June 24, 2003

Back to those 'limits' on freedom?

Remember back in 1999 when, during the campaign for the Presidency, George Bush was upset by a parody website and proclaimed that "There ought to be limits to freedom"? He was referring specifically to freedom of speech, and it appears that the occupying force in Iraq has decided to follow his lead. Today's Globe and Mail has a front page photo of a young Iraqi being lead off by armed troops, noting that he had "insulted occupying troops on his way to school" and had been "bound and taken away as a warning to others". [Here is a screen capture of the front page in case Globe and Mail has updated their site by the time you read this.]

This, of course, goes along with our shutting down of elections, declaring that we won't accept an islamic theocracy, banning Ba'athists from certain jobs, decreeing that images of Saddam cannot be shown in certain places, and trying to disarm the Iraqi citizens.

Last week, it was noted that we were forbidding any speech that would incite violence against the occupying troops. Are we now expanding it to include insults as well? Of course, not knowing what the kid said, it could have been something that might incite violence, but when it's reported that he's been arrested and taken away as "a warning to others", it doesn't sound like what he said was necessarily all that dangerous (otherwise, I'd expect to read that he was being arrested for "threatening" the troops, rather than "insulting" them).

Link via Eschaton


UPDATE: The Memory Hole has this picture, taken from a Yahoo News story which published the original story from Agence France-Presse. The caption in this version is slightly different from the one in the Globe and Mail (link to a screenshot of that one is above), but conveys the same basic story - that a 17-year-old Iraqi student was arrested, as a "warning" to others, after he insulted the police.

. I just wanted to add this picture so that you can compare the two versions of the caption for context.

Posted by thorswitch at June 24, 2003 03:42 PM | TrackBack


Comments

The letter from Sen. Byrd is interesting - he's had some good things to say lately and is saying them rather well. I just wish he didn't have some of the baggage I've heard that he carries with him (rumours of a racist past), which make it easy for conservatives to discount anything he says by pointing that past out - even if it has nothing to do with what he's trying to say now.

As for the other entry here in comments, what can I say - it looks like my first piece of comment SPAM. I'm not sure if I should be pleased that I'm findable enough that a spammer would post here, or just majorly annoyed because I really, REALLY hate spam in general....

Posted by: kriselda jarnsaxa at June 24, 2003 07:53 PM

Truth is not determined by majority vote

Posted by: Thacher Robertson at December 10, 2003 07:15 PM