Interesting stuff
" Personally I believe nothing"? Isn't believing nothing, still a belief? Hence there is a belief in something. Thus was created the great Ying and Yang. Nothing turning into something and back to nothing, the great revolution that creates evolution. Just having fun, discernment is indeed a wise, wise choice when interpreting data from outside sources.
batfink wrote:What did you make of that video Jono?
I dunno, I looked at it for a while. Probably watched it for longer than I watched the Surf Ranch comp.
batfink wrote:indo-dreaming wrote:But hey maybe ive also been kind of brainwashed by MSM narrative on some things.
Ah Indo, nothing to worry about there. These days we are almost bound to either be brainwashed by the MSM narrative, or the non-MSM narrative. I’m sure the non-MSM narrative might consider themselves free thinkers (or as Supafreak’s cartoon suggests, “analysts”), and I’m ok with whatever they want to call themselves, but the idea that they have somehow freed themselves of a narrative is just as naive.
Even the term ‘MSM narrative’ is a misnomer, as though there is one particular story out there. Presumably Faux News isn’t part of the MSM, although how that could be true defies rational consideration. Sort of like Alan Jones railing against ‘teh elites’. A non-sequitur.
There is no single MSM narrative. Nearly all of those organisations are corporations and their purpose is to make money, not bring you a dispassionate list of news items according to importance. Truth? That was jettisoned long ago.
So what is more likely is that everyone consumes “news” in the wrong way, not realising how curated it is. That equally applies to non-MSM news sources, but here too the scepticism reflex is abandoned.
That’s what I find disturbing. It seems we are all in one of two camps, either highly sceptical of any MSM news, but completely gullible muggins on anything from non-traditional outlets, or vice versa. Sypkans item putting up a Faux News diatribe from some clown called Watters that barely scratched the realms of reality, as somehow being revelatory was either laughable or disturbing, I’m not sure which.
Noam Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’ videos from the 80s still apply. Getting real news is a thousand times more difficult than then, but the ideas are still relevant.
Read Jane Mayer’s ‘Dark Money’ to see how the MSM narrative was being engineered by arch-capitalists for their own ends since the 70s.
Personally, I believe nothing. Every conviction is a prison.
I agree with some of this to an extent and much i don't agree with.
I do think there is a generally mainstream narratives on certain topics though, like last year the Lab leak theory was reported as pretty much debunked, there wasn't much media at all that challenged this (well not that i saw, even in conservative media), as to do so at the time you appeared like a conspiracy theorist
I found myself swallowing it and if someone said it leaked from a lab on social media, id reply with a link that it wasn't possible.
Then as time went on some things started to change my mind, i think it was the guy who had worked for the WHO on Joe rogan.
Now the narrative has completely changed.
There has been quite a few examples through this Covid thing.
Listened to this today on podcast, much of it along the line of the conversation.
"Bari Weiss is a writer and former New York Times columnist who resigned from the paper last year"
"...There is no single MSM narrative. Nearly all of those organisations are corporations and their purpose is to make money, not bring you a dispassionate list of news items according to importance. Truth? That was jettisoned long ago."
I think you are kidding yourself there...
there's most certainly an accepted narrative for the majority of the mainstream players, the 'polite society' players... the 'responsible outlets' as 'the atlantic' recently put it, trying to explain away their shirking of any resposibility, for ignoring the bloody obvious, on the biggest story of a lifetime...
and "...their purpose is to make money..."
yeh nah...
you reckon jeff bezos is making money? ...cnn, with their most abysmal of ratings? ...the guardian?
the acceptable narrative is so bleeding obvious its painful, ...very very painful....
"...So what is more likely is that everyone consumes “news” in the wrong way, not realising how curated it is. That equally applies to non-MSM news sources, but here too the scepticism reflex is abandoned."
I think you under estimate many punters, yes fox and cnn have their diehards, who are both as dangerous and delusional as each other, but many, if not most viewers, know exactly what they are getting when they tune in
"...That’s what I find disturbing. It seems we are all in one of two camps, either highly sceptical of any MSM news, but completely gullible muggins on anything from non-traditional outlets, or vice versa. Sypkans item putting up a Faux News diatribe from some clown called Watters that barely scratched the realms of reality, as somehow being revelatory was either laughable or disturbing, I’m not sure which."
ok, rather than broad sweeping say a lot - but commit to nothing, and prove nothing - statements, let's break that 'barely scratched the realms of reality' down... to either / ors...
a) russian bounties, totally hyped only to be walked back? ...yes or no
b) cnn guy said, '....biden is the most protected president ever...' (...after cnn totally sheltering him for 12 months or more...)? ...yes or no
c) after at least 3 months of the framing of the 'peaceful protests', ...did 'the narrative' reluctantly change to condemning the 'violence' to appease the polls? ...yes or no
d) hunter biden's laptop, ...hunter's laptop or 'russian misinformation' campaign? ...yes or no
e) lab leak theory, ...changed from 'conspiracy theory', to a totally viable theory (very likely a more probable theory....)? ...yes or no
"Noam Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’ videos from the 80s still apply. Getting real news is a thousand times more difficult than then, but the ideas are still relevant."
yeh, and I see matt taibbi is revisiting them, and he takes a very similar posiion to me on all of the above, and just about everything else...
ie. the corruption of the leftist corporate media
"...Read Jane Mayer’s ‘Dark Money’ to see how the MSM narrative was being engineered by arch-capitalists for their own ends since the 70s.
Personally, I believe nothing. Every conviction is a prison."
well that's not exactly true, because your biases are just as obvious as everyone else's, despite you liking to think you've been trained otherwise...
that's not intended as a personal shot, just an observation, and we all have 'belief' and 'trust' in something / someone... we have to... or we'd be nutty loose conspiracy crazies... and I 'believe' you are not...
just mislead like the rest of us... that's what the contemporary media landscape does....
A courteous and reasoned response sypkan.
A) like the claims that trump’s election was backed, and hacked, by Russians, there is neither enough interest or information to bother with. Faux News is hardly an unbiased source of news. Equally the evidence that Trump sought to pressure the President of a foreign country to investigate Biden’s son is hardly contested, and yet nothing of substance has come forward.
Agree to disagree.
B) No, a largely laughable line, basically just an echo of shrill news and websites. Zero evidence because it is a largely unquantifiable claim.
C) the storming of the Capitol was never considered a peaceful protest, so axiomatically, no
D) Hunter Biden’s laptop? Apparently they have it and yet they aren’t able to contrive any charges against him. In that sense, does it really matter? No
E) lab leak theory, yes, has gone from a fringe conspiracy theory to being accepted as a viable theory. Original response to it was over the top, however you must remember that the theory was proffered without evidence, and was politically charged, not evidence based. The issue of whether it was lab generated or natural remains entirely moot, and likely never answered. Natural occurrence from a wet market, where they sell bats for eating, still entirely plausible.
Yeah, it’s hard to believe that someone could get by without a belief system isn’t it. Took me a long time to reach that. Thank you.
I haven’t revealed any of my biases yet, you’ve just read a batch into them. Dispassionate observation is a lost art. Actual analysis also.
By the way, I read the entirety of the comments thread below Matt Taibbi’s piece, as well as the piece of course. Such a stark contrast with the zerohedge comments. Was a fun way to spend an afternoon down a rabbit hole, but at least it was with interesting people.
I’ll reveal one of my main biases sypkan. I can’t stand certainty. I find people who can speak or write with certainty just frightening. It isn’t the doubtful that are the problem it’s those who walk around with absolute certainty in their hearts and minds.
You sought yes or no answers from me. Yes and no require certainty. This binary vision of ‘reality’ isn’t actually a strength of mine. I prefer to live in a largely grey zone, withholding belief.
Batfink, I like your point E.
It's a very relevant point, at the time when this was first put forward there was practically no reasonable evidence and it was put forward by people with an extreme political interest in it being true.
I'd add that I think the response by many people and the media in general was a lot due to the fact that making such accusations is a really irresponsible, bad idea without really solid evidence.
I think Sypkan is reading a great deal of malice into things that just don't have much of it in reality.
thanks for the response... but geez ...really?!
I think you are being a bit evasive...
I'm not talking in absolutes, I'm talking about the points raised in the video you said '... barely scratched the realms of reality...'
the points were about the change in 'narrative' from the media, from absolute absolutes to the opposite being possibles and likely probables... sometimes full concedes that they totally overplayed their hand...
a)"It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.
But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-intel-walks-back-claim-russians-put-bou...
you seem to be well on the road to whataboutism...
b) the cnn guy literally said, '....biden is the most protected president ever...' or something to that effect...
cnn were also pushing for a press conference, weeks if not months after biden's election, ...because biden was a hiden... biden's press conferences are a joke, hand picked 'journalists', minimal questions, with minders in the wings shitting their pants. these are hardly points of contention...
c) what's the storming of the capitol got to do with anything?
it was widely reported that the polls showed blm was losing the democrats votes. they (and their media sycophants) literally changed their narrative overnight from 'peaceful protests' to condemning the violence...
not really about 'belief'....
d) "Hunter Biden’s laptop? Apparently they have it and yet they aren’t able to contrive any charges against him. In that sense, does it really matter? No"
the fact hunter doesn't even try to deny it's his laptop, ...kinda confirms it is...
the rest... hmmmmmmm
e) trump hinted he had evidence, ...but said "I'm not allowed to talk about that..."
if the 'journalists' were worth a pinch of shit, they would have investigated to confirm or deny either way... but they didn't...
they shut it down because it challenged their obsessively whimsical sensibilities and worldview ...not very journalistic... quite pathetic actually...
and the scientists? ...well... what a fail...
wet market? ...yeh plausible... but looking less and less probable with with every passing month... which is many many months now...
happy for you you don't see, or care, of the significance of such things, but many people certainly do, and contrary to 'the narrative', that's more about accountability and the absolute failure of the whole system rather than pointing blame or any perceived racism
we started well... but sorry, you're just seeming disingenous... or possibly totally biased...
haha
It sure is a complex narrative you weave Sypkan.
incapable of processing more than two conflicting positions jq?
well yeh... we've seen that time and time again...
What are these alleged conflicting positions then sypkan?
I dunno what you think you've seen time and time again, but I'm happy for you either way cobba.
well, you are very... "you're eiher with us or against us" ...on every single issue, ...every time!
you've even stated as such at least once
you accept and parrot the shameless propaganda and bullshit the likes of greenwald and taibbi are railing against, ...every single time, ....without any capaciy for critical thought at all it would seem...
that's fine, if that's your shtick, that's your mission...
but I think you and others need to think about why people like greenwald and taibbi are now only getting a run at places like zerohedge and fox...
also maybe consider why former collegues of theirs have gone as far as to suggest substack should be censored...
and rather than reactively attacking the source, actually engage in the material...
but up to you, do what you want, it makes for good sport if nothing else... but as to how helpful or productive it is... well...
Practically everything you've said there could be said about you mate. Look at your reaction to batfinks considered response to your comment. Didn't take long for you to dismiss it did it, fell right back into accusations of bias and disingenuousness.
I think you need to take a look at the connections and conclusions you are drawing. I think a lot of what you ascribe to malice (e.g. those evil leftist medias!!11) is more likely to be a combination of a number of things such as: A rapidly changing set of information, an overly cautious approach to information about medical treatments (remember, people were and are drinking bleach as a 'cure') and a climate of severe misinformation (remember people burning down 5g towers because???). Sure it's not the entire story, a decent portion is probably just out of a knee jerk reaction to someone they don't like, but you are doing the exact same thing when you by default, ascribe all of it to some sort of malice or evil or corruption.
You are not thinking about it critically at all, you have your narrative and you are committed wholeheartedly to it.
You, sypkan, accept and parrot all sorts of things, so long as they attack the villains in your narrative you seem to pretty much accept it.
You show me some examples of the 'shameless propaganda' I'm parroting then, I'm happy to pull it apart.
How helpful and productive do you think your complex, vitriolic narrative posting is?
I find it really grating that you constantly rail against 'narratives' whilst having constructed such a complex one of your own - take a brief glance in the mirror.
Im sorry jq, batfink's response may have been considered, but he did go off track a bit. we were talking about specific points I took from the vid, ...that may be due to the nature of the internet, or it may be people's tendency to tit for tat on it... be it relevant or not...
I didn't dismiss it, just tried to hone it back in. I respect his position, though I do think he often displays just as much bias and evidence of being mislead as he often accuses others of...
I don't assign it to malice, or the "evil leftist medias", you seem to be fighting a different beast in your head there... but I do assign it to corruption of process, ...as many others do...
the corruption comes from the very top, in so many ways...
bleach? medical treatments? 5G towers?
who are you arguig with?
Im not saying anything against medical recommendations... and I don't see their relevance to the lab...
"You are not thinking about it critically at all, you have your narrative and you are committed wholeheartedly to it."
that's bullshit, I'm just putting stuff up that doesn't get a run in the dogmatic (terribly curated) mainstream press. many times I've said, ...we still don't know, ...we need to wait and see... but if I was a betting man...
you up for another bet?
lab v wet market.... charity of your choice...
"You, sypkan, accept and parrot all sorts of things, so long as they attack the villains in your narrative you seem to pretty much accept it."
but do I? ...do I present it as gospel? ...as you do... word for word?. ...not to be contested? ...or do I, more often than not, just ask the questions? ...the questions you think are just too dangerous to even ask... the questions that shouldn't be aired... shouldn't be 'platformed'...
I don't see villians at all, I just see a very divided body politic, ...with some very unhealthy, dogmatic, righteous, extremely uncompromising views out on the extreme wing, ...of both sides!
"You show me some examples of the 'shameless propaganda' I'm parroting then, I'm happy to pull it apart."
mate, do we really need to go over the russiagate thing again?
the 'peaceful protests'? you seen the vids yet?
kavanaugh?
the many many trump threads? ....and every dogmatic propagandic hyperbolic angle the mainstream press (and you...) threw at him?
china versus russian trolls?
your mindless parroting of labor propaganda?
the immigration 'debate'?
"How helpful and productive do you think your complex, vitriolic narrative posting is?"
well that's your perspective... your entitled to find offense in me talking about the daily debates in the news if you wish... sorry for taking an interest in news and views you find inconvenient... as to how productive it is? ...we'll see... mate your world view is such a sheltered workshop, you are not willing to addeess any issues people outside your niche ideology find important or threatening. I can only praise the gods you don't set the daily agenda of importance
"I find it really grating that you constantly rail against 'narratives' whilst having constructed such a complex one of your own - take a brief glance in the mirror."
right back at you ol' boy...
if you haven't picked up on the 'narratives' thing, you aren't as smart as I thought...
Sypkan, if you want to actually pull apart those points of difference I'm more than willing, but you're going to have to stop straw-manning like this. If you want to debate the various points of US politics where we've disagreed I'm happy to, but do it in the right thread - it'll just derail things otherwise.
A lot of these views here that you've ascribed to me just aren't things I've said, some of them I've never even commented on. I suspect the reason for you doing this is, of course, your narrative - as one of 'the baddies' I must have the views of other 'baddies' too, this just isn't true.
What's this about bets? Pretty sure we never had one? If I had to make one re lab vs natural origins, I'd bet that we'll never have evidence to a sufficient quality to definitively prove either way.
I've 'picked up' on the narratives thanks Sypkan, what I don't get is why you can't see your own narrative here. I just think it's pretty absurd the amount of vitriol you unload about narratives without any reflection as to your own...
ok, I was wrong about you jq, and I apologise
the 'vitriol' you perceive, is just throwing it back at an ideology that talks a lot about toxicity and tolerance, whilst practicing at the wrong ends of both... an ideology that is full of villianising, malice, and 'evil' winged media empires, whilst appearing to have no self reflection whatsoever of what image it is they are projecting... and you do go there...
but let's move on, re. the lab...
"I'd bet that we'll never have evidence to a sufficient quality to definitively prove either way."
I've read this so many times now, and sorry I just can't believe that certain people of a certain persuasion just accept this as a given. the SARS origin wasn't just dismissed and given up on, the MERS one wasn't left a convenient mystery... every other modern virus outbreak has been researched extensively to find the hows and whys
and now the biggest, most destructive, most impacting virus in a lifetime, and it is just brushed off as... 'oh well, that's that....'
this thinking is just bizarre to me
inconceivably so
JQ wrote:Batfink, I like your point E.
It's a very relevant point, at the time when this was first put forward there was practically no reasonable evidence and it was put forward by people with an extreme political interest in it being true.
I'd add that I think the response by many people and the media in general was a lot due to the fact that making such accusations is a really irresponsible, bad idea without really solid evidence.
I think Sypkan is reading a great deal of malice into things that just don't have much of it in reality.
What garbage.
There is only two reasons in never got the attention it deserved from day one.
1. Trump supported the idea, so anything Trump says much of the media etc had to instantly say the exact opposite.
2. Organisations like the WHO didn't want to upset China, i guess in part because they needed their cooperation to an extent or just because they were scared to piss China off.
Okay the market was also going to always be a place to investigate nobody is suggesting otherwise, but the lab should have had as much attention from day one, i believe there is only two labs in the world that do gain of function research with coronaviruses including Sars 2 type viruses, and the outbreak just happens to be a few kilometres from one of these labs?
You can never write off the possibility of it just being a huge coincidence, but it could also be exactly what it seemed and from day one should have had as much attention from authorities to investigate.
Sardine run South Africa.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10159765819535774&id=661685773
Adani haters are going to hate this, hot of the press.
"Bravus’ has now struck coal and exposed the first of the coal seams at our Carmichael Project."
https://www.bravus.com.au/we-have-struck-coal-at-carmichael/
Really info? Not so fast buster ...
https://www.acf.org.au/acf-wins-adani-court-case
So reassured my ongoing donations go towards making such a massive difference ...
Yes really Guy
And yes they have jumped hurdle after hurdle, and had lies after lies published about them (including water use/allocation), which even continued in the Guardian recently some BS that the coal will be used for plastics that the company has publicly announced is BS.
We're on track to export first coal this year," Mr Boshoff said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-24/bravus-formerly-adani-strikes-car...
And no your donations if you are silly enough to throw your money away, has been pissed up a wall, by some inner-city late drinking kook, probably named Guy.
indo-dreaming wrote:quote=JQ]
i believe there is only two labs in the world that do gain of function research with coronaviruses.
I’m sure if you say it that this has been reported. I’m less sure that you realise that there is no way to verify this, that there are literally hundreds of labs doing research with germs that would curl your hair, quite a few in Australia actually. Not necessarily doing gain of function as you understand it, or with coronaviruses. More things like anthrax, Ebola, (death rates in the vicinity of 50%+ for some of these, as opposed to 0.1% for Covid, or whatever recent figure you’d like to pin your hat on)
So research in North Korea, Russia, the US (ooh ah), China, are undoubtedly doing biological research that probably plays around with the possibility of wiping out humanity if there is a leak. They are not telling the world what they are doing. It’s a secret.
I just wouldn’t put much store in the ‘just two’ labs. I’m also happy to agree with Jon Stewart’s piece on the Colbert tonight show. I just can’t tell how serious he’s being. Sure, there is a lab nearby. Also there is a wet market there where they sell, umm, bats, live, for eating, along with all manner of other animals. Conditions are somewhat unsanitary by western standards, by all reports. Bats harbour the greatest number of viruses of just about any animal on earth. They are kept in cages for sale, lots of other live animals nearby, substantial opportunity for viruses to cross over.
Just saying, I’d rather live In a world where people were a little less sure about themselves. The information everyone is getting is highly filtered, highly slanted, perfectly delivered to arouse, not to inform. Nobody has more than a tiny percentage of the information necessary to make informed decisions, and a tiny percentage of that tiny percentage have the necessary training to make even the slightest sense of it. Mostly, they’re not on swellnet, or websites dedicated to revealing some new world order.
We’re all getting played. I’d just rather be on the side that knows that it’s being played and not react to it. Otherwise you just become a wind up toy, the monkey to the organ grinder.
sypkan wrote:"I'd bet that we'll never have evidence to a sufficient quality to definitively prove either way."
I've read this so many times now, and sorry I just can't believe that certain people of a certain persuasion just accept this as a given. the SARS origin wasn't just dismissed and given up on, the MERS one wasn't left a convenient mystery... every other modern virus outbreak has been researched extensively to find the hows and whys
and now the biggest, most destructive, most impacting virus in a lifetime, and it is just brushed off as... 'oh well, that's that....'
this thinking is just bizarre to me
inconceivably so
I think we’re getting close to the issue here sypkan. You seem to think that SARS, MERS and I think there were at least two others since 2000 that had their origins traced. You seem to think they were absolutely cleared to have been of animal origin, but science doesn’t work like that. They were merely shown to have been likely transmitted from animals, and they showed a conceivable pathway. None of them showed incontrovertible proof that they couldn’t have been grown in a lab, and anyone who says that isn’t a scientist.
But the real impact of what you say is your need for certainty, this underlying idea that things need to be ‘settled’, agreed upon, worked out. This certainly isn’t the way science works. A more singnificant issue is that humans have an underlying need for narrative to make sense of the world around them. Religion covered this for millennia but now we are in the age of science and that doesn’t provide that same level of certainty.
You’re battling with a desire for control, an entirely predictable response to unfathomable times. However as conscient, sentient beings, we can write a new script for ourselves.
What hasn’t changed is the level of ‘control’ you or anybody else had, only your perception of what is in control. We never had any on a global scale or even anything outside our own responses to ‘events’.
The reality is that very little is under the control of anyone. You can either get used to that reality, or just build up mythical certainties to buttress your psyche against a constant onslaught of uncertainty, doubt, and not knowing what tomorrow holds.
I’ve chosen the former.
batfink wrote:I just wouldn’t put much store in the ‘just two’ labs. I’m also happy to agree with Jon Stewart’s piece on the Colbert tonight show. I just can’t tell how serious he’s being. Sure, there is a lab nearby. Also there is a wet market there where they sell, umm, bats, live, for eating, along with all manner of other animals. Conditions are somewhat unsanitary by western standards, by all reports. Bats harbour the greatest number of viruses of just about any animal on earth. They are kept in cages for sale, lots of other live animals nearby, substantial opportunity for viruses to cross over.
.
Yes we all originally believed there was bats sold at the market and that people there ate bats, and then there was this pangolin thing.
But the problem is although the market sold lots of animals it DIDNT sell either bats or pangolins, authority's would have known this very quickly, so why have we been strung along to think this?
BTW. People in some areas like the South region of China do sometimes eat bats, but in the Wuhan area (central china) bats are rarely if ever eaten, hence why they weren't sold at the market.
There is also no local populations of bats nearby, the bats that host these types of viruses are generally horse shoe bats that are found over a thousands kilometres away.
And yes in caves in these areas with horsehoe bats they have found very similar viruses to Covid, one that was being messed with in the Wuhan lab.
Reliable links backing up no Bats or pangolins sold at the market:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-covid-19-bats-...
BTW. I have no interest in the Jon Stewart’ thing there is much better discussions/interviews with more educated people like Jamie Metzl an advisor to the WHO or Evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein or even Nicholas Wade
In regard to the two lab thing, yeah sure there are many labs doing all kinds of suss stuff, but this lab wasn't just messing around with any viruses it was doing gain of function research with viruses that are very very close to Covid-19, this isn't a common thing, hence why there is even some type of USA funding.
There was even reports and concerns a few years before covid about the lab not taking the safety precautions that they should have been.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/us-officials-raised-alarms-about-safe...
And then there is the fact that even after testing hundreds of thousands of animals they still cant find any evidence of the virus in a Intermediate host like a pangolin or civet etc.
nah batfink...
nice psychanalysis... but nah...
not a dismissive nah, there's a bit of truth there... Im an idealist, and I can't stand bullshit, and I also have a casual interest in science, so I wish to know with some certainty what is most likely, ...but no control issues...
and tbh, your control theory, is straight outa the mainstream press' playbook for belittling and controlling the unruly, but lately way too close to the truth 'conspiracy theorists'. ...lately seen getting a run at all the usual suspects...
it's the dismissive attitude that pisses me off more than anything, that's not a shot at you, this dismissive attitude comes right from the top ...the very very top! ...and percolates down, you of all people should well know that...
it's like they are priming us, trying to hem our expectations... preparing us for their prepared to release 'truth'...
and then when people like you and jq get on the bandwagon, I get a little frustrated... at you being played and primed as much as me...
even if they tell us what happened, and it aligns with my estimates, I'll barely believe them, there's many forces at work here, many vested interests, ...and the china part is just the beginning...
yep, indo, seen it reported there was actually no bats for sale at that market, ...but geez they've gotten some mileage outo that narrative...
and nearest natural bats 1000 kms away...
I've read there's 8 labs across the world doing similar research, ...that'd be 8 at least you'd imagine, as batfink rightly points out
the main point isn't to bash china, the main point is it's well past time for a time of reckoning on such things... as frog astutely pointed out days ago
I really enjoy reading everyone’s take on this thread and glad it’s fairly civil , be great if we were all in the lineup one day sharing waves and taking the piss out of each other.
Blowin wrote:
@blowin , I brushed some fire coral at lacerations once and didn’t know what the fuck had hit me , still had pain and rash 2 weeks later
Yes info, you are right
"A year ago, the idea that Covid-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan – a short distance from the wet market that is usually claimed to be the source of the virus – was dismissed as a crackpot theory, supported only by Donald Trump, QAnon and hawks on the right looking to escalate tensions dangerously with China.
Now, after what has been effectively a year-long blackout of the lab-leak theory by the corporate media and the scientific establishment, President Joe Biden has announced an investigation to assess its credibility. And as a consequence, what was treated until a few weeks ago as an unhinged, rightwing conspiracy is suddenly being widely aired and seriously considered by liberals..."
"...Viruses are known to have escaped from labs like Wuhan’s many times before, and leaked US cables show Washington was concerned about safety procedures and security at the Wuhan lab two years before the emergence of Covid-19. There are now reports, rejected by China, that several staff at Wuhan got sick in late 2019, shortly before Covid-19 exploded on to the world stage. Did a human-manipulated novel coronavirus escape from the lab and spread around the world?
No interest in truth
Here we get to the tricky bit. Because nobody in a position to answer that question appears to have any interest in finding out the truth – or at least, they have no interest in the rest of us learning the truth. Not China. Not US policy-makers. Not the World Health Organisation. And not the corporate media.
The only thing we can state with certainty is this: our understanding of the origins of Covid has been narratively managed over the past 15 months and is still being narratively managed. We are being told only what suits powerful political, scientific and commercial interests.
We now know that we were misdirected a year ago into believing that a lab leak was either fanciful nonsense or evidence of Sinophobia – when it was very obviously neither...."
"...No one in power truly wants to get to the bottom of this story. In fact, quite the reverse. Were we to truly understand its implications, this story might have the potential not only to hugely discredit western political, media and scientific elites but even to challenge the whole ideological basis on which their power rests.
Which is why what we are seeing is not an effort to grapple with the truth of the past year, but a desperate bid by those same elites to continue controlling our understanding of it. Western publics are being subjected to a continuous psy-op by their own officials."
Virus experiments
Last year, the safest story for the western political and scientific establishments to promote was the idea that a wild animal like a bat introduced Covid-19 to the human population. In other words, no one was to blame. The alternative was to hold China responsible for a lab leak, as Trump tried to do.
But there was a very good reason why most US policy-makers did not want to go down that latter path. And it had little to do with a concern either to refrain from conspiracy theories or to avoid provoking unnecessary tension with a nuclear-armed China.
Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times science writer, set out in May, in an in-depth investigation, why the case for a lab leak was scientifically strong, citing some of the world’s leading virologists.
But Wade also highlighted a much deeper problem for US elites: just before the first outbreak of Covid, the Wuhan lab was, it seems, cooperating with the US scientific establishment and WHO officials on its virus experiments – what is known, in scientific parlance, as “gain-of-function” research.
Gain-of-function experiments had been paused during the second Obama administration, precisely because of concerns about the danger of a human-engineered virus mutation escaping and creating a pandemic. But under Trump, US officials restarted the programme and were reportedly funding work at the Wuhan lab through a US-based medical organisation called the EcoHealth Alliance.
The US official who pushed this agenda hardest is reported to have been Dr Anthony Fauci – yes, the US President’s chief medical adviser and the official widely credited with curbing Trump’s reckless approach to the pandemic. If the lab leak theory is right, the pandemic’s saviour in the US might actually have been one of its chief instigators...."
as I suggested months ago, trump and faucci seem to have a pact of silence between them, because they are both complicit... if that wasn't the case, big mouth trump would've blown it all wide open 12 months ago...
"...And to top it off, senior officials at the WHO have been implicated too, for being closely involved with gain-of-function research through groups like EcoHealth..."
and the WHO, they aren't just protecting china! ...their embarrassing behaviour and flip flops has been just too contradictory, flip floppy and shaming for it to be only about being bought by china... they are mainly scientists at the end of the day... one of em would've broken ranks...
"...Colluding in deceit
This seems to be the real reason why the lab-leak theory was quashed so aggressively last year by western political, medical and media establishments without any effort to seriously assess the claims or investigate them. Not out of any sense of obligation towards the truth or concern about racist incitement against the Chinese. It was done out of naked self-interest.
If anyone doubts that, consider this: the WHO appointed Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, the very group that reportedly funded gain-of-function research at Wuhan on behalf of the US, to investigate the lab-leak theory and effectively become the WHO’s spokesman on the matter. To say that Daszak had a conflict of interest is to massively understate the problem..."
'conflict of interest' ...massively understate indeed... one cannot even believe they expected this to go unoticed...
anyway, good article, that's just the start, worth the read...
ps. no idea who jonathon cook is... I know he's from Nazareth ...so sorry if he's too 'Jonathon of Nazareth' conservative for you no platform types... but give it a go... it'll be character building...
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-06-01/wuhan-lab-leak-inquiry/
"...The extent to which major media are not only negligently failing to cover the story with any seriousness but are also actively continuing to collude in deceiving their audiences – and sweeping these egregious conflicts of interest under the carpet – is illustrated by this article published by the BBC at the weekend.
The BBC ostensibly weighs the two possible narratives about Covid’s origins. But it mentions none of Wade’s explosive findings, including the potential US role in funding gain-of-function research at Wuhan. Both Fauci and Daszak are cited as trusted and dispassionate commentators rather than as figures who have the most to lose from a serious investigation into what happened at the Wuhan lab.
Given this context, the events of the past 15 months look much more like a pre-emptive cover-up: a desire to stop the truth from ever emerging because, if a lab leak did occur, it would threaten the credibility of the very structures of authority on which the power of western elites rests.
Media blackout
So why, after the strenuously enforced blackout of the past year, are Biden, the corporate media and the scientific establishment suddenly going public with the possibility of a China lab leak?
The answer to that seems clear: because Nicholas Wade’s article, in particular, blew open the doors..."
one likes to think they can trust the likes of the BBC and ABC over the mainstream press...
(whatever that term means to you)
but yeh nah...
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-06-01/wuhan-lab-leak-inquiry/
sypkan wrote:yep, indo, seen it reported there was actually no bats for sale at that market, ...but geez they've gotten some mileage outo that narrative...
and nearest natural bats 1000 kms away...
I've read there's 8 labs across the world doing similar research, ...that'd be 8 at least you'd imagine, as batfink rightly points out
the main point isn't to bash china, the main point is it's well past time for a time of reckoning on such things... as frog astutely pointed out days ago
8 hmmm don't recall that figure, do you remember where you read this?
I think in a fairly recent podcast with Bret Weinstein it was two but maybe i missed some detail and these are the two major labs (from memory the other was maybe in Seattle), either way even 8 is still a low number when world wide,
The chance of an outbreak starting a few kilometres from even one in 8 of these labs in the world when it could happen anywhere in the world or at least anywhere in somewhere like Asia with wet markets is pretty unlikely odds, possible but unlikely..
The Lab should have had as much attention as the market from day one.
And surely they knew very early that bats and pangolins were not sold at the market and that it was rare for people in wuhan to eat bats.
But instead 99% of media from day one are painting a picture of bats and pangolins being sold at the market, half the world thinking most of China eat bats and people even thinking it came from bat soup or some other BS, and the rest of us including me believing it came from a bat via a pangolin because thats what the so called experts were saying, and here we were laughing at those that thought it came from bat soup and looking down on anyone that suggested it leaked from a lab as conspiracy theorist..
it's crazy in hindsight to think we didnt question things more and how we were so quick to write others off as nutters.
can't remember where indod, but they were only referring to 'similar research', and said there's only 2 labs doing the high end shit ...or should be...
"The chance of an outbreak starting a few kilometres from even one in 8 of these labs in the world when it could happen anywhere in the world or at least anywhere in somewhere like Asia with wet markets is pretty unlikely odds, possible but unlikely..
The Lab should have had as much attention as the market from day one."
exactly, at least as much attention... as I've read elsewhere, if it happened in such close proximity to the US lab, that would definitely have been the first place we look, why is that not the case in china?
it's laughable how various players manipulated and others allowed this scenario to develope
it's disgraceful
and it's not scientific at all, ...which is kinda ironic after having to listen to that most tedious of mantras relentessly thrown around of late... 'follow the science'
"But instead 99% of media from day one are painting a picture of bats and pangolins being sold at the market, half the world thinking most of China eat bats and people even thinking it came from bat soup or some other BS, and the rest of us including me believing it came from a bat via a pangolin because thats what the so called experts were saying, and here we were laughing at those that thought it came from bat soup and looking down on anyone that suggested it leaked from a lab as conspiracy theorist.."
yep, ...and to add insult to injury... i think it was the Wade article that pointed out, that surely it is more racist to have the whole world judging china's cultural practices as the source of the pandemic, rather than the lab, which could happen anywhere...
it's one big scam
the whole world was played to divert attention away for whatever reason... for many reasons it would seem... whether the virus escaped or not, the means of the cover up seems way more damaging than the end
it's a clusterfuck
a clusterfuck psy-op it would seem, with the power to do a lot of damage, as the cook article pointed out...
BTW. Looks like Sydney is blowing up could be Victoria take two if they aren't careful.
Chapel Hill North Carolina. Research partner, Wuhan Institute.
Big pharma making a fortune all paid by taxpayers.
All environmental, human rights and social protests quashed.
Control over population using fear and guilt of do the right thing.
Power and control of government with media support now virtually unchallenged.
A new war was run and won, without a single bullet being fired and the winners were, the ruling elite and all their companies and agencies that now get richer legally funded by taxpayers.
Losers, everyone who is now fearful.
Thankfully, this is only a temporary phase, as the movement toward unity and equitable Co operation cannot be stopped regardless of the level of awareness of those seemingly in control. No doubt some more chaos will be involved first though. Remember to be Centred.
Classic. Humour is the perfect way to stay Centred and is indeed interesting stuff, thanks Supa freak.
@davetherave , yes laughter is definitely the best medicine and I thought Andre was worthy of interesting stuff
Very unfortunate use of sign and results
trigger warning:
there will be no more 'trigger warning'
cancelled
...stand by for replacement woke wages industry justrifying word manipulation...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/brandeis-word-police-highlights-t...
Full blown madness, sypkan.
Yes, words can of course only mean one thing, and we the New Left get to decide what that is. Also be aware that this interpretation will change suddenly, so that you'll never know if you're committing a mortal sin of hate speech - until you're out, that is.
Full stop.
Here's some Kryptonite for that kind of person:
https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-gulag-archipelago-aleksandr-solzhenitsy...
VJ, I hadn't read it since my schooldays, but borrowed it at the local library recently and it was just as shocking as the first time. Perhaps even more so.
And Solzhenitsyn's almost detached tone deepens one's anger and despair.
To think that there are still people making excuses for Stalin is mind-boggling.
Here's a link to it on archive.org
https://archive.org/details/TheGulagArchipelago-Threevolumes/The-Gulag-A...
Thanks for the link, VJ. Can’t read it though. Felt like necking myself after a few pages. Certainly is powerful. Horrific.
The Gulag Archipelago is rated the second-best non-fiction book of all time according to the National Review.
Blowin wrote:Thanks for the link, VJ. Can’t read it though. Felt like necking myself after a few pages. Certainly is powerful. Horrific.
Take it as a compliment, Blowin. A strong indication that you're not a sociopath.
Have it cunts