Thursday, December 26

Tag: Censorship

Penguin Random House, Authors Sue Iowa Officials Over School Book Ban
30Nov By adminNo Comments
World

Penguin Random House, Authors Sue Iowa Officials Over School Book Ban

Updated Nov. 30, 2023 4:30 pm ETPenguin Random House has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block school book banning in Iowa, the latest effort by publishers, authors and teachers to counter the removal of works from school classrooms and libraries.The legal action, filed Thursday in federal district court in the Southern District of Iowa, was prompted by a state law passed earlier this year that bans from school libraries or classrooms books that depict or describe sex acts. (Religious texts are exempt.) The law also bans books that address gender identity or sexual orientation for students in kindergarten through sixth grade.Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Should People Have the Right to Say Awful Things Without Facing Legal Consequences?
26Nov By adminNo Comments
Entertainment

Should People Have the Right to Say Awful Things Without Facing Legal Consequences?

Terrible times breed terrible words, and words have consequences—especially when what you say can be recorded and broadcast. Yet society cannot agree, perhaps more so now, on which views are acceptable and what the consequences should be for a person expressing them.Last week, Stuart Seldowitz, a former State Department official, was arrested and charged with a hate crime after videos of him delivering a series of bigoted rants against Mohamed Hussein, a twenty-four-year-old Manhattan street-cart vender, went viral. In these, Seldowitz called Hussein a terrorist, insulted his Muslim faith, and said, with a hysterical crack in his voice, “If we killed four thousand Palestinian children, you know what—it wasn’t enough.” Hussein, for his part, repeatedly asked Seldowitz to leave him alone.Th...
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Erdogan’s Turkey Doesn’t Belong in the EU
20Nov By adminNo Comments
Business

Erdogan’s Turkey Doesn’t Belong in the EU

The European Commission on Nov. 8 issued its annual report on states wanting to join the European Union. The report criticizes the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for disregarding human rights, increasing ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and restricting freedom of expression. The commission takes particular aim at Turkey’s stance on Israel: “Its rhetoric” in support of Hamas “is in complete disagreement with the EU approach.”The EU, like the U.S., has long held delusions about Mr. Erdogan’s views and intentions. Yet for anyone paying attention, his latest inflammatory comments—that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization but a liberation group”—are no surprise. Throughout his 20-year tenure as leader of Turkey, he has spread radical Islam, crushed political opposition and...
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Hamas’s Barbarity Heightens the Crisis in Higher Education
19Nov By adminNo Comments
Health

Hamas’s Barbarity Heightens the Crisis in Higher Education

The barbaric attack by Hamas against Israel—the intentional slaughter of defenseless civilians, including children and babies, and the taking of hostages—should have been a unifying moment for America. Shamefully, it has become something else: a wake-up call about a crisis in higher education.It has been painful to watch students at elite colleges implicitly or explicitly endorse Hamas’s attack. They aren’t old enough to remember 9/11, and it’s clear they never learned its lesson: Intentionally targeting civilians for slaughter is inexcusable no matter the political circumstances. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Meta Allows Ads Claiming Rigged 2020 Election on Facebook, Instagram
15Nov By adminNo Comments
Technology

Meta Allows Ads Claiming Rigged 2020 Election on Facebook, Instagram

Meta Platforms will let political ads on Facebook and Instagram question the legitimacy of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, one of several changes the social-media company and other platforms have made to loosen constraints on campaign advertising for 2024.Meta made the change last year, but it hasn’t gained wide attention. The company decided to allow political advertisers to say past elections were “rigged” or “stolen” but prevented them from questioning the legitimacy of ongoing and coming elections. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Hawley Aims at Wokeness and Misses
12Nov By adminNo Comments
Health

Hawley Aims at Wokeness and Misses

Nov. 12, 2023 12:51 pm ETConservatives celebrated when the Supreme Court ruled, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), that corporations have a right to free speech. Now Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) has joined Bernie Sanders to propose legislation that defies Citizens United. Mr. Hawley is up front about wanting to silence publicly traded corporations because he doesn’t like what some have to say. “Corporate America has funneled billions of dollars into elections in favor of politicians who favor their woke, social agendas,” he says in a press release. He wants to “hold mega-corporations’ feet to the fire and stop their dollars from buying our elections.” He exhorts: “To my conservative friends, listen, there is no reason we should want to empower these mega-corporations....
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Here’s How Violent Extremists Are Exploiting Generative AI Tools
10Nov By adminNo Comments
Technology

Here’s How Violent Extremists Are Exploiting Generative AI Tools

“We're going to partner with Microsoft to figure out if there are ways using our archive of material to create a sort of gen AI detection system in order to counter the emerging threat that gen AI will be used for terrorist content at scale,” Hadley says. “We're confident that gen AI can be used to defend against hostile uses of gen AI.”The partnership was announced today, on the eve of the Christchurch Call Leaders’ Summit, a movement designed to eradicate terrorism and extremist content from the internet, to be held in Paris.“The use of digital platforms to spread violent extremist content is an urgent issue with real-world consequences,” Brad Smith, vice chair and president at Microsoft said in a statement. “By combining Tech Against Terrorism’s capabilities with AI, we hope to help cr...
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WSJ Reporter Evan Gershkovich and Press Freedom in Focus at ‘Reporters at Risk’ Event
8Nov By adminNo Comments
World

WSJ Reporter Evan Gershkovich and Press Freedom in Focus at ‘Reporters at Risk’ Event

An event about the risks facing foreign correspondents and global press freedom was held in honor of jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.The Atlantic Council event “Reporters at Risk: In Honor of Evan Gershkovich” brought together a panel of journalists and press advocates, including reporters who had been held by foreign governments. Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Josh Hawley’s Unoriginal Constitution – WSJ
7Nov By adminNo Comments
Business

Josh Hawley’s Unoriginal Constitution – WSJ

Since the Supreme Court unleashed independent political spending in 2010’s Citizens United v. FEC, progressives have forecast the ruin of American politics by corporate spending. More than a decade on, elections are competitive and no doom has come to pass, but the same false alarm is now making the rounds on the political right. Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has introduced legislation to reverse Citizens United as a way to punish corporations whose progressive politics he dislikes. He told RealClearPolitics that his “goal is to get corporate money out of our politics,” and to stop companies from “controlling our elections.”Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Why Stanford’s Leaders Tolerate Anti-Semitism
6Nov By adminNo Comments
Business

Why Stanford’s Leaders Tolerate Anti-Semitism

After Hamas massacred some 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7, many Stanford students marched in support of the terrorist group, chanting “2, 4, 6, 8, smash the Zionist settler state.” University leaders responded with a statement supporting “academic freedom,” including the “expression of controversial and even offensive views.”This is the same university where administrators last year undertook an Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, which published a catalog of words and phrases to be removed from the school’s websites. Among the proscribed terms: “American,” “immigrant” and “blind study.”Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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