A Stitch in Haste

Let the record reflect that suppression of thought is not limited to China.

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ITEM: Palestine emulates China’s crackdown on Internet cafes —

A note stuck to the door of his tiny music shop warned Mohammed al-Shaer several months ago that selling tapes and CDs of popular Arabic music was “haram,” or forbidden by Islam.

Al-Shaer paid no heed until a bomb went off outside his business this week — apparently the work of what Palestinian security officials now suspect may be a secret “vice squad” of Muslim militants.
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Fears of an Islamic cultural crackdown have risen since the Islamic Hamas took over the government a year ago after winning an election. On Monday, Education Ministry officials said they removed an anthology of folk tales from school libraries because of explicit sexual language, destroying 1,500 books.

MY TAKE: As is so often the case with Palestine, the line between “government” and “outlaw” is fuzzy and disjointed. Are the bombers and the censors the same people? Who knows? But this much is clear: The Religion of Peace never maintains a grip on its adherents without eventually turning it into a stranglehold on free thought.

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ITEM: And that includes so-called “secular” Islamic nations such as Turkey —

A Kurdish politician in Turkey has been sentenced to six months in prison for referring to jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan as “Mr Ocalan”.
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It was the second conviction for the leader of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in seven days.

Last week, Ahmet Turk — alongside with a DTP deputy leader — was sentenced to 18 months in prison for distributing party materials in the Kurdish language.

Turkish law allows distribution of political literature only in Turkish.

MY TAKE: Making it a crime to respectfully call a colleague “Mister”? Remind me again how Turkey is less Islamofascist than Saudi Arabia? In any case, a while back many noted the irony that in France it is a crime to deny the Armenian Massacre while in Turkey it’s a crime to acknowledge it. And these two nations hope to share a common membership in the European Union, complete with common principles of criminal law — and expressive freedom? Yeah right, good luck with that.

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ITEM: Did I just say “France“?

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.
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The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules. The journalists’ organization Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for a free press, has warned that such a system could lead to excessive self censorship as organizations worried about losing their certification suppress certain stories.

MY TAKE: Ah yes, the fiction of the “professional journalist” — complete with certifications (i.e., that you are not too uppity). As one Macworld commenter succinctly concluded: “Fraternity” outweighs “Liberty” and “Equality” these days. (Via Boing Boing and techdirt. But note that one commenter is disputing the account and insists the law is only directed at so-called “happy slapping.”)

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ITEM: Quick data point from China —

The Chinese government began blocking access to the popular blogging site LiveJournal on Friday, cutting off its citizens from the roughly 1.8 million blogs the service hosts.
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The timing of the block coincides with the National People’s Congress meeting in Beijing, says Xiao Qiang, a Chinese dissident and founder of the China Digital Times.

MY TAKE: China blocks lots of websites. Lots.

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ITEM: I presume you already know about the suppression of thought in Egypt —

Earlier this month, Abdel-Karim Suleiman, a 22-year-old former law student at al-Azhar Islamic university, became the first Egyptian jailed for his blogging when he was handed a four-year prison sentence.
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The international group Reporters Without Borders has added Egypt to its list of Internet Black Holes.

MY TAKE: There was a time, about 30 years ago, when many thought Egypt would be the great hope for leading the Muslim world into modernity. Now it is increasingly clear that there simply is no hope for the Muslim world. Not when atrocities such as this can still happen.

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LATE ADDITION: More from Turkey —

A Turkish court ordered access to YouTube’s Web site blocked on Wednesday, after a prosecutor recommended the ban because of videos allegedly insulting the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Paul Doany, head of Turk Telekom, Turkey’s largest telecommunications provider, said his company had begun immediately enforcing the ban.

MY TAKE: This has nothing to do with copyright infringement or even “happy slapping.” It’s naked, brazen censorship, by a (supposedly) modern, secular Islamic state. Go figure. (UPDATE: The Turkish government lifted the ban after two days of relentless global outrage.)

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