Censorship

Outrageous raid in Marion, Kansas

This entry was posted in Censorship News and tagged Kansas law liberty on by

I wish I had the time to write a proper article about the outrageous police raid on the offices of the Marion County Record and the home of its owner, Eric Meyer. Currently, though, I’m putting all my efforts into getting the revised edition of Tomorrow’s Songs Today ready for final review. Just as I thought it was ready to go, I discovered some omissions that had me sending out emails yesterday, and I got the first reply this morning.

So I’ll settle for links and short comments.

AP News. The official justification for the raid has not been made public. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation has said it was asked to assist in “allegations of illegal access and dissemination of confidential criminal justice information.” This could be justification for such a raid in some cases, such as breaking into law enforcement databases, but at present there’s no indication any such thing was involved. Most of the news articles I’ve seen follow the theory that the motivation was the Record‘s reporting on a local restaurant owner.

New York Post. The Post reports that Meyer’s mother, aged 98, died shortly after the raid on his home, and Meyer attributes her death to the stress of the raid. It says that the search warrant (which has not been publicly disclosed) “seems to violate federal law” and that normal procedure under the law is to subpoena materials.

Washington Post. The other Post mentions that “the Record had been actively investigating Police Chief Gideon Cody at the time of the raid after receiving tips that he had left his previous job in Kansas City, Mo., to avoid repercussions for alleged sexual misconduct charges.”

Read the articles. Find additional information for yourself. Comment if you think I’m missing something important.

Kafka’s Mastodon

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged censorship Internet mastodon on by

I run the Filk News account on Mastodon, providing information about concerts, filksings, and other items of interest for the filk music community. Normally I don’t write much about filk here, but the story has relevance to anyone who uses Mastodon to distribute or gather information or just to connect with friends.

The first part of the story is in my earlier post, “The petty tyrants of Mastodon.” You may want to read it first if you haven’t already. Since then I’ve gotten no satisfaction from indieweb.social and found it necessary to move Filk News to liberal.city, which I think will be a better home for it. (Another post which I made, “The impending strangulation of Mastodon,” reflected a user error on my part, so I’ve removed it from public view.)

As I said in “Petty Tyrants,” my personal account is on Liberdon, which is included on a “Tier 0 Blocklist”. It simply lists domains to block without giving reasons. When I noticed trouble interacting with Indieweb from Liberdon, I reported the issue to Indieweb’s admin, Tim Chambers. He said he had changed Liberdon’s status from “blocked” to the less restrictive “silenced” while looking into the issue.
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Chinese censorship in America

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged censorship China on by

The other day I found a report by PEN America called “Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing.” There’s no visible date on it, but there are references to 2023, so it’s either recent or recently revised. It goes into detail about how American movie makers bend to the Chinese government’s will. It’s not the threat of arrest or property seizure that impels them, but economic and social pressure. “The Chinese Communist Party, in fact, holds major sway over whether a Hollywood movie will be profitable or not — and studio executives know it.”

Well-known actors can be affected even by what they say and do outside movies.
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Banning book bans in Illinois

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged books Illinois law libraries on by

Illinois has enacted a law which many articles have characterized as “outlawing book bans.” More precisely:

Illinois public libraries that restrict or ban materials because of “partisan or doctrinal” disapproval will be ineligible for state funding as of Jan. 1, 2024, when the new law goes into effect.

Here’s the full text. It encourages libraries to adopt the American Library Association’s “Library Bill of Rights.” This sounds like a good idea on the face of it, but it may accomplish less than expected and have unintended consequences.
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The thug’s veto in Lancaster, New Hampshire

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged censorship libraries New Hampshire on by

The Weeks Memorial Library in Lancaster, a small town in northern New Hampshire, was going to put on a “drag queen story hour,” then it cancelled the event because of alleged threats of violence. A WMUR news article says,

Linda Hutchins, board chair of Weeks Memorial Library, said the library has a non-discrimination policy when it comes to renting out their room, but when they started receiving violent threats and word of multiple protests, safety became a top priority.

However, an NHPR news article makes it doubtful whether these threats were real:
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CUNY misrepresents American freedoms

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged censorship education law on by

The bogus claim that there’s a “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment of the US Constitution usually comes from a left-wing position, but anyone can use it. The Board of Trustees of the City University of New York claimed that the speech made by student Fatima Mousa Mohammed at the May 12 Law School commencement constituted “hate speech.” The statement asserts that “hate speech … should not be confused with free speech and has no place on our campuses or in our city, our state or our nation.” Presumably the university plans or has already engaged in some action penalizing the speaker, though I haven’t been able to find out what it did or is going to do.

This case is particularly interesting because it doesn’t follow the usual script of people holding a left-wing view claiming that positions they don’t like are unprotected “hate speech.” According to an article on FIRE’s website, Ms. Mohammed “accused Israel of ‘indiscriminately raining bullets and bombs’ on Palestinians, criticized CUNY for working with the ‘fascist’ New York City Police Department and military, and expressed disdain for ‘capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism.'” Those sound more like the positions of someone who’d fling “hate speech” accusations rather than being on the receiving end.
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Fayneese Miller’s obsession 3

This entry was posted in Censorship Writing and tagged censorship education Hamline religion on by

The situation at Hamline University, which I blogged about a few days ago, has gotten stranger. President Fayneese Miller’s recent statements suggest that the non-renewal of the contract of a lecturer for including Islamic art in an art course is the manifestation of some strange obsession.

The lowliness of the lecturer plays an important role in Miller’s raving. She emphasizes repeatedly that the lecturer was a mere “adjunct instruction” and insists that “the adjunct instructor chosen to teach the course in art history did not ‘lose her job.'” Easy for a university president to say. Not so easy to hear when you’re told you aren’t coming back next term. Miller adds that “the decision not to offer her another class was made at the unit level and in no way reflects on her ability to adequately teach the class.” That’s exactly the issue. A fully competent lecturer isn’t coming back, not because of any problems with her teaching, but because she didn’t follow the commandments of a conservative branch of a religion. But defending a lowly lecturer against a university president’s wrath is, says the university president, a “privileged reaction.”
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Student journalism and cowardice 1

This entry was posted in Censorship Writer ethics Writing and tagged censorship Hamline religion on by

You may have heard about Hamline University’s recent outrageous action. Not everyone has, though, and there’s been misinformation going around, so let me start by summarizing it. A lecturer (not a professor), in a course on art history, devoted a session to Islamic art. Aware that some Muslims regard it as improper to portray Muhammad visually, he informed the class that he would be presenting such an image, a classic Islamic work from the 14th century, and gave people a chance to leave before showing the picture. A student complained anyway. The university announced that it would not renew the untenured lecturer’s contract, so strictly speaking, it didn’t fire the lecturer. The action, however, was intended as punishment for violating Islamic law. Hamline is a Methodist school, not an Islamic one, in Minnesota.

Since this is at least nominally a blog on writing, my focus won’t be on the university’s vile action, but on what played out at the Hamline Oracle, a student news publication. I suspect they took the actions they did under extreme pressure from the administration, but their rolling over as they did was an act of gross cowardice regardless.
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New York’s threat to free speech on the Web 1

This entry was posted in Censorship News and tagged censorship law liberty on by

A law recently passed by the New York State Legislature poses a serious threat to online speech. FIRE is already challenging this outrageous law, which I doubt can survive a legal battle, but in the meantime, it poses a threat to anyone running a site that’s read in New York and allows user input.

The law applies to the ill-defined category of “social media networks.” That doesn’t just mean Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It could apply to anyone who runs a Mastodon instance or even runs a blog that allows comments. FIRE says:
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Banned Books Week 2022

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged books censorship on by

CC license from pngall.comNormally I don’t pay much attention to Banned Books Week. In past years it seems the scariest scenarios anyone reported were things like someone claiming a book shouldn’t be on library shelves for fourth-graders. I’ve called it “Bland Books Week.” This year is different, though. A movement has arisen from the sewers of the religious right to intimidate and harass librarians. “Woke” leftists and Muslim fanatics also pose threats. People at my local library have been worried, even though little has happened around here.

Here are some incidents that have made the news.
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