Cultural imperialism

[radegund]

I'm an editor, and it upsets me when I read that US law now prohibits publishers from editing papers by scholars from five "embargoed nations".

In a move that pits national security concerns against academic freedom and the international flow of information, the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control recently declared that American publishers cannot edit works authored in nations under trade embargoes. Although publishing the articles is legal, editing is a "service" and it is illegal to perform services for embargoed nations, the agency has ruled.

The nations affected are Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Cuba. So their scholars can be published in American journals, but only in unedited form (and, as the article later explains, unrefereed also - which completely defeats the purpose from the point of view of the author).

This is pretty sinister, right? It's not just me?

[Countdown of joy: just 35 days until the smoking ban comes into force.]

Comments

[dreamvirus.livejournal.com]

You're right about the good news thing, and I always feel better when I'm actually doing something as opposed to feeling so overwhelmed that I do nothing. On the other hand I want to know how I can do something useful and use whatever talents I have in the best way. I've seen how good people can struggle for their whole lives to make a difference in a practical way and fail, or succeed in a very limited sense, and then I've also seen how some bastard with a really good idea or a new perspective can come along and change everything. The only problem is what seems like a good idea at the time can turn out to be an abomination in practice so you have to be very careful what ideas you go trying to give people. I'd like to be that bastard with a good idea, so I try to find out as much as I can and think as big as I can. Maybe it can never work this way. I don't know.