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Australian scientists are rallying behind their counterparts in the United States amid fears that President Donald Trump could ram through a damaging anti-science agenda over the next four years.

Trump's moves to censor federal government scientific departments and undermine the integrity of climate research have triggered sympathy and anger in Australia, where many scientists believe the country's conservative government has conducted a similar assault on science over the past few years.

"My sense is that morale among the science fraternity in the U.S. is extremely low at the moment," said Associate Professor Stuart Khan, a water researcher at the University of New South Wales and one of the organizers of the Australian March for Science. "We want to show that we understand what is going on and we stand in solidarity."

The United States is an important research partner for Australia and a bilateral science and technology relationship has existed in some form for 48 years.

However, Trump's recent directives, particularly his administration's instructions that any data from the EPA must undergo review by political appointees, have many Australian scientists concerned.

"It's reminiscent of the censorship exerted by political officers in the old Soviet Union," Dr. Alan Finkel, the chief science advisor to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, told a roundtable discussion in the capital Canberra on Monday. "Every military commander there had a political officer second-guessing his decisions."

Gag orders aren't the only sign of Trump's apparent anti-science stance. His pick to head the EPA, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, has made a career of challenging the agencies environmental regulations. Trump has also reportedly tapped vaccine skeptic Robert Kennedy Jr., who has erroneously linked vaccines with autism, to lead a commission into immunization safety.

RELATED: Will Trump Go After Vaccine Science?

Australian scientists have not faced directives limiting interaction with the media and public like those imposed by Trump, but several said political interference has taken different forms.

"It's primarily lack of funding, pulling out government support, and public campaigns that undermine and belittle scientific achievements," Khan said.

After taking office in 2013, former prime minister Tony Abbott slashed science funding, abolished climate science programs and chose not to appoint a science minister for the first time since 1931.

Funding for Australia's main research grants body, the Australian Research Council, was cut by $74.9 million; the national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, had its funding slashed by $111 million.

As a result, severe job losses including up to 110 roles in the organization's Oceans and Atmosphere division were announced by CSIRO in February 2016. The decision was reversed and extra resources allocated to climate change research only after a public outcry and widespread international criticism.

"It was a brutal act to try and force compliance and control because they didn't regard the organisation to be sufficiently beholden to government directives," Dr. Michael Borgas, a climate scientist and former president of the CSIRO staff association, said.

RELATED: Cities Are Tackling Climate Change by Freeing Their Data

Abbott, who once declared that climate change was "absolute crap," was ousted by Malcolm Turnbull in a party coup in September 2015, but key science policies have remained intact.

In fact, the Turnbull government has proven it's not above scrubbing science from the record.

In May 2016, it was revealed the Australian government intervened to have all mentions of the country removed from a UNESCO report on climate change impacts at world heritage areas.

One of three Australian case studies, the Great Barrier Reef, experienced its worst coral bleaching ever in 2015-2016, an event scientists said was 175 times more likely because of human-caused climate change.

More than 93 percent of the smaller reefs that make up the wider ecosystem were affected by bleaching and preliminary surveys have shown widespread reef mortality.

"I was confidentially told by the editor of the report that the Australian government asked that the Great Barrier Reef case study and two others that referred to Australia were taken out of the report," said Professor Will Steffen, a climate science expert at the Australia National University, who reviewed the Great Barrier Reef chapter.

The Australian government later admitted the request was made because the reef's inclusion may have impacted tourism.

Borgas, who spent 15 years advocating for employees at CSIRO, said there were lessons from the Australian experience that could be useful to scientists in the U.S.

Participating in a trade union or scientific society that advocated for the rights of scientists was a good start, he said. But he also urged U.S. scientists to keep speaking out about threats to science integrity.

"Scientists sometimes don't like to be politically engaged," said Borgas. "But it's something you have to do. You have to learn to do it."

WATCH: The Difference Between Global Warming and Climate Change

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Australian Scientists Who Faced Censorship Have Advice for Dealing With Trump - Seeker

Four US states are considering legislation that would ensure free speech on college campuses and prohibit universities fromshielding people from offensive and controversial ideas.

Most states were put on alert after the eruption of violence at the University of California, Berkeley, whereMilo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to give a speech.His event was cancelled over safety fears.

President Trump has put the issue of free speech on campus in the spotlight after hethreatened to withdraw federal funds from universities that dont honor the First Amendment rights.

Virginia

Earlier this week, the Virginias House of Delegates passed bill HB1301aimed at protecting freedom of speech on campus. The bill reaffirms that public colleges and universities in the state are covered by the First Amendment.

The full text of the law reads: Except as otherwise permitted by the First Amendment to the Constitution, no public institution of higher education shall abridge the freedom of any individual, including enrolled students, faculty and other employees, and invited guests, to speak on campus.

House Democratic leader David Toscano celebrated the bill, saying:Any time we have the chance to support the First Amendment we should do that.

Its a good idea to celebrate the First Amendment. We want our campuses to be noisy, we want people to debate things, he added.

Colorado

In Colorado,the Senate Education Committee approved abill defending the constitutionally granted rights of Colorado students. The bill would prohibit governmentfunded colleges from restricting students First Amendment rights to free speech in any way. According to the draft of the bill, free speech includes speaking, distributing materials, or holding a sign.

The bill also requires convertingexisting so-called free speech zonesa campus phenomena where only at certain places students are able to exercise free speechinto monuments or memorials.

Free speech zones are counterintuitive to our core values, we should never falter in our defense of our constitutional rights or confine a free exchange of ideas, explained Senator Tim Neville, who introduced the bill.

Students on Colorado campuses are growing into the leaders of tomorrow, and restricting their fundamental rights as they seek out truth and knowledge is contrary to the American spirit as well as the mission of universities, he added.

North Dakota

North Dakota is also considering a bill to fight the onslaught of safe spaces and ensure the Constitution that guarantees free speech is protected in the states public universities.

Republican State Rep. Rick Becker sponsor of House Bill 1329, said the proposed legislation is aresponse to an attitude that free speech is not free speech at universities, where free expression is stifledby university policy.

There is an atmosphere of political correctness and social justice that will lead to safe spaces and this whole concept on every campus, hesaid. We have to put a stop to it now.

The bill would confirm free speech as a fundamental right and demand the governing body of the North Dakota University System to a ratify a policy of free speech.

The policy would require acommitment to free and open inquiry by students in all matters and outlaw any restrictions on speech, unless it violates other laws or disrupts the universitys functions.

It would also require tocontain a bill of student rights that would prohibitcolleges in North Dakota from subjecting students to any nonacademic punishment, discipline or censorship for exercising their free speech.

Becker cited the violence last week at the University of California, Berkeley during the protests againstMilo Yiannopoulos, claiming theres a growth of anti-speech rhetoric on college campuses.

North Carolina

The States Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest has announced his intention to work with the General Assembly to pass the Restore Campus Free Speech act, a law closely based onthe model campus free speech legislationthat would guarantee free speech at universities.

North Carolina will be the first state to use the model law by the Goldwater Institute think tank and turn it into an actual legislative proposal. AsHeat Streethas reported, the model proposalincludes a toughlegal regime to ensure free speech.

The law would prohibit colleges in North Carolina from banning speakers, creating safe spaces with the intention of shielding students from certain ideas and opinions, harsh sanctions for those limiting free speech including expulsion, and even a $1,000 fine if university violates free speech rights.

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4 US States Consider Free Speech Laws To Fight Censorship and 'Safe Spaces' On Campus - Heat Street

A stack of Uzbek newspapers. Censorship is in theory proscribed by law in Uzbekistan. In reality, those few reporters that have been foolhardy enough to flout the rule on self-censorship have been subjected to intimidation and harassment. However, some news outlets in this Central Asian state have recently started dabbling with easing their policy of self-censorship on sensitive topics. (Photo: EurasiaNet)

As headlines go, this one might not look especially exciting; What Can We Expect from the Liberalization of the Foreign Currency Market? But the article, by respected economist Yuliy Yusupov, became an instant sensation when it was published January 17 by the Uzbekistan-focused online business news outlet Kommersant.uz. Tight official controls over currency and trade and the flourishing of a black economy in both these areas had made the subject off-limits for any local media in the days of the late President Islam Karimov. Thus, it is no surprise that the January 17 article touched off a flurry of social media chatter among Uzbek news consumers. The appearance of the piece offers evidence that, slowly and tentatively, some news outlets in Uzbekistan are dabbling with easing their policy of self-censorship on sensitive topics. Yusupov said he was initially approached by Kommersant.uz to write the article, but that they were surprised by the boldness of what they got back. They wavered over [the article] for a long time. Nobody has yet written such a candid piece in the press. Especially since they have experience of senior comrades telling them what they could and could not write, Yusupov told EurasiaNet.org. Eventually, the website relented and even published two more similar articles by Yusupov. Kommersant overcame the self-censorship, good for them. We will definitely continue, this is just the beginning, Yusupov said. So far, the higher-ups are quiet. Lets hope for the best. Yusupovs most recent article, published on February 6, is titled; About the Danger of Protectionism. The piece is, in effect, a frontal assault on a policy long favored by Karimov. Such articles would struggle to stand out in a Western business publication, but critical analyses of economic policies in particular, discussion of how badly the government has handled the economy have long been a no-go area for reporters in Uzbekistan. Censorship is in theory proscribed by law in Uzbekistan. On paper, existing legislation provides for expansive editorial freedoms. One passage in the law regulating media activity states that nobody has the right to demand prior approval for published material, or to demand changes to a text, or its removal from circulation. In reality, those few reporters that have been foolhardy enough to flout the rule on self-censorship have invariably been summoned to prosecutors offices, where they have been subjected to intimidation and harassment. Controls tend to be even stronger on reporters in the regions, and will likely remain so for some time. In the city of Samarkand, reporter Toshpulat Rakhmatullayev recently wrote a piece on news website Nuz.uz titled; Who Will Free Samarkand of the Powers of Darkness? The article examines the spate of power shortages that has been afflicting his region of late, and, on the face of, is quite standard, if heavily opinionated. In addition to describing the routine blackouts occurring in Samarkand carefully tabulating how many times the power went out Rakhmatullayev also recounts his exchanges with government officials. It is not difficult to note that between the power going out and going back on again, there would be intervals of one to three minutes. You can imagine how this grates the nerves. My friend, who has a generator at home, says that as soon as he gets to his device, they turn the light back on, Rakhmatullayev wrote. The report duly earned Rakhmatullayev a summons to the prosecutors office. But, undeterred, the journalist penned another piece on February 1 headlined; Why Should Journalists Suffer for Telling the Truth? I had to tell this person from the prosecutors office that it is necessary to distinguish between complaining and journalism. I did not complain, but I just raised the problem of electricity supply to Samarkand, which is a problem that is of concern to thousands of people, Rakhmatullayev wrote. Letters from Samarkand residents to the presidential website, which recently introduced a function allowing citizens to write in directly with complaints, have proven of little use in alleviating the problem, Rakhmatullayev noted. He added that when he complained to local officials, they did nothing but try to gather incriminating information about him. Since President Shavkat Mirziyoyevs ascendancy to power, articles have appeared in the Uzbek press detailing the everyday problems affecting citizens. These concern primarily shortages of electricity, gas, water and employment. It is Mirziyoyev himself who has encouraged this sudden surge of emboldened criticism by publicly urging officials to pay more heed to the pleas of ordinary citizens, and to discuss them in newspapers and Internet publications. You too should act from below and demand solutions to your problems, the president told an audience during a meeting with members of the public in January in the semiautonomous republic of Karakalpakstan. Mirziyoyev has also been effecting some changes at the top. On February 3, he appointed a new head of the national television and radio broadcaster a former minister for information technology and communication development, Hurshid Mirzahidov. The outgoing head of the broadcaster, Alisher Hadjaev, who had filled the position since December 2005, was a high-ranking officer in the National Security Service, or SNB. The SNB has in the decades since independence amassed a vast army of operatives and extended its influence into all areas of life with a view to consolidating the authority of the ruling elite. Under Hadjaev, state television was used as a platform for the propagation of the late President Karimovs political programs and ideology. Even mild criticism of any aspects of government policy disappeared from the airwaves, and progressive-minded journalists were dismissed. Despite being one of the largest broadcasters in the region, Uzbekistans national state television and radio company has no correspondents anywhere across the former Soviet Union and focuses entirely on domestic developments. In addition to hammering home state ideology, the government-run broadcaster was also used to target perceived opponents of the authorities, or the country itself. For example, in 2012, at the height of a smear campaign targeting Turkish businesses in Uzbekistan, the state broadcaster pulled the plug on popular Turkish TV shows, substituting them with South Korean soap operas instead. And it was during the Hadjaev era that the TV evening bulletin earned the mocking unofficial nickname of News from Heaven.

Originally posted here:
Uzbekistan: Emboldened Media Shedding Self-Censorship - EurasiaNet

This condition of generalized fear may even be inspired by some act of ancient violence, passed on through underground lore to contemporary consciousness. In the western part of El Salvador, peasants remembered, long after the fact, the armys 1931 massacre of their families, which took over ten thousand lives. So powerful was that memory fifty years later that when the rest of the country rose up against the military, scarcely anyone in the region took up arms.

Such ripple effects, even if unintended, are especially potent when their target belongs to an already vulnerable group. After 9/11, for example, journalists and activists reported extensive fear throughout Arab and Muslim communities in the United States, inspired by the detention of 1,200 to 5,000 Muslim and Arab men. This was a fear not just of detention, deportation, or vigilante violence, but of speaking out on politically controversial issues of American foreign policy, which mightand often doesattract scrutiny, surveillance, or harassment from the federal government and police. Theres fear in the Arab community, reported Mino Akhtar. What I hear Arabs and Muslims saying is, Lets keep a low profile. Dont step out there. We need to stay quiet and let this blow over, a claim confirmed by numerous press reports.

Against such a backdrop of fear, even the most innocuous actions can generate additional fear, with equally repressive results. In December 2001, for example, Mohadar Mohamed Abdoulah, a Yemeni immigrant living in San Diego, was granted $500,000 bail after being detained for two months as a 9/11 material witness and for having lied on his asylum application. Initially, the local Muslim community rallied to Abdoulahs cause, pledging $400,000 for his bail fund with promises to raise more. But once it was announced that each contributor would have to provide his or her name to the government and perhaps appear before the judge, many in the community balked. When people were told theyd have to go to court and answer questions from the judge, said Abdoulahs lawyer, they chilled out. One day, added the lawyer, its all about the solidarity and standing tall. Then they run. This community isnt split. This is about abject fear. Because of the states detentions and deportations, and because of vigilante attacks, this simple request to identify themselves to the court was enough to arouse fear throughout the Muslim community in San Diego.

Generating fear across time and space in this way requires the involvement, even cooperation, of the entire society: elites and collaborators, bystanders and victims. To command more than a small, immediate audience, political fear must mobilize generals and foot soldiers, and a supporting army of secretaries, cooks, and maids to tend to them. Political fear also relies upon bystanders, whose passivity paves a path for elites and their collaborators, and the targeted community of victims, who transmit didactic tales of fear among themselves, thereby increasing its reverberating effects. Inspired by the victims desire to shield themselves from sanctions, these small acts of education among the victims are central to the economy of fear. They minimize the amount of actual coercion perpetrators must apply, and they maximize the effect. One black North Carolina woman recounts that under Jim Crow her parents and grandparents warned her, at an early age, that if she disobeyed the rules of segregation, she would get arrested. So, she concluded, any time you saw white and colored, unless you wanted to be arrested and be in jail, you didnt dare.

This is the second in a series of five posts this week on fear in the age of Trump, drawn from Fear: The History of a Political Idea.

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Beware of Self-Censorship - New Republic

Australias top governmentscientist is likeningPresident Donald Trumps changes at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to scientific censorship under Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin.

Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, speaking during a roundtable discussion in Australias capital city ofCanberra, said Monday that science is literally under attack in the United States, according to the Guardian:

TheTrump administrationhas mandated that scientific data published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency from last week going forward has to undergo review by political appointees before that data can be published on the EPA website or elsewhere.

It defies logic. It will almost certainly cause long-term harm. Its reminiscent of the censorship exerted by political officers in the old Soviet Union.

Every military commander there had a political officer second-guessing his decisions.

Finkel was referring to a decisionby the Trump administration last month for political appointees toreview all the scientific data foundby scientists at the EPA before it can be cleared for publication.Doug Ericksen, communications director for Trumps EPA transition team, said that the review also applies to information on the agencys website and social media accounts.

And in January, EPA staffers said that the Trump White House ordered the agencyto remove its webpage on climate change a move that ruffled the feathers of many environmentalists.

If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on climate change will disappear, one unnamed EPA staffer told Reuters last month, adding that some employees were working to preserve the data stored there.

Were taking a look at everything on a case-by-case basis, including the web page and whether climate stuff will be taken down, Ericksentold the Associated Press. Obviously with a new administration coming in, the transition time, well be taking a look at the web pages and the Facebook pages and everything else involved here at EPA.

Climate Central reported last weekthat the EPA has, in fact, started removing Obama-era information from the government website. Theyre mostly scrubbing it of anything that has a hint of Obama, Gretchen Goldman,research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said.

The administration, however, has downplayed the ordeal. White Housepress secretary Sean Spicer, who first denied Trumpdirectly orderedthe EPAs data scrub, said in January that the communications clampdown on scientific datawas not out of the ordinary, telling reporters, I dont think its any surprise that when theres an administration turnover, that were going to review the policy.

ButGeorge Gray, who was theassistant administrator for the EPAs Office of Research and Development under former PresidentGeorge W. Bush, told the Guardian that scientific studies are typically reviewed at lower levelsand rarely by political appointees.

Scientific studies would be reviewed at the level of a branch or a division or laboratory, he said. Occasionally, things that were known to be controversial would come up to me as assistant administrator and I was a political appointee. Nothing in my experience would go further than that.

Finkel, for his part, sees the White Houses decision as akin to Stalins efforts to censor science.

Soviet agricultural science was held back for decades because of the ideology of Trofim Lysenko, who was a proponent of Lamarckism, he said. Stalin loved Lysenkos conflation of science and Soviet philosophy and used his limitless power to ensure that Lysenkos unscientific ideas prevailed.

As the Smithsonian Magazine outlined, Lysenko was Stalins director of biology and he led a group of animal and plant breeders who rejected the science of genetics. He worked to discredit the genetic discoveries of Gregor Mendel and Thomas Hunt Morgan, attacking them for being foreigners with idealistic ideas that were the product of bourgeois capitalism.

Lysenko argued that he could quickly force plants and animals and even the Soviet people into forms that could meet practical needs and that those characteristic changes could be passed on to their offspring a debunked theory known as Lamarckism.

One of Lysenkosmost infamous claims was that he changed a species of spring wheat into winter wheat after just a few years. That was, of course, impossible, but it fed into Stalins mantra that the Soviet government could create the perfect utopia.

So while Western scientists embraced evolution and genetics, Russian scientists who thought the same were sent to the gulag. Western crops flourished. Russian crops failed, Finkel said. Today, the catch-cry of scientists must be frank and fearless advice, no matter the opinion of political commissars stationed at the U.S. EPA.

Last week, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works suspended rules to approve Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA without any Democrats present. The Democrats boycotted Pruitts hearing last Wednesday, citing concerns over his rejection of climate change science.

A date for the Trump appointees full Senate vote has not yet been set, but given Republicans lead the Senate, his nominationis expected to be approved.

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Australia's chief scientist: Trump's EPA changes akin to Stalin's censorship of science - TheBlaze.com