Category Archives: Transhuman News

The World Economic Forum (WEF), notorious for its great reset agenda, featuring the now-infamous slogan you will own nothing and be happy, has published an article pushing for artificial intelligence-powered censorship to contain the problem of online abuse.

The article, published on the WEFs website, bundles together the real problems faced by online content moderators, such as detecting and removing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), with establishment preoccupations like containing misinformation and white supremacy increasingly flexible labels that tech elites use to censor the enemies of progressivism.

Joe Biden arrives on stage to address the assembly on the second day of the World Economic Forum, on January 18, 2017 in Davos. (Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)

Via the WEF:

Since the introduction of the internet, wars have been fought, recessions have come and gone and new viruses have wreaked havoc. While the internet played a vital role in how these events were perceived, other changes like the radicalization of extreme opinions, the spread of misinformation and the wide reach of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) have been enabled by it.

The article goes on to recommend the increased adoption of a technique already used by Silicon Valley leftists using feedback from content moderators (who are typically either leftist or following leftist guidelines from social media companies) to train AI censorship models.

To overcome the barriers of traditional detection methodologies, we propose a new framework: rather than relying on AI to detect at scale and humans to review edge cases, an intelligence-based approach is crucial.

By bringing human-curated, multi-language, off-platform intelligence into learning sets, AI will then be able to detect nuanced, novel online abuses at scale, before they reach mainstream platforms. Supplementing this smarter automated detection with human expertise to review edge cases and identify false positives and negatives and then feeding those findings back into training sets will allow us to create AI with human intelligence baked in. This more intelligent AI gets more sophisticated with each moderation decision, eventually allowing near-perfect detection, at scale.

Leftists in tech are increasingly fixated on owning and imprinting their biases on the field of artificial intelligence. The field of machine learning fairness, which blends critical race theory with computer science, is one such example of this. A devotee of the field, former Google employee Meredith Whittaker, is now a member of Joe Bidens FTC.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.He is the author of#DELETED: Big Techs Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.

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'Near-Perfect Detection:' World Economic Forum Pushes AI Censorship of ...

Last fall, the cartoonist Maia Kobabe had the unsettling experience of waking up to find emails waiting from The Washington Post, The Associated Press and elsewhere. Gender Queer, a coming-of-age memoir Kobabe had published years before, had suddenly become the subject of a firestorm at a school board meeting in Fairfax County, Va. A week later, Kobabe laterwrote in The Washington Post, I found out that Gender Queer had also been banned in a school district in Florida, and within a month, it had been challenged at schools in Rhode Island, New Jersey, Ohio, Washington and Texas.

Kobabe, who identifies as nonbinary and uses the pronouns e/eir/em, was stunned. Why are they mad about the book? Because I said nonbinary and trans people exist? Kobabe wondered. The book has been out for two and a half years. Why now?

In 2021, Gender Queer would prove to be the most banned, challenged and restricted book in the United States,according to the American Library Association. 2021 was a particularly bad year for censorship. The A.L.A.s Office of Intellectual Freedom tracked 729 challenges to public library, school and university material last year involving 1,597 books. Thats five times as many challenges as the year before, and almost six times as many books. It is by far the most challenges the A.L.A. has recorded over the last 20 years.

And 2022 seems likely to be even worse. In the spring, the Florida legislaturepassed a law giving parents more power in choosing what books are present in their school districts libraries.Six other states have similar laws, and five more are considering them. Recent years have also seen an upswing in harassment ofteachers andlocal community librarians.

The Catholic Church is no stranger to the attempt to control what books people are able to read. From 1559 until 1966, we literally wrote the book on condemned texts and authors, often out of the very same instinct to protect the vulnerable that parents and community members are currently expressing. And also much like today, we didnt hesitate to persecute those who opposed our way of thinking about certain literature. But in the end our practice only revealed the reasons why censorship is a terrible strategy for addressing social and moral concerns. Groups calling for censorship today would do well to consider the churchs experiences.

Censorship was already very much in the air when Pope Paul IV issued the Vaticans first Index of Prohibited Books in 1559. The printing press, which had been invented a century earlier, had become the internet of its day, enabling ideas to spread with an alacrity and reach that was previously unimaginable. Some governments, seeing the new capacity of writers to quickly foment opposition to state policies, had begun todemand licenses of publishers and to imprison or execute printers and writers over their work.

The church, too, had been intensely affected by the printing press. As the librarian Robert Sarwakpoints out: Without the printing press, for example, the 99 Theses [sic] of Martin Luther (1517) would have to have been copied out by hand. Simply put, neither Lutheranism nor Protestant Christianity in general may have ever spread without the printing press. By the time Pope Paul IV promulgated his Index, churches in some nations had already produced their own lists of forbidden books. The Inquisition was also active in many countries, prosecuting, jailing and sometimes executing anyone it found spoke or wrote heresy.

But Pope Pauls list would not only condemn individual works; it censored the entire bodies of work of an astonishing 550 authors and dozens of publishers. Even within the church, these moves were considered draconian, so much so that they were often ignored and then officially repealed at the Council of Trent, a few years after Paul died.

Pauls impulse to go too far is not an isolated incident, either for the church or secular society. Today, we see organizations not simply challenging certain books but demanding the banning of whole classes of material,such as L.G.B.T. stories, andengaging in extreme actions to achieve their goals.

Censorship is like lighting a fire. Once started, it tends to get completely out of control. There is no such thing as burning just one book.

Looking back on the history of censorship and persecution in the church, we frequently find today that the ideas and authors being suppressed or jailed werent actually challenging Catholic doctrine. Astronomer Galileo Galilei was condemned for saying the earth revolved around the sun. French Dominican theologian Yves Congar saw his 1950 book True and False Reform in the Church banned not because it took a heretical position on the divinity of Christ or the real presence, but for simply pointing out that the church as a human institution was capable of getting in the way of Gods grace and needed reform. The ecclesiastical apparatus might overshadow the action of the Spirit and of grace in peoples lives,he wrote.

Other forms of church action have functioned similarly. The witch hunts which saw tens of thousands of women persecuted and often murdered by Catholic and Protestant authorities in medieval Europe had nothing to do with the Apostles Creed and everything to do with mens anxiety about the power and sexuality of women. The systematic efforts of the church to annihilate Indigenous cultures in missionary territories were born not of legitimate doctrinal concerns but racism.

And the same problems are to be found in the books people want banned today. Six of the 10 most censored books of 2021 were written by or have as central characters people of color. Roughly half have female protagonists. Looking to prior years, the same patterns persist: The books challenged are often written by people of color, women or members of the L.G.B.T. community, or concern issues of race, gender and sexual orientation.

Those calling for Gender Queer to be banned often cite its graphic depictions of sexuality. But in its 240 pages there is nudity on just a handful of pages and sexual activity portrayed explicitly on only one. Rather than some kind of pornographic comic book, Gender Queer is a heartfelt and often funny story. Kobabes journey may not be the norm, but the book actually captures the quest to discover oneself in the universeand how best to lovethat every young person embarks on. Rather than a book to censor, its the kind of novel that parents could use with older children to help them to talk through their own nascent sense of identity.

Some people are happy to live in the place they were born, Kobabe writes on a page with a pretty drawing of mountains, forest and a beach, while others must make a journey to reach the climate where they can flourish and grow. Between the ocean and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.

Things that have gotten the church all hot and bothered at one time have often turned out later to be either no big deal or fundamental to the churchs self-understanding. So Congars book, which called for an ecumenical council, inspired Pope John XXIII to convene the Second Vatican Council. Likewise, science that the church once condemned, from cosmology to the theory of evolution, is now accepted as fact.

If the churchs history with censorship has highlighted anything, it is the need for hesitation and humility in the consideration of what constitutes heresy. The stones that the builder rejected have all too often become the cornerstone.

By banning books or arresting and executing thinkers deemed heretical, the church has sometimes succeeded in suppressing those points of viewbut only for a time, and at great cost. The fact that the church condemned Galileo did not mean that the idea that the earth revolves around the sun went away; nor did the suppression of the work of theologians like Congar or the Jesuits John Courtney Murray, Teilhard de Chardin and Karl Rahner end their influence. Indeed, at Vatican II their work became foundational to the way the church understands itself.

Today book banning is even more ineffective. People can find anything they want online, and in fact the banning of a book usually only feeds its sales. So in February, as AmericasJames T. Keane noted, the Holocaust memoir Maus: A Survivors Tale returned to best-seller lists again, 36 years after its publication, once the news got around that it was being placed on banned book lists.

Truly, banning books is like kids trying to build a dam in a big river. Their work might divert the waters course a little bit, but it cant stop it.

And in the meantime, the activity of those who would ban books often undermines their credibility. The censorship and imprisonment of notable figures like Galileo remains one of the Catholic Churchs greatest disgraces. Even today, such movescontinue to be cited as evidence that the church cannot be trusted, that when challenged it always eventually dismisses rational discourse in favor of naked aggression.

In the end, those demanding the removal of certain texts from schools or libraries may succeed for a time. But the history of the church shows that they will not be able to stop those stories from reaching people in their communities. In the end, you cant stop an idea through censorship. And usually the impulse to try comes out of fear of others, rather than love for ones own.

More here:
The Catholic Church has been banning books for centuries. Here's what it can teach us about censorship today. - America Magazine

Fights about free speech can feel rhetorical until they are not. Heres what censorship looks like in practice: A student newspaper and journalism program in Nebraska shuttered for writing about pride month. The state of Oklahoma seeking to revoke the teaching certificate of an English teacher who shared a QR code that directed students to the Brooklyn Public Librarys online collection of banned books. A newly elected district attorney in Tennessee musing openly about jailing teachers and librarians.

In Florida today it may even be illegal for teachers to even talk about who they love or marry thanks to the states Dont Say Gay law. Of course, it goes far beyond sex: The sunshine states Republican commissioner of education rejected 28 different math textbooks this year for including verboten content.

Acts of censorship are often tacit admissions of weakness masquerading as strength. This weakness is on full display with the imposition of so-called educational gag orders, laws which restrict the discussions of race, gender, sexuality and American history in K-12 and higher education. A political project convinced of the superiority of its ideas doesnt need the power of the state to shield people from competing ideas. Censorship is the desperate rear-guard action of a movement that has already lost the fight for hearts and minds.

This year alone, 137 gag order bills like these have been introduced in 36 state legislatures. Thats a sharp increase from 2021 when 54 bills were introduced in 22 states, according to a report released last month by PEN America, a free speech organization. Only seven of those bills became law in 2022, but they are some of the strictest to date, and the sheer number of bills introduced reflects a growing enthusiasm on the right for censorship as a political weapon and instrument of social control.

These new measures are far more punitive than past efforts, with heavy fines or loss of state funding for institutions that dare to offer courses covering the forbidden content. Teachers can be fired and even face criminal charges. Lawsuits have already started to trickle through the courts asking for broad interpretations of the new statutes. For the first time, the PEN report noted, some bills have also targeted private schools and universities in addition to public schools.

It wasnt all that long ago that Republican lawmakers around the country were introducing laws designed to protect free speech on college campuses. Now, theyre using the coercive power of the state to restrict what people can talk about, learn about or discuss in public, and exposing them to lawsuits for doing so. Thats a clear threat to the ideals of a pluralistic political culture, in which challenging ideas are welcomed and discussed.

How and what to teach American students has been contested ground since the earliest days of public education. The content of that instruction is something about which Americans of good will can respectfully disagree.

The Supreme Court has also recognized limits on the censorship of school libraries, if not curriculums. Local school boards may not remove books from school libraries simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, a plurality of justices wrote in a 1982 decision.

Despite the moral panic over teaching about gender and race, American parents say they are overwhelmingly satisfied with the instruction their children receive. A poll from National Public Radio and Ipsos earlier this year found that just 18 percent of parents said their childs school taught about gender and sexuality in a way that clashed with their familys values, while 19 percent said the same about race and racism. Only 14 percent felt that way about American history.

And yet, some Republican candidates are using the threat of censorship as a show of strength, evidence of their power to muzzle political opponents. Last year in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin won the governorship of that state after a campaign in which he demagogued the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Beloved by the Nobel Prize-winning Toni Morrison. Other candidates are looking to make it a centerpiece of their pitch to voters in the midterm elections in races from Texas to New Jersey.

Some want to extend censorship far beyond the classroom. In Virginia, a Republican state representative tried to get a court to declare as obscene two young adult books frequently banned in schools, Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe and A Court of Mist and Fury, by Sarah Mass. The case was dismissed this month, but if it had been successful, it could have made it illegal for bookstores, libraries to carry the books or for private citizens to sell or share them everywhere in the state.

Right-wing lawmakers are also looking to restrict what Americans can say about abortion. Model legislation from the National Right to Life Committee, which is circulating in state legislatures, aims to ban Americans from giving instructions over the telephone, the internet, or any other medium of communication regarding self-administered abortions or means to obtain an illegal abortion. That prohibition extends to hosting websites that contain such information.

Even when such bills fail to censor they can easily cascade into vigilantism. Across the country, libraries in small towns are being closed and library staff are being harassed and intimidated. The Times reports that librarians have been labeled pedophiles on social media, called out by local politicians and reported to law enforcement officials. Some librarians have quit after being harassed online. Others have been fired for refusing to remove books from circulation. The American Library Association has documented more than 1,600 books in 700 different libraries or library systems that have faced attempted censorship.

Political factions on both the left and the right are insecure enough in their ideas that theyve tried to muzzle those with whom they disagree. But only right-wing legislators are currently writing censorship into law and enforcing it with the power of the state.

For a vocal minority to ban discussion of certain facts or topics because they make some people uncomfortable or simply to score political points is deeply undemocratic, particularly in a nation founded on a commitment to free speech and the open exchange of ideas. Free expression isnt just a feature of democracy; it is a necessary prerequisite.

Link:
Other voices: Government censorship? Weakness masquerading as strength - St. Paul Pioneer Press

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

(Updated 9.15.22, 7:50 p.m. for typos.)

An East Coweta High School sophomore is pushing back against a year-long campaign to remove certain books from school libraries.

Ill be frank, I don't believe that censorship is the correct option, Natalie Zern told the Coweta County Board of Education Tuesday. Historically, when books get banned, it doesn't end up well for the people or for the leadership.

A nationwide crusade to eliminate a particular batch of objectionable books in public schools made its way into the Coweta boardroom last fall, resulting in near-monthly tirades and a few lewd read-alouds from local activists who say they want to protect students from exposure to inappropriate materials.

Its been a long, contentious back-and-forth, further complicated by a Georgia General Assembly-mandated policy clarification that effectively excludes those activists from the decision-making process for evaluating objectionable materials unless they are doing so at a school their children attend.

An important voice missing from those tense exchanges, Zern said, has been that of the Coweta County School System students themselves.

Weve had teachers, parents, guardians and concerned citizens with nothing to do with the school system share their opinions, Zern said. However, we've got to hear from someone whom this censorship will actually affect someone you as teachers, parents, citizens and school board members are supposed to be representing.

Zerns parents, both educators, helped her understand that literacy is not only the ability to read and write, she said, but also knowledge or competence in a specific area.

While some speakers may have been able to read, they do not have literacy skills in areas such as childhood education, juvenile and adolescent development or political ideology, Zern told board members.

She recited part of the Coweta County School Systems Mission, Vision and Beliefs statement (www.cowetaschools.com): We believe, as leaders of learners, we must empower students to be active and accountable participants in their learning.

Zern told board members that, as leaders of 23,000 students, you must give us the tools to empower and educate ourselves on matters we deem important to us.

We are not active if we do not get to choose the materials we wish to read in an already very rigid curriculum, she said. We are not accountable if we aren't taught the freedom of media and the freedom to choose. We are not participating if our curriculum is being left in the hands of representatives who are going to take away our books. We are not learning if all media we ingest is tailored to fit the specific wants and wishes of people in the county. And we are not empowered if you refuse to dignify us with the right to learn about different cultures, ideas and things we're interested in.

She said she recently studied censorship in an advanced placement history class taught by Jennifer Sandlin at ECHS, where she learned that banned books throughout history have included any version of the New Testament that was not written in Latin, the works of Galileo, Voltaire, Copernicus and Victor Hugo, and George Orwells anti-authoritarian 1984.

When leaders censor books, they aren't looking out for the good of the people they're looking to forward an agenda that they believe in, Zern said.

They often do so with weak evidence and claims, she said, citing the reading of an isolated passage from Sarah J. Maas Court of Mist and Fury last December. The speaker chose a sexually explicit excerpt to make the point that the book should not be available to students, Zern said, but missed its wider purpose.

Had the speaker exercised their literacy skills, they would have found out that the book is a social commentary with focus on mental health, the main characters severe depression and the abusive relationship the main character undergoes, she said, noting that several areas of the Bible also include sexually explicit or inappropriate content.

Im not trying to bring religion into issues for the sake of controversy, she said. Im simply trying to illustrate that the inclusion of these passages does not undermine the influence or message of the Bible.

Zern also emphasized the importance of reading for fun as well as for school, citing a Scholastic study conducted in 2013 that indicated the practice can increase students Lexile scores and comprehension skills.

Both forms of reading are necessary to fully develop literacy skills and are needed to completely develop a childs reading process, so children should have equal opportunities to read the books they want, she said.

The practice of removing so-called objectionable materials from classrooms robs students of important educational opportunities, Zern said.

A child who is not permitted to read a book in class a book that's being taught by an educator that has been reading and studying it for years is missing out on the lessons, analysis and literacy development that goes along with it, she said. It may seem like a few angry adults now, and one or two censored texts, but before long, it's sure to become a systemic problem.

Convincing students to hate certain books will teach them to hate reading, Zern said.

You're teaching them that the happiness and the lessons found in literature don't exist, she told board members. You're telling them that you value your own personal comfort over their development into a functioning, intelligent and well-read adult. You're telling them that you want them to be treated like a 5-year-old.

Zern was not the only student speaker at Tuesdays meeting.

Seventh grader Colby Wilson also took to the lectern to make the board aware of her objections to the outdated dress code at Arnall Middle School.

Wilson said she has been pulled for dress code violations several times once when she was wearing sweatpants and a sweater.

I would never wear anything inappropriate anywhere, she said.

Shorts have been a particular issue, Wilson said. She was pulled for a violation recently while walking to class, surrounded by her friends and peers.

Not only was this embarrassing, but the situation was handled horribly, Wilson said. The administrator should have pulled me aside to speak about whatever they thought was the problem.

Wilson said she is tall and has trouble finding clothes to fit the dress code.

The teachers and staff say that girls thighs and legs are inappropriate and distracting, she said. But if anyone is distracted, then that person should be punished, not the girls. It is not that you can see my thighs. When girls wear jeans with holes in the thigh area, putting tape over the hole (a fix accepted by many schools) only makes people stare at the area.

Wilson said she thinks its unfair that boys also are allowed to wear shorts but never seem to get violations.

Administrators should be focused on girls education, not our clothing, she said. We are 14 and younger. We should not have to worry about this. When girls get punished for others actions, it makes us feel like it's our fault, and it is not. I hope you take all this into consideration and update Arnalls dress code.

While all seven elected board members were present at the meeting, only six appeared to have been supportive of the students who came before them.

During Zerns comments, Board Chair Beth Barnett gaveled down an interruption from board member Buzz Glover, reminding the board that it was the publics time to speak. Glover explained his outburst later, during board comments.

Ive been on this board a year and nine months, and I heard the most disgusting thing that I have heard said in this room tonight. And no, it was not from the speaker it was from my colleague to the right, Glover said, referring to District 4 representative Linda Menk. I heard my colleague say, What a dimwit. I don't know if she intended for me to hear it or not, but I did.

Glover said hes known Zern for several years and is proud of her. He apologized for Menks alleged comment, which was not picked up on audio.

I hope you didnt hear that, Glover said to Zern.

He went on to issue an open invitation for other Coweta students to speak at future meetings.

I invite all 23,000 of you that are out there to come speak on whatever subject you like, and I never and I hope nobody on this board would think anything less of any student whether I agree with them or not. Or any other speaker, he said. Im looking forward to January 2023.

Menk, an embattled two-termer, was unseated by challenger Rob DuBose in June after he earned nearly 80 percent of the runoff election vote.

DuBose takes office in January 2023.

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Student tells BOE censorship is not the 'correct option' - Newnan Times-Herald

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.

See the original post here:
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

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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

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

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