Here in the United States, we lack an official government mouthpiece; a publication solely dedicated to trumpeting the governments every action. Fortunately, Chinas Xinhua News, China Daily, Peoples Daily, and China Global Television Network all trumpet their governments successes around the world. Some of these reported successes are Confucius Institutes. Lets take a look at their history, and what a Chinese government approved version of education is like.

First championed by Politburo member Li Changchun in 2011, the institutes are, in his words, an appealing brand for expanding [Chinese] culture abroadthe Confucius brand has a natural attractiveness. Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical. The institutes are overseen by the Ministry of Education, informally known as Hanban, and are part of a propaganda initiative that has $10 billion in funding behind it. The institutes espouse a Beijing-approved version of Chinese culture and history, ignoring human rights concerns and teaching that Tibet and Taiwan indisputably belong to mainland China, a la Manifest Destiny.

Minister of Propaganda Liu Yushan celebrated the institutes expansion across the world in Peoples Daily: We should actively carry out international propaganda battles against issuers such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, human rights and Falun Gongwe must establish overseas cultural centers and Confucius Institutes.

To Mr. Changchuns credit, the Chinese government has found out that many American colleges desire one thing above all: money. Exploiting a reduction in college funding from the American government, many Confucius Institutes bring millions of dollars for the universities that accept them into their communities. As Politico reports, colleges get to outsource Chinese language instruction, while still collecting their free money. This has led to Confucius Institutes being established across the United States and a complete list can be found here. According to a report put together by Dr. Marshall Sahlins, teachers within the institutes are carefully vetted by Hanban, and need to possess a strong sense of mission, glory, responsibility, and to explicitly ban discussion of human rights in China or the Tiananmen Square massacre. If a student raises uncomfortable questions about the political status of Tibet, Haban orders instructors to refocus the discussion on Tibets natural beauty or indigenous culture. Thats not exactly a place for academic freedom or freedom of inquiry.

Several controversies have marked Confucius Institutes government propaganda in recent years. When Matteo Mecacci of the International Campaign for Tibet requested a sample of course materials from an institute in Washington D.C., he received books and DVDs from the State Council Information Office, whose main function is to produce propaganda products. One student at the University of Kentuckys Confucius Institute recalls one of the faculty responding to a question about air pollution in China by stating that reports of air pollution were misinformation reported by U.S. media.

Another controversy involved a slip up by Hanban officials in their vetting process. Sonia Zhao, a Chinese national, was dispatched to McMaster University in Canada to teach Chinese language. Unbeknownst to Hanban, she was a practitioner of Falun Gong (a Buddhist spiritual movement), and she was ordered to renounce her faith in order to secure her permanent employment. She later quit, arguing that McMaster University was giving legitimization to discrimination. Her contract stated that she was forbidden from joining illegal organizations like the Falun Gong.

Under Canadian and U.S. law, such discrimination because of religious beliefs is illegal, and McMaster University later shuttered the institute due to its hiring practices. At North Carolina State, a visit by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was scuttled by the university in order to avoid hurting strong relationships [they] were developing with China. Confucius Institutes are also expanding into primary and secondary education, with many Confucius Classrooms setting up shop in education systems around the world, most notably the City of Chicago Public School System.

Luckily, public officials and academics across the world are starting to wake up to this trend of cultural imperialism in higher education. What is the purpose of college if it does not challenge, reform, and inform the way you see the world? The American Association of University Professors recommended in 2014 that universities cease their involvement with Confucius Institutes unless several reforms are made, including standardizing freedom of inquiry for all faculty in the institutes and making the contracts between the institutes public.

The United States Senate Committee on Investigations published a report on their recommendations to the Department of Education and the State Department on how to address the Confucius Institutes Communist Party-approved programs. Committee Chairman Rob Portman (R-OH) and ranking member Tom Carper (D-DE) agreed that Confucius Institutes are part of a broader strategy to export Chinas censorship to American college campuses. The report concludes that unless the Institutes become fully transparent and the Chinese government reciprocates by welcoming the State Departments funded American Cultural Centers into China, Confucius Institutes should not continue in the United States.

Who cares, right? Bates College does not have a Confucius Institute. Sadly, however, some Chinese students at Bates are very careful not to express their political opinions publicly. One student at Bates told me that they dont do anything political. [They are] worried if therell be any consequences back home for [them] or [their] family. This student is one of many Chinese students in universities across the country that consciously keep their opinions about their government under wraps. Dan Wang, a pro-democracy activist, elaborates on the methods that the Chinese government uses to silence critics in the U.S. in a piece for The New York Times. Another student at the University of Minnesota, Luo Daiqing, was arrested upon his return to China for posting comment denigrating a national leaders image and indecent pictures.

This is the reality that some Bates students deal with every day, in fact, two of the people I talked to prefer that I not even quote them out of fear that they might be subject to repercussions back home. Many schools dont even need a brick and mortar Confucius Institute to silence government critics. The students that spoke with me are courageous individuals, and I especially want to offer thanks to the individual who gave me permission to quote them in my article. If youd like to learn more, be sure to check out the links to the previous paragraph about what it is students go through on some campuses, despite lacking an actual Confucius Institute. Authoritarianism takes many forms and in the age of technology can be extended to oppress individuals even beyond the borders of a single country.

Excerpt from:

Xi's Reach: Propaganda and Self-Censorship on Campus - The Bates Student

To the victors go the spoils, they say, but in the siege of online censorship over freedom of thought, the statues are being toppled before theyve even laid the foundation, and history is being re-written in real-time.

We have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood Thomas Jefferson

Social media companies like Facebook fuel polarization, and they were created for mass deception intentionallyby design.

Their algorithms are trained to keep people on the platform as long as possible as they continue toamplify division,and the majority of the American people believe social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints.

As of June, 2020, roughly three-quarters of US adults said it was very (37%) or somewhat (36%) likely that social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints that they find objectionable. Just 25% believed this was not likely the case, according to a PEW Research Center survey.

Citizens of a free society can only make informed decisions based on the information that is available to them.

But when information is suppressed and skewed, as with censorship in the name of fighting online misinformation, then the people are stripped of their right to review and assess the information for themselves.

With the discrimination between truth and falsehood [] the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness Thomas Jefferson

In fact Thomas Jefferson wrestled with this conundrum. He knew that misinformation was a scourge among the press, but logic and reason dictated to him that it was better to allow the free exchange of ideas and to let the public decide on their merits rather than to censor anyones voice.

Jefferson penned a letter to Marc Auguste Pictet on February 5, 1803, in which he stated:

Our newspapers for the most part, present only the caricatures of disaffected minds.

Indeed the abuses of the freedom of the press here have been carried to a length never before known or borne by any civilized nation, but it is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use [. . .] of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood, and hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.

Allow them to print, and let the public decide.

But in order for the public to decide, it must be privy to all sides of an argument, not just the ones approved by the authoritative sources decreed by the magistrate.

The House of Representatives urges all Americans, regardless of our beliefs or partisan affiliation, to seek information from authoritative sources and to engage in political debate from a common factual foundation H Res 1154

Earlier this month Congress passed House Resolution 1154,which condemns believing in conspiracy theories and encourages that all Americans seek information from authoritative sources.

Thinking for yourself or exploring any line of questioning that isnt the established norm shall be deferred to a so-called authoritative source.

Big tech companies adhere to this principal like a fly to a VPs head in heated debate by enlisting theirthird-party fact-checkers as their authoritative sources,who themselves are not free from bias or influence.

After the New York Postpublished a supposed smoking gun article of a political nature on Wednesday, Facebook communications director Andy Stone, who was previously the press secretary of a former senator, tweeted that Facebook was reducing the articles distributionevidentlybefore the story had even been reviewed by Facebooks third-party fact checking partners.

While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebooks third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.

Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 14, 2020

In response, Senator Josh Hawley lambasted Facebook and demanded that the social media company explain its course of action.

.@Facebook explain your decision to censor the sourced reporting of the @nypost. Did Biden campaign ask you to do so? pic.twitter.com/FdGQV5N7i3

Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) October 14, 2020

If the NY Post story turns out to be accurate, then Facebook would be guilty of suppressing important information that could influence the course of American history with a presidential election less than a month away.

Likewise, if the story turns out to be unequivocally false, then it would also be labeled an attempt at election interference, and the newspaper would lose credibility.

Either way, sometimes the truth can be considered an attempt at election interference just as much as a falsehood, and readers should be wary of rhetoric that attempts to dumb-down a complex issue for political gains.

In the end, fake news peddlers will only damage their own reputations and bring doubt on their reporting The Heritage Foundation

Echoing the wisdom of Jefferson, theHeritage Foundation published in 2017that For all the uncertainty and chaos that an unfettered media seem to engender, Americans have been best at ultimately veering closer to the truth than any other people.

In the end, fake news peddlers will only damage their own reputations and bring doubt on their reporting.

Instead of being met with immediate censorship, why not allowinformation that comes forth from the media, from government, or from private citizens to be put to public discourse after a thorough evaluation of the known facts that are made available to everyone?

Whether the news seems outright preposterous or whether it transcends some universal truth let logic and reason (and in some cases perhaps a little faith and intuition) be the guiding forces not an authoritative body that determines what you can and cannot know, should or should not believe.

If an argument doesnt hold water, it will sink very quickly.

And what happens when there are two authoritative sources with conflicting information?

Anything that goes against WHO recommendations would be a violation of our policy Susan Wojcicki, CEO at YouTube

You would think that medical doctors would be authoritative sources for health issues, but not in 2020! No matter how qualified you are to talk about COVID-19 in a medical setting, if your advice goes against the World Health Organizations (WHO) recommendations, you will be censored, at least by Google-owned YouTube.

In April, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told CNN, Anything that goes against WHO recommendations would be a violation of our policy, and that the videos would be removed.

When authoritative sources such as doctors, economists, politicians, and news pundits all have different points of view, which authoritative source should you listen to?

Without mentioning which ones, the House of Representatives says all Americans should trust authoritative sources, and they say so without the slightest sense of irony of the self-serving nature of their request.

Recent trends in the spread and reach of misleading or unfounded claims online have the unsettling potential to come to a head after Election Day House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, October 13, 2020

Next up, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will be holding a hearing on Thursday to explore how the government should assist in censoring the free and open exchange of ideas in order to combat Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories Online.

In the hearing, the Committee will examine:

Is misinformation really the intended target? Who benefits from censorship? Who loses?

When you take away the right of the people to access, share, and discuss information on a free and open forum, you are creating a class of uninformed citizens whose decision-making is surrendered to tow the authoritative line.

A wise man I once interviewed said, Censorship destroys the very diversity it was meant to protect.

Information warfare is raging, and misinformation is coming at us from all sides.

I agree with Thomas Jefferson that no matter how many inaccuracies the media prints, the people should be able to decide for themselves whom to trust.

If a newspaper prints nothing but garbage, then the people who think for themselves and have access to other sources will be able to recognize this, and they may simply choose not to subscribe.

Likewise, any media company that misleads on purpose should be called out, criticized, and made accountable including ours.

It is just as much the responsibility of the reader to do their due diligence in investigation as it is for the media to do theirs.There are multiple sides to every story, not just the authoritative one.

But once the wheel of censorship starts to turn, its very difficult to put on the brakes, especially if the power to suppress information is given to influence by political forces.

History is omitted and re-written in real-time as the information warfare rages.

The statues topple, though they have not been built.

Facebooks business model is poison & its algorithms amplify misinformation: digital forensics expert testifies

Social media services that I & others have built are tearing people apart: ex-Facebook ads chief testifies

Facebook to censor anything it deems necessary to avoid adverse legal or regulatory impacts

Originally posted here:

Online censorship is toppling statues that havent been built yet: op-ed - The Sociable

From Pokemon to Gumball, sometimes cartoons just push it too far and end up getting pushed back by the censors.

There are tons of cartoon innuendos that happened in older shows, fromSpongebobtoInvader Zim, and honestly, it's a very surprising fact that some of these jokes even made it into the shows at all. There are some shows likeRen And Stimpy orMr. Meaty that made their living off of Gross-Out humor and body horror, which doesn't seem like a sustainable model for a kids' show in the first place.

RELATED:15 Cartoon Episodes That Were Too Controversial To Air

Invader Zim was particularly bad about this since Nickelodeon specifically did a call for a television show that would cover their 12-16 year old demographic. Let's take a look at some scenes like this that didn't quite make it to air.

Ren And Stimpy was always known for pushing the envelope, so much so that eventually John Kricfalusi got fired from his own show. John K. was fired for plenty of other reasons, but the scene that got him canceled wasn't the first time he had gotten a scene pulled from the show.

The first scene that Nickelodeon got rid of was in an episode where Ren's cousin Sven comes over, and Stimpy and Sven spend the day together. The issue is when they hide in a closet together, and Stimpy decides they can play a game called "Sword Swallower".No need toextrapolate that point, but that's why the scene was pulled (although it's available on DVDs for any curious fans).

Denno Senshi Porygonis probably one of the most infamous cartoon episodes ever to air. It's the 38th episode of the 3rd season, in which something is wrong with the Pokeballs, so the team enters them to figure out what's going on.

The worst offender in the show is when Pikachu delivers a thunderbolt to a cyber missile, after which the screen rapidly flashes between red and blue. This event gave seizures to tons of people across Japan, putting about 685 people in the hospital. It was known in the Japanese press as the Pokemon Shock. Stocks fell by about 5%, the episode was pulled from the rotation for all time, and it's never been aired again.

This is the actual episode that got John K. fired, in addition to the fact that he was notoriously hard to work with and did so many edits of the show that were already completed that episodes were frequently turned in well past their airing deadline. In the episodeMan's Best Friend, we see Ren savagely beat a man with an oar.

RELATED:Parks & Rec: 10 Controversies That Almost Killed The Show

The man who was beaten is named George Liquor for some reason, which is already pretty weird for a kid's show. There's a sequence where Ren very visibly snaps in a very realistic and dark way, with surreal, splotchy backgrounds behind him. After this, he beats the man until he's black and blue, swollen, with bulging eyes.

For whatever reason, thePowerpuff Girls show decided it needed to take the George OrwellAnimal Farm route with one of their episodes, in which for some reason, a gnome shows up who starts a cult in which they have sacrificed happiness for peace.

The show has an incredibly biased depiction of what Communism is, and regardless of anyone's view on the economic system, it gets into some pretty weird and heavy topics for a kids' show about 3 little girl superheroes. He's also one of the only characters in the series who has straight up been killed, aside from some sentient broccoli and the Rowdy Rough Boys.

Rocko's Modern Life is pretty well-known for having some pretty racy jokes thrown into the mix more or less all the time. There was one episode where Rocko was a phone operator for an adult phone line, an episode where the word "hell" is plainly shown in text.

In the very second episode of the show, the first segment is entitled "Leap Frogs". The whole plot of the episode is already pretty weird, which can be summed up by saying that his neighbor Beverly Bighead is feeling unfilled in her relationship. She then invites Rocko over to "help her out around the house". She appears naked in the episode, shares an adulterous kiss with Rocko, and they watch a tape of frog mating together.

As with every anime that exists, Pokemon has a beach episode. Weirdly enough though, this might just be one of the more risque beach episodes that's happened in an anime that's aired for children. There's a pretty frequent thing in the show where Jessie and James seem to enjoy dressing in drag pretty frequently, generally for the sakes of a disguise.

RELATED:The 10 Most Controversial Animated Disney Movies, Ranked

The issue isn't with the crossdressing, thee issue enters into the equation when James for some reason decides to don a bikini complete with an inflatable chest. Misty, who is a minor, also partakes in a bikini contest, and the fact that James' chest isn't as flat as hers is played for laughs since it's demoralizing.

In the 1984Spider-Man television series, for whatever reason, they decided that they wanted to bring in Morbius as a villain. The censorship that happens with this character is pretty dumb, but at the same time, it's pretty odd that they decided to include this character in the series anyway. Morbius, for anyone who doesn't know, is a vampire. A vampire who drinks blood.

For some reason, there's some weird restriction (or was) against saying the word "blood" or showing a character sucking blood in a children's cartoon. Their solution to this was to make Morbius drink plasma, and he uses suction cups in his hands to acquire it.

Daria was a series that kind of pushed the limits for its time, both on MTV and on a relic of the early 2000s, called The N. The show frequently explored themes of drugs and sexuality, and despite the fact that it was a cartoon specifically meant for adults and for teenagers, the fact that the show was a cartoon made both censors and parents uncomfortable with the concept of the show exploring such mature themes.

RELATED:15 Controversies That Almost Ended Pixar

Another issue is that a lot of the sexuality hinted at was not of the heterosexual variety, making homophobic parents in the 90s extremely upset. It's ludicrous that this type of thing would be censored, but it definitely put a damper on the show.

Heff In A Handbasket is an episode ofRocko's Modern Life. The show was already well known for going too far pretty frequently, already having the episodeLeap Frogs on this list. Apparently, they didn't learn their lesson, because the episodeHeff In A Handbasket happened.

There was already an episode where the show explored Hell pretty heavily, but this episode took the Satanic hell imagery to another level. For whatever reason, censors have a major problem with anything that could present Christianity in a questionable light, which is a reason that a lot of Japanese RPGs have been censored when being ported over.

Happening in season 1 ofThe Amazing World Of Gumball, Darwin and Gumball share a kiss with each other and then go on to talk about how great it was. Having characters kiss in really any kid's show is pretty weird in the first place, but for a lot of censors in other countries, the fact that it was shared by two boys is again what put it over the top.

For some reason, there's still tons of censorship when it comes to LGBTQ+ themes, which in our current year is pretty sad. Oh, the kiss was also an accident and it's played for laughs anyway, so it really makes no sense that it was cut.

NEXT:15 Controversies That Almost Ended Great TV Shows

Next 10 Things About Harry Potter's Scar That Make No Sense

Cody is an author from Ohio. When he's not writing, he enjoys improv comedy, making music with friends, and consuming whatever media he can. Before working for Valnet mainly on the Screen Rant site, he got his writing experience in doing music reviews and comic book scripts.

Continued here:

10 Scenes From Classic Cartoons That Didn't Make It Past Censors - Screen Rant

Earlier this month, Christies auction house announced the sale of a digital portrait of the Bitcoin code for more than $130,000 when the first estimated price was $12,000$18,000. It was the first time a nonfungible token was auctioned at one of the major auction houses for traditional art.

One of the last events, Bridge to Metaverse, presented by Snark.art, showed tokenized artworks by both established and emerging contemporary artists. A group exhibition brought leading artists of our time the Kabakovs, Kendell Geers, AES+F, Recycle Group and others to the blockchain space, and a series of panel discussions worked as a bridge between the traditional and blockchain-based art worlds with its own systems of distribution.

One criticism of the crypto art market has been the perceived naivety of the works. Although people were being distracted by the emergence of memes and CryptoKitties, there have also been some serious artists who have made their presence felt in the crypto world.

The traditional position of arts has been a commentary on the current state of affairs. A way to subversively criticize and, at the same time, to magnify the truth of what we are living through.

This is a perfect match with the emergence of the anonymity of blockchain technology in the new climate of being constantly tracked by our everyday gadgets.

Related: Painting a different picture: How digital artists use blockchain

Will the emerging artists in the new field of crypto art be influenced by traditional artists bringing their works into a shared blockchain space? With strong voices raising political, race, gender and inequality issues, their influx in these current times may create a shift in the way art is created, collected and viewed.

The traditional art market brings with it not only artists but also gallerists and curators who are naturally also drawn to growing markets. In fact, we are already seeing a move toward more classic ways of buying, with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles purchasing works from artists to exhibit them in its own permanent collection.

Of course, this will also open the door to Crypto Art Basel, Biennale and other curated events whose crypto artworks will break sales records at Christies or Sothebys.

Fifty years from now, those first NFT artworks by world-acclaimed artists could become highly valuable, just like what happened with the first animations of John Whitney, the father of computer animation, who created the first animated art on his computer back in 1960.

Serious contemporary artists mirror and even magnify the truth of our reality without censorship. In the current political world, a marriage between the established artists and crypto art with no censorship is virtually a perfect match.

Misha Libman, co-founder of Snark.art, certainly believes this is a challenge to not only take on but to relish in, and he stated that:

Therefore, is the crypto art audience ready to be challenged with serious statements of shifting toward digitalization? Especially as established artists now find themselves with a new technological medium and a way to reach audiences they never had before.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Alexandra Luzan is a Ph.D. student researching the connection between new technologies and art at Ca Foscari University in Venice. For about a decade, Alexandra has been organizing tech conferences and other events in Europe dedicated to blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. She is equally interested in the relationship between blockchain tech and art.

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NFT and crypto art can magnify the truth of our reality without censorship - Cointelegraph