Using COVID as a justification for Hersh? Can you say ludicrous non sequitur?
[QUOTE=Elvis2008;2812491]We already saw your corroboration bullshit blow up with the origin of Covid[/QUOTE]You're obviously COVID-obsessed but, unfortunately for you, facts that are relevant to this Ukraine-centric forum, including facts relevant to the NordStream issue, have an existence that is INDEPENDENT and OUTSIDE of your little COVID bubble. Nice try at attempting to link the issues, but it doesn't help Hersh as it provides nothing in the way of factual corroboration of his claims.
FWIW, I can't recall if I've ever even mentioned COVID in this forum. If I have, it was probably to point out the utter irrelevance of trying to shoehorn COVID-specific issues into the Ukraine discussion.
BTW, while you're on your COVID rant, can you educate us as to whether COVID spreads differently on a Flat Earth?
[QUOTE]"So that blows up your whole corroboration as facts bullshit model for truth?[/QUOTE]Actually, it precisely substantiates my position. Those who pushed the "natural origin" narrative did so WITHOUT verifiable facts! Here are two examples:
1. If COVID was natural, there should have been a sizable animal population (bats, pangolins, or other) in which the SARS-COV 2 virus (or very close variant) could be detected. That fact never materialized, despite the best efforts of the narrative-pushers. The closest variant that has ever been found in animals is a distant relative, at best.
2. If COVID was natural, no one would benefit more than China. A lab leak would make China the bad guy, whereas a natural origin would make China just another victim. China not only has exclusive control over the area from which the "natural origin" allegedly came, but they also have a huge amount of resources (scientists + soldiers + other personnel) they could have deployed to find the "natural" source, had it existed. The fact that China couldn't produce evidence of animal origin is a pretty good indication of a flawed narrative.
You seem to be assuming that I was somehow on the "natural origin" bandwagon. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the two above points illustrate, that narrative was lacking when it came to essential, verifiable facts. As a consequence, from early on I doubted "natural origin" and leaned toward the lab-created theory. And, as is my general practice, I refused to jump to conclusions and patiently waited for more facts to surface.
Thanks much for so effectively making my point for me!
And thanks SO much for clearly demonstrating that narrative + reinforcing narratives (repeated ad nauseam) will NEVER = verified and corroborated facts!
(Note: I don't believe goats have been investigated as a possible source of COVID. Someone should research whether goat-fucking was the problem.).
[QUOTE]As for you, you are not looking at Ukrainian weakness:[/QUOTE]Unlike you, I am perfectly able to keep my feelings for Putin and his Orcs (abhorrence and contempt) completely separate from my analysis and evaluation of evidence and facts. As much as it's my HOPE for a Ukrainian victory, I have made no such prediction or claim. "Expert" prognosticators are out there in force, on both sides. But, since the vast majority of truly relevant information is being kept secret (by both sides), all the pundits are basically peddling guesswork and their personal opinions. That's fine, and I'm sure it helps pay the bills, but it's still mere speculation.
As I've said many times before, if I had a dollar for every wrong prediction about this war, I'd have a shitload of dollars!
[QUOTE]You are so blind it is unreal. Ukraine can and probably will lose this war and yet here you are talking about how Putin will die like Hitler. Yeah, Ukraine is going to surround Moscow like Hitler was in Berlin.
You say no one knows what is going to happen and then you come up with this Hilter bullshit.[/QUOTE]And you're apparently blind to the fact that my Mussolini / Hitler post was a direct response to a known clown who tried to equate Zelensky with Saddam (and his death). What does it say about you that you're unable to pick up on ridicule and then try to distort it to fit your own convoluted, bile-filled, pretzel-logic?
Twister much?
Insert the word Russia for Ukraine, and you're getting closer to the truth.
[QUOTE=DramaFree11;2812528]Elvis, Xman and Pauline, believe everything they read and see from there liberal sources. Ukraine is getting destroyed. Putin is now stronger then ever, the sanction have done nothing, but bring Russia and China closer. Great job Biden and his buddies.
This will go down as one of the miss calcuations ever. We go to war with Russia, but the states and Europe forget to produce gas. The world is now in recession and it could get much worse. Putin is a bad guy, but he is totally winning now at home and abroad. This war should have never started.
The funny part is the liberals want this disaster to continiue and Rep. , want it to end. I guess they want to keep blaming Russia for everything. What a disaster, the quicker this ends the better off, everyone will be. Ukraine is not winning anything, I am sorry, they are getting more destroyed every day this continues. There will be nothing left to fight over, Ukraine will lose one or 2 generations of men, and Kiev will probably be land locked. I guess this is a win![/QUOTE]Ukraine is at war and, while it's obviously not flourishing, it's supported by Europe, the US, and other major countries (like Australia and Japan). Russia has the support, in varying degree, of China, Iran, and North Korea.
The war has been mostly static over the winter months, so it's hard to see any firm evidence for your conclusion that Ukraine is losing. If you have anything to offer, other than your own opinion, kindly lay it on the table for examination and debate.
Otherwise, your opinion is just one of many, most of which have turned out to be wrong.
P.S. The war could end tomorrow. All it'd take is for Putin to order his troops back to Russia. Dems didn't start this war, and neither did Republicans. It was started by a narcissistic dictator with imperialist and revanchist ambitions. He can either decide to stop it, or he will need to be stopped.
Sorry, but your facts fall short of proving your hypothesis.
[QUOTE=Paulie97;2812830]You're really swaggering around on this one. LOL Peer reviewed analysis from SARS-2 positive swabs collected from the Wuhan wet market in the early days of the pandemic show the presence of DNA from susceptible animal species. And this is based on a recently released peer reviewed study conducted by international researchers.
[URL]https://zenodo.org/record/7754299[/URL]#. ZE6749 rMJPY.
Also SARS-2 has been discovered in animals many times.
[URL]https://www.fao.org/animal-health/situation-updates/sars-cov-2-in-animals/en[/URL]
Of course none of that will take any dedicated conspiracy theorist or Chinophobe off their soap box, but it might inspire someone like yourself to approach this one with some of the same humility you display when it comes to predicting the outcome of the war in Ukraine. This one is inconclusive.[/QUOTE]Your hypothesis falls short for at least two reasons:
1. The lab-leak hypothesis, as I understand it, postulates that viral genetic sequences taken from animals, such as the ones being researched at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, were manipulated in ways that made them more infectious to humans. That's not inconsistent with the content of your two articles.
A) Your first article has this title: "Genetic evidence of susceptible wildlife in SARS-CoV-2 positive samples at the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, Wuhan: Analysis and interpretation of data released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control". And this quote: "Our analysis of these data found that genetic evidence of MULTIPLE animal species was present in locations of the market where SARS-CoV-2 positive environmental samples had been collected".
B) Your second article opens with this passage: "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2): A virus that is spreading globally through human-to-human transmission, but has also demonstrated ability to infect MULTIPLE animal species". "with spillover potential from one animal species to another".
C) Both articles, together and separately, make the point that several species of animals are susceptible to either human-to-animal or animal-to-animal transmission of SARS-COV2. Neither article makes the claim that they've pinpointed the source of the original strain. In fact, the specific use of the word "MULTIPLE" (emphasis added, here and above) is a clear indication that the phenomenon they're describing is necessarily one that occurred AFTER the point of origin. Neither article makes the claim, nor do they pretend to do so, that they've definitively proved the animal origin hypothesis OR that they've pinpointed the likely (single) candidate for the species of origin.
2. Re your second article: When you pull back the curtain on the authoritative "Peer Reviewed" label, there's a major fly in the ointment:
A) "We acknowledge that these circumstances are unusual. We are proponents of open data sharing, and ensuring that data from our analyses are broadly accessible in public repositories is our standard practice. Although our colleagues at the CCDC have stated their intention to share these raw sequence data to support the publication currently undergoing review, they remain inaccessible through GISAID at the time of writing".
B) In layman's language, China refuses to share the data and we have no idea if they ever will. So, not sure exactly what "peer reviewed" means, in this context, but they admit that the data itself is being withheld. If the data isn't available for independent review, what exactly were the "peers" looking at?
C) Which begs the question, if the data is favorable to the animal origin hypothesis, and if that hypothesis is favorable to China, why are they withholding it?
To be clear, I'm perfectly open to being persuaded either way. But, so far, the animal-origin narrative has been mostly full of Sound and Fury (signifying nothing).
Here's an example of what I would view as convincing evidence: A bat (or numerous bats) were captured from their natural habitat (near Wuhan, or wherever). Samples were taken, genetic sequences analyzed, and the ORIGINAL (or very close variant) SARS-COV2 strain was detected. Here are our findings, published online for all to evaluate for themselves.
Has anything even close to that happened? Nope, it hasn't. China would be the CLEAR beneficiary. China has MORE than enough resources. But, here we are a few years after the onset of the pandemic, and all that's coming out of China is the sound of crickets.
Recently, in der PutinBunker, der PutinFuhrer shit himself!
[QUOTE=Questner;2812878]Recently in an interview held in a shelter-basement type of a bunker, Zed has admitted to carrying a handgun. Is it a plastic pocket clown howitzer or a Walter with a dong attached to a barrel, we don't know. Folks report fewer and fever Napoleons in Ukraine's asylums, a sign of failure of the education system. Lunatics just haven't ever heard about the emperor's life.
"When vejk subsequently described life in the lunatic asylum, he did so in exceptionally eulogistic terms: 'I really don't know why those loonies get so angry when they're kept there. You can crawl naked on the floor, howl like a jackal, rage and bite. If anyone did this anywhere on the promenade people would be astonished, but there it's the most common or garden thing to do. There's a freedom there which not even Socialists have ever dreamed of. ".
― Jaroslav Haek, The Good Soldier vejk.[/QUOTE][URL]https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/vladimir-putin-falls-down-stairs-and-soils-himself-claims-suggest/news-story/4da8667ecd4e6b21c871617f08f5959b[/URL]
Reports are that his KGB babysitters couldn't bring themselves to touch him, so they took turns trying to clean him off with water pistols!
― Jaroslav Jokester, The Good Jester vejk.
And the article supports my position.
[QUOTE=Paulie97;2813053]On the Covid lab leak theory.
Recent senate report is Republican partisan, and even they admit it's inconclusive. There's simply no room for cocksuredness on this one.
[URL]https://abcnews.go.com/Health/new-report-senate-republicans-doubles-covid-lab-leak/story?id=98656740[/URL][/QUOTE]"While their investigation concedes that "both hypotheses are plausible," the nearly 300-page document released by the minority on the Senate health subcommittee makes a circumstantial case that the "PREPONDERANCE of circumstantial evidence" points to "an unintentional research-related incident" -- an undetected aerosol leak -- likely at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), as the first spark which would ultimately ignite the pandemic" (emphasis added).
I responded separately to your longer post, but one additional point is that my initial response to Elvis was for the specific purpose of debunking his argument about Hersh, corroboration, etc. He brought up the COVID issue, not me. And the points I made about the flaws in the narrative he cited were not intended as a comprehensive defense of the lab-leak hypothesis, or anything other than popping his Hersh-bubble.
Demonstrating that a particular narrative is flawed, and citing points that favor an alternative narrative, is NOT the same as asserting a definitive conclusion about either narrative. Here's a direct quote from my response:
"As a consequence, from early on I doubted "natural origin" and LEANED TOWARD the lab-created theory. And, as is my general practice, I refused to jump to conclusions and patiently waited for more facts to surface. " (emphasis added).
As the article you posted clearly shows, more facts are surfacing with the passage of time. I'm persuaded solely by evidence and facts, full stop. As things stand right now, the PREPONDERANCE of that evidence leans toward the lab-leak hypothesis, which is why I LEAN TOWARD that position. If new evidence surfaces, I'll be happy to consider it.
If there's anything about which I'm "cocksure," it's my ability to sort through what's presented as evidence and separate the wheat from the chaff.
Any questions?
Once again, claims DON'T = facts
[QUOTE=Elvis2008;2813156]Well, there was absolute certainty and that was the point. [URL]https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736[/URL](20) 30418-9/ fulltext.
"We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. ".
The whole point of the exercise was not to debate Covid but debunk JM and his ridiculous notion of corroboration as fact. These "scientists" corroborated Covid could not possibly come from a lab which was ridiculous. Facts are facts. You do not need ten people to agree with you that two and two are four.
Furthermore, JM has this black and white perception of the world. With Covid, I think it is around 98% that it came from a lab and there were rumors that animals that were infected with Covid by the lab were sold to the wet market. Apparently, Chinese lab techs are not well paid. Of course, no one will admit to that now.
Based on the facts as put out, I would put it as 99% now that the information leaked about Ukraine was true and the same with the USA blowing up the Nordstrom pipeline. I think what people do not get is how hard it is to write something like Hersh did with the pipeline and get all the facts right. If he got one wrong, the USA government would have jumped him, but they disputed nothing factually. Their responses to both the leak and Hersh's article were weak. What may change my mind is new information not hit jobs on the people bringing us the facts.[/QUOTE]You keep talking about Hersh's "facts," but all they amount to are unverified claims, nothing more.
If you can point to a third party who has verified any of Hersh's claims, please do so. Otherwise, it's mere narrative. In fact, why doesn't Hersh himself point out examples of verification? If there are any out there, he'd be in the best position to know. Has he followed up with anything that highlights points of verification? If so, I haven't seen it. So what we're left with is Hersh's word, and only HIS word.
― Serious accusations demand serious evidence, right? Here's a thought experiment for you:
1. You've been accused of a serious crime, let's use murder for this example.
2. A very persuasive witness testifies for the prosecution, with a HIGH level of detail, about all the "facts" that point to you as the murderer.
3. The witness refuses to answer any cross-examination questions. Furthermore, the witness characterizes any questions as a personal attack.
4. The prosecution fails to present any other witnesses, or any other pieces of evidence, that would tend to validate the single witness's account. AND, here's an interesting twist, the prosecutor and the witness are the SAME person!
5. In the jury deliberation room, Juror 1 says "Wow, that witness was really persuasive and he had a LOT of detailed facts". Juror 2 says "Wait a minute. These are serious charges, and all we have is the unverified testimony of a single witness. I need more than that".
Question: Both jurors have been nominated to be the foreperson of the jury that will decide your fate. Which one would you prefer?
P.S. While you obviously believe that failing to issue some kind of point-by-point rebuttal amounts to an admission that Hersh's story is true, others would likely see such a rebuttal in a much different way. "Hey! The US govt wouldn't issue such a specific rebuttal if there wasn't something there".
So, since there's a definite possibility that anything beyond a flat denial could be turned into a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" double-edged sword, what would be the point of going down that road?
[URL]https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230208-white-house-rejects-report-that-us-was-behind-nord-stream-sabotage[/URL]
Note: NOTHING in any of the above means that I'm not open to the possibility that the US bombed the pipeline, or was involved in it. But only verifiable facts can back up that serious accusation, not someone's personal narrative.
