Showing posts with label COVID-19 origins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COVID-19 origins. Show all posts

Friday, April 21, 2023

The Answer to Whodunit

Colonel Mustard with revolver image found here
Suppose you had a murder take place, and you want to know "Whodunnit" (who done it). You gather a whole lot of evidence, and nearly all of it points to a particular perpetrator: Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the revolver, say. But what you don’t have is Colonel Mustard coming out and verifying your findings. He’s not willing to show you evidence that it was him; he’s not even showing you evidence that would give him an alibi. As the detective, do you make an arrest and bring forth the case, or do you shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, I guess we’ll never know for certain, because he’s not giving us the final proof"? In just about any crime novel—as well as any real life case—you bring forth the overwhelming evidence you’ve got and see if it convinces a jury beyond reasonable doubt.

For reasons that we can only speculate about, the intelligence community—that mixture of three-letter agencies involved in gathering information and figuring out what’s happening in the world—can’t seem to tell us basic things like where the COVID-19 pandemic started. Despite all the evidence.

A couple of major pieces of information came out this week. One was a Congressional hearing, in the now-GOP-led House. Another was a committee report from a Senate investigation. Both say approximately the same thing: this was a virus created in a lab in Wuhan, China, where gain-of-function in viruses were being worked on, and that leaked from that lab.

Here is what former DNI John Ratcliffe said in his opening statement at the hearing, in its entirety, because this about says it all (I got it from a Robert Gouveia video; the link is queued up to where he starts speaking; Gouveia makes some good commentary here and there):

It’s a pleasure for me to be back in the House of Representatives, where I spent six years serving on the House Intelligence, Judiciary, and Homeland Security committees before leaving Congress when I was confirmed by the Senate to serve as the Director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration.

My confirmation was actually the first in-person Senate hearing after the COVID-19 pandemic began, and during it I promised to ensure that the intelligence community would be laser focused on getting answers to the virus’s origins and spread.

What follows is a brief unclassified overview of what the intelligence community learned and knows, a synopsis of the relevant challenges that I encountered during this effort, and where I believe we must go from here.

First, let me state the bottom line up front. My informed assessment as a person with as much access as anyone to our government’s intelligence during the initial year of the pandemic has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science, and by common sense.

From a view inside the IC [intelligence community], if our intelligence and evidence supporting a lab leak theory was placed side by side with our intelligence and evidence pointing to a natural origin or spillover theory, the lab leak side of the ledger would be long, convincing, even overwhelming, while the spillover side would be nearly empty and tenuous. Were this a trial, a preponderance of circumstantial evidence provided by our intelligence would compel a jury finding of guilt to an accusation that coronavirus research in the Wuhan labs was responsible for the pandemic. And likewise, the Chinese Community Party would be guilty of going to great lengths to cover up the virus’s origins—from destroying medical tests, samples, and data to intimidating and disappearing witnesses and journalists, to lying and coercing global health authorities, even spreading propaganda that the virus originated here in the United States by the US military.

Their efforts continue to this day, as the Chinese Embassy has formally objected to this hearing and this committee’s efforts to ascertain the truth. And the Chinese government has done all of this while proving itself incapable of offering even a shred of exculpatory evidence.

The intelligence community’s sources on this issue are numerous, diverse, and unassailable. And I hope that the recent unanimous Congressional ??? to require the declassification of our COVID origins material will make some of this available to you and the American people.

Right now, a few of the intelligence community’s agencies are publicly assessing that the COVID-19 virus originated from a lab leak in Wuhan. And as this shift continues, the day will come when every single agency in the IC will make the same assessment. Which begs the question: Why have they not? It’s a simple and obvious question that does not have a simple answer.

The challenges that I and other senior Trump administration officials encountered while in office included legitimate concerns about our closely held sources and methods of intelligence, as well as illegitimate roadblocks that related to professional conflicts of interest and partisan politics. These included the headwinds created when a lab leak assessment was initially labeled falsely and falsely reported with near unanimity as a conspiracy theory by conflicted science, scientists, and by mainstream press, while also being censored as disinformation by social media giants.

Internally, national and electoral politics were also influencing the analysis of our intelligence on China within the IC, as reflected in the January 6, 2021, report by the intelligence community’s analytic ombudsman. As a career non-political official, the ombudsman found, “Analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward, because they tend to disagree with the Trump administration’s policies, saying in effect, ‘I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies.’”

To this day, the CIA, which I believe is unquestionably the world’s premiere spy agency, with an unrivaled capacity to acquire information, has continued to state that it does not have enough information to make any formal assessment. To put it bluntly, I think this is unjustifiable and a reflection, not that the agency can’t make an assessment with any confidence, but that it won’t.

Some three and a half years later, the only plausible assessment the agency could make with any level of confidence is that a virus which killed over a million Americans originated in a Chinese lab whose research included work for the Chinese military. And such an assessment would obviously have enormous geopolitical implications that I believe the current administration does not want to face.

Let me close by saying that I think that the search for the truth should drive where we go from here. And everyone, from our intelligence agencies to members of the administration to members of Congress, to public health officials, should put politics aside and let our intelligence speak the truth about what happened—speak the truth to the Americans, who deserve that truth, deserve justice, and deserve accountability. And only by seeking truth, justice, and accountability for this pandemic can we achieve the other equally important goal of preventing the next pandemic.


Former DNI John Ratcliffe, at House investigation hearing,
screenshot from here

He goes on to answer questions, but that will do for now. The other main information source this week was the Senate special committee’s Muddy Waters: The Origins of Covid-19 Report. For a little light reading, you can find the 21-page executive summary here.  And for the full 300-page report, go here

Dr. John Campbell goes over the report, in his usual calm and businesslike style, highlighting the details without too much commentary, which has allowed him to report things without getting banned on YouTube through the duration.

By the way, he’s willing to say he believes the leak was unintentional, and that the coverup has mainly to do with the Chinese desire to save face. He doesn’t think they would have leaked it on purpose, allowing the world to see them in a bad light. The Muddy Waters report also calls it unintentional: “The preponderance of circumstantial evidence supports an unintentional research-related incident.” I haven’t read the totality yet, but there’s the additional behavior of the Chinese allowing travel in and out of Wuhan—but not allowing travel into the rest of the country—causing the spread to the rest of the world. It also appears that the infection began to spread at least a month before originally reported.

Another interesting Dr. Campbell video this week related to a German report on the weird fibrous clots being found in corpses in the last couple of years. They have traced them to the vaccine and ruled out the virus as a cause.

There’s more. On Wednesday, Judicial Watch said it has received documents showing that the NIH granted funding “for experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that sought to create mutant coronavirus variants.” Just the News story here. You can find the 552 pages of documents here

The details and documentation are mounting. But these are things we “knew” early on. That is, we had enough evidence to suppose we knew. The documentary Tracking Down the Origin of Wuhan Coronavirus, done by Epoch Times reporter Joshua Philipp in April 2020, lays out the case for the lab leak and hasn’t been refuted.

What seems puzzling is why it isn’t obvious to more people—regardless of the media and political lies. There’s a good discussion of this (on American Though Leaders with Jan Jekielek for EpochTV) by Debbie Lerman, a self-described “socialist liberal Democrat,” who saw the falsehoods pretty much from the beginning, by reading the research and asking questions. Her friends refused to even allow her to ask questions without the accusation that she was suddenly a MAGA Trump supporter.

She refers to four things that had to be aligned for the deceptive story to spread: “panic, politics, propaganda and profits, the four P’s.” She walks us through those four, and how they each played out.


Debbie Lerman, screenshot from here

I wondered how those would compare to the four things that played into mass formation, described by Mattias Desmet:

1.       a lot of people experiencing a lack of social bonds, a lack of social connectedness.

2.       a lot of people who experience a lack of meaning making.

3.       a lot of people who experience a lot of free-floating anxiety.

4.       a lot of free-floating frustration and aggression.

It seems to me, his four things had to be in place for the four P’s of Lerman to play out. Because we had a lot of people lacking social bonds and meaning making, with anxiety and frustration, then the perpetrators of the pandemic mass formation were able to cause the panic, tie it to politics, control the message with censorship, and allow profits to flow in.

Speaking of profits, the 4th “P,” the WHO, one of the perpetrators of the deception, is attempting to amend its treaty of 2005. Not good. (Another good Dr. John Campbell video about this here.) It is to give them greater unaccountable power over all the nations of the earth. Supposedly they are supported by funding from the various nations. But right now two of the top donors, one of which is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, combine to be the highest donor. And donors get to say what the WHO policies will be. After the manipulations we’ve been through in the last few years, this absolutely must not happen.

So, we have more information. And truth is powerful. It eventually wins. We can hope that, as people wake up from the mass formation, or deception, we can provide them with a huge supply of truth. Other than succumbing to the tyranny, it’s the only way to get through such times.

Friday, June 4, 2021

Who Can You Trust?

A friend posted on Facebook, without comment, a very long Vanity Fair article on the possible origins of the COVID-10 virus. In the midst of news about Anthony Fauci’s emails and the administration’s sudden-but-very-late interest in the origins, I thought I’d read it.


image from the Vanity Fair article

As you’d expect from Vanity Fair, they slip in blame on Trump at every opportunity—and there doesn’t have to be an opportunity; they will make one.

Example 1—in reference to a group of researchers called DRASTIC [Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19], who were looking into the virus origins, doubting the wet market story:

At times, it seemed the only other people entertaining the lab-leak theory were crackpots or political hacks hoping to wield COVID-19 as a cudgel against China. President Donald Trump’s former political adviser Steve Bannon, for instance, joined forces with an exiled Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui to fuel claims that China had developed the disease as a bioweapon and purposefully unleashed it on the world. As proof, they paraded a Hong Kong scientist around right-wing media outlets until her manifest lack of expertise doomed the charade.

With disreputable wing nuts on one side of them and scornful experts on the other, the DRASTIC researchers often felt as if they were on their own in the wilderness, working on the world’s most urgent mystery.

This is several years after Bannon’s advisory role in the Trump campaign.

Example 2—in reference to the February 19, 2020 statement by the medical journal The Lancet, signed by 27 scientists saying, “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” which shut down open discussions on the issue:

And yet, in the wake of the Lancet statement and under the cloud of Donald Trump’s toxic racism, which contributed to an alarming wave of anti-Asian violence in the U.S., one possible answer to this all-important question remained largely off-limits until the spring of 2021.

There was no alarming wave of anti-Asian violence—although that was a storyline invented by the legacy media. Dennis Prager goes through the actual facts here. And anything Donald Trump said against China was clearly against the CCP, not the people. Nor is there any evidence cited (because there wasn’t any to cite) of his “toxic racism.”

Example 3—in reference to former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield’s report—after leaving his position as Trump left office—to the threats and ostracizing he received for trying to voice an opinion that didn’t align with the prescribed narrative as stated in the Lancet:

With President Trump out of office, it should be possible to reject his xenophobic agenda and still ask why, in all places in the world, did the outbreak begin in the city with a laboratory housing one of the world’s most extensive collection of bat viruses, doing some of the most aggressive research?

The fact is that President Trump didn’t have a xenophobic agenda, and reference to such a statement has nothing to do with the subject of this article.

Example 4—in reference to a dossier showing problems with the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s research, compiled by Miles Yu, the State Department’s principal China strategist, who had given it to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who had made it public, following which the Director of National Security attempted to put out an ambiguous statement in support of the “it was natural” narrative:

Then, the bomb-thrower-in-chief weighed in. At a press briefing just hours later, Trump contradicted his own intelligence officials and claimed that he had seen classified information indicating that the virus had come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Asked what the evidence was, he said, “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”

Trump’s premature statement poisoned the waters for anyone seeking an honest answer to the question of where COVID-19 came from. According to Pottinger, there was an “antibody response” within the government, in which any discussion of a possible lab origin was linked to destructive nativist posturing.


Worker inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 23, 2017.
(Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images), image found here

Oddly, the point of the article, in short, is that Deep State operatives prevented the truth from being sought or revealed.

So, if you get past the obvious toxic bias, you can glean some actual facts.

The facts were available a year ago, and were presented accurately, and with good substantiation, in the Epoch Times documentary Tracking Down the Origin of Wuhan Coronavirus, from April 2020. I re-watched it after reading the article. It has held up well. I prefer the straight news of the maligned-as-biased-but-actually-accurate Epoch Times to the snarky, Trump-derangement-syndrome perspective of the Vanity Fair writer. And it was also good to know in April 2020, instead of waiting until June 2021.


Joshua Philipp discusses Fauci emails on Crossroads

The point here is, if you are just now suddenly learning that the virus very likely came from a Wuhan lab just up the street from that wet market they blamed, then you’re listening to the wrong news sources.

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Capitol Hill, May 26, 2021
(Sarah Silbiger-Pool/Getty Images), image found here
One thing the Anthony Fauci emails have been showing is—what we already knew—his willingness to lie to the American people in order to get behavior that he wants to elicit, rather than simply showing the science and letting the people make decisions.

That willingness of officials to lie to us has been a real plague.

I’m still struggling to know for certain when I’m getting accurate information, as I assume everyone is. So, since you can’t get good information from regular news sources, you might as well experiment with some other sources and practice using your discernment. With that in mind, here are some articles and videos that caught my attention lately. Even the most unconventional sources, where you ought to be skeptical, are likely to bring you more truth than the media that conforms to some propaganda narrative. And whatever is true is likely to come out even in the biased MSM eventually.


·        Live Q&A: Fauci Emails Suggest Lab Coverup; Gain-of-Function Research Enters Spotlight” Joshua Philipp on Crossroads, EpochTV  (may require subscription). Philipp speaks about the Vanity Fair article and his documentary from last year. He also covers the Fauci emails. The first ¾ of the program are available on YouTube

 

·        Fauci Team Scrambled in January 2020 to Respond to Lab Leak Allegations, Emails Show” by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke for The Epoch Times, June 3, 2021. 

 

·        Dr. Fauci Under Fire for Sending $600K in Funding to Wuhan Lab; ‘Virus Origin’ Theory Getting Traction” Roman Balmakov on Facts Matter, EpochTV, May 29, 2021. 

 

·        US government officials helped China cover up COVID origins” Tucker Carlson Tonight, June 2, 2021. 

 

·        Study Claims Mask Mandates Didn’t Slow Pandemic” by Dr. Rebecca Deurlein, Katy Christian Magazine, June 3, 2021.  In summary, data shows that “states that mandated masks saw no discernable difference in the spread of Covid-19 from those that did not.”

 

·       "Lawsuit Filed Against Houston Methodist Hospital System for Illegally Requiring Employees to Take Experimental COVID-19 'Vaccine'” by Dr. Steven Hotze, Katy Christian Magazine, May 31, 2021. Here are the concluding paragraphs of this fact-based opinion piece:  

o   This is the first time in the history of the United States that an employer is coercing and forcing its employees to participate in an experimental “vaccine” trial as a condition for continued employment. Methodist Hospital is forcing its employees to be human guinea pigs for this experimental “vaccine.” / In writing to his Methodist employees, David Bernard, CEO of Houston Methodist, Baytown Hospital stated, “100% vaccination is more important than your individual freedom. Every one of you is replaceable. If you do not like what you’re doing you can leave, and we will replace your spot.” This is coercion and it is illegal.

 

·        117 employees sue Houston Methodist over COVID-19 vaccine requirement” by Janelle Bludau, KHOU 11 News, May 28, 2021.  This is a news piece on the same issue as above.

 

·        Vaccine researcher admits ‘big mistake,’ saysspike protein is dangerous ‘toxin’” by Celeste McGovern for LifeSite News, May 31, 2021.  The piece begins with this:


o   New research shows that the coronavirus spike protein from COVID-19 vaccination unexpectedly enters the bloodstream, which is a plausible explanation for thousands of reported side-effects from blood clots and heart disease to brain damage and reproductive issues, a Canadian cancer vaccine researcher said last week.

 

·        Urgent Warning—Teens Experiencing Heart Problems After Jab—Dr. Jane Ruby” on the Stew Peters Show, May 30, 2021.  Dr. Ruby points out that there is nothing “mild” about myocarditis. The numbers that the CDC considers “small” are 148 and growing—higher than a usual trigger for concern and possibly ending a vaccination program—with a surge in cases under 18, now that there is a push for vaccinating teens, who are at very low risk from COVID-19.

 

·        CDC investigates dozens of reports of heartinflammation in teenagers and young adults that occur four days after theirsecond dose of Moderna or Pfizer vaccines” by James Gordon for The Daily Mail, May 22 (updated May 23), 2021.  This is the story referred to in the video above. While much of the story tries to press the importance of vaccination and the danger of the disease, one paragraph says this:


o   Children generally face low risks of Covid, with the fatality rate well below zero, which has raised questions about whether getting them vaccinated against COVID-19 is for kids' own protection or to protect more at-risk adults.

 

·        Dr. Hodkinson Interview—Covid-19 Vaccines, Infertility & Spike Protein Dangers” Independent journalist Taylor Hudak interviews Dr. Roger Hodkinson, uploaded to BitChute May 30, 2021.  Dr. Hodkinson claims to be pro-vaccine, but he fears dangers to young people, and risks of permanent infertility in males and females from the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

 

·        The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: a review of SARS Lab Escapes” by Gilles Demaneuf, Nov. 16, 2020. This is the DRASTIC report referred to in the Vanity Fair piece referenced in today’s post. 

 

·        How Trump’s Vaccines Prevent the Great Reset and Save Humanity” James Fetzer blog post April 30, 2021.  The part that connects the pandemic to what is called the Great Reset, an intentional collapse of world economies in order to replace them with a controlled (socialist) economy is at least an explanation worth examining. Much of the rest of this—the plan to modify humans to be part robots, for example—is too far-fetched for me to entertain as a possibility at this time. But there are bits of information mixed in here. It’s a long read. It also links to this:

o   FULL REPORT: The Plan To Control The Whole World” by David Sörensen for Stop World Control, which looks to be a blog or website. Again, the “take over the world” conspiracy seems far-fetched, but many of the things he talks about I have observed, and he does provide a pretty good list of citations at the end.