Sacred Freedom, Sacred Ground.

In both France and the United-States, freedom of speech is a constitutional right. In France it is guaranteed by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which has constitutional value and in the U.S. it is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. In both countries there are also some restrictions to freedom of speech: in France, for instance, denying the Holocaust is prohibited by the law and in the United-States, falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is illegal, and these are only two instances.

But the United-States has a looser understanding of free speech than the rest of the Western World. Certain forms of hate speech are tolerated.

For instance, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that an anti-gay church has the right to picket military funerals, even though it may cause emotional distress to the families of the dead soldiers. (BBC news). It may be immoral and disturbing but it is still coherent with the way Americans value free speech.

So it was all the more surprising to read this piece of news:

A group of friends went to the Jefferson Memorial to commemorate the president's 265th birthday by dancing silently while listening to music on headphones. Park Police ordered the revelers to disperse and arrested them when they did not. The dancers sued on free speech grounds, but the appeals court ruled last week that their conduct was indeed prohibited "because it stands out as a type of performance, creating its own center of attention and distracting from the atmosphere of solemn commemoration" that Park Service regulations are designed to preserve. (Huffington Post, WP)

How can the solemnity of a monument be more sacred than that of the funeral of an American soldier who just died for his nation?

Apparently the sacredness of the space supersedes freedom of speech :

"A prohibition on expressive activities in a nonpublic forum does not violate the First Amendment if it is viewpoint neutral and is 'reasonable in light of the use to which the forum is dedicated,'" said the Judge, and "expressive dancing” does constitute an act that undermines "an atmosphere of calm, tranquility, and reverence" at the memorial.

And in an odd footnote that demonstrates the speciousness of the argument rather than its reasoning, the court added that Jefferson "discouraged celebrations of his birthday" (WSJ) 
Well, OK then.

Of course the court’s decision simply motivated more people to go to the Jefferson Memorial and because we are in the age of instant video, the arrest of the dancers was filmed and the video went viral. The arrest itself caused a larger disturbance than the dancers themselves who were, at least in the first instance, dancing in silence. The court’s decision only aggravated the matter.

Watch :

So how does one make sense of any of this? If we want to even begin to understand what this means, we should probably keep in mind that the Jefferson Memorial is not a simple monument but that it serves the function of a modern religious temple devoted to the Civil Religion (Belah) of the nation.

Visit Washington D.C. and you'll see that the monuments and memorials devoted to the Founding Fathers are modeled after Greek or Roman temples: the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial are the most obvious examples. Walk into the former and you’re immediately struck by the size of the statue which is not unlike those found in religious temples in ancient Greece. In the National Museum of American History in DC you can even see a statue of George Washington modeled after the great statue of Zeus Olympios, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Temples, according to mythologist Mircea Eliade, house the gods and give us a sense of the sacred in our world. The architects on the national mall knew this well and built sacred temples in which to honor those gods who built the nation: a creation myth.

The idea of myth here does not reflect the idea of something false, as it often does in today's parlance, but a story of the origin which has become sacred. Myths are stories we tell ourselves in an attempt to ascribe meaning to the world. One of the most powerful forms of myth is the creation story, which tells a story of our earliest beginnings. Every society has its creation myth and all are concerned with fundamental rather than historical truths. In the case of national myths, the creation myth represents in narrative form the founding of a nation. (see Robert Segal, Mircea Eliade). Rome had the myth of Romulus and Remus, France has the French Revolution and the US has the American Revolution.

The American narrative of the origins has all of the essential features found in myth: a sacred time which is the time of origins (the American Revolution), a sacred text (the US Constitution), nearly divine demigod heroes (The Founding Fathers), rituals (4th of July, Presidential Inaugurals, etc..) and sacred places, which can take the form of temples.

There are other national myths specific to the US as well (Manifest Destiny, self-reliance, the American Dream) but the story of the founding of the US is deeply felt. So keep this in mind the next time you intend to exercise your right to freedom of speech in the US:  one can dance on graves but not at the feet of the gods.

U.S. Censorship of Al Jazeera.

Seeing a revolution or a war unfolding live on television is always fascinating and somewhat exciting and in many ways the protest-revolution in Egypt has reminded me of the Revolutions in Eastern Europe, (particularly in Romania where television played a crucial role).

Of all television coverage on the events in Cairo, Al-jazeera’s has been the most interesting one, mostly because it offers a different perspective a but also because it is the most watched tv channel in the Arab world. Much has been said about the importance of online social networks such as Twitter and Facebook - whose role may have been exaggerated in the West - but these are only available to the young in the -upper-middle-class whereas most Egyptians are informed through satellite television and not the net.

Al Jazeera has done such a good job that it has been specifically targeted as their bureau in Cairo was shut down and their network’s licenses and accreditation cancelled or withdrawn.

This is not the first time that they have been banned, restricted or threatened by autocratic Arab regimes since they started broadcasting in 1996 - in Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and even Kuwait.

But until this week, I had never realized that the reason I can watch Al-Jazeera is that I do not live in the United-States where it has been banned from the largest cable networks.

As Frank Rich pointed out in his excellent Op-Ed in the NYTimes this week:

… in America, it can be found only in Washington, D.C., and on small cable systems in Ohio and Vermont. None of the biggest American cable and satellite companies — Comcast, DirecTV and Time Warner — offer it.

This week the director-general of the Al Jazeera network wrote an interesting article in Newsweek which caught my attention. In it, he underlines the contradiction between the much claimed free press concept in the West and the refusal to provide “alternative viewpoints” to the American audience.

Of course, as always in the West, the censorship is never direct but it is sugarcoated with commercial reasons like :

… the insistence by U.S. operators that Americans are not interested. From a commercial standpoint, they argued, Al Jazeera was not worth their precious bandwidth. (Newsweek)

Of course, Al Jazeera claims otherwise – and they seem to have figures to prove their point:

Tony Burman, Al Jazeera’s head of strategy for the Americas, said traffic to the satelite network's English-language website, where a live stream of its broadcast is available, increased 2,500% during the past week of Egypt coverage. He said up to 60% of the traffic was from the United States. (LATimes)

The « commercial reason » is moot (more here) if you consider the loads of useless crappy channels available on U.S. cable tv anyway.

In reality American broadcasters are afraid of the fearmongers on the right like Bill O’Reilly who brands the Arabic channel “anti-American” and “anti-Semitic” – which shows his utter ignorance since Arabs are semitic people -. Of course, this accusation would be propagated by Islamophobic Foxnews. After all, this view of Al Jazeera was first promoted by officials in Bush administration when they didn’t like the graphic footage from the war in Iraq. There have even been allegations of a memo in which president Bush speculated about a U.S. bombing raid on Al Jazeera world headquarters in the Qatari capital and other locations.

More generally this virtual ban of Al Jazeera in the United-States is the “consequence of a decade’s worth of indiscriminate demonization of Arabs in America”.

Of course, the Qatari channel is at times critical of US and Israeli policy – it may also show crude images of wars but it has the merit of giving another perspective and an Arabic insight which might help Americans (who are willing) understand a bit better what the Arab world is about.

In any case, before anything else it should be a question of principle. Freedom of expression cannot stop at what makes you uncomfortable. If Al Jazeera is available even in Israel, why not in the United-States?

It is time for Americans to do at home what they ask others to do in the world for credibility sake.

Perspetive on Islam and the United-States.

By Mark A. Schmidt.

Flag Desecration and Freedom of Speech.

From a European perspective, the presence of US flags in front of people's houses is a distinct feature of the American experience. Flags are usually not so proudly put on houses in Europe.

Blame it on a history of dangerous nationalism or on cultural differences, the fact is that Americans tend to be much more outspoken about their patriotism then the Europeans.

So it makes sense that the desecration of the US flag should have serious consequences and be considered a serious crime in the US (see here or here). There is even a United-States Flag Code which gives a set of rules as to the Dos and Donts of how to handle the flag.

France in particular has always had an ambiguous uneasy relationship with its flag which has been associated with far-right extremists who have used it for their agenda. (think of the Fête des Bleu-Blanc-Rouge for instance). The current French president decided to re-claim the flag and other symbols of the Republic, probably because he thinks it is important but also because it pleases his right-wing electorate. In the meantime, the booing of the national anthem at a few soccer games caused outrage and led to the passing of a law that makes it a criminal offense to insult the French flag or national anthem in public, (up to 7,500 euros and 6 months in prison) in 2003, when Sarkozy was Minister of the Interior0

Well, this week, things went one step further when this photograph of a man wiping his butt with the French flag won a prize at an exhibit in the “politically incorrect” category. The picture was shown oat the exhibition organized in Nice by FNAC, the French book and music store giant and then by the free newspaper Metro.

The picture may be of a very bad taste, (well, that may be the point) and apparently, France’s Minister of Justice Michele Alliot-Marie did not like. That's her own right, but for her to demand the “criminal prosecution” of its authors is even more scandalous and over the top.

“I want the person who committed this outrage to be punished, and possibly those who published it,” Eric Ciotti wrote to a government ministry, who is a deputy from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party, calling for an investigation.

It seems that the FNAC and the photographer played a low profile and the picture was quickly withdrawn from the contest in Nice after complaints from veterans' groups.
The problem is that since this "desecration of the flag" took place at a private cultural event, it is not covered by the law and is only an offense, not a crime.
Never mind, France’s Minister of Justice Michele Alliot-Marie believes the law should just be changed :

"Presumably the law has the legal means to punish such an intolerable act against the French flag," said the minister's spokesman."If the existing law proves incomplete in this regard, it should be revised." (BBC)

So is France becoming more American? Hardly. Something major is missing: the First Amendment to the US Constitution which guarantees freedom of expression and freedom of speech and makes the US Flag Code more or less irrelevant. (Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that punitive enforcement would conflict with the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.).
Given the current level of crime in France, it seems to me that Mrs Alliot-Marie has better things to do and should addressed the real issue of crime and stop messing with people's bad taste.