Rep. Luna exposed the hidden network operating in the background that is destroying free speech in America
The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday held a full committee hearing on government-big tech collusion and suppression of speech in regard to the Hunter Biden laptop report.
Republican members were prepared, brought in the evidence, and executed brilliantly at the hearing.
Democrats sounded like self-absorbed liars who support the denial of God-given human rights.
Twitter’s top former censors were on the hot seat all day as they appeared before a Republican-led House Oversight Committee to answer questions about their outrageous and targeted censorship of conservatives. Republican lawmakers like badass Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-GA), Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) scored knockout blow after knockout blow as they exposed the former Twitter execs for colluding with the FBI and private-public groups in restricting free speech and silencing Americans in a clear violation to the US Constitution.
Possibly the most explosive questioning today came from MAGA-STAR freshman Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. The beautiful Florida Representative brought the receipts and exposed the former Twitter brass and their network of tyrants who are behind the censorship of American conservatives.
Paulina’s questioning was exceptional. She exposed the hidden network operating in the background that is destroying free speech in America. The network includes DHS, CISA, DFITF, EIP, CIS and others. And Luna brought proof that Yoel Roth was using the private software cloud JIRA to communicate with the FBI and government officials to silence conservative speech. Roth had no where to run and hide.
This evidence left the panel SPEECHLESS! These horrible people NEVER thought they would be exposed and held accountable for their highly unethical and likely criminal conduct.
Remember these organizations. You will be hearing much more about them in the coming months.
Bravo, Representative Luna!
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“Free Speech for Whom?”: Former Twitter Executive Makes Chilling Admission on the “Nuanced” Standard Used For Censorship
Democratic members and witnesses repeatedly returned to the statement of Holmes on “shouting fire in a crowded theater.”
Yesterday’s hearing of the House Oversight Committee featured three former Twitter executives who are at the center of the growing censorship scandal involving the company: Twitter’s former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, former deputy general counsel James Baker and former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth. However, it was the testimony of the only witness called by the Democrats that proved the most enlightening and chilling. Former Twitter executive Anika Collier Navaroli testified on what she repeatedly called the “nuanced” standard used by her and her staff on censorship. Toward the end of the hearing, she was asked about that standard by Rep. Melanie Ann Stansbury (D., NM). Her answer captured precisely why Twitter’s censorship system proved a nightmare for free expression. Stansbury’s agreement with her take on censorship only magnified the concerns over the protection of free speech on social media.
Even before Stansbury’s question, the hearing had troubling moments. Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md) opened up the hearing insisting that Twitter has not censored enough material and suggesting that it was still fueling violence by allowing disinformation to be posted on the platform.
Navaroli then testified how she felt that there should have been much more censorship and how she fought with the company to remove more material that she and her staff considered “dog whistles” and “coded” messaging.
Rep. Stansbury asked what Twitter has done and is doing to combat hate speech on its platform. Navaroli correctly declined to address current policies since she has not been at the company for some time. However, she then said that they balanced free speech against safety and explained that they sought a different approach:
“Instead of asking just free speech versus safety to say free speech for whom and public safety for whom. So whose free expression are we protecting at the expense of whose safety and whose safety are we willing to allow to go the winds so that people can speak freely.”
Rep. Stansbury responded by saying “Exactly.”
The statement was reminiscent to the statement of the former CEO Parag Agrawal. After taking over as CEO, Agrawal pledged to regulate content as “reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation.” Agrawal said the company would “focus less on thinking about free speech” because “speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.”
Navaroli was saying that it is not enough to simply balance free speech against public safety (a standard that most free speech advocates would oppose as ill-defined and fluid). Instead, Navaroli and her staff would decide “free speech for whom and public safety for whom.”
The suggestion is that free speech protections would differ with the speakers or who was deemed at risk from the exercise of free speech. It takes a subjective balancing test and makes it even more ambiguous and illusory. Free speech demands bright lines to avoid the chilling effect of uncertainty for citizens. The Twitter standard described by Navaroli defies definition, let alone understanding, for anyone posting controversial or dissenting views.
In the hearing, the Democratic members and witnesses repeatedly returned to the statement of Holmes on “shouting fire in a crowded theater.” The hearing shows how this statement has been grossly misused as a justification for censorship. From statements on the pandemic to climate change, anti-free speech advocates are claiming that opponents are screaming “fire” and causing panic.
The line comes from Schenck v. United States, a case that discarded the free speech rights of citizens opposing the draft. Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer were leading socialists in Philadelphia who opposed the draft in World War I. Fliers were distributed that encouraged men to “assert your rights” and stand up for their right to refuse such conscription as a form of involuntary servitude. Writing for the Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes dismissed the free speech interests in protecting the war and the draft.
He then wrote the most regrettable and misunderstood judicial soundbites in history: “the character of every act depends on the circumstances in which it is done . . . The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” “Shouting fire in a crowded theater” quickly became a mantra for every effort to curtail free speech.
Holmes sought to narrow his clear and present danger test in his dissent in Abrams v. United States. He warned that “we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loath and believe to be frought (sic) with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that at an immediate check is required to save the country.”
Holmes’ reframing of his view would foreshadow the standard in Brandenburg v. Ohio, where the Supreme Court ruled that even calling for violence is protected under the First Amendment unless there is a threat of “imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
However, Navaroli, Stansbury, and others are still channeling the standard from Schenck, which is a curious choice for most Democrats in using a standard used against socialists and anti-war protesters.
Yet, Navaroli’s standard from Twitter makes the Schenck standard look like the model of clarity. Essentially, she adds that you also have to consider the theater, movie, and audience to decide what speech to allow. What could be treated as crying “Fire!” by any given person or in any given circumstances would change according to their “nuanced” judgment.
According to Navaroli, she and her staff would not allow the “safety [of others] to go the winds so that people can speak freely.” It is the classic defense of censorship in history and the touchstone of every authoritarian regime today. Today’s hearing will address the question of when corporate censorship programs become an extension of the government. However, while it is unclear how Twitter’s censorship made us more safe, Twitter’s “nuanced” standard certainly allowed free speech to “go to the winds” of censorship.
You can find the Stansbury-Navaroli exchange around the 5:13:25 mark below:
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Australian scientists make a ‘crazy interesting’ Covid-19 discovery that could finally explain why some people don’t get sick with the virus while it kills others – and offer the world a way to fight it
- Naturally occurring Covid-fighting protein found
- The protein appears after Covid enters the body
- It then attaches to the virus to fight against its spread
A protein in the lungs that blocks Covid and forms a natural barrier to the virus has been discovered by scientists at the University of Sydney.
The naturally occurring protein, LRRC15, works by attaching itself to the virus like Velcro, preventing the Covid particles from binding with more vulnerable cells – as well as reducing the chance of infection.
The astonishing find may finally explain why some people suffer serious illness with the virus, or even death, while others never get sick or appear symptomless.
LRRC15 is not known to be present in humans until the virus enters the body, but it appears after infection.
The protein helps activate the body’s response to Covid and the team behind the incredible find hopes it will offer a promising pathway to develop new drugs to fight the virus.
Researchers believe that patients who died from Covid-19 did not produce enough of the protein, or produced it too late to make a difference.
This theory is supported by a separate study from London that examined blood samples for LRRC15.
That study found the protein was lower in the blood of patients with severe covid compared to patients that had mild Covid.
The authors said they are now developing two strategies against Covid using LRRC15.
They say the strategies could work across multiple variants.
One will target the nose as a preventative treatment, and another will be aimed at the lungs for serious cases.
Professor Greg Neely, who led the study, said his team was one of the three internationally to independently to uncover this specific protein’s interaction with COVID-19.
The other teams were at Oxford University in the UK and Yale and Brown universities in the US.
‘For me, as an immunologist, the fact that there’s this natural immune receptor that we didn’t know about, that’s lining our lungs and blocks and controls virus, that’s crazy interesting,’ Prof Neely said.
Postdoctoral researcher and study co-author Dr Lipin Loo said the LRRC15 protein was far more present in the lungs of people with COVID-19 than those without, suggesting it was already helping to protect people from COVID-19.
‘When we stain the lungs of healthy tissue, we don’t see much of LRRC15, but then in COVID-19 lungs, we see much more of the protein,’ Dr Loo said.
‘We think this newly identified protein could be part of our body’s natural response to combating the infection creating a barrier that physically separates the virus from our lung cells most sensitive to Covid-19.’
The team hopes their discovery will help develop new antiviral and antifibrotic medicines to treat Covid-19, and other viruses where lung fibrosis occurs.
They found LRRC15 is also expressed in fibroblast cells, the cells that control lung fibrosis, a disease which causes damaged and scarred lung tissue.
Covid-19 can lead to lung fibrosis, and it is hoped that the stunning find can help battle long Covid.
‘We can now use this new receptor to design broad-acting drugs that can block viral infection or even suppress lung fibrosis,’ Neely said. There are currently no good treatments for lung fibrosis, he said.
Dr Lipin Loo, a postdoctoral researcher who was part of the study, said LRRC15 ‘acts a bit like molecular velcro, in that it sticks to the spike of the virus and then pulls it away from the target cell types’.
‘We think this newly identified protein could be part of our body’s natural response to combating the infection creating a barrier that physically separates the virus from our lung cells most sensitive to COVID-19,’ he said.
LRRC15 is present in many locations in the body, such as lungs, skin, tongue, fibroblasts, placenta and lymph nodes.
However, the researchers found human lungs light up with LRRC15 after Covid infection.
Prof Stuart Turville, a virologist with the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales, praised the study.
He told the Guardian: ‘Greg Neely’s team is brilliant at what we call functional genomics.
‘That is the ability to wake up or turn off thousands of proteins at a time and when looking at new viruses, this is really important.
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