If you work at the Centers for Disease Control—the nation’s top public health agency—you are now officially banned from using the following seven words:  “Vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based.

Although it sounds like a page out of a George Orwell novel, it’s not. According to the Washington Post, the forbidden-word edict was announced at a policy meeting at CDC on Dec. 14, 2017. The official who presented the word ban offered no explanation, but the reason seems obvious: The quasi-fascists in the Trump administration don’t “believe” in science when it contradicts their beliefs and ideology on social issues such as reproductive rights, gender equality and social fairness.

How do you research and/or report on developments in the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS without using the phrase “evidence-based?” How do you investigate sexually transmitted diseases, birth defects caused by the Zika virus, without using the words “vulnerable,” and “fetus?”  Research and policy groups at the CDC work on issues ranging from food and water safety to heart disease and cancer, and ways to control the spread of infectious diseases. Under the censorship doctrine of the Trump administration, these groups will not be allowed to use some of the basic language of their work to report on their progress or to make recommendations. There are no alternative words for “science” and “evidence,” —and none have been suggested under this edict.

This unprecedented, Orwellian, authoritarian crap emanates from a Trump administration rife  with right-wing extremists, Constitution-averse Christian zealots [like Mike Pence, for example], willful no-nothings and flat-earthers—plus look-the-other-way legislators in hock to industries who hate the science that generates regulations that force them to act responsibly. While the media focuses on Trump’s latest offensive tweet, this is the kind of long-lasting damage that is being inflicted behind the scenes.

Need I say that censorship is dangerous? This forbidden-word proclamation—if obeyed by people who don’t want to lose their jobs—sets a frightening precedent. We can only hope that the scientists and staff at the CDC will have a Spartacus moment and will ignore the order.

Forty years ago, George Carlin shocked us with his monologue on the seven words you couldn’t say on TV. His routine was funny. This is most assuredly not.

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Every year since 1982, book stores, book lovers, and libraries across the country have spent the last days of September raising awareness and protesting censorship. Banned Book Week is also about celebrating; celebrating our freedom to read and the significance of the first amendment. Here is the short list of reasons to celebrate banned book week in 2011.

Reason number one is that most public libraries subscribe to the open book (yes, punerific) policy of the Library Bill of Rights. The Library Bill of Rights is as follows:

1. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.
2. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
3. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
4. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
5. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
6. Libraries that make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.

Essentially this means that our public libraries are more bipartisan than we are, more free than the “free press”, and more unbiased than the Texas school board. Sobering thought, isn’t it?

Reason number two has everything to do with what the American Library Association calls the Freedom to Read statement. Just one of the many highlights of the ALA’s Freedom to Read is that its first tenet states [emphasis mine]:

It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority.

Some of the most celebrated progressive people in our history were considered unorthodox, unpopular, and/or dangerous at some point. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel Clemons/Mark Twain, and Albert Einstein were all considered at turns unorthodox and/or dangerous. Can you imagine a world without any of them?

Another on a long list of reasons to celebrate is the increased ease and convenience with which public libraries can make literature available to the public they serve. Many libraries now have growing digital libraries accessible 24/7 on the web. E-reader owners can appreciate the check-out feature that allows them to download their favorite books in various compatible formats and read them on their devices for the same amount of time they would check out a paper or audio book. Three cheers for even more ways to freely read!

Good reads, cool t-shirts, fun activities, hilarious blog posts, and community spirit are a just a few of the ways people are sharing their love of reading and celebrating. There is something for everyone and variety is another reason to celebrate Banned Book Week.

In case you were concerned (like me) that this kind of censorship is still in an issue, you can rest easier knowing that after a peak in the 1990’s, the number of challenges per year have dropped by more than half. In 1995, there were 762 challenges. In 2010, the number of challenges topped out at 348. So while we should remain vigilant and resistant to censorship, we can celebrate the small victories.

Think libraries are all about literacy and the freedom to read? They are. But they also advocate for other important issues. Just a few of the things the ALA supports and/or is helping us with: net neutrality, broadband accessibility, copyrights and intellectual property, cultural diversity, and reading material for poor/low-income communities. Public libraries are also vital to many parents educating their children at home.

Unfortunately, funding for public libraries is under strain and/or facing drastic cuts that close library doors for good. This is why for Banned Book Week 2011, I’m encouraging everyone to join me in volunteering at a public library, donating books (especially frequently banned books), donating a few bucks to the American Library Association, and/or telling our local and state representatives how important libraries are to us. Libraries=Books=Knowledge=Power. Public libraries = power in the hands of the people.

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Students in Missouri’s Republic school district won’t find Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five or Sarah Ockler’s Twenty Boy Summer in their school libraries. Classics like The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Grapes of Wrath are on every “top banned books” list in the country.

I wanted to know what unpopular literature my kids may not have access to at school, and thought I could turn it into a valuable lesson, so I asked my middle-schoolers to check with their librarians. They even explained that Mom expressed an interest in “writing about banned books”. Operation Lesson Learned was a no-go; the librarian they asked put the [temporary] kibosh on our lesson by refusing to provide a list of banned books. “That’s that”, my daughter summed up. Not so fast. The list of censored material was censored?

Since it was after school hours at this point, I called my local public library. I spoke with a friendly voice in the reference section about how to obtain a list of banned books in my area and/or in my school district. I explained that I had fruitlessly checked the district’s website and that my children were refused a list at school. After an assurance that the Wentzville branch of public libraries did not participate in censorship, I was told that the absence of a list from the school district may mean that there aren’t any banned materials. Furthermore, banning is different than “challenged” materials. I was directed to the American Library Association website for more information.

Apparently a challenge is the first step in “removing or restricting” material. For schools, this may mean a person or group of people would approach the school board and challenge a book or idea being used or available in a school. Usually it is done to protect children from ideas or knowledge that challenge instigators find undesirable or disagreeable. When a challenge is made, a committee is formed to determine if it has merit. A banning is simply a successful challenge and more rare than you may think.

Through a series of informative charts and graphs on the ALA’s website, I picked up a few more things. First, as previously noted, the books most often challenged and/or banned are also the most read and in most cases the most praised. One could argue that banning a book makes reading it more desirable. The top four reasons given for challenging a book in order from most to least: sex, offensive language, violence, age appropriateness. (what is up with our sex hang-ups anyway?)

So I know how and [mostly] why it’s done but I still don’t know which, if any, materials are banned in my kids’ school district. The list was so difficult to obtain, it was either highly offensive or non-existent. At this point, I was no longer mildly curious. I was going to get that information from someone, somewhere. It was time for another phone call.

I rang up the kids’ school and connected with the library. After explaining what I was after, I was transferred to the head librarian’s desk where I left a message. Soon after, my phone buzzed the Star Trek theme song. Bingo.

The good news is that there wasn’t a big secret. The head librarian did not know of any banned books (she would know, right?) and in the many years she has held her position, she told me she has participated in only one challenge committee. The challenge: a book called Puppies. The reason for the challenge: a single reference to the word ‘bitch’ as it applies to…yep, puppies. Because the single reference to the term ‘bitch’ was used in an informative context and not intended as derogatory, it was deemed appropriate usage and the challenge went nowhere.

The potential bad news is that I have yet to get a definitive answer. Given the lack of information online, the word of my school’s head librarian, and the lack of student or parent outrage, I’ll assume our school is relatively censorship-free. Little to no censoring insofar as it applies to books, anyway.

The lesson, I told my kids, is that while it is okay to have and promote your own beliefs and opinions, it’s not okay to [systemically or otherwise] force them on others. It’s okay to decide what books your children read, it’s not okay to make that decision on behalf of other parents. Why? Perhaps because our forefathers understood that knowledge is power and the desire to ensure the people had this power led to writing of the very first amendment to the Constitution. The more varied and culturally diverse the information we have access to, the more knowledgeable—and thus powerful–we can be.

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The Federal Communications Commission voted a partisan 3-2 on network neutrality on December 21st, in what proponents consider an upset. The rules, a flimsy copy of rules written by Verizon and Google in October, are worse than nothing. So they say.

Net neutrality is a hot topic, but only [it seems] for people who understand what net neutrality is and what it means for the future of free speech and online innovation. The rules, which the FCC hopes to enforce and Republicans vow to block in their first 2011 session, are a boon to the telecommunications industry.

What is net neutrality?

Net neutrality is what internet users are accustomed to. Simply put, it means that providers must give all network traffic the same priority. It means that we have equal access to Google and Bing, YouTube and Hulu, Fox News and CBS. They cannot collect fees from a company, for example, in order to grant that company network priority over others. In essence, showing bias towards one website or application can mean a certain level of control over what you, the consumer, have access to. Without net neutrality, providers could choke bandwidth or even block certain websites from being accessed by you.

Why the FCC’s net neutrality rules are worse than nothing

The FCC could reclassify internet providers as telecommunications companies, and ISP’s would be subject to the same rules and regulations that phone and cable companies are. Reclassification would also grant the FCC regulatory oversight. That could be the end of it. The FCC, however, chose to take the hard road and adopt separate rules and regulations for the internet; rules and regulations which may or may not hold up to inspection by the Supreme Court.

The “rules” [as proposed by Verizon and Google and approved by the FCC] prevent fixed-line broadband providers [e.g. DSL, cable] from blocking access to websites and/or applications but wireless providers would be able to put limits on access. Under the new “rules”, wireless providers like AT&T would be able to block applications that compete with their own products and services.

This is exactly what happened late last year with Comcast and the popular video service, Netflix. Netflix is direct competition to Comcast’s on-demand video service, so Comcast gave Netflix an ultimatum: pay us a fee or we block your service from being accessed by Comcast customers. Netflix paid, though under duress. Unfortunately, we can’t expect companies like Netflix to eat the cost of the imposed fees and that cost is passed on to Netflix customers. One company’s greed is another man’s cost.

We should be outraged at such underhanded stifling of competition, and consumers should be outraged that these costs are passed on to them. But at the heart of this issue is freedom. We should all be outraged that certain telecommunications companies seek to undermine freedom of speech, internet freedom, and innovation. Internet giants like Google should remember how they came to be the largest and most popular search engine around the world [net neutrality] and once again take the lead; this time in fighting to keep our free and open internet just the way it is.

Image credit: thenextweb.com

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In a novel approach to censorship, the US Department of Defense [DOD] recently bought up the entire 10,000-copy first run of Operation Dark Heart, a memoir that it doesn’t want us to read. DOD says that the book, written by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, reveals classified information about US operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan that threatens national security. This action may mark the first time in history that a government has used purchasing power to take a controversial book out of circulation.

The buyout actually works to the financial benefit of the author, who might not otherwise have sold out his first printing. The second edition—replete with blacked-out text—may also sell more briskly than otherwise expected.  The tactic also has inspired a bit of humor. On a recent edition of NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me” news quiz, panelists joked about similar ways to enhance sales of other books, such as: Where the Wild Things (and our Troops) Are, and Eat, Pray, Love, Reveal Nuclear Codes.

In a nod to more traditional book-banning tactics, DOD is reported to have destroyed the books after buying them [for a reported $47,000]. [No word, yet, as to whether they were destroyed the old-fashioned way—by burning—or whether book-broiling has morphed into a more 21^st century format—shredding and recycling.]

Either way, this episode is not the first time a work of non-fiction has been outlawed or censored for national-security reasons—with or without justification. And there’s no reason to think it will be the last. Here are a few other examples:

United States Vietnam Relations, 1945-67

You probably know this publication as “The Pentagon Papers.” Smuggled out of the US State Department in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg and others, and leaked to the New York Times, it was more report than book. But its 3,000 pages contained information that embarrassed the US military, the State Department and many others who formulated and executed American policy in Southeast Asia after World War II. Outed for the web of lies its top officials had promulgated about US military policy and activities, the Pentagon attempted to prevent publication and charged Ellsberg with near-treasonous acts. The effort became futile when Ellsberg outflanked the military censors, by getting several other national newspapers to publish excerpts, and when the US Supreme Court struck down the government’s attempt to block publication. Supreme Court, 1: US government censorship, 0.

The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence

The CIA really, really didn’t like this 1974 book by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks. The spy agency claimed that Marchetti—a former employee—had violated his contract, which said that he couldn’t write about the CIA without its approval. According to Wikipedia:

The authors claim to expose how the CIA actually works and how its original purpose (i.e. collecting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers) had been subverted by its obsession with clandestine operations.

It is the first book the federal government of the United States ever went to court to censor before its publication. Civil-liberties groups opposed the government’s attempt at censorship, questioning whether a citizen can sign away his First Amendment rights.

The CIA demanded the authors remove 399 passages but they stood firm and only 168 passages were censored. The publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, chose to publish the book with blanks for censored passages and with boldface type for passages that were challenged but later uncensored.The book was a critically-acclaimed bestseller whose publication contributed to the establishment of the Church Committee, a United States Senate select committee to study governmental operations with respect to intelligence activities, in 1975.

Spycatcher

All you have to know to understand why British muckety-mucks hated this book its subtitle: “The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer.”  Written in 1985 by Peter Wright, who worked as a British intelligence agent for 21 years, the book reveals the activities of MI5, Great Britain’s domestic counter-intelligence agency. Wright’s tell-all infuriated British cloak-and-dagger higher-ups, not just because it violated the code of secrecy, but also because it exposed many embarrassing instances of ineptitude in the agency in the 1960s.  Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government took its objections to court—both in Great Britain and in Australia. Although the British government won some legal battles, it eventually lost the war. Spycatcher was published in the US in 1987, and several British newspapers brazenly flouted an injunction, publishing excerpts and a serialization of the book. The world did not end.

Special Forces Hunter at War

In 2009, Denmark was all a-buzz over Thomas Rathsack’s upcoming expose of his life as a Danish Special Forces commando in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Danish Ministry of Defense not only wanted to ban it, it demanded that the publisher supply a list of people to whom it had sent advance copies, and it warned  newspapers against publishing it. The government said that Rathsack had revealed too many details on the commandos’ methods of operation and [the information] could prove useful to Denmark’s enemies.” [Denmark has enemies? Who knew?]

Unfortunately for the Danish government, on the day before the book’s scheduled publication, an influential Danish newspaper published extracts from the book—and its morning edition sold out. In an editorial accompanying the excerpts, the editors said, “Members of the public have a right to follow the news—even when we are at war, and even when the authorities think they should be kept in the dark.”

A database of censored books—courtesy of our friends in Norway!

Want to know more about censored books? Check out Beacon for Freedom, an extensive, searchable database of censored books. Located in Norway, Beacon for Freedom has its roots in a group called NFFE, which “was established in Spring of 1995 as an independent centre of documentation and information committed to defend freedom of expression world-wide.” Now operating under new management, the website lists 657 censored books from a wide variety of countries.

“The struggle for freedom of expression is as ancient as the history of censorship,” says the site. “…The database, containing bibliographical information on the writings of free thinking men and women that were banned through history, will serve as a tribute to the memory of the countless victims of censorship – past and present. In recognition that knowledge of the past is essential to understanding the present, today’s conditions for freedom of expression should be viewed in a broader context and time perspective; that of the world history of censorship.”

Image credit: Larry West, deviantart.com

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By the time you read this, an extremist Christian minister in Florida may or may not have burned copies of the Koran. He is far from the first, and he won’t be the last, to try to kill a book. Censorship and book burnings are an ugly, but persistent, aspect of world history.

Excuses for banning and/or barbecuing books have included sexual and socially disturbing content. This week’s threatened Koran burning, though, is about politics and religion [and it’s getting mighty hard to separate the two]. What other books have been banned, burned or censored for so-called religious reasons? The list is long, and no religion can claim innocence. Here’s a sampling, culled—and freely paraphrased—from 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature.

Galileo Galilei, Italy, 1632

As you may remember, Galileo was the professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa who looked at the sky through a refracting telescope that he designed, and concluded that, 50 years earlier, Copernicus had been right: We live in a sun-centered universe.

In his book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, he stated principles that still guide modern science, one of which is: “Statements and hypotheses about nature must always be based on observation, rather than on received authority.” [A principle still not fully accepted in certain contemporary political circles.]

The Vatican denounced Galileo’s book as “dangerous to the faith.” He was sentenced to prison and required to make a public renouncement of his ideas. He did so, but legend has it that after making his statement, he muttered “And yet it [the earth] moves.”  In 1992, 359 years after Galileo recanted [or didn’t], Pope John Paul II formally pardoned him.

Moses Maimonides, Egypt, 1197

Maimonides is considered the most important Jewish medieval philosopher. He wrote his scholarly Guide of the Perplexed to help bridge the gap between strict Jewish law, emerging discoveries in natural science, and secular philosophy. Jewish leaders, however, objected to the idea that religious beliefs and practices should be questioned using philosophical principles. [Another notion that persists in the 21^st century.]

In 1232, the rabbis of France cut a deal with Catholic Dominican friars, who were role models for banning and burning—and not just books. The monks agreed to confiscate copies of Maimonides’ work and burned them, as a warning to Jews to keep away from a dangerous line of thinking. Maimonides may have been the first Jewish scholar to have his works officially burned. And at the behest of his own people, yet. Oy!

The Bible, various authors [or God, if that’s your belief]

Note to Koran-burning Christian ministers: The “holy” book that you’re quoting from is among the world’s most censored. Can you imagine your own outrage if someone announced a Bible-burning?

For a book whose every word is so fundamental to so many people, it may be surprising to learn how controversial it has been. Many early censorhip efforts focused on translations of the text viewed as the “original.” In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church guarded its Latin text jealously, fearing that translations would lead to non-sanctioned interpretations. So, in the 14^th Century, when John Wycliff wrote an English translation, the church banned it in England. Similarly, William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament—which had to be smuggled into England in 1524—also was banned, and publicly burned by church officials. Worse yet, John Rogers, who produced another English translation, was himself burned as a heretic in 1554.

If you’re thinking that Bible censorship is strictly a medieval activity, think again. In the 1960s and 1970s, during China’s Cultural Revolution, Bibles were burned as part of the effort to get rid of the “four olds: culture, thinking, habits and customs.” In the US, in the 1960s, a conservative group sued the University of Washington because it offered a course on the Bible as literature. [They lost.] In 1981, Christian fundamentalists in North Carolina burned copies of a controversial, gender-neutral version, called “The Living Bible.” Still others, in an effort to separate church from state, have attempted to have Bibles removed from public-school libraries.

Salman Rushdie, 1989

Full disclosure: I haven’t read The Satanic Verses, but neither had the members of India’s Parliament who, upon the book’s publication, immediately launched a campaign to have it banned–nor had  many other protesters.  Rushdie’s book is a fictional work, but its narrative ignited a firestorm among Muslim leaders, who took offense at the book’s purported attacks on Islamic history and beliefs.  Rushdie attempted to clarify the book’s meaning and intentions—explaining that it was not an anti-religious novel, but rather “an attempt to write about migration, its stresses and transformations.” But his explanation was uniformly rejected by Muslim leaders, and his subsequent apology was ineffective, as well.

Some Muslim groups in the UK held public book burnings. South Africa banned the book before it was even published in that country. In Pakistan, six people died and 100 were injured during violent demonstrations against the book. Most countries with large Muslim populations banned the book and imposed stiff prison sentences and fines for possessing it. In the US, bomb threats caused two major bookstores to temporarily remove The Satanic Verses from their shelves. And, as is well known, Iran’s former leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa—a religious edict—against the book and called for Rushdie’s execution.

When will the censors and book burners learn? Probably never.

Does religious censorship work? In a word: no. Galileo’s principles live on. Maimonides is revered as a great thinker. The Bible is the world’s #1 best seller, in all its incarnations and translations. And The Satanic Verses—perhaps because of the controversy it sparked—became an immediate best-seller in the US and UK.

No longer a religious person myself, I still support others’ rights to believe in whatever gets them through the day without violating my head space. While to me, religion is itself a distortion, people who distort others’ religious beliefs or demand purity of belief just aren’t helping.

In her introduction to 100 Banned Books’ section on religious censorship, Margaret Bald calls religious censorship a futile effort. “A book cannot be killed,” she says, quoting Moroccan writer Nadia Taqzi. “It lives and dies on its own…To review the censorship of books [on religious grounds] is to be struck by the futility of religious censorship…To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.”

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