The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gave six analysts financial rewards for changing their position on the lab leak coronavirus origin theory, according to whistleblower testimony released by House investigators.
The House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic wrote letters Tuesday to CIA Director William Burns and former CIA Chief Operating Officer Andrew Makridis outlining whistleblower testimony accusing the CIA of giving monetary incentives to six agents on its Covid Discovery Team to change their position on the lab leak hypothesis. According to the lawmakers, the whistleblower is a “multi-decade, senior-level, current Agency officer.”
🚨BREAKING🚨
New testimony from a highly credible whistleblower alleges @CIA rewarded six analysts with significant financial incentives to change their COVID-19 origins conclusion from a lab-leak to zoonosis. pic.twitter.com/KIemfi2Wgl
— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) September 12, 2023
“According to the whistleblower, the Agency assigned seven officers to a COVID Discovery Team (Team). The Team consisted of multi-disciplinary and experienced officers with significant scientific expertise. According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” the letter to Burns reads.
“The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” the letter adds.
House investigators are requesting Burns turn over all documents and communications related to the Covid Team and the origins of the coronavirus, including its correspondence with relevant federal agencies and the team’s pay history. Burns has until Sept. 26, 2023 to respond to the subcommittee’s request. Likewise, the subcommittee is asking Makridis to participate in a transcribed interview on Sept. 26 because of the “central role” he played in forming the Covid Team.
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic published a report in July accusing former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci of orchestrating a campaign to discredit the lab leak theory at the beginning of the covid pandemic. Assessments from the FBI and Department of Energy have concluded covid most likely originated from a lab in Wuhan, China where coronaviruses were being researched.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-09-12 14:30:332023-09-12 14:30:33CIA Gave Financial Rewards To Six Analysts Who Covered Up Lab Leak Investigation, Whistleblower Alleges
As health experts downgraded the danger of the latest COVID variant, news broke Sunday that the Biden administration hid government data from the public in 2021 showing that COVID cases among vaccinated seniors was spiking. Medical experts and lawmakers say that the Biden administration is continuing its pattern of distorting and concealing scientific evidence and data surrounding the virus for political gain and societal control.
On Wednesday, Dr. Eric Topol, a professor and executive vice president of Scripps Research, told USA Today that the latest “Pirola” COVID variant has “been downgraded from a hurricane to not even a tropical storm.” The latest data on COVID fatalities confirm Topol’s assessment, with The New York Times reporting that the number of deaths due to COVID in August stood at 600 per week, which was 4% of the 14,000 deaths that occurred weekly in August 2021.
Meanwhile, the White House appears to be ramping up COVID precautions at a time when most Americans have moved on from pandemic-era practices such as masking and social distancing. After First Lady Jill Biden contracted COVID last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced that President Biden would be following CDC recommendations by “masking in this 10-day period.” But Biden apparently flouted the recommendations during a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday.
Still, businesses, schools, and hospitals appear to be taking their cues on masking from former Biden administration official Dr. Anthony Fauci, as a number of them have reinstated mask mandates. On Saturday, the former White House COVID czar stated that he is “concerned that people will not abide by” likely future CDC recommendations to wear masks in public again. Although Fauci said that “the CDC does not mandate anything,” Dr. Marc Siegel, a clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, pointed out that “the agency’s recommendations have frequently led to state, local, and business mandates.”
A major, “gold standard” study released in February on the effectiveness of masking found that “wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness … and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test.”
The seeming disconnect between government policy and scientific evidence, as well as concerns over basic civil liberties, are leading lawmakers to respond. On Thursday, Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) introduced legislation to forbid mask mandates on planes, public transit, and schools over the next 15 months.
Observers are also noting that data on masking is far from the only COVID-related scientific evidence that the Biden administration is ignoring. On Sunday, The Epoch Times reported that data compiled by the U.S. military in 2021 showing that fully vaccinated seniors were experiencing high rates of breakthrough cases of the virus was not only hidden from the public, but also from health officials within government agencies like the FDA.
“[T]hat story is really shocking,” remarked Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an epidemiologist and professor of medicine at Stanford University, on Wednesday’s edition of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” “[T]he CDC had information from an analysis of Medicare data … that the vaccine was waning efficacy in September 2021. That meant that there were a large number of seniors that were relatively unprotected by the Delta wave that was hitting the South back then in 2021. It was right around that same time the Biden administration pulled the allocation of monoclonal antibodies to the American South, claiming that they wanted to save it for later. A lot of people died as a consequence of that hidden information.”
Bhattacharya continued, “If the CDC had shared that information more broadly, then we might have been able to protect those older people during that deadly Delta wave. … And the reason [the information wasn’t shared] was very simple. They thought that if they told people, people would stop taking the vaccine. But scientific data like that are a public good. You don’t use it for propaganda purposes. You use it to tell people true things so that people can make good decisions.”
Bhattacharya went on to lament that the Biden administration has not appeared to learn any lessons from the initial response to the pandemic.
“[U]nfortunately, it just seems like we are trying to make the same mistakes again,” he observed. “I think with mask mandates, with essentially recommending boosters before we actually have high quality randomized data, ignoring the fact that the population has very broad … immunity thanks to recovery from COVID. … I think that the idea that what failed before will work now is an amazing thing to me. Science normally learns from its mistakes. … [Y]ou make a mistake and you change your hypothesis and then you test that next hypothesis. Here what we see is the opposite of that, where it seems like we’re just doomed to repeat ourselves over and over again.”
Bhattacharya further called for an official government commission to be held in order to assess America’s response to the pandemic.
“[W]hat hasn’t happened is an official inquiry, kind of like a 9/11 Commission,” he explained. “The goal isn’t to blame anybody. The goal is to learn lessons from what went wrong so we don’t do it again. I wrote something called the Norfolk Group document, along with seven other scientists where we lay out an agenda for an honest COVID commission. [We] deserve answers on vaccine efficacy and side effects, on mask efficacy, on lockdowns, lockdown harms, school closures, why immunity after COVID recovery with natural immunity was ignored. … And yet there doesn’t seem to be any official interest on the part of the Biden administration to actually conduct such an inquiry.”
As to his advice for the American public going forward, Bhattacharya was candid.
“I think for most people, just live your life,” he emphasized. “… [I]mmunity is an honest to God real thing. … [J]ust live your life and don’t worry so much. Now, if you are older or [are] vulnerable in other ways, go talk to your doctor. … But the point is that we should not be treating COVID as something around which we reorganize our entire life. We should instead be treating COVID as something that’s manageable.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-09-08 11:17:372023-09-08 11:51:29‘Just Live Your Life’: Experts Say Biden Admin Distorting COVID Data as Scare Tactic
A panel of independent advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will meet on September 12th, 2023 to make recommendations on updated COVID-19 vaccines ahead of the fall season, according to a U.S. government website on Friday.
This panel is another effort to impact the 2024 elections as it did the 2020 election.
People should be free to choose how cautious to be. Mask mandates, lockdowns, and closing schools won’t stop the virus.
COVID-19 cases are up. Hospitalizations climbed 24 percent last week.
But the media make everything seem scarier than it is. The headline “Up 24 Percent!” comes after dramatic lows. Hospitalizations are still less than half what they were when President Joe Biden said, “The pandemic is over.”
Yet the shallow media keep pounding away: “It may be time to break out the masks,” headlined CNN.
Frightened people believe. The movie studio Lionsgate reinstated an office mask mandate. Atlanta’s Morris Brown College mandated masks and even banned parties.
This month, several school districts in Kentucky and Texas closed. “The safety and wellbeing of our students, staff, and community is a top priority,” said the school superintendent in Texas.
But kids rarely get very sick from COVID, and schools aren’t COVID hotspots. Studies on tens of thousands of people found “no consistent relationship between in-person K-12 schooling and the spread of the coronavirus.”
A Lancet study found Florida had the 12th-fewest excess COVID deaths in the country, even though Florida students went back to school without masks relatively soon.
At least Texas’ and Kentucky’s closures were isolated and brief. Long-term closures during the pandemic brought America’s lowest math and reading scores in decades. Florida’s kids suffered less learning loss than kids in other states.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2023-08-31 05:30:432023-09-02 11:48:04VIDEO: President Donald J. Trump, ‘We will not comply’ with Covid authoritarianism
President Biden has “practically speaking” already declared a national emergency on climate change, the president said in an interview with The Weather Channel published Wednesday. “We’ve conserved more land. We rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, we passed a $368 billion climate control facility.” At first, he said he had declared an emergency, but when pressed he said he had done so “practically speaking.”
The point of an emergency declaration is so that executives can exercise special powers to respond to an emergency, which would be unlawful under normal circumstances. However, due to the enormous powers they unlock, federal emergency declarations are limited by three federal laws.
Under the Public Health Service Act, the Health and Human Services Secretary can declare a public health emergency that grants the secretary extensive powers to respond to the public health emergency.
Under the Stafford Act, a state governor or tribal area chief executive can request federal assistance, allowing the president to declare a disaster or emergency; such a declaration enables the federal government to disburse financial assistance and other relief, coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Under the National Emergencies Act, the president may declare a national emergency without a request from a specific state, which confers 123 powers granted in other laws, although the president must specify which authorities are activated.
The law does not recognize a method of declaring an emergency, “practically speaking,” without an official declaration. Thus, even CNN acknowledged, “President Joe Biden incorrectly claimed in an interview with The Weather Channel that he has already declared a national emergency on the climate crisis.”
Biden elaborated on what he meant regarding a climate change emergency. “It’s the existential threat to humanity,” he stated. A threat to humanity’s existence would logically involve a threat to American lives, and a natural event that threatens American lives would typically be an appropriate subject for an emergency declaration. In that sense, it’s possible to follow Biden’s logic.
But while the logic is certainly clear, the solution is not. To protect lives during a hurricane, tornado, or manhunt, a governor could order citizens to evacuate, shelter in place, or avoid a certain area, as well as stockpiling emergency resources. Then, once the emergency is past, citizens can resume their normal lives. These are not only inadequate but meaningless responses to something as ill-defined as “climate change.” Evacuate to where? For how long? The current climate change narrative identifies a global crisis extending for lifetimes.
In fact, the lack of workable solutions might explain why President Biden has so far declined to declare a climate emergency. Biden has labelled climate change an “emergency” in speeches and vowed to combat it through executive actions, but he has stopped short of declaring an official emergency. If he did declare an emergency, what powers would he invoke, precisely?
Another possible reason for Biden’s delay is the inevitable legal and constitutional challenges, which he might then lose. Under normal circumstances, emergency powers are as short-lived as the crisis. But a climate emergency would be practically endless, enabling a presidential administration to sweep away America’s normal operating procedure forever, “practically speaking.” The courts have already struck down a number of Biden administration executive actions on the climate — from stopping offshore drilling to redefining inland waters — and they might not look too kindly on what would amount to a massive power grab.
But climate change is not the only issue on which emergency powers allure Biden. Biden has been contemplating an abortion emergency declaration since last year. He contemplated declaring an emergency over monkeypox, which primarily affects a very specific subset of the population. And he kept extending the COVID-19 emergency until long after he declared the pandemic over, and Congress had forced him to let it end. Somehow, under the president who promised to restore normalcy to Washington, everything is an emergency.
But President Biden’s track record with emergency declarations — specifically, considering them but not declaring them — suggests they serve a purpose other than good governance. That purpose is politics. When the chief executive is constantly mulling an emergency declaration, that stokes fear and alarm in the public, who assume he has alarming information they don’t. Fear can be a powerful motivator, driving people to vote, protest, or answer polls in the desired way. And many politicians today traffic almost exclusively in the rhetoric of fear. Even 70% of churchgoers have a growing sense of fear, although the Bible repeatedly exhorts them to “fear not.”
Biden is not the only figure to misuse an emergency declaration to advance a political agenda. In May, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D) officially declared a state of emergency because the legislature was considering a school choice bill. In June, the Human Rights Campaign — an activist organization with no governmental or emergency power — declared a state of emergency for people in Florida who identify as LGBT because the state government enacted measures to check the inroads of transgender ideology in education and medicine. These nakedly political emergency declarations cheapen the whole concept, so that people are tempted to take it less seriously in the event of an actual emergency.
Today’s progressives are apparently trying to improve on former Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel’s slogan, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” After lurching society to the Left, their worry is not that they might waste a crisis by failing to achieve their agenda, but that there aren’t enough crises to accommodate it all. Thus, they are proactively looking for crises to exploit or, if necessary, manufacture. “Is this a crisis?” they ask themselves. “Or rather, would people believe it is?”
Healthy representative governments don’t flit breathlessly from crisis to crisis, nor do they replace mature deliberation for fear-driven urgency. This is unacceptable, and it must not continue.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-08-11 10:22:342023-08-13 05:27:28Biden: Already Declared Climate Emergency ‘Practically Speaking’
They promoted lie after lie on Covid and got away with murder, literally. Why wouldn’t work for the fetish hoax on climate?
“Every single prediction they’ve ever made has been wrong… They still haven’t, after 30 years, shown us that human emissions of CO2 drive global warming.”
Some energy industry groups are expressing concern that the White House will declare a COVID-19-like emergency—but for the climate instead.”They’re leaning to that direction,” U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart told Just the News in an article published on July 30. “If you grant the president’s emergency powers to declare a climate emergency, it’s just like COVID.”
An emergency declaration on the climate could give the president “vast and unchecked authority to shut down everything from communications to infrastructure,” said Mr. Stewart, who has been a critic of the Biden administration.
Infrastructure around water and electricity could be affected by such a decision, he said.
“They can literally do exactly what they did in COVID,” Mr. Stewart said. “If you disagree with the climate emergency, [speech] can be shut down. We really need to be paying attention to that because that power could be extended indefinitely until the ‘climate emergency’ is over. Who knows how long that would last.”
The White House press office didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment about whether the administration might be preparing such a declaration.
President Joe Biden and other administration officials have said that the United States and the world are in the midst of a “climate crisis” and have used language describing it as an emergency. So far, Mr. Biden has stopped short of declaring an emergency, although some Democrats and environmental groups have pushed the idea.
The dynamic duo of climate grifting, Al Gore and John Kerry, predicting that the polar ice caps would be gone by 2014.
How many times in succession do the climate apocalypse-mongers have to be wrong before people finally realise the whole thing is a monumental scam, fabricated… pic.twitter.com/ceZE0gnP6y
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-08-01 10:04:382023-08-03 13:46:50Energy Industry Fears White House Will Declare COVID-Like ‘Climate Emergency’
Former congresswoman Michele Bachmann sounded the alarm Monday about developments coming out of the World Health Assembly that suggest that the World Health Organization (WHO) is intent on establishing “a platform for global governance through health care” in the wake of the COVID pandemic.
On Sunday, the WHO kicked off its annual 10-day World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, described as the “decision-making body of WHO.” Concerns over the WHO’s actions have been steadily building since the beginning of the pandemic, when observers noted that the WHO’s deference to China arguably worsened the spread of COVID. In addition, observers are also pointing out that the Biden administration is working to enable the organization to “centralize authority not just for pandemics, [but] for any health emergency in the hands of the director-general.”
Now, says Bachmann, the current World Health Assembly is poised to increase the WHO’s mandate over the health care decisions of sovereign nations.
“There’s a dual track process that they’re following,” she explained during an on the ground report from Geneva on Monday’s edition of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” “One is through a global pandemic treaty that they’re calling an ‘accord.’ The second is through a package of about 300 amendments to the international health rules. Both lead to the same result. Both lead to the creation of a platform for global governance through health care. And it is a web that locks us in … the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”
As Bachmann went on to observe, the potentially massive ramifications of the decisions being made at the World Health Assembly are happening with surprisingly little fanfare.
“There were no members of Congress here,” she pointed out. “I was actually shocked because this has been a big issue that a lot of their constituents have rightfully been very concerned about. … There was no American press here. So how would anyone even know what was going on unless they tuned in and they watched for themselves?”
Bachmann, who currently serves as dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University, further noted that the WHO’s view of COVID appears to be exactly the same now as it was at the beginning of the pandemic. “We’ve learned a lot of things in the last three years, haven’t we? And the World Health Organization bungled almost everything, whether it was masks or vaccines or lockdowns, but yet they acted like nothing happened. There was no review. They acted like everything was just normal.”
Bachmann then laid out the WHO’s plans going forward. “They’re planning to meet in New York City in September. They’ll go over the progress that they’re going to make in January. They’ll give a final completed package of the 300 amendments, together with a global pandemic treaty, to the World Health Organization and the U.N. And then they’ll meet again in Geneva next February. But one year from this week, they will take the vote. And so they intend to vote for a platform for global government and to give themselves the power that no one has ever seen before.”
The former congresswoman from Minnesota also described the U.S. government’s involvement in the WHO’s agenda.
“I heard from Secretary Xavier Becerra, the head of our Health and Human Services [who] said he wants more ‘bio surveillance,’ in other words, surveillance of our bodies. And then they want to share that data with everyone else in the world. This is highly invasive. They were very clear today. They want very bold language. They intend to have surveillance over every citizen on earth, and they intend to … control us through health care.”
Bachmann further detailed how the WHO’s agenda goes well beyond pandemics.
“They’ve got this concept they talked about today called ‘One Health’ — they’ve got graphics on it [that] show humans, animals, the earth — ‘One Health.’ So when decisions are made about health care, they have to take into account the earth and what the impact would be on climate change. … So what it boils down to is, ‘Humans = cockroaches = a clump of dirt.’ … That’s why you don’t want to give up decision-making authority to someone like the director general of the WHO. They have a very different agenda at hand.”
At the same time, she underscored, the WHO’s emphasis seems to be on “equity” rather than innovations in medicine.
“The number one word that they use besides ‘urgent’ was ‘equity.’ [They want] to have equal outcomes for everyone on earth with universal health care. … And for those countries that are producing health products, they need to produce more health products and give them away to the world. So one thing they didn’t do [was] focus on any new breakthroughs in medicine. … There was nothing about breakthroughs or cures. Everything was about giving themselves more power and more authority control.”
Bachmann called on Congress to start confronting concerns over the WHO’s attempted power grab sooner rather than later.
“We need our senators to wake up, hold hearings, pull these documents in, [and] start to review them. [I]f they’re thinking they’ll wait until January, that’s pretty late, because the next meeting will be in in Geneva in February. The final vote will take place in May. … They should have been there this week. … And I would call on [House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy as he is negotiating for raising the debt ceiling [to] put on the table that Joe Biden has to get the United States out of the World Health Organization and pull [their] funding … as the price of raising the debt ceiling.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-05-24 10:47:482023-05-24 10:52:08Largely Unnoticed, WHO Moves Forward with Global Governance Plan
Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kans.) on Monday released a 301-page report concluding that COVID-19 “most likely” leaked from a lab weeks before China’s official narrative as the result of “one or possibly two” lab accidents. “We won’t be able to prove this in a criminal trial. But I do think there’s enough evidence, if this was a civil case, that we would convince a jury,” said Marshall of the report fittingly titled, “Muddy Waters.”
Conducted over 18 months by former Trump official Dr. Bob Kadlec, Dr. Bob Foster, and GOP staff on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, the report concluded after studying the lab-leak theory as well as the natural origin theory, “The preponderance of circumstantial evidence supports an unintentional research-related incident.” The full senate report represents the fullest picture the American public has yet received of the evidence pointing in any direction; in earlier assessments from the U.S. intelligence community, only a summary was declassified.
The conditional nature of the lengthy study’s conclusions highlights the remaining uncertainty about the origins of COVID-19. “Every time I pick on China, we should look in the mirror because our own federal government has kept data from us, they wouldn’t show us information. They wouldn’t let us talk to the right people,” said Marshall.
The report didn’t discount the possibility of a natural origin without a fair hearing. It affirmed several data points that made the Hunan Seafood Market at least a plausible origin point. However, “the absence of key epidemiological and genetic data” led them to conclude this was unlikely. “Recent natural zoonotic spillovers of respiratory viruses with pandemic potential have left behind evidence of where and how they occurred,” they noted. Instead, they summarized, “the preponderance of information supports the plausibility of an unintentional research-related incident that likely resulted from failures of biosafety containment during SARS-CoV-2 vaccine-related research.”
The report described the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) as a lab-leak waiting to happen. By 2019, the lab had collected “approximately 20,000 … animal virus samples from across China,” which “underwent initial evaluation in BSL-2 settings … usually by graduate students.” The report added, “Widely accepted biosafety guidelines hold that initial evaluation of SARS-related bat coronaviruses should be conducted in at least BSL-3 laboratories because of the risk of creating infectious aerosols.” BSL-2 laboratories operate with lower safety standards than BSL-3 laboratories.
But WIV’s labs suffered from “neglected maintenance, insufficient operational funds, and a lack of specialized managers and engineers to operate BSL-3 labs,” complained Yuan Zhiming, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CCP) Committee of the Wuhan Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in May 2019.
Aware of WIV’s safety and maintenance shortcomings, researchers attempted to retroactively address them, all while its biolabs remained fully operational. In 2019 they filed patents for correcting “existing door seals that developed slow leaks over time,” “a manually operated exhaust fan,” HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filter disinfection, and mending the pressure cooker-like autoclave sterilizers, used for sterilizing equipment, which were “unable to achieve required sterilization temperatures,” had “potential leaks around the autoclave doors,” and accumulated “excessive condensation of autoclaved infectious materials.”
“It is very, very apparent that their biological safety training is minimal,” said Robert Hawley, “who for years oversaw safety programs at the U.S. Army’s maximum-containment lab at Fort Detrick, Md.”
Eventually, the problems at WIV came to the attention of the nation’s leaders. On November 19, 2019, a senior CCP official from Beijing relayed “important oral and written instructions” to WIV senior leadership in a special biosafety and security training session, which was “was followed by a two and a half day remedial biosafety training course for WIV researchers.”
By then, the disease may have already been spreading. The report noted “an increase in adult Influenza-Like-Illness (ILI) accompanied by negative laboratory influenza tests” in the week November 11-17, 2019 from a Wuhan hospital, “approximately 13 weeks before the peak incidence of COVID-19 cases in late January-early February 2020.” According to international data collected in 28 other countries, 13 weeks is “the average time from the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 [the COVID virus] to the maximum incidence of recognized cases.”
Officially, the report acknowledged, China holds that the first COVID-19 outbreak was “no earlier than December 8, 2019.”
However, “eyewitness accounts, media reports, epidemiological modeling and additional academic studies further support October 28 to November 10 as the window of emergence.” Some of the anecdotes come from government sources (emphasis added):
“The Deputy Consular Chief [at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan] recalled, ‘By mid-October 2019, the dedicated team at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan knew that the city had been struck by what was thought to be an unusually vicious flu season. The disease worsened in November.’”
“A January 2021 S. Department of State factsheet stated … ‘several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.’”
“Unpublished People’s Republic of China (PRC) Government data identified the first COVID-19 case in mid-November. A veteran South China Morning Post reporter reviewed an official China CDC document that showed a 55-year-old from Hubei province contracted the virus on November 17, 2019.”
Some anecdotes were collected media reports about the situation in Wuhan (emphasis added):
“An Australian journalist interviewed a frontline Wuhan doctor who conveyed that he and his colleagues saw a growing number of patients exhibiting fever and respiratory difficulties in early November, 2019. The physicians realized that a coronavirus, likely SARS, was the causative agent by early December.”
“Two other media outlets published information from leaked hospital data from pneumonia patients in Wuhan with suspected COVID-19. These reports identified two separate suspected case-clusters in early October and November 2019.”
“A Wuhan University biostatistics professor gave an interview in which he discussed his work to compile a nationwide database of COVID-19 cases. According to the epidemiologist, several suspected cases predated the earliest official cases in December, 2019. ‘There were two patient cases in November, with onset on November 14 and November 21, 2019, and five or six cases before December 8, 2019.’”
“In August 2021, a veteran Washington Post policy columnist reported that at least one of the WIV researchers became ill in early November, 2019 and exhibited symptoms highly specific to COVID-19, including the loss of smell and ground-glass opacities in his lungs.”
Still other anecdotes measured the crisis with proxy variables (emphasis added):
“A June 2020 published Harvard University study found an unusual increase in Wuhan hospital traffic during [autumn 2019].”
“Satellite imagery showed a significant increase in vehicles parked at major Wuhan hospitals – an indicator previously established as a proxy for hospital occupancy rates – in this period compared to October and November of 2018.”
“Search queries made on the Chinese search engine Baidu for terms like ‘cough’ also increased substantially in October and November, 2019.”
The report contained one more reason to believe that COVID may have been circulating earlier than Chinese authorities admit. “People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Professor Zhou Yusen, Director of the 5th Institute at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS), … submitted one of the first COVID-19 vaccine patents on February 24, 2020,” said the report. “Several experts assessed that Zhou likely would have had to start this vaccine development research no later than November 2019 to achieve the February patent submission date.” National Review’s Jim Geraghty called this revelation “the closest thing to a smoking gun” in the report.
The researchers considered other evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis as well, such as a unique genetic marker in the COVID virus, SARS-Cov-2. “One of the notable genetic findings of SARS-CoV-2 is the presence of an FCS [furin cleavage site]. It is the first SARS-related beta coronavirus found with one,” but WIV had been attempting “to artificially insert genetic sequences for human furin cleavage [HFC] sites to evaluate their pandemic causing potential in SARS-related coronaviruses” since 2018.
In the end, the report settles on “two plausible scenarios” for a lab leak. First, they hypothesized that a “research-related incident occurred sometime before September 2019,” the virus was first isolated in the low-level lab. “This infection, while unlikely to have caused the COVID-19 pandemic, may have spurred the WIV and PRC government to undertake precautionary actions identified by this investigation and others,” they wrote.
Second, they hypothesized a “mid- to late October” spillover from the lab due to malfunctioning equipment, which provoked another round of security responses. A detail from a November 12 internal report suggested “the possibility of more than one research-related incident” when it indicated that “incidents involving ‘high pathogens’ requiring a response from the BSL-4 team had occurred.”
In any event, the report suggested that the poor quality of the WIV labs contributed to make any lab leak worse. “The identified underlying biosafety issues increased the likelihood that such containment failures were not immediately recognized,” they said. “The possibility of unrecognized biocontainment breaches combined with SARS-CoV-2’s clinical characteristics of asymptomatic and mild clinical illness in the majority of infections, likely confounded early recognition and containment of the initial outbreak.”
If these hypothetical scenarios strike close to the truth, then China has not only covered up the origins of COVID, but indirectly contributed to them through inadequate lab safety. The report repeatedly stated that none of the evidence it collected can definitively prove that the COVID virus came from a Chinese lab. However, they noted, “according to published research, the cause of over 80% of laboratory-acquired infections (LAI) are never conclusively determined.” To date, the 301 pages of research and 1,570 footnotes they published represent the fullest explanation Americans have been able to access.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-04-20 15:36:132023-04-20 15:37:21‘One or Two’ Lab Leaks Most Likely Origins for COVID: Senate Report
Marc Morano, the force behind CFACT’s award-winning Climate Depot news and information service, is hitting the speaking circuit hard. Marc recently appeared in Calgary, Canada, Orlando, Houston, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg.
WATCH: Marc Morano speaking tour exposes the “Great Reset” and climate agendas.
Morano Excerpt:
“They’re collapsing high-yield agriculture in the Netherlands and other places. They’re making food scarce. The Harvard public school of Health: The root causes of the climate also increase the risk of pandemics. So if you don’t support the Green New Deal, you’re a grandma killer! And that’s coming from Harvard University. This is Harvard as well. The Harvard Environment Law Review — this paper just came out this week. Climate homicide deaths for prosecuting big oil for climate deaths. Two years ago, a doctor issues the first clinically diagnosed patient with climate change — a lady suffering from heat stroke. So you can be charged with homicide; A doctor can diagnose you with climate change; and you can now have climate as a cause of death on your death certificate. I’m not making any of this up. This is in our academic mainstream now. Of course, the last hundred years of climate change has at a 99% drop in climate-related deaths.
Now be afraid, because the Biden Administration is pushing the U.S into a pandemic treaty where it won’t matter who your Governor is, who your mayor is, this will be coming International Global instant lockdowns.”
Marc has issued some stark warnings, for instance that, “the Great Reset essentially is restricting energy, food, transportation, free speech, property ownership, and collapsing our financial system, and the Biden Administration is pushing the U.S into a pandemic treaty where it won’t matter who your Governor is, who your mayor is, there would be international global instant lockdowns.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2023-04-13 15:08:402023-04-13 15:11:09VIDEO: Great Reset & Covid Climate Connection Explained in Just 20 Minutes
The number of illegal immigrant crossings is surging at the southern border as the fate of a major Trump-era immigration order known as Title 42 remains uncertain.
A federal judge recently ruled that the Biden administration must end the policy, which former President Donald Trump invoked in 2020 to expel certain illegal immigrants to prevent the spread of COVID-19, on Dec. 21 before Republican states asked the Supreme Court to intervene, which resulted with a temporary pause on the order. Areas like El Paso, Texas and Yuma, Arizona, have seen surges that have overwhelmed local resources surrounding the previous Dec. 21 deadline even as some illegal immigrants continue to face expulsion.
VIDEO: Title 42 staying for the time being isn’t stopping migrants from crossing illegally into Yuma, AZ, where daily encounters are 1,200+ a day
In Yuma, Arizona, Mayor Douglas Nicholls says a recent surge in illegal immigration will lead to the release of migrants onto the town’s streets. Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines says the surge coincides with “confusion” over when Title 42 ends.
“There is so much confusion from the illegals coming across the border regarding Title 42 , numbers continue to climb as many believe they will be granted permission to stay. The President must address the open border and the consequences of illegals pouring into our communities overwhelming the Hospitals and NGOs. If DHS proceeds with street releases the burdens will be placed on the already strained resources of local cities. This is not sustainable,” Lines told the DCNF.
Federal border authorities in El Paso have moved roughly 10,000 illegal immigrants that crossed into the area recently, as many released from custody were sleeping on city sidewalks and on the floors of the local airport.
Migrant encounters at the southern border typically decrease at this time of year. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered over 45,000 migrants at the southern border in October 2019, over 71,000 in October 2020 and over 164,000 in October 2021.
CBP encountered a record of more than 230,000 migrants in October 2022.
As of publication, CBP hasn’t officially released encounter numbers for November 2022. However, the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) says border agents arrested more than 209,000 illegal immigrants during that time period.
The encounters during that time period are up from more than 174,000 across CBP in November 2021, more than 72,000 in November 2020 and more than 42,000 in November 2019.
In city governments across the United States, officials are seeking to use federal COVID-19 funds intended to preserve life to fund abortion and benefit the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, an outcome pro-life leaders call a “tragic” and foreseeable misuse of funds.
Earlier this month, Toledo’s city council proposed ordinance 530-21, which would spend $100,000 in American Rescue Plan funds to pay for Ohio women to travel out of state to obtain an abortion. The funds would go to the Agnes Reynolds Jackson Fund, one of the nation’s network of abortion funds, which defer but do not cover the full price of an abortion — a decision that has outraged state pro-life leaders.
Meanwhile the city of Rochester, New York, has selected Planned Parenthood of Central and Western NY as one of 20 members of its “Rochester Peace Collective,” which will split $5 million in American Rescue Plan funding. Mayor Malik Evans, a Democrat, said the organizations deserve these “front-end investments,” because have the ability “to intervene in the lives of people who maybe have been impacted by violence.” The Toledo ordinance also says its terms are “necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, safety and property.”
Yet pro-life advocates say abortion is violence, not health care. “It is tragic to see the abortion industry once again exploiting a health crisis as a way to line their pockets with taxpayer funding,” Connor Semelsberger, director of federal affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand.
“Using funds allocated for COVID recovery to enable the taking of innocent lives and the harming of mothers and their children is both unjust and immoral,” said Roman Catholic Bishop Daniel E. Thomas. “It is our responsibility as faithful servants of God to spearhead legislation to make it easier for mothers and fathers to flourish economically so they can provide a loving and thriving home for their families.” The Ohio-based Center for Christian Virtue, a state affiliate of FRC, set up a webpage enabling Ohioans to contact Toledo City Council members and politely voice their opposition. “It’s hard to imagine a more gross abuse of taxpayer dollars,” said CCV President Aaron Baer. He may find a receptive audience: Council member Vanice Williams, who supports abortion-on-demand, opposes the measure, because “we really need to hone in on what we spend these ARPA dollars on.”
Similarly, in Rochester, pro-family advocates oppose the $225,000 grant for Planned Parenthood’s sex education program, as it uses taxpayer dollars to link minors to Planned Parenthood’s website.
These cities, which have not yet acted, are far from alone in using federal health care funds to promote abortion. In July St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, a Democrat, signed a bill using $1 million of federal COVID relief funds to pay for abortion travel, or childcare, for women seeking to have an abortion — something she said fulfilled her campaign promises and dovetailed with her political philosophy. “I said I would fight like hell to make sure St. Louisans can access the reproductive health care they need,” she vowed. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt, a Republican, filed a lawsuit against the measure immediately.
“Atlanta; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Fresno, Calif.; Nashville and Davidson County, Tenn.; New York City; and Seattle directed state or municipal funding to abortion access. Cuyahoga County, Ohio; and St. Louis, Mo., directed funding from the American Rescue Protection Act to abortion access,” reported the far-Left Nation magazine.
Pro-life advocates say the outcome was anything but a surprise. “As the American Rescue Plan Act was being assembled Family Research Council and many other groups warned that” the ARPA funding would underwrite elective abortions “unless the bill clearly defines what healthcare funding can and cannot be used for, or has explicate language to prevent it from subsidizing abortion.”
“The American Rescue Plan Act lacks key abortion funding restrictions,” Semelsberger warned FRC readers at the time. “This is government irresponsibility at its worst,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.
Upon passage of the $1.9 trillion plan — which took place in March 2021, as COVID had already begun to recede and the economy was rebounding — Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson hailed President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democratic congressional leaders as “health care champions” for preserving abortion funding in the American Rescue Plan.
“As Roe becomes a fainting memory it is important to remember that there is no longer a federal right to an abortion as established by our courts and therefore should not be subsidized on the taxpayer’s dime,” Semelsberger told TWS.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2022-12-22 13:51:262022-12-22 14:13:31‘Tragic’: Cities Use Federal COVID-19 Money to Fund Abortion, Planned Parenthood
The Jab is a war against the American people and so why are we holding drug companies harmless?
It’s time for Biden, Congress, the CDC and NIH to give Americans harmed by the vaccines the right to sue. It is important that pharmaceutical companies be held accountable for killing and maiming American citizens.
Democrats love to talk about human rights. Well isn’t it a human right to seek restitution for harm caused upon we the people by companies like Pfizer? Isn’t our government supposed to protect us not companies? Time to call the White House and your members of Congress. Tell them to lift the ban on suing drug companies that are killing and maiming our people.
The government of Thailand has paid more than $45 million as compensation to people who developed illnesses and injuries after receiving COVID=19 vaccine shots.
Thailand’s National Health Security Office said last week that from May 19, 2021, to March 8, 2022, a total of 15,933 people had filed complaints of negative reactions to COVID-19 vaccines.
The NHSO rejected 2,328 complaints after the agency ruled that the side-effects were not related to the vaccinations.
Of the rejected cases, 875 complainants are under appeal and 891 cases are pending consideration.
Over the weekend, WND reported data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show the Millennial generation suffered a “Vietnam War event,” with more than 61,000 excess deaths in that age group in the second half of 2021, according to an analysis by a former Wall Street executive who made a career of crunching numbers to make big-dollar investment decisions.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-03-15 04:19:292022-03-15 09:38:00Thailand has Paid Out $45 Million to Victims of Covid Vaccines, Why Don’t Americans Have the Same Right?
Here are some of the highlights from today’s video:
FDA Executive Officer, Christopher Cole: “You’ll have to get an annual shot [COVID vaccine]. I mean, it hasn’t been formally announced yet because they don’t want to, like, rile everyone up.”
Cole on President Joe Biden: “Biden wants to inoculate as many people as possible.”
Cole on plans to approve vaccine for toddlers: “They’re not going to not approve [emergency use authorization for children five years old or less].”
Cole on pharmaceutical companies: “There’s a money incentive for Pfizer and the drug companies to promote additional vaccinations.”
Cole on the financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies: “It’ll be recurring fountain of revenue. It might not be that much initially, but it’ll be recurring — if they can — if they can get every person required at an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company.”
FDA official statement: “The person purportedly in the video does not work on vaccine matters and does not represent the views of the FDA.”
Why is the FDA potentially hiding the fact that annual COVID shots will be enforced? Is the FDA worried about upsetting the American people with that alleged information?
A lot of questions remain unanswered, and the public deserves to know the truth.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00O'Keefe Media Grouphttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngO'Keefe Media Group2022-02-16 06:11:252022-02-16 06:13:29VIDEO EXPOSE: FDA Exec Reveals Future COVID Plans
The ivermectin controversy has sparked a wider debate about medical freedom.
A new bill recently introduced in New Hampshire would allow residents to get ivermectin from pharmacies without first getting a prescription or approval from a doctor. The legislation, titled House Bill 1022, is still in committee, but the state House of Representatives is slated to vote on it in the coming weeks.
The purpose of the bill is to provide wider access to ivermectin for those who want to take it as a treatment for COVID-19. Thus far, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved the drug for treating COVID-19, but many believe it is an effective treatment and are eager to have it on hand should they be infected with the virus.
Though the FDA has not weighed in on this bill in particular, the agency has made it clear that they have serious concerns about the use of ivermectin for this purpose.
“The FDA has received multiple reports of patients who have required medical attention, including hospitalization, after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for livestock,” they write on their website. “Currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19,” they continue. “There’s a lot of misinformation around, and you may have heard that it’s okay to take large doses of ivermectin. It is not okay.”
The caution isn’t only coming from the FDA, however. As Newsweekreports, “a number of medical experts testified in opposition to the bill during a legislative session [in January].”
Part of the opposition is undoubtedly due to concerns about safety and efficacy, but there are also concerns about what the bill specifically allows and requires. To address these, the House committee is considering certain bipartisan amendments, such as “requiring that patients who receive the drug are informed that its use for COVID-19 is ‘off-label’ and setting guidelines for tracking any adverse effects.”
A Polarizing Pill
Though ivermectin received very little attention when the pandemic first broke out, its use in treating COVID-19 has become increasingly well known, and, in recent months, polarizing. In particular, the drug garnered significant public attention when comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan disclosed in September that he was using it to treat COVID-19 after getting a prescription from his doctor.
Rogan’s announcement led many CNN commentators to claim he was taking “horse dewormer”, since the drug is often used to treat parasites in horses and other livestock. This was misleading, however, since the drug is also approved for human use to treat certain infections.
The whole spat came to a head when Joe Rogan interviewed Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, in October. “Does it bother you that the network you work for out and out lied, just outright lied about me taking horse dewormer?” Rogan asked Gupta. “They shouldn’t have said that,” Gupta replied. “Why did they do that?” Rogan pressed. “I don’t know,” Gupta responded.
CNN’s rhetoric aside, the question of whether it’s appropriate to prescribe ivermectin to COVID-19 patients remains divisive. A doctor in Virginia, for instance, recently resigned from his position at a medical school after losing a court battle over whether he could prescribe ivermectin for COVID-19. Meanwhile, a doctor in Minnesota who recently served in the Minnesota Senate and is now running for governor is under investigation for prescribing the drug to COVID-19 patients. And in Canada, a doctor has had his medical license restricted because of his views on COVID-19, and one of the restrictions is that he is not allowed to prescribe ivermectin.
Despite the pushback, many doctors in the US continue to prescribe the drug for COVID-19. One such physician is Dr. Joseph Varon, who is the chief medical officer at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston. “My love for [ivermectin] is based on my personal use and good outcomes my patients have had,” Dr. Varon told the Houston Chronicle back in August. “Once you see it work, it is difficult to deny its usefulness.”
But while many doctors support the treatment, many others are strongly against it. For instance, Dr. A. Clinton White, a professor of infectious disease at University of Texas Medical Branch, has said many of the trials that seem to show the benefits of ivermectin were “deeply flawed and likely reflected biases.”
This statement about the trials is worth noting, because it gets at one of the core problems with the whole debate. The problem is that the safety and efficacy of this treatment is fundamentally an empirical question, one that most of us simply aren’t qualified to speak to. Typically, the solution to this problem is to rely on experts who can interpret the data for us. But when the experts themselves disagree, there’s not much we can do except hope that the results of future trials will be more conclusive.
But while the jury may be out regarding the empirical data, the ethics of making this drug available are a completely different question, and this is a question lay persons can weigh in on.
The Ethics of Medical Freedom
The argument for allowing people to access ivermectin, or any drug for that matter, rests on the principle of self-ownership. As Murray Rothbard explains in For a New Liberty, “the right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to ‘own’ his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference.”
This may sound simple enough, but it has profound implications. If you really own your body, that means you and you alone have the right to decide what goes in it and what doesn’t. If someone coercively prevents you from taking a drug, they are effectively saying they have a higher claim on your life than you do. And that holds true whether that someone is acting by themselves or on behalf of a government.
“When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us,” said Ron Paul, “we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.”
Another phrase that’s often used for the self-ownership position is bodily autonomy. Notably, the word “autonomy” comes from the Greek words auto, which means “self”, and nomos, which means “law.” So in essence, autonomy is about having a “self-law” or being “self-governing”.
Now, many people give lip service to the idea of bodily autonomy with phrases like “my body, my choice.” But holding that principle consistently means removing all restrictions about what people can do with their body. After all, you can’t be “self-governing” if you’re simultaneously being governed by other people.
Of course, some people will use their freedom to make bad choices and will have to suffer the consequences, but this is nothing new. We let people take all sorts of health and safety risks out of respect for their autonomy, such as with diet, alcohol consumption, smoking habits, and extreme sports.
And while some people may use their freedom to make bad choices, many others will use it to make good choices that the government is currently preventing them from making, such as taking drugs that could save their life.
Now, whether ivermectin is one of those lifesaving drugs is currently up for debate. But what shouldn’t be up for debate is each individual’s right to make their own medical decisions.
Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-02-09 06:48:522022-02-10 07:37:55Over-the-Counter Ivermectin? It Could Be Coming to a State Near You—Despite FDA Concerns
Politics aside, the simple truth is this: if a nation of truckers were to strike for just two weeks, it would be a stunning catastrophe. Most people have no idea how essential these hard-working people are to our survival.
RELATED TWEET: Canada has now officially become a totalitarian police state.
NEW: Ottawa Police Chief Provides Update On How Law Enforcement Is Identifying & Targeting Protestors & Supporters of Protestors Who Fund Them For Prosecution… pic.twitter.com/kl4x9Rxfti
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
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Only time will tell if Rogan’s critics have the last laugh and see him gone completely.
Comedian Joe Rogan is the biggest name in podcasting. His show, the Joe Rogan Experience, attracts an estimated 11 million listeners per episode. Since 2020, Spotify has enjoyed an exclusive deal with JRE for an estimated US$100 million. With three to four episodes per week, each of which run for hours at a time, he has a lot of influence — and a lot to lose.
And don’t his detractors know it!
“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” Neil Young wrote to his management team and record label last week. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” Spotify sided with Rogan — and then removed Young’s catalogue from their service.
Young’s decision followed the release of an open letter, penned by a 270-strong “coalition of scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators,” who called Rogan out for “misinformation” and “promoting baseless conspiracy theories”. They were particularly referring to his recent interviews with Drs Robert Malone and Peter McCullough.
(As it turns out, fewer than 100 of the signees were medical doctors, most of whom work at universities and do not practice medicine. The remainder included teachers, psychologists, engineers, podcasters, a dentist, and a vet.)
Others have since followed the lead of Rogan’s frontrunner critics. Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell soon announced she would remove her music from Spotify, followed by guitarist Nils Lofgren.
According to the Los Angeles Times, there are rumours that the Foo Fighters, Barry Manilow, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle “will be the next to walk”. Indeed, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex released a statement denouncing a “global misinformation crisis” and telling of their heroic efforts to hold Spotify accountable.
More recently, even the White House has urged Spotify to tighten the screws of censorship, first amendment be damned.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki calls on Spotify, a Swedish company, to do more to censor Joe Rogan, an American citizen, with regard to COVID.
While Joe Rogan is a giant, he is certainly not uncancellable. And Spotify is no charitable organisation. Shareholders and company executives factor profits into any major decision — which may be why Spotify has already quietly cancelled over 40 past JRE episodes. They have also announced their decision to add a content advisory label to any podcasts that discuss Covid-19.
It may not end there. Only time will tell if Rogan’s critics have the last laugh and see him gone completely.
Just what is so threatening about this former UFC commentator and psychedelics enthusiast?
Decorated journalist Glenn Greenwald — whose centre-left libertarian outlook closely aligns with Rogan’s — minces no words on the controversy:
“Censorship — once the province of the American Right during the heyday of the Moral Majority of the 1980s — now occurs in isolated instances in that faction. In modern-day American liberalism, however, censorship is a virtual religion. They simply cannot abide the idea that anyone who thinks differently or sees the world differently than they should be heard.“
Warns Greenwald: the woke’s focus until recently was to “expand and distort the concept of ‘hate speech’ to mean ‘views that make us uncomfortable,’ and then demand that such ‘hateful’ views be prohibited on that basis.” Now, he says, their target is “misinformation” or “disinformation” — terms that “have no clear or concise meaning”. And the lack of definition is deliberate. “Like the term ‘terrorism,’ it is their elasticity that makes them so useful,” he writes.
“Corporate outlets beloved by liberals are free to spout serious falsehoods without being deemed guilty of disinformation,” Greenwald notes, “and, because of that, do so routinely.”
It’s not Rogan’s alleged “misinformation” that worries these outlets. It’s their loss of control over the narrative being believed by the masses. They too have much to lose — and they are losing. Rogan’s stats dwarf the viewership of America’s popular cable news channels, even in primetime.
For further proof that “misinformation” is not Joe Rogan’s crime, consider that Neil Young previously released an entire album, The Monsanto Years (2015), which sowed major popular distrust towards genetically modified cropping.
Young released a short anti-GMO documentary, and he went on tour “amplifying misinformation about GMOs to large mainstream audiences”. He was also interviewed by Steven Colbert on The Late Show, where he warned of “the terrible diseases and all of the things that are happening” to people who eat genetically modified products.
To Joe Rogan’s credit, he released a nine-minute video via Spotify in which he graciously addresses his critics, admits various failings, and clarifies that he is no expert but enjoys hearing from experts across the ideological divide. His message would disarm all but the most dedicated censorship enthusiasts.
In the video, Rogan addresses the hot potato that is ‘misinformation’, and makes a good case for why his show deserves to stay up:
“The problem I have with the term ‘misinformation’ — especially today — is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact.
“Like for instance, eight months ago if you said, ‘If you get vaccinated you can still catch covid and you can still spread covid,’ you would be removed from social media. They would ban you from certain platforms. Now, that’s accepted as fact.
“If you said, ‘I don’t think cloth masks work,’ you would be banned from social media. Now that’s openly and repeatedly stated on CNN.
“If you said, ‘I think it’s possible that Covid-19 came from a lab,’ you would be banned from many social media platforms. Now that’s on the cover of Newsweek.”
Precisely. “Misinformation” is whatever the cultural imperialists decide it is at any given moment, until they change their mind or the truth catches up with them.
Rather than censoring him, Rogan’s critics would do well to listen to his podcast. By doing so, they may even learn what their future opinions will be.
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate… More by Kurt Mahlburg
RELATED TWEET:
After I was beaten by antifa & hospitalized for a brain bleed in 2019, @joerogan offered to give me a voice even though I was unknown. The pile on against him now is because he’s willing to speak with those overlooked by the establishment. Thank you, Joe. https://t.co/oqaSvrbgWfpic.twitter.com/uKfcrbcBbu
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-02-04 05:53:452022-02-04 07:31:39The Joe Rogan affair is not about ‘misinformation’ but narrative control
