Archive for the ‘Censorship’ Category

Could CHINA be exporting its CENSORSHIP to the rest of the WORLD? – VisualPolitik EN – The Global Herald – The Global Herald

VisualPolitik EN published this video item, entitled Could CHINA be exporting its CENSORSHIP to the rest of the WORLD? VisualPolitik EN below is their description.

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China is a country known for censorship, the Asian giant has managed to position itself and stand up to the West, showing that they can open up to the world and, at the same time, maintain their dictatorship.

China has more censorship than any other country, a result of their superior technology that allows them to develop a massive firewall to filter the information that the Chinese population sees. The worlds most popular social media platforms are banned in this country, because China uses its own social networks which are monitored by the government, thereby having total control of the flow of information.

These days we are hearing of cases where Western films and companies self-censor themselves in order to enter the expanding and attractive Chinese market.

But how does censorship work in China? Is censorship being exported to other countries? Do many Western companies really censor themselves in order to enter the Chinese market?

Join us in this video where we answer these questions.

And dont forget to visit our friends podcast, Reconsider Media:

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Could CHINA be exporting its CENSORSHIP to the rest of the WORLD? - VisualPolitik EN - The Global Herald - The Global Herald

Freedom From Censorship: Inside The Battle To Build A Second Internet – The Federalist

It was just above freezing on Capitol Hill the night of Jan. 8, when Twitter banned President Donald Trump from messaging his nearly 90 million followers.

The censorship of a sitting American president by unaccountable and unelected billionaires in California was a dangerous escalation, but here in Washington, Democrats were overjoyed, most Republicans were relieved, and the corporate press was ecstatic. To even question the decision publicly in D.C. was to support an imagined insurrection.

That night, as friends and I discussed the damage done and the battles ahead around my kitchen bar, we foresaw a world where these kinds of sweeping actions would become common to the point of mundane, losing any fig leaf of justification along the way. As the hours wore on and the beer animated our discussion, one of our company, Martn Avila, sat aside and said little.

It was strange: Avila was a technologist who stayed in a guest room when he was in town. Hed been predicting this moment for years, but the night it happened he chose to retire with barely a word.

Early the next morning, I heard the engine start on his 94 Range Rover as he pulled the truck into the winter air. He was heading to North Carolina to meet with some old friends.

President Trump was far from the first to be banned by Twitter, but his permanent suspension marked the start of a long, dark night, when anyone anywhere might be banned for anything at the whim of a technocrat.

Wed seen warnings the sun was setting on a free internet: Mozilla Firefox President and cofounder Brendan Eich was fired over his Christian religion in 2014; Google worked openly to demonetize content it didnt like in 2020; and that same year social media giants censored a true story from a major newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton in order to assist their political allies. Treating the U.S. president worse than a terrorist spokesman, however, was something new.

In response, President Trumps followers flocked to Parler, a Twitter competitor that hadnt banned him from their platform, quickly making it a top-downloaded app in the Apple and Google Play stores. Seeing the threat to their censorship, on Saturday both stores announced they would ban the companys app. That evening, their web host, Amazon Web Services, took Parler entirely off the internet.

These actions cant be overstated: To ban an app from the major stores is to essentially ban it from being used by any of your customers and at the moment of its greatest momentum. To ban it from the very servers it uses is to lower it into its grave. For three of the most powerful companies on the planet to do so in concert is nothing less than the end of a crucial idea that if you dont like the way somethings done, you can do it yourself, and if youre good and lucky enough you might even succeed. We called that idea the American dream.

But the very existence of men like Eich, as well as the ongoing occasional leaks and small rebellions within the tech giants, speak to a community of dissidents throughout Silicon Valley that until this final moment had seen few reasons to start something new. By the end of the weekend, that calculus had irrevocably changed and Avila and a small number of other conscientious objectors had launched the first salvo against the core of Big Tech by starting a new company called RightForge.

The mission is simple on its face: create an internet governed by the principles enshrined in our Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. The execution, however, requires something more than previous attempts to combat Big Tech supremacy: Instead of playing whack-a-mole by challenging platforms and software, go after the rot at the core, creating a separate, sprawling infrastructure built on hard work, skill, and servers. That is, a second internet.

Its a fundamental problem wed never had to think about before. What happens when the companies that own the ground say you cant build here anymore if youre a conservative, a free-thinking scientist, an upset parent, or simply a Christian?

Thats no hyperbole: Just last month, GoDaddy cut the legs out from Texas Right To Life for providing a forum to protect the constitutional right to life by reporting violations of the states new law. The publicity GoDaddy received from the corporate press was so unanimously positive, a company called DigitalOcean jumped on the bus, crowing that they deserved credit for deplatforming Christians they werent even officially doing business with yet.

The tyrants who seek to control arent brave, nor are they new and its far from the first time the lords who own the land have told the rest they cant build there anymore. Four hundred years ago, the Puritans set sail for the Americas under just such circumstances. Theyd hoped to land in the colonies down south, just as Americans had hoped for a free internet, but forces outside their control had a different plan so they chartered their own founding and forged their own destinies.

RightForge seeks to do just that, because today that is the only way forward. While Ive devoted my life to journalism, everything is at stake; if the internet is not free, honest journalism itself is threatened along with honest political debate, education, science, and the rest.

Wherever despotism abounds, President Calvin Coolidge warned the American Society of Newspaper Editors nearly a century ago, the sources of public information are first to be brought under its control.

Few in politics, the press, or tech recall his warning; worse yet, few still believe it. The most powerful insiders in the world have turned on the American people and the heritage of liberty we cherish, proudly taking aim at our open society. The only choice remaining is to create an alternative; if we dont forge our own path free from their control, this night weve entered will only grow darker and longer.

So, on the first Monday of the month I joined them in their fight as chief communications director, where Ill be defending and expanding an internet where people of all politics and religions can communicate, interact, and conduct commerce free from arbitrary power.

This mission stands in support of honest journalism and against those who seek to censor it, so far from leaving, Ill be remaining at The Federalist. Were on the front lines of every single battle for our culture and country, and Im anxious for the fray.

This fight is a crucial one. One by one, from science and the universities to banking and commerce, press and opinion, conservatives are losing access. We may soon need alternates to all these things and will need access to an internet infrastructure to build them.

Its as easy to be optimistic as it is pessimistic neither posture requires much effort beyond a smile or a frown. Assuming everything will be OK that the rulers will overreach and grow weary, or that some mythical backlash is coming isnt realistic, and is as incompatible with the American way as defeatism in the face of difficult odds. Big Tech might be big, but were a strong people with the intelligence, the technology, the means, and the grit to fight for our freedoms and forge our own destinies.

Weve done it before; were doing it again.

Christopher Bedford is a senior editor at The Federalist and chief communications officer at RightForge.

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Freedom From Censorship: Inside The Battle To Build A Second Internet - The Federalist

Biden’s Justice Department Clueless That Censoring Parents Is Sure to End Badly – Heritage.org

It sounds like hyperbole, but its true: A progressiveeducationassociation wants parents attending school board meetings to be treated like terrorists.

It has askedPresident Joe Bidento criminalize parent opposition to Critical Race Theory and COVID mandates, a burgeoning grassroots movement that has caught radicals by surprise.

The move to suppressFirst Amendmentrights came from the National School Boards Association (NSBA), which organizes school board members. It wants the Biden administration to use "extraordinary measures" initially created to deal with foreign threats to now intimidate parents and "preserve public school infrastructure," according to the groups recent letter to the White House.

The group wants theBiden administrationto invoke the PATRIOT Act and create a posse that includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and National Threat Assessment Center to protect them against parentsthe very people school boards are responsible for representing in their local communities.

>>>Attorney General Garland Abuses Power He Doesnt Have to Threaten Parents

And the Biden Justice Department has quickly responded to the NSBAs request to criminalize political opposition and strong-arm Americans. U.S. Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland will meet with federal, state and local officials to "discuss strategies for addressing this disturbing trend."

Parents have a lot to say, however, and they should not be harassed.

Over the last year, parents have been attending school board meetings in large numbers to object to prolonged closures, as well as educators use of Critical Race Theory to promote racial prejudice. To most Americans, even those who may disagree with them, they are family, friends and neighbors advocating on behalf of their children. To the NSBA, theyre "current threats."

If anything, it is parents who sometimes must fear vindictive reprisals or censorship by school board members. In Loudoun County, Virginia, this year, members of the school board formed a Facebook group to investigate and dox parents who dared speak against CRT. Reports from Indiana, Minnesota, Virginia,and Wisconsin to name only a few, find that board members are no longer including time on meeting agendas for or are otherwise suspending public comment.

Both school board members and meeting attendees are responsible for keeping the meetings civil. NSBAs accusations that parents are a problem shows utter contempt for parents pouring into school board meetings to have their voices heard.

Censoring parents is sure to end badly. For parents to care about school children in their communities is a healthy, all-American development. Voter turnout for school board elections has been modest for years, hovering around 10 percent. The new interest should be celebrated, not criminalized.

Parents want to know what is being taught to their studentsas they should. School boards have the responsibility for directing important district operations, including curricular choices and other district operational policies. Yet board members have grown accustomed to "sleepy and ill-attended public meetings," according to USA Today, and are "reeling" to find parents upset at COVID-related policies and educators application of critical race theorys racially prejudicial ideas in K-12 classrooms.

According to national polling, 70 percent of a nationally representative sample of parentssaythey do not want schools to teach children that their skin color is the most important thing about them.

State lawmakers around the U.S. agree and are considering proposals that say no public official can compel a teacher or student to believe or profess an idea that violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

>>>Critical Race Theory Fight Is Generational

School officials, on the other hand, are using discriminatory activities in schools based on critical race theory. This includes schools in Portland, Oregon, where videos of a public school critical race theory working group are available on YouTube.com; Evanston, Illinois, where a teacher is suing the district over mandatory racial affinity groups; and Hayward Unified School District in California, where school officials posted a note on the district website saying they would teach CRT.

NSBA promotes CRT and has urged the Biden administration to reinstate racially discriminatory workforce development programs that President Donald Trumps administration abolished last fall. Given the publics rejection of CRT and state lawmakers efforts to prohibit racial discrimination, its positions do not reflect the interests of families or policymakers.

Parents are not to be trifled with. According to Axios, more than twice as many board recall elections or campaigns were held or initiated between January and July 2021 than during all of last year.

NSBA should not be worried about parents attending meetingsthey should be worried about voters headed to the ballot box.

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Biden's Justice Department Clueless That Censoring Parents Is Sure to End Badly - Heritage.org

Senators Blast Google for Banning Pro-Life Ads: This is …

A dozen U.S. Senators wrote a letter Thursday to Google, urging the big tech company to end its ban on life-saving pro-life advertisements.

Earlier this week, Live Action and Heartbeat International saidGoogle removed their ads about the abortion pill reversal protocol and a video about fetal developmentcalled Baby Olivia. The ban came as abortion activists pressure Google, Facebook and other big tech companies to censor pro-life information and tell mothers that it is dangerous to save their babies lives.

Live Action and Heartbeat International are appealing the ban, and 11 Republican U.S. Senators supported their request in a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday.

Googles pro-life censorship is out of step with the science and reflects an unacceptable bias against pro-life views,they wrote. We insist that you immediately reverse this decision.

The Republican senators slammed the internet giant for its double standards, noting that it still allows abortion groups to advertise deadly, mail-order abortion drugs.

LifeNews is now on GETTR. Please follow us for the latest pro-life news

While banning pro-life [abortion pill reversal] ads, Google continues to allow ads for purveyors of the deadly abortion pill mifepristone by mail, despite the fact this drug has resulted in at least 24 mothers tragic deaths and at least 1,042 mothers being sent to the hospital,the lawmakers wrote.Googles double standard on abortion is disingenuous and an egregious abuse of its enormous market power to protect the billion-dollar abortion industry.

Signing the letter were Republican U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, of Mississippi; Steve Daines, of Montana; Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee; Mike Braun, of Indiana; Marco Rubio, of Florida; Mike Lee, of Utah; Ted Cruz, of Texas; Tom Cotton, of Arkansas; and James Lankford and Jim Inhofe, of Oklahoma.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, of Missouri,also wrote a letter urging Google to stop the censorship of pro-life adsearlier this week.

Censorship by Google means a near blackout of that information online. Google, which owns YouTube and other companies, is one of the most powerful entities in the world, and political leaders in the United States and Europe have been investigating whether Google is violating anti-trust laws.

Pro-life and conservative groups have been feeling thebruntof its censorship powers for years.

Why they fight so hard to silence us, I struggle to understand. But they do. And they fight dirty, Cindi Boston-Bilotta, vice president of Heartbeat International,which runs the abortion pill reversal hotline, wrote Tuesday in an email to supporters.

She said Google removed all Abortion Pill Reversal ads at the prompting of abortion activists, and they are pressuring Facebook to do the same.

Studies and medical experts confirm the abortion pill reversal protocol is safe and effective. It works very similarly to a hormonal treatment that has been used for years to help prevent miscarriages.

The censorship comes at a critical time when abortion activists are pushing to expand abortion pills. The Biden administration recently stopped enforcing safety regulations on abortion drugs, meaning abortion groups now can sell them through the mail without ever seeing the woman in person.

Live Action president and founder Lila Rose said Google claims the ads included misleading content, restricted drug terms and restricted medical content.

But Kaylee McGhee White, an opinion writer at the Washington Examiner, said there is no evidence to back these claims.

She wrote:

in criticism of the treatment by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which Google is citing to justify its crackdown on Live Action, ACOG does not once mention a single case in which the treatment has had negative effects. And thats because the evidence that it is harmful is flimsy at best and outright dishonest at worst.

Researchandmedical experts confirmthat the abortion pill reversal treatment is safe and effective for both mother and baby. Thousands of mothers and babies stories are proof as well. One mother, Rebekah Buell, saidher son Zechariah is alive today because of the abortion pill reversal procedure.

Anyone who has taken the first abortion pill and wishes to stop the abortion is urged to immediately visit http://www.abortionpillreversal.com or call the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline at 877-558-0333.

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Senators Blast Google for Banning Pro-Life Ads: This is ...

Officials tear out yearbook pages, prompt censorship claims

BIGELOW, Ark. (AP) Officials at an Arkansas high school physically tore out pages from the schools published yearbook that included references to the U.S. Capitol riot, George Floyd and COVID-19, claiming community backlash, an action the Student Press Law Center condemned as censorship.

The SPLC, a nonprofit that defends the First Amendment rights of student journalists and their advisers at high school and college levels, and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette both requested documentation regarding the community backlash.

Hadar Harris, executive director of SPLC, said when asked for documentation regarding the community backlash, Heidi Wilson, the superintendent at East End School District, could not produce any.

I have done an extensive search and I dont have anything responsive, Wilson replied in an email to the newspaper on Aug. 10.

It is painfully clear that you did not remove these pages from the yearbook for any legally justifiable reason, wrote Harris in an email Friday to Wilson. In fact, even the legally dubious reason you gave about the so-called community backlash failed to hold up under closer scrutiny. A public records request served on your office seeking any records reflecting any community backlash against the yearbook turned up nothing.

According to the Democrat-Gazette, it appeared the two-page timeline depicting news events from 2020 and 2021, including the U.S. Capitol riot and the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Daunte Wright, were ripped out by hand.

The spread outlined important world events that took place during the 2020-2021 academic year, including the 2020 election, the impact of COVID-19, the death of George Floyd, and more. The reason cited for the removal of the already-published content was that school officials were at the receiving end of community backlash over the yearbook spread, wrote Harris.

The yearbook adviser, Meghan Clarke Walton, resigned over the censorship issue. She also taught English and journalism at the school.

I did not authorize the removal of these pages, nor do I support it in any way, she said. Deciding to resign was the most difficult decision I have ever made. However, I needed to stand up for myself and for the students who created that yearbook spread.

Walton said more than 100 distributed yearbooks had the pages removed. About 15 yearbooks that were sold during the first day of distribution are the only ones that have all the pages.

In the letter, Harris also demands administrators to reprint the censored pages of the yearbook along with a written apology, strongly suggesting the reprint and apology be distributed by Sept. 15.

Wilson could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

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Officials tear out yearbook pages, prompt censorship claims