After banning almost 5,000 books in the last seven years, Kuwaits government has relaxed its book censorship laws in a move that has been welcomed by writers and free speech activists.

Kuwaiti state media reported that the countrys parliament had voted 40 to nine in favour of lifting the Ministry of Informations control over books imported into the country. Previously, the ministry had blacklisted more than 4,000 books since 2014, with titles including Victor Hugos The Hunchback of Notre Dame and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garca Mrquez falling foul of its censorship committee. All books published in the country had to receive prior approval from a 12-member committee that met twice a month before they could be released, with offences ranging from insulting Islam to inciting unrest and committing immoral acts.

The new rules mean importers and publishers will only have to provide the Ministry of Information with book titles and author names, with the importer alone bearing responsibility for the books contents. According to the National, only an official complaint from the public will spark legal action against a book, with a ban only to be implemented by the courts, rather than the Ministry of Information.

The International Publishers Association said the ruling put an end to the mandate of the Kuwaiti book censorship committee.

Congratulations to those in Kuwait who have successfully encouraged this change in favour of the freedom to publish, said the chair of the IPAs freedom to publish committee, Kristenn Einarsson. This is an important step forward and I hope that more positive changes will follow.

Kuwaiti-American author Layla AlAmmar told the Guardian that the change was a major and positive step in the right direction.

Abolishing the committee is a major accomplishment that is worthy of celebration, and the credit for it rightly goes to writers and activists like Bothayna al-Essa and Abdullah al-Khonaini, who lobbied tirelessly for this cause, she said.

AlAmmar said that, in the nearly 15 years that the committee was in place, almost 5,000 books were banned in a largely arbitrary fashion and that the law had throttled an already fledgling publishing industry and market where piracy is rampant.

Campaigners have both welcomed the news and shared reservations. The Ministry of Information is no longer the judge when it comes to books and I believe this is a most important achievement, Essa told Gulf News. We will continue to work towards achieving greater freedoms.

But Khonaini said: The freedom of expression is already restricted in Kuwait on multiple levels. This law doesnt fix it. The amendment shifts the power of censorship away from the executive branch to the judicial branch. We still need to work on the prohibition section in the law, which needs a stronger political lobby and mature political and societal awareness.

AlAmmar pointed to the case of International prize for Arabic fiction winner Saud al-Sanousi, who went to court to get a ban on his book annulled. It remains unclear what the fate of the banned books is: does the ban automatically lift? Must they pass through some other authorising committee or bureaucratic procedure before their sale is allowed? None of this has been addressed, she said.

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Kuwait relaxes book censorship laws after banning thousands of titles - The Guardian

By: Lifestyle Desk | New Delhi | Published: August 26, 2020 6:24:56 pmAuthors have welcomed this decision. (Representational image)

According to a report in The Guardian, the Kuwait government has become more lenient with its censorship laws pertaining to books. This comes after it banned almost 5,000 books in the last seven years. The report further states that the countrys parliament voted in favour of Ministry of Information exercising no control over imported books. The same report further states that under the new rules, publishers need to give book titles and names of authors to the Ministry. In the past, books like One Hundred Years of Solitude, Hunchback of Notre Dame were banned.

Congratulations to those in Kuwait who have successfully encouraged this change in favour of the freedom to publish, Kristenn Einarsson, the chair of the International Publishers Associations freedom to publish committee was quoted as saying.

Abolishing the committee is a major accomplishment that is worthy of celebration, and the credit for it rightly goes to writers and activists like Bothayna al-Essa and Abdullah al-Khonaini, who lobbied tirelessly for this cause, Kuwaiti-American author Layla AlAmmar was quoted as saying in the report.

The freedom of expression is already restricted in Kuwait on multiple levels. This law doesnt fix it. The amendment shifts the power of censorship away from the executive branch to the judicial branch. We still need to work on the prohibition section in the law, which needs a stronger political lobby and mature political and societal awareness, Khonaini said.

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Kuwait eases censorship laws after banning 5000 titles in last 7 years - The Indian Express

Before the coronavirus placed restrictions on hotels, Trump-friendly tourists were known to pop inside at night, hoping to get a glimpse of someone theyve seen on cable or to take in the buzzy scene of the renovated Postal Service Building.

The president will, on occasion, dine at the hotel with his favorite lawmakers and friends, and major moments of the administration like Trumps acquittal in the impeachment trial have been topped off by exclusive parties with lawmakers, the presidents attorneys and top officials.

And now, even during the coronavirus pandemic, the hotel is being used as a backdrop to the convention (a suite was used as a setting for a video on Tuesday night featuring Kellyanne Conway and Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Donald Trump Jr. filmed himself getting ready in a hotel room) and an unofficial headquarters for Republican Party elite.

Instagram posts showed hotel guests sipping cocktails and posing for photos with people like Richard Grenell, the former director of national intelligence and ambassador to Germany, who is a convention speaker on Wednesday.

According to an agenda of the Convention Celebration obtained by POLITICO, the Trump Victory Finance Committee is hosting a three-day party at the hotel that offers Trumps top supporters and donors a place to congregate and attend special events.

There are wine tastings with Guilfoyle and the presidents daughter Tiffany Trump, a bourbon tasting with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and a luncheon with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. Donors are getting updates on the state of the race at different meetings hosted by Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel of the Republican National Committee, Trump Victory political director Chris Carr, campaign manager Bill Stepien and deputy campaign manager Justin Clark.

Panels throughout the day touch on the themes of the convention and Trumpism, too, like The Failed Coup, with Matt Whitaker, Pam Bondi and Dr. Sebastian Gorka; The Real Joe Biden, with Corey Lewandowski and Katrina Pierson; Big Tech Censorship, with Donald Jr. and Charlie Kirk; The Law & Order President, with Rudy Giuliani; Strengthening the U.S.-Israel Relationship; and even a panel on the current debate over college sports during the pandemic, Let Them Play: The Fight for Student Athletes, with convention speaker Herschel Walker.

Administration officials appearing throughout the week include trade adviser Peter Navarro, Administrator Seema Verma of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, White House aide Andrew Giuliani, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.

Each night, guests are invited to watch the speeches at the hotel, although on Thursday its expected that many of the people invited to the celebrations at the Trump hotel will be guests of the president at the White House for his nomination speech, set on the South Lawn.

Read more:

For the well-connected, Trumps D.C. hotel serves as convention backdrop and social hub - POLITICO

In his opening remarks at the virtual Republican National Convention (RNC) on Monday night, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk predictably assailed Big Tech for censoring conservativesan all-too-familiar point of view that has increasingly come to dominate much of the right's thinking about social media.

"The American way of life means you speak your mind without retribution, without being kicked off social media by a self-righteous censor in Silicon Valley," said Kirk. He also accused tech platforms of silencing doctors while regurgitating Chinese state propaganda.

Sean Parnell, a Republican running for a Pennsylvania House seat, echoed the same talking point, expressing the view that the Democratic Party was beholden to Big Tech.

"The party of Harry Truman became the party of hedge fund managers, Hollywood celebrities, tech moguls, and university professors, all bloated with contempt for middle America," said Parnell.

This is, by now, a familiar refrain. "Big Tech hates conservatives and will stop at nothing to silence them" has become the default conservative opinion, popularized by Republican ideological leaders like Sens. Josh Hawley (RMo.) and Ted Cruz (RTexas).

And yet if there was ever a televised event that demonstrated the lameness of the conservative anti-tech position, it was the first day of the RNC. No major tech platform censored any of the contenton the contrary, they granted easy and unrestricted access.

Multiple YouTube channels aired the RNC in full. It was possible to watch the event live on the GOP Convention's Facebook page, and to find it on Google (it's the top video result). Even Twitter, the platform most obviously hostile to conservatives, made it perfectly easy to watch. All of the platforms provided unlimited access to the remarks by Kirk, Parnell, and everyone else who spokeand importantly, this access came at no cost to viewers.

Contrary to the anti-social media perspective peddled by Kirk and others, it wastraditionalmedia outlets that restricted conservative speakers. CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox News cut away from the convention repeatedly. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow was petrified that unfiltered access to Republican speakers would cause her audience to succumb to disinformation, and thus she ceaselessly intervened to explain why certain GOP talking points were false. (Unsurprisingly, there was no live fact-check of the Democratic National Convention.)

Viewers with a cable subscription who preferred a selective, biased curation of the RNC could turn on their televisions. Viewers who just wanted to watch the event without interruption or interjection could do so for free on any of the major tech platforms.

This is an important point and one that the anti-tech crusaders in the Republican Party ought to consider more carefully as they mull regulations aimed at hampering social media companies. To the extent that there are genuine anti-conservative biases on social media, they pale in comparison to the biases of the traditional media. It's true that tech platforms occasionally make arbitrary or contradictory rulings about politically extreme speech; meanwhile, The New York Timesopinion page apologized for publishing a provocative but fairly mainstream opinion piece by a major Republican senator, fired the editor responsible, and essentially vowed never to make this mistake again. Conservative voices have flourished on Facebook, where articles from Breitbart and The Daily Wire praising President Donald Trump are routinely among the most shared content. At the same time, there's not a single reliably pro-Trump columnist at the Times orThe Washington Post.

If social media were to be regulated out of existenceand make no mistake, proposals to abolish Section 230 could accomplish precisely thisthen the Republican Party would return itself to the world where traditional media gatekeepers have significantly more power to restrict access to conservative speech. It should come as little surprise that Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden, who supports the revocation of Section 230, prefers this world. Why does Charlie Kirk?

See the rest here:

Big Tech Is Not a Big Threat to Conservative Speech. The RNC Just Proved It. - Reason

SIR - So the British Brainwashing Corporation are to ban Rule Brittania and Land of Hope and Glory from the proms.

The season is a significant event in British culture and in classical music. Czech conductor Ji Blohlvek described the Proms as "the world's largest and most democratic musical festival".

Outside proms existed in London's pleasure gardens since the mid 18th century, and indoor proms became a feature of 19th century musical life in London from 1838, notably under the direction of Louis Antoine Jullien and Sir Arthur Sullivan. The annual series of Proms continuing today had their roots in that movement. They were inaugurated on August 10, 1895 in the Queen's Hall in Langham Place by the impresario Robert Newman, who was fully experienced in running similar concerts at His Majesty's Theatre.

So, we have had the proms, in one shape or another for nearly three hundred years. The BBC is a relatively new organisation and it should not be allowed censorship of what is chiefly a series of concerts celebrating British culture.

Will the BBC drop British from its name?

D Hodgson, Falcon Road , Bingley

See the rest here:

BBC should not allow censorship of Proms - Bradford Telegraph and Argus

Seinfeld became one of the most iconic comedies of all time thanks to their willingness to push boundaries. Overall, the series broke the mold for what a sitcom could look like. And while doing so they explored controversial issues and never-before-seen topics that audiences were shocked to see.

Not every storyline on Seinfeld aged well, though they were surprisingly progressive for their time. And theres one topic the writers thought theyd never get past television censors. The Contest is an episode wholly focused on the topic of masturbation, and yet amazingly, they never utter the word.

Most of Seinfelds content was inspired by real-life situations. The show explored the minutiae of everyday life but made it funny and over-the-top, which kept fans entertained and enthralled since they could relate to what was going on.

Series co-creator Larry David came up with The Contest based on a real contest he and his friends had involving who could go the longest without masturbating. Amazingly, the network allowed the content if no characters used the word masturbate. According to DVD extras, Julia Louis-Dreyfus never thought the episode would air because of the subject matter.

Later, David said the strength of the episode was that it used euphemisms for the act rather than explicit language. It even spurred one of the most notorious quotable lines in Seinfeld history, according to WikiSein.

RELATED: 5 Things That Still Make No Sense About Seinfeld

Its an unlikely topic for television. Still, season 4 episode 10 became popular because it was shockingly personal and therefore taboo. Somehow, David managed to make it clear what was going on without being explicit.

It all starts when George tells everyone his mother caught him masturbating, which caused her to fall over and injure herself. Everyone makes fun of George. Then, they come up with the idea to put up money to see who can go the longest without pleasuring themselves. The men put $100 on the contest but make Elaine put in $150, claiming its easier for women to refrain than for men.

The rest of the episode shows the group getting tempted in all kinds of different ways, like when Kramer sees a naked woman walking around her apartment or when Elaine runs into John F. Kennedy Jr. Jerry is dating a virgin who is finally ready to have sex. One by one, everyone drops out of the contest.

Its later implied that George won the contest though audiences never see him collect his earnings.

The episode avoids using explicit language to describe masturbation, which is how it got past censors in the first place. Ultimately, the euphemisms become more memorable anyway. Jerry refers to his self-control as being master of my domain, a phrase thats still employed today.

David considers The Contest one of the best episodes of the series not just because he wrote it, but because it highlighted exactly what Seinfeld aimed to do every time. Audiences laughed, cringed, and secretly related to the plights of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer.

As usual, it was funny because it was true.

See the rest here:

'Seinfeld' Creators Never Thought 'The Contest' Would Get Past Censors But They Omitted 1 Crucial Word - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

BJP leader Kapil Mishra has been accused of making inflammatory speeches targeting anti-CAA protesters before the violence broke out.

Freedom of Expression has once again become a hot topic of debate in the country after publishers Bloomsbury India withdrew the book titled 'Delhi Riots 2020: The Untold Story' by advocate Monica Arora and Delhi University professors Sonali Chitalkar and Prerna Malhotra. The authors claimed this was a book based on facts and was checked by the publisher before publication.

What forced the publisher to withdraw is the garrulous noises of India's intolerant brigade, the Leftists and Islamists, who are unhappy at the prospect of getting exposed. They had tried to build lies around the Delhi riots despite facts to the contrary presented through police investigation, court observations and confessions by rioters. They feared being exposed.

These are the same sets of people who come in defence of lawyer Prashant Bhushan who is held guilty of contempt by the Supreme Court (the same courtesy was not extended when Justice Karnan was held guilty of contempt in 2017), or shout slogans of "Bharat tere tukde honge (India will split)", or "Afzal hum sharminda hain, tere qatil zinda hain (We are sorry Afzal that your killers are alive; in this case that would be the judiciary, because the apex court had upheld the hanging of Afzal Guru). These are the same people of the 'award wapsi gang' who said India had become intolerant.

What the publishers did is their business. The larger issue is what happened to these guardian angels of liberalism and open thoughts. Let thoughts come from all directions so that people can assimilate and process these to arrive at the truth. Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore advocated that there should be no gag on knowledge. The mind must broaden to help mankinds struggle for wisdom.

But these people have adopted the communist ideology of censoring knowledge so that people dont get educated and become wise. They must live under the belief that what intellectuals decide for them is the best. This is like understanding scriptures through the mullahs or the clerics. These Leftists and Islamists have tried to occupy the mind space of the country since Independence. Whichever government came to power, they were not disturbed since they were entrenched in colleges and universities and most institutions of the country dealing with intellectual discourse. Even the film industry has been dominated by them. This explains why films were financed by mafia dons and how Dawood Ibrahim, declared international terrorist after the Mumbai blasts of 1993, ruled the roost.

They oppose Salman Rushdie for expressing his opinion about Islam. They oppose Taslima Nasreen for expressing her experiences of living in an Islamic society. They also oppose Tarek Fateh for articulating his opinion based on his experiences. But they support when an artist expresses his art by painting Hindu gods and goddesses nude. They are mum when temples are destroyed and Hindus humiliated. They are mum when Hagia Sophia, an iconic building, is reconverted into a mosque. Needless to mention that they were mum when journalist Alok Tomar was arrested for reproducing the Danish cartoonists caricature of Prophet Muhammad.

But their days are over because of the proliferation of social media and also realisation in many media houses that the nationalist urge for a strong India demands fair play based on logic and reason. Things have changed more particularly after Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 and got a resounding victory in 2019. There is no sign of abatement of Modis popularity and the India intolerant brigade knows that deliverance for them would not be easy.

They have become frustrated as they are losing their intellectual hegemony day by day. They fed lies to people on historical facts of Ayodhya and the renowned professors who did these are looking for cover after the Supreme Court gave its verdict that repudiated their claims. They used lies, assumptions and insinuations to create an optic that tried to confuse the nation. They are the ones who gave the Aryan invasion theory, now rejected after scientific evidence, to suit their narrative that Hindus were not original inhabitants of this land. Their politics dominated their writings.

They wallowed in excitement when the same publisher came out with a book on Shaheen Bagh which is a biased narrative and forwards the same arguments the Leftists/Islamists gave in various television debates. The book tried to defend the Constitution but could not justify opposition to a legislation passed by Parliament with an overwhelming majority. It tried to commit a fraud in the name of the Constitution.

Contrary to this, Monika Aroras book claims to be based on facts. These facts were not objected to when the publisher was in the processing of preparing the book for publication. Later, comments by Leftists/Islamists created a perception that the book was anti-Muslim. Since when has speaking against the guilty based on verified facts and interviews become anti-Muslim? They were rioters and people need to know who did what and why. But, alas, this did not suit the political narrative of the gang sponsored by the Congress. No wonder the Congress has jumped into the fray.

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Justice has its own way of getting vindicated. The controversy over the publication of the book has made everyone aware that there is a book of this nature and people are waiting excitedly to know the truth. Social media and debates over freedom of expression in this new context have made the book popular. The purpose of censoring the book has been defeated. Those who wallowed in victory would be sulking at the huge response. This is new India trying to break free from intellectual slavery of the Left-Islamists and fascists.

(The author is a national panel spokesperson of BJP and an author. Views expressed are personal.)

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How The Attempt To Censor A Book Telling The Truth About The Delhi Riots Has Backfired - News18