By Peter J. Smith

Shenzhen, March 10, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The People’s Republic of China has invented a new and innovative way to make the totalitarian regime internet-user friendly: cartoon cyber cops. China, which has long-been concerned with the threat posed by online dissidents, has been notorious for its hard-line restrictions on the Internet. However, with “Jingjing” and “Chacha”, the cute cartoon cops, the communist country can now put some friendly faces on the ubiquitous online police force.

Chinese Police successfully introduced the novel idea to use these animated icons to patrol news and discussion websites in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. The very clever names for the animated cops come from the Chinese characters jing and cha, which means “police”. The Internet police icons have been responsible for a 60% decline in the filtering of Internet postings for content challenging the political order.Â

“The main function of Jingjing and Chacha is to intimidate, not to answer questions,” a security official told Beijing Youth Daily.

“Now internet users know the police are watching them,” said Chen Minli, director of the Shenzhen City Public Security Bureau’s Internet Surveillance Center said in an interview with the Financial Times. She called the cartoons “a historic breakthrough,” putting the presence of the online police at the forefront in people’s minds. Chen attributes the idea of the cutesy communist cops to her teenage daughter’s mind. The idea puts a more personable face to the sophisticated government apparatus that blocks and filters thousands of websites in China.

Jingjing and Chacha move along with the user as he scrolls through local discussion websites. The process is interactive. Internet users can now easily denounce Internet crimes, or re-educate themselves about online conduct by just clicking on the icon. Jingjing and Chacha will also communicate with Internet users through the QQ instant messaging system, as virtual users to deter them from internet crime, or just to remind them in a friendly fashion that the regime’s “Big Brother” is watching them.

Chinese users can find out more about Jingjing and Chacha from their websites. There they also can listen to the music available, including the hit number, “Song of the People’s Police.”

See related previous LifeSiteNews stories:

Internet Censorship: Is It Possible? How soon? - In Depth Report
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/aug/050831a.html

Control of Internet Being Taken Away From US For Questionable Reasons
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/oct/05101101.html

Communist Google: Search Leader Agrees to Submit to Chinese Censors
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jan/06012503.html

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 26, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – For two years, Americorps “volunteers” illegally used taxpayer dollars to take part in or aid abortions, according to a federal watchdog agency.

“Between 2013 and 2015, the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC)…allowed a few AmeriCorps members to provide emotional support (doula care) to women during abortion procedures at three New York City clinics operated by the Institute for Family Health (IFH),” according to a new report released today by the Office of Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service (OIG-CNCS). The report notes, “The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act (the Serve America Act), the Federal statute authorizing the AmeriCorps program, expressly prohibits the use of AmeriCorps resources to 'provid[e] abortion services or referrals for receipt of such services.'”

Yet a major Americorps grant recipient, the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) authorized six Americorps “volunteers” to carry out their work with the abortion facilities, the report says.

The OIG found that NACHC's “senior management” covered up multiple “instances of waste, fraud and abuse” within the program.

The CNCS issued a statement saying it is “deeply disappointed” that the NACHC “authorized national service participants to perform prohibited activities…The grantee broke the law and violated the spirit of national service.”

However, this is not the first time Americorps, the national service initiative created by President Bill Clinton, has seen its members illegally take part in abortion-related activities.

The report notes that the NACHC had always played fast-and-loose with the rules. It “disregarded the direction of CNCS’s General Counsel in 2010 to include in its training materials and member agreements the abortion prohibition precisely as stated in the Serve America Act,” the report states. “Instead, NACHC adopted a narrower restriction.”

In 2011, investigators discovered that two Americorps members had completed nine months of “service” at a Planned Parenthood in New York City. Their actions allegedly violated federal laws prohibiting Americorps volunteers from "attempting to influence legislation" and "organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes."

Following the incident, then-acting CEO of CNCS, Robert Velasco II, testified before Congress that CNCS would “continuously improve our accountability” by “instituting new practices in the prevention, detection, and enforcement of prohibited activities.”

Critics say the latest incident proves that more needs to be done.

“I am outraged by the terrible misuse of taxpayer dollars under the direction of the National Association of Community Health Centers,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-OK. “Abortion-related procedures should never be funded by taxpayers. Given these disturbing developments, I believe this grantee should be immediately terminated from the HealthCorps program.”

Rep. Diane Black, R-TN, said she was personally hurt by today's revelation that the abortions took place in federally qualified health centers, another potential violation of the law.

“I have long highlighted the work of our nation’s community health centers as an alternative to the big-abortion business of Planned Parenthood and its related groups,” Congresswoman Black said. She said she is “heartbroken” to learn that the NACHC “allowed AmeriCorps volunteers to promote abortion in violation of federal law. NACHC didn’t just break the rules; they broke trust with the American people.”

After multiple breaches of federal law relating to abortion over several years, “extraordinary measures would be required to restore confidence in NACHC’s ability to manage the substantial federal funds entrusted to them,” the new OIG report says.

Others say the problem is not restricted to one grant recipient. Americorps pays participants an annual stipend of approximately $13,000 plus health care insurance to “volunteer” in government-approved causes for up to a year. Afterwards, they receive a scholarship for the full amount of the Pell Grant.

Critics say the volunteers are little more than politically active bureaucrats, paid at taxpayer expense. Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) called for “a complete re-examination – if not the elimination – of the AmeriCorps program” and, two years later, charged its activists with “mimicking the work of lobbyists and political organizers for agenda-driven community organizations."

Nonetheless, the most recent $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, passed by Republican legislators last December, increased funding for Americorps by $50.58 million and added another $10.382 million for the National Service Trust, which funds scholarships for Americorps “volunteers.”

It also fully funded Planned Parenthood.

Rep. Black is demanding the CNCS take action at once. “Our laws protecting the unborn today are tragically minimal, but they must mean something,” she said, “and when they are not followed, consequences must be enforced.”

April 26, 2016 (LifeSiteNews)—Over 750,000 people have pledged to boycott Target over the company’s new policy allowing men to use women’s bathrooms.

The American Family Association, which launched the petition, says the fact that it’s generated such a large response in only five days shows how outraged Americans are.

“American families are concerned about their wives and daughters being harmed by predators or voyeurs who will now have more freedom to enter women’s bathrooms,” AFA president Tim Wildmon.

“There are many more sex offenders in America than transgender people, so we believe that Target should keep separate facilities for men and women, but for the transgender community and for those who simply like using the bathroom alone, a single occupancy unisex option should be provided, as AFA has proposed.”

Target announced its new policy last week, writing in a statement that it would allow people to use bathrooms based on their self-determined “gender identity” and not biological reality.

“Everyone deserves to feel like they belong.  And you’ll always be accepted, respected and welcomed at Target,” the company wrote in its statement announcing the new policy.

Clearly, the more than 759,000 people who have promised to boycott Target over this issue don’t feel that the company respects or welcomes them and their views on men in women’s bathrooms and vice versa.

Target spokeswoman Molly Synder defended the new policy as “inclusive,” despite the fact that many Target stores already offer “single-stall, family bathrooms for those who may be more comfortable with that option.”

Pro-family leaders have repeatedly warned that policies allowing men unrestricted access to women’s restrooms facilitate predatory behavior toward vulnerable women and children.

“Target's policy is exactly how sexual predators get access to their victims,” AFA’s petition says.  “And with Target publicly boasting that men can enter women's bathrooms, where do you think predators are going to go?”

Over the past several years, there have been numerous cases of men using transgender bathroom policies as an excuse to enter women’s bathrooms and intimate facilities like locker rooms. 

For example, in February, a Seattle man entered a swimming pool changing room and undressed in front of a young girls’ swim team, claiming he had the right to do so under transgender policies.

In 2014, a man was jailed after entering Ontario women’s shelters posing as a woman and subsequently committing sexual assault.  He was a convicted rapist and had a history of criminal sexual abuse.

Nearly a year ago at a Missouri Target, a man was arrested for illegally filming women in a dressing room.

Earlier this month, a Pennsylvania man was charged with invasion of privacy for spying on a 10-year-old girl in the bathroom.  He allegedly spent an hour in the women’s restroom viewing pornography and was later charged for possession of child pornography.

Unisex bathrooms are a “common-sense approach” and “reasonable solution” to the issue of transgendered customers, the petition suggests.  “Target should keep separate facilities for men and women, but for the trans community and for those who simply like using the bathroom alone, a single occupancy unisex option should be provided.”

RELATED

Target’s new policy allows men to use women’s bathrooms
Sexual predator jailed after claiming to be ‘transgender’ to assault women in shelter
Man strips in front of girls in locker room, says transgender law allows it

SAN FRANCISCO, April 26, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Not only are Planned Parenthood's charges against the journalist who exposed its fetal organ harvesting practices baseless, but the abortion provider should pay her court costs as punishment for trying to squelch her free speech, her attorneys said today.

Liberty Counsel represents Sandra Merritt, who posed as “Susan Tennenbaum, CEO of Biomax,” to capture undercover footage of Planned Parenthood representatives discussing how they alter the abortion procedure to obtain the specific aborted babies' organs requested by researchers, as well as haggling over the price for rendering such services.

The attorneys filed two motions to dismiss Planned Parenthood's case against her and demand that Planned Parenthood pay Merritt's costs yesterday with federal Judge William Orrick, who was named to the bench in 2013 by President Obama.

One legal complaint calls Planned Parenthood's lawsuit “a meritless claim aimed...at chilling expression and bedrock First Amendment liberties.”

As a result, “she should be awarded reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs” directly from Planned Parenthood's bank account.

"Sandra has bravely stood up to a heavily funded corporation and exposed the truth of their brutal practices. She should be rewarded, not punished by our legal system,” said Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver.

A separate motion asks Judge Orrick to dismiss Planned Parenthood's lawsuit, saying the nation's largest abortion chain lacks standing to bring the case and has failed to establish any of its legal allegations.

Much of Planned Parenthood's involvement can be dismissed, it says, because any of Merritt and David Daleiden's purported crimes involved their recording of the National Abortion Federation's annual convention in April 2014. That may allow NAF to object, but not Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood cannot claim an “invasion of privacy” because, as a business, it has no such expectation, it says. “Plaintiffs here are not seeking to vindicate their patients’ rights to obtain an abortion,” the complaint says, “but to vindicate a purported right of privacy in their own corporate business transactions.”

Claims that Merritt and Daleiden engaged in unfair business practices are erroneous, the complaint states, because their meetings with Planned Parenthood officials “did not yield any agreements or transactions.”

Planned Parenthood has said that, by using a false name and identification, the pair of investigative journalists gained fraudulent access to their premises, where they videotaped dissections of unborn children and discussions of the amount of money Planned Parenthood receives, seemingly without incurring any expense, a possible federal felony.

The attorneys quoted a previous court ruling that stated, “in a case where consent was fraudulently induced, but consent was nonetheless given, plaintiff has no claim for trespass.”

Finally, they say Merritt and Daleiden cannot be held responsible for any alleged damage the revelations caused to Planned Parenthood's bottom line, because it is the abortion provider's own fault.

“It is the discussions of altering abortion procedures and harvesting and selling baby body parts revealed in the videos, not Ms. Merritt’s identification of herself as Susan Tennenbaum of BioMax, that caused any purported business injuries alleged by” Planned Parenthood, including numerous state and federal investigations that the organization's national officers teach affiliates how to skirt the law, they wrote.

The case is scheduled to be heard on July 6. But whatever happens, the Center for Medical Progress will not relent.

"Sandra is not intimidated by Planned Parenthood's bullies,” said Harry Mihet, chief litigation counsel for Liberty Counsel. “Their efforts to hide the truth and chill free speech will fail."