Policies at an American school are being driven by a “Christian” law group of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which is part of the national Family Research Council extremist hate group.

A librarian reportedly was surprised when censors used the policies to threaten him.

A new policy banning educators from “advocacy activities” in the Central Bucks School District is already causing confusion and frustration over what that could entail.

Central Bucks South High School librarian Matt Pecic said on Wednesday a principal told him to take down four posters with a quote from Elie Wiesel, a world-renowned Holocaust survivor and author. According to Pecic, the principal said the poster violated the new policy.

Pecic, who has worked in the district for 31 years, was told the posters had to go, or Human Resources would be contacted. Pecic said it was his understanding there would be “consequences” if not followed.

So Pecic removed the posters, telling WHYY News he felt “powerless.”

“If I didn’t take it down, I knew there would be consequences that could impact me,” he said.

“It’s a horrible feeling. And you feel like you have to do something that you don’t agree with,” Pecic added.

The posters had warned “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented”. Censorship of them predictably turned into public condemnation of the school for tormenting its librarian and students.

This school already was under investigation for “creating a hostile learning environment“.

One peculiarly alarming detail is that school administrators said unless they are given a list of exact names to identify anyone alleging abuse, they will make it unsafe for students suspected of alleging abuse.

Another alarming detail is the PR firm Devine and Partners was hired by the school to throw a librarian under the bus with an obvious non-sequitur.

The district’s outside public relations firm, Devine and Partners, released a statement alleging the librarian was “asked by the administration to present the quote in conjunction with Mr. Wiesel’s book in order to promote educational inquiry and student interest in reading the novel, or to take it down. We regret that the decision was made to remove it.”

We have told you to remove the poster, which we will regret if you remove the poster?

That’s quite the gaslit PR position, reminiscent of Kristallnacht.

And what part of a library poster with Mr. Wiesel’s name next to a quote doesn’t rise to the requirement of a promoting educational inquiry in a book by that author?

The school should get its taxpayer money back.

And on that note, what’s with a school issuing hot take down orders on Holocaust posters near International Holocaust Remembrance Day?

Maybe if the school had listened to their librarian, even put the guy in charge, they’d actually learn a thing or two about what “promote educational inquiry and student interest” really means. Censorship is a backwards and upside down way to get there.

Clearly this school is under the sway of some very wealthy and powerful American groups apparently setup (hello Texas) to block education as they torment children, parents and educators.

Cannon was a vocal member of a Facebook group called Moms for Liberty Bucks County PA. Moms for Liberty is a national group that fights for book censorship. When she ran for school board, she and two other candidates were endorsed by the right-wing Proud American Patriots Network. The PAPN was linked with the Three Percenters movement, a right-wing militia group. If you thought Cannon’s fringe ideas and connections would make her unelectable … you’d be wrong.

Canon, while touting her membership in a domestic terror group, has used the backwards and upside down logic tactic extensively.

She claims for example that censoring representation or symbols of the groups she doesn’t like will make them feel her environment is more inclusive of them. That’s exactly backwards, naturally. Nothing says being excluded like having your posters and symbols taken down.

Meanwhile, she posts on Facebook as Debra Theresa to spread motivational quotes from “Adolf Hitler”:

Local news has reported her sentiments very dryly as common for the time and area.

As Pennsylvania life languished in the early days of the pandemic and most people stayed home, vandals left their mark in Philadelphia. The graffiti in March 2020 included multiple swastikas and other symbols of hate, including the white supremacist symbol “1488” that partially pledges allegiance to Hitler. […] The 238 incidents involving white supremacist propaganda in Pennsylvania put it in the top eight states with the most activity, coming behind Texas…

And they point out also it’s no accident we’re talking about schools as a political battleground for such “vandals”.

More than 96% of teachers are white, and more than half of Pennsylvania schools have no teachers of color, according to state data.

Pennsylvania schools run by extremist hate groups, especially those targeting LGBTQ, is something to reflect on this 78th Holocaust memorial weekend.

Thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people were arrested and thrown into camps during Adolf Hitler’s 1933-1945 dictatorship, based on anti-homosexuality laws that preceded and outlasted the Nazi era.

Outlasted is an understatement.

The big story in a nutshell is that Twitter lied and hasn’t fixed security flaws, negligently and catastrophically ignoring customer safety.

An FTC complaint [a decade ago] said far too many Twitter employees could access internal systems and user data, and the company agreed to set up a “comprehensive information security program that is reasonably designed to protect the security, privacy, confidentiality, and integrity of nonpublic consumer information.”

When Zatko testified in Congress that no such plan was in place, a third engineer still at the company told Twitter security executives that a program for tweeting as others was still widely available, and that he had tried to get it shut down or restricted years earlier. That issue was reopened, the complaint says, leading to the discovery of even deeper access that also would allow deletion of tweets or the restoration of tweets that had been deleted — something regular users can’t do on their own accounts.

Though Twitter’s then-leaders had said the number of people who had access to such powerful tools had been cut in 2020, the new whistleblower complaint says the GodMode code remains on the laptop of any engineer who wants it. All they would have to do is change a line of the code from FALSE to TRUE and run it from a production machine that they could reach through an easily accessible communications protocol known as SSH.

“Twitter does not have the capability to log which, if any, engineers use or abuse GodMode,” the complaint says.

It’s very easy to log SSH. That’s kind of the point here. Twitter isn’t doing even the basics to protect its customers from itself.

Terrible company management of a horrible technical design while lying about it; what more could convince you to abandon ship?

It gets worse because there’s now allegedly both heavy internal and external threats from management to censor security experts and hide the slide.

The company’s current head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, did not respond to an email seeking comment on the new claims. […] The whistleblower spoke with The Post on the condition of anonymity because other former employees have been threatened and harassed. …recently departed security staffers said in interviews with The Post that [customer safety and trust] has gotten much worse under Musk.

As I’ve written before, Irwin (after suspiciously fluffing her resume) was very publicly censored by the CEO after she tried to speak freely to external claims. Of course she didn’t respond.

Crashes on the Nurburgring (Ring) have been a problem, as one of the most dangerous tracks in the world, especially in the areas unseen by “marshals” until it’s too late like in 2021.

The driver killed in the pileup was a Nurburgring regular. “There weren’t many marshals on that day. There should be,” a driver and instructor who was on track Monday night said.

That devastating crash was caused by a coolant-leaking Porsche creating a slick, which caused 10 vehicles and motorcycles within a few seconds to lose control, something they fear more than anything.

Koprivica’s fatal crash has left many Ring regulars and local business operators wondering if the track has become too dangerous. It also leaves the community in a precarious spot. Road & Track spoke about safety conditions with a number of people whose livelihood depends on the Ring. Many wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal from circuit management, which controls access to the track. Everyone we spoke to wants change, but many fear the consequences of speaking out publicly. The Ring is the only game in town. No one wants to get shut out. […] “The problem always was, and is now, the amount of marshals there during the week,” Neumann said. “I’d guess there are sometimes only five people, and five people can never see everything over 20 kilometers.”

In a similar vein, a McLaren spilled oil on the Ring causing a huge pileup. Here’s what it looked like in 2017.

To make a finer point, do you see the yellow danger light warning here at 2:13.78, which is about seven seconds before the pileup comes into view?

The heads-up-display on these cars is becoming impressively detailed, yet they have to see a barely visible yellow light to get any sense at all about road safety.

Here’s another example at 120mph involving no spill, after the white car hit the shoulder on the left causing over-steer and drift to the right before crashing into the barrier.

You can see the advantages of having video all along the Ring.

At least those incidents are the kind of things being used to justify laying fiber optic along every inch, to power 100 off-grid cameras with a Ring-side intelligence program.

All 21 kilometers (just over 13 miles) of the Nordschleife will be digitalized as part of a project that will cost the Nurburgring operating company €11 million ($11.95 million). Over the next two years, a “completely new infrastructure will be built” around the track, with foundations laid and storm-proof masts carrying “special HD cameras” erected. While this work is underway, earthworks will be carried out along the track to lay channels for fiber optic and power cables. The Nurburgring will also be adding off-grid systems for power supply, and LED panels for digital warning signs will go up.

The LED panels will warn drivers on track, promising far more coverage than the existing 13 lights, while the intelligence analysis will feed a control room.

An off-grid system might sound strange, but in the 2022 fatal crash people tried to use Facebook software for critical safety updates (group called TrackSecure, started after another fatal crash five years prior) and the service went offline. They have since moved to a standalone cellphone app with the ability to update others even without cell signal.

Enhancement of safety – specifically for the drivers and the safety marshals – by increasing the capacity of perceiving flag signals through an electronic real-time transmission of the marshals‘ flag signals into the driver cockpit under permanent surveillance and control by Race Control.

Really this simple app from 2020 was meant for the dashboard of any car. Instant bright and giant yellow or red flags get displayed on a cellphone screen. Yet it alone couldn’t prevent the latest pile-ups.

What’s most interesting is that the Ring wants to operate as a rural one-way road under generic German traffic rules. Even when considering it a toll-road, it doesn’t want to be classified for the usual safety and insurance requirements of a race track. As such it operates only the five or so marshals mentioned for the entire road on a normal day (versus an organized race day when it runs 1,000 marshals). The need for a cost-effective, private, safety data sharing platform is evident.

This resistance to an expensive and comprehensive race-track safety baseline, while being used as an unofficial race-track, has forced the Ring towards distributed technology solutions.

Its AI doesn’t even have to be very sophisticated, watching primarily bright shoulder lines and alerting on any transgressions, or abrupt speed changes.

People who are in the area might benefit from distributed data storage and consent systems like W3C Solid, which would enable AI processing all to happen without centralization (avoid privacy violation). You can achieve intelligence, privacy and safety too!

Speaking of being over the lines and off-grid, that lesson from Facebook failing at the very moment it was needed for safety… led to the exact right conclusion. Facebook should not be used for anything, especially not safety.