Category Archives: Government Oppression

Activists are calling on 82 major apparel and retail companies around the world to commit to sourcing cotton outside of China. In a letter to "apparel industry leaders," the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region cited astudy that ties international cotton sales to accusations ofbrutal treatment of China's Muslim minority.

The Uyghurs are a Turkic Muslim minority ethnic group mostly congregated in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a massive autonomous region along the northwestern border of the People's Republic of China. Since 2014, accusations of widespread human rights abuses against the Uyghur people have been raised.

Beijing has been accused of implementing tactics like government surveillance, forced sterilization, and re-education camps, in a campaign that's been described as "ethnic cleansing." The Chinese government has denied these accusations.

In 2020, the United States banned the import of certain Xinjiang products, including cotton, over concerns about forced labor in the region.

China's International Press Center did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

"In the Uyghur region, the Chinese government has set up a system of hundreds of internment camps," Laura Murphy, a professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at the Helena Kennedy Center for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, told Insider. "Every decision any Uyghur person might make in that region is dominated by the knowledge that at any point they could be sent to one of these internment camps."

Murphy added that "it's also against the law for them to refuse participation in a government program."

Under President Joe Biden's administration, the US Treasury Department has sanctioned two high-level Chinese officials over allegations of "genocide and human rights violations"against the Uyghurs. Human Rights Watch has said that China could be detaining as many as 1 million Uyghurs. For its part, the US government has also warned that companies with supply chain ties to Xinjiang"run a high risk of violating US law."

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied committing genocide against the Uyghurs.

"These basic facts show that there has never been so-called genocide, forced labour, or religious oppression in Xinjiang," Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the UN Human Rights Council in February, according to Reuters. "Such inflammatory accusations are fabricated out of ignorance and prejudice, they are simply malicious and politically driven hype and couldn't be further from the truth."

Murphy spearheaded the report "Laundering Cotton: How Xinjiang Cotton is Obscured in International Supply Chains." In her research, she initially identified five Chinese companies selling cotton yarn or fabric that was sourced from the Xinjiang region. She then tracked shipments from those five companies, which largely went to apparel manufacturers in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia, China, and Mexico. The study then looked into which global companies had ties to those intermediaries, through shipping records, finding that Xinjiang-sourced cotton "circumvents certain supply standards and import bans to end up on clothing racks around the world."

On Tuesday, the Coalition sent an open letter to 82 top retailers and brands that have not yet signed a "call to action" demanding that companies "fully extricate their supply chains from the Uyghur Region." Several brands, including ASOS, Eileen Fisher, the Marks and Spencer Group, and Reformation, have signed onto that pledge.

Insider reached out to all 82 companies who received the letter on November 22. The brands that received the letter included retail and e-commerce giants like Amazon, Carrefour, Costco, Home Depot, Ikea, Jo Ann Stores, Kmart, Kohl's, L.L. Bean, Macy's, Patagonia, Sears, Target, Walmart, and Wayfair. Most of the recipients were apparel brands, including American Eagle Outfitters, Brooks Brothers, Chico's, Duluth Trading, Eddie Bauer, Forever 21, Gap Inc., Guess, Hanes, Hugo Boss, Land's End, Levi Strauss, Lilly Pulitzer, Lucky Brand, Madewell, Marco Polo, Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren, Uniqlo, and Vineyard Vines.

Most did not immediately reply. JCPenney declined to comment.

"We are concerned about reports of forced labor in, and connected to, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR)," a Nike spokesperson said in a statement sent to Insider. "Nike does not source products from the XUAR and we have confirmed with our contract suppliers that they are not using textiles or spun yarn from the region."

Spokespersons for C&A, Everlane, Lacoste, L.L. Bean, and Tesco said that their companies' ethical codes for suppliers strictly prohibit the use of forced labor. The L.L. Bean spokesperson said that the company exited Xinjiang in August 2020, and that it has removed "all Chinese cotton from our assortment."

Lacoste said that it has only used cotton originating from the US, Australia, Turkey, and Peru for its 2020 production. An Everlane spokesperson told Insider that "our analysis and records indicate that none of our raw materials, yarns, and fabrics produced in the manufacturing units called out in your report (and otherwise) originate from the XUAR."

Timothy Voit, the vice president of strategic and international sales at textile-manufacturing company Thomaston Mills, told Insider: "We don't source anything from China. We do specify the origin of cotton to be used in any of our products anywhere in our supply chain to exclude the possibility of forced labor from Xinjiang or Xinjiang."

Murphy told Insider that given the sheer enormity of Xinjiang's cotton output, the burden of keeping the fabric off clothing racks should fall on governmental bodies and international corporations, not consumers.

"It is a wake-up call that we need to be much more attentive to where our products come from," Murphy said. "Because otherwise we're complicit in both forced labor and a pretty radical discriminatory global system where the worst consequences fall upon the most marginalized among us."

Read more from the original source:

Activists Call on Retailers to Pledge Not to Work in Xinjiang Region - Business Insider

The woman in the video is about the same age as my mother. She is speaking at a school-board meeting in Virginia as a concerned parent.

Ive been very alarmed by whats going on in our schools, she reads from prepared notes. You are now teaching, training our children to be social-justice warriors and to loathe our country and our history. Her voice is soft but stern. She recounts her youth in Mao Zedongs China and the political fanaticism she witnessed firsthand, before calling critical race theory the American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. At the end of her remarks, the audience bursts into cheers. Virginia Mom Who Survived Maoist China Eviscerates School Boards Critical Race Theory Push, blares the headline on Fox News.

As a Chinese academic working in the U.S., I watched the video and was disconcerted by its familiarity. The speakers views are not uncommon among many first-generation Chinese immigrants, who are grateful to their new country and eager to assimilate. Critical race theory, the analytical framework developed by a small group of legal scholars to address structural racism, has been morphed into a derogatory term by the right. The loudest conservative voices reject any effort to talk about racial inequality as divisive and dangerous, akin to the Cultural Revolution, Maos mass movement that plunged China into a decade of turmoil and claimed more than a million lives.

From the January/February 2021 issue: Uncovering the Cultural Revolutions awful truths

At a time when authorities in Beijing have tightened their grip at home and are extending their reach abroad, when U.S.-China relations have tumbled to the lowest point in decades, and when students and scholars of Chinese descent face heightened scrutiny, the frequent invocation of my birth country in the discourse on free expression is not random or simply misguided: Its a product and a tool of geopolitics. China has become a foil, the embodiment of authoritarian evil eroding American freedom.

The use of the Cultural Revolution to characterize the state of free speech on American campuses reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Chinese history and American society. Academic freedom is in peril. Focusing the blame on cancel culture or social-justice warriors, however, would be to miss the greater challenge. The root of the problem lies not in zealous individuals or foreign interferenceits always easier to focus on incidents than to examine the system, to blame the other than to reckon with the selfbut in relations of power that bend institutions to the will of the powerful.

Growing up in China, I was taught at a very young age that the two biggest taboos were politics and death. When I moved to the U.S. in 2009 for graduate school, I proudly declared to my family that I was leaving not just to pursue a degree but to live in a free country. One of the first things I did after arriving at the University of Chicago was type the words Tiananmen and 1989 into Google. I had sensed the presence of a seismic event in my birth year by tracing the contours of censorshipa date that cannot be mentioned, heightened surveillance around its anniversary, and my mother's refusal to answer any questions about itbut only in a foreign land was I able to reach the forbidden history and learn what my government had denied me.

I was eager to exercise my newly gained freedoms and participate in American democracy, however limited opportunities are for an international student. I could not vote, donate to a candidate, or run for office, so I volunteered at a phone bank for Barack Obamas reelection campaign and pressed questions to local candidates. When the Institute of Politics opened at the University of Chicago in 2013, I was among the organizations first student leaders. By facilitating many of its events, I watched debates on free expression unfold: How should a university respond to offensive speech? Are trigger warnings necessary? Should the campus be a safe space? In 2014, the university released the Report on the Committee of Free Expression, which has become known as the Chicago Principles, reaffirming its commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate. In conversations with schoolmates, I defended the principles and used my upbringing in an authoritarian society to lecture my American friends, whom I saw as well-meaning but overly sensitive, spoiled by the rights they took for granted and blind to the dangers of ideological control.

In retrospect, I recognize the limits of my argument. By upholding free speech as a shield and dismissing grievances over the sometimes ill-conceived tactics of the aggrieved, such as shouting down a speaker, I was the one reluctant to receive new ideas, to understand why certain speech offends and how shifting norms around race, gender, and sexuality echo the deep wells of discrimination, the progresses made, and the long roads ahead. Still new to this country, I clung to an idealized version of the U.S. not because of what it is but because of what I needed it to be to justify my journey.

My awakening came in 2016, as the ugly truths of this nation were laid bare. The banner of free expression was hijacked by the far-right and its sympathizers, whose concept of an open-minded campus was measured by the most bigoted speaker it was willing to host. With a spike in hate crimes and waves of discriminatory policies, the marginalized were not fragile for pointing out the dangers to their being. As racism, misogyny, and xenophobia occupied the highest levels of government, these harmful ideas did not need the additional platform of a university event to be heard, nor could they be defeated by a mere exchange of words. What the most vocal proponents of campus free speech desired was not the freedom of inquiry but a license to offend, free from consequences.

Earlier this year, the Hong Kong prodemocracy activist Nathan Law was invited to speak at the University of Chicagos Harris School of Public Policy. The Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) at my alma mater emailed the deans of the Harris School to express grave concerns that the invitation of Law fell outside the purviews of free speech and was extremely hurtful, insulting and angering to the Chinese student community.

Read: The end of free speech in Hong Kong

Laws event at the Harris School proceeded as planned, but his talks at other U.S. campuses faced similar opposition. HK activists free speech are threatened by pro-CCP (Chinese Communist Party) nationalists, such as CSSAs, which are CCPs extended arms, Law wrote on Twitter.

The long arm of the Chinese state does indeed pose serious threats to academic freedom, but the main risk is not from nationalistic students. CSSA members are diverse in political opinion, though the ones supportive of Beijings policies are usually the most vocal. The few who surveil or harass other members of the campus community should face discipline, but painting every Chinese student who holds pro-government views as a potential agent of Beijing erases individual agency and feeds racist paranoia. Students, however misinformed, are also entitled to free expression and, hopefully, will learn and correct their mistakes.

The vulnerability instead lies in the operational model of the university. With the privatization and commercialization of higher education, universities are run like businesses, in which a degree becomes a product, students become customers, and the worlds most populous country becomes the biggest overseas market. Numbering nearly 400,000 before the coronavirus pandemic, Chinese students make up more than a third of U.S. universities international student population. Schools are often underprepared for the influx of Chinese students, making them rely on organizations like CSSAs, which keep a cozy relationship with Chinese consulates but also provide services and a sense of community for overseas students.

The financial incentives from tuition income and other lucrative collaborations with Chinese entities have also exposed schools to Chinese-state pressure and downturns in bilateral relations. In 2017, the Chinese government cut funding for visiting scholars to the University of California at San Diego after the Dalai Lama gave the institutions commencement speech. As tensions rose between Washington and Beijing, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, home to the largest Chinese-student community in the U.S., took out a $61 million insurance policy against a potential drop in Chinese enrollment. Academic publishers including Cambridge University Press and Springer Nature have capitulated to Beijings censorship demands and blocked content for the Chinese market. Emblematic of both the power and the limitations of the academic community, Cambridge reversed its decision after widespread protests and threats of a boycott; Springer did not.

Over the past few years, there has been a growing awareness of Beijings influence on U.S. campuses, but the problem is routinely portrayed as uniquely Chinese. The blame is assigned to an external actor, and the solution is to impose a borderon money, ideas, and personnel. This amounts to little more than swapping one source of state pressure (foreign) for another (domestic). Protecting American universities from the China threat has become another lever in Washingtons tool kit, and jingoistic rhetoric fans xenophobia and racial animosity.

There are few better examples of a genuine challenge to academic freedom being misappropriated by geopolitics than the controversy around Confucius Institutes. Launched in 2004 by Chinas Ministry of Education, the centers are located at colleges and universities around the world and offer lessons on Chinese language and culture. They are jointly financed and managed by Beijing and host institutions. Though the latter have varying degrees of autonomy, the Chinese government provides the candidate pool of teachers, preapproves much of the course material, and retains the right to terminate a contract in case of action that severely harms the image or reputation of the program.

In 2014, the American Association of University Professors and its Canadian counterpart issued a report criticizing Confucius Institutes for allowing third-party control of academic matters. That September, the University of Chicago ended its partnership with the program, after faculty and students petitioned for the closure on academic-freedom grounds. It was the first institution in the U.S. to do so. Few others followed at the time. Concerns over Confucius Institutes were notably separate from discourse on campus free expression and, initially, were largely ignored by school administrators. Existing centers continued and new ones opened, totaling more than 100 in the U.S. by 2017.

The figure has plummeted to only 36 this fall; at least eight more are scheduled to close. The pressure came not from the academy but from the U.S. government. Amid escalating rivalry between the U.S. and China, legitimate questions about censorship and self-censorship at these language centers have been swept up in a frenzied narrative of indoctrination and espionage. The focus has shifted from academic freedom to national security. Lawmakers call on schools in their districts to shut down Confucius Institutes. The National Defense Authorization Act prohibits universities that host these centers from receiving Department of Defense funding. As universities acquiesce to these demands, the future of Chinese-language learning remains uncertain. Flawed as they are, Confucius Institutes have fulfilled a genuine need, especially at smaller schools with fewer resources.

Discussions on this topic are incomplete without reflecting on the history and politics of foreign-language education, which has long been a low priority for state and federal governments except in moments of national emergency. Language skills are valued largely for their usefulness to the state, to advance foreign-policy agendas or improve economic productivity. In 1958, shortly after the launch of Sputnik 1, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, which established federal support for foreign-language training. The law included a loyalty oath to the U.S. government and the Constitution as a condition of funding. Universities pushed back, boycotting the acts student-loan program, and the loyalty provision was repealed during the Kennedy administration.

Decades later, Stewart E. McClure, the chief clerk of the Senate committee responsible for the legislation, reflected on his role in inventing the name of the law, a God-awful title that was politically expedient: If there are any words less compatible, really, intellectually, in terms of what is the purpose of educationits not to defend the country; its to defend the mind and develop the human spirit, not to build cannons and battleships.

A university is not a public square. Miss the institutional context, and the understanding of academic freedom is flattened to an individual's right to free expression. Buried in the latest controversy over a disinvited speaker or a poorly worded email, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia has voted to effectively end tenure in the states public-university system. Donors have swayed hiring decisions at the University of North Carolina and tried to shape the curriculum at Yale. To the drumbeat of strategic rivalry, the State Department has placed various restrictions on Chinese students and researchers, the Justice Department is carrying out a China Initiative to combat economic espionage with a focus on academia, and funding for science, according to bills in Congress, is aimed at winning the competition against China. As a backlash to last years protests for racial justice and as a prelude to the next election cycle, more than two dozen states have introduced bills or passed laws that ban critical race theory at schools and limit teaching on racism and gender discrimination.

Read: The GOPs critical race theory obsession

I do not know whether proponents of these bans realize how much their position resembles that of Beijing and its followers, the red menace they rail against. An honest history lesson would reveal systemic oppression and implicate the powerful. The language of unity and national pride is weaponized to absolve the authorities and conceal the truth.

An ivory tower above and beyond the messy planes of politics is an illusion. The academy is not an abstraction. It has a history and depends on a set of material conditions to function. Its not merely a meeting of minds but also a congregation of bodies, in a world where some bodies are valued more than others. Like any other institution, the academy is embedded in the power relations of a society, and relations of power, if not actively contested, are always reproduced. Regarding racist speech and critiques of racist speech as equal in a marketplace of ideas is not being neutral; it is perpetuating racism. Too often, discussions on campus free speech are distracted by superficial optics and overlook the underlying power dynamic. The privileged cry victim when their privilege is being challenged. The disenfranchised resort to aggressive tactics in a desperate attempt to be heard and are cast as the bully.

The solution to hateful speech is not outlawing speech; constructing and enforcing a ban yields more power to the already powerful. The path forward lies in leveling the terrains of injustice and empowering the marginalized, and that requires efforts from all of society. The academy is not an activist organization, but it has a professional duty to challenge orthodoxy and a moral obligation to speak truth to power. Academic freedom is not just freedom from pressures of the state or moneyed interests; more important, its the freedom to explore, to transcend boundaries, to discover new realms of knowledge and imagine new ways of being.

Since I left China, over the phone and through text messages, my mother has repeated a warning: Focus on academics. Stay away from politics. She was disappointed when I majored in physics; she had been hoping I would choose a more feminine profession, such as teaching high-school-English. She has, in any case, taken comfort in the thought that exploring the fundamental laws of nature will keep me far from the affairs of the state. I have not told her about my recent career change to research the ethics and governance of science, or the many articles I have written that are critical of the Chinese government. In the shadows of an oppressive regime, silence can be a language of love.

I reckon with the denial in my mothers caution, a condition of enduring authoritarianism; staying away from politics means staying obedient to the state. We all inhabit political lives; the difference is between choosing passivity and exercising agency.

Every day, I go to work at one of the oldest institutions of higher learning on this continent. Im reminded of the fact that this campus predates the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, that universities outlive kings and popes, empires and dictators. As I walk past the storied halls and gothic spires, Im also heavy with an awareness that legacies of slavery and colonialism mark this place. For most of the institutions history, a body like mineforeign, female, and nonwhitewas never accepted. My presence here is a fruit of past struggles. My belonging contends the borders of the academy. My humanity is not up for debate.

Excerpt from:

Cancel Culture Isn't the Real Threat to Academic Freedom - The Atlantic

By Nicholas Goldberg

Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021 | 2 a.m.

Americans are again battling over history.

Is the year 1619 as important as 1776? Shall we tear down statues of Robert E. Lee or go further and topple Thomas Jefferson too? Is the left telling a twisted web of lies (as President Donald Trump put it) about Americas magnificent history, or was the U.S. indeed built on a rotten foundation of genocide, disenfranchisement, bigotry and oppression?

Angry debates have spread from social media to school board meetings to state capitols to the White House, as Americans haggle over who we really are and the past that formed us.

But lets not be myopic. The United States is not alone in this. History is being rethought, reinterpreted, relitigated and, all too often, cynically manipulated around the world.

Just this month, Xi Jinping, Chinas paramount leader, wrote himself into that countrys history books on a par with the 20th century giants Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The Chinese Communist Partys newest official history devotes more than a quarter of its 500-plus pages to Xis nine years in office, according to The New York Times, and a recent party resolution dictates how he will be portrayed in textbooks, classrooms, movies and TV shows.

In Israel, historians are pressing the government to release documents about a massacre of civilian Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin during the creation of the state in 1948. Historians want the documents as they study the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the government is stonewalling to protect the countrys image.

Meanwhile, a shocking 56% of Russians said in May that the monstrous, murderous dictator Joseph Stalin was, in fact, a great leader. Stalins rapidly rising favorability reflects nostalgia for a dimly remembered Soviet past and pride in Russias victory over fascism in World War II, but it is also the result of an effort by President Vladimir Putin to rehabilitate Stalins reputation for his own political purposes. Statues to Stalin were dismantled in previous generations but are now being re-erected in some cities.

The point is this: History is fraught, everywhere.

Thats because it is more than just a collection of old harmless stories; its actually about national identity, about how nations and citizens define themselves. Where do we come from? What do we stand for? Who are our heroes, and who are our villains?

For the most part, its good to debate history. People should know their past and engage with it. Its healthy to reconsider it every generation or so through the lens of an evolving present and newly uncovered facts.

But history can also be manipulated for power, for ideology, for votes, for factional advantage or simply to justify one policy or another. Thats what Xi and Putin appear to be doing. The past can be used to stoke enmity or a sense of injustice and grievance. That happened in the Balkans in the 1990s. It happens today in China, where the Communist Party has long emphasized the so-called century of humiliation by outside powers, beginning with Britain and the Opium Wars in 1839.

Trump, too, was a deft manipulator of historical narratives. As president, he began an overwrought campaign against The New York Times 1619 Project (which has received some pushback from historians on issues of accuracy and interpretation) and established his own 1776 Commission to encourage patriotic history about our magnificent country.

That wasnt a serious proposal. It was politics and marketing that played conveniently into his Make America Great Again propaganda, riling up disaffected voters.

The reality is that history whether at home or abroad is rarely black and white, as Trump and other political leaders might have you believe. Countries arent good, evil or magnificent, but complicated.

Whats more, history is full of contradictions. Stalin was an egregious mass murderer, but he was also our wartime ally who sat beside Churchill and Roosevelt as they worked to defeat the Nazis.

Jefferson was the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, but he also owned more than 600 slaves. (The New York City Council recently voted unanimously to remove a statue of him from City Hall.)

Israel created a refuge for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust in Europe, yet its establishment also began a new odyssey of displacement, dispossession and conflict.

Real historians need to labor in that murky nuance, wrestling with that cognitive dissonance.

To fight false narratives, they need to be intellectually honest, not polemicists or partisans or propagandists.

As we rethink our history periodically, we need to view it from a range of perspectives and in all its ugly accuracy, without whitewashing. To do otherwise is self-defeating, because we study the past in part to learn from our mistakes.

Inevitably, there will be clashing interpretations. Here at home, some historians portray U.S. history as an uplifting story of the slow but steady expansion of rights and liberties to more and more Americans, while others emphasize the mistreatment of Indigenous people, the horrors of slavery, the denial of rights to immigrants and people of color.

The study of history is fuller and richer because of these competing points of view.

As the British historian Christopher Hill said: History has to be rewritten in every generation, because although the past doesnt change, the present does; each generation asks new questions of the past and finds new areas of sympathy as it relives different aspects of the experiences of its predecessors.

Thats a positive process as long as the rewriting wherever in the world it takes place adheres to basic standards of honest scholarship, rather than power politics and gamesmanship.

Nicholas Goldberg is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

More here:

Jefferson statues are coming down in the US; Stalin statues are going up in Russia - Las Vegas Sun

During a recent professional-development training, Tulsa Public Schools teachers were told to shift their classroom focus to privilege and oppression, according to materials recently made public.

That recommendation was included in a Changing the Discourse training offered by the National Equity Project that was provided to Tulsa teachers. Much of the National Equity Projects materials and website include concepts associated with Critical Race Theory, such as the idea that white individuals automatically enjoy privileged status while racial minorities are automatically oppressed, regardless of individual circumstances or achievement.

One slide presented during the program stated that the training would help participants calibrate what we mean by equity and closing the achievement gap. It divided discourse into two categories with the second category defined as the language that tends to be about uncomfortable, unequal, ineffective, prejudicial conditions in school.

Another slide from the presentation encouraged Tulsa teachers to shift from focusing on ability and merit to privilege and oppression.

That same slide also informed teachers that they should put less focus on techniques, methods, and best practices and instead put more focus on learning and relationships. Rather than focus on discipline and control, the training told Tulsa teachers to instead place more focus on alienation and resistance.

Teachers were also told to put less focus on answers and solutions and instead focus on dilemmas and inquiries.

Portions of the training were recently made public on the Facebook page of Tulsa Parents Voice, a local chapter of a statewide organization that advocates for parental involvement in Oklahoma education. A spokesperson for the group indicated the slides were obtained from a participant.

Consciously Redistribute Power

On its website, the National Equity Project encourages officials to acknowledge and make meaning of the historical and ongoing impacts of racism and white supremacy. The projects statement of beliefs also declares that public systems, including public schools, maintain inequity by design and that inequity was not created by accident.

It takes rebel leadership to abolish unjust systems and catalyze positive change, the National Equity Project site states. Rebel leaders make good trouble.

The group indicated its recommendations, if embraced, disrupt existing school systems in significant ways.

Leading for equity requires us to redesign structures and processes to consciously redistribute power across role groups and institutions, the National Equity Project site states.

Various blog posts authored by the leadership of the National Equity Project also stress that significant disruption is a feature, not a bug, of its training and mission.

The fight for our collective future will not be fair or gentlepower concedes nothing without demand, wrote LaShawn Rout Chatmon, executive director of the National Equity Project, in a June 4, 2020 blog post. We are already witnessing the callous and negligent responses to demands for justice and accountability.

In that same blog, Chatmon decried alleged further evidence of racial terror being waged against Black bodies, followed by maligned indifference to demands for justice. We can no longer deny the violence, pain and loss that is being disproportionately beset upon Black people and Black communities.

In a Sept. 16, 2019 blog, Kathleen Osta, the National Equity Projects managing director of the Midwest region, wrote, White students need to learn our history as white people, the way that whiteness was constructed to advantage those who were designated as white and disadvantage people of color systematically denying people of color the right to vote, the right to own property and build wealth, and the right to live in communities with well-funded schools, transportation, green space. They need to understand the way that government policies created and sustain the racial segregation and systemic inequities we see today and they need opportunities to confront these truths in ways that support them to be curious, to acknowledge their emotional responses and not fall victim to the defensiveness, guilt, and white fragility that often arises when white people come into consciousness about our true history.

Lawmakers Call for HB 1775 Permanent Rules

Under House Bill 1775, which became law this year, Oklahomas K-12 schools are banned from teaching several concepts associated with Critical Race Theory, including that one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex or that an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Under emergency rules adopted by the State Board of Education to implement HB 1775, schools are prohibited from contracting with outside entities to conduct programs that include material banned by HB 1775. Schools are also prohibited from adopting diversity, equity, or inclusion plans that incorporate the concepts barred by HB 1775.

Under the regulations, school districts that fail to comply with HB 1775 can have their annual accreditation status downgraded and districts that do not address shortcomings for two years in a row can face the loss of accreditation.

Twenty-eight members of the Oklahoma Legislature recently signed a letter calling on State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister to begin the process of promulgating permanent rules to implement House Bill 1775.

As you are aware, H.B. 1775 took effect July 1, outlawing the teaching of race and sex-based discriminatory ideologies to students in Oklahoma schools, the letter stated. There is continued opposition to these ideologies from parents, educators, students, and citizens statewide. We write today to urge you to immediately begin the process of promulgating permanent rules to implement H.B. 1775 and to do so by posting the State Board of Educations existing emergency rules for public comment.

The lawmakers wrote that it is past time for the permanent rules to be published for the 30-day public comment period, as required by the Oklahoma Administrative Procedures Act. Given the importance of these rules, members of the Oklahoma legislature will be closely monitoring both the substantive changes the State Department of Education makes to existing emergency rules and the process the Department utilizes to submit permanent rules to the legislature for final approval.

Despite the passage of HB 1775, the website of the Oklahoma State Department of Education, which is headed by Hofmeister, still includes or directs teachers to materials that tout themes common to Critical Race Theory, including a letter from Hofmeister declaring that racism is so deeply entrenched and pervasive in nearly every corner of society and that the need for systemic change has long been at the fore of public school concerns. Among the high-quality resources touted on the agency website is a lesson plan that teaches students about the advantages of being a recipient of White privilege, offers a privilege aptitude test for students, and requires students to openly discuss questions such as What does White privilege mean to you?

On its website, the National Equity Project lists Tulsa Public Schools as one of the organizations school-district clients, alongside districts in other states such as the Berkeley Unified School District, Chicago Public Schools, and San Francisco Unified School District. Tulsa appears to be the only Oklahoma district listed.

The use of National Equity Project training in Tulsa Public Schools coincides with the district generating some of the worst academic outcomes among the more than 500 school districts in Oklahoma. State tests administered in spring 2021 showed that 89 percent of all students testing in all subjects in Tulsa Public Schools scored below grade level, and 64 percent were effectively more than a year behind. Among Tulsas third-grade students, 92 percent tested below grade level in English with 74 percent more than a year behind.

As of publication, Tulsa Public Schools had not responded to a request for comment.

See the original post here:

Tulsa teachers told to focus on 'privilege and oppression' - Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs

One of my west Ada County legislative colleagues spilled the beans. Arguing against being too hasty, this colleague countered during floor debate: We havent been hasty. Weve been working on some of these bills since July.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Exhibit A for political malpractice. A majority party that controls 80% of the Senate and over 82% of the House has been working for nearly four months writing bills behind closed doors four months to draft legislation, consider long term consequences, finalize a few well-crafted bills, and build a consensus to pass them.

Instead, we got a hodgepodge of 29 bills introduced in the House, which were withheld from the public until the first day of the reconvened session and voted on the next day. Some read as if they were written on the back of a napkin. Most of them where so poorly written you could drive a truck through the gaps in logic, legality, and fiscal impact.

The outcome: Not a single bill passed. The majority party spent $100,000 of your tax dollars to reconvene the Legislature with nothing to show for it.

Actually, thats not entirely true. One legislator confided in private it really didnt matter if any of the bills actually passed. What mattered was creating talking points for reelection campaigns next year just by introducing them (e.g. I tried to do . . .).

In fact, the political malpractice put on display makes a convincing argument for not allowing the Legislature to call itself into special session. This can happen if voters pass a proposed constitutional amendment that will appear on next Novembers ballot. The events of this week took place a year before the 2022 election. Imagine if the legislature could pull this political stunt a month before Election Day! The opportunities to pervert the legislative process for purely political campaign purposes are endless which would be endlessly paid for by you.

A question of balance

Many of the bills, either singularly or in combination, gave the unvaccinated the right to work anywhere, anytime, in any environment and without disclosure. The rights of those who want to avoid being exposed by those who are unvaccinated were never considered. One scenario would not allow you to ask or confirm if a caregiver employed by a business or government entity was unvaccinated, thus preventing you from denying them employment and entry into your home to take care of your kids or elderly parents.

The honest, mature, professional debate we should have had this week was how to balance the rights of the individual with the rights of others and the public at large. Allowing anyone to do anything they want, anywhere, at any time, without any responsibility or consequence for their actions is anarchy. Conversely, government control of everything at the cost of individual liberty is oppression.

The best path forward is somewhere in the middle, rather than either extreme. Its what discerning and disciplined legislators do in the face of highly emotional and inflammatory circumstances. In the words of J. K. Rowling, We must face the choice between what is easy and what is right. Its easy to play into the emotions of the moment. Its a lot harder to step back and discern the right course of action that may not fully satisfy those emotions.

This is why we need to elect critical thinkers who understand they represent the interests of all constituents, not just those who voted for them.

This is why we need to vote for the person, not a letter or a color.

Read more from the original source:

The outcome of the $100,000 session: Not a single bill passed - Idaho EdNews

Union Minister of Home Affairs & Cooperation, Amit Shah on Monday expressed his confidence that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will return to power during the 2022 Assembly polls.

He reiterated on the same, while virtually laying the foundation stone for setting-up the Rani Gaidinliu Tribal freedom fighters Museum at Luangkao village, Tamenglong District at 12 PM in the City Convention Center, Imphal East.

The Home Minister further stated that BJP-Led government has restored peace, law & order in the state, a northeastern region which earlier witnessed suppression from various insurgent groups.

He also highlighted that prior to N. Biren Singh taking over as the Chief Minister, Manipur have seen oppression in the forms of bandhs and blockade.

Development in the state will further intensify once the BJP-led government comes to power for a second consecutive term, he said.

Before coming to power in Manipur, we had promised to end bandh, hartal and blockade. We have ended all the three, and significantly improved the law and order situation, he claimed.

Shah asserted that Manipur played a significant role to resist the British colonial role across the northeast regions during the 1857 & 1891 revolution.

Continued here:

BJP-Led Government Restored Peace In Manipur; Says Union Home Minister Amit Shah - NorthEast Today

Demonstrations have been planned for the day on which Barbados is scheduled to transition to a republic because of an invitation extended from the Government of Barbados to Prince Charles to attend the festivities as the Guest of Honour and accept the prestigious Order of Freedom Independence award.

The planned protests have received the endorsement of an International Relations Specialist at the University of the West Indies as well as an outspoken politician who currently sits on the Governments backbench.

In an interview with Barbados TODAY, General Secretary of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration David Denny declared the inclusion of Prince Charles an insult to the Barbadian people given the role of the British Monarchy in the proliferation of slavery and oppression in Barbados.

You are either breaking with the monarchy or you are not breaking with the monarchy. And if you are breaking with the monarchy, then you cannot invite them to be part of that process. I am not saying that you cannot invite the prince to Barbados, but not for our ceremony for Barbados to become a republic. It is a contradiction. It is not an honourable thing to do and I think it is an insult to Barbadian people, declared Denny.

We insulted the Barbadian people from 1998 when we created a national heroes square with Lord Nelson in it and we struggled from then until Lord Nelson was removed, he added.

The peaceful protest is slated for 3 p.m. on November 29th at Government Headquarters on Bay Street. The social activist revealed that he is applying for permission for up to 100 attendees, hours ahead of the 11 p.m. transition ceremony.

Denny acknowledged that the protest is unlikely to prompt Mottley to rescind her invitation or dissuade Charles from coming, but he noted that the consciousness of Barbadians needed to be stirred.

He explained that at independence, when Queen Elizabeth II visited the country, she was being retained as head of state, making her presence at the independence festivities appropriate. On this occasion, Denny said it was a contradiction.

His sentiments were shared by Dr Kristina Hinds, who described the invitation from Prime Minister Mottley as a beggarly gesture and the award as highly inappropriate.

We are moving to become a republic and in so doing to break these colonial ties with the British Monarchy and I think it is extremely inappropriate to award a member of the same British family the Freedom of Barbados, Dr Hinds declared.

The British Royal family is a source of exploitation in this region and many other parts of the world and as yet, they have not offered a formal apology or any kind of repair for past harms. So I dont see how someone from the family can be given the Freedom of Barbados Award. That is beyond me.

The international relations specialist added that whilst the invitation was also unnecessary, it could be better understood from a diplomatic perspective.

You dont have to offer an award in order to say that you want to maintain a friendly relationship. All you have to do is to maintain a friendly relationship, indicate that this is what you intend to do, which is to continue developing this very important relationship, remain a member of the Commonwealth, and stand for all of what the Commonwealth stands for. But you do not have to offer an award and anybody who says that this is necessary for diplomatic relations is being disingenuous in my opinion, added Dr Hinds.

Meanwhile, longstanding St Michael East MP Trevor Prescod, a pan Africanist, declined to share his personal views on the inclusion of Prince Charles; he would make them known when the celebrations were complete.

I believe Mr Denny and all those who are not in favour of the invitation of Prince Charles are entitled to express their view and how they feel about the transition that they are witnessing. The Government as well and the Cabinet of Barbados and certainly the Prime Minister are entitled to their views of how things should be done, said Prescod.

I dont even quite understand the justification for some of these things but I always leave things at a point. Until I have a strong rationale for the objections, I leave things at a point where everybodys opinion is worthy of listening to. I think that Mr Denny who is in a position and the other brothers and sisters who want to object, I believe that they should be allowed to do so, the MP added.[emailprotected]

Read our ePaper. Fast. Factual. Free.

Sign up and stay up to date with Barbados' FREE latest news.

Read the original here:

Protest against British monarchy participation could feature in the upcoming republican celebrations - Barbados Today

Hon. Marco MendicinoMinister of Public Safety

Dear Minister Mendicino,

As we write this letter, two Canadian journalists are being held by police under your jurisdictionfor doing their jobs.

This moment demands your involvement to immediately release journalists Amber Bracken andMichael Toledano, and to bring about a swift resolution respecting journalists fundamentalrights. The national police force has repeatedly acted well beyond the law when dealing withmembers of the media, in defiance of court rulings. We ask you to exercise your oversightresponsibility to correct these serious violations forthwith.

As you are aware, Amber Bracken and Michael Toledano were illegally arrested on Nov. 19while reporting on the construction of a contentious natural gas pipeline in Wetsuweten territory in northern British Columbia. They were within the court injunction area which court decision after court decision has affirmed journalists right to access when the RCMP took them into custody and confiscated their belongings and equipment.

The national police force has repeatedly acted well beyond the law when dealing with members of the media, in defiance of court rulings.

The RCMP stated the reason for arresting the two was because they had embedded with theprotestors, which has never been illegal in Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador SupremeCourt Justice Derek Green affirmed these rights when he found in favour of journalist JustinBrake who faced criminal and civil charges after spending several days inside the Muskrat Fallssite covering a protest that shut work down at the dam in 2016. The civil charges weredismissed in 2019 by Justice Green. The criminal charges, too, were subsequently dropped.

Both Bracken and Toledano are journalists that have spent considerable time reporting on theland disputes associated with the construction of the Coastal GasLink project. Last year,Bracken was one of three journalists awarded with the CAJs Charles Bury Award for heroutstanding contributions to journalism reporting on the Wetsuweten crisis for The Narwhal.Bracken was specifically selected for the award for protecting the publics right to see eventsunfolding at Wetsuweten despite threats of arrest in 2020. Toledano has been living in the Wetsuweten territory for the past three years as a member of the media to create adocumentary called Yintah, which will air on national television in 2022.

The arrests of Bracken and Toledano are just the latest instances of Canadian police detainingjournalists who are simply trying to do their jobs. This past Thursday, the RCMP detainedindependent filmmaker Melissa Cox, who was later released without charges. This incidentmarks the second time Cox has been detained while covering a land dispute related to theWetsuweten territory. Previous charges of mischief and trespass were thrown out of court lastsummer. In addition to Cox, law enforcement also arrested Indigenous journalist and podcasthost Karl Dockstader who was covering a land dispute in Ontario. Those charges were laterwithdrawn.

At Fairy Creek, journalists were also repeatedly threatened and detained by RCMP officers. Thesituation became so egregious that, in August, the CAJ and a coalition of media intervened inthe issuance of an injunction, asking the courts to remind law enforcement of the rights ofMedia.

In two scathing written rulings, B.C. Supreme Courts Justice Douglas Thompson determinedthat the vast exclusion zones, affiliated checkpoints, and media restrictions set up by RCMPofficers at the injunction area are unlawful and seriously and substantially impacted important liberties. Justice Thompson ultimately refused to extend the injunction when he issued his second decision in September, stating the way the RCMP continued to violate charter rights when enforcing the injunction was causing a depreciation of the courts reputation.

As Canada and its democratic and civic institutions contend with and promise to redress their roles in the oppression and dispossession of Indigenous people on their land, journalists have a unique and express duty to bear witness to and comprehensively cover news events of consequence.

With 29 arrests over a two-day span, the decision to detain the press along with protestorsrepresents a move by the RCMP to prevent the public from being informed about what ishappening on the ground, during a standoff, which just recently, has included an RCMP vehiclestriking an elder, the use of canines to effectuate arrests, and the continuous implementation ofexcessive exclusion zones.

It is crucial to acknowledge the context in which these detentions, of everyone from landdefenders to media workers, are taking place. As Canada and its democratic and civicinstitutions contend with and promise to redress their roles in the oppression and dispossessionof Indigenous people on their land, journalists have a unique and express duty to bear witnessto and comprehensively cover news events of consequence. Federal agencies should see it ineveryones collective democratic interest to not unlawfully impede residents access toinformation of great public concern.

The story Bracken and Toledano are there to cover is not about press freedom. As the charterexpressly guarantees anyone in Canada, including but not exclusively the press, the right offreedom of expression, their legally enshrined rights of access need be honoured so they, andall other media workers, can do the job of covering the story, and not becoming the story.

The RCMP must be held accountable for their repeated violations of the rights of media inCanada. As the minister responsible for their oversight, we demand that you take immediate steps to investigate and correct the RCMPs actions and to ensure that going forward,journalists right to report will be protected in this country.

We the undersigned (listed alphabetically),

CC:

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

The Honourable Mike Farnworth, Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General,Province of British Columbia

Brenda Lucki, Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

The rest is here:

Open letter: Media calls on Trudeau government to halt RCMP violations of press freedom | Ricochet - Ricochet Media

BJPs Goa election in-charge Devendra Fadnavis said on Monday that political parties such as AAP and TMC were like migratory birds which will go back to where they came from once the election in the state concludes.

Addressing BJP workers in the Mandrem assembly constituency in North Goa, the former Maharashtra chief minister said, A lot of parties have come to Goa but they are like Siberian birds. Siberian birds come to Mumbai, Goa for a periodsome Siberian birds have arrived from Delhi, some from Kolkata. Once the election is over, they will be back to where they came from. Goa will see a government under BJP leadership return (to power). We trust CM Pramod Sawant, and most of all, we trust PM Narendra Modi, said Fadnavis.

Attacking the Opposition, he said, If there is a completely confused party at the national level, it is the Congress which has now become a nano party.

On the TMC that has aggressively entered Goa politics ahead of the Assembly elections slated for February next year, he said, Someone should ask Mamata didi, what have you accomplished in Bengal? At one time, the financial capital of India was not Mumbai, it was KolkataFirst, the Communists ruined it and then didi ruined it further. People have no jobs, theres no law and orderIf you speak out against the government, you are hanged, your limbs are broken, you are beheaded. This is the kind of oppression there. And this oppression can never be acceptable in Goa.

He also attacked the Aam Aadmi Party, saying their Delhi model was only about power, education and health and other things, like infrastructure, were looked after by the Centre in the National Capital Region. People died of Covid because they did not have one large hospital that Kejriwal had built. They were dependent on the Centre.

Read the original here:

AAP, TMC like Siberian birds, will go back after election: Fadnavis in Goa - The Indian Express

Repressive regimes have perfected online harassment of dissidents. (Image: Unsplash/Towfiqu Barbhuiya)

Inspired by the Arab Spring, Manal al-Sharif used social media to start and lead movements. In the second of two articles, the Saudi-born cybersecurity expert and human rights activist examines how her home country uses social media to crush dissent. She explains how digital rights and human rights are inextricably intertwined, and how the absence of the former is the death knell of the latter.

When the internet arrived in Saudi Arabia in 1999, my world was changed forever. Though heavily censored, the World Wide Web was my first window to the outside world. I managed to hack my way to enlightenment and launched a career in cybersecurity. Ten years later, I joined the Arab Spring movement, using social media platforms to advocate for womens rights in the worlds most patriarchal society. Again, I was lucky: I was able to use the Internet to escape indoctrination.

Today, I no longer use any social media platforms and live in self-imposed exile in Australia. Unfortunately, the Saudi government and other global dictators have mastered the craft of behaviour manipulation using the same tools we once used to gain liberation. Even more worryingly, I am witnessing the transformation of the world into a global Saudi Arabia, with a state of surveillance, intimidation, misinformation, and manipulation facilitated by technological advancements and AI. These undesirable developments proliferate and fester thanks to a shameful lack of proper digital rights and privacy regulations.

What do you know about the bees?

Following the sobering revelation of the Facebook Files that gave us a look in the companys inner workings, regulators in the US are taking serious steps to circumvent more harm caused by

Facebook and its affiliates (Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus) should not be the only ones to be regulated and held accountable for the abuses facilitated by loopholes and growth algorithms. Any social media platform with many users should be part of the overhaul, including YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok and Twitter.

In Saudi Arabia, one of the worlds last absolute monarchies, Twitter is the most-used social media platform. Saudi Arabia has a young population, and its youth use Twitter as their virtual parliament and as a critical source of information. Yet research shows that even for conversations involving millions of tweets, a few hundred or a few thousand influential accounts drive the discussion.

In October 2018, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated for his demands for freedom of speech. Jamals main platform was Twitter. He was just one of many Saudi activists who used social media to continue the political conversation ignited by the Arab Spring at the end of 2010. Before his assassination, Jamal had faced an orchestrated virtual war whenever he tweeted: intimidation, harassment, defamation, and the deliberate burying of his tweets. He even received news of his death on Twitter on the day of his assassination.

By 2018, Saudi Arabia had the highest annual growth rate of social media users anywhere in the world. Social media users in the kingdom grew by 32% versus a worldwide average of 13% from January 2017 to January 2018.

Thanks to young Saudi activists such as Omar Abdulaziz, Jamal learnt that this online war was a construct of state-sponsored trolls and bots, known in Saudi as flies. The flies are controlled by a single man, Saud al-Qahtani, the crown princes adviser, dubbed by Saudi activists as Mr Hashtag or The Lord of the Flies, and one of the primary suspects in Jamals assassination. He refers to his flies as the electronic army.

When this shocking revelation confronted Jamal, he attempted to help Omar wage a counter-war using the same methods for good. The participants in this counter-war would be known as the electronic bees. On the Saudi National Day in 2018, Jamal tweeted in Arabic: What do you know about the bees? This was when he crossed the line from talk to action. He was killed 11 days later.

In the weeks that followed Jamals assassination, I witnessed first-hand how Twitter trends in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world were indeed controlled by Mr Hashtag. On October 2, 2018, the day of Jamals disappearance, Mr Hashtag and his trolls buried the story by getting two unrelated hashtags to trend in Saudi Arabia. (Note that both are translated from the Arabic hashtag; the Arabic word for beauty is jamal.)

On October 20, 2018, the day Jamal was pronounced dead, the crown prince was the primary suspect, yet Twitter trends in Saudi were unanimous in their praise of him and the Saudi government. They were clearly state-sponsored. Indeed, statements declaring allegiance to the Saudi state were among the global trends that day, with users pledging in Arabic that I am Arab and Mohammed Bin Salman represents me.

Translation of trends in order:

1 #Kingdom_of_Justice

2 #I_am_Saudi_I_Protect_Saudi

3 #How_Many_Lovers_You_Have

4 #We_Renew_Allegiance_to_King_Salman_and_Mohammed

Inspired by the Arab Spring, I once used social media to start and lead movements. That October, however, Twitter became a war zone that was no longer tolerable. Anyone attempting to question the Saudi authorities version of the story was relentlessly threatened, trolled and bullied. Eventually, many deleted their accounts or were arrested for their tweets and sent to jail, while some disappeared and remain lost to their families to this day.

I was one of those who retreated off all social media platforms following Jamals assassination. I wasnt scared or intimidated, but I knew we had lost the battle for Twitter to Mr Hashtag and his ilk. Henceforth, it would be a lost cause to use Twitter to speak up, for our voices would be silenced with lies, harassment, and manufactured patriotism.

Given this deeply divided starting point, how do we reinvent the digital world for the better?

Twitters Example

Since October 2018, Twitter has been releasing analysis on the state-linked accounts used for political manipulation in countries such as Iran, Cuba, Russia, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The accounts are used for what Twitter calls a state-backed information operations on Twitter. By October 2019, Twitter identified 5,929 accounts linked to the Saudi government and released that data set to the public. They also suspended the account of Saudi al-Qahtani, aka Mr. Hashtag.

Twitter has disclosed 85,640 accounts linked to state-backed information operations to date. By doing so, Twitter hopes to emphasise the need for transparency to improve public understanding of inauthentic influence campaigns as they state in the report.

Twitters reports dont expose the details of what loopholes these state-backed accounts are exploiting or their techniques for manipulation. But its a step towards a more transparent relationship with these platforms, and it should be encouraged and praised. More tech giants can follow Twitters example by publishing similar reports and giving independent researchers access to such data to understand the mess we are in today.

Too Big To Control

More than a hundred years ago, Louis Brandeis, an American Supreme Court Justice, warned about the dangers of corporations becoming too big. He argued that if we fail to develop adequate constraints, businesses could achieve a level of near-sovereignty, but without the checks and balances for elected political authorities.

This evidence calls loudly for change. It is joined by the thousands of Arab Spring activists who were betrayed, their revolution stolen in broad daylight; by journalists such as Maria Ressa in the Philippines, who has written for years on how democracies are crumbling around the world, and Khashoggi, who endured harassment and intimidation for his courageous work; and by those like me, who are living under self-imposed exile following unprecedented harassment and intimidation online. The evidence is deafening, and its time to step up.

Policymakers, ethical technologists, digital rights groups, and netizens worldwide must come together and shape ethical practices for tech in pursuit of a humane digital world. In this interconnected world, digital rights and human rights are inextricably intertwined. The absence of the former is the death knell of the latter.

We have numerous options to move forward. For one thing, we must strive for the publication of a Global Ethical Tech Index that encourages technologists to put humans back at the centre of their designs. For another, we must advocate for the adoption of universal regulations on digital rights and privacy protection (so-called ethical lobbying) following the example of the European Unions General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which will help authorities to demand checks and balances and independent researchers to sound the alarm on abuse. Alongside this, we must educate the general public on persuasive technology, behaviour communication, and how large-scale mining of personal data can be used to shape our views of the world. These examples are just three of many.

If the freedom of speech is the thing upon which all other freedoms are predicated, only a safe and transparent digital world can ensure that this fundamental right remains protected. These endeavours will not be easy, but the alternative is unthinkable and will be felt by all.

Excerpt from:

When governments defy the people: the authoritarian blueprint for oppression - Michael West News