Nice song...when I saw the thread title, I instantly thought of the song...and although I strongly support the right to bear arms, I think the cavalier way they treat guns in the USA is dumb and the way their lawmakers are posing with the guns above is reckless and stupid.

PS, I assumed they're all law makers, I recognize only Boebert.

I think the woman on the far right is a movie actor and former MMA cage fighter Gina Carano.
Don't get drunk and try to pick her up at a local nightclub...

Also, don't get too drunk at your local nightclub, you might get picked up by Marjorie Taylor Greene

Yeah, why be armed when you be powerless against the state instead.

I mean, it’s not like government are censoring free speech, promoting false science, in cahoots with big media and playing the populace against each other.

At this point, i’d prefer if each household had a tank and an attack helicopter.

Yeah, why be armed when you be powerless against the state instead.

Never found this a remotely compelling argument. Guns or no guns, the US civilian population could not stop the state if it deployed its military against the civilian population. What good are assault rifles going to be when several M1 Abrams rolls down the street. They going be able to shot down a missile launched from an aircraft with assault rifles?

I mean, it’s not like government are censoring free speech, promoting false science, in cahoots with big media and playing the populace against each other. 

I think the 2nd  suggestion is far more likely to come from the side that supports gun ownership in the US and the 4th suggestion is something that side just as guilty of if not more than the other. With 1 and 3 there is genuine discussion to be had on those topics but that's a far cry from the government is coming to get you.

I always found the idea of needing a gun to feel safe as strange. I can't imagine living in a society where I would feel the need to have a gun to either protect me from the government or so I could  feel safe just going about my day to day business. Its not like my country is free from crime, in fact drug use might be worse here than in the US and there is a degree of gun crime here in Ireland, though its pretty much exclusively the reserve of gangland crime, with the occasional innocent bystander getting targeted by mistake. Armed criminals would never shoot a cop here though. Its like an unwritten rule, you don't kill police here that would just bring down way too much heat on a criminal organization. There was one case where unarmed police (regular police are unarmed here ) raided a property. The criminals inside had AK47's or the like, but when the police kicked in the door the criminals all jumped out the window and just left the weapons.

I was recently speaking with a few American's here in my home town. Ireland's awash with American tourists at the moment due to the strength of the dollar and my home town has a rather famous pub that's frequented by many of them. They where strongly pro-gun ownership and one of them was a retired sheriff. I didn't start the conversion but the topic of gun ownership came up and I was pointing out to him that in the history of the Irish state outside of the troubles there hasn't been a mass shooting, and that in the history of the state only about 80 police officers died in the line of duty (again quite a number of those who where killed where during the troubles) and he said to me that's because your country did it right and never had guns in the first place. I was like pardon, that sounds like your where criticizing the founding fathers of America?

At this point, i’d prefer if each household had a tank and an attack helicopter.

Every child should have his own tactical nuke!

Totally agree Stav.

Wish I could take this opportunity to do a bit of chest-beating with Connacht vs Sharks coming up but I suspect you'll crush the B team we're sending out.

"the US civilian population could not stop the state if it deployed its military against the civilian population"

Doesn't need to stop them. Just weaken them enough t make them vulnerable...which ends up being the same as stopping them.

"...come from the side that supports gun ownership in the US and the 4th suggestion is something that side just as guilty of if not more than the other"

Have you not been living in the world over the last few years? The vaccines have serious medical conditions appearing in 1/800 patients...it's promoted while others that see serious adverse events in 1/100000 are shelved. And the point is not whether it's a left or right government, the population should have the means to fight tyranny. Imagine if all the peasants had weapons during the dark ages? Perhaps it wouldn't have lasted for 700 years. I can think of a good few more occasions where an armed populace may have averted disaster.

Giving up your arms is giving up your freedom. It's that simple but "frog in hot water" syndrome prevents most from realizing it.

Doesn't need to stop them. Just weaken them enough t make them vulnerable...which ends up being the same as stopping them.

What double speak is this?...you are basically saying it doesn't stop them but that it almost stops them which does stop them?

Yes have you?

Giving up your arms is giving up your freedom. It's that simple but "frog in hot water" syndrome prevents most from realizing it.

Nope. I live in a a free society which does haven't guns. Ireland outranks the US in terms of freedoms actually. The people scared of all these threats they need guns to protect themselves from are the ones who are not free, they are controlled by fear, which mostly isn't real and even if it was real guns wouldn't save them from it.

"What double speak is this?...you are basically saying it doesn't stop them but that it almost stops them which does stop them?"

Think harder...see if you can understand it.

I would always support the freedom to have the option to have a firearm in your home, to protect your loved ones, should any threat enter your domain, or to even carry it on you at any time.

I would also fully respect someone's opinion who thought that having a firearm in a home is not warranted in any circumstances

I see the negatives and positives on both sides....

Each to their own....

Nothing wrong with responsible gun ownership. It's tools like axes and knives...screwdrivers and hammers...cars? Banning them because some people are irresponsible is just plain daft. What's next, banning alcohol , cigarettes,  headache pills..etc? The government has no business parenting it's citizens. 

When seconds count the police are only minutes away.

So true hey Xavi...

Having lived in a country that bans guns and even knives, I have gotten used to it- and am fine with no weapons.

I am prepared to sacrifice my freedom to have a gun for the freedom to li ve in a society with little to no people having guns. 

When I read about violence and guns in the newspaper in the UK, it is often in poor places with lots of young black men. (Not being racist, but that seems to be the trend). Clearly, people can still create guns, or get them illegally - but that seems to be a minimum. 

If guns are legal 10% of people will buy guns. 
That will cause another 20% of people to get guns to protect themselves from the people with guns. 
And so, it perpetuates. 

How about this one DA,  my mom phones the police because two poc have jumped the wall into the back yard in the evening. Her house is in a cul-de-sac where she is the house at the very top. Bottom of the road is the police station around the corner and one property over. 

The charge office there told her they didn't have any vehicles!!!!!

Literally less than 100 meters away. We used to take shortcuts through their holding cell area on the way home when I was a lighting.

Lightie*

"people can still create guns, or get them illegally - but that seems to be a minimum"

This seems to be on the increase ... people 3D printing guns parts and assembling their own firearm. ..

Literally less than 100 meters away

Sadly, I am not surprised..... it is absolutely shocking what our police force has become.... and our army.

Shark, you are a fool for trusting the system...I know you mean well, but try living here for a decade before judging me...and remember, things change swiftly...

Think harder...see if you can understand it.

Let me guess, your thinking is probably along the lines that some of the US military would side with the armed civilians and in this conflict between the evil US military controlled by the tyrannical government and the good US military defending the persecuted civilian population, the armed civilians population will give the good guys the edge they need to prevail á la Red Dawn.

Now there is a couple of flaws with that idea that if you think harder about you might understand as well.

If that's not what you where thinking, then what you wrote was just a contradiction.

Don't be skeptical, go and look it up for yourself. But since that i know you won't...here.

Alright I read that and its interesting read. Firstly I would agree with the position of several of the people quoted who are talking in their field of expertise and are critical of the slowness in conducting follow up research when there is indicators of a considerably greater risk with the vaccines than previously believed and the withholding of available research from the public that denies people the ability to make an informed choice and creates suspicion and mistrust among the general population.

Of course there is a but. You said The vaccines have serious medical conditions appearing in 1/800 patients.

You wrote that like if its been definitively proven. It has not. To quote a section of that article.

"We don’t want to create a lot of unnecessary anxiety and we can’t say there is now proof that the vaccines cause these events because the data are of poor quality"

Your own post is a textbook example of the reason cited in that article why some medical authorities withhold or delay the release of certain data, because some people will incorrectly interpret the data and present it in a worse light than it really is.

So yes their is indicators of additional risk but not definitive proof and further research is needed.

But lets say after further research that we get confirmation that serious side effects affects occur in 1 in 800 who take the vaccine. I'm absolutely for telling people who are getting the vaccine there is that risk.

I'd also tell them that for every 800 people who get Covid and are not vaccinated, 5-6 of them will die. That's just people who will die, not the number of people who will suffer serious illness which will be a much a higher percentage. Where am I'm getting these numbers from?. Why the same source you linked to the BMJ who give a death rate for Covid of 0.66% link In fairness that article is from April 2020 and the death and illness rate may have come down with different variants and of course the death rate is affected by age but I've no doubt age also effects the chances of having a serious side effect from a vaccine.

So yes by all means give people the full picture, but please don't misinterpret the data to conform to your preconceived views and present it as fact.

Sure:

I was actually hoping you could give me example of where an armed civilian population actually did fight off a tyrannical government.

Well, you bought all the Covid nonsense, have been skeptical about government censorship of free speech, and wholeheartedly buy the climate change narrative...shall I go on? I mean, what else would you say, really?

I didn't bring Covid up, you did. I just said I was skeptical of your claims about the Covid vaccine.

As for government censorship, well I'm against the forms practiced by say China and Russia (and before Mike wonders in and starts fucking shiteing on about Ukraine and censorship, I'm not in favor of everything Ukraine has done in this area, TV Rain for being an example, but some degree of censorship can be tolerated in the case of war). However often times when people cite examples of censorship in the west its just them being angry at not being able to make post content that can have serious potentially deadly real world consequences. Be with this topic there is room for debate.

As for climate change, its not a narrative, its back by an overwhelming preponderance of scientific evidence. A narrative is that its all a great conspiracy.

As for a final thing to say, well I would say your a dyed in the wool conspiracy theorist and see a conspiracy behind every significant event going on in the world frequently ignoring Occam's Razor. You cry wolf so much that even when you do stumble on to something worth investigating your credibility is gone.

"You wrote that like if its been definitively proven. It has not. To quote a section of that article."

You will never get to the truth if you ignore what you don't like.

Lol Stav, are you assuming that the link i gave you is the only source? Your argument sure makes it seem like it.

Try Google, i promise…it’s easy

Here’s the PubMed link

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36055877/

Can’t hyperlink from my phone.

“ However often times when people cite examples of censorship in the west its just them being angry at not being able to make post content that can have serious potentially deadly real world consequences. Be with this topic there is room for debate.”

Why always these half-arsed neither here nor there arguments with you?

I don’t care about “often” or “x doesn’t mean y”…that stuff doesn’t work on me.

Have you not been seeing the Twitter files?

Is like we have to drag you to the truth, then cut off your eyelids and force you to see it. Almost every agency in the US are now being shown, in black and white, to have partaken in illegal censorship through social media.

Some measure of censorship…are you gonna paraphrase “yell fire in a packed cinema” next?

If you want to be an American Shark, you are part of vast number of people. We struggle to find kind ways to keep them out.

I’d move to Florida in a heartbeat, Moz.

I should hopefully be in NA this year though.

And i do intend on retiring in Florida.

Here’s the PubMed link

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36055877/

Well I guess you don't read your own articles because that link has an article that refers to one of same studies that was already referred to in the article you first linked too.

I asked for new research that backed up what you claimed, not the same evidence and from an older source.

Why always these half-arsed neither here nor there arguments with you?

LOL well I would say you arguments did even constitute a quarter of an arse, but we be pulling hairs at this point.

I don’t care about “often” or “x doesn’t mean y”…that stuff doesn’t work on me.

Then come up with better arguments because that's often what your argument that you and people of your ilk amount too. "Dur... its been hotter in the earths past, therefore the planet will be fine" "Dur... the planets temperature has risen naturally before, therefore the warming is natural" "Dur... people can make money out of global warming, therefore global warming is a scam" "Dur...its usually cold at X location today, therefore global warming can't be occurring" etc etc

Have you not been seeing the Twitter files?

Oh god...why have I feeling I about to hear another conspiracy...do I want to know? Go on enlighten us so, is it something to do with Elon Musk spazzing out on his keyboard when posting on twitter.

Is like we have to drag you to the truth, then cut off your eyelids and force you to see it.

Mate you haven't the slightest clue what truth is. You operate in a reality where the truth is exactly what you want it to be.

Almost every agency in the US are now being shown, in black and white, to have partaken in illegal censorship through social media.

Hmm...you know I could look this up. But I've this feeling it would be a complete waste of time.

Texas is the closest to my Boland without the FCN ANfcnC...Still not the same, not even clo se!

“Well I guess you don't read your own articles because that link has an article that refers to one of same studies that was already referred to in the article you first linked too.“

I know, numpty…was simply linking you the study, in case you only read the article.

lolz…so you haven’t been seeing or keeping up with the Twitter file dump.

Why am i not surprised?

Better not look it up now, i don’t know if you’ll be able to stand the embarrassment.

Here is Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Page…he’s been covering it as the files have been dropped. Now do some honest research and fact check him.

https://mobile.twitter.com/mtaibbi/

Then come back here and say “Sorry, uncle Plum.”

California, New York and "some" parts of Florida would be to my liking. 
The Mexicans seem to find it relatively easy to get into the US. 

Although I can't say the same for inland places like Kansas, Alabama, Georgia etc.
Places that are too far North like Chicago and inland are ok, but not where I would want to live.

Canada seems like a good place, but too cold for my liking. I actually prefer Canadians to Americans, although having said that the people I have met from California have been cool people. I would not like to live in any of the red states.

Australia would be another good place. However, where I live in Cornwall is nice. Much better than many places in the UK. A bit cold in winter, but I am about to go on a 2-month working holiday. 
1 month in the Canary Islands, and then 1 month in Portugal - Peniche). 2 of the better surfing places in the world. Nice and warm as well.
I often leave the UK for a surf trip to warmer places. 

“ I just typed Matt Taibbi into DuckDuckGo (its a search engine that doesn't track your searches in case you are wondering) and the first thing that comes up is an image of him being interviewed on Fox News...that's all the research I need to do on the clown to know I'm not interested in what he has has to say.”

Lol, i’m never knew that appearing on Fox news invalidated one’s work.

Hmmm am i sensing a pattern of illogical bias here?

I’m now a Florida resident Plum. But I do still spend the summers up  north where I have most of my friends. I actually found Florida too monotonous until I discovered Sarasota. It reminds me of the Lake District with it’s huge lagoon. I can walk to the Opera in 10 minutes. There are scores of great restaurants, superb boating and fishing on the ocean and the estuary. I have seen most of Florida, once had a place in Palm Beach  and this is by far my favorite option.

Lol, i’m never knew that appearing on Fox news invalidated one’s work.

Hmmm am i sensing a pattern of illogical bias here? 

No your sensing a person who doesn't want his time wasted.

So you have no interest in the opposite perspective….typical Woke one way street thinking.

Lol it’s not even a matter of perspective, the Twitter files are openly available to anyone.

And Star wants us to take him seriously.

So you have no interest in the opposite perspective….typical Woke one way street thinking.

I have no interest in spending time in Plums endless world of conspiracies, from Alien's to 9/11 to Climate Change to Covid, actually be quicker if I just listed conspiracies he doesn't believe in.

Ah yes woke, the standard refrain from the right wingers when they need a distraction from reality.

Lol it’s not even a matter of perspective, the Twitter files are openly available to anyone.

Whats the bets it  is a matter of perspective and if I look into this more thoroughly I find its got some genuine elements of censorship mixed in with a whole load of lies and exaggerations twisted to serve a right wing political agenda.

And Star wants us to take him seriously.

Go back to Rigel 7.

Wonderful.   That is where you are ignorant about the undermining of the Police and the justice system through which the Democrats have changed the inner cities of the USA a murder sphere with crime at extremely high levels.   The criminals have arms and they do not hesitate to use it, even during the riots organized and funded by the Democratic Party using the BLM and Antifa as their terrorist subsidiaries.     

Gun sales has increased sharply in cities in the USA because people thought themselves to be endangered by the armed gangsters and criminals, while the police are hampered by staff reduction and regulations - limiting their reaction to call-outs especially bearing in mind the murder of Police Officers.

There is no doubt that the Democrats are trying to pass legislation to undermine the US Constitution.   That is the reason why some people think they must stop undermining of the Constitution - How widespread that type of thinking is not really proven as fact.   What is certain is that the collapse of law and order in cities throughout the USA have turned people to buy guns to defend themselves.

Lol Star…

The truth is two words and a click away…

“Twitter files” + hit -enter-.

But let me get this straight…

1) The paper that i linked you too ain’t enough. So much for science.

2) A headline story that is basically a scandal at this point has seemingly evaded you and despite the files being readily available for review…you excuse your bias on the basis that “It’s Plum saying it so it must be bs”. So much for evidence.

How far you’ve fallen.

Well in the case of Covid, it turned out to be just a flu. Hell you have Aussies playing a test match with Covid, Granted as I pointed out at the time it was initially dangerous because of our lack of exposure.

But time and the vaccines have made it exactly what the conspiracy theorists called it on Fox…just another Flu.

I picked it up at the Miami Art Fair and it spoiled my golf the next day, but it was gone faster than the mildest flu. There were a lot of agendas with Covid, not all legitimate.

I'll try to help you.

1. The paper you linked too doesn't prove what you think it proves.

But time and the vaccines have made it exactly what the conspiracy theorists called it on Fox…just another Flu.

If only Fox news said, just another Flu...in two and a bit ye ars from now.

Many of them did say it would weaken over time to become effectively a flu. And I can’t remember anybody on Fox saying it would have a 4% death rate or as the good Dr said….shaking of hands is a thing of the past. Neither Fox nor CNN got this right, but Fox was probably sounder.

The fact is the media in which Stav believe implicitly generate lies concocted by their owners and his take on Twitter is BS.     The fact is that the Biden Administration used the FBI and CIA  to censor publication of any news to their detriment and the Democratic Party and their corrupt leadership was directly responsible for undermining freedom of speech. 

Stav is known for not believing facts when they contradict his weird thinking on issues.        

Hey, Star…you’ll never guess what all these far right sites like MSN.com are publishing on their news page…

“ “We don’t do this.” That response from Twitter to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is a singular indictment, coming at the height of Twitter’s censorship operations. Apparently, there were some things that even Twitter’s censors refused to do.

One of those things was silencing critics of Schiff and his House committee.

In the latest tranche of “Twitter Files,” journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter balked at Schiff’s demand that Twitter suspend an array of posters or label their content as “misinformation” and “reduce the visibility” of them. Among those who Schiff secretly tried to censor was New York Post columnist Paul Sperry.

Sperry drew Schiff’s ire by writing about a conversation allegedly overheard by one of his sources. Sperry’s article, which appeared in RealClearInvestigations, cited two sources as overhearing two White House staffers discussing how to remove newly-elected President Trump from office. The article raised the possibility of bias on the part of an alleged key player in launching the first Trump impeachment, CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella. The sources reportedly said that Ciaramella was in a conversation with Sean Misko, a holdover from the Obama administration who later joined Schiff’s staff. The conversation — in Sperry’s words — showed that “just days after [Trump] was sworn in they were already trying to get rid of him.”

Rather than simply refute the allegation, Schiff wanted Sperry and other critics silenced. His office reportedly laid out steps to cleanse Twitter of their criticism, including an instruction to “remove any and all content about Mr. Misko and other Committee staff from its service — to include quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content.”

The date of Schiff’s non-public letter in November 2020 is notable: Earlier that year, I wrote a column for The Hill criticizing Schiff for pushing for censorship of misinformation in a letter that he sent to social media companies. His office promptly objected to the very suggestion that Schiff supported censorship.

We now know Schiff was actively seeking to censor specific critics on social media. These likely were viewed as more than “requests” since Schiff was sending public letters threatening possible legislative action against these same companies. He wanted his critics silenced on social media. After all, criticizing his investigations or staff must, by definition, be misinformation — right?

His office seems to have indicated they knew Twitter was using shadowing-banning or other techniques to suppress certain disfavored writers. In the letter, his staff asked Twitter to “label and reduce the visibility of any content.”

Twitter, however, drew the line with Schiff; one of its employees simply wrote, “no, this isn’t feasible/we don’t do this.”

The “this” referred to in this case was raw political censorship. And even a company that maintained one of the largest censorship programs in history could not bring itself to do what Schiff was demanding — but the demand itself is telling.

Not only does it show how dishonest some politicians have been in denying censorship while secretly demanding it, it also shows the insatiable appetite created by censorship. The article in question, written by Sperry, is a good example. Sperry has denied ever supporting QAnon conspiracy theories, as Schiff’s office charged. Yet even if Sperry’s account about Schiff’s staffer was wildly untrue, that should make it easier to rebut publicly.

The move by Schiff to ban Sperry and others on Twitter — and to remove content — is highly ironic. Schiff has been criticized repeatedly for promoting “misinformation” and for relying on unidentified “sources” for his claims of Trump’s criminality. For example, Schiff pushed the false claim that the infamous Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation; he also was criticized for pushing false narratives of Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election.

Nevertheless, I would equally oppose any effort to ban Schiff from social media, although that is hardly likely given the demonstrated political bias of past censorship efforts. For his part, Sperry was later permanently suspended by Twitter, which I also criticized.

Schiff is unlikely to be deterred by the release of these communications. He recently sent a letter to Facebook, warning it not to relax its censorship efforts. His letter, written with Reps. André Carson (D-Ind.), Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), reminded Facebook that some lawmakers are watching the company “as part of our ongoing oversight efforts” — and suggested they may be forced to exercise that oversight into any move by Facebook to “alter or rollback certain misinformation policies.”

Schiff’s actions embody the slippery slope of censorship. By labeling his critics as QAnon supporters or purveyors of “misinformation,” he sought to have allies in social media “disappear” critics like Sperry — yet he found that even those allies could not stomach his demands. Given Twitter’s censorship of even satirical sites, it was akin to being turned down by a Kanye West podcast as being too extreme.

With the disclosure of apparent FBI involvement in Twitter’s censorship program, the release of the Schiff files is another rare insight into how government officials attempted to enlist social media companies for censorship by surrogate or proxy. That is precisely why many in the media, political and business establishments have mobilized against Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter who has released these compromising files.

In a recent tweet, Schiff chastised Musk and demanded more answers from the Twitter CEO. While insisting that “I don’t support censorship,” Schiff asked Musk if he would “commit to providing the public with actual answers and data, not just tweets?” Well, Musk just did precisely that.

The “actual answer” is that Schiff has long sought to silence his critics, and Musk has exposed the underbelly of censorship — which is where we found Adam Schiff.“

These wild conspiracies huh?

Hi again, Star

Here’s yet again more reporting in the matter, this time basically straight for the neo-nazi conspiracy think tank known as The Washington Times.

“ More than two-thirds of voters think the recent revelations exposed in Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” warrant further investigation by Congress, according to a new poll that shows concerns about censorship of conservative voices on social media extend far beyond the Republican base.

Mr. Musk’s steady drip of internal documents since taking over Twitter has revealed the extent to which the platform worked with the Biden campaign and federal agencies to moderate speech. It exposed Twitter‘s liberal bent in censoring conservative viewpoints and suppressing news stories that linked then-candidate Joseph R. Biden to his son Hunter’s eyebrow-raising business foreign business deals.

Despite those revelations going largely ignored by liberal-leaning legacy new outlets, voters across the political spectrum say the conduct exposed in the Twitter Files likely crossed the line.

A recent survey by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies and Harris Insights & Analytics found that 71% of Republicans, 65% of Democrats and 68% of independents think Congress and the FBI should thoroughly investigate potential civil and First Amendment violations by Twitter.

The Twitter Files revealed the close coordination between social media companies and federal officials to moderate content, including requests by the FBI to censor individual posts and ban certain users.

? In one internal Slack exchange disclosed by Matt Taibbi, one of several independent journalists given access to Mr. Musk’s vault, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, wrote that he met with federal officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security on Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

During those meetings, Twitter executives were alerted to rumors that Hunter Biden would be the target of a “hack and leak operation,” a warning which, in part, led social media platforms to suppress The New York Post’s October 2020 story exposing Mr. Biden’s links to his son’s embarrassing and potentially illegal business ventures. It refuted Mr. Biden’s claims that he didn’t know about and wasn’t involved in his son’s overseas ventures.

The FBI took possession of the laptop in December 2019, 10 months before the newspaper published materials from the computer, raising questions as to whether the bureau sought to discredit materials they had already authenticated.

The Harvard-Harris poll found that 74% of voters think Twitter employees should be criminally prosecuted if they were found to be working with federal officials to suppress content in violation of people’s First Amendment rights. That figure includes 82% of Republicans, 69% of Democrats and 73% of independents.

Most voters, 64%, also think Twitter “engaged in political censorship” during the 2020 election. That majority includes 59% of Democrats.

A majority of voters, 61%, say Twitter’s decision to ban tweets about the Hunter Biden laptop specifically was based on political bias, including nearly half, or 48%, of Democrats surveyed in the Harvard-Harris poll.

A plurality, 48%, of voters say Twitter was specifically trying to help Mr. Biden during the 2020 election while 25% say Twitter employees were in former President Donald Trump’s corner and 28% say Twitter employees were even-handed.

Forty percent of Democrats said Twitter employees wanted to help Mr. Biden.

Voters felt particularly strongly about perceived political censorship on the part of James Baker, Twitter’s top lawyer during the 2020 election who joined the company after working for years as a lawyer for the FBI.

While serving in the FBI, Mr. Baker was a key facilitator of the FBI’s much-criticized investigation into whether former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Ahead of the 2020 election, according to Twitter Files documents, the FBI set up top-secret briefings with Mr. Baker who would later push Twitter to block reports that threatened then-candidate Biden.

Internal emails also revealed that amid the chaos at Twitter on the day The New York Post published the story, Mr. Baker arranged a phone call with Matthew J. Perry from the FBI’s Office of the General Counsel.

An overwhelming majority of Americans — 76% — said Mr. Baker “was acting out of politics in banning information about the Hunter Biden laptop.”

That sentiment spans the political spectrum, with 85% of Republicans, 70% of Democrats and 73% of independents saying Mr. Baker was politically motivated.

And beyond Twitter’s involvement in the 2020 election, 69% of those polled said Twitter employees were working with government officials to “censor Tweets that questioned COVID and other policies.” That figure includes 78% of Republicans, 67% of Democrats and 61% of independents.

Sixty-eight percent of respondents said such behavior, if true, would be a violation of the First Amendment. That figure includes 77% of Republicans, 62% of Democrats and 66% of independents.

The results of the Harvard-Harris poll, which polled 1,851 registered voters between Dec. 14-15, reflect a broad awareness of the revelations among voters from all political persuasions despite the series of Twitter Files being mostly ignored by left-leaning news outlets.

A Media Research Center analysis found that the Twitter Files made up less than 0.5% of coverage on CNN and MSNBC, although the cable channels covered other stories related to Twitter.

The study found that MSNBC aired close to two hours of content involving Twitter from Dec. 2 to Dec. 13 and more than 80% of its reports had no reference to the Twitter Files.

“Since that study, we’ve seen that NPR and others have issued these conclusory comments that there is no story here,” Media Research Center Vice President Dan Schneider told The Washington Times. “This is how the left-wing media in America always operates.”

He said left-leaning outlets avoid the Twitter Files because they are part of the story. “They either know too much and don’t want to have to backpedal on their false reporting in the past, or else they don’t want to implicate themselves in the wrongdoing that is now obvious for everybody to see,” he said.

He said Americans are beginning to see the news media “acting as political operatives, not as reporters.”

The Harvard-Harris poll also found that just 40% of voters think the mainstream media is fair and unbiased. The poll also found that 63% of respondents think the media supports political censorship on social media.

Vanessa Otero, the founder and CEO of Ad Fontes media, the quantitative media analysis company behind the Media Bias Chart, said the Twitter Files, and Twitter itself, has certainly become one of many partisan issues in the U.S.

Still, Ms. Otero, who is a lawyer by training, said there are elements of the Twitter Files disclosures that cross partisan lines.

The suppression of the Hunter Biden story ahead of the 2020 election, a key focus of the Twitter Files releases, has an obvious appeal for Republicans, she said. But she added that the left traditionally harbors skepticism of intelligence and government agencies.

Ethics surrounding the freedom of speech and First Amendment principles are shared strongly across partisan lines, she said.

“So you sort of have this blending,” she said. “Each side has a reason to say ‘what the FBIand Twitter are doing together doesn’t feel right.”

She said that crossover shakes out in polling questions, such as whether Congress should look into the disclosures further.

“That is a function of the fact that this is not legislated,” she said. “There needs to be more legislation about what social media companies and the government can and can’t do regarding content moderation.”

A vast majority of voters agree.

Seventy percent of respondents to the Harvard-Harris poll said they support new national laws protecting the internet and social media users from social censorship. That figure includes 69% of Republicans, 72% of Democrats and 71% of independents.“

Hey again, Star…this from Ottawa, that bastion of far right conspiracy virtue…

“What are the Twitter Files? After multi-billionaire Musk bought Twitter, he promised he would lift the corporate veil on ideologically motivated censorship perpetrated by the social media platform’s previous management.

The most anticipated documents, released this month to three handpicked journalists, chronicled Slack messages and emails between company officials that centred on the suppression of an explosive news story on the eve of the U.S. presidential election that could have been damaging to Joe Biden. They also exposed discussions around the company’s decision in 2021 to ban the Twitter account of then president Donald Trump.

What did the Twitter Files tell us? The dump of internal communications was seen by many as vindication for those who claim Twitter’s content moderation policies are unfairly biased against conservatives.

Posted in a Dec. 2 Twitter thread, journalist Matt Taibbi described the first installment of the “Twitter Files” as an “incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms,” calling it a “Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.”

While content moderation purportedly began as a way to combat spam and fraudsters on Twitter, Taibbi alleges it grew into a means for famous and powerful users to request management remove content they didn’t like.

“Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well,” Taibbi wrote.

“First a little, then more often, then constantly.”

A redacted screenshot of an Oct. 24, 2020 email between two Twitter executives included a list of URLs of tweets allegedly flagged by “the Biden team” for “review.”

A reply to this email consisted of two words: “handled these.”

While this service was allegedly open to both Republicans and Democrats leading up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Taibbi said the system wasn’t balanced.

“Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right,” Taibbi tweeted.

What did the Twitter Files reveal about the Hunter Biden laptop story? While conservatives had long complained that Twitter had been suppressing right-wing voices, the company’s politically-influenced content moderation policies were exposed after a bombshell New York Post story based on emails found on a laptop owned by U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

The computer had been abandoned at a Delaware repair shop the previous April and the shop’s owner provided it to the New York Post. The laptop linked Biden, who was running for president, to foreign influence-peddling being done by his son Hunter and brother Jim. Twitter tried blocking the story from being tweeted and shared (Facebook then followed suit).

“Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be ‘unsafe’,” Taibbi tweeted.

“They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.”

The New York Post, White House spokesperson Kaleigh McEnany and reporters, including at this newspaper, found themselves suspended from Twitter for posting links to the story.

Subsequent emails posted by Taibbi show executives struggling to understand their own policy.

“I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe, and I think the best expalinabilty argument for this externally would be that we’re waiting to understand if this story is the result of hacked materials,” wrote Twitter manager Trenton Kennedy.

“We’ll face hard questions on this if we didn’t have some kind of solid reasoning for marking the link unsafe.”

Twitter’s in-house counsel Jim Baker — whom Musk fired earlier this week — wrote it was “reasonable for us to assume that (Hunter Biden’s laptop) may have been (hacked) and that caution is warranted.”

What did the Twitter Files say about banning Donald Trump’s account? A second document dump by Taibbi a week after the first concerned the banning of Trump’s account, which occurred two days after the infamous Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.

Taibbi wrote that while much of Twitter’s internal debate on banning the then president took place between Jan. 6 and 8, the framework for that decision had been in place for some time.

Screenshots of Slack conversations seem to show a culture of on-the-fly decisions to ban content and users, often with little oversight or context.

“During this time, executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content,” Taibbi wrote, in later tweets revealing reports of false tweets even being reported to executives from the FBI.

“Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally,” Taibbi tweeted.

“We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here.”

By the morning of Jan. 8, internal Twitter communications show that they had given Trump one more “strike” left before being permanently removed from the service, reported journalist Bari Weiss, who was also granted access to the files, along with Taibbi.

“For years, Twitter had resisted calls both internal and external to ban Trump on the grounds that blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information that people should be able to see and debate,” Weiss wrote.

The events of Jan. 6 put both internal and external pressure on Twitter executives to take action, Weiss wrote — showing screenshots of Slack conversations depicting many in the company were upset the ban hadn’t happened earlier.

What has been the aftermath? Musk has fired a lot of people at Twitter, including those implicated by the Twitter files. And Conservatives have held it up as proof that Big Tech is censoring speech in America.

But Daniel Tsai, a lecturer in business, law, technology, and culture at the University of Toronto, told the National Post he thinks the Twitter files landed with a bit of a thud.

“I think Musk is doing it for his own therapy,” he said.

“He’s trying to get validation that he made a bad deal and was misled into buying a terrible company — a poorly-performing company that didn’t have the subscriber base he was told it would have.”

Musk had claimed, before buying Twitter, that their user numbers were vastly inflated by non-human, automated bot accounts.

He has reinstated Trump’s Twitter account, and offered “amnesty” to scores of other accounts that had been banned by Twitter for reasons other than fraud or spamming.

But Musk is now facing accusations that he’s already begun practicing what he preached against, using Twitter to ban accounts he disapproves of.

Last month, he temporarily suspended comedienne Kathy Griffin for satirically impersonating him.

This week, he used his self-proclaimed war on “Twitter bots” to suspend University of Central Florida Sophomore Jack Sweeney.

For years Sweeney has, much to Musk’s dismay, operated @elonjet, an automated Twitter account that keeps track of the location of Musk’s private jet.

Despite Musk’s Nov. 6 assurance that Sweeney would still be permitted to use the platform, Twitter banned all of his accounts on Thursday, including one that tracked the locations of Canadian government VIP aircraft that Sweeney operated with Canadian researcher Steffan Watkins.

That was followed by Thursday’s banning of several prominent American journalists who had been critically covering Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Musk claimed they had posted tweets revealing the home addresses of him and his families, but the journalists and their publishers deny it.“

So much BS conspiracy stuff, one doesn’t know where to start or why nobody is being sued.

Hi again, Star

Hi Again, Star

I've noticed that the Wall Street Journal have recently attended some QAnon events...starting to think they signed up.

Note: COVID Hysteria plunged the world into a financial crisis that has, is, and will continue to cost innumerable lives. 

Alex Berenson was kicked off the site at the White House’s urging. That’s a violation of the First Amendment.

Alex Berenson is back on Twitter after being banned for nearly a year over Covid-19 “misinformation.” Last week the former New York Times reporter settled his lawsuit against the social-media company, which admitted error and restored his account. “The First Amendment does not apply to private companies like Twitter,” Mr. Berenson wrote last week on Substack. But because the Biden administration brought pressure to bear on Twitter, he believes he has a case that his constitutional rights were violated. He’s right.

In January 2021 we argued on these pages that tech companies should be treated as state actors under existing legal doctrines when they censor constitutionally protected speech in response to governmental threats and inducements. The Biden administration appears to have taken our warning calls as a how-to guide for effectuating political censorship through the private sector. And it’s worse than we feared.

Facts that Mr. Berenson unearthed through the discovery process confirm that the administration has been secretly asking social-media companies to shut down the accounts of specific prominent critics of administration policy.

On July 16, 2021, a reporter asked President Biden: “On Covid misinformation, what’s your message to platforms like Facebook.” Mr. Biden replied: “They’re killing people.” (The president later said he meant users were killing people.) Later that day, Twitter locked Mr. Berenson’s account, and on Aug. 28 it banned him permanently.

Last Friday Mr. Berenson published conversations from an internal Twitter Slack channel. Referring to an April 2021 meeting with White House officials, one Twitter employee noted that the meeting overall was “pretty good,” but added that the White House “had one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform.”

Another employee asked: “Any high level takeaways from the meeting? Anything we should keep an eye out for?”

The first employee responded: “Yes, they really wanted to know about Alex Berenson.” The employee wrote that Andy Slavitt, then a senior White House Covid adviser, “suggested they had seen data viz that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.” (“Viz” probably stands for “visualization” and “disinfo” for “disinformation.”)

Mr. Berenson wasn’t the only target. At a July 15, 2021, White House press briefing with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, press secretary Jen Psaki said: “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. . . . There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of antivaccine misinformation on social media platforms.” This was a reference to the so-called “Disinformation Dozen,” 12 named individuals identified in a report by the U.K.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate—a report that Facebook disputed even as it said it had taken action against its targets. Ms. Psaki went on to say of the 12 that “all of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including . . . ones that Facebook owns.” That might have been a reference to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccination, who had been deplatformed by Facebook-owned Instagram.

At the same briefing, Dr. Murthy called on social-media companies to purge more Covid posts: “We’re asking them to consistently take action against misinformation superspreaders on their platforms.” At a briefing the next day, again possibly referring to Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Psaki said that if you post misinformation, “you shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others.”

Recent Freedom of Information Act disclosures show that a week later, on July 23, 2021, Nick Clegg—a former U.K. deputy prime minister and now Facebook parent Meta’s president for global affairs—emailed Dr. Murthy to thank him for meeting with Facebook and to report on “the steps we took just this past week” to “further address the ‘disinfo dozen’: we removed 17 additional Pages, Groups, and Instagram accounts tied to the ‘disinfo dozen’ . . . resulting in every member . . . having had at least one such entity removed.” He added that Facebook was “continuing to make 4 other Pages and Profiles, which have not yet met their removal thresholds, more difficult to find on our platform.”

This goes even beyond what was happening when we wrote the week before Mr. Biden’s inauguration. At that time, lawmakers had repeatedly threatened tech companies with catastrophic consequences if they didn’t more aggressively censor speech the government disfavors. Congress had immunized these companies from liability if they remove “objectionable” but “constitutionally protected” content, to quote Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

In response to these and other inducements and threats, social-media companies were already suppressing speech about Covid that was well within the bounds of legitimate debate and sometimes proved accurate. Facebook had banned anyone from saying that Covid might have originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, or that the Covid vaccines didn’t prevent infection."

SB

It is very easy to enter the USA.   Just fly to Mexico and contact the Human trafficking gangs and pay them $5 000 and they will put you on a bus provided you carry a small package for them to be delivered to their gangster partners in the USA,   

Once you are in the USA and delivered the small package to the US Gangsters the US Government will give you a cell-phone and send you by plane to any city of your choice after giving you a US certificate you can use to get anything legally available to US Citizens.    There you can apply for a driver's license and use that as identification purposes - for instance to register as a voter in the USA,

The protection racket of illegal migrants will be strengthened if you join the Democratic Party or better still one of their terrorist subsidiaries BLM and Antifa.

MSM in America was being bought out as early as 1916 by J P Morgan. Thus, from that time, the media has always been a tool to manipulate and alter society based upon the goals of the small few who run this world. David Rockefeller once boasted, decades ago, that "they" can change the beliefs and thoughts of the entire planet in thirty minutes or less, such was the power they exerted over MSM. Well, that assertion has been well and truly proven true. That, in spite of the glut of information to the contrary. Those who wish to prevent an open platform of information are always liars and deceivers.  

Agreed, Deus

 "Those who wish to prevent an open platform of information are always liars and deceivers. "

...and those that buy it all aren't too far behind.

What's interesting to me is that, at some point, it's clear that they make a decision and choose to sit on the side that they know is wrong, partly to avoid embarrassment and also because it's a little more comfortable. Both are selfish motives.

And then they yell "science" and "conspiracy" in a tune most palpably ironic.

Hey, Star…you’ll never guess what all these far right sites like MSN.com are publishing on their news page…

MSN isn't a traditional news site/channel, it has a news page that consists of a collection of new stories from various actual news sites/channels across the political spectrum.

In the particular case of the article you quoted in that post, it was MSN linking to an opinion piece in The Hill, I'm not particular sure which way The Hill leans on the political spectrum, wikipedia for example cites two examples where the Hill could you accused of leaning to the left and another two leaning to the right. However the actual article was written by Jonathon Turley who if you care to look up is certainly on the political right.

Here’s yet again more reporting in the matter, this time basically straight for the neo-nazi conspiracy think tank known as The Washington Times.

I know you are being sarcastic when you say neo-nazi but rather hilariously in this case the Washington Times have actually posted Neo-Confederate content in the past. But yup the Washington Times are are also on the political right.

Hey again, Star…this from Ottawa, that bastion of far right conspiracy virtue…

Like with MSN this is actually an article by Ottawa but a link to an article by the National Post who are once again a news organization that is considered to be on the political right.

Hi again, Star

Well reading through the exchange this is something you can have a genuine debate on whether Schiff was overstepping the mark in what he was asking for Twitter to do, if he was misrepresenting certain individuals, or did he even do much wrong at all by simply asking questions, like he wasn't ordering twitter to do anything  The response from Twitter  does clearly show that Twitter at least in this case where not under the thumb of left leaning politicians. Would be interesting to know if other politicians from both political spectrum have asked Twitter similar things.

Hi Again, Star

I've noticed that the Wall Street Journal have recently attended some QAnon events...starting to think they signed up.

Another opinion peace from a news organization that leans to the political right. Though in fairness to the WSJ I believe they are genuinely considered pretty reasonable when it comes to factual accuracy in their content. not that factual accuracy is not something that comes into play when its an opinion peace.

So if your goal in copying these articles was to prove its not just right wing new sources who where interpreting what was in the Twitter Files the same way the right wing and you are, you've failed spectacularly.

It stuns me that seemingly intelligent people don’t  believe the source of information representing their general views won’t bend the truth. I regard myself as fiscally and  patriotically conservative…but socially a bit to the left of center. Believe it or not, a lot of what happens in the States is now driven by hard working immigrants from South and Central America and from places like the Phillipines.

I have employed many of these people and they are loyal and incredibly hard working.

But opening the Borders without a proper process is destructive. 

And I believe we should be engaging in discussions with Russia, China, Korea and Iran. But until they give up their apparent need to enlarge their sway, we should enhance  our military capability.

Oddly enough these views pretty much aligned with Trump’s agenda. To me they are all common sense and best for the whole globe. Unfortunately his personal style bothered people so much the MSM was able to sabotage him with lies like the Russia hoax.

Unfortunately his personal style bothered people so much that he sabotaged himself the MSM was able to sabotage him with lies like the Russia hoax

.

Old Star attempts to appear as though he's all about credibility...facts...science...evidence...

Until it doesn't match what he wants to believe.

That's when the proverbial tits head north