The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up
by Liao Yiwu
from Pantheon
The Corpse Walker is a compilation of twenty-seven extraordinary oral histories that opens a window, unlike any other, onto the lives of ordinary, often outcast, Chinese men and women. Liao Yiwu (one of the best-known writers in China because he is also one of the most censored) chose his subjects from the bottom of Chinese society: people for whom the “new” China--the China of economic growth and globalization-—is no more beneficial than the old. By asking challenging questions with respect and empathy, he manages to get his subjects to talk openly about their lives.
Here are a professional mourner, a trafficker in humans, a leper, an abbot, a retired government official, a former landowner, a mortician, a feng shui master, a former Red Guard, a political prisoner, a village teacher, a blind street musician, a Falun Gong practitioner, and many others–people who have been battered by life but who have managed to retain their dignity, their humor, and their essential, complex humanity.
Liao crafted the interviews (conducted between 1990 and 2003) with sensitivity and patience, working both from notes and from his own memory of these remarkable conversations. The result is an idiosyncratic, powerful, and richly revealing portrait of a people, a time, and a place we might otherwise have never known.
Censored 2008: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2006-07 (Censored)
from Seven Stories Press
"Carefully orchestrated. . . . This well-researched work is highly recommended for most libraries."-Library Journal (starred review)
"Buy it, read it, act on it. Our future depends on the knowledge this collection of suppressed stories allows us."-The San Diego Review
"Required reading for broadcasters, journalists, and well-informed citizens."-Los Angeles Times
The best-selling Censored series highlights the year's twenty-five most important underreported news stories, alerting readers to negligence of corporate media and the resurgence of alternative media.
Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored, is an associate professor of sociology at Sonoma State University. He is known for his pieces in the alternative press and independent newspapers nationwide, such as Z Magazine and Social Policy.
Project Censored, founded in 1976 by Carl Jensen, has as its principal objective the advocacy for and protection of First Amendment rights and the freedom of information in the United States.
The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn
by Diane Ravitch
from Vintage
The impulse in the 1960s and `70s to achieve fairness and a balanced perspective in our nation's textbooks and standardized exams was undeniably necessary and commendable. Then how could it have gone so terribly wrong? Acclaimed education historian Diane Ravitch answers this question in her informative and alarming book, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn. Author of 7 books, Ravitch served as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education from 1991 to 1993. Her expertise and her 30-year commitment to education lend authority and urgency to this important book, which describes in copious detail how pressure groups from the political right and left have wrested control of the language and content of textbooks and standardized exams, often at the expense of the truth (in the case of history), of literary quality (in the case of literature), and of education in general. Like most people involved in education, Ravitch did not realize "that educational materials are now governed by an intricate set of rules to screen out language and topics that might be considered controversial or offensive." In this clear-eyed critique, she is an unapologetic challenger of the ridiculous and damaging extremes to which bias guidelines and sensitivity training have been taken by the federal government, the states, and textbook publishers.
In a multi-page sampling of rejected test passages, we discover that "in the new meaning of bias, it its considered biased to acknowledge that lack of sight is a disability," that children who live in urban areas cannot understand passages about the country, that the Aesop fable about a vain (female) fox and a flattering (male) crow promotes gender bias. As outrageous as many of the examples are, they do not appear particularly dangerous. However, as the illustrations of abridgment, expurgation, and bowdlerization mount, the reader begins to understand that our educational system is indeed facing a monumental crisis of distortion and censorship. Ravitich ends her book with three suggestions of how to counter this disturbing tendency. Sadly, however, in the face of the overwhelming tide of misinformation that has already been entrenched in the system, her suggestions provide cold comfort. --Silvana TropeaIf you’re an actress or a coed just trying to do a man-size job, a yes-man who turns a deaf ear to some sob sister, an heiress aboard her yacht, or a bookworm enjoying a boy’s night out, Diane Ravitch’s internationally acclaimed The Language Police has bad news for you: Erase those words from your vocabulary!
Textbook publishers and state education agencies have sought to root out racist, sexist, and elitist language in classroom and library materials. But according to Diane Ravitch, a leading historian of education, what began with the best of intentions has veered toward bizarre extremes. At a time when we celebrate and encourage diversity, young readers are fed bowdlerized texts, devoid of the references that give these works their meaning and vitality. With forceful arguments and sensible solutions for rescuing American education from the pressure groups that have made classrooms bland and uninspiring, The Language Police offers a powerful corrective to a cultural scandal.
Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Information Revolution and Global Politics)
from The MIT Press
Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information--often about politics, but also relating to sexuality, culture, or religion--that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in over three dozen countries, offering the first rigorously conducted study of this accelerating trend.
Internet filtering takes place in at least forty states worldwide including many countries in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Related Internet content control mechanisms are also in place in Canada, the United States and a cluster of countries in Europe. Drawing on a just-completed survey of global Internet filtering undertaken by the OpenNet Initiative (a collaboration of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, and the University of Cambridge) and relying on work by regional experts and an extensive network of researchers, Access Denied examines the political, legal, social, and cultural contexts of Internet filtering in these states from a variety of perspectives. Chapters discuss the mechanisms and politics of Internet filtering, the strengths and limitations of the technology that powers it, the relevance of international law, ethical considerations for corporations that supply states with the tools for blocking and filtering, and the implications of Internet filtering for activist communities that increasingly rely on Internet technologies for communicating their missions.
Reports on Internet content regulation in forty different countries follow, with each country profile outlining the types of content blocked by category and documenting key findings.
Contributors:
Ross Anderson, Malcolm Birdling, Ronald Deibert, Robert Faris, Vesselina Haralampieva, Steven Murdoch, Helmi Noman, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, Mary Rundle, Nart Villeneuve, Stephanie Wang, and Jonathan Zittrain
The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories 1 (Rough Guides)
by James McConnachie
from Rough Guides
The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories is the definitive guide to the world''s most controversial conspiracies. From phoney crucifictions to fake moon landings, and from stolen elections to manufactured viruses, there''s always another story lurking behind the ''official version''. This guide questions whether Princess Diana''s death was an accident? What really happened on 9/11? Why did Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrate on entry? Some theories are sobering, some troubling , others simply crazy, The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories sorts the myths from the realities.Â
Censored 2007: The Top 25 Censored Stories (Censored)
by Peter Phillips
from Seven Stories Press
"Buy it, read it, act on it. Our future depends on the knowledge this collection of suppressed stories allows us."-San Diego Review
"Devastating evidence of the dumbing down of mainstream news in America. . . . Required reading for broadcasters, journalists, and well-informed citizens."-Los Angeles Times
"A terrific resource."-Library Journal
"For the smart and courageous news manager, this annual report is a virtual road map for the coming year's news schedule. Many of these stories should, in an ideal news world, prompt deep and lengthy investigative efforts."-The Village Voice
"A distant early warning system for society's problems."-American Journalism Review
The best-selling Censored series highlights the year's twenty-five most important underreported news stories, alerting readers to deficiencies in corporate media and the resurgence of alternative media. Among the top censored stories of the year, Censored 2007 highlights the environmental and economic repercussions of Hurricane Katrina, the newest findings on global warming, escalating trends in human trafficking, and the use of napalm in Iraq.
The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq
by Sheldon Rampton
from Tarcher
The war in Iraq may be remembered as the point at which the propaganda model perfected in the twentieth century stopped working: the world is too complex, information is too plentiful, and-as events in Iraq reveal- propaganda makes bad policy.
The Best War Ever is about a war that was devised in fantasy and lost in delusion. It highlights the futility of lying to oneself and others in matters of life and death. And it offers lessons to the current generation so that, at least in our time, this never happens again.
As the team of Rampton and Stauber show in their first new book since President Bush's reelection, the White House seems to have fooled no one as much as itself in the march toward a needless (from a security perspective) war in Iraq. As the authors argue, one of the most tragic consequences of the Bush administration's reliance on propaganda is its disdain for realistic planning in matters of war. Repeatedly, when faced with predictions of problems, U.S. policymakers dismissed the warnings of Iraq experts, choosing instead to promulgate its version of the war through conservative media outlets and PR campaigns. The result has been too few troops on the ground to maintain security; failure to anticipate the insurgency; and oblivious disregard, even contempt, for critics in either party who attempted to assess the human and economic costs of the war.
Even now that withdrawal seems imminent, however, the administration and its allies continue their cover-ups: downplaying civilian deaths and military injuries; employing marketing buzzwords like "victory" repeatedly to shore up public opinion; and botched attempts, through third-party PR firms, at creating phony news.
The Bush administration entered Iraq believing that its moral, technological, and military superiority would ensure victory abroad, and that its mastery of the politics would win support at home. Instead, it found a morass of problems that do not lend themselves to moralistic, technological, or propaganda-based solutions.
Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the War on Free Expression
from W. W. Norton
One hundred political cartoons you wanted to see, but weren't allowed to: all were banned for being too hot to handle.
Think you live in a society with a free press? These celebrated cartoonists and illustrators found out otherwise. Whether blasting Bush for his "Bring 'em on!" speech, spanking pedophile priests, questioning capital punishment, debating the disputed 2000 election, or just mocking baseball mascots, they learned that newspapers and magazines increasingly play it safe by suppressing satire.
With censored cartoons, many unpublished, by the likes of Garry Trudeau, Doug Marlette, Paul Conrad, Mike Luckovich, Matt Davies, and Ted Rall (all Pulitzer Prize winners or finalists), as well as unearthed editorial illustrations by Norman Rockwell, Edward Sorel, Anita Kunz, Marshall Arisman, and Steve Brodner, you will find yourself surprised and often shocked by the images themselves—and outraged by the fact that a fearful editor kept you from seeing them. Needed now more than ever because of a neutered press that's more lapdog than watchdog, Killed Cartoons will make you laugh, make you angry, and make you think. 100 illustrations.
Muzzled: From T-Ball to Terrorism--True Stories That Should Be Fiction
by Michael Smerconish
from Thomas Nelson
Sick of the total BS of rampant PC?
This brazen, furiously funny book is the antidote to today's poison of political correctness. With humor and chutzpah, attorney, commentator, and popular radio host Michael Smerconish takes on today's oversensitive culture with a collection of entertaining, outlandish anecdotes about PC gone wild-stories that are hilarious, horrifying, and unbelievably true.
Why are sports leagues handing out trophies to losers? Why are little old grandmas hired to guard 200-pound prisoners? Why are newborn babies and old men with walkers singled out at the airport while likely terrorists are ushered through security with ease?
This book shows through these absurdities that today's atmosphere of censorship and multiculturalism is paving the way for serious threats to our cultural identity and national security: "It's one thing for the forces of political correctness to muzzle our day-to-day lives here at home in the US, quite another when that same cancer metastasizes into the war on terror."
We must eradicate the PC disease. Our sanity-and our very lives-depend on it. Â
"Michael Smerconish talks the talk: If you say unpopular things, watch out! Using vivid examples of PC rubbish, Muzzled will lead you into a world that would terrify Rod Serling. An entertaining and provocative book."
-Bill O'Reilly
"Reads like fiction, too bad it's true."
-Nelson DeMille, novelist, author of Night Fall and The General's Daughter
"The PC virus is out of control . . . and it's worse than you think! In this entertaining and important book, Michael Smerconish chronicles just how mindless things have gotten in politically correct America. He tells fascinating stories that will make you laugh . . . right up until the time they make you scream. Thanks to the PC crowd, we are all living in The United States of the Absurd."
-Bernard Goldberg, journalist and author of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, Arrogance, and Bias
"I really squirm whenever I find myself agreeing with Smerconish. (I know the feeling is mutual.) I did a lot of squirming while reading this provocative book. All true liberals and conservatives must agree with Smerconish that the PC muzzles must be removed so that people can decide based on the marketplace of ideas."
-Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Harvard and author of Preemption
"I don't often find myself on the same side of the political barricades as Michael Smerconish. But Muzzled is a witty, provocative, and timely book. Even when Michael is wrong, which is often, he draws you in and keeps you reading."
-Arianna Huffington, author of Pigs at the Trough and Fanatics and Fools
"By proving the link between America's political correctness at home and its looming defeat abroad, Smerconish performs a great and courageous public service. Citizens should take this book to heart . . . and then vote to defeat the rogue multiculturalists who value 'ethnic and racial sensitivities' far more than America's survival."
-Michael F. Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris and Through Our Enemies' Eyes, former chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden Unit
"In Muzzled, my American Blood Brother of status-quo-obliterating defiance, Michael Smerconish, once again smokes out the cockroaches of political correctness . . . Muzzled is a great title for a book that I am convinced every American school kid should read and be tested on. If a new generation doesn't grow some intellectual balls, our Once Great Nation will continue to repeat horrific mistakes and pay the price . . . Read it. Live it."
-Ted Nugent, rock star, author, television personality, and hunter extraordinaire
100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature
by Nicholas J. Karolides
from Checkmark Books
Throughout history, writers have had their works of literature and social, political, and religious thought censored in the United States and around the world. 100 Banned Books profiles 25 well-known, often classic works in each of these categories that have especially significant censorship histories. Each clearly written entry in this eye-opening book gives readers a summary of the work, its censorship history, and suggestions for further reading.
Among the works covered are: Political Grounds: Animal Farm, Dr. Zhivago, The Grapes of Wrath, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and more Religious Grounds: The Bible, The Koran, The Talmud, Oliver Twist, and more Sexual Grounds: Lolita, Madame Bovary, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Ulysses, and more Social Grounds: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Canterbury Tales, Black Like Me, and more.
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