Cartoon advertising and terrorism

I’m sure we’ve all heard the amusing story this week about the neon advertising signs in Boston that the city authorities mistook for terrorist bombs (even blowing one up, just to be safe). Well the story continues to develop, with two of the marketers responsible now being charged with criminal offences. What makes this sad but revealing is that one of these two is a Belorussian citizen who’s applying for asylum in the USA. If he’s convicted or enters a plea bargain, he’ll be deported. Only by winning totally or having the state drop its case can he avoid the penalties that brought him to the “Land of the Free” in the first place (usually, asylum seekers are fleeing imprisonment, torture or death).

The really daft thing is that the mistake here was made by the Boston authorities – these signs had been placed in ten cities around the USA weeks earlier, and only in Boston did this over-reaction happen. Is the USA really that paranoid these days?

Here, because the state feels embarrassed, it is taking legal action against someone who, in all likelihood, had no intention of creating a hoax bomb scare. He was merely doing an advertising job that he was paid to do. This outcome probably never occurred to him. And in a knee-jerk reaction, state and local authorities are exacting what could be a heavy price over a misunderstanding…
The trend that this shows in American thinking resembles McCarthyism, only stupider. The government has ceased with even the formality of asking questions, instead deciding to take the most punitive route possible before undertaking a half-hearted search for truth.
(From The Register.)

pax et bonum

Article posted at 09:21am on 02 February 2007
Category: General, Politics