Secrecy, extraordinary levels of classification, lies, denial, and deception became the chief legacy of the initial impulse to censor radiation information from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
“Taxi” is Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s third film since he was arrested in 2010 and charged with making anti-government propaganda. He was barred from making films for 20 years, from leaving the country and from speaking to the foreign media. He got around some of these restrictions this time by filming inside a taxi driving through the streets of Tehran, producing a beautifully humane fable. "Taxi" took the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival.
A coordinated campaign by the Motion Picture Association of America follows a trend of lobbyists funneling money and gifts to state attorneys general, who are subject to fewer restrictions and disclosure requirements than elected officials at the national level. Google is the target today, but the real target is the open Internet, which depends on free and uncensored platforms to survive.
Ebola evades Big Data; Underground networks in Hong Kong; PBS pouts; Streaming battles; Virtual Ponzi; Battlefield Twitter
Reader Comments - Ten Points Towards a Two-State Solution; Students Walk Out Suburban Denver Schools; Indiana Autoworkers and Two-Tier Contracts; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; War on Drugs Damages Black Social Mobility; Freelancer Economy; Transformative Utopias and Human Rights; Climate Change Rally; Banned Books; Texas Schoolbooks; ISIS, Iraq and Syria; Freedom University Georgia; Immigrants; Cuba Training World's Doctors
Banned Books Week, the annual end of September "celebration of the freedom to read," brings to light the fact that around 11,300 books have been challenged since a consortium of literary-minded sponsors established the event in 1982. Challenges are defined as attempts to remove the title from libraries or schools, and in 2013, 307 were reported to the American Library Association's (ALA) Office of Intellectual Freedom.
Reader Comments - People's Climate March, Greening of the Labor Movement, What Next; ISIS, Syria, Iraq, Muslim Fundamentalism; Ongoing War in Middle East; Elizabeth Warren and Israel; Theodore Roosevelt; Emmett Till, Michael Brown - Ongoing Struggle for Racial Justice; Guns and the Southern Freedom Struggle; Texas School Text Books; Military Weaponry in Schools - WTF?; Socialism, Worker Cooperatives;
Today in History; Abraham Lincoln Brigade celebrations
Rubble Bucket Challenge; Kids' artist hits profiling; White Ferguson betrays itself; Race/class in Silicon Valley; Cooper Union - Cooper vs. $; Klein's latest
Ferguson, Brought to You by the Black Internet; NYT Gets Called Out by Its Own on Ferguson; What 1 Million Net Neutrality Comments Look Like; Boston and Big Blue Look You In the Face; CWA Challenges Local Media Consolidation; Gov't Info Plays Favorites
This weekend's Clearwater Festival will be the first without Pete and Toshi Seegers, founders and mainstays of the Clearwater organization, started 49 years ago. Pete Seeger lived their lives as peoples' artists, fighting for peace, civil rights, nuclear disarmament, defense of the environment, and as a socialists.
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