I'm just gonna post this here, since I'm sick of tormenting Hubski with these types of articles. This is a devastating long read.
My wife read that yesterday, and yeah, we consider the argument settled.
This one should be posted. How am I supposed to get through that without being convinced it was a lab leak? Where’s a convincing rebuttals of this investigation?
Interesting questions raised by it though. Like what if the reason that China won't abide any investigations isn't not that they're covering up the lab leak, but that they're covering up a bio weapons program that also takes place at WIV? And giving outsiders access would be like the US giving access to Los Alamos to outsiders? I could think of other far less Occam's razory theories, but that one seems at least plausible. Whatever the case, every new piece of information that comes to light only ever points in a single direction. The odds of that being the case with a natural origin have to be infinitesimal.
Historically, the coverup is worse than the crime. China made the choice to go "we've got this all handled, our response was better than everyone else, look how stupid the US is struggling with this massive outbreak while we have concerts with 10,000 people in them" rather than disclosing they knew full well how bad things were, had the outbreak entirely characterized and were using their prior knowledge for geopolitical advantage. This came at a time when China was pivoting from "one belt one road" to "wolf warrior" and every strategic partner China has is in the grips of a fatal pandemic that their erstwhile trading partner not only caused, but failed to aid them against in the slightest. China's best geopolitical move is to go "you can't prove that we knew we made this, we knew it got out, we knew how bad it was and we knew we were condemning millions to death with our nondisclosure" and then be outraged while others argue just how proven those allegations are. It will be isolating, it will be geopolitically damaging and it will stunt the projected international growth of Chinese ambitions, but the magnitude of the catastrophe is such that their path was cemented as soon as the virus jumped an international border. There was a steady stream of foreigners through Los Alamos through the height of the Cold War. There were more Norwegians in my elementary school than Black kids. Our high school had classes in German, Spanish, Latin and Russian. We had so much foreign exchange that there was a remedial class to get high schoolers through NM's state history exam, the passing of which is a requirement for matriculation (nobody from Germany took a year and a half of NM state history in 7th/8th grade and it showed).Like what if the reason that China won't abide any investigations isn't not that they're covering up the lab leak, but that they're covering up a bio weapons program that also takes place at WIV?
And giving outsiders access would be like the US giving access to Los Alamos to outsiders?
Yes, bad analogy about Los Alamos. I was more thinking about the Manhattan Project days, when even mail was read by sensors before coming or going. Obviously, there were foreigners then, too, but America is and always has been a lot less hostile to foreigners than pretty much everywhere, despite the nativism that appears to always be everywhere. I believe that in this case the coverup is not worse than the crime if the only crime is the simple leak. The crime is beyond punishment, as it has been known a long time, and even reported in Shi's own work, that you shouldn't really be messing with SARS. We need to stop doing this type of research everywhere, not just sloppy labs. It took what, 10 years, between when bats were identified as the SARS source and a global pandemic caused by that research? We can't afford to do that all over again in another 10 years.
Let's be clear: We drove under a manned machine gun nest when I went to my oboe lessons in 7th grade. We drove under unmanned machine gun nests whenever we needed to go to the mall in Santa Fe. Of course, during the '50s my English teacher and her friends used to flirt with the guards by whispering to each other in Russian under the tower, while the guards used to flirt back by shooting into the bushes. And of course, DOE's response to the Global War On Terror was to shut the entire 11-mile road to the public. You're right, though - machine gun nests or no, I sold books to visiting Soviet physicists every other week or so, right up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And we knew lots of physicists who traveled to the USSR, China, you name it. Prior to Wen Ho Lee there was a lot of intellectual exchange. Which leads directly to your next point: Right I mean you say that now but obviously since the US was funding gain-of-function research in a Chinese lab known to fall far short of published BSL requirements, it can't be all that bad, can it? Right? I mean... especially if our tax dollars helped to make it happen, right? That's kind of like lamenting what the recession "did" to subprime lending or what the opioid crisis "did" to pharmaceutical pain management.I was more thinking about the Manhattan Project days, when even mail was read by sensors before coming or going.
I believe that in this case the coverup is not worse than the crime if the only crime is the simple leak. The crime is beyond punishment, as it has been known a long time, and even reported in Shi's own work, that you shouldn't really be messing with SARS.
“If the pandemic started as part of a lab leak, it had the potential to do to virology what Three Mile Island and Chernobyl did to nuclear science.”
I maintain that the Loose Change-sized hole in September 11 is the CIA scrubbing all evidence that Osama bin Laden was ever on their payroll. 'cuz let's be frank. The CIA would have to be real dumbasses not to have bin Laden on the payroll before Khobar Towers, and real dumbasses to retain any evidence of it after. I also think MBS knew there was a bin Laden-sized opening at the CIA and took it.
Yeah lost in all the discussions about poor defenseless journalist Jamal Khashoggi is the fact that he was the nephew of Adnan Khashoggi, the most famous arms dealer in the history of arms dealing (up until Nicholas Cage did a passable impression of Viktor Bout in Lord of War). Allegedly, he helped his friends Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos plunder the Philippines of some $160 million by fronting for them in illegal real-estate deals. When United States authorities attempted to return some of the Marcos booty to the new Philippine government, they discovered that the ownership of four large commercial buildings in New York City—the Crown Building at 730 Fifth Avenue, the Herald Center at 1 Herald Square, 40 Wall Street, and 200 Madison Avenue—had passed to Adnan Khashoggi. On paper it seemed that the sale of the buildings had taken place in 1985, but authorities later charged that the documents had been fraudulently backdated. In addition, more than thirty paintings, valued at $200 million, that Imelda Marcos had allegedly purloined from the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, including works by Rubens, El Greco, Picasso, and Degas, were being stored by Khashoggi for the Marcoses, but it turned out that the pictures had been sold to Khashoggi as part of a cover-up.