News Round-Up: US Supreme Court Discusses Censorship, Covid's Lab Origin and 'Dark Nationalist' Paintings of British Countryside
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
US Supreme Court discusses social media censorship by Biden White House.
Study: Covid-19 most likely to come from the lab.
British Museum: paintings of British countryside evoke dark nationalist feelings.
Billionaire-funded company uses AI to find important minerals for Net Zero move.
US: the Covid pandemic is not over for most Democrats.
US Supreme Court discusses social media censorship by Biden White House
The US Supreme Court on Monday discussed the landmark free speech case that will determine how forcefully the government can compel social media platforms to censor people's opinions. The case began in May 2022, when the attorneys general of the states of Missouri and Louisiana filed a lawsuit against Joe Biden and officials of his administration, alleging that the Biden administration was using social media companies to enforce censorship and thereby suppressing free speech protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Censorship was used in the context of Covid-19 when officials demanded censorship of truthful information – for example, preventing discussion of the possible laboratory origin of the SARS-Cov-2 virus, information and speech critical of the lockdown policy used to contain the spread of the virus, and anything that cast a negative light on Covid vaccines, including talk of vaccine injuries by victims themselves. Other issues were also suppressed – for example, on the instructions of the authorities, social media platforms blocked articles in The New York Post ahead of the 2020 presidential election that exposed the corrupt business practices of Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden while the former was the vice-president under Barack Obama. Posts about possible election fraud in the 2020 presidential election were also deemed inadmissible.
In the autumn of 2022, private individuals who had been censored on social media under pressure or directions from the government were added as plaintiffs in the same case. They include Stanford University medical professor Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, now former Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Martin Kulldorff, psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, creator of The Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft, and Jill Hines, a leader of the consumer and human rights group Health Freedom Louisiana.
In early July last year, Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued an unprecedented ruling banning the U.S. government and its officials from interacting with social media companies in this way. "During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth”," Doughty wrote in a 155-page explanation accompanying his injunction.
In September last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit also said that Biden's White House, top health-care decision-makers and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were likely to have violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The three-judge unanimous decision stated that the White House “coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences”. In other words, undue influence was used to get tech companies to remove or restrict the circulation of posts about, for example, Covid or the elections. At the same time, the ruling limited the scope of the injunction issued by Judge Doughty by removing the ban on some of the agencies that were included in the original injunction.
A debate in the Supreme Court on Monday showed that there is no similar consensus among the country's nine most important judges as there is in the lower court. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently dominated by members of a distinctly conservative wing, but that does not necessarily mean they would support the current appeal. Politico reports that a majority of the justices seemed sceptical about the case at Monday's hearing. Judge Samuel Alito, a conservative judge, represented the side for whom the barrage of emails from the White House and others to the social media companies may have met the legal standard for coercion, according to the publication. According to Alito, it would be unfathomable that officials would be so crude in dealings with the traditional press as they were in emails exchanged with the tech firms. However, two other judges noted that government officials often badger journalists and editors when they think something has been misreported in an article.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, on the other hand, expressed doubts that trying to control the federal government’s interactions with the media was feasible or effective.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she thought lower courts had made errors in the case. She also expressed concern that the rationale behind the suit could prohibit government officials from reaching out to social media platforms about individuals being doxxed, or publishing someone’s personal information online with malicious intent.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by Biden, talked about instances when the government could require speech to be suppressed if there was a compelling interest.
Of course, based on what was said by the court during the hearing, when questions were put to the parties and the parties commented on their positions, a final decision cannot really be predicted. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision by late June.
Study: Covid-19 most likely to come from the lab
Researchers from Australia and the United States estimate that Covid has a nearly 70% probability of coming from a laboratory, according to The Daily Mail. The team compared the characteristics of the virus and the pandemic to 11 criteria that analyzed things like the rarity of a virus, the timing of the pandemic, the population infected, the spread of a virus and the unexpected symptoms of a virus.
Based on the nature of Covid, researchers assigned a score to each category – less than 50 percent meant the pandemic would be classified as a natural outbreak, but 50 or more percent would mean it came from a laboratory. In three categories, the researchers gave maximum points for the laboratory origin of the virus.
In the study, the virus and pandemic scored the maximum number of points in three categories.
The first was the 'existence of a biological risk,' which is considered to be a geopolitical environment from which a biological threat could originate.
With the pandemic, a biological risk was present in an area where dangerous pathogens were researched and where poor lab security could allow a pathogen to be released.
The score was high because Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was located just some 12 kilometres from the wet market believed to have been the site of the first cases of Covid and because Chinese researchers were experimenting with dangerous pathogens under lax protocols.
In the 'unusual strain' category, Covid also scored maximum points. This class was described as virus strains having atypical, rare, newly emerging or antiquated characteristics, as well as showing signs of gain-of-function or genetic engineering.

Lastly, Covid scored maximum points in the 'special insights' category. This was defined as 'suspicious circumstances and other insights identified prior to the outbreak, during the period of outbreak or post-outbreak.' In this area, researchers highlighted the extensive debates around the origin and 'a series of unusual actions at the WIV,' including handing over control of the lab to the military and removing a large virus database containing 20,000 samples from bats and mice.
Across all categories Covid scored 68% of the points, which means that it is highly unlikely that the virus evolved naturally, instead of having escaped from the laboratory.
According to the researchers who carried out the study, their aim was to show that although most of the research carried out still deals with the natural origin of the virus, it cannot be ruled out that it originated in a laboratory. This is particularly true in a situation where a virus that originates naturally from a bat cannot jump to humans, and one would hence need to find the intermediate host that spread the virus to humans. However, this intermediate host has never been identified.
Of course, it should be noted that the result of the study is not surprising and that the origin of the virus can in fact be attributed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Although it was labelled a conspiracy theory at first, critically-minded scientists have linked the virus to the Wuhan laboratory from the very beginning of the pandemic. For example, the institute carried out gain-of-function research of bat coronaviruses and these experiments were in fact funded by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) through the EcoHealth Alliance. However, Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth, was later one of the most ardent promoters of the natural origin theory of the virus, as was the director of the NIAID, Anthony Fauci. We have written more about the case here.
British Museum: paintings of British countryside evoke dark nationalist feelings
The Fitzwilliam Museum, owned by the University of Cambridge in the UK, claims that paintings of the British countryside evoke dark nationalist feelings, reports The Telegraph. This has prompted the museum to undertake an overhaul of its displays. The new signage states that pictures of “rolling English hills” can stir feelings of “pride towards a homeland”. However, visitors are informed that “there is a darker side” to the “nationalist feeling” evoked by images of the British countryside.
The museum has rearranged the paintings into themed categories, which museum director Luke Syson hopes will make the gallery's displays "inclusive and representative". The categories include 'Men Looking at Women', 'Identity', 'Migration and Movement' and 'Nature'.

The 'Nature' category includes English landscapes by artists such as John Constable (1776-1837), Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) and Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), and French scenes by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Paul Cézanne (1839-1906).
A sign for the Nature gallery states: “Landscape paintings were also always entangled with national identity. The countryside was seen as a direct link to the past, and therefore a true reflection of the essence of a nation. Paintings showing rolling English hills or lush French fields reinforced loyalty and pride towards a homeland. The darker side of evoking this nationalist feeling is the implication that only those with a historical tie to the land have a right to belong.”
A sign for the new Identity gallery informs visitors that portraits of uniformed and wealthy sitters “became vital tools in reinforcing the social order of a white ruling class, leaving very little room for representations of people of colour, the working classes or other marginalised people”. (sama lause oli topelt) The paintings in this room include a portrait of Richard FitzWilliam (1745-1816) by Joseph Wright (1734-97), who bequeathed £100,000, his collection of artworks and objects, along with his library, to the University of Cambridge, and his bequest funded the same museum. Labelling for his portrait points out that FitzWilliam’s wealth “came from his grandfather, Sir Matthew Decker, who had amassed it in part through the transatlantic trade of enslaved African people”.
Billionaire-funded company uses AI to find important minerals for Net Zero move
KoBold Metals, a Silicon Valley company in the US, is using artificial intelligence (AI) to create a "treasure map" of new mineral deposits, according to CNBC. In particular, the company is looking for undiscovered reserves of copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel, which are essential metals needed in large quantities to reach zero CO2 emissions or Net Zero – for lithium batteries, wind turbines, solar panels and other technological devices. The company currently has more than 60 exploration projects in several countries. For example, a large copper deposit was recently discovered in Zambia. Josh Goldman, the company's CEO, said that investors were thrilled by the discovery. "They are feeling delighted about this news because this is what we set out to do. The point of the company is to discover, find and develop mineral resources that we need for the energy transition," Goldman said. According to him, the potential for new mineral discoveries in Zambia is huge.
In addition to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the company's investors include well-known billionaires such as fund manager Ray Dalio, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Alibaba founder Jack Ma and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. They are joined by investors such as Norwegian oil company Equinor.
Assessing the company, it can be seen that, alongside supporting the Net Zero policies, wealthy businessmen have again found a lucrative way of investing, as the demand for these metals is growing by leaps and bounds. At the same time, there is also a significant extraction cost – for example, six times as much land has to be moved to retrieve the amount of minerals needed to produce one electric car than it is necessary for an internal combustion engine car. Of course, the environmental footprint of mining on a scale many times larger is also greater.
Here is a short video showing how copper is mined and produced in Zambia:
United States: the Covid pandemic is not over for most Democrats
A recent poll by US polling firm Gallup on whether respondents think the Covid pandemic is finally over showed that not everyone thinks it is. Americans' perceptions on this issue run very clearly along political lines. While 79% of those identifying themselves as Republicans said the pandemic was indeed over, only 41% of Democrats thought the same. Among independent voters, 63% said the pandemic was over.

Overall, 59% of respondents thought the pandemic could be considered over. However, six out of ten respondents said that pre-pandemic normality had not been restored.