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A new book by University of Wyoming professor Jeff Lockwood explores the role of corporate wealth in censoring speech and expression, and he got his inspiration from a campus incident several years ago.

Behind the Carbon Curtain: The Energy Industry, Political Censorship and Free Speech, is set to be released in April by University of New Mexico Press. A book launch party is scheduled for 1-3 p.m. April 1 at Second Story Books, 105 Ivinson Ave.

Lockwood directs the UW Creative Writing Program with a joint appointment in the Department of Philosophy. He said he first began considering the ideas central to his book in 2012.

A sculpture called Carbon Sink by artist Chris Drury was installed in 2011 on the UW campus south of Old Main, near the intersection of 10th Street and Ivinson Avenue. The circular, ground-level sculpture consisted of a 36-foot-wide whirlpool of beetle-killed logs, with a charred center.

The sculpture was removed the following year, a year ahead of schedule. In an essay written for WyoFile, Lockwood accused the UW administration of caving to pressure from politicians and the energy industry to have the sculpture removed because it drew a connection between fossil fuels, climate change and the bark beetle epidemic.

I was very concerned with the collusion of corporate power and political power to destroy art, he said.

Emails obtained by Wyoming Public Radio suggest former President Tom Buchanan ordered the sculpture to be removed because of the controversy it generated.

Following his public protest, Lockwood began hearing from residents elsewhere in the state about similar occurrences at museums and institutions of higher education.

The people who were telling me these stories were not often in positions where they had the necessary protection, he said.

Lockwood said his position as a tenured professor gives him an opportunity to tell stories others cant.

I was given the incredible privilege of tenure by the people of Wyoming, and that comes with a very serious responsibility, which is to tell the truth as I understand it, and to do that in a fearless way, he said.

Behind the Carbon Curtain documents those stories, as Lockwood argues the energy industry uses economic pressure to suppress the expression of ideas that run counter to its economic interests.

Lockwood said Wyoming offers a particularly clear lens into the relationship between the energy industry and the government because of the states small size and its dependence on a single industry.

But its not as if its not happening in other places, he said. Its just clearer here.

He points to similar stories in states such as Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

In a broader sense, I make the case that Wyoming is a microcosm of whats happening around the country, Lockwood said.

And its not just a problem of the energy industry, either, Lockwood argues.

The relationship between corporate wealth and political power, to me, is probably the single-most insidious and most dangerous phenomenon in American democracy, he said.

He hopes the book generates concern among readers and spurs them to action. He stressed he doesnt consider his argument to be limited to a single political party. For example, censorship on college campuses has multiple sources.

The First Amendment is fundamental to the health of the future of the country, he said. This is something we all share in.

Lockwood joined the UW faculty 30 years as an entomologist in the College of Agriculture. He has written nonfiction books about philosophy and entomology as well as a crime noir novel.

See the article here:
New book by professor explores censorship - Laramie Boomerang

"We the organizers of Ayam Beirut Al Cinema'iya refuse to accept the censorship of creative art in all its forms and invite you to join us in protest."

With these words, the organizers of Beirut Cinema Days invite everyone to join them in speaking up against censorship in Lebanon. They are calling for a protest and discussion panel at 8 p.m. on Friday, in Metropolis Cinema, Achrafieh.

In a statement posted on their Facebook page, the organizers of the festival explain that the move comes in response to the censorship board enforcing strict regulations on most films that were part of this year's edition.

"During the 9th edition of Ayam Beirut Al Cinema'iya the censor was stricter than in any previous year and did not grant screening permissions for two films Beit El Baher (The Beach House) and Mawlana (The Preacher)."

In the statement the organizers also note that the censor asked many other filmmakers participating in the festival to edit out parts of their films.

"They were not granted screening permissions until the last minute when he decided to grant a one-time cultural screening permit."

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A film festival in Beirut is protesting censorship in Lebanon - StepFeed

If you didnt know by now, I go to McMaster University. Recently, they had a guest speaker, Jordan B. Peterson, come to McMaster.

As I reported earlier this week, that event got shut down because protesters played loud music, yelled, and apparently acted a little violent, too McMaster is currently investigating a reported assault.

But the interesting part of this story is how the Dean of the McMaster University, Patrick Dean, responded after the events fallout.

According to the CBC, Patrick Dean said that what occurred was "extremely regrettable and didnt meet the standards of open debate."

That sounds great and all, but when you look at the wider picture, you begin to realize that Patrick Dean might be saying this because the Peterson event got so much media attention.

It wouldnt be surprising, considering that the McMaster administration never stands up to the student union when they censor those who have controversial opinions. I've seen this first hand.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms documents cases of universities censoring free speech and expression on campus, and give them letter grades each year.

In 2014 and 2015, McMaster got a B letter grade in policy, but a C in practice, and a D in student union practice."

In other words, McMasters official policy on freedom of speech and expression gets a passing grade but too often, in reality, they allow their student union to run roughshod over other peoples rights.

Its true that other universities have worse scores, but Im focusing on McMaster right now because Im a student there.

Theres a simple way forward, McMaster:

Why dont you follow your own official policy instead of letting leftists ruin the university for the rest of us?

Read this article:
McMaster U. dean calls censorship of Prof. Jordan Peterson ... - The Rebel

IMBD homepage on March 22, 2017.

You would think the First Amendment is a bulletproof defense against censorship of the Internet. But then you are not reckoning with the awesome political power of the Screen Actors Guild.

The union representing Hollywood stars and role players somehow persuaded California lawmakers to enact a law that would bar the popular IMDb website from revealing the ages of actors. Its a law that sounds crazy even by California standards, yet Governor Jerry Brown signed it last fall.

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Youve probably heard of the entertainment-focused IMDb. Owned by Amazon.com, it was founded by a British computer programmer and movie buff in 1990, when the Internet was in diapers. Today, its among the worlds most popular websites, with over 250 million visitors every month.

The basic IMDb service is free. Its content, like that of Wikipedia, is crowdsourced. Members love to post information about their favorite movies, directors, stars, and this is the important fact the actors ages.

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Many stars arent happy about that. Its not just vanity, they say; Hollywood is rife with ageism, and older actors dont want directors to think theyve passed their sell-by dates.

IMDb has a paid version of its service called IMDbPro that has become the Hollywood equivalent of LinkedIn, the social network for business. Actors and others pay about $150 a year to see and be seen by the industry elite, and to hunt for jobs. And a role might be harder to come by if its known that a certain actor is on the far side of 50.

But you cant ban the whole Internet from publishing someones age. Or can you? California legislators figured out a way around that by framing their law as a defense against age discrimination. They wrote a publishing restriction that applies only to a commercial online entertainment employment service provider, allowing paying members to demand that his or her age be deleted from that site.

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You wont be surprised to learn that IMDb and IMDbPro are virtually the only sites on earth that fit the criteria described in the law. Sure enough, as of Jan. 1, IMDb had received more than 2,300 takedown requests, including 10 from people whove won Oscars and another 71 whove been nominated for Oscars, Emmys, or Golden Globes.

IMDb hasnt honored a single one of these requests, insisting the law is flagrantly unconstitutional. Besides, it wont work. The same information is usually available elsewhere online, for the price of a quick Google search. And so IMDb argues the law harms its business by driving its users to other sites, without achieving its purpose.

IMDb filed suit against the law in federal court, and in February, US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria issued an injunction against it until the case can be heard.

There is an exceedingly strong likelihood that IMDb will prevail, the judge predicted. Thats putting it mildly.

The IMDb law is merely the nuttiest recent effort by governments here and abroad to censor unwelcome Internet content. Other examples are less ridiculous but equally pernicious.

Google, for instance, is headed to court in France, hoping to fend off a ruinous global expansion of the right to be forgotten. A 2014 ruling of the European Court of Justice held that citizens of the European Union can demand the deletion of embarrassing search results that are no longer relevant to a persons life. For instance, if a Frenchman went bankrupt 10 years ago, he could ask Google not to display this fact when someone ran a search of his name.

Google has complied with over a quarter-million such requests, but only in Europe. The Frenchmans bankruptcy would still come up if someone ran his name through Google in the United States. But in 2015, a French court ruled that Google must wipe embarrassing search results worldwide. Its a radical attempt to force the entire world to play by Europes censorious rules.

Some American lawmakers would be happy to comply. Last month, a couple of New York state legislators filed a bill that would require Internet search services to remove, on request, listings that hurt a persons reputation, and which are no longer material to current public debate or discourse.

Im sympathetic; weve all done things wed like the world to forget. But its no different from trying to block the publication of Brad Pitts age. Thats not the governments job.

Other ongoing disputes over online expression are more complex. Even now, European companies are pulling ads from Facebook and YouTube because users of those services sometimes post racist and anti-Semitic messages that are illegal overseas but protected here.

You cant blame advertisers for fleeing such stuff, even where its legal to publish it. And Internet companies arent bound by the First Amendment. They have every right to bar materials that dont meet their ethical standards, or those of their customers. Websites are also entitled to use their own judgment in flagging stories that might be considered fake news; I might disagree with their decisions, but I dont see it as censorship.

But governments cant ban the online publication of truth, at least not on this side of the Atlantic. Somebody tell the Screen Actors Guild.

Excerpt from:
Internet censorship, Hollywood style - The Boston Globe

THE DAILY PIC (#1757Whitney Biennial edition): I guess my all-around favorite objects in this years Biennial were a suite of huge paintings by Frances Stark that simply reproduce whole pages from a book called Censorship Now!! by the cranky, radicalbut not dismissableIan Svenonius. His text, so painstakingly reproduced via Starks brushstrokes, argues for the censorship of many of the nastier bits of mainstream and establishment culture, in just the way that parts of the establishment have wanted to censor parts of the counterculture that it disapproves of.

The enlargement that Stark does is of course the direct opposite of censorship, and could be generalized as a defense of free speech in all cases. Theres clearly some kind of celebration of Svenonius in Starks paintings. But in their sheer, unavoidable legibility, they might also stand as a counterweight to Svenoniuss call for silencing voices he doesnt like.

One other thing I like about these pictures. The vast majority of contemporary paintings are hobbled by the weight of authority their ancient medium carries. (Worse, they dont even notice that they are.) Stark is using just that weight to make us consider the words of a radical anti-authoritywho seems to have an authoritarian streak. (Photo by Lucy Hogg)

For a full survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.

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At the Whitney, Frances Stark's Giant Paintings Argue Against the Censorship They Promote - artnet News