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U.S. blacklists 34 Chinese language entities over human rights abuses, brain-control weapons

U.S. blacklists 34 Chinese entities over human rights abuses, brain-control weapons

Chinese and US flags fly in front of a company building in Shanghai, China, 16 November 2021.

Aly song | Reuters

WASHINGTON – The Biden government said Thursday it has imposed trade restrictions on more than 30 Chinese research institutes and facilities for human rights abuses and the alleged development of technologies, such as brain control weapons, that undermine US national security.

The Ministry of Commerce accused the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences and eleven of its research institutes of using biotechnology “to support the end uses and end users of the Chinese military and to pick up alleged brain control weapons,” a statement in the federal register said.

The communication does not go into any further details of the alleged brain control weapons.

“The scientific pursuit of biotechnology and medical innovation can save lives. Unfortunately, the PRC is choosing to use these technologies to take control of its population and its repression from members of ethnic and religious minorities, “wrote US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in a statement referring to the People’s Republic of China and human rights abuses in China’s extreme western region of Xinjiang.

The Foreign Ministry had previously described the abuse of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities, such as in the Xinjiang region, as “widespread, state-sponsored forced labor” and “mass detention.”

Earlier this month, the White House announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, citing “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”

Beijing denies abusing religious and ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

The Commerce Department has added four other Chinese companies to its entity list because of their role in modernizing the Chinese military, which runs counter to US national security and foreign policy interests.

The department also added five other Chinese companies that reportedly “acquired or attempted to acquire technology from the United States to help modernize the People’s Liberation Army.”

US officials have long complained that intellectual property theft by China has cost the economy billions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs. You also said that it threatens national security. Meanwhile, Beijing claims it is not involved in intellectual property theft.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The Department of Commerce also took action against companies in Georgia, Malaysia and Turkey for allegedly “diverting or attempting to divert US items for Iranian military programs.”

“In particular, these units are part of a network that is used to supply or attempt to supply Iran with items of US origin that would ultimately provide material support to the Iranian defense industry in violation of US export controls,” it says in the message.

In total, the Ministry of Commerce took action against 34 companies in China, three in Georgia, one in Malaysia and two in Turkey.

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Politics

Alphonso David Fired as Human Rights Marketing campaign President Over Cuomo Ties

Alphonso David Fired as Human Rights Campaign President Over Cuomo Ties

Alphonso David, the president of the human rights campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ organization, was fired by the group’s board on Monday night for a report revealing that he had advised former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo on dealing with allegations of sexual harassment.

David, the first black president of the group, was dismissed “for an important reason” in separate votes by the boards of the human rights campaign and its affiliated foundation after the two boards held a joint meeting. After two abstentions on the Board of Trustees, the votes were unanimous.

The removal of Mr David is the latest fallout from the report by Letitia James, the New York State attorney general, describing Mr Cuomo’s allegations of sexual harassment and the efforts of his staff to take revenge against the former governor’s accusers. Mr. Cuomo resigned in August after the report made 11 allegations and described a toxic work environment.

Mr David, who had worked as an attorney in Mr Cuomo’s office, was identified in the James report as being involved in efforts to undermine Mr Cuomo’s first accuser, Lindsey Boylan. Although Mr. David no longer worked there, he had a memo containing confidential information about Ms. Boylan’s career. He shared the memo with Mr. Cuomo’s advisors, who hoped to provide details to reporters. Mr David has claimed that as a lawyer he has an obligation to do so.

Mr David also proposed changes to a letter slandering Ms. Boylan that circulated among Mr Cuomo and his aides, saying that he would collect signatures from former aides for it. However, he refused to sign it himself and later said that he did not know the extent of the allegations against Mr Cuomo. He called for Mr Cuomo’s resignation after the report was made public.

A person familiar with deliberations on the human rights campaign board said that when the allegations came to light, Mr. David never told the organization that he was providing advice to Mr. Cuomo. The person said that Mr. David did not consult the group’s attorney or tell them that he would be interviewed by Ms. James’ office.

In a statement, board co-chairs Morgan Cox and Jodie Patterson said they had decided to end David’s role “with immediate effect for violating his contract with the human rights campaign.”

The statement also touched on a public dispute that unfolded between Mr. David and the board over the weekend after Mr. David said he had been told that a review of his actions had been completed without any wrongdoing being found.

“Yesterday and today, Mr. David issued a statement containing significant untruths about the investigation and his status with the organization,” said Mr. Cox and Ms. Patterson. “At HRC we are fighting to bring full equality and liberation to LGBTQ + people everywhere. This also includes fighting on behalf of all victims of sexual harassment and assault. “

The review was carried out by members of the HRC Executive Committee. They determined that Mr. David had a conflict of interest in advising Mr. Cuomo’s office and that his efforts are damaging the organization’s reputation. Joni Madison, the group’s chief operating officer, becomes interim president while David’s successor is sought.

Mr. David is not the only liberal ally of Mr. Cuomo involved in the James report. Recently, prominent attorney Roberta A. Kaplan, a co-founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, whose mission is to fight for victims of sexual harassment, resigned after the James report revealed that she was with Tina Tchen, the executive director, spoke of Time’s Up, a letter written about Ms. Boylan by Mr. Cuomo’s staff. Despite denying the charge of advising Mr. Cuomo’s team on defamation of a victim, both Ms. Kaplan and Ms. Tchen recently resigned from their roles.

Mr David had been a Cuomo adviser for nine years when the human rights campaign hired him in June 2019. Announcing the appointment of Mr David, the group highlighted his work with the former governor on important advances in LGBTQ rights, including marriage equality and a ban on conversion therapy.

Divisions between Mr David’s supporters and those who believed he had crossed a line in helping Mr Cuomo tackle allegations of sexual harassment became even more apparent Sunday after Mr David posted his statement on Twitter. Along with stating that the review was completed without a finding of misconduct, he said that the co-chairs of the board “have now asked to consider resigning, not because of misconduct but because they believe that the incident was a ‘distraction’ to the organization. “

He said their plan was to “calmly resolve the matter this holiday weekend,” adding, “I have the support of too many of our employees, board members and stakeholders to go quietly into the night. I’m not resigning. “

“The idea that this is a distraction is just wrong,” said David. “I was not distracted, nor were my HRC colleagues who fight for human rights. The distraction would require my resignation without submitting the results of the review. “

Human rights campaign officials then released a statement to their own staff saying that the review had not been carried out and that Mr David misrepresented the information he was given about the results.

“We were very surprised and disappointed by the inaccuracies in his portrayal of events,” the two CEOs told their employees in an email. “This investigation will soon be completed,” the statement said, and the organization “will then have more to say.” The chief executives initially supported Mr. David in staying in his position, but when some staff asked if he should resign, they hired the Sidley Austin law firm to review his conduct.

The person familiar with the board’s decision said there was no written report of this review and that there never would be. Rather, there were oral presentations to the board of directors. Mr. David is said to have given the board of directors names in addition to the 10 hours he spent giving names for the interviews.

The CEO’s statement released late Monday showed that there were not just isolated calls for Mr David to step down, but hundreds of them, with staff, board members and allies wanting the group to separate from him.

“This is a painful moment in our movement,” they wrote. “While the board’s decision is not the result we ever imagined or hoped for with regard to Mr David’s tenure at HRC, his actions have placed us in an untenable position by violating the core values, guidelines and mission of Violate HRC. ”They said they were“ grateful for his guidance over the past two years, ”especially on initiatives related to the trans community.

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Business

It’s the Media’s ‘Imply-Too’ Second. Cease Yelling and Go to Human Sources.

It’s the Media’s ‘Mean-Too’ Moment. Stop Yelling and Go to Human Resources.

Perhaps even worse, Ms. Cooper remarked early on that she’d never heard of Brian Lehrer, the beloved WNYC morning host whose gently probing, public-spirited interviews embody the station’s appeal, and that she didn’t “get” why he was popular. She has since come to the view that “Brian is the soul of the station and, in many ways, the city itself,” a WNYC spokeswoman, Jennifer Houlihan Roussel, said in an email.

In fact, Ms. Cooper’s mission was to jump-start the station’s lagging digital transformation, something she had done with unusual success in San Francisco and that requires a willingness to make enemies. She has ambitious plans to hire 15 to 20 more reporters — but first she had the near-impossible assignment of bringing together a group of traditional radio journalists, used to working for days and occasionally weeks on colorful local features, with the reporters at Gothamist, the scrappy local blog that WNYC bailed out in 2018. Ms. Cooper sought to professionalize Gothamist away from its bloggy and irreverent roots, telling reporters to be less openly hostile to the New York Police Department in their reporting, two reporters said. Ms. Roussel suggested that Ms. Cooper was trying to rein in Gothamist’s habit of adding “an element of editorializing to its coverage that can be interpreted as bias.”

And Ms. Cooper started pushing the radio journalists to pick up their pace and to file stories for the web. That seemed like a reasonable request, but it led to another stumble in early February, when an 18-year veteran of the radio side, Fred Mogul, filed a story with one paragraph printed in a different font. The editor realized it was Associated Press copy; Ms. Cooper promptly fired Mr. Mogul (who declined through his union to be interviewed) for plagiarism without a review of whether he’d ever done it before.

Ms. Cooper declined to speak to me about Mr. Mogul’s termination. But one thing I learned this week about public radio is that no matter what is happening, someone is always recording it. And that was true when Ms. Cooper called a virtual meeting Feb. 5 over Zoom to inform the full newsroom of her decision to fire Mr. Mogul. According to a copy of the recording provided to me by an attendee, Ms. Cooper told the staffers, “It’s totally OK to be sad.” But then several stunned radio reporters questioned the move, explaining that they regularly incorporated A.P. copy into stories on air and had imported the practice to WNYC’s little-read website, crediting The A.P. at the bottom of the story.

“Go through every single one of our articles and fire all of us, because that is exactly what we have all done,” one host, Rebeca Ibarra, told her.

On Feb. 10, more than 60 employees — including Mr. Lehrer — signed a letter asking Ms. Cooper to reconsider and calling the firing a “troubling precedent.”

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Politics

Pelosi requires ‘diplomatic boycott’ of 2022 China Olympics on human rights grounds

Pelosi calls for 'diplomatic boycott' of 2022 China Olympics on human rights grounds

A Chinese man wears a protective mask as he stands in front of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics logos at the National Aquatics Center in Beijing, China on April 9, 2021.

Lintao Zhang | Getty Images

House spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., On Tuesday called for a “diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in response to China’s human rights record.

“We cannot pretend there is nothing wrong with the Olympics in China,” Pelosi told the Congress Human Rights Commission and the Congressional Executive Commission for China during a hearing on the Games.

Pelosi suggested in her remarks that athletes should still be able to take part in the Games, but that the leaders and kings of the world should not travel to attend them in person.

“When heads of state go to China in the face of a genocide that is going on while you are in your seats, the real question is, what moral authority do you need to speak about human rights anywhere in the world when you are ready, the Chinese government? To show her respect when she commits genocide? “

Pelosi has beaten corporate sponsors of the Games, who “look the other way at China’s abuses out of concern for their bottom line.” She specifically called on companies that are allegedly committed to weakening parts of a bipartisan law aimed at the use of forced labor in the Xinjiang region.

“If we do not speak out against human rights violations in China for commercial reasons, we will lose all moral authority to stand up for human rights anywhere,” said Pelosi.

China has labeled “lies and disinformation” allegations that it violates the human rights of Muslims in Xinjiang.

The games are scheduled to open on February 4, 2022.

Pelosi acknowledged that their proposed diplomatic boycott may not work. “I don’t know if it’s possible because we haven’t done it in the past,” she said.

In 2008, Pelosi called on then-President George W. Bush to boycott the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Beijing to protest against China’s human rights record, which at the time was largely marred by the government’s actions in Tibet.

Bush attended the opening of these games along with more than 80 other heads of state.

Activists and lawmakers from both parties have called on President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2022 Olympics in protest. They cite China’s reported treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang – which has been labeled genocide by both the Trump and Biden administrations – and Beijing’s response to protests in Hong Kong.

The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee has said it opposes boycotts, including because they affect athletes who have trained for years to compete.

The White House previously left the door open for a boycott, but press secretary Jen Psaki said last month that such a move would not be discussed.

“While China has changed in some ways over 30 years, it is appalling that its human rights record has deteriorated,” Pelosi said in the virtual hearing on Tuesday afternoon.

Pelosi stressed that she is a dedicated Olympic fan and that the athletes’ performance in the Games is a source of pride.

“Let’s honor them at home,” said Pelosi. “Let’s not honor the Chinese government by letting heads of state go to China to show their support for their athletes.”

“Silence on this issue is unacceptable. It enables China’s abuse,” Pelosi said.

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Health

Oxford to launch human problem trial to review immune response

Oxford to launch human challenge trial to study immune response

Caroline Nicolls will receive an injection of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine administered by Nurse Amy Nash at Madejski Stadium in Reading, west of London, on April 13, 2021.

STEVE PARSONS | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON – Oxford University researchers announced the start of a Human Challenge study on Monday to better understand what happens when people who have already contracted the coronavirus become infected for the second time.

The researchers will investigate what kind of immune response can prevent people from becoming infected with Covid-19 again and examine how the immune system reacts to the virus a second time.

Little is currently known about what happens to people who had the virus the second time they were infected.

The experiment is carried out in two phases with different participants in each phase. The first phase is slated to begin this month and the second phase is slated to begin in summer.

In medical research, Human Challenge studies are controlled studies in which participants are intentionally exposed to a pathogen or beetle to study the effects.

“Challenge studies tell us things that other studies cannot because, unlike natural infections, they are tightly controlled,” said Helen McShane, chief investigator for the study and professor of vaccinology in the Department of Pediatrics at Oxford University.

“If we re-infect these participants, we will know exactly how their immune systems responded to the first COVID infection, when exactly the second infection occurs, and how much virus they have,” said McShane.

It is hoped that the study will help improve scientists’ basic understanding of the virus and develop tests that can reliably predict whether people will be protected.

What happens in each phase?

In the first phase, up to 64 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 who were previously infected naturally will be re-exposed to the virus under controlled conditions.

Researchers will oversee attendees’ care while they perform CT scans of the lungs and MRI scans of the heart while isolating in a specially designed suite for at least 17 days.

All participants must be fit, healthy and have fully recovered from their initial infection with Covid to minimize the risk.

Study participants will only be released from the quarantine unit if they are no longer infected and there is a risk of the disease spreading.

A view of the City of London on a clear day.

Vuk Valcic | SOPA pictures | LightRocket via Getty Images

In the second phase of the experiment, two different areas are examined.

“First we will very carefully define the basic immune response of the volunteers before we infect them. We will then infect them with the dose of virus selected from the first study and measure how much virus we can detect after infection. We will then.” to be able to understand what kind of immune responses protect against re-infection, “said McShane.

“Second, we will measure the immune response several times after infection so we can understand what immune response is being generated by the virus,” she added.

The entire study period is 12 months, including at least eight follow-up appointments after discharge.

“This study has the potential to change our understanding by providing high-quality data on how our immune systems react to a second infection with this virus,” said Shobana Balasingam, senior research advisor on vaccines at Wellcome, a nonprofit that funded the study.

“The results could have important implications for the future management of COVID-19, influencing not only vaccine development but research into the range of effective treatments that are also badly needed,” Balasingam said.

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Business

These Footwear Include a Drop of Human Blood. Nike Does Not Approve.

These Shoes Contain a Drop of Human Blood. Nike Does Not Approve.

Some workplaces encourage employees to donate blood to charity. But six employees at MSCHF, a quirky Brooklyn-based company known for products like toaster-shaped bath bombs and rubber chicken bongs, offered their blood for a new line of shoes.

“‘Sacrifice’ is just a cool word – it was just the MSCHF team that donated the blood,” said one of MSCHF’s founders, Daniel Greenberg, in an email on Sunday. (When asked who collected the blood, Mr. Greenberg replied, “Uhhhhhh yes, hahah, no medics, we did it ourselves, lol.”)

A drop of blood is mixed with ink that fills an air bubble in the sneaker, a Nike Air Max 97, Mr Greenberg said.

“Actually, not much blood was collected,” he said, adding that “there were about six of us on the team.”

Starting Monday, MSCHF will sell 666 pairs of shoes – each pair costs US $ 1,018 – as a result of a series of “Jesus shoes” that contained holy water.

Mr. Greenberg noted that Nike was “not involved in any way” in the process.

In a statement, Nike said, “We have no relationship with Little Nas X or MSCHF. Nike did not design or publish these shoes and we do not endorse them. “

The Consumer Product Safety Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday on whether there were any concerns or legal issues surrounding the sale of the shoes.

“If we can make people fans of the brand and not the product, we can do whatever we want,” Greenberg told news website Insider last year. “We build what we want. We dont care. “

The “Satan Shoes” are a collaboration between MSCHF and the rapper Lil Nas X after a music video on the devil was released for his song “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”, in which he spins on Satan’s lap.

In the song, Lil Nas X, who was born Montero Lamar Hill, wrote “gleefully about lust as a gay man,” wrote Jon Pareles, the New York Times’ lead music critic.

Lil Nas X was released in 2019 and the title of the song is an obvious reference to “Call Me by Your Name,” a novel about a secret summer romance between two men that has been turned into a movie.

The shoes have a pentagram-shaped bronze charm and the imprint “Luke 10:18” – a reference to the Bible passage that says “I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning”.

Lil Nas X responded sarcastically to the social media uproar about the shoes, posting a video on YouTube on Sunday titled “Lil Nas X Apologizes for Satan Shoe” – but what appears to be an apology cuts a sexually charged scene from the Music video.

On Thursday, Lil Nas X wrote to 14-year-old Montero on Twitter that the song was about a man I met last summer.

“I know we promised never to come out publicly,” he wrote. “I know we promised to die with this secret, but this will open doors for many other strange people to just exist.”

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Politics

U.S. Joins Allies to Punish Chinese language Officers for Human Rights Abuses

U.S. Joins Allies to Punish Chinese Officials for Human Rights Abuses

WASHINGTON – The United States on Monday imposed sanctions on top Chinese officials as part of a multinational effort to punish Beijing for human rights abuses against the largely Muslim Uighur minority that American officials have labeled genocide.

The penalties – in coordination with the European Union, the UK and Canada – come days after the Biden government’s heated encounter with Chinese officials in Alaska and will most likely heighten tensions between Washington and Beijing.

“Amid increasing international condemnation, the PRC continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity,” Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken said Monday in a statement referring to the People’s Republic of China.

“The United States reiterates its call on the PRC to end the suppression of predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, including by releasing all those arbitrarily detained in detention centers and detention centers,” he added.

The United States sentenced Wang Junzheng, secretary of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Party Committee, and Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, for their roles in the detention and serious abuse of Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang said the finance department.

The sanctions were imposed under the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows the executive branch to use economic penalties to punish officials from other nations for human rights violations. The action will freeze any assets these officials hold in the United States.

The US move came hours after the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada imposed their own sanctions on Chinese officials and organizations for human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The European Union, along with the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, reached out to four Chinese officials. The UK has done the same. Canada has not published the names of its destinations.

In response to the European Union’s action on Monday, Chinese officials imposed sanctions on 10 Europeans, including members of the European Parliament.

“This move, based on nothing but lies and disinformation, ignores and distorts facts,” said Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement condemning the European Union’s actions, adding that the efforts made “which severely affects China’s internal affairs” and “seriously undermines China-EU relations. “

Mr Blinken said the joint action was an effort by the United States to “work multilaterally to advance respect for human rights.” A joint statement by top diplomats representing the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, among others, called for Beijing to “end and arbitrarily release its repressive practices against Uighur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang and arrested . “

China’s crackdown on Uyghurs has included forced sterilization and the sending of hundreds of thousands – if not a million or more – to indoctrination camps to promote loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party and break adherence to Islam.

In a separate action on Monday, the United States, in coordination with the European Union, announced sanctions naming military officials and other units in Myanmar for their violent suppression of democratic protests.

US action against Beijing appears to be in line with the diplomatic vision of Mr Blinken and Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor to President Biden, at their first face-to-face meeting with Chinese officials in Alaska last week. Mr Sullivan said the United States remained “divided” over the challenges facing the world’s two largest economic and technology powers.

The penalties also follow the Biden administration’s decision to impose sanctions on 24 Chinese officials for undermining democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, and are similar to the Trump administration’s strategy of using sanctions as a means to punish Chinese officials for violating human rights.

Omer Kanat, the executive director of the Uighur Human Rights Project, praised the coordinated efforts of many nations to punish Chinese officials.

“Unprecedented cooperation between governments like this will end the genocide,” Kanat said in a statement on Monday. “This is what Uyghurs have asked – the dam has broken and the reaction has finally begun.”

Ana Swanson contributed to the coverage.

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Politics

US sanctions two Chinese language officers for human rights abuses towards Uyghurs

US sanctions two Chinese officials for human rights abuses against Uyghurs

Chinese and American flags outside the building of an American company in Beijing, China January 21, 2021.

Tingshu Wang | Reuterss

WASHINGTON – The Biden government on Monday sanctioned two Chinese officials for their role in serious human rights violations against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

China’s Wang Junzheng, secretary of the Xinjiang Manufacturing and Construction Corps Party Committee, and Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, have been punished against Uyghurs for their links to “arbitrary detention and aggravated physical abuse, including serious human rights violations,” said the Treasury Department in a statement on Monday.

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Beijing previously denied US allegations that it committed genocide against the Uyghurs, a Muslim population native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China.

China has also said the allegations of the use of detention centers are unfounded and that it is instead using vocational training facilities to stamp out Islamist extremism and separatism.

The sanctions imposed by the Biden government complement measures taken today by the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada.

The sanctions follow a dispute between Foreign Minister Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan as well as top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi and State Councilor Wang Yi in Alaska.

Blinken has already accused China of coercion and aggression at home and in the region.

This story evolves. Please try again.

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Health

Carola Eisenberg Dies at 103; Helped Begin Physicians for Human Rights

Carola Eisenberg Dies at 103; Helped Start Physicians for Human Rights

The medical group and another advocacy group, Human Rights Watch, exposed the threats to public health, especially children, from anti-personnel landmines in Cambodia. In a report she called for an international ban on these weapons. The group of doctors then teamed up with five other organizations to form the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

In a statement by Dr. Eisenberg’s death praised Alan Jones, chairman of the board of Physicians for Human Rights, for “the unfathomable number of lives she could touch, improve, ease and save”.

Caroline Blitzman was born on September 15, 1917 in Buenos Aires, the second of three daughters. Her father, Bernardo Blitzman, had emigrated to Argentina from Russia as a baby; Her mother, Teodora (Kahn) Blitzman, came from the Ukraine. Caroline grew up across the street from a slaughterhouse where her father was an executive hides.

After graduating from high school, she trained as a psychiatric social worker at the Hospicio de las Mercedes (now José Tiburcio Borda’s municipal hospital) in Buenos Aires before embarking on a medical career.

“I had to go into medicine to do more than just give the families tickets at Christmas time to get a turkey,” she said in a 2008 interview with the Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine.

In 1944 she graduated from the University of Buenos Aires with a degree in medicine.

Dr. Eisenberg was trained instead at Johns Hopkins University under the guidance of Dr. Leo Kanner, who recently coined the term autism. She worked with him at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

She then moved to the Johns Hopkins Medical School and practiced psychiatry until 1968 when she became a psychiatrist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Student Health Service.

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Business

A Spreadsheet of China’s Censorship Exhibits the Human Toll

A Spreadsheet of China's Censorship Shows the Human Toll

In China, don’t ask the heroes.

At least seven people were threatened, detained or arrested in the past week for expressing doubts about the government’s account of the deaths of Chinese soldiers in a clash with Indian troops last year. Three of them are held for between seven and 15 days. The other four are being prosecuted, including a man who lives outside of China.

“The Internet is not a lawless place,” the police said in their cases. “Blasphemies from heroes and martyrs will not be tolerated.”

Her punishment might have gone unnoticed had it not been for an online database of language crimes in China. A simple google spreadsheet that everyone can see. She lists nearly 2,000 times when people were fined by the government for their online and offline statements.

The list, which is directly linked to public judgments, police notices, and official news reports from the past eight years, is far from complete. Most of the punishment takes place behind closed doors.

Still, the list paints a grim picture of a government punishing its citizens for the slightest hint of criticism. It shows how random and merciless China’s legal system can be when it punishes its citizens for what they say despite freedom of expression being enshrined in the Chinese constitution.

The list describes dissidents who have been sentenced to long prison terms for attacking the government. It is about petitioners who appeal directly to the government to correct the injustice against them, are locked up for shouting too loudly. It includes nearly 600 people fined for testifying about Covid-19 and too many others cursing the police, often after receiving parking tickets.

The person behind the list is a bit of a mystery. In an interview, he described himself as a young man with the surname Wang. Of course, if the government found out more about him, he could end up in jail.

Mr. Wang said he decided to compile the list after reading about people punished for allegedly insulting the country during the celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic in October 2019. Although he is young, he told me he remembers having more freedom of expression before Xi Jinping became the top leader of the Communist Party in late 2012.

“I knew there was language crime in China, but I never thought it was that bad,” wrote Mr. Wang on his Twitter account in August, writing in both English and Chinese. He wrote that after more than 1,000 judgments, he became depressed.

“Big Brother is watching you,” he wrote. “I tried to look for Big Brother’s eyes and found them everywhere.”

The list, bluntly titled “An Inventory of Language Crimes in China in Recent Years,” contained details of the events that challenged Beijing’s official report of the clash between Chinese and Indian forces at its controversial Himalayan border in June. The Indian government said at the time that 20 of its soldiers had died. Last week, the Chinese government finally said four of its troops had died.

State media in China called them heroes, but some people had questions. One, a former journalist, asked if more had died, a matter of great interest both inside and outside the country. According to the clue to which the chart is linked, the former journalist has been accused of engaging in disputes and provoking trouble – a common accusation by authorities against those who speak up – and faces a prison sentence of up to five years.

Updated

Apr. 25, 2021, 9:43 p.m. ET

Reading the list, it becomes clear how well Mr. Xi and his government have tamed the Chinese Internet. People once thought the internet was uncontrollable, even in China. But Mr. Xi has long seen the Internet both as a threat and as a tool to control public opinion.

“The internet is the biggest variant we face,” he said in a 2018 speech. “Whether we can win the war over the internet will have a direct impact on national political security.”

Liberal voices and media were among the first to be silenced. Then the internet platforms themselves – including the Chinese versions of Twitter and YouTube – were punished for what they allowed.

Now, Chinese internet companies are bragging about their ability to control content. Nationalist online users report speeches that they find offensive. Of the seven people who were accused of insulting the heroes and martyrs, six were reported by other users, according to police. In a way, the Chinese internet is self-monitoring.

China’s police force, disliked for their extensive powers to indefinitely detain people, is a big beneficiary. According to the table, people were arrested for calling the police “dogs”, “bandits” and “bastards”. Most are only locked up for a few days, but one man is there Liaoning Province was sentenced to 10 months in prison for posting five offensive posts on its WeChat timeline.

Petitioners are among those who suffer the most. In one case in the table, a woman in Sichuan Province whose son died suddenly in school and whose husband committed suicide was sentenced to three years in prison for disseminating false information. The ruling listed the headlines of 10 articles she posted and the pageviews they had garnered. Most of them have 1,615 page views, the least only 18.

Perhaps the most depressing things are about people who have been punished for what they said about the Covid-19 pandemic. At the top of the list is Dr. Li Wenliang, who was reprimanded on January 1, 2020, along with seven others who have tried to warn the country about the coronavirus. He died of the virus in early February last year and is now known as a whistleblower who tried to warn the world about the coronavirus outbreak. However, 587 other cases are listed in the table.

Even cheesy skits by aspiring online influencers can be viewed as obnoxious. Two men in northwest Shaanxi Province streamed a funeral they held for a sheep. In the video, one man cried over a photo of the sheep while the other was digging the grave. They were detained for 10 days for violating social norms.

But the table also shows inspiring cases in which people spoke out to challenge authority.

In 2018, a 19-year-old man in the northwestern city of Yinchuan decided to test the newly passed law prohibiting questioning and criticizing heroes and martyrs. He wrote on Weibo that two famous martyrs died meaningless deaths and that he wanted to see if he would be arrested, indicating a lack of freedom of speech in China. He was detained for 10 days and fined $ 70.

A man, Feng Zhouguan, criticized Mr. Xi and was charged with disputes by the local police in Xiamen City. He was detained for five days, but after his release he appealed and alleged that the police had illegally interfered in possible defamation cases between two people. The local police, he argued, were “not the military bodyguards or family militias of the national leader”. The court upheld the verdict.

Still, many people pay a steeper price.

Huang Genbao, 45, was a senior engineer with a state-owned company in the eastern city of Xuzhou. He was arrested two years ago and sentenced to 16 months in prison for insulting the national leader and damaging the national image on platforms such as Twitter. He shared a cell with more than 20 people and had to follow a strict routine, including toilet breaks. He and his wife have lost their jobs and he is now delivering meals to support his family.

“My life in the detention center reminded me of the book ‘1984’,” he said in an interview. “Many of the experiences are likely worse than the storylines in the book.”