1001 Nights Cast

‘During the night of the 26 September 1996, the Taliban militia entered the Afghan capital of Kabul and took control of the city. One of their first moves was to lock up the premises of national television and ban all TV broadcasts…Law and order reigns in Kabul. Afghanistan is now known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and Sharia (Islamic law) has been brought into force. The Taliban have introduced radical reforms, particularly concerning the status of women. Press freedom…has totally disappeared. All television broadcasts have stopped and the TV building is being used as a barracks. The sole radio station, which covers the whole country, puts out only religious programmes and official propaganda—even music has no place on the Taliban’s airwaves. The printed press—no more than ten publications throughout Afghanistan—is under government control. Only foreign media, working with the help of dozens of Afghan journalists living in exile, are trying to supply impartial news to a population manipulated by the “theology students”’.

On October 15 1996, the BBC broadcasts that in Kabul, Taliban students are burning films.

The same day in the UK, the BBC broadcasts Espisode 2588 of Neighbours. Grampa Kennedy encourages the kids to have their party, however, a dampener is put on the evening when Billy suspects that Melissa is homophobic after a joke about one of his favourite teachers, Andrew Watson.

Also in 1996, the text of the Internet version of the Broadcasting Act 1996, Chapter 55, is published by the Queen’s Printer of Acts of Parliament, prepared to reflect the text as it received Royal Assent.
In section 297A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (unauthorised decoders), for subsection (1) there is substituted-
‘(1) A person who makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any unauthorised decoder shall be guilty of an offence and liable—
(a) on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum; and (b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or to a fine, or to both.’

‘The logic of gatekeeping—whether by Church, National states, or the media themselves—is that information is like a food or a drug, which, apropos the Pure Food and Drug Act of the United States and similar laws in most countries, requires inspection or certification before it can be made available to the public. To offer information unvetted is, on this reasoning, to poison the public, as it could be from spoilt food or bogus medication. Thus, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, writing the unanimous opinion for the Supreme Court in Schenck v. United States in 1919, contended that ‘the most stringent protection for free speech would not protect a man from falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater, and causing panic…the question in every case is whether the words…create a clear and present danger…’

In 1994, Phillip Noyce directed Clear and Present Danger, an action/drama thriller in which CIA analyst Jack Ryan, played by Harrison Ford, is drawn into an illegal war fought by the US government against a Colombian drug cartel.

One piece of trivia relating to this film is that the scene in which the convoy of Suburbans is attacked by the drug cartel is now actually used as a training video by US government agencies.

The Suburban is a large sport utility vehicle manufactured by Chevrolet. It is one of the longest-lived automobile nameplates in the United States, dating from 1935. It is also one of the largest SUVs on the market; it has three rows of seats and a normal-sized cargo area behind them, a full pickup truck frame, and V8 engine power. The trucks are popular with large suburban families due to their ‘go anywhere, haul anything’ nature, but have been criticized for their excessive bulk and poor fuel economy.

As Tim Flannery reports: ‘The best evidence indicates that we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 70 per cent by 2050. If you own a four-wheel-drive and replace it with a hybrid-fuel vehicle or a smaller standard-fuel car, you can achieve a cut of that magnitude in a day rather than half a century. If your electricity company offers a green option, for the cost of a daily cup of coffee, you will be able to make equally large cuts in your household emissions. And if you vote for a politician who has a deep commitment to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, you might change the world. If you alone can achieve so much, so, too, can every individual and, in time, industry and government on Earth.’