Wampum

Return of the ... One True King (pt 6)

I've been writing a process series on the elections for the 7th Majlis (Iran's legislature), held on the 20th of this month. A running side-bar has been most of the American press coverage reduces to very, very few independent primary reports, they ran several days behind the European, Asian, and Middle Eastern press, and generally were conclusionary -- "here endeth the lesson" -- day after day. The lowest point personally (remember no one you actually know knows you blog) was when the paper of record for Southern Maine ran 500 words of editorial that elections were good and mullahs were bad.

In writing the Return of the ... One True King series I used sources from inside Iran, including the web site of the 6th Majlis, and began to read Iranian bloggers, both at home and in exile. I edited, redacted, munged, illuminated, and I'm sure I also obsured, text that originated in Iran. The point of writing about Iran and restricting oneself to texts that geographically originate "about, but not within Iran" eluded me, but today I've found that point.

I was violating US law. The "Return of the ... One True King" series of posts was a series of criminal acts, because it was ... Criminal Editing of the Enemy. I've been trading with the enemey. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control is letting publishers subject to its jurisdiction (which excludes Yas-e Nou and Sharq, already closed by Iran's Guardian Council exercising their jurisdiction) know that trading with the enemey (in the form of editing scientific publications, poetry or news) is ten years and/or $500,000.

Now much of what I wrote was the result of being up at all hours with Jonah (age 4, autistism, sleep disorder), so breathy, rushed, disjointed, like bird watching. I haven't yet tried the hard problem, of writing about, rather than observing others write about. I'll get around to it, after all, the cast of characters in Tehran and Washington are not going anywhere soon. More's the pity.

It is simply amazing to think about, for those of us who came up on Soviet mathematical and scientific publications and Soviet and Chinese military and political publications, collected, translated, summarized, digested, glossed, ... that the manuscript for a volumn of 17th century Persian poetry in Farsi, with an American English translation, can not be lawfully edited for publication within the confines of the United States. Neither for that matter can the debates of the 6th Majlis on reform of the law concerning the damages for wrongful deaths -- tort reform -- which currently contains a 10-to-1 statuatory disparity in the "blood money" valuation of human life along confessional lines.

If there are any Americans that want access to texts originating from Iran which are edited for publication, they will have to attempt that access exterior to the political jurisdiction of the United States.

Oh. IRNA reports today that it intercepted a Pushtu language broadcast that ...

-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Cherry <s.cherry@ieee.org>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 08:36:30
To:dave@FARBER.NET, ip@v2.listbox.com
Subject: Re: [IP] It's a crime to edit for publication...?

Dave,

As it happens, we at the IEEE had our semi-annual all-hands staff
meeting last week. There, executive director Dan Senese said that not
only is the license process obviously distasteful, it's also not
clear the State Department is granting them. At least, we still
haven't gotten one, and no one else seems to have either. We were
told that our attorneys continue to press our application.

Otherwise, the situation hasn't changed much since November, when
Spectrum magazine wrote up the story to date
<http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/nov03/1103nvs.html>.

I'm not the person to make official statements for the organization,
but I can tell you first-hand that it's been a very painful matter
for our volunteer editors, for the editorial staffs of the
transactions and the magazines, and for the Institute leadership to
have to treat Iranian articles differently.

Steven

Posted by at February 28, 2004 08:23 AM | TrackBack