This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.

During a recent hearing on his bill to establish the Stop Social Media Censorship Act, state Rep. Jeff Coleman repeatedly referenced experts sitting behind him in the audience who would be better able to address questions about the legislations legality.

The first of these experts to testify was Chris Sevier, an Iraqi war veteran, Tennessee attorney and advocate who has pushed anti-LGBTQ and anti-porn legislation in statehouses across the country and was deemed a security concern in the Missouri Capitol two years ago.

Sevier may be best known for suing states that wouldnt recognize his marriage to his laptop a move to protest gay marriage. Hes also made headlines for past legal issues, including being charged with stalking and harassing country music singer John Rich and a 17-year-old girl.

Sevier later pleaded guilty to reduced charges of misdemeanor harassment.

In 2011, Seviers Tennessee law license was moved to disability inactive status due to being presently incapacitated from continuing to practice law by reason of mental infirmity or illness.

Meanwhile, Sevier has been connected to controversial legislative efforts across the country for years often leaving uneasy interactions in his wake.

Last month, Sevier was escorted by security out of the Oklahoma Capitol after an altercation with a lawmaker. Three years ago in Rhode Island, a state senator withdrew a bill pushed by Sevier, citing its dubious origins.

After Missouri Senate Administrator Patrick Baker sent an email to senators and staff with a photo of Sevier and the subject line security concern in 2019, Sevier filed a federal lawsuit against him alleging defamation. The lawsuit was dismissed the same month.

The Stop Social Media Censorship Act is the latest of his legislative initiatives to find its way to Missouri.

Social media posts and draft legislation uploaded online indicate Sevier has crafted versions of the bill, in addition to a handful of others, for all 50 states. Hes also been working to find lawmakers to sponsor his bills since the fall.

Coleman, R-Grain Valley, said Sevier first approached him in late October or early November after seeing Colemans public complaints about social media censorship.

The bill would allow Missourians whose political or religious speech is censored on large social media platforms to bring lawsuits against those companies. Opponents argue the legislation is unconstitutional and would impede platforms ability to remove objectionable content, while supporters say its necessary to give users a voice.

He asked me to carry that bill, and I agreed to it, Coleman said, later adding: In general, I think its a very good bill, because we have to figure out something in order to stop whats going on.

When reached by phone by The Independent Tuesday afternoon, Sevier said, You can kiss my ass, before hanging up.

Coleman, who was elected in 2018, said he had previously never heard of Sevier.

As a legislator, youve got so many things going on, so many bills youre trying to keep up with, you really dont have time to do a background check on someone, Coleman said.

But after learning of Seviers past following his testimony at last months committee hearing, Coleman said he is moving forward without Seviers input and working to refine the bill.

He seems like a nice enough guy. But theres enough out there thats a concern that we dont have him helping us anymore, Coleman said, later adding: We dont need those distractions, because this is an important issue. We want to make sure that thats the issue, not him.

Rep. Dottie Bailey, R-Eureka, is also sponsoring a version of the Stop Social Media Censorship Act. Bailey could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

Link:

Man Who Tried to Marry His Laptop Wrote 'Censorship' Bill for Missouri Rep - Riverfront Times

Censorship and surveillance in Tibet have reached unprecedented levels further escalating the violation of the Tibetan peoples fundamental rights, president of Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) Lobsang Sangay said on Wednesday.

Sixty-two years ago, on this day (Tibetan National Uprising Day), thousands of Tibetans in Lhasa rose in unison to protest against occupying Chinese regime.

Heavily fortified in a digital cage, Sangay said, it is near impossible to get information out of Tibet.

This past January, we received news of the self-immolation protest by 26-year-old Shurmo from Driru Shagchukha village, five years after the event. This sheds light on the extent of information control and surveillance being carried out in Tibet, he said.

Sangay said that on December 24, 2020, authorities in the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) announced criminal prosecutions against individuals who use online communication tools to split the country and undermine national unity.

It is not surprising, the 52-year-old exiled leader said, that China has been listed as the worst internet abuser in the world in Freedom Houses 2020 report on internet freedom.

Similarly, China is ranked at the near bottom at 177th in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), he said.

Today, Chinas tentacles have reached beyond Tibet by using its growing economic clout to jeopardise global democracy, according to Freedom House, added Sangay.

The political heir of the Dalai Lama said China conducts the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression in the world. It highlights the CCPs efforts to control and pressure Chinese citizens, he said, political dissidents and minority communities such as Tibetans, Uighurs and Hong Kong beyond its borders. The democracies around the globe must come together to thwart such assaults on global democracy.

Over a million Tibetans have lost their lives in the past six decades under Chinese rule. Today, we have come together to collectively mourn this loss, said the Tibetan leader.

But we are also here to mark the undaunted resilience of people in Tibet. Even under the threat of losing their lives, they continue to protest by protecting and preserving our language, our religion, our land, and our identity, he added.

The rest is here:

China violating Tibetans rights with heightened censorship, surveillance: CTA - Hindustan Times

DoctorsfightingCOVID-19 should be supported by their profession and their government, not suppressed. Yet today physicians are smothered under a wave of censorship. With coronavirus variants and vaccine hesitancythreatening a prolongedpandemic, the National Institutes of Health and the broader U.S. medical establishment shouldfreedoctors to treat this terrible disease with effective medicines.

For centuries, doctors haveaddressedemerging health threats by prescribing existing drugs for new uses, observing the results, and communicating to their peers and the public what seems to work. In a pandemic, precious time and lives can be lost by an insistence on excessive data and review. But in the current crisis,many in positions of authority havedone just that, stubbornly refusingtoallowany repurposed treatments. This departure from traditional medical practice risks catastrophe.When doctors on the front lines try to bring awareness of and use such medicines,they get silenced.

Ive experiencedsuchcensorship firsthand. Early in the pandemic,my research led me to testify in theSenatethat corticosteroids were life-savingagainstCOVID-19, when all national and international health care agencies recommended againstthem. My recommendations were criticized, ignored and resisted such that I felt forced to resign my faculty position. Only later did a large studyfrom Oxford Universityfindthey were indeed life-saving. Overnight, theybecame the standard of care worldwide. More recently, we identifiedthrough dozens of trialsthat the drug ivermectin leads to large reductions in transmission, mortality,and time to clinical recovery. After testifying to this fact ina second Senate appearance the video of which wasremoved by YouTubeafter garnering over 8 million views I was forced to leave another position.

I was delighted when our paper on ivermectin passed a rigorous peer review and was accepted byFrontiers in Pharmacology. The abstractwas viewedover 102,000times bypeople hungry for answers. Sixweeks later, the journalsuddenlyrejected the paper, based on an unnamed external expertwho stated that our conclusions were unsupported, contradicting the four senior, expert peer reviewers who hadearlieracceptedthem.I cant help but interpret thisin contextas censorship.

The science shows thativermectinworks. Over 40 randomized trials and observational studies from around the worldattestto its efficacy against the novel coronavirus. Meta-analyses by four separate research groups, includingours, found an average reduction in mortality of between 68%-75%. And 10 of 13 randomized controlled trials found statistically significant reductions in time to viral clearance, an effect not associated with any other COVID-19 therapeutic. Furthermore, ivermectin has an unparalleled safety record and low cost, which should negate any fears or resistance to immediate adoption.

Our manuscript conclusions were further supported bytheBritish Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) Panel. Following the World Health Organization Handbook of Guideline Development, it voted to strongly recommend the use of ivermectin in the treatment and prevention of COVID-19, and opined that further placebo controlled trials are unlikely to be ethical.

Even prior to the BIRD Panel recommendations, many countries have approved the use of ivermectin in COVID-19 or formally incorporated it into national treatment guidelines. Several have gone further and initiated large-scale importation and distribution efforts. In the last month alone, such European Union members as Bulgaria and Slovakia have approved its use nationwide. India, Egypt, Peru, Zimbabwe, and Bolivia are distributing it in many regions and observingrapid decreases in excess deaths. Increasing numbers of regional health authorities have advocated for or adopted it across Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa. And it is now the standard of care inMexico City,one of the worlds largest cities.

Its time to stop the foot-dragging. People are dying. The responsible physicians of this country, and their patients, need to be able to rely on their government institutions to quickly identify effective treatments, rather than waiting for pristine, massive Phase III trials before acting. At minimum, the NIH should immediately recommend ivermectin for treating and preventing COVID-19, and then work with professional associations, institutions, and the media to publicize its use. If it doesnt, the organization will lose credibility as a public institution charged with acting in the national interest and doctors will ignore its guidance in the future.

My story is not unique. Physicians across the country are fighting a pernicious campaign to denigrate all potential treatments not first championed by the authorities, and others have faced retaliation for speaking up. Sadly, too many of our institutions are using the pandemic as a pretext to centralize control over the practice of medicine, persecuting and canceling doctors who follow their clinical judgment and expertise.

Actually following the science means listening to practitioners and considering the entirety and diversity of clinical studies. Thats exactly what my colleagues and I have done. We wont be cowed. We will speak up for our patients and do whats right.

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Censorship Kills: The Shunning of a COVID Therapeutic - Fairfield Sun Times

Rodger Whitney| New Bern

I was wrong about censorship being just one step lower than murder. It is worse than murder.

The destruction of an idea or body of work that could potentially live for centuries is unacceptable. Now, those who would rewrite history, hide what we were, hide the attitudes that have brought us to this point in time so they do not have to look at the good, the bad and the ugly of humankind's existence have attacked Dr. Seuss.

Over time, attacks on Mark Twain and other classic writers as well as artists and statues have been tolerated. We cannot allow censorship, the greatest threat to a free America, to continue.

Whether by social media persuading people not to view or use products and images and books, or by the removal of artworks, statues or books from a library, Censorship threatens truth...and the ability to learn from the mistakes of the past.

Slavery was a mistake. It is a mistake that has existed with Whites owning Whites, Whites owning other races, Africans owning Africans...a mistake that continues now with sex trades and other equally bad situations. We cannot learn from these mistakes if we do not know them.

We cannot learn about our country if we do not know, acknowledge and understand the struggles of the Civil War, the good of those who tried to end domestic slavery.

We cannot learn about music, art, literature and freedom of the press if censorship is allowed.

Write or e-mail your state and federal legislators. Write and email the business giants that threaten free expression...and contact the publishers of Dr. Seuss and let them know that knuckling under pressure sends a very bad message.

A free country cannot be without uncensored free expression.

Rodger Whitney

New Bern

Link:

Letter to the editor: Censorship threatens the truth - New Bern Sun Journal

Editors note: The death of Rush Limbaugh, the growth of Newsmax and charges of censorship by Amazon and other book sellers are among the forces shaking up conservative media companies. In this three-part series, the Deseret News examines the challenges facing radio, television and book publishing, and how those challenges might affect the companies and you: the reader, listener and viewer.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley lost a book deal. Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling lost fans. And now, even as a prospective merger of two large publishing houses in the U.S. is rattling the industry, Amazon is deleting content it deems offensive from the worlds largest platform for book sales.

In this tumultuous landscape, can conservative authors still continue to speak freely and sell books?

Yes, publishers say, but they may have to change the way they do business in a culture newly cognizant of the power to cancel people with unpopular opinions.

We dont let it directly determine what we publish, but the fact is, with every book, there is always fear that the book is going to be pulled. The authors feel very vulnerable, said David Bernstein, publisher of Bombardier Books, a conservative imprint of Post Hill Press.

Conservative fears were realized this month when the book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, by Catholic scholar Ryan T. Anderson, vanished from the Amazon website three years after it was published.

Four Republican senators, including Utahs Mike Lee, called the action political censorship, saying in a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos that Amazon has openly signaled to conservative Americans that their views are not welcome on its platforms.

But the controversy over Andersons book is only the latest action troubling conservative writers and publishers. Others include the cancellation of a forthcoming Hawley book critical of technology companies by Simon & Schuster, protests against a new book by Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson, and an open letter signed by people in the publishing industry who say no one affiliated with former President Donald Trumps administration should get a book contract.

The tremors shaking book publishing usually go undetected by the public, since the average reader only pays attention to the book, its content and the author, not the company that publishes a book, said Thomas Spence, who became president and publisher of Regnery Publishing a year ago.

Regnery, founded in 1947, has published books by Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Malkin and Dennis Prager, among other conservatives well acquainted with controversy. Regnerys success was a major reason that the largest publishing houses in the U.S. established their own conservative imprints, publishing insiders say.

But the outcry against authors who express unpopular beliefs is growing louder in the environment known as cancel culture, and some writers are warning that recent events will effectively muzzle conservatives. The backlash to Amazons decision, however, suggests that the outlook for conservative publishing is still bright. Heres why.

Andersons book, described by author Rod Dreher as a well-written, scientifically informed critique of gender ideology by a leading Catholic public intellectual, is still for sale on the website of the publisher, Encounter Books, as well as on the Barnes & Noble website and other places online.

Anderson, who recently became president of the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., told Dreher, writing for The American Conservative, that he has sold a couple of thousand books in the past week, adding this is unheard of for a three-year-old book.

He noted that Amazons action came at the same time Congress was considering the Equality Act and suggested that Amazons action has a silver lining, which is this could be (the) further catalyst thatll interrupt the libertarian slumber of many conservatives and prompt them to think critically about what, for example, the natural law says about both the justification of and limits to economic liberties.

Author Abigail Shrier is not as optimistic. Shrier, a journalist whose book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, has been removed twice from the Target website, wrote that the Amazon case is dangerous because of the outsized influence the company wields in publishing.

As a direct result of Amazons action, many outstanding books will now go unwritten; they will not be commissioned whenever Amazons distribution is the slightest bit in doubt. As I write this, authors are being dropped by agents or politely refused representation, based on what the agents now know Amazon will not carry, Shrier wrote.

Shriers book, however, is still listed on Amazon, as is God and the Transgender Debate, an examination of what the Bible has to say about gender by Southern Baptist theologian Andrew T. Walker.

So is a take on Andersons book, Let Harry Become Sally, an e-book by Kelly R. Novak that Amazon billed last week as a #1 best seller.

Amazon has not given a specific reason for removing Andersons book, saying only that the company reserves the right to delist content that violates its standards.

In an email, Anderson said this could be a moment that determines how the company will operate going forward. If Amazon hears from enough people, perhaps that will lead it to reconsider its decision and not just on me, but also preventing future de-platforming. If Amazon gets away with this, itll likely lead to more de-platforming in the future.

While Anderson can only speculate about the reasons his book is no longer on Amazon, Hawley, the Missouri senator, knows why Simon & Schuster canceled his book contract because the company put out a statement. Without giving specifics, the publisher said that Hawley, a Trump supporter who was the first senator to say he would challenge the 2020 election results, had a role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints; at the same time, we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom, the statement said.

Hawleys book deal was canceled the day after the riot. The next week, more than 250 authors, editors, agents and other workers in publishing signed an open letter that said no companies should publish work by anyone who incited, suborned, instigated or otherwise supported the riot, or who was a participant in the Trump administration. The number of signers is now approaching 600.

But within two weeks, Hawley had another publisher in Regnery, and Spence explained the decision in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, in which he said cancel culture is more appropriately described as blacklisting.

Not so long ago, publishing professionals would have been horrified to be accused of it. Today they compete to see who can proclaim his blacklist with the fiercest invective, Spence wrote.

So far, Amazon hasnt been inclined to cancel Hawleys book; its accepting pre-orders for The Tyranny of Big Tech and gives a release date of May 4.

Spence said hed been following Hawleys career knew he was a Yale Law School graduate and was a former Supreme Court clerk and had thought it would be nice to have a book from him before this one essentially landed in his lap. A lot of people have sent me emails saying, Oh, youre so courageous, thanks for taking a stand and taking this book, and I have to blush. I think I did the right thing, but I dont know that it was particularly courageous in this case, he said.

Getting canceled by Simon & Schuster has raised the profile of the book a lot, he added.

That has happened before, said Bernstein of Bombardier Books. When Simon & Schuster canceled a book by Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017, the far-right commentator self-published Dangerous and sold upwards of 100,000 copies, Bernstein said.

Donald Trump Jr. also self-published his second book, Liberal Privilege.

Bernstein said that conservative imprints such as Center Street at Hachette Book Group or Sentinel at Penguin are ghettos within the largest publishing houses, which he said skew young and liberal. The problem with conservative books within the large publishing houses is that theyre not going to support you if there is any controversy. The first whiff of controversy, Josh Hawley gets his book canceled. The first whiff of controversy, (Florida GOP Congressman) Matt Gaetz gets his book canceled. The editors get fired or get shifted around. Or the imprint gets closed. All of these things are happening at an increasing pace right now.

The New York Times recently reported that longtime editor Kate Hartson, editorial director at Center Street, had been let go and that Hartson told colleagues she thought her termination was because of her political beliefs. She had published books by Donald Trump Jr., Newt Gingrich, radio host Michael Savage and Rand Paul, among others. Her most recent book was reported to be Unmasked: Inside Antifas Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, by Andy Ngo.

Not every objection to an author results in a book being canceled. When Penguin Random House Canada announced that it was publishing Jordan Petersons Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, the company had to hold a town-hall style meeting for employees who were upset about the decision. It was published anyway. (In the U.S., the book was released March 2 under Penguins Portfolio imprint.)

And some authors, like J.K. Rowling, have the benefit of being too successful to be truly canceled, Bernstein said. Her position in publishing is kind of untouchable. When you make up that much of a companys bottom line shes like a line item of her own on their balance sheet no company is going to release her and give up that revenue.

For many conservative authors, however, the fear of being de-platformed is real, whether it be on a sales platform or social media.

Frankly, the number of books that get pulled off of Amazon is infinitesimal, but these stories get magnified and people are rightly concerned, because the number of people being de-platformed on Twitter started off being very small, too, Bernstein said.

Small conservative imprints such as Bombardier may benefit from the current environment if authors seek publishers who share their views. But so may Regnery, whose namesake, the late Henry Regnery, published Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher in 1979.

Spence, who said his views were shaped by the First Things essay Why the News Make Us Dumb by C. John Sommerville and The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk, welcomes the business, although he realizes that this may be a particularly vulnerable moment for conservative publishers.

Certain big players in the publishing world have the power to make our business very difficult if they want to. Thats Amazon and Google, all the people targeted by Josh Hawleys book, and maybe Im stupid to be publishing a book punching them in the nose, Spence said.

If we couldnt sell our books on Amazon, that would be a pretty serious blow. We sell most of our books on Amazon. What they have done on rare occasions is make it more difficult for people to find our books. He cited Shriers book, which Regnery published. The company wanted to buy ads that would make the book more prominent in searches, but Spence said that Amazon would not let them buy ads for that book.

Spence is also cognizant of the power of Facebook and Twitter, and that social media platforms could also take action to block promotion of one of his authors or books.

Theres a lot of potential hazards on the road ahead, he said. But its also good times for Regnery, because theres no such thing as bad publicity. Controversy is good.

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Is Amazon allowed to censor conservative books? - Deseret News