Tag: censorship

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First Amendment rights general freedom international affairs

Truth, Compassion & Forbearance

China, Falun Gong, genocide

The Chinese Communist Party’s genocidal ways did not begin with the mass Uyghur incarcerations. Twenty-four years ago the CCP kicked off “its brutal campaign to eradicate Falun Gong in China,” writes John A. Deller in The Epoch Times.

“Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) was introduced to the public in China by Mr. Li Hongzhi in May 1992,” explains Mr. Deller. “It is a spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition based on the principles of truth, compassion, and forbearance. . . . By 1998, over 70 million people across China had found improved health and morality through Falun Gong.”

In the West, we may not immediately see how dangerous (to tyrants) a religio-philosophical movement like Falun Gong could be. 

Isn’t it innocuous? When D. T. Suzuki introduced Zen Buddhism to the U.S. in the last century, most Americans . . . yawned. 

But the Chinazis did not yawn. They banned Falun Gong on July 20, 1999. And began arresting and imprisoning and torturing and executing its practitioners.

While Deller insists that Falun Gong was not perceived by most of its practitioners to be intrinsically anti-communist, over the course of the antagonism it has dawned on the persecuted that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is indeed at odds with “truth, compassion, and forbearance.”

What really bothers the CCP? Ideas. 

Of independence . . . forbearance. 

Of truth . . . not propaganda. 

Of compassion . . . the idea that maybe prisoners shouldn’t be killed to facilitate lucrative organ transplants.

The 24-year-old genocide is a memecide, the attempted final solution to these paramount ideas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights media and media people social media

First Amendment: Irrelevant?

censorship, social media, cat

For at least three years, we have all suspected — well, known — that the federal government has been pressuring social-media companies to censor speech that government officials dislike regarding the pandemic and other matters.

One clue: officials like Jennifer Psaki, White House press secretary from 2021 to 2022, forbiddingly and publicly demanded that social-media firms do more to suppress disapproved speech.

Even so, many left-wingers stressed that once allegedly open public forums like YouTube, Facebook, pre-Musk Twitter et al. were private entities with every darn right to set standards for posting. 

Just market decisions, that’s all that was happening here!

Now that litigation has delivered so much evidence that government agencies have been colluding to censor, directly and chronically “working with” social-media firms to suppress dissent, many on the left are not even pretending to favor protection of First Amendment rights to express speech they disagree with.

Jonathan Turley notes that according to The New York Times, a recent ruling temporarily enjoining the Biden Administration from colluding to censor would, by fostering open discourse, lamentably “curtail efforts to combat disinformation.”

Washington Post editors and others on the left “no longer deny censoring,” agrees Jeffrey Tucker. “Now they defend censorship as a policy in the national interest. . . . They don’t even pretend to have respect for the First Amendment that gave rise to the national media in the first place. They now seek a monopoly of opinion and interpretation.”

Yes. Cat’s out of the bag.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights judiciary social media

Censors Cancelled

Federal Judge, social media, censorship

The verb is “enjoin.”

In a July 4 preliminary injunction, Judge Terry Doughty has enjoined federal officials from communicating with social-media companies except on matters pertaining to criminality or threats to national security.

“The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition,” explains Doughty. The government “seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

For a few years now, government officials have asked social-media personnel to censor speech on topics like the pandemic, elections, and laptops dropped off by Hunter Biden, speech that officials want to suppress only because they disagree with it or find it inconvenient. Politically.

A lawsuit brought by Missouri and Louisiana argues that federal officials pressured and colluded with social-media companies to block speech protected by the First Amendment.

Some critics of this and other lawsuits — and of more non-formal objections to the government’s conduct — say that what has been exposed in documents brought to light during litigation, and in the Twitter files, cannot be called governmentally instigated censorship at all.

What’s really going on, they burble, is nothing more than persons working for the FBI, the CDC, the White House, and other such government-force-backed entities idly wondering — in incidental and nonbinding casual conversation, mind you — whether the social-media company they’re just happening to hobnob with could come down like a ton of bricks on the accounts of persons saying things that government officials disapprove. No big deal.

Not the most plausible pseudo-exculpation I’ve ever heard.

The relevant adjective? “Guilty.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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China’s Many Rushdies

China, bounties, crime, censorship, protest

Since when do police place bounties on the heads of former residents who have committed no crime?

Since just now. 

But it depends on how you define “crime.”

For me, to be guilty of a crime you must have committed an objectively definable, willful violation of the rights of others — fraud, robbery, kidnapping, torture, rape, murder. Speech criticizing the crimes of a crime-committing government cannot count as “crime.” To pretend otherwise would be an abuse and usurpation of proper standards of thought.

But the dictatorial Chinese regime is unbound by such considerations.

On July 3, the Hong Kong police, mere lackeys of the mainland government, placed bounties of one million Hong Kong dollars (about $128,000 USD) on the heads of eight pro-democracy dissidents no longer living in Hong Kong.

“We’re absolutely not staging any show or spreading terror,” says top HK police official Steve Li. “We’re enforcing the law.” Oh.

CNN notes that “many of the activists have continued to speak out against what they say is Beijing’s crackdown on their home city’s freedoms and autonomy.”

“What they say” is Beijing’s crackdown? 

Just a smidgen of investigative journalism would enable CNN’s reporters to report, as fact, that there has indeed been a crackdown, that it’s not just “critics” who say that the 2020 National Security Law has been used to destroy the pro-democracy, pro-human rights movement in Hong Kong and “cripple its once vibrant society.”

But I guess folks at CNN dare not risk bounties on their heads, also.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom judiciary

High Court Too Busy

California, gig, contractor, speech, censorship

What is the U.S. SupremeCourt thinking by refusing even to listen to arguments about the effects of California’s AB5 law, which effectively outlaws certain kinds of freelancing and gig work, on the right to speak out and petition in California?

The case is Mobilize the Message, LLC v. Bona. Plaintiffs were challenging the constitutionality of AB5 because it bans independent contractors from doing door-to-door canvassing for candidates or initiative campaigns yet allows independent contractors to do the same kind of work if they’re doing it as newspaper carriers or salesmen.

Of course, if AB5 were completely consistent in its assault on independent contractors, that wouldn’t make it any less injurious to political work and freedom of speech. But the separate and unequal provisions of the act do mean that political workers are being forced to abide by different rules than certain nonpolitical contractors.

That’s not right, not just.

As the Institute for Free Speech puts it, “The only distinguishing feature separating the two [kinds of contractors] is the content of the speech they are paid to promote, a distinction that is presumptively unconstitutional under the First Amendment.”

Lead counsel for the plaintiffs, Alan Gura, says that the Court’s decision will “price political speech beyond the reach of many citizens.”

What’s the deal, are the justices too busy? 

We’re all busy. 

On the other hand, they have a job. A lot of folks in California could use one, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture Internet controversy social media

Google Can’t Have That

censorship

Over the last several years, one has put one’s YouTube speech at risk by addressing such verboten or intermittently suppressed topics as pandemic policy, vaccine efficacy, origin of the COVID-19 virus, “climate change” (are winter, summer, and all natural disasters really caused by carbon footprints? inquiring minds want to know!), 2020 election fraud, and whatever else inspires post-Enlightenment institutional censors to clatter into action.

Because of the emails and other documents that have come to light in various lawsuits, we now know for sure that social-media companies have not been censoring independently. 

They’ve been in cahoots with government agencies — agencies eager to find corporate workarounds to the First Amendment.

A recent target of Google’s YouTube? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Running for president as a Democrat in competition with the alleged incumbent, Joe Biden, this son of assassinated 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy is disturbing the serene pools of so-called thought that constitute Acceptable Opinion and Settled Science.

I often disagree with Kennedy. But I feel that he isn’t just feeding me B.S.; he actually believes stuff. 

He may be mostly wrong, but I prefer that to mostly crooked.

Google has just deleted another Kennedy video, one in which he converses with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson about climate change, COVID-19, and a possible link between exposure to chemicals and sexual dysphoria.

This last musing seems dubious. But, whatever, let the guy talk. Except — hold on — isn’t RFK Jr. causing Joe Biden a lot of political trouble?

Can’t have that. 

Or, anyway, Google can’t have that. 

Or whichever Biden administration officials are directing Google (or vice versa) can’t have that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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No Laughing Matter

China, censorship, comedian, comedy

Without freedom of speech, the jester’s art can be perilous.

Chinese comedian Li Haoshi, who performs under the name House, recently did stand-up comedy at a Beijing club, after which, reports Reuters, “an audience member posted online a description of a joke he had made . . . describing it as demeaning to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).”

That went viral on Chinese social media.

“In the joke,” Reuters explains, “Li recounted seeing two stray dogs he had adopted chase a squirrel and said it had reminded him of the phrase ‘have a good work style, be able to fight and win battles,’ a slogan Chinese President Xi Jinping used in 2013 to praise the PLA’s work ethic.”

Not exactly a ripsnorter, it is hardly biting satire, either — after all, Li steered clear of any mention of Winnie the Pooh.

But no matter. Next thing the funny man’s employer knew, “China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism Bureau said it would fine Shanghai Xiaoguo Culture Media Co 13.35 million yuan and confiscate 1.35 million yuan in ‘illegal gains’ from the firm.”

That’s a cool $2 million U.S. for the ever-so specific crime of “harming society.”

“In response to the fine, Xiaoguo Culture . . . said it had terminated Li’s contract,” and, for good measure if you are a totalitarian, Reuters adds that “Weibo appears to have banned him from posting to his account there.”

“We will never allow any company or individual [to] use the Chinese capital as a stage to wantonly slander the glorious image of the PLA,” declared China’s cultural ministry.

Suffice it to say, China isn’t currently known for its comedy. 

And won’t be until more people perform their own stand-up act.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Whose Brains Fell Out?

Elon Musk, Turkey, democracy, censorship, freedom, ethics

Just before the Turkish presidential election, the Turkish government ordered Twitter to block content that its strongman incumbent apparently found inconvenient. (The election isn’t over; a runoff is scheduled for May 28.)

We don’t know what Twitter was told to censor. All we know is that, although now guided by the somewhat pro-free-speech policies of Elon Musk, Twitter complied, saying it did so “to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey. . . .”

Journalist Matthew Yglesias tweeted that Twitter’s compliance “should generate some interesting Twitter Files reporting.” This is an allusion to internal Twitter communications released by Musk showing how readily and frequently pre-Musk Twitter censored dissenting speech at the behest of U.S. government officials.

The jibe got under Musk’s skin. “Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias?” Musk counter-tweeted. “The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety [in Turkey] or limit access to some tweets.”

But Twitter doesn’t control Turkish policies. It only controls its own policies.

Had Twitter refused and then, in turn, been throttled in Turkey, every Twitter user there would have known about the censorship by their government. Some might have protested. But only a few people in Turkey will know about the Twitter-abetted censorship.

Musk has in effect announced that Twitter will censor anything governments want if only a government willing to block Twitter does the asking. And what tyrants do is up to them. 

Whether we cooperate with their tyranny when we have the means to resist? 

That is up to us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs

Here-at-Home Problem

China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, censorship, propaganda

The China problem is “not just a distant ‘over there’ problem,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) recently argued. “As the spy balloon incident as well as the illegal CCP police stations on American soil illustrate, it’s a ‘right here at home’ problem.”

It’s also a just-north-of-us problem. Canada is currently expelling a Chinese diplomat and dealing with the fallout over China’s interventions in Canadian politics, along with big financial gifts to a foundation for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father.

An article in The Globe and Mail nonchalantly explained the reasons China is engaged in trying to control the speech of every one of the planet’s inhabitants. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has many international goals:

  • “build acceptance abroad for its claims on Taiwan, a self-ruled island that it . . . reserves the right to annex by force.”
  • “play down its conduct in Xinjiang, where the office of former UN Human Rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet last year said China has committed ‘serious human-rights violations.’”
  • “generate support for a draconian 2020 national-security law to silence opposition and dissent in Hong Kong.”
  • “quell foreign support for Tibet, a region China invaded and annexed more than 70 years ago, and to discourage opposition to Beijing’s militarization of the South China Sea and sweeping maritime claims in the region.”

Having committed a long list of crimes against humanity, the CCP understandably demands that everyone keep their mouths shut. 

Rep. Gallagher believes the U.S. should improve “our deterrent posture across the Taiwan Strait” and communicate “in clear terms that we will not stand idly by while the CCP continues to increase its aggression internationally” — while President Biden has repeatedly pledged U.S. military support for Taiwan.

But for some reason, Biden has never discussed the prospect with the American public. 

As if it weren’t our concern, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights general freedom

Freedom vs. Force at Harvard

Harvard, censorship, cancel culture, freedom of thought

Things haven’t been going well for freedom of expression on campus.

Institutions of higher learning where foes of free speech flourish include purported bastions of intellectual discourse like Harvard University. In 2022, Harvard ranked 170th out of 203 schools with respect to free speech on campus in an assessment by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

According to a 2023 College Pulse survey, 26 percent of Harvard students say it’s sometimes okay to use violence to stop speech on campus. Only 27 percent say it’s always wrong to shout down a speaker.

“Many, many people are being threatened with — and actually put through —  disciplinary processes for their exercise of free speech and academic freedom,” says Janet Halley, of Harvard Law School. “Many people think that they’re entitled not to be offended.”

Jeffrey Flier, medical school professor, says free speech has been in decline at Harvard at least since 2007.

Halley, Flier, and more than 100 other Harvard faculty members have newly formed the Council on Academic Freedom.

Flier says it’s been too hard for professors to simply “[put] their head above the parapet [and say] ‘I think this is wrong.’ There hasn’t been any network of people from across the spectrum that could be able to do this. But that’s what we now have in the council.”

The Council seems to be off to a good start. Now let us see how many of the rest of the school’s 2,400 or so faculty members join up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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