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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.

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

To The Eagle:

Excuse me sir, I did not suggest restricting free speech. I advocated separating the wheat from the chaff. I prefer to see printed here, items of quality. Naturally, what one considers trash, another might consider to be treasure.

Our opinion forum has limited space. Only so many words will fit. When the editor sets my opinion aside so that anothers might be published instead, that is not censorship. That is editorial discretion. Ive suggested that our editors discretion should favor civility over derision and facts over fantasy.

Websters more accurate definition of Fascism is A political movement, philosophy or regime that exalts nation and race above the individual, in a centralized autocratic form of government, headed by a dictatorial leader, with suppression of any opposition. That also sounds like Trumpism to me.

Having tasted the power of the presidency and faced with losing it, Trump made a desperate fascist grab for unlimited power, but his attempted White House coup failed. God bless America.

Grace Ling

Puget Island

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Not censorship but editorial discretion - The Wahkiakum County Eagle - The Wahkiakum County Eagle

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.

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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

The buildings located on the Red Square: Kremlin wall (at left) and Saint Basil's Cathedral (at right), Moscow, Russia.(Stock Photo, Getty Images)

Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.

The Russian government escalated its war against social media companies on Wednesday by slowing down access to Twitter in the country in order to protect Russian citizens.

But just like its done in the past, Roskomnadzor, the states communications regulator, appears to have botched its plan to censor a social media platform while at the same time taking down its own website offline, as well as those of the Kremlin and the Russian government, according to several experts and journalists.

Last week, the regulator warned Twitter that it could face heavy fines if it was found guilty of repeatedly failing to remove some 3,000 posts containing information about suicide, child pornography, and drugs dating back to 2017. The regulator added that if Twitter continued to ignore the takedown requests, it would block the platform completely.

But on Wednesday Roskomnadzor took matters into its own hands and took action against the social media company.

Starting March 10, 2021, centralized response measures have been taken against Twitter to protect Russian citizens and force the internet service to comply with Russian legislation, Roskomnadzor said in a statement on Wednesday morning, according to a translation by the Moscow Times.

The agency said it would be slowing down access to Twitter on cell phones and desktops, but according to multiple Twitter users in Russia who posted messages on Wednesday morning, the action so far has had little minimal impact. However, the Russian version of the outages tracking website Down Detector is reporting a spike in issues with Twitter in the country.

The Twitter slow down is part of an escalating stand-off between Moscow and U.S. social media platforms. The action comes just 24 hours after news emerged that Moscow is planning to sue Twitter along with Google, Facebook, Telegram, and TikTok for allegedly failing to delete posts it said illegally urged children to take part in anti-Kremlin protests.

However, it appears that while trying to slow down access to Twitter, Roskomnadzor may have inadvertently knocked its own website offline together with a swathe of other Russian government sites and services, including the official Russian government website and Kremlin.ru though the latter subsequently came back online with a warning that its not secure.

At one point the Russian authorities appeared to blame the outage on a U.S. cyberattack, with Senator Andrey Klimov referring to reports this week that Washington is preparing a digital attack against Russia in response to recent moves against U.S. targets.

But then Russias Ministry of Digital Development laid the blame for the websites going offline on malfunctioning equipment operated by Rostelecom, a Russian telecoms provider, claiming the outage had nothing to do with the efforts to throttle Twitter.

But Russian experts believe that the effort to slow down Twitter and the sudden removal of several government websites are related.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on the Russian governments efforts to control cyberspace, said on Twitter Wednesday that the throttling of the social network is what caused the website outages in Russia.

Meanwhile, investigative journalist Alexey Kovalev pointed out that an almost identical incident befell Roskomnadzor in 2018 when it attempted to block Telegram. This was because Russias security services decided that Telegram was a tool for terrorists due to the messaging services strong encryption preventing them from seeing what people were saying to each other.

And Financial Times Moscow correspondent Max Seddon wrote that it looks like Russia managed to take all the government websites offline in its attempts to slow down Twitter...Another crushing success.

Twitter, which didnt immediately respond to VICE News request for comment, is only used by around 3 percent of the Russian population. But it has become a space for hyper-politicized speech in the country, according to experts, particularly around the poisoning, and subsequent arrest and jailing of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

Roskomnadzor has no power to actually block any website or service itself. In 2018, it provided a list of IP addresses of Telegram users to the internet service providers, who then implement the block.

Trying to avoid being shut down, Telegram switched its IP addresses to Google and Amazons cloud infrastructure. But because thousands of Russian businesses and much of Russias critical IT infrastructure depend on the same services when Roskomnadzor decided to block those addresses too, Telegram remained online while the websites of online businesses and services were blocked.

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Russia May Have Censored the Kremlin Website While Trying to Censor Twitter - VICE