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Two Trump Energy Department appointeeswith deep ties to Koch Industries and the Koch donor network have been burying reams of agency research that looks favorably on renewable energy, according toan in-depthinvestigation by Grist and InvestigateWest.Published October 26, the investigation reveals how the appointed high-ranking officials mandated political review of research, watered downreports, and slow-walked or shelved scientific findings and studies when they favored renewable deployment over continued reliance on fossilfuels.

Documents obtained by InvestigateWest reveal clear political interference in the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), much of it coordinated by Dan Simmons, the offices Assistant Secretary, and Alex Fitzsimmons, the former Chief of Staff to Simmons. While the article notes the lobbying histories of DOEs top brass, Simmons and Fitzsimmons also have recent ties to the Kochnetwork.

Before being tapped by the Trump team to run lead on renewable energy policy,Simmons had a long career promoting fossil fuels, bashing renewables, and even calling for the elimination of the very office he was tapped to run.

From 2008 until he took over EERE in 2017, Simmons worked at the Institute for Energy Research(IER), a free-market think tank that receives the majority of its funding from dark money groups associated with the Koch network and from oil refinery trade groups. Simmons was vice president of policy at IER and had the same title at IERs lobbying arm, the American Energy Alliance (AEA). In 2015, while Simmons was in charge of policy, AEA actually recommended that Congress eliminate EERE.

Excerpt from 2015 American Energy Alliance report calling for Congress to eliminate the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and RenewableEnergy

Simmons antagonism to renewable energy before he joined the DOE cannot beoverstated.

As the utility industry watchdog Energy and Policy Institute has noted, he routinely traveled the country for IER and AEA to bash renewable portfolio standards, relying on inaccurate and cherry-picked data. Before joining IER, Simmons served as the director of the American Legislative Exchange Councils (ALEC) Natural Resources Task Force, where he helped to write [ALECs] anti-clean energy playbook. ALEC functions to connect state legislators with corporations and create mock legislation that serves as models for actualbills.

Simmons prior employers share extremely close ties to petrochemical billionaireCharles Koch and the extensive Koch donornetwork.

The Institute for Energy Research was founded by Charles Koch himself and is currently run by the former top lobbyist for Koch Industries. The AEA and IER both receive funding from foundations in the Koch donor network, and the countrys leading oil refiners trade group, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), gives three times more to AEA than it does to any othergroup.

The ties between ALEC and the Koch network are well documented, with the pro-business group receiving at least $3.3 million from Koch-controlled foundations and Koch Industries maintainingalongstanding and influentialmembership.

Before his time at ALEC, Simmons was also a fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the prototype for Koch influence in academia, a research center which has been funded and controlled by Charles Koch and his associates since the1980s.

Simmonstapped Alex Fitzsimmons to serve as his chief of staff when he took over EERE. The two had worked together at IER and AEA, where Fitzsimmons worked as the Manager of Policy and Public Affairs.In addition to managing research, communications, and outreach at IER and AEA, Fitzsimmons was also a spokesman and Communications Director for Fueling U.S. Forward, a pro-fossil fuelscampaignexposed by DeSmog as being funded by Koch Industries. According to its website, Fueling U.S. Forward was dedicated to educating the public about the value and potential of American energy, the vast majority of which comes from fossil fuels, before it shuttered in2017.

According to the Grist/InvestigateWest investigation, written by journalist Peter Fairley, Simmons and Fitzsimmons created systems and workflow that deliberately buried any of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's research that could be perceived as supportive of a transition to renewable energyresources.

In all, the department has blocked reports for more than 40 clean energy studies, Fairleyreported. The department has replaced them with mere presentations, buried them in scientific journals that are not accessible to the public, or left them paralyzed within the agency, according to emails and documents obtained by InvestigateWest, as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees at the Department of Energy, or DOE, and its nationallabs.

Documents obtained by InvestigateWest show how Trump appointees mandated a tiered system of review for release of studies, with EE-1 referringto Dan Simmons, while PDAS refers to Alex Fitzsimmons, thenthe office's Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary.Credit: Peter Fairley/InvestigateWest on DocumentCloud.

Onedocument obtained by InvestigateWest shows how Fitzsimmons established a system that enabled politically appointed officialsto intervene and, if necessary, consult their superiors before politically sensitive reports went out. Researchers and scientists were ordered to designate certain studies including those that compared renewables to fossil fuel resources and those that projected future penetration of renewable energy supplies be flagged for review by Simmons and Fitzsimmons. The two could then block the findings or request that the scientists and researchers alteredtheirresults.

There are dozens of reports languishing right now that cant be published, Stephen Capanna, a former director of strategic analysis for the Energy Departments Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, told Grist. This is a systemicissue.

Main image:Daniel Simmons, Acting Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, in October 2017. Credit:Dept of Energy Solar Decathlon, publicdomain

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The Koch Operatives Behind the Trump Energy Department's Renewables Research Censorship - DeSmog

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Facebook and Twitter "spent years preparing to face" the kind of controversy that came with the New York Post's publication of emails allegedly taken from the computer of Joe Biden's son Hunter, said Robert McMillan at The Wall Street Journal. They still ended up with a mess. Twitter, which initially blocked users from sharing the article (and even froze the Post's official account), did "an about-face" after an outcry from Republicans and said it would change its ban on hacked content "unless it's directly shared by hackers." Meanwhile inside Facebook, "executives had performed role-playing exercises about how to respond to an email dump." Following the playbook they developed, Facebook flagged the Post's articles for fact-checking and limited their exposure in news feeds. That didn't shield Facebook from widespread criticism: Republicans lawmakers complained of censorship, even as the Post's articles stayed at the top of the most-shared charts.

"What were they thinking?" asked Matthew Walther at The Week. The platforms' explanations of their actions "are not credible." If Facebook was really concerned about users sharing "unconfirmed" reporting, it wouldn't have waited until last week to block Holocaust denial. It looks instead like "the deliberate use of long-tolerated monopoly power to influence the course of an election." The fallout could well mean that those monopolies as we know them now "will not survive another presidential election." Imagine if these Silicon Valley giants united to ban all content critical of President Trump and promote criticism of Biden, said Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept. Twitter's rationale about blocking documents taken without authorization is unjustifiable and dangerous. What about The New York Times' reports on Trump's leaked tax returns? Anyone cheering for Twitter or Facebook now is "being short-sighted and myopic."

If you're complaining that there is no simple rule telling social media companies what to publish, you've fallen for a false narrative about "censorship," said Max Boot at The Washington Post. "Social-media companies have no obligation to pass along possible Russian disinformation," and it "would be the height of irresponsibility" to broadcast these stories without some fact-checking first. After they got burned in 2016, "it's entirely understandable and proper that Facebook and Twitter exercise some caution." That's not censorship. "It's editorial judgment," and we need more of it.

These platforms have never been neutral, said Kevin Roose at The New York Times. They've been controlling what we see for years. It's just that "their decisions were often buried in obscure 'community standards' updates or hidden tweaks to the black-box algorithms that govern which posts users see." They've just made their "high-stakes decisions" more visible. But Facebook and Twitter still haven't provided nearly enough visibility into their decision, said Andy Kessler at The Wall Street Journal. On the contrary, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's explanations and reversal have given "his adversaries the fuel to burn his tweet house down." If the social media giants with their multibillion-dollar valuations want to survive this, they'll need to go much further on transparency. I want to see Facebook's community standards "chiseled in stone" and detailed explanations for each banned post.

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.

Originally posted here:
Is social media censoring speech or combating disinformation? - The Week Magazine

Newswise The Stonewall Riots often are cited as the beginning of the LGBTQ movement. However, recent research fromJason Shepard, chair and professor of communications at Cal State Fullerton, highlights how First Amendment law was both a weapon and shield in the expansion of LGBTQ rights.

Shepard can provide an in-depth perspective and researched-based context to LGBTQ rights discussions. His research examines the legal history of three 1950s and early 1960s cases in which the Supreme Court overturned the censorship of magazines by and for sexual minorities, and how that allowed LGBTQ Americans develop identity and community, laid the foundation for the future of LGBTQ rights law. Shepard summarizes his research in thisone-minute video.

ONEmagazine, published from 1953 to 1967, was the first widely distributed LGBT magazine in the U.S. It was banned from the mail in 1954.

"The cases I examined are another reminder of how powerful the U.S. Supreme Court is and has been in the history of our democracy. In 1958, the Supreme Court decided that America's first gay-rights magazine couldn't be banned from the U.S. mail. The decision allowed ONE magazine to connect gays and lesbians to a broader subculture that later launched the gay liberation movement."

Read Shepard's research in "The First Amendment and the Roots of LGBTQ Rights Law:Censorship in the Early Homophile Era, 1958-1962" published in theWilliam & Mary Journal of Race, Gender and Social Justice.

Jason Shepard, chair and professor of communications

Shepard teaches courses in the communications law and journalism. He has authored several books, including: "Privileging the Press: Confidential Sources, Journalism Ethics and the First Amendment," "Major Principles of Media Law," and "Ethical Issues in Communication Professions: New Agendas in Communications." He writes "Online Legalities," a regular column inCalifornia Publisher.Shepard also has published research inYale Journal of Law and Technology,Communication Law and Policy,Journal of Media Law & Ethics,Nexus Journal of Law and Policy,andDrake Law Review. Shepards research has been cited widely, including by a federal appellate court and in theNew York Times.

Excerpt from:
Research reveals how magazine censorship in the 50s and 60s laid the foundation for future LGBTQ rights law - Newswise

Government officials in Thailand are threateningto censor coverage of anti-government protests, according to The Associated Press, targeting news outlets, a publishing house and a Telegram messaging app beingused by demonstrators.

The AP noted that atop official with the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission confirmedthat it had been ordered to block access to the encrypted messaging app Telegram.

A police spokesman also reportedly confirmed an order allowingauthorities to censor news sites that are sharing information deemed distorted. A copy of the censorship request obtained by the AP showed that five online news sites and one digital broadcast were being targeted after showing live footage of the protests.

Same Sky, known for producing work in the past with controversial publications, was also searched by police, according to the news service, which added that copies of three books were taken and the publisher was told to come in for questioning.

Additionally, authorities have reportedly threatened to take action against those who promote the protests on social media.

Bangkok was put under a state of emergency last week at the start ofstudent-led protests against Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and the monarchy, which have ramped up in recent days. Demonstrators say flaws in the country's constitution affected the outcome of last years general election.

While Thai officials are now reportedly threatening to silence demonstrators in an attempt to curb the protests,it doesnt appear that any of the censorship measures have been enacted.

Read more from the original source:
Thai authorities threaten to censor coverage of anti-government protests | TheHill - The Hill

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) Amid a year of contagion and turmoil, Chileans vote Sunday on whether to draft a new constitution for their nation to replace guiding principles imposed four decades ago under a military dictatorship.

The countrys conservative government agreed with the center-left opposition to allow the plebiscite a month after the outbreak of vast street protests that erupted a year ago in frustration over inequality in pensions, education and health care in what has long been one of South Americas most developed nations.

If approved, a special convention would begin drafting a new constitution that would be submitted to voters in mid-2022.

Chiles current constitution was drafted by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and was sent to voters at a time where political parties had been banned and the country was subject to heavy censorship.

It was approved by a 66%-30% margin in a 1980 plebiscite, but critics say many voters were cowed into acceptance by a regime that had arrested, tortured and killed thousands of suspected leftist opponents following the overthrow of an elected socialist government.

I think that many people went to vote out of fear, said political scientist Claudio Fuentes, who wrote a book about that plebiscite titled, The Fraud.

The current constitution has a flaw of origin, which is that it was created during the military dictatorship in an undemocratic process, said Monica Salinero, a 40-year-old sociologist who supports drafting a new charter.

The free-market principles embodied in that document led to a booming economy that continued after the return to democracy in 1990, but not all Chileans shared.

A minority was able to take advantage of good, privatized education, health and social security services, while others were forced to rely on sometimes meager public alternatives. Public pensions for the poorest are just over $200 a month, roughly half the minimum wage.

Recent polls have indicated heavy backing for a new constitution despite opposition from conservative groups, and expectations among many are high.

Luisa Fuentes Rivera, a 59-year-old food vendor, said hopes that with a new constitution we will have better work, health, pensions and a better quality of life for older people, and a better education.

But historian Felipe Navarrete warned, Its important to say that the constitution wont resolve the concrete problems. It will determine which state we want to solve the problems.

Claudia Heiss, head of the political science department at the University of Chile, said it would send a signal about peoples desires for change, and for a sort of politics that would allow greater inclusion of sectors that have been marginalized from politics.

Conservative groups fear the revamp could go too far, and endanger parts of the constitution that have helped the country prosper.

The people have demonstrated saying they want better pensions, better health, better education. and the response of the political class is a process that wont solve the problems and will open a period of uncertainty, said Felipe Lyon, 28-year-old lawyer and spokesman for the group No, Thanks that opposes the change.

The decision to allow the vote came after hundreds of thousands of Chileans repeatedly took to the streets in protests that often turned violent.

The vote was initially scheduled for April, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has killed some 13,800 Chileans, with more than 500,000 people infected by the new coronavirus.

Officials trying to ensure voters feel safe are barring infected persons or those close to them from the polls. Voters must wear masks dipping them only briefly for identification purposes and must bring their own pencils.

The manner of drafting a new constitution is also on Sundays ballot. Voters will choose between a body of 155 citizens who would be elected just for that purpose in April, or a somewhat larger convention split equally between elected delegates and members of Congress.

Read more here:
Chileans vote on whether to rewrite dictatorship-era charter - Associated Press