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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants his office to help defend Llano County officials being sued for restricting and banning books from their public library system.

In a court filing Wednesday, Paxton asked Austin-based federal district court Judge Robert Pitman to let the state intervene in the lawsuit, which was filed by seven Llano County residents in April.

If Pitman grants the motion, Paxtons office could aid the county judge, county commissioners and library director in fighting the lawsuit.

In this weeks filing, Paxton notes that the plaintiffs are represented by nine lawyers, six of whom work for San Francisco-based law firm BraunHagey and Borden LLP. On the other hand, the Llano County Attorneys Office has only two lawyers.

With such a small number of lawyers, Llano County might not have the resources to handle daily legal obligations plus stand against lawyers whom Paxton describes as oriented toward systemic change rather than the resolution of a single lawsuit, according to his offices filing. However, the resources Paxton would bring from the Office of the Attorney General would be sufficient to ensure that the plaintiffs claims are fully and fairly explored and presented to the court, his office argues.

According to the lawsuit, Llano County officials removed several books from shelves, suspended access to digital library books, replaced the library board members with people who favor book bans, halted new book orders and allowed the board to close its meetings to the public in a coordinated censorship campaign that violates the First and 14th Amendments.

At the time, the plaintiffs said their constitutional rights were violated when public officials censored books based on content and failed to provide proper notice or an avenue for community comment, according to previous reporting by The Texas Tribune.

Attorneys for the residents either could not be reached or were unavailable to comment. Paxtons office could not immediately be reached for comment.

Books removed from the library include Maurice Sendaks In the Night Kitchen, Susan Campbell Bartolettis They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group and Jazz Jennings Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen.

Since last year, Texas Republican officials and grassroots conservatives have waged a battle against what they portray as indoctrination and obscenity in school and public libraries. Last fall, one state lawmaker compiled a list of some 850 books about race and sexuality that he sent to school districts, asking how many are available on their campuses.

This came after the Texas Legislature passed a law limiting how race, slavery and current events are taught in schools. They dubbed it the critical race theory bill, even though the legislation never mentioned the term. Critical race theory is a university-level concept that examines how racism shapes laws and policies. Public education experts, along with school administrators and teachers, say the theory is not taught in public schools.

Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have made parental rights a priority as they both seek reelection in November. Patrick has also vowed to push for a Dont Say Gay bill in Texas, mirroring Floridas conservative push to limit classroom discussions about LGBTQ people.

Join us Sept. 22-24 in person in downtown Austin for The Texas Tribune Festival and experience 100+ conversation events featuring big names you know and others you should from the worlds of politics, public policy, the media and tech all curated by The Texas Tribunes award-winning journalists. Buy tickets.

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Ken Paxton wants Texas to help defend Llano County officials being sued for banning books - The Texas Tribune

I dont tweet. I probably never will. As a former English professor, I am too steeped in the idea that you must provide well-reasoned support for your assertionsnot just blurt them out rapid-fire with as many typos as you can manage.

Despite my lack of interest in the venue, however, I have noticed the recent uproar surrounding Elon Musks takeover of Twitter. The left is furious because it appears that Musk will disallow the censorship of which they had grown so fond. No more can they rest easy in the knowledge that their poorly formed ideas and false narratives will be unequivocally protected from dissidents by thought-police algorithms and official banishments.

Meanwhile, the right, being the hand most often slapped by the corporate dictatorship that was Twitter, is eating its popcorn now and watching with glee the recent turn of events in Dystopia. It is cheering Musk on and preparing all its pent-up one-liners for the new free-speech-friendly virtual world.

I admit there is satisfaction in seeing the smug enraged, but that is a base, sectarian satisfaction, which probably misses the forest for the trees. Free speech is a double-edged axe, as is censorship. Unbridled free speech is an open marketplace for ideas, not all of which are good for people and some of which are downright dangerous for both body and soul. Sure, you can say, as the free-market economists do about corporations, that the bad will be defeated by their betters in the free market of discourse, but this is nave. In a very truly well-educated society, the best ideas may prevail, for the citizens of that land have the tools to evaluate arguments on their merits. But we do not live in a well-educated society, not by a long shot, and the peddlers of bad ideas are often expert propagandists. They need not defeat their opponents (those with good ideas) in open debateindeed, they are incapable of winning on those grounds. They need only control positions of power: in the media, including social media and entertainment, in education, medicine, agriculture, politics, and so on.

With a poorly educated, highly indoctrinated society such as we have, it is not the better ideas that will prevail in a free-speech environment; it is the more pervasive propaganda. Admittedly, censorship offers no better an alternative. As we have seen with Twitter and other big-tech entities during the so-called pandemic and 2020 elections, censorship is executed by the powerful, not the wise.

In the hands of a wise parent, however, censorship of what comes into the home and into the minds of the children is not just a useful tool; it is essential for the familys healthmental, physical, and spiritual alike. So too with a wise government, with wise teachers, with wise editors of media outlets, with a wise religious authorityall potentially disseminators of truth and protectors of persons. In their hands, strict limitations on the flow of harmful ideas into society can only serve to limit the damage and carnage on a fallen, and therefore vulnerable, race.

The problem, of course, is that we do not have many wise people in government, in education, in media, or in religious authority at present, and, in fact, a great many of them are actively engaged in the destruction of the moral and political orders. Therefore, the censorship they impose is exactly the wrong kind: they cancel truth rather than lies.

Which brings us back to Twitter: a dictatorially leftist organization controlling the lions share of bellicose one-liner communications. Not only does the platform itself inhibit real debate, but its owners could not resist flexing the muscle of their market domination, and they started openly banning users who did not align with their weak-minded politics. To focus on their acts of censorship, though, and to cheer Musks alleged intention of bringing free speech back to the playing field is to miss the point of the problem.

The real offense of Twitter is not censorship. It never was a kindly, public-service endeavor meant beneficently to allow folks everywhere to speak their minds and be heard. It was about money and political power, and the owners of political power do not typically give equal time to their opponentsnot in their own backyard. And if you think about it, why should they?

The trouble with Twitter is not censorship but false advertising, a bait-and-switch scam. Come on in, everyone! The water is fine, and the speech is free. You can make a splash and spar with anyone about anything you like. There is the appearance of no vested interest behind the offering.

That Elon Musk just paid $44 billion dollars for it should shatter that illusion.

Michael Larson

Top image by Mohamed Hassan, Pixabay

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The Trouble with Twitter - Chronicles - A Magazine of American Culture

Earlier this month, thousands of software developers in China woke up to find that their open-source code hosted on Gitee, a state-backed Chinese competitor to the international code repository platform GitHub, had been locked and hidden from public view.

Gitee released a statement later that day explaining that the locked code was being manually reviewed, as all open-source code would need to be before being published from then on. The company didnt have a choice, it wrote. Gitee didnt respond to MIT Technology Review, but it is widely assumed that the Chinese government had imposed yet another bit of heavy-handed censorship.

For the open-source software community in China, which celebrates transparency and global collaboration, the move has come as a shock. Code was supposed to be apolitical. Ultimately, these developers fear it could discourage people from contributing to open-source projects, and Chinas software industry will suffer as a result.Read the full story.

Zeyi Yang

The must-reads

Ive combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Americas children are more anxious than everAnd it runs deeper than the pandemic. (NYT $)+ The relentless stream of bad news is making us all feel bad. (Wired $)+ How to mend your broken pandemic brain. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Digital surveillance programs make immigrants feel like prisonersTheyre touted as a more humane alternative to detention, but ankle tags carry stigma and stoke anxiety. (Coda Story)+ The CIA and US military are spending huge amounts of money on metaverse projects. (The Intercept)

3 The Wikipedia editor exposing the predatory world of cryptomaniaThat doesnt mean shes reveling in its current implosion. (WP $)+ Six months into the crypto crash, investors are making the same mistakes. (Motherboard)+ Fraudsters are using a deepfake of Elon Musk to steal crypto. (Motherboard) + This crypto reality dating show sounds like a parody of itself. (Input Mag)

4 A new ancestry-predicting DNA tool is solving missing-people mysteries But experts are wary that DNA phenotyping could further fuel racial discrimination in policing. (NYT $)+ Our museums are a treasure trove of genomic data. (Ars Technica)

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The Download: Open source censorship in China, and US kids are more anxious than ever - MIT Technology Review

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is in the middle of a two-week visit to the United States, with the stated aim of boosting trade and tourism, after NZ ditched almost all its COVID-19 restrictions and reopened the border.

Ardern is accompanied by Trade Minister Damien OConnor and representatives from major NZ companies including dairy exporter Fonterra, meat processor Silver Fern Farms, and kiwifruit exporter Zespri.

In a press release, Ardern made clear that the US relationship is fundamental to us in political and security terms too. She will meet President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, and they will discuss New Zealands role in the US-NATO war against Russia, and in the growing preparations for war against China.

It is Arderns second overseas trip since the pandemic began. Last month, she visited Japan, where she signed an intelligence-sharing agreement, helping to bring Japan into closer alignment with the US-led Five Eyes spy network.

Arderns US visit has been overshadowed by the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. In response to these horrific events, she echoed the banal statements of Biden and other politicians, which are aimed at preventing any serious discussion of their underlying social and political causes.

In her commencement address to Harvard University graduates last Thursday, and during an earlier appearance on the Late Show, Ardern was applauded for mentioning New Zealands gun control measures. The countrys parliament banned military-style assault rifles following the March 15, 2019 terror attack, in which fascist gunman Brenton Tarrant killed 51 people at two Christchurch mosques.

In her Harvard speech, Ardern said nothing about the role of far-right politicians, including Donald Trump, in fuelling Tarrants ideology. Instead, she blamed the attack on social media and promoted her governments push for global internet censorship, dubbed the Christchurch Call to Action.

Ardern lamented the declining influence of mainstream media outlets, that is, those which serve corporate interests, and urged social media companies to work with governments to develop responsible algorithms to stop disinformation.

What this means in practice can be seen in New Zealand, where the Labour Party-led government has already boosted the powers and resources of the Office of the Censor to rapidly take down online content deemed extremist. The real target of such measures is not the far-right, but working people, who are moving to the left.

New Zealand, like the US, is seething with class tensions. Ardern portrayed the country as a sort of identity politics paradise, telling her privileged audience: Almost 50 percent of our parliament are women, 20 percent are Mori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, and our deputy prime minister is a proud gay man.

She did not mention that her diverse Labour-Greens coalition government has used the pandemic to engineer the biggest transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich in New Zealands history. Tens of billions of dollars have been handed to corporations and the banks, while real wages are going backwards amid the soaring cost of living. Nearly one in four children lives in poverty, while homelessness and reliance on charity are at record levels.

Workers are seeking a means to fight back, with a nationwide strike by 10,000 healthcare workers held earlier this month. Low-paid hospital workers face chronic staff shortages, made worse by the constant stream of sick and dying COVID-19 patients.

The New Zealand government is now following the US and other countries in removing all public health restrictions and allowing COVID to infect millions of people. While visiting the US, where hundreds are dying from the virus every day, Ardern promoted the lie that the pandemic is over, as she encouraged tourists to return to New Zealand.

In an interview which was basically an advertorial for New Zealand, Late Show host Stephen Colbert congratulated Ardern on the countrys relatively low COVID death toll of more than 1,000 people in a country of five million. Ardern explained that this was because we decided that we would try and eliminate, just get rid of COVID, using lockdowns and border quarantine measures.

Ardern said New Zealand had adopted this policy because we just couldnt stand the idea of our population being devastated when we could do something about it It was the right thing to do, it saved so many lives. She said the border had remained closed for the entirety of the pandemic, implying that the restrictions are being lifted now because the pandemic is over.

Arderns presentation was false from start to finish. Her Labour Party-led government, supported by the nurses and teachers unions, initially opposed a nationwide lockdown. The measure was announced in late March 2020, not out of altruism, but because the ruling class feared a mass movement developing among tens of thousands of healthcare workers and others, who were demanding action to stop the virus.

Ardern failed to mention that New Zealands elimination policy was abandoned last October, against the advice of public health experts, and that the Omicron variant has spread like wildfire. Following the instructions of the corporate and financial elite, which is totally unconcerned about protecting lives and views all public health measures as a barrier to profit-making, the NZ government has embraced the criminal policy of mass infection.

Quarantine-free travel is resuming just as New Zealand is in the middle of a deadly surge, which is expected to get worse as the country heads into winter. The vast majority of the more than 1,100 COVID-related deaths happened in the last three months, following the reopening of schools for in-person learning.

According to Worldometers, New Zealand recorded 20 COVID deaths per million in the past seven days, the eighth-highest weekly death rate in the world. More than one million people in the country have been infected, meaning there could be hundreds of thousands suffering from Long COVID.

Seeking to minimise the danger posed by the virus, Ardern joked with Colbert about her own recent infection, saying she got COVID for Mothers Day from her partner, and she did not recommend it as a gift.

The virus has, however, disrupted Arderns US trip. So far, three members of her delegation have tested positive, including Ministry of Foreign Affairs chief Chris Seed and Arderns chief press secretary Andrew Campbell. California Governor Gavin Newsom also revealed he had tested positive the day after meeting Ardern in San Francisco.

Despite this spate of infections, Arderns meeting with Biden is still scheduled to go ahead. As the world hurtles towards war, Ardern told the media that she would encourage greater US engagement in the Pacific region. This is meant to push back against Chinas growing influence and to defend the NZ ruling classs own interests in its neo-colonial patch.

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New Zealand PM in the US promotes internet censorship, downplays pandemic - WSWS

A record number of books have been banned or challenged in the U.S. in the last year, part of a push by conservatives torein in discussionof issues that some find distasteful. Now, author Margaret Atwood is responding to the rise in censorship by auctioning a fireproof edition of her novel "The Handmaid's Tale," which ranks among the most frequently banned books in the U.S.

In a video posted onSotheby's sitefor "The Unburnable Book," Atwood is shown with a flamethrower as she takes aim at the edition, which is printed on pages made from heat-resistantCinefoil, sewn together with nickel wire. The flames lick at the book, but the pages remain intact.

"I never thought I'd be trying to burn one of my own books ... and failing," Atwood said in a statement.

The edition is "designed to protect this vital story and stand as a powerful symbol against censorship," the auction site notes.

The auction, which places the expected sale range at $50,000 $100,000, will direct all proceeds to PEN America, a group that advocates for free expression and that plans to use the money to support those efforts. "The Handmaid's Tale," first published in 1985, is a dystopian vision of a future America where women are stripped of their rights and live under a theocracy that prizes them strictly for their reproductive abilities.

Interest in "The Handmaid's Tale" has increased amid a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that, if finalized, would pave the way for states to severely curtail abortion rights in the U.S. The prospect Roe v. Wade being overturned has sparked observations about the book's prescience and relevance to modern events.

"The Handmaid's Tale" has been among the most challenged publications in America, with the American Library Association (ALA) noting that it has been targeted for "vulgarity and sexual overtones."

Efforts to ban books have surged in the past year, with the ALA finding there were a record 729 challenges to more than almost 1,600 titles in 2021, double the number in 2020.

Atwood said in the statement that her book has been banned "by whole countries, as Portugal and Spain in the days of Salazar and the Francoists, sometimes by school boards, sometimes by libraries." She also expressed hope that society doesn't get to the point of "wholesale book burnings, as in 'Fahrenheit 451'," referring to the Ray Bradbury classic.

More recently, Barnes & Noble has faced pressure from a Virginia lawmaker and a congressional candidate to restrict sales of two books deemed "obscene" to minors without parental consent. The candidate, Tommy Altman, said he is running for Congress to protect freedom, including the right to free speech. One of the books the pair is aiming to restrict is the most challenged book of 2021, the memoir "Gender Queer" by Maia Kobabe.

"To see [Atwood's] classic novel about the dangers of oppression reborn in this innovative, unburnable edition is a timely reminder of what's at stake in the battle against censorship," Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle said in a statement.

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Fireproof "Handmaid's Tale" edition is up for auction: A "symbol against censorship" - CBS News