Calgarian

Hi Guys,

Got a question. Everybody keep reffering to "freedom of speech" here. Does any body know if anything(books etc.) was banned in USA cause of its contents in recent history?If there was then what happened to FOS then?

Khan

CasaNova

I am so bored of this discussion.

gruffbrown

Short and sweet.....

TA5

To answer your question...no, that is what 'freedom of speech' means, you can't ban things due to content.

Discussion closed.

NorthernLad

Yep - check this out for freedom of speech!

www.godhatesfags.com

MJC

And there was me thinking The Almighty was a 40 a day Marlboro Man!!

un-mundo

Don't think they were wildly keen on films like The Life of Brian, either. Astonishing, really, given all that freedom of speech stuff. They bombed cinemas that showed it. It was a comedy, but they got terribly excited about it. The fact that it was intended to be funny seemed to pass them by.

Now it's awfully silly for Muslims to be upset by cartoons, obviously, because clearly that's quite a different matter. Oh yes.

Autonomy

Quote from Amarican Library Assoc. And I am quite impressed...

Elect to Read a Banned Book

Throughout the country, most children are starting a new academic year. Teachers are sending out their lists of required readings, and parents are beginning to gather books. In some cases, classics like "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," "The Catcher in the Rye," and "To Kill a Mocking Bird," may not be included in curriculum or available in the school library due to challenges made by parents or administrators.

Since 1990, the American Library Association's (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) has recorded more than 7,800 book challenges, including 458 in 2003. A challenge is a formal, written complaint requesting a book be removed from library shelves or school curriculum. About three out of four of all challenges are to material in schools or school libraries, and one in four are to material in public libraries. OIF estimates that less than one-quarter of challenges are reported and recorded.

It is thanks to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, and students that most challenges are unsuccessful and reading materials like "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," "Slaughterhouse Five," the Harry Potter series, and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Alice series, which topped OIF's most challenged list in 2003 and ended the four-year reign of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, remain available.

The most challenged and/or restricted reading materials have been books for children. However, challenges are not simply an expression of a point of view; on the contrary, they are an attempt to remove materials from public use, thereby restricting the access of others. Even if the motivation to ban or challenge a book is well intentioned, the outcome is detrimental. Censorship denies our freedom as individuals to choose and think for ourselves. For children, decisions about what books to read should be made by the people who know them best—their parents!

In support of the right to choose books freely for ourselves, the ALA and [Name of Library] are sponsoring Banned Books Week (September 25 - October 2, 2004), an annual celebration of our right to access books without censorship. This year's observance is themed "Elect to Read a Banned Book," and commemorates the most basic freedom in a democratic society—the freedom to read freely—and encourages us not to take this freedom for granted.
Since its inception in 1982, Banned Books Week has reminded us that while not every book is intended for every reader, each of us has the right to decide for ourselves what to read, listen to or view. [Name of library] and thousands of libraries and bookstores across the country will celebrate the freedom to read by participating in special events, exhibits, and read-outs that showcase books that have been banned or threatened. The [name of library] will be hosting the following activities:[List activities, displays, presentations, read-outs of favorite banned books etc. with date, time and location.]

The American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; the ALA; the American Society of Journalists and Authors; the Association of American Publishers; and the National Association of College Stores sponsor Banned Books Week. The Library of Congress Center for the Book endorses the observance.

American libraries are the cornerstones of our democracy. Libraries are for everyone, everywhere. Because libraries provide free access to a world of information, they bring opportunity to all people. Now, more than ever, celebrate the freedom to read @ your library! Elect to read an old favorite or a new banned book this week.




long link....

shiva

thank you for once again displaying your boundless ignorance of the great nation you call home.
your ignorance brings joy to my day everytime you put your foot in it like the good little republican muppet you are.



"Ulysses by James Joyce was selected by the Modern Library as the best novel of the 20th century, and has received wide praise from other literature scholars, including those who have defended online censorship. (Carnegie Mellon English professor and vice-provost Erwin Steinberg, who praised the book in 1994, also defended CMU's declaration that year to delete alt.sex and some 80 other newsgroups, claiming they were legally obligated to do so.) Ulysses was barred from the United States as obscene for 15 years, and was seized by U.S Postal Authorities in 1918 and 1930. The lifting of the ban in 1933 came only after advocates fought for the right to publish the book.
In 1930, U.S. Customs seized Harvard-bound copies of Candide, Voltaire's critically hailed satire, claiming obscenity. Two Harvard professors defended the work, and it was later admitted in a different edition. In 1944, the US Post Office demanded the omission of Candide from a mailed Concord Books catalog.

John Cleland's Fanny Hill (also known as Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) has been frequently suppressed since its initial publication in 1749. This story of a prostitute is known both for its frank sexual descriptions and its parodies of contemporary literature, such as Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders. The U.S Supreme Court finally cleared it from obscenity charges in 1966. (Copies exist on the English Server and on Wiretap; if one server is inaccessible, try the other, or wait until later.)

Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Boccaccio's Decameron, Defoe's Moll Flanders, and various editions of The Arabian Nights were all banned for decades from the U.S. mails under the Comstock Law of 1873. Officially known as the Federal Anti-Obscenity Act, this law banned the mailing of "lewd", "indecent", "filthy", or "obscene" materials. The Comstock laws, while now unenforced, remain for the most part on the books today; the Telecommunications Reform Bill of 1996 even specifically applied some of them to computer networks. The anti-war Lysistrata was banned again in 1967 in Greece, which was then controlled by a military junta.



Jean-Jacques Rousseau's autobiography Confessions was banned by U.S. Customs in 1929 as injurious to public morality. His philosophical works were also banned in the USSR in 1935, and some were placed on the Catholic Church's Index of Prohibited Books in the 18th century


i love this one!!

John T. Scopes was convicted in 1925 of teaching the evolutionary theory of Darwin's Origin of Species in his high school class. The Tennessee law prohibiting teaching evolution theory was finally repealed in 1967, but further laws intended to stifle the teaching of evolution in science classes have been proposed in the Tennesee legislature as recently as 1996

and this one!!

An illustrated edition of "Little Red Riding Hood" was banned in two California school districts in 1989. Following the Little Red-Cap story from Grimm's Fairy Tales, the book shows the heroine taking food and wine to her grandmother. The school districts cited concerns about the use of alcohol in the story.


isnt he one of th usa' greatest authors, pity you cant read him when your in some states

In Mark Twain's lifetime, his books Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were excluded from the juvenile sections of the Brooklyn Public library (among other libraries), and banned from the library in Concord, MA, home of Henry Thoreau. In recent years, some high schools have dropped Huckleberry Finn from their reading lists, or have been sued by parents who want the book dropped. In Tempe, Arizona, a parent's lawsuit that attempted to get the local high school to remove the book from a required reading list went as far as a federal appeals court in 1998

Even Shakespeare was banned

Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice was banned from classrooms in Midland, Michigan in 1980, due to its portrayal of the Jewish character Shylock.



i could go on but i fear i may have torn your ignorance from its dark impenetrable republican bossom, and heaven forbid you may see some light past the great oracle of fox.

CasaNova

Donald Duck is BANNED in some European countries for Not wearing underwear!!!!


But the very same europeans are seen butt naked in sunny places.


NOW! This is really fu**** confusing.


If i was a Robot I would end up short circuit and shut down by thinking about this.

Eeyore

Sorry, habibi, but no he isn't - that's an urban myth.

TA5

Hmmm. If i'm ignorant than you must be somewhat illiterate, or just plain stupid, seeing that your article does nothing to prove that there is any form of censorship in the US. There is a big difference between precluding a book from a school curriculum and banning it from entering or being possessed in a country.

BTW, for your stupidity, 'school district' and 'public library' does not mean 'state', big difference there pal.

Wow, i guess I should have remembered that seeing that I am 175 years old and was deeply affected by things that happened in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Your ignorance is absolutely appalling. I guess your next argument is that the middle east is a pillar of freedom of speech

CasaNova

Nope, its Banned.

DD Kaput


also:

http://www.crikey.com.au/articles/20...0832-6922.html


elections were a tight race between socialist Tarja Halonen and conservative Sauli Niinasto. ... in federal parliament, his opponents labelled him the man who banned Donald Duck. He lost the election ... Finnish local councils had banned Donald Duck because he didn't wear trousers

CasaNova

Here you Go:

Below is a link if anyone buys any controversial books in USA the address and the details of the buyer will have to be reported to the Police, read the link there are more appaling laws and bla bla bla!

Reporting of Book Buyers


Also:

more nice links

Freedom of speech is a joke in America, because it makes no ... independence b) exception from arbitrary restrictions on a specified civil right


Hmmmmm

As the Clinton Administration's second term ended in 2000, evidence of its domestic human rights legacy was scant. The country made little progress in embracing international human rights standards at home. ... As in previous years, serious human rights violations were ... human rights violations also included violations of workers' rights, discrimination ...




Dont get me wrong i am not trying to say that Middle east is a champion in it! - but you dont try to tell me that USA is a saint.

Eeyore

Sorry Casanova (or is it Balushi?), but Donald Duck is NOT banned in ANY European country.

If you'd actually read the link I provided, you'd have understood why and how the urban myth came about. Here it is again - click here and READ IT THIS TIME!

BTW, those two links you provided - presumably you didn't bother reading the first one (DD Kaput), because it backs up the fact that it's a total myth that Donald Duck was ever banned in Finland. The second one is just plain inaccurate; it was written by someone who believed the myth.

And I have to say, the fact that you yourself were foolish enough to believe the myth does rather point up how little you know about Europeans, and Scandinavians in particular.