A sobering account of how governments have used Covid-19 as a pretext for limiting freedom.
Two advocates for journalists’ rights reveal the severe blows to free expression and democracy inflicted by world leaders’ repressive actions during the pandemic.
Drawing on their work with the Committee to Protect Journalists, Simon and Mahoney map the alarming spread of what the World Health Organization calls “the infodemic”—“the flood of misinformation, lies, rumors, half-truths,” and other ills that authorities worldwide have deployed to weaponize Covid-19, risking lives and undermining freedom. “Censorship has been a defining feature of the…pandemic,” they write. Legal and journalistic purists may take issue with their expansion of the traditional definition of censorship to include not just the suppression of information, but its manipulation for harmful ends, as by promoting false narratives or spying on citizens electronically, purportedly to promote public safety. But it’s hard to argue with the wealth of facts, quotes, and stories the authors use to support their case. A startling number of countries have become “less free” during the pandemic: 91 have imposed new censorship measures, and in 80, democracy and human rights have deteriorated, according to a 2020 report by the democracy watchdog Freedom House. The infodemic may have begun when China lied about the origins of Covid-19 (at one point claiming that it originated in imported “frozen food”), but it spread quickly to democracies like Brazil, which pumped out misinformation; and Israel and Norway, which “coerced or cajoled” citizens into releasing personal data on dubious grounds. The “most disappointing result by far” has occurred in India, which Freedom House downgraded from a “free” to “partly free” country after Prime Minister Narendra Modi cracked down on the press, shut down the courts, and vilified Muslims by suggesting that they were spreading the virus. Few readers will disagree with the authors’ conclusion that, in response to such crises, people everywhere must “stand up for our right to speak freely.”
A sobering account of how governments have used Covid-19 as a pretext for limiting freedom.Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73591-368-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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