One month after the Merge, 51% of Ethereum blocks were compliant with OFAC standards,according to blockchain development Labrys' data, as MEV-Boost relays take over market share.

On Twitter, users highlighted how the figures represent a milestone towards censorship, as more blocks are under surveillance:

OFAC stands for the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the entity in charge of enforcing United States economic sanctions, while MEV-Boost relays are centralized entities that act as trusted mediators between block producers and block builders. In this way, all Ethereum proof-of-stake (PoS) validators can outsource their block production to other builders.

This metric tracks how many blocks were built by OFAC-compliant MEV-Boost relays since the Merge. Due to Ethereum's upgrade to a PoS consensus, MEV-Boost has been enabled to a more representative distribution of block proposers, rather than a small group of miners under proof-of-work (PoW).

Speaking to Cointelegraph in September, Lachan Feeney, Labrys' CEO, noted that in the case of hard censorship, that would mean that no matter how long you waited, no matter how much you paid, you would never get to a point where those sanctioned transactions would get included in the blockchain.

Under a hard censorship scenario, nodes would be forced by regulation to basically discard any blocks with any of these transactions in them.

He also noted that even with soft censorship, when sanctioned transactions would eventually be validated, it would likely result in long waits and high-priority fees, making the user experience substandard.

According to Labrys' page, there are currently seven major MEV-oost relays including Flashbots, BloXroute Max Profit, BloXroute Ethical, BloXroute Regulated, BlockNative, Manifold and Eden. "Of the 7 available major relays, only 3 do not censor according to OFAC compliance requirements. OFAC compliant relays will not include any transactions that interact with the Tornado Cash smart contract or other sanctioned wallet addresses as designated by OFAC," stated the company.

Continued here:

51% of Ethereum blocks are now compliant with OFAC standards, raising censorship concerns - Cointelegraph

In 2018, #MeToo, the hashtag people around the world use to discuss sexual harassment, was blocked on social media in China.

Internet users in the country formed a new hashtag to keep raising awareness. They used the characters for rice (, pronounced m) and bunny (, pronounced t).

They even used emoji to represent the phrase a clever and more effective way to dodge the censors.

Here are some other ways people in China are tricking the censors to post on social media.

A few months ago, people were posting a lot about the Netherlands on Chinese social media platform Weibo. Wake up, sleeping people of the Netherlands! said one post. Others lamented that the people of Amsterdam wanted their tulips back.

These Chinese social media users arent expressing a nascent interest in all things Dutch. Theyre talking about recent protests over frozen bank deposits in the province of Henan. Ordinarily, discussions about a controversial topic like this would be censored on Chinese social media, and posts containing the word Henan could be blocked or deleted. But Henan () sounds a lot like Helan (), the Mandarin word for the Netherlands. By swapping the names around, people were able to get past the censors and keep the conversation going.

This particular approach to internet speak substituting words that sound like or are spelled like others has been an essential part of being online in China for decades, allowing netizens to use the humor and cleverness of spoken Mandarin to dodge censorship.

Criticism and discussion of Chinas zero-Covid policy is often suppressed on social media. When an outbreak occurs, people are forced to undergo endless rounds of mandatory testing. To talk about it, people used a phrase to represent the concept again and again visually, repeating the character for again (, pronounced yu) an escalating number of times.

In each successive character ( shung, then ru, then zhu), appears another time.

The word again is repeated ten times across the four characters, hiding the phrase again and again in plain sight.

In China, people have perfected this kind of language play online as a way to discuss an ever-lengthening list of banned or controversial topics, creating an eternally shifting lexicon of online slang. The play on puns and homophones has been a long existing literary and cultural tradition, Shaohua Guo, author of The Evolution of the Chinese Internet, told Rest of World. The prevalence of Internet use, particularly social media, further popularizes the practice.

In July, Chinese social media site Weibo announced an effort to clean up the use of intentionally misspelled words and homophones, following on the heels of one of the countrys main internet regulators prohibiting their use in usernames. Weibo said it would refine its keyword identification model to be able to filter this type of coded language, but experts wonder if the company can really keep pace with online slang in China.

Xuan Wang, a sociolinguist at Cardiff University, pointed to memes, GIFs, and even images of everyday household objects, like an empty chair, that have been layered with subtext and additional meaning to demonstrate the diversity of online language in China. There are so many examples, China Digital Times keeps a running catalog. Being able to fully ban language like this as it continues to evolve is not realistic or tenable, Wang told Rest of World. Wherever there is censorship and control, there is resistance. There is no end to it. Thats how social life is.

To illustrate just how difficult this might be, weve collected some popular examples of censor-dodging online slang most of which were eventually banned, too.

If you want to: insult someones intelligenceyou call them: a paratrooperThe word for paratrooper (, pronounced snbng) sounds similar to a popular insult that Chinese internet company Baidu banned from its message forums in 2021. After people started calling each other paratroopers instead, state media published stories defending Chinas airborne forces. It forced Baidu into an awkward spot: the company knew what people were really using the word for, but it couldnt ban a word that honored Chinas military, and left the posts up.

If you want to talk about: censorshipyou mention: seafoodThe reference originated with the word for river crab (, pronounced hxi), which sounds nearly the same as the word for harmony (, pronounced hxi) if something had been censored, it had been harmonized.Once the characters for river crab were themselves banned, internet users subbed in other seafood. Now people say fish, anything you catch in the sea, said Wang. Not using the direct homophone, but words that refer in a zigzag way back to the censored word.

If you want another way to talk about: censorshipyou can invoke: a grass mud horsePerhaps the most widely known of the code words referencing online censorship, the meaningless phrase grass mud horse (, pronounced co n m) sounds nearly the same as a common insult to someones mother and was popularized in response to attempts to scrub vulgar content from the internet.

If you want to talk about: feeling burned outyou can say youre: lying flatSome young people in China have turned to lying flat (, pronounced tngpng), which refers to opting out of participation in the hypercompetitive cultures of work and school. This trend has been in response to intense working hours, a widening wealth gap, and what The New Yorker described in 2021 as a Sisyphean experience of being locked in competition that one ultimately knows is meaningless.

If you want to talk about: social distancingyou can say youre: sittingThe character for seat (, pronounced zu), contains two components representing people. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the winner of a creative character contest in Japan reinvented it, moving one of the people to the line below the other, to look like theyre socially distancing. The example was picked up online in China.Its pictorial, but its not part of the official corpus of characters, so how does anyone pick that up? said Wang, the Wales-based sociolinguist.

If you want to: quiet quityou can: touch fishA tactic thats essential for surviving any workplace with 996 hours, the phrase touching fish (, pronounced m y) means pretending to work appearing busy, while really just passing the time at the office. It comes from the idiom fishing in troubled waters, which refers to the idea that rough seas are easier to catch fish in, allowing a lazy angler to get a big haul.

If you want to talk about: Googleyou can say: valley doveThe word valley dove () is pronounced just like Google. The term became popular after Google relocated its servers from China to Hong Kong in 2010.Some users said that valley doves could not survive in China, referencing the fantastical creature to mock censorship.

If you want to talk about: your Covid-19 health codeyou can refer to: the green horseThese days, in China, being in possession of a green health code (, pronounced l m) means youre Covid-free and can move freely in public. This code is required for everything from entering a movie theater to boarding a flight. People have started talking about holding onto their green horse, pronounced the same way, in order to preserve their freedom. In April, a giant inflatable green horse was put up in a public square in Wuhan, making it an instant social media sensation.

If you want to: defy the censorsyou can write in: chrysanthemum scriptChrysanthemum script (, pronounced jhu wn) overlays the symbol for multiplying a number by one million in Cyrillic between characters.It obscures the characters, visually and in writing, hoping to confuse automated censorship tools while still remaining easily readable by a human. The Cyrillic character is no longer banned, leading some users to believe it is no longer an effective method.

If you want to: stop trying to make something betteryou can: let it rotAn approach that has become particularly popular with the lying-flat crowd, letting it rot (, pronounced bi ln) means to sit back and let a bad situation get worse.

If you want to talk about: government corruptionyou can say theres: govern-rotThis pun (, pronounced zhngf) sounds the same as government (, zhngf), but means totally rotten or completely corrupt.This homophone was used to discuss corrupt government officials online until it was banned.

If you want to: get away from it allyou can: runAs people get tired of economic challenges and Covid-19 lockdowns, those who have the means have been spreading the message: run. The Chinese words for profit and enjoyment both include the character , which is pronounced like the English word run. Through using it as slang, people have been daydreaming, and sharing tips online about getting visas or studying abroad.

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How Chinese citizens use puns on Weibo to talk about #MeToo and zero-Covid without being censored - Rest of World

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said people in the "highest positions of power" are denying objective truth and trying to bully people who disagree.

"It is conform or be canceled," Gabbard said Thursday night in an address to the Independent Women's Forum, calling the mindset "as un-American as it gets."

Gabbard spoke on the importance of defending what it means to be a woman as leaders in the Democratic Party refuse to define the term "woman" and slammed the left for embracing cancel culture and censorship.

TULSI GABBARD: US FACES DOMESTIC THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY FROM THE POWERFUL

"Those who deny the biological differences between a man and a woman are not only erasing women as a category of people, theyre denying the existence of objective reality, and the truth becomes whatever those in power want it to be," said

Gabbard pointed out that Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson could not define what a woman was during her Senate confirmation hearing.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris, speaks during an event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Friday, April 8, 2022, celebrating the confirmation of Jackson as the first Black woman to reach the Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

"We have an administration in the White House, and woke politicians in Washington, a Supreme Court justice, who are unable and unwilling to define what a woman is."

Gabbard pointed out the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party for claiming to be on the side of feminists but refusing to defend women's sports when female athletes object to competing against biological males

"How is it controversial to define what a woman is?" Gabbard asked. "It is the height of hypocrisy for those who claim to be feminists, who claim to be champions for women over decades to deny that there is such a thing as a woman."

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The former Democratic presidential candidate left the Democratic Party on Tuesday, denouncing the organization as an "elitist cabal."

Gabbard, who retired from the House of Representatives in 2021, attacked the institution in a nearly 30-minute video posted to her YouTube account. She did not announce plans to join the Republican Party or adopt any other political affiliation, however.

"I can no longer remain in todays Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism," Gabbard said in an excerpt posted to Twitter.

Fox News' Andres Hagstrom contributed to this report

Elizabeth Heckman is a digital production assistant with Fox News.

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Tulsi Gabbard blasts censorship, denial of 'objective truth' by the left: 'It is conform or be canceled' - Fox News

Artists and culture workers in Poland are increasingly self-censoring their work under pressure from the right-wing populist government, according to a new study.

The 100-page report, Cultural Control: Censorship and Suppression of the Arts in Poland, published today by the Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI), claims that instead of establishing an explicit, centralized censorship regime, the leading the Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwo; PiS) has taken a more devious approach, exerting its influence by infiltrating art institutions. Since it came to power in 2015, PiS has installed its allies in management at 23 major Polish cultural institutions and artistic events.

The AFI called for Polish and European Union legislators to step up the protection of artistic freedom and will soon initiate a strategic litigation program to challenge Polands acts of artistic suppression before the European Court of Human Rights and the E.U. Court of Justice, according to the initiatives co-executive director Sanjay Sethi.

A protester standing in front of a banner that reads PoliticiansHands off! of the exhibition in April 2017 in Gdansk, Poland, the same day the Supreme Administrative Court ruled on the de facto liquidation of the World War II Museum and a change in its director. (Photo by Michal Fludra/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

But the ongoing war in Ukraine could be an obstacle to concrete action. Although the European Commission in 2017 initiated a procedure under Article 7 to assess whether Poland was at risk of breaching E.U.s common values, the country is currently a critical political ally against Russia and they have taken a strong stance against the war in Ukraine, Sethi told Artnet News. My fear is that Western countries will back off of Poland due to its strategic importance in countering Russia.

The report offered a birds-eye view of the deteriorating situation in Poland by interviewing artists and culture workers and taking stock of changes in the countrys legal framework and administrative structure that limit minority perspectives from entering the public discourses, prevent government criticism from gaining legitimacy, and restrict how artists and creatives can express themselves over the past six years.

One of the conservative governments most effective legal weapons, according to the report, is its blasphemy law, which is regularly used to punish creative expressions capable of harming the sanctity of the Catholic Church. The number of related charges jumped from 10 in 2016 to 29 in 2020, and the number of cases filed with prosecutors climbed from 90 in 2018 to 146 in 2020.

Jarosaw Suchan. Courtesy of Muzeum Sztuki.

Among the recent cases, at least nine were related to artists, including the 2019 arrest of Elbieta Podlena for handing out a work depicting the Virgin Mary with her halo painted with the rainbow colors of the LGBTQ+ pride flag.

Such high-profile cases have already caused widespread fear of legal or other repercussions for controversial work among the local arts community, particularly among LGBTQ+ artists and culture workers, said Johanna Bankston, AFIs human rights research officer. PiSs strategic use of over-broad blasphemy and defamation laws to punish artists for critical work is among the most pressing issues in the report.

Brankston recalled speaking with a lesbian curator who feared she would be dismissed from her position at a major Polish museum if her boss were to find out about her sexual orientation because of the public homophobic comments from the institutions head, who targeted LGBTQ+ employees in the past.

Some artists who expressed fears of legal ramifications and the loss of professional opportunities have had to rethink the theme of their work to avoid controversy, Bankston added. As an E.U. member state beholden to democratic values, Polands lack of effort to protect LGBTQ+ individuals rights and promote their acceptance in society is extremely alarming.

People with bananas demonstrate outside Warsaws National Museum. 29 April, 2019, Warsaw, Poland after gallery removes feminist art featuring bananas. Photo by Krystian Dobuszynski, NurPhoto via Getty Images.

The report also accuses the right-wing government of politicizing the countrys Ministry of Culture and National History through the appointment of PiS party loyalists to promote its nationalist, conservative political views.

Among the staff changes was the 2019 dismissal of Magorzata Ludwisiak as director of the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, the replacement of Hanna Wrblewska with a painter and drummer as interim director of Zachta National Gallery of Art, also in Warsaw, and the ouster of Jarosaw Suchan, longtime chief of Muzeum Sztuki in d, who was replaced by Andrzej Biernacki, a painter and the founder of a small private gallery with no institutional experience, this spring.

By unilaterally appointing hard-line right-wingers in nearly all key state cultural institutions, spanning art, literature, historical memory, theaters, and public media, the party can simply claim that artistic production is happening organically, when in reality they are curating what the public sees and hears, Sethi concluded.

See the article here:

Self-Censorship Among Artists and Museum Workers Is on the Rise in Poland, a New Report Finds - artnet News

Last weekend, the Orange County Museum of Art opened its long-awaited new home, a $94 million building 14 years in the making, with the return of the California Biennial. Missing from the festivities was artist Ben Sakoguchi, who has said that the institution rescinded his invitation to participate in the show due to swastika imagery in his painting.

The censorship controversy, which Sakoguchi explained in detail on his website, threatens to cast a pall over what Surface magazine previously called a nice feel-good story and moment of triumph for Orange County.

A native of San Bernardino who now lives in Pasadena, the 84-year-old artist, who as a child was imprisoned with his family at a Japanese internment camp in Arizona, was among 20 local artists selected to appear in California Biennial 2022: Pacific Gold.

Four days before the exhibitions October 8 opening, he shared on his website a detailed timeline of the events leading up to his ultimate exclusion from the show.

Ben Sakoguchi, Comparative Religions 101 (2014/2019). Photo courtesy of the artist.

Curators Elizabeth Armstrong, Gilbert Vicario, and Essence Harden extended the invitation to him in January. On June 24, they told Sakoguchi that they specifically wanted to show his Comparative Religion 101, a massive, 16-panel painting packed with references to different world religions. It was to be the artists first time showing the work.

The central panel shows the tiny figure of Albert Einstein overlooking the Grand Canyon, based on a real photograph of the scientist. Surrounding the scenic view are depictions of giant Buddhas, depictions of God in the style of everyone from Michelangelo to Matt Groening, so-called relics of Jesus Christ such as the Holy Foreskin and wood from the True Cross, and visions of the Virgin Mary appearing in everything from a condom to a turtles underbelly, among other imagery that blends religion, satire, politics, and pop culture.

The swastika appears twice in the painting: Once next to the Free Indian Legion, a group of Sikh prisoners of war who fought for Germany, and again on a flag waving behind Japans World War II-era emperor, Hirohito, and a samurai in full armory, accompanied by the label Samurai God.

Ben Sakoguchi, Comparative Religions 101 (2014/2019), detail. Photo courtesy of the artist.

In both contexts, the swastika seems to serve double duty, referencing both its embrace by Nazis during World War II, and also its long history as a symbol of good luck and prosperity in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain faiths.

The museum did not responded to inquiries from Artnet News, but a representative told Los Angeles Magazine that organizing the Biennial was an iterative process, with artworks being considered throughout the curatorial process, up until the opening. Ultimately the artist was not included in the exhibition.

The first sign that there were any issues with the work came on August 19, when the museums chief curator, Courtenay Finn, informed Sakoguchis representatives that questions have been raised about content of Comparative Religion 101, by OCMA education department.

Ben Sakoguchi, Comparative Religions 101 (2014/2019), detail. Photo courtesy of the artist.

In the coming days, the museum sent the artist a list of 17 questions about the work, one of which specifically asked about the use of xenophobic, violent, and racist symbols, imagery, and language. There was no specific mention of the swastika. OCMA also asked if Sakoguchi could prepare some audio and visual recordings talking about the piece.

He agreed, and began preparing a selection of slideshows. All seemed well. On September 4, one of the curators, Vicario, told the Los Angeles Times that Sakoguchis piece was to be among the biennials highlights.

I find [Comparative Religions 101] powerful because hes an artist who has been at this for about 40 years who has a visual literacy and ability to illustrate his particular view of the world through this format. Its very satiricalin a way, it reminds me of part Mad magazine and part political cartoons, he said. You get an immediate visceral reaction. Its completely present and of the moment and unlike anything we saw.

Ben Sakoguchi, Comparative Religions 101 (2014/2019). Photo courtesy of the artist.

A few days later, Sakoguchi sent in his written responses to the museums questions, explaining that Ive been on the receiving end of xenophobia and racism for most of my existence, and have lived though a long period of time where continued violence, harm, and negative stereotypes were widely tolerated and swept under the rug. I favor selectively shining a light on the offending symbols, imagery, and language, both past and present, as a reminder of our history and of how far we still have to go as a society and of how vigilant we need to be.

The museum had also asked how it might prepare for audience members who might be uncomfortable or triggered in some way by the painting and its imagery.

I have no advice for the museum in that regard. Ive never believed my role as an artist was to make work that ensured comfort, Sakoguchi responded. My paintings are purposefully subject to alternate interpretations, and a reading of Comparative Religions 101 that provokes anger is certainly possible if the viewer is a literalist. But I cant explain the humor and irony in the work to a literalist, any more than I can explain red to a person who is (red/green) colorblind.

On September 12, Sakoguchi was told the painting had been rejected because the museum will not show any work that depicts a swastika, he said.

He had not yet completed his work on audio-visual slideshows about the painting, a set of supplementary materials that includes 16 examples of pre-Nazi swastikas.

Ben Sakoguchi, Comparative Religions 101 (2014/2019). Photo courtesy of the artist.

Through Lee Foley, a director at Sakoguchis Los Angeles gallery, Bel Ami, the artist declined to comment further on the controversy. But Foley confirmed what he told Hyperallergic, that the museum then reached out to the gallery to try to arrange a loan of an alternative Sakoguchi work without involving the artist.

When the gallery said it would respect Sakoguchis decision not to participate, the museum pushed back in an email.

Your work needs to assert its rightful place within the biennial as a reminder that communities of color are the social and economic backbone of this country and of California, in particular, the curators wrote in a letter quoted by Hyperallergic. Your participation in the biennial is a radical act of cultural resistance and we need your artistic voice to state loudly and clearly that we will not cower to right wing political agendas that are attempting to culturally whitewash our histories and our truths.

At the last minute, according to the gallery, the museum even offered to includeComparative Religion 101 after all, but Sakoguchi remained unswayed. Ultimately, the biennial opened without him.

California Biennial 2022: Pacific Gold is on view at the Orange County Museum of Art, 3333 Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa, California, October 8, 2022February 26, 2023.

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Artist Ben Sakoguchi Has Accused the California Biennial of Censorship for Excluding His Painting - artnet News

Crypto Influencer Eric Wall Talks Censorship Resistance At Devcon

When investor and social media star Eric Wall took the main stage at Ethereums marquee conference in Bogota, Colombia Thursday afternoon, he came with a warning.

When he stepped off a half hour later, Skylar Weaver, the conferences organizer, told the crowd they may look back on Walls speech as the most important of the 444 talks at Devcon VI.

Distilling an argument he has made to his 100,000 followers on Twitter over the past two months, Wall said Ethereum is facing an existential crisis in the wake of The Merge, the highly anticipated upgrade implemented last month.

Some of the core people in Ethereum feel that censorship resistance has basically failed, Wall told The Defiant in a brief interview after his talk. I dont agree with that, I think weve got to fight until the entirety of Ethereum gets burned down before we allow this to happen. But not everyone is as idealistic. But Im trying to galvanize the community.

In August, the US government sanctioned Tornado Cash, a DeFi protocol used to obscure the flow of cryptocurrencies. Tornado Cash is popular with users seeking privacy on Ethereum but has also been used by cybercriminals seeking to launder stolen crypto.

A wave of censorship followed, with crypto companies proactively blocking transactions to and from Tornado Cash and, in some instances, users who had previously interacted with the sanctioned protocol.

When Ethereums distributed team of developers implemented The Merge, it changed the method by which the blockchain reaches consensus on the order and validity of transactions. It cut the energy use of Ethereum by an estimated 99%, eliminating one of its key criticisms.

But it also empowered a new set of middlemen that contribute to the ordering of transactions, chief among them a protocol called Flashbots.

According to data compiled on mevwatch.info, more than half of the blocks produced on Ethereum Friday were censoring transactions to comply with US government sanctions due to the participation of Flashbots and its competitors.

Flashbots announced new technology at Devcon on Friday, which it says will address concerns regarding its censorship of transactions on Ethereum. The code for the software, dubbed Suave, will be released in the coming weeks.

Several technological solutions to base-layer censorship have been proposed and should be explored, Wall noted. In the event that they fail, however, the Ethereum community would be left with little recourse other than a user-activated soft fork, or USAF, according to Wall.

Such a move would eliminate the stake of censoring entities in Ethereum. The potential cost of such a move is enormous, however, and stands to impact the entities themselves as well as the retail investors on whose behalf the Ether has been staked.

Censorship on the blockchain can take several forms of varying severity, Wall said, and he suggested increasingly severe punishments, culminating in a user-activated soft fork, for entities that censor transactions.

I recognize that, you know, Im arbitrarily coming up with rules for slashing [censoring entities] stake in Ethereum, he acknowledged on stage. And this shouldnt be something thats arbitrary. This is something that should be a policy that we all agree on.

Wall also suggested that Ethereums most prominent spokespeople, including founder Vitalik Buterin, avoid the debate altogether.

Imagine Vitalik saying, Were going to slash this validator, were going to slash that validator, Wall said. That would just go back to everyone criticizing us and saying, The overlords of Ethereum decide who gets to keep their stake or not!

A user-activated soft fork would, among other things, create two versions of Ethereum one compliant with government regulations, and one not. With much of the market capitalization of Ethereum tied up in tokens pegged to the US dollar tokens issued by companies vulnerable to government regulation the compliant chain could receive a majority of Ethereums market capitalization.

From my perspective, the censored fork doesnt have any value, Wall said. I will go with the rebellion fork as long as I can, and if that fails, then the Ethereum project has failed, and I will go and do something else.

Ether is down nearly 20% since The Merge was implemented on Sept. 15.

ETH Price, Source: The Defiant Terminal

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'We've Got To Fight Until The Entirety of Ethereum Gets Burned Down' - The Defiant - DeFi News

Declare, in public, that you do not think a man can become a woman and you will quickly discover the limits that are currently placed on free speech. More than any other issue, it is transgender ideology that drives cancel culture, social-media bans, campus No Platforming and all the other forms of censorship that have become horribly routine features of public life. And despite powerful trans lobby groups like Mermaids and Stonewall finally facing some welcome scrutiny in recent weeks and months, this censorship continues largely unabated.

Just this week, Maya Forstater, who lost her job in 2019 for speaking out about womens rights, has had her Twitter account suspended after she criticised Mermaids for its alleged safeguarding failures. Forstaters offence was to have shared pornographic images that a former Mermaids employee, Darren Mew, had created and had previously shared himself, without facing any censure at the time.

This truly beggars belief. A man who is known to have taken part in pornographic photoshoots was employed by a childrens charity. His role granted him access to online forums with vulnerable children. He was also expected to attend events and residential weekends for teenagers. All the while, he maintained a public Instagram account, posting images such as one of himself dressed as a schoolgirl, leaning back on a bed, with his legs spread. Despite these posts, which date back to February 2021 according to The Times, he kept his job, salary and social-media accounts, seemingly until this month. But when a woman dared to ask whether this was appropriate, she was silenced by Twitter.

Forstater was suspended from Twitter following mass complaints from other users, who accused her of posting nudes without permission. It turns out there really are people so lacking in a moral compass they would defend the rights of a porn model who works at a childrens charity, while complaining about a woman who raised the alarm.

Of course, Twitter did not need to act on these complaints. But social-media companies have long been in hock to transgender ideology. Twitter regularly disappears people at the request of trans activists from feminist Meghan Murphy back in 2018 to gay-rights campaigner Dennis Kavanagh earlier this year.

And of course, if social-media companies do not act on the grievances of the trans lobby, the police are all too ready to step up to the plate. Just last week, journalist Caroline Farrow claimed that police officers turned up at her home, allegedly to arrest her on suspicion of malicious communication and harassment. Apparently, her crime had been to upset transgender activists.

Not long before this in July, womens rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen was investigated by police for being untoward about paedophiles, in a YouTube video she made about pre-teens performing in drag. Last month, Sussex Police warned Twitter users that misgendering a transgender paedophile could be a hate crime. Anyone might now think that looking after the hurt feelings of paedophiles has become a police priority.

Trans activists resort to censorship because, high on their assumed moral superiority, they are not prepared to engage in debate. On campus, gender-critical academics such as Selina Todd and Heather Brunskell-Evans have been repeatedly No Platformed. At Sussex University, Kathleen Stock was hounded out of her job by intimidatory trans activists. Academics are often keen to join in the witch-hunting of their colleagues, usually by signing petitions denouncing gender-critical views.

Even just drawing attention to this censorious climate can land you in trouble. Earlier this year, Laura Favaro, at City University, tried to do some research into how freely gender can be discussed in academia, by speaking to both sides of the debate. Leading scholars quickly sought to discredit her work and planned to act in response.

This is not just a university phenomenon. In June this year, Nottingham City Council cancelled a talk by feminist Julie Bindel because of the speakers views on transgender rights. And in 2018, Leeds Council stopped feminist group Womans Place UK from holding a meeting in the citys civic hall. Even in schools, girls are not able to challenge transgenderism without risking abuse from their peers and exclusion from the classroom. There are calls for gender-critical books to be pulled from book shops or to be cancelled pre-publication. Most brutally censorious are the masked-up and sometimes tooled-up Men in Black who attend womens rights rallies expressly to intimidate participants.

This censorship is not a bug in the system of trans lobbying it is the primary goal. A policy of no debate has long been a touchstone for transgender advocates. Mermaids maintains that the rights of trans children and adults are an indivisible part of human rights, and that they are not up for debate. Stonewall equates any debate on gender issues with questioning trans peoples right to exist. Documentary-maker Olly Lambert has quipped that it was easier to get an interview with Hamas and the IDF than it was with the CEO of Mermaids, Susie Green.

This refusal to debate is backed by claims that all discussion calls into question the right of transgender people to exist or that it invalidates their experiences. Talk of invalidation and the right to exist nudges us to think of the trans activists trump card claims that transgender children are placed at risk of suicide when their gender identities are not affirmed. Never mind that these suicide statistics are highly contested. We are not meant to question any of the trans lobbys claims.

It is appalling that people who challenge transgender orthodoxies are still being censored, just as the dangers of promoting transgender ideology to children are becoming harder to deny. To bring down the transgender house of cards once and for all, it is vital we insist on the right to free speech without limits.

Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won, which you can order here.

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Why the trans lobby loves censorship - Spiked

Dr. Phil McGraw spoke to Sean Hannity on Tuesday to share his view and concern on the rise of cancel culture and speech censorship, as it permeates into society.

He shared how he always thought individuals went to the universities to hear other people's ideas - "not necessarily agree with them, but at least learn something about what they had to say."

Dr. Phil also addressed that there are now surveys that say anywhere from 15 to 30% of students think it's okay to yell down the speaker that you don't agree with.

"We're just getting to the point that we are in a bubble and we don't want to talk to anyone that doesn't agree with our thinking," the talk show host admitted. "If someone says something that is offensive to our sensibilities, then people go on the attack and they may choose a wrong word," he said.

Dr. Phil discussed canceled words and phrases with his audience and guests. (CBS)

Dr. Phil referred to a Cato Institute survey revealing how 62% of Americans are afraid to speak out for fear that they will say something they shouldn't say.

In a recent episode of "Dr. Phil," he asked his audience, how many of them are afraid to speak up or say something in the show and recalled how the studio audience looked like "the wave at Texas Stadium."

DR. PHIL GUESTS DUEL OVER CANCEL CULTURE: YOU CANT SAY THAT!'

Dr. Phil outlined that the reason why many individuals have a fear of speaking out is not because people think, feel or behave in the wrong way, but are just afraid they'll run a red light and the word police will get all over them.

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Joshua Comins is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. He joined Fox News in 2020.

Joshua covers media, politics and breaking news, and has covered the annual CPAC conference for Fox News Digital.

He also photographs and documents current events.

Joshua is a New Jersey native and graduated from Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida with a B.S. in Communication. Story tips can be sent to joshua.comins@fox.com.

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Dr. Phil speaks out on the dangers of cancel culture and censorship - Fox News

After seeing crackdowns on protests in Iran and Russia, Proton VPN created a new feature to disguise VPN traffic and sneak past government censors. Proton is following through on its anti-censorship stance by making this feature, known as Stealth, available to free VPN users. The company is even sending the app directly to Iranians by request.

When I spoke with Samuele Kaplun, Proton's engineering director, he explained that Proton VPN's Stealth feature is based on WireGuard over TLS. He said that Proton VPN is taking WireGuard, which is normally based on UDP, and wrapping it in TLS and sending the traffic over port 443. In essence, Stealth effectively disguises VPN traffic as more humdrum HTTPS traffic, which Kaplun says makes it much harder for deep packet inspection to spot.

Proton VPN told me that Stealth mode was already quietly available on Android and is now functional on iOS and macOS. Windows will have to come later. Android was given priority because of the ubiquity of Android devices, especially outside of the US.

"The people who need it the most are using mobile, and mostly Android," Kaplun said.

I should note that Proton has been criticized for not living up to its privacy claims with its Mail product, but the company says it addressed the issue and the VPN was not affected.

Kaplun was very clear that this new feature is for bypassing censorship in countries that are using deep packet inspection to block VPNs, specifically Iran and Russia. He emphasized that a major impetus was the reporting on major protests in both of those countries and alleged law enforcement crackdowns that followed.

It appears to be working. Kaplun told me that Proton VPN's monitoring architecture has already seen more connections from Russia and Iran. The company is also hearing directly from users. "And in Russia in particularNow that we've introduced it, people are giving feedback that they are now back online," said Kaplun.

Normally, VPN companies tell me about their ethics and censorship stance, but quickly move on to how fast their VPN is or how many streaming services it can access. Proton VPN, meanwhile, described the lengths it took to get its app into people's hands.

The Proton VPN website is blocked in Iran, Kaplun explained, and Iranians began contacting the company through its customer service system. The company responded by providing the Android APK directly to people through these support exchanges. The support staff instructed customers to sideload the updated application that includes the new Stealth feature.

"We believe that the people who need to bypass censorship the most are the same people who are not necessarily able to pay for [a VPN service]," said Kaplun, who cited embargoes against countries like Russia that would prevent companies from doing business with everyday Russians.

"Accessing the internet is a human right, so we're doing our part."

This meeting reminded me of similar conversations I've had with representatives from a different VPN company. Over the years, they would often talk about how important it was that they offered a free version and how they saw it as their way to give back to the world and support a free and open internet. Their representatives told me more than once how their company's name was painted on walls by protestors.

And then they would tell me that their company was also obligated to monetize their free users with advertisements.

Those free servers, they'd remind me, cost money, after all. And they had such an enormous free user base that it would be foolish not to monetize them. How could they justify not doing so? It always struck me as practical, logical, and deeply cynical. The freedom to access information is a right only unalienable as long as it also pays the bills.

To be fair, Proton surely believes that talking about its ideals is good for business, and it isn't alone. IVPN and Mullvad VPN offer extremely low-cost services with very strong transparency and privacy protections. TunnelBear VPN has also long put its values at the forefront.

Even outside the world of security and privacy, technology companies increasingly want to sell us on the idea that they are moral entities and that purchasing their products does good for the world. These days, everything from your phone to smart speakers claims to be about bringing humanity together or something to that effect.

But very few companies seem as hopeful as Proton VPN. Proton believes that combating censorship will make the world a better place and that technology can improve people's lives, not just monetize them in new and more complex ways.

The world has seemed short on hope for many years, and the technology industry especially so. Although I would love to see more companies take a page from Proton VPN and give more away for free, I'll settle for a little optimism that's not just for marketing's sake.

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Proton VPN's New Stealth Feature Helps Fight Censorship in Iran and Russia - PCMag

John Solomon, CEO and Editor-In-Chief of Just The News, joins Glenn to expose The Election Integrity Partnership a coalition of entities that responds to censorship requests by urging social media and Big Tech platforms to throttle certain posts, users, or pages. And, Solomon explains, this is something theyre doing in conjunction with the U.S. State Department: Its the largest federally sanctioned censorship operation ever uncovered in America, he says. But, it gets even worse. One of the players involved in this all is Robbie Mook former Hillary Clinton campaign manager AND one of the culprits in the Russian collusion hoax to take down Donald Trump. Solomon explains the 2 reasons why Mooks involvement is so significant and what this means for U.S. censorship moving forward

TranscriptBelow is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Our good friend and a serious journalist, John Solomon. Welcome to the program, sir. How are you?

JOHN: Good to be with you, Glenn.

GLENN: Can you recap this story for anybody who may have missed it or may have forgotten about it, that you broke three or four weeks ago?

JOHN: Yeah. And there's a big development today I'll get to. But the election integrity partnership, was a three -- four-person, or four-entity -- private entity that came together. Two universities. Cyber community companies. And they formed this sort of left-leaning project that worked with the Homeland Security Department, and the State Department, to create a concierge ticket system, that people could file tickets, saying, I think this information will use the election integrity project. Go on behalf of us. And ask the social media companies to throttle the post, delete the post, or block the post, or flag the post.

And they did this. And they did it with significant reach. According to their own after action report, which we obtained. They impacted 4800 URLs, websites, 4800 of them, 20 journalists. More than two dozen conservative influencers. And by the way, we're one of the news organizations that was censored or blocked by this.

GLENN: Right.

We are too, and I was named as a super spreader.

JOHN: You were.

GLENN: I mean, there's a chart that you obtained, introducing the narrative, mainstreaming it, and then super spreaders. And this was about the Colour Revolution.

Which I don't know any -- I don't know who -- Beattie is. I don't know any of the others who were saying this. We were doing our even independent research.

And then it says -- Darren Beattie appears on Tucker Carlson. The next one is: Significant influencer pickup. Glenn Beck and mass spreading, sharing dynamics, as users post stories, and claims to Facebook groups.

So I'm a super spreader.

JOHN: Yeah. Welcome to the club. It's just amazing. The idea that -- and the country that was founded with the First Amendment. The very first one that our Founding Fathers gave us. Free speech. To see this collaboration, DHS sanctions. The State Department actually sends requests.

Helmuth didn't send any requests to actually censor the State Department. Private groups, including the Democratic National Committee did.

And this partnership itself, did a lot of its own flagging under the name of the government, forwarding it to -- 22 million tweets. Social media posts were impacted by the targeting that this group did.

Thirty-five percent of the time, when the request was maid of Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Google, the request was granted by social media.

That's a pretty good batting average. I know some baseball players that would take a batting average. A really, really significant -- the largest federally sanctioned censorship operation ever uncovered in America. And today we have a brand-new development. It turns out that one of the players, who was instructing the Homeland Security department during the 2020 election was a Harvard University entity, traded by Hillary Clinton's former campaign manager, Robbie.

Now, why is that significant? First off, another left-leaning person involved in the machinery. But it was Robbie, in 2016, who testified during the Sussmann trial, recently, he and Hillary Clinton sanctioned the idea of leaking key things about the Russia collusion there. The fake Russian collusion narrative, to the news media, even though they weren't sure it was true.

Think about that, in 2016, he's the perpetrator in one of the largest disinformation campaigns ever pulled out in American electorate history, and four years later, he's advising his group at the developer center, at Harvard University is advising the government on how to fight this information

GLENN: This is craziness. Is there anyone picking this up, to break this up? Or is this just getting worse?

JOHN: Absolutely -- well, it's definitely accelerating.

The group is back in action. They said they got the gang back together in a tweet post just a few days ago.

There are multiple members of Congress that have jumped in. Johnson, the Senate Homeland Committee.

James Comer, likely to be the chairman of the House Oversight Committee. Jim Jordan, likely, to be the chairman of judiciary committee, if Republicans gain control, Chuck Grassley, likely to be Senate judiciary community chairman. They're all asking questions. My understanding is, there may be a preservation letter going out in the next couple of days.

GLENN: What is it? Okay.

So, John, can I ask a question that maybe you're not prepared to answer. But --

JOHN: Sure.

GLENN: You know, just based on my gut, and I could very well be wrong, but this doesn't feel like an election that's going to be close.

And I hope it's not. One way or another, I hope it's not.

Because I don't think people are going to believe, that it wasn't fixed. The -- the Democrats will know that it was fixed. But if they lose, they'll say, it was the other side fixing it. And conservatives are so concerned about the last election. And it feels at least in Texas, it feels like a -- a red wave.

And I'm not suggesting that it feels like a 20-point margin. But it feels like we will win if they are close. We would win.

Could be wrong.

Are these elections safe? Are they secure?

JOHN: Well, listen, they're -- we have a much better handle on the rule changes, that really tipped the election to the favor of Democrats in 2020.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court rulings. Arizona legislation. Georgia legislation. Florida legislation. Texas legislation.

A lot of the states, particularly the red states, and the battle ground states, have attempted to fix the issues, that a lot of people believe hijacked the 2020 election. There are some states where the issues aren't fixed. Pennsylvania is a concern for a lot of people.

There has been some unusual activity in Colorado.

I think 30,000 registrations went out. We just confirmed this, this morning, to noncitizens who aren't supposed to vote in Colorado. So there are still failures and mistakes. We know Iran hacked into the 2020 election. We learned that a year after it occurred.

But I think the system is more insulated against the sort of tactics that the Democrats and liberals and their bureaucratic friends and the election bureaucracy, try to use during the covid-19 are wiser, smarter.

There are more election poll watchers ready to go and train, something that I think Glenn Youngkin did very well. And praised the model for the Republican Party, nationally. So I think people have greater confidence, that the system will be better oiled, less craziness.

And, also, changes to rules that they've done in the name of COVID-19, have been rolled back in a big way.

And I think another important thing happened two weeks ago, Glenn. I don't know if a lot of people paid attention. Because it happened on a Friday night.

But an Obama-era judge, Obama-appointed judge, declared that the whole concept that made Stacey Abrams, the national figure that she is, that Georgia is the epicenter of a 21st century Jim Crow race this voting system, an Obama judge struck down every count of her lawsuit. That sends a pretty powerful message to Americans and Georgians alike, that just asking for someone's ID is not racist. Checking somebody's citizenship is not racist.

Having a court declare that. By the way, a court led by a Democratic judge is I think, probably a very important force, going into this election.

GLENN: Let me switch subjects.

Ukraine. First of all, why is the teacher's union head, Randi Weingarten over on the front lines of Ukraine today?

I mean, I'm not even going to joke about it.

Anyway, why is she over there?

She's assessing the situation. What kind of payoff favors are -- what is happening there?

JOHN: Yeah. It's a mystery for a lot of people. She obviously has been over there. She says that she's trying to help the Ukrainian schools weather and perform the middle of a war. Who knows what's really going on there.

Listen, Ukraine has long been a favor to liberal Democrats. They have championed these causes. And, you know, they're in the middle of a brutal war. Putin's attack on Sunday was a brutal attack, because it targeted civilians.

It killed lots of people, unnecessarily.

I don't know what actually motivates are there. We're trying to find out. We put some FOIAs in at the State Department.

Because the State Department probably would have cleared or been -- we found out beyond what she said, what's there.

But, listen, this is a very dangerous war. It is already -- had enormous consequences on the economy of the European Union. Enormous human consequences to the Ukrainian people.

And Vladimir Putin is acting more and more desperate, and I think a lot of people have to look for, do we have a president? Do we have a leadership in the world, that can find an offramp?

Right now, stop this war, and try to create a negotiated settlement.

GLENN: Does it seem like we're looking for an off-ramp to you?

JOHN: I had an amazing interview with Victoria Coates over the weekend. Former Deputy National Security Adviser. She said, that Joe Biden is missing the opportunity.

He has not defined to the American people, what the endgame is, why we're spending this money.

And, well, he tried to find the exit strategy beyond regime change in Russia. And there's no answer. She said, this is a sign of an extraordinary weak leadership, that Joe Biden has brought before foreign policy.

GLENN: Yesterday, we had our airports, the outward facing websites went down. It looks like the Russians, not the government, but probably a front organization, claimed responsibility, that they are going to start to hassle and make our lives more difficult by hacking into systems here.

JOHN: Yeah. That's -- that's something that we're seeing increasingly -- and including indictments. There was an indictment about three weeks ago, of some Iranian hackers, who were targeting a key infrastructure, particularly energy infrastructure.

You see the airport this week, and we know the Iranians successfully hacked a database. Let's keep this in mind. The guy who went on 60 Minutes, said, we have a completely secure proof election in 2020.

We later found out a year later, because of an indictment, because of the FBI and Justice Department. That wasn't true. That, actually, beginning in the summer of 2020, our homeland security department, the agency knew that we had been penetrated by Iran.

They were able to get into one state's voter database, and steal 150,000 American's identity. That's a really remarkable revelation that was kept from us, during the 2020 election. The infiltration of state-sponsored hackers is growing every day in our infrastructure.

It's way behind being insulated. I think that's one of the concerns. We have hospital systems. Energy systems. Water systems. All being penetrated and tested every day. And this is the next front of warfare. Right?

The digital warfare is -- I remember it about a decade ago, was Leon Podesta, the CIA director said we're going to have a digital Pearl Harbor, one day, because we're just not ready for it.

And I think the efforts to get that digital Pearl Harbor, started by our enemies, are growing by the day.

GLENN: If you could, hang on for one minute. I want to take a one-minute break, and then back in with John Solomon, who is just -- he's one of the guys that I really trust. If you don't read just the news, you should. Justthenews.com.

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(music)

John, I don't know if you follow the story. I watched it a couple of times. First, the New York Times came out and said, that's a conspiracy theory. And then the very next day, Gasgon from LA put a warrant out for the arrest of this voting machine company, and he was arrested, I think in Michigan, or she, and brought to California because of the transfer of information to China, which they say was a mistake.

But I'm not sure I believe that. Do you know what this story is really all about?

JOHN: Well, this is a really important story.

First off, it's a far left prosecutor, that has brought it.

But acknowledging that this company, this Michigan-based company appears to have stored valuable data about the election poll workers and election system workers on a server in China.

And that this was not only a breach of the contract according to the district attorney's office. It was a national security risk. And it shows, once again, just like the Iran hacking deal we talked about a few days ago. Our foreign adversaries are looking for any way to steal data. To steal identities in America. To influence elections. To influence corporate business decisions.

And this possibility, this idea that this was sitting on the servers, while they were trying to penetrate or not. The indictment is silent on that issue right now.

But it shows it was -- at the very least, very sloppy. And put, you know, this software. This poll chief software, in a location where it could easily be penetrated by the Chinese.

GLENN: But here's what doesn't make sense to me. That's a violation of a corporate contract. What's the criminality here?

JOHN: False representations in the contract, is basically the -- and if you look at the indictment, right? There's a representation that they weren't doing what they were doing.

But there's also, it says, in the charges that were released by the district attorney. A suspicion of theft of personal identifying information. A suspicion of theft.

We don't know more about that yet. We expect more of that, when the extradition of court hearings begin going on. But a lot of cross-pollination. A Michigan county -- L.A. County working together to unravel this case. And bring in this indictment. A lot of eyes are on this, because it goes against the grain of a lot of narratives of the left. But in this case, one of the left's favorite. Gasgon, he's the one bringing this case, and my understanding is, the FBI has been involved. There's a lot of different pieces of -- different players still trying to figure it out --

GLENN: Yeah. That's one of the reasons why I don't trust.

Oh, it's Gasgon and the FBI. Oh, well, I feel safe now. One last thing. You know, I'm seeing something. And I just can't believe is true. But I think it is. They're not going to do anything about Hunter Biden, are they?

JOHN: We'll see. Listen, I think there was a significant amount of activity before the grand jury this spring, that brought forth the sort of evidence that would support charges for tax evasion, or tax violations.

I think for improper foreign lobbying, is one of the things that I worried about people being asked about in the grand jury. This gun charge came in late. Obviously other people have been charged with lying about using drugs, on their -- on their federal firearms license.

So I think at the end of the day, right after the election, the prosecutors will make a final decision. I think there are three outcomes, right?

One, they could cut a deal. That's the thing -- most likely thing will happen. Although a lawyer for Hunter says, two, there will be an indictment. Or, three, there will be some dispute, between the line U.S. attorney and the main justice, that will freeze this up.

But the evidence is now pouring out into the public. It will be hard for the Justice Department, not to take any action.

GLENN: And if the Democrats control the House and the Senate, will they be able to do anything about this?

JOHN: That's a great question. Right?

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A Russian hoax culprit now is helping government CENSOR US! - iHeartRadio