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 . '/' . substr('9780061692048',-6,3) . '/' . '9780061692048' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Richard Ford
$27.99
 . '/' . substr('9780307387899',-6,3) . '/' . '9780307387899' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Cormac McCarthy
$35
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Flickr / yukali
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According to the muckrakers at TPM, some independent media types were refused entry to a “Going Rogue” event in the world capital of Sarah Palin, Wasilla, Alaska, because their names were on a “banned list.” (continued and video)
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AP / Eugene Hoshiko
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It’s not the first time that objections have been raised over the kinds of values promoted, whether explicitly or implicitly, by media products hailing from the general vicinity of Hollywood, but this time the issue concerns a whole country taking on a major international commercial coalition: China and the World Trade Organization, respectively.
Posted on Sep 22, 2009
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wordpress.com
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As protests in Iran continue, the extent to which the government will go to silence dissent has sunk to even further depths of ridiculousness. Protesters at a Tehran soccer match chanted and waved green banners, to which government censors responded by delaying the telecast of the game and editing out the crowd noise and close-ups.
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telegraph.co.uk
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Everyone’s favorite world leader/womanizer is in the news again after a film director accused the Italian prime minister of censorship. Italian state television has refused to show a film trailer that accuses Silvio Berlusconi of creating a “frivolous media culture,” and many think the PM’s incredible influence over the media has something to do with it.
Posted on Sep 3, 2009
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pornfilmfestivalberlin.de
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After facing loads of criticism at home and abroad, China is delaying a rule on the mandatory installation of anti-porn and anti-violence software on all new computers sold. Many have found problems with the software, claiming it blocks sensitive political sites and opens computers to government surveillance and hackers.
Posted on Jun 30, 2009
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commons.wikimedia.org - Tej
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The Russian Supreme Court has ordered a retrial for the three men acquitted of murdering Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who exposed human rights abuses in Chechnya. Politkovskaya, a leading critic of then-President Vladimir Putin, was one of many Russian journalists mysteriously silenced after speaking out against the government.
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By Amy Goodman — Tools of mass communication that were once the province of governments and corporations now fit in your pocket. As these technologies have developed, so too has the ability to monitor, filter, censor and block them.
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Flickr / phauly
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Is China experiencing a pornography epidemic? Beijing’s obsession with porn blocking now rivals its attempts to stifle political dissent. On top of censorship software soon to be packaged with every computer sold in the country, China has told Google to limit its search functionality for fear of accidentally helping Chinese users find the good stuff.
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smh.com.au
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After an uninspiring scoreless draw with fellow autocratic state Saudi Arabia, it seems that North Korea’s football (soccer) team has managed to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The qualification raises the possibility of a cup confrontation with South Korea—or even the U.S.—next summer.
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Flickr/NotionsCapital.com
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Investigations into China’s new anti-pornography software “Green Dam-Youth Escort,” which is to be bundled with all personal computers sold in the country, reveal that it blocks more than just porn. The new software also censors Web sites with controversial political keywords related to the Tiananmen Square military crackdown and the banned spiritual group Falun Gong.
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Flickr / +lyn
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Shepherd Johnson’s Flickr account, along with an estimated 1,200 photos, vanished shortly after he started hassling the president via the White House’s official photostream. Yahoo, which owns the popular photo sharing site, won’t comment, but Johnson says he lost access after posting 20 or so negative comments, complete with links to images of torture.
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Keith Allison
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Starting July 1, every computer sold in China will come bundled with software designed to block access to pornographic sites and whatever else parents—and, critics fear, the government—want to keep at bay. As one of the software’s developers explains, “If a father doesn’t want his son to be exposed to content related to basketball or drugs, he can block all Web sites related to those things.”
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amazon.com
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Amazon fell into hot water with the gay community after gay-themed books began disappearing from the site’s sales rankings. Amazon blamed the problem on a “glitch” and has restored some of the titles, but one author says a representative from the site told him his work had been recategorized as “adult.”
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bbc.co.uk
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An obvious Photoshop job in Israel has hilariously tried to make Israel’s inaugural Cabinet a bit more Orthodox. In one ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspaper, two female Cabinet members were cropped out of an official picture and replaced with two non-Cabinet men.
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nytimes.com
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Anti-government demonstrations in Pakistan were thwarted by police Thursday, as opposition leaders were arrested and protesters were stopped after the government claimed that such public gatherings could be sites for terrorist attacks.
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wired.com
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The ghoulish comic “Tales From the Crypt” is taking a spooky look at the possibility of a Sarah Palin presidency. An editorial by Gathy Gaines Mifsud, daughter of publisher William Gaines—a target of a ghastly 1950s Senate investigation on censorship—rails against Palin and her reported McCarthy-esque book-banning stunts while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
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Flickr / aesop
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Team McCain has rejected the “vicious smear” that as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin wanted to ban books from the local library, but the campaign’s 1,615-word memo on the subject indirectly supports the accusation. As Palin’s mayoral predecessor recalls, “She asked the library how she could go about banning books.” According to the Anchorage Daily News, she also fired the library director “without warning” for “not fully supporting her efforts to govern.”
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AP photo / EyePress
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When Beijing was chosen to host the Olympics, the Chinese government pledged to make human rights improvements, but Amnesty International says the situation has actually gotten worse because of the coming games: “Specifically we’ve seen crackdowns on domestic human rights activists, media censorship and increased use of re-education through labor as a means to clean up Beijing and surrounding areas.”
Posted on Jul 28, 2008
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While YouTube teems with clips from the extensive career of the late, great George Carlin, it would be impossible to capture the full scope of his comic genius. Having said that, here are a few highlights.
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AP photo / Dima Gavrysh
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Ed Rampell —
As a follow-up to his “Hollywood 10” retrospective essay, and in honor of Friday’s 60th-anniversary commemoration of 1947’s “Hollywood Fights Back!” radio program, author Ed Rampell shows how history has (unfortunately) repeated itself of late in America’s entertainment and news media.
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checksinthemail.com
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When Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control, went before Congress to testify on the effects of global warming on Americans’ health, she was about 10 pages lighter than planned. According to a source within the CDC, the White House “eviscerated” Gerberding’s prepared remarks, slashing 10 of the original 14 pages.
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Sally Field worked her Emmy acceptance speech into an (unfortunately) incoherent anti-war crescendo during Sunday night’s telecast, which, like the other two muted moments showcased in this video montage by the always-hilarious Defamer team, was awkwardly squelched by hypervigilant editors at Fox.
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Beijing Public Security Ministry
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Web users in Beijing will soon have to deal with a new annoyance as part of China’s endless effort to control the Internet. By the end of the year, all websites registered with the government will feature animated Internet cops that will warn users to avoid forbidden content and offer friendly (if obnoxious) Internet security tips.
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By Amy Goodman — Students at Wilton High School in Connecticut weren’t allowed to discuss the war, unless it was with a military recruiter, so they wrote a play about it. “Voices in Conflict,” which was quickly banned by the school, has made it to New York where it brought the audience to tears.
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msnbc.com
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In a landmark ruling, a federal appeals court has sided with broadcasters against the Federal Communications Commission on the issue of indecency, saying the regulatory body has not adequately explained how the Constitution could permit the censorship of “indecent” language.
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AP Photo / Hermann J. Knippertz
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By Reese Erlich — The veteran journalist and Mideast traveler profiles Jafar Panahi (above), whose socially conscious films have earned him critical acclaim, box-office success and the unwelcome scrutiny of his government.
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washingtonpost.com
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When Qin Zhongfei took 10 minutes to scribble down a satirical poem about local bureaucrats, he had no idea it would land him a month in jail—a sign that free expression still languishes in China, despite hopes that President Hu Jintao’s economic reforms would translate to a more open society.
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sl.wikipedia.org
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A Turkish publisher, two editors and a translator have all been acquitted of insulting Turkishness. The four were charged for translating and publishing “Manufacturing Consent,” by Noam Chomsky (above), which criticizes Turkey’s treatment of Kurds. Though the EU has pressured Turkey to reform its laws regarding expression, it remains a crime there to insult the state.
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slate.com
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The National Security Council has blocked publication of an article critical of the Bush administration’s Iran policy, claiming that it contains classified information. The piece was written by two former government Mideast experts, who have accused the NSC of playing politics: “They don’t want us to say how many opportunities this administration has missed to put relations with Iran on a better track.”
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seasite.niu.edu
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The editor of the Indonesian version of Playboy magazine is on trial for indecency in the world’s most populous Muslim state. The magazine contains no nudity, but the prosecution cited the “inviting expressions” of the underwear-clad models as one of the reasons it is asking for the maximum penalty of 32 months.
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NBC has told the Dixie Chicks it won’t run an ad for their documentary because in it they criticize President Bush. Watch it.
The irony: The Dixie Chicks are being silenced in trying to advertise a film about how they were silenced.
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A Marine stationed in Iraq found he was blocked from accessing the cheeky, left-leaning political blog Wonkette, while he had no problem accessing conservative Michelle Malkin’s site.
Hmmm….
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From polarice.com
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Bush & Co. have apparently been muzzling climate scientists from speaking forthrightly to the public about global warming. Shocker, right?
Perhaps they thought last week’s head fake on giving more free rein to NASA scientists would throw reporters off the scent….
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Illustration by Karen Spector
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By Molly Ivins — As our government renames a civil liberties-trampling spying program and suppresses the results of its own studies, Americans are being left in an information vacuum regarding the true state of our union.
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From Al Jazeera via MSNBC
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Jill Caroll, 28, appears pleading and weeping in a newly released tape. | story
Truthdig says: Al Jazeera won’t let us hear Carroll’s voice because it would be too “upsetting” to viewers. CNN CNN’s “The Situation Room” won’t even show a clip. What exactly is going on here? Why not let us, the viewers, decide what’s too “upsetting”? How is this any different from Bush’s censorship of coffins returning home from Iraq? We’ve watched jetliners packed with innocents crash into our Twin Towers. We’ve watched Iraqi civilians bombed in real time by our own forces. Since when did we become unable to judge for ourselves what we need to see to make sense of the world around us?
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By James Harris — Howard Stern’s move to Sirius just might change the radio business for good. But will the change be for the better? James Harris reports.
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