Category Archives: Censorship

Long before Netflixs Blonde landed a controversial NC-17 rating, the Motion Picture Association gave films like Baby Doll (1956) and Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) adults only designations as a way to placate concerned parents and reformers.

Now, when news surfaces of Hollywood allegedly kowtowing to everything from domestic social crusaders to foreign governments, debate lights up headlines and social media conversations. But, historically speaking, industry moguls have most often erred on the side of not ruffling feathers, home or abroad, in order to court consumers as evidenced in the birth of the MPA 100 years ago.

The lobbying group, which is marking its centennial in 2022, was born as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association in 1922. MPPDA counsel C.C. Pettijohn once told a 1929 Public Relations Conference that the film industry was first understood as a three-legged stool that included production, distribution, and exhibition. Pettijohn argued that the MPPDA allowed the public to work as the fourth leg that could make or break the industry.

One moment that led to its creation: When Americas Sweetheart Mary Pickford obtained a divorce from her husband, Owen Moore, in 1920 it rankled millions of Catholic fans sold on her wholesome image. When the gossip rags let loose about her man waiting in the wings, swashbuckling screen star Douglas Fairbanks, moral crusaders found new firepower to question the living standards in Hollywood. Things got worse when Pickford was accused of breaking up Fairbankss marriage. While Pickford and Fairbanks still managed to become Americas Royal Couple, the precedent for questioning Hollywoods morals was set.

Hollywood had another battle with social reformers in the wake of silent comedian Fatty Arbuckles scandalous San Francisco soiree that allegedly resulted in the death of actress Virginia Rappe. As trials commenced, discussions of censorship began to swirl, something the industry was staunchly against. Censorship is as rotten as human slavery and it has less friends, opined Moving Picture World editor-in-chief Arthur James in October 1921.

Hollywoods response was to self-regulate by creating the MPPDA in 1922. Pressures from social reformers led the industry to hire Will Hays, President Hardings Postmaster General, to come to the industry in hopes of winning the confidence of an increasingly weary public. Lewis Selznick referred to these turbulent times as an era of scandal. Selznick cited the new baseball commissioner as offering a template for Hollywood to maintain audience confidence. In his memoir, Hays wrote that while I am not a reformer, I hope that I have always been public-spirited. Hays offered a bridge between Hollywood and the public. Opposed to outright censorship, Hays opted for a democratic process, because self-regulation educates and strengthens those who practice it.

Hays accepted the industrys offer on January 14, 1922. When Hays took office, Arbuckles second trial was just about to begin. The nation was following the story closely, and while the comedian would eventually be acquitted (complete with an apology from the jury), Hays banned Arbuckle from the industry. The move showed industry skeptics that Hays was serious about keeping the industry clean. Adolph Zukor, head of Famous Players-Lasky (soon to be Paramount), shelved Arbuckles future projects and took a $500,000 loss. The industry distanced itself from problematic publicity, just as they have many times over the last century.

By the end of the 1922, Hays offered Arbuckle a comeback tour. It was too late. The court of public opinion had settled its case. Theater owners were worried that the one-eighty on Arbuckle would lose any public trust gained since Hayss appointment. The Motion Picture Theater Owners of America issued a statement, arguing that no act of any official can make up the public mind on this matter.

Hays offered a thirteen-point agreement that included eliminating from films overt sexuality, prostitution, cavalier depiction of vice, passionate love scenes, any ridicule of government or religion, and any salacious advertising. But the 1920s provided no shortage of scandalous material for Hays to moderate. Wallace Reids newsworthy drug addiction became a difficult, but manageable, public relations story. However, when stars like Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, and Clara Bow put their sexuality on screen in front of patrons the world over, it would erupt another series of social outcries. Others decried the Hollywood arrival of Elinor Glyn, author of the so-called sex novel Three Weeks (1907) and future inventor of Clara Bows It (1927).

For some U.S. consumers, movies had become nothing more than a Babylonian product. By the end of the decade, it was clear that moviemakers were not adhering to any self-censorship. An emphasized list of donts and be carefuls was added in 1927. Even publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst was lobbying for film censorship. A formal Production Code was added in 1930. Three general principals were emphasized: Movies should be regarded as entertainment, are important as an art form, and have moral obligations.

However, none of these added provisions along with the lengthy corresponding rulebook were followed any better than Hayss original thirteen points. The years 1930-1934 are lauded by fans as the last Pre-Code years when filmmakers had a heyday with stories that violated every facet of the Production Code. So-called fallen woman films (The Divorcee), gangster pictures (Scarface), sex-filled musicals (Gold Diggers of 1933), sex comedies (She Done Him Wrong), Depression pictures (Wild Boys for the Road) and everything in between ruled the day.

During the Pre-Code years, new forces arose to push back on Hollywoods free-for-all approach to lascivious content. The Payne Fund Studies began to (unsuccessfully) link the rise of juvenile delinquency with Hollywood movies. Each study was published while a summarizing and propagandizing volume was published as Henry James Formans Our Movie-Made Children (1933). Formans book became a best-seller, alerting studio moguls that the public was on the verge of being lost again. The Great Depression was hitting the studios. Even those that were in better shape at the end of the 1920s were feeling the effects by the Depressions nadir in 1933. Nobody in Hollywood was in a place to risk ticket sales.

At the same time, the Catholic Legion of Decency was up in arms over the dangers of films and even had a Legion Pledge that congregations spouted from the pews. I make this protest in a spirit of self-respect, concluded the pledge, and with the conviction that the American public does not demand filthy pictures, but clean entertainment. The social and political winds were blowing hard against the movie industry. It was time again to make a big move, as the previous decade had not offered a consistent response to social reformers.

The answer to the public concern was Joseph Breen, an Irish Catholic who worked as a journalist before landing jobs at the US Foreign Service and the 28th International Eucharistic Congress. It was at the Eucharistic Congress in Chicago during summer of 1926 that showcased the power of the Catholic Church in the United States. Catholics moved from the margins to the mainstream, and by 1933 were a sizable social and political force. The Legion of Decency also kept its own ratings system, never afraid to condemn a film it felt out of line with its own standards. This was the crowd Hollywood needed to appease.

Hays hired Breen to be the Codes enforcer, a role in which he served from 1934 until 1954 (which a brief stint running RKO in 1941). Less of a gentlemans agreement and more a process of arduous negotiation, the Production Code impacted film content and satisfied many anti-Hollywood activists for nearly two decades. Movies would now have to adhere to the industry standards, as no film would be released without a Production Code Administration seal.

By the end of 1934, newspapers around the country celebrated Hollywoods new direction. The Motion Picture Herald printed praise from the press who reflect audience appreciation of higher-class product, showing that the new strictures resulted in increased audience attendance.

The first years of the Motion Picture Association (as the MPPDA) set the standard for industry responses to contemporary mores. Hiring a political insider was the move in 1922, and by the early 1930s the industry needed to respond to growing church boycotts. Breen allowed the industry to create a product that met churchmen half-way. The social and political winds driven by the public, that global fourth stool-leg highlighted by Will Hays, will always be a major focus of Hollywoods operation.

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100 Years Ago: How Hollywoods Early Self-Censorship Battles Shaped the MPA - Hollywood Reporter

The Ethereum network will be able to withstand censorship risks both in the short and long term, according to Ethereum community member and investor Ryan Berckmans.

The ban of Ethereum-based privacy tool Tornado Cash by U.S. authorities earlier this month left many wondering whether Ethereum transactions could be also at risk of censorship, especially after Ethereums imminent transition to a proof-of-stake system.

A widespread concern is that entities controlling a large chunk of staked Ether (ETH), such as Coinbase or Kraken, would start censoring transactions to comply with U.S. sanctions. That is an unlikely scenario, according to Berckmans, who sees the high centralization of staked ETH as a temporary issue.

With time, the costs of entry to the staking business will drop due to the maturity of open-source tools and industry expertise as well as the generally reduced risk profile, said Berckmans. That will allow more and more players to enter the staking business, thus reducing the dominance of large staking pools.

The idea that these will be able to somehow sustainably censor user transactions or affect the fork choice in Ethereum, its just not a credible idea, Berckmans pointed out.

Moreover, according to Berckmans, the Tornado Cash ban in the United States was a policy mistake that is unlikely to result in more government sanctions. He said that U.S. policymakers are likely to acknowledge the mistake and take a more favorable approach to Ethereum, which is inherently aligned with Americas interests.

Ethereum is about permissionless innovation, free enterprise, property rights, globalization, Berckmans explained.

Check out the full interview on our YouTube channel, and dont forget to subscribe!

Continued here:
Will Ethereum 2.0 be vulnerable to censorship? Industry professional explains - Cointelegraph

I read with interest your editorial (The Guardian view on Chinas censors: the sense of an (acceptable) ending, 24 August). In 2016, I was about to publish a book on pop art, which had a short section on artists responding to political and social turmoil in the 1960s, and which included an illustration of Jim Dines Drag Johnson and Mao (1967). The etching depicts Mao Zedong of the Peoples Republic of China and the US president Lyndon B Johnson, who sent troops to counter Chinese communist support in the Vietnam war.

Dines coloured etching applies cosmetic touches to the lips, cheeks and eyelids of these two supposed (and opposed) freedom fighters (and a black heart painted on the chin of Mao), essentially to caricature political propaganda and masculine conviction. The capitalist and communist leaders appear as drag actors whose posturing affects a global audience. The printers of my book a Chinese company forced the London publisher to remove the offending illustration and text. In our cosy western world, we should never take free speech for granted, especially if it concerns art.John FinlayEdinburgh

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Chinas censorship reaches far beyond its own borders - The Guardian

Anti-censorship protestors at a meeting of the Lafayette Library Board, defending a librarian who included queer teen dating in a book display in defiance of the board. John Burnett/NPR hide caption

Anti-censorship protestors at a meeting of the Lafayette Library Board, defending a librarian who included queer teen dating in a book display in defiance of the board.

LAFAYETTE, La. The culture war inside America's libraries is playing out in the monthly meetings of the Lafayette Library Board of Control. Conservative activists are demanding the removal of controversial books, librarians are being falsely accused of pushing porn, and free speech defenders are crying censorship.

The August meeting in Lafayette was fairly humdrum routine reports on the bookmobile, library hours, and plans for a new branch until the lectern was opened for public comments.

"Everything that has happened in the past 18 months with this board and to the library has basically been a dystopian nightmare," declared one unhappy library patron.

Since conservatives took over the Lafayette library board last year, the controversies have come fast and furious:

"Hold up your signs for Cara again," one speaker told the audience. "We don't support fascism in the Lafayette Public Library."

Lafayette Parish is deeply religious, conservative Trump country red as a boiled crawfish. So others in the community have applauded the board's rightward shift.

"I'm a father of four young children," said a man in a tie and blue blazer, "and my daughter found a cartoon book that was basically pornographic. It encouraged children to explore themselves in a variety of ways. It was in the children's section."

The father concluded, "These are local libraries which should reflect the prevailing local community standards."

For many critics, this is the crux: whose community standards?

A somber librarian named Connie Milton stepped up to the podium and explained that libraries are struggling to keep pace with societal changes that emphasize the inclusion of diverse genders, races, and sexual orientations.

"We just want everybody to be able to come into a library and see themselves represented. That's all we're doin'," she said to hearty applause.

Milton announced that she had just given her two weeks' notice.

"Morale is not good," she said. "People are afraid to lose their jobs."

Lafayette Parish is by no means unique. Across America, fractious debates over free speech in public and school libraries have turned these hushed realms into combat zones. Cops are regularly called to remove rowdy protestors.

Texas leads the country in book bans. In the towns of Katy and Granbury, uniformed peace officers came into school libraries to investigate books with sexual content after criminal complaints from citizens. And the school district in Keller, Texas, pulled 41 challenged books off its shelves, including a graphic adaptation of "Anne Frank's Diary," "Gender Queer: A Memoir," and the Bible.

Traditional-values groups are demanding the removal or restriction of books with explicit sex education, and books that unflinchingly document LGBTQ realities and the Black American experience. The American Library Association in its unofficial tally reports that challenges of library books have jumped fourfold, from 416 books in 2017 to 1,597 book challenges in 2021.

In Lafayette, the president of the library board is Robert Judge, a retired insurance claims adjustor and high-school science teacher, and a devout Catholic. He gets criticized for imposing conservative church teachings on library policy, for instance, regarding LGBTQ topics.

"I think the idea that I have to drop off my Catholic Christian worldview at the door when I walk into serving the public is silly," he said in an interview at his kitchen table.

Judge believes the library's mission should submit to a traditional notion of family values and community standards, not the other way around.

"This is where we get into the sticky ground," he said, "Do we allow a governmental agency and the library is a governmental agency to supersede parents' rights? And do we protect parents' rights, or do we just say, 'Well that's the stuff that we have and we put it anywhere and if your kid stumbles on it, it's not our problem?' "

Judge sought to have several books banned outright, but the board didn't go along with him. As a compromise, the library moved all 1,100 nonfiction books from the young adult section to the adult collections. No books have been banned, says Danny Gillane, director of the Lafayette Public Library System.

"I don't care if they [the board] want to censor the library, if I don't have to remove things from my collection," he said. "That is my goal is to keep all of the materials we have in the library."

But some critics consider making a book harder to find is a form of censorship.

"We don't need to refile it in another section like it's something shameful," said Christopher Achee, parliamentarian with the Louisiana Library Association.

"We encourage you as a parent to know what your child is reading," he said. "That parent has every right to tell that child, 'No, this isn't appropriate for you.' But that right ends when another parent comes in looking for that exact same information."

The changes at the library since conservatives took over the governing board have infuriated liberal patrons.

"We're really upset that the library is being used in the culture wars," said Jean Menard, a home-school mom who says she depends on Lafayette libraries for her two teenagers' education. Menard started an anti-censorship Facebook group, Supporters of Lafayette Public Libraries. The group has more than 2,000 members.

"It is not the board of control's position to micromanage the library," she said. "Librarians need to be able to manage the library. This is a public library. It's for everyone. [If] they don't like the programs or materials, don't attend, don't check out the material!"

That argument has gone nowhere with conservatives on a crusade to cleanse Louisiana libraries. Standing in their way can have severe consequences.

Amanda Jones, president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians, made a speech against censorship and now she says she's hounded by conservative activists on social media who say she advocates pornography. John Burnett/NPR hide caption

Amanda Jones, president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians, made a speech against censorship and now she says she's hounded by conservative activists on social media who say she advocates pornography.

Last month, a middle-school librarian named Amanda Jones stood up and spoke out against censorship at a meeting of the library board where she lives and works in Livingston Parish, near Baton Rouge.

"The citizens of our parish consist of taxpayers who are white, black, brown, gay, straight, Christian, non-Christian people from all backgrounds and walks of life," she said in prepared remarks. "No one portion of the community should dictate what the rest of the citizens have access to."

She concluded, "Hate and fear disguised as moral outrage have no place in Livingston Parish."

Though 19 other people spoke up against censorship at the meeting, Jones's speech got all the attention. She's won several national Librarian-of-the-Year awards and is currently president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians. But she was completely unprepared for what happened.

"A few days later," she said, "I open the internet and there were pictures of me, awful memes, saying I advocate teaching erotica and pornography to 6-year-olds. It gave my school's name. None of that is true. I gave a blanket speech on censorship. And they decided they wanted to make me a target."

"They" is Citizens for a New Louisiana the same group behind the conservative takeover of the Lafayette library board. The group has harshly criticized Jones on its Facebook page which has 19,000 followers for defending books they consider obscene and inappropriate for children.

Michael Lunsford is director of Citizens for a New Louisiana, which he describes as a government accountability group.

In his office in Lafayette, he pulls out one of the controversial sex-ed books, "Let's Talk About It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human."

"We have this page that actually shows intercourse," he said, showing an illustration. "Then we have things like this that have closeups of genitalia. We've got a page here on masturbation and how to do it."

"Any reasonable person who looks at this material I hope would say an 11-year-old doesn't need to see this," he said.

Michael Lunsford, director of a conservative citizens group, has pushed to remove graphic sex education books they consider inappropriate for children, and he says anyone who disagrees with him is promoting smut. John Burnett/NPR hide caption

Michael Lunsford, director of a conservative citizens group, has pushed to remove graphic sex education books they consider inappropriate for children, and he says anyone who disagrees with him is promoting smut.

In ultra-conservative Louisiana, sex education in public schools, grades 7 to 12, is at the discretion of the local school board, with an emphasis on abstinence until marriage and no discussion of abortion or homosexuality.

But why attack a librarian for a book that's in her library? Is defending a graphic sex ed book the same as promoting smut?

"I don't know that we attacked her personally," Lunsford said. "We asked a question: What type of influence does she have over what our children see in school libraries as the president of the association? I think that's a valid question."

In the current toxic political climate, school librarian Amanda Jones says she has begun to fear for her life. When asked how the social media onslaught has affected her, she broke into sobs.

"It's horrible. My anxiety is through the roof. I live in constant fear that some person that they've incited is going to come and get me or get my child. Or come up to the school where I work and harm a child. It's been a month of this and it just won't stop."

Last week, Amanda Jones sued Michael Lunsford, Citizens for a New Louisiana and a local individual she says is trolling her. The lawsuit asks for a state district court judge to issue a temporary restraining order to stop what it calls the harassment and defamation.

Meanwhile, with their successes in Lafayette, Lunsford's group plans to expand its campaign to purge library books and programs that it finds offensive in Louisiana's other 62 parishes.

Read more:
Cultural war moves to libraries as some groups demand removal of books. - NPR

No one, including the most bullish supporters of Ukraine, expects the nation's war with Russia to end soon. The fighting has been reduced to artillery duels across hundreds of miles of front lines and creeping advances and retreats. Ukraine, like Afghanistan, will bleed for a very long time. This is by design.

On Aug. 24, the Biden administration announced yet another massive military aid package to Ukraine worth nearly $3 billion. It will take months, and in some cases years, for this military equipment to reach Ukraine. In another sign that Washington assumes the conflict will be a long war of attrition, it will give a name to the U.S. military assistance mission in Ukraine and make it a separate command overseen by a two- or three-star general. Since August 2021, Biden has approved more than $8 billion in weapons transfers from existing stockpiles, known as drawdowns, to be shipped to Ukraine, which do not require congressional approval.

Including humanitarian assistance, replenishing depleting U.S. weapons stocks and expanding U.S. troop presence in Europe, Congresshas approvedover $53.6 billion ($13.6 billionin Marchand a further $40.1 billionin May) since Russia's Feb. 24 invasion. War takes precedence over the most serious existential threats we face. Theproposed budgetfor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion while theproposed budgetfor the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Our approved assistance to Ukraine is more than twice these amounts.

The militarists whohave wagedpermanent war costing trillions of dollars over the past two decades haveinvested heavilyin controlling the public narrative.

The enemy, whether Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin, is always the epitome of evil, the new Hitler.Anyone who questions the righteousness of the cause is a traitor or a foreign agent.

Those we support are always heroic defenders of liberty and democracy. Anyone who questions the righteousness of the cause is accused of being an agent of a foreign power and a traitor.

The mass media cravenly disseminates these binary absurdities in 24-hour news cycles. Its news celebrities and experts, universally drawn from the intelligence community and military, rarely deviate from the approved script. Day and night, the drums of war never stop beating. Its goal: to keep billions of dollars flowing into the hands of the war industry and prevent the public from asking inconvenient questions.

In the face of this barrage, no dissent is permitted.CBS Newscaved to pressureand retracted itsdocumentarywhich charged that only 30 percent of arms shipped to Ukraine were making it to the front lines, with the rest siphoned off to the black market, a finding that wasseparately reported uponby U.S. journalistLindsey Snell. CNN hasacknowledgedthere is no oversight of weapons once they arrive in Ukraine,longconsideredthe most corrupt country in Europe. According to a poll of executives responsible for tackling fraud,completed byErnst & Young in 2018, Ukraine was ranked the ninth-most corrupt nation from 53 surveyed.

There is little ostensible reason for censoring critics of the war in Ukraine. The U.S. is not at war with Russia. No U.S. troops are fighting in Ukraine. Criticism of the war in Ukraine does not jeopardize our national security. There are no long-standing cultural and historical ties to Ukraine, as there are to Britain. But if permanent war, with potentially tenuous public support, is the primary objective, censorship makes sense.

War is the primary business of the U.S. empire and the bedrock of the U.S. economy. The two ruling political parties slavishly perpetuate permanent war, as they do austerity programs, trade deals, the virtual tax boycott for corporations and the rich, wholesale government surveillance, the militarization of the police andthe maintenanceof the largest prison system in the world. They bow before the dictates of the militarists, who have created a state within a state. This militarism, asSeymour Melmanwrites in "The Permanent War Economy:American Capitalism in Decline,"

is fundamentally contradictory to the formation of a new political economy based upon democracy, instead of hierarchy, in the workplace and the rest of society. The idea that war economy brings prosperity has become more than an American illusion. When converted, as it has been, into ideology that justifies the militarization of society and moral debasement, as in Vietnam, then critical reassessment of that illusion is a matter of urgency. It is a primary responsibility of thoughtful people who are committed to humane values to confront and respond to the prospect that deterioration of American economy and society, owing to the ravages of war economy, can become irreversible.

If permanent war is to be halted, as Melman writes, the ideological control of the war industry must be shattered. The war industry's funding of politicians, research centers and think tanks, as well as its domination of the media monopolies, must end. The public must be made aware, Melman writes, of how the federal government "sustains itself as the directorate of the largest industrial corporate empire in the world; how the war economy is organized and operated in parallel with centralized political power often contradicting the laws of Congress and the Constitution itself; how the directorate of the war economy converts pro-peace sentiment in the population into pro-militarist majorities in the Congress; how ideology and fears of job losses are manipulated to marshal support in Congress and the general public for war economy; how the directorate of the war economy uses its power to prevent planning for orderly conversion to an economy of peace."

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Rampant, unchecked militarism, as historian Arnold Toynbee noted, "has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations."

This breakdown is accelerated by the rigid standardization and uniformity of public discourse. The manipulation of public opinion, what Walter Lippman called "the manufacture of consent," is imperative as the militarists gut social programs; let the nation's crumbling infrastructure decay; refuse to raise the minimum wage; sustain an inept, mercenary for-profit health care system that resulted in 25 percent of global COVID deaths although we are less than 5 percent of the world's population to gouge the public; carry out deindustrialization; do nothing to curb the predatory behavior of banks and corporations or invest in substantial programs to combat the climate crisis.

Critics, already shut out from the corporate media, are relentlessly attacked, discredited and silenced for speaking a truth that threatens the public's quiescence while the U.S. Treasury is pillaged by the war industry and the nation disemboweled.

You can watch my discussion with Matt Taibbi about the rot that infects journalismhereandhere.

The war industry, deified by the mass media, is never held accountable for military fiascos, cost overruns, dud weapons systems and profligate waste. It is showered with ever-larger sums, nownearly halfof all discretionary spending.

The war industry, deified by the mass media, including the entertainment industry, is never held accountable for the military fiascos, cost overruns, dud weapons systems and profligate waste. No matter how many disasters from Vietnam to Afghanistan it orchestrates, it is showered with larger and larger amounts of federal funds, nearly half of all the government's discretionary spending. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the U.S. debt to over $30 trillion, $6 trillion more than the U.S. GDP of $24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spend more on the military, $813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.

An organization likeNewsGuard, which has been rating what it says are trustworthy and untrustworthy sites based on their reporting on Ukraine, is one of the many indoctrination tools of the war industry. Sites that raise what are deemed "false" assertions about Ukraine, including that there was a U.S.-backed coup in 2014 and neo-Nazi forces are part of Ukraine's military and power structure, are tagged as unreliable.Consortium News,Daily Kos,Mint PressandGrayzonehave been given a red warning label. Sites that do not raise these issues, such as CNN, receive the "green" rating" for truth and credibility. (NewsGuard, after beingheavily criticizedfor giving Fox News a green rating of approval in July, revised its rating for Fox News and MSNBC, giving them red labels.)

The ratings are arbitrary. The Daily Caller, whichpublishedfake naked pictures of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was given a green rating, along with a media outletowned and operatedby the Heritage Foundation. NewsGuard gives WikiLeaks a red label for "failing" to publish retractions despiteadmittingthat all the information WikiLeaks has published thus far is accurate. What WikiLeaks was supposed to retract remains a mystery. The New York Timesand the Washington Post, which shared a Pulitzer in 2018 for reporting that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to help sway the 2016 election, a conspiracy theory the Mueller investigationimploded, are awarded perfect scores. These ratings are not about vetting journalism. They are about enforcing conformity.

NewsGuard, established in 2018, "partners" with the State Department and the Pentagon, as well as corporations such as Microsoft. Its advisory board includes the former director of the CIA and NSA, retired Gen. Michael Hayden; the first U.S. Homeland Security director, Tom Ridge, and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former secretary general of NATO.

Readers who regularly go to targeted sites could probably care less if they are tagged with a red label. But that is not the point. The point is to rate these sites so that anyone who has a NewsGuard extension installed on their devices will be warned away from visiting them. NewsGuard is being installed in libraries and schools and on the computers of active-duty troops. A warning pops up on targeted sites that reads: "Proceed with caution: This website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability."

Negative ratings willdrive awayadvertisers, which is the intent. It is also a very short step from blacklisting these sites to censoring them, as happened when YouTube erased six years of my show "On Contact," which was broadcast on RT America and RT International. Not one show was about Russia. And not one violated the guidelines for content imposed by YouTube. But manydid examinethe evils of U.S. militarism.

In anexhaustive rebuttal to NewsGuard, which is worth reading, Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News, ends with this observation:

NewsGuard's accusations againstConsortium Newsthat could potentially limit its readership and financial support must be seen in the context of the West's war mania over Ukraine, about which dissenting voices are being suppressed. ThreeCNwriters have been kicked off Twitter.

PayPal's cancellation ofConsortium News' account is an evident attempt to defund it for what is almost certainly the company's view thatCNviolated its restrictions on "providing false or misleading information." It cannot be known with 100 percent certainty because PayPal is hiding behind its reasons, butCNtrades in information and nothing else.

CNsupports no side in the Ukraine war but seeks to examine the causes of the conflict within its recent historical context, all of which are being whitewashed from mainstream Western media.

Those causes are: NATO's expansion eastward despite its promise not to do so; the coup and eight-year war on Donbass against coup resisters; the lack of implementation of the Minsk Accords to end that conflict; and the outright rejection of treaty proposals by Moscow to create a new security architecture in Europe taking Russia's security concerns into account.

Historians who point out the onerous Versailles conditions imposed on Germany after World War I as a cause of Nazism and World War II are neither excusing Nazi Germany nor are they smeared as its defenders.

The frantic effort to corral viewers and readers into the embrace of the establishment media only 16 percent of Americanshave a "great deal" or "quite a lot"of confidence in newspapers, and only 11 percent have some degree of confidence in television news is a sign of desperation.

As the persecution ofJulian Assangeillustrates, the throttling of press freedom is bipartisan. This assault on truth leaves a population unmoored. It feeds wild conspiracy theories. It shreds the credibility of the ruling class. It empowers demagogues. It creates an information desert, one where truth and lies are indistinguishable. It frog-marches us towards tyranny. This censorship only serves the interests of the militarists who, as Karl Liebknecht reminded his fellow Germans in World War I, are the enemy within.

Read more

from Chris Hedges on war, peace and the future

Read the original here:
Ukraine, media censorship and the ruthless politics of permanent war - Salon

We now know with certainty that the FBI actively worked to alter the outcome of a U.S. presidential electionagain. But as the larger ramifications of their actions are being digested, some additional questions come to mind. How did the FBI know the New York Post was about to run a story on the laptop? Was the FBIs coverup of Hunter Bidens laptop also related to former President Donald Trumps first impeachment trial? And why is it that the FBI had a physical office located within Ukraines National Anti-Corruption Bureau since June 2016? And finally, the big question: Was the subsequent FBI investigation of Hunter designed to actually protect Joe and Hunter Bidenand perhaps more importantly, protect the FBI?

In a letter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Sen. Ron Johnson recently disclosed that whistleblowers alerted him that FBI officials intentionally undermined efforts to investigate Hunter Biden. Johnson noted that after the FBI obtained Hunters laptop, local FBI leadership told employees, you will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop. The supposed reason given for this inaction? The FBI was not going to change the outcome of the election againwhich is certainly some strange logic to use, because by choosing not to investigate the Hunter Biden laptop, the FBI did, in fact, directly impact the outcome of an election.

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The Far-Reaching Implications of the FBI's Censorship of Hunter Biden's Laptop | Truth Over News - The Epoch Times

The Ethereum community, which is known for a sunny rainbow-and-unicorns vibe, is unusually serious as of late. Following a recent move by the U.S. Treasury Department to target a batch of crypto-related open source code, one word keeps coming up in Ethereum circles: censorship.

The concern surfaced earlier this month when the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash, an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency mixer that allows users to obfuscate transactions, and a series of Ethereum addressesbarring all Americans from interacting with both the mixer and the addresses.

According to Treasury officials, Tornado Cash has laundered over $7 billion in cryptocurrency since its creation in 2019, and has become a favorite destination for the infamous North Korean hacking outfit known as the Lazarus Group.

The Tornado Cash announcement marked a watershed moment for the crypto world. Although the Treasury has long targeted financial criminals and those who support terrorist activity, its unusual for the agency to sanction a piece of technologyin this case a mixerdirectly.

All of this set off concern within the Ethereum community about whether the blockchain is resistant to government censorshipconcern that has only increased as Ethereum approaches its highly anticipated merge upgrade next month.

Though applications existing on Ethereum can be censored, as weve seen with Tornado Cash, whether the Ethereum blockchain itself can be subject to censorship has been a topic of debate, especially with Ethereums upcoming merge.

Thats because the merge will shift Ethereum from a proof of work (PoW) consensus model to proof of stake (PoS), and, in turn, validators will have the responsibility of creating new blocks on-chain and verifying transactions, rather than miners. To become a validator, one must deposit 32 Ethera sum, currently worth around $50,000, that is intended to ensure that participants have a stake in the success of the network.

A single entity, however, can also run multiple validators, so long as the entity can afford it, and in doing so arguably garner more control. As a result, some within the Ethereum community have become concerned about the emergence of powerful, centralized entities after the mergeentities that could be pliant when it comes to carrying out government censorship requests.

Those concerned about censorship have raised various hypotheticals: Might a validator refuse to confirm a block to the Ethereum blockchain because it contains Tornado Cash transactions? Would fear of legal repercussions lead them to ignore or reject such blocks?

It is unknown whether any of this will happen, or whether the government will target validators, but such questions have been at the center of debate onlineespecially as it circulated on crypto Twitter that 66% of the Beacon Chain [or proof-of-stake chain] validators will adhere to OFAC regulations, including Coinbase and Kraken.

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin weighed in on this discussion himself, and signaled his support in slashing the stake of any validators that censor the Ethereum protocol if asked by U.S. regulators.

Even Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong suggested hed rather stop the staking business of his cryptocurrency exchange than comply with any potential censorship.

Another concern post-merge involves MEVmaximal extractable value (formerly miner extractable value)and potential MEV-Boost issues, and how these could increase the potential for censorship.

MEV describes the profit a validator can earn by selecting or reordering transactions within blocks, while MEV-Boost is an optional software built for proof-of-stake Ethereum.

MEV-Boost allows validators to outsource block production to maximize their reward. Though there are upsides to MEV and MEV-Boost, both can also be used by bad actors in a malicious way. Specifically, some within the Ethereum community are worried about censorship of MEV-Boost relay operators, or entities that connect validators to block builders; the fear is that the existence of these relay operators offers a big new target for censorship.

The concern is so widespread that it was addressed during the most recent Ethereum Core Developers meeting.

If we allow censorship of user transactions on the network, then we basically failed. This is the hill that Im willing to die on, developer Marius van der Wijden said during the call. If we start allowing users to be censored on Ethereum then this whole thing doesnt make sense, and I will be leaving the ecosystem.

Most Ethereum developers, however, sounded hopeful that potential MEV-related issues, especially involving censorship, would not be prevalent threats, and remained focused on building Ethereum as a censorship-free protocol.

While some may take the topic more seriously than others, experts in the cryptocurrency space dont believe censorship-related fears are overblown, especially if blockchains are more widely used by normies as time goes on.

If crypto is going to go mainstreamits going to have to exist within a modern regulatory framework. That means adhering to OFAC sanctions, allowing for strong protections from money laundering, and so on, Matt Hougan, Bitwise CIO, tells Fortune. The question vis--vis ETH validators, however, is whether that adherence should occur at the foundational technological layer, or on the application and user side.

Hougan made an analogy involving the internet, asking whether libel and hate speech should be banned by the internet itself, or handled at the user and application layer instead. History suggests that freedom, innovation, and growth are best served when technologies are allowed to be credibly neutral, and we police bad acts by policing bad actors, he said.

And though the merge hasnt happened yet, weve already seen forms of censorship on Ethereum in a few ways.

Ethereum infrastructure companies Infura and Alchemy have blocked access to Tornado Cash. Circle, the company behind the popular USDC stablecoin, froze Tornado Cashlinked addresses. Uniswap, the largest decentralized exchange on Ethereum, has also reportedly blocked Tornado Cashlinked addresses. Even Ethermine, the largest Ethereum miner, stopped processing Tornado Cash transactions, being dubbed the first hard evidence seen of censorship actually happening in block production online.

Looking ahead, only time will tell how, or if, censorship resistance is maintained.

Some online predict the decentralized finance (DeFi) space will continue to split into two: one being a regulated, compliant version of DeFi, and the other being badlands DeFi, as Gabriel Shapiro, general counsel at Delphi Labs, wrote on Twitter. Most blue-chip projects will embrace the former.

To Hougan, an interesting part of this process is that the Ethereum community is determining through discussion how important decentralization is as a core value. Different blockchains will decide on different answers to this question, and it will be interesting to see which answer the market rewards and punishes.

Until then, the debate surrounding censorship on Ethereum is likely to get louder.

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The Ethereum community is worried about censorship as the merge approaches. Heres why - Fortune

In reaction to the sanctions, organisations such as Coin Center have defended the mixer, stating that the smart contract code is not a sanctionable entity.

It is unknown whether privacy coins such as Monero would face similar restrictions in light of this new precedence. A hard fork upgrade on August 13 made it more challenging to trace Monero transactions.

Contrary to the idea that all bitcoin transactions are private by nature, the data on a blockchain is public, and transactions may be traced. Crypto mixers and privacy coins were established to facilitate the open financial systems anonymity. But each faces unique uphill struggles.

A crypto mixer, also a tumbler or blender, is a transaction mixing tool or service anybody can use to conceal a crypto wallets source of funds. These technologies were initially built for bitcoin in 2013, but once solutions like Tornado Cash made them available for a range of cryptocurrencies, they became a popular alternative to privacy coins.

Blender.io was the first custodial mixer sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Department of the Treasury (OFAC). It didnt garner the same attention as Tornado Cash since it belonged to the pattern of prior punishments against individuals and organisations.

Tornado Cashis an Ethereum-based crypto mixer that mixes ETH and ERC-20 tokens using non-custodial smart contracts. Through a zero-knowledge proof contract, users contribute funds to smart contract addresses that arrange them by the amount and efficiently mix the deposits.

For instance, suppose you wish to combine 11 ETH. Because deposits are categorised by amount, you send 10 ETH to the 10 ETH mixer and 1 ETH to the 1 ETH mixer. Once funds are given to each mixer, the zero-knowledge proof verifies that you provided a deposit to each one without revealing which one was initially yours. This provides the equivalent of a withdrawal authorisation slip for each mixer.

On August 8, 2022, OFAC added a list of Tornado Cash-related addresses to the same list of sanctioned addresses, including Blender.io. OFAC used the same language for Blender.io as it did for Blender.io, but failed to recognise their significant custody distinction. Coin Center asserts that Tornado Cash has two distinct components: the decentralised group of governing members, Tornado Cash Entity and the immutable smart contract coin mixers Tornado Cash Application.

The Tornado Cash Entity cannot modify or update the Tornado Cash Application due to the destruction of the original developers administrative keys. Smart contracts exist so long as the Ethereum blockchain is operational. Therefore, even if the Tornado Cash website is down, anybody can develop a replacement front end or communicate with the smart contracts directly that gives users access to the same mixers.

The issue is that OFAC included these immutable addresses for smart contracts on its list of penalties. Consequently, there are currently innocent Americans with funds in these mixes. If they attempt to transfer the funds, they will violate the law and face penalties. And because the application is not a legal business, it cannot petition OFAC to remove the sanctions.

Coin Center claims that OFAC did not cite the legal authority to add the smart contract addresses to the sanctions list since the Tornado Cash Application is not an organisation, triggering constitutional concerns. In response to OFACs notification, firms agreed to filter individuals associated with these IP addresses. Aave, a decentralised financial application, prohibited any user that received Tornado Cash payments in a dust assault.

Privacy coins are digital currencies that employ various techniques to conceal IP addresses, wallet balances, and the movement of transactions. Z-cash and Monero are the two most popular privacy-centric cryptocurrencies. Z-cash is a cryptocurrency that protects transaction data primarily through zero-knowledge proofs. They vary from crypto mixers in transforming financial privacy into a product rather than a benefit.

Since this early setback, Z-cash has never returned to the highs of the 2017 bull cycle and presently stands second in total market capitalisation behind Monero. While Monero prices were able to hit 2017 levels in 2021, they could not surpass their all-time high.

Monero is a privacy-centric cryptocurrency that provides financial anonymity via privacy-enhanced blockchain encryption. Every transaction uses one-time stealth addresses to conceal the balances of public addresses.

The protocol for Monero was improved on August 13. The earlier version of Monero provided a layer of anonymity, but its entire untraceability was questionable. In 2018, detractors said that the process of elimination might discover the signature rings inputs. And in 2021, CipherTracer purportedly patented a transaction-tracking technology used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Even if CipherTracer uncovered actual flaws, the scope of their repercussions remains unknown. They did not reveal their tactics or degree of success. Since it prevented CipherTracer from being accessed by anybody unwilling to pay, this earlier version nevertheless provided some financial anonymity.

In Canada, efforts were undertaken to trace the sources of funding for the trucker freedom convoy. The authorities sanctioned 34 cryptocurrency wallets associated with the movement, and Monero addresses were included on that list.

By raising the number of transactions in a ring signature, the Monero team expect this upgrade will solve any possible security loopholes. Even if the anticipated Monero chain enhancements are essential, the principles of tracking the likely source of funds remain the same after the fork. If the update is successful in eliminating these backdoors, there is a danger that OFAC might take similar action against Monero.

The developers prospective capacity to benefit from these smart contracts renders him accountable. The Dutch financial crimes agency FIOD detained a Tornado Cash developer suspected of using the application to launder money. It is unknown if he was arrested for his attempts to launder money or for his association with others who did so.

Though major privacy coins like Monero and Z-cash are actively trying to improve transaction privacy, they havent obtained the same level of acceptance as leading layer-1 blockchains such asEthereum. Many rivals, notably Secret Network and Oasis Network, believe that privacy coins do not provide a privacy layer that can be utilised to create Web3.

In 2020, Secret Network was the first privacy-based blockchain to offer the programmability of smart contracts. It resides in the Cosmos ecosystem and works towards a Web3 privacy goal. Multiple applications have been released, including the decentralised messaging service Altermail and the decentralised exchange SiennaSwap.

However, Secret Network and its rivals confront the typical difficulty of a crowded market. They have a long way to go before overcoming the market domination of Monero and Z-Cash. The prospect of punishment has spurred many members of the Z-Cash community to investigate the possibility of programming their smart contracts.

Amid the battle for financial privacy, the state has used two distinct instruments thus far. They employed the regulatory sanctions hammer with crypto mixers. If one financial privacy method is too popular with criminals or difficult to trace, their strategy may be to eliminate it.

Advocacy groups such as Coin Center may challenge such measures in court, but this may take years. In the meanwhile, the sanctions are probably harming innocent Americans.

They may continue their cat-and-mouse game with developer upgrades via investigations for other privacy solutions.

However, user adoption is a crucial aspect of this game. As more users use mixers or privacy coins, tracing transactions becomes progressively more difficult. It is comparable to the traditional police pursuit into a tiny alley. If the suspect approaches a busy procession, they can brush themselves off and blend with the crowd.

If a privacy coin, mixer, or base-layer privacy solution obtains widespread adoption, its resistance to censorship might increase. State officials would struggle to garner political support for sweeping punishments or the necessary technologies to circumvent privacy protections. And the possible repercussions of Tornado Cash punishments on Ethereum validators may draw millions more into this discussion.

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Can Crypto Mixers And Privacy Coins Withstand Censorship? - Coin Culture

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written to the Madison County School Board in Ridgeland, Mississippi, regarding recent restrictions on 10 books, requiring students to obtain parental permission in order to read them.

The 10 books in question address race-related or LQBTQ+ themes, and we are concerned that the district may have unconstitutionally targeted these books for the political views they express.

We understand that school districts can be subject to heavy pressure to censor books, which is why it is vital to have strong book challenge procedures. The district should strive to address the concerns of parents by explaining the pedagogical purposes of the library and instructional materials chosen by qualified education professionals, rather than by simply labeling them as supposedly problematic.

NCAC strongly urges the district to reconsider this policy and to adopt alternatives which do not endanger the rights of students to read and learn.

Please read our full letter to the Board here:

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Madison, Mississippi, School District Restricts Books on Race and LGBTQ+ Themes - Blogging Censorship

In my earlier Times Argus commentary July 27, I criticized Publisher Steve Pappas for holding back on publishing many articles from the New York Post in October 2020, which exposed salacious and incriminating information found on Hunter Bidens laptop (clearly implicating President Joe Bidens deep corruption). This story was buried yet, for almost more than the five years prior to that, Publisher Pappas chose to publish numerous AP stories incriminating Donald Trump. These stories were all leaked sources from the DOJ, FBI (incidentally, which is a crime), and from people not authorized to speak to the press and those who demanded anonymity. But the press ran with those leaked stories and continued the narrative Donald Trump was a Russian agent. We got him this time. Where did those years of incriminating, false stories end up? We read little about that in the Times Argus. After all, the mainstream media did not want to admit they were wrong.

Why was that? In my opinion, the government was never able to convict Trump after all the years of Russia, Russia, Russia because there was not enough proof (worthy of impeachment and indictment) and the media could never admit to their loyal readers they got this story so wrong. After all, losing credibility from your readers could have serious consequences for their financial viability.

So where are we now with the raid on Mar-a-Lago? Agree with Donald Trump or have a visceral hatred, we are now in a very similar media frenzy with this event even before anyone really knows the facts. Sound familiar? It is apparent the Department of Justice and Merrick Garland (by extension) are feeding information to the media and by doing so, are creating provocations which all are going to have the effect of damaging an already wounded DOJ and trust in the FBI. Perhaps, more importantly, American opinion of equal justice under the law will continue to erode. If you dont believe this, read all persuasions.

This DOJ behavior is questionable and the legal basis for raiding a past presidents home remains to be determined. Lets wait and see. We currently have a sewer of leaks without regard to fairness and are only two weeks into this event. Our government currently feels emboldened they can control the narrative through leaks to the media. They have obviously leaked information to the Washington Post and New York Times, a reminder of how they approached the Russia hoax: same game plan, drip, drip, drip. Intelligent, aware American citizens (and Times Argus readers) should understand this with open minds and eyes wide open. Failure to do so make haters giddy but, remember, what goes around, comes around.

Interestingly, Dave Gram (worked in Vermont journalism for 35 years) excoriated me in his Aug. 2 commentary by saying I was wrong for criticizing Publisher Pappas and said Newspaper investigations often take years to develop into publishable stories.

How is it, Gram, that Publisher Pappas can print an AP story about the Mar-a-Lago raid less than two weeks after it happened and at the end of this -page story, which said after prosecutors interviewed another witness who told them that there were likely additional classified documents still stored at Mar-a-Lago, the person said. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Dave Spaulding lives in Montpelier.

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Spaulding: Censorship at the top? | Commentary | rutlandherald.com - Rutland Herald