A brief chronological Compendium of a Few Banned or Challenged Works, and Censorship and Anti-Censorship Efforts 01 Jul - 31 Dec 2008

The obstructions to knowledge are the imprints or predispostion left in the mind by the delusions -- ignorance of the nature of reality, attachment, and hatred -- since beginningless time. --Dalai Lama, The Way to Freedom, pg 83

Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!

2008, July 21: COINTELPRO Comes to My Town: My First-Hand Experience With Government Spies

By David Zirin. See the entry on the COINTELPRO page.

By the United States Armed Forces in Afghanistan. On 26 Oct 2007, Jawed Ahmad, an Afghani citizen working for Canadian Television, was arrested at the airport in Khandahar by the U.S. military. As of this date, he had been held without trial and even without being charged, in the detention center at Bagram Air Force Base, for eight months. According Reporters Without Borders, he is one of twelve journalists to have been detained, since 2004, by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an article published on this day, Anna Sussman reported that as a result of the detention, the Stanford Law School International Human Rights Clinic has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Mr. Ahmad against the U.S. government. Clinic project leader and attorney Barbara Olshansky said that he has c committed no crime and that his detention is a threat to both the rule of law and to free speech. She is quoted:

In the United States, we believe that freedom of the press is an essential component of our democracy, but it appears that under military order, the U.S. government is detaining foreign journalists without basis and without due process. That runs afoul of our beliefs and the law. It also interferes with our ability as citizens to get uncensored press reports from combat zones.

Ms. Olshansky, who has also been litigating Guantanamo cases, said the Bagram detention center is an even "darker, larger black hole than Guantanamo", with prisoners there reporting torture and beatings.

Mr. Ahmad's brother, Siddique, reported that Jawed had said he was told by the U.S. military that he was detained for having Taliban contacts in his phone. Carlotta Gall, the Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief for the New York Times, has worked alongside Ahmad, and she told the Committee to Protect Journalists that he had nothing more than other journalists by way of contacts with the Taliban. Bob Dietz of the Committee to Protect Journalists, pointed out that: "Speaking with combatants in an asymmetrical theatre of war is absolutely legitimate. Journalists seek out all sides. I am sure that Canadian Television would have demanded reporting from all sides." He is further quoted: "The Department of Justice can be heard with great empathy that they are doing this to protect our troops and win this war. But within those parameters, they have to find a way not to abuse local journalists." Ms. Olshansky also pointed out, independently, that: "It is not illegal under U.S. law to have contacts with an enemy. Reporters need it to have a story; that's how the news works."

Ms. Sussman summed up her report on the situation with:

The petition filed by the Stanford Law School International Human Rights Clinic on Ahmad's behalf may force the U.S. government to reveal the nature of the charge against him. Without the government presenting at least an allegation of illegal or hostile conduct, a seasoned journalist might say that Ahmad was only doing a reporter's job well in contacting the enemy. A more cynical observer might conclude that he has been detained for committing an act of journalism.

By John Pilger. This piece is one part media criticism and one part political punditry. It was published on this day in The New Statesman, and reprinted at CommonDreams.org on 27 Jul. In the media criticism, Mr. Pilger details the shameful fullscale failure of the corporate press to report on the crime against humanity being perpetrated. Some of the points he covered are:

• On 12 Jul, the Times devoted two pages to Afghanistan. It was mostly a complaint about the heat. The reporter, Magnus Linklater, described in detail his discomfort and how he had needed to be sprayed with iced water.

• He also described the "high drama" and "meticulously practised routine" of evacuating another overheated journalist.

• Alongside this was a report whose final paragraph [emphasis mine] offered the only mention that "47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday".

• I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children. A 500lb US Mk82 bomb was dropped on her mud, stone and straw house. There was no "enemy" nearby.

• I interviewed a headmaster whose house disappeared in a fireball caused by another "precision" bomb. Inside were nine people - his wife, his four sons, his brother and his wife, and his sister and her husband.

• A total of 64 civilians were bombed to death while the Times man was discomforted. Most were guests at a wedding party. Wedding parties are a "coalition" speciality. At least four of them have been obliterated [...].

Mr. Pilger then masterfully tied in the comportment of the lackey journalists into the political environment of the debacle in Afghanistan and went on to excoriate the Democrats/Liberals/Left Wingers for being willing accomplices in the bloodshed, and for acting not only to perpetuate but also to increase the indiscriminate butchery of civilians.

Without this one-sided onslaught, the resurgence of the Taliban, it is clear, might not have happened. Even Hamid Karzai, America's and Britain's puppet, has said so. The presence and the aggression of foreigners have all but united a resistance that now includes former warlords once on the CIA's payroll.

The scandal of this would be headline news, were it not for what George W Bush's former spokesman Scott McClellan has called "complicit enablers" - journalists who serve as little more than official amplifiers. Having declared Afghanistan a "good war", the complicit enablers are now anointing Barack Obama as he tours the bloodfests in Afghanistan and Iraq. What they never say is that Obama is a bomber.

In the New York Times on 14 July, in an article spun to appear as if he is ending the war in Iraq, Obama demanded more war in Afghanistan and, in effect, an invasion of Pakistan. He wants more combat troops, more helicopters, more bombs. Bush may be on his way out, but the Republicans have built an ideological machine that transcends the loss of electoral power - because their collaborators are, as the American writer Mike Whitney put it succinctly, "bait-and-switch" Democrats, of whom Obama is the prince.

By the People's Republic of China. It was reported on this day that foreign journalists working from the Olympics press centre in Beijing were unable to access amnesty.org, and that a number of other websites were also reported to have been blocked. This censorship was emplaced as Amnesty International was preparing to launch the report of a new evaluation of the human rights performance by Chinese authorities preperatory to the Olympics. The Olympics Countdown: Broken Promises was to be published via the internet 2100 GMT, 28 Jul. The report is a follow-up to China: The Olympics Countdown: Crackdown on Activists Threatens Olympic Legacy; that report was released in April 2008. The new report shows that there has still been little progress towards fulfilling the Chinese government's promise to improve human rights, but rather that it continued the deterioration of human rights in key areas.

The action flies in the face of government promises to ensure "complete media freedom" during the Olympics, and the blocking of Amnesty International’s website, along with a number of others, is seen as a clear example of those broken promises. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has on many occasions highlighted the loosening of restrictions on foreign media in China as an example of an improvement in human rights brought about by the hosting of the Olympics.

By the American Booksellers Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, American Library Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Association of American Publishers, National Association of College Stores; et al; and which is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. ALA officials say they know of 420 requests to remove books from schools and libraries during 2007. The ten most frequently challenged books for this Banned Books Week are:

1. And Tango Makes Three: Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
2. The Chocolate War: Robert Cormier
3. Olive's Ocean: Kevin Henkes
4. The Golden Compass: Philip Pullman
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain
6. The Color Purple: Alice Walker
7. TTYL: Lauren Myracle
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Maya Angelou
9. It's Perfectly Normal: Robie Harris
10. The Perks of Being A Wallflower: Stephen Chbosky

Be it noted that despite the ALA's reported position on Freedom of Information, it continues to turn a blind eye to the oppression of private citizens in Cuba who have dared to open their private collections to the public without the consent of the government.

By Sherman Alexie. Based on Mr. Alexie's own experiences, the story is of a boy who leaves the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white school where, according to the book jacket description, "the only other Indian is the school mascot". The book was assigned reading in a class in the Crook County School District. Parent Hank Moss, of Prineville reead his son's copy and raised objections to the school board during this week. An article in The Oregonian quoted him as saying that the book includes "a reference about masturbation, and that it's ok and no big deal." Which Mr. Moss feels in apprproriate. He complained to the school board, showing them some photocopied pages, and the school board issued a directive to the superintendent to look into how it was included in the curriculum.

The Bend Bulletin quoted Mr. Alexie as commenting that the book "is actually a celebration of the compassion a small town of white conservatives showed ... an Indian boy, they ended up loving"; and that it is "about following your dreams. ... It's the story of an Indian kid dreaming of a bigger life. It's very American." Mr. Moss said: "I don't think it should be for anybody. I think it's trash. I don't think a 50-year-old ought to read it."

Appendix G1: Censorship by President GeeDubya and company
          1st Term:  2001-2004
          2nd Term: 2005-2008

Appendix G2: George Bush religious initiatives and cover-ups
          1st Term:  2001-2004
          2nd Term: 2005-2008

Appendix G3: Actions to shield George Bush from free speech
          1st Term:  2001-2004
          2nd Term: 2005-2008

Appendix G4: 21st Century COINTELPRO operations
          1st Term:  2001-2004
          2nd Term: 2005-2008

For information about the history of the flag       amendment and the veterans who oppose it       see the ACLU site: