90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, July 10, 2023

Girls With Guns

It’s hardly news that the government has long managed news reporting through a combination of leaks, favored treatment, and threats. With the growth of social media and the COVID-19 “pandemic,” the Biden administration blatantly used every tool in its arsenal to censor constitutionally protected free speech. Posters on the pre-Musk Twitter and Facebook, to take the most obvious examples, were regularly shadow banned and even silenced altogether from posting alternate views to those of the government.

This past week, Judge Terry A. Doughty detailed the government’s manipulation of social media in a 155-page memorandum. Based on what was presented to the court, he enjoined agencies, officers, and employees from HHS, NAIAD, CDC, FBI, DoJ, White House, OMB, DHS , and DoS from continuing their practices. Those practices, which the judge characterized as “almost dystopian,” included flagging posts and “urging encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech." It also bans their working with the “Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the purpose of urging suppression or reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech.”

The public officials had threatened the social-media companies with adverse consequences for noncompliance, including reforming Section 230 immunity, antitrust enforcement, and increased regulations if they failed to comply. It’s clear that these tactics allowed the Biden Administration to suppress free speech through proxies, where to have done so directly would have resulted in more immediate scrutiny and judicial halt. The memorandum is a well-documented history of the Administration’s unconstitutional control of information.

While a great deal of the suppression concerned COVID-19’s origin, the government response, and treatments, the judge found it was very wide reaching: suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 election; suppressing speech about the lab-leak origin of COVID-19,the efficacy of masks, lockdowns, and the vaccines; suppressing speech about the integrity of the 2020 election and voting by mail; suppressing even parody content about the Bidens and the administration; suppressing negative posts about the economy and the President himself.

To be sure, the government has some legitimate purposes in monitoring posts which are not violative of the right to free speech. The judge specifically held that the preliminary injunction does not prohibit the defendant agencies, officers and employees from:

(1) informing social-media companies of postings involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies:

(2) contacting and/or notifying social-media companies of national security threats, extortion, or other threats on its platform;

(3) contacting and/ or notifying social-media of criminal efforts to suppress voting, to provide illegal campaign contributions, of cyber-attacks against election infrastructure, or foreign attempts to influence elections;

(4) informing social-media companies of threats that threaten the public safety or security of the United States;

(5) exercising reasonable government speech promoting government policies or views on matters of public concern;

(6) informing social-media companies of postings intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures;

(7) informing or communicating with social-media companies in an effort to detect, prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber activity;

(8) communicating with social-media companies about deleting, removing, suppressing, or reducing posts on social-media platforms that are not protected free speech by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

This is merely an injunction that is effective only under a full hearing and order in the case, indicating that the court believed the plaintiffs were likely to succeed after a full trial. Nevertheless, the Administration finds so threatening this minimal limit on its power to shut down protected speech that it has filed an immediate appeal.

The most obvious targets at this stage of the case were the infectious disease epidemiologists Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), leaders in the fight against lockdown policies. They expressed concern that lockdowns had damaging effects on physical and mental health, dissented from the views that everyone needed to be vaccinated, that masks protected people from COVID, that it was appropriate to mask young children, and asserted that natural immunity was stronger than vaccine immunity. But states also have an interest in open discussion of alternate views in setting policies. Missouri and Louisiana contended they have a “sovereign and proprietary interest in free speech.” I think that is inarguable. It is, after all, the most significant reason for the First Amendment -- an informed citizenry.

Lest you think this is just partisan wailing by conservatives who were banned or a theoretical discussion of constitutional law, Brett Swanson shows how it had significant, even deadly, consequences:

Visage à trois #1546

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #1205

Visage à trois #1545

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #1205

Inside the world of teenage transitions in Australia where 13-year-olds are having their breasts removed after one letter from a psychiatrist - which teens can't even do in Thailand - and mums humblebrag with before and after pics on Facebook

Children with gender dysphoria are having mastectomies
One clinic is willing to operate on children as young as 13

Australian girls as young as 13 are allegedly having their breasts surgically removed to make them look and feel more masculine as they undergo gender transition.

One 15-year-old who has gender dysphoria documented having a double mastectomy at an Australian plastic surgery clinic in a Reddit post.

Describing the experience as '10/10', the teen encouraged other adolescents who did not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth to undergo the same operation.

The teen wrote that an initial appointment with a surgeon in January lasted no more than 20 minutes and a follow up to take measurements took a similar length of time.

The teen then called a psychiatrist requesting a referral for 'chest masculinisation' - sometimes called top surgery - and was told he was unavailable for the next 11 months.

But when the teen told the psychiatrist they already had a surgery date booked he offered an appointment a couple of months later.

After just one consultation with the psychiatrist in May the psychiatrist allegedly wished the teen luck and wrote a referral for a double mastectomy.

The teen had spent two years saving up for the surgery, which took place on June 18, and their parents covered the rest of the $14,873 bill.

Another teenager who recently underwent a double mastectomy was pictured smiling in a Facebook post with his mother.

The 17-year's mum wrote: 'My baby's top surgery was today it went well... he was so excited. Still in recovery but surgeon said it all went well.'

Another mother replied that she had planned taking her 17-year-old to Thailand for the same procedure when he turned 18 but surgeons there would not perform the operation on anyone under 20.

Senior child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Jillian Spencer said there were Australian psychiatrists and surgeons who were recommending and performing such operations.

Dr Spencer said young people requested approval letters from a psychiatrist and if they did not get what they wanted would post negative reviews on social media and go elsewhere.

'It is very concerning that there are a very small number of child psychiatrists in Australia whose clinical practice deviates markedly from that of...