls” to ensure the public is given “balanced and truthful [i.e. only state approved] information.”
Some background information can be found in the Foundation for Advertising Research’s report on DTC advertising of pharmaceuticals.
Not PC has an article well worth reading on censorship by privilege.
The government has two main ways it can direct expression. The first is by breaching our rights - by direct censorship; the second is by controlling our privileges - withholding its largesse unless we toe the party line. This second form of influence is most often felt where the government funds intellectual (or anti-intellectual) activity, in the arts, education, and science.
Go and read it: “The establishing of an establishment” - a different kind of censorship.
