Selling War, Fake Freedom, Democracy, Human Rights and Rule of Law only in US Favor as ‘Smart Power’

Selling War, Fake Freedom, Democracy, Human Rights and Rule of Law only in US Favor as ‘Smart Power’ 以“聰明力量”的名義兜售戰爭、虛假自由、民主、人權和法治，只為美國青睞.

Professor John Walsh in San Francisco: PEN, the “free speech organization,” gets into China bashing. Another brick in the Whole of Society Anti-China Edifice.

PEN is now headed by Suzanne Nossel, formerly in the State Dept and author of the book “Soft Power.” PEN does not defend Julian Assange or even raise the issue. But as you can see they are very interested in China’s “encroachments on free expression well beyond its own borders.”

And though they mention free speech on campuses, they have had nothing to say about the abolition of Confucius Institutes, harassment of Chinese students, academics, scientists and fellows.

See the following link and the quote below from the link.

https://pen.org/press-release/ayad-akhtar-to-assume-presidency-of-pen-america/

“PEN America is positioned at the vanguard of defending free expression in the U.S. and globally, work poised to grow under Akhtar’s leadership. In recent years, the organization has defended traditional arenas of free expression—press freedom, censorship, protest rights, and digital freedom—and put new free expression issues on the map, in particular infringements on speech on university campuses, online harassment, fake news and disinformation as a threat to free expression, the crisis in local news coverage, and China’s encroachments on free expression well beyond its own borders.”

The link to the phrase “China’s encroachments on free expression” is this:
https://pen.org/report/made-in-hollywood-censored-by-beijing/

Pic of opening to this article is below.

Part of the “Whole of Society” assault on China which has taken over or increased its influence in a lot of progressive organizations as we have discussed before: The Guardian, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The Nation – some to a greater degree than others. For PEN the takeover is total and long-standing now.

Kiji Noh in San Francisco: PEN has always been deeply comprised organization, a relic of the cold war.

However, to criticize the film industry, they are stepping way out of their lane.

They are also violating their own charter:

PEN CHARTER
LITERATURE knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals.

IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES, and particularly in time of war, works of art, the patrimony of humanity at large, should be left untouched by national or political passion.

MEMBERS OF PEN should at all times use what influence they have in favor of good understanding and mutual respect between nations and people; they pledge themselves to do their utmost to dispel all hatreds and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace and equality in one world.

PEN STANDS FOR the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations, and members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in the country and community to which they belong, as well as throughout the world wherever this is possible.

PEN DECLARES for a free press and opposes arbitrary censorship in time of peace. It believes that the necessary advance of the world towards a more highly organized political and economic order renders a free criticism of governments, administrations and institutions imperative. And since freedom implies voluntary restraint, members pledge themselves to oppose such evils of a free press as mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood and distortion of facts for political and personal ends.

This is their tax form. Suzanne Nossel, the PEN CEO, is paid $423,500/yr*, an obscene amount for an artistic non-profit.
https://pen.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2019-Form-990.pdf (see page 9)

Their largest single program is “Free expression”–a $2.4M budget, of which we can assume a large part is China-bashing, as it is named specifically in 2019.
This was not mentioned in 2018.

Also, Nossel received a $50,000 salary hike the same time PEN started naming China explicitly in its tax declaration (2019). Its revenues also abruptly increased by $3M.
https://pen.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2018-Form-990.pdf

*ADP reports that the highest non-profit compensation in NYC for a CEO–a medical industry CEO–was only 60% of Nossel’s salary.
https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Nonprofit-CEO-Salary–in-New-York
This may or may not be a representative sample, however, it is clear that Nossel’s is not a reasonable compensation for a non-profit charity organization.
It is more in line with the compensation you find at soft power NGO’s, that are appendages of the government.
https://www.501c3.org/nonprofit-executive-compensation/