How Powerful Forces Collaborated to Peddle Misinformation about the Origins of the Coronavirus (indiatimes.com) 280
There's "an overwhelming body of evidence" for scientists' belief that the coronavirus originated in an animal before making the leap to humans, reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here.) They add that U.S. intelligence agencies also "have not found any proof" for a fringe theory it somehow leaked from a lab.
Yet as recently as September, a Hong Kong researcher was appearing on Fox News "making the unsubstantiated claim to millions that the coronavirus was a bio-weapon manufactured by China." The Times traces it to "a collaboration between two separate but increasingly allied groups that peddle misinformation: a small but active corner of the Chinese diaspora and the highly influential far right in the United States." Each saw an opportunity in the pandemic to push its agenda. For the diaspora, Dr. Yan and her unfounded claims provided a cudgel for those intent on bringing down China's government. For American conservatives, they played to rising anti-Chinese sentiment and distracted from the Trump administration's bungled handling of the outbreak.
Both sides took advantage of the dearth of information coming out of China, where the government has refused to share samples of the virus and has resisted a transparent, independent investigation. Its initial cover-up of the outbreak has further fueled suspicion about the origins of the virus... Dr. Yan's trajectory was carefully crafted by Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese billionaire, and Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump. They put Dr. Yan on a plane to the United States, gave her a place to stay, coached her on media appearances and helped her secure interviews with popular conservative television hosts like Tucker Carlson and Lou Dobbs, who have shows on Fox. They nurtured her seemingly deep belief that the virus was genetically engineered, uncritically embracing what she provided as proof...
The media outlets that cater to the Chinese diaspora — a jumble of independent websites, YouTube channels and Twitter accounts with anti-Beijing leanings — have formed a fast-growing echo chamber for misinformation. With few reliable Chinese-language news sources to fact-check them, rumors can quickly harden into a distorted reality. Increasingly, they are feeding and being fed by far-right American media...
The Chinese government often punishes critics by harassing their families. But when The Times reached Dr. Yan's mother on her cellphone in October, she said that she had never been arrested and was desperate to connect with her daughter, whom she had not spoken to in months. She declined to say more and asked not to be named, citing fears that Dr. Yan was being manipulated by her new allies. "They are blocking our daughter from talking to us," her mother said, referring to Mr. Guo and Mr. Wang.
Yet as recently as September, a Hong Kong researcher was appearing on Fox News "making the unsubstantiated claim to millions that the coronavirus was a bio-weapon manufactured by China." The Times traces it to "a collaboration between two separate but increasingly allied groups that peddle misinformation: a small but active corner of the Chinese diaspora and the highly influential far right in the United States." Each saw an opportunity in the pandemic to push its agenda. For the diaspora, Dr. Yan and her unfounded claims provided a cudgel for those intent on bringing down China's government. For American conservatives, they played to rising anti-Chinese sentiment and distracted from the Trump administration's bungled handling of the outbreak.
Both sides took advantage of the dearth of information coming out of China, where the government has refused to share samples of the virus and has resisted a transparent, independent investigation. Its initial cover-up of the outbreak has further fueled suspicion about the origins of the virus... Dr. Yan's trajectory was carefully crafted by Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese billionaire, and Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump. They put Dr. Yan on a plane to the United States, gave her a place to stay, coached her on media appearances and helped her secure interviews with popular conservative television hosts like Tucker Carlson and Lou Dobbs, who have shows on Fox. They nurtured her seemingly deep belief that the virus was genetically engineered, uncritically embracing what she provided as proof...
The media outlets that cater to the Chinese diaspora — a jumble of independent websites, YouTube channels and Twitter accounts with anti-Beijing leanings — have formed a fast-growing echo chamber for misinformation. With few reliable Chinese-language news sources to fact-check them, rumors can quickly harden into a distorted reality. Increasingly, they are feeding and being fed by far-right American media...
The Chinese government often punishes critics by harassing their families. But when The Times reached Dr. Yan's mother on her cellphone in October, she said that she had never been arrested and was desperate to connect with her daughter, whom she had not spoken to in months. She declined to say more and asked not to be named, citing fears that Dr. Yan was being manipulated by her new allies. "They are blocking our daughter from talking to us," her mother said, referring to Mr. Guo and Mr. Wang.
Lab manipulated can look like a natural one (Score:2, Insightful)
It could be entirely true it came from an animal, but still be from a lab. Its entirely possible for a lab to take a virus that came from bat/pangolin, then introduce it to other species, like a primate, and then pass it through series of primates until it evolves to be able to pass easily between primates. Such a virus would be basically indistinguishable from one that came from nature, because exactly the same biological processes are occurring for it to evolve, its just being helped along. So, there is n
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I'm late to the party so I probably just missed something. Why was a Chinese lab in Wuhan being funded by the US NIH? Has that been one of the revelations, that the US NIH is funding a lot of off-shores research? Or are you making the broader point that many countries, including the US and China, have national health services that fund basic biological research, and some of those funds could be researching novel human pathogens?
Re:Lab manipulated can look like a natural one (Score:4, Informative)
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Interesting. But whats the point in gain of function in a lab? There is no need I can see for that. We can develop vaccines for a new virus now in days and possibly into mass manufacturing in weeks. There were vaccines for this virus days after the genome was published. The last nine months have been mainly for approval, and for manufacturing issues. But the manufacturing issues probably could be addressed to bring it to weeks to get mass production under way.
If people want to study at a SARS virus,
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Possible. But it doesn't pass the Occam razor test.
- Natural transmission from an animal is possible, it has already happened and genetic analysis of the virus points in that direction.
- It is a really shitty bioweapon. Low mortality rate and difficult to control. For an effective bioweapon, you want something deadly that spreads quickly but in a limited way. Bonus points if you have a treatment/vaccine. Something more like Ebola than Covid-19.
- If it is not a bioweapon, it could be legitimate research, but
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The Wuhan lab was known to be studying corona viruses from bats.
This is hardly a fringe theory.
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Re:Lab manipulated can look like a natural one (Score:5, Insightful)
It may or may not be a 'fringe theory", but that does not stop it from being untrue.
Covids a descendent of RaTG13 coronavirus (around 98% similar). At the time of the outbreak there was no research on that particular virus at the Wuhan lab, and certainly there have been nothing in their publications about attempts at trying to breed it into a human virus intentionally. Such research would have been very unlikely to have passed CAOS ethics board approval, as it would generate too high a risk and contribute nothing to the study of SARS or emerging bat coronaviruses, the major focus of the studies at the time (One study estimated a new bat coronavirus infects a human every few days, most never traveling beyond that original human)
Regardless, there are hundreds of virus labs around china, and the only seeming reason the wuhan lab has been singled out for this particular conspiracy theory is it has wuhan in the name, even though it ignores the 3 hour transit times between the lab and the wuhan fish markets (they are not in the same town).
Theres simply no evidence for it.
Re: Lab manipulated can look like a natural one (Score:2, Interesting)
Why would people do this?
Ever heard of the holocaust? Stalin and his purges? Maoâ(TM)s Great Leap Forward? Rwanda genocide? The ethnic cleansing that was rife after the breakup of Yugoslavia? Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge? Isis?
There is and has been a plethora of vile humanity who would jump at the chance to loose a plague.
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The UK economy was also going to crash so to preserve the value of the pound, it looks like they crashed everyone's economy on purpose, all the stupidest shit came out of the UK, to be idiotically copied by other countries (global economic warfare).
I think you'll find that all the stupid economic shit that everyone is copying started in Japan in the 1990s.
Far from wanting to preserve the value of the pound, the UK government needs the pound to be weak to help with exports post-Brexit - and in fact the UK has managed a trade surplus the last two years because of the weak pound, something that it has struggled to do for decades.
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The trade surplus has a different reason - EU members try to fill their stocks with whatever they need from the UK because after Brexit it will be much more difficult to get and they would need time to transition to alternative suppliers.
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The trade surplus has a different reason - EU members try to fill their stocks with whatever they need from the UK because after Brexit it will be much more difficult to get and they would need time to transition to alternative suppliers.
That applies to both sides, so it should magnify the existing imbalance, not change it, I would think.
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You forgot to normalise for the levels of preparedness.
The UK has squandered four years and still isn't prepared for Brexit. The EU was far more pragmatic.
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You forgot to normalise for the levels of preparedness.
The UK has squandered four years and still isn't prepared for Brexit. The EU was far more pragmatic.
Pragmatic isn't the word I would use. The UK govt for some reason believed that the trade negotiations would achieve something whereas the EU knew from the start that they had no intention of making Brexit anything other than as difficult as they could make it, regardless of the effect on their own economy. That's sort of the opposite of pragmatic.
Not that I'm saying that the UK government has done anything other than make a mess of everything at every opportunity. I'm never seen such a collection of stupid
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Right and thats more plausible than the usual conspiracy theories of spooky bad men from the chinese government trying to, uh, kill all the chinese people with viruses for SOME REASON.
However, we do know what the Wuhan Virology labs where working on, and RaTG13 (The coronavirus Covid is believed to have evolved from, its around 98% similar although chinese scientists have reported troubles finding newer samples of RaTG13 in bat populations suggesting the coronavirus population in bats have moved on to more
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Your nuanced, fact-based take on things isn't distracting people from how poorly Trump handled the pandemic, and so must be liberal propaganda (or whatever).
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This is also my understanding. This an accepted line of research with many published papers. Of course, I guess it's possible that even this line of research might not be a plausible cause of the corona virus, but I've yet to see an expert definitively make this claim. Everything I've seen is watered down and doesn't address the issue of animal to animal lab mutation.
Also, even if true, this doesn't mean the virus was released on purpose. There have been many known lab accidents where pathogens have
Humans suck (Score:2)
Most people hear what they want to hear. Logic and evidence means little to such people. Democracy only (barely) works because competing stupidity roughly cancels each other out.
The ends don't justify the means (Score:2)
For the diaspora, Dr. Yan and her unfounded claims provided a cudgel for those intent on bringing down China's government.
You can't fight an oppressive regime with lies.
Sooner or later the lies will be disproved and the regime will emerge victorious and "rightful", while its opposition will come out as liars. This will make it harder to blame the regime for other atrocities they actually did. Historically this tactic only "works" as an excuse for war and only if the regime is soundly and swiftly defeated.
Another thing is - you can't fight immoral regime with immoral means. If you are exposed as an immoral actor (liar), you
Missing the Bigger Picture (Score:5, Insightful)
But whilst the history of Covid-19 misinformation is critically important to understand [given that it has cost the lives of a quarter-million citizens and counting], there's a bigger, more dangerous picture here.
As Rudy Giuliani famously said on live TV, "Truth Isn't Truth!" [youtube.com].
The bigger problem here is that if you can take a significant part of the population and persuade them that provable facts are wrong, that scientists are wrong, that evidence is irrelevant, then you are actually creating a malleable population that is ripe for catastrophic manipulation. President Trump isn't the first person to describe the press as "The Enemy of the People" - the same refrain has been used by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, to name just two.
The moment that you can persuade that slice of the population to ignore the facts, an entire country can suffer the consequences.
For just one example, consider the idea of "free at the point of use" healthcare - the sort enjoyed by many western nations, including France, Germany and the UK. In the United States, we are told that this sort of thinking is "socialist nonsense". But look at it from a purely economic perspective: in order for the United States to pay for "free at the point of use" healthcare would be from general taxation, i.e. income tax and corporation tax.
Who would stand to pay "more" if that model were adopted? Multi-millionaires and billionaires, that's who. So... roll out a massive disinformation campaign to declare that "free at the point of use" healthcare is somehow "socialist" and "bad". But the scary thing is to think about all those people in the country who earn less than say $5 million a year who think that it is bad - the very people who stand to gain the most and yet have been persuaded by misinformation that it would be a bad idea. In other words, even though "free at the point of use" healthcare would be a significant benefit to the vast majority of Americans, it is being peddled as "socialist" and "un-American" - by the relatively small number of billionaires who would stand to pay the most, through general taxation, if it were implemented. In other words, being opposed to "free at the point of use" healthcare and "sucker" are starting to look remarkably similar...
Most of the time, these sorts of truths are hidden behind impenetrable walls of misinformation. Now and then, however, the truth leaks out. Like when President Trump admitted that if the Republicans made it easy for the Democrat majority in some states to vote [i.e. by not jerrymandering districts, by allowing postal voting], then there would never be another Republican President. In other words, a Republican President admitted that free and fair elections could be utterly harmful to the minority Republican government... [theguardian.com]
We've reached a point where the scale and audacity of the lies is stretching credulity. Yet the scary thing is how many people continue to believe the lies, who want to believe the lies.
I watched President Trump's 2016 campaign carefully and one of the things I thought he was most incredibly successful at was tapping in to a vein of public sentiment that said, "If you're having a tough time, if you're being abused by 'The Man', I'm here to tell you that I can stop it. I'm here to tell you that it's not you that's at fault..."
It was a masterstroke. With one statement he set up a construct in which the listener could project their own grievance on his loosely-worded issue and see themselves; relinquish their own
Re:Missing the Bigger Picture (Score:5, Interesting)
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At the same time, I don't think that the ability or the individual are omnipotent.
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I wonder if someone can do what Trump did, but isn't lazy and incompetent you guys might wind up not having to even bother with elections anymore.
There seems to be a sizable number of Americans who don't want to abide by the results of this year's' one.
who do you trust... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is most people don't know enough about viruses to actually make sense of what the scientist are saying. The general trust of the new media is so low that no body even expects them to get it right any more , so people choose whatever makes them feel the most comfortable.
A good question to consider is: Why shouldn't they? Truth is only important if there is such a thing as free will, which cannot exist if there is No god. If human beings are nothing more then accidental combinations of random elements that exist for no purpose, die for no reason and flame out like a flickering light in under 100 years. Why bother with 'truth' unless it serves your personal happiness. That is what the schools teach and that is what the people both subconsciously and sometime consciously have embraced.
That is what our news media suffers from, and why no one trust them. They have little interest in objective truth and it shows in almost every article they write, composed to sell with with emotion by telling a story rather then reporting the facts in a neutral fashion ( not as much money in that).
Re: who do you trust... (Score:3)
Why shouldn't they? Truth is only important if there is such a thing as free will, which cannot exist if there is No god.
This mysticism bull crap isn't helping anything.
Is the golden rule - treat others as you would want them to treat you - important if there is no god? It's important to me, even if we stray from it, and the existence or not, or the belief or not in any gods doesn't change my rationale, nor should it for you. Your god would want you to carry on even if it long since perished right? IDK, just tossing something out there to help people that can't possibly imagine no god...
So hopefully that wasn't too hard o
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Understanding that the evolution of empathy and moral creatures does not require religion is a great achievement for any human being.
Understanding the development of religious systems in relation to legal systems as a means to orderly collect these moral mutations into a system a kin to "Euclids elements" is yet another great achievement for any human being.
Realizing the common usage of law and religion is to enforce the former using the latter because of willful ignorance is a depressing moment for all who
misinformation vs information (Score:2, Interesting)
If we do not have the information on where this virus came from (and we currently do NOT) then how can the NYT know that what they are so eager to label as "misinformation" is indeed that? It's unusual for any virus to arise in nature, make it this far into the human population, be identified for a year, and yet researchers are unable to figure out which animal it came from.
Is the probably biased Dr Yan right? Who knows. Does anybody else have a better answer? Not yet.
China is now trying to blame this virus
Miss information (Score:2)
"Misinformation" is in the eye of the beholder. There has been no definitive determination of the origins of the virus, and there probably never will be due to Chinese CYA, mainly local Chinese officials from national Chinese officials.
While the theory that the Chinese developed the virus intentionally, and released it intentionally, is rather far-fetched, it cannot be disproven.
Another alleged "conspiracy" theory, that the virus originated in say the Wuhan lab, is entirely plausible, and also cannot be di
Re: NYT? (Score:2, Insightful)
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At least he didn't say "failing".
Unknown origin (Score:2)
Re:Unknown origin (Score:4, Interesting)
How about USA corporate main stream media wanting to push anti-China propaganda
Not to mention the president. Every time he opens his mouth it's all "China virus" this and "China virus" that.
Did he ever notice that the previous virus, H1N1, came from America and killed 500,000 people in the first year?
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandem... [cdc.gov]
How come it's not the "America virus"?
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Because Wilson was too concerned about the War Effort and didn't like the Spain at that moment.
Re:Unknown origin (Score:4, Informative)
For the Spanish flu, it was due to Spain being neutral and not censoring the news. The Spanish press were the only ones talking about it.
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It's not the "America virus" because Obama was president at the time. If it was any Republican president, the media would have called it the Donald Trump virus.
It's unlikely that any American president would call it that, I'm talking about presidents of other countries where people were dying from America Virus.
The answer is: Because none of those other presidents were as petty and mean as Trump.
You can bet they'll call it that in the future though, now that Trump has lowered the bar for "acceptable presidential behavior" by several feet.
Re:Unknown origin (Score:5, Insightful)
I seem to remember Trump's China ban completely excluded a broad class of travelers from China, which made it worthless. It was always hard not to see as just point-scoring because of Trump's many previous attempts to control travelers from Islamic countries and his anti-China rhetoric.
I mean, the "China travel ban" might have been useful if it had been universal, required quarantining and testing after arrival, and had applied broadly to all of Asia Pacific. But it ultimately would have failed anyway given the wide spread in Europe and no travel ban for Europe or anywhere else.
That being said, though, the China travel ban may have helped if it (a) had been universal and (b) had been accompanied by other levels of general preparedness with the idea that the virus would spread here widely eventually, and the tamping down of transmission used to ramp up testing, PPE, etc.
Regardless of the political posturing, I just hope we're ready for the next pandemic in terms of massive PPE stockpiles and a PPE manufacturing base sufficient to saturate the American market (including the civilian consumer market).
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When the US President tried to even limit travel from China in January,
He never tried to do that at all.
He tried to limit travel by Chinese nationals from China, and no one else. What he needed to do was impose quarantines on all travel from China, whether the traveler was a US citizen or not. Here is the pulse, and here is his finger, far from the pulse, jammed straight up his ass. Want a pretzel?
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Ain't it weird how every time we open our mouths about history, it's all "Spanish Flu" this, and "Spanish Flu" that.
And it is precisely that language that is no longer used for viruses because of people like you.
What are you really complaining about? That you can't be an anti-China racist? Or that words and the labeling of things change and you can no longer call black people n***ers?
When you grow up and join us in the modern world please leave your 1930s era shit behind.
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Was this indented as a joke?
a) It a wasn't very funny,
b) wasn't very obvious you meant it as a joke.
In the case it wasn't. I would like to point out that 'Adam' comes from Hebrew ( the language that Genesis and the story of creation was written in).
It refers to a type of dark brown clay ( out of which God presumably made the man). So the logical conclusion is that the first man
was of a dark brown color ( lighter then most Africans but darker then most Italians , very close to the skin color common now Pa
Re:NYT? (Score:5, Informative)
It's just Project Mockingbird showing up for payday. These are the same people who sold Iraq WMD which were proven lies and got Americans to support a terrible war.
Here's a more balanced discussion of the odds of nCov-19 lab origin: https://youtu.be/q5SRrsr-Iug [youtu.be]
Plenty of "evidence". Note that they are trying to confuse the words "evidence" and "proof". Evidence is submitted in a controversy but it may never prove the case. Classic disinfo technique to trick people with similar words.
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The same idiots who voted and endorsed Trump supported teh war. From 2001 to 2008 every conservative would tow the party line of "you can't claim you support the troops if don't support the war" .. anyone remember that? All the supposedly anti-war Republicans especially on talk radio towed that line. Now they are supporting someone who says he wouldn't have supported the war.
Re:NYT? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't mention the war!
I may have mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.
Re:NYT? (Score:5, Informative)
Now they are supporting someone who says he wouldn't have supported the war.
Guess who else voted for the war?
Joe Biden.
Also, Hillary Clinton.
In hindsight, the war was obviously a mistake. But back in 2002, 80% of the Senate voted for it, including 60% of Democrats.
Americans wanted blood (Score:3)
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Excuses excuses.
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Really? Might I remind you of the freedom fries? Or the whole "old Europe" schtick of Rumsfeld?
Re:NYT? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:NYT? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, Biden has attempted to claim he was against the war on multiple occasions, and been factchecked on it multiple times (one example: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06... [cnn.com] )
Back in March, Biden stated that he voted in favor of the iraq war to put pressure on Saddam, despite the fact that Biden didn't believe there were any WMDs. Biden stated "I didn’t believe he had those nuclear weapons. I didn’t believe he had those weapons of mass destruction."
However, in October 2002, in a senate debate Biden stated "the reason [Hussein] poses a growing danger to the United States and its allies is that he possesses chemical and biological weapons and is seeking nuclear weapons, with the $2 billion a year he illegally skims from the U.N. oil-for-food program. For four years now, he has prevented United Nations inspectors from uncovering those weapons and verifying Iraq's disarmament, and he is in violation of the terms he agreed to allowing him to stay in power."
The day before invasion, Biden said "By refusing to disarm, a defiant Saddam has made the fateful choice between war and peace. Let us make sure that in winning the war, we also win the peace."
Finally, in may 2003, after the invasion, when no WMDs were found, Biden went on Meet The Press, and said "I do think we'll find weapons of mass destruction."
In short, either Biden was in favor of the Iraq war and believed there were WMDs, and is now a liar, OR he didn't believe there were WMDs, but was deliberately lying to the public to get America into the war.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing (Score:2)
Before the war with Iraq, no one knew for sure about the WMD's and in the light of 11th Sept 2001, an awful lof of people were not willing to go on record as opposing the invasion. They might have doubted that WMD's existed but went along with it rather than risking not invading and it being true.
I was working in the Gulf at this time and most of the locals would not trust Saddam an inch which was just a bit more than Iran.
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Before the war with Iraq, no one knew for sure about the WMD's
Our military knew for sure. We sold him the WMD's, and we knew that they were past their expiration dates.
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So your argument is that Saddam may have had WMDs that nobody found after an extensive search by satellite, drone, troops on the ground, by offering cash rewards to locals, interrogation and torture of prisoners, and careful analysis of Iraq's government records.
Doesn't it just seem more likely that these things didn't exist, like the intelligence services admitted after the invasion?
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If you are not clinically retarded you should isolate yourself and take a vow of silence.
to be fair to them (and the republican too) (Score:2)
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If you get told by intelligence agency there are WMD, what do you do ? Ignore it ? That would be a terrible politician which would ignore the evidence provided.
You consider the quality of the evidence (which was poor) and then if it is poor you ask for corroboration.
The same issue actually popped up in the 50ies where the military was telling the US government a lie : "Russian have plenty of nuke ! more than us! and then convinced the politicians of the lie, started get money for and making a lot of nuke.
It was a lot harder to gather useful intelligence back then. These days we have a lot more spying apparatus, notably in space, which can be used to shed light on such questions.
As a politician be it republicans or Democrats, you can ONLY acts upon the intelligence and info given to you. How are you to decide that intelligence/info is intentionally made up ?
Get it straight from the horse's mouth, not from another politician.
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Which war? There are so many of them.
If you mean the land war in Syria that the Dems had hoped we would be in within 6 months of Hillary's inauguration, that one didn't happen. So the western powers haven't yet gotten their natural gas pipeline crossing Syria. That got a lot of people really MAD. Trump didn't do nearly enough actual war mongering, though he sabre rattled plenty.
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> watching Trump and Bolton squabble in public
When Trump hired that guy, I thought it was because he wanted to go to war in the mideast, which is pretty much what Bolton is about.
Instead, the two ended up disagreeing publicly about everything, and after firing him, Trump continues to mock him for the same reasons liberals have been for like 15+ years.
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No, Trump mocks him because he disagreed with Trump. That's the main (only?) reason Trump mocks anyone. Weak insecure bullies always act that way, whether they are 8 or 80.
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Lab leaks are nothing new and happen everywhere (Score:2)
It is difficult to conceive of a rational reason for the Chinese to release the virus among their own population deliberately.
However that is hardly the only way for a virus to escape a lab (whether it was manipulated there, was merely being studied there, or whether it was accidentally infecting animals being studied there). And it's not even that unheard-of; around December 1989/January 1990 a number of monkeys in Reston, Virginia were found to be infected with a novel strain of Ebola virus (Now known as
Re:Lab leaks are nothing new and happen everywhere (Score:5, Interesting)
"This may well be one of those cases where we never will understand exactly where the virus originated."
Yea, and it bothers me that it's going to be treated as 100% settled. If the chain of events was something like, "created in a lab to study it" -> "escapes lab by accident" -> "Chinese government decides to react reasonably forcefully and reasonably in public, while never letting on that it was some escaped strain", then this would:
(1) Be totally plausible given the fact that stuff can absolutely get out of a lab.
(2) Be totally plausible given the serious and expensive actions China took immediately
(3) Be totally plausible given that labs modify viruses to try to stop viruses all the damned time
(4) Generally be undetectable as a modified organism
(5) Not be a conspiracy- keeping a government secret doesn't make you a conspirator, it makes you a patriot.
That being said, the claim floating around that it's a "bioweapon" runs into the obvious issues- it wouldn't fall into any normal category for any kind of "weapon", given that it indiscriminately infects humans, and a "bioweapon" meant for indiscriminate destruction wouldn't be released by China (or any of the big governments normally), and it would likely be more detectable as a modified organism. Is the world better now for any nation, or government, than it was before this latest Coronavirus? If it is, is it by first order effect, or by some Rube Goldberg chain of events?
Anyone, one actual good reason to have the "bioweapon" conversation now is, bioterrorism appears largely inevitable on the scale of a century or so. It's easier than ever to modify viruses, and the technology to do this, while still out of range of a mad scientist, is being reduced in required expertise and cost, at something less than Moore's law was, but still seemingly exponential for now. Picture a terror cell with some ideology that permitted biological attacks, and the ability to create such a thing. This group could be some manner of zealot that is willing to use this to accomplish some goal. Having someone worried about that now might save us some problems in the future.
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That being said, the claim floating around that it's a "bioweapon" runs into the obvious issues- it wouldn't fall into any normal category for any kind of "weapon", given that it indiscriminately infects humans, and a "bioweapon" meant for indiscriminate destruction wouldn't be released by China (or any of the big governments normally),
I agree with the other things you've said in your comment, but we part company here. In possession of a virus which mostly affects the elderly, China might well release it. Then they find out it effects other people more than they think, and then clamp down on it.
and it would likely be more detectable as a modified organism.
Yeah, that's the real argument against this being a modified bioweapon. That tends to leave markers we can identify.
Is the world better now for any nation, or government, than it was before this latest Coronavirus? If it is, is it by first order effect, or by some Rube Goldberg chain of events?
I don't expect humans to behave rationally.
No that isn't evidence (Score:2)
Re:Misinofrmation doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
The madness is that the country is populated be people with two highly polarized views that are each unwilling to make compromises with the other view and take the concerns of anyone other than like minded people seriously.
Trump is a symptom of a deeper problem. One that isn't going to go away just because he won't be in power soon.
Re:Misinofrmation doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
In 2020, the Republicans got a bigger share of the Hispanic vote than ever before.
So, no, Republicans aren't just resentful white people.
Re:Misinofrmation doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)
ShanghaiBill noted:
In 2020, the Republicans got a bigger share of the Hispanic vote than ever before.
So, no, Republicans aren't just resentful white people.
Correct. Some of them are resentful Cuban exiles and their offspring, who are absolutely, irrevocably opposed to normalization of relations with Cuba. Others are sociopathic rappers, whose political interest is in keeping their taxes low, while still others are rich, conservative gays, both in and out of the closet.
Also, it's exceedingly important to understand that the majority of Hispanic voters have little to no sympathy for illegal Latino immigrants, mostly because they, themselves are either legal immigrants, who jumped through all the required hoops to gain their citizenship (and so tend to be contemptuous of those who they regard as cheaters), or are those legal immigrants' offspring, whose U.S. citizenship is therefore a birthright (and who think of themselves as Americans, rather than Latin Americans, and thus don't identify with illegals at all). So, they tend to regard candidates who focus on immigration reform, and decriminalizing illegal immigration as being out of touch with them, and resent their ignoring the issues that actually are important to them.
Which are mostly the bread-and-butter stuff: reducing their taxes, helping them afford medical insurance, cracking down on street crime, and stopping police from harassing, arresting, or even shooting their teenage kids for relatively trivial infractions. And, yes, those last two are issues as vexed for Hispanic voters as they are for black ones, because, from a practical standpoint, cracking down on street crime without victimizing marginally-culpable teens in the process is a non-trivial nut to crack. (Hey, if logic ruled voters' political choices, we'd have a far different society than we do. But I digress.)
(I spent four years living in a Las Vegas barrio neighborhood. I made it a point to talk to my Latino neighbors about their feelings about and experiences with illegals. I'm just summarizing here what I learned from them about their consensus position on the subject.)
In my experience, the only intelligent Republican voters are those who choose the GOP for reasons of purely-economic self-interest. The others are gullible fools who vote for them because the Republican party exploits their bilnd focus on wedge issues like restricting access to abortion, opposing gun control, and "returning" the country to a mostly-mythical golden age when nobody protested anything, because everything was perfect. And that works for them, because their electeds stay on-message, in lockstep, and they obey the golden rule: Thou Shalt Not Criticize a Fellow Repubican.
For the past 8 years or so, I've been predicting that the Republican party will wind up going the way of its predecessor, the Whig party, which fractured after the election of James Buchanan, due to irresolvable conflicts between its ultraconservative wing and its center-right faction. Depending on what happens after Trump leaves office, that could occur sometime in the next four years, or the GOP might just contimue to limp along until 2028.
But, hey, what do I know? I'm the idiot who was cheerfully confident in 2016 that the electorate couldn't possibly be both stupid enough and gullible enough to elect an obvious con man president ...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In my experience, the only intelligent Republican voters are those who choose the GOP for reasons of purely-economic self-interest. The others are gullible fools who vote for them because the Republican party exploits their bilnd focus on wedge issues like restricting access to abortion, opposing gun control, and "returning" the country to a mostly-mythical golden age when nobody protested anything, because everything was perfect.
This. There are a large percentage (the vast majority) of conservatives that are not wealthy voting against their personal economic interests due to the irrelevant distractions of abortion and gun issues. The Republicans voting in their economic self-interests are the 1-percenters.... a tiny but rich and powerful minority. If every voter always voted in their personal economic self-interests, we'd never see another Republican candidate elected to any public office. So Republicans only win elections by decep
Black-and-white thinking (Score:3)
Slavery on the other hand has been met with compromises.
For example there's effectively slave labour in prisons all around the world. So there's a compromise right there.
We didn't abandon slavery completely, we still employ it, but only impose it on a particular sub group of people who has been convicted by a jury of th
Re: (Score:2)
So, they tend to regard candidates who focus on immigration reform, and decriminalizing illegal immigration as being out of touch with them, and resent their ignoring the issues that actually are important to them.
OK, but there has not been a candidate like that in decades. The closest thing there has been was Ronald Reagan, who declared an immigration amnesty and then actually followed through on it. You might note that he was a Republican.
My [Mexican] family has been here since 1850 but that doesn't magically make me dumb enough to think that people legally seeking asylum here in the USA don't deserve it, or even that people who immigrate illegally because we've deliberately broken our asylum process deserve deport
Re: Misinformation does matter (Score:4, Interesting)
To my observation:
So, they tend to regard candidates who focus on immigration reform, and decriminalizing illegal immigration as being out of touch with them, and resent their ignoring the issues that actually are important to them.
drinkypoo responded:
OK, but there has not been a candidate like that in decades. The closest thing there has been was Ronald Reagan, who declared an immigration amnesty and then actually followed through on it. You might note that he was a Republican.
I am a registered Republican. Don't just assume that, because I'm willing to be honest about how the GOP stays in power, I must therefore pledge allegiance to the Democrats.
Having said that, I firmly believe that Ronald Reagan was the absolutely-unchallengeable worst thing to happen to American society in the 20th Century. Yes, he did the right thing about immigration - which was not poison among Republican voters at the time. But he and his odious electoral brain trust enlisted the evangelical Christian right to campaign for his election, which woke it up to the potential of its political power to affect elections. That was to the seemingly-permanent detriment of public policy (opposition to abortion rights had never been a political weapon until then), as, for instance, the California GOP has been captured by the evangelicals ever since.
His worst sin, however, was to not only legitimize greed, but to elevate it to the status of an actual virtue. Prior to the Reagan administration, most Americans would at least pay lip service to the idea that greed deserved its place as the most prominent of the Seven Deadly Sins. Afterwards, it was purely "I got mine, Jack," and anyone who objected was clearly a fool (and probably a Commie). The aftermath of that fundamental change in society's values continues to reverberate - and gain power - today. It's why worshippers at the shrine of Saint Ayn of Rand insist on bleating that shareholder profit and shareholder profit alone is the highest, best, and only goal of capitalism, it's why taxes for corporations and the rich have been cut again and again (remeber the Laffer Curve?), while our infrastructure crumbles and our labor force has seen its average income in constant dollars steadily fall since 1981. It's a cancer that sucks capital out of the pockets of actual consumers, in favor of stuffing it into the pockets of the billionaire class.
Henry Ford, who is wrongly credited with inventing the production line, made his fortune from creating the first vertically-integrated corporation, offering customers not only relatively-affordable cars, but financing them, as well, so they could purchase over time a vehicle few of them could have paid for in a single, lump sum. But the bedrock of his success was his insight that, by paying his workers a more-than-minimal wage, he could turn each of them into one of those customers - and make them each a rolling advertisement for his products.
That is what the rise of Ronald Reagan and the worship of unadulterated greed brought us: determined blindness on the part of the capitalist class to the fact that the American economy's dependence on spending by consumers means that sucking money out of their pockets without, at the same time, replacing it with more money makes them less and less able to afford to buy those capitalists' products as time goes along.
And no, buying on credit and endlessly postponing paying off the costs is not a viable substitute for actually being able to afford those purchases, because one extended interruption in employment or major illness means bankruptcy for many consumers. Maybe even most of us. And forcing everyone who's not already wealthy to transition to a gig economy is hastening the advent of a consumer class that can no longer afford even to buy goods on credit.
All of that - ALL of it - is Reagan's legacy. And all but the 1% are paying its price, right fucking now.
Or will be soon,
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You are correct, in all respects, however...
"The others are gullible fools who vote for them because the Republican party exploits their bilnd (sic) focus on wedge issues"
I've voted almost exclusively Republican, but since 2002 I've realized the Republican Party, the GOPe, no longer actively represents my interests. They talk like they do, but little or no action. So why do I continue to vote for them?
The alternatives are unthinkable. Until Trump. He is what Republicans should be, but mostly no longer have
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I'm going to guess that you didn't read the comment I actually responded to.
But yes, there are definitely two polarized views in the USA, and the sad part is that the ratio is very nearly an even split for each viewpoint.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No, the sad part is that one side says "we should help people" and the other side says "we should fuck people over, praise Jesus" and then the two are described as being equivalent when they are clearly not, and a lot of shit is talked about how we should build bridges between them when only one side wants to build, and the other side wants to see the world burn.
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"really, this is TWO highly polarized views ? This kind of lazy, faux cynicism bullshit is the problem. Not "polarized views".
one side wants healthcare for everyone, the other does not.
one side thinks millionaires should pay more taxes than working people, the other does not
one side thinks the environment should be protected. the other literally DOES NOT."
You trot out these oversimplifications and outright distortions to make your case? Really?
No one wants to deny healthcare to anyone. No, they do not. The
Re:Misinofrmation doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)
.. think about that 75 million people endorsed racism, xenophobia, vindictiveness, and anti-vaccine BS. That's madness.
Another way to look at it that 75 million people were so repulsed by the Democratic agenda that they were willing to vote for Trump despite him being a racist, xenophobic, vindictive anti-vaxxer.
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Re:Misinofrmation doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
91% of Republicans think he isn't racist.
So what? They probably think they aren't racist either, although they consistently vote for representatives who back racist policies. By their actions shall you know them. Jesus Christ would never vote Republican, but you can trick Jesus Moreno into doing it.
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I've always thought that was weird. Why would you be worried about the number of vaccines given at once? Why not worry about the number of separate inoculations? Give them all at once and get it over with! One needle instead of a bunch, and one single adjuvant to piss off your immune system instead of a bunch of separate ones. Or maybe an annual schedule. Take all the immunizations and just divide them up so you get X number on your birthday every year. Or any other vaccine schedule.
If only we had some meth
Re: (Score:2)
I've always thought that was weird. Why would you be worried about the number of vaccines given at once? Why not worry about the number of separate inoculations? Give them all at once and get it over with! One needle instead of a bunch, and one single adjuvant to piss off your immune system instead of a bunch of separate ones. Or maybe an annual schedule. Take all the immunizations and just divide them up so you get X number on your birthday every year. Or any other vaccine schedule.
If only we had some method to determine which of these options was optimal.
Vaccines are composed of killed or weakened viruses plus whatever other substances are present. The point is to expose the body to the virus and trigger an immune response. Some people are concerned that too many at once could have unintended consequences on an infant. It's not clear to me if the groupings done, like the MMR vaccine, are done for a patient benefit or convenience/cost considerations.
Typical known side effects (https://www.vaccines.gov/basics/safety/side_effects) are:
Pain, swelling, or red
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Some vaccines don't have the virus at all, but rather just specific parts thereof...
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Some vaccines don't have the virus at all, but rather just specific parts thereof...
Sure. https://www.vaccines.gov/basic... [vaccines.gov]
I don't think that changes the main point though. There is no dispute over the fact that vaccines have side effects.
The question regards the possibility that multiple at once in an infant can in rare cases have severe adverse effects.
I'm certainly not questioning the value of vaccines. I'm old enough to have lived through many of those "childhood diseases" and they are awful.
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Some vaccines are killed or weakened virus. Many of the side effects you mention are from adjuvants, which are specifically added to irritate the immune system because killed or weakened virus particles on their own often don't provide good immunization.
Vaccines given in combination are done so in some cases to get children immunized quickly against diseases that are particularly dangerous for infants, and to reduce the number of appointments, which is easier and cheaper for parents, and less traumatic for
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Vaccines in general are studied *very* well. If it wasn't obvious, when I said "If only we had some method to determine which of these options was optimal", that was dripping with sarcasm.
Sarcasm doesn't help the discussion at all. If you have done any reading at all you will find that many doctors share these concerns.
That's how science advances.
Re: (Score:2)
75 million people were so repulsed by what they were told about the Democratic agenda
FTFY. There's a difference.
Is there really a difference when what they were told was by the very politicians running for the various offices?
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You are wrong, Many of trumps voters objected to exactly the same things you object too about trump racism, xenophobia, vindictiveness and don't forget sexism ( unless you are ok with that one).
The difference is that trump has delivered on a lot of his promises when it comes to ending abortion ( which many people view as genocide)
He also delivered when it comes to resisting the insaneness of boys will be girls and girls will be boys, both of which are promoted vigorously by his competitor.
Do you really thin
Re: (Score:3)
"If 75 million people were racist as you think they are..."
Quite a disingenuous comment there. Read it again:
"...75 million people endorsed racism, xenophobia, vindictiveness, and anti-vaccine BS"
It should not need to be explained how the English language works. This kind of BS is a big part of the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Because "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." --Desmond Tutu
And: "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." --Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Stor
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I always thought it was rains of power. Something to do with Thor :)
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Did you see how many Back women voted for him? Zero.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Misinofrmation doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Truly racist candidates generally get zero votes from minorities. To claim that minorities would be stupid enough to vote for a candidate who directly stands against their own interests is quite insulting.
Then let them be insulted, because the only people who share interests with Trump are the ultra-wealthy, and everyone else who voted for him is stupid enough to vote for a candidate who directly stands against their own interests. He is not restoring jobs, he is not doing anything meaningful to stem immigration, he is pissing away money needed for important projects on his worthless wall which can be cut through with cheap tools or climbed over by all the most fit people in Mexico but none of the people who need our help the most due to our foreign policies in central and South America or our domestic policies on drugs which have international repercussions, and he has demonstrated his racist nature time and again both before and during his presidency.
People can be resourceful and resilient and still dumb enough to fool, mostly through willful ignorance.
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Then let them be insulted, because the only people who share interests with Trump are the ultra-wealthy
This pretty much applies to all mainstream politicians. They are all wealthy, they all have wealthy friends, all take donations from wealthy individuals and are all looking for ways to line their own pockets and those of their friends. Given that both of the viable candidates stand against their interests, who should they vote for?
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There's many coronaviruses. Certain forms of the cold belong to the coronavirus family. If they'd been studying the common cold at the time of the covid outbreak, your question would still be correct but utterly absurd, agreed?
This is like saying that a zoo studying wombats is responsible for an outbreak of chimpanzees because they're both mammals and therefore related.
In reality, it's closer to a zoo studying bonobos and there being a chimpanzee outbreak. Much closer but still rather definitely not the sam
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Wow, next you're going to tell me they pushed a false narrative about Fort Sumter and the start of the civil war.
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Those who corruptly demanded to win elections
...are Donald Trump, who is consistently insisting that he won when we know definitively that he didn't.
Re: If it came from animals (Score:2)
Apparently, the lab is hours away from the wet market... not sure that qualifies as up the street, irrespective of how you travel.