Executive summary

Is the Chinese governments greater engagement with international institutions a gain for the global human rights system? A close examination of its interactions with United Nations human rights mechanisms, pursuit of rights-free development, and threats to the freedom of expression worldwide suggests it is not. At the United Nations, Chinese authorities are trying to rewrite norms and manipulate existing procedures not only to minimize scrutiny of the Chinese governments conduct, but also to achieve the same for all governments. Emerging norms on respecting human rights in development could have informed the Chinese governments approach to the Belt and Road Initiative, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and national development banks, but they have not. Chinese authorities now extend domestic censorship to communities around the work, ranging from academia to diaspora communities to global businesses.

This paper details the ways Chinese authorities seek to shape norms and practices globally, and sets out steps governments and institutions can take to reverse these trends, including forming multilateral, multi-year coalitions to serve as a counterweight to Chinese government influence. Academic institutions should not just pursue better disclosure policies about interactions with Chinese government actors, they should also urgently prioritize the academic freedom of students and scholars from and of China. Companies have human rights obligations and should reject censorship.

Equally important, strategies to reject the Chinese governments threats to human rights should not penalize people from across China or of Chinese descent around the world, and securing human rights gains inside China should be a priority. The paper argues that many actors failure to take these and other steps allows Chinese authorities to further erode the existing universal human rights system and to enjoy a growing sense of impunity.

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Chinas influence on the global human rights system - Brookings Institution

It would seem that pressure on Facebook ahead of the US election is continuing, and being stepped up, regardless of CEO Mark Zuckerbergs recent attempts to curry favor with his critics by going back on his previous positions regarding free speech.

This time, its Facebooks Instagram that is being targeted by activists of the Stop Hate for Profit coalition, who are announcing a day-long boycott of the platform, as they describe the tech and social media giant as failing to address racism, hate, and disinformation.

The one-day freeze in sharing posts on Instagram on September 16, and then the posting of a series of coordinated messages in unison everywhere on social media is a part of an entire week of the usual activist efforts to keep the spotlight on Facebook as a company that they believe has had a continued role in undermining democracy and sowing division.

The coalition, whose members include Anti-Defamation League, Mozilla, and NAACP, among others, has already tried its hand at damaging Facebook financially in June, when the giant was criticized for the way it handled racial unrest a largely inconsequential temporary suspension of advertising on Facebook took place at the time, that gave big brands and corporations a chance to promote themselves and then go back to business as usual.

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This time, Stop Hate for Profit is making it clear that the goal is to preemptively caution Facebook of the needs to commit to more, not less censorship ahead of the US election.

The prepared messages that activists are expected to flood social media with have to do with the coalitions list of demands to be met before the election.

The coalition wants Facebook to remove groups found to be linked to white supremacy, militia, hate, and violent conspiracies, spend more money monitoring such pages, change platform policy to forbid any event page with a call to arms, as recommended by Change the Terms and give 5% of its annual revenue to anti-racist and anti-hate groups.

Other demands call for removal of election-related information that is deemed to be misleading by credible fact checkers, and also ban calls to violence by politicians in any format.

The campaign doesnt explain who or what should be the arbiter deciding when speech is hate speech, what kind of content is violent, etc.

Excerpt from:

Stop Hate For Profit is trying again in its calls for Facebook censorship - Reclaim The Net

The Viewco-host Sunny Hostin alleges that ABC News attempted to remove passages from her forthcoming memoir that reflected poorly on the network, journalist Yashar Ali reports. In his newsletter, Ali published excerpts from Hostins book,I Am These Truths: A Memoir of Identity, Justice, and Living Between Worlds, in which she claims that the news organization tried to censor her memoir months ahead of its release. I didnt want to believe that racism played a part in their revision requests, she writes, per Ali. We were just dotting some is and crossing some ts, right?

According to Ali, who obtained a copy of Hostins memoir from a source,I Am These Truthscontains a forward alleging that ABC News asked her to delete passages that portrayed the network in a negative light. Deleting those passages didnt feel right to me, writes The View co-host and ABC News legal analyst and correspondent. They were all true, and they were some of the battle scars of my experience.

Hostin reportedly does not reveal what passages she was asked to remove, but writes that the request came in early summer, as Americans took to the streets in the wake of George Floyds death. My television agent and my book agent emailed me to express confusion that a news organization would try to censor a Puerto Rican, African American womans story while they were covering global demonstrations demanding racial equity, she claims.

The authors lawyers pushed back, and ultimately, ABC relented. Then, on Friday, June 12th, I got a text from a reporter, she writes. That reporter was Ali, who published a bombshell HuffPost report about senior ABC News executive Barbara Fedida. The exec allegedly made racist comments about various Black employees, including Hostin (sources told Ali that Fedida called her low-rent) and Robin Roberts.

Hostin addressed Fedidas alleged remarks on The View shortly after Alis story was published, but in her memoir, she goes into great detail about the experience. I was floored. I felt incredibly sad, but I also felt relief, writesThe Viewhost. Many of the experiences Ive had at ABC, including several described in these pages that standards and practices at first asked me to delete well, if the allegations were true, all of the dots were connected.

My suspicions that I was treated worse than my white colleagues the fears that I tried to talk myself out of many times maybe they were true, she continues. Had my employer, my home away from home, devalued, dismissed, and underpaid me because of my race? I had just read emails from them directing me to erase evidence of such treatment from my story. And if Im being honest, I wasnt even angry. I was deeply, profoundly shaken and saddened.

In July, The Walt Disney Company, ABC News parent organization, fired Fedida following an investigation into the allegations. The investigation substantiated that Ms. Fedida did make some of the unacceptable racially insensitive comments attributed to her, said Peter Rice, Chairman of Walt Disney Television, in an email sent to ABC News employees. It also substantiated that Ms. Fedida managed in a rough manner and, on occasion, used crass and inappropriate language.

Sunny Hostins memoir,I Am These Truths: A Memoir of Identity, Justice, and Living Between Worlds, hits bookstands on Tuesday, September 22.

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Sunny Hostin Claims ABC News Tried to Censor Memoir Passages That Reflected Poorly on the Network - Decider

WeChat and TikTok have begun some forms of censorship of content in the U.S. as well as around the world. As reported by Bloomberg the companies have taken practices used in China and brought them to the rest of the world.

Given the context of Trump's ban on WeChat and TikTok, this move could give his administration even more ammunition to attack these companies. It is worth noting that the type of censorship we are talking about his is very different to the moves Facebook and others have taken to ban hate speech.

This much more political in nature. WeChat and TikTok often bury or hide certain words. These are words that reflect political movements, gender and sexual orientation or religion.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute said that most of the content censored on WeChat supported pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. It also censored messages from the U.S. and U.K. embassies regarding a newnational security law.

Since its roots as lip-syncing based platform TikTok has become a place or political protest. It has often been used to protest issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement.

One of the authors said that hashtags related to LGBTQ+ issues have also been censored in several languages. Other topics include criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This sort of censorship in the U.S. and around the world by WeChat and TikTok is potentially very worrying. Washington has accused services like TikTok of blocking content considered sensitive to the Communist Party.

WeChat generally admits that it complies with controls back in China. Whilst TikTok has often pushed back against claims that the Chinese government influences the company. This is because TikTok mainly operates outside of China.

The report says that the above hashtags are categorized in the same way as "terrorist groups, illicit substances and swear words". This means they are treated in the same way as these sorts of ideas.

TikTok claims it censors certain terms and phrases because of "relevant local laws". The company also claimed that it strongly supports our LGBTQ creators around the world".

TikTok went onto reiterate that its "user data is stored in the U.S. and Singapore, with strict controls on employee access". The company was categoric that it had never "shared user information with the Chinese government".

With bans on TikTok and WeChat to take effect in mid-September further claims of censorship is the last thing this story needs. How these tensions develop has been fascinating to observe and will no doubt continue to twist and turn as the months' progress.

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WeChat And TikTok Taking Censorship Outside China To The U.S. - Android Headlines

San Francisco State University is again at the center of a national discussion about the boundaries and consequences of freedom of expression, this time brought about because two faculty members have invited Leila Khaled to participate in a virtual class discussion.

Let me be clear: I condemn the glorification of terrorism and use of violence against unarmed civilians. I strongly condemn antisemitism and other hateful ideologies that marginalize people based on their identities, origins or beliefs.

At the same time, I represent a public university, which is committed to academic freedom and the ability of faculty to conduct their teaching and scholarship without censorship.

Embracing these core principles freedom of expression, freedom from censorship and a university as an inclusive and welcoming environment serves as the foundation of a strong higher education that develops critical thinking; they need not be mutually exclusive.

Embracing hard-to-reconcile complexities and rejecting binary thinking are the hallmarks of a quality educational experience.

Justice Louis Brandeis famously asserted that the response to falsehoods or ill-conceived ideas is not censorship, but rather to avert the evil by the processes of education. He noted that the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Our university is among the most diverse in the nation, where students frequently encounter divergent viewpoints and world views, which plays an essential role in the development of the burgeoning minds of our students. It is our obligation to utilize moments such as these to heap on more learning, engage in more debate, and challenge viewpoints and assumptions.

Rather than stifle speech, we must encourage robust questioning and dissent, and ensure that our students and faculty are free from retaliation or censorship for doing so.

My conversations with SF Hillel and Jewish student leaders have enhanced my appreciation for the deeply painful impact of this upcoming presenter, as well as past campus experiences. I understand that Zionism is an important part of the identity of many of our Jewish students. The university welcomes Jewish faculty and students expressing their beliefs and worldviews in the classroom and on the quad, through formal and informal programming.

As stated in this letter by Jewish student leaders at SF Hillel to the university, the university has committed to partnering with student leaders to ensure their right to freedom of expression and to promote viewpoint diversity. The SFSU Division of Equity and Community Inclusion has allocated funds to host speakers with diverse points of view.

Our recently formed Bias Incident Education Team joins our Office of Equity Programs and Compliance to strengthen our work in tracking and addressing bias incidents. The university is providing, and will continue to provide, staff training on rising rates of antisemitism and the intersection with anti-Zionism, and moreover we will maintain strong and open lines of communication with our community as we respond to divisive events.

While we undertake these important efforts to create safety and inclusion, the university will not enforce silence even when speech is abhorrent.

What sets a university apart from primary or secondary education is that the views of our faculty are not prescribed, curtailed or made to conform to content standards. This is the time in a students education when exposure to the views of their academic instructors challenges their intellectual capacity and brings about greater intellectual rigor. For San Francisco State, protecting viewpoint diversity enables our important mission of delivering higher education.

We must couple our collective commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression with a collective commitment to being a welcoming and inclusive campus. We condemn ideologies of hatred and violence. We do this not by restricting protected speech, teaching or scholarship, but by providing resources for those in need of support and, again, by facilitating educational opportunities that promote viewpoint diversity.

At my first SFSU Fall Convocation last year, I talked about engaging in courageous conversations. There are no harder conversations than those centered on volatile political and cultural issues.

My goals remain unchanged.

We will have these conversations. We will encourage diverse viewpoints. We will demonstrate compassion. But I am also a realist and a historian. There will be times when conversation, let alone agreement, is impossible. There will be times when people find a courses content or a speaker deeply offensive.

I have urged the university community to use these moments as opportunities to invite others to share their thoughts, ideas and words. I urge all to see these moments not as evidence of permanent or widespread disagreement. We should not allow ourselves to be defined by the moments that divide us but by the opportunities to come together for the kinds of rich courageous conversations that only one of the most diverse universities in the world can foster.

Originally posted here:

SF State president: I condemn hate but cherish a diversity of opinions - The Jewish News of Northern California

Michael Caputo

Michael Caputo Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Days after President Donald Trumpadmittedto knowingly downplaying the Covid-19 pandemic in his statements to the public, newreportinglate Friday revealed that Trump political aides have been reviewingand in some cases alteringweekly CDC reports about the deadly virus in an effort to bring them into closer alignment with the president's false narrative and claims.

PoliticoreportedFriday evening that the Health and Human Services Department's politically appointed communications aides, led by former Trump campaign official Michael Caputoa Republican strategist with no medical expertise"have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior."

The primary target of the Trump officials' interference, according toPolitico, has been the CDC'sMorbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports(MMWR), a crucial resource for experts, public officials, and members of the public seeking to track the spread of Covid-19. While CDC officials have pushed back on meddling from political appointees,Politicoreported that the agency has "increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording."

According to one internal email obtained byPolitico, Caputo aide Paul Alexander accused the CDCan agency directed by Trump appointee Robert Redfieldof "writing hit pieces on the administration" and attempting to use its weekly reports to "hurt the president."

"CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening," wrote Alexander, an assistant professor of health research at McMaster University in Toronto. "Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear."

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Alexander demanded that Redfield allow the HHS aide to personally edit the CDC's reports, which are authored by career scientists.

"The reports must be read by someone outside of CDC like myself, and we cannot allow the reporting to go on as it has been, for it is outrageous. Its lunacy," Alexander, who has alsoattempted to alterthe public messaging of Dr. Anthony Fauci, wrote to Redfield. "Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how they CDC, wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and 'complete.'"

Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves called the emails "explosive" andsaidCaputo should resign immediately.

"This is just beyond the pale," Gonsalves tweeted. "Caputo, with acquiescence of Redfield, has started to twist the science to Donald Trump's advantage. It's sick and disgusting."

In one email to CDC officials obtained by POLITICO, a Caputo aide blistered scientists and called for already-published reports to be retroactively altered. pic.twitter.com/QSFhMlU00i

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) September 12, 2020

According to Politico, attempts by political appointees to alter the MMWR to their liking "began in earnest after a May report authored by senior CDC official Anne Schuchat, which reviewed the spread of Covid-19 in the United States and caused significant strife within the health department."

"HHS officials, including Secretary Alex Azar, believed that Schuchat was implying that the Trump administration moved too slowly to respond to the outbreak," Politico continued. "The HHS criticism was mystifying to CDC officials, who believed that Schuchat was merely recounting the state of affairs and not rendering judgment on the response."

In addition to trying to change the language of CDC scientists to make it fit with the president's rosy depiction of the pandemic, Caputo and his aides have also moved "to halt the release of some CDC reports, including delaying a report that addressed how doctors were prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence," Politico reported Friday.

"The report, which was held for about a month after Caputo's team raised questions about its authors' political leanings, was finally published last week," Politico noted. "It said that "the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks."

Downright criminal stuff here. The whole executive branch will need an audit. https://t.co/FifycXnJfE via @politico

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 12, 2020

Politico's new reporting represents just the latest evidence of the Trump administration's ongoing interference in the activities of public health agencies, an effort lawmakers and experts have denounced as a deliberate campaign to undermine trust in Covid-19 data and advance the president's political agenda.

"A Trump stooge with a history of racist statements and no medical background is doctoring CDC reports warning Americans on Covid because they make Trump look bad," Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) tweeted late Friday, referring to Caputo.

Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, said the "Trump CDC is dead to me if they muzzle the MMWR."

"To kill the MMWR," Feigl-Ding added, "is akin to burning science."

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"Downright criminal": Report that "racist Trump stooge" tried to censor CDC reports rocks experts - Yahoo News

The Netflix blurb for Cuties describes the plot as:

Eleven-year-old Amy starts to rebel against her conservative family's traditions when she becomes fascinated with a free-spirited dance crew.

Directed by Mamouna Doucour, a French Senegalese woman (not unlike the film's young protagonist), the film won the Directing Award in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival before getting picked up by Netflix a truly prestigious accomplishment! Ahead of its streaming release, Doucour told TIME that the movie, "tries to show that our children should have the time to be children, and we as adults should protect their innocence and keep them innocent as long as possible."

This intention was clear to people like Monica Castillo, who reviewed the film for RogerEbert.com, saying:

Doucour uses these uncomfortable images to provoke a serious conversation about the sexualization of girlsespecially regarding girls of color, the policing of a girl's sexuality, double standards, the effect of social media on kids, and how children learn these behaviors. To do this, the director shows what it looks like for young girls to emulate what they see in music videos and grown-up dance routines. A few times in the film, we see the confused or even disgusted faces of adults watching the younger generation gyrate and twerk, biting their lips or their nail in a suggestive way. It's likely that these girls don't fully understand what those gestures mean, but they see it in pop culture and they imitate it, like several other generations of girls before them. Doucour also explores some of the emotional tangles that come with wanting to fit in and to be taken seriously, as well as the repercussions that come with acting youthfully impulsive.

Sounds provocative, sure, and challenging but certainly topical and relevant. Sounds like Doucour deliberately tried to make a film that tackled a difficult subject, and may have even done so successfully.

But you wouldn't know it from the right-wing media machine, which picked up on the film's provocative artwork and immediately declaring it to be a dangerous work of snuff that promotes the exact agenda the director was deliberately rejecting which people who actually watched the film seemed to understand.

Ted Cruz, for instance, now wants to weaponize the apparatus of the State and send the DOJ after Netflix for producing and distributing "child pornography."

Ted Cruz certainly knows about porn, having previously tweeted about his porn-watching habits. He also certainly knows about the legal precedent for defining pornography as established by the Supreme Court in 1964the impossibly vague qualifications of "I know it when I see it."

Er go, if the Republicans who claim to believe in small government decide that a film in which there is no sexual intercourse between children is, indeed, "pornography," they can make a legal argument in defense of that.

Here's Josh Hawley, ostensibly concerned about the very same topic as the film's director:

Tom Cotton, who just a few months ago spoke out in favor of a heavily armed military invasion of Democrat-leaning American cities, similarly told conservative rag The Daily Caller: "I urge the Department of Justice to take action against Netflix for their role in pushing explicit depictions of children into American homes."

Critic Emily Nussbaum summed up this non-troversy well:

The summer of "Cancel Culture" and boy-who-cried-wolf claims of "liberal censorship" has finally come full circle. And I, for one, am relieved that Republicans are once again nakedly revealing themselves as the censorious authoritarians they have always been.

'This Film Is Sounding an Alarm.' What Cuties Director Mamouna Doucour Wants Critics to Know About Her New Film [Suyin Haynes / Time]

Why 'Cancel Netflix' is trending [Julia Alexander / The Verge]

"Cuties" Review [Monica Castillo / RogerEbert.com]

As we mentioned yesterday, China has banned media coverage of Disney's new live-action remake of Mulan. The most expensive movie ever directed by a woman (Niki Caro), with a cast full of famous Chinese and Chinese-American actors should have been a huge win for, well, everyone, right? So what the hell happened? After some stumbles []

The Chinese government has ordered major media outlets in China to not cover the release of Walt Disney's "Mulan." Authorities ordered the ban as controversy broke out over the film's links with China's Xinjiang region, where China is committing mass human rights abuses against the Uighur minority population and others, Reuters reports today. This is []

The government of Pakistan, an Islamic nation in which extramarital affairs and gay sex are illegal, has blocked five popular apps in its quest to purify the internet of the second largest Muslim-majority country. Reuters reports that the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority today sent notices to the management of five apps, Tinder, Grindr, Tagged, Skout and []

For all of their elegance, style and universe busting utility, Apple products can still be a monumental pain sometimes. Just try transferring files. Or sharing large files with non-Apple users. The process often requires iTunes, a lot of hoop-jumping and a decent percentage of curse words as you try to click and drag a simple []

During daylight hours, lightwaves in the blue spectrum are actually very beneficial. They help make you more alert, improve your reaction times and generally elevate your mood. But as with almost anything, positives and negatives are situational. So when your eyes are flooded with blue light at nightwell, let's just say it isn't nearly as []

The typical MacBook Pro or MacBook Air these days has either two or four external ports. Other laptops may include one or two more, but in this age of interactivity, users routinely find they need more hookups than their laptops can handle. Between external drives, mice, phones, tablets and everything else that requires a USB []

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Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and others are trying to censor a Netflix film they haven't seen - Boing Boing