SHADOWS OUT OF TIME

From across the pond, courtesy of Pete and Nicky Crowther's PS Publishing (who released my second book, SPIES & SAUCERS), comes a brand new Lovecraft-themed anthology entitled SHADOWS OUT OF TIME. The anthology includes my latest short story, "Toward a General Theory of Yithian Psychology," as well as stories by such writers as Gordon Linzner, Will Murray, Robert M. Price, Harry Turtledove, and Don Webb. Featuring a cover painted by award-winning artist Bob Eggleton, the book is available in a limited hardcover edition as well as a trade paperback.

Censorship in Texas

From Jordan Smith's CBLDF.org article entitled "Texas School Investigated by Office for Civil Rights After Books Pulled":

Granbury ISD, a district roughly 60 miles west of Dallas, is under federal investigation by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights after 131 books were removed from the school library in January of 2022.

Before the start of the semester last year, the superintendent asked librarians to remove books that didn’t align with the conservative community. Graphic novels swept up in this removal included Jerry Craft’s New Kid and Class Act, Raina Telgemeier’s Drama, a collection about famous women entitled No Girls Allowed, and V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd [...].

This investigation by the OCR is particularly notable because it is the first time the federal government has become involved in the recent school bans and challenges outside the House Committee on Oversight hearing. The fact that it has gotten to this point speaks to the escalation of book challenges in the United States.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Censorship in Florida (Part 2)

From Christopher Wiggins' 1-23-23 ADVOCATE article entitled "DeSantis Blames 'Queer Theory' for AP African American Studies Course Rejection":

Monday morning, Florida’s anti-LGBTQ+ Republican governor, Gov. Ron DeSantis, addressed questions about his education department’s recent rejection of an AP African American Studies course, claiming its inclusion of queer theory made it inappropriate for Florida’s students to learn.

According to DeSantis, the advanced placement course on Black history included a lesson on “queer theory,” which runs afoul of the governor’s “don’t say gay” law.

“This course, when I heard it, didn’t meet the standards. I figured, ‘Yeah, they may be doing CRT,’” DeSantis told reporters in Jacksonville. “It’s way more than that. This course on Black history, what [is] one of the lessons about? Queer theory. Now, who would say that’s an important part of Black history, Queer theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids” [...].

“If those like the Florida governor would educate themselves first, before hindering the education of our young people, they might realize that great thinkers and writers like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, as well as a host of others, are the progenitors of what is now Black Queer Theory,” [E. Patrick] Johnson tells The Advocate.

“It would be best that those who are not scholars of African American history to leave the question of what should and should not be included in that history to those scholars,” he says.

Press Secretary for Equality Florida, Brandon Wolf, agrees with Johnson’s assessment.

“It sounds like Ron DeSantis would himself benefit from taking AP African American Studies, as he has no knowledge of the critical role that queer people have played in Black history in our country,” Wolf tells The Advocate. “Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and so many others helped shape American history, and learning about the contributions of Black LGBTQ people absolutely has educational value, despite the governor’s objections.”

Wolf adds: “DeSantis has staked his political career on book banning, government censorship, and replacing lessons on arts, culture, and our history with whitewashed, anti-LGBTQ propaganda. Educational institutions deserve better than his politically-motivated assaults on truth. Students deserve better.”

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Censorship in Florida

From Will Potter's 1-25-23 DAILY MAIL article entitled "Florida District Removes Novel by Nobel Prize Winner Toni Morrison - the Fourth Most Banned Book in America - from Classrooms and Libraries After Christian Mom Blasted Public Schools as 'Marxist Indoctrination Camp'":

A Florida school board has become the latest to remove a book by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison from its classrooms and libraries after a mom slammed it for 'exposing kids to pedophilia' and running 'Marxist indoctrination camps'.

Michelle Stille blasted the Pinellas County school board for including Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye' in her child's advanced literature course.

Stille, a teacher at a Christian school in the district, said she was 'shocked any adult would expose 15-year-olds' to the book's 'explicit descriptions of illegal activities'.

Stille emailed school board members disturbing excerpts from the book, which led the authority to review and ultimately ban the novel across the county.

The controversial 1970 novel tells the story of a young African American girl who believes she is ugly as she doesn't have blue eyes.

The book includes elements of abuse, pedophilia, sexual assault, racism and incest, and has consistently been one of the most banned books in school districts across America.

Stille claimed she would be pulling all seven of her kids out of the area's public schools in protest.

'When I first read The Bluest Eye back in September 2022 I had a freeze response to it,' she said her in her YouTube clip, titled 'Marxism in Education' [...].

Pinellas County chief academic officer Dan Evans responded by banning the book from libraries and classrooms, telling school board members the district was 'erring on the side of caution'.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Devin Stone: "Trump's Criminal Referral from the January 6 Committee"

In this 18-minute video, Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone presents a useful and succinct overview of Donald Trump's Criminal Referral from the January 6 Committee....

DAILY BEAST: "Anti-Liberalism in America Is a Delusion of ‘Freedom’ That Will Only Lead to Violence"

From Bonnie Kristian's 1-17-23 DAILY BEAST article entitled "Anti-Liberalism in America Is a Delusion of ‘Freedom’ That Will Only Lead to Violence":

“Suppose the election was declared free and fair,” American diplomat Richard Holbrooke worried of Bosnia in 1996, but the winners are “racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace and reintegration]. That is the dilemma,” he said, in a decade when ascendant illiberalism was a relatively distant prospect, a problem for faraway places like Peru, Slovakia, and the Philippines.

And though that sentence could be pasted verbatim into any number of articles about former President Donald Trump from the last half-decade, I’m not so sure we have the same dilemma now, when illiberalism is rising on left and right alike here in the United States. Ideological anti-liberals—the sort of people who know what “David French-ism” means, who explicitly reject liberalism’s insistence on tolerance and want to fundamentally change how our government works—don’t have the numbers to sweep to power as Holbrooke’s comment anticipated.

That means their plan to overhaul American politics depends, at best, on a delusional belief that if we toss out liberalism, their party will somehow come out on top. At worst, however, it depends on something much darker: forcible subjugation of the many Americans who haven’t embraced their vision for a post-liberal United States. And that’s a plan which could only appeal to those who have forgotten the centuries of horrific violence that led the West to liberalism [...].

So how do these illiberal groups expect to win? Let’s take the blasphemy law crowd—Christian nationalists—as a case study. Writing to self-proclaimed Christian nationalists in the pages of World Magazine, a conservative Christian outlet, Southern Baptist ethicist Andrew T. Walker raised the key question: “Tell me,” he said, “how are you going to achieve sufficient enough majorities in a nation where Christianity is in decline?”

Realistically, they won’t. Christian nationalism isn’t a decades-long evangelism program. It’s an illiberal politics supported by a minority of a minority of a shrinking demographic. The answer to Walker’s question, then, isn’t conversion and persuasion. It’s delusion—or force.

Like other advocates of illiberalism, Christian nationalists typically don’t spell this part out. They don’t acknowledge the comparative unpopularity of their cause, and they certainly don’t openly endorse a return to the ideological violence that fueled demand for liberalism in the first place. Let’s get back to creed wars is not an attractive message to anyone who knows that history.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

GIZMODO: "The Enduring Mystery of an Aggressive FBI Raid Near Area 51"

From Lucas Ropek's 1-19-22 GIZMODO article entitled "The Enduring Mystery of an Aggressive FBI Raid Near Area 51":

[Joerg] Arnu shared pictures with Gizmodo of the damage caused by the feds as they stormed both residences. They clearly showed door frames that have been violently impacted. Arnu says that agents also tracked mud all over his carpeting, broke a desk and a lamp, and left his homes in a state of disarray. The damages from the raids total approximately $5,000, he said.

The biggest loss that the blogger suffered, however, was the assets that police seized during the raids: approximately $20,000 worth of electronics, according to him. This included five computers, multiple phones, external hard drives, digital cameras, and an expensive drone, among other items.

“I’d really like to have my stuff back,” Arnu said in an interview. “I lost all of the backups. I lost literally all of the information that I had saved on my computers, including tax information, financial information, medical records—all of that is gone and is basically being held hostage by the FBI right now.”

As of this week, it’s been more than two months since the government raided both of Arnu’s properties, but he still hasn’t been charged with a crime. He was served with a search warrant that was missing dozens of pages and gave no reason for the raid; the case records related to the warrant have been sealed, so there’s no way of telling what the point of the search was. He also hasn’t been able to get in touch with the FBI, aside from a letter from the agency’s legal department denying reimbursement for the damage caused during the raids, he said. And, it goes without saying, he never got his stuff back.

“I believe the search, executed with completely unnecessary force by overzealous government agents, was meant as a message to silence the Area 51 research community,” Arnu recently wrote on his website.

The lingering questions around the case have yet to be answered: what were federal agents after when they ransacked his residences in Rachel and Las Vegas? Why did they feel the need to conduct their raids with such force? And what exactly did Arnu do to incur their wrath?

To read the entire article, click HERE.