Surely that would include viruses that have been manipulated and/or are of unverified virulence? Particularly given the lack of an effective vaccine at the time? Downgrading to BSL-3 would only have made sense at a much later date.
kinda what I thoughtâŚ
Mine does, too, and it does comicalâsometimes wildly comicalâstuff like that fairly often. But sometimes it gives the right info further down.
My dad was like that back in the 1960s, at least for a long time. He was a conservative Southerner, and a World War II veteran (he didnât see combat, but he served with the Seabees on Guam). When I questioned why we were in Vietnam, he said that the government must have had some reason that they couldnât tell us, but that if they did tell us the reason, weâd agree with it.
In conversation a couple of decades later, my dad brought up that earlier idea of hisâwithout my prompting, if I remember correctlyâand said that he was mistaken.
5 Likes
Itâs more a perspective of default generally trust, vs. default generally distrust though. Back to my point about these institutions being a big part of the reason democracies have thrived.
Nothing is perfect, but I think if oneâs level of distrust for institutions in democracy is on par with distrust for those in authoritarian countries, priorities are unbalanced, and you may end up doing the work of enemies for them.
Since many authoritarian counties put a lot of effort and resources into convincing people in democracies that they shouldnât trust their institutions. I believe many have fallen prey to this technique. Particularly in recent years, reposting Chinese/Russian propaganda all over the internet, working against their own best interests.
I think it will take some time for society to gain a more critical eye for these techniques.
2 Likes
I donât need any help from Chinese or Russian propaganda to distrust my government. Iâve acquired a degree of distrust of my government over a fairly long period of time.
I remember reading Robert F. Kennedyâs account of the Bay of Pigs, and how during the botched invasion, when he encountered his brother walking on the White House grounds, the first thing his brother said was, âIâd do something if I knew what was going on.â And I learned that over time JFK learned to distrust our institutions.
I learned that the government of the Republic of Vietnam was designed by U. S. political science professors, mostly from Michigan State University. I also learned that when CIA operatives in Vietnam noticed that most of the Vietnamese households that had pictures of public men on their walls, had pictures of Ho Chi Minh, but that a few had pictures of Diem, somebody in that outfit chose Diem to be president. Our officials, however, sat on their hands while Diem was murdered in a coup.
I learned LBJ was on tape as saying, in February 1965, when the war was in its infancy:
I learned that, notwithstanding his serious doubts that we could win that war, over the course of the war we sent over 2 million military personnel to Vietnam, and for some time in the late 1960s, we had over half a million there at the same time. Iâm having trouble imagining just the air traffic that must have been involved in that project.
I remember coming home from high school and getting a copy of Life Magazine from the hooks under the mailbox, taking it inside, opening it up, and seeing the pictures of the My Lai massacre, and thinking, well, theyâve got to stop the war now. And they did stop our direct participation in it, about three years after that Life Magazine issue.
Many years after that, someone in George H. W. Bushâs administration sent April Glaspie over to Iraq to tell Saddam that whatever might happen between Iraq and Kuwait was strictly between those two countries, i. e., none of our business. Based on that information, and on Kuwaitâs oil-stealing behavior during Iraqâs life-and-death struggle against Iran, and Iraqâs longstanding claim to Kuwait based on Kuwaitâs having been a kind of sub-province of Basra during the Ottoman Empire, and on the Anglo-Ottoman Agreement of 1913, which recognized the Ottoman Empireâs claim (it wasnât ratified, on account of the outbreak of World War I, but it should have served as a letter of intent), Saddam invaded. So we went to war with Iraq over (1) something we had said was none of our business, and (2) according to Secretary of James Baker, jobs. I was back in school during that time, and I was in one of the universityâs cafeterias when the radio playing on the public address system announced the beginning of the war. I was the only one in the cafeteria who seemed to notice. I scanned the place, and everyone else just seemed to continue with their meals and their chitchat.
A short time later I was talking with some guys, and one of them said, âWell, Iâm gonna go home and watch the war on TV.â I couldnât tell if he was being cynical or sincere.
Everyone was so casual! Then it finally hit me: âOh, yeah, nobodyâs worried about being drafted.â
I donât fully trust my own self. Epictetusâs saying, that a man should watch over himself as though over a mortal enemy, certainly applies to me.
But I donât fully trust the government either.
8 Likes
More than that.
1 Like
Itâs interesting how certain progressives have gone from default distrust of the intelligence agencies to default trust in just a matter of years.
Sounds like these same progressives should have worried a little less about Chinese and Russian propaganda and a little more about the propaganda being pumped out by their own countryâs media and intelligence agencies, which they seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker.
3 Likes
Indeed.
2 Likes
I was always kind of foggy about that, but I just now checked it out, and apparently, JFK went along with the coup.
About the murder, though: Maybe people should have expected that Diem would be murdered as part of the coup, but Iâm not sure they did expect it (by âpeople,â I mean Kennedy, Lodge, and some of the Americans who were in Vietnam at the time).
Edited to add:
This is Maxwell Taylorâs account of Kennedyâs reaction to the murder of Diem:
âMaxwell Taylor, Swords and Plowshares
According to another source:
So I remain foggy about whether or not Kennedy intended or expected Diemâs death.
Great opinion piece in the WSJ today.
The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak
The Wall Street Journal - June 6, 2021
9 Likes
Diem was almost incomprehensibly arrogant and clueless in the middle of an equally fraught situation. It couldnât have really have ended another way.
1 Like
Just a bad deal all the way around. I wish this had been implemented (if I understand it correctly):
How does the Vietnam war and the relevant players relate to the Wuhan Virus Lab leak? Why is it in this thread?
Relevant?
1 Like
It has to do with trusting the government.
Or something like that.
Guy
2 Likes
Great point, and I apologize for what amounted to an extended rant. But someoneâwhile engaging in a general critique of distrust of the governmentâactually hinted that peopleâs distrust might have its origins in the influence of Russian and Chinese propaganda.
About some things it seems quite difficult to remain silent. Nonetheless, I should have held my peace, and in the future I will increase my efforts to either stay on topic or be silent.
1 Like
Nonsense. That was a perfectly good rant!
4 Likes
boooooring. I hope you fail miserably!
4 Likes
I was wondering if what theyâre saying about a âdouble CGGâ sequence correlates with what Dr. Birger Sørensen has been saying since last year, which got some press attention but was largely rejected. Not sure, but it seems possible.
In the process of finding that I turned this up which is very interesting from June 2020 and mirrors many of the things said in the Newsweek article in the OP, though if you get to the July article linked at the bottom they propose a theory which doesnât require an GoF explanation.
3 Likes
Powerful. Regardless of investigation outcome, China has committed enough wrongdoings to warrant punishment from the worlds democraciesâŚ
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/07/pompeo-libby-china-covid-biden/