#censorship

#censorship

TikTok will soon have new American oligarch overlords. If Donald Trump is to be believed, Lachlan Murdoch, Michael Dell, and Larry Ellison are potential investors in a deal to keep the social-media giant in the United States. Trump has been actively thwarting legislation, signed into law under Joe Biden with bipartisan majorities, to force a sale to the U.S. because TikTok is currently owned by ByteDance, which has close ties to the Chinese government.

I definitely don't think that the government should be involved ever in dictating what a comedian can or cannot say in a monologue,

Kamel Daoud arrives for his interview in Berlin in a black limousine, accompanied by two men dressed in black who never leave his side. The Algerian writer, who now lives in France, is under police protection: his latest book not only won him France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt it has also put him in grave danger. "Houris" is a novel that recounts the massacres and torture that took place during the Algerian civil war.

The logic then follows that the CCP would also implement similar controls over the U.S. version of the app, and there's long been speculation that Chinese officials could use this power to seed censoring anti-China narratives.

A former Meta executive who wrote an explosive expose making allegations about the social media company's dealings with China and its treatment of teenagers is said to be on the verge of bankruptcy after publishing the book. An MP has claimed in parliament that Mark Zuckerberg's company was trying to silence and punish Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former director of global public policy at Meta's precursor, Facebook, after her decision to speak out about her time at the company.

The atmosphere was exuberant on September 6, when six young women in tight outfits took to the stage in Istanbul's sold-out open-air venue Kucukciftlik Park: A cheer went up from the crowd of 12,000 people who had joined in the dancing to the beat in the late summer heat. The musicians Mina, Esin, Zeynep Sude, Emine Hilal, Lidya und Sueda are the members of Turkish girl band Manifest, which was formed in February following a talent show.

Now, some naysayers may argue that the Administration's speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smoke screen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation; principle-less and coldly antithetical to any experiment in a constitutional republic governance,

There are many, many important questions to ask about ABC's indefinite "suspension" of the late-night show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, which is being celebrated in MAGA-land as an important landmark on the road to a purged and intimidated entertainment industry. It draws attention to the FCC as an instrument for state-sponsored censorship, and the dubious ethics of media moguls eager to curry favor with the Trump administration and avoid trouble.

There are reports of severe disruption in other parts of the country, including the northern provinces of Kunduz, Badakhshan, Baghlan and Takhar. The Taliban leadership has not provided an official explanation, however a spokesperson for the governor of Balkh stated that the decision was taken to "prevent immorality." But many experts suspect the Islamic fundamentalist group wants to block critical content and preempt potential protests.

ABC's suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! is nothing short of a political execution carried out under the banner of corporate cowardice and wrapped in a sudden "gotcha" culture that has sinisterly sprung from the murder of Charlie Kirk. This slap at Kimmel is how censorship takes root. It's when a late-night comic delivers a stinging critique. The "informant society" that is howls, then Donald Trump's censorship flexes its arm, and a network folds.

The charges stem from an April 2024 protest at Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne museum, where Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina, Alina Petrova, and Anastasia "Taso" Pletner condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine. During their performance, the group called Vladimir Putin a war criminal, and Pletner urinated on a portrait of the Russian president. Meanwhile, prosecutors claimed Alyokhina, Pletner, Olga Borisova, Diana Burkot, and Alina Petrova spread "false information" about Russian soldiers killing Ukrainian civilians in their "Mama, Don't Watch TV" video.

We were not allowed to paint in red, green, black and white: The Palestinian flag was forbidden. And the colors of the Palestinian flag were forbidden,

While I don't deny the level of antisemitism in American society, as a Jew who has family in Israel as well as having lost family in the Holocaust, I respectfully offer a different perspective than Daniel Klein, the author of the op-ed. If AB 715 only dealt with anti-Jewish actions and language, I would support it. But conflating opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu's policies and the belief that Palestinians deserve to live in their own state with antisemitism is a reach.

Smooth but provocative, harmonious but rebellious, alternative band Molotov has made waves since appearing on the Mexican music scene in the mid-90s. Founded by two friends, the group quickly added more and began developing a solid underground reputation. Once they signed with Universal Music Latin Entertainment, Molotov truly took Mexico by storm. Almost like a Latin answer to America's '90s rap-rock phenomenon, the group mixed genres and languages.

In September there was a plenary meeting of the board of the Ukrainian Writers' Union, from which it clearly transpired that some of the Ukrainian novelists, poets, and critics were not doing their duty in promoting communist ideals or the Soviet way of life. In Russia two writers were selected by Zhdanov, in his famous address, as examples of the wrong point of view Anna Akhmatova, who was said to be an escapist, largely living sentimentally in the past and absorbed with her personal emotions; and Zoschenko, who was described as trivial, frivolous, and cynical in his distorted portrayal of Soviet life.

Randa Abdel-Fattah is an anti-racism scholar and author who lost an $870,000 research grant over criticisms of her stance on Israel. The Palestinian Australian writer also recently withdrew from a writers festival after organisers demanded she and other speakers avoid divisive topics and abide by an anti-Semitism code. In this Unmute, she talks about censorship in academia and a broader effort to silence pro-Palestinian voices in Australia.