back to article Borat's human rights restricted in Kazakhstan, US says

The forced closure of Sacha AliG Baron Borat Cohen's Borat.kz website has been listed by the US State Department as an example of the Kazakhstani government's restrictions on freedom of speech and other human rights abuses. The department issued strong criticism of the country's administration, pointing out that it has no …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Alex Wood

    Tut

    These Yanks just can't cope with a little competition.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What would America do?

    Ok, so if someone was to release a film portraying America as a "goat's-urine swilling, Jew-hating, sister-whoring nation" Would the American authorities want to remove any advertising for the film. No they wouldn’t! They would just throw anyone involved in the making of the film into guantanamo bay and claim they are all terrorists. Which one do you think is worse?

  3. Paul

    Identity theft.

    Is this refering to Kazakhstan or the US?

    "According to Reuters, the report also lists torture by police, poor prison conditions, arbitrary arrests, military hazing, restrictions on freedom of assembly, domestic violence against women, people trafficking and "severe limits on citizens' rights to change their government" as areas of concern."

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Labour too

    Well it is'nt just the Kazakh's who try and restrict freedom of speech because the Labour Party's lawyer wrote to my web hosting company to try and force me to withdraw a website that simply took the mickey out of Blunkett's poor answers on Mastermind .

    AS

  5. Terry Blay

    Deprivation of life??

    Deprivation of life... typical american style phrase - why not just say 'killing' or 'murder'?

    Sounds like another 'Precipitation Situation' to me. Do you think they talk like this at home with their families?

  6. classified

    Borat and torture

    Mixing all together Borat, domestic violence against women, people trafficking and political assassination undermine credibility of report. That is exactly kind of report Brat charcter would write.

  7. Arnold Lieberman

    Ho ho ho

    Good to see America-bashing is still popular. You guys should put your money where your mouths are, drop your copies of The Guardian and take the kids on holiday to Kazakhstan.

    The US may be being run by an idiot, but there's still got a long way to go before all the populations' freedoms are brought down to the level of some of the former Soviet republics.

    And before the bigots tell us that America got the goverment it chose, remember that 100 miillion Americans didn't vote for Bush. That's democracy in action! ;-)

  8. Liam

    Ha!

    you guys beat me to it!

    how the hell does the US have the right to query anyone these days. just because you are rich and corrupt means you are better eh?

    i mean the US has never tried to overthrow elected governments with the military has it? :) cough *bullsh1t* cough

  9. Steven Knox

    What America Would Do

    >Ok, so if someone was to release a film portraying America as a "goat's-urine swilling, Jew-hating, sister-whoring nation"

    Like say, anything by Michael Moore? Or perhaps anything on Comedy Central? Oh, here's a good one: a recent movie had this guy pretending to be a foreign reporter interviewing Americans, and they edited out the rational bits to showcase Americans as drunk, provincial, racist hypocrites. Whatever happened to that guy?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    US Culture of verbiage

    "Deprivation of life... typical american style phrase - why not just say 'killing' or 'murder'?"

    A lot of people misunderstand the US and assume because it was our colony, it is informed by an Anglo-Saxon culture.

    Not so.

    Aside a few million people living in a small North-Eastern zone of civilisation, the rest of the USA suffers from very strong historical Germanic influences.

    Bush, von Rumsfeldt, Eisenhower, Rooseveldt, Kissinger, etc...

    In their culture, "unlawful deprivation of life" comes to mind more spontaneously than "murder".

    (And so does doing dirty deals with 3rd-world despots such as Saddam & Suharto.......but that's another story...).

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's Arnold again (sure your name isn't Joe?)

    It is indeed good to see that America-bashing is still popular - gives one a bit of hope that there's some common-sense left in the rest of the world.

    For example, those 100 million Americans you were talking about, instead of demanding a decent alternative to Bush, voted for a man who refused to distance himself from most of Bush's atrocities but merely objected to the *manner* in which Bush had handled them (in August, 2004, when asked, "Knowing everything you know now, would you still have voted to give Bush the authority to attack Iraq?" Kerry answered "Yes" - and a similar 'Bush-Lite' posture characterized most of the rest of his campaign as soon has he had gotten the Democratic nomination locked up). Kind of like expressing a preference for a kinder, gentler Mussolini instead of that really nasty Hitler guy.

    We're a sorry excuse for a democracy these days, and the fact that we may not (yet) have declined to the level of countries like Kazakhstan (which of course hardly started out with our advantages, so while our absolute level of freedom may still be higher the trend-lines are not encouraging) is scant comfort. But indeed we do have the government that we deserve: it's just too bad that the rest of the world has to put up with it as well.

    - bill

  12. Anders Jensen

    domain Revoked

    Judging my the whois on borat.kz it doesnt look very revoked or they dpnt deleting domains when they revoke them ?

  13. Mark Lynch

    he's taking the piss out of the americans!

    In fairness I don't see what the Kazahks are worried about - it's the americans he's taking the piss out of. They come off so utterly ridiculous throughout the film. If they could see this they'd probably revoke the .tv domain, but luckily for us it's lost on them.

  14. Arnold Lieberman

    It's not Schwarzenegger either

    Notice I said chose, not deserve. None of us have the government we deserve.

    At least Americans have the chance to choose between scumbags, which is more than your average Turkman can do.

    Seriously, politicians the world over are pretty much all the same; the only difference is in how much power they wield and what they can get away with.

    That's why they're in politics, not IT.

    In America, and no doubt most Western nations it's the size of your election budget that gets you heard, and the amount of dirt you hold/backscratching you do that gets you in the position to fight in the first place.

    Agreed, the level of freedom enjoyed by us in the West appears to be diminishing, whether its because of British apathy or the American electoral system, or French corruption etc. etc. All western countries have their problems, and perfect representation (i.e. anarchism, which can only work with a population that gives a toss) becomes more unmanageable as the size of the population grows.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    laugh...

    people do make me laugh, slagging of western governments where you DO have freedom of speech and pretty much freedom of everything.. and defending the countries that have no freedoms hardly at all..

    all i can say is if you dont like the western country your in with your freedoms to speak out against them, feel free to leave and reside in your other country of choice, i know where id rather be and as much as the UK is crap its no where near as bad as say iraq

  16. Mike VandeVelde

    Talking With Americans

    Steven - you mean this guy?

    http://home.comcast.net/~wwwstephen/americans/

    rofl!

This topic is closed for new posts.