ABC bleeped out the expletive-ridden exchange that followed Will Smiths blow to Chris Rocks face during Sunday nights Academy Awards but it didnt matter since unedited footage of the incident leaked onto social media just minutes later.

As is customary for broadcasts of live shows, ABCs feed was on a 20-second delay to enable producers to cut or bleep foul language or any other display that potentially violates Federal Communications Commission guidelines.

But while the audio was cut and censored for several seconds, closed captions indicated that the King Richard star said, Keep my wifes name out of your fking mouth.

International broadcasting crews, meanwhile, were beaming the raw feed of the awards show to global audiences. Audio from the uncensored Australian broadcast appears to confirm this, including Rocks stunned reaction: Will Smith slapped the st out of me.

So while ABC may have momentarily spared American viewers the tense Rock-Smith exchange, it quickly went viral on their mobile devices.

Rob Mills of ABC, who was in the networks production trailer during the show, told Variety that it quickly became apparent that the incident was not scripted.

Before Smith smacked the comedian, Rock had made a joke about Smiths wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, being in the fake action film because of her bald head. She had previously spoken about having a hair loss condition, alopecia.

Chris Rock came on and he was doing, I think, material based on what happened that night, as any comedian will do, Mills told Variety. He made the [G.I. Jane] joke. Obviously, you could see the joke did not land with Jada. And then you see Will start to get up and walk up.

Mills added: There have certainly been unpredictable moments where people have gotten up and done things, so we thought this was one of those.

Once Rock and Smith both used expletives in their reactions, it dawned on the ABC producers that this was real.

You started to realize this is real once Chris, who certainly knows the limits of broadcast standards, said, Will Smith slapped the st out of me, Mills said. Thats when it became obvious that this was not a joke.

Due to strict FCC guidelines on the use of profanity during domestic broadcasts, Mills said, he and his team erred on the side of caution in censoring the aftermath.

When youre on the button, which I wasnt but our standards people were, I think you obviously go towards overcorrection than letting something get through, Mills said.

American viewers instead relied on clips from overseas, which do not apply the same rigorous requirements against profanity.

Americans can be a bit more puritanical and outraged by these things, a radio producer for BBC told the Washington Post.

See the article here:

How ABC tried -- and failed -- to censor Will Smith slap of Chris Rock - New York Post

On March 27, YouTube removed the entire archive of six years of Chris Hedges On Contact from its platform without any notice or explanation. Even though very few of Hedges shows referenced Russia or Vladimir Putin directly, his association with RT America as well as his opposition to NATO warmongering was all that was required for YouTube to delete hundreds of hours of interviews on a range of political subjects that were critical of both the Democrats and Republicans.

The World Socialist Web Site denounces the malicious and anti-democratic suppression of the archive of On Contact and demands that full public access to it be immediately restored.

As reported previously by the World Socialist Web Site, the Russian state-funded cable news network RT America was shut down in the US on March 3 and all 120 of its employees were laid off at offices located in New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Miami.

Although the management of the news channel said the network had experienced unforeseen business-interruption events, the abrupt shutdown of RT America was no doubt part of the anti-Russian offensive mounted by corporate media outlets and governments aligned with the US and NATO in the proxy war being fought in Ukraine against the regime in Moscow.

Among the RT America programs terminated were several popular left-wing and anti-war TV shows including Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp and On Contact with Chris Hedges. These programs were specifically targeted for censorship because they adopted an anti-war standpoint that was opposed to the narrative developed by the ruling political establishment in the US and Europe.

This campaign to silence voices critical of the role of imperialism in provoking the war in Ukraine has been extended to the removal of video content from YouTube, podcasts from Spotify and other censorship measures by the social media platforms Facebook and Twitter.

Hedges had denounced as a war of aggression the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. But he went on to explain the war in historical context and suggested that the betrayal of agreements with Moscow, which he covered as a reporter in Eastern Europe during the dissolution of the USSR, as well as the expansion of NATO on the perimeter of Russia likely baited Putin to invade Ukraine.

In a statement published on Substack, Hedges wrote of the censorship by YouTube, The entire archive of On Contact, the Emmy-nominated show I hosted for six years for RT America and RT International, has been disappeared from YouTube. I received no inquiry or notice from YouTube. I vanished. In totalitarian systems you exist, then you dont.

Hedges went on to explain that the lack of oppositional content in the mainstream media was one of the reasons he was on RT in the first place, I was on RT because, as a critic of US imperialism, militarism, the corporate control of the two ruling parties, and especially because I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, I was blacklisted.

Hedges denounced the Democrats for being the biggest advocates of online political censorship in the US, The most vocal cheerleaders for this censorship are the liberal class. Democrats in the U.S. Congress have held hearings with the CEOs of social media companies pressuring them to do more to censor content. Banish the troglodytes. Then we will have social cohesion.

He also drew broader conclusions about the meaning of the removal of his programs from YouTube, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden exposed the truth about the criminal inner workings of power. Look where they are now. This censorship is one step removed from Joseph Stalins airbrushing of nonpersons such as Leon Trotsky out of official photographs. It is a destruction of our collective memory. It removes the efforts to examine our reality in ways the ruling class does not appreciate. The goal is to foster historical amnesia. If we dont know what happened in the past, we cannot make sense of the present.

The actions of YouTube, which is owned by Googles corporate parent Alphabet Inc., are part of a coordinated effort by the big social media platforms to silence anyone who does not adopt the political line of the White House and US State Department and label them as Russian propaganda.

Other recent developments include the decision by Twitter as of February 28 to label the tweets of those who worked at RT America with a message that says, Russia state-affiliated media. Absurdly, this includes the Twitter account of Ed Schultz, the former host of MSNBCs The Ed Show and, starting in 2016, the host of News with Ed Schultz on RT America. Schultzs Twitter account now has the Russian state media label even though he died of natural causes on July 5, 2018.

Also reported previously on the WSWS, comedian and activist Lee Camps 500 hours and eight years of video archive of Redacted Tonight was removed from YouTube and his podcast Moment of Clarity was removed from Spotify. In a recent post, Camp called the anti-Russian censorship McCarthyism, We live in a world of immense censorship that is increasing every day. America claims to be this is the place where we have freedom of press or freedom of speech and yet they are deleting everything that is possibly anti-war and anti-imperialist.

On Saturday, Facebook deleted a popular anti-war video produced by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) without explanation. The video, No Third World War! Against Ukraine war, NATO aggression and German rearmament! resonated with the public and had been viewed over 20,000 times within a few days before it was removed.

The video gained a following because it presented a fundamental truth about the present danger of a world war with nuclear weapons. The SGP both condemned the Putin regimes war in Ukraine and explained how the conflict was provoked by the encirclement of Russia by NATO and the wars conducted by the US and its European allies over the past thirty years.

The new round of online censorship is a continuation of the campaign mounted by the tech monopolies under the direction of the intelligence state apparatus that began in 2017 to prevent anti-capitalist and revolutionary socialist political ideas from reaching wide layers of the working class. With the development of the Internet, and especially social media, over the past three decades, the ruling elite fears that its grip on information and political analysis through traditional corporate media channels has been significantly undermined.

The World Socialist Web Site views as a basic responsibility the defense of all progressive and left-wing individuals and political tendencies against government instigated censorship and repression. We therefore urge all supporters and readers to circulate this statement as widely as possible in order to build public support for the restoration of access to Hedges On Contact archive.

Foreword to the German edition of David Norths Quarter Century of War

Johannes Stern, 5 October 2020

After three decades of US-led wars, the outbreak of a third world war, which would be fought with nuclear weapons, is an imminent and concrete danger.

Read more from the original source:

Six years of Chris Hedges' On Contact program erased by YouTube - WSWS

Something both convoluted and disturbing happened on Twitter this week that illustrates why its not enough for lawmakers in Washington to haul Big Tech executives before congressional committees every now and then and give them a good talking to.

Congress actually has to do something about this. Regulating social media giants like Twitter and Facebook as common carriers, prohibiting them from censoring under the absurd pretext that speech they dont like is harmful or abusive, would be a good place to start. If that doesnt happen, Twitter will eventually ban every conservative voice and every media outlet that dares to challenge left-wing pieties about race, gender, and a host of other issues.

Heres what happened. On Wednesday evening, around the time Twitterbegan censoring Federalist articlesby appending a warning they may be unsafe and their contents could be violent or misleading, I got a notice from Twitter support letting me know that someone had complained about a tweet of mine noting that Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, is a man.

As a result, my tweet would be banned, but only in Germany, where, according toTwitters explanationof what it calls, country withheld content, an authorized entity issued a valid legal demand to block my tweet.

I had written the tweet in response to news this week that Twitter locked the account of Charlie Kirk for saying Levine is a man. Banning Kirk made no sense, I wrote, because Levine is obviously a man a man who dresses like a woman, but a man nonetheless.

To be clear, Levine is a 64-year-old man who spent the first 54 years of his life presenting or living publicly as a man. He was married and fathered two children. In 2011, he decided to transition and began dressing and presenting as a woman, changing his name to Rachel Levine (previously, he went by Richard, his given name). He divorced his wife of 25 years in 2013.

Levine is and will always be a man. His story is a sad one, and far from mocking or berating him, conservatives should pray for him and hope that he gets the help he obviously needs.

But none of this is really about Levine. Its about Twitter. Twitter locked Kirks account after itlocked the account of The Babylon Beeearlier this week for postingan articleheadlined, The Babylon Bees Man of the Year is Rachel Levine, riffing onan actual USA Today piecenaming Levine as one of its 2022 women of the year, despite the fact that Levine is a man.

After Twitter locked out the Bee, which is a satirical publication, its Editor in Chief Kyle Mann tweeted, Maybe theyll let us back into our @TheBabylonBee Twitter account if we throw a few thousand Uighurs in a concentration camp, which prompted Twitter to lock Manns account for hatful conduct. Later, the Bees founder Adam Ford was locked out of Twitter for retweeting Mann.

While all this was going on, articles at The Federalist suddenly started getting blocked by Twitter. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the handful of articles that were blocked, but it started withan article by Libby Emmonspublished Wednesday morning entitled, Everybody Knows Rachel Levine Is Truly A Man, Including Rachel Levine.

When my colleague Tristan Justiceasked Twitter about it, a spokesperson told him, the URLs referenced were mistakenly marked under our unsafe links policy this action has been reversed. Nothing to see here, it was all just a big mistake!

But we all know it wasnt. It was no more a mistake than my tweet getting flagged in Germany, of all places, or Kirk and Mann and Ford and the Bee all getting locked out of their accounts. This kind of behavior from social media companies has become all too common for anyone to believe that getting locked out of your account or getting an article taken down is ever a mistake, and certainly not when the tweet or article in question is asserting the plain truth that a man does not become a woman simply by growing his hair out and putting on a skirt. When youre account is locked overthat, its on purpose, and the point is to shut you up.

And its not just Twitter. This week, YouTuberemoved a bunch of videosfrom the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, including a speech by J.D. Vance and a panel discussion with Federalist CEO Sean Davis, Rachel Bovard, and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. a panel discussion that happened to be aboutthe harms of Big Tech and how federal law protects them from liability.

Its obvious that these firms will eventually silence everyone who dissents from their woke ideology. Theyre not even trying to hide it anymore. If you say that Rachel Levine is a man, or that Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania swimmer who just won an NCAA Division I national championship, is a man, they will come after you. It doesnt matter that Levine and Thomas are in fact men. Truth is no defense against censorship by Big Tech.

So until Congress under what would have to be a Republican majority, given Democrats enthusiasm for online censorship acts to put an end to this, it will continue. And the list of things you cant say will grow. Before long, you wont be able to say, for example, that abortion is the taking of a human life, that gay marriage is not the same as marriage between a man and a woman, or that children should not be taught that America is systemically racist.

In such an environment, the only way to ensure the censors dont come after you is to follow the extraordinary example of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was asked by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., on Tuesday during the confirmation hearing to define the word woman. Jackson replied, infamously, Im not a biologist.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

The rest is here:

If Congress Doesn't Rein In Big Tech, Censors Will Eliminate The Right From Public Discourse - The Federalist

To message a friend, you have to know which app theyre using. Someone might not respond to texts or Signal, but might be addicted to WhatsApp. The DMA, which is closer to becoming law after European authorities signed off on it last week, will require large messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp to open up to smaller networks (if the platform requests it). That means your iMessage text could be received by someone who only uses Signal, for instance.

The largest messaging services (such as [WhatsApp], Facebook Messenger or iMessage) will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms, if they so request, EU lawmakers agreed. Users of small or big platforms would then be able to exchange messages, send files or make video calls across messaging apps, thus giving them more choice.

Sounds great, right? Interoperability supporters are celebrating the new rules, but those advocates and security experts alike also have questions: How would this work, exactly? Where will user data be stored? What does this mean for end-to-end encryption?

Researcher Carla Griggio has studied interoperability at Aarhus Universitys Department of Computer Science and said the DMA is essentially about letting users have the freedom to decide where they want to communicate without being cut off from the people who choose to use a different messaging platform.

Having this law ask at least the biggest platforms to open up would allow you, for example, to choose to stop using WhatsApp if you wanted without being cut off from communication with the people that still choose to use WhatsApp, she said.

But Griggio said its still unclear whether people will be able to control who reaches them where. How are we still going to have control over where we communicate with whom? she said.

Theres also a social component to making messaging platforms work seamlessly together, she said. iMessage, for instance, allows users to send stickers or animations, but its unclear whether those functionalities can be carried over when communicating with people on different apps. If anything in the content of the conversation is not part of that contract between apps, for example stickers or voice messages, I don't think that interoperability is going to work, she said. And it's going to bring frustrations, miscommunication.

The other big question is how end-to-end-encryption will work across all apps. Security experts are concerned it will need to be weakened or dropped for the sake of interoperability. Neil Brown, managing director of the internet-focused law firm decoded.legal, said requiring users to accept weaker security in order for platforms to remain interoperable would seem counterintuitive.

Brown said he could see platforms offering end-to-end encryption giving their users a heads-up if theyre working with platforms that do not offer the same.

I would not be surprised that, if platforms offering end-to-end encryption were able to interoperate with platforms which do not, they would warn their users about the implications of those originating communications from a non-end-to-end encrypted platform, he said.

There could be one way to allow for interoperability while circumventing these concerns about end-to-end encryption and data privacy, said Conrad Kramer, who has worked on Apples Shortcuts feature and co-founded Workflow. Kramer said companies like Apple, Meta and others could open their messaging service APIs to one central app. From there, users would be able to choose whether they want to send a message from iMessage or Signal or Messenger without opening those apps.

The rules may also have the effect of allowing Android users to finally have access to iMessage (though no word on whether the green and blue bubble divide will come to a close).

[If] I am a smaller messaging app, and I would like to interoperate with WhatsApp and iMessage, those companies would be legally required to provide an API for my app to reach into and talk to the iMessage and WhatsApp networks," he said.

In the case that abuse occurs through a messaging platform or the government needed messaging data for whatever reason, the network where the message traveled to would be responsible: If you are using iMessage, and you message over the WhatsApp network to someone else on WhatsApp, the answer is Facebook because Facebook operates the network that the message traversed," Kramer said.

Kramer said the main concern with encryption is that if the rules required the servers of Apple or Facebook to talk (or interoperate), then an iMessage going to WhatsApp would potentially need to be decrypted from iMessage and then re-encrypted for WhatsApp: at which point that is breaking the encryption. But it would be less of an issue if the message traveled through one network.

In any model where the message traverses a single network, and it goes from one phone to another phone, the encryption would still preserved and not broken," he said.

Regardless, platforms are going to need to cross engineering hurdles to make interoperability work. Apple is already worried the rules will create security vulnerabilities, while Google thinks theyll hinder innovation.

Requiring coordination between large tech companies is something that is very hard to do, Kramer said. They do not like each other, they do not work well together.

Read more:

Google ordered translators to censor the word 'war' in Russia - Protocol

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Oliver Cain saw his online social media presence scrubbed because of an image depicting a shirtless man.

Virginia Fallon is a Stuff senior writer and columnist.

OPINION: I have to admit that when I saw first saw male nipples had been cancelled I thought it was funny.

Not really funny-funny but a sort of other-funny, an amusement that used to be rooted in anger long before it morphed into cynicism. Nonetheless, I laughed a little at the recent headline.

Womens nipples have been cancelled for ages, so its only fair male mammilla should follow suit. Theres not much difference between the little raised regions of tissue after all, and if one bare chest should be deemed offensive then equality dictates that so should all of them.

Then, dammit, I read the whole story, and it wasnt any sort of funny at all. Now Im just back to being angry.

READ MORE:* Instagram reinstates queer Auckland artist's page after 'homophobic' complaints* Artist's social media shut down after 'homophobic' complaints about cartoon nipples* Timaru painter's realist 'painterly' feel exhibition

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The social media ban was a nightmare for Cain, who lost access to clients and contacts across the globe.

Auckland artist Oliver Cains social media was recently shut down following homophobic complaints about one of his works: a stylised painting of the chest of a man with blue skin and bright pink nipples.

The work was intended for an exhibition as part of Aucklands Pride festival, though when Omicron saw many of the events cancelled, Cain went ahead with his own show, paying for a few sponsored Instagram posts to advertise it.

Because the exhibition had a light homoerotic theme, Cain chose what he thought was the safest painting to feature online because I know how some people can be. They were, and his account was blocked because hed been posting offensive content.

Compare that to all the other shirtless people on Facebook and Instagram, and it doesn't really make sense, he said.

His first appeal to reinstate his account was denied and a subsequent one ignored, though after Stuff ran a story hes back up and running.

Karoline Tuckey/Stuff

Photographer Mariana Waculicz had her work displayed at an exhibition in Levin removed due to complaints from the public due to the model's nipples being visible. Shes pictured here with another of her pieces.

Until I read about Cains experience I foolishly thought the only inoffensive nipples were those belonging to men. Now I realise theres a caveat: they have to belong to straight men.

Womens nipples are objectionable regardless of the sexual orientation of their owners, of course. Instagram bans them, and only permitted videos and pictures of breastfeeding in 2014 following pressure from activists. Even in the offline art world, Kiwis have long displayed the same prudish aversion to the tiny little things.

Photographer Mariana Waculicz had a work banned from a 2017 exhibition for depicting a topless woman in a river, and that same year The NZ Woman's Weekly refused to run a breast cancer awareness advertisement showing Aucklander Anete Smith topless after a mastectomy.

Smith's reconstructed breasts and nipples were displayed in a gorgeous re-creation of Rubens painting Samson and Delilah, something the magazines editor said could be deemed inappropriate by readers. Instead, they ran an ad featuring a different woman who did not have nipples after her mastectomy.

Its probably unsurprising I have a tale about the time a single nipple nearly got me cancelled.

While pregnant, I posed topless in a bath of milk for an exhibition about new and expectant parents, and the resulting image offended some viewers. The gallery owner demanded the picture be removed, the artist fought back, and the work remained displayed next to one of a newborn snuggled against his fathers naked chest. That was 21 years ago: look how far weve come.

The issue of cancelling nipples in art is about inequality, deep sexism, and perpetuating shame of our bodies. Gender and sexual orientation should have nothing to do with what makes nipples offensive, if indeed they ever are.

By the way, at that long-ago exhibition my young son stood before my photo and studied it silently for a very long time.

Thats a pretty picture, Mum, he said eventually, I like your smile.

More:

A ban on cartoon nipples is just the tip of our censorship problem. - Stuff

TULLY, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) An overwhelming week for Tully High School Senior Tyler Johnson didnt get any easier.

I get a phone call from one of my friends and they said did you hear what is happening and I said no what are you talking about and at this point Im like oh no here we go again.

A high school English teacher assigned students a worksheet on verifying sources, using recent news articles about Tyler. It asked questions like how do you know its a credible web page? How do you know this is a reputable author?

Essentially trying to what seems to be censoring me just like Mr. OBrien and Mr. Hughes have done to me and Kyle and it feels like were not making any progress within the situation, Johnson said.

The assignment has since been removed. Superintendent Hughes responded to NewsChannel 9s request for comment saying in an email in part:

We trust our teachers to develop lesson plans that help our students learn and grow. Obviously given the emotional nature of the issue, this lesson was not appropriate and when we learned of it, we instructed the teacher to stop it immediately.

They put out in their letter how theyre going to support all LGBTQIA+ students and staff, but they still, its the third letter now and they still havent told us how theyre going to do that.

Now, Johsnon says he feels uncertain in a place where he used to feel so confident.

For me, that building has become such an uncomfortable place for me to be. When I walk in my anxiety is through the roof, Johnson said.

Hoping he can start to move forward and begin to heal.

Read more here:

Controversy continues at Tully: English teacher calls into question credibility of recent gay censorship - WSYR

Over a dozen House Republicans sent a letter Friday to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal threatening to hold social media companies accountable for censoring conservative voices.

The letter highlighted Twitters suspension of the account of Dr. Robert Malone, a researcher involved in the development of mRNA vaccines who has been critical of the vaccine program. The lawmakers said the reasons for Twitters censorship were not transparent and those who are banned or censored dont have a clearly available recourse.

For far too long, Big Tech companies, such as Twitter, have been able to censor important voices without recourse available to those affected, said the letter, which was spearheaded by Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas. While the 117th Congress has failed to address the need to update and modify Federal law and regulations impacting the internet and social media, it is highly probable that under new leadership in 2023, Congress will spearhead an effort to hold Big Tech accountable for its arbitrary censorship practices.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dr. Malone has questioned the U.S. government and pharmaceutical industrys conduct responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and developing vaccines. Twitter banned him in early January after his tweets questioned the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.

The ban came just three months after Mr. Agrawal took over the top job at the social media platform. Since then, several high-profile accounts were banned, suspended or their content was restricted. The recently targeted posts appeared to mostly involve COVID-19 or criticism of the Biden administration.

Censored Twitter accounts include those of Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia, the Daily Wires Matt Walsh, the Blaze Media Podcaster Daniel Horowitz, Project Veritas Chief of Staff Eric Spracklen and scientist Michael Makris.

The Congress members asked Mr. Agrawal several questions about Dr. Malones suspension from Twitter including the specific post that Dr. Malone violated within Twitters COVID-19 misleading information policy that led to the suspension of his Twitter account.

They also asked if Twitters COVID-19 misleading information policy is synthetic and manipulated media policy changed since your becoming CEO? If so, would Dr. Malones account have been suspended under the prior policies for the same post?

The letter notes that one of Twitters stated principles is Making it straightforward. Simple is good, but straightforward is better. Our product, our behavior, and our work habits should all be transparent and to the point.

They also asked if Mr. Agrawal believes that suspending accounts without explanation complies with his companys principle of being straightforward and transparent?

Visit link:

House GOPers demand answers from Twitter CEO about censorship, Robert Malone suspension - Washington Times

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee wants to make it a misdemeanor for politicians to lie about election results. Yes, of course this would violate the First Amendment.

To justify the idea, Inslee is invoking the anniversary of the riot at the U.S. Capitol. "January 6 is a reminder not only of the insurrection that happened one year ago, but that there is an ongoing coup attempt by candidates and elected officials to overturn our democracy. They are willing to do this by provoking violence, and today I proposed we do something about that," he wrote last week.

He does not indicate what this has to do with elections in Washington state, all the way on the other side of the country, which is the only place where his law would apply.

In August, five Republican legislators in Inslee's state held a rally encouraging the conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. They cannot be punished for such speech, because the First Amendment protects such argumentsyes, even false arguments.

Inslee thinks he can get around these protections by targeting falsehoods that are spread "for the purpose of undermining the election process" and"likely to incite or cause lawlessness." The wording of the bill is not publicly available yet, but the governor seems sure that it will fit within the limits of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the 1969 Supreme Court case establishing that speech inciting lawless action is not protected.

But that precedent requires the threat of lawless action to be "imminent." Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, notes that this is not a minor threshold.

"If I'm standing outside a police station and yelling 'burn it down,'" that counts as calling for imminent lawless action, Volokh explains. "But just saying an election is a fraud and we should do about it isn't incitement." And to the extent that speech can incite imminent violence, Washington already has a law criminalizing it.

Volokh also notes that courts have historically been reluctant to give officials the authority to punish certain types of false speech about the government itself. Some laws, like those that forbid lying about when and where elections take place, have passed muster. But trying to outlaw speech that questions the legitimacy of election results echoes the Sedition Act of 1798, which permitted the punishment of anybody publishing "false, scandalous, or malicious writing" about the United States. "This is part of the debate in the U.S. that is literally 225 years old," Volokh says.

The Sedition Act expired in 1801, but Inslee's arguments echo the arguments made for the act back thenthe idea that if false speech undermines the government's credibility, it may foster violence against the government. Since then, many courts have recognized that such censorship can suppress legitimate allegations about government misconduct. The court precedents are not in Inslee's favor here, Volokh says. (Volokh has written more on the proposal here.)

There's a sharp irony to Inslee's efforts. A law that censors critiques of elections, even if these critiques are outright lies, would surely fan doubts about elections' legitimacy. By trying to suppress distrust in government, the law would foster it instead.

In case there are any questions about whether Inslee grasps the limits on the government's power to censor, he has defended his proposal by blithely invoking the "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater" clich. When a public figure deploys that quote from 1919's Schenck v. United States, it's virtually always a sign that he knows very little about the First Amendment's history. If you want to convince people that you'll censor in a restrained way, don't quote from a case authorizing the imprisonment of protesters who had been distributing anti-draft pamphlets.

Read more:

Washington's Governor Wants To Prevent Another January 6 with Unconstitutional Censorship - Reason

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On New Years Eve Badiucao, a famous Chinese dissident artist, was landing in Melbourne on his way back from Italy, where the Chinese government had severely pressuerd his exhibition in Brescia. Currently, the so-called Chinese Banksy, is in self-exile in Australia.

In this interview Badiucao explains the role of his art, linked to a past of family persecutions since the Mao era. How did this former law student become a dissident artist under the wing of Ai Weiwei, through artistic projects that mix human rights awareness and new technologies? Above all, the dialogue with Badiucao is crucial to understand how China exerts its propaganda outside its borders through multiple levels: from coercion and boycotts to judicial accusations, stalking, and death threats.

How did you experience Beijings attempt to boycott your exhibition in Brescia?

Threats and boycott attempts are common in my performances, but I can say in Italy I enjoyed a whole menu of warnings. It all started with a letter from the Chinese government where they threatened to jeopardize future collaborations with the Brescia Museum and the city. I really appreciated the reaction of Brescia. They welcomed me, giving an example to the world and opposing Beijing.

Get briefed on the story of the week, and developing stories to watch across the Asia-Pacific.

The second attempt was online, where accounts related to the government started a hate campaign against me. There were also soft warnings Chinese people who showed up during the exhibition claiming to be supporters while warning me about the dangers of staying in Italy, where people die on the streets for no reason. I havent told anyone yet, but in Brescia I was forced to change hotels every day. So I thought: Now, I could work for Yelp [the business review website].

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In a recent documentary you decided to reveal your identity, explaining both your reasons and the consequences: threats to you and your family, canceled exhibitions, surveillance on your phone, home invasion, and stalking. You say the CCP awaits the moment of revenge when there is less media attention. What do you mean? How did they find out your identity? How is your family now?

I moved to Australia in 2009 and started making political cartoons in 2011.

During the Hu Jintao administration?

Thats right, I can say it was an okay period.

Better than Xi Jinping?

Yes, there was much more digital freedom. Xi on the other hand never stops providing material for satirists; hes like Trump. However, this does not mean that the government wouldnt want to control the internet in 2011 as well. In that period they arrested Liu Xiaobo, Nobel laureate for peace. So, social networks were simply a new, not-regulated thing [in 2011].

I applied for Australian citizenship to be more protected and free. I hid my identity for seven years but through traces left on social media and my ties with Ai Weiwei in Berlin, finally the government connected the dots and got my identity. This exposed my family in China to different risks, so I canceled my exhibition in Hong Kong and made a documentary (the director was threatened as well) to show my real face. The more I make art, the more I feel protected by public consideration.

My family is still in China, but I prefer not to contact them to avoid them being persecuted.

So they forced you not to hear from your family?

No, it was my choice.

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A free choice?

No, it hurts me.

Recently, you revealed: I want to extend the definition of art. I consider myself an artist; being an activist is just a side effect of being an artist in China. Why did a law student decide to become an artist? How did you meet Ai Weiwei and how did he inspire you?

I come from a family of filmmakers who were persecuted during the Maoist 100 Flowers Campaign in the 1950s. I always wanted to be an artist, but art was not well seen at home. I initially followed my family wish, which was to be a lawyer, but then I met Ai Weiwei on Twitter. Although he is very famous, he is also very helpful and easy-going. He gave me a lot of advice, until I started working with him and a magical friendship was born. Ai Weiwei is an inspiration for human rights, not only Chinese but also European ones.

Indeed, you often talk about Chinese government problems, but since you live in Australia, what idea did you have of the critical issues of Western liberal-democratic systems?

Ai does not use the internet to promote his art, he makes art with the internet itself and he spoke, for example, about the migrant tragedy in Europe. I think that if Europe and the U.S. want the world to respect human rights, they must do more at home. Because every time China is accused of not respecting them, the [Chinese government] propaganda replies, violations still persist in the West as well. This does not mean we should not continue to report violations around the world. Human rights issues remain universal.

However, I am also thinking of leaving Australia to see if other places like Europe or the U.S. are more open-minded. In Melbourne, the links between the Australian and Chinese governments often impose self-censorship or prevent me from accessing certain spaces or developing certain initiatives.

During the Tiananmen anniversary you began a campaign against Twitter, requesting the social media giant create a tank man emoji to remember the Tiananmen massacre. How is this initiative going? What do you mean when you say dont use the internet to promote art but make art with the internet?

The tank man emoji is exactly one of the many ways of making art with the internet. It is also bringing the scientific community to take a stand. Creating a new emoji means working with the Unicode language, and every year the Unicode community meets to decide what can be integrated or removed. Furthermore, now I am thinking of a project with NFTs (non-fungible tokens) where the blockchain technology will prevent them from being modified or censored.

What ways do people use to circumvent Beijings censorship? How popular is your art in Chinese communities around the world and in rural areas of China?

There are tons of ways to avoid censorship in China, but you need knowledge about basic English and VPNs. It is not for everyone. Some Chinese think I am a CIA agent. As mentioned, propaganda and censorship also go abroad, not necessarily with intimidation and agreements, but simply through systems like WeChat. If you are an entrepreneur who wants to promote tourism in China, you must use it, and if your attitude is unwelcome, you will have problems. So, if you want to do business, you better keep politics or even human rights out of it. Furthermore, Chinese people can only have one citizenship and many of those living abroad want to remain Chinese and to keep contacts with their country.

I understand both sides, those who are more closed and those who are more open. They too face a struggle for their identity, just like me.

Read the original here:

Badiucao Explains How China Exports Its Propaganda and Censorship to the West - The Diplomat

Five for Fighting frontman John Ondrasik spoke out against censorship on Monday during an appearance on "Americas Newsroom" after YouTube temporarily removed and then reinstated a music video of his song "Blood on my Hands," which criticized the U.S. for its handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

"It seems that freedom of expression only matters when the censorship applies to our side, our tribal team," Ondrasik told co-host, Dana Perino. "If its criticizing somebody thats on our side, well so what, censorship. Its all political."

Ondrasik went on to say that bringing attention to the American citizens and allies left behind, the children sold for food, the lesbians and gays who have been murdered, and the women who have had their rights stripped away was not a political message, but rather a moral one.

JOHN ONDRASIK RELEASES GRAPHIC VIDEO FOR 'BLOOD ON MY HANDS' FEATURING FOOTAGE OF AFGHANISTAN UNDER TALIBAN

He also took aim at celebrities and human rights activists that "stand on their soapboxes and preach about their moral compassion" while remaining silent on the abuses occurring within Afghanistan as a result of U.S. indifference and complicity.

John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting at PBS' 2017 National Memorial Day Concert Rehearsals at U.S. Capitol on May 27, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Capital Concerts)

"Frankly none of them stood up for me when YouTube took my video down. Their silence I think speaks loudly, and it makes you wonder if the whole thing's an act."

The video, which used real-world footage depicting atrocities by the Taliban and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, was reportedly flagged as having violated YouTubes "graphic content policy."

Once the video gained traction, Ondrasik claimed YouTube removed the video, citing issues with its graphic imagery, despite other similar videos of Taliban atrocities existing on the tech platform. Roughly nine hours after the songwriter tweeted about his video having been removed, YouTube reinstated it. The platform added a warning that the video could be "inappropriate or offensive to some audiences."

Hundreds of people gather near a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane at a perimeter at the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP)

"This was our mistake, and weve reinstated your video. So sorry this happened, and thanks for being patient while we worked this out," Team YouTube said on Twitter, followed by a prayer hands emoji.

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The singer-songwriter added that the flip-flop by YouTube was perplexing and probably would have never occurred without a national outcry to reinstate the video.

Fox News' Caitlin McFall contributed to this report.

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John Ondrasik warns of political censorship after YouTube temporarily removed Afghan withdrawal music video - Fox News