Category Archives: Freedom of Speech

By Lawrence DavidsonBackground: Weaponising anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism has been weaponised. That is, the Zionists, within and without Israel, are using the charge of anti-Semitism as a weapon to silence those who are critical of the Israeli state. In wielding this weapon, Zionist organisations and the media outlets they control or influence have released a flood of slander and libel. The charge of anti-Semitism is levelled at anyone who opposes Israels inherently racist policies and is supportive of Palestinian human rights. And, where the Zionists have sufficient political influence, as is the case in so much of the United States, they are making every effort to encourage laws that make criticism of Israel illegal because, they claim, it is ipso facto anti-Semitic. In this way, the weaponisation of anti-Semitism maliciously defames individuals, corrupts legal systems and also threatens any reasonable notion of free speech.

In cases where individuals and organisations are labelled anti-Semitic as part of a concerted campaign of defamation, one would hope that the libel laws would offer some protection and / or relief. And, as we will see, in some cases such as the United Kingdom and Australia, this has proven possible. However, in the United States this has not happened. To understand why requires a short history lesson on the evolution of free speech, as against the need to protect individuals, particularly public persons such as those running for office, from defamation.

American attitudes towards free speech, which form the foundation for much of the countrys legal thinking when it comes to libel, slander and defamation, can be traced back to the writing of John Stuart Mill (1806-73). Mill was an influential English utilitarian philosopher and liberal thinker who supported the growth of democracy in the 19th century. He also considered what aspects of democracy would need the strongest defence. For instance, he supported a very broad interpretation of freedom of expression. He laid out his position in an 1859 book entitled On Liberty. Here he argued that allowing a broad interpretation of free speech was the best way of establishing what is true and what is not. Even if an opinion is false, the truth can be better understood by [publicly] refuting the error. Mill had faith in the citizenry (or at least the educated middle class of his day) to recognise, through the process of debate, what is true when it came to public pronouncements. If any argument is really wrong or harmful, the public will judge it as wrong or harmful. Thus, for Mill the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, [in this case by suppressing his or her public speech] is to prevent harm to others. However, considering that defamation was subject to rebuttal, the citizenry would ultimately reject such falsehoods without state intervention.

Even though Mills faith in an educated publics ability to know truth from falsehood has proven, at least as far as this author is concerned, quite naive, Mills notion of erring on the side of government inaction when it comes to slanderous or libelous speech has had much influence in the United States.

In 1919, sitting as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a series of decisions that laid out the future standard for judging prosecutable speech: The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. The example Holmes used for such an extreme case was that ones First Amendment right to free speech would not permit someone yelling fire in a crowded theatre. The libel laws in the US have followed this same path towards setting a high bar for any demonstration that free speech has been abused. Thus, in terms of defamation one now has to prove that the presentation in question is meant to defame (and is not just an opinion) and is put forth with actual malice [New York Times v Sullivan 376 US 254 (1964)]. This is particularly the case for public figures bringing suit for defamation. Public figures in the United States seem to be in a special category of people who are expected to attract a certain amount of, apparently legally acceptable, slanderous and libellous abuse.

The fact is that, in the US, libel is so difficult to demonstrate in both federal and most state courts that such suits are only rarely attempted. It is clear that in this case protecting an idealised principle of free speech has taken precedent over protecting the reputations and public standing of individuals.

As it has turned out, this situation has given American Zionists a wide field to use the weaponised charge of anti-Semitism with near impunity. A good example of this has been the smear campaign waged against the Democratic Partys presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, who is himself Jewish. Called an anti-Semite over and again, Sanders has relied on the American progressive community to defend him. There is no indication that either Sanders or his legal advisors have considered suing his defamers for libel.

The misbalance between freedom of speech on the one hand and recourse to legal protection against slander and libel on the other is greatest in the United States, and in this case, public figures appear most at risk. In England and some of the Commonwealth countries such as Australia, a somewhat greater balance exists, opening up the possibility of legally defending oneself against defamation.

Anecdotally, a key historical root in the evolution of this more balanced standard for Britains defamation law is the 17th century decision to outlaw duelling transforming an often deadly engagement into a supervised courtroom debate. As of today, English law allows actions for libel for any published [untrue] statements which are alleged to defame a named or identifiable individual(s) [including businesses] in a manner which causes them loss in their trade or profession, or causes a reasonable person to think worse of him, her or them. There are exceptions to and defences against this standard, but it certainly opens up a more reasonable opportunity for defending oneself against defamation than exists in the United States.

The same can be said for a Commonwealth country such as Australia. Here, the primary purpose of the law against defamation is to protect citizens from false statements about them that may cause harm to their personal or professional reputation.

Lets take a look at a few recent examples of successful challenges to libellous defamation issuing from Zionist sources.

Members of the United Kingdoms Parliament and those running for Parliament who are critical of Israel or otherwise supportive of Palestinian rights have suffered repeated exaggerated and fabricated allegations of anti-Semitism. Finally, in 2019, one such victim, Mrs Audrey White, former Member of Parliament (MP) for Liverpool Riverside, decided to sue the British paper the Jewish Chronicle for libel. She was able to prove that this Zionist paper had, over a series of four articles, published fake allegations that she was an anti-Semite. These pieces turned out to be part of a campaign of false charges waged against many left wing politicians. Ultimately, in early 2020, the paper was forced to admit, in print, that it had lied about Mrs White, and pay damages and court costs. It was also demonstrated that the paper had engaged in unacceptable obstruction of the investigation that led to the libel ruling.

This is not the first time the Jewish Chronicle has been sued for defamation. In August 2019 the paper was forced to pay a cash settlement to InterPal, a British charity providing aid for Palestinians. The Jewish Chronicle had implied that interPal was a terrorist organisation. The paper now faces a financial crisis and is reportedly operating with a $2 million deficit. It is staying afloat due to financial contributions from community-minded individuals. [Editors note: on 8 April 2020 the Jewish Chronicle announced that it has gone bankrupt and will cease publication.]

A similar series of events have taken place in Australia. Again, political figures are targets if they are critical of Israel or otherwise supportive of Palestinian rights. Take the case of former Labour Party MP Melissa Parke, who had the courage to assert that, To say that Israel has become an apartheid state is not anti-Semitic; it is a simple statement of fact and international law. She went on to suggest that Palestinian resistance, including retaliatory missile launches from Gaza, were a consequence of decades of brutal occupation. Finally, she drew attention to, and criticised, Zionist influence on Australian politics. For this she was described as an anti-Semite in a front-page story in the tabloid Herald Sun and similar piece in the paper West Australian. She was also slandered by Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia / Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. He publicly described Parke as a fanatic and someone trafficking in conspiracy theories. She sued them all for defamation. To date both the Herald Sun and the West Australian have been forced to published retractions and offer apologies.

The weaponisation of anti-Semitism by the State of Israel and its Zionist allies worldwide should serve as a clear warning to American legislatures and courts that it would be both fair and wise to bring the countrys libel laws into closer conformity with those of the UK and Australia. Indeed, it can be argued that to simply ignore the defamation that is now being rolled out by the Zionists actually puts free speech in danger. Here is how this is happening.

The profuse and persistent use of slander and libel is an attempt at censorship. If you will, it is an attempt to silence a certain category of speech under the cover of free speech. The United States has a worse-case scenario of this fraudulent approach because American Zionists seek to use slander and defamation as a basis for novel speech-restricting law. Here they weave a particularly tangled web declaring that it should be illegal to stand in opposition of one form of racism (Israels racist policies towards the Palestinians) because to do so supposedly reflects another form of racism (they can assert this only by equating opposition to Israeli policies with anti-Semitism). It is enough to make your head spin!

John Stuart Mills 19th century assertion that If any argument is really wrong or harmful, the public will judge it as wrong or harmful has proved unreliable. Most people are buried in their local affairs and, in the present case, have no objective information or experience to judge the behaviour of a foreign country in this case, Israel. All they can go on is media and government messages which, in the US, are influenced by pro-Israel lobbies. This means that, with the possible exception of college campuses, there is no public debate as Mill would understand it. So, how is the average member of the public to judge Zionist slander and libel to be wrong and harmful?

The situation really demands legal recourse to seek retraction and compensation for purposeful falsehoods, not only for the sake of peoples reputations and public standing, but also for the sake of maintaining a reasonable doctrine of free speech. Weaponised words and concepts are, most of the time, synonymous with falsehood and propaganda. In that environment, free speech is diminished and corrupted.

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A Zionist attack on free speech - Redress Information & Analysis

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic. The number of infections has now reached close to 1,275,542 globally with over 69,000 recorded deaths as of this writing.REF The first cases of the disease were identified in Hubei province in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).REF

Initially, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) silenced whistleblowers like Dr. Li Wenliang, who tried to limit the spread of the disease domestically and abroad. The government subsequently repressed the freedom of speech of bloggers who tried to share accurate information about the spread of the disease, the mortality rate, and the challenges faced by medical professionals.

The CCPs ongoing, systematic repression of both freedom of association and freedom of religion has stunted civil societys capacity to respond to crises like infectious diseasesand the government has cracked down on private citizens attempts to help each other, including the donation of medical supplies. The CCPs onerous requirements for international nongovernmental organizations and its current policies have also prevented international humanitarian aid from reaching the Chinese people in their time of need.

The experience and capacity of international humanitarian aid organizations is tremendous. Both secular and faith-based aid charities have developed professional expertise, experience, and rapid response capacity through years of responding to outbreaks of infectious diseases. Organizations like Doctors Without Borders/Medicins Sans Frontiers, Oxfam International, and Save the Children, as well as faith-based organizations (FBOs) like Samaritans Purse, Caritas, Catholic Relief Services, and World Vision, were on the frontlines of fighting the Ebola and SARS epidemics.REF Dr. Ken Brantley was named one of Time magazines people of the year for his work fighting Ebola on behalf of Samaritans Purse.REF These groups are now combatting COVID-19 throughout Asia and in Europe.REF Their medical personnel are setting up field hospitals, and they are providing information about the disease to vulnerable populations in other countries.

However, because the Chinese Communist Party sought to maintain a positive public image by centralizing control while managing the outbreak, it sidelined and undermined its own citizens attempts to limit the number of victims of COVID-19. The CCPs systematic repression of citizens freedom of speech and association is especially pernicious in the face of the spread of a highly infectious disease.REF

If the Chinese government genuinely seeks to address the health and financial impacts of COVID-19 on its people, then it should rely on its people to help in appropriate ways. Nongovernmental, international and domestic, faith-based and non-faith-based organizations not only offer their medical skills, knowledge, and supplies, they also can provide much needed social and financial support to individuals who are struggling.

To aid the Chinese people and to mitigate the global impact of COVID-19 and any future infectious diseases, the U.S. government should press the Chinese government to respect freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religion so that citizens and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can contribute their information, expertise, and resources. The U.S. is already the top single-country donor to China to counter the spread of COVID-19.REF As such, it should also press for better access for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), as well as international aid organizations, including faith-based NGOs.

As reports of a new virus began trickling in at the start of 2020, they were accompanied by stories of the Chinese government severely restricting freedom of information about the virus. The most stark example was the case of Chinese doctor and whistle blower, Li Wenliang.REF Dr. Li quietly sounded the alarm in a private WeChat message between himself and other doctors, alerting them to wear proper protective gear because he was witnessing the rise of a highly contagious, as-of-yet unknown pneumonia-like virus that is now known as COVID-19 or the novel coronavirus.REF

Dr. Li was called in for questioning and forced to recant his previous statements. He later died from the coronavirus. His death sparked outrage in China and an unofficial national period of mourning.

Restrictions on freedom of speech created challenges from the start. In shutting down Dr. Lis (and likely others) early warnings about the disease, the CCP may have enabled the disease to spread more quickly, as people did not know to take precautionary measures. In the same way, ongoing restrictions on speech will likely be obstacles to managing the disease going forward.

Other cases in which the Chinese government restricted free speech were reported, including the disappearances of outspoken individuals like businessman Fang Bin, human-rights-lawyer-turned-citizen-journalistREF Chen Qiushi, and citizen-journalist Li Zehua.REF Their reporting provided on-the-ground evidence of over-crowded hospital conditions and the dead and dying on the streets of China, revealing the initial inadequate response by the Chinese government to COVID-19.REF

Even free speech that does not reflect poorly on the Chinese government is being restricted. On January 31, after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global emergency, Sun Feng, a Christian in Shandong province, sent an urgent message to his WeChat group urging them to begin nine days of prayer and fasting for the victims and their families. On the seventh day of the fast, local police from the Public Security Bureau detained Mr. Sun for 24 hours. They ordered him to stop unauthorized prayers. Instead, he announced an additional day of fasting and prayer as a form of nonviolent form of protest.The police confiscated his cell phone and computers.REF There are other instances in which persons of faith are being persecuted.Pastor Li Wanhua was summoned by State Security for re-sharing posts by Dr. Li originally warning of COVID-19; other congregants from pastor Li Wanhuas church have also been called in for questioning.REF

Concerns have been raised about the means the Chinese government has used to implement its quarantines.REF When people are considered for quarantine, their standing with the CCP and their social credit scoresREF are reportedly taken into consideration.REF Chinese authorities have rolled out a new application called the Alipay Health Code that issues citizens a green, yellow, or red flag that determines the extent to which they are permitted to travel, based on the apps perceived risk about the individuals likelihood to contract the coronavirus.REF According to The New York Times, the app may have its utility during the coronavirus, but its far reach erodes personal privacy by sharing personal data, like location, with local law enforcement. The apps use after COVID-19 is over may prove a threat to the liberty of ordinary Chinese citizens in the future. For example:

There are other indicators that highlight the draconian nature of the Chinese governments response to COVID-19. Video footage showed families being roughly, sometimes violently, dragged from their homes in order to comply with quarantine.REF And the individuals who disappeared, like the citizen journalists, have, in most cases, not yet reappeared. Additionally, drones, some purportedly operated by private citizens and others used by traffic police, have been deployed to harass people on the street and instruct them to wear masks.REF Chinas checkered history with the use of surveillance technology casts this in a more sinister light.REF

The draconian application of surveillance technology is unnecessary, counterproductive, and judging by its scope, likely motivated by political concerns beyond any response to COVID-19.

The Chinese authorities overarching failure to safeguard freedom of speech has been coupled with restrictions on freedom of association and freedom of religion. These limits, as well as the governments increasing digital surveillance, severely limit civil society engagement, including during the coronavirus outbreak. From the outset of his tenure, Chinese President Xi Jinping began increasing the existing labyrinth of government regulations to exercise greater control over civil society.

The 2016 Charity Law, 2017 Regulations on Religious Affairs, and the 2016 Foreign NGO law have had several notable impacts on Chinas response to the coronavirus.

GONGOs. Government-organized nongovernmental organizations (GONGOs) are favored to the exclusion of grassroots groups. The Chinese Governments 2016 Charity Law governs organizations with the charitable purpose of relief from damage caused by public health incidents. But the law makes it extremely difficult for an organization without sponsorship by a Chinese government entity to register.REF At the end of 2018, the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) reported that it had 816,027 registered social organizations, many of which are GONGOs.REF NGOs that lack a government sponsor do not register and, therefore, risk punishment for their charitable activities. Others register as business entities even though they do not seek profit. In 2018, the government began clamping down on unregistered social organizations.

The MCA and the Ministry of Public Security investigated 5,845 unregistered social organizations.REF Because unregistered NGOs are barred from publicly raising funds, their ability to operate or grow is severely limited. The Chinese government directs the public to fund GONGOs like the Chinese Red Cross. The Red Cross is the countrys biggest charity. But while it is a member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), unlike in most other countries, the Red Cross in China is government-controlled and gets most of its funding from the state. The Red Cross in China is not just the Red Crossits a quasi-government organization, said Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. So the problems with the Red Cross undermine the trust, the confidence in the government.REF

The public distrusts the Chinese Red Cross because of revelations of its employees buying extravagant luxury goods with the publics donations.REF The publics mistrust is well-placed. The New York Times recently reported that the Chinese Red Cross failed to distribute supplies to fight COVID-19 to medical workersand gave them to government agencies instead.REF

Registration and Personal Information. Registration for religious groups is conditioned on loyalty to the CCP. In 2018, the Chinese government launched a campaign to pressure unregistered religious groups to register with the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) and the MCA under the 2017 Regulations on Religious Affairs (RRA).REF Government officials essentially only accept the registration applications of groups that are affiliated with one of the five state-sanctioned patriotic religious associations (PRAs).REF Most house churches do not affiliate with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) because of the requirement that they assist the CCP in carrying out its work of Sinicizing religious beliefs.REF

In addition to affiliation with the TSPM, authorities also demand that house churches provide personal information about their members. In January 2019, the SARA and MCA issued a joint notice stating that religious groups must provide information on finances from an authorized accounting firm and provide the social credit scores of group leaders.REF House churches lack of legal status prevents them from formally organizing relief efforts. Only faith-based organizations that have a close relationship with the PRAs, like the Protestant Amity Foundation or Catholic Jinde Charities, have limited freedom to respond to COVID-19.REF The state media and PRAs actively tout these groups workwhile affirmatively excluding other groups from joining in relief efforts.REF

International Registration. Onerous registration requirements discourage international NGOs from providing assistance. The 2016 Peoples Republic of China Law on the Management of Overseas Non-Governmental Organizations Activities requires them to register with the Ministry of Public Security and conditions their work (including humanitarian aid) on vague terminology about spreading rumors, obtaining state secrets, and endanger[ing] Chinas national unity.REF After the law passed, many international NGOs, including humanitarian groups, left the country. According to the Congressional-Executive Commission on Chinas 2019 Annual Report, the Chinese government intensified efforts to eliminate illegal overseas NGOs through Internet surveillance and mobilizing citizens to report on them.REF

Recent history further supports the supposition that the Chinese government will continue to punish whistleblowers and box out civil society organizations in favor of a heavy-handed CCP response to the COVID-19 crisis. Examples abound.

The 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Virus. The SARS virus was another novel coronavirus that surfaced in China in 2002; similar to COVID-19, it was viewed by the Chinese government as a threat to the CCPs leadership. Cases were reported as early as November and December of 2002, but the Chinese government did not make the public aware of the disease until February 2003and the international community did not become aware of the extent of the disease until April 2003, when whistleblower, Dr. Jiang Yanyong, released a letter to international media.REF

Like with COVID-19, whistleblowers were quickly silenced. Dr. Jiang was the chief physician at a Beijing hospital and a senior member of the Communist Party. His leaked letter revealed that six people had already died, and another 60 were infected with the virus.REF It also led to the resignations of the Minister of Public Health and the mayor of Beijing.REF Some public health experts credit his open letter to the media with helping to contain the virus and prevent a pandemic. The government has intermittently detained Dr. Jiang, who has been under house arrest, most recently since April 2019, after he reiterated his calls for the CCP to admit responsibility for the crimes he bore witness to in Tiananmen Square in 1989.REF

By Chinese law, it is illegal for any entity other than the Ministry of Health to break the news about a health-related issue. The Implementing Regulations of the Law of the Peoples Republic of China on Guarding State Secrets actually classifies such information as a state secret.REF According to Jennifer Bouey at Rand Corporation, this law, coupled with Chinas lack of a center for disease control (at the time) or a reporting mechanism for health crises, contributed to the lack of information about the SARS epidemic.REF

The Chinese governments response to COVID-19 leaves the impression that history is, in fact, repeating itself. Apart from some notable improvements in the Chinese governments response to COVID-19, such as its reporting about the disease more quickly and its decision to share COVID-19s gene sequencing with the international community,REF the Chinese governments suppression of civil society is almost a copy-paste of the PRCs response to SARS.

The 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake and 2010 Qinghai Earthquake. When the eighteenth-deadliest earthquake in recorded history hit the Southwestern city of Wenchuan, killing more than 70,000 people, there was an unprecedented outpouring of grassroots citizen support.REF Both local religious congregations and congregations from other parts of China sent volunteers and delivered financial aid and supplies. Then-President Hu Jintao faced strong criticism for his mishandling of the earthquakes aftermath.REF After a brief period of freedom, the Politburo Standing Committee (the top leadership of the CCP) member and former Minister of Public Security Zhou Yongkang urged the local government to maintain stability, and they limited the grassroots groups ability to provide aid.REF Two years later when a strong earthquake hit Qinghai province, the government required all donations to be handed over to local officials, causing what has been described as the Death of Charity.REF Since then, there has been no comparable level of civil society response to a disaster.

Although responding to earthquakes is different than responding to a pandemic, they pose similar challenges to Chinese political leaders. Floods, earthquakes, and pestilence were once viewed as signs that an emperor had lost the mandate of heaven. Today, they are seen as a direct reflection of the regimes broader fitness for governing. Rebecca Lee, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, wrote that natural disastersand the Wenchuan earthquake in particularbrought the shortcomings of the bureaucratic government starkly into focus, creating the opportunity, and indeed the necessity, for the charitable sector to thrive.REF

Today, COVID-19 poses an unprecedented threat to President Xi Jinpings legitimacy. His government has gone into crisis management mode, with videos of him greeting hospital workers while wearing a face mask and relentless praise from state media seemingly doing little to stem the peoples criticism.REF Until that point, President Xi had been absent from media and the public for several weeks.

The Chinese governments impulse to centralize is simple: It wants the CCP to be seen as the sole provider for its people. If carried out successfully, the Chinese governments response to COVID-19 enhances the legitimacy of President Xi and the CCPs leadership. On the flipside, however, a failure to successfully contain the virus poses a serious threat to the Chinese governments legitimacywhich is why control has been so tight during the crisis.

In free societies, the little platoonscharitable organizationsare often the first to show up and the last to leave in a crisis. A shining light among those little platoons are FBOs. There are at least three types of faith-based organizations: (1) congregations; (2) national networks, which include national denominations, their social service arms (for example, Catholic Charities), and networks of related organizations (such as the YMCA and YWCA); and (3) freestanding service organizations, which are incorporated separately from congregations and national networks.REF

The unique strengths of faith-based organizations include a high level of public trust, ability to build the capacity of local leaders, access to human and financial capital, a holistic view of service, roots in local communities, and a higher calling that creates tenacity.REF In a pandemic, faith-based organizations can augment the work of other civil society organizations by providing access to food, medical care (through faith-based hospitals), and social and economic support. A 2003 analysis of a World Bank survey found that no other organisations are more firmly rooted or have better networks in poor communities than the religious ones.REF

In the U.S., both federal and state governments have long-standing relationships with FBOs. President George W. Bush created offices of faith-based and community initiatives at the White House and in federal agencies to coordinate the governments efforts to incorporate FBOs into the U.S.s broader efforts to supply aid domestically and abroad.REF American religious institutions, such as universities, charities, and health systems, have a $303 billion socio-economic impact annually.REF

Among FBOs are a nations religiously affiliated medical networks. In America,17 percent of hospitals are faith-based.REF One in every six beds is at a Catholic hospital.REF Advent Health (sponsored by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church) operates one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the nation and serves more than 5 million patients annually.REF Americas capacity to treat infectious diseases would be significantly reduced without their existence.

In stark contrast, the Chinese governments politicized registration requirements and draconian restrictions have prevented FBOs from developing the capacity and receiving the necessary training to provide aid in a professional manner, as they do in other countries. Before the Communist Revolution in 1949, missionary hospitals provided the most advanced treatments for the sick. Of the 500 hospitals in China in 1931, 235 were run by Protestant missions and 10 by Catholic missions.REF The mission hospitals accounted for 61 percent of Western-trained doctors, 32 percent of nurses, and 50 percent of medical schools.REF Although religious denominations opened the first modern clinics and hospitals and launched modern medical education in China, the CCP now excludes both non-patriotic international and domestic religious communities from health care.

While the response to a pandemic should be primarily government-led, civil society can fill in the gaps where governments cannot. In China it is hard to envision what a robust civil society response to COVID-19 would look likeprecisely because these little platoons are largely absent from the landscape due to poor Chinese government laws and policies that fail to put the good of Chinese citizens above the desire for the CCPs power and control.

FBOs development has been stunted, despite the massive growth of faith in China. According to the CCPs own estimate, there are at least 200 million religious believers in the country whose total population is estimated at 1.4 billion.REF

In a country with hundreds of millions of religious believers there are fewer than a handful of legally registered FBOs, like Amity Foundation and Jinde Charities. Forced underground by the requirement of loyalty to the CCP through affiliation with a PRA and registration with the local religious affairs bureau, the majority of religious believers seek to perform good deeds without attracting the ire of a government that wants to be seen as the sole source of help.

Nevertheless, there are prominent examples of faith-based groups stepping up in the midst of humanitarian crises in Chinaoftentimes only to be later shut down. One such example was Early Rain Covenant Church, formerly run by Pastor Wang Yi. His church offered aid to earthquake victims and advocated on behalf of parents whose children died when their schools collapsed on them during the 2008 earthquake. Ten years after the earthquake, police arrested Pastor Wang Yi and 200 members of the Early Rain Covenant Church when they were preparing to hold a memorial service for the victims of the earthquake.REF

In spite of these restrictions and crackdowns, religious communities and individuals are determined to help. The patriotic religious associations have stepped in with financial assistance equivalent to more than $30 million.REF But after seven house churches in Beijing donated $10,000 in face masks and disinfectants to the people of Wuhan, police called their leaders in for questioning.REF

Reverend Huang Lei, a Wuhan church leader, believes that local officials rejected donations out of fear of angering Beijing officials who would accuse them of cooperating with illegal organizations. He said, In China, the government likes to control all channels for donating money. They dont like civil society to participate, and especially not faith-based organizations.REF Another pastor in Wuhan expressed the churchs desire for peaceful coexistence with the government: We are to seek peace for this city, peace for those who are afflicted with this illness, peace for the medical personnel struggling on the front lines, and peace for every government official at every level.REF

In a public health crisis, governments need to show their citizens strong leadership and a well-thought-out plan of action. That plan of action should include appropriate civil society responses, and even partnerships between the government and civil society actors. Chinas history of violating human rights norms and suppressing civil society to centralize control in order to shore up its own legitimacy has exacerbated the harms of natural disasters and infectious diseases.

China should relax restrictions that sideline domestic civil society organizations and allow them to build capacity so they can respond when possible to alleviate suffering. China should also allow international humanitarian aid organizations to register without imposing onerous political requirements on them so they can respond to crises and help build the capacity of Chinese civil society.

The U.S. obviously does not have the power to direct the Chinese government response to crises like COVID-19. It should, however, seek to create greater space for civil society to organize and operate. As the top government donorhaving donated nearly $1.3 billion in aid to assist in the alleviation of COVID-19 as of March 10, 2020REFthe U.S. should press the Chinese government to improve access for international humanitarian aid and to expand freedom for domestic humanitarian groups to contribute to the response to this and future crises.

Specifically, the U.S. government should:

As the world continues to grapple with the life-threatening effects of COVID-19, the U.S. government should use its influence to urge the Chinese government to expand freedom for both secular and religious civil society organizations and allow them to contribute their considerable assets to bear on crisis management. The growth of both the charitable and religious impulses among the Chinese people can provide tremendous benefits to civil society, especially in times of crisis.

But by silencing whistleblowers and sidelining charitable service, the Chinese government exacerbated the human toll of SARS, earthquakesand now COVID-19. The Chinese people are clamoring for the government to allow greater freedom for doctors and citizen journalists to respond to COVID-19not because they desire to overthrow the government, but because they are desperate to obtain life-saving information. Meanwhile, as the Chinese government criticizes the international community for not offering enough medical supplies and donations, it is simultaneously preventing its own people from meeting each others needs.

When Dr. Jiang Yanyong was recognized with an international award for his role in preventing SARS from becoming a global pandemic, he said, I am a doctor. If I see a human life at stake, I will intervene.REF Today, many Chinese citizens share Dr. Jiangs desire to preserve human life. As the Chinese government seeks to demonstrate that it can govern well and meet the challenges that this crisis presents, it can do so by embracing a greater role for its own people.

Olivia Enos is a Senior Policy Analyst in the Asian Studies Center, of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage Foundation.

Here is the original post:
How the Chinese Government Undermined the Chinese People's Attempts to Prevent and Respond to COVID-19 - Heritage.org

The ability to speak ones one mind in an effort to persuade others of the truth of your position is a critical component in the workings of politics, academia, the courtroom . . . almost any area of public or private concern. Few personal liberties are therefore more cherished in this country than the right to free speech.

George Washington said it powerfully: For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.

Though it may have a checkered past on the issue, the Supreme Court has been an important guardian of the First Amendments guarantee of free speech. Recently, and positively, the Court has held that the state cannot compel pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise government-subsidized abortions. It has held that the government cannot treat Church signs advertising places of worship less than it treats non-religious directional signs.

Unfortunately, as with other rights, the right to free speech often falls prey to abortion distortion, where courts contort the meaning of well-established free speech principles to silence pro-life speakers. While the Supreme Court has made important and encouraging strides in the past decade to safeguard free speecheven in the abortion contextJustice Scalia once spoke of the Courts troubling tendency to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion, or even to speak in opposition to abortion, is at issue.

Sadly, the abortion distortion doctrine continues to rear its ugly head in the lower courts.

For years, the City of Pittsburgh has tried to keep pro-life speakers away from the very place where their message matters most: close to the entrance of abortion clinics. Similar to the City of Englewood ordinance we are challenging in federal court, Pittsburgh adopted a buffer zone prohibiting persons from congregating, patrolling, picketing, or demonstrating within 15-feet of an abortion clinics entrance.

Despite the Supreme Courts 2014 decision in McCullen v. Coakley, which unanimously struck down a buffer zone abortion law in Massachusetts, both the district court and the Third Court of Appeals upheld Pittsburghs ordinance. Contrary to how the City interpreted its own ordinance, the Court of Appeals narrowed its scope by holding that the ordinance doesnt cover sidewalk counseling.

While laudably permitting the speech of pro-life sidewalk counseling, there are two critical problems with the courts ruling: (1) its not the role of federal courts to construe narrowly state and local laws in order to save them from a constitutional challenge, and (2) even if the ordinance does not apply to some pro-life speakers, it still sweeps within its ambit classic forms of free speech activity (including pro-life speech activity), such as demonstrating and picketing.

The Third Circuits decision shouldnt be allowed to stand. And well soon be filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of the pro-life speakers in Pittsburgh. Its time for the Supreme Court to put an end to abortion distortion in the realm of free speech once and for allboth in this case and in another pro-life speech case out of Chicago that the Court is still considering whether to accept and decide (we also filed an amicus brief in this case).

The right to free speech is not a luxury or perk. When the government impermissibly seeks to squelch or limit that right, courts should be vigilant in striking down those restrictions. And when lower courts wrongly uphold those restrictions, as did the Third Circuit here, the Supreme Court needs to step in and reverse them.

You can sign on to our Supreme Court brief below.

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ACLJ to File Amicus Brief with Supreme Court in Pro-Life Speech Case Battling the Abortion Distortion - American Center for Law and Justice

Alternatives to originalism have always existed on the right, loosely defined. One is libertarian (or classical liberal) constitutionalism, which emphasizes principles of individual freedom that are often in uneasy tension with the Constitutions original meaning and the founding generations norms. The founding era was hardly libertarian on a number of fronts that loom large today, such as the freedom of speech and freedom of religion; consider that in 1811, the New York courts, in an opinion written by the influential early jurist Chancellor James Kent, upheld a conviction for blasphemy against Jesus Christ as an offense against the public peace and morals. Another alternative is Burkean traditionalism, which tries to slow the pace of legal innovation. Here, too, the difference with originalism is clear, because originalism is sometimes revolutionary; consider the Courts originalist opinion declaring a constitutional right to own guns, a startling break with the Courts long-standing precedents.

These alternatives still have scattered adherents, but originalism has prevailed, mainly because it has met the political and rhetorical needs of legal conservatives struggling against an overwhelmingly left-liberal legal culture. The theory of originalism, initially developed in the 1970s and 80s, enjoyed its initial growth because it helped legal conservatives survive and even flourish in a hostile environment, all without fundamentally challenging the premises of the legal liberalism that dominated both the courts and the academy. It enabled conservatives to oppose constitutional innovations by the Warren and Burger Courts, appealing over the heads of the justices to the putative true meaning of the Constitution itself. When, in recent years, legal conservatism has won the upper hand in the Court and then in the judiciary generally, originalism was the natural coordinating point for a creed, something to which potential nominees could pledge fidelity.

But circumstances have now changed. The hostile environment that made originalism a useful rhetorical and political expedient is now gone. Outside the legal academy, at least, legal conservatism is no longer besieged. If President Donald Trump is reelected, some version of legal conservatism will become the laws animating spirit for a generation or more; and even if he is not, the reconstruction of the judiciary has proceeded far enough that legal conservatism will remain a potent force, not a beleaguered and eccentric view.

Assured of this, conservatives ought to turn their attention to developing new and more robust alternatives to both originalism and left-liberal constitutionalism. It is now possible to imagine a substantive moral constitutionalism that, although not enslaved to the original meaning of the Constitution, is also liberated from the left-liberals overarching sacramental narrative, the relentless expansion of individualistic autonomy. Alternatively, in a formulation I prefer, one can imagine an illiberal legalism that is not conservative at all, insofar as standard conservatism is content to play defensively within the procedural rules of the liberal order.

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The Right Constitutional Philosophy for This Moment - The Atlantic

Lebanese activists and journalists say they fear the Hezbollah-led Cabinet could be using the COVID-19 pandemic as justification to further consolidate its power through targeting dissent.

A state of emergency announced March 15 introduced strict restrictions on citizens. Activists deemed the step a "security plan that lacks regard for public health. They say the government could use its expanded powers to imprison activists who were involved in organizing protests last October.

The government activated criminal laws to arrest and charge people at a time that it did not stop flights from [coronavirus] epicenters like Iran and ignored taking necessary measures to protect the people, Jad Yateem, an activist and founding member of LiquaaTeshrin, told VOA.

LiquaaTeshrin is a group formed by Lebanese activists who demand government reform. The group last week called on the Lebanese government to change its state of emergency in the face the spread of the virus in the country. It said the government needed more effective measures to safeguard societys health and livelihood.

Lebanon has registered at least 333 coronavirus cases, and the number is growing, particularly in Beirut.

Since the announcement of the state of emergency, the government has shut public institutions and private businesses, closed ports and borders, and ordered its citizens to stay home unless they had an extreme need to get out. Activists see all of this as an unprecedented effort to increase the powers of the army and police without providing people with alternatives to secure their daily needs.

There is no transparency in revealing the readiness of the health sectors ability in Lebanon to deal with this issue, because this might uncover the amount of corruption, Yateem said, adding that many Lebanese families are unable to obtain essential needs during the lockdown.

Now this crisis is being used as a cover-up for former mistakes and to pass more political and economic gains by the ruling elite, he said.

Financial crisis

The epidemic comes as the country is facing its worst financial crisis in decades. Human Rights Watch said in a report last Tuesday that the virus spread had placed an additional strain on the deteriorating health sector marked by a scarcity of medical supplies.

The watchdog group in a separate report this month accused the government of pursuing a spate of prosecutions against journalists and activists critical of alleged government. The campaign was threatening free speech in the country, whose constitution says everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression, it said.

Lebanons criminal defamation laws are being instrumentalized by the powerful to silence many of the activists involved in the nationwide protest movement, the HRW report said.

Protests in Lebanon erupted in October after the government decided to increase taxes and gasoline prices. The demands of the protesters evolved to include combating alleged corruption and mismanagement by the ruling class. The widening protests later that month forced Saad Hariri to resign as prime minister.

Hezbollah influence

Many Lebanese politicians opposing the new Cabinet, led by Prime Minister Hassan Diab, say it is made up of Hezbollah and its allies. The new government, they argue, is excluding the mainstream Sunni bloc led by Hariris Future Party.

Some Lebanese experts say the economic and health crises, along with a growing discontent among the population, could take the country to the brink of collapse. The countrys officials say they are doing their best to salvage the economy, but the government's US $80 billion debt and increased instability are slowing their progress.

People dont trust in this government and they dont really know if they stopped the flights from Iran despite the governments announcement that they did close the airport, Hanin Ghaddar, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute, told VOA.

Hezbollah is a Shiite radical group founded in 1982 and supported by Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The United States considers the group a terrorist organization that aims to advance Irans agenda in the Middle East.

When Iran became the first country in the region to record cases of coronavirus, the Lebanese government came under intense criticism from the opposition groups who said the government was unwilling to suspend flights with Iran because of Tehrans influence. To add to their frustrations, Lebanons first confirmed case of the virus was a woman who had returned from Iran.

The Hezbollah-led government initially rejected any reports about the outbreak, threatening to arrest journalists who reported on the case. Ghaddar of the Washington Institute said the governments initial denial and attacks on freedom of speech have only deepened the mistrust of the people.

With Hezbollah being in power today, if everything goes bad it will backlash against its government, because by the end of the day, they will be held accountable as the authority before the Lebanese people, she added.

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Lebanese Activists Fear Hezbollah-led Government Is Using Coronavirus to Solidify Power - VOA News

(GVG) - In times of uncertainty, data is certainly one of the levers to press. Over the past weeks, as a result of this unprecedented global pandemic, nations are making strategic decisions to protect their citizens, strengthen their health systems resource allocation and ensure security, in the face of this severe menace.

As a result, real-time, accurate data plays a key role to make urgent and necessary decisions backed by true numbers. In the developed world, the access to digital measurement platforms to track resources and movements is widespreading. In spite of the fact that leaders, in these technologically evolved nations, do count on trustworthy data sources, they are still struggling in this race against time to make the best and most appropriate decisions every day.

We can all imagine the huge pressure faced by developing nations, when in parallel to the challenges purely posed by this unheard of global situation, they lack the right tools to accurately track crucial data in which to back their decisions. At Global Voice Group, we are certain that access to real information is more than ever decisive for leaders and decision-makers to make the right choices, or at least the most reasoned ones. Especially when the spread of fake news is reaching new peaks.

Misinformation can surely have devastating effects. Not only can it generate unrest among the citizens, specially at a time when quarantines are spreading across the nations at the same pace as the virus, but it also misleads crucial decision-making processes which can have even more dramatic effects. Fighting misinformation is a task that should be carried out with the utmost rigour: tracking and erasing misleading contents should by all means be done without any interference over freedom of expression.

The spread of misinformation has actually been going on long before the existing sanitary crisis. The efforts to erase these detrimental contents are requiring social media platforms to strengthen their resources in order to remove these contents. What is crucial is for States and communications companies to only perform this exercise under the umbrella of transparency and norms. These shall be drafted, as a first step, in order to create a sustainable framework in which to secure freedom of speech and leave not a single space for censorship practices, of any sort.

Over the past weeks, the definition of this harmful content has broadened its scope for leading social media channels like Twitter and it now explains fake content in the following terms, the one which goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information. This is an essential step towards ensuring a healthy digital news ecosystem, even for a self-designated free speech wing of the free speech party platform.

Countering misinformation through real-time, accurate data proves to be the most effective means to fight against the devastating impact of fake news that sometimes reach the highest decision-making levels. For instance, in the UK, the government had already put together a new counter disinformation unit, even before the virus outbreak, to jointly work with social media companies in the context of fighting against fake contents.

A same wave of regulatory efforts against disinformation has also hit South Africa, through its criminalization. The regulations were published in the Government Gazette under the 2002 Disaster Management Act and carry penalties including fines, imprisonment, or both. The key is for these procedures to be transparent and aligned with all other specific norms to fight against this growing phenomenon, but always preserving individual rights.

Different States are putting in place similar strategies to properly monitor and identify fake contents, struggling to keep only officially reliable sources of medical information on air and erase all other none cross-checked, fake information. While the risks of this threat, as well as the virus itself, affect all States, measures towards firm regulation to fight against misinformation are just beginning to be put in place.

This battle eventually goes way beyond the existing context and should be understood as a long-term problem which poses a threat towards decision-making and therefore good governance worldwide. In addition, it places the focus on the need for data centralization and cooperation at State level to promote sustainable decision-making and policy drafting, exclusively driven by data and avoiding all misinformation for the sake of societies well-being.

James Claude, CEO of Global Voice Group

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Improving decision-making in the face of growing misinformation - Ecofin Agency: Economic information from Africa

If we learn anything from the spread of COVID-19 around the world, it should be the importance of freedom of speech.

The Chinese Communist Partys decision to silence discussion of the emerging disease and punish doctors who raised the alarm created an ideal environment for this virus to spread throughout Wuhan, then across China, and eventually around the world.

File photo: GovHK.

As this virus continues to spread, infecting hundreds of thousands and killing tens of thousands, why would there be pressure in Hong Kong and beyond to silence discussion of this disease and punish doctors who are raising the alarm about its origins?

we will inevitably face SARS 3.0

On March 18,Mingpaopublished an opinion piece entitled This pandemic originated in Wuhan, the lessons of seventeen years ago have been completely forgotten. The authors Dr. Kwok-Yung Yuen and Dr. David Lung are unrivalled experts in their field. Dr. Yuen is a microbiologist whose SARS study group discovered the role of the coronavirus in the SARS epidemic in early 2003. Dr. Lung is also a microbiologist who has recently published on the detection of COVID-19 via saliva samples.

In their article, the authors offer practical advice on understanding the virus for the general reader. First, they explain how the World Health Organization and the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses name viruses, while also acknowledging that the colloquial use of Wuhan pneumonia is understandably more straightforward than COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 and thus does not need to be condemned.

Second, Yuen and Lung explain that genetic sequencing has shown the virus likely originated in horseshoe bats before spreading to an intermediate host in the Wuhan Seafood Market (most likely endangered pangolin), which then served as an amplification epicentre spreading from animals to humans, before mutating to enable human-to-human transmission.

Yuen Kwok-yung. File Photo: TVB screenshot.

Third, the authors point out that Chinas state-sponsored conspiracy theory tracing the origins of the virus the United States is completely baseless. The real source of this virus is Chinas wildlife trade, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) failed to halt seventeen years after SARS spread from civet cats to humans. If this trade continues, the authors assert, in another decade or so, we will inevitably face SARS 3.0.

A frank discussion of the origins of this virus and the need to prevent another pandemic, written by two experts in microbiology who have been on the frontlines in researching and battling both SARS and COVID-19: this would appear to be precisely the type of opinion piece that we need at this moment.

Yet Yuen and Lungs article produced a storm of angry controversy on Chinese social media. Within a day, the authors had publicly retracted their piece. Yuen and Lung did not explain what pressures led them to this decision, but anyone who cares about increasingly fragile academic freedoms in Hong Kong should be deeply concerned by such developments.

Two types of stigma

The third section of Yuen and Lungs article discussing Chinas wildlife trade is undoubtedly the most controversial. The authors assert: the Wuhan coronavirus is a product of the poor culture of the Chinese people, recklessly capturing and eating wild game, treating animals inhumanely, disrespecting life, and continuing even today to eat wild game to satisfy their desires. The Chinese peoples deep-rooted bad habits are the source of this virus. If this remains unchanged, in another decade or so, we will inevitably face SARS 3.0.

File photo: GovHK.

It would be unfair, of course, to stigmatise the people of China as a whole for Chinas wet markets. It would also be unfair to denounce Chinese culture as a whole on account of the wildlife trade. This is not, however, what Lung and Yuen are doing.

It is not only fair, but indeed necessary, to stigmatise the wildlife trade and wet markets in China that have now produced two major illnesses (SARS and COVID-19) that have killed tens of thousands around the world.

It is not only fair, but indeed necessary, to stigmatise unscientific practices in Traditional Chinese Medicine that encourage the consumption of civet cats to nourish yourqior pangolin scales to treat male impotence. These are not, we must note, the beginning and the end of Chinese culinary or medicinal culture, but they are indeed components of these cultures that need to be confronted for the sake of global health.

It is not only fair, but also necessary, to stigmatise the political culture that has enabled the perpetuation of this wildlife trade despite obvious evidence of the risks involved. The CCP exercises extensive monitoring and control over so many aspects of life in China today, to the point that it can imprison civilians for random comments in private chats. Yet despite this power and control, the CCP has proactively chosen not to act against the wildlife trade for nearly two decades after SARS, facilitating the emergence of Covid-19.

Intra- and Inter-species Transmission of Coronaviruses. Source: Su et al. (June 2016). Epidemiology, Genetic Recombination, and Pathogenesis of Coronaviruses. Trends in Microbiology 24(6), 490-502.

It is also fair, and indeed necessary, to stigmatise the political culture of secrecy and suppression of bad news that has facilitated the spread of both SARS and COVID-19. The decision to reprimand Dr. Li Wenliang for comments on COVID-19 in a private chat among doctors shows both the Party-states reach and its horrid misuse of this reach.

These trends do not, of course, represent Chinese culture as a whole: there are other possibilities. These trends are, however, real components of the political culture in the Peoples Republic of China today which, just like the viruses they have covered over, cannot be simply denied away.

Political correctness facilitating political regression

If this story had ended with Lung and Yuens retraction of their article, this affair would have been just one more sad sign of CCP orthodoxies exerting pressure on academic freedom in Hong Kong. Yet on March 20th, Professor Jon Solomon of the Universit Jean Moulin in Lyon launched a petition onchange.orgaddressed to Zhang Xiang, the current vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, pressuring Zhang to fire Kwok-yung Yuen. There is a counter-letter here.

Photo: Facebook.

In this petition, Solomon claims that Yuen and Lungs article resurrect[s] the vocabulary of historical racism and has done grave damage to the University of Hong as well as Hong Kong and global civil society. He then asks Zhang to provide a public explanation of the universitys support for Yuen. He calls for a panel to investigate the living history of colonial racism at the University of Hong Kong, and pending further investigation, asks that the university reconsider its appointment of Dr. Yuen.

In Solomons curious eagerness to draw attention to the colonial legacies behind the University of Hong Kong, legacies of which all are aware, he ignores two far more relevant legacies.

The first is the legacy of critical intellectual work which extends, despite a parallel legacy of repression, from the origins of political writing in China to the present. While Solomon undoubtedly envisions himself as a valiant warrior struggling against Orientalism, it is in fact oddly Orientalizing to assume that a critical discussion of cultural practices must be rooted in colonial racism, as if the people of China were simply sitting around for a few millennia failing to recognize the potential for critical reflection, and as if any critical discussion of culture since then is shaped by colonial racism.

Jon Solomon. Photo: The Jean Moulin University Lyon 3.

This spectre of the colonising white devil who haunts cultural critique, however, serves a crucial role in this narrative by recasting Solomon as white savior. Yet we must ask, from what exactly is Solomon rescuing the people of China: an article inMingpaothat called on people to be honest about the origins of the virus? One hundred years after the May Fourth Movement, is eating pangolin now off-limits for critical discussion?

The second legacy that Solomon ignores yet also ironically enables is the CCPs increasingly obvious deployment of political correctness to protect its own political regression. With its typical essentialism, the Party is redeploying vigilance against stigmatising people as a protection against the urgently necessary stigmatisation of dangerous practices and political secrecy. The laudatory ideal of protecting people from stigmatisation then ironically serves the purpose of protecting from criticism the powers and practices that put the Chinese people and the entire world at the greatest risk.

If Solomon disagreed with Yuen and Lungs article, there is no clear reason why he could not write an article inMingpaoarticulating his disagreement and explaining his own understanding of the emergence of COVID-19. To instead publicly write to one of the authors vice-chancellors demanding an explanation and reconsider[eration] of his appointment is a clear threat to academic freedom, operating on the level of the thugs who have repeatedly rallied for the University of Hong Kong to fire Benny Tai.

Pro-Beijing demonstrators at a rally calling for Benny Tai to be sacked from HKU. Photo: Apple Daily.

What actual benefit would there be for Hong Kong if Yuen was in any way reprimanded for his reflections? And what real risks could there be for the world if Hong Kongs leading specialists in coronavirus research grow afraid to speak frankly?

Such suppression of academic freedom would be worthy of condemnation in any context. In the context of Hong Kong today, where both academic freedom and freedom of speech are under increasingly grave threat from a Party-state pushing the same line as Solomon, such suppression is doubly deserving of condemnation. And when such suppression of free speech got us into this mess twice and is likely to do so again, repeating this mistake is nothing short of dangerous.

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Ming Pao row: If we learn anything from the virus outbreak, it should be the importance of free speech - Hong Kong Free Press

Freedom of speech is the property of the left in Australia, while those on the other side of politics are vilified, demonised and intimidated in order to be silenced, according to Sky News host Alan Jones. I suppose it's no use saying that, as a nation, we must protect freedom of speech if you don't practice it, Mr Jones said. He said those on the left of politics can say whatever they like about you and get away with it. Mr Jones was critical of NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane for his recent praise of Chinas President Xi Jinping.Mr Moselmane had praised Preisdent Xis unswerving leadership in his attempts to handle the deadly coronavirus pandemic. Most knowledgeable people would say instead that China has betrayed the world, Mr Jones said.It did not notify the world that a crisis was upon us, he said. It seems the ideological enemy in this country is alive and well, some of them are well paid members of our parliament. Image: AP

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Freedom of speech 'is the property of the left of politics' - Sky News Australia

After all, student high jinx is par for the course. Yet in fact, the decision to exclude a former Cabinet Minister is part of a dark mission to destroy the essence of democracy freedom of speech.The sinister missionaries hand was evident again in the suspension of Trevor Phillips by the Labour Party and in a campaign by Guardian newspaper staff against their own columnist Suzanne Moore. In both these cases the targeted individuals appear to be guilty of nothing more than stating what to most of us is glaringly obvious. In Phillips' case his crime was to draw attention to the fact that members of vile paedophile gangs in Northern cities were of Pakistani Muslim origin, in the case of Moore she simply pointed out that being a woman is a biological fact, not a lifestyle choice. That Phillips, a brave crusader against racism as founding Chairman of the Equalities Commission, can be branded an Islamaphobe and Moore, a leading feminist writer, as transphobic should be a warning to us all - no one is safe from the puritanical poison of politically correct wokeness.

Too many leading institutions have, in effect, been taken over by an intolerant left wing elite who regard any viewpoint other than their own as unacceptable. Once, most academics put aside their personal political views to provide students with a balanced education. Today, much of academia has become the most narrow-minded branch of the liberal establishment. Consequently, it is increasingly difficult for academics with anything other than liberal left views to survive. A survey at the time of the 2017 election found that just 7 percent of university staff intended to vote Conservative. My friend, the late, great political philosopher Sir Roger Scruton recalled that when he taught at Birkbeck College, he was the only conservative there, apart from the lady who served meals in the Senior Common Room. Sir Roger was for years denied the recognition he deserved by the academic establishment.

Much of the student body is affected too, with young minds dulled by the simplistic dictums of political correctness. Which is why many student societies have become vehicles of cultural oppression, at best marginalising and at worst vilifying views that offend snowflake undergraduates. Presumably, university authorities are either complicit or complacent.

The dominance of the liberal establishment is aided and abetted by the echo-camber of social media, which has spawned a new form of ugly discourse where everything is understood through the prism of identity. It has become commonplace for someone to preface a statement with qualifications like as a member of a certain ethnic group, as a gay man or transgender female. As such statements are so ubiquitous we have become numb to just how disturbing they really are. Identity has become the ultimate arbiter of opinion. This is the triumph of relativism; of the ego over discussion, of opinion over knowledge. We live in an era where the national conversation is so degraded that, for wokes, it is acceptable to deny a speaker a platform simply on the grounds that what they have to say, even when evidentially based, might possibly make someone in the audience feel uncomfortable.

For most of us, busy with work and family lives, such issues may appear marginal. But in practice, the way debate is increasingly shut down, with speakers no platformed and books denied publication, should worry us all. It represents the ruthless exercise of power by the few over the many. Although the result of the General Election last December demonstrates that most people reject the woke agenda of the left, it does not mean that the culture war is won. Far from it, the liberal left elite are in control of almost all our leading cultural institutions, including the BBC, and are using their power to influence how people think. Even television adaptations of Agatha Christie mysteries now routinely come with an unsavory dose of political correctness and liberal moralizing. No element of our culture is safe.

The announcement that the government is considering legislation to strengthen free speech in universities is a welcome start, but no more than a beginning. Whilst institutions can be legally forced to allow certain speakers, legislation alone will not weaken the dominance of an ideology that vilifies those who dare to think for themselves. The only way lasting change can be made is by redistributing the power of the liberal establishment. The Government must proactively ensure that all appointments made to cultural bodies play a part in bringing about a greater range of views more in keeping with the sentiments of hard-working patriots. Perhaps communal panels of workers supported by worthy local organisations could vet applicants. Such an approach would leave the left up-in-arms because they know that it would give a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless.

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No one is safe from the puritanical poison of wokeness says SIR JOHN HAYES - Express

Photo by Owen Stidman

ASGs weekly session. Senators heard two bills and voted on an emergency resolution and a previous weeks bill, passing both.

Associated Student Government Senate introduced three resolutions Wednesday regarding the census count, protection of students freedom of speech and the widespread release of a task force report that details institutional actions supporting genderqueer, non-binary and transgender students at NU.

They also passed a bill, introduced by ASG parliamentarian and Weinberg sophomore Elizabeth Sperti in a Feb. 26 session, that proposed the creation of an ad hoc committee to consider establishing a one-stop advocacy office for all student concerns.

Wednesdays session marked the Senates penultimate meeting of Winter Quarter. ASG officials were eager to roll out resolutions before the end of the term and elections season, which officially starts in the spring.

Weinberg junior James Crisafulli introduced a bill, supported by four Senate members, to affirm that ASG will commit to acknowledging and increasing outreach efforts toward collecting accurate information on Northwestern students for the 2020 census. It also says ASG will help students fill out census forms and fight miscommunication.

Our biggest goal with the resolution is just that people on ASG are sort of so tapped into off-campus life and student body and different organizations, Crisafulli said, that we just want them to be more aware of (census collection) as an issue and being able to spread awareness about the census coming up.

The census is a constitutionally mandated count of U.S. residents that occurs every ten years. It is particularly important for political representation of college students, because there is a misconception that they will be counted by their households, when in fact, off-campus students are responsible for counting themselves, he said.

Another resolution, authored by ASG chief of staff Henry Molnar and SESP senator Daniel Rodriguez, Bienen senator Megan Radcliffe and SESP senator Jenn Beardsley, proposes that the University establish concrete protection of freedom of speech. The lengthy set of proposals, which have been crafted by a Senate committee entitled FreeSpeechNU, chronicled recent campus incidents concerning free speech, such as the anonymous demonstration at The Rock and protests against Jeff Sessions visit to campus, which both occurred in Fall Quarter.

Its basically a really comprehensive (bill) looking at a bunch of different free speech policies at Northwestern and trying to expand those, Molnar said.

The resolution condemns the Universitys repainting of The Rock and issuance of citations, which were later dropped, to student protestors at the Sessions speech.

The bill proposed the University extend free speech policies to apply to The Rock. It added that the University should amend its demonstration and advertising policies to remove limitations on political expression as well as set clear policies on students and University employees conduct during a protest.

The final bill of the meeting concerned the Universitys release of the report by Gender Queer, Non-binary and Transgender Task Force, which was released last month. The 82-page report details key requests, action items, desired outcomes and deadlines to improve conditions of life for GQNBT individuals at Northwestern.

Co-authored by ASG vice president Adam Davies, Rainbow Alliance senator Alyssa Peterson and three other Senate members, the resolution proposes the administration disseminate the report through a University-wide email and that it clearly states the transgender and cis-gender leads of the task force, cementing its commitment to advancing GQNBT causes.

Peterson said even though the findings in the report were important and relevant to students at NU, it was listed as the third item of the University newsletter. The University should take responsibility and take the forefront in promoting its results, Peterson said.

Normally, a report of this scale would have been given a campus-wide all-scale email of its own separate from the newsletter, Peterson said. As Northwestern has demonstrated in the past, they continue to skirt from the experiences of the genderqueer nonbinary and trans student body under the rug.

As it is an emergency resolution, which according to ASGs laws, means that it is voted on during the same session it was introduced, the bill was passed.

The other two resolutions, which are on census collection and freedom of speech protection, will be put to a vote at the final meeting of Winter Quarter.

Isabelle Sarraf contributed reporting.

Email: yunkyokim2022@u.northwestern.eduTwitter: @yunkyomoonk

Related Stories: The Ripple: US Census Bureau, Evanston aim for complete census count Northwestern takes initial steps to reduce 2020 Census undercount Explaining ASGs constitutional amendments

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ASG introduces three resolutions, votes on advocacy committee - The Daily Northwestern