Publisher Penguin Random House announced Friday it will publish “classic” unexpurgated versions of Roald Dahl’s children’s novels after it received criticism for cuts and rewrites that were intended to make the books suitable for modern readers.
Along with the new editions, the company said 17 of Dahl’s books would be published in their original form later this year as The Roald Dahl Classic Collection so “readers will be free to choose which version of Dahl’s stories they prefer.”
The move comes after criticism of scores of changes made to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and other much-loved classics for recent editions published under the company’s Puffin children’s label, in which passages relating to weight, mental health, gender and race were altered.
Augustus Gloop, Charlie’s gluttonous antagonist in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — originally published in 1964 — became “enormous” rather than “enormously fat.” In Witches, an “old hag” became an “old crow,” and a supernatural female posing as an ordinary woman may be a “top scientist or running a business” instead of a “cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman.”
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FILE – Books by Roald Dahl are displayed at the Barney’s store on East 60th Street in New York on Monday, Nov. 21, 2011. Critics are accusing the publisher of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s books of censorship after it removed colorful language from stories such as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Matilda” to make them more acceptable to modern readers.
Andrew Burton / The Associated Press
In Fantastic Mr. Fox, the word “black” was removed from a description of the “murderous, brutal-looking” tractors.
The Roald Dahl Story Company, which controls the rights to the books, said it had worked with Puffin to review and revise the texts because it wanted to ensure that “Dahl’s wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today.”
While tweaking old books for modern sensibilities is not a new phenomenon in publishing, the scale of the edits drew strong criticism from free-speech groups such as writers’ organization PEN America, and from authors including Salman Rushdie.
Rushdie, who lived under threat of death from Iran’s Islamic regime for years because of the alleged blasphemy of his novel The Satanic Verses, called the revisions “absurd censorship.”
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Rushdie, who was attacked and seriously injured last year at an event in New York state, tweeted news of Penguin’s change of heart on Friday with the words “Penguin Books back down after Roald Dahl backlash!”
PEN America chief executive Suzanne Nossel wrote on Twitter: “I applaud Penguin for hearing out critics, taking the time to rethink this, and coming to the right place.”
Camilla, Britain’s queen consort, appeared to offer her view at a literary reception on Thursday. She urged writers to “remain true to your calling, unimpeded by those who may wish to curb the freedom of your expression or impose limits on your imagination.”
Dahl’s books, with their mischievous children, strange beasts and often beastly adults, have sold more than 300 million copies and continue to be read by children around the world. Their multiple stage and screen adaptations include Matilda the Musical and two Willy Wonka films based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with a third in the works.
Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka on set of the 1971 film ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,’ based on the novel by Roald Dahl.
Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images
But Dahl, who died in 1990, is also a controversial figure because of antisemitic comments made throughout his life. His family apologized in 2020.
Francesca Dow, managing director of Penguin Random House Children’s, said the publisher had “listened to the debate over the past week which has reaffirmed the extraordinary power of Roald Dahl’s books and the very real questions around how stories from another era can be kept relevant for each new generation.”
“Roald Dahl’s fantastic books are often the first stories young children will read independently, and taking care for the imaginations and fast-developing minds of young readers is both a privilege and a responsibility,” she said.
“We also recognize the importance of keeping Dahl’s classic texts in print,” Dow said. “By making both Puffin and Penguin versions available, we are offering readers the choice to decide how they experience Roald Dahl’s magical, marvelous stories.”
Conservatives criticized from within their own ranks over political ad featuring ‘Willy Wonka’ spoof of Trudeau
Phnom Penh, Cambodia – Cambodian rapper Kea Sokun was once jailed for his hard-hitting lyrics, but that did not stop him from forging ahead with his latest release, Workers Blood, set to scenes of striking garment workers beaten by military police. At least four workers died in the protests.
“They fought for their rights, for freedom, the search for justice full of obstacles,” Sokun raps in Khmer. “I would like to commemorate the heroism of the workers who sacrificed their lives.”
Within days of the song’s release on January 3 — the ninth anniversary of the government’s deadly response to a vast garment workers’ strike — the Ministry of Culture warned the music video was “inciting content that may cause insecurity and social disorder”.
The leaders of the human rights organisations that commissioned the song were soon hauled in for questioning. Police threatened legal action unless the video was removed from the websites and Facebook pages of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights (LICADHO) and the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL), representatives for the rights groups say.
“Every year we post [about the anniversary of the protests] and we have no problem, so why now when we only used old images with a song about a real event, why is it incitement?” Am Sam Ath, LICADHO’s operations director, told Al Jazeera. “We regard the order to remove the video as a violation of LICADHO’s right of expression.”
National police spokesperson Chhay Kimkoeurn claimed no threats were involved and said police merely sought to “educate” the rights groups.
“We didn’t threaten them with legal action, but if they don’t obey the law we will enforce the law,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to “incitement” to commit a crime, a vague charge commonly wielded against those perceived to have criticised the government.
The song, commissioned by two Cambodian rights groups, was to raise awareness about a brutal crackdown on garment workers that took place in 2014 and left at least four people dead [Courtesy of LICADHO and CENTRAL]
The censorship of Workers Blood is part of an ongoing crackdown on freedom of expression in Cambodia that is gathering pace ahead of national elections in July. Nearing his fourth decade in power, Prime Minister Hun Sen outlawed the main opposition party ahead of the last elections five years ago, and is now preparing to hand control of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) to his son Hun Manet.
Civil society organisations, opposition politicians and rappers alike are being forcefully reminded of the limits of what can and cannot be said in an increasingly restrictive society.
“I think the government is trying to legitimise itself and this is a transition period of power, so they are looking at civil society as threats,” Khun Tharo, program manager for CENTRAL, told Al Jazeera. “The government feels this song has really discredited [them].”
A song seeking justice
While Cambodia’s music industry has exploded in recent years, few rappers besides Sokun have dared bring direct social commentary into their songs. Other rappers who have spoken out against the government’s actions faced death threats or were forced to issue public apologies.
“I always want to use songs as mirrors to reflect the reality in society,” Sokun told VOD, an online media outlet in Cambodia, last year. “I just want to speak the truth.”
Growing up in a poor household down the road from the World Heritage site of Angkor Wat and dropping out of school in his early teens, Sokun was arrested and sentenced to one year in prison in 2020 for a series of nationalist songs touching on topics like Cambodia’s borders, and filled with unsparing takedowns of the rich and powerful.
A judge offered to release Sokun if he apologised for his lyrics, but the rapper refused and served the time, boosting his popularity across Cambodia.
The 24-year-old now has more than a quarter of a million subscribers on his YouTube channel and continues to target political issues and injustice, producing a song describing his incarceration and another about the filling in of Phnom Penh’s lakes for development.
But it was Workers Blood that hit a nerve with the government because it was a reminder of the scale of garment workers’ protests that began in late 2013, says Sabina Lawreniuk, a University of Nottingham research fellow who studies Cambodia’s garment industry.
Tens of thousands of workers took to Veng Sreng Boulevard in Phnom Penh to demand higher wages and the government was eventually forced to double the minimum wage to $160 per month. It has since increased wages annually, even as aggressive new laws on trade unions have also been introduced that rights groups say are intended to stifle independent union organising.
“Labour politics in Cambodia are explicitly entangled with electoral politics in a way that some other human rights issues and struggles in Cambodia are not,” Lawreniuk told Al Jazeera. “That huge mobilization of people really unsettled the government.”
The protests came in the aftermath of the closely contested elections of 2013 when the Cambodia National Rescue Party spooked the CPP by capturing a large share of the votes on a platform calling for wage increases for garment workers and civil servants.
Kea Sokun is a hugely popular rapper in Cambodia and was previously jailed on charges of ‘incitement’ [Courtesy of Kea Sokun]
The Veng Sreng protests only ended after police and military forces began firing at the crowds, injuring dozens and killing at least four people on January 3, 2014. One protester, 15-year-old Khem Sophat, remains missing to this day.
“I don’t have hope that he will be found, his friend said he was shot and lay down on the street,” Sophat’s father, Khem Soeun, told Al Jazeera. “My child was very gentle, he was always helping the family.”
Sophat had lied about his age to get a job at a garment factory and sent money to his parents every month, his father said. He last saw his son nine months before the protests when he visited for the Khmer New Year holidays.
“After he went back to work, he never came back again,” Soeun said. “His mum, when she heard the song [Workers Blood], she cried all day, it reminded her of Veng Sreng street.”
The deaths were the result of “indiscriminate firing and excessive use of force by the military police,” according to a fact-finding report produced shortly after the protest by the labour rights group Asia Monitor Resource Center. No one has ever been held accountable for the workers’ deaths.
“Waiting for justice for nine years, a long time passed and nobody responsible, longing for a solution,” Sokun raps. “The eyes saw the truth, unforgettable, stuck in the minds of those who live.”
Vorn Pov, president of the Independent Democratic Informal Economy Association (IDEA), was beaten bloody by government security forces at the protest. As a prominent labour activist associated with Veng Sreng, Pov was questioned by police about Sokun’s song and later forced to remove it from his organisation’s Facebook page, even though IDEA had not sponsored the song.
“When listening to Sokun’s song, it is shocking, like it’s still new and fresh and so unjust for the victims,” Pov told Al Jazeera. “I feel this society cannot be relied upon to find the truth when injustice happens.”
Avoiding the ‘red line’
Ministry of Culture spokesperson Long Bunna Siriwadh would not elaborate on what specifically about Workers Blood triggered the allegation of incitement.
“I don’t analyse the meaning, I only speak to the principle of law and social order,” Siriwadh told Al Jazeera, claiming Sokun could keep making songs. “He can continue to do whatever he wants. But don’t cause turmoil to society, respect the law — it is easy like that.”
Hun Sen laid down a clear red line in a recent speech, warning the opposition party and other potential detractors that criticism of the ruling CPP would be met with legal action or violence. The CPP has already sued one of the opposition Candlelight Party’s vice presidents for $1m in defamation damages after he claimed there were issues with the electoral process, and this week police arrested another Candlelight leader for allegedly issuing a bad cheque.
In the run-up to Cambodian elections, freedom of expression is usually constricted, and while curbs might later be relaxed, the situation never returns to how it was before, according to Nottingham University researcher Lawreniuk.
“Although it feels like authoritarian control tightens around election time, and then it’s released, actually the government’s power has always been consolidating over time,” Lawreniuk said. “That’s what has enabled this slide toward de facto one-party rule.”
The prominent rights group LICADHO says the move to take down the video infringes on its freedom of expression [Courtesy of LICADHO and CENTRAL]
Sokun, who has stayed mostly silent since the crackdown, declined to comment for Al Jazeera, saying he was now experiencing “a lot of problems in his life”. But he has denied the song ran afoul of the law.
“Nothing is wrong with the song, there’s no incitement to cause turmoil,” he told Voice of America shortly after the video was censored. “We want the authorities to find justice for the victims, but instead they take action against the one who posts [the song], I feel regret about this.”
The original posts may have been removed, but Sokun’s song continues to be shared widely across social media on other pages and platforms. If the government’s aim was to stop the music video from being seen, it has not worked, CENTRAL’s Tharo said.
“Now it has gone viral,” he said. “I think our target has been reached, because the whole idea was to create a public sentiment of remembrance [about Veng Sreng].”
A senior White House official asked US tech company Cloudflare to help circumvent internet censorship in Iran after protests erupted in that country last September but US sanctions prevented the firm from doing so, Cloudflare CEO Mathew Prince said Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“I got a call from a senior official in the White House who said, ‘Can you do in Iran what you’re doing in Russia?’” said Prince, whose company makes software that protects users from cyberattacks and allows activists in authoritarian regimes to bypass censorship, during a panel discussion on security and technology. “And I said, ‘No.’ And [they] said, ‘Why not?’ And I said, ‘Because sanctions prevented us from ever putting our equipment in Iran.’”
The Iranian government moved to block internet access as hundreds of protesters were killed in clashes with Iran’s security forces last fall, according to human rights activists.
The anecdote underscores the prominent role that large tech firms can play in US foreign policy.
US officials have, for example, tried to broker a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide crucial satellite communications for Ukrainian troops during the war while also encouraging SpaceX to provide satellite service to Iran.
In the case of San Francisco-based Cloudflare, Prince said the White House official suggested the company could be given a “license” to operate in Iran, but Prince replied that it was “too late” for that.
Prince did not name the White House official.
CNN has requested comment from the White House National Security Council.
The Biden administration in September granted certain exceptions to US sanctions on Iran for tech firms that provide tools for everyday Iranians to communicate, such as cloud computing or social media services.
But that move was long overdue, digital rights activists previously told CNN, and US sanctions unwittingly accelerated Iran’s development of an internal communications network.
Despite heavy US sanctions imposed on Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, Prince said Cloudflare’s prior presence on the ground in Russia means people there can use Cloudflare technology to circumvent Moscow’s censors to read credible news about the war. About 10% of Russian households use that anti-censorship Cloudflare technology, Prince claimed.
The phone call from the White House, Prince said, illustrated a difficult “tradeoff” between sanctions meant to punish human rights-flouting regimes and the need to get technology into the hands of dissidents.
Asked to respond to Prince’s comments during the panel discussion, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, “We engage in those tradeoffs every day.”
Many technologies present “great opportunity, but great dangers in the wrong hands,” Wray said.
While Cloudflare touts its record protecting dissidents abroad, it has also drawn heavy criticism from human rights activists for the firm’s willingness to provide services to controversial platforms such as messaging board 8chan (Cloudflare pulled its support for 8chan in 2019).
When Yvette Benarroch, a leader in the conservative Moms for Liberty chapter in Collier County, Florida, addressed the state’s Board of Education meeting on Wednesday, she exuded gratitude.
“Thank you for carrying out the governor’s parental rights agenda,” she said with a smile.
The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature passed a law last year saying the board, a division of the state’s Department of Education, would need to approve a training program for public schools in the state. Training would be mandatory for all media specialists, who are in charge of finding and approving educational resources, and for teachers who have books in their classrooms.
Beyond saying that schools needed to be transparent about why they had selected instructional materials, the law didn’t outline what that training should look like, and state education officials convened a working group — made up largely of parents, educators and school staff, including some people who have previously tried to ban books from schools — to draft the new training.
The final training, which the Board of Education approved this week, focuses on shielding kids from books about racial justice and books with LGBTQ themes. This made many conservatives happy, and it was a victory for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential contender who has highlighted so-called parental rights and “anti-wokeness” in his political platform. He has sought to ax workplace diversity initiatives (an effort that was thwarted by a federal judge), has appointed conservatives to the board of a progressive college, pushed right-wing higher education officials to ban discussion of “critical race theory” and has championed the “Don’t Say Gay” law that prohibits public school teachers from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity.
His success in transforming Florida public schools into breeding grounds for far-right ideas wouldn’t be possible without the help of Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit organization that advocates for parents’ rights — a term that has become synonymous with pushing conservative ideology in public schools. Moms for Liberty has been on a book-banning crusade since its inception, and at least two of the working group members on the media specialist training belonged to Florida chapters.
This shift in Florida has taken place as public libraries and schools have been under attack around the U.S. Right-wing culture warriors have in particular pushed for institutions to ban books with LGBTQ themes, claiming they are inherently pornographic and that school librarians who don’t want to remove them from shelves are trying to abuse or “groom” children.
“The attacks are more than just curating books that are a little too mature for young kids,” said Stephana Ferrell, co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, a nonprofit focused on fighting book bans and censorship. “They’re actually targeting the lived experiences of people who aren’t white, Christian, cis or straight.”
New Guidance Sparks Fear
The new training is supposed to pertain only to instructional materials. But because school librarians are also media specialists, some districts have begun citing the guidance — even before the final training was approved — as justification for removing books from their libraries.
“It’s just another way for the far right to say that you can’t trust public schools to deliver an education to your children,” Ferrell said.
The Florida Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.
The new training, which can be found on the Florida Department of Education’s website, includes 40 slides and a 52-minute video. The beginning of the training is dedicated to the subject of pornography and states that no one may provide minors with sexually explicit or other harmful material unless it has “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
Violating the state statute on providing harmful materials would be considered a felony, the training says. But it does not provide examples of works that meet this definition, and the vague language has left some educators worried that they could be found guilty of a crime if they don’t censor books that conservatives claim are harmful.
“I see that some librarians self-censor because they’re afraid of getting in trouble, and that should not be a consideration as far as choosing books for our students,” Tania Rodriguez, a media specialist in Osceola County, told WFTV 9 in Orlando.
The training also tells media specialists to “avoid” materials that may lead to student indoctrination. It does not provide a definition of what could be considered indoctrination or include any examples of material that could encourage it.
Educators must allow anyone living in their district to challenge materials in schools, according to the training. It does not say if this includes library books or applies only to reading material in classrooms. The training also says media specialists should also check to see if a book has been removed or restricted in any other districts, then “carefully consider” whether to approve it for their own.
“It’s very frustrating because all of this is unfounded,” said Kathleen Daniels, the president of the Florida Association for Media Education. “There is no book in the Florida schools that can be considered porn.”
‘13,000 More To Go’
Many school board meetings across the country have made headlines in the past year for growing heated, with residents pushing back against right-wing school policies and book-banning attempts. But in Florida this week, almost all of the public comments were in support of the new rule.
If anything, some people were worried the training didn’t go far enough.
Many speakers took umbrage with the language saying books with sexually explicit language may be used as long as they have educational value.
“Please tighten the language,” parent Kathleen Murray said, claiming the guidance contained a loophole that could allow students to read books that explain “how to conduct homosexual activities on each other.”
Bruce Friedman, president of the Florida chapter of No Left Turn in Education, a conservative organization that fights for parental rights, is known in Clay County for repeatedly attempting to get his school district to ban books. He said Wednesday that the new training guidelines would allow him to continue his quest.
“I have challenged 1,800 books,” he said. “I have 13,000 more to go.”
Parents can already restrict their children from reading any book they don’t like — in fact, all districts in Florida offer a way for parents to prevent their children from checking out any book they deem inappropriate.
“We support parents’ rights to have a guiding hand in their children’s education,” Daniels said. “But you can’t dictate what other children can do.”
Conservatives claim the crackdowns on educational resources are meant to protect kids. But, Daniels said, it does children a disservice to keep them away from certain books and not expose them to different ideas.
“It’s frustrating,” she said, “because it’s the students who are getting the short end of the stick.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Some are fighting local efforts to censor books, while others are focused on cultural programs, education about Ukraine or helping people buy groceries: These are this year’s winners of the I Love My Librarian Award.
Based everywhere from New York City to Carencro, Louisiana, the winners share a common desire to work closely with their patrons.
“Even in these unprecedented times and as our nation’s library workers face historic levels of intimidation and harassment due to an ongoing wave of book censorship, librarians continue to empower their patrons, teach critical literacy skills, promote inclusion in their space and collections, and provide vital services for their communities,” American Library Association President Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada said in a statement Tuesday.
Each of the 10 honorees will receive a $5,000 cash prize and a $750 travel stipend to attend the library association’s LibLearnX event later this month in New Orleans. The awards are based on nominations from library users around the country and made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and support from the New York Public Library.
Winners include Kathryn Blackmer Reyes of the San Jose State University library in San Jose, California, cited for how she promoted untold stories by Asian Americans, Native Americans and Hispanics among others. At the Highlands County Library System in Sebring, Florida, Vikki Brown successfully pressed for a grant to set up a mobile library for the rural population.
Cara Chance of the Lafayette Public Library, in Carencro, Louisiana, has battled efforts by the library’s Board of Control to restricts books with LGBTQ themes. Tara Coleman, based at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, has led a campuswide common reading program; and David Ettinger, at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., is working with students on their research skills.
At Childs Elementary School, in Bloomington, Indiana, Julie Marie Frye is helping kids learn more about Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion. Lauren Ginsberg-DeVilbiss, of the Wright Brothers School in New York City, is helping students grow a community garden. Students at Christ Church Episcopal School, in Greenville, South Carolina, are receiving help from librarian Jamie Gregory in learning about censorship and the meaning of intellectual freedom.
Roseanna Gulisano, at Highbridge School in New York City, has worked to raise money for more books for students who can’t afford to buy them, along with funds to buy food and clothing. At the Evanston Public Library in Evanston, Illinois, Elacsha Madison has focused on teen programs in marginalized communities.
The awards were established in 2008. This year, judges at the library association chose the winners from more than 1,500 nominations.
Nostr has gotten a lot of attention and steam behind it since its recent addition to the list of alternative social platforms that are prohibited from promotion on Twitter. And it’s also gaining traction as it’s become clear that the Twitter buyout by Elon Musk hasn’t fundamentally changed anything about freedom of expression on the platform — users are still being banned for inconsistent and arbitrary reasons, and people are looking for a decentralized alternative that isn’t something like Mastodon, where a server operator still has the ability to control your identity.
Despite the recent attention, the Nostr protocol and first relay server implementation were actually created at the end of 2020 by developer fiatjaf. Before the big burst of attention, it was just a quiet, niche protocol simply trying to be a lightweight solution to the problems of Twitter and Mastodon. On both systems, your identity/username is simply a thing controlled by whoever is running the server. Mastodon being a federated system with multiple different servers all talking to each other doesn’t fundamentally change that reality. Whoever’s server you use to host an account is in total control of whether you can use it or not. Even running your own server, other server operators can black- or whitelist which servers will be allowed to talk to theirs. This has led to a lot of partitioning in the “Fediverse” of different Mastodon servers and makes the idea of just running your own meaningless. You can still ultimately be censored by other server operators, preventing their users from ever seeing your content in their feed.
The core differentiator between Nostr and something like Mastodon is that, instead of using a username owned by a server operator, each user utilizes a public/private keypair to handle that function instead. That is something that a server operator cannot simply seize from you or lock you out of. This is one of the core building blocks on top of which the overall Nostr protocol is built.
The next is “events.” This is the basic object/data type used by clients and the relay servers that clients connect to in order to send and retrieve messages. The general idea of the protocol is that clients send events to relay servers, who then in turn store and index them, and other clients can communicate with relay servers to request events they have received and stored. In the original NIP 01, three different event types are defined:
0: Sends metadata about a user, such as username, picture, a bio, etc.
1: Sends text messages and basic content
2: Recommends relay servers for people following the event creator to connect to
All events are structured in a specifically-defined way. They include the public key of the creator, a timestamp of when they were created, their type (or kind in the specification), the content payload and a signature from the event creator. They also can have tags referencing other events or users, and have an ID value which is a hash of everything except the creator’s signature (similar to a TXID for Bitcoin transactions). This lets you guarantee that a message was actually created by the owner of the public key inside of it by verifying the signature (and the person who owns that key if it isn’t compromised), and guarantee that the message wasn’t altered after they signed it. Just like you can’t alter a Bitcoin transaction after it’s signed without voiding it, you can’t alter a Nostr event after the creator signed it without it being an obvious fraud.
The event kind system was expanded quite substantially from that original NIP. There is an event type for encrypted direct messages, establishing a shared key by combining the sender’s private key with the receiver’s public key, which results in the same key you would get by combining the sender’s public key with the receiver’s private key (this is how BIP 47 and Silent Payments work). There are also types for replaceable events and ephemeral events. In the case of a replaceable event (obviously), they are designed so that the original creator of the event can sign a new one to replace the old one. Relay servers following the specification will automatically drop the older event from their storage and begin serving the newer versions to clients upon receipt. Ephemeral events are designed so that they will be broadcast to anyone subscribing to their creator when sent to the relay, but relay servers are not supposed to store them. This creates the possibility of having messages seen only by people when they are online during its broadcast. There is even an event type to signal a reaction (such as likes or emojis) to other people’s events.
Speaking of that last one, events can also contain tags. Currently there are tag types for events (to reference an exact Nostr event), public keys (to tag or reference other users) and subjects (to emulate functionality, such as email subjects). All of these can include pointers to specific relay servers from which the the data can be fetched so that users can actually interact across servers, i.e., a user posting their content to one relay server can interact with and reference content created by another user posting to a different relay server in a way that allows any user to coherently fetch the entire thread of interactions in the proper order and without massive complexity in figuring out where to find the relevant data.
Inside the original NIP, a specification is given for how clients are to interact with relay servers through a subscription message/data structure that includes filters for what events that client is interested in receiving. Those filters can specify users’ public keys, exact events, types of events and even specific timeframes in which they want them based on the prior criteria. You can even submit prefixes of public keys or event IDs, such as “1xjisj….” and receive any event or events from a public key that begin with that short string (this can be useful for hiding from a relay server what you actually wanted to view).
Overall, the protocol is a very bare bones, generalized scheme for passing messages between users that covers the important things, such as guaranteeing the integrity of messages and who sent them with the use of public key identities, while also facilitating infrastructure on the backend for relay servers that can be extremely centralized or allow a user to run their own personal relay server, all while seamlessly interacting with each other and not causing massive chaos in the event of a user being banned from one relay server. They can move to another one or run their own and their de-platforming from the prior server does not lose them their digital identity or followers because they still maintain control over their private key and users can authenticate that when finding them elsewhere.
Relay servers can operate however they want as well. They can operate for free, can charge micropayments to post or download messages, and there is even a NIP for requiring hashcash-style proof of work to submit a message. They can be a single relay server for hosting and serving only your posts to other users, or they can be a server running at massive scale such as Twitter or Reddit (clients can display and organize information however they want, which allows emulating essentially any social media platform that exists today). All of this can interoperate seamlessly and without being able to shut out a user. You can prevent them from posting content to your relay server, but ultimately you can’t stop them from viewing content you host on your relay server or stop other users from finding their content on other servers.
It is a very simplistic protocol with a large, open design space for people to build, guaranteeing users can always interact with each other regardless of what individual relay server operators choose to host or not host. This is simultaneously its greatest strength and greatest weakness. While it guarantees the freedom for developers to build without tight constraints by a complicated protocol, there are also many problems that it will inherently run into that are not handled by the protocol itself.
In the next piece I write, I will go into some of the issues I see occurring and potential solutions, but for now, I’ll just say that in terms of the simplicity of the design and the possibilities that it opens up for people to build, Nostr has done a very good job, considering it is the brainchild of one person and only a handful of people have really contributed to the protocol specification itself so far.
This is a guest post by Shinobi. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
WASHINGTON — About 200 protesters lit candles and shouted “Free China!” two blocks from the White House on Sunday in a show of support for demonstrations in China calling for an end to severe anti-virus controls and for political change.
Protesters in Freedom Plaza held up signs saying, “No Dictatorship, No Censorship,” demanding that President Xi Jinping and the ruling Communist Party give up power. They held up blank sheets of paper, a symbol of opposition to the party’s pervasive censorship. Some yelled, “Free China!”
The protests erupted Nov. 25 after at least 10 people died in a fire in Urumqi, a city in China’s northwest. Authorities rejected suggestions firefighters or people trying to escape might have been blocked by anti-virus controls. But the disaster became a focus for public frustration with curbs that confine millions of people to their homes.
“I did not care much about these public issues before as it did not happen to me,” said a Chinese student who would give only her surname, Liu, due to fear of retaliation.
“The COVID policy is really improper,” said Liu. “Now that I am in a country with free speech, I shall do my best when my rights can be protected.”
Uighurs, Tibetans and members of other ethnic minorities that are targeted for surveillance and control by the Communist Party joined the protests.
“I was encouraged by the courageous young people in China,” said a man who refused to give his name.
“How can we not stand up after they did?” he said. “I shall at least let them know they were not alone.”
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
CNN
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For the first time in decades, thousands of people have defied Chinese authorities to protest at universities and on the streets of major cities, demanding to be freed not only from incessant Covid tests and lockdowns, but strict censorship and the Communist Party’s tightening grip over all aspects of life.
Across the country, “want freedom” has become a rallying cry for a groundswell of protests mainly led by the younger generation, some too young to have taken part in previous acts of open dissent against the government.
“Give me liberty or give me death!” crowds by the hundreds shouted in several cities, according to videos circulating online,as vigils to mark the deaths of at least 10 people in a fire in Xinjiang spiraled into political rallies.
Videos circulating online seem to suggest China’s strict zero-Covid policy initially prevented emergency workers from accessing the scene, angering residents across the country who have endured three years of varying Covid controls.
Some protesters chanted for free speech, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and other political demands across cities from the eastern financial hub of Shanghai to the capital Beijing, the southern metropolis of Guangzhou and Chengdu in the west.
CNN has verified protests in 16 locations, with reports of others held in dozens of other cities and universities across the country.
Protesters take to Hong Kong’s streets in solidarity with mainland
While protests in several parts of China appear to have largely dispersed peacefully over the weekend, some met a stronger response from authorities – and security has been tightened across cities in a country were authorities have far-reaching surveillance and security capabilities.
In Beijing, a heavy police presence was apparent on Monday evening, a day after protests broke out there. Police vehicles, many parked with their lights flashing, lined eerily quiet streets throughout parts of the capital, including near Liangmaqiao in the city’s central Chaoyang district, where a large crowd of protesters had gathered Sunday night.
When asked Monday whether “the widespread display of anger and frustration” seen across the country could prompt China to move away from its zero-Covid approach, a Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed suggestions of dissent.
“What you mentioned does not reflect what actually happened,” said spokesperson Zhao Lijian, who added that authorities had been “making adjustments” to their Covid policies based on “realities on the ground.”
“We believe that with the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people our fight against Covid-19 will be successful,” he said.
In a symbolic protest against ever-tightening censorship, young demonstrators across China held up sheets of white paper – a metaphor for the countless critical posts, news articles and outspoken social media accounts that were wiped from the internet.
“I think in a just society, no one should be criminalized for their speech. There shouldn’t be only one voice in our society – we need a variety of voices,” a Beijing protester told CNN in the early hours of Monday as he marched down the city’s Third Ring Road with a thin pile of white A4 paper.
“I hope in the future, I will no longer be holding a white piece of paper for what I really want to express,” said the protester, who CNN is not naming due to concerns about repercussions for speaking out.
The United Nations on Monday urged Chinese authorities to guarantee people’s “right to demonstrate peacefully,” Secretary General spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said at a daily briefing.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said China’s ruling Communist Party should “take notice” of the protests.
“Protests against the Chinese government are rare. And so when they do happen, I think it’s worth us taking note, but more importantly, I think it’s incumbent on the Chinese government to take notice of its own people,” Cleverly told reporters.
Throughout the weekend, censors moved swiftly to scrub videos and photos of the protests from the Chinese internet, though the startling images made headlines worldwide.
In online commentaries, Chinese state media made no mention of the protests, instead focusing on the strengths of Beijing’s anti-Covid policies, emphasizing they were both “scientific and effective.”
But to many protesters, the demonstrations are about much more than Covid – they’re bringing together many liberal-minded young people whose attempts to speak out might otherwise be thwarted by strict online censorship.
A Shanghai resident in their 20s who took part in the candlelight vigil in the early hours of Sunday said they were greeted by other young people holding white papers, flowers and shouting “want freedom” as they walked toward the makeshift memorial.
“My friends and I have all experienced Shanghai’s lockdown, and the so-called ‘iron fist’ (of the state) has fallen on all of us,” they told CNN, “That night, I felt that I could finally do something. I couldn’t sit still, I had to go.”
They broke into tears quietly in the crowd as the chants demanding freedom grew louder.
“At that moment, I felt I’m not alone,” they said. “I realized that I’m not the only one who thinks this way.”
In some cases, the protests have taken on an even more defiant tone and openly called for political change.
During the first night of the demonstrations in Shanghai, a crowd shouted “Step down, Xi Jinping! Step down, Communist Party!” in an unprecedented, direct challenge to the top leader. On Sunday night, some protesters again chanted for the removal of Xi.
In Chengdu, the protesters did not name Xi, but their message was hard to miss. “Opposition to dictatorship!” chanted hundreds of people packing the bustling river banks in a popular food and shopping district on Sunday evening, according to videos and a participant.
“We don’t want lifelong rulers. We don’t want emperors!” they shouted in a thinly veiled reference to the Chinese leader, who last month began a norm-shattering third term in office.
According to the participant, the crowd also protested against revisions to the party charter and the state constitution – which enabled Xi to further cement his hold on power and scrap presidential term limits.
Much like in Shanghai, the gathering started as a small candlelight vigil for people killed in the fire in Urumqi on Thursday.
But as more people gathered, the vigil turned into a louder arena to air political grievances.
“Everyone started shouting these slogans very naturally,” the participant said. “It is so rare that we have such a large-scale gathering and demonstration. The words of mourning didn’t feel enough, and we had to shout out some words that we want to say.”
To her, the experience of suffocating censorship inevitably fuels desire for “institutional and spiritual freedom,” and mourning the victims and demanding democracy and freedom are two “inseparable” things.
“We all know that the reason why we have to keep undergoing lockdowns and Covid tests is that this is a political movement, not a scientific and logical response of epidemic prevention,” she said. “That’s why we have more political demands other than lifting lockdowns.”
The Chengdu protester said she felt encouraged by the wave of demonstrations sweeping the country.
“It turns out there are so many people who are wide awake,” she said. “I feel like I can see a glimmer of light coming through ahead.”
This is an opinion editorial by Scott Worden, an engineer, an attorney and the founder of BTC Trusts.
“I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.” — Satoshi Nakamoto
It’s one of those perfect fall days in Colorado, and I’m sitting outside of a pub in the late afternoon. I’m meeting with a fellow bitcoiner, a man I met in Austin at the end of this summer. As the sun fell behind the mountains, the sky turned orange, setting the perfect backdrop for lively bitcoin conversation.
As we ticked down the typical list of everything we agreed on — censorship is bad, red meat is good, etc., — I made an offhand comment about wishing more businesses would accept bitcoin as payment. “Well I don’t, why would you want to part with your sats?” was the reply he tossed back. The implication, of course, is that a true Bitcoiner values satoshis more than anything else in the world. Why would you trade them for groceries, t-shirts or beer? “Haven’t you heard of Laslo Hanyecz? That fool traded 10,000 bitcoin for a couple of pizzas. I’m not repeating that mistake. Talk to me when bitcoin hits $200k, then maybe it would make sense.”
My new friend isn’t alone with this line of thinking. It’s a sentiment that’s proffered by folks like Michael Saylor and others in the HODL community. They’ll espouse, “The scarcest asset in the world is Bitcoin. It’s digital gold,” “Buying bitcoin is like purchasing property in Manhattan 100 years ago”, and “Don’t sell your bitcoin!” Yet at the same time, there is an intuitive recognition that if bitcoin can’t ever be traded for a good or service, it in effect has no value, no matter what price is flashing on the BLOCKCLOCK in the office. I call this the HODLer’s dilemma.
But is this really a dilemma? Are these mantras, as prolific as they are, consistent with the spirit of Satoshi’s innovation? Does the proliferation of the Lightning Network and non-custodial mobile wallets that our parents (or children) can intuitively operate require us to evolve our understanding of Bitcoin’s value proposition? Personally, I believe the time is now to stop thinking of bitcoin as simply a store of value and begin to conceptualize it primarily as a medium of exchange … that also happens to store value better than any asset on earth. In case you weren’t already paying attention, here’s a few reasons why.
Privacy
“Bitcoin would be convenient for people who don’t have a credit card or don’t want to use the cards they have.” — Satoshi Nakamoto
The time to start exiting the system is right now. The signal has never been stronger. Today we live in a world where the fiat system can:
All of this is happening today, and it is likely just the tip of the iceberg. In a retail system where cash transactions are becoming increasingly scarce and inconvenient, the majority of big banks, credit agencies and payment systems have acquiesced to the demands of a government that appears to have an existential stake in controlling our behavior.
Of course, bitcoin isn’t a panacea to censorship — at least how it’s most commonly purchased and exchanged today. The Canadian Trucker Protest showed us that a government committed to suppressing the voice of their citizens will go to almost any length to do so, and in the process taught us that licensed exchanges and chain analysis techniques can be highly effective in blacklisting addresses and even identifying donors. These vulnerabilities will need to be overcome in order to provide a more censorship-free currency-of-exchange. But by transacting in bitcoin with peers and merchants for everyday goods and services as often as possible, we incentivize others to both accept and transact in bitcoin. Through numbers alone we can render the bitcoin economy more robust, decentralized and difficult to censor. A community that values privacy will naturally choose to adopt non-custodial wallets, engage in collaborative transactions and avoid KYC exchanges. Growing and educating this community has never been more important.
Convenience And Autonomy
“With e-currency based on cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third-party middleman, money can be secure and transactions effortless.” — Satoshi Nakamoto
A common counter-argument to transacting in bitcoin is that it’s either too complicated or too slow compared with swiping a credit card. This is simply no longer true. Today, any beginner-level Bitcoiner can download Muun Wallet and within minutes send Lightning invoices to clients for payment via QR Code. Coinkite has an NFC device that allows users to sign for transactions with a tap of their card. There are more examples, and many more to come. The beauty of these solutions is that they are fully non-custodial, i.e., there is no central third party that controls your coins. The software is merely enabling transactions to be broadcast to the network. Lightning transactions clear instantaneously, with fees an order of magnitude lower than Visa or Mastercard’s traditional 2–3%. (For example, it recently cost me about $.60 in fees to send the equivalent of $700 USD to Wrich Ranches last week for beef. That same transaction would have cost the merchant around $20 had I used Visa.)
In addition, these transactions promote autonomy on both sides. Lightning transactions, like everything else backed by Bitcoin’s proof-of-work, occur without counterparty risk. Removed from the equation is the risk that a consumer won’t pay his bill, dispute a charge, not have enough money in his account or file for bankruptcy down the road. All of this risk manifests as transactional inefficiency, and its costs are directly or indirectly absorbed by merchants and consumers. A trustless system like bitcoin is thus more efficient, reducing risk for merchants, and ultimately rendering goods and services less expensive for responsible consumers.
“I’m sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.” — Satoshi Nakamoto
We would do well to think of all of our transactions in terms of bitcoin. When money is truly a store of value, we take a measured approach to spending and account for the potential increase in value that money may have in the future. This is logical, and applies whether you’re spending sats or dollars. The website bitcoinorshit.com drives this point home quite bluntly.
There’s also the story of Laszlo Hanyecz, who in 2010, famously purchased two pizzas for 10,000 BTC. In effect, Laszlo paid a couple of billion U.S. dollars for pizza, if we take into consideration BTC’s market value over a decade later. It surprises me though, when Bitcoiners jump on Laszlo for being economically naive, and use this example to support their position that bitcoin should never be spent. The simple truth is that everyone who bought pizza in 2010 effectively spent thousands of bitcoin on it. The only way to avoid this would be to eat something less expensive or go hungry. The fact is, every fiat transaction we make is a direct trade off for potentially increasing our stack. Once we understand this, the public controversy over spending bitcoin on products or services is fundamentally dead.
The overwhelming majority of us need to trade monetary energy for goods and services to survive in today’s society. The only controversy that remains is which products or services take precedence over the opportunity to acquire more sats. It’s a decision that is personal and unique for each of us. The answer should be thought of independently and irrespective of whether that monetary energy is spent in sats, dollars or yen — it’s only the monetary energy saved — that which is left over — that is relevant when it comes to the HODLer’s dilemma.
We are all likely to save more BTC if we begin transacting more in BTC. For one thing, when we deal in a sound money that is a proven store-of-value, we’re more apt to be discerning in our purchases. Sure, we really want the new iPhone, but is it worth 5 million sats if you expect a sat to be worth a penny someday? We might decide to wait another year before we upgrade and retain those sats for the future. On the other hand we all need food, shelter and clothing. If I have a choice between buying my meat from Costco with my Visa card, or buying direct from a rancher who accepts bitcoin, why wouldn’t I choose the latter?
Today, the number of merchants that accept bitcoin is relatively small, though growing steadily. As bitcoiners begin to understand that their “spend dollars, save sats,” theory may be counterproductive, greater numbers will begin to seek goods from merchants that accept bitcoin for payment. This spike in demand will drive merchant adoption, potentially shifting the timeline for a bitcoin economy significantly to the left.
More Exchange Equals More Value
“As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases. It has the potential for a positive feedback loop; as users increase, the value goes up, which could attract more users to take advantage of the increasing value.” — Satoshi Nakamoto
This is where we sit today. There’s a growing number of speculators and bitcoin enthusiasts who have bought into the idea that Bitcoin is a bona fide store of value. This community further believes that the asset’s scarcity will inevitably lend to a supply squeeze that will cause the price to rocket upwards. Sure, it’s possible that this could happen through the mere act of HODLing, but as Satoshi Nakamoto points out, the value goes up when the numbers of users go up. Does buying and holding an asset qualify as use? If the brilliance behind bitcoin is enabling peer-to-peer transactions without a third-party middleman, are we really leveraging that capability by exclusively stacking and not spending?
I believe that bitcoin needs to become a true medium of exchange in order for it to fully realize its potential as a store of value. Since value is not derived from scarcity alone — demand is fundamental to bitcoin’s price. If bitcoin’s utility becomes the driving force for its demand, it is at this moment that its true potential as a store of value will be realized. Today’s economic and political backdrop might just be the motivation we all need. But until bitcoin becomes an essential part of our daily economic activity, it is apt to be valued alongside other speculative assets, and subject to the whims of the same fiat system it was meant to supplant.
This is a guest post by Scott Worden. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
In many countries, cursing online about the government is so commonplace nobody bats an eye. But it’s not such an easy task on China’s heavily censored internet.
That doesn’t appear to have stopped residents of Guangzhou from venting their frustration after their city – a global manufacturing powerhouse home to 19 million people – became the epicenter of a nationwide Covid outbreak, prompting lockdown measures yet again.
“We had to lock down in April, and then again in November,” one resident posted on Weibo, China’s restricted version of Twitter, on Monday – before peppering the post with profanities that included references to officials’ mothers. “The government hasn’t provided subsidies – do you think my rent doesn’t cost money?”
Other users left posts with directions that loosely translate to “go to hell,” while some accused authorities of “spouting nonsense” – albeit in less polite phrasing.
Such colorful posts are remarkable not only because they represent growing public frustration at China’s unrelenting zero-Covid policy – which uses snap lockdowns, mass testing, extensive contact-tracing and quarantines to stamp out infections as soon as they emerge – but because they remain visible at all.
Normally such harsh criticisms of government policies would be swiftly removed by the government’s army of censors, yet these posts have remained untouched for days. And that is, most likely, because they are written in language few censors will fully understand.
These posts are in Cantonese, which originated in Guangzhou’s surrounding province of Guangdong and is spoken by tens of millions of people across Southern China. It can be difficult to decipher by speakers of Mandarin – China’s official language and the one favored by the government – especially in its written and often complex slang forms.
And this appears to be just the latest example of how Chinese people are turning to Cantonese – an irreverent tongue that offers rich possibilities for satire – to express discontent toward their government without attracting the notice of the all-seeing censors.
In September this year, US-based independent media monitoring organization China Digital Times noted numerous dissatisfied Cantonese posts slipping past censors in response to mass Covid testing requirements in Guangdong.
“Perhaps because Weibo’s content censorship system has difficulty recognizing the spelling of Cantonese characters, many posts in spicy, bold and straightforward language still survive. But if the same content is written in Mandarin, it is likely to be blocked or deleted,” said the organization, which is affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley.
In nearby Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong, anti-government demonstrators in 2019 often used Cantonese wordplay both for protest slogans and to guard against potential surveillance by mainland Chinese authorities.
Now, Cantonese appears to be offering those fed-up with China’s continuous zero-Covid lockdowns an avenue for more subtle displays of dissent.
Jean-François Dupré, an assistant professor of political science at Université TÉLUQ who has studied the language politics of Hong Kong, said the Chinese government’s shrinking tolerance for public criticism has pushed its critics to “innovate” in their communication.
“It does seem that using non-Mandarin forms of communication could enable dissenters to evade online censorship, at least for some time,” Dupré said.
“This phenomenon testifies to the regime’s lack of confidence and increasing paranoia, and of citizens’ continuing eagerness to resist despite the risks and hurdles.”
Though Cantonese shares much of its vocabulary and writing system with Mandarin, many of its slang terms, expletives and everyday phrases have no Mandarin equivalent. Its written form also sometimes relies on rarely used and archaic characters, or ones that mean something totally different in Mandarin, so Cantonese sentences can be difficult for Mandarin readers to understand.
Compared to Mandarin, Cantonese is highly colloquial, often informal, and lends itself easily to wordplay – making it well-suited for inventing and slinging barbs.
When Hong Kong was rocked by anti-government protests in 2019 – fueled in part by fears Beijing was encroaching on the city’s autonomy, freedoms and culture – these attributes of Cantonese came into sharp focus.
“Cantonese was, of course, an important conveyor of political grievances during the 2019 protests,” Dupré said, adding that the language gave “a strong local flavor to the protests.”
He pointed to how entirely new written characters were born spontaneously from the pro-democracy movement – including one that combined the characters for “freedom” with a popular profanity.
Other plays on written characters illustrate the endless creativity of Cantonese, such as a stylized version of “Hong Kong” that, when read sideways, becomes “add oil” – a rallying cry in the protests.
Protesters also found ways to protect their communications, wary that online chat groups – where they organized rallies and railed against the authorities – were being monitored by mainland agents.
For example, because spoken Cantonese sounds different to spoken Mandarin, some people experimented with romanizing Cantonese – spelling out the sounds using the English alphabet – thereby making it virtually impossible to understand for a non-native speaker.
And, while the protests died down after the Chinese government imposed a sweeping national security law in 2020, Cantonese continues to offer the city’s residents an avenue for expressing their unique local identity – something people have long feared losing as the city is drawn further under Beijing’s grip.
For some, using Cantonese to criticize the government seems particularly fitting given the central government has aggressively pushed for Mandarin to be used nationwide in education and daily life – for instance, in television broadcasts and other media – often at the expense of regional languages and dialects.
These efforts turned into national controversy in 2010, when government officials suggested increasing Mandarin programming on the primarily-Cantonese Guangzhou Television channel – outraging residents, who took part in rare mass street rallies and scuffles with police.
It’s not just Cantonese affected – many ethnic minorities have voiced alarm that the decline of their native languages could spell an end to cultures and ways of life they say are already under threat.
In 2020, students and parents in Inner Mongolia staged mass school boycotts over a new policy that replaced the Mongolian language with Mandarin in elementary and middle schools.
Similar fears have long existed in Hong Kong – and grew in the 2010s as more Mandarin-speaking mainlanders began living and working in the city.
“Growing numbers of Mandarin-speaking schoolchildren have been enrolled in Hong Kong schools and been seen commuting between Shenzhen and Hong Kong on a daily basis,” Dupré said. “Through these encounters, the language shift that has been operating in Guangdong became quite visible to Hong Kong people.”
He added that these concerns were heightened by local government policies that emphasized the role of Mandarin, and referred to Cantonese as a “dialect” – infuriating some Hong Kongers who saw the term as a snub and argued it should be referred to as a “language” instead.
In the past decade, schools across Hong Kong have been encouraged by the government to switch to using Mandarin in Chinese lessons, while others have switched to teaching simplified characters – the written form preferred in the mainland – instead of the traditional characters used in Hong Kong.
There was further outrage in 2019 when the city’s education chief suggested that continued use of Cantonese over Mandarin in the city’s schools could mean Hong Kong would lose its competitive edge in the future.
“Given Hong Kong’s rapid economic and political integration, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Hong Kong’s language regime be brought in line with that of the mainland, especially where Mandarin promotion is concerned,” Dupré said.
It’s not the first time people in the mainland have found ways around the censors. Many use emojis to represent taboo phrases, English abbreviations that represent Mandarin phrases, and images like cartoons and digitally altered photos, which are harder for censors to monitor.
But these methods, by their very nature, have their limits. In contrast, for the fed-up residents of Guangzhou, Cantonese offers an endless linguistic landscape with which to lambast their leaders.
It’s not clear whether these more subversive uses of Cantonese will encourage greater solidarity between its speakers in Southern China – or whether it could encourage the central government to further clamp down on the use of local dialects, Dupré said.
For now though, many Weibo users have embraced the rare opportunity to voice frustration with China’s zero-Covid policy, which has battered the country’s economy, isolated it from the rest of the world, and disrupted people’s daily lives with the constant threat of lockdowns and unemployment.
“I hope everyone can maintain their anger,” wrote one Weibo user, noting how most of the posts relating to the Guangzhou lockdowns were in Cantonese.
“Watching Cantonese people scolding (authorities) on Weibo without getting caught,” another posted, using characters that signify laughter.
“Learn Cantonese well, and go across Weibo without fear.”
Self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist” Elon Musk announced a crackdown Sunday on parody Twitter accounts impersonating him, or anyone else.
“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” Musk tweeted Sunday evening.
“Previously, we issued a warning before suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning. This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue,” he continued in a thread. Furthermore, “Any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark.”
That came after a number of prominent verified Twitter users — including comedians Kathy Griffin and Sarah Silverman and actress Valerie Bertinelli — switched their account names to read “Elon Musk” to prove that Musk’s new plan to give blue verification checkmarks to anyone who’ll pay $8 a month is flawed, allowing anyone with $8 to impersonate anyone else and potentially spread disinformation. As of Sunday night, Griffin’s account was suspended, while Silverman and Bertinelli had gone back to their real names.
Musk has described himself as a “free-speech absolutist,” and that content on Twitter should not be censored much past the the law. Last week, after completing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Musk tweeted: “Comedy is now legal on Twitter.”
In April, Musk said: “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”
But perhaps more telling, in a 2019 interview in The Atlantic, Musk said “Accurate and entertaining satire is vital to a functioning democracy,” then quipped: “Unless it’s about me.”
A number of Twitter users called out Musk for Sunday’s changes:
ATLANTA — Education and civil rights groups said Friday that they will sue to overturn Georgia’s law banning the teaching of certain racial concepts, claiming it violates First Amendment rights to free expression and 14th Amendment rights to equal protection.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Education Association and the Georgia Association of Educators sent a notice to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr notifying Carr of their intent to sue in federal court.
Kara Richardson, a spokesperson for Carr, said the office had received the letter but declined comment, as did a spokesperson for state schools Superintendent Richard Woods. Both Carr and Woods are up for reelection on Tuesday.
Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this year signed House Bill 1084 into law. The measure, based on a now-repealed executive order from President Donald Trump, attracted opposition from teacher groups and liberal groups. But Republicans said it was absolutely necessary to ban critical race theory, a term stretched from its original meaning as an examination of how societal structures perpetuate white dominance to a broader indictment of diversity initiatives and teaching about race.
Banned “divisive concepts” include claims that the U.S. is “fundamentally or systematically racist,” that any people are “inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” and that no one “should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of his or her race.” Bills using identical language have been proposed in dozens of states — backed by the Center for Renewing America, a think tank led by former Trump administration officials.
School districts must respond to complaints, and people who don’t like the outcome can appeal to the state Board of Education. If the board finds the school district in the wrong, it could suspend some or all of its waivers from state regulation.
Suits have been filed challenging similar laws in states including Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma and New Hampshire.
Opponents of the law argue that it’s classroom censorship, saying it limits the ability of educators to teach accurate history and the ability of students to receive an accurate education. The opponents said Friday that it violates a First Amendment right for students to receive information and ideas and also violates First and 14th Amendment prohibitions on punishing people for speech.
“As a classroom teacher I am confused and concerned about how this law will impact not only my classroom, but my career,” history teacher Jeff Corkill said in a statement. “Like many educators in Georgia, I can’t figure out what I can or can’t teach under the law, and my school district’s administrators don’t seem to understand the law’s prohibitions either.”
Other Georgia laws pushed through this year in a flurry of conservative election-year activity included allowing the state athletic association to ban transgender girls from playing high school sports, codifying parental rights, forcing school systems to respond to parental challenges of books and increasing tax credits for private school scholarships.
“Efforts to expand our multicultural democracy through public education are being met with frantic efforts in Georgia to censor educators, ban books, and desperate measures to suppress teaching the truth about slavery and systemic racism,” Georgia Association of Educators General Counsel Mike McGonigle said in a statement.
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Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jeffamy.
Jolie’s nerves were running high as she walked into the campus of Goldsmiths, the University of London, last Friday morning. She’d planned to arrive early enough that the campus would be deserted, but her fellow students were already beginning to filter in to start their day.
In the hallway of an academic building, Jolie, who’d worn a face mask to obscure her identity, waited for the right moment to reach into her bag for the source of her nervousness – several pieces of A4-size paper she had printed out in the small hours of the night.
Finally, when she made sure none of the students – especially those who, like Jolie, come from China – were watching, she quickly pasted one of them on a notice board.
“Life not zero-Covid policy, freedom not martial-lawish lockdown, dignity not lies, reform not cultural revolution, votes not dictatorship, citizens not slaves,” it read, in English.
The day before, these words, in Chinese, had been handwritten in red paint on a banner hanging over a busy overpass thousands of miles away in Beijing, in a rare, bold protest against China’s top leader Xi Jinping.
Another banner on the Sitong Bridge denounced Xi as a “dictator” and “national traitor” and called for his removal – just days before a key Communist Party meeting at which he is set to secure a precedent-breaking third term.
Both banners were swiftly removed by police and all mentions of the protest wiped from the Chinese internet. But the short-lived display of political defiance – which is almost unimaginable in Xi’s authoritarian surveillance state–has resonated far beyond the Chinese capital, sparking acts of solidarity from Chinese nationals inside China and across the globe.
Over the past week, as party elites gathered in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to extoll Xi and his policies at the 20th Party Congress, anti-Xi slogans echoing the Sitong Bridge banners have popped up in a growing number of Chinese cities and hundreds of universities worldwide.
In China, the slogans were scrawled on walls and doors in public bathrooms – one of the last places spared the watchful eyes of the country’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras.
Overseas, many anti-Xi posters were put up by Chinese students like Jolie, who have long learned to keep their critical political views to themselves due to a culture of fear. Under Xi, the party has ramped up surveillance and control of the Chinese diaspora, intimidating and harassing those who dare to speak out and threatening their families back home.
CNN spoke with two Chinese citizens who scribbled protest slogans in bathroom stalls and half a dozen overseas Chinese students who put up anti-Xi posters on their campuses. As with Jolie, CNN agreed to protect their identities with pseudonyms and anonymity due to the sensitivity of their actions.
Many said they were shocked and moved by the Sitong Bridge demonstration and felt compelled to show support for the lone protester, who has not been heard of since and is likely to face lifelong repercussions. He has come to be known as the “Bridge Man,” in a nod to the unidentified “Tank Man” who faced down a column of tanks on Beijing’s Avenue of Eternal Peace the day after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989.
Few of them believe their political actions will lead to real changes on the ground. But with Xi emerging triumphant from the Party Congress with the potential for lifelong rule, the proliferation of anti-Xi slogans are a timely reminder that despite his relentless crushing of dissent, the powerful leader may always face undercurrents of resistance.
As China’s online censors went into overdrive last week to scrub out all discussions about the Sitong Bridge protest, some social media users shared an old Chinese saying: “A tiny spark can set the prairie ablaze.”
It would appear that the fire started by the “Bridge Man” has done just that, setting off an unprecedented show of dissent against Xi’s leadership and authoritarian rule among mainland Chinese nationals.
The Chinese government’s policies and actions have sparked outcries online and protests in the streets before. But in most cases, the anger has focused on local authorities and few have attacked Xi himself so directly or blatantly.
Critics of Xi have paid a heavy price. Two years ago, Ren Zhiqiang, a Chinese billionaire who criticized Xi’s handling of China’s initial Covid-19 outbreak and called the top leader a power-hungry “clown,” was jailed for 18 years on corruption charges.
But the risks of speaking out did not deter Raven Wu, a university senior in eastern China. Inspired by the “Bridge Man,” Wu left a message in English in a bathroom stall to share his call for freedom, dignity, reform, and democracy. Below the message, he drew a picture of Winnie the Pooh wearing a crown, with a “no” sign drawn over it. (Xi has been compared to the chubby cartoon bear by Chinese social media users.)
“I felt a long-lost sense of liberation when I was scribbling,” Wu said. “In this country of extreme cultural and political censorship, no political self-expression is allowed. I felt satisfied that for the first time in my life as a Chinese citizen, I did the right thing for the people.”
There was also the fear of being found out by the school – and the consequences, but he managed to push it aside. Wu, whose own political awakening came in high school when he heard about the Tiananmen Square massacre by chance, hoped his scribbles could cause a ripple of change – however small – among those who saw them.
He is deeply worried about China’s future. Over the past two years, “despairing news” has repeatedly shocked him, he said.
“Just like Xi’s nickname ‘the Accelerator-in-Chief,’ he is leading the country into the abyss … The most desperate thing is that through the [Party Congress], Xi Jinping will likely establish his status as the emperor and double down on his policies.”
Chen Qiang, a fresh graduate in southwestern China, shared that bleak outlook – the economy is faltering, and censorship is becoming ever more stringent, he said.
Chen had tried to share the Sitong Bridge protest on WeChat, China’s super app, but it kept getting censored. So he thought to himself: why don’t I write the slogans in nearby places to let more people know about him?
He found a public restroom and wrote the original Chinese version of the slogan on a toilet stall door. As he scrawled on, he was gripped by a paralyzing fear of being caught by the strict surveillance. But he forced himself to continue. “(The Beijing protester) had sacrificed his life or the freedom of the rest of his life to do what he did. I think we should also be obliged to do something that we can do,” he said.
Chen described himself as a patriot. “However I don’t love the (Communist) Party. I have feelings for China, but not the government.”
So far, the spread of the slogans appears limited.
A number of pro-democracy Instagram accounts run by anonymous Chinese nationals have been keeping track of the anti-Xi graffiti and posters. Citizensdailycn, an account with 32,000 followers, said it received around three dozen reports from mainland China, about half of which involved bathrooms. Northern_Square, with 42,000 followers, said it received eight reports of slogans in bathrooms, which users said were from cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Wuhan.
The movement has been dubbed by some as the “Toilet Revolution” – in a jibe against Xi’s campaign to improve the sanitary conditions at public restrooms in China, and a nod to the location of much of the anti-Xi messaging.
Wu, the student in Eastern China, applauded the term for its “ironic effect.” But he said it also offers an inspiration. “Even in a cramped space like the toilet, as long as you have a revolutionary heart, you can make your own contribution,” he said.
For Chen, the term is a stark reminder of the highly limited space of free expression in China.
“Due to censorship and surveillance, people can only express political opinions by writing slogans in places like toilets. It is sad that we have been oppressed to this extent,” Chen said.
For many overseas Chinese students, including Jolie, it is their first time to have taken political action, driven by a mixture of awe and guilt toward the “Bridge Man” and a sense of duty to show solidarity.
Among the posters on the notice boards of Goldsmiths, the University of London, is one with a photo of the Sitong Bridge protest, which showed a plume of dark smoke billowing up from the bridge.
Above it, a Chinese sentence printed in red reads: “The courage of one person should not be without echo.”
Putting up protest posters “is the smallest thing, but the biggest I can do now – not because of my ability but because of my lack of courage,” Jolie said,pointing to her relative safety acting outside China’s borders.
Others expressed a similar sense of guilt. “I feel ashamed. If I were in Beijing now, I would never have the courage to do such a thing,” said Yvonne Li, who graduated from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands last year.
Li and a friend put up a hundred posters on campus and in the city center, including around China Town.
“I really wanted to cry when I first saw the protest on Instagram. I felt politically depressed reading Chinese news everyday. I couldn’t see any hope. But when I saw this brave man, I realized there is still a glimmer of light,” she said.
The two Instagram accounts, Citizensdailycn and Northern_square, said they each received more than 1,000 submissions of anti-Xi posters from the Chinese diaspora. According to Citizensdailycn’s tally, the posters have been sighted at 320 universities across the world.
Teng Biao, a human rights lawyer and visiting professor at the University of Chicago, said he is struck by how fast the overseas opposition to Xi has gathered pace and how far it has spread.
When Xi scrapped presidential term limits in 2018, posters featuring the slogan “Not My President” and Xi’s face had surfaced in some universities outside China – but the scale paled in comparison, Teng noted.
“In the past, there were only sporadic protests by overseas Chinese dissidents. Voices from university campuses were predominantly supporting the Chinese government and leadership,” he said.
In recent years, as Xi stoked nationalism at home and pursued an assertive foreign policy abroad, an increasing number of overseas Chinese students have stepped forward to defend Beijing from any criticism or perceived slights – sometimes with the blessing of Chinese embassies.
There were protests when a university invited the Dalai Lama to be a guest speaker; rebukes for professors perceived to have “anti-China” content in their lectures; and clashes when other campus groups expressed support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests.
But as the widespread anti-Xi posters have shown, the rising nationalistic sentiment is by no means representative of all Chinese students overseas. Most often, those who do not agree with the party and its policies simply choose to stay silent. For them, the stakes of openly criticizing Beijing are just too high. In past years, those who spoke out have faced harassment and intimidation, retaliation against family back home, and lengthy prison terms upon returning to China.
“Even liberal democracies are influenced by China’s long arm of repression. The Chinese government has a large amount of spies and informants, monitoring overseas Chinese through various United Front-linked organizations,” Teng said, referring to a party body responsible for influence and infiltration operations abroad.
Teng said Beijing has extended its grip on Chinese student bodies abroad to police the speech and actions of its nationals overseas – and to make sure the party line is observed even on foreign campuses.
“The fact that so many students are willing to take the risk shows how widespread the anger is over Xi’s decade of moving backward.”
Most students CNN spoke with said they were worried about being spotted with the posters by Beijing’s supporters, who they fear could expose them on Chinese social media or report them to the embassies.
“We were scared and kept looking around. I found it absurd at the time and reflected briefly upon it – what we were doing is completely legal here (in the Netherlands), but we were still afraid of being seen by other Chinese students,” said Chen, the recent graduate in Rotterdam.
The fear of being betrayed by peers has weighed heavily on Jolie, the student in London, in particular while growing up in China with views that differed from the party line. “I was feeling really lonely,” she said. “The horrible (thing) is that your friends and classmates may report you.”
But as she showed solidarity for the “Bridge Man,” she also found solidarity in others who did the same. In the day following the protest in Beijing, Jolie saw on Instagram an outpouring of photos showing protest posters from all over the world.
“I was so moved and also a little bit shocked that (I) have many friends, although I don’t know them, and I felt a very strong emotion,” she said. “I just thought – my friends, how can I contact you, how can I find you, how can we recognize each other?”
Sometimes, all it takes is a knowing smile from a fellow Chinese student – or a new protest poster that crops up on the same notice board – to make the students feel reassured.
“It’s important to tell each other that we’re not alone,” said a Chinese student at McGill University in Quebec.
“(After) I first hung the posters, I went back to see if they were still there and I would see another small poster hung by someone else and I just feel really safe and comforted.”
“I feel like it is my responsibility to do this,” they said. If they didn’t do anything, “it’s just going to be over, and I just don’t want it to be over so quickly without any consequences.”
In China, the party will also be watching closely for any consequences. Having tightened its grip on all aspects of life, launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent, wiped out much of civil society and built a high-tech surveillance state, the party’s hold on power appears firmer than ever.
But the extensive censorship around the Sitong Bridge protest also betrays its paranoia.
“Maybe (the bridge protester) is the only one with such courage and willingness to sacrifice, but there may be millions of other Chinese people who share his views,” said Matt, a Chinese student at Columbia University in New York.
“He let me realize that there are still such people in China, and I want others to know that, too. Not everyone is brainwashed. (We’re) still a nation with ideals and hopes.”
WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay $965 million to people who suffered from his false claim that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, a jury in Connecticut decided Wednesday.
The verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host over his relentless promotion of the lie that the 2012 massacre never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns.
It came in a lawsuit filed by the relatives of five children and three educators killed in the mass shooting, plus an FBI agent who was among the first responders to the scene. A Texas jury in August awarded nearly $50 million to the parents of another slain child.
“ Experts testified that Jones’s audience swelled when he made Sandy Hook a topic on the show, as did his revenue from product sales. ”
The Connecticut trial featured tearful testimony from parents and siblings of the victims, who told about how they were threatened and harassed for years by people who believed the lies told on Jones’s show.
Strangers showed up at their homes to record them. People hurled abusive comments on social media. Erica Lafferty, the daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung, testified that people mailed rape threats to her house.
Mark Barden told of how conspiracy theorists had urinated on the grave of his 7-year-old son, Daniel, and threatened to dig up the coffin.
Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis discusses a question from the jury with attorneys on Tuesday.
H. John Voorhees III/Hearst Connecticut Media/AP
Testifying during the trial, Jones acknowledged he had been wrong about Sandy Hook. The shooting was real, he said. But both in the courtroom and on his show, he was defiant.
He called the proceedings a “kangaroo court,” mocked the judge, called the plaintiffs’ lawyer an ambulance chaser and labeled the case an affront to free speech rights. He claimed it was a conspiracy by Democrats and the media to silence him and put him out of business. “I’ve already said ‘I’m sorry’ hundreds of times, and I’m done saying I’m sorry,” he said during his testimony.
Twenty children and six adults died in the shooting on Dec. 14, 2012. The defamation trial was held at a courthouse in Waterbury, about 20 miles from Newtown, where the attack took place.
The lawsuit accused Jones and Infowars’ private parent company, Free Speech Systems, of using the mass killing to build his audience and make millions of dollars.
Experts testified that Jones’s audience swelled when he made Sandy Hook a topic on the show, as did his revenue from product sales.
In both the Texas lawsuit and the one in Connecticut, judges found the company liable for damages by default after Jones failed to cooperate with court rules on sharing evidence, including failing to turn over records that might have showed whether Infowars had profited from knowingly spreading misinformation about mass killings.
Because he was already found liable, Jones was barred from mentioning free-speech rights and other topics during his testimony.
Jones now faces a third trial, in Texas around the end of the year, in a lawsuit filed by the parents of another child killed in the shooting.
It is unclear how much of the verdicts Jones can afford to pay.
During the trial in Texas, he testified he couldn’t afford any judgment over $2 million. Free Speech Systems has filed for bankruptcy protection. But an economist testified in the Texas proceeding that Jones and his company were worth as much as $270 million.
Google pulled its search engine from China in 2010 because of heavy government internet censorship. Since then, Google has had a difficult relationship with the Chinese market. The end of Google Translate in China marks a further retreat by the U.S. technology giant from the world’s second-largest economy.
Alphabet’s Google on Monday said it shut down the Google Translate service in mainland China, citing low usage.
The move marks the end of one of its last remaining products in the world’s second-largest economy.
The dedicated mainland China website for Google Translate now redirects users to the Hong Kong version of the service. However, this is not accessible from mainland China.
“We are discontinuing Google Translate in mainland China due to low usage,” Google said in a statement.
Google has had a fraught relationship with the Chinese market. The U.S. technology giant pulled its search engine from China in 2010 because of strict government censorship online. Its other services — such as Google Maps and Gmail — are also effectively blocked by the Chinese government.
As a result, local competitors such as search engine Baidu and social media and gaming giant Tencent have come to dominate the Chinese internet landscape in areas from search to translation.
Google has a very limited presence in China these days. Some of its hardware including smartphones are made in China. But The New York Times reported last month that Google has shifted some production of its Pixel smartphones to Vietnam.
The company is also looking to try to get Chinese developers to make apps for its Android operating system globally that will then be available via the Google Play Store, even though that’s blocked in China.
American businesses have been caught in the middle of continued tensions in the technology sphere between the U.S. and China. Washington continues to fret over China’s potential access to sensitive technologies in areas such as artificial intelligence and semiconductors.
In a Donald Trump-influenced era of through-the-looking-glass politics, everything seems upside down, traditional loyalties are scrambled, history can be rewritten and truth is just what anyone wants it to be.
A Republican-run House hearing Thursday encapsulated the current political circus ahead of another tense election. In a head-spinning spectacle, a Kennedy family scion and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination was greeted as a hero by Republicans. But he was slammed by Democrats, including by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as “a living, breathing, false flag operation.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was given a platform by pro-Trump Republicans because his conspiracies about vaccine and Covid-19, and claims that the government has tried to censor him gel with their efforts to shield Trump by claiming that the political weaponization of government is a Democratic and not a GOP transgression.
The marriage of convenience in a fiery hearing underscored how populism and the bending of truth pioneered on the right by Trump also has significant currency on the left. It illustrated how the character of mainstream American politics is under siege from fringe voices and extremist positions that once struggled to be heard but in recent years found a footing on social media, the campaign trail and even in Congress and the White House.
As an example of his creation of alternative realities – a tactic frequently used by Trump – Kennedy forcibly denied that he had ever been anti-vaccine, racist or antisemitic. Yet CNN fact checks show he has repeatedly shared unfounded conspiracy theories with a false link between autism and childhood vaccines. He has also claimed that man-made chemicals could be making children gay or transgender. And just last week, he was hit by new claims of conspiracy mongering, racism and antisemitism over remarks at a dinner in New York City in which he claimed that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
Despite this controversy, Kennedy brazenly appeared to be inventing new truths even during the hearing. He said, for instance, “In my entire life, and while I’m under oath I have never uttered a phrase that was either racist or antisemitic.” At another moment he said: “I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” then added: “But everybody in this room probably believes that I have been because that’s the prevailing narrative.”
Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of President John F. Kennedy, criticized his relative in a social media video Friday, calling his candidacy an “embarrassment.”
“I’ve listened to him. I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is, his candidacy is an embarrassment. Let’s not be distracted, again, by somebody’s vanity project.” Schlossberg said.
In an odd flipping of the normal political order, Democrats in the hearing effectively sought to undermine the candidacy of the son and nephew of assassinated party heroes, former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy. The top Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett, for instance, condemned committee chair Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan for letting Kennedy air what Democrats regard as extreme views. “It’s a free country. You absolutely have a right to say what you believe,” she said, adding: “But you don’t have the right to a platform, public or private.”
Plaskett’s comments did raise serious questions about whether there are limits – if any – on a prominent personality’s right to free speech even if they are saying things that are not true, as well as the extent to which misinformation has swamped politics and elections. But most of the hearing stayed away from such topics and was dominated by Republican attempts to score points and shield Trump and Democratic attacks on Kennedy.
One of the ex-President’s top allies, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the fourth ranking House Republican, revived conservative claims that the Democratic-leaning officials in the federal government suppressed a story about a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden before the last election, a move she argued had been instrumental in his father beating Trump for the presidency. She cited this theory when asking Kennedy whether he believed there was censorship amounting to government interference in the 2020 election.
Former Twitter executives admitted under oath this year that the social media network temporarily suppressed a story about the laptop but said there was no government interference in the decision. CNN has previously reported that allegations the FBI told Twitter to suppress the story are unsupported, and a half-dozen tech executives and senior staff, along with multiple federal officials familiar with the matter, denied any such directive was given.
But the specific truth in this case isn’t necessarily important to Republicans who were using Kennedy to further create the impression of government interference to prevent Trump retaining the White House. The more public confusion there is the better it is for the ex-president politically. Of course, claims that Democrats are the ones really guilty of election interference are a direct attempt to whitewash Trump’s own behavior – since he used the tools of his office to try to subvert the 2020 election and to stay in power.
Thursday’s hearing is not the first time political reality has seemed mixed up or traditional loyalties subverted. Just last week for instance, Republicans subjected FBI Director Christopher Wray to a fearsome grilling in a hearing while Democrats unusually defended the bureau – long regarded as one of the most conservative organs of the US government. The GOP storm was whipped up by allies of Trump who want to discredit investigations into his effort to overturn the 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents in his Florida resort. Trump has already been indicted in the latter case and there are growing signs he will be charged in the former. He denies any wrongdoing and claims the investigations are politically motivated.
It’s not that Republicans don’t have genuine ground for oversight. Independent government watchdog reports and internal investigations for instance have found deficiencies and mistakes in some investigations involving Trump. In the Russia probe, there were mistakes in the use of a dossier complied by a former British spy and in applications for surveillance warrants. More recently, an agreement with the Justice Department under which Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to two tax misdemeanors and struck a deal to resolve a felony gun charge is within the right of Congress to investigate. But neither case so far supports the wild claims that a corrupt liberal deep state is conducting schemes designed to suppress conservatives that are often made by Trump and his fellow Republicans.
There is plentiful evidence that the ex-president is the one who weaponized government to go after his political enemies and to evade accountability. For instance he sacked former FBI chief James Comey and told NBC News it was because of the Russia investigation. He used his position as president and the prospect of military aid to seek to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into opening an investigation into Joe Biden and his son in a phone call that later led to his first impeachment. And Trump, by pressuring multiple officials in key swing states and by lambasting poll workers and making claims of widespread voter fraud, apparently used executive power to try to defy the will of voters in 2020.
Voters also risked being misled by Washington’s hall of mirrors on another occasion this week. In a more frivolous, but still misleading example of the way it’s often hard to work out what is true, the Biden campaign debuted a campaign video that appeared to show one of Trump’s most fervent allies, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene praising Biden as fulfilling the historic mission of great Democratic presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. The words were those of Greene but they were selectively edited from a speech in a video that disguised her true intent, which was to condemn historic government spending by Democrats on education, health care, and social safety net programs that Republicans claim are akin to socialism.
This example of things being not quite what they seem was more of a cheeky case of campaign trolling than the wholesale refashioning of truth evident Thursday. The hearing at one point degenerated into both Republicans and Democrats accusing each other of trying to censor their questions and witnesses.
One veteran Democrat, Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, summed up how the session had in itself warped reality. “I never thought we’d descend to this level of Orwellian dystopia. Suddenly, the tools of the trade are not to get at the truth but to distract, distort, to deflect and dissemble,” Connolly said.
Oddly, several members on the Republican side of the committee nodded their heads in agreement – apparently convinced the Orwellian behavior in question was on the part of what they see as a tyrannical, censoring government rather than in the obvious truths turned upside down.
This story has been updated with additional information.
A federal judge on Saturday temporarily blocked portions of an Arkansas law that would have made it a crime for librarians and bookstores to provide minors with materials deemed “harmful” to them.
The law, signed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in March, would have held librarians and book vendors criminally liable for knowingly making available to minors material that would appeal “to a prurient interest in sex.” Under the law, the material would also have to lack “serious literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political value” and be “patently offensive” under community standards.
The law, known as Act 372, would have taken effect Tuesday but will now remain blocked while the case plays out.
A group of libraries, librarians, several bookstores and publishing groups – including the Arkansas Library Association and the Central Arkansas Library System – filed a lawsuit last month arguing that a section of the law violated the First Amendment. The plaintiffs also challenged another section of the law that would have allowed individuals to challenge libraries over a material’s “appropriateness.”
The plaintiffs argued that the law could make way for the removal of libraries’ “young-adult” and “general” collections with sexual content. They also said it could even lead to a ban of all persons under the age of 18 from entering public libraries and bookstores, due to “the risk of endless criminal prosecution.”
Providing banned materials under the law to a minor would be a Class A misdemeanor and punishable by up to a year of jail or a $2,500 fine.
US District Judge Timothy L. Brooks of the Western District of Arkansas, an Obama appointee, ultimately agreed in his preliminary injunction, citing concerns about potential violations of the First and 14th amendments.
He described the law’s definition of “appropriateness” as “fatally vague,” arguing that it would be too challenging to enforce the law without infringing on constitutionally protected speech. Material deemed “harmful” for the youngest minors may be appropriate for the oldest minors or adults, Brooks said.
A spokeswoman for Sanders said the governor continues to support the law despite the ruling.
“The governor supports laws that protects kids from having access to obscene content and the idea that Democrats want kids to receive material that is literally censored in Congressional testimony is absurd and only appropriate in the radical left’s liberal utopia,” Sanders communications director Alexa Henning said in a statement to CNN.
The ruling is subject to appeal. CNN has reached out to Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, regarding potential next steps.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, which represented some of the plaintiffs, welcomed the judge’s injunction.
“It’s regrettable that we even have to question whether our constitutional rights are still respected today. The question we had to ask was – do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials?” Holly Dickson, the executive director of ACLU Arkansas, said in a statement. “Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties. We are committed to maintaining the fight to safeguard everyone’s right to access information and ideas.”
The plaintiffs included 17-year-old Hayden Kirby, who said in a statement that the law would limit her ability to “explore diverse perspectives.” Kirby said she spent time in the library every day throughout middle school.
“To restrict the spaces I’ve accessed freely throughout my life is outrageous to me,” she previously said in a statement. “I want to fight for our rights to intellectual freedom and ensure that libraries remain spaces where young Arkansans can explore diverse perspectives.”
The American Library Association said in a report earlier this year that there were 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources across the country in 2022, marking the highest number of attempted book bans since the association began compiling the data more than 20 years ago.
Free speech organization PEN America found book bans rose during the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, in large part due to state laws in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah and South Carolina – which accounted for almost a third of the bans, according to the report from April.
A new law signed in Texas last month banning books containing sexual content that is “patently offensive” was decried by opponents as potentially harmful to childrens’ education.
Last month, President Joe Biden announced he plans to appoint a new federal coordinator to address the increase in book bans enacted across different states.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a sweeping bill into law Friday that will restrict education about gender identity and sexual orientation and ban books with certain sexual content from school libraries, as well as require schools to notify parents if their child asks to use a new name or pronoun.
Iowa is just one of several Republican-led states to pass laws strengthening what advocates often describe as “parental rights” over the past few years.
The controversial movement, which critics argue is aimed at limiting the rights of LGBTQ and other marginalized students, emerged as a top issue for the national Republican Party during the Covid-19 pandemic and is expected to play a key role during the 2024 election cycle.
The Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization, likened Iowa’s parental rights law to legislation enacted in Florida last year that opponents dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.” The Florida law banned certain instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom and set off a social and political firestorm.
Iowa state Sen. Ken Rozenboom, chair of the education committee, has said that the parental rights bill “matches up with what most schools are doing now.”
“But we need to rein in those schools that believe that ‘the purpose of public education is to teach [students] what society needs them to know.’ We must put parents back in charge of their children’s education,” he wrote in his newsletter in March.
The new Iowa law, also known as SF 496, touches on a range of education-related issues.
It prohibits instruction relating to gender identity or sexual orientation to students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
The law also requires school administrators to notify parents if their child “requests an accommodation” related to their gender identity, including using a name or pronoun that is different than the one “assigned to the student in the school district’s registration forms or records.”
When it comes to books, the law puts restrictions on school libraries for students in kindergarten through 12thgrade. The libraries can only have books deemed “age-appropriate,” which, according to the law, excludes any materials with “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.”
School employees found to be in repeated violation of some of these provisions could face disciplinary action, according to the law.
Similar laws restricting what books are allowed in libraries have recently gone into effect in other states, including Florida, Missouri and Utah.
“Vague language in the laws regarding how they should be implemented, as well as the inclusion of potential punishments for educators who violate them, have combined to yield a chilling effect,” according to a report published in April by PENAmerica, a nonprofit that works to defend free expression and tracks book bans.
Laws like the one in Florida give incentives to teachers, media specialists and school administrators to proactively remove books from shelves, the report said.
There were more book bans across the country during the fall 2022 semester than in each of the prior two semesters, according to PENAmerica. The bans were most prevalent in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah and South Carolina.
About one-third of the titles banned are books about race or racism or feature characters of color. About 26% of the titles have LGBTQ+ characters or themes.
“Those children tell us all the time that finding books that reflect their experiences and answer questions they would never ask adults is lifesaving for them,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation.
The past year has brought an escalation to the book ban movement, with many state lawmakers introducing legislation that could have an impact on what’s available at public and school libraries.
“We’re looking at over 31 bills that oppose some kind of restriction on the ability of librarians to create collections that serve the needs of every student or attempt to censor books based on one group’s opinion,” Caldwell-Stone added.
There are at least 62 “parental rights” bills that have been introduced in 24 states this year, according to FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
Most have yet to become law. But last year, six bills were signed by governors – two in Florida, two in Arizona and one eachin Georgia and Louisiana.
Many of the bills focus on parents’ right to know what their children are learning in classrooms, particularly around issues of race and gender.
The Republican-controlled US House passed its own “Parents Bill of Rights” bill in March, though the Senate is not expected to take up the legislation.
Overall, a record number of anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced this year. Some focus on education, but others concern health care, bathroom access and drag performances.
For months, Twitter owner Elon Musk and his allies have amplified baseless claims that the US government illegally coerced Twitter into censoring a 2020 New York Post article about Hunter Biden. The foundation for those claims rests on the so-called “Twitter Files,” a series of reports by a set of handpicked journalists who, at Musk’s discretion, were given selective access to historical company archives.
Now, though, Twitter’s own lawyers are disputing those claims in a case involving former President Donald Trump — forcefully rejecting any suggestion that the Twitter Files show what Musk and many Republicans assert they contain.
In a court filing last week, Twitter’s attorneys contested one of the most central allegations to emerge from the Twitter Files: that regular communications between the FBI and Twitter ahead of the 2020 election amounted to government coercion to censor content or, worse, that Twitter had become an actual arm of the US government.
In tweets last year, Musk alleged that the communications showed a clear breach of the US constitution.
“If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?” he said of a screenshot purportedly showing Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020 asking Twitter to review several tweets it suggested were violations of the company’s terms. Some of the tweets in question included nonconsensual nude images that violated Twitter’s policies.
In another push to promote misleading allegations of government malfeasance stemming from the Twitter Files, Musk also claimed that the “government paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor info from the public.”
Legal experts have said the claim of a constitutional violation is weak because the First Amendment binds the government, not political campaigns, and Trump was president at the time, not Biden. The Twitter Files also show the Trump administration made its own requests for removal of Twitter content. And the payments to Twitter have also been identified as routine reimbursements for responding to subpoenas and investigations, not payments for content moderation decisions.
“Nothing in the new materials shows any governmental actor compelling or even discussing any content-moderation action with respect to Trump” and others participating in the suit, Twitter argued.
The communications unearthed as part of the Twitter Files do not show coercion, Twitter’s lawyers wrote, “because they do not contain a specific government demand to remove content—let alone one backed by the threat of government sanction.”
“Instead,” the filing continued, the communications “show that the [FBI] issued general updates about their efforts to combat foreign interference in the 2020 election.”
The evidence outlined by Twitter’s lawyers is consistent with public statements by former Twitter employees and the FBI, along with prior CNN analysis of the Twitter Files.
Altogether, the filing by Musk’s own corporate lawyers represents a step-by-step refutation of some of the most explosive claims to come out of the Twitter Files and that in some cases have been promoted by Musk himself.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Even as the filing undercuts Musk’s effort to portray the Twitter Files as a smoking gun, the filing may still work to his benefit because, if successful, it may save Twitter from a costly re-litigation of its handling of Trump’s account and others.
The communications in question, some of which also came out in a deposition of an FBI agent in a separate case, were invoked last year as part of a bid to revive litigation over Twitter’s banning of Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. The lawsuit had been dismissed last summer, after the federal judge overseeing the case said there was no evidence of a First Amendment violation.
Musk’s release of company files has given lawyers for Trump and other plaintiffs in the case another shot. If the court decides the new evidence is enough to suspend the prior judgment, the lawyers for Trump and others said in May, then they might decide to file a fresh amended complaint.
But Twitter argued last week that the judge should not allow the case to be reopened because nothing in the Twitter Files supports the already dismissed claim of federal coercion.
Even the FBI’s flagging of specific problematic tweets were merely suggestions that they might violate Twitter’s terms of service, not a request that they be removed or an implication of retribution if Twitter failed to take the tweets down, Twitter’s lawyers said.
Citing another case, Twitter wrote: “The FBI’s ‘flags’ cannot amount to coercion because there was ‘no intimation that Twitter would suffer adverse consequences if it refused.’”
Twitter also objected to the claim, amplified by Musk, that Twitter was paid to censor conservative speech when it sought reimbursement for complying with government requests for user data.
“The reimbursements were not for responding to requests to remove any accounts or content and thus are wholly irrelevant to Plaintiffs’ joint-action theory,” Twitter wrote.
It added: “The new materials demonstrate only that Twitter exercised its statutory right—provided to all private actors—to seek reimbursement for time spent processing a government official’s legal requests for information under the Stored Communications Act. The payments therefore do not concern content moderation at all—let alone specific requests to take down content.”
Former President Donald Trump has hit the 2024 campaign trail and is giving voters a preview of what a second Trump presidency could look like if he’s elected. He’s made many campaign promises – many of which are often vague and lacking in details or specifics – including ending the war in Ukraine, building 10 new cities and giving drug smugglers the death penalty.
Here are some of the policies he says he would enact if elected for a second term.
“The drug cartels are waging war on America—and it’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels,” former President Donald Trump said in a January campaign video.
If elected, Trump said in his November 2022 campaign announcement that he would ask Congress to ensure that drug smugglers and human traffickers can receive the death penalty for their “heinous acts.” The former president also vowed to “take down” drug cartels by imposing naval embargos on cartels, cutting off cartels’ access to global financial systems and using special forces within the Department of Defense to damage the cartels’ leadership.
“When I am president, we will put parents back in charge and give them the final say,” Trump said in a January campaign video, speaking about education
The former president said he would give funding preferences and “favorable treatment” to schools that allow parents to elect principals, abolish teacher tenure for K-12 teachers, use merit pay to incentivize quality teaching and cut the number of school administrators, such as those overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Trump also said in the campaign video that he would cut funding for schools that teach critical race theory and gender ideology. In a later speech, Trump said he would bring back the 1776 Commission, which was launched in his previous administration to “teach our values and promote our history and our traditions to our children.”
Lastly, the former president said he would charge the Department of Justice and the Department of Education with investigating civil rights violations of race-based discrimination in schools while also removing “Marxists” from the Department of Education. A second Trump administration would pursue violations in schools of both the Constitution’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, which prohibit the government establishment of religion and protect a citizen’s right to practice their own religion, he said.
“I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states,” Trump said at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference in March.
Trump added in a campaign video that he would issue an executive order instructing federal agencies to cut programs that promote gender transitions, as well as asking Congress to stop the use of federal dollars to promote and pay for gender-affirming procedures. The former president added that his administration would not allow hospitals and healthcare providers to meet the federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare if they provide chemical or physical gender-affirming care to youth.
Trump said in two February campaignvideos that, if “Marxist” prosecutors refuse to charge crimes and surrender “our cities to violent criminals,” he “will not hesitate to send in federal law enforcement to restore peace and public safety.”
Trump added that he would instruct the Department of Justice to open civil rights investigations into “radical left” prosecutors’ offices that engaged in racial enforcement of the law, encourage Congress to use their legal authority over Washington, DC, to restore “law and order” and overhaul federal standards of disciplining minors to address rising crimes like carjackings.
Addressing policies made in what Trump calls the “Democrats’ war on police,” the former president vowed in a campaign video that he would pass a “record investment” to hire and retrain police, strengthen protections like qualified immunity, increase penalties for assaulting law enforcement officers and deploy the National Guard when local law enforcement “refuses to act.” The former president added that he would require law enforcement agencies that receive money from his funding investment or the Department of Justice to use “proven common sense” measures such as stop-and-frisk.
“Shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” Trump said at a New Hampshire campaign event, adding in another speech that it would take him “no longer than one day” to settle the war if elected. Trump offered no details on how he would end the war in Ukraine.
Trump further addressed his strategy of stopping the “never-ending wars” by vowing to remove warmongers, frauds and “failures in the senior ranks of our government,” and replace them with national security officials who would defend America’s interests. The former president added in a campaign video that he would stop lobbyists and government contractors from pushing senior military officials towards war.
Trump said in multiple campaignvideos that he would spearhead an effort to build Freedom Cities to “reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American Dream.”
In his plan, the federal government would charter 10 new cities on federal land, awarding them to areas with the best development proposals. The former president said in a campaign video that the Freedom Cities would bring the return of US manufacturing, economic opportunity, new industries and affordable living.
In the March video, Trump added that the US under a second Trump administration would lead in efforts to “develop vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles for families and individuals,” not letting China lead “this revolution in air mobility.” The former president said these airborne vehicles would change commerce and bring wealth into rural communities.
“When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won’t be anything left,” Trump said in a January video.
To address the “disturbing” relationship between technology platforms and the government, the former president said he would enact a seven-year cooling off period before employees at agencies such as the FBI or CIA can work for platforms that oversee mass user data.
Trump added in multiple campaignreleases that he would task the Department of Justice with investigating and prosecuting the online censorship “regime,” ban federal agencies from “colluding” to censor citizens, fire bureaucrats who are believed to engage in federal censorship and suspend federal money to universities participating in “censorship-supporting activities.”
On false information, the president would ban the use of taxpayer dollars to label any domestic speech as mis- or disinformation, as well as stopping federal funding of nonprofits and academic programs that study mis- or disinformation.
Under the proposed Trump Reciprocal Trade Act, the former president said if other countries impose tariffs in the US, “we charge THEM – an eye for an eye, a tariff for a tariff, same exact amount.”
Trump vowed in a campaign video to impose the same tariffs that other countries may impose on the US on those countries. The goal, the former president said, is to get other countries to drop their tariffs.
As part of a larger strategy to bring jobs back into the US, Trump said he would also implement his America First trade agenda if elected. Setting universal baseline tariffs on a majority of foreign goods, the former president said Americans would see taxes decrease as tariffs increase. His proposal also includes a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods, as well as stopping China from buying up America and stopping the investment of US companies in China.
“With victory, we will again build the greatest economy ever,” Trump said in his November campaign announcement. “It will take place quickly. We will build the greatest economy ever,” though he didn’t provide specific policy proposals or explain how he would improve the economy.
Trump said he would repeal Biden’s tax hikes, “immediately tackle” inflation and end what he called Biden’s “war” on American energy production.
At CPAC, Trump promised to, “fire the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system like it has never been weaponized before…” Trump also said in a campaign video that he would reinstate a 2020 executive order to remove “rogue” bureaucrats and propose a constitutional amendment for term limits on members of Congress.
Trump also pledged to “appoint US Attorneys who will be the polar opposite of the Soros District Attorneys and others that are being appointed throughout the United States.” The former president added on to this message, vowing to end the “reign” of such investigations and district attorneys and overhaul the Department of Justice and the FBI.
“I will take Biden’s executive order directing the federal government to target the firearms industry, and I will rip it up and throw it out on day one,” Trump said at the 2023 National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action leadership forum in April.
The former president also promised in the speech that the government would not infringe on citizens’ Second Amendment rights and that he would push Congress to pass a concealed carry reciprocity.
“I will create a special team to rapidly review every action taken by federal agencies under Biden’s ‘equity’ agenda that will need to be reversed. We will reverse almost all of them,” Trump said in a campaign video.
Trump added in multiple campaignvideos that he would revoke Biden’s equity executive order that required federal agencies to deliver equitable outcomes in policy and conduct equity training. If elected, Trump said he would also fire staffers hired to implement Biden’s policy, and then reinstate his 2020 executive order banning racial and sexual stereotyping in the federal government.
“When I’m president, I will ensure that America’s future remains firmly in American hands just as I did when I was president before,” Trump said in a campaign video.
Trump vowed to restrict Chinese ownership of US infrastructure such as energy, technology, telecommunications and natural resources. The former president also said he would force the Chinese to sell current holdings that may put national security at risk. “Economic security is national security,” he said.
Trump vowed in a June campaign video to reinstate his previous executive order that the US government would pay the same price for pharmaceuticals as other developed countries to “end this global freeloading on American consumers for once and for all.”
Some of the former presidents’ pharmaceutical policies were overturned by Biden. Trump said in the video his administration would pay the best prices offered to other countries, who he said often pay lower pharmaceutical prices than Americans. This policy, Trump believes, would cause the pharmaceutical industry to raise prices for other countries while lowering costs for Americans.
