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Booksellers at Hong Kongs annual book fair are offering a reduced selection of books deemed politically sensitive, as they try to avoid violating a sweeping national security law imposed on the city last year.

The fair was postponed twice last year because of the coronavirus pandemic. It usually draws hundreds of thousands of people looking for everything from the latest bestsellers to works by political figures.

This year, far fewer politically sensitive books are on display. Vendors are curating their books carefully to avoid violating the national security law, which Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in June 2020. Authorities have used it to crack down on dissent, arresting more than 100 pro-democracy supporters in the region.

The law has drawn criticism for restricting freedoms not found on the communist-ruled mainland that were promised to the former British colony for 50 years after it was handed back to China in 1997.

Jimmy Pang, a local publisher who used to sell books about the 2014 pro-democracy demonstrations that became known as the umbrella movement, said many books critical of the government had disappeared.

Every vendor will read through the books that they are bringing to the book fair to see if there is any content that might cause trouble, said Pang, who is president of the Subculture publishing house.

We dont want to get into trouble that will affect the operation of the book fair, so we self-censor a lot this time. We read through every single book and every single word before we bring it here, he said. Some books published by Subculture were pulled from the shelves of Hong Kongs public libraries earlier this year. Those books are not available at the fair.

Now that authorities have used the national security law to quash dissent, publishers, distributors and even importers and exporters have become wary about the risks of publishing or dealing with potentially sensitive books, said Hui Ching, research director of the Hong Kong Zhi Ming Institute, a private, independent thinktank.

Political author Johnny Lau, author of a book about the Chinese Communist party and Hong Kong in the last century, said his book was not allowed at the fair this year because of the political pressure from government policies.

Thats why we can only see publications which are (in) favour to the government, he said.

Benjamin Chau, deputy executive director of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, which organises the fair, told reporters earlier this week that books written by pro-democracy authors could still be sold as long as they didnt break the law.

Some visitors, such as Alex Chan, lamented the lack of such books this year. Is the book fair still a place we can buy any kinds of books? Is Hong Kong still a place with freedom of speech or freedom to publish? he said.

A number of publishers have gone ahead and displayed books about the 2014 protests and other politically sensitive topics.

When we publish a book, we put a lot of effort into ensuring the content is legal. Thats why we dont think theres a big problem and would still bring them, said Raymond Yeung, a spokesman for publisher Hillway Culture Company. We hope this will be an encouragement to our fellow publishers, to show that theres still some people publishing books like this, he said.

Original post:
Self-censorship hits Hong Kong book fair in wake of national security law - The Guardian

In the aftermath of infamous British troll Katie Hopkins's cancelled visa, we need to take care that the howls of the progressive left don't veer into the oppressive.

The principle of the vaccine is that you need to introduce poison into yourself to get better, which brings us to Katie Hopkins. She is presumably on a plane by now, yelling at flight staff about the peanuts, winging her way back to a newly "FREE!" UK, but her brief visit really brought on a fever in a tired debate.

Like a lot of right-wing pathogens, it is said she doesn't believe COVID-19 exists, or that social distancing doesn't work, or both together, and it sounds like there was a little difficulty finding a spot on a plane for her. If only someone knew someone associated with a luxury travel company who shared her crackpot beliefs, she would have been away sooner.

That she was brought out here by the Seven network is no coincidence, either. The line is that she's "controversial", "exciting", etc, and it's a purely commercial decision. But Seven has a lot of these: Sam Armytage comparing twins with different skin tones, brown and white ("good on her" about the last); Prue MacSween calling for a new Stolen Generation, and for a young Muslim writer to be run over; the casual reference to"blackfootballers" losing the UK's Euro penalty; and that's just a recent haul. Proprietor Kerry Stokes doesn't seem to see cleaning out his Augean stables as a high priority for his khaki-clad patriotism. Hopkins, here for Seven's Big Brother VIP, wouldn't have been out of place.

Excerpt from:
Caution needed banning people for their views is the road to censorship - Crikey

The Biden Administration sure isnt taking Donald Trumps Big Tech lawsuits seriously. A week after the former Presidents lawyers argued in court filings that his removal by social-media firms amounted to state action, the Administration broadcast that it is coordinating with the firms to remove content.

Were flagging problematic posts for Facebook , said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday, referring to coronavirus misinformation. Meanwhile, the Surgeon General, an officer in the department of Health and Human Services, released a report with a page of suggestions on what technology platforms can do to crack down on certain information. The Verge reported that officials at Twitter met with the surgeon generals office on Monday to discuss its misinformation policies.

Its been clear for some time that the tech giants look to government to determine what coronavirus-related speech to allow. YouTubes misinformation policy bans content that contradicts the evolving guidance of health authorities. Facebook stopped blocking some commentary on the lab-leak theory of the viruss origins only after President Biden ordered an investigation into the possibility.

Public-private coordination is not in itself sinister. The government can be an important source of information, and most people would agree that its not an abuse of Facebooks authority to suppress, say, fraudulent medical advice that goes viral.

Yet as the acute crisis phase of coronavirus passes, a government arrangement with private firms to control speech about the pandemic looks less salutary. We dont know how deep the coordination goes, and Mr. Trumps lawsuit makes a weak case. We also dont know to what extent the platforms are complying with the White House in what they consider the public interest, or if they also fear retaliation.

Continue reading here:
Censorship Coordination Deepens - The Wall Street Journal

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Thank god for the Canadian Senate.

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The Senate held up the Trudeau governments obnoxious, anti-democratic Bill C-10 long enough that the legislation to regulate personal posts on the Internet failed to become law.

The bill was still on the order paper when Parliament rose for the summer. That means its still alive and debate on it in the upper chamber will quickly resume should Parliament resume in September.

However, if an election is called before the House and Senate return, Bill C-10 will die a well-deserved death.

What wont die, though, is the Liberals desire to limit Canadians freedom and crown themselves or their appointees the final arbiters of what is and is not acceptable to put on the Internet in Canada.

Bizarrely, the Liberals have convinced themselves that in order to save free expression they have to limit it. And they believe this mission is so urgent, completing the passage of C-10 and its sister bill, C-36, will almost surely be one of their first tasks when Parliament resumes (unless they fail to win re-election, of course).

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Back in the spring, when Canadians and pundits began complaining that C-10 was an outrageous and unwarranted assault on free speech, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau scoffed at such accusations. He labelled them fringe thinking.

Steven Guilbeault testified at the Commons Heritage committee that a very high proportion of Canadians are asking the government to step in. Clear majorities in English and French Canada wanted government to step in and prevent harmful speech, he insisted. (Never once did the minister define what kind of speech was harmful.)

A briefing paper prepared by his office in early June got a bit of closure to the answer. Legal but offensive social media comments were intimidating valuable voices and causing them not to engage in discussions of important issues.

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The conclusion of Guilbeaults staffers: Harsh online comments are preventing a truly democratic debate. They are undermining Canadian democracy, so even if posts are legal, the government needs the power to remove offensive comments from the Internet.

Offensive to whom, though?

See what I mean? The Liberals have convinced themselves that in order to save democracy and free speech, they have to tightly regulate what Canadians get to say online.

Thats dangerous doublethink. And it proves the Liberals are intellectually unsuited for the task of protecting Charter rights.

Which do you think is a greater threat to democracy: repugnant statements online by individuals with no power to enforce their screeds or committees of bureaucrats and progressive politicians sitting in judgement over what can and cannot be posted?

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As if C-10 were not enough to prove the Liberals understand nothing about free speech, consider that just before Parliament rose the Trudeau government introduced Bill C-36, an act that would reinstate the Canadian Human Rights Commissions (CHRC) power to conduct hate-speech witch hunts.

The commission had so abused its power before by going after individuals who challenged political correctness, that the Harper government stripped the CHRC of what were known as Section 13 powers.

Now the Liberals not only want to restore the commissions power, they want to beef it up with threats of up to $70,000 fines for any individual Canadian suspected of posting statements that promote detestation or vilification.

Posts could be instantly ordered removed and suspected offenders could be placed under house arrest, even if there is no evidence a criminal act has been committed.

And while the Liberals claim all this has broad public support, under questioning from Ontario Conservative MP Alex Ruff, Guilbeaults staff was forced to admit that of the hundreds of letters and emails they had received on C-10, not a single one supported the bill.

No support at all.

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GUNTER: The dangerous doublethink of the Liberal government's online censorship - Toronto Sun

Twitter is finding new ways to censor political opinion it is not fond of. After making biased censorship the norm on the platform, Twitter appears to have decided to censor tweets that expose liberal hypocrisy. The latest instance featured the controversy around the photograph of dead Reuters photojournalist Danish Siddiqui.

On the 16th of July, Twitter user Yosha (username @BlackDrug) shared the screenshot of a conversation on her account where she pointed out the hypocrisy of liberal intellectuals. She used the tweets of Stuti Mishra, journalist with The Independent, to point how liberals claimed that the photograph of Siddiquis corpse would hurt sentiments but do not think twice before using photographs of funeral pyres to score political points.

Yosha had used the following two screenshots in her tweet:

Initially, the screenshots were labelled sensitive media.

But on 18th July, Yosha was notified that her tweet violated Twitter rules against abuse and harassment. According to Twitter, Yosha engaged in targeted harassment. Consequently, her account has been locked for 12 hours.

But the Twitter censorship went beyond only Yoshas tweet. The platform is forcing people to remove tweets where they had quote-tweeted the above tweet by Yosha. On the 18th of July, this journalist had his account locked for the same.

As can be seen, the tweet did not contain any image and comprised only of four words. Twitter claimed that a tweet that did not contain any image violated rules against posting media depicting the moment of death of an individual. Perhaps, it was motivated by the images in Yoshas tweet but even makes little sense as the her tweet itself was said to violate abuse and harassment rules, not the rule related to dead body photographs.

The rules that this journalists account was claimed to violate is bizarre and exists from 2019. According to the rules, the platform may remove media that takes pleasure in the suffering of the deceased or laughs at or otherwise mocks the deceased.

But it is not clear how a tweet that does not contain any image would violate a rule specifically for tweets that contain images. This instance marks a great escalation in Twitter censorship. The platform has basically decided to censor tweets that expose liberal hypocrisy. Now, not only does the platform assist liberals gain a wider reach for their propaganda but they will silence others who expose their agenda. The censorship is as political as it gets.

Danish Siddiqui was killed by the Taliban during clashes with Afghanistan. Following his death, a photograph of his dead body began to circulate on social media. Journalists wanted people to not circulate the photograph because it was apparently disrespectful, after using photographs of funeral pyres for their politics. Twitter appears to have accommodated their interests by censoring those who exposed their hypocrisy.

It also further elucidates the fact that there are no rules anymore because they are applied selectively, based on the political preferences of the individual; which again marks a very dangerous turn of events.

Read more here:
Twitter censors tweets that exposed liberal hypocrisy over Danish Siddiquis photograph, calls it abuse and harassment - OpIndia