"WeChat and the Surveillance State," 1984 in China

BBC reporter discusses his experience when he posts pictures of the protests commemorating Tiananmen Square in Hong Kong on WeChat.

I was in Hong Kong to cover the enormous candlelight vigil marking 30 years since the People's Liberation Army was ordered to open fire on its own people to remove the mostly student protesters who'd been gathering in and around Tiananmen Square for months in June 1989.  

This moment in history has been all but erased from public discourse on mainland China but in Hong Kong, with its special status in the Chinese-speaking world, people turn out every year to remember the bloody crackdown.
This time round the crowd was particularly huge, with estimates ranging up to 180,000. . . .

After he posted the pictures on WeChat and started answering questions from Chinese who had never heard of Tiananmen Square, he was blocked from using WeChat.

It seems posting photos of an actual event taking place, without commentary, amounts to "spreading malicious rumours" in China. 

I was given time to try and log in again the next day after my penalty had been served.
When I did I had to push "agree and unblock" under the stated reason of "spread malicious rumours". 

So this rumour-monger clicked on "agree". 

Then came a stage I was not prepared for. "Faceprint is required for security purposes," it said. 

I was instructed to hold my phone up - to "face front camera straight on" - looking directly at the image of a human head. Then told to "Read numbers aloud in Mandarin Chinese". . . .

Chinese Censorship in media and research

The WSJ has this article about a former producer for China Central Television:  

A letter posted online in the wee hours Monday by a former producer for China’s state television broadcaster starkly voiced in public the frustrations of a journalist working inside the country’s state-run media machinery. 

The letter was written by Wang Qinglei, a producer on well-known China Central Television news programs “24 Hours” and “Face to Face.” It was a response, Mr. Wang wrote, to being fired for having posted online criticisms of CCTV’s coverage of Charles Xue, a Chinese-American investor and prominent social media commentator arrested earlier this year in Beijing on charges of visiting prostitutes. 

Saying at the outset that he left CCTV on Nov. 27 after spending 10 years there, Mr. Wang described his disgust at the broadcaster’s reports on Mr. Xue and other influential microbloggers: “We abused the public institution of media to wantonly bombard an individual indiscretion. Journalistic integrity and professionalism were nowhere to be found.” . . .  

Elsewhere in the letter, Mr. Wang savages the propaganda system that censors news content. He contrasts CCTV’s shining new office tower and expanded global operations with what he says is the broadcaster’s declining reputation and influence – a trend he attributes to tightened controls. . . .

The WSJ also has this article about academic research:

But some say they are concerned that a political agenda might be driving China's choice of sites, its exclusion of foreign archaeologists and its relative lack of openness about its research. 

"There's this strong sense of nationalism that flows through the Chinese program," says Jeffrey L. Adams, an anthropologist at the University of Minnesota who has written about Chinese archaeology. . . . . 

How China determines who gets to be the prominent Chinese academic experts in US

Fred Hiatt has this at the Washington Post:

. . . Last month, a cultural attache in the Chinese embassy in Washington invited Perry Link to attend a Forum of Overseas Sinologists in Beijing in December. 

Given that Link is one of America’s eminent China scholars, this might not be surprising — except that he had not received a visa to enter China since 1996 for reasons the Chinese have never explained. 

Link replied that he would be interested in attending, but would he receive a visa? 

Absolutely, he was told. 

You’re sure? Link e-mailed back. 

Of course, the attache replied. Just send your passport, “and I can help you to finish the visa application.” 

Link sent his passport and application, and on Nov. 8 received the following message: “After review, I’d like to inform you that you will not be invited to the forum.” 

The Lucy-and-the-football quality of this exchange is striking, but Link is far from the only foreign scholar to be blacklisted. In 2011, 13 respected academics who had contributed chapters to a book on Xinjiang, a province of western China that is home to a restive Muslim minority, found themselves banned. 

Link, who has forged a distinguished careerat Princeton and the University of California at Riverside can survive a visa ban. But for a young anthropologist seeking tenure, the inability to do field research could be terminal. And because China never explains its refusals or spells out what kind of scholarship is disqualifying, the result is a kind of self-censorship and narrowing of research topics that is damaging even if impossible to quantify. . . .

My own research on using schooling to instill indoctrination is available here.

Shocking how the government uses taxpayer funds to buy support from private entities

Given how much money the government has access to, they could buy support for Obamacare from almost anyone.  For an administration claims to have high standards of transparency, it is astounding that the Obama administration wouldn't make clearly public that they are making these bribes.   From the Washington Times:

Two months before enrollment began in the Obamacare exchanges, the administration’s top health care official heaped praise on WebMD for launching an online resource to help Americans navigate the complex law. 

The consumer health care site had the occasional nice thing to say about Obamacare, too. In one article, it predicted doctors might pick up more patients and crowed in an article titled “7 Surprising Things About the Affordable Care Act” that many consumers already had received insurance refunds under the law. 

But what neither Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius nor WebMD mentioned at the time was that the company, which millions of Americans regularly read for health news, also stood to earn millions of dollars from a federal contract to teach doctors about Obamacare. 

The contract documents, reviewed by The Washington Times, reward WebMD handsomely. For instance, the fee schedule offers dozens of products, including: 

 • As much as $126,826 for a single 5,000-word review article on scientific advances in a clinical topic. 

• Up to $68,916 for a four-minute video from an opinion specialist. 

• More than $140,000 for an eight-question online quiz. . . .

Rupert Murdoch gives up on trying to crack the Chinese media market

As a totalitarian country, I am not surprised that China wants to maintain strict control over the flow of all types of information.  From Fortune:

It is an iron-clad rule of the contemporary business landscape: Invest in China or imperil your future growth. It's noteworthy, then, that one of the most aggressive western companies in terms of trying to crack the China nut is more or less giving up the fight. 

21^st Century Fox, the film and TV company Rupert Murdoch cleaved from his print-focused News Corp. (NWSA) this summer, is actively reducing its exposure the world's second-largest economy. It's a shocking development only in that Murdoch spent so many years pursuing the China market so enthusiastically. The company is going out guns-a-blazing too. Murdoch's son James, his only child currently employed as a company executive, has criticized the Chinese government for timidity and a lack of commitment to reform. 

Why get out now? "It's always been hard for us in the business of ideas to do business in China," the younger Murdoch said during an extensive interview in July at Fortune's annual technology-industry conference, in Aspen, Colo. "We went from the end of the Jiang Zemin regime, which was liberalizing, trying to do all things, to a much more … timid approach to investment and to liberalization. … I don't think a lot of people noticed [the shift] enough. And basically it became harder to do business there." 

As a result, 21^st Century Fox (FOX) has been busy selling off and selling down investments. . . .

From Skokie, Illinois: 4th grade students taught that government is 'your family'

Is it really great that 9 year old students are taught this type of propaganda?

Government is like a nation's family.  Families take care of children & make sure that they are safe, healthy and educated, and free to enjoy life . . . Families make and enforce rules and give appropriate punishments when rules are broken.  Government does these things for its citizens, too.

"Arizona school district asks parents to sign gun pledge"

Even if this signing of the pledge is viewed as voluntary, why is the school district providing people an inaccurate impression of what is safest action for the family.  From Fox News:

An Arizona school district is asking parents to sign a pledge promising to lock up their guns and teach their children about the "dangers and consequences" of the misuse of firearms. 

The Arizona Daily Independent reports that parents enrolling their teens in high school and junior high schools in the Flowing Wells Unified School District in Tucson are being asked to sign the pledge as part of the district's registration process. 

Under the terms of the contract, parents must agree to "keep any guns and all weapons under lock and away from school grounds and away from my children," the newspaper reported. 

At least two parents have expressed concerns over the contract, which district superintendent David Baker said was written several years ago and slipped through the review process. . . .

Evidence that the Zero Tolerance approach on guns in schools is actually done to change students' views

Some evidence that public schools are actually trying to indoctrinate students on the gun issue.  There seems to be no notion that there are also benefits as well as costs from guns.  From the San Jose Mercury:

An elementary school will hold a toy gun exchange Saturday, offering students a book and a chance to win a bicycle if they turn in their play weapons. 

Strobridge Elementary Principal Charles Hill maintains that children who play with toy guns may not take real guns seriously. 

"Playing with toys guns, saying 'I'm going to shoot you,' desensitizes them, so as they get older, it's easier for them to use a real gun," Hill said. . . .

Every child who brings a toy gun will get a raffle ticket to win one of four bicycles, Hill said. . . . .  

Hill hopes the toy gun exchange idea catches on. 

"If we want older kids to not think guns are cool, we need to start early," he said.

Gary Becker and Jim Heckman's strange, self-serving argument for more government funds for economists

Gary Becker and Jim Heckman's piece in today's WSJ makes a very strange argument.  Anecdotal stories of benefits doesn't show that those benefits wouldn't have been obtained anyway.  It also doesn't address or deal with any of the problems of government funded research, such as political biases or wealth transfers.  Nor do they even mention any evidence showing that government is particularly good at picking which projects to back.  Surely Gary at least would argue that with regard to government picking investments in general.

Given that people write op-eds for free, is there any reason to suspect that this research is going to be underproduced?  There are also obviously a lot of politically connected think tanks that have an incentive to produce research.  In addition, with all the huge subsidies given to research through public universities, even if there is a net benefit from subsidies, there could already be too much research being produced.  Subsidies are also already available in terms of the data the federal government provides.  

In any case, it is not like the vast majority of economic research requires much money.  I personally have done studies on crime after compiling the largest data sets used to study the subject, but it never dawned on me to get government subsidies.

The claim about the health care savings from reduced smoking are also wrong.  People have to die at some point.  Smokers die earlier and their illnesses are shorter before they die.  That saves Social Security payments for the government as well as medical costs.

The argument surely comes across as economists appearing self-serving.  It also shows how the temptation to get government money warps people's perspectives, and it provides a reason why the government should stay out of education.  From today's WSJ:

The federal deficit has ballooned in recent years, and even larger deficits are coming due to the expected growth of entitlement spending. There is little disagreement among members of both political parties that federal spending should be reduced. In such an environment it is crucial that the right criteria guide the cuts that will be made. Across-the-board cuts are not a thoughtful way to make choices. . . .
We cannot expect the market alone to support basic economic and social research, including data collection, since they are public goods that are difficult to appropriate privately. In cutting out the considerable fat from the public diet we should not cut the muscle that has helped make our economy the largest and strongest in history.

It is pretty scary that such a dumb person is a teacher

It isn't just this teacher's attitude that concerns me. The way that she formulates arguments and discusses politics in the class is also very worrisome.

Why the government shouldn't own the broadcasting airwaves

Remember Lyndon Johnson:

That federal agency soon limited licenses to restrict competition and guarantee profits for selected license holders in key markets. It made complicated regulations that required expensive lawyers and consultants. It also seemed to grant and revoke (or threaten to revoke) broadcast licenses in ways that advanced the careers of certain politicians with ties to the FCC.
One of them was Lyndon Johnson. He was broke when he was first elected to Congress in 1937. But within 12 years, he was one of the richest and most powerful members of the U.S. Senate. He got his wealth when his wife bought a cheap radio station – that quickly became the most powerful and profitable station in Texas – after getting FCC permits nobody else could get. . . .

Now under the Obama administration we have this:

 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski testified Wednesday that his agency takes calls to cancel Fox's broadcast licenses "very seriously."  Groups, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), have urged the FCC to pull Fox's licenses because of evidence that its parent company News Corp. hacked people's phones in the United Kingdom to get stories.  During a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) pressed Genachowski on whether he plans to do anything about the allegations. Genachowski said it wouldn't be appropriate to comment on a specific case, but that the commission is "certainly aware of the serious issues that have been raised in the U.K."  He noted that the law requires that the FCC only grant broadcast licenses to people of "good character." . . .

Does anyone think that the Obama administration can keep politics out of this?  Even if the licenses aren't revoked, does the threat produce a chilling effect? If people don't trust Fox, they can obviously stop watching the network.

Obama Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein can't remember 2008 article on controlling speech that he disagrees with

I have also written a lot of papers, but I would still remember the basic points from a paper that I had written three years earlier.

Alinsky-tied gets $56 million federal loan

Tax dollars given to an left wing group that has no background in area that it is being given a huge amount of money for. From Fox News:

A Saul Alinsky-tied group has been awarded a $56 million federal loan to start up a nonprofit health insurance company -- one of several organizations across the country this week tapped to launch a new network of insurers under the sponsorship of the federal health care overhaul.

The Wisconsin group, Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative, was awarded the funding on Tuesday. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the group is expected to provide coverage statewide within five years after starting on a smaller scale in early 2014.

But Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson questioned the group's credentials -- given its affiliation and lack of experience in the insurance field.

"The indisputable fact is that Common Ground was an outgrowth of the Alinsky operation in Chicago," Wilson said. "We're not giving money to a group with experience in health care issues or in setting up exchanges. ... We're handing the money to people who have been trained by arguably the single most expert individual on community organizing in the last 100 years." . . .

"[Rep. Steny] Hoyer urges schools to teach health care benefits"

The notion that universities should be teaching the benefits of Obamacare should be rather shocking. It isn't clear that Hoyer, a powerful Democrat in Congress, understands the point of universities. It is also surprising that the Federal government has already spent money putting together sample flyers for universities to hand out to students. When Hoyer writes that "Another excellent resource for your student body is the non-partisan Young Invincibles online tool kit," it appears as if he is implicitly acknowledging the obvious that the government information is biased.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer is asking colleges and universities in his district to add a new item to their curricula: Information about the benefits of the Democrats' health care overhaul. . . .

The letter, which Hoyer's office said was sent to the University of Maryland, Bowie State University, St. Mary's College of Maryland and other schools, follows after the jump.

May 11, 2011

Dear ------,

As we approach the graduation season, I wanted to follow up on a letter you should have received from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan regarding health care coverage for students.

The recently enacted Affordable Care Act contains a vitally important, immediate improvement in health coverage options for young people under age 26. Thanks to this new law, young people up to age 26 can typically obtain coverage on their parents’ health insurance plan as long as that plan covers dependent children. This option is true regardless of whether they are employed, in school, or living at home. I encourage you to follow up on the secretaries’ advice and ensure that your graduating students – and the entire student body – are aware of this new option for health coverage.

The Administration provided numerous ways to supply this information to your student body. Listed below are those links for your convenience:

• Place a “badge” on the home page of your Website that automatically links to information about how students can remain on their parents’ health insurance plan. Download the badge by visiting: http://www.healthcare.gov/stay_connected.html.

• Distribute a flyer to students and their parents about this new benefit along with graduation materials. Download a sample flyer by visiting: www.healthcare.gov/center/brochures/new_benefits_for_graduates_and_young_adults.pdf.

• Encourage staff to talk to students about other insurance options – for example, if their parents do not have coverage – by visiting: www.healthcare.gov/foryou/betterbenefitsbetterhealth/youngadults.html.

• Host a session to explain insurance options to your students. HHS has helpfully offered to assistance in creating this event and you can email them at: externalaffairs@hhs.gov.

• Encourage students to visit the Administration’s Facebook page with information for young adults and parents about coverage for individuals under age 26. That can be found at: www.facebook.com/youngadultcoverage.

Another excellent resource for your student body is the non-partisan Young Invincibles online tool kit: http://www.gettingcovered.org/Toolkit/, which has information tailored specifically to young people. It is searchable by state and explains exactly what the new law means to young people, including how to get on a parent’s insurance policy, what to do if he or she has a pre-existing condition, and how the new law impacts women and young people with cancer.

Working together, we can ensure more students and recent alumni obtain the health coverage they need. Please feel free to contact my office at 202-225-4131, should you have any questions. We appreciate your attention to this important matter.

Wishing you the best during this graduation season and with kindest regards, I am

Sincerely yours,


STENY H. HOYER

More censorship in Venezuela

Is there any question that more totalitarian countries try harder to control the information that their citizens receive?

Venezuela has told a private TV company to stop showing a Colombian soap opera it says is insulting to the country.

Chepe Fortuna stars a character called Colombia and her sister Venezuela, who owns a dog called Little Hugo, the same name as Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

In one episode Venezuela loses Little Hugo, prompting Colombia to tell her she is better off without him.

The spat comes as the countries are making efforts to improve their historically strained relationship.

They restored relations last August, shortly after President Juan Manuel Santos took office in Colombia.

Venezuela's telecommunications regulator Conatel said the secretary character named Venezuela was "repeatedly characterised as associated with crime, interference and vulgarity".

Her gossipy and unscrupulous manner, it said, showed "the shameless manipulation of the plot to demoralise the Venezuelan people".

Conatel ordered the Televen channel to take the programme off air on Thursday night. The channel has not yet commented on the demands. . . .

Push for UN "policing" the Internet

Countries such as Brazil, India, South Africa, China and Saudi Arabia like the idea of the UN policing the internet. Presumably a few other not so free countries need to be added to this list. The motives of at least some of these countries should give people pause. Particularly, the desire by certain countries to control the information that their citizens receive. In addition, whatever the original claimed motivation for the regulations, the regulations could easily change direction once the regulatory apparatus is put in place

Previously, when Hugo Chavez took broadcast licenses away from radio stations he would point out that they could still broadcast on the internet. Now where will they go?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez defended plans for a law that would impose broadcast-type regulations on the Internet, saying Sunday that his government should protect citizens against online crimes.

Chavez's congressional allies are considering extending the "Social Responsibility Law" for broadcast media to the Internet, banning messages that "disrespect public authorities," "incite or promote hatred" or crimes, or are aimed at creating "anxiety" in the population.

Government opponents and press freedom groups have been critical of the plan, saying it is one of several measures being considered that could restrict freedoms in Venezuela.

"We aren't eliminating the Internet here ... nor censoring the Internet," Chavez said during his weekly television and radio program, "Hello, President." "What we're doing is protecting ourselves against crimes, cybercrimes, through a law." . . .

UPDATE: Now the regulation used against over the air broadcasters will be applied to the internet.

The National Assembly has approved a sweeping set of laws that impose penalties for spreading political dissent on the Internet, grant decree powers to President Hugo Chávez for 18 months and prevent legislators from breaking with his political movement. . . .

The extension of an existing broadcast law to include restrictions on Internet messages that “incite or promote disobedience of the current legal order” or “refuse the legitimately constituted authority” has elicited concerns from press freedom groups. The measure introduces fines and the suspension of services for Web sites deemed in violation.

Changes in the broadcast law also portend a showdown with Globovisión, a news network here that remains critical of the government. The government recently took a 20 percent stake in Globovisión, and the law may ease a further shift in control by requiring television station owners to be in Venezuela when reapplying for licenses. Globovisión’s owners recently went into exile in the United States. . . .

There are also the regulations that ban Venezulan groups from taking foreign donations.

More indoctrination in public schools

The public schools would immediately forbid any positive discussion about Christianity, but the public schools have no problem with this.

The parents of a Bedford teen are calling for the ouster of school officials who assigned their son a book that refers to Jesus Christ as a "wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist."
"We had almost PhD people letting this fumble through their fingers, and they all said it was grand," said Dennis Taylor, a conservative Christian. "I think there should be a review of these individuals and perhaps some firing done."
Taylor and his wife Aimee became upset when they learned that their son had been assigned the book "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," in his personal finance class at Bedford High School.
"Nickel and Dimed" is a first-person account of author Barbara Ehrenreich's failed attempts to make a living at various minimum wage jobs across the country. Written in response to 1996 welfare reform, the book offers a serious critique of the current economic system, which Ehrenreich argues preys on the poor.
This fall, Dennis and Aimee Taylor complained about the book to the school district, citing its occasional use of obscene dialogue and anti-capitalist message.
"The author is a known social Marxist, hates everything American, everything that America stands for or was built on," Aimee Taylor said. "I mean when you read the book you see that strongly in this woman's agenda. It's horrible." . . .

Howard Dean: "you would actually have to have some [government] sanctioned human beings talking" on TV news shows

So why do younger people view Obama so positively?

On issues such as Social Security reform, on labor market regulations, and what he is going to do on the national debt, one would think that younger voters would actually oppose Obama. While he is less popular among young people than he was a couple of years ago when he was running on an agenda of cutting government spending, he is still quite popular.

Meetings of the College Democrats that attracted 200 people in 2008 now pull in a dozen. New voter registration is way down, too, and free posters of President Obama — once “the Michael Jordan” of politics, as one freshman put it — are now refused by students. . . .

This was not what Generation O expected Mr. Obama won two years ago with 66 percent of the 18- to 29-year-old vote, a historic proportion. Americans under 30 also worked on campaigns at a greater rate than the general population did for the first time since 1952, or possibly even earlier, according to the National Election Studies. . . . .

While most of them still view him more favorably than their parents or grandparents do, various polls show that the youthful passion that led to action has not been sustained. . . .

More research needs to be done on this point in bold.

Public University doesn't react negatively when university email sent out asking staff and students to vote for Democrats

This is one reason not to have people working for the government. The article from the Winston-Salem Journal is here:

Some 6,400 staffers and students at Winston-Salem State University received e-mail exhortations Monday to take advantage of early voting and help the Democratic Party, setting off local Republicans.

After a complaint by Nathan Tabor, the chairman of the Forsyth County GOP, university officials acknowledged that the e-mail — sent from the student-affairs division — was improper. . . .

Tabor said he’s upset that he had to call the university and complain.

“That is a tax-funded school,” Tabor said, calling the original e-mail “highly illegal and unethical.”

The university said it would try to discover who sent out the e-mail and whether it was sent intentionally or accidentally in a partisan form.

Early voting started last Thursday in Forsyth County and runs through Oct. 30. Election Day is Nov. 2. . . . .