> Make no mistake: This is an authoritarian escalation.
> Blaming outside agitators or interests always was a propaganda ploy and remains so now.
> It is no accident that this indefensible police crackdown comes in service of an indefensible war. The very extremity of protest repression speaks to desperation on the part of institutions of the American establishment.
URGENT: Within hours, Congress will vote on legislation that criminalizes student protest under the guise of fighting antisemitism. Write your rep now and tell them to vote NO on this authoritarian campus crackdown.
Free speech is alive and well on American campuses as students are welcome to protest injustice as long as their slogans are perfectly calibrated to offend noone and can withstand the scrutiny of bad-faith actors and no individual among them is a hothead who's said some offensive shit either during the protest or previously on social media. #gazaprotests#censorship#acab
#EU#France#Israel#Palestine#FreedomOfSpeech#Censorship#FranceInsoumise: "Since October 7, France Insoumise’s position on the Israel-Palestine conflict has turned it into the target of much of the French political class, including a pro-Israel faction on the center left, who have used the crisis to pursue the ostracization of the left-wing force founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. They’ve pointed to statements like France Insoumise’s October 7 communiqué as definitive proof of the “antisemitic,” “Islamo-leftist” extremism that supposedly runs rampant on the Left — making it into a threat on par with Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, or perhaps an even more dangerous one.
The prosecutor’s office has yet to publicly explain its reasons for summoning Hassan or Panot. Panot’s press release, however, claims that the cause is indeed the party’s October 7 communiqué, a text which referred to the day’s attacks as an “armed offensive of Palestinian forces led by Hamas,” one coming in “the context of an intensification of Israel’s policy of colonization in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”
“We mourn the lives of dead Israelis and Palestinians,” the October 7 statement continued, before calling for an immediate cease-fire and peace negotiations."
Fight for your libraries. Don’t let them take away your library by defunding it out of providing vital services. Don’t let them shackle the library with rules meant to prevent the right people from getting the right book to change their life. Don’t let them close the doors, because you know they will never open again. Fight for the freedom to read and explore new ideas. Fight against censorship and denying people the materials their souls need. If a library closes, it will never open again. You couldn’t create libraries today. You want to loan out books? And people will just willingly give them back? Are you mad? Naïve, perhaps? Once a library closes its doors, it’s over. The book banners have won. Do not let them win. Fight for libraries. Fight for library workers. Fight for patrons. Fight for free people reading freely. #libraries#censorship#librarians#LibraryWorkers#LibraryPatrons#BookBans
Proposed bill in Alabama to allow the arrest of librarians.
No one is perfect—not even librarians. But professional #librarians are terrific. They're dedicated public servants, and they know how to library better than politicians do.
🇷🇺 #Russia has arrested a journalist from the Russian edition of Forbes magazine over charges of spreading "false" information about Moscow's military offensive in Ukraine, his lawyer and Forbes said on Friday.
So, anyone know how this ban is going to be enforced? Or attempted to be enforced?
I'm guessing government forced removal from mobile app stores, but then what about people who already have the app? Or who side-load it on their Android phones. Or use a web app?
"Rather than prevent the rise of the far-right or combat racism and antisemitism, Germany’s pro-Israel anti-antisemitism has allowed the flourishing of a far-right able to direct their racism towards anti-Zionist migrants while exploiting the fight against antisemitism to increasingly fascist ends."
I've dipped into the #TikTok debate, with a unique proposal. No ban, instead, mandate reciprocity.
Liberal democracies should restrict TikTok and other Chinese apps like #WeChat and #Weibo from accessing their digital markets until #China allows foreign platforms like #LINE, #Spotify, #Signal, and #Facebook equal and fair access to the Chinese #digital market.
> The blanket suspension of student protesters casts “serious doubt on the University’s respect for the rule-of-law values that we teach,” 54 law professors wrote.
B'Nai Brith has pressurized #Toronto Public #Library to remove Palestinian Professor, Refaat Alareer's poem, "If I Must Die" on account of a twisted, disingenuous accusation of anti-semitism. The poem has been praised around the world & translated into numerous languages. It speaks of hope & love amidst grief & tragedy. A cynical attempt by a pro-Israel lobby group to hide the fact Israeli forces murdered the beloved teacher in #Gaza amidst the #genocide.
In a year that will be remembered for its relentless assault on intellectual freedom, 2023 saw an unprecedented wave of book bans sweeping across the United States.
The numbers are staggering and the targets are clear. In the first half of the 2022-23 school year alone, 30% of banned books focused on racial topics or featured characters of color, while over half of the bans in 2023 took aim at LGBTQ+ content. —via takeitback.org #Censorship#BookBans#Education#Diversity#DEI#Racism#LGBTQ