For the past two months, Iraqi interpreters working with US forces have been forbidden from wearing masks. This decision was recently
overturned. Ostensibly, this was because the security situation had become
better.
Some believe instead that this rule was instated to prevent asylum claims. Some think that it reflects traditional
army FUBAR decision making. Personally, I think they are becoming more cautious because the
back up plan is a piece of junk.
[more inside]
posted by marmaduke_yaverland
on Dec 6, 2008 -
22 comments
Judge bans the word "rape" from a rape trial. Jeffre Cheuvront, a Nebraska judge, "granted a motion by defense attorneys barring the use of the words rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, and sexual assault kit from the trial of Pamir Safi—accused of raping Tory Bowen in October 2004." This move follows some tightening of language during trials meant to avoid unnecessarily swaying jury members. But has it gone too far this time?
posted by cmgonzalez
on Jun 24, 2007 -
112 comments
Hot dog joint hit with foie gras fine. The City of Chicago Health Department has issued a citation to a Northwest Side eatery (Hot Doug's, all all places!) for serving foie gras in voilation of the city ban. “People are actually dying from the cold, and I’m getting hassled because of some sausage,” owner Doug Sohn said Friday afternoon...
posted by Durwood
on Feb 18, 2007 -
70 comments
Blogspot, Geocities, and TypePad blocked in India. Indian ISPs, who had been ordered by the Indian government to block
certain
blogs, have blocked the entire blogspot.com, geocities.com, and typepad.com
(by IP), rendering hundreds of thousands of blogs inaccessible in India. The block
was ordered by the government apparently because terrorists were using blogs to
co-ordinate their activities. Indian bloggers,
upset
at the blanket ban, have
started
a wiki to keep track of the situation. They have also created a
mailing
list to discuss the issue. Some
prominent
Indian
bloggers are also
tracking updates. Indian laws require
ISPs to install filtering equipment and follow government orders to block sites,
or the can lose their licence to operate. This is not the first time such an
incident has occurred. In 2003, the government ordered a block on a Yahoo group
that was supposedly anti-national. Indian ISPs ended up
blocking
Yahoo Groups completely. India's recently introduced
Right-to-Information
Act, which many bloggers are planning to use, gives the government 30
days to respond to an RTI request. In the interim, despite
national
and international coverage of the issue from the likes of New York Times
(linked earlier),
Washington
Post,
CNN,
New
Statesman, and
WSJ
(paid reg. required), these major blogging sites remain blocked.
posted by madman
on Jul 19, 2006 -
37 comments
Alabama lawmaker to introduce a novel new way to keep people from catching "the gay". I can hear the ACLU drooling from here. Does the state have any power to limit the books available in a public library?
posted by ozomatli
on Feb 9, 2005 -
53 comments
Thou shalt not make scientific progress. "Medical research is poised to make a quantum leap that will benefit sufferers from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, muscular dystrophy, diabetes and other diseases. But George W. Bush's religious convictions stand in its way."
posted by homunculus
on Mar 24, 2004 -
45 comments
Vans Stevenson, senior lobbyist for MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America), was the last to revise a letter California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer is to distribute to other attorney generals. Lockyer is the president of the National Association of Attorneys General. - is your government owned? Lockyer receives thousands in campaign contributions from MPAA, RIAA, and '
[via: The Register]..corporate and private donations from the major studios, including The Paramount Pictures Group, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Warner Bros PAC, AOL Time Warner. Senior executives, such as Alan Horn and Howard Welinsky, respectively CEO and senior VP at Warner Brothers..." Adam Eisgrau of P2P United said that "the draft attributed to the attorney general's office contains many significant factual errors, eyebrow-raising metadata, and articulates a very broad expansion in several important respects of product liability and consumer protection law that would have enormous effects..' It's in
The NY Times.
Slyck has
the original document.
posted by giantkicks
on Mar 15, 2004 -
3 comments
Bellevue school bans hats, hoods... In order to curtail
unproven gang activity, Interlake High School has banned baseball caps, and the wearing of hoods, stemming from alleged gang involvement on the part of a few students. The faculty "believes" there to be gang actvity, and we all know that gangs require hooded-sweatshirt / ballcap uniforms, or you're out... Gang members can usually be singled out due to their poor fashion taste, but it has nothing to do with how they joined. This must be more of that freedom we North Americans seems to endorse so much...
posted by Dark Messiah
on Mar 8, 2004 -
63 comments
Birth of a Nation: one of the most
controversial films in american history.
The film "...was banned in more than a dozen localities (and furthermore has been the most banned film in American history) because of its white supremacist sympathies, racist stereotypes, and glorification of the Ku Klux Klan..."
Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy,
Marjorie Heins.
Given the recent controversy over Gibson's film, where do we draw the line between
freedom of expression and
censorship? when are these debates influenced by politcal agenda rather than sincere concern?
posted by poopy
on Feb 25, 2004 -
27 comments
UK bans controversial charity ads In recent weeks, UK newspaper readers have been opening their newspapers to find full-page, colour pictures of a cockroach crawling out of the mouth of a baby. Now the adverts, for children's charity Barnardo's, have been banned. Barnado's
maintain that the pre-Christmas ads were justified as "a way of cutting through the apathy."
posted by TheophileEscargot
on Dec 10, 2003 -
51 comments
No laptops??? How am I going to watch my DVDs? Or, for that matter, get my ego stroked by people ogling my TiBook?
posted by fpatrick
on Sep 4, 2002 -
35 comments
No butts about it... Bloomberg plans to ban smoking in small bars and restaurants in NYC. Why not? The
pope took it even further. And after all, it won't hurt
business owners. Perhaps a better plan would be to limit
food portions instead. How do
NYC smokers feel about this? I know
Carrie Bradshaw will not be too thrilled.
posted by bmxGirl
on Aug 9, 2002 -
125 comments
The Website of Anti-Porn Guy Welcome to my site! My name is David McNamara and I am 19 years old. I have 2 cats and I am a senior at Royal Palm Beach High School in Royal Palm Beach, Florida......I want to ban pornography with a 10-year prison term for viewing or participating in pornography, as well as oral and anal sex with a 1-5 year prison term for oral sex and a 1-10 year term for anal sex. I also want to ban the manufacture and sale of contraceptives (birth control) with a prison term of up to 1 year in jail and/or a fine of up to $5,000 for violating this ban. None of these laws will be retroactive. Wonder what he's doing now - his site was last updated 12-10-00. Discuss? Dismiss?
posted by Corky
on Jul 25, 2002 -
52 comments
Remember that Florida Mayor who banned Satan from town? Well, after she got done talking to mass-media syncophants like Dan Rather, her utterly misguided publicist apparently let her talk to the keen and incisive sleuths from
Satanosphere, who, as usual, got down to the really important stuff. Like:
matt: ...The one question everybody has for you is this: Are you planning on banning any other major deities or demons? Like Skeletor?
So, will
Skeletor be banned forever from Inglis, Florida? Will the ACLU extend
Skeletor the same legal protection as it graciously offered Satan? And perhaps most important of all, what about
Wil Wheaton?
posted by rusty
on Mar 21, 2002 -
13 comments
The Taliban has declared the Internet un-Islamic, but elsewhere in the Muslim world, going online is one way to avoid the censors.
posted by KimmishKim
on Oct 16, 2001 -
8 comments
When Headlines Go (Nearly) Right The world's most unfortunately named cleric makes a cameo appearance in a row over sex scenes in a film. Can someone persuade me that the Pope didn't make Bishop Sin a cardinal just for these moments?
posted by holgate
on Mar 27, 2001 -
7 comments
