The Censors (966- 968)

965- The censors (Magic realism) Censorship debatewhen are there times when censorship is
appropriate? Who gets to decide? What should the limits be?
-A time during extreme violence and political repression (Argentina). For example, under many
dictatorial governments, spreading ideas that may undermine the govs authority is illegal.
(come up with examples about China aei wei, only allow 12 US movies per year, closed internet
boundariesWhy? ). Egypts revolution is another examples only made possible by social
networking.

The Censors by Luisa Valenzuela (pp. 185-190) Orange

-He is determined to find his letter at first, but then he becomes a "work-a-holic" to
move up in the Censorship rankings and is almost obsessed with his job.
The major irony is that he censors his own letter, so basically he kills himself and he
knows it too.
Theme: Love, Obsession, Pride, Self-Betrayal
Focus: Irony, Theme, writing a short story critique activity.
Political censorship exists when a government attempts to conceal, distort, or falsify information that its citizens receive by
suppressing or crowding out political news that the public might receive through news outlets. In the absence of unflattering but
objective information, people will be unable to dissent with the government or political party in charge. It is also the suppression of
views that are contrary to those of the government in power. The government often has the power of the army and the secret police, to
enforce the compliance of journalists with the will of the government to extol the story that the government wants people to believe, at
times even with bribery, ruin of careers, imprisonment, and even assassination.
The word censorship comes from the Latin word censor, the job of two Romans whose duty was to supervise public behaviour and
morals, hence censoring the way people acted.
Suppression of dissent occurs when an individual or group which is more powerful than another tries to directly or indirectly censor,
persecute or otherwise oppress the other party, rather than engage with and constructively respond to or accommodate the other
partys arguments or viewpoint. When dissent is perceived as a threat, action may be taken to prevent continuing dissent or penalise
dissidents. Government or industry[1] may often act in this way.

Identify the Tone of the 1st paragraph. what words does the author se as she approaches the
subject and the main characters circumstances? What is the mood set by the author as well?
Use article 5 with high functioning groups.
South Park- censorship
America - Sopa

The Censors by
Luisa Valenzuela

Description
Paranoid, oppressive,
fearful

Mood

Setting

Irony

Style

Characterization

The nature of the job

makes people callous and
uncaring.
The Censors is ironic
because Juan becomes the
very thing he feared the
most, causing his own
death.

The style is sparse and

direct.
Juan is an unthinking,
detached machine.

Text Evidence
Usually it takes months,
even years, if there arent
any snags; all this time
the freedom, maybe even the
life, of both sender and
receiver is in jeopardy. An
thats why Juans so
troubled: thinking that
something might happen to
Mariana because of his
letters. (LOL, p. 187)
When an employee loses his
hand due to a letter bomb
exploding, his supervisors
dismiss his injury as
negligence.
He was about to
congratulate himself for
having finally discovered
his true mission, when his
letter to Mariana reached
his hands. Naturally, he
censored it without regret.
And just as naturally, he
couldnt stop them from
executing him the following
morning... (LOL, 188)
His zeal brought him swift
promotion. We dont know if
this made him happy. (LOL,
188)
Soon his work became so
absorbing that his noble
mission (saving Mariana)
blurred in his mind. (LOL,
188)

Somebody Wants But So

Description/Purpose
Somebody Wants But So (SWBS) offers a framework for students to create summaries.
Preparation/Tips
Use the framework to summarize information from reading passages or information from
lectures several times to provide a variety of models for students.
Use the phrase Somebody Wants But So as a prompt to conclude discussions/instruction.
Extend the capsule summary statements with additional details; have students write summary
statements after they are able to succinctly articulate them using this strategy.
somebody
= who - the
individual/character
wants = what
but =
complications/proble
ms/conflict
so = solution/outcome

Examples
Somebody

Harry Potter

resources, so they
obtained these
resources by
developing overseas
colonies. Somebody
European countries

Wants
wants to learn
about his parents,
be happy, and
make friends

But

So

but he must protect

himself from the
dangers he faces at
Hogwarts

so he learns how to use his powers for

good and to protect himself and his
friends

Wants

wanted to
industrialize

Christopher Columbus set sail for

the Spanish in 1492 searching for
a western route to the East Indies
(East Asia). He failed to find that
route, but in the process he
expanded Spanish colonies by
claiming the Americas for Spain.
Somebody
Christopher Columbus and Spain

But

So

but did not have the

necessary natural
resources,

so they obtained these resources

by developing overseas colonies.

Wants

wanted a new
western trade
route to the
East Indies

But

but Columbus
did not find
that route or
the East
Indies

So

so he claimed the land he did

find (the Americas) for Spain.

The Great Firewall: China's Web Users Battle

Censorship By Austin Ramzy / Beijing Tuesday, Apr. 13, 2010
After he was listed on this year's TIME 100 poll
to determine the world's most influential people,
Chinese author Han Han wrote a blog post
announcing, "Other Chinese nominees include
sensitive word, sensitive word and sensitive
word." It was something of an inside joke, but
one that Han's huge fan base would immediately
get. "Sensitive word" was a jab at China's Web censors' habit of sometimes blocking
even commonplace names from display in blog posts and Web searches. Within days, his
post had generated more than 20,000 comments, most in support of the writer, a few in
opposition and many grumbling about the state of online freedom in China.
Critics of China's censorship regime have often predicted that information will
inevitably circumvent efforts to restrict it. But so far China has managed, through a
variety of means, to restrict the discussion of topics the government finds objectionable,
such as independence drives in the regions of Tibet and Xinjiang and the banned
religious movement Falun Gong.
For the tens of thousands of censors employed by the government, blocking
access to restricted information both at home and abroad is an ongoing struggle. Their
work is mirrored by employees of large Web portals who ensure content conforms with
official directives. With what is called the "Great Firewall of China," authorities block
access to overseas Web pages deemed objectionable and shutter domestic sites that
repeatedly stray into restricted territory. Search engines are prevented from linking to
sensitive content. Mainland media, which face a host of regulations that limit how they
can report the news, are often forced to take down controversial stories that have been
posted online. (See pictures of Chinese mourning the loss of Google.)
Despite those restrictions, the Internet in China roils with debate over current
events. China now has an estimated 384 million Internet users, more than the total
population of the U.S. That size, combined with the growing popularity of interactive
applications that allow users to generate their own content, has placed great strain on

censors' ability to restrict the flow of sensitive information. Often news happens and
discussion spreads widely before censors have a chance to decide how to manage the
subject. "In this war, the censor is obviously not winning," says Xiao Qiang, the director
of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley. "In the interactive
space, users are winning by numbers."
Perhaps the greatest threat China's censorship regime now faces is that it can't
seem to stop debate over censorship itself. Since Google declared in January that it
planned to stop censoring its Web search results in China, the state of online censorship
has come under increasing scrutiny. The Chinese government has sought to portray its
conflict with the Internet giant as a commercial dispute and a simple matter of law. But
to a significant number of Chinese Web users, the extensive Web restrictions
increasingly chafe. So they make use of widely available proxies and virtual private
networks to fanqiang, or "climb the wall," for access to everything from politics to porn.
Censors can further restrict access to overseas sites by slowing or blocking the
networks used to bypass the Great Firewall, says Xiao, but they are reluctant to do so
for fear of interfering with commercial applications, like secure communications
between corporate offices. (See who will profit when Google exits China.)
In 2006 Jason Ng, a blogger from Guangdong province in south China, began writing
about how to circumvent censorship in China after he read about the government's
block on Wikipedia, the user-generated online encyclopedia. He started by posting
technical tips and essays on various bulletin boards and his own blog on sina.com, a
major Chinese Web portal. "During that time, many of my posts were either quietly
deleted or unable to get published on my blog for no reason," he says.
Pent-up frustration led Ng to create his own website, kenengba.com, in April
2007. The site its name means maybe gained attention last year among Chinese
Web users who opposed a government plan to require the installation of software on
new computers that would block some websites. The Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology's proposal was promoted as a way to restrict pornography, but
most of the targeted websites were political. In August 2009 the agency dropped the
requirement to install the software, known as the Green Dam Youth Escort, after
widespread protest from Web users and foreign computer makers.
Since then, Ng says, he has received phone calls and e-mails from government officials
ordering him to remove articles that teach users how to circumvent Web restrictions, or
else his website would be shut down by authorities. This has left him with little choice,

he says, but to switch to an overseas server. In late March, when Google began
redirecting Chinese search traffic to an uncensored site based in Hong Kong,
authorities blocked Ng's site. His daily traffic dropped from more than 20,000 hits to
6,000 overnight, but many mainland users still climb the Great Firewall to view his site.
The phenomenon is happening in much larger numbers on Twitter, where
thousands of Chinese users post information about current events in China despite the
site's being blocked by authorities. When the activist lawyer Gao Zhisheng reappeared
in March after disappearing in police custody more than a year ago, the news was first
revealed on Twitter and then spread to the mainstream press. Ai Weiwei, a Chinese
artist who has organized an investigation into the deaths of children whose schools
collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, has been active on Twitter over the past
year; he now has 33,000 followers. Recently he began posting birthday memorials for
students who died in the quake. In a recent interview with CNN, Ai, who helped design
the "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium in Beijing, predicted that social media would one day
overcome China's censorship regime.
Because mainland users have to climb the Great Firewall to access Twitter, they
generally share an interest in issues of free speech, says Xiao. They discuss news in the
unfiltered medium of Twitter and then repost information on mainland blogs and
Twitter-like microblogging services. "It is not a fluke," he says. "It's a pattern. The
Chinese censors look at this space with great focus and are trying to figure out what to
do with it.
Read more:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1981566,00.html#ixzz1kKeEEeG
R

In North Korea, the Internet is only for a few - Technology & Media
- International Herald Tribune
By Tom Zeller Jr.Published: Sunday, October 22, 2006
NEW YORK The tragically backward, sometimes absurdist
hallmarks of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea and
in particular its leader, Kim Jong Il, are well known. There's Kim's
Elton John eyeglasses and cotton-candy hairdo, for instance.
A newer, more dangerous sort of North Korean eccentricity
registered around 4.0 on the Richter scale earlier this month - a
nuclear weapon test broadcast on state-controlled television.

But the stark realities of life in North Korea were perhaps most evident in a simple
satellite image over the shoulder of the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during
a briefing Oct. 11. The image showed the two Koreas, North and South, photographed
at night.
The South was illuminated from coast to coast, suggesting that not just lights, but the
other, arguably more bedrock utility of the modern age - information - was pulsating
through the population.
The North was black.
This is an impoverished country where televisions and radios are hard- wired to receive
only government-controlled frequencies. Cellphones were banned in 2004. In May, the
New York- based Committee to Protect Journalists ranked North Korea No.1 - over
Burma, Syria and Uzbekistan - on its list of the 10 most-censored countries.
That would seem to leave the question of Internet access in North Korea moot.
At a time when much of the world takes for granted a fat and growing network of
digitized human knowledge, art, history, thought and debate, it is easy to forget just
how much is being denied the people who live under the veil of darkness revealed in
that satellite photograph.
Indeed, while other restrictive regimes have sought ways to limit the Internet - through
filters and blocks and threats - North Korea has chosen to stay wholly off the grid.
Julien Pain, head of the Internet desk of the Paris-based group Reporters Without
Borders, which tracks Internet censorship, put it more bluntly. "It is by far the worst
Internet black hole," he said.
That is not to say that North Korean officials are not aware of the Internet.
As early as 2000, at the end of a visit to Pyongyang, then-Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright asked Kim to "pick up the telephone any time," to which the North Korean
leader replied, "Please give me your e-mail address" - signaling to everyone that at least
he, if not the average North Korean, was cyber-savvy.
These days, the designated North Korean domain suffix - ".kp" - remains dormant, but
several "official" North Korean sites can be found delivering sweet nothings about the
country and its leader to the global conversation (an example: www.kcckp.net/en/) although these are typically hosted on servers in China or Japan.
Kim, embracing the concept of "distance learning," has established the Kim Il Sung
Open University Web site, www.ournation-school.com, aimed at educating the world on
North Korea's philosophy of "juche" or self-reliance.

But to the extent that students and researchers at universities and a few others have
access to computers, these are linked only to each other - that is, to a nationwide,
closely monitored intranet - according to the OpenNet Initiative, a human rights project
linking researchers from the University of Toronto, Harvard Law School and Cambridge
and Oxford Universities in Britain.
A handful of the elite have access to the wider Web, via a pipeline through China, but
this is almost certainly filtered, monitored and logged.
Some small "information technology stores" - crude cybercafs - have also opened. But
these, too, connect only to the country's closed network, and, according to The Daily
NK, a pro-democracy news site based in South Korea, "classes" can cost more than six
months of wages for the average North Korean.
A generator is also kept on hand, for when the power inevitably goes out.
"It's one thing for authoritarian regimes like China to try to blend the economic catalyst
of access to the Internet with controls designed to sand off the rough edges, forcing
citizens to make a little extra effort to see or create sensitive content," said Jonathan
Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University.
The problem is much more vexing for North Korea, Zittrain said, because its
"comprehensive official fantasy worldview" must remain inviolate.
"In such a situation, any information leakage from the outside world could be
devastating," he said, "and Internet access for the citizenry would have to be so
controlled as to be useless. It couldn't even resemble the Internet as we know it."
But how long can North Korea's leadership keep the country in the dark? Writing in the
International Herald Tribune last year, Rebecca McKinnon, a research fellow at the
Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, suggested that North Korea's ban
on cellphones was being breached on the black market along the Chinese border.
And as more cellphones there become Web-enabled, she suggested, a growing number
of North Koreans, in addition to talking to family in the South, will be quietly raising
digital periscopes.
Of course, there are no polls indicating whether the average North Korean would prefer
nuclear arms or Internet access, but given Kim's interest in weapons, it probably would
not matter.
"No doubt it's harder to make nuclear warheads than to set up an Internet network,"
Pain said. "It's all a question of priority."

Russia Cracks Down on Political Art

On June 11, Alexander Shchednov, known in Russia's art circles as
Shurik, was hanging up a collage outside the town hall in the
southwestern city of Voronezh. The image showed the face of a
coy-looking Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin superimposed
over the head of a woman in an evening dress, with the slogan,
"Oh I don't know ... a third presidential [term] ... it's too much, on
the other hand [three is a charm]." But Shchednov never got the
chance to display his new work. Before he could hang the collage, he was arrested,
becoming the latest in a string of artists to fall victim to the heavy hand of Russian
censorship.
Speaking to the opposition website Kasparov.ru, Elena Dudukina of the Voronezh
human-rights protection group Voronezh-Chernozemye said Shchednov was asked to
give the police a $95 bribe to avoid arrest. When he refused, he was detained overnight
and, according to Dudukina, beaten while in custody; Voronezh police say an
investigation into the allegation is under way. A trial was scheduled for June 15, with
Shchednov charged with "uncensored swearing in a public place." But the artist never
showed up in court, so the hearing has been postponed. (See pictures of the fashions
of Russian Czars.)
Shchednov is one of a growing number of artists in Russia who have been accused of
breaching censorship conventions and insulting authority. There is no specific law that
explicitly forbids anti-Establishment artworks, but law-enforcement figures can easily
find loopholes that they can use to detain artists. They are helped by legislation passed
in 2002 that forbids the expression of extremism. The law is intended to combat farright nationalism, but many artists have been caught in its wide net.
The most high-profile case is that of Andrey Erofeyev, former head of contemporary art
at Moscow's State Tretyakov Gallery. In 2008 he was indicted and charged with inciting
religious hatred after putting on an exhibition a year earlier at the Andrey Sakharov

Museum in Moscow called "Forbidden Art 2006." The paintings depicted in the show
were considered by authorities to be insulting to the Orthodox Church one of the
works showed a crucified Lenin, another portrayed Mickey Mouse as Jesus. Erofeyev
was fired from his job at the Tretyakov in 2008, and his trial is ongoing. "Artists should
not be prosecuted just because someone doesn't like what they do," says Friederike
Behr, a researcher at Amnesty International in Russia. He adds that the antiextremism
law itself is not the problem: "There is a good reason for that law to exist. It's just the
interpretation and implementation of the law [which] is worrying."
Artyom Loskutov, a video artist based in Novosibirsk, Siberia, spent 26 days in prison
before he was released on June 10. He had been arrested after helping to organize an
art gathering called Monstratsia, which was held in Novosibirsk on May 1. The liberal
weekly the New Times reported that 800 people had attended, some of them
brandishing political posters with slogans like "Who is in charge?" On May 15, Loskutov
received a call from the police asking him to come in for a chat. But having already
spoken to authorities two weeks earlier about his involvement in Monstratsia, with no
consequences, he declined. Hours later, he was detained by plainclothes police, who
then claimed to have found 11 grams of marijuana in his belongings. (Read "The
Russians Are Coming.")
"The marijuana wasn't mine," Loskutov, whose art is nonpolitical, tells TIME. "Even if I
was a regular drug taker, I knew the police wanted to see me that day. I would not have
risked having drugs with me." Loskutov was released, but his trial is set for later this
summer. The artist thinks it will be a litmus test for others. "I think the result will say a
lot about the state of art in Russia," he says. "If I am found innocent, it will prove that
there is a certain freedom to express oneself. If I am found guilty, it means we are
approaching a critical time for art and artists in this country."
Artists hoping to avoid becoming a target of Russia's censorship laws may find
themselves forced to take a page out of Ilya Glazunov's book. Last week, Putin visited
Glazunov, one of Russia's most famous painters, at his studio on the artist's 79th
birthday. The Prime Minister paused in front of a painting of a knight, Prince Oleg with
Igor, which Glazunov had completed in 1973. Then he offered his critique that the
sword in the painting was too short. "It would only be good for cutting a sausage," Putin
said. (See pictures of Putin's Patriotic Youth Camp.)
Had this not been Russia, Glazunov might have defended his work. Instead, he
complemented Putin on his eye for detail and said he would correct the mistake. Under

the current climate, he was probably right to when it comes to Russian art, going up
against the authorities has its consequences.
Read more:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905202,00.html#ixzz1kKdA1X9
9

At Least 173 Dead in Libyas Crackdown on Protest

Libyan security forces have opened fire
again on anti-government protesters,
while a U.S.-based rights group has
raised Libyas death toll to 173 from five
days of unrest.
Witnesses Sunday in Libyas secondlargest city, Benghazi, said the security
forces shot at mourners attending a
funeral for protesters killed a day
before.

Human Rights Watch issued its higher death toll report Sunday, as sources
at hospitals in Benghazi said the violence there has killed at least 200
people and wounded hundreds of others.
Protesters demonstrate against Libyan Leader
Moammar Gadhafi, shown on placard at left, in the
Mediterranean port city of Alexandria in Egypt,
February 20, 2011

Libyan security forces also fired Saturday on

crowds gathering for the funerals of activists.

Arab media reports said at least 15 protesters were killed in Saturdays

shootings, which some Benghazi residents described as a massacre.
Witnesses said snipers opened fire after the mourners tried to storm a
military building.
The demonstrations have been largely confined to Benghazi and other
cities in eastern Libya since they began last Tuesday. They represent an
unprecedented challenge to the four-decade rule of Libyan leader
Moammar Gadhafi, whose supporters have staged small rallies in the
capital, Tripoli, in recent days.
There was no independent confirmation of Libyan witnesses accounts of
the violence, as the government has barred local and foreign journalists
from covering the unrest.
The U.S. State Department has issued a warning to Americans to stay away
from eastern Libya, saying more demonstrations and violent incidents are
possible in the coming days. It also said even peaceful protests can quickly
become unruly and foreigners could become a target of harassment or
worse.
Libyan authorities also cut off Internet services in the country Saturday,
denying cyber activists a key tool to mobilize demonstrators.
Gadhafi has tried to defuse the protests by doubling the salaries of state
employees and releasing 110 suspected Islamic militants. He took power in
a 1969 coup and has built his rule on a cult of personality and a network of
family and tribal alliances.

China, Cuba, Other Authoritarian Regimes Censor News From Iran

By Ariana Eunjung Cha

Washington Post Foreign Service

Saturday, June 27, 2009 BEIJING

-- Out of fear that history might repeat

itself, the authoritarian governments of China, Cuba and Burma have been
selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving
government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic
reforms.
Between 1988 and 1990, amid a lesser global economic slump, prodemocracy protests that appeared to inspire and energize one another broke
out in Eastern Europe, Burma, China and elsewhere. Not all evolved into
full-fledged revolutions, but communist regimes fell in a broad swath of countries, and the global balance of
power shifted.
A similar infectiousness has shown up in subtle acts of defiance by democracy advocates around the world this
week.
In China, political commentators tinted their blogs and Twitters green to show their support for Iranians
disputing President Ahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection. The deaths of at least 20 people in violent clashes in
Tehran have drawn comparisons online to "June 4," the date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing in
1989. And a pointed joke about how Iranians are luckier than Chinese because sham elections are better than no
elections made the rounds on the country's vast network of Internet bulletin boards.
"The Iranian people face the same problems as us: news censorship and no freedom to have their own voices,"
28-year-old blogger Zhou Shuguang said in a telephone interview from the inland province of Hunan. Zhou said
he and several friends were among those who had colored their online pictures green, the signature color of the
Iranian opposition.
In Cuba, President Ral Castro's government has imposed a complete blackout of news surrounding the Iranian
elections. But word of developments is trickling through, anyway.
Havana-based blogger Yoani Snchez, 33, who e-mails friends outside Cuba to get her entries posted online,
said the Iranian protests -- in particular, the reportedly widespread use of Twitter, Facebook and cellphones -have served as "a lesson for Cuban bloggers."
"Seeing those young Iranians use all the technology to denounce the injustice, I notice everything that we lack
to support those who maintain blogs from the island," Snchez wrote. "The acid test of our incipient virtual
community has not yet arrived, but maybe it will surprise us tomorrow."
"Today it's you," she told the Iranian protesters in one posting. "Tomorrow it could well be us."
In Burma, the junta's mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, has drowned out news from Tehran with articles
on bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. But some of the nearly 200 journals published privately in Rangoon and
Mandalay have seized on the topic as a way to pass subversive messages to readers.
"What we, the private media, are trying to do was to put in as much stories and pixs of what's going on in
Teheran in our papers. So far we were successful," the editor of a Rangoon-based weekly publication said in an
e-mail. "The upcoming paper of mine . . . will carry, albeit if it's not censored, news stories of the events in
Teheran and a feature on 'Elections and Democracy,' trying to draw some parallels between the one in Iran and
the upcoming one here," a reference to elections, scheduled for 2010, that many critics dismiss as a sham.

Unlike in Iran, however, the experience of past failed protests has yielded a measure of pragmatism in Burma.
Overtly political opposition groups, such as Generation Wave, and numerous apolitical networks have in recent
months focused on a more evolutionary strategy of change, reaching out in particular to Burma's rural masses.
"We cannot go directly to our goal," said a graphic designer who co-founded a group that teaches
social management and governance in Rangoon and remote towns under the cover of English
classes.

Moe Thway, founder of Generation Wave, said Iran's citizens do not appear to be
as depressed or despairing as Burma's. Even the most hard-bitten Burmese
activists see little hope in taking to the streets for now.
"About Iran, I can't say whether their current movement will change the political
trend or not," he said. "Iran and our Burma are still different."
In Venezuela, a South American country that is increasingly polarized, protests
against President Hugo Chvez's administration are common. Juan Meja, 22,
said he found the protests in Iran stirring, partly because he felt that opponents
of the government in Tehran want the same thing as protesters in Caracas.
The fact that people have gone out onto the street, that they demand their rights
be respected, means to us that they felt there was no liberty and that they want a
different country," said Meja, a student leader who opposes Chvez. "We believe that if the people of the world
raise their voices loudly enough -- in Iran, as we do it here in Venezuela, and hopefully one day in Cuba -- then
surely we will have a better world."
Venezuela, as opposed to countries such as Cuba and China, holds frequent elections, and dissent remains a part
of the political discourse. But in a decade in power, Chvez has taken control of the Congress, the courts and the
state oil company, and his opponents charge that he is a dictator in the making.

China, Syria, Censorship

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

While Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and Iran's nuclear program won the spotlight
at the Arab League Summit, held in Libya over the weekend, Arab leaders endorsed a
low profile -- yet dangerous -- document.
Proposed by Syrian President Bashar Assad to presumably "manage Arab differences,"
the first article of the document stipulated that Arab regimes "should not launch any
kind of media campaigns, against each other, for [such campaigns] obstruct the
management of differences, efforts aimed at compromise, and reinstatement of
normalcy [in bilateral relations]."
The Syrian Assad regime, it seems, perceives media as a tool at the disposal of
the state, rather than the "fourth estate" whose job is to participate in the checks and
balances inside individual states, or across countries.
Syria's proposal of this gentlemen's agreement to censor free press comes at the time
the world witnesses a surge in police state behavior.
China, the planet's most prosperous authoritarian regime, has been trying to
bully the giant search engine Google. However, as the world focuses on Google's
freedom fight against China's censorship, the Syrian Initiative wins the unanimous
approval of 22 Arab states, and receives minimal media coverage. After all, Damascus
has blocked Syrian access to Facebook, YouTube, most search engines, and a dozen
other social and political URLs, long before Beijing decided to move against Google.
Police states, like China and Syria, are more sensitive to freedom of the press
than many in the West might think. The free world, for its part, should not remain silent
against Chinese and Syrian violations of such basic human rights.
A common wisdom has emerged in the West, especially among liberal and left
wing circles, that the world should leave regimes and their peoples alone.
Just like many Westerners sympathized with the native Navi tribe living in a tree in the
hit sci-fi movie Avatar, against the White Man's military-industrial resource-hungry
complex, these same Westerners sometimes argue that the West should stay out of the
business of countries like China and Syria.
Such argument is wrong.
There is no nation on earth that enjoys living inside a tree, or prefers state
censorship over freedom. All nations seek modern technology and freedom. While
communicating with trees, like in Avatar, might be a domestic tradition that should be
respected, cultural heritage should never be understood as the antithesis of innovation,
human rights, or freedom.
Police states like China and Syria have tried to hide behind cultural sensitivities
and label basic human rights as Western innovations unfit for their populations. This is
deception.
Meanwhile globalization has been both positive and negative when it comes to police
states.
On the one hand, autocratic regimes are finding it extremely harder to control the flow
of the news and online social networking into their once tightly iron-curtained
countries.
On the other hand, Chinese and Syrian efforts of censorship have expanded. While
Beijing is fighting the world famous Google, Syria took its efforts to like-minded
regional leaders, at the Arab Summit, and got the nod for it.

The good news is that the more China tries to censor Google, the more its authoritarian
behavior is highlighted in world headlines.
The bad news is that, unlike China or even Iran, countries like Syria are
tightening their grip and getting away with it, or rather receiving world praise for a
presumed effort to achieve peace with Israel, a speculation that has been in the news
for the past half century, but has never been realized.
The Syrian censorship document received little to no media attention in the Arab
Middle East, where a new satellite channel opens every week, or in the West.
Arab satellite channels, such as Qatari Al-Jazeera that claims to be a champion of
human rights and scrutinizes every American behavior to propagandize against it, did
not make a big deal out of the Syrian censorship document. To understand why the
always-agitated Al-Jazeera remained silent on the Syrian Arab censorship document,
one should always remember the Syrian perception of how regimes "should not launch
any kind of media campaigns against each other."
The Syrian understanding of media outlets, whether satellite TVs, radios or
newspapers, as regime-owned tools perfectly fits Al-Jazeera, which is owned by Qatar's
despot. And since Assad and the Qatari autocrat have been allies for some years, AlJazeera found nothing wrong with turning a blind eye toward a Syrian initiative that
aims at censoring all Arab media.
Perhaps Al-Jazeera was busy videoing how American troops were presumably
killing innocent Muslims in Afghanistan, agitating its millions of viewers against some
Danish cartoons, or crying foul against veil laws imposed on French women.
China, Syria and Al-Jazeera understand media as a propaganda tool owned by
police states, nothing else. For that, they should be shunned, whether they are good
economic partners, like China, potential peace signatories, like Syria, or owners of
massive deposits of natural gas, like Qatar.

Name ____________________

The Censors,

by Luisa Valenzuela

Instructions: Fill in the chart with quotes from the text.

The Censors by
Luisa Valenzuela

Mood

Description

Paranoid, oppressive, fearful

Clue: What does the job do to

people? Does it make them
more or less caring?

Setting

Write your description below:

Clue: What is Juans

greatest fear? What
happens in the end?

Irony

Write your example of irony

below:

Text Evidence

The style is sparse and direct.

Style

Clue: In your own words,

how would you describe
Juan?
Write your description of him

Characterizatio below and find a quote that

n
fits this description in the
next box.

What is the message in the story? How is it revealed?

Does the message apply to my life? If so, in what way? If not, explain.

Writing a paragraph summary The Censors using the following model

Somebody Wants But So

Description/Purpose
Somebody Wants But So (SWBS) offers you a framework for writing, quick, effective and
informative paragraphs.
somebody
wants
but
so

Examples
Somebody

Harry Potter

Christopher
Columbus and
Spain

Juan from The

Censors

=
=
==
=

Wants
wants to learn
about his parents,
be happy, and
make friends

who - the individual/character

what
complications/problems/conflict
solution/outcome

But

So

Write your paragraph summary using the (SWBS) model below). Be sure to add a
sentence about the message of the story and how irony works by the end of it! (10
points)

Analyzing literature selections for universality of themes

1) A common saying that reflects a possible theme of this section is
a) Birds of a feather flock together.
b) Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
c) He who lives by the sword must die by the sword.
d) In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
2) If we say that a theme of this selection is "Over zealousness can lead to self-destruction," that theme would be an
example of
a) Conflict between the individual and society.
b) Conflict between the individual and nature.
c) Conflict between the individual and himself.
d) Conflict between the individual and his girlfriend.
3) Judging from events in the story, one can conclude that
a) Juan can be easily led.
b) Juan cannot be easily led.
c) Juan is a leader, not a follower.
d) Juan feels very strongly about democracy.
4) Juan proved to be
a) A lazy employee.
b) A bossy manager.

c) A demanding taskmaster.
d) A conscientious employee.
5) The reader can tell that Juan did not fear for his life because
a) He did not have a problem with screening letters for explosives.
b) He did not have a problem with checking letters for poison dust.
c) He censored his own letter.
d) All of the above.
6) It is ironic that Juan would be executed for "his devotion to work," knowing that
a) People are generally rewarded for hard work.
b) He was late to work everyday.
c) His basket was the emptiest one at the Censorship Division.
d) He lived with his mother.
7) That Juan did not fight his execution shows
a) The tremendous amount of pressure he was under.
b) That he had given up a long time ago.
c) How much he had been brainwashed.
d) How much he believed in the system.
8) Being at conflict with the Government illustrates universal themes like
a) Man vs. man
b) Man vs. society
c) Man vs. nature
d) Man vs. woman
9) The ending of the story illustrates irony in that
a) His dedication to his work brought him "swift promotions."
b) His devotion to his job led to his exhaustion.
c) He had snitched on his co-workers.
d) He worried about his letter being censored, and ended up censoring his own harmless letter.
10) Which statement from the passage best expresses a conclusion we can draw from the story?
a) You dont form a habit by doing something once.
b) He had a truly patriotic task, both self-denying and uplifting.
c) His stroke of luck was really one of fates dirty tricks.
d) Juancito let happiness get the better of him.