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CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

nytimes.com

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Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#831
post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cover-ups are a cultural thing in East Asia because reputation is paramount. They'll attempt to cover up anything that makes them look bad as means to protect their reputation. So the second part of your statement is not necessarily true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbrea... China attempted information control on SARS-1, but rolled most of it back by April. They still haven't done this for SARS-2. That's not proof, but is a difference. Enough small differences can add up to a large difference.

That was during Hu's tenure which was quite different than what it is today. Still, their natural impulse is to cover up facts.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Actually, you've made my point quite clearly. The fact that you think you know the answer without a doubt, and that I am refusing to acknowledge it due to political reasons, is exactly why we won't know the truth. If you were to step back and evaluate the possibilities rationally, acknowledge the evidence you do and do not have, and ask how well your heuristics are calibrated to this domain, you would see that not on…

Too long, didn't read and don't really care.

Dewokenization is coming to town.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you can't expect me to paste multiple paragraphs as a quote here. If you think Trump's clumsy ersatz nod to "Fortunate Son" contextualizes putting Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad, OK then. If you can find elected officials threatening to execute other electeds who were pro-Iraq War (so, so many people), go ahead and post it.

But the quote is clearly referring to a theater of war, not a “firing squad.” Why misrepresent the quote?

I think reasonable people can disagree about this. Trump is pretty good with the "flimsy excuse", like "look I said 'stand back' as well as 'stand by'" or "hey I said 'peacefully and patriotically'". Probably whether you're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on these kinds of things is some kind of political ink blot test, but to me, he definitely has the instinct and pattern of "say it without saying it".

Most leaders are aware that people might cue off of what they're saying and do something very bad, so they stay far away from rhetoric like this. Trump (deliberately IMO) does the opposite for political gain. So even if I agree this is about combat, what's the difference? He's once again engaging in his pattern of dehumanizing his opponents and advocating violence against them, which has led to actual violence.

Elsewhere you pointed out this is pretty similar to Vietnam War protests. I think generally that's right (again "Fortunate Son"), but there are some differences. First is there isn't a draft; we have an all volunteer force (though there's a big discussion to be had about economic exploitation and multi-generational military families). Second, she wasn't even in Congress during Bush 2 and AFAIK had no policy making power where she was at State.

Do I love Liz Cheney? Hell no; her policy positions are one disaster after the next. I believe she should be vigorously opposed in every election she runs in. But do I think she should be subject to wink wink "sure would be a shame if something happened to Liz Cheney" rhetoric from maybe the most powerful person on Earth? Absolutely not; no one deserves that.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> without fear of downvotes That this even exists is a fundamental part of the problem.

Participants here are afraid of losing "points" and care about "winning" points.

So you end up increasing the bias towards what gets you points rather than frank conversations based on a bigger array of facts than just the convenient facts.

Corona made this painfully visible. With facebook and others only admitting 4 years later that they completely muffed the other side of the conversations with downvotings, shadowbanning, suspending accounts when those voices had a perfectly valid reason to argue and question the official narrative.

The funny thing is that 99% of the users here will look with disdain to the burnings on public squares, but they behave exactly that way in a digital format today.

We won't change that system since it is human nature, but at least it will be recorded in history that some humans we're trying to revert that situation.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#835
post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely Spanish Flu. People thought H1N1 started in US because US reported it first. Later it was thought to have originated from Mexico. PRC propaganda notes strange pneumonia with covid like symptoms in Fort Detrick area prior to covid going global. Is that enough propaganda for US to open up their sovereign soil for international investigation? The point is CIA claims has just as little credibility as PRC claims, e…

Why didn't China not allow WHO to inspect the origin of the virus?

Why didn't Saddam Hussein allow the American to inspect it's weapon of mass destruction facilities ?

I hope you're too young to have lived through that 2001 era propaganda because it was the exact same narrative. Put the burden of proof on your opponent with demands that you know can't be accepted.

If you're not too young then you failed twice at the very same propaganda technic. Congrats.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We must be the exact same age. See I knew there was something I liked about you haha. Hopefully this doesn't come across as deflecting or whatever (HRC has a lot of takes I disagree with, I think she would have been a very good president, but I'm more of a Warren or Booker guy). I think being an effective leader in the US at the level HRC was for decades is a lot harder than people really know. I'm not talking abou…

So I guess it depends on why you think the Iraq War was bad. To me, the Iraq War was bad because, even if the intel had been correct, the notion that you could create a democracy in Iraq was fundamentally foolish, along with the idea that it was America’s job to do it. To me, the Iraq War was a predictable disaster rooted not in bad intel, but the mistaken concept of liberal universalism (emphasis on universalism, no…

I 90% agree on the foreign policy stuff. I'd even go further and say advocates for invasion never considered Iraq was actually pretty good for a country in that region. Not only were they a key counterbalancing force to Iran, they were relatively religiously and culturally moderate (I'm sure there's a lot of nuance here; again I'm pretty ignorant). Advocates full on ignored or misrepresented intelligence about Iraq's WMD program though (I'm pretty sure even HRC ignored it or at least weighed it way too lightly).

I agree the Iraq War was premised on deeply faulty assumptions and complete naïveté about other cultures. Governments grow out of culture (a popular saying is "people tend to get the governments they deserve", which is maybe a little insensitive re: stuff like minority rights but not otherwise totally wrong); you can't really just poof a democracy into being; you can't just assume people will adopt your values. I do think we're way more circumspect on this now than you do though, I mean we haven't done another Iraq/Afghanistan. I'll also say that even though Republicans snicker at it, Jake Sullivan's foreign policy for the middle class is a pretty big departure for the establishment. That's a substantial positive change.

I also agree you can't 100% import "Americans". But, my worry with Trump's rhetoric here is that he ignores you can 99% import Americans, the children of the remaining 1% are fully assimilated, and that this has always been the case. There's so many ways we could make our immigration and asylum systems more humane and sustainable, but the GOP has ratfucked our immigration and asylum systems for decades to win elections (this is their move: break a part of government and then be like "look government is broken"... well yeah) so things will be trash for the foreseeable future.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess it depends on why you think the Iraq War was bad. To me, the Iraq War was bad because, even if the intel had been correct, the notion that you could create a democracy in Iraq was fundamentally foolish, along with the idea that it was America’s job to do it. To me, the Iraq War was a predictable disaster rooted not in bad intel, but the mistaken concept of liberal universalism (emphasis on universalism, no…

This is the only comment you made so far that made sense, with clear assertions and references. Everything else was unfounded or inflammatory without any concrete assertion, which is why it vibed like "Fox News talking points." While I do think what you describe under the label of "liberal universalism" mostly makes sense, I do challenge it's consistency. By all measures, some countries are trending towards becoming…

Ukraine I think is a pretty good example of where we've learned our lesson. We're working with allies, we aren't involving US or NATO troops, we're broadening our coalition and isolating our adversaries, etc. I think we could do better (Russia is super winning the propaganda war inside the US), but it's a positive trend from Iraq/Afghanistan.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the quote is clearly referring to a theater of war, not a “firing squad.” Why misrepresent the quote?

I think reasonable people can disagree about this. Trump is pretty good with the "flimsy excuse", like "look I said 'stand back' as well as 'stand by'" or "hey I said 'peacefully and patriotically'". Probably whether you're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on these kinds of things is some kind of political ink blot test, but to me, he definitely has the instinct and pattern of "say it without saying it".…

Like many Trump quotes, this isn’t an “ink blot” test:

> I don’t blame (Dick Cheney) for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb. She is a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.

She has a rifle, and there are nine other guns pointed at her. When are people facing a firing squad given their own weapon? The quote is literally a textbook “what if the war hawk’s shoe were on the other foot” trope.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#839
post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn't China not allow WHO to inspect the origin of the virus?

Why didn't Saddam Hussein allow the American to inspect it's weapon of mass destruction facilities ? I hope you're too young to have lived through that 2001 era propaganda because it was the exact same narrative. Put the burden of proof on your opponent with demands that you know can't be accepted. If you're not too young then you failed twice at the very same propaganda technic. Congrats.

If you were old enough to have lived through that propoganda then you would have realised that other countries did not share the same opinion as the US.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#840
post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you post some videos from people who posted on social media reporting that people are dying in the US before Chinese people did it?

The narrative is Fort Detrick was temperorily shutdown in 2019, later determined via congressional testimony because they were "cutting corners". At around the same time, from april 2019, series unusual respiratory illnesses similar to convid, later categorized as related to vaping related killed ~50, infected a few 1000s across 30+ states. PRC asserts this was origin of covid or something, and coverup by US gov (CDC…

Check the date of that video, if you are trying to spread propaganda at least do it right.
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