censorship

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Iranian authorities have arrested several prominent activists on baseless accusations amid labor union strikes and ongoing protests against rising prices, since May 6, 2022, in dozens of small towns, Human Rights Watch said today. Those arrested include a prominent sociologist and four labor rights defenders. News outlets close to […]

censorship

Disney Targeted on Gay Rights by both DeSantis’ Christian Taliban and Saudi Muslim Obscurantism

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis notoriously just came after the Walt Disney Co. for its opposition, if belated, to his “don’t say gay” legislation forbidding school teachers to mention the subject of gay relationships to children under 9. The act vaguely insists that mentions before children older than that had to […]

censorship

Saudi Arabia: Mass Execution of 81 Men: Rampant Abuses in Criminal Justice System, lack of Fair Trials

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Saudi authorities’ execution of 81 men on March 12, 2022 was its largest mass execution in years despite recent promises to curtail its use of the death penalty, Human Rights Watch said today. Rampant and systemic abuses in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system suggest it is highly unlikely that […]

Antisemitism

My Life with Maus: Or How I Was Banned (Even If in a Second-Hand Way) by a Trumpian World

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Sometimes life has a way of making you realize things about yourself. Recently, I discovered that an urge of mine, almost four decades old, had been the very opposite of that of a rural Tennessee school board this January. In another life, I played a role in what could be thought […]

censorship

Banning ‘Maus’ only exposes the significance of this searing graphic novel about the Holocaust

The Conversation

By Biz Nijdam | – A school board in Tennessee voted unanimously in favour of removing the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman from its Grade 8 language arts curriculum in January. Maus is based on interviews with Spiegelman’s father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Auschwitz survivor, and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 […]

censorship

Banned Books Should Be Required Reading

Olivia Alperstein

( Otherwords.org ) The people who want to ban Maus or The 1619 Project are the ones who need to read them. By Olivia Alperstein | February 2, 2022 In January, a Tennessee county school board voted unanimously to ban Maus, a graphic novel by Art Spiegelamn about his parents’ experience in Auschwitz, from school […]

censorship

The Real Obscenity is that anti-Nazi Books like “Maus” are banned by McMinn County, TN

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – Objection to teaching Critical Race Theory (which is anyway not taught at the K-12 level) and school boards banning books are evil Siamese Twins. Both arise from fear of knowledge, truth and candid assessment. Both are motivated by a desperation to preserve an old order and suppress the […]

censorship

Israeli Pegasus Spyware was used against Human Rights Watch Workers

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (New York) – The targeting of a Human Rights Watch staff member with Pegasus spyware underscores the urgent need to regulate the global trade in surveillance technology, Human Rights Watch said today. Governments should ban the sale, export, transfer, and use of surveillance technology until human rights safeguards are in place. […]