So much for promoting free expression lol

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/4646012-writers-attacking-pen-america-over-israel-are-burning-down-their-own-house/



https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/pen-america-writers-gaza-israel/678272/


Hot takes on the matter? Just another day?

Sounds like these folk ought to get back to writing, and spend a lot less time... on the soap box.
The same can be said for the college students, and the teachers and administrators. I believe it's the State Department's job to handle international politics.

If these people absolutely must protest something, let them clean up their own back yard... first.
There's plenty of crap right here in the US that needs a decent protest.

And, although I haven't been following this installment of the Israel/Palestinian conflict... I do seem to remember that Palestine... fired (attacked), first?

Careful what you say about you know who.

I've noticed very obvious and overreaching censorship of 'public' comment on what was once perceived as open comment platforms such as Google's YouTube. Maybe the tooling always existed and I never noticed prior? Maybe 'misinformation' and rhetoric of public too dumb to critically think has bolstered the censorship tooling and application.

Specifically with Israel, it's full blown levered toward Pro-Israel angle. It's
unclear to me if it's legacy media accounts doing this or Google itself. Statements implying genocide or referencing statistics in casualties almost always are censored. Or with the students, comments sympathizing with them having freedom of assembly and speech to petition would be censored. What is left was mostly rhetoric about naive kids and rhetoric about Hamas barbarians. The other voices squelched.

Perhaps I need to seek a new platform, I enjoy the comments especially when they differ from my own. Echo chamber boring as hell.

This post was edited by RedFromWinter on May 10 2024 06:48am

Whenever someone like that makes a public move like this, there is always some aspect of their marketization involved.

Book reading is pretty even between D & R's though, so the audience won't grow that way. My bet is that they're pulling a publicity stunt so that all of the affluent college protestors will look at their books.

Like most of the other protestors, their claims and demands are frivolous. I think they actually believe what they are peddling while also trying to score publicity.

The cancel culture aspect of it is just a trend of the times. Lefties hate free speech they disagree with.

You'd think an organization dedicated to free speech would generally avoid taking political/geopolitical positions, I mean besides the obvious pro-freeze peach ones.
Of course, they're about as much of a free speech organization as the ACLU is a civil liberties organization, I think the two groups would get together and lynch Julian Assange in the town square if they got their way

/e double post. somehow

This post was edited by Goomshill on May 10 2024 08:09pm