New report: “The Party’s AI: How China’s New AI Systems are Reshaping Human Rights.” From a summary article: > China is already the world’s largest exporter of AI powered surveillance > technology; new surveillance technologies and platforms developed in China are > also not likely to simply stay there. By exposing the full scope of China’s AI > driven control apparatus, this report presents clear, evidence based insights > for policymakers, civil society, the media and technology companies seeking to > counter the rise of AI enabled repression and human rights violations, and > China’s growing efforts to project that repression beyond its borders...

THE CLUMSY ATTEMPT TO SILENCE ARTISTS OPPOSING GENOCIDE ONLY MAKES THEIR MESSAGE LOUDER ~ Stanton Cree ~ Over the last week I found myself in the interesting position of having to navigate the British establishment’s censorship just to listen to a bit of music, watch some TV, and a film. I started my weekend wanting to catch Kneecap‘s Glastonbury set. I had to wait, however, until the BBC uploaded it to iPlayer after caving to government pressure and declining to livestream the group. Having missed Bob Vylan, I then had to search for a recording, as the BBC refused to upload it after an explosion of outrage from politicians and journalists. Next, I had to make time to watch To Kill a War Machine before it will presumably get banned for supporting non-violent direct action terrorism. Finally, I got to watch Gaza: Doctors Under attack on Channel 4 as the BBC, once again, refused to show it. By now I’m sure you’ve realised the thing that connects all this together is Palestine, and the suppression of anyone or anything that draws attention to the ongoing genocide. Enough has been said about the blatant hypocrisy of the garden-variety ‘Free Speech Warrior’ working to silence those speaking out against racism, sexism, homophobia, and genocide. What we are witnessing now, however, are very obvious examples of state censorship—ironic given those in government are always banging on about a ‘Free Speech crisis‘. Given my low opinion and regularly validated distrust of government, state censorship isn’t particularly surprising to me. The BBC has traditionally aligned itself with the imperial status quo, and the Labour party is just as much part of the establishment as the Tories. State intervention to deny artists their rights to expression is unfortunately nothing new either—an ongoing example is the cops’ continued gagging of Grime and Drill artists. What I do find astonishing is how quickly the pretence of state non-interference in the arts has been discarded. Politicians and media have shifted from quietly ignoring censorship to openly endorsing it when it comes to Kneecap and Bob Vylan—who have consequently had shows pulled. What is it that the powers that be find so egregious? Apparently, the idea that genocide is not just wrong but should also be resisted. What’s impressive is the lengths the establishment is going to in order to make such a mundanely moral stance as “stop genocide” seem sinister. The BBC and politicians have rushed to condemn the “antisemitic sentiments” and “hate speech” supposedly expressed by Bob Vylan, but none have bothered to show their work. Exactly what they’re referring to is left to speculation. Desperate to vilify the Vylans, the BBC’s cultural editor went as far as conflating two separate statements made during the set, which seems to be the basis for further erroneous claims that Bob Vylan were “calling for the death of Israeli troops”. But why let a little thing like context get in the way of a juicy story? The Mail on Sunday went even further, entirely inventing a quote to justify their unhinged front page demand for the state repression of musicians. Most of the focus has been on the chant of “death to the IDF”, which has been presented without any context even by supposedly unbiased, centrist, and liberal individuals and publications. International law recognises the legitimate use of force against an occupying army. The claim that the chant somehow calls for death to Israelis (let alone all Jews) makes about as much sense as saying that “death to fascism” was a call to kill all Italians. As for antisemitism—it is a common tactic of propagandists to muddy the waters by conflating the Israeli state with its citizenship or with the Jewish people as a whole. By saying an attack on the Israeli military is an attack on all Jews, they are playing right into the hands of Israeli state propaganda. The evolution of a lie, courtesy of BBC Culture Editor, Katie Razzall Bob Vylan have never hidden what they are about. They are aggressively and unapologetically political, snugly fitting within the traditions of both Punk and Rap. Their songs are typical anti-racist and anti-fascist fare and the combination of anarcho-punk with Grime hits hard and doesn’t leave much room for misunderstanding. Glastonbury’s own website describes their shows as “a cathartic experience where rage and protest meets positivity and joy”. Which begs the question, why pretend they didn’t know what they were getting? Yet now even Glastonbury’s organisers, who have long presented the festival as an open forum for left leaning politics, went from Michael Eavis saying last week that “People that don’t agree with the politics of the event can go somewhere else” to abruptly following establishment voices in distancing themselves from Bob Vylan. An impressive U-turn after their initial support of their line up. With no remarks regarding acts such as Amyl and the Sniffers, Inhaler, CMAT, and of course, Kneecap, it certainly appears to be a response to political pressure. The condemnation of Bob Vylans’s supposed ‘incitement to violence’ stinks of exactly the kind of liberal pearl-clutching addressed in the duo’s 2021 song “Pretty Songs”. As a society we have been conditioned to accept the idea that any grave injustice should be passively resisted and that any kind of physical resistance is morally questionable. The irony of the government condemning moral support for militant action, while it actively actively remilitarises and sells weapons abroad, should not be lost on anyone. Fortunately, the censorship crusade already seems to be backfiring in the most predictable way. The more power used to suppress the message, the louder it gets. Drawing attention to Bob Vylan, along with Kneecap, Palestine Action and others just increases support for them. The clumsy attempts to demonise these groups further exacerbates the growing rupture between the people and the political establishment. There is nothing ethically dubious in stating support for the right of victims to fight those carrying out a genocide. To suggest otherwise clearly favours annihilation. Pacifism is merely a pretty ideal that benefits the elite and those who seek to maintain the status quo. The appeal to pacifism and the presupposition that any and all violence is inherently wrong, strikes to the very heart of this storm in a teacup. Bob Vylan are under no obligation to pander to such sensibilities, and neither are we. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Top photo: Brian J. Matis on Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 The post Vilifying the Vylans or: How I learned to stop censoring and call for death to the BBC appeared first on Freedom News.

THIS LUCID AND PASSIONATE DOCUMENTARY ABOUT PALESTINE ACTION IS WELL WORTH VIEWING BEFORE STARMER’S “SOCIAL DEMOCRATS” CENSOR IT ~ Rob Ray ~ I can certainly see why the makers of To Kill A War Machine are worried that proscription of the subject of their documentary, Palestine Action (PA), will turn into a ban for them too. The Rainbow Collective have produced one of the most explicitly pro-direct action features I’ve seen in years. Unapologetic in tone, the programme includes interviews with members and supporters, who talk about their motivations, strategies and the ways in which State repression has ramped up since the start of Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. PA hardly needs much of an introduction after a week of intense media focus. But in brief, over the last half-decade the non-violent group has carried out a campaign of sabotage against Israeli arms firm Elbit, which operates numerous sites across the UK and is well meshed with Britain’s corporate and political Establishments. Its tactics have been to target not just the property of Elbit itself – making it as expensive as possible to operate in Britain specifically – but to also go down the supply and financing chain, hitting the likes of Barclays for investing in the firm and Arconic for selling it monitor screens.  Produced in a kinetic, glitchy manner which will be familiar to anyone who has watched many activist film productions, To Kill A War Machine flicks between footage of PA activists smashing through windows and rooftops, interviews, slickly dystopian Elbit advertising bragging about its lethality and accuracy, and blurred but nevertheless horrifying footage of the child victims of such “precision.”  Included in the interviewees are several recognisable figures, in particular eloquent takes from Sukaina Rajwani, mother of Filton 18 prisoner Fatema, Shezana Hafiz of Cage International, and Palestine Action founder members Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard.  The analysis and insights provided are well-presented, lucid and passionate, with Rajwani’s deeply admirable fortitude speaking out in what must be extraordinarily stressful circumstances watching her daughter going through the hell of Kafkaesque persecution being particularly worthy of note.   A minor quibble I might have with interviewee Lowkey’s otherwise solid analysis is his focus on how they draw primarily from the Raytheon Nine and suggestion that their iteration is unique, whereas throughout, I was seeing influences from the animal rights movement of the 1990s and 2000s, which might be useful to draw out a bit. The campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences has strong parallels to Palestine Action’s strategy, particularly “go down the chain, find the weak points”.  They’re also being dealt with in similar ways (with some crucial differences).  In the case of HLS, government repression was more subtle, but used the same playbook – identify, vilify, isolate and shock. Rather than use the wild overkill of anti-terror legislation, in the 2000s Establishment reaction took the form, initially, of information gathering and infiltration by the State, while the media portrayed animal rights activists in the most ghoulish of ways, with the aim of dividing a perceived “extreme” wing of the movement from the cover of broader support.  Legislation was then beefed up, with injunctions being used to physically push legal campaigning away from the gates of the research establishments. Punishments were increased to allow for exemplary sentencing – frighten people off by making it clear political crime in particular was unacceptable, in a way that non-political crime was not. Back in 2015 I interviewed an AR activist from the time about this for Black Flag (p.16-17), who explained: “People had been sent down before, but it became multiple forms of harassment. We’d do a local stall about animal rights and local cops would show up trying to shut us down. They’d stand in front of the stall, intimidating people away. They’d follow activists around, stalk them at demos, anything to isolate us. At government level they changed laws to facilitate crackdowns. Harassment legislation was extended to companies after we challenged the idea in court. In SOCA (section 146-7) they specifically included anti-animal rights rules by banning home demos. That was specifically to stop us from getting shareholders’ addresses and targeting the communities where they lived, which was extremely effective. All the cops who used these laws have moved on now, so they’ve fallen out of use, but these laws are still on the books.” It might seem odd that Starmer, who would be well acquainted with such strategies from his time as a pro-bono movement lawyer in the 2000s, doesn’t simply re-employ them before leaping to terror legislation. Until, of course, you remember that his priority is not to stop a movement, but to outflank his political critics while shoring up his international position. The disastrous effects of proscription on free speech and individual liberty are simple collateral damage in the cause of silencing far-right “two-tier” accusations and brown-nosing the US.   The documentary highlights this procession around 3/4 of the way in, noting the path from an early 2022 meeting between Priti Patel and Elbit (shading into a dodgy inclusion of a rep from the supposedly independent Crown Prosecution Service), through to Labour’s use of arrests for non-violent action under terror legislation and a ghosting of activists within the prison system so thorough that even their lawyers couldn’t reach them. A clear path of private complaint, Establishment mobilisation, and politically-charged escalation towards the moment of outright repression we find ourselves in. The hope in the face of proscription is it might finally break through to the general public that it’s all our rights that are at risk when a political party decides to arbitrarily apply the label of “terrorist” to strictly non-violent forms of dissent. Unlike the bleating of far-right types about university students telling them to get lost, proscription is full-on, indisputable State censorship in the raw.  To Kill A War Machine is a solidly made, inspiring film to watch, but even if it were absolute rubbish, it has already done the job it set out to do. I ended up watching it in a meeting room, on a borrowed projector, via a hastily-organised showing by people intent on getting it out before the proscription vote. Up and down the country this weekend, and again tonight, others are doing the same. It’s already out there, and a State ban would come too late to shut the barn door. Now it’s not just the story of Palestine Action, it’s the story of Palestine Action they don’t want you to see.  To Kill A War Machine is available now and can be streamed or downloaded from their website. The post Film Review: To Kill A War Machine appeared first on Freedom News.