The all things Poltical topic - We bear our banners aloft, boots like Drums Our Cadence quick, our countenance dire.

[ComradeYellow]

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

Sounds like a huge discipline problem, being "uncomfortable" taking orders from her or refusing to salute. 

I think upbringing and impounded prejudices can be a stronger force than "discipline" sometimes.  Those can be extremely tough to dislodge.

Look at it like this, after military everyone happily goes right back to their families and "falls back in line" to civilian life.  So yeah, home life is pretty potent.

[ShadySands]

I never saw anything much different than the same casual stuff you'd see outside the military except that people would lean into it a little more for laughs. Anything truly hateful was most likely reserved for a more receptive audience. There were always stories of hate groups and whatnot getting exposed and expelled but it was always something that you heard about in a safety brief. The most extremism that I saw out in the open in my 5 years was of the Christian variety. 

[Malcador]

I've always read articles on the US military having problems with gangs and white supremacists, usually the Army though. 

[Zoraptor]

4 hours ago, pmp10 said:

Protasevich is not Khashoggi.
Not that it makes the act any less heavy-handed, but he was nabbed over the news-site he run not some criticism.
I bet hundreds of names are being extracted from him and his hardware at this very moment.

The last one is the significant thing. They'll be after sources etc.

And let's be frank, if he wasn't being run as an asset by (a/ multiple) NATO countries' intelligence service it would be a massive surprise since the Belarussian opposition is getting the buffet support package; so they may well get info on his handler and their Belarus internal sources too. Whether people like it or not, that is Treason so long as the government is run by Lukashenko.

5 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

Can you prove beyond any doubt that is what not a lab leak? 

Can you prove beyond any doubt that it was a lab leak?

Not equivalent since there's literally no evidence of it being a lab leak beyond the lab being there and some of its large workforce being ill, something that happens with large workforces. That's not really even much in terms of circumstantial evidence, it has only slightly more evidence than the Chinese 'theory' that US scientists made it and diplomats deliberately spread it to defame China.

OTOH, we know that every other human coronavirus has a natural origin, and that there have been at least two spontaneous crossovers in the past 20 years- SARS(1), and MERS. SARS came from Civits, iirc, and MERS from camels, and SARS was near identical in terms of how the outbreak happened mechanically to SARS2 ('covid19'). It took ~4 years to identify the intermediate species from which SARS jumped but it was identified, and that species was found a long way from the initial outbreak, because you only notice outbreaks when they hit large population centres. SARS is actually why the Chinese have a virology lab in Wuhan in the first place. There's also no evidence from the RNA sequence of tampering, beyond the facile one of it being effective at infecting humans. Even then, and after multiple mutations during the poandemic it's about 20% as effective as measles.

It being of natural origin is the default, because it's provably happened multiple times before in a short, relatively speaking, timeframe. At worst, it was an accidental release of a pre-existing virus and there's no actual evidence for even that.

OTOH, the origin question is clearly being used as a cudgel in the current wave of sinophobia/ sinohysteria. Much like all those EU leaders who couldn't stand the UK having a successful vaccine when they didn't and who made crap up- hello Monsieur Macron- the damage to medical credibility etc is just a side effect of people playing geopolitics. It's like Vladimir Putin having Parkinson's and retiring in January or Russia going bankrupt within in six months in 2014 due to sanctions; you aren't really meant to remember any specifics nor ask any questions, you're just meant to remember the impression it gives. And for the lab story the impression meant to be given is pretty obvious.

[Darkpriest]

8 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

The last one is the significant thing. They'll be after sources etc.

And let's be frank, if he wasn't being run as an asset by (a/ multiple) NATO countries' intelligence service it would be a massive surprise since the Belarussian opposition is getting the buffet support package; so they may well get info on his handler and their Belarus internal sources too. Whether people like it or not, that is Treason so long as the government is run by Lukashenko.

Not equivalent since there's literally no evidence of it being a lab leak beyond the lab being there and some of its large workforce being ill, something that happens with large workforces. That's not really even much in terms of circumstantial evidence, it has only slightly more evidence than the Chinese 'theory' that US scientists made it and diplomats deliberately spread it to defame China.

OTOH, we know that every other human coronavirus has a natural origin, and that there have been at least two spontaneous crossovers in the past 20 years- SARS(1), and MERS. SARS came from Civits, iirc, and MERS from camels, and SARS was near identical in terms of how the outbreak happened mechanically to SARS2 ('covid19'). It took ~4 years to identify the intermediate species from which SARS jumped but it was identified, and that species was found a long way from the initial outbreak, because you only notice outbreaks when they hit large population centres. SARS is actually why the Chinese have a virology lab in Wuhan in the first place. There's also no evidence from the RNA sequence of tampering, beyond the facile one of it being effective at infecting humans. Even then, and after multiple mutations during the poandemic it's about 20% as effective as measles.

It being of natural origin is the default, because it's provably happened multiple times before in a short, relatively speaking, timeframe. At worst, it was an accidental release of a pre-existing virus and there's no actual evidence for even that.

OTOH, the origin question is clearly being used as a cudgel in the current wave of sinophobia/ sinohysteria. Much like all those EU leaders who couldn't stand the UK having a successful vaccine when they didn't and who made crap up- hello Monsieur Macron- the damage to medical credibility etc is just a side effect of people playing geopolitics. It's like Vladimir Putin having Parkinson's and retiring in January or Russia going bankrupt within in six months in 2014 due to sanctions; you aren't really meant to remember any specifics nor ask any questions, you're just meant to remember the impression it gives. And for the lab story the impression meant to be given is pretty obvious.

In general I'd agree, however this 'conspiracy' theory has some credibility and certain amount of resemblence to other cover ups from totalitarian regimes. You won't get a proof like in a case of lets say Chernobyl, but there is a significant amount of items, that can create a certain picture. 

You've mentioned. 

1) location

2) some reported early records of a sick staff

 

Then there are among the others:

3) type of conducted research

4) some lead scientists writing papers on the transmition of coronaviruses and specifically certain characteristis of bats in relation to coronaviruses

5) very unusual construction of the virus, which looked initially like a merged type of some more common coronaviruses with HIV like characteristics, allowing to bypass some immune responses

6) governmental reaction, once the outbreak was obvious (including harsh police/military actions, which also saw people being welded in their own homes) 

7) large number of cell phone usage lost during the pandemic (numbers not conecting to network anymore) 

and much larger numbers of people on cementaries during the last spring ceremonies to commemorate dead ones. 

papers and interviews in China on weaponizing similar type of bio-agent, to overwhelm health care system and create civil disorder in the targeted countries. 

9) vanishing whistleblowers

 

These are ones i recall from the top of my head. I admit, I have not followed closely each of these and did not dig into sources of that information. I was more interested in governmental responses and for majority of this year I'm looking at economic policies (both monetary and fiscal) to figure out how probable is stagflation vs deflation and crash and if I should be looking to keep Etherum (with 2.0 potential for a real underlying value, unlike Bitcoin) or dump it at a higher value. 

 

 

[Zoraptor]

Yeah, nah. That's the same sort of stuff that Orogun linked me in a video a year or so ago, and it hasn't improved with age. My personal favourite there was the 'expert' who said only China had such labs, then talked about her experience in similar US labs five minutes further on in the video. Summed the whole thing up perfectly.

14 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

3) type of conducted research

4) some lead scientists writing papers on the transmition of coronaviruses and specifically certain characteristis of bats in relation to coronaviruses

5) very unusual construction of the virus, which looked initially like a merged type of some more common coronaviruses with HIV like characteristics, allowing to bypass some immune responses

For 3 and 4, it's a virology lab, that is the research it does. It was established specifically because of SARS1, and did coronavirus research because of SARS1. That's a matter of longstanding public record- can't get much more scientifically public than research papers- and not in any way secret.

5 isn't unusual at all. It's not unusually resistant to immune response, it's just a novel respiratory virus. Novel viruses are unusually resistant because there's no shared memory/ selection, and respiratory viruses are resistant because of the nature of their environment. And again, you look at the other natural crossover viruses and find... they're more resistant to immune response and considerably more deadly. 'Like HIV' is ludicrous anyway, since HIV was also a natural crossover which phylogenetic evidence suggests happened as many as 20 (!) times. Even if it were 'like HIV' beyond the trivial of both being RNA viruses it would not in itself have been suspicious.

22 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

papers and interviews in China on weaponizing similar type of bio-agent, to overwhelm health care system and create civil disorder in the targeted countries.

Well yeah, and you can find multiple papers and such from western sources with similar discussions. As a bioweapon it's... just stupid, it has no sensible utility. It doesn't target the right demographics, it isn't infectious enough or alternatively, is too infectious. As a geopolitical weapon it's stupid too, because the one thing China absolutely does not want is a global recession when its economic growth comes from exporting, and its biggest threat by far is an internal one from failing to deliver expected yearly improvements and growth. You also can't 'target' it effectively to specific countries- as before, it's too infectious to be controllable, but not infectious enough to be really effective- and anyone would know that you can't.

If it were part of a bioweapons program they'd also have a parallel program for ameliorating any effects once it inevitably reached China, ie a vaccine or similar ready to roll. As it stands their vaccines are almost all the least effective- and going by 'vaccine ready' it would be a German or British bioweapon since Oxford and BionTech had working vaccines literally weeks after getting a sequence; it took China a fair bit longer and their vaccines apart from being low efficiency are also low tech.

End of the day nothing could convince me more of Chinese incompetence than it being a bioweapon. Own goal that they'd know would be an own goal, badly designed, stupid stupid stupid. And again, multiple coronaviruses have crossed spontaneously in the last 20 years...

25 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

6) governmental reaction, once the outbreak was obvious (including harsh police/military actions, which also saw people being welded in their own homes) 

7) large number of cell phone usage lost during the pandemic (numbers not conecting to network anymore) 

9) vanishing whistleblowers

That's just Xi's China being Xi's China. They suppress anything that makes them look bad, and large scale casualties- whether they caused the outbreak or not- makes them look bad. You only have to glance very briefly at their actions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong to find similar examples of repression for reasons other than a 'bioweapons' leak.

[Darkpriest]

50 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Yeah, nah. That's the same sort of stuff that Orogun linked me in a video a year or so ago, and it hasn't improved with age. My personal favourite there was the 'expert' who said only China had such labs, then talked about her experience in similar US labs five minutes further on in the video. Summed the whole thing up perfectly.

For 3 and 4, it's a virology lab, that is the research it does. It was established specifically because of SARS1, and did coronavirus research because of SARS1. That's a matter of longstanding public record- can't get much more scientifically public than research papers- and not in any way secret.

5 isn't unusual at all. It's not unusually resistant to immune response, it's just a novel respiratory virus. Novel viruses are unusually resistant because there's no shared memory/ selection, and respiratory viruses are resistant because of the nature of their environment. And again, you look at the other natural crossover viruses and find... they're more resistant to immune response and considerably more deadly. 'Like HIV' is ludicrous anyway, since HIV was also a natural crossover which phylogenetic evidence suggests happened as many as 20 (!) times. Even if it were 'like HIV' beyond the trivial of both being RNA viruses it would not in itself have been suspicious.

Well yeah, and you can find multiple papers and such from western sources with similar discussions. As a bioweapon it's... just stupid, it has no sensible utility. It doesn't target the right demographics, it isn't infectious enough or alternatively, is too infectious. As a geopolitical weapon it's stupid too, because the one thing China absolutely does not want is a global recession when its economic growth comes from exporting, and its biggest threat by far is an internal one from failing to deliver expected yearly improvements and growth. You also can't 'target' it effectively to specific countries- as before, it's too infectious to be controllable, but not infectious enough to be really effective- and anyone would know that you can't.

If it were part of a bioweapons program they'd also have a parallel program for ameliorating any effects once it inevitably reached China, ie a vaccine or similar ready to roll. As it stands their vaccines are almost all the least effective- and going by 'vaccine ready' it would be a German or British bioweapon since Oxford and BionTech had working vaccines literally weeks after getting a sequence; it took China a fair bit longer and their vaccines apart from being low efficiency are also low tech.

End of the day nothing could convince me more of Chinese incompetence than it being a bioweapon. Own goal that they'd know would be an own goal, badly designed, stupid stupid stupid. And again, multiple coronaviruses have crossed spontaneously in the last 20 years...

That's just Xi's China being Xi's China. They suppress anything that makes them look bad, and large scale casualties- whether they caused the outbreak or not- makes them look bad. You only have to glance very briefly at their actions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong to find similar examples of repression for reasons other than a 'bioweapons' leak.

I'd agree it was not a bioweapon type of virus. I expect somone being not quite lucky and simply failing or skipping some safety protocol, and contaminating oneself with a virus, which they have studied (specifically the bat and its interactions with the corona type viruses). 

Given the history with SARS, I suspect they just wanted to understand it better. 

Someone contaminated area, virus caused large number of hospitalizations and was easily transmitted, Chinese gov paniced, overreacted and put tons of red tape on top, to make sure it will not look bad. 

And since it most likely will never be established, what exactly was the source, there will be a number of people with various opinions and people will argue, their view is better. 

 

The wet market theory is weak

The natural bat/pangplier to human transmitio  is also weak (that type of a bat does not occur naturally in the ground zero region) 

 

The more worrying fact is, that even the mere possibility of talking of such scenario, was considered 'Trump' talk and media ridiculed or banned such theories on a research related accident from the discourse. 

It should be deemed dangerous, because, if such a thing was a source of pandemic, there should be procedures revised and the type of research put in some more transparent constraints for all the labs of this type globally. 

 

EDIT: the biggest red flag is lack of transparency and access to the lab, even for the WHO audit. 

Edited May 27, 2021 by Darkpriest

[Zoraptor]

Lack of transparency is not a red flag. It's how China does business in pretty much everything. It is also extremely doubtful that the US would allow the WHO access to labs in similar circumstances given the rhetoric about the WHO being beholden to China.

The bat/ pangolin theory is not at all weak. It's based on the proven (well, as much as you can) method of zoonotic transfer involved in SARS1. In that case the bats were also far removed from the initial outbreak, as were the proximal civets. The suspected method of transmission was via them mixing at a wet market, but it could equally as much have been someone from a rural area coming into the big city while infected. SARS-CoV2 has been shown to infect a fairly large variety of often not particularly closely related mammals. Humans, gorilla, pangolins, civets, mink, dogs, cats, tigers and lions at very least have had documented covid infections. In most of those cases they probably caught it from humans rather than bats, but you only need it to go the opposite way once, and as previous quite apart from SARS/ MERS coming from civets and camels you have HIV crossing over 20 times.

It's rare that it happens, but the more chances you give it the more likely it is.

Edited May 28, 2021 by Zoraptor

[Azdeus]

19 hours ago, Gorth said:

I remember all the humorous pictures of that level 4 "institute of virology" with the Umbrella Corporation logo. No kidding, the same as the company that made the zombie virus in Resident Evil, making you wonder where the game developers got their inspiration from???

Chinas facial mass surveillance system is called "Skynet". But it's ok, because it's a "good" AI.

[ComradeYellow]

It's cyan which is the diametrically opposite color of red so it's O.K.

[BruceVC]

3 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Yeah, nah. That's the same sort of stuff that Orogun linked me in a video a year or so ago, and it hasn't improved with age. My personal favourite there was the 'expert' who said only China had such labs, then talked about her experience in similar US labs five minutes further on in the video. Summed the whole thing up perfectly.

For 3 and 4, it's a virology lab, that is the research it does. It was established specifically because of SARS1, and did coronavirus research because of SARS1. That's a matter of longstanding public record- can't get much more scientifically public than research papers- and not in any way secret.

5 isn't unusual at all. It's not unusually resistant to immune response, it's just a novel respiratory virus. Novel viruses are unusually resistant because there's no shared memory/ selection, and respiratory viruses are resistant because of the nature of their environment. And again, you look at the other natural crossover viruses and find... they're more resistant to immune response and considerably more deadly. 'Like HIV' is ludicrous anyway, since HIV was also a natural crossover which phylogenetic evidence suggests happened as many as 20 (!) times. Even if it were 'like HIV' beyond the trivial of both being RNA viruses it would not in itself have been suspicious.

Well yeah, and you can find multiple papers and such from western sources with similar discussions. As a bioweapon it's... just stupid, it has no sensible utility. It doesn't target the right demographics, it isn't infectious enough or alternatively, is too infectious. As a geopolitical weapon it's stupid too, because the one thing China absolutely does not want is a global recession when its economic growth comes from exporting, and its biggest threat by far is an internal one from failing to deliver expected yearly improvements and growth. You also can't 'target' it effectively to specific countries- as before, it's too infectious to be controllable, but not infectious enough to be really effective- and anyone would know that you can't.

If it were part of a bioweapons program they'd also have a parallel program for ameliorating any effects once it inevitably reached China, ie a vaccine or similar ready to roll. As it stands their vaccines are almost all the least effective- and going by 'vaccine ready' it would be a German or British bioweapon since Oxford and BionTech had working vaccines literally weeks after getting a sequence; it took China a fair bit longer and their vaccines apart from being low efficiency are also low tech.

End of the day nothing could convince me more of Chinese incompetence than it being a bioweapon. Own goal that they'd know would be an own goal, badly designed, stupid stupid stupid. And again, multiple coronaviruses have crossed spontaneously in the last 20 years...

That's just Xi's China being Xi's China. They suppress anything that makes them look bad, and large scale casualties- whether they caused the outbreak or not- makes them look bad. You only have to glance very briefly at their actions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong to find similar examples of repression for reasons other than a 'bioweapons' leak.

You make some convincing points here and they based on science, historical precedent  and facts. 

Its hard to dispute your argument when you frame it like that, for example the unpredictable spread of the virus and how it cant be controlled and the reality that the Chinese vaccines  have not been very effective so if anything  its " Western " pharmaceutical  companies that intentionally created the virus as they have demonstrated they released effective vaccines quickly 

As I mentioned earlier I still believe it came from animals and was accidently spread to humans so your post just adds to that view. I will never say its impossible it came from a lab and was accidently\intentionally  released but I dont support that idea 

[Darkpriest]

I wonder how does it look in Sweden, and does this give n outlook that more conservative/law and order type people will be gaining more votes

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/sweden-goes-being-one-safest-countries-europe-second-most-dangerous

[BruceVC]

48 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

I wonder how does it look in Sweden, and does this give n outlook that more conservative/law and order type people will be gaining more votes

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/sweden-goes-being-one-safest-countries-europe-second-most-dangerous

I watched an interview with someone from the Swedish government on Sky and he was asked about why Sweden has mishandled the pandemic so badly ....he said they havent and their is exaggeration from some in the media?

I wonder what @Pidesco and @Azdeus  think overall about the Swedish response, is it true its been a failure? How do we measure a failure ? 

[Guard Dog]

14 hours ago, ShadySands said:

 The most extremism that I saw out in the open in my 5 years was of the Christian variety. 

Remember boot camp? EVERYONE went to one church service or another because that was an hour each week no one f---d with you!. That first Sunday in Forming Week the DI on duty that day said we could either go to church ot stay there in the squad bay... with him.  He implied we wouldn't like that much.

Of course know how that worked with everyone gone he could relax for a bit and watch TV or something. 

[ShadySands]

I went to the Buddhist service that first week but stayed in the squad bay for every week after that. I must have been a bad example because each week more people stayed behind when they saw that I was still alive and well.

I want to say it was after my first deployment but there was a senior enlisted guy at Camp Lejeune that got deep into some weird fundamentalist stuff. He ended up recruiting his junior Marines and had them try to recruit their friends and families into his church. They'd all line up on street corners and medians waving signs and chanting Westboro Baptist level stuff. Eventually, I think, someone came down on that guy for abusing his influence on his subordinates and having them recruit and organize their church stuff at work. I don't know how it ended because there were still dudes chanting with signs when I got out of there but it wasn't as many as before.

I'm not doing how creepy the whole thing was any justice

Edited May 28, 2021 by ShadySands

[ComradeYellow]

2 hours ago, BruceVC said:

I watched an interview with someone from the Swedish government on Sky and he was asked about why Sweden has mishandled the pandemic so badly ....he said they havent and their is exaggeration from some in the media?

Sweden did not enforce lockdown like their neighbors did.  Result:  More deaths.  Shocking.

The article is more about Arab immigrants though and how it results in more terrorist attacks (allegedly), and I'm not touching that debate with a ten foot pole! (Mostly because I'm not Swedish and it's none of my business).

[BruceVC]

20 minutes ago, ComradeYellow said:

Sweden did not enforce lockdown like their neighbors did.  Result:  More deaths.  Shocking.

The article is more about Arab immigrants though and how it results in more terrorist attacks (allegedly), and I'm not touching that debate with a ten foot pole! (Mostly because I'm not Swedish and it's none of my business).

My bad, thanks for telling me. I still am interested in what our Swedish residents think because it comes up around Swedens overall response to the pandemic  and I not sure what is the reality on the ground ?

[Maedhros]

My impression of Tegnell is that he's more stubborn than people on internet forums. Likewise many Swedes and their defense of him.

[HoonDing]

The virus is flaring up in Taiwan now. So much for complacency.

[rjshae]

14 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Lack of transparency is not a red flag. It's how China does business in pretty much everything. It is also extremely doubtful that the US would allow the WHO access to labs in similar circumstances given the rhetoric about the WHO being beholden to China.

Yes I agree, although it will continue to stoke suspicion. It might be better to define first why we need access; are we just looking for blame, or is there an additional value in discovery? I think the latter, although the Chinese government will claim the former. Any data we do actually receive will be heavily scrubbed.

[rjshae]

2 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

The virus is flaring up in Taiwan now. So much for complacency.

No sure what your point is here. I do remember when Taiwan was presented to us as a model response. I suppose all they did in the end was buy time.

[ComradeYellow]

https://www.rt.com/news/525078-taiwan-vaccine-covid19-wave-october/

Apparently they're trying to get more people vaccinated.  I guess they aren't as readily available in Taiwan as they are here in the heart of Yankeeville U.S.A. (One phone call and a trip to the pharmacy and it was all over).

[Bartimaeus]

The January 6th commission was blocked - 54 yays, 35 nays. Scumbag Sinema from Arizona skipped town, along with a number of Republicans. I'd really like to see the filibuster reduced in power - back to the old days of forcing Senators to actually sit up there and talk for 72 hours straight rather than just being able to say "I filibuster" and that being the end of the story. It'd make it so they would actually work to filibuster the important things rather than just filibuster literally everything solely to obstruct anything and everything.

[rjshae]

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

The January 6th commission was blocked - 54 yays, 35 nays. Scumbag Sinema from Arizona skipped town, along with a number of Republicans. I'd really like to see the filibuster reduced in power - back to the old days of forcing Senators to actually sit up there and talk for 72 hours straight rather than just being able to say "I filibuster" and that being the end of the story. It'd make it so they would actually work to filibuster the important things rather than just filibuster literally everything solely to obstruct anything and everything.

Well I'm all for an investigation of the events, but frankly I think the FBI will do a much better job. All this demonstrates is that the Republican party is now (for the most part) a sock puppet.

[Guard Dog]

I have decided to officially endorse a candidate for the governor of California.

 

Edited May 29, 2021 by Guard Dog
Forgot link