Category Archives: Censorship

Nashville In a world of rampant censorship, we must ask ourselves: How far do we have to go to protect our children? And after what point is overly sheltering hurting our kids?

This is a question being asked in Memphis, Tennessee at this very moment. Following the reverberating pain of the shooting of George Floyd, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa wrote the book, His Name is George Floyd. It discusses Floyds life and legacy and is essential reading for anti-racists. When Samuels and Olorunnipa arrived at the Whitehaven High School in Memphis last October to speak on their book, they were told to not share any excerpts or delve too deeply into the topic. Students were also not given a copy.

This was a condition required by a Tennessean law, which requires school books to be age-appropriate (which is, of course, a completely subjective and arbitrary requirement, but so is censorship). It is no coincidence that books called out for being not age-appropriate are ones discussing racism. Tennessee, which was one of the first states to restrict classroom conversations on racism, is clearly intent on asserting itself as a state lacking free speech.

Another interesting development is that Whitehaven is a majority Black school, with even the youngest students certainly old enough to fully remember the massive waves of protests in 2020. Why is the state and Memphis-Shelby County so intent on covering up issues of racism and claiming that racism is age-inappropriate for students who have grown up in a system built on racist ideals? The answer lies within the question itself. The state seems to believe that a lack of school education will produce students who do not know racism. This is untrue in two ways.

A system without civics education produces students who grow to be either ill-informed (sometimes, in Tennessee, in damaging ways) or are angry at the politicians. In the age of widespread information on the internet, the number of young people who dont know whats going on is much lower than it used to be. Its no easy feat to be an uninformed, socially active teen these days, especially in a place like Memphis. Unfortunately, disinformation is rampant and is the real enemy of the truth in communities with censorship.

When we think about censorship in the age of the internet, we sometimes believe that people will know nothing without these books and resources. But when we dont provide truthful resources and difficult conversations in the classroom, we fundamentally fail our children. We make it obscenely difficult for them to be able to pick out truth from lies, and accurate graphics from misleading statistics. And, though we have yet to see the consequences truly, we know that when children are incapable of picking out right from wrong on the internet, they go on to propagate misinformation unknowingly. According to TIME Magazine, fewer than 45% of teens say they can tell the difference between real and fake news. Still, a survey done by Common Sense Media said that a whopping 54% of teens get their news from social platforms like Instagram or TikTok.

By continuing the fight for censorship, we have doomed our children to an uphill battle for information.

The next time we ask ourselves how far is too far? We must carefully consider the effects of censorship on young people. These effects lie in a lack of media literacy, one of the cruelest things we can do to our children in the 21st century.

Emmie Wolf-Dubin (she/her) is a high school student in Nashville who covers anything from entertainment to politics. Follow her on Instagram: @redheadwd07.

Edited by Nykeya Woods.

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Censorship in Memphis: The Real Effects of Withholding Information - YR Media

November 20, 2023 at 10:00 p.m. EST

MUMBAI Over a three-decade career, the filmmaker Anurag Kashyap often trained a critical eye on his native India as he wove tales about rogue cops, rotten ministers and the hypocrisies of the Indian middle class. He garnered standing ovations at Cannes and received fan mail from Martin Scorsese. He landed lucrative deals with Netflix after the American streaming platform entered India in 2016, looking to produce edgy, Hindi-language shows.

But in 2021, Kashyap said, Netflix shelved what would have been his magnum opus: an adaptation of the nonfiction book Maximum City, which explores Hindu bigotry and the extremes of hope and despair in Mumbai.

When the U.S. streaming giants, Netflix and Amazons Prime Video, entered India seven years ago, they promised to shake up one of the worlds most important entertainment markets, a film-obsessed nation with more than 1 billion people and a homegrown moviemaking industry with fans worldwide.

In the last four years, however, a chill has swept through the streaming industry in India as Prime Minister Narendra Modis Bharatiya Janata Party tightened its grip on the countrys political discourse and the American technology platforms that host it. Just as the BJP and its ideological allies have spread propaganda on WhatsApp to advance their Hindu-first agenda and deployed the states coercive muscle to squash dissent on Twitter, they have used the threat of criminal cases and coordinated mass public pressure to shape what Indian content gets produced by Netflix and Prime Video.

Today, a culture of self-censorship pervades the streaming industry here, manifesting in ways both dramatic and subtle. Executives at the India offices of Netflix and Prime Video and their lawyers ask for extensive changes to rework political plots and remove passing references to religion that might offend the Hindu right wing or the BJP, industry insiders say. Projects that deal with Indias political, religious or caste divisions are politely declined when they are proposed, or dropped midway through development. Even completed series and films have been quietly abandoned and withheld by Netflix and Prime Video from their more than 400 million combined viewers worldwide.

Why greenlight it, then change your mind? asked Kashyap, recalling how Netflix walked away from his three-part adaptation of Maximum City, based on the award-winning book by Suketu Mehta. Its invisible censorship.

The Washington Post spoke to more than two dozen filmmakers, writers, producers and executives in India and the United States who shared their experiences and details about projects, many of which have not been previously reported. Many interviewees spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve their relationships with Netflix and Prime Video. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post. The Posts interim CEO, Patty Stonesifer, sits on Amazons board.

The trouble began in 2019, when Hindu-nationalist activists first called for boycotts and filed police complaints against Netflix and Prime Video, seeking to curb content they saw as denigrating Hinduism and India. The pressure campaign peaked in January 2021, when these activists nationwide prompted police across India to investigate Prime Video, ostensibly for mocking a Hindu god in a political series called Tandav. A top Prime Video executive in India was forced to briefly go into hiding and surrender her passport to police, according to people familiar with the matter.

It was a watershed moment. Streaming executives had to review the projects going forward, recalled Parth Arora, a former director of production management for Netflix India. You wanted to make sure that you are not making the same mistakes that happened on Tandav.

Since then, Prime Video has shelved Gormint, a satirical series billed as Indias answer to Veep, because it mocked Indian politics, said the series director. And despite investing more than $1 million to produce Indi (r) as Emergency, a documentary about the 1975-1977 period when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended civil liberties and censored the media, Netflix recently relinquished the rights and will not release the film, which contains veiled commentary about the Modi administration, people familiar with the project said.

Sunil Ambekar, a senior leader and spokesman for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu-nationalist umbrella organization affiliated with the BJP, said it was the duty of filmmakers to promote a positive image of India and its culture. Movies that celebrate Bharat are more liked by the people, he said, using the Sanskrit name for India. These days we can see pride for nation, and pride for India, more actively expressed.

In early 2021, the Indian government introduced a system of self-regulation in which streaming companies must resolve viewer complaints within 15 days, or else face regulatory scrutiny by an industry body or a government committee staffed by various ministries. A senior official in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the policy candidly, said the goal was not to squash criticism of the government or to ban discussion of Indias social and religious rifts but mostly to curb profanity and sexual content.

He acknowledged, however, that the bureaucracy was often under political pressure from the Hindu right wing and other quarters to censor shows. We had to think of how to discipline these platforms, he said. We want content to be sanitized.

Industry insiders say streaming platforms cannot risk their presence in such a crucial market by defying pressure from the BJP or its supporters. The companies business is thriving with streaming revenues in India projected to grow more than 20 percent a year from $2.6 billion in 2022 to $13 billion in 2030, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Boston Consulting Group.

In a response to questions about political pressure, Prime Video India praised the Indian governments current streaming regulations for allowing creativity in the content we create and said the companys programming decisions are designed to serve our incredibly diverse audiences in India.

A Netflix spokesperson said: We have an incredibly broad range of Indian original films and TV shows, all of which speak to our long standing support for creative expression. This diversity not only reflects our members very different tastes, it also distinguishes our service from the competition.

Neither company addressed specific projects they have dropped.

In many ways, Kashyap, 51, embodied Indias indie spirit and the initial flush of excitement about streaming and how both have since been subdued. In 2018, he co-directed what Reed Hastings, then Netflixs chief executive, touted as the first big, spectacular Netflix series to come out of India, the crime thriller Sacred Games.

But in 2019, still riding high from a string of Netflix projects, Kashyap couldnt resist speaking out against the Modi administration as India became embroiled in nationwide protests over a citizenship bill seen as discriminatory against Muslims. He gave fiery speeches at protests in New Delhi and Mumbai. On Twitter, he called the government fascist and rule by gangsters.

Before long, he came to resemble one of his protagonists. In his films, misfits and troublemakers rise at first by challenging the system. Sooner or later, they stumble.

As a child growing up in Uttar Pradesh state, Kashyap recalled, he wrote short stories so dark, his schoolteacher alerted his parents. In college, he didnt pursue science like his parents wanted, and instead hung out with the leftist street theater troupe, the Jana Natya Manch, and rode a rickety bicycle across New Delhi to watch films by Fritz Lang, Bimal Roy and Tomu Uchida.

The brooding, realist movies made me realize there was nothing wrong with me. These were the kinds of stories in my head, Kashyap said. I never fit in. I never thought cinema should be about hero and heroine, song and dance.

In 1992, Kashyap moved to Mumbai, then called Bombay, to begin his career at the bottom of the film industry. By the mid-2000s, his films were catapulting obscure actors to Bollywood fame but Kashyap eschewed mainstream success, instead becoming a darling of the international film festival circuit.

Kashyap was perfect for Netflix after it launched a multibillion-dollar international expansion in 2016. The company was then facing hurdles with censors in China, and to win India, another massive, tantalizing market, it wanted offbeat content that would create buzz.

In 2018, Hastings joked at a conference in New Delhi that he could acquire 100 million new subscribers in India alone nearly what Netflix had worldwide at the time and would invest heavily in local content like an upcoming crime thriller co-directed by Kashyap and his longtime collaborator Vikramaditya Motwane.

You will see a different side of Mumbai, Hastings promised the audience as a giant screen flashed the promotional poster for Sacred Games. It is not a pretty, happy, dancey one. It is crime and gritty like Narcos.

Sacred Games was indeed provocative. Its antihero was a gangster who mocks his pious Hindu father and instigates religious violence. It showed hard drug use and lots of sex. It was a massive hit.

Soon, the backlash began. In 2019, a Hindu-nationalist activist wrote to police demanding action against Netflix for its deep-rooted Hinduphobia, citing examples such as Sacred Games and Leila, a Handmaids Tale-style series about a future totalitarian Hindu society. The police did not take action. The following year, after a BJP party official complained about a Netflix series showing a Muslim boy kissing a Hindu girl in a Hindu temple, police registered a criminal case against two Netflix executives, but no arrests were made. The hashtag #BoycottNetflix began to trend on Twitter.

Meanwhile, the head of India content at Prime Video, Aparna Purohit, also came under scrutiny. OpIndia, a right-wing news site, dug into her Facebook history, found she had posted political cartoons criticizing the government and accused her of giving space for ultra-left radicals and Islamist elements on the streaming platform.

In January 2021, the campaign against streamers came to a head. After Prime Video released the series Tandav, viewers in nine Indian states filed complaints with police. The coordinated complaints alleged that the cast and crew of Tandav, as well as Prime Videos Purohit, had insulted a Hindu god in one scene. But Tandav riled BJP supporters in other ways: It also depicted police brutality against student leaders and farmer protests, mirroring real-life controversies that had been dogging the Modi administration.

Police from Uttar Pradesh, a BJP-ruled state, descended on Mumbai to interrogate actors and producers. An Uttar Pradesh judge reviewing Purohits plea seeking protection from arrest ruled that she was trying to earn money in the most brazen manner by mocking Hinduism and undermining India as a united force socially, communally and politically.

Facing the threat of arrest, Purohit was whisked by Prime Video into safe houses and went incommunicado, two friends recalled. Today, several cases alleging Purohit hurt Hindu sentiments remain in the courts despite Prime Videos attempts to have them dismissed, and Purohit cannot leave India without seeking permission from the police. Purohit did not respond to requests for comment.

The complaints filed against Prime Video and the social media campaigns were organized behind the scenes by activists like Ramesh Solanki, the Hindu nationalist who filed the first police complaint in 2019.

In an interview, Solanki described the existence of hundreds of WhatsApp and Facebook groups where Hindu nationalists like himself had gathered to discuss how to apply pressure on streaming platforms. The groups members were scattered worldwide, he recalled, and offered financial and legal aid to those who volunteered to file complaints against the foreign companies.

They were always criticizing Bharat and the people of Bharat, always criticizing the army, always making shows that were negative, Solanki said. They were not good for the image of India abroad.

After the successful Tandav campaign, Solanki said, he was flooded with congratulatory messages from BJP leaders and, last year, became a party member himself. Prime Video and Netflix have learned their lesson, Solanki said: They are aware: If we do any mischief, if we cross the line, we will face the music.

Inside Prime Video, the first show to be dropped after the Tandav crisis was Gormint, a satire about the absurdity of Indian politics, recalled series director Ayappa K.M. All nine episodes of the first season had already been shot in India, London and Thailand, and they were publicly scheduled to stream immediately after Tandav. They vanished without a trace.

The director said he didnt begrudge Prime Video executives because they faced enormous personal risks, but he bemoaned the state of the industry. It is creative evolution in reverse, he said. Only passive, thoroughly sanitized content stands a chance on most platforms now.

While Gormint was never put out, Prime Video released what one industry executive called a make-up film, about an Indian archaeologist who discovers a mythical bridge described in the Ramayana Hindu epic, prompting him to reconsider his atheist beliefs.

Prime Video did not answer questions about the Tandav controversy and its repercussions, saying only that the company sought to tell authentic and unique local stories while respecting and embracing the myriad languages and cultures that make up Indias vibrant tapestry.

At Prime Video we take our responsibilities seriously and make our programming decisions thoughtfully, according to a company statement.

Prime Videos travails also stunned its rival. As Purohit faced the threat of arrest in 2021, the Netflix India chief, Monika Shergill, told the companys global leaders that its India office should not take risks or they might also face the possibility of jail, said a former Netflix India executive. Shergill did not respond to requests for comment.

Another former Netflix India employee said the company decided against releasing a film by the director Dibakar Banerjee about generations of an Indian Muslim family experiencing bigotry even though it was completed, but executives signaled to Banerjee that if the BJP left power, the political climate may be more amenable for the films release. Banerjee could not be reached for comment.

This May, a Netflix India team gave a presentation to executives from Europe and Latin America, in which they used India as a case study to illustrate how Netflix needed to be more malleable to local regulation, the former employee recalled. The general line is: Theres no fighting back.

One director who has worked with Netflix and Prime Video said streaming companies didnt just fear antagonizing the Modi government. They were even more concerned about its right-wing supporters, who might launch mass campaigns calling for boycotts and arrests. What the government has done very smartly is they effectively say, You self-censor stuff, the director said. There is a gun to your head because at any point of time, its so easy to mobilize a bunch of people.

Concerns about self-censorship and revisionism are also surfacing elsewhere. A member of a team that made a podcast for Spotify about the history of Indias space program said executives asked to review the script because it hailed the contributions of Indias first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who is often condemned by Hindu nationalists as being too conciliatory toward Muslims and Pakistan. Executives also seemed hesitant about giving credit to Tipu Sultan, an 18th-century Indian Muslim ruler who pioneered the use of rockets, but they ultimately did not push for changes.

I was a bit shocked, the team member recalled. What is wrong with talking about them? These are facts recorded in history.

From the beginning of his career, Kashyap has refused to be disciplined. To get his films released in theaters, Kashyap often fought against government censors who objected to his treatment of historical events and expletive-laden screenplays.

But in 2019, he took on the ruling party itself. He mocked Modi supporters on social media during the national election and became a popular target of troll attacks. After the government passed the bill that critics said disadvantaged Muslims, Kashyap made headlines by joining a massive protest in Mumbai. And after a masked mob attacked anti-government student protesters in January 2020, the director flew to New Delhi, picked up a microphone and exhorted the students to fight on.

Back home in Mumbai, he sat every morning at his dining room table and wrestled with Maximum City. Kashyap wrote feverishly, filling hundreds of pages of blank paper with his expansive Hindi handwriting. It was my best work, he said. Ive never done such honest, important work.

But shortly before preproduction was scheduled to begin, the Tandav saga upended the industry. A few weeks after that, controversy engulfed Kashyap: Tax officials raided 28 locations associated with his former production company and announced they found unreported income equivalent to $90 million.

Under the Modi government, critics say, tax authorities have frequently been deployed to probe political opponents, and opposition parties criticized Kashyaps investigation as politically motivated. The case is ongoing. Kashyap denies any wrongdoing.

After that, Kashyap recalled, Netflix walked away from Maximum City without providing a clear reason, but he believes either the content became too sensitive to touch or he did. Kashyap drank heavily and fell into a lengthy depression. He suffered two heart attacks.

Maximum City was where all my energy went, he said. I was heartbroken. I totally lost it.

Shunned by investors, Kashyap used up his personal savings and borrowed money to finish his next film. He rewrote the drama about an interfaith couple as a more conventional romance. Still, it flopped.

After three decades of bruising fights with government censors, Kashyap said he is now even more frustrated by the streaming industry, which submitted to a kind of censorship that was opaque and impossible to appeal.

Streaming was finally the space I was waiting for, Kashyap said. The disappointment is it was supposed to be a revolution, but it was not. Like social media, it was supposed to empower people, but it became a tool.

Today, along elevated highways, in chic neighborhoods and on the sides of city buses in Mumbai, advertisements for new Prime Video and Netflix shows are ubiquitous, a reminder that the companies continue to bet big on India despite mounting political constraints. But even liberal filmmakers and Kashyaps supporters increasingly acknowledge a simple truth: The animating force of Mumbai isnt art, they say. Its dhandha business.

Netflix and Prime Video are here to capture a market of 1.3 billion people, said Hansal Mehta, a director who has several projects with the platforms. The more we fool ourselves that people are here for something else, the more we will be disillusioned with the system.

On a recent afternoon, Kashyap padded around in purple pajama pants in his apartment. He emerged from his study clutching the 800-page screenplay for Maximum City Part III, flipped through it wistfully, then set it aside.

Kashyap said he was recovering. He was getting back into writing every day on his dining room table, fueled by a steady diet of Kilchoman whisky, hand-rolled cigarettes and takeout biryani. He was even getting work again with Netflix, on a project that didnt directly touch contemporary issues. I know I need to stay away from current politics, he said.

He recently completed Kennedy, a film about an anguished cop turned hit man that wasnt funded by Netflix or Prime Video, but by Zee, an Indian conglomerate. Kashyap shoehorned into the script thinly veiled criticism of Indian politicians coziness with billionaire industrialists and the governments handling of the pandemic. Its not clear if theyll remain intact once the film is reviewed by censors for theatrical release or prepared for streaming.

And Kashyap is still trying to raise funds to get Maximum City made. For inspiration, he said, he often looked to filmmakers who made daring works in Iran and China one a strict theocracy, the other an authoritarian one-party state. India was neither, for now.

They still find ways to do it, he said. So why cant I?

Niha Masih contributed to this report.

Design by Anna Lefkowitz. Visual editing by Chloe Meister, Joe Moore and Jennifer Samuel. Copy editing by Christopher Rickett. Story editing by Alan Sipress. Project editing by Jay Wang.

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Facing pressure in India, Netflix and Amazon back down on daring ... - The Washington Post

A man who now does "faith" outreach for the homophobic, book-banning Moms for Liberty in Philadelphia was once a familiar sight in Copley Square, where he'd try to convince passersby that Barack Obama was as evil as Hitler and Dick Cheney.

Phillip Fisher Jr. made the news this week when the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that he is not just an organizer for a group that wants to ban books from school shelves, he's also a registered sex offender - following his 2012 conviction involving a 14-year-old in Chicago.

Sonya Dunne recalls:

Oh my God, when Obama was in office this nut was all over Boston with Lyndon LaRouche. Pretty much a constant fixture outside CVS in Copley and the Charles River Plaza.

Fisher didn't stay long into the Obama administration doing street outreach in Boston for the LaRouche movement, though: In 2009, he was photographed in Chicago, outside a meeting about health care called by US Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., holding a poster with a large photo of Obama with a Hitler mustache drawn in.

After seeing that photo, Dunne added:

Yep thats him. He was always accompanied by that poster of Obama as Hitler.

At some point, though, Fisher and the LaRouchies grew disenchanted with each other.

In fact, he claims the LaRouchies concocted "a railroad job" that got him to plead guilty to aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a minor between the ages of 13 and 17 - in exchange for which 11 other charges were dropped - while he was trying to "break free" of the group, the Inquirer reports.

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Rightwing Philadelphia censorship fan who is also a registered sex ... - Universal Hub

An Urdu translation of Alan Woods Marxist masterpiece, Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution, written on the history of the Bolshevik Party that led the Russian Revolution of 1917, was published by Lal Salam Publications, officially launched at a ceremony on 18 November 2023.

[Originally published in Urdu at marxist.pk]

A launch ceremony was organised by the Progressive Youth Alliance, a nationwide organisation of Marxist students and youth, in collaboration with Lal Salam Publications. The event was held at the head office of Lal Salam Publications in Lahore. Students, youth, workers, progressive political activists and writers participated in this event, which also commemorated 106 years since the October Revolution in Russia.

A hall was previously booked in Al-Hamra Arts Council Lahore. But the Pakistani state, afraid of the history of the Russian Revolution, cancelled the booking just a day before the event. But despite this, the successful holding of the launch ceremony is a testimony to the fact that no matter how much you try to stop true ideas, they find their own way.

Adeel Zaidi, the central leader of Red Workers Front, the nationwide organisation of workers under the banner of the IMT, performed the duties of stage secretary during the ceremony. At the beginning, Saif, a student of GC University Lahore, opened by reciting a revolutionary poem.

After that, the first address was given by Fazeel Asghar, the central president of the Progressive Youth Alliance. Other speakers included Abid Hussain Abid, the leader of Anjuman Progressive Writers; progressive political activist and researcher Hasan Jafar Zaidi; and the central leader of Lal Salam, the Pakistan section of the IMT, Adam Pal.

Fasail Asghar said that the transformation of the Bolshevik Party from an organisation based on a few people into a mass revolutionary party was not a miracle, but reflected the power of the revolutionary ideas of Marxism, which are still a beacon for us today.

The transformation of the Bolshevik Party from an organisation based on a few people into a mass revolutionary party was not a miracle / Image: Lal Salaam

Abid Hussain Abid discussed the contents of the book in literary and political terms and appreciated the great effort of the author. He highlighted the role of the revolutionary party that has a program of creating an alternative socialist system to get rid of the growing global crisis of capitalism.

Hasan Jafar Zaidi gave a summary of the entire book, including excerpts. Aftab Ashraf said that the main feature of this book is that it explains the method of building the party that led the revolution of Russia and especially its leader Lenin.

The concluding remarks of the ceremony were delivered by Adam Pal. Addressing the participants, Adam said that, in the current era, reading theory is a must for every youth who aspires for a revolutionary change in society. He also highlighted the importance of a party modelled on the Bolsheviks in the context of the movements emerging in Pakistan and all over the world in today's revolutionary era.

Posters against the forced eviction of Afghan refugees were also displayed at the event.

In the event, Sanaullah Jalbani, organiser of Lal Salam Publications Lahore, introduced the books based on the revolutionary ideas of Marxism, published by Lal Salam Publications, and gave details of the Marxist literature to be published in the coming period, including an Urdu translation of the Communist Manifesto, which will be published in the near future.

At the end, enthusiastic revolutionary slogans were raised and the participants went home with armfuls of revolutionary literature.

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Pakistan: Urdu translation of Bolshevism launched in Lahore ... - In Defence of Marxism

Brianna Reeves

Published: 2023-11-22T20:52:18 Updated: 2023-11-22T20:52:28

Fortnite players call out censorship of Eminem songs on the in-game radio, specifically for butchering the rappers lyrics.

Eminem will officially make his Fortnite debut on Wednesday, November 29, with a skin that sports three of the hip-hop artists iconic looks.

The rappers also set to head up Fortnite Big Bang, a live event marking the end of Season OG on Tuesday, December 2. In celebrating the upcoming crossover, it seems Epic has reinstated some Eminem tracks to the in-game Icon Radio catalog.

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To the chagrin of players, though, Ems bars are heavily censored, some to a hilarious degree.

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Fortnite-centric Twitter/X account iFireMonkey pointed out that Ems return to the in-game radio involves lots of censorship. The users shared a short clip wherein Eminems Godzilla song featuring Juice WRLD plays in the background.

Of course, some of the rappers more colorful language had to be nixed. Thus, a lyric like Motherf*****n finger comes out as finger, finger.

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But the real problem arises with the prostate exam lyric that follows the aforementioned line. Apparently, the word prostate isnt allowed on Fortnite radio stations. So this bit of Godzilla in Fortnite sounds like, finger, finger exam (exam).

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Suffice it to say, Fortnite players are getting a kick out of Fortnites need to censor Eminem songs. Yet, many mention in response to the above post that itd be nice if Epic gave players an option.

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They gotta make censorship optional, reads one comment. NAH THEY BUTCHERED THE SONG (I understand its necessary for lil Timmy but please make censoring optional), someone else wrote.

Another person argued that only accounts for underage users should be restricted in this manner. Just like the cosmetics, music censoring should only be for underage accounts.

While the latter suggestion sounds promising, things could get tricky with respect to previously established game rating parameters. Fortnite players looking to get their Slim Shady fix in-game may want to look up the actual tracks on their own time.

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Fortnite players baffled by censorship of Eminem songs in-game - Dexerto

Its an opportunity to maybe shine a light on the issues and use our platforms to make change for the better.

These were the words of England midfielder Jordan Henderson during a press conference in the months preceding the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. His comments were in response to questions about the host nations appalling human rights record, particularly in regard to LGBTQ+ people, women and labour migrants, and whether teams should be boycotting the competition in protest.

England manager Gareth Southgate echoed Hendersons suggestion. There would be more change if we go and these things are highlighted, he argued. Theres an opportunity to use our voices and our platform in a positive way.

This sentiment was commonly expressed in the build-up to the tournament, as teams justified their participation in what was widely regarded to be an ill-disguised sportswashing attempt. However, a year has gone by and such changes have yet to materialise, with those inside the state continuing to be denied basic rights and freedoms.

Qatari physician and activist Dr Nasser Mohamed tells Index on Censorship that for LGBTQ+ people inside the state the situation has not improved.

As we were approaching the lead up to the Qatar World Cup, I noticed that the coverage and the public message was so disconnected from the lived reality that I had, he revealed.

Mohamed publicly came out as gay in 2022, after his anonymous attempts to publicise the struggles of LGBTQ+ people in his home country received little traction, seeking asylum in the United States as a result. He described his initial reaction to Qatar being awarded the World Cup as one of anger and defeat. He accused the state of using the tournament to try and launder their international reputation, and attempting to gaslight the world into believing they arent abusers, despite taking everything from him.

As for the suggestions that the pressure of a global audience would force the state to improve their stance on LGBTQ+ rights, Nasser assured us that this has not been the case. In terms of things on the ground, I think they have not changed, if anything they are worse, he said. Arrests, torture, everything, its still happening.

The activist also condemned his home states use of celebrity endorsements to launder their image. You get people like David Beckham coming in and selling their influence to the authoritative regime, saying things like football has the power to change the world. Amazing! Do you think it will happen by your magical presence? he laughed. You cant just show up and magically infuse goodness into the world, there needs to be action.

Mohamed also criticised the role of the media when it came to reporting on such human rights violations, arguing that much of the coverage afforded to LGBTQ+ rights in the region framed the issue as a cultural argument between the Middle East and the West, which he said came at the detriment of actual LGBTQ+ people in the country.

You get all the thousands of spins on the same factual story. Muslim Dad beats his son or Homophobic Qatari is violently attacking his LGBT child. Then on the Arabic side, white Europeans and Americans are intruding to come and tell Middle Eastern parents how to raise their children, he explained.

Then people get really afraid because now they are worried about Islamophobia, racism, discrimination. In comparison, sometimes it feels like being in the closet and occasionally facing homophobia is a lesser evil.

The absence of change in Qatar is not down to a lack of effort on the part of persecuted groups. In the autumn 2022 issue of Index, when we looked at the free speech implications of hosting the tournament in Qatar, Qatari activist Abdullah Al-Malikioutlinedthe many ways the regime punishes and thereby silences human rights defenders. He wrote:

Tamim [bin Hamad Khalifa al-Thani]has planted fear and terror in the hearts and minds of the Qatari people. No one in our country can criticise the actions and words of the corrupt dictator, or those of his terrorist gang.

Mohamed spoke about his own recent experience. He suggested that external pressure has been placed on platforms and organisations to stifle any allegations of human rights violations in the state, a situation he is no stranger to. He described being ghosted by Meta, shadowbanned by X (formerly Twitter) and speaking to high-profile politicians at length only for those conversations to go nowhere.

Theres censorship definitely, he said. Its really hard because Qatars money is everywhere. Whenever my voice reached a certain level, I was dropped by the people I was talking to.

It seems that simply spreading the word is not helping to bring about changes in the region. I naively thought nothing was happening through lack of knowledge, Mohamed said, before pausing. Its not a lack of knowledge.

There are similar concerns over the continuing exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar. Despite promises from the state that conditions would improve following global outrage in the build-up to the World Cup,a report published last week by Amnesty Internationalstated that progress towards improving these rights has largely stalled since the tournament ended, while hundreds of thousands of workers who suffered abuses linked to the tournament have still not received justice.

Prior to the tournament, there was hope that the global pressure had successfully pushed Qatar into improving conditions for migrant labourers. Reforms were passed in 2021 in an attempt to reduce the power of sponsors over workers mobility and to raise the minimum wage, motions which were largely influenced by the criticisms levelled at the country following their successful World Cup bid. However, Amnesty Internationals Head of Economic Social Justice, Steve Cockburn, said on publication of the new report that Qatar had shown a continued failure to properly enforce or strengthen these pre-World Cup labour reforms, putting the legacy of the tournament in serious peril.

He said in a statement: From illegal recruitment fees to unpaid wages, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers lost their money, health and even their lives while FIFA and Qatar tried to deflect and deny responsibility. Today, a year on from the tournament too little has been done to right all these wrongs, but the workers who made the 2022 World Cup possible must not be forgotten.

Human Rights Watch stated earlier this year that the 2021 legislation was not in itself adequate to solve the issues faced by migrant workers, calling claims by Qatari authorities and FIFA that their labour protection systems were adequate to prevent abuse grossly inaccurate and misleading. An investigation by the organisation found that some issues being faced by migrant workers in the country in the aftermath of the World Cup include wage theft, being prohibited from transferring jobs, not receiving their entitled compensations and being unable to join a union.

Mohamed believes that the fight for human rights in Qatar should encompass all such groups who find themselves exploited, abused or persecuted, but that more targeted action is required: Workers rights, womens rights, you can support all of these causes and I think it can be powerful, and it can be a very helpful thing to do, but it needs intention.

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Qatar fails to deliver on World Cup promises - Index on Censorship

Narges Mohammadi is locked in a vicious circle. The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner has been held in Tehrans notorious Evin prison since September 2022 and the Iranian authorities seem determined to keep the prominent human rights activist there.

Mohammadibecame active in fightingagainst the oppression of women in Iran as a student physicist in the 1990s and has promoted human rights ever since, including campaigning for an end to the death penalty in a country where 582 were executed last year alone.

In her nomination for the Peace Prize, Berit Reiss-Andersen, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said: Her brave struggle has come with tremendous personal costs. Altogether, the regime has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.

During her current detention, Mohammadi has been summoned to the courts on numerous occasions to face new charges. Yet Mohammadi argues thatthe revolutionary courts are not independent judicial bodies and she has also stopped lawyers attending on her behalf for that same reason.

Some of these charges relate to her ongoing human rights work from inside prison, including smuggling out an article which was published in the New York Timeson the anniversary of Mahsa (Jina) Aminis death in custody, the event that sparkedthe Woman, Life, Freedom protests that erupted inIranin 2022. Mohammadis message from prison was: The more of us they lock up, the stronger we become.

At the beginning of last week, the woman human rights defender started ahungerstrikein protest against delayed and neglectful medical care for sick prisoners, as well as the rule which makes wearing the mandatory hijab a condition for the transfer of the women prisoners to medical facilities.Then, earlier this week Mohammadi heard that she was to face a series of new charges, but after refusing towear hijab the prosecutor prohibited her from attending court. As a result neither Mohammadi nor her lawyer know the nature of the new charges levelled against her. She has now ended her hunger strike.

The regime will be infuriated with her refusal to engage with the justice system, while Mohammadi knows that each time she doesnt attend it draws yet more attention to her plight.

Mohammadi knows only too well the methods the authorities use to break prisoners. Index has recently been given a video made by Mohammadi just before she returned to jail, shot by the Iranian film-maker Vahid Zarezadeh. In it she says that people should not be surprised if, in the event that she dies in jail, the authorities blame an undiagnosed health problem, perhaps a dodgy heart.

This system sets up the conditions for the prisoners death, she says.

In sharing the video, she has put the regime on notice that they are being watched. You canwatch the video here.

Zarezadeh tells me, It was filmed at the time when she was rushed from the prison to the hospital due to the blockage of her heart veins, which were opened through angioplasty. She was on medical leave and not in good health. Shortly after this video, she was returned to Qarchak womens prison.

He says, Qarchak Womens Prison is a notorious facility designed for women, where many human rights activists and opponents of compulsory hijab are held. The prisons lack of adequate drinking water, as well as poor hygiene and medical care, leads to the spread of various diseases among inmates. Originally used as a livestock centre, Qarchak has been expanded over time. Numerous reports highlight human rights violations in this prison, yet Iranian judicial authorities show no inclination to change the conditions of detainment.

Irans appalling human rights record has also come under scrutiny at this weeks Alternative Human Rights Expo, whichhighlighted human rights issues related to the suppression of freedom of expression and assembly in the Middle East and North Africa.The virtual event, hosted by the Gulf Center for Human Rights and its partners, washeld to focus attention on the 28th session of the Conference of Parties (COP28) to be held from 30 November to 12 December 2023 in the United Arab Emirates. It featured artists, poets, writers and singers from the region including Iranian poet Fatemeh Ekhtesari.

Ekhtesari performed her poem She is Not Woman as part of the event (which is available to view here) which includes the following lines:

Were sick of queuing for the gallows Clotted grief in our blood Trouble is all thats left Rage is all we own

Narges Mohammadis rage is clear for everyone to see. It is high time that she and other human rights defenders in Irans jails are unconditionally released.

Continue reading here:
Life and death in Iran's prisons - Index on Censorship

In the late 1950s, the Rhode Island legislature created a commission to encourage morality in youth. One of its practices was to send notices to out-of-state distributors and retailers of publications it deemed obscene, asking for cooperation in suppressing them. The notices warned that the commission had circulated lists of objectionable materials to local police departments, and that it would recommend prosecution against those found to be purveying obscenity.

Four publishers sued. The case went to the Supreme Court. With one dissent, the justices in Bantam Books Inc. v. Sullivan (1963) held that the informal censorship violated the 14th Amendment. They also noted that it didnt matter that the Rhode Island commission had no real power beyond informal sanctions.

People do not lightly disregard public officers thinly veiled threats to institute criminal proceedings against them if they do not come around, noted Justice William Brennan, a fierce liberal, in his opinion. It would be nave to credit the states assertion that these blacklists are in the nature of mere legal advice, when they plainly serve as instruments of regulation independent of the laws against obscenity.

Brennans warning is worth keeping in mind when considering last weeks ruling in Missouri v. Biden, in which a federal district judge in Louisiana, Terry Doughty, ordered the Biden administration to desist from communicating with social media platforms for purposes of removal, deletion, suppression or reduction of content containing protected free speech.

Judge Doughtys order has flaws, including, it seems, some dubious assertions of fact that need to be closely investigated. And the broadness of the preliminary injunction is also a practical issue.

Still, the order is a triumph for civil liberties. It also ought to be considered a victory for liberals, insofar as liberals have historically been suspicious of Big Tech and the big national-security state cooperating, as alleged in this case to suppress the speech of people whose views they deem dangerous.

But in one of the stranger inversions of recent politics, its mostly conservatives who are cheering and liberals who are decrying the ruling. A government official appearing on a television show and stating that certain speech is disinformation does not come even remotely close to the government coercing social media companies into removing that speech, scoff the law professors Laurence Tribe and Leah Litman in an essay on the Just Security website.

Fair enough. And its certainly true that senior government officials, no less than private individuals, also have free speech rights, which include urging companies to do what they think is the right thing. The legal line between a government official encouraging or discouraging private conduct versus engaging in behavior that amounts to coercion is a blurry one.

But its also a line that, in this case, the administration seems to have repeatedly crossed. Two examples:

In a July 20, 2021, interview on MSNBC, the anchor Mika Brzezinski asked Kate Bedingfield, who was then the White House communications director, whether the White House would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act so that social media companies would be open to lawsuits for hosting Covid misinformation. Bedingfield replied, Were reviewing that, and certainly they should be held accountable. Social media companies soon began to remove the pages and accounts of the so-called Disinformation Dozen, referring to notorious vaccine skeptics.

On Oct. 29, 2021, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy tweeted that we must demand Facebook and the rest of the social media ecosystem take responsibility for stopping health misinformation on their platforms. That day, according to Doughtys ruling, Facebook requested that the government provide a federal health contract to determine what content would be censored on Facebooks platforms.

Neither of these cases is an example of the administration merely encouraging Big Tech to remove ostensibly harmful content. On the contrary, it is multiple federal agencies yelling jump and threatening dire legal consequences and Big Tech replying, in effect, How high?

The constitutional principle should be obvious. Government should not be able to do an end-run around its constitutional obligation to protect freedom of speech by delegating censorship to private-sector actors, Nadine Strossen, a former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, told me on Tuesday. If private-sector action becomes so closely interwoven with the government that it becomes functionally indistinguishable from state action, it sensibly becomes subject to First Amendment constraints.

Thats true irrespective of whose speech is being curtailed.

Critics of last weeks ruling may claim that, at the height of the pandemic, with thousands of Americans dying of Covid every day, the government had an urgent interest in curtailing what it saw as misinformation. Similar claims were made about communists at the height of the Cold War and antiwar activists during World War I. Yet the actions of government and powerful media companies against them shock us to this day.

It shouldnt be hard to agree that the highest purpose of the First Amendment is to protect speech we like the least speech we are sure is pernicious, bigoted, obscene or potentially harmful to health. Liberals especially should take care that the arguments they now make for privatized censorship will not eventually be turned on them.

Link:
Opinion | Speech We Loathe Is Speech We Must Defend - The New York Times

For comic professionals at San Diego Comic-Con, there is no better party than the annual Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) welcome party. This years event will be Thursday, July 20 at the Westgate Hotel, from 8pm-12pm on the Terrace Under the Stars, and it will be sponsored by Oni Press.

At the event, theyll be debuting a new initiative in support of the CBLDF, called FIGHT CENSORSHIP, READ COMICS! where theyll be unveiling new artwork for the initiative from artists including Maia Kobabe (Gender Queer), Matt Kindt (Mind MGMT, BRZRKR), Gabriel B and Fbio Moon.

The party is free for CBLDF members and the general public with a suggested voluntary donation to support CBLDFs ongoing work supporting free speech and creative expression. The first 50 attendees will also receive a free Secret Edition variant cover of the latest issue of the publishers sci-fi anthology,Xino #2, featuring artwork by Nick Cagnetti (Pink Lemonade), while the first 200 will receive a free FIGHT CENSORSHIP, READ COMICS! button set.

The evening will also feature the annual CBLDF annual Silent Art Auction, featuring comic art and collectibles donated from Abrams Comicarts, Becky Cloonan, Dark Horse Comics, DSTLTRY, Dynamite Entertainment, Oni Press, IDW, and more.

During the evenings events, Oni Press will also be offering 50 signed copies of theGender Queer: Deluxe Edition hardcover with a bookplate signature by creator Maia Kobabe with all funds benefiting the CBLDF. High-quality, 1117 prints of Kobabes FIGHT CENSORSHIP, READ COMICS! illustration will also be available at the Oni Booth #1829 throughout the week, with a portion of all proceeds benefiting the CBLDF.

Continued here:
Fight Censorship with the CBLDF San Diego Comic-Con 2023 Welcome Party - San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty | YouTube

Some critics of last week's preliminary injunction inMissouri v. Biden, which bars federal officials from encouraging social media platforms to suppress constitutionally protected speech, reject the premise that such contacts amount to government-directed censorship. Other critics, especially researchers who focus on "disinformation" and hate speech, pretty much concede that point but see nothing troubling about it. From their perspective, the problem is that complying with the First Amendment means tolerating inaccurate, misleading, and hateful speech that endangers public health, democracy, and social harmony.

The day after Terry Doughty, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, issued the injunction,The New York Times gave voice to those concerns in a piece headlined "Disinformation Researchers Fret About Fallout From Judge's Order." According to the subhead, those researchers "said a restriction on government interaction with social media companies could impede efforts to curb false claims about vaccines and voter fraud."

That much is true by definition. Doughty's injunction generally prohibits various agencies and officials from "meeting with social-media companies," "specifically flagging content or posts," or otherwise "urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing" the "removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech." The injunction also bars the defendants from "threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies" toward that end and from "urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing" them to "change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech."

The injunction includes some potentially sweeping exceptions. Among other things, it does not apply to "postings involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies"; "national security threats, extortion, or other threats"; posts that "threaten the public safety or security of the United States"; "foreign attempts to influence elections"; posts "intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures"; or "criminal efforts to suppress voting," "provide illegal campaign contributions," or launch "cyber-attacks against election infrastructure."

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Some of these categories are commodious enough to encompass constitutionally protected speech by American citizens. In particular, "national security" is a broad, ill-defined excuse that might apply, for example, to information derived from classified sources or even to criticism of U.S. surveillance practices. The goal of resisting "foreign attempts to influence elections" can easily result in misidentification of Americans as Russian agents or mischaracterization of accurate reporting as foreign "disinformation."

But insofar as Doughty's order has bite, which it presumably does as it relates to COVID-19 "misinformation" and speech embracing Donald Trump's stolen-election fantasy, those anxious researchers surely are right that it "could impede efforts to curb false claims about vaccines and voter fraud." Notably, these critics take it for granted that preventing the government from demanding removal of disfavored content will have a substantial impact on the speech that platforms allow.

"Most misinformation or disinformation that violates social platforms' policies is flagged by researchers, nonprofits, or people and software at the platforms themselves," theTimes notes. But "academics and anti-disinformation organizations often complained that platforms were unresponsive to their concerns." The paper reinforces that point with a quote from Viktorya Vilk, director for digital safety and free expression (!) at PEN America: "Platforms are very good at ignoring civil society organizations and our requests for help or requests for information or escalation of individual cases. They are less comfortable ignoring the government."

The reason social media companies are "less comfortable ignoring the government," of course, is that it exercises coercive power over them and could use that power to punish them for failing to censor speech it considers dangerous. In the 155-page opinion laying out the reasoning behind his injunction, Doughty notes implicit threats against recalcitrant platforms, including anti-trust actions, new regulations, and increased civil liability for content posted by users.

Doughty cites myriad communications that show administration officials expected platforms to promptly comply with the government's censorship "requests," which they typically did, and repeatedly complained when companies were less than fully cooperative. He emphasizes how keen Facebook et al. were to assuage President Joe Biden's anger at moderation practices that he said were "killing people."

The major platforms eagerly joined what Surgeon General Vivek Murthy described as a "whole-of-society" effort to combat the "urgent threat to public health" posed by "health misinformation," which he said might include "legal and regulatory measures." It beggars belief to suppose that the threat of such measures played no role in the platforms' responses to the administration's demands.

As the fretful researchers quoted by the Times see it, that is all as it should be. "Several disinformation researchers worried that the ruling could give cover for social media platforms, some of which have alreadyscaled back their efforts to curb misinformation, to be even less vigilant before the 2024 election," the paper reports. Again, that concern assumes that the interactions covered by Doughty's injunction resulted in stricter rules and more aggressive enforcement, meaning less speech than otherwise would have been allowed.

The Times paraphrases Bond Benton, an associate communication professor at Montclair State University, who worries that Doughty's ruling "carried a message that misinformation qualifies as speech and its removal as the suppression of speech." As usual, the Times glides over disputes about what qualifies as "misinformation," which according to the Biden administration includes truthful content that it considers misleading or unhelpful. But since even a demonstrably false assertion "qualifies as speech" under the First Amendment, the "message" that troubles Benton is an accurate statement of constitutional law. That does not mean platforms cannot decide for themselves what content they are willing to host, but it does mean the government should not try to dictate such decisions.

The concerns expressed by Doughty's critics go beyond health-related and election-related "misinformation," and they go beyond the soundness of this particular ruling. In an interview with the Times, Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, complained that the U.S. takes "a 'particularly fangless' approach to dangerous content compared with places like Australia and the European Union." Those comparisons are telling.

Australia's Online Safety Actempowers regulators to order removal of "illegal and restricted content," including images and speech classified as "cyberbullying" and "content that is inappropriate for children, such as high impact violence and nudity." Internet service providers that do not comply with complaint-triggered takedown orders within 24 hours are subject to civil penalties. The government also can order ISPs to block access to "material depicting, promoting, inciting or instructing in abhorrent violent conduct" for up to three months, after which the order can be renewed indefinitely.

Freedom House notes that Australia's law includes "no requirement for the eSafety Commissioner to give reasons for removal notices and provides no opportunity for users to respond to complaints." The organization adds that "civil society groups, tech companies, and other commentators have raised concerns about the law, including its speedy takedown requirements and its potential disproportionate effect on marginalized groups, such as sex workers, sex educators, LGBT+ people, and artists."

Australia's scheme plainly restricts or prohibits speech that would be constitutionally protected in the United States. Likewise the European Union's Digital Services Act, which covers "illegal content," a category that is defined broadly to include anything that runs afoul of a member nation's speech restrictions. E.U. countries such as France and Germany prohibit several types of speech that are covered by the First Amendment, including Holocaust denial, disparagement of minority groups, and promotion of racist ideologies.

These are the models that Ahmed thinks the U.S. should be following. "It's bananas that you can't show a nipple on the Super Bowl but Facebook can still broadcast Nazi propaganda, empower stalkers and harassers, undermine public health and facilitate extremism in the United States," he told the Times. "This court decision further exacerbates that feeling of impunity social media companies operate under, despite the fact that they are the primary vector for hate and disinformation in society."

Critics like Ahmed, in short, do not merely object to Doughty's legal analysis; they have a beef with the First Amendment itself, which allows Americans to express all sorts of potentially objectionable opinions. If you value that freedom, you probably consider it a virtue of the American legal system. But if your priority is eliminating "hate and disinformation," the First Amendment is, at best, an inconvenient obstacle.

The post Some Critics of the Ruling Against Biden's Censorship by Proxy Have a Beef With the 1st Amendment Itself appeared first on Reason.com.

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Some Critics of the Ruling Against Biden's Censorship by Proxy Have a Beef With the 1st Amendment Itself - Yahoo News