“Tricky.” Over the course of 110 pages in a federal complaint, that one descriptive word seemed to stand out among the exchanges between social media executives and public health officials on censoring public viewpoints. The exchange reveals long-suspected coordination between the government and these social media companies to manage a burgeoning censorship system. Twitter just reportedly suspended another doctor who sought to raise concerns over Pfizer Covid records. Former New York Times science reporter Alex Berenson is also suing Twitter over his suspension after raising dissenting views to the CDC. In the meantime, Twitter is rolling out new procedures to combat “misinformation” in the upcoming elections — a move that has some of us skeptical.
The recently disclosed exchange between defendant Carol Crawford, the CDC’s Chief of digital media, revealed a back channel with Twitter and other companies to censor “unapproved opinions” on social media. The “tricky” part may be due to the fact that, during that week of March 25, 2021, then CEO Jack Dorsey was testifying on such censorship before Congress and insisting that “we don’t have a censoring department.” It seems that any meeting on systemic censorship with the government would have to wait until after Dorsey denied that such systemic censorship existed.
The exchange is part of the evidence put forward by leading doctors who are alleging a systemic private-government effort to censor dissenting scientific or medical views. The lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana was joined by experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya objected this week to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents.
Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.
The Great Barrington Declaration was not the only viewpoint deemed dangerous. Those who alleged that the virus may have begun in a lab in China were widely denounced and the views barred from being uttered on social media platforms. It was later learned that a number of leading experts raised this theory with Fauci and others early in the pandemic.
Fauci is accused of quickly scuttling such discussion and critics point to his own alleged approval of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. Fauci and other leading experts now admit that the lab theory is a real possibility, even if they do not agree that it is the best explanation. Social media companies like Facebook declared that the previously banned “conspiracy theory” would now be allowed to be discussed. Yet, some in the media continued to push the media to avoid discussing it. The New York Times science writer Apoorva Mandavilli declared the theory “racist” even as Fauci and others were saying that it is now considered a possible explanation.
Indeed, many of the views that the media attacked as conspiracy theories or debunked are now again being seriously considered. That includes claims of adverse responses to the vaccines, natural immunity protection, and the psychological costs from masking or isolation, particularly among children. None of these views are inviolate or beyond question — any more than the official accounts were at the time. Rather, they were systemically “disappeared” from social media – pushed to the far extremes of public and academic discourse.
The First Amendment is designed to prevent the government from censoring speech. While the new lawsuit will face legal challenges, it has already forced previously unknown government-corporate coordination into the public view.
While the CDC now admits that it made serious mistakes during the pandemic, it allegedly worked with companies to ban opposing views. Those who sought to raise these questions found their accounts suspended. There is every reason for the CDC to combat what it considers false information through its own postings and outreach programs. However, the involvement in censoring dissenting views is deeply troubling.
That brings us back to the “tricky” part. The request for the meeting was made on March 18, 2021. That week, Dorsey and other CEOs were to appear at a House hearing to discuss “misinformation” on social media and their “content modification” policies. I had just testified on private censorship in circumventing the First Amendment as a type of censorship by surrogate. Dorsey and the other CEOs were asked about my warning of a “little brother problem, a problem which private entities do for the government which it cannot legally do for itself.” Dorsey insisted that there was no such censorship office or effort.
The new lawsuit sheds new light on that testimony. It now appears that the CDC was actively feeding disapproved viewpoints to these companies, including a list of tweets that the CDC regarded as misinformation. In one email, Twitter senior manager for public policy Todd O’Boyle asked Crawford to help identify tweets to be censored and emphasized that the company was “looking forward to setting up regular chats.”
Facebook also received lists of “offensive” posts to be “dealt with.” Facebook trained government officials in using its “CrowdTangle” system used by “health departments [to] flag potential vaccine misinformation” to allow the company to review and possibly remove it. It added that “this is similar to how governments and fact-checkers use CrowdTangle ahead of elections….”
That was another eye-raising reference since these companies were criticized for killing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election. The story was blocked as presumed “Russian disinformation,” a move that Dorsey admitted in the March hearing was a mistake. Now, a year later, story is accepted not just as legitimate but potentially a serious threat for the Biden Administration.
Whatever the outcome of the litigation, the filing raises, again, whether our concept of state censorship and a state media are outmoded. The last few years have seen a striking uniformity in the barring of certain political and policy viewpoints, including dissenting medical or scientific views that could potentially protect lives. That occurred without any central ministry of information or coercive state laws. It was done by mutual agreement and shared values between the government and these companies.
What was not known were the moving parts in what has been arguably the most successful censorship system in our history. To some extent, no direction was needed beyond the periodic announcements of figures like Fauci or the CDC, which were treated as gospel and not to be challenged. Even when Fauci was criticized for reversing himself on key issues like the wearing of masks or their efficacy, it did not change the concerted effort to suppress opposing views.
The “tricky” part for the public is how to deal with the circumvention of the First Amendment in a system of censorship by surrogates. Outsourcing the suppression of opposing views threatens the same core values in our government. Just as the CDC overstepped its bounds in mandatory moratoriums on evictions, it should not be allowed to exercise control over free speech, directly or indirectly. It’s mandate to ensure “a Healthy World–Through Prevention” should not apply to unhealthy thoughts.
You left out the recently released cdc guidance largely incorporates the Great Burrington Declaration and the Florida COVID protocol
Seems fauci and collins are the fringe scientists now.
Imagine if dr science actually engaged in scientific debate and not engaged in ad hominem attacks and appeals to authority lives could have been saved.
Do you mean when he told Dr. Rand Paul he did not know what he was talking about?
OT
Biden’s forbearance on student debt is completely irrational, insane, illicit and unconstitutional.
“Executive overreach” is politically amusing; violations of law are actionable crimes.
Where the —- are the judicial branch and Supreme Court?
Law and fundamental law, as applied to all elected and appointed officials including corrupt judges, must be enforced by adjudication, legislation, impeachment and kinetic enforcement.
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DOJ – Judicial Review in the United States
“The doctrine of judicial review holds that the courts are vested with the authority to determine the legitimacy of the acts of the executive and the legislative branches of government.”
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“…RESISTED BY A FORCE TOO STRONG FOR ME TO OVERCOME.”
THAT FORCE: THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST DEEP DEEP STATE SWAMP.
The last time any Justice fulfilled his oath and duty was 1861:
“The clause in the Constitution which authorizes the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus is in the ninth section of the first article. This article is devoted to the Legislative Department of the United States, and has not the slightest reference to the Executive Department.”
“I can see no ground whatever for supposing that the President in any emergency or in any state of things can authorize the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, or arrest a citizen except in aid of the judicial power.”
“I have exercised all the power which the Constitution and laws confer on me, but that power has been resisted by a force too strong for me to overcome.”
– Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, May 28, 1861
It’s people like you who make the Right easy to dismiss. That Lincoln violated the constitution does not mean it is not in effect. You are a child intellectually, but think you are smart. This is very common with Alt Right folks – amirite?
The entire communistic American welfare state is unconstitutional including, but not limited to, matriculation affirmative action, grade-inflation affirmative action, employment affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, minimum wage, rent control, social services, forced busing, public housing, utility subsidies, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, TARP, HHS, HUD, EPA, Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.
Article 1, Section 8, provides Congress the power to tax ONLY for “…general Welfare…,” omitting and, thereby, excluding any power to tax for individual welfare, specific welfare, particular welfare, favor or charity. The same article enumerates and provides Congress the power to regulate ONLY money, the “flow” of commerce, and land and naval Forces. Additionally, the 5th Amendment right to private property is not qualified by the Constitution and is, therefore, absolute, allowing Congress no power to claim or exercise dominion over private property, the sole exception being the power to “take” private property for public use. If the right to private property is not absolute, there is no private property, and all property is public.
Government exists, under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to provide maximal freedom to individuals while government is severely limited and restricted to merely facilitating that maximal freedom of individuals through the provision of security and infrastructure only.
American constitutional freedom lasted for a mere 71 years until “Crazy Abe” Lincoln’s eminently unconstitutional “Reign of Terror,” after which the Progressive incremental implementation of Marx’s principles of the Communist Manifesto commenced. Secession was fully constitutional and Lincoln had no power to deny; take it from there.
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“…THE RECONSTRUCTION OF A SOCIAL WORLD.”
– KARL MARX TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Marx’s letter of congratulation and commendation to Lincoln as his “earnest of the epoch” leading America to the “RECONSTRUCTION of a social world”:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm
Lincoln espoused Marx’s pejoratives “capitalist” and “fleece the people” in 1837.
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“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.”
– Abraham Lincoln, from his first speech as an Illinois state legislator, 1837
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“Everyone now is more or less a Socialist.”
– Charles Dana, managing editor of the New York Tribune, and Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war, 1848
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“The goal of Socialism is Communism.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
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“The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.”
– Karl Marx and the First International Workingmen’s Association to Lincoln, 1864
George is plainly nuts and that’s been clear for years.
Why dismiss? All of what he posts is true. redundant, does not impeach his posts.
The College loan forgiveness is unconstitutional. Nancy Pelosi explained why today. Pelosi is a grand grifter. She followed Sen Tom Cotton that exposed the giveaway and explained the threat to democracy, Only this threat is real. Both are smart enough to see that if all a President has to do is grant loans, then suspend/cancel payments, there is no check on the executives power. Congress can no longer starve an executive
Imagine if Trump would have told the Dept of Transportation to grant loans to companies to build a wall on the southern border. No money would be spent no problem. Exactly like the Dept of education granting loans for collage.
Trump took money from DOD to fund the wall. That became a controversy.
No you are not right
I do not share all of Georges views
But he argues them competently
Which is rare from those on the left
George is not even close to alt right
We can not communicate if you just make up terms
George’s posts are always long, paranoid, far-right rants that take up a lot of space but don’t necessarily say anything of relevance.
long, paranoid, far-right rants
Yes we know. Quoting the constitution makes a person far right and paranoid. You on the other hand consider the constitution a hindrance to achieving nirvana.
Fascinating. Curious what, exactly, you think of nirvana and what is a hinderance to achieving it? Side note: being able to quote bits of the Constitution doesn’t preclude misinterpreting those same Constitutional bits..
It’s strange when Anonymous the Stupid calls anyone paranoid. That is one of the reasons he remains anonymous, has pretend friends and pretends he is not here day and night.
There are lots of wholly pointless posts here.
Georges not among them.
His posts are often long tedious rants,
They are still well argued – even when I think he is wrong.
Your own posts would be much better if you spent half the effort george dies defending your assertions,
or even actually making assertions – rather than just spraying ad hominem
RE:”His posts are often long tedious rants,..He took issue with my referring to his ‘dissertations’ as ‘rants and rages’. Poetic license, nothing more.
RE:”It’s people like you who make the Right easy to dismiss.” Perhaps! However, there are those who are not ‘Right’, but are advocates for that which they believe to be right. It is of these which you need to take heed. The bell has not yet tolled.
ZZ, yes, the far-right is easy to dismiss. We don’t need White, Christian nationalists trying to dictate outdated values from small, Southern towns. That’s not where it’s at in the 21st Century. We can’t go back to the 1950’s and there’s no point in trying.
RE:” We don’t need White, Christian nationalists trying to dictate outdated values from small, Southern towns.” They are not your concern. To borrow from popular culture….”You’re looking in the wrong place!”
You are afraid of people with morality. They make you look bad.
What is wrong with loving one’s country?
65% of this country never set foot on a college campus. So they flip the bill.
Depends on whether the football stadium is on the campus or not.
OK. We get it. You don’t like the Constitution and law.
The Constitution definitively addresses each of the aforementioned concerns including the free press and private property:
– The press is free and competitive press is free; concerned citizens must develop competitive press against the press they don’t like.
– Twitter is private property over which ONLY the owners may “claim and exercise” dominion – Congress and government have no dominion over Twitter beyond common criminal acts of bodily injury and property damage.
– Twitter et al. manipulate election data and coerce voters through the omission of relevant and true election information, or presentation of false election information; Twitter et al. violate 52 U.S. Code, §10101. Voting rights, subsection 10102 – Interference with freedom of elections:
(b) Intimidation, threats, or coercion
No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose, or of causing such other person to vote for, or not to vote for, any candidate…
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52 U.S. Code § 20511 – Criminal penalties
No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose, or of causing such other person to vote for, or not to vote for, any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, presidential elector, Member of the Senate, or Member of the House of Representatives, Delegates or Commissioners from the Territories or possessions, at any general, special, or primary election held solely or in part for the purpose of selecting or electing any such candidate.
(1) knowingly and willfully intimidates, threatens, or coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any person for—
(2) knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process
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Merriam- Webster
Definition of coerce – transitive verb
1 : to compel to an act or choice
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One of the many corruptions of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights by Lincoln et al. is the 14th Amendment which is illicit and unconstitutional due to its improper ratification under the duress of brutal post-war military occupation and general oppression and tyranny by government. Voters, through elected representatives and as States, must have the power to restrict the vote which was the full expectation of the Framers. Twitter should rightly be ignored by rational people. People under the age of 21 are not necessarily mature and rational, and should be restricted and should not be allowed to vote as was effected by several State laws in 1788, and in immediately subsequent elections. It is eminently indicative of immaturity inexperience that people under the age of 21 may not purchase or consume alcohol by law.
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Any person under the age of 21 years who purchases any alcoholic beverage, or any person under the age of 21 years who consumes any alcoholic beverage in any on-sale premises, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
– B & P Code 25658. Sales To Minors, California
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“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
George, you’re the last person we’d ask for Constitutional guidance.
I don’t remember you ever correcting George.
I have disagreements with George but most of his facts are correct. Yours aren’t.
I was going to put ” Redundant ” in parentheses but chose not to. Thank you!
Anyone with half a brain would know that Facebook was receiving its marching orders from the big players in the Democratic Party. It should be understood that under the threat of a breakup because of being a monopoly Facebook accepted the protection of Democrats in high places and agreed to do their bidding. Instead of just being a private company making decisions on its own they simply licked the hand that fed them. They told themselves that, “This choke chain isn’t so bad after all.” So now it turns out that their pit bull suffers from a very bad and painful set of teeth fighting with the intelligence of one fourth of a brain. They enjoyed teaching the pit bull how to fight. My prediction is that when the dog can no longer fight they will simply shoot it in the head. Keep your ears open for the sound of the shot.
Twitter Incorporated is an SEC-registered publicly-traded company.
Why hasn’t Gary Gensler, Chair of the SEC, authorized a full-scale investigation into materially misleading information having been filed by Twitter in its Quarterly, Annual, and Material Event forms?
Which leads to the next question: why haven’t the Hedge Fund managers identified Twitter as a very profitable short sale target.
Twitter isn’t worth more than 1/2 of what it’s stock is trading at currently.
In addition, if Twitter has less than adequate control of the number of ‘bots’ and fake accounts, what else within the company have they little to no control over?
If I had the free cash flow currently to do so, I’d be seriously considering purchasing Put Options on Twitter, making a bet the stock will tank between now and EOY.
And now we learn that Jack Dorsey was telling bold-faced lies to Congress in March of 2021 about Twitter’s collusion with government entities regarding extreme censorship.
Maybe Elon Musk should buy the company outright, at whatever the price will be, and then put the company out of its misery — terminate 100% of the employees — then out of the ashes shall rise the Phoenix — a new company, lean and mean and hungry, bearing no relationship to the Twitter we’ve come to know, and distrust, over the past roughly 15 years.
P.S. – Gary Gensler won’t do anything about the current Twitter because Gensler is in the tank for left-leaning liberal Democrat politicians — no one disputes this. Gensler’s got to go, and it can’t come too soon for the health of the US economy.
Peter Sztrok’s wife is Gensler’s deputy! Imagine that! One big, happy Marxist family!
“. . . coordination between the government and these social media companies to manage a burgeoning censorship system.”
That is textbook fascism and a clear violation of 1A.
Typically, fascists use the government’s police powers to *compel* a private company to do their bidding. What’s morally despicable in this case is that those private companies noose themselves.
Indeed. You read my mind! There is evidence that Twitter and FB are DARPA creations for Intel. Twitter, especially, cannot open their books, their business model is unsustainable. This suggests it was the state, itself, directly censoring viewpoints to “protect our democracy.”
Pull out now! Like your father should have!
It was not until Obama got elected president that the word ‘clearly’ came into regular and frequent usage.
‘Clearly’ used in this fashion left the uncritical listener with the impression that ‘it’s settled,’ no debate or further inquiry is required.
I recall decades ago the expression “I’m from Missouri: show me.”
Don’t tell me: show me.
Prove it, don’t expect me to swallow what you say as gospel.
That’s been one of the hallmarks of America in times past.
It isn’t present much anymore…….clearly!
Twitter and other social media sites could create a “self-labeling” system where users rate their own posts as “Opinion, PG, R, Violent, Nudity, etc.” and a corresponding filtering system for parents (similar to the Hollywood ratings system).
On “Opinion” rated posts, users could footnote background information (like newspapers), so readers could research it for themselves.
For example: in that scenario Trump would stamp his posts “Opinion” without footnotes so readers would know he just makes up things. Such a labeling system may well have prevented violence and deaths on January 6.
And I’m labeling your comment as stoopit!
The argument that private companies can control what is said on their platforms is dead now that we know it is the government itself pushing the censorship.
And that they get special protection for not being editors. Which when they censor, they are editing, so they should loose that protection.
One big problem is that some (not all) “Unconstitutional-Authoritarians” leaders on both sides simply don’t trust the American people. Some of these leaders (not all leaders) support a European style “Nanny State” instead of trusting the voters wishes (limited within constitutional boundaries).
The irony is, these same “Nanny-State” leaders divide the American people merely to win elections. This creates anger and discontent where voters of one party hates the voters of the opposing party. Decades of this hate and division, stoked by these politicians, leads to events like January 6. Trump especially stoked this division instead of attempting to unite Americans.
This is a self-propelling game where then the “Nanny State” leaders are proven correct – voters can’t be trusted to self-govern within constitutional legal boundaries. The blame is falsely placed on the voter instead of the leaders that divided us.
The root problem is “Unconstitutional-Authoritarianism” (opposite of America’s model of government). Voters aren’t the problem to be censored. Our leaders need to do their jobs also.
RE:”One big problem is that;;” So there you have it, .and well writ too. The Golden Rule of the political class. ‘Promise them everything, but give them Gar-Bage’. Amongst them is the profound lack of respect for the intelligence of the electorate. When one considers the fact that the likes of a Jerry Nadler continues in the favor of his constituency, it is easy to understand why. As Groucho Marx would have put it….”I could never respect a constituency which would elect ME to high office’
“The “tricky” part for the public is how to deal with the circumvention of the First Amendment in a system of censorship by surrogates. “
Sometime after Jan 2021, this subject was widely discussed and I even posted a link by Hamburger that touched on this problem and others. Many bloggers from the left dissed the idea, but it remains and slowly moves forward because our Congress can’t seem to act in a fashion promoting free speech. The leftist ideologues do not care about America or the Constitution. They will do anything they can to create an authoritarian regime in America where the Constitution is used solely to promote leftist ideas and incarcerate the minds and people of the right.
The article dealt with many things: The Constitution Can Crack Section 230
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-constitution-can-crack-section-230-11611946851
RE:” Trump obviously broke the law… ” Also sprach Svelaz! The usual and customary ‘blah, blah, yada, yada; ‘Obviously’ remains lack of incontrovertible evidence to support the charge. Until then all these conversations remain loaded with speculation and conjecture. People should find something more valuable to do with their time rather than attempting to outfox JT or anyone else commenting herein. If the outflow and sequelae of the ‘Steele Dossier Travesty’, in all its ramifications, as well as the past 7 years, did anything else, it served to re-enforce and evidence that things are seldom what they seem and today’s obvious truths can become tomorrows confirmed falsehooda. Confidence in all agencies of government and their minions has been shit-canned for the foreseeable future, awaiting the time when accountability and responsibility finally takes its pound of flesh. Only the electorate, by virtue of the nature of their choices, can set those wheels in motion. When the likes of Jerry Nadler, and others of his ilk, are returned to DC to decay on the vine, the expectations are dim.
Dr Leana Wen, MD, is a left-wing, proabort, physician, trained in Emergency Medicine. Born in China and married to a man from South Africa, she served as the first president of Planned Barrenhood who was a licensed physician…before she got forced out by her moral scolds. Dr Wen, as a Washington Post columnist and CNN analyst, was an ardent supporter of US Government COVID mitigating strategies like masking and vaccinating youth. She later came to see the damage of these US Feds COVID imposed strategies particularly to her ostensibly mixed race children. Now she is defacto cancelled by, again, our nation’s moral scolds. Two strikes for her: Planned Barrenhood and questioning
the scienceAnthony Fauci.The Cancellation of Leana Wen
Woe to someone who changes her mind about Covid mandates
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cancellation-of-leana-wen-covid-cnn-american-public-health-association-11661291645
A physician at clinic asked me last year if I had received my booster shots. We had a history of working closely together in caring for the poor in our clinic, particularly minorities and immigrants without health insurance. On one day in early 2021, she pressed me about the importance of my getting a COVID booster for myself and also to protect my family at home. She was wearing 3 surgical masks and a face shield; I was wearing one mask. I listened patiently, did not interrupt her, and waited until she stopped talking. When it finally came my turn to reply, I said 2 words: T Cells. With that she picked up her notebooks, laptop and literally walked away without a word. She also knows Im a researcher in viral entities that provoke inflammation in the heart and vascular system. To this day she has never broached last year’s exchange, but often asks for my expertise regarding molecular mechanisms of inflammation.
We will never get an apology from Big Tech, Fauci, CDC, NIH, FDA, Pfizer nor our vast
rightleft-wing conspiracy moral scolds for the tremendous damage they have inflicted on our institutions pre-dating Roe v. Wade. I would be happy if they worked on their own many failings, stopped their moral scolding and perhaps enrolled in a Twelve Program ala Alcoholics Anonymous. Alas that would require humility and hence belief in a “higher power”.https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-steps
1. We admitted we were powerless over
alcoholmoral scolding— that our lives had become unmanageable.2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to
alcoholicsmoral scolds, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.RE:”Woe to someone who changes her mind about Covid mandates..” ‘Ah, yes I remember her well’. There’s no argument that science is constantly in a state of flux. There’s always controversy, but what has been established through evidence based methodology is the best one can be guided by until another truth is revealed. I gave the science community the benefit of the doubt because I knew that the labs and the publications were always running behind and what we needed to know ‘now’ would not be known for ‘months’ and so on down the road. I’m sure you followed matters as closely as I did from the inception. One cannot deny that the events in Lombardy in the winter of 2020 were overwhelming, and led to many of the policies which were implemented. The pulmonary doc I know told me of the frustrations they had dealing with the pneumonias. The tried and true were not working. It was like a wild fire out of control. The rest is the history of trials and errors. However, three years hence we learn what some always suspected, as I did not trusting the veracity of the W.H.O.’s representations, What we REALLY needed to know and when, had been shoved under the rug, and that has made all the difference..
Indeed. In 2020, for the first time in medical and science history, existing knowledge, protocols, practice, and experience was denied and instead replaced with a politically-influenced, privately accepted narrative backed up with only carefully selected short-term data instead of long-term hard evidence with the threat of loss of income and profession if the narrative not be regurgitated verbatim. All in the name of “Orange Man Bad!”
RE: “Indeed. In 2020, for the first time in medical and science history,…’….and continued after him by the same orchestra and chorus. Only now we know more about the score, how bad the tune, and the conductor is about to retire.
I’ll give you an example of agenda driven self-censorship, even among the usual censor types like Fauci and the CDC: One of the most troublesome comorbidities for Covid is obesity and the inherent problems that follow and yet as the powers that be closed the schools, shuttered small businesses and restaurants and kept the kids out of school they never told people to lose weight???? They demanded all of these stringent measures, up to and including gutting our armed services, but they would never tell people to lose weight. Magazines went so far as to have fat women on their covers with the caption “This is Healthy”.
Ask yourselves what group would they be pandering to and why? Why is obesity now ok? Why is it the same as when the movement started in the 80s to demand that nobody, especially Dan Quayle, say that fatherless families are harmful. The left, the media and Hollywood all cater to what is wrong with society because they think it helps the people they are incorrectly trying to assist and in reality they are harming.
HullBobby,
Well said.
Even HBOs Real Time with Bill Maher made a similar observation about normalizing obesity.
I prefer my women with some curves. Not stick figures with poofy lips.
But putting someone who is grossly overweight and trying to say, “This is Healthy?”
Then we have the CDC, Mayo clinic, and generally anyone with a degree of common sense can tell you the cost of obesity in healthcare, shortening of life spans, future medical problems and the aforementioned costs,
But then, that would not be inclusive. Cannot have that.
I do not recall who it was, some young woman in a Hollywood movie, might of been a Star Wars one, and the mob came after her for being healthy weight for her age, height.
A few years ago, stopped into a locally ran mom and pop gas station and there was a table set up, selling Girl Scout cookies. Sadly, the young ladies were already obese and they could not of been more than 8 years of age.
I think enough intelligent, aware and sensible citizens have come to the realization that if the left is involved, supportive of, or otherwise glad about something, it is not going to end well for the average legal citizen of middle class, working means.
The same people who castigate Musk now are the same people who defend the horribly destructive meddling of hard left billionaires.
Musk has planted the seeds of honesty so deadly to conspiracy.
The case discussed here claims that government officials and members of Congress induced the tech companies to engage in censorship that the 1st amendment prevents the government and Congress from doing itself. It documents in detail the threats made and direct coordination involved. The claim is against the government and officials, not the private companies. It would have been interesting to read a more focused analysis of the merits of the arguments. Alex Berenson may bring a similar claim, based on his discovery of meetings between Twitter executives and high-level Biden administration officials that focused specifically on removing him from the platform.
Censorship is usually the symptom of bad governing. The solution is not censorship but to govern better!
Maybe focus on abolishing “gerrymandering” so politicians have to represent all voters – not just the ones of their own party.
Maybe shorter and cheaper election cycles? Prior to the 21st Century, politics became ugly and divisive right before an election. After the election was over, party leaders would play nicer trying to unite Americans until the next election cycle. Today there is no break in electioneering, it’s ugly and divisive 365 days a year.
Leaders of both parties need to treat voters (of any party) as their fellow Americans NOT akin to a foreign enemy or traitor for simply having a different point of view.
We need to stop supporting divisive and unpatriotic politicians like Trump. Even if not convicted of any crimes, Trump could have attempted to unite fellow Americans and find bipartisan solutions.
Today we have the results of decades of bad governing and now many of those same officials want to “censor” the results of what they helped create. The solution is start governing better so Americans aren’t so angry at the other party.
Constitutionally, you can’t support government imposed “censorship” and then also support gun rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights or African-American rights using the same U.S. Constitution. Unless there is a future constitutional amendment, the U.S. Constitution is a package deal – you can’t just cherry-pick the rights you agree with.
Divisive politics created Trump’s violent insurrection wing (not stereotyping Trump’s peaceful supporters). Censorship is not the solution to bad governing.
We need to stop supporting divisive and unpatriotic politicians like Trump.
Nobody has ever accused you of having insight so you got that going for you.
Ashcroft write those laws. BTW, they have to comply with the Constitution, things like federalism, separations of power.
A long post whining on the internet is not working toward a solution.
Don’t have access to classified Intelligence documents. Going to go out on a limb here and just use a little used thought process called Common Sense.
Gain of Fuction was done at Wuhan Lab. NiH funded it.Fauci head of NIH.
Covid escaped from the lab. Not the ” wet market ” j which just so happened to be in proximity to a lab doing viral experiments ( what are the odds?).
Fauci and others suppressed any counter argument to their ” natural origin ” theory with Big Tech and MSM totally compliant.
Fauci is guilty as sin.
Emotional Italian, your chosen posting name is repetitive. ;))
I was going to put ” redundant” in parentheses, but chose not to. Thank You!
So “emotional,” in fact, that our predecessors ruled a wild, lawless planet restoring order and civilization for about a thousand years. They also helped form the basis for our current legal system, calendar, architectural knowledge and fostered a belief in the superiority of rationality of irrationality.
Silly, wild-eyed gumbahs.