During the COVID pandemic, scientists seemed to be in rare agreement about the source of the virus; its lethality; the need for universal lockdowns, masks, and social distancing; the inefficacy of certain treatment options; and the near-miraculous efficacy of the vaccine.

A few dissenting voices came through. Remember John Ioannidis, the Stanford scientist who warned in March 2020 that we didnt have enough data to know whether NPI measures were doing more harm than good? Remember Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, the two doctors from Bakersfield, California, who argued in an hour-long video, released in April 2020, that COVIDs fatality rate was similar to that of the flu? Five million people watched them before YouTube yanked the video. Remember Michael Yeadon, erstwhile VP at Pfizer, who claimed the PCR test overestimated the incidence of COVID by a factor of ten? Remember the Great Barrington Declaration, which rejected general lockdowns and argued for focused protection for the elderly and immuno-compromised who are especially vulnerable to COVID? Remember Gov. DeSantiss roundtable discussion with the three principal Great Barrington scientists? Remember Scott Atlas? Joe Rogan hosted Robert Malone and Peter McCullough, and the redoubtable Freddie Sayers of UnHerd released a steady stream of patient, challenging, informative interviews with the likes of Carl Heneghan, Swedens Anders Tegnell, and Bret Weinstein.

You could find all these eccentric sources during the pandemic, and, as the surfeit of hyperlinks in the previous paragraph indicates, theyre still available somewhere or other. But establishment scientific journals and scientists, including American public health officials at NIH, the CDC, and other agencies, ignored the contrarians or dismissed them as kooks, cranks, and conspiracy theorists (e.g., here and here), even though some of the kooks are specialists in immunology and epidemiology employed by Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard. You could find seams of dissent if you dug deep enough, but why bother? Science knew what it was doing and would tell us what to do. Problem is, Science earned its commanding capital letter only by demonizing dissenting scientists (lower-case).

Eager to do their public service, eager to suppress disinformation, eager not to kill grandma and not to help Trump, social media companies largely reinforced the manufactured scientific consensus by removing nonconforming videos, tweets, and podcasts. On Twitter, the most offensive offender was Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter who amassed hundreds of thousands of followers with derisive tweets mocking the official COVID narrative and public health officials. Twitter permanently banned Berenson in August 2021 after he tweeted that the COVID shot isnt a vaccine: Think of itat bestas a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.

Berenson sued Twitter and was restored to the platform in August 2022, the first time a social media company has lost such a suit. The rationale has always been: As private companies, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube can make whatever rules they want and are solely responsible for determining when the rules have been violated. Berensons victory doesnt undermine that argument. According to The Atlantic, the judge threw out Berensons First Amendment claim, and Twitter settled because one of its executives violated Twitter policy by communicating directly with Berenson about his account.

But the ball game is changing, bigly. The president and other officials have publicly remonstrated with media companies to do more to suppress misinformationmost dramatically in Bidens theyre killing people comment about Facebook in July 2021. Bidens statement was hastily withdrawn, but it was part of a pattern. Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director, hinted that social media companies should be held legally liable for distributing misinformation, and Jen Psaki, former White House press secretary, called on platforms to collaborate to silence harmful voices.

Since the beginning of the Biden administration, there have been rumblings that the White House and federal agencies have also privately pressured social media companies to squelch dissent. Now several lawsuits have begun to pull back the curtain. Berenson is suing Biden, alleging that members of the administration pressed Twitter to deplatform him. Lawyers representing plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden recently filed an amended complaint showing that eighty officials from nearly a dozen federal agencies were in contact with social media executives concerning climate change, Hunter Bidens laptop, election fraud, and COVID. If it turns out that government officials leaned on media companies to remove individual users, plaintiffs have a highly plausible First Amendment case. Censorship mediated through media is still censorship.

On COVID, there appear to be smoking guns, a small arsenal of them. We now know Mark Zuckerberg gave Anthony Fauci his personal phone number. In July 2021, a Meta executive reported to Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on the companys effort to address the disinfo dozen problem, a reference to the dozen figures considered the most dangerous sources of disinformation (quoted here). On his Substack, Berenson posted a screenshot of an internal Twitter Slack chat from April 2021, in which an employee refers to a really tough question from the White House about why Alex Berenson hasnt been kicked off the platform. In another message, a Twitter employee refers to Biden COVID adviser Andy Slavitts claim that Berenson was the epicenter of disinfo. More disclosures are coming. On September 6, a judge ordered Fauci to turn over any communications between his office and social media companies.

Jenin Younes of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, whose clients have joined the Missouri suit, points out that, whatever the outcome, the case will establish legal guidelines for social media companies. These cases will determine whether or not Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube morph into state media (or, more precisely, Democratic Party media). The suits will decide whether or not federal bureaucrats control the dissemination of scientific information, and so will affect the integrity of science and public confidence in scientific expertise. No matter how you look at it, the stakes are extremely high.

Peter J. Leithart is President ofTheopolis Institute.

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Consensus by Censorship | Peter J. Leithart - First Things

Ethereums upgrade to proof-of-stake (PoS) may make it more vulnerable to government intervention and censorship, according to the lead investigator of Merkle Science.

Speaking to Cointelegraph following the Ethereum Merge, Coby Moran, a former FBI analyst and the lead investigator for crypto compliance and forensic firm Merkle Science, expressed his thoughts on some of the risks posed by Ethereums transition to PoS.

While centralization issues have been broadly discussed leading up to the Merge, Moran suggested the prohibitive cost of becoming a validator could result in the consolidation of validator nodes to the bigger crypto firms like Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.

In order to become a full validator for the Ethereum network, one is required to stake 32 Ether (ETH), which is worth around $47,000 at the time of writing.

A pre-Merge report from blockchain analytics platform from Nansen earlier this month revealed that 64% of staked ETH is controlled by just five entities.

Moran continued to say that these larger institutions will be subject to the whims of governments in the world, and when validator nodes identify sanctioned addresses they can be slashed rewards and then eventually kicked off the system, with businesses prevented from interacting with them:

Vitalik Buterin spoke about this risk in an Aug. 18 developer call, suggesting one of the forms censorship could take is validators choosing to exclude or filter sanctioned transactions.

Vitalik went on to say that as long as some validators do not comply with the sanctions, then these transactions would eventually be picked up in later blocks and the censorship would only be temporary.

On Aug. 8, crypto mixer Tornado Cash became the first smart contract sanctioned by a United States government body.

Related: Rep. Emmer demands an explanation of OFACs Tornado Cash sanction from Sec. Yellen

In reaction, various entities have complied with the sanctions and prevented the sanctioned addresses from accessing their products and services.

The development has had a large effect on the Ethereum community, with EthHub co-founder Anthony Sassano tweeting on Aug. 16 that he would consider Ethereum a failure and move on if permanent censorship occurs.

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Ethereum may now be more vulnerable to censorship Blockchain analyst - Cointelegraph

Commentary

These days, I rarely encounter people who disagree that the COVID-19 pandemic policy was a disaster.

You can usually get a laugh at a cocktail party when making fun of sanitizer madness, 15 days to flatten the curve, ubiquitous plexiglass, or six feet of distance. The school closures are in disrepute, as is the restriction on hospital visits or the banning of funerals and weddings. Even masking seems ridiculous in retrospect.

And remember when you couldnt get a haircut for three months? How many lives did that save?

One even encounters widespread derision at the notion that the vaccines were effective at disease blocking. People whisper in private about vaccine injury, which seems incredibly common.

To be sure, theres still a hard-core of true believers out there, easily recognizable by their beaks worn in public spaces and the funny two-step they do in stores to keep from getting near others. They wish we had stayed locked down longer or imposed even more violence against the unvaccinated.

Lets say that group constitutes 10 percent but surely no more than 20 percent of the population. As for the rest, the days of delusion are long gone. The entire public health establishment faces tremendous public incredulity. Traditionally, medical science has been among the most trusted of all sectors of life. But the Pew Research Center documents that it has taken a huge hit this year. Its not as bad as elected leaders in whom three-quarters of Americans say they have little or no trust, but its still bad.

And yet, however many people think these things in private, these opinions were nowhere in the mainstream media for the better part of two years. The near-universal opinion was that Dr. Anthony Fauci was a genius with the best interest of the country at heart. Dissidents were silenced and punished with throttles and bans. The government collaborated with Big Tech to mark all opposition to the extremist lockdowns and mandates as misinformation.

What effect does that have? It causes the opposition sectors to migrate into a Samizdat category, a banned point of view thats nonetheless widely held. Think of opposition to Communist Party rule in the Soviet Union in the old days. Trust in the party was nearly zero, but that was hardly ever expressed in public culture. As a result, people felt a sense of shame for holding perfectly reasonable views.

In fact, most people who today disagree profoundly with regime priorities during the pandemic dont know that some of the worlds leading experts on the topic shared their views completely. There were some who spoke outnot nearly enoughbut there was a conspiracy from the top to crush and discredit them. We know this. We have the receipts.

The government worked closely with social media companies to shut down scientifically informed voices, which isnt only an outrage against truth and justice; its also a flagrant violation of First Amendment rights.

Still, the censors succeeded in keeping these reasonable views out of the mainstream of the public mind, which is to say that their censorship worked. You and I might be pleased to have read the right Substack or encountered a contrarian book or paper. But remember that for every one piece of exposure of a dissenting perspective, tens of millions of others receive the mainstream line.

I was speaking to a group of highly informed finance professionals and making all of the above points. They seemed to be in full agreement. But then I became curious and asked how many in the audience had heard of the Great Barrington Declaration. Only six hands went up from the whole crowd.

Six people out of 600! This was a great reality check for me since this topic had reached more mainstream readers and listeners than any other during the pandemic. But in this crowd of highly educated professionals, only 1 percent had even heard of it.

This statement of public health principles has nearly 1 million signatures after a year of being online, but thats a drop in the bucket compared with the daily reach of Faucis pronouncements. Even if people dont really believe what they read and hear from the mainstream, a reputable alternative has never really had widespread reach.

The sad reality today is that people who have a seriously informed understanding of the issues underlying the great public health and economic calamity of our lifetimesand perhaps in all of modern historyconstitute a very tiny group. This is the triumph of the censors.

This leaves us today in a very strange position. An economic crisis is brewing, and inflation has already wrecked the value of wages and savings. This is a direct consequence of the pandemic lockdowns and wild congressional spending packages that were funded entirely by funny money created by the Fed. When Americans want to know why all of this is happening, they need only reflect on the policies over the past two years.

And yet, when you scour the mainstream media for this point of view, its extremely difficult to find. Even now, there has been no large effort to rethink what happened. Instead, we get the Orwellian memory hole. The entire lockdown experience is being dropped from memory simply because it was such an unworkable disaster but nonetheless one backed by the whole of the public and private establishment as if it were a normal and scientific application of public health mitigation strategy.

These days, the whole subject is treated like something weird that goes on in China and nothing more. The New York Times and CNN write about Chinas continuing lockdowns as if nothing like that ever happened here, even though that did happen here. We just pretend otherwise.

Another strange effect of censorship is to train the public mind in a kind of protocol of compliance. We all know what we can and cant say. We can believe what we want to believe of course, but constant compliance has spillover psychological effects. Force a person to behave as if he believes something long enough and it might eventually become an authentic belief. Even worse, a person comes to believe that authenticity and truth dont really matter anymore.

Im graced often these days with the opportunity to speak out about lockdowns and mandates and the remarkable disaster of the past 2 1/2 years. I often hear from listeners that it isnt only educational; its also therapeutic. People truly need to talk, share, learn, decompress, and come to terms with the trauma that all of this has been for the world.

My message states to many people that they arent insane, evil, victims of misinformation, or dangerous non-compliers. Instead, theyre reasonable and responsible citizens who are looking at facts and reality for what they are. And the reality is that the ruling class that imposed this new order of things on the world is the real danger.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn served such a crucial role in the latter years of communism and after simply because he told the truth that everyone knew in their hearts but couldnt formulate fully or state without penalty or personal trauma. He said openly and with moral passion what multitudes knew but couldnt say.

Theres a crying need today for a coming together of reality and public culture instead of the preposterous game of pretend that Big Tech and Big Media play every day. They know they were and are wrong, but they have to keep up the masquerade as champions of science and slayers of misinformation. They wasted vast amounts of their own credibility in the effort and seem determined to keep it up until their reputations are in complete ruins.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Did the Censors Succeed? - The Epoch Times

In free democracies like Australia we assume artists can express what they want in their work without fear of persecution.

Unlike in some countries where they could be imprisoned for art that challenges political or moral standards, democracies are usually far more supportive of artists free speech.

Though in recent years, some artists have detected complex new pressures that are threatening to curtail what they feel they can say in their work.

ArtsHub spoke to one established artist who described how it feels like you have to be more careful now, when dealing with morally challenging subjects, and that they would think twice about doing that kind of [extreme] work now.

This feeling of having to think twice before presenting risky ideas in art is a trend seen both at home and overseas.

At this years Documenta art exhibition in Germany, for example, a work by one of its invited artist-collaboratives had to be covered up after public accusations that it included an anti-Semitic reference. The large outdoor banner work entitled Peoples Justice by Indonesian art group Taring Padi included a cartoon-like figure many interpreted as a derogatory portrayal of a Jewish person.

In defending the work, the creators explained that the piece (which interestingly, was first exhibited at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2002 without issue) was intended to depict part of a campaign against militarism and the violence [they] experienced during Suhartos 32-year military dictatorship, and that it was in no way related to antisemitism.

Yet public outrage persisted to the point that less than a month after the furore, Documentas Director Sabine Schormann resigned over the issue.

In this case, it seems understandable that the German public felt particularly sensitive about links to antisemitism in their publicly funded art, but the consequences for the festivals Director appear unprecedented.

For well-known poster artist Peter Drew, this high profile controversy reveals some concerning new trends towards binary interpretations of art.

Read: Making great propaganda art

What I see in that Documenta example is a pulling towards singular interpretations of art, rather than being tolerant of multiple interpretations, he told ArtsHub.

I see it as a pull towards understanding art in terms of it meansthis or it meansthat, so artists and curators get pulled into having to define the artwork in thoseterms. And I think youve already lost when youre drawn into having to define your art within thatlimited frame, he said.

For artist Julie Rrap a practitioner who has been at forefront of feminist art in Australia since the mid 70s there are many dangers inherent in binary interpretations of art, especially when pushed to political extremes.

It doesnt matter whether your view [of the art] comes from a far right or far left position both are dangerous because they lack any sense of a middle ground on which to explore ideas, she observed.

Art is about allowing people not to have limits on their imaginations, she continued. So if audiences are starting to look for something political in the work that may or may not be there, and then they are interpreting it in those narrow terms, thats a dangerous direction for art to be heading. Its reducing art to propaganda!

Similarly, Catalan Australian artist Dani Marti who is currently based in Sydney and whose past works have explored explicit ideas around sexuality said that recent trends towards dogmatic political thinking are encroaching on artist and audience freedoms.

Art is a platform where you should be allowed to question certain power structures, Marti told ArtsHub. But the current climate [of political dogma] is absolutely compromising that work and jeopardising creativity.

In response to what has, in recent years, felt like somewhat of a closing-in on artists who question power structures and orthodoxies, the Sydney-based Festival of Dangerous Ideas (established in 2009) has become a sacred space for artists to speak about their work without fear of suppression.

This years festival program which included artist-speakers like Claire G. Coleman and Baduicao has just concluded, and its director Dr Simon Longstaff said these forums remain vital ways for the public to engage with artists difficult ideas.

Art plays an essential role in holding up a very well-polished mirror on society, which inevitably has the capacity of making us uncomfortable, because it presents a view of us that most of us dont want to know about, he told ArtsHub.

So we need to preserve those spaces where its Ok [for artists] to push at the boundaries of whats accepted especially at the moment, where theres a tendency to shut things down.

We need artists to keep pushing at those boundaries to help preserve that middle space [for discussion and debate].

Read: Artist censored from Hong Kong protest exhibition

Longstaff has also observed how artists with contentious ideas are increasingly being caught up in dialogues that unfairly assign them with particular moral labels.

He commented that, It used to be when people disagreed with your ideas theyd say I dont agree with your ideas or your perspective and youd start to explore that. But its now become, I dont agree with your ideas and that means you are a bad person.

For Rrap who lectures in art at the University of Sydney alongside her art practise the effects of these narrow judgements on the next generations of artists is especially concerning.

It does worry me to think that young artists might feel too scared to say anything in their work for fear of being shut down, she said.

Risk is crucial as an artist, and its important to allow artists to step outside those boundaries of convention so they can explore ideas that are occurring to them in their imagination, and we should acknowledge that those ideas are not necessarily connected to real life or reality, Rrap concluded.

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What's happening to arts censorship in the age of cancel culture? - ArtsHub

norman lebrecht

September 20, 2022

The Canadian Music Centre (CMC) has authorised an indigenous panel to permit or ban use of indigenous material in new compositions.

Composers hav econtacted us in alarm.

Read the new censorship rule:

The Indigenous Advisory Council (IAC) serves at arms length from the CMC on matters related to cultural appropriation and misuse of Indigenous songs, story, and culture. The IAC is a group of Indigenous folks from across Canada with a broad range of expertise in music, curation, museology, performance, and repatriation. Its mandate is to provide recommendations to CMC for appropriately redressing instances of misuse in compositions on an ongoing, case-by-case basis.

This work is made possible with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and Canadian Heritage to support thinking about these issues in a large-scale policy basis. It is a major priority for the CMC to work with Indigenous leaders to examine and search for resolutions to the use of Indigenous Song and Story in the works of Canadian Composition past, present and future; [to establish] protocols for composers and performers when composing and performing works influenced or based on Indigenous materials (Goal #1, current 2019-2024 Strategic Plan). Having been part of the cause of injury, CMC has to be part of the healing and the solution and take leadership in the healing.T

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Canada will censor use of indigenous music - SlippediscSlippedisc | The inside track on classical music and related cultures, by Norman Lebrecht -...

Available: Espaol

According to confidential information accessed by El American, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), which oversees Radio Television Mart, has a list of between 25 and 30 federal employees who could soon be fired from that channel. Since November 2020, right on the brink of the controversial presidential elections, several dozen contractors have been laid off.

At first glance, the matter seems to be a consequence of the budget cuts to be made by the current administration. However, employees and former employees explained to El American that there is strong censorship in the channel and that the budget cut would be one of the numerous measures that have been implemented for months, which would intend to seek to silence both those who discomfort the Cuban regime and those from the United States who are interested in resuming relations with the oldest dictatorship in the hemisphere.

An employee of Radio Television Mart, who asked not to be identified, explained to El American that he has been instructed not to use the word dictatorship in reports and audiovisual products in general. He assured that he also cannot use the word regime and, instead, has been asked to use the word government to refer to Castros tyranny. Likewise, the word dictator is forbidden and the word president must be used, according to our source.

What they tell you had happened during the administration of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, which ended in 2017. Colleagues related to me how they were censored back then. The budget is a pretext, an alibi, an old trick of the socialist clique that has done so much harm to the dream of the visionary Jorge Ms Canosa and the great Ronald Reagan, Luis Leonel Len, a former OCB contractor who worked for years at Radio Televisin Mart, commented to El American.

Radio Televisin Mart has been since its creation a space that is supposed to be dedicated to showing not only Cubans, but the American people and the entire world, the truth of what is happening on the island under a regime that has been in power for decades. The statements and testimonies of employees and former employees about an environment of censorship that would be an open secret are of great concern to the entire Cuban community and to the defenders of freedom of expression.

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Another source contacted by El American pointed out that the cut in funds is functional to continue firing people who are uncomfortable with the interests of the Castro regime. He also assured that what is being experienced in the working environment of the channel is fear.

Luis Leonel confirmed these statements, assuring that if not everybody, a great part of the people are afraid. I was not told that. I lived it. It was sad and frustrating to see how fear is a constant where freedom is supposedly defended. The people I worked with still regret it. And you dont have to be very enlightened to clearly understand that if there is fear, it is because something is very wrong there.

El American also spoke with Isabel Cuervo, a renowned investigative journalist who was fired from Radio TV Mart in 2018. When we asked her if she experienced any kind of censorship at the channel, she answered the following: The biggest censorship that has ever happened in the history of Radio TV Mart was imposed on me, when in October 2018 they censored a report on George Soros, deleted it from all platforms, escorted me out of the building and then subjected me to federal investigation.

In relation to the atmosphere in the media, Cuervo said: With the Soros case they left a strong precedent, but obviously the censorship and silencing of journalists will continue. It is a shame and a real danger that this is happening in the United States.

Regarding the importance and impact of the media, Luis Leonel pointed out that Radio Mart could be the detonator for the Cubans imprisoned on the Island to finally reach the longed-for freedom, which has not yet been achieved and which will not be possible without a media that directly and systematically sends them free information. He also added that deactivating Radio Television Marti would be a great victory for Castroism. They want it as much as they want the Embargo removed and the Guantnamo Naval Base handed over to them, he said.

Legislators from both parties have sent a letter to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is in charge of OCB, to reject the budget cut. Mario Daz-Balart, Carlos Gimnez, Mara Elvira Salazar, Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, among others, have stressed the importance of Radio Televisin Mart for the Cuban people and access to free information.

The budget cut for OCB is worrisome and would significantly affect a medium that for a long time has denounced to the world what Cubans suffer. However, the allegations of censorship within the media are even more alarming. Turning off the voices of Radio Television Mart that tell the reality of what is happening under Castros regime would almost be tantamount to legitimizing the Castro dictatorship and Miguel Diaz-Canel before the world. There are no media anywhere in the world that does what Radio Televisin Mart has done for decades in giving voice to the Cuban people.

Vanessa Vallejo. Co-editor-in-chief of El American. Economist. Podcaster. Political and economic analysis of America. Colombian exile in the United States // Vanessa Vallejo. Co-editora en jefe de El American. Economista. Podcaster. Anlisis poltico y econmico de Amrica. Colombiana exiliada en EE. UU.

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Censorship at Radio TV Mart? Employees of the Historic TV Station Talk About Possible Mass Dismissals - El American

Several groups are doing everything in their power to control the thought processes of the younger generation. Students, faculty, public school administrators, and school board members should not be subjected to this mentality that embraces censorship and a society that does not read books, think independently, learn about history, or appreciate the beauties of nature.

For a majority of the million-plus K-12 children in Arizona, public education is the backbone for their future. It is a travesty that several groups are doing everything in their power to control the thought processes of the younger generation.

This reality is very disruptive to public education. Students, faculty, public school administrators, and school board members should not be subjected to this Fahrenheit 451 mentality that embraces censorship and a society that does not read books, think independently, learn about history, or appreciate the beauties of nature. Dedicated employees of schools and school districts should not have to suffer the consequences from being terrorized by those perpetuating fear mongering and lies.

Joanie Rose

As an eye witness to this extremism and vitriol, I observed these angry education protesters show no respect or understanding for the countless hours teachers spend researching and preparing lessons so their students will be knowledgeable in a competitive world.

It is time to step up and support school officials and teachers who, in todays world, are working under the most difficult of circumstances.

The questionable grownups who attend school board meetings have no good intentions. They participate in public comments not to promote or improve education but to spread unfounded conspiracies like Critical Race Theory (CRT). Nowhere in any Arizona public school system is CRT part of the curriculum.

To make a bad situation worse, the same folks want to remove books while targeting Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and topics that have enlightened students for decades.

Please understand, these people also refused to protect children during the pandemic. They screamed, in mob-like fashion, at school board meetings that students did not need to wear masks or be inoculated despite the advice of highly trained medical professionals, doctors, and scientists who encouraged both measures.

The only way to stop anti-education candidates is VOTE for candidates who actually care about education and the wellbeing of all students. Teachers should be allowed to teach facts and not be intimidated to fictionalize history.

Take time to learn about the men and women running for school board positions. Sadly, many candidates are propped up by anti-public education groups and profiteers such as The Goldwater Institute, Turning Point USA (Charlie Kirk), Freedom Works (Koch Brother-owned), and Purple for Parents (Three Scottsdale Unified School District Governing Board candidates). These national groups and their candidates openly advocate for privatizing our schools through defunding and using vouchers. This action eliminates special needs children from educational opportunities.

School board races arent normally high profile or well-funded, but these groups have vowed to influence school boards and decimate the public institution of education. Deep pocketed millionaires and billionaires (Peter Thiel) will be laughing all the way to the bank on our taxpayer dimes. Please do your homework! Dont just vote for a name or a party, vote for a sincere person you know truly cares about education for all students.

Joanie Rose

Scottsdale

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Parents of K-12 students need to be aware of dangerous school board candidates - Arizona Capitol Times

In China, social media censors have been ordered to drown out public complaints about food and drug shortages.

China was the first country in the world to put quarantines in place during the Covid-19 pandemic. But the virus still persists there, as everywhere else. The Ili Kazakh autonomous prefecture, also known as Yili, was placed under lockdown in early August this year after a fresh outbreak of the virus, and this move was taken without any official announcement to give the public time to prepare.

Now, one month into the lockdown, locals in Yili have taken to social media to write about their experiences, especially about growing concerns and complaints regarding shortages of food, medication, delays or outright refusals of medical care. But their posts are being drowned out by a flood of innocuous posts dealing with anything from cooking to details of personal moods but not all is as innocent as it seems.

According to a leaked directive published by the China Digital Times, government censors were ordered to open a campaign of comment flooding to hide posts criticising the lockdown or those expressing concern with how the situation is evolving.

There are no subject matter restrictions, the document reads, according to CDTs translation. Content may include domestic life, daily parenting, cooking, or personal moods. All internet commentary personnel should post once an hour (twice in total), but not in rapid succession! Repeat: not in rapid succession!

Sample posts archived by the CDT as a possible example of the comment flooding campaign showed pictures of landscapes or local cuisine. However, they were quickly accused of being attempts to dilute the conversation around the lockdown.

Ili Kazakh is an autonomous prefecture for Kazakh people in Northern Xinjiang the region of China that is traditionally the home of mostly Uyghur people. This province has been the site of a years-long oppression campaign by the central government against the local Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, and locals believe the poor management of this lockdown is part of that campaign.

Locals concerns were further stoked by the fact that sites near Ili Kazakh, a popular tourist destination, have recently been re-opened to visitors. Despite this, the lockdown is now entering its 40th day with no sign of coming to a close anytime soon.

Although central authorities have denied that anything was going poorly initially, they changed their stance last week and recognized that there have been some issues with the distribution of food and medical supplies. Although they did apologize in a press conference, they shifted the blame squarely onto local officials.

Children who have a 40-degree fever cant even see a doctor, pregnant women cant even get into the hospital, we really cant take this any more, said one reported comment. First they say its fake news, then they apologise, added another. What is real, is that the entire city has been silent for 41 days, said another, according to CDT.

Last week, a health official in Yili said that the remaining lockdowns will be lifted after two to three more rounds of testing, according to the South China Morning Post.

The severity of the lockdown in Yili is bewildering given that only around 220 cases of Covid-19 infections are recorded in the whole Xinjiang province. But the rolling lockdowns continue to be implemented in various areas of China under the countrys dynamic zero containment strategy, in which widespread lockdowns and other restrictions can be implemented suddenly on residences, neighborhoods, or even whole cities, in an attempt to stifle any potential outbreak.

Still, the Chinese Governments use of concentration camps against ethnic Uygurs, in the form of the Xinjiang internment camps, officially called vocational education and training centers, casts a huge shadow of doubt on the Yili lockdown. Even if instituted for public safety, locals are understandably reluctant to assume fair play. The severity of restrictions imposed here, alongside food shortages, in particular, raise genuine concerns from locals which are further fueled by the leaked directive.

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Chinese censors told to drown out posts about food and medicine shortages in the mostly-Uyghur province of Xinjian - ZME Science

The conspiracy world celebrates a new chapter in its crusade against humanity. 09/19/2022 14:00

The arguments of anti-vaccine and, in general, the opinions of lovers of conspiracies are so difficult to hold that we will not entertain them. In fact, we have a really fun article on some crazy conspiracy theories if youre interested in the subject and want to be entertained for a while.

Recently, thanks to the information shown on Gizmodo, we have learned how groups dissidents of traditional science and lovers of conspiracies have at emoji of a vegetable as its code in code for circumvent censorship of Mark Zuckerbergs social network. By the way, we also have an article showing the meaning of WhatsApp emoticons.

The carrot is the favorite emoji of anti-vaccines on Facebook

If you take a look at Tweet that we show you under these lines, you will be able to know the story of a man called Marc Owen Jones, who was invited to join an anti-vaccine group on Facebook. What those responsible for the group did not know is that Marc is an associate professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University and investigator about the growing trend for disinformation In the net. Once inside, he was able to verify a strange technique for avoid censorship of the social network. One of the messages it said the following:

My sister, 57, entered the hospital with respiratory problems. She has two and the b.

Given that we are dealing with a group of people against the vaccinesit can be understood that the carrots they are the way to avoid writing said word and, thus, be able to circumvent the algorithm in charge of pointing out the publications that could be problematic. In fact, the attempt to avoid censorship seems evident, given the message posted by Marc, where one of the group leaders type the following:

If a post has been rejected or deleted, it was probably me. As moderators, our primary role is to protect the group from censorship and removal. Encryption is important and carrots, to date, go undetected by artificial intelligence censorship.

It seems that the resemblance of the vegetable with a needle to give injections could be the reason chosen by the group to skip censorship, although the use of emojis from the group is also often observed in other groups. cupcake either shot glasses, English shot is used to name both this type of glass and the injections. assumptions human health monitors continue their crusade against the vaccines and each time they look for new ways to hide among the publications of the different social networks. It seems, at the moment, that Facebook has not taken action in the matter.

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This is the emoji with which anti-vaccines are dodging censorship on Facebook - Gearrice

The Rev. Mary Robin Craig is saddened to think about parents censoring books available to children in school and public libraries (Young readers and the wide world, Sept. 18.). The books she cites that helped her are not the kinds of books of concern today.

We must go to the shelves and read what is being assigned in school, what is age-appropriate, what is vulgar and, perhaps, too explicit. For instance, the nonfiction teen book, All Boys Arent Blue, includes graphic depictions of homosexuality. Some books, like The Bluest Eye, are well-written, yet may not be appropriate for a school assignment because students can be embarrassed to discuss incest aloud in a classroom.

It is not only the subject, but the style, and how the teacher handles the book report. These books still could be available in regular fiction or biography in the public library.

Marjorie Dwyer,

Westlake

Link:

Censoring books is also about figuring out whats age- and classroom-appropriate - cleveland.com