Netflix: To boycott or not to boycott

This afternoon my wife read an article in the Daily Kos about a boycott of Netflix.  The reason is that Netflix bowed to a Saudi Arabian request not to make available an episode of a series that was critical of Saudi Arabia.

I cancelled our Netflix account which was rather easy.

But then I did my own reading about the boycott.  See https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hasan-minhaj-responds-netflix-saudi-arabia_us_5c2cf80be4b0407e90875e85.

The request was limited to not making it available in Saudi Arabia.  Still, I think I’ll let the cancellation stand.  If I get any meaningful explanation from Netflix, I’ll consider re-subscribing.  Meanwhile, we’ll visit the public library more often for DVDs.

Quote of the day: Elevez votre voix, pas le niveau de la mer

“Raise your voice, not the level of the sea” is the title of a podcast yesterday from Radio des Nations Unies.  It is about World Environment Day, June 5.  News of this has been “censored” in Duluth.  I cannot easily find it in the Duluth News Tribune.  My top find in the New York Times was a picture of a worker in India wading through recycled plastic bottles.

Is this “censorship” or lack of interest.  I can certainly find many other references in English to World Environment Day.

My translation of the text that iTunes shows me for this seven-minute podcast is:

“Each year on June 5 millions of people across the planet celebrate World Environment Day, at the levels of community, nation, and region to promote a positive action on the most pressing environmental challenges.  The host of World Environment Day this year is Barbados, …”

The top Google search item I found was http://www.unep.org/wed/, UNEP stands for United Nations Environmental Programme.

Barbados was chosen as the host for this year’s WED  because it is considered a leader in solar power.  See http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=2788&ArticleID=10851&l=en

BTW, WED is not going totally ignored in the U.S. I did see an item that Secretary of State John Kerry did make a statement about WED.

Comment on SOPA/PROTECT-IP

I sent this on Facebook to a relative who was calling for opposition to SOPA/PROTECT-IP.

I think this is one of the issues where we need a Constitutional amendment that no bill can be any larger than the original Constitution. Or we need to require a law degree to even vote. There are so many twists and turns in many bills that few are even certain what's in them. And unfortunately, many voting in Congress don't even read the entire bills, much less understand them.

I was going to foam at the keyboard at Franken, but I poked around a bit and found "Legal Analysis of SOPA / PROTECT-IP: No, It's Not Censorship" http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/11/legal-analysis-of-sopa-protect.php.

I'd really have to read SOPA and PROTECT-IP myself to be sure what they said, but right now I'm working slowly through Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" and hope to start in the spring on the "Federalist Papers".

The "Huckleberry Finn" rewrite: Thomas Bowdler is alive and well

Michiko Kakutani wrote a marvelous slam about the latest attempt to force Mark Twain to write according to some people's taste; "New 'Huckleberry Finn' Edition Does Disservice to a Classic", New York Times, 2011-01-06.

One of her best sentences on changing "nigger" to "slave" was, "Never mind that attaching the epithet slave to the character Jim — who has run away in a bid for freedom — effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape."  Another is that it "stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character)".

Rewriting by translators is one reason that I prefer reading books or seeing movies in the original language.  I may comprehend the text less in the original, but that is my doing, not some intermediary's.

See also "Bowdlerization", Melvyn Magree, Reader Weekly, 2001-04-12.

On freedom of the speech: Do I have a better memory than the Internet?

The Huffington Post reported that a newspaper was told by a court that it must reveal the name of an anonymous contributor to the comment section of an online story.  The plaintiffs in the case complained that the comment was libelous. See "Illinois Newspaper Forced To Disclose Names of Anonymous Commenters", Huffington Post, 2010-06-03.

This made me think of a quote that I remember as this: "The antidote to too much freedom of speech (or the press) is more freedom of speech (or the press)."  I thought Winston Churchill made it.  I can't find it in Bartlett's Quotations, George Seldes' "Famous Quotations", in Wikiquotes, or with a Google Search.

I did find a whole bunch of interesting quotes relating to freedom of speech and of the press under Censorship in Wikiquotes.  Two that seem to fit the above case are:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost." - Thomas Jefferson

I did find a good quote by Winston Churchill in the Censorship section:

"You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken - unspeakable! - fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse - a little tiny mouse! -of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic."

I am sure you can think of quite a few dictators or terrorists who fit this quote today.