According to a Des Moines Register article, fourteen state attorneys general have accused the New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, and Reuters of serious crimes. The accusations appear highly dubious. The claim is that these news organizations have paid freelance reporters who have ties to Hamas and have thereby committed the crime of “material support for terrorism.”
A Fox News article corroborates the main points and adds some details. I don’t consider Fox News a very reliable source, but when a news outlet makes the people it generally supports look bad, it’s more credible, and the Fox News article has a bit more nuance than the Register article.
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The term “gaslighting” has become popular on social media. “To gaslight” means — or at least once meant — to manipulate people to make them think they’re insane. Today the word often serves as an all-purpose tool for attacking someone who says you’re wrong.
A Time article discusses the stretching of several psychological terms, including gaslighting:
Perhaps the most often misconstrued word of the past few years, “gaslighting” has been widely adopted as a way to describe any act that’s insensitive, a lie, or simply a difference of opinion.
Mastodon was supposed to be the answer to many social media problems. Instead of being one site under the control of one group of people, it’s many independent instances. If administrators on one became troublesome, you could move to another. You could find an instance that reflected your values and had the kind of people you like. It’s become something different.
Eugen Rochko, the founder of Mastodon, recently boasted:
I’d like to get it out there that the onboarding experience changed a fair bit this year. We don’t force people to choose a server anymore, so getting started shouldn’t be any more complicated than on any other site.
In the strict sense, no one was ever forced to choose a server. As far as I know, no court has ever ordered anyone to get a Mastodon account. But everyone who uses Mastodon has to choose one, and that hasn’t changed. It’s just that people now are herded into the big servers and have to make an extra effort to pick any of the others. That’s a step backward, toward monolithic social media.
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Does US federal law mandate a “kill switch” for alcohol-impaired drivers in cars made in the future? According to several fact checkers, no. However, an article by Jon Miltimore for FEE shows that it does.
The issue isn’t one of what the law contains, but of terminology. In claiming there is no kill-switch mandate, USA Today refers to the very text that mandates it:
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When researching and writing material about China, you have to be aware of the Chinese government’s disinformation efforts. People who speak out against it are apt to be the targets of systematic insults and character assassination. If you’re operating on a small level, you probably won’t be bothered. Even though my articles on boycotting the Chengdu Worldcon did well in the search engines, I’ve received only one clear threat with a Chinese connection.
CNN has reported on “the world’s largest known online disinformation operation”:
The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—at times threatening its targets with violence. …
The onslaught of attacks – often of a vile and deeply personal nature – is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show.
Just a couple more items from Chengdu Worldcon reports.
Chris M. Barkley, writing on his experience on an “Ask a US Fan” panel, reported: “Also, knowing that whatever was said at this panel would probably be reviewed by either Communist Party officials or members of the security services, I had planned in advance to make a point of saying that I was not a foreign policy expert nor was I there to criticize the government or policies of the People’s Republic of China.”
On a more positive note, there was a table for Tibetan science fiction. The report says, “The entire convention was not planned like a free and easygoing party, but more like a well-regulated exhibition. After all, the fan area was located in the lobby on the first floor, in a corner space.” I’m sure any mention of China’s conquest of Tibet was carefully avoided or rewritten as “liberation,” but given the convention’s general bleakness, giving space at all to Tibetan SF is something.
Lukianenko remained officially a Guest of Honor, though he never showed up. I haven’t seen any explanation for his absence. Normally, when a GoH doesn’t show, the concom will say something, even it’s a vague “personal reasons.” This wasn’t a normal Worldcon, though. However, his writing appears in a tie-in book that also has stories by Sawyer and Liu.
A teacher who wants to limit students’ minds and close off their horizons is a vile person. To Kill a Mockingbird is a powerful, moving novel about racial injustice in the South. It presents a world that’s different from today’s America and presents the suffering and hope of the people who suffered and tried to correct its injustices. A man defends the target of a false criminal accusation at great personal cost. For this reason, four progressive teachers in the state of Washington wanted to keep their students from reading it. A Washington Post article tells the tale.
In their formal challenge to the book in the Mukilteo School District, the teachers claimed, “To Kill A Mockingbird centers on whiteness. … It presents a barrier to understanding and celebrating an authentic Black point of view in Civil Rights era literature and should be removed.” Three of the four are white, just by the way. Claiming that the novel “centers on whiteness” shows either gross ignorance of the book or gross dishonesty. In normal use, the Civil Rights Era began in the 1950s, and the novel is set during the Depression. It’s true that it doesn’t celebrate what it was like to be black in Alabama in those days.
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On June 26, 2021, a police officer in Massachusetts fatally shot Nathan Allen. Too many killings by police have been unjustified, and some were frankly murder, so it’s necessary to look carefully into each one. Investigators found that this one was justified. Allen had just shot and killed two people without provocation, apparently just because they had dark skin. Just before that, he had shot into an unoccupied car and stolen and crashed a truck. Allen then advanced on the officer while holding a gun. After telling Allen to put the gun down and being ignored, the officer shot him. After handcuffing Allen, the officer tried to treat his wounds, but Allen died.
Assuming everything happened as described, I’d have to say the officer acted properly. He had to shoot because Allen was an ongoing threat to his life and the lives of others in the vicinity. This is miles removed from, for example, Daniel Pantaleo’s killing Eric Garner for illegally selling cigarettes. (Pantaleo was punished by being fired and losing his pension, which he claimed was a horribly excessive punishment.)
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Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer has been the least controversial of the Chengdu Worldcon’s three Guests of Honor. He’s Canadian and isn’t under the same pressures or motivations as Chinese author Cixin Liu and Russian Sergei Lukianenko. However, he’s shown that just a guest spot and airfare are enough to buy off any principles he might have had.
I’m not expecting him to denounce the treatment of the Uyghurs or censorship in Hong Kong while he’s there. That would be stupid. But he didn’t have to say the things he said.
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