Amazon removes from the marketplace books promoting dangerous and false “cures” for autism
One week after concerns regarding Amazon’s algorithmic promotion of whack-o conspiracy theory garbage made headlines, the company is back in the news for removing a different breed of insane and… Read more »
The resurgence of the censoring asterisk
Depending on your level of presence on Twitter, you might be familiar with the current linguistic practice of replacing some letters—typically vowels—with asterisks, ie. obf*scation, for emphasis in tweets. Here’s an… Read more »
The South African apartheid and the burning of books
It’s been twenty-four years since the apartheid reign in South Africa had been put to rest, and since today is a spooky day, we’re going to talk about another chilling… Read more »
Tehran Book Fair Uncensored continues, highlighting censored voices from the Persian diaspora
The Tehran International Book Fair (TIBF) came to a close on May 12th, two days after Donald Trump announced that the United States will be withdrawing from the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal. Several… Read more »
As US-Iranian relations worsen, Tehran’s book festival might be getting better
Yesterday, Donald Trump pulled out of what was considered to be Obama’s signature foreign policy deal — an agreement with Iran to lift sanctions in exchange for nuclear accountability. In return,… Read more »
Columbia Journalism Students organize a book drive for detained Reuters journalists in Myanmar
This past December, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists, were unjustly detained in Myanmar following their coverage of the humanitarian crisis caused by ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in… Read more »
Egypt continues its crackdown on authors, booksellers, and publishers
MobyLives has been covering Egypt’s depressingly long crackdown on intellectuals, writers, booksellers, and publishers for some time now, giving particular attention to the trials and tribulations of novelist Ahmed Naji. In… Read more »
Make no mistake: Free speech is under heavy attack
Yesterday, former Breitbart news editor Ben Shapiro showed up to speak at the University of California, Berkeley. It was many things: a pointless provocation, a field day for newsroom thesauruses, and the inaugural installment… Read more »
Mark Bray wants to pull the emergency brake on white supremacy
Yesterday was another busy one for Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, available everywhere tomorrow. He appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, where he and Southern Poverty Law… Read more »
The memoir of an imprisoned former Israeli Prime Minister has led to multiple police raids
Ehud Olmert has seen better days. The George W. Bush-painted former Prime Minister of Israel (he served the office from 2006 to 2009) is currently serving out a prison sentence for… Read more »