Good luck with the move! Always a major operation. Off to warmer climes? One day we're gonna catch up again for a beer or two - or even a mead...

Yep, we'll be near Yokohama, just south of Tokyo. It's on average 10C warmer in the winter. That will make a huge difference. I'm not moving the snow shovel.

This confirms to me a belief I've long held that we've only advanced as a species technologically, which, granted, has given fantastic benefits and is a good thing. But we confuse this with moral, ethical, and indeed logical advancement, which I maintain we have not demonstrated at all.

Great minds! Furthermore, the advancements in ethics and logic that we did make appear to have been shuffled down towards the bottom of the deck, while science/technology has become the new god of everything.

Good luck with the move! Always a major operation. Off to warmer climes? One day we're gonna catch up again for a beer or two - or even a mead...

If we fight, there’s still that small chance. If we do nothing, we can be sure there's no chance.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." (Not sure who said that.)

All good points.

The technological advances we've made have allowed us to improve human rights through, mainly, food production. Most of our social advances have been made possible by the technical ones, not by some moral or spiritual awakening. Those in power can simply afford to hand out more freedoms to those under them. If that situation of abundance reverses, so will human rights.

PS: In the midst of yet another move. May visit less frequent until we get settled.

Socrates couldn’t believe it:

I know very well that I am not wise
even in the smallest degree.

On the other hand:

It cannot be (the Oracle) is speaking falsely
for (the Oracle) is a god and cannot lie.

Socrates was “for a long time at a loss” to understand the meaning.

“(V)ery reluctantly”, Socrates sought “to point out to the Oracle its mistake.” He determined the best way to do this was by questioning the experts of his time.
The theory was:

You said that I was the wisest of men
but this man is wiser than I am.

Therefore: I am not the wisest of men.

First off, he chose a politician, who was “reputed to be wise” and “examined him” by asking a series of questions.

(B)ut this was the result:
When I conversed with him I came to see that,
though a great many persons, and most of all he himself,
thought that he was wise, yet he was not wise.

Socrates troubles began, however, when:

I tried to prove to him that he was not wise
though he fancied that he was.
By so doing I made him, and
many of the bystanders, my enemies.

Later Socrates reflected on this encounter:

Neither of us probably knows anything that is really good,
but he thinks that he has knowledge, when he has not,
while I, having no knowledge, do not think that I have.

Socrates was forced to deduce:

I seem, at any rate, to be a little wiser than he is on this point:
I do not think that I know what I do not know.

Undeterred, Socrates embarked upon a journey of “Herculean labors” whereby he sought out more experts - “I went on to one man after another” - but each examination produced “exactly the same result”, including the unfortunate consequence that:

I was making enemies every day
which caused me much unhappiness and anxiety.

So what was Socrates' inescapable conclusion from questioning all these elites?

I must tell you the truth; verily, by the dog of Egypt:
I found that the men, whose reputation for wisdom stood highest
were nearly the most lacking in it
while others, who were looked down on as common people
were much better fitted to learn.

This seems like a simple, uncontroversial thing, but today we are in a position where asking questions provokes a furious response from the experts, so let’s take a look at how Socrates got along and see if there are any parallels with todays’ situation.

Disclaimer: Following Socrates advice may lead to you being executed by the state.

• Freedom of Speech (de-platforming/censoring of alternative views)
  
• Right to Privacy (phone tracking, surveillance)
  
• Freedom of Movement (lockdowns)
  
• Freedom of Assembly (protests banned)
  
• Freedom to not take experimental chemical agents that don’t work - or even get you high (No jab - No job)

This War on Civil Rights, instituted by governments, is driven by a powerful cohort of unelected, unaccountable experts.

Mainstream media/Big-Tech is the delivery device.

And that’s just in the ‘free’ -world.

It’s hard to imagine a more formidable goliath.

In the good old days, we might look for a politician to buck this trend - someone people can rally around - but in the Australian political landscape at least, nobody has shown any such leadership. Not from the left, the right, the Greens, or the independents. They all trumpet the same lines - ‘Listen to the (select crew of) experts’ - abuse/cancel anyone who asks a question.

That just leaves the public to organize themselves - do their best to provide factual information and disseminate it however they can.

Here’s some steps we can take:

Our secret weapon is a question

• Don’t blindly believe the top experts. Science is not supposed to be a religion.
  
• Question them. That will enrage the experts - but stay calm and carry on.
  
• Do they have conflicts of interests?
  
• Are they financially/psychologically beholden to the CCP for example?
  
• Are they financially/psychologically beholden to corporate interests? Which ones?

If a scientist saying 'fossil fuels are great' was getting money from Exxon, you'd want to know that. So how 'bout those top-scientists (Daszak,Lipkin et al) promoting the CCP's version of Covid from the loudest platforms? Are they benefitting from their arrangements with this totalitarian regime?

Details

• What are they arguing exactly? Demand details. The top scientists will fight tooth and nail not to discuss details, but wade through that - you gotta get them - you can't get to the truth without them.

Once you do get to those details - you’ll find the false premise - you'll find vested interest. From there it all unravels.

Be Positive

• Have fun. Some of it is hilarious.
  
• Be engaging, open in discussions - leave the name-calling to the other side.

Yeah, sounds nice in theory, but what's the likelihood that will stand a chance against the combined might of the political/scientific/tech elites? That’s a fair point.

But as Lin Shuling would say in the protest against Miramar/Taitung Government:

If we fight, there’s still that small chance. If we do nothing, we can be sure there's no chance.

• Money - lots of it. Daszak is calling for billions of dollars in funding to pursue his unsubstantiated zoonotic crossover theories and all the GoF experiments associated with it. ‘Virus Hunting’, which took off after 911, is still riding the exponential curve. On the other hand, revelations of a lab-leak would, hopefully, see a strong contraction in funding for high-risk facilities such as WIV, and a ban on GoF.
  
• Celebrity status. Fame is addictive - for those that are prone to craving it. Like any other drug.
  
• Power. Also addictive. In the ‘Brave New-Normal’ of data-centralization and surveillance, our guys, almost exclusively men, are on the right side of that power imbalance. They are the top- experts who keep telling us to listen to the experts.

There is a stack more easily refutable “arrant nonsense”, as Richard Ebright, a rare hero amongst the scientists in all of this, puts it, being spouted by the top-experts. But at some point you need to step back out of their weeds and focus on what’s important.

How did it happen?

Probably a Lab Accident

Can that be proved definitively?

Yes. Most likely already has been - by the CCP’s internal investigation.

Will the outside world ever be granted access to this evidence?

Probably not.

Why does it matter?

Apart from the obvious that we don’t want it to happen again, an awful lot of big state surveillance has been downloaded on the population - all of which is being justified by Covid.

Are we being asked to accept this because of a security lapse at a lab?

Are we living in a world where the top-experts, super-sized by their media platforms, are spreading CCP propaganda and lying to us?

The most likely answer to those questions is, i'm sorry to say, ‘Yes’.

The next question is; ‘What can we do to fight against that?’

There is “no evidence of direct transmission of SARSr-CoVs from bats to people”.

There is "no evidence" of pangolin or any other wild animal acting as an intermediate species (between bats (for which there’s no evidence) and humans) (unless you count scientists as an intermediate species - and the lab-animals, including pangolin, through which bat viruses were passaged). That goes for SARS-1 & 2.

Even if there was a crossover event, it still doesn’t explain how a highly contagious virus ended up in Wuhan without causing an outbreak anywhere else.

There is a mountain of evidence detailing scientists spreading misinformation and fear-mongering to pump up the above scenario, as we’ve covered.

The obvious question is why are they doing that?

“In October 2015, we collected serum samples from 218 residents in four villages in Jinning County, Yunnan province, China.
“As a control, we also collected 240 serum samples from random blood donors in 2015 in Wuhan, Hubei Province more than 1000 km away from Jinning (Fig. 1A) and where inhabitants have a much lower likelihood of contact with bats due to its urban setting.” (Lol - Daszak was so sure an outbreak wouldn’t occur in Wuhan that he used it as a control group.)

From that ‘experiment’, no people in Wuhan tested positive (according to their arbitrary cut-off threshold) but six people supposedly tested positive to bat virus antibodies - harmless ones.

“Importantly, 20 (9.1%) participants witnessed bats flying close to their houses”. (Whoopee-doo)

Here’s the interesting thing - the six samples deemed ‘positive’ according to the cut-off line, only reacted with the recombined WIV viruses from “the receptor binding domains (RBD) of the spike protein (S) from SARS-CoV, bat SARSr-CoVs Rp3, WIV1, and SHC014”.

Biotech expert Yuri Deigin took a look at their methodology - he thinks it’s suss - but whatever, let’s say it’s true - there were 6 positives - not that surprising since the ingredients for the WIV viruses were collected from the same area.

The difference is, according to EcoHealth/WIV’s report, none of them felt sick or remembered being sick from the natural virus - nor did they spread it to others. Compared to WIV's recombined GoF viruses which are designed to make people sick and spread to others.

Even Batwoman admits "the majority of bat viruses are harmless". The only extant known bat viruses in the world today that aren’t harmless, are the ones concocted at WIV. And Covid.

Buried in the report was the admission that:

(Zoonotic) spillover is a relatively rare event….(T)o date, no evidence of direct transmission of SARSr-CoVs from bats to people has been reported.”
WIV/EcoHealth then got funding to conduct a second, bigger study in which “0.6% tested positive for bat coronaviruses.” (all harmless)

The authors admit: “The low seroprevalence observed in this study suggests that bat coronavirus spillover is a rare event.” (not even “relatively rare” anymore - just rare)

In fact:
“We did not find evidence supporting a direct relationship between bat contact and bat coronavirus sero-positivity in the human population.”

Therefore: it’s so rare that there is “no evidence”. You can't get rarer than that.

Remember, these studies showing “no evidence of direct transmission of SARSr-CoVs from bats to people” are the entire basis for Daszak’s claim that both Covid and “the next Disease X”, and so on... are lurking around every corner.

So how the hell does Daszak keep getting away with these ludicrous fringe-theory claims?

Why does he get supported to the hilt by other scientists and mainstream media outlets?

It’s the same old answer that we keep running up against. It’s gotta be either:

(a) colossal stupidity, or

(b) corruption

Therefore (b): Shut up.

Therefore (c)
“The big lesson to learn from this one is: we have to spend the money to properly prepare now.”

Give us “one or two billion dollars” to transition the world to a 'new-normal-lockdown-compliant-get-your-6-monthly-jab-surveillance mentality.'

That’s just the ‘free-world’ entry-level version. Hands up any politicians that would like to wield that kind of data/authority over the masses…?

“We estimate a nine to one return on investment, at least...and that's without including the cost of Covid.”

That's a 900% return for investors into Daszak/WIV Inc! Sounds tempting.

“The problem is that it's hard (for EcoHealth/WIV) to convince people to fund a big project that would cost one or two billion dollars when these truly global pandemics are not common.” (super-rare actually - we’ll get there soon)

“I worry that we’re not going to change.”

Don’t worry! It’s changing. You changed the world Pete! How many of us can say that?

People are infected, so the story goes, “on a daily basis.. by undiscovered viruses in wildlife in emerging disease hotspots.”

“Any one of these could be the next ‘Disease X’ – potentially even more disruptive and lethal than COVID-19.”

Indeed. 7mil divided by 365 = 19 178 potential Disease X’s every day!

The Message is:

Be afraid. Zoonotic crossover events are lurking/happening around every human interaction with animals - from bats to backyard chickens - was always ready to explode - which we warned you about - btw.

“But we’re all to blame – we talked about pandemics professionally, but we should have shouted louder. Some people did, but they were called scaremongerers, accused of hyping it up. Look at where we are now."

Don’t be too hard on yourself Pete - you shouted long n loud from the world’s loudest platforms. You totally out-shouted the other voices (Prof Ebright) warning that your behaviour was bound to unleash a pandemic. You did your absolute best. When the history of Covid is written - no-one can take that away from you.

On the upside, “where you are now” is a rich getting richer pivotee-to-China WHO celebrity scientist - which is not a bad gig going forward considering...

“A pandemic such as this one isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime tragedy.”

The scariest thing is how confident you are that people won't find out the truth.

Since you've made me aware of this guy Daszak, I see him everywhere. He's constantly in the news, on TV, on podcasts. Shit, I saw him on Netflix just yesterday. Why is he spending all his time selling his theories?

And your points are valid. These experts speak as if people just started interacting with wild animals in the past couple of decades, which is absurd. If anything, we're interacting less with wildlife, not more.

He's a salesman with eye-popping conflicts of interest - appeasing China - supported by all major media platforms.

'Absurd' is the word. It's flat-out Covid Misinformation - designed to get more money.

And your points are valid. These experts speak as if people just started interacting with wild animals in the past couple of decades, which is absurd. If anything, we're interacting less with wildlife, not more.

Growing up in a country town, with a father who liked hunting-shooting-fishing, i did a lot of those. We’d go on 10-day camping trips up the Lachlan River. Shoot pigs (feral pests), kangaroos (dog meat - human food if we didn’t get anything better), ducks (human food), water rats (for the fur). That’s a full on viral hotspot existence including bush meat literally cooked at the coal-face.
Then came home to 30 backyard show-chooks and racing pigeons (with attendant rats and mice and bats) - and cleaning the shit out of those sheds without a mask. I fucking hated that job - breathing in shit-dust...

But don’t remember being plagued by deadly coronaviruses.

I’d never heard of them until SARS-1. Now they’re everywhere supposedly.

These days, i still live in the countryside, go fishing, camping - got backyard chooks, wild animals, bats galore - so a lifetime of continuous hotspot inhabitation. Should that be banned now?

Despite the talk of bulldozers, cattle-farms, and mining causing Covid, according to Daszak et al’s actual theory - it’s people leading my kind of lifestyle who are committing the highest risk behaviour.

Interestingly, so are those living indigenous lifestyles. Take my Bunun neighbour A-de for example - our shared farming/hunting experiences is kinda how we clicked. He’s got a living larder of farm animals at his house - goes hunting for wild pig and goats. Then get this - traps/eats civets! I also trapped them! (released far away) because they raid chicken sheds - for the eggs mostly but also chickens - daily if you don’t trap them. Never saw A-de wear a mask while doing any of the above. How high risk is that?! Quickly ban it now - for the sake of humanity!

What Daszak et al are actually promoting is a ‘War on Indigenous Lifestyle’. You won’t hear them say that - but that’s what it amounts to.

His solution:

"A modern, well run factory farm ...usually (has) better biosecurity, as people don’t want to lose all their animals – and income."

No farmer wants to lose all their animals - and income - i would have thought - or you mean their income doesn’t matter - just that of the subset of bosses of modern, well run factory farms, paying good money for biosecurity experts, like yourself?

Daszak laments:
“What you’ve got now is a lot of amateur farmers, who have converted old properties that are pretty unsecure from a disease point of view.”

Ok, so it’s also a War on Hippies as well. A War on Alternative Lifestyles.

So what’s left in Daszak’s ideal world of biosecurity when you cancel indigenous and alternative lifestyles? Apart from massive funding for biosecurity experts?

In the throes of manifesting that wet dream our heroes are still not satiated. They dream of more perversions... bigger ones: "This pandemic has been very severe” Mike Ryan huffs, reaches for the tissue box - “But this is not necessarily the big one."

But it doesn’t cause super-contagious expialadocious coronaviruses.

If anything, environmental destruction should be great for reducing risk.

Here’s the argument again, this time by Daszak et al:

“Rampant deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of agriculture, intensive farming, mining and infrastructure development, as well as the exploitation of wild species have created a ‘perfect storm’ for the spillover of diseases from wildlife to people.”

Jeff Tollefson reiterates, proudly presented by Nature:

“This phenomenon (Covid) is likely to be the direct result of increased contact between humans, wildlife and livestock, as people move into undeveloped areas. These interactions happen more frequently on the frontier of human expansion because of changes to the natural landscape and increased encounters with animals.”

Putting aside that the evidence suggests the outbreak happened in Wuhan, not in some remote forest, the above theory, at first sight, sounds vaguely plausible. But let’s think about it logically for a minute.

Thought image a:
An island of natural habitat being encroached upon by deforestation for development.

Thought image b:
That same island shrunk to a quarter the size by “rampant deforestation”.

Mathematics will tell you that deforestation decreases the overall interface circumference of human-animal interaction.

As with migration, “rampant deforestation” is not something that started a few years ago. People talk about so many ‘football fields’ of rainforest being cleared in the Amazon every day - i agree - very bad - but take a drive across America or along the east coast of Australia and see how many football fields of forest have been cleared for farming and buildings. Why didn’t that cause a rash of coronavirus pandemics?

The thing is, when you bulldoze a habitat for a cattle farm, a mine, or a shopping mall, whatever, the native animals and birds don’t hang around riding the escalators and infecting the shoppers. Most of the animals die. Some lucky ones retreat back to the remaining habitat, where they compete for dwindling resources - causing further death.

Let’s take pangolin for example. Ian Lipkin, Hlomes, Andersen et al told us that Covid was caused by bats infecting pangolin which infected humans. Pangolin are solitary creatures which are already an endangered species. Bulldozing their habitat is not going to increase bat or human interaction with pangolin in the wild. It will dramatically decrease it.

So what does that leave us with? Top scientists, enabled by mainstream media platforms, cynically playing on people's concerns about environmental destruction to deflect attention from their own reckless, cruel experiments on animals - experiments designed to manufacture more contagious viruses - just like SARS-CoV2.

The "'perfect storm'" was brewing in Daszak's lab environment - not the natural one.

And the arguments about deforestation and migration? That's laughable.

Yes, they talk about migration/refugees like it only started yesterday. I wonder how Moses got on battling all the coronaviruses.

Iraq War 2 caused mass migration. It resulted in a lot of people suffering long term side-effects from scientists using troops as guinea pigs for their anthrax vaccine - but no coronaviruses that i'm aware of.

How about all the birds migrating from continent to continent every year? Did that just start up recently as well?

32:30 "I think that we’re seeing this (virus outbreaks) much more than we used to and this is the function of many things - deforestation - population migration - international travel - climate change."

Apart from climate change - all of those have been going on since the Stone Age. Ok, I’ve got a theory - if you flip the script with Lipkin/Daszak speak - you end up closer to the truth. In the spirit of scientific experimentation, let's give it a spin:

32:30 I think that we’re seeing this (virus outbreaks) much more than we used to and this is the function of many things - scientists collecting viruses - scientists meddling with viruses - scientists having accidents with viruses.

This is your main thesis which I agree with. And I would argue the climate change as well has been going on since the beginning of the planet. We're just in a stage that is being enhanced by human activity.

And the arguments about deforestation and migration? That's laughable.

Here’s the argument oft repeated by celebrity scientists (espoused here by Virus Hunter):

32:30 "I think that we’re seeing this (virus outbreaks) much more than we used to and this is the function of many things - deforestation - population migration - international travel - climate change."

Apart from climate change - all of those have been going on since the Stone Age. (edit: including climate change)
Ok, I’ve got a theory - if you flip the script with Lipkin/Daszak speak - you end up closer to the truth. In the spirit of scientific experimentation, let's give it a spin:

32:30 I think that we’re seeing this (virus outbreaks) much more than we used to and this is the function of many things - scientists collecting viruses - scientists meddling with viruses - scientists having accidents with viruses.

"Why do I think things could get worse? If we don’t change the ways in which we interact with our natural environment, we’re going to have this problem continuously."

Why do I think things could get worse? If we don’t change the ways in which scientists interact with our natural environment, we’re going to have this problem continuously.

"We have international trade which means that something that starts in central Africa rapidly spreads around the world - just like this did, right?"
(Ian, memo-to-self, Covid didn’t start in central Africa, right? How about this:)

We have international trade which means that something that starts in Wuhan rapidly spreads around the world - just like this did, right?

"We have people who can no longer 34:16 find protein so they wind up eating wild animals and becoming infected by those animals."

We have scientists who can no longer 34:16 find funding so they wind up trapping wild animals and becoming infected by those animals.

"We have very wealthy people who like to keep exotic pets, which can infect animals as well - so we are a perfect storm for this - we need to change the way we interact with our natural environment." 34:39

We have very wealthy scientists who like to experiment on exotic lab animals, which can infect lab workers as well - so we are a perfect storm for this - we need to change the way scientists interact with our natural environment. 34:39