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January 11, 2024

FOIA for EPA Records on Facebook Censorship of East Palestine Posts Filed

WASHINGTON Yesterday, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking communications between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Facebook regarding posts about the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

The request comes after reports that Facebook flagged or removed posts by whistleblowers and community activists about potential health impacts of the Norfolk Southern train derailment. The posts were on pages such as East Palestine Off the Rails and personal accounts of residents and whistleblowers.This FOIA specifically requests EPA communications with Facebook employees about train derailment-related content and any EPA contracts or financial ties with the social media company.

The FOIA request was filed after whistleblower client Scott Smith, an independent scientist who discovered elevated dioxin levels in East Palestine, reported that Facebook flagged his verified public figure profile after resident and outspoken advocate, Jami Rae Wallace, tagged Smith on his Facebook timeline on November 25 when she shared the Huffington Post article, A Roll of the Dice: The Unknown Threat of Exposure to Chemical Mixtures.Previously, Jami Rae Wallace received a text from Mark Durno, EPA Region 5 leader on the ground and Homeland Security Advisor, telling her to remove her Facebook post where she posted to think critically about answers the EPA was giving residents regarding their health.

This post may go against our guidelines on suggested content, Facebook alerted. This post may show content that is broadly disliked. Common reasons are clickbait, contests or giveaways, engagement bait or links to low quality or deceptive websites.Smiths post also contained the following message from Facebook: Here is the content that hurt your good standing.

The flagged news article focused on synergistic toxicity, the cumulative impacts of multiple chemicals and how scientists fail to adequately assess chemical mixtures in disasters like East Palestine, where residents were exposed to a cocktail of chemicals after the fiery derailment last year and subsequent burning of multiple train cars. Chemicals burned or created by the ignition include vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, dioxins, and more.The EPA has continually maintained that the chemicals of concern were all below action levels while residents continue to report symptoms.

This situation comes one month after Norfolk Southern served Smith with a subpoena for his communications and test results on the water, furnace filters, and soil contamination in East Palestine.

Whistleblower client, Scott Smith, stated,

Anyone who cares about their constitutional rights and free speech needs to pay attention to what is happening in East Palestine, Ohio. That is why we need EPA records to shine light on any coordination with Facebook to suppress the free sharing of information on what is currently happening to residents there. The government should not be serving as a mechanism of censorship to protect multi-billion-dollar corporations.

Our Environmental Investigator, Lesley Pacey, commented

Facebook should not be censoring independent scientists or East Palestine residents who are understandably concerned about pollution in their backyards. The public has a right to discuss and debate the governments response to this environmental disaster as well as post news articles that legitimately address potential health risks. Facebook unfairly targeted Smiths post when it was scientifically factual. Was there an algorithm that flagged the post or another reason? Social media censorship should never interfere with informed public discourse, especially during an ongoing health emergency.

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FOIA for EPA Records on Facebook Censorship of East Palestine Posts Filed - Government Accountability Project

Photo by Karollyne Videira Hubert on Unsplash

By Mary Beth Tinker

As a teenager, civil rights trailblazer Mary Beth Tinker knew she was gay. Today she supports Iowa students currently fighting against censorship and anti-LGBTQ laws.

Young people will find a way to speak up about the issues that concern them, even controversial ones. Some adults will try to stop them, while others believe that youth need freedom of speech and thought. My parents were that kind, but it wasnt easy.

Back in 1965, I was a 13-year-old student upset about the Vietnam War. In December, a small group of us were suspended for wearing black armbands to school to mourn the dead and support a Christmas truce. The ACLU of Iowa and its lawyer, Dan Johnston, challenged the suspensions of me, my brother John, and Chris Eckhardt. In a landmark victory for students rights, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v Des Moines (1969) that schools are not enclaves of totalitarianism and that neither students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech at the schoolhouse gate.

We had no idea that the case would still be taught today in schools and universities and featured in museums celebrating youth, the First Amendment, and the Constitution.

Now, Iowa history is repeating itself. The ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal have filed a lawsuit against SF 496, the Iowa law forbidding instruction, promotion, or materials through sixth grade with LGBTQ content or characters. It bans books, except religious texts, that depict sex acts for all grades. The Des Moines Register has documented hundreds of books already removed from schools.

I see myself in students like Puck Carlson, Percy Batista-Pedro, and Berry Stevens, some of the students represented in the lawsuit. Some are being accused of being unpatriotic, like we were, for exercising their Constitutional rights.

And I see myself for another reason. As a teenager, I knew I was gay. The lawsuit against SF 496 is especially poignant because I dont want students today to go through the censorship that I did. They need the freedom to express and accept themselves.

My father was a Methodist minister, but our family also became involved with the Quakers. My parents felt that speaking up about controversial issues like racial justice and peace was just part of their spiritual ministry. LGBTQ issues were not yet on the radar.

In the mid 60s, as the Vietnam War escalated, my parents spirituality guided us. Sunday evenings in December found us gathered around yuletide candles as Dad read the Christmas story to us from the Bible, with its message of hope for love and peace.

When we took that message to heart by wearing black armbands to school, at first Dad didnt think that we should. However, with the persuasiveness of youth, we successfully argued that our parents had been our role models.

Dad died at a young age after becoming a target of death threats and vitriol. I never had the chance to talk with him about being gay, but I want something better for todays youth.

Thankfully, the ACLU is still here. I care about my home state, and its students. As Justice Abe Fortas stated in Tinker, students must not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved. Lets support students by challenging censorship and SF 496.

Mary Beth Tinker is a retired nurse who lives in Washington D.C. with her wife and is a frequent speaker to student groups about free speech and expression.

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Guest Commentary: Iowa Students Are Fighting Censorship and Anti-LGBTQ Laws - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

On Monday, the Culture Committee of the Berlin Senate agreed on the introduction of a clause that effectively abolishes artistic freedom and represents a major step towards the type of cultural conformism imposed by the Nazis. Under the pretext of combating extremism, terrorism, discrimination and antisemitism, anyone who criticises Germanys war policy or Israeli crimes is to be silenced. Cultural workers are to be placed under general suspicion.

In the future, funding decisions from the Senate Committee for Culture will contain a so-called anti-discrimination clause, which obliges the recipients of funding to take all necessary steps to ensure that the state funding does not benefit any organisations classified as extremist and/or terrorist. The basis for this measure is the terror list drawn up by the European Union (EU) and the constitution protection reports of the German domestic intelligence service, explained Culture Senator Joe Chialo (Christian Democratic Union, CDU).

In particular, the clause is directed against any content alleged to be antisemitic according to the definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Chialo claimed the aim was to further sensitize institutions and cultural professionals by anchoring the definition into the funding guidelines along with an obligatory self-declaration for applicants. In fact, the IHRAs definition lacks any scientific credibility and has been criticised by hundreds of academics and historians around the world.

Hundreds of demonstrators protested against the introduction of the clause in front of the Berlin Senate on Monday. An open letter from creative artists, which gathered over 4,000 signatures in just a few days, warned: The withdrawal of financial support and public platforms is currently being used as a means of pressure to exclude from public discourse those critical of the policies of the Israeli government and the war in Gaza. The planned clause will make it easier for the administration and politicians to use this means of pressure and restrict the space for necessary discourse.

Gulya, who took part in the demonstration with two friends, told the WSWS: I am an artist and rely on public funding. I am appalled that people are trying to silence us when we stand up for something so important. I fear Germany is moving in a far right direction and Im angry with the German left. Media outlets like the taz newspaper are attacking us and supporting Israel. They are all part of the problem.

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Watch the video message from WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North.

When Chialo took the microphone at the rally in order to condemn the protesters and defend his censorship measure, he was met with a chorus of booing, forcing him to quickly quit the podium and hurry into the Senate building.

During the subsequent meeting of the Berlin Culture Committee, representatives of all the political parties represented in the Senate expressed their full support for Chialos frontal attack on culture. Melanie Khnemann-Grunow (Social Democratic Party, SPD) began by agreeing with the CDU-led initiative and bluntly threatened cultural workers: We have noticed a resounding silence in the arts and culture sector after 7 October. She then called for the Senates intervention to also be reflected in artistic output. There could no more blatant way to formulate the demand for thoroughly conformist art and culture!

Daniel Wesener (Greens) boasted that the citys previous coalition of the SPD, Left Party and Greens had already implemented key elements of Chialos initiative: The clause is already in force. The self-declaration is already part of funding applications. However, he added, he had sent Chialo a multi-page catalogue of questions on implementation in order to help the Senator avoid coming into conflict with constitutional issues.

Martin Trefzer from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) also thanked Chialo for his initiative. Trefzer praised the Green parliamentary groups list of questions and summarized the committees position: We must react to the Israel-related antisemitism that we experienced after 7 October. The AfD and the Greens agreed that it was now a matter of making the clause legally tight.

Elke Breitenbach (Left Party) merely criticised the enactment, but not the content of the clause. It should have been implemented in consultation with the heads of cultural institutions and churches, who had all taken up the censorship and war propaganda of the German government in past weeks. We would have done it differently, explained Breitenbach meekly.

In reality, Chialos initiative ties in seamlessly with the policies of the Left Party and its former coalition partners. The Berlin State Concept for the Prevention of Antisemitism, which the former SPD-Left Party-Green Senate adopted in 2019, states: The working definition of antisemitism of the International Alliance for Holocaust Remembrance, as expanded by the federal government, forms the basis of Berlins administrative action to deal with antisemitism.

Re-interpreting the fight against antisemitism as a weapon against critics of Israels murderous policies is a prime example of a political process described by WSWS International Editorial Board chairman David North as a semantic inversion in his lecture at Humboldt University on December 14, 2023. Under the leadership of far-right forces, commemoration of the Holocaust is now being misused to legitimise new crimes and criminalize opponents of war - especially socialists and Jewish-Israeli opposition activists. The association of the Jewish population with the crimes of the Israeli government carried out in this manner is itself deeply antisemitic in character.

What is at stake is nothing less than the destruction of artistic freedom. The wording of the clause implies that applicants may not invite, employ or allow people to speak whose perspectives do not coincide with the interests of the Interior Ministry, the Foreign Office or the European Commission. Anyone who organises anti-war protests, publishes works of criticism or provides a stage for opponents of war must reckon with the withdrawal of the funding upon which independent art is so dependent. The desired consequence is state censorship and peremptory self-censorship.

This is most clearly demonstrated by the Berlin Senates attempts to shut down the Oyoun cultural Centre in Neuklln after meetings were held there by the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East and the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) opposing the massacre in Gaza. With the support of all parties, the Senate decided at the end of November to stop funding the renowned cultural centre, contrary to existing promises, and to rent the property to someone else. Since then, several employees of the migrant centre have been threatened with deportation.

In a widely circulated statement, the SGP warned of the far-reaching implications of the Senates action against the Oyoun cultural centre: Anyone who criticises the governments war policy must expect arbitrary arrests, house searches and secret service surveillance. Demonstrations against the massacre in Gaza are being banned by the dozen, the demand for equal rights for Palestinians is being criminalized and Muslims are being placed under general suspicion.

The working class is confronted with a phalanx of the entire ruling class determined to silence all those who oppose the governments war policy. Culture Senator Chialo referred on Wednesday to a similar clause that has already been passed by the state of Schleswig-Holstein and predicted threateningly: All federal states and the federal government will follow suit. At a closed meeting last weekend, Bavarias ruling, deeply conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) called for critics of Israel to be punished with at least six months in prison for antisemitism and for foreign citizens who take part in a hostile, antisemitic crowd to be deported.

The purges in the art and cultural world are already well underway, the SGP statement goes on to warn. Any institution that criticises the governments policy must now fear losing any basis for its work.

This development cannot be tolerated. We call on all artists, students and workers to protest against the introduction of the censorship clause and to take part in the strike against the genocide in the Gaza Strip to be held on January 14. The growing social struggles of the working class must be linked to the immense opposition to the war - and requires an international and socialist orientation and perspective. Sign up today to support the participation in the European elections of the SGP, which is fighting for precisely this perspective and defending artistic freedom on this basis.

The World Socialist Web Site is the voice of the working class and the leadership of the international socialist movement. We rely entirely on the support of our readers. Please donate today!

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Defend the right to free artistic expression! Oppose the Berlin Senate's censorship clause! - WSWS

If you were barred from the road you take to work, would you care? Thankfully, those who pave our roads arent picking and choosing who uses Them, but the same cannot be said of Big Tech. Social medias expansion into our everyday lives has succeeded in replacing asphalt for algorithm, yet social media platforms are regularly blocking peoples access to the information superhighway by blocking what people can post as well as others access to those posts. Every year that our public conversations and debates become more digital, protecting speech online becomes more important.

Under the misleading guise of content moderation, social media platforms have engineered a pattern of biased censorship against conservatives. There are obvious examples like Facebook removing satirical Babylon Bee posts or Twitter locking the New York Posts account for breaking the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Just as perilous are the more hidden manipulations between the users and content, where algorithms and human moderators can shadow ban undesirable persons and statements, suppressing others from viewing the content without notifying the authors. Last years Twitter Files release provided damning evidence of the platform using visibility filtering (the companys code for shadow banning) to punish popular but institutionally disfavored accounts like Libs of TikTok.

Regardless of its form, Big Techs prolonged addiction to censorship reveals a market failure. In other industries, the remedy would be competition. If barred from one road on the way to work, why not take another? Due to network effects and myriad anti-competitive practices, a small number of successful social media companies today function as oligopolies, able to work together to throttle your access to all viable roads at their discretion. Twitter bypassed the censorship problem because an eccentric billionaire mortgaged himself for his beliefs. We should not expect more calvary like Elon Musk in the Silicon Valley.

Thankfully, Texas and Florida had their eyes wide open. These states passed first-of-their-kind laws to establish their citizens right to speak online over Big Techs right to censor. Texas focused directly on preventing social media bans over political viewpoints. Florida required platforms to publish their censorship rules and to give their users proper notice of changes to those policies, while also giving political candidates immunity from censorship during their campaigns.

Unsurprisingly, Big Tech, represented by industry associations like NetChoice, sued these states to protect their unregulated oligopoly over the digital public square. This yearslong fight is coming to a head with oral arguments scheduled for next month at the Supreme Court. Although NetChoice raised numerous complaints, the court limited the case to only two questions:

Perhaps the most important assumption in these questions that could decide this case is, whose speech is whose on social media? When Grandma posts on Facebook, does the statement belong to her as the author or to the website as a publisher whose algorithm inserted it into your feed? NetChoice argues that Grandmas story belongs to Facebook and, therefore, Facebook receives First Amendment rights for choosing to feature or censor her comments through its editorial discretion.

The Heritage Foundation partnered with the Scott Rasmussen National Survey to survey 1,000 American adults, asking them this very question: Who is primarily responsible for the content of posts on social media sites?

Sixty-six percent, representing a majority of men, women, the young, the elderly, conservatives, and liberals attributed ownership to the people who post the content. Only 27% agreed with NetChoice that posts are actually the platforms speaking to you, with 8% of respondents being uncertain. Public opinion is clear: Grandma speaks for Grandma.

However, even if the vast majority of Americans are incorrect and social media websites can claim your speech as their own to protect their right to censor, these companies are hypocrites every time they invoke what is called Section 230 to protect themselves. This is a 1996 statute meant to shield nascent online platforms from the liabilities of being a publisher. For example, if something illegal was posted on Myspace, the website was protected because it was not Myspaces speech.

Yet today, Big Tech is telling us that they deserve to have it both waysthat posts on social media are simultaneously the platforms (to benefit from First Amendment protections) and not the platforms (to benefit from Section 230 protections).

If no other institution, logic, or physical law of the universe has this sort of bold inconsistency, I am skeptical of Big Techs entitlement to it. Only last year, Google was in the Supreme Court arguing that YouTubes targeted recommendations to users were not editorial speech and, therefore, merited Section 230 protections, contradicting this years NetChoice legal arguments.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on this case was loud and clear: Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say.

Big Tech is wrong on the facts and expects Americans to trust them to behave as they engage in doublespeak. Lets bring them to court.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and well consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular We Hear You feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

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Big Tech Heading to Supreme Court Over Social Media Censorship - Daily Signal

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How ideological book censorship is threatening Canadian libraries

Little did I know the harm it was causing.

According to diversity bureaucrats in charge of libraries at Ontarios second-largest school board, I should never have been allowed anywhere near my favourite book, because it says nothing about my own lived experiences.

Recently, the Mississauga, Ontario-based citizens group Libraries Not Landfills exposed an internal training document from the local Peel District School Board (PDSB) containing instructions for librarians on how to destroy the vast bulk of their book collections for ideological reasons.

Citing a need to promote anti-racism, inclusivity and critical consciousness, the document explains how to remove any harmful, oppressive or colonial content.

Most books published before 2008 had to go; childrens titles like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and even Anne Franks Diary of a Young Girl, were pulled off the shelves. Such books are rife with explicit and implicit biases that make them inherently racist, classist, heteronormative, and/or sexist.

Books deemed harmful were to be destroyed in a sustainable manner, either shredded or landfilled. In an FAQ section, the document rationalized treating books as garbage by arguing that PDSB operates within a white supremacist structure and that these resources are to be weeded out as not inclusive, culturally responsive or relevant. Because of the harm they were causing, they could not be sold or donated.

News of the policy quickly created a media firestorm.

One PDSB student told the CBC that half the books in her schools library had disappeared over the summer, including such favourites as the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series. There were rows and rows of empty shelves with absolutely no books, she said. Public outrage followed.

Ontarios Education Minister, Stephen Lecce, immediately condemned the removal of books as offensive, illogical and counterintuitive. PDSB leadership, caught in the act, claimed it was all a simple miscommunication, although it was obvious from the document that staff were simply following instructions from board administrators.

PDSBs deliberate policy of book destruction provides clear evidence of the dangers posed by handing administrative control of public institutions to anti-racist activists operating under the guise of promoting diversity, inclusion and equity.

This rejection of the pluralism and freedom of thought inherent to expansive library collections is, unfortunately, infecting other components of the literary world as well, from book publishers to organizations that claim to defend Canadians freedom to read.

Together with a group of other childrens book authors, I wrote to the Writers Union of Canada, the Ontario Library Association and PEN Canada (a free expression lobby group) asking for their response to the PDSB book-burying scandal. Two offered only meek statements of indifference; PEN Canada never even bothered to respond.

As a former elementary school teacher, I have seen first-hand the wide diversity of Canadian childrens literature dating back decades. Shizuye Takashimas 1971 A Child in a Prison Camp, for example, recalls the authors experience in an internment camp in the Second World War. Tanzanian-Canadian Tololwa M. Mollels gorgeous The Orphan Boy won the prestigious Governor-Generals Literary Award for Illustration in 1990. There is no diversity problem in Canadian libraries that needs fixing.

The bureaucrats at PDSB attack timeless classics as Euro-centric texts that were penned long before students birth dates, and may not reflect the lived experiences of students.

But as a teacher, I found that classic literature such as Frances Hodgson Burnetts The Secret Garden had the power to shape all childrens young minds. In prose that inspires a sensitivity to the beauty of our language, the book showed my students how a simple Yorkshire cottage boy, Dickon, could transform two spoiled, upper-class English children with his simple, earthy values.

Similarly, Canadian author Joyce Barkhouses The Pit Pony vividly depicts the dangerous working conditions of turn-of-the-20th-century Cape Breton coal miners, including child labourers. Yes, Barkhouses characters are all white, but her books vivid picture of an earlier Canada allows our youngest citizens of whatever ethnic origin to learn about our shared history and strengthen Canadian identity in the next generation.

Insisting on diversity in each individual book, as the PDSB policy does, misses the larger picture: true diversity is achieved through a plurality of viewpoints, characters and stories within a librarys entire collection.

The PDSBs misguided book-burying crusade reminds me of the warning from the German poet Heinrich Heine: Those who burn books will in the end burn people.

Written in 1821, Heines prophecy was realized on May 10, 1933, when, under the Nazi regime, Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment Joseph Goebbels orchestrated the infamous mass burning of Jewish and un-German books at Berlins Opernplatz. This was not only a symbolic destruction of literature but a precursor to the devastating human atrocities that followed.

Well-written childrens books do not cause harm. They entertain, illuminate, enlighten and educate. They carry the legacy of our culture, the history of our societies, and the seeds of our future growth. To inspire a lifelong love of reading, we need libraries with shelves sagging under the weight of their collections. The real harm lies in destroying books.

Marjorie Gann is a Senior Fellow with the Aristotle Foundation and author of Five Thousand Years of Slavery, co-authored with Janet Willen. This column was adapted from the original full-length C2C Journal version.

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Far-left book censorship is threatening Canadian libraries - Troy Media