I was surprised to hear that BC Premier Gordon Campbell named Mary Polak to his cabinet as the Minister of Healthy Living and Sport. Whenever I hear her name I remember that she was the the Surrey School Board Chair who supported banning three kids picture books that had representations of gay and lesbian parents: [...]
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The cover article in this week’s Georgia Straight is about this film. The review says it’s mostly about 4 couples and one threesome and their relationships. Young people fucking was mentioned a lot earlier this year because of it’s title, and because of the controversy around Bill C-10. Bill C-10 is [...]
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Thanks to Janine Fuller for agreeing to speak, to Shannon LaBelle for convening this session at the BCLA conference, and to Ashley Dunne for the following session writeup.
Little Sister’s Bookstore: Fighting Censorship in Canada for Over 20 Years
Report by Ashley Dunne, SLAIS student
Little Sister’s Book and Art Emporium is celebrating their 25th anniversary. They have [...]
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A hearing into a human rights complaint alleging a Maclean’s magazine article spread hatred against Muslims started yesterday in Vancouver.
From the CBC website:
Mohamed Elmasry and Naiyer Habib of the Canadian Islamic Congress complained to the Canadian, Ontario and B.C. human rights authorities after the Toronto-based magazine published the article, titled The future belongs to Islam, [...]
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Posted in censorship on May 14, 2008 | No Comments »
The Tyee recently published a great article, The Urge to Burn Books, on book burnings in Nazi Germany in 1933.
I like how Stan Persky brings this historical event into the present with this comparison:
So, whenever people burn books — whether it’s the ancient library of Alexandria, Egypt going up in flames nearly two millennia in [...]
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Photo credit: florian.b on flickr
The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom just published their list of the top ten banned books from last year. I haven’t read Olive’s Ocean or TTYL yet, but if they really are sexually explicit and have offensive language I will probably enjoy them immensely.
1. “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin [...]
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Posted in censorship on April 2, 2008 | No Comments »
I found this interesting. From Wikipedia:
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of people interested in building a high-quality encyclopedia in a spirit of mutual respect. Therefore, there are certain things that Wikipedia is not.
Wikipedia is not censored:
See also: Wikipedia:Profanity, Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles, Censorship, and Wikipedia:Options [...]
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The Guardian reported that today China expelled foreign journalists from Tibet to try and stop the flow of information about the violent crackdown on Tibetan protesters. The Editor of the Guardian wrote to the Chinese Ambassador to the UK:
“I am writing to express my deep concern over the apparent blocking by Chinese authorities of [...]
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Written by and posted on behalf of Jon Scop
Janine Fuller ended her talk to a group of about thirty librarians and library students today by telling us that we inspired her, but I’d venture to say that it was Janine who provided a source of great inspiration to us. Janine has been [...]
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CLA Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom released the results (7 page Word document) from their survey of challenges in Canadian libraries today.
Items challenged ranged from Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby to The Golden Compass; books, graphic novels and film; and internet filtering.
Almost all of the challenges resulted in the item being kept [...]
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