The US Is Discrediting All Arguments for Why It Should Lead the World

The US Is Discrediting All Arguments for Why It Should Lead the World

Caitlin Johnstone

CaitlinJohnstone.com

May 29, 2024

One by one, the US empire is discrediting all of its own arguments for why it should lead the world. All the violence, tyranny and injustice it claims to be keeping at bay with its globe-dominating leadership is being inflicted by the empire itself, in more and more brazen and egregious ways each year.

The entire premise behind the empire’s containment strategies, military encirclement and cold war brinkmanship with China is that obviously the PRC needs to be stopped from rising and displacing the US as the global leader, and arguments about the need to control Russia and Iran by any means necessary arise from the same premise. These arguments are accepted as a given by many on the basis that the US is a free and democratic country which promotes liberal values and opposes authoritarianism, so of course it’s better to have the US in charge of world affairs.Profiles in Corruption... Schweizer, Peter Best Price: $17.98 Buy New $17.99 (as of 03:27 UTC - Details)

But every point which could be used to bolster that argument is being rapidly eroded by the US itself. The US is making the world a much more violent and dangerous place. The US is assaulting freedom by perpetrating and facilitating more and more injustice and authoritarianism. The US is undermining international law by constantly violating it. Every argument that could be made for the merits of US global leadership gets weaker by the day.

As the US backs Israel in routinely committing horrifying massacres in Gaza, it’s clear that the US cannot claim to be making the world a more peaceful and harmonious place.

As the US and its allies recklessly ramp up nuclear brinkmanship with Russia over the failing proxy war in Ukraine, it’s clear that the US cannot claim to be making the world safer.

As the US denounces the International Criminal Court for applying for arrest warrants of Israeli officials, and supports Israel in dismissing the orders of the International Court of Justice to cease its assault on Rafah, it’s clear that the US has discredited its claim as the upholder of the “rules-based international order”.

As online censorship and banned pro-Palestine slogans are increasingly normalized throughout the US-led western world, it’s clear that the US has discredited its claim to being a protector of the freedom of speech.

As the US inflicts violent police crackdowns on anti-genocide protesters on university campuses nationwide, it’s clear that the US has discredited its claim to being a protector of the freedom of assembly.

As the US backs Israel in murdering a historic number of journalists and shutting down Al Jazeera, while itself imprisoning Julian Assange for journalistic activity exposing US war crimes, it’s clear that the US has discredited its claim to being a protector of the freedom of the press.

As the US supports its proxies in Kyiv canceling elections in Ukraine while providing military assistance to most of the world’s dictatorships, it is clear that the US has discredited its claim to being a major promotor of democracy.

Whatever argument you could come up with for why the world benefits from US leadership, there are major stories in the news right now which soundly discredit such claims. The evidence is in, and that argument has been lost.

This is not some empty rhetorical point I’m just making to show that my worldview is better than those of the mainstream western empire apologist; it is extremely relevant to present and future developments of unparalleled importance to the survival of our species.

The US empire has been simultaneously ramping up aggressions against China and Russia as well as in the middle east with increasing recklessness that appears bound for a massive military confrontation with at least one major nuclear-armed state at some point in the coming years. It is doing so because the rise of China means US planetary hegemony will be on its way out the door unless something significant occurs, and the empire managers appear to have calculated that it’s worth risking the life of every terrestrial organism to force that something significant to occur.

The only possible argument that this is a sane or reasonable thing to do is that the world is better off with US leadership than without it. But as we just discussed, every possible premise of that claim has been soundly discredited by the actions of the United States. And it’s only getting worse.

This to me makes it abundantly clear that the world would be better off without US leadership.

Whenever I say this I get empire apologists in my comments furiously arguing that if the US doesn’t dominate our planet then China will, but there’s no evidence that China seeks to supplant the US as a unipolar planetary hegemon, and the assumption that there must always be one unipolar power dominating the globe is ahistorical nonsense. In all of human history there has been only one unipolar planetary hegemon, namely the US empire, and it didn’t exist until the fall of the Soviet Union in the nineties.

It is not rational to believe that something which has only happened one single time in all of history must be the norm for our world. Multipolarity has been the norm, not the exception, throughout all the rest of our time on this planet prior to the emergence of US global supremacy some three decades ago.

None of this is to suggest that a multipolar world will solve all our problems or give rise to peace and harmony. But it is clear that accepting the emergence of such a world is preferable to a world in which the US empire seeks to suppress and delay its arrival with rapidly increasing amounts of violence and aggression, up to and including ramping up for World War Three and playing insane games of chicken with armageddon weapons.

The US empire is too crazy and sick to be allowed to rule the world anymore. There is no argument to be made that the benefits outweigh the costs. There is no reason the world’s great powers cannot come together and collaborate toward a healthy world for the benefit of everyone, if humanity can just shrug off its primitive impulse to dominate and control.

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https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/05/no_author/the-us-is-discrediting-all-arguments-for-why-it-should-lead-the-world/

WHO Do You Think You Are?

WHO Do You Think You Are?

Not the boss of us, that's WHO. (*And yes, I'M BACK!)

Jenna McCarthy
Jenna’s Side

May 29, 2024

In only the biggest news to break since pig yoga made its debut in Massachusetts, just this past glorious holiday weekend, the infamous World Health Organization’s “Pandemic Preparedness Treaty”—the one that would have eliminated national sovereignty and guaranteed travel restrictions, unprecedented surveillance, and most likely my very own spot in the grimmest FEMA camp imaginable—bit the proverbial dust.

As they are wont to do, the WHO had attempted to package the pandemic treaty in trendy inclusiveness-themed paper and tie it up with a pretty, politically correct, socially sensitive, kumbaya-colored bow. The treaty’s impetus, the story goes, is that we can’t expect the most affluent, industrialized nations to behave fairly and to not stockpile all of those safe-and-effective vaccines for themselves. It’s about equity, you see. Spreading the love. Being diligent, thoughtful global citizens. Caring selflessly for others and saving the planet and ensuring racial parity and probably something about preserving LGBTQ+ rights and possibly protecting baby seals.Virus Mania: Corona/CO... Scoglio, Stefano Best Price: $42.79 Buy New $35.00 (as of 10:37 UTC - Details)

For those unfamiliar with its origins, the WHO was created by the UN during World War II with the goal of establishing complete planetary control… a one world government… a “global body to coordinate international health efforts.” The decision-making arm of the WHO is the World Health Assembly (WHA), which is comprised of representatives from all 194 member states, including the US. The first WHA convened in 1948 in (where else?) Switzerland, which is famously neutral and therefore unlikely to host routine meetings of megalomaniacs hell bent on governing the entire globe’s populace or anything. Thanks for the impartiality, Switzerland!

The WHO’s autocratic, unscrupulous, unelected leaders believe that they and they alone are competent and capable enough of orchestrating a coordinated world-wide response to the next pandemic, the one they are right this minute arranging they’ve all but guaranteed us. The nefarious Treaty That Tanked (A Midwestern Doctor penned a brilliant detailing of the miserable thing which I highly recommend reading) would have granted these goons the power to not only “prevent, detect, and respond to pandemics,” but to determine what constitutes a pandemic in the first place.

*Cue the climate change catastrophe headlines*

It’s worth noting that even non-communicable diseases—think cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory and cardiovascular disorders—can be declared pandemics. It’s also curious that the WHO has forecast a 77% increase in new cancer cases by 2050 I wonder why. Wouldn’t it be terrifically convenient if they had the authority to lock us all up for a disease they caused? The ramifications of such sweeping powers make The Shining look like a G-rated Pixar flick.

The WHO is not giving up, of course. According to the organization’s Chief Tyrant Tedros Ghebreyesus, the treaty’s colossal flop shocking unpopularity is merely an annoying speed bump on the superhighway to hell.

“This is not a failure,” Ghebreyesus insisted. “We will try everything — believing that anything is possible — and make this happen because the world still needs a pandemic treaty.”

Dr. Rima Laibow believes the problem isn’t merely the WHO, which is an agency of the UN, but the entire United Nations. (Her website, preventgenocide2030.org, is a wealth of info.) To her point, the UN is busily prepping for this September’s Summit of the Future (tagline: multilateral solutions for a better tomorrow *someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya*), a “high-level event, bringing world leaders together to forge a new international consensus on how we deliver a better present and safeguard the future.” (Sound familiar?) The UN’s Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development looms just five and a half freedom-filled years away—and if you haven’t gone down that dystopian rabbit hole, I’ll just say if you’re a nudist, vegan hermit, you have nothing at all to worry about.

Laibow is no fringy conspiracy theorist not that there’s anything wrong with those. Many others agree—including Dan Astin-Gregory, who has organized the Road To Geneva convoy (May 30 – June 1), a pandemic-star-studded event (featured speakers include Aseem Malhotra, Ryan Cole, Brett Weinstein, Jessica Rose, Andrew Bridgen, Steve Kirsch, Mikki Willis, and more) to protest the WHO and its unelected bureaucrats. Take that, Switzerland.

If I hadn’t just gotten back from Commiefornia, and I didn’t have a day job, and I wasn’t supporting two nearly adult children in two of the most expensive states in the US and could afford to jet off to The Peace Capital on a well-intended whim, I’d be there with a megaphone and loud, annoying, bedazzled bells on.

Every day, people ask me, so what can we do? Dr. Laibow’s website has a robust menu of messages (organized by country) that readers can send directly to their lawmakers to encourage them to exit the UN, halt vaccine passports, stop the International Health Regulations (IHR) amendments, and demand transparency in anything relating to the WHO. Simply enter your contact info and the site takes you to auto-populated letters ready to send to your specific representatives. It takes a few quick minutes, and although it’s not quite as satisfying as I imagine flipping an angry dozen middle fingers in Tedros Ghebreyesus’s face would be, it’s a start. Do it. And then share the link with everyone you know. Seriously. It’ll likely take millions of messages to make an impact—do not let that stop you—but it’s something. And something is always better than nothing.

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Source

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/05/no_author/who-do-you-think-you-are/

GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau tried to hide massive security failure at Winnipeg biolab

GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau tried to hide massive security failure at Winnipeg biolab

The Trudeau government has an appalling record of failing to stand on guard for the security of Canadians in the face of China's interference with our democracy

Lorrie Goldstein

Published Feb 29, 2024  •  Last updated Feb 29, 2024  •  

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick /THE CANADIAN PRESS

We now know why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fought so hard to keep secret the documents revealing scientists Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were fired from Canada’s highest security biolab because of their undisclosed relationships with agencies of the People’s Republic of China.

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It was the same reason Trudeau fought so hard to avoid a public inquiry into China’s interference in the last two federal elections, until political and public pressure left him with no choice.

Both controversies reveal the same thing – the Trudeau government’s appalling record of failing to stand on guard for the safety and security of Canadians in the face of China’s brazen and continuing interference with our democracy.

Documents released this week, almost four years after the fact, finally revealed the full story about why Qiu and Cheng were marched out of Winnipeg’s Level 4 National Microbiology Laboratory – which does research on some of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases – in July 2019, before being officially terminated in January 2021, after their security clearances were revoked.

The National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg is shown in a May 19, 2009, photo. Photo by JOHN WOODS / FILES /THE CANADIAN PRESS

The reason was that by then, CSIS and Public Health Agency of Canada investigators had concluded the scientists were “a realistic and credible threat to Canada’s economic security.”

Qiu, in particular, CSIS said, “developed deep, cooperative relationships with a variety of People’s Republic of China institutions and has intentionally transferred scientific knowledge and materials to China in order to benefit the PRC, and herself, without regard for the implications to her employer or to Canada’s interests.”

Even when confronted with evidence of these activities, CSIS said, Qiu lied about these relationships.

While those investigations were going on, Trudeau, when confronted by questions from the opposition parties demanding answers about security lapses at the Winnipeg lab, accused the questioners of anti-Asian racism, while his government claimed the information had to be kept secret for reasons of national security.

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That’s the same tactic he used, initially, when questioned about China’s interference in the last two federal elections – playing the race card while invoking national security.

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This before he was finally compelled to agree to a public inquiry into foreign interference – grudgingly – in the face of months of opposition and public pressure to do so.

But that’s not all the Trudeau government did in a bid to keep the Winnipeg lab security documents secret.

For months, it rejected demands from a special Commons committee on Canada-China relations to release the documents, as well as from the House of Commons itself and ultimately from then Commons speaker Anthony Rota.

Instead, the Trudeau government went to court to keep the documents secret until dropping the case after the issue became moot, because of the 2021 federal election, which dissolved Parliament.

Following the election, then Trudeau government house leader Mark Holland struck an ad hoc all-party committee to examine the lab investigation documents.

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It concluded most of them could be released without endangering national security and that the real reason the government tried to keep them secret for so long was not due to legitimate national security concerns, but out of embarrassment for the internal security failures it revealed.

In releasing the documents Holland, now health minister, acknowledged the security situation at the lab was unacceptable and that proper security protocols were not followed, but he insisted he is “absolutely certain” – and the documents establish – “that no sensitive information left the lab.”

But at this point, given its record, how would this government even know?

lgoldstein@postmedia.com

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Source

https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-trudeau-tried-to-hide-massive-security-failure-at-winnipeg-biolab

Dr. Fauci’s Lieutenant on the Hot Seat

Dr. Fauci’s Lieutenant on the Hot Seat

Justin Hart   May 27, 2024   Government, Public Health   

In a moment of rare bipartisan denunciation, Democrat Representative Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) confronted Dr. David Morens, longtime advisor to Dr. Fauci: “Sir, I think you’re going to be haunted by your testimony today.”

Dr. Morens, a senior scientific advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been embroiled in controversy following revelations of his attempts to seemingly conceal embarrassing information about his personal friend and NIH grant recipient, Dr. Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance. Morens’s attempts to evade Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests laid bare yesterday in front of the Select Committee on Covid-19 were eye-opening and disturbing.

Dr. Morens frequently used his personal email to conduct official business, explicitly to avoid FOIA scrutiny. He emailed a colleague in May 2020: “So you and Peter and others should be able to email me on gmail only.”

In other uncovered correspondence, Dr. Morens openly discussed methods to delete federal records to prevent their release under FOIA: “I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIAed, but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe. Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to Gmail.”

In one particularly shocking email, Dr. Morens asked Dr. Peter Daszak for monetary reimbursement—specifically a “kickback”—for his assistance in editing EcoHealth Alliance’s grant compliance efforts. Although this allegation has yet to be confirmed, the email reads: “…do I get a kickback???? Too much fooking money!” 

Under testimony, Dr. Morens claimed that this was simply “black humor” and “joking” with his friend  Peter Daszak—who is now under disbarment from NIH grants following serious mismanagement of grants to his company EcoHealth Alliance.

In addition to Dr. Morens’s FOIA endrun revelations, the emails also contained unprofessional and misogynistic comments. He seemingly disparaged CDC Director Rochelle Walensky attributing her appointment to her sex: “Well, she does wear a skirt…” 

Representative Mary Miller-Meeks (R-IO) confronted Dr. Morens on these issues: “You’re trusted with one of the highest positions in government to combat public health crises. And instead of doing your job, you’re too busy worried about avoiding FOIAs and challenging someone’s position because they happen to wear a skirt.”

Morens apologized but seemed to downplay the significance of his comments: “…it was the same snarky, joking stuff.” But Rep. Miller-Meeks was having none of it. She interrupted: “That’s not a snarky joke. That is an underlying behavior that indicates how you approach women and how you think of women, and it’s disgusting.”

At the heart of the matter is what Dr. Morens was doing to hide information to protect Peter Daszak and even Dr. Fauci from embarrassing revelations of their actions during the Covid-19 pandemic. In emails, Morens discussed back-channeling information to Dr. Fauci to avoid FOIA requests: “I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him…” Confronted by these emails, Morens dismissed them: “There are some elements of this that I don’t think are being understood.”

Additional emails further reveal Fauci’s involvement in offline communications, potentially undermining US government operations by assisting Dr. Morens’s efforts to share internal NIH information with Dr. Peter Daszak. 

For instance, Dr. Morens shared confidential information marked (For Official Use Only) with Daszak: “Please feel free to share any docs that I’ve sent to you, with Tony. Hopefully, you can do that in a way that avoids FOIA, and if not possible, just show him stuff on screen share on Zoom.”

Dr. Morens and Dr. Fauci have collaborated and co-authored numerous papers and articles over the years but Morens seemed to downplay his relationship with Dr. Fauci: “I never gone out with him to have a beer.” 

Representative Michael Cloud (R-TX) read the email regarding the “FOIA lady” instructing him on how to avoid the information requests. Morens objected: “She gave me [no info] about avoiding FOIA.” Cloud pushed back: “So you were lying then but you’re telling us the truth now?” Morens dug deeper: “I was making a joke with Peter, I said something like ‘I have a way to make it go away’ but that was just a euphemism.” 

These past few weeks have been busy for the Select Committee of Covid-19, headed by Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R_OH). They have long requested the disbarment of EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak from the NIH, and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has initiated formal proceedings. The May 15, 2024 memorandum from HHS underscores the severity of EcoHealth’s compliance failures, emphasizing the need for exacting oversight in public health research.

As background to all of this, the ideological framework that Fauci and Morens have consistently promoted over two decades of co-authorship gives some color commentary on where the stringent pandemic policies originated. Their collaboration began with largely technical papers on infectious diseases, yet over time, their recommendations expanded significantly in ambition.

Their earliest publications together (which started in 2004) seemed to show cautious optimism for tackling infectious diseases without breaching individual rights or governance norms. By 2007, their tone had noticeably shifted. In an article on the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, they warned against complacency and hinted at the necessity for heightened vigilance. 

In their 2012 work, “The Perpetual Challenge of Infectious Diseases,” they moved even further, declaring eradication—rather than just mitigation—as the new goal, emphasizing a radical new approach to managing infectious diseases.

Their evolution was cemented in a 2016 article on the Zika Virus. In it, they posited that human behaviors and modern societal structures were significant contributors to the emergence of diseases.

…in our human-dominated world, urban crowding, constant international travel, and other human behaviors combined with human-caused microperturbations in ecologic balance can cause innumerable slumbering infectious agents to emerge unexpectedly. In response, we clearly need to up our game…

The implications of crowds spreading sickness are not new, but the corollary here is that human actions need strict regulation to prevent future outbreaks, a policy evolution that would have significant impacts just four years down the line.

The culmination of these ideas appeared starkly in their widely-cited 2020 “Cell Magazine” article in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Here, Fauci and Morens argued for transformative changes in human behavior and infrastructure to live “in greater harmony with nature.” They contended that human behaviors fundamentally disrupt the “human-microbial status quo,” leading to disease outbreaks.

This article was a watershed, revealing their vision of a restructured society to prevent pandemics—an ideological stance that has drawn criticism for its potentially authoritarian overtones.

Fauci and Morens’s advocacy for “rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence” was more than a scientific proposal; it was a call for a societal overhaul.

They seem to pine for yesteryear without all the hustling and bustling: “Since we cannot return to ancient times, can we at least use lessons from those times to bend modernity in a safer direction?”

Nothing epitomizes the US Government’s response to the pandemic like the loaded phrase: “bend modernity in a safer direction.” 

Now, with Dr. Morens’s skirting FOIA requests and promoting ways to “[make] it all go away” – the hubris is laid bare for all to see.

The deceitful actions of Drs. Morens, Daszak, and Fauci, their evasion of FOIAs, and their backroom dealings have severely undermined public trust. As these revelations come to light, it is crucial for us to demand greater transparency and integrity from our public health officials. Only then can we restore faith in our health institutions and ensure they truly serve the public good.

Republished from the author’s Substack

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Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the original Brownstone Institute Article and Author.

Author

• Justin Hart is an executive consultant with over 25 years experience creating data-driven solutions for Fortune 500 companies and Presidential campaigns alike. Mr. Hart is the Chief Data Analyst and founder of RationalGround.com which helps companies, public policy officials, and even parents gauge the impact of COVID-19 across the country. The team at RationalGround.com offers alternative solutions on how to move forward during this challenging pandemic.

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Source

https://brownstone.org/articles/dr-faucis-lieutenant-on-the-hot-seat/

Treasure Trove of Damning Evidence Surrounding Covid Origin

Treasure Trove of Damning Evidence Surrounding Covid Origin

Dr. Joseph Mercola

Mercola.com

July 31, 2023

According to a July 12, 2023, article by Ryan Grim published by The Intercept,¹ U.S. House Republicans investigating the origin of COVID-19 “appear to have inadvertently released a trove of new documents … that shed light on deliberations among the scientists who drafted a key paper in February and March of 2020.”

The paper in question is “The Proximal Origin of Sars-Cov-2,”² a letter to the editor of Nature Medicine published March 17, 2020. This letter ended up being widely cited by the media as evidence of a scientific consensus that the virus emerged naturally and jumped species.

The House Subcommittee on the origin of COVID-19 devoted an entire report to this paper, showing how the authors presented a false conclusion to the public while privately believing the virus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

The report was published July 11, 2023, the same day the subcommittee also held a hearing on the “Proximal Origin” paper, in which they questioned Robert Garry, Ph.D., of Tulane University and Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., of Scripps, two of the scientists involved in its creation. The Intercept explains how more information than intended ended up out in the open:³

“According to the metadata in the PDF of the report, it was created using ‘Acrobat PDFMaker 23 for Word,’ indicating that the report was originally drafted as a Word document. Word, however, retains the original image when an image is cropped, as do many other apps …

The Intercept was able to extract the original, complete images from the PDF using freely available tools, following the work of a Twitter sleuth. All the files can be found here.”⁴

The original subcommittee report has now been taken down.

Background

February 1, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-director of the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) convened a conference call with 11 scientists to discuss COVID-19.

On that conference call, Drs. Fauci and Collins were warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — and that the virus appeared to be the result of genetic engineering. Minutes from the call reveal a lab escape was in fact the consensus among the gathered experts on that day.

Yet later that very day, a first draft of “The Proximal Origin” paper had been written, and three days later, on February 4, Fauci was sent a copy for editing and approval. The authors have maintained that new information changed their minds, but what, exactly, could they have learned in that short time? As it turns out, nothing.

According to The Intercept, “Slack messages and emails show that their initial inclination toward a lab escape remained long past that time.” So, as initially suspected, the “Proximal Origin” paper appears to have been nothing more than an attempt to control the narrative.

Zoonotic Origin Pushers Suspected Lab Leak

“In a Slack exchange February 2, 2020, between Andersen and Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology in the School of Biological Sciences, it becomes clear how seriously the authors took the hypothesis that COVID may have leaked from a lab … before they ultimately became dedicated to publicly dismissing it,” Grim writes.⁵

The main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely — it’s not some fringe theory. ~ Kristian Andersen, Ph.D.

In that Slack exchange, Andersen wrote:

“I believe RaTG13 is from Yuanan, which is about as far away from Wuhan as you can be and still be in China. What are the chances of finding viruses that are 96% identical given that distance? Seems strange given how many SARS-like viruses we have in bats.”

RaTG13 refers to a virus found in a Chinese mine in 2013 after several miners had fallen ill with COVID-like symptoms. This virus was stored and researched at the WIV. Rambaut replied to Andersen’s comment:⁶

“I personally think we should get away from all the strange coincidence stuff. I agree it smells really fishy but without a smoking gun it will not do us any good.

The truth is never going to come out (if [lab] escape is the truth). Would need irrefutable evidence. My position is that the natural evolution is entirely plausible and we will have to leave it at that. Lab passaging might also generate this mutation but we have no evidence that that happened.”

Rambaut also noted:⁷

“Given the shitshow that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural processes.”

While Andersen agreed with Rambaut’s comment, saying “Yup. I totally agree that that’s a very reasonable conclusion,” he still, clearly, did not believe that COVID was caused by zoonotic transfer. Earlier in that same Slack thread, Andersen stressed that:⁸

“The main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely — it’s not some fringe theory. I absolutely agree that we can’t prove one way or the other, but we never will be able to — however, that doesn’t mean that by default the data is currently much more suggestive of a natural origin as opposed to e.g. passage. It is not — the furin cleavage site is very hard to explain.”

The choice of words is ironic, considering the lab leak theory was dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory in large part thanks to Andersen’s “Proximal Origin” paper, which boldly proclaimed that “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus” and that “we do not believe any type of laboratory scenario is plausible.”

How Involved Was Fauci?

During the July 11, 2023, subcommittee hearing, Andersen insisted that Fauci and Collins had not influenced the conclusions presented in “Proximal Origin,” but doubts linger.

February 5, 2020, Andersen wrote that suspicions of genetic engineering and bioweapons research was “definitely not going away,” and that he was being approached by journalists about it. “There might be a time where we need to tackle that more directly head on,” he wrote, “but I’ll let the likes of Jeremy [Farrar] and Tony [Fauci] figure out how to do that.”

And while Fauci and Collins didn’t figure out how to quash the theory for good, they sure tried. April 16, 2020, Collins emailed Fauci expressing dismay that the “Proximal Origin” paper had failed to quash the lab leak hypothesis, and asked Fauci if there was anything else the NIH could do to “put down this very destructive conspiracy theory.”⁹

The next day, Fauci cited the paper from the White House podium and told reporters that COVID-19 was “totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”¹⁰

There are also questions about whether Fauci and other government officials may have used private emails to cover up their coverup. During the hearing, the subcommittee chairman reported that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is investigating the conduct of Dr. David M. Morens, senior scientific adviser to Fauci.

The investigation was launched after the subcommittee released a 2021 email by Morens to several “Proximal Origins” authors, including Garry and Andersen, in which he admitted that he was using a personal Gmail account to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).¹¹

Pressure From on High

In a February 16, 2020, email, Eddie Holmes, another one of the “Proximal Origins” authors, also alluded to “pressure” being applied, although he didn’t name names:

“Well, that’s suspicious … he comes back 15 minutes after I submit? A natural phenomenon? I’m not sure we can exclude the hypothesis of deliberately engineered responsibility shirking. Anyway, it’s done. Sorry the last bit had to be done without you … pressure from on high.”

According to Grim, “officials with the communications department at the NIH had been asking about the status of the submission,” and “Taken as a whole, the messages undercut the claims that the NIH took a hands-off approach to the paper.”

‘Impossible’ to Reject Lab Leak Theory

Andersen’s reply to the journal Nature also reveals that dismissing the lab leak theory was impossible from the very beginning, based on the data. Before the “Proximal Origin” paper was submitted to Nature Medicine, it had been pitched to — and rejected — by Nature.

The rejection letter specified that one reviewer thought the lab leak had to be conclusively rejected, lest it fuel conspiracy theories. According to that reviewer, once new pangolin sequences were published, “a lab origin will be extremely unlikely.” In a February 20, 2020, reply to Nature, Andersen wrote:

“Had that been the case, we would of course have included that — but the more sequences we see from pangolins (and we have been analyzing/discussing these very carefully) the more unlikely it seems that they’re the intermediate hosts.

Unfortunately, none of this helps refute a lab origin and the possibility must be considered as a serious scientific theory (which is what we do) and not dismissed out of hand as another ‘conspiracy’ theory. We all really, really wish that we could do that (that’s how this got started), but unfortunately it’s not possible given the data.”

However, by the time the paper was submitted to Nature Medicine, it had been further edited to more strongly dismiss the possibility of a lab leak.

A Deeper Cover-Up at Play?

According to Republicans on the subcommittee on the origin of COVID-19, the “Proximal Origin” paper may have been unduly influenced by Fauci and other government officials who sought to downplay the possibility that COVID-19 might have emerged from the WIV — a lab with a long history of U.S. funding of questionable gain-of-function research. Subcommittee chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said:¹²

“We are examining whether government officials, regardless of who they are, unfairly and perhaps biasedly tipped the scales toward a preferred origin theory …

And, overall, we’re examining whether scientific integrity was disregarded in favor of political expediency — maybe to conceal or diminish the government’s relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology …

Or maybe to avoid blaming China for any complicity, intended or otherwise, in a pandemic that has killed more than 1 million Americans and has had a crushing effect on all humankind itself.”

Meanwhile, Garry, Andersen and certain Democrats tried to shift blame onto others, such as Sir Jeremy Farrar. However, by doing so, they only “highlight how insidious the process was,” independent journalist Sam Husseini — who live-tweeted the hearing — writes.¹³ Quoting from Husseini’s Substack article:¹⁴

“… Jeremy Farrar … played a crucial role in pulling together the group of people who would sign ‘Proximal Origin’ … he was also a signer of the Lancet letter,¹⁵ the other main pillar of propaganda from 2020 on COVID origins.

Farrar had been head of the highly influential Wellcome Trust in Britain and is now chief scientist for the WHO as it attempts a ‘power grab.’ This could hardly be more disturbing, but none of this was pointed out in the hearing.

Time and again, Farrar’s name was invoked to let Fauci off the hook and never was it brought up to show how there was a deeper coverup going on.”

Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier was also named as taking part in the meetings that led to the publication of “Proximal Origin.” As noted by Husseini, no one bothered to explain the importance of his presence either.

Fouchier launched a firestorm of controversy in 2011 when he used serial passage to make the avian flu airborne.¹⁶ The New York Times warned that his work might lead to an “engineered doomsday.”¹⁷

“But Fouchier didn’t sign any either the Lancet letter or ‘Proximal Origin’ — quite likely because his doing so would have made alarm bells go off,” Husseini writes.¹⁸

“This shows how the propaganda put out at the beginning of the pandemic was highly orchestrated to hinder people from seeing the possibility of lab origins for COVID and the dire threats involved. This raises further questions as to the wider agendas at play.”

Sources and References

• ^{1, 3, 5, 6} The Intercept July 12, 2023
• ² Nature Medicine March 17, 2020; 26: 450-452
• ⁴ Document Cloud Subcommittee on Coronavirus
• ^7, 8, 9 The Nation July 12, 2023
• ¹⁰ USRTK April 11, 2023
• ¹¹ The Intercept June 29, 2023
• ¹² White House Oversight Committee July 11, 2023
• ^13, 14, 18 Sam Husseini Substack July 13, 2023
• ¹⁵ The Lancet March 7, 2020; 395(10226): E42-E43
• ¹⁶ Science. 2012 Jun 22; 336(6088): 1534–1541
• ¹⁷ NYT January 7, 2012

Copyright © Dr. Joseph Mercola

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Source

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/07/joseph-mercola/treasure-trove-of-damning-evidence-surrounding-covid-origin/