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Kent Chan,Bright Lights (better life later) (2016), neon bulbs, acrylic sheet (image courtesy the artist)

Weng-Choy Lee is president of the Singapore section of the International Association of Art Critics. Malaysian-born, Lee spent his youth in Manila, followed by a decade in the US. In 1992, he moved to Singapore, where, among other things, he co-ranThe Substation,an arts center and mainstay of the local art scene. Lee and I first crossed paths while I was co-organizing an event in Phnom Penhs art gallery and resource center,SA SA BASSAC, for which he presented remotely. After I published an article on Singapores Art Stage early this year, we began to discuss art writing more seriously.

Singapore, so foreign to me, was Lees home for decades, and he is currently working on a book of essays on artists who mostly hail from his adopted country. Our previous conversations about the meaning of home, art criticism in the region, and learning to listen to a place have been extremely generative to me, so I was delighted by the opportunity to more formally discuss these and other issues with him.

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Weng-Choy Lee: Lets start with me asking you a question. In your Hyperallergic article, Everything Points Inward: Capitalism and Its Discontents at an Art Fair in Singapore, you wrote about working for SA SA BASSAC at this years Art Stage. What was the feedback like?

Ben Valentine: While I received a few positive reactions, investigating further on social media, I noticed a lot of negative responses, especially from Singaporeans. These seemed to be more in reaction to the predictability of me a liberal white American helicoptering into the island city-state to decry human rights violations and unfettered capitalism. I was aware of this trope and had tried to counterbalance it by grounding my writing in personal experiences, such as my discomfort with the fancy shoes I had to wear as part of my costume for working at Art Stage, and my wifes brief detainment at immigration. Upon reflection, though, it seems fair to say I did not succeed.

WCL: I empathize. My first essay on Singapore was the same: I too decried capitalism and the lack of human rights. One reason I appreciated your piece is because you didnt just write from your American perspective, you drew upon your experiences in Cambodia. Also, while you at first recoiled from the pungent capitalist spectacle of it all, I thought your point was about moving past that and listening to your surroundings and to artists like Kent Chan, who was part of a curated platform at the fair.

When I arrived in the 90s, I sought out some local professors. One senior academic told me, with a straight face, that Foucault was completely irrelevant here. I dont ever want to forget the shock of that encounter. But after a couple of decades, one can get complacent. It bears repeating that one must remain critical and not allow problems to become normalized.

BV: So lets talk censorship and self-censorship. What are the limitations of Singapores art-criticism scene?

WCL: The situation in Singapore is more complex than most people might assume. In 1993, the governments Censorship Review Committee came out with a report that basically endorsed the status quo with a few minor tweaks. Its recommendations were generally welcomed without much objection by the arts community. Ten years later, though, the next Censorship Review was met with strong criticism by an organized group from the arts. We distinguished between censorship and regulation (e.g., ratings for mature content)recommending the latter and completely rejecting the former.

In 2002, The Straits Times newspaper invited me to write a piece on censorship. The editor consulted me about some minor changes, to which I agreed. When printed, however, they changed the crux of my argument without telling me. I argued thatcensorship is always arbitrary;they changed it to censorship is sometimes arbitrary thus proving my point. Today, censorship is not always about controlling content. Yes, certain topics remain taboo: Dont cast aspersions on the judiciary or incite racial antagonism, film remains under tight control, and so on. But censorship here is also about singling out and pressuring certain individuals, thereby intimidating the arts community as a whole.

Over the years, independent art publications have tested boundaries, been met with government pushback, and continued to operate. In many cases, lack of funding was the reason for closing shop. The government will withhold funding on content they dislike, but again, this isnt applied absolutely rigorously but arbitrarily. If you can fund it yourself, then you can say it, to a large degree. With regards to criticism, the challenge isnt only direct censorship but also the poverty of public intellectual debate, which is a consequence of living in a censorship regime.

BV: You seem to suggest that the bigger issue is a failure to find ways to move beyond the obvious problems, while not ignoring them.

WCL: Historically, weve had a weak appreciation of what the public is or can be. And I believe a healthy public discourse is necessary if we are to become better listeners as an arts community.

Singapores first biennale, in 2006, was created to be the anchor cultural event for the World Bank and IMF meetings hosted that year. The Substation wanted to organize a street party well after the meetings. We explicitly said to the authorities there would be no speeches; we just wanted to bring together local arts and civil society groups in public to celebrate as a community. The authorities denied us permission.

The following year no biennale, no IMF meetings we tried for a tunnel party (next to The Substation is a tunnel). We wanted to organize a commercial flea market and booths for arts and civil society groups. Again, no speeches, just live music. We did get permission for the flea market and music, but they said no to arts and civil society. Equally disappointing was that on the day itself, the arts and civil society groups who all dutifully came to the planning meetings were mostly absent. Since they were no longer formally a part of the event, maybe they didnt feel the need to show up. Although some things have changed: Todays annualPink Dot gatherings are an example of a strong commitment to public space that we were perhaps missing back in 2007.

But let me ask you: What are some of your experiences in finding a way to speak from your present location in Cambodia? As noted, Singapore is my adopted home. Becoming local and being located isnt about some essentialist precondition often its very much about learning to listen.

BV: This is an issue very much on my mind, and one I believe Ill always be navigating. Im beginning to wonder if a masters degree in art history about the region or about Cambodia is necessary for me. Ive been diving into books and texts on the history here, but the context remains incredibly foreign.

The article I wrote about my early time in Cambodia would be so different today. The fundamentals wouldnt change ask a lot of questions, dont come to artworks or artists with my own agenda, and be willing to put aside my Western art history education in favor of local context but I still have a long way to go.

Although Im far from fluent, learning the language has been invaluable for developing trust, respect, and a deeper insight. No doubt, subtle cultural differences have resulted in miscommunication and confusion. But I suppose the big adjustment is that here I trust my first reads of art much less, and I rely more heavily on interviews and conversations with the artists than I would in contexts with which Im more familiar. Really taking time is the key for empathy, not to mention accurate, thoughtful art writing.

Link:
Censorship Is Always Arbitrary: An Interview with an Art Critic in Singapore - Hyperallergic

It is what Trumps victory said so clearly about the MSMs inability to influence public opinion and, by extension, the outcome of elections. What has also remained unspoken is the medias desperate and dangerous reaction to this waning influence.

As a 25 year media-watcher, I have never seen anything close to the propaganda campaign the national media launched to defeat Donald Trump last year. It was 24/7, it was coordinated across every news outlet, it was all-hands-on-deck. And Trump still won. Which can only mean that the medias influence has eroded to a point where, despite hurling every kitchen sink available, they suffered a humiliating loss last November.

Before I get into the grit of the nit, it is important to keep in mind that our media is nothing more than the communication branch of the Democrat Party. When you look at everything the media does the lying, the campaigns of personal destruction, the fake news, the focus on stuff like Melanias shoes this explanation is the only one that makes sense. The media is a full-blown leftwing political operation run, for the most part, by former Democrat operatives like Jake Tapper, George Stephanopolous, and Chuck Todd, as well as those related to Democrat operatives.

Knowing that, and knowing the long history of leftwing regimes (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Chavez, Castro), we know what a leftwing political operation does when its influence begins to diminish. Because their ideas are so unappealing and are proven failures, the left ultimately has no choice but to embrace violence and censorship. This truth is as old as the Bolshevik Revolution, and this is exactly what we are seeing unfold today in our own country. Rather than politicians, though, it is our media that has turned dangerously militant.

Rush Limbaugh is absolutely correct, the Democrat party is dead. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the partys two supposed leaders, are non-entities. From top-to-bottom, the party is a feckless pile of incompetence. Knowing this, the media has told Schumer and Pelosi to hold their beer as they seize the levers of power in the leftwing cause. As a result, the media has used billions of corporate dollars to launch a propaganda campaign to unseat Trump and to keep the divisive issue of identity politics thriving.

Naturally, this rabid pursuit of so-called social justice is meant only to serve what has always been the overriding goal of leftwing tyrants: control of our lives through a centralized government.

Nevertheless, this represents the least of our medias sins.

The media campaign to censor and silence the political right, most especially on the college campus and online, is being waged on two fronts: through the ever-expanding definitions of hate speech and the alt-right, and through large corporations.

At this point, pretty much every conservative position on abortion, homosexuality, border security, the police, affirmative action, immigration, terrorism, etc., has been labeled as hate speech by the establishment left and many in the media. Moreover, the holding of these beliefs makes you an automatic member of the alt-right, which aligns you with white supremacists.

Now that this phase is in place, now that mainstream conservative and Christian beliefs have been toxified as hate, whether they are already aligned with the media or because they have been bullied by the media into joining the cause, the mega-corporations that now control our primary means of communication the public square that is the Internet are instituting a wave of censorship.

Hiding behind the medias absurdly expanded definition of hate (or fake news), Americas Googles, Facebooks, Twitters, advertisers, and Web servers are blacklisting conservatives, banning populists, and outlawing their ideas. People are being disappeared from the public square or, out of fear of being disappeared, they no longer feel comfortable to speak freely.

The violence comes, of course, from the medias personal army of Brownshirts, the leftwing terrorists in Antifa. Just like Hitlers henchmen, Antifa spreads out across the country to violently silence speech that the left does not want heard. And it is not only against neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. Almost all of the chaos, rioting, and violence waged by Antifa over the past two years has been against everyday Trump supporters, everyday Republicans.

To encourage Antifas wave of violent suppression, our media either ignores and downplays their crimes, promotes their cause as righteous, blames their violence on Trump and his supporters, compares them to heroic World War II soldiers, or in the case of NBCs Chuck Todd, attempts to legitimize this violence against the political right.

Now, does anyone have any more question about why the media is so desperate to take away our Second Amendment rights?

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC.Follow his Facebook Page here.

See more here:
As Its Influence Wanes, Increasingly Militant MSM Promotes ... - Breitbart News

Google censored Catholic Online's Daily Readings.

Censorship is a growing problem in cyberspace. Media outlets and content producers across the web are learning the hard way that if Goolge and Facebook disagree with your opinion, you will be silenced and run out of business. It is time to regulate social media to protect free speech.

Censorship by Google and Facebook is stifling free speech in America.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) -- In some countries, posting a meme that is critical of the government will get you arrested and put in jail. What happens after that depends on where you live. You could walk free after a short time, or you could be put to death.

As Americans, we have always cherished our right to freedom of expression. It is such an important right, we enshrined it in our Constitution as the First Amendment.

For over two hundred years, the public forum created by the First Amendment has been jealously guarded against all infringement.

But in the past few decades, the public forum has changed. It has moved into cyberspace where private corporations rule. Today, Google dominates the realm of internet searches as well as the advertising market, and YouTube, which it owns. Facebook dominates social media.

Whereas a few decades ago, most people got their news and information via the newspaper and television, today most people consume media on their mobile devices. They use the internet to access Google, YouTube, and Facebook, and this is where they get their news and information.

The problem is that Google and Facebook have started to aggressively censor content across the web. And they're turning to questionable organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center to tell them how to do it. The result is overbearing censorship, particularly of conservative media.

In 2014, as the Islamic State conquered a swathe of territory across Syria and Iraq, the terrorists released a series of gruesome propaganda videos to terrorize the rest of the world. These videos were swiftly censored. Google, YouTube and a host of smaller media providers often removed these videos within minutes to hours of their posting. The justification was that the blood and gore violated their terms of service. They often added they did not want to provide the terrorists with a channel of communication that could be used to promote terrorism.

For some time, censorship was restricted to that kind of content, but within the past two years, it has steadily grown.

Soon, any content critical of Islam or that dealt with terrorism was subject to censorship. The restrictions have since spread further. Today, any kind of content that is considered offensive, hateful, or that could inspire hatred or violence is subject to censorship.

Most of the content facing censorship comes from the right wing of the political spectrum. Neo-Nazi organizations like Stormfront have been booted entirely off the web. But the censorship does not end with Nazis.

Last week, a conservative group, The Liberty Conservative, was ordered to remove a piece that explained the difference between the Alt-Right movement and actual Nazis. Google deemed the piece offensive, and demanded they take it down.

The Liberty Conservative relented and removed the piece. Had they refused, Google would have kept all of their advertising revenue from their Ad Sense account. Ad Sense is Google's advertising platform that pays content providers, such as The Liberty Conservative for displaying ads on their webpages. Many media outlets rely on this money to stay in business.

This is how Google gets away with claiming they are not censoring content. The Liberty Conservative could have kept their piece published, but Google would not have paid them, and in turn, they would not have the money to pay their staff. This would have put The Liberty Conservative out of business. But technically, they could have kept the piece published.

This kind of censorship is known as "soft censorship."

Google also has the power to bury websites it doesn't like in search results.

A similar occurrence took place in the last month on Catholic Online. Google demanded the removal of several daily reading videos from YouTube because they were somehow deemed offensive. These videos were mere Bible readings from the Catholic lectionary. They contained no commentary or editorial. There was no homily or sermon. They were simply passages from the Bible.

Catholic Online was able to compromise and remove advertising from those videos, but the alternative was to either have their entire channel shut down, or be paid nothing from ad revenue as long as the videos were up. This has driven Catholic Online to develop an alternative media strategy for itself, which will be announced shortly.

The problem with these cases is that Google, a private corporation, is deciding what speech is acceptable in the public forum. That's because the public forum has moved from the newspaper and television and into cyberspace, but we have few laws which regulate cyberspace.

It is time for the U.S. federal government to enter cyberspace and set boundaries for Google and Facebook. This is common in other parts of the world where Google and Facebook already censor their content to order. People in countries like China use Google too, but Google censors their results to satisfy the demands of Chinese law.

Google could do the same in the U.S., but in reverse. They could be compelled to censor less content hosted in the United States as long as that content would otherwise be protected by the First Amendment. They could be banned from soft censorship.

Google and Facebook are monopolies, much like cable and electric companies. As such, they should be regulated to ensure the service they provide meets the expectations of a free and just society.

Few people like Nazis. Few people care to click into webpages emblazoned with swastikas. However, the same First Amendment that protects hateful content also protects content like daily Bible readings.

We the people ought to decide what is permissible in the public forum of ideas, not some private corporation. It's time to end soft censorship and intimidation by private firms, lest we find ourselves in some kind of Orwellian future where the only acceptable content are cat videos and Google-Southern Poverty Law Center approved propaganda.

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Pope Francis Prayer Intentions for AUGUST 2017Artists. That artists of our time, through their ingenuity, may help everyone discover the beauty of creation.

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Google censoring the BIBLE? Censorship by Google and Facebook growing in the US - Catholic Online

Anti-corporate voices across the ideological spectrum are claiming that Google is attempting to silence them for their political positions.

Barry Lynn, a senior fellowat the New America Foundation a think tank funded by Google says he lost his job this week as a result of his research critical of Google, which Lynn says should be considered a monopoly.

Every day I see people waking up to the power of Google, Facebook and Amazon. We have to do something as a people, we have to do something through our government and address the power of these companies, Lynn told The Guardian. The number of congressmen and others making statements on Capitol Hill about this is growing very rapidly. The number of businesses who are saying that something must be done about the power of these companies and the way they use their power.

On the far-left, the World Socialist Web Site is claiming a 70 percent drop in referrals from Google searches and that the sites news articles and essays on politics, history and culture are being systematically blocked. The group claims a Google algorithm change in April led to its content being blacklisted.

In an article published Wednesday, the WSWS claimed that the top 45 search terms that formerly led readers to the WSWS are now blocked by Google. The socialist website says Google is wrongfully censoring them under the guise of fighting fake news.

Also this week, a right-wing website called The Liberty Conservative claims to have received a letter from Google threatening to suspend advertising revenue from the site unless it pulled down an article written by an organizer of last months white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.

Yesterday morning, we received a very bizarre letter from Google issuing us an ultimatum, Shane Trejo wrote inan articleposted to The Liberty Conservative on Wednesday. Either we were to remove a particular article or see all of our ad revenues choked off in an instant. This is the newest method that Big Brother is using to enforce thought control.

Trejo claimed the article contained no offensive content and was merely distinguishing the many differences between the alt-right and literal Nazis.

The site often runs alarmist articles about the influence of corporations in American politics. (RELATED:Google And Facebook Co-Sponsoring Protest Of Pro-Life Womens Health Care Clinic)

Trejo said the site had to comply with Googles strong-arming tactics for the time being as a result of financial constraints.

An independent publisher such as The Liberty Conservative needs revenue from the Google ad platform in order to survive, he explained.

Conservative website PJMedia first highlighted Trejos claims in an article later featured on the Drudge Report.

Google has yet to return TheDCs request for comment for this article.

The latest accusations of censorship follow Googles controversial firing of an engineer, James Damore, for writing a memo criticizing Google as an ideological echo chamber.

My firing neatly confirms that point, Damore wrote in a Wall Street Journal column following his firing.

How did Google, the company that hires the smartest people in the world, become so ideologically driven and intolerant of scientific debate and reasoned argument?

Read more here:
Anti-Corporate Voices Claim Google Censorship | The Daily Caller - The Daily Caller

By Jane Bambauer By Jane Bambauer August 30

My last two posts summarized the extent to which the First Amendment should constrain the government when it seeks to censor weak scientific claims. To the extent that the government uses advertising restrictions in order to promote good science, free speech doctrine has already begun to get in the way.

This could nudge federal agencies and other lawmakers to use other means to promote research and consumer knowledge. Thats a good thing. The government could do much more than it currently does using its own powerful voice and by using other non-censorship regulations. Here are a few examples:

1. Funding and supporting more independent research.

One of the greatest drawbacks to our current system of food and drug testing is that we rely on self-interested companies to produce the bulk of research that regulators and consumers must use to make important decisions. This is so in part because randomized controlled trials the gold standard for research are very costly. The companies that are likely to profit from positive research findings are the most eager to fund it.

But for the company, the research is only worth its costs if it comes out the right way. Randomized controlled trials can be gamed, and often are. Although controlled trials are supposed to avoid the selection effects that can mar studies of observational data, they can be distorted if researchers put conditions on study participants that ensure all the research subjects are unusually healthy, and therefore unusually likely to respond well to medicines and to avoid side effects. Independent researchers would have more interest in selecting the pool of research subjects in a way that better represents the future users of the product.

It is unrealistic to expect that the National Institutes of Healthand other federal research organizations will receive large enough budgets to run all clinical trials themselves. But more can be done with post-market observational data. While observational studies will always raise questions about whether there are sufficient controls to ensure that an effect is truly causal, they do have the virtue of coming from the real world and reflecting what has happened in the field. Randomized controlled trials, by contrast, reflect the population of patients who happened to come down the pipeline and are willing to consent to an experiment. Controlled trials also tend to be quite small because of their costs, and they may lack the power to detect rare but important therapies or side effects.

Compared withcontrolled trials, analysis of observational data is cheap. The federal government should encourage researchers to access medical data and link them to other consumer databases in order to uncover latent health benefits and risks. Instead, federal privacy and research law tends to do the opposite, discouraging data collection and erecting barriers to access.

2. Publicizing or certifying the findings of independent or well-conducted research.

The government can also use its voice to promote the research that meets its favored scientific standards. Rather than using censorship rules, the government could certify health claims that meet its evidentiary standards, and allow manufacturers to proudly mark that certification in its advertising. The government can also contribute to consumer education more actively through its websites or through public service campaigns in the mainstream media.

3. Using ex-post liability and safe harbors.

Regulators could also rely more heavily on ex-post enforcement than the modern regulatory state typically does. Strict liability and ex-post fines for products that prove to cause harm can do a lot to motivate research and caution by manufacturers. The government could also create strong incentives to engage in pre-market research using safe harbors from the fines and liability that would otherwise apply if a product turns out to be dangerous for its anticipated use.

4. Mandating disclosures about the evidence base (or lack thereof.)

The government could also make better use of rules requiring companies to provide disclaimers or other information.The compelled speech doctrine seems to bemore forgiving than the free speech rules that apply to censorship, at least when compelled disclosures are used to provide relevant, purely informational content. Thus, the state could require companies that choose to makescientific or health claims in their advertising to provide the evidence supporting and contradicting each of their claims on a website or through a central clearinghouse.

Mandated disclosures have a tendency to proliferate quickly, though, and they dont always have salutary effects. In the next post, I will address some serious limits to the ability for mandated disclosure to effectively educate consumers.

Link:
Promoting good science without censorship - Washington Post