California High-Speed Rail

Here is my reaction a letter to a letter from a friend bemoaning the cutbacks to the high-speed rail project in California...

Regarding California's high-speed rail (HSR), for years I've been reading lib/Dem blogs that were skewering the HSR project, in spite of being a Dem initiative.  I think the problem is that the plan was faulty.   Here's some commentary from 2008: 

Stops are death to a high-speed system...

This design breaks all three rules laid down by the French. First, instead of building the line on cheap rural land, the designers will run it through the heart of Modesto, Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield - the urban areas, with the most expensive land in the San Joaquin Valley.

Second, instead of building the line where few overpasses are needed, the designers will run it through the most heavily developed area in the valley, with numerous cross-streets, each one of which has to be bridged.

Then there is the noise. The environmental impact report for this project blandly states that train noise will be "low" or "moderate" in the valley communities. But a 225-mph train going through the heart of the most heavily populated areas in the valley is sure to upset and annoy thousands of persons per trip. There will be 96 trips per day.

A passenger standing on the Merced platform, waiting for a local train, will be 23 feet away from the high-speed train as it comes through at 225 mph. In this case, it will not be a question of noise, but of whether the passenger will be blown off the platform.

There are some commonalities with other recent high speed transportation failures.  Noise limited the now defunct Concorde SST to flights over the ocean.  Maglev trains never caught on in part due to noise:

At more than 300km/h, a lot of energy is spent to overcome the air drag of the trains themselves. Issues also become noise, and the required straightness of the infrastructure. And the issue that with stops, decreasing travel time by increasing maximum speeds becomes marginal. Overall, speeds above 300km/h tend to become uneconomical, no matter the propulsion system.

Meanwhile, cost estimates for California's high-speed rail ballooned and the completion date was pushed back:

The California high-speed rail project has often been derided as a boondoggle, and with good reason. After narrowly winning a statewide vote in 2008 with low-balled cost estimates and exceedingly optimistic — some would say deceitful and fraudulent — assumptions, and not releasing the business plan until after the election, the proposal was quickly changed when reality set in and for years has borne little resemblance to the system promised to voters...  Cost estimates quickly ballooned from $40 billion or $45 billion to $98.5 billion, then down to $68.4 billion after abandoning end-to-end dedicated high-speed tracks in favor of sharing rails with freight and local trains at both ends of the system, thereby making a trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco in the mandated 2 hours and 40 minutes virtually impossible. The San Diego and Sacramento segments were soon placed on the back burner, despite promising voters there that they would have high-speed train service. Current cost estimates (2019) are around $79 billion, and the completion date has been pushed back by about a decade.

Estimates of the project’s ridership, which is critical to its viability, particularly since operating subsidies are prohibited, have dropped from as high as 117 million passengers a year to 36 million. That would still be more than the entire Amtrak system, which covers more than 500 destinations in 46 states and serves fewer than 32 million passengers per year. Amtrak’s high-speed Acela Express service, which serves a larger, denser market than the planned California system — including Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C. — has an annual ridership of just 3.4 million.

Even Gov. Gavin Newsom realized the hopelessness of the project when he used his State of the State address in February to “level about high-speed rail.”

“[L]et’s be real,” he said. “The project, as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long.”

There have been a number of failed/failing efforts to economically increase transportation speeds in our lifetimes, including the SST, maglev trains, and loops/hyperloops.

Public Discourse and Walled Gardens

 A recent post by Antonio Garcia-Martinez struck a chord with me -- The walls of perception, or why blocking is good.  Excerpt:

If you want an answer for the leading riddle of our time—why is it that in a media landscape where the individual consumer has never had more absolute control over who or what they read or watch are we more obsessed than ever with ‘content moderation’ and ‘misinformation’?—the answer is insufficient use of the block button. Every person you block is like a another brick in our frontier wall, defending you from the insane philosophies, inane prattlings, and bad-faith self-promotion of a world fracturing into mutually-hostile tribes no longer tethered to physical or cultural contours like political or linguistic borders. There’s no point in engaging with the foreign tribes, and you’re fooling yourself if you do.

I disagree with the last statement, but find Garcia-Martinez's observations about public discourse illuminating.  Suppose we follow his suggestion and try to create a space free from distractions?  The following questions arise:

• How concerned should we be about the possibility that foreign tribes get around our walls and obtain information which they use to discredit us in the public sphere?  Garcia-Martinez seems to say that this could be countered by more effective blocking, while ignoring the immediate consequences.  This seems reasonable with the caveat that it may not be possible to ignore the immediate consequences, depending upon one's employment status.  The old warning with regard to email seems relevant:  Anything you say or write may become publicly available. 
• Should one behave differently in the public sphere where foreign tribes are present?  The obvious answer would seem to be yes.  One can't and shouldn't want to withdraw from the public sphere entirely.  In the public sphere, it will be useful to be respectful to foreign tribes if conversation there is to be constructive.  In more private conversations, however, it can be more useful to speak openly and test heterodox views.

Let's consider these points in light of Martin Gurri's book, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.  As described by Matt Taibbi:

The thesis of The Revolt of the Public is that traditional centralized powers are losing — have lost — authority, in large part because of the demystifying effect of the Internet. The information explosion undermined the elite monopoly on truth, exposing long-concealed flaws. Many analysts had noted the disruptive power of the Internet, but what made Gurri unique is that he also predicted with depressingly humorous accuracy how traditional hierarchies would respond to this challenge: in a delusional, ham-fisted, authoritarian manner that would only confirm the worst suspicions of the public, accelerating the inevitable throw-the-bums-out campaigns. This assessment of the motive for rising public intransigence was not exactly welcomed, but either way, as Kling wrote, “Martin Gurri saw it coming.”

Gurri's book was originally published in 2014.  We're well into the process.  Personally, it's been about one year since I stopped reading any mainstream publication or viewing news/political commentary on a mainstream TV channel.  Over the course of that year, I've become more and more convinced of the wisdom of this decision.  From my admittedly unscientific perspective, the anti-authoritarian trends predicted by Gurri are accelerating, as the number of journalists moving from mainstream publications to Substack soars, while the mainstream media gets tied in increasingly absurd knots.   

JFK and the Unspeakable

Background

The purpose of this post is to provide a quick reference for the basis of my beliefs regarding the U.S. empire, the assassinations of JFK and RFK, and the U.S. equivalent to the Praetorian Guard that governs the empire from behind the scenes. I have written about this before in this venue: Being Woke to the Praetorian Guard - With Update.  That post covers my overall outlook quite well, but does not address the specifics of the JFK assassination.  The assassination always seemed suspicious to me, but I never had a clue as to the motivation.  After all, the conventional wisdom is that Kennedy was a Cold War hawk who escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Three books provide in depth answers to this question:

• JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, by James Douglas
• The Devil's Chessboard : Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government, by David Talbot
• The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Crime, Conspiracy and Cover-Up - A New Investigation, by  Tim Tate and Brad Johnson

These books provide the big, coherent picture.  It starts in the 1930s with Dulles brothers work on Wall Street and the corridors of power in the budding empire.  World War II provides a striking contrast between JFK's heroism and the machinations of Allen Dulles as an operative in Switzerland.  Following the war, Allen Dulles with the CIA and his brother John Foster Dulles with the State Department moved decisively to take control of U.S. foreign policy during the Eisenhower administration.  CIA directed coups, assassinations, and general interference followed in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Congo. Laos, Vietnam, and Indonesia.  

Meanwhile JFK was elected to the House of Representatives and then to the Senate.  As early as 1954 Senator Kennedy was skeptical of U.S. involvement in Vietnam:

I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance in Indochina can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere, "an enemy of the people" which has the sympathy and covert support of the people. 

However, he became something of a cold warrior in the Senate during the 1950s and while campaigning for president in 1960.  Upon being elected president that year, he came to the office while both Allen Dulles at the CIA and J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI were at the peak of their powers.  

Assuming the Presidency

On February 3, 1961, less than a month following Kennedy's inauguration, Kennedy received the news of Patrice Lumumba's assassination in the Congo.  Here's a picture of Kennedy at the moment when he received the news:

The CIA instigated Bay of Pigs invasion followed in April 1961.  It proved to be a fiasco -- one which Kennedy failed to rescue by sending in U.S. air forces as had been hoped for by the CIA. The military-intelligence hostility to Castro would continue to frustrate Kennedy's attempts to defuse the Cold War.  The CIA made 6 attempts to assassinate Castro during Kennedy's presidency, partnering with organized crime in the process.  

Vietnam

Meanwhile, the military-intelligence apparatus was heavily involved in Laos and Vietnam and were pressing for increased U.S. military presence there.  As with Cuba, Kennedy was initially hesitant to push back too hard, and the U.S. involvement did increase moderately.  By the time Kennedy tried to pull back, it was too late [James K Galbraith quoting from Robert McNamara’s 1995 memoir In Retrospect, from Chapter 3 -- “The Fateful Fall of 1963: August 24–November 22, 1963”]:

A pivotal period of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, punctuated by three important events:

1. the overthrow and assassination of South Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem; 
2. President Kennedy’s decision on October 2 to begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces;
3. his assassination fifty days later. 

On the Diem assassination:  

In Saigon and Chicago (Chapter 5), Douglas reinforces the image of Kennedy losing grip on his government, especially in Saigon, where his ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge was pushing for a coup to oust Diem, while Kennedy wanted Lodge to use diplomacy.   

It’s quite apparent, in retrospect that Kennedy’s attempt at appeasement of conservative Republicans by appointing two of their own – Lodge in Vietnam and John McCone as head of the CIA, backfired in Kennedy’s face. 

On the decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam:

National Security Action Memorandum Number 263 (NSAM-263) was a national security directive approved on 11 October 1963 by United States President John F. Kennedy. The NSAM approved recommendations by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor. McNamara and Taylor's recommendations included an appraisal that "great progress" was being made in the Vietnam War against Viet Cong insurgents, that 1,000 military personnel could be withdrawn from South Vietnam by the end of 1963, and that a "major part of the U.S. military task can be completed by the end of 1965." 

This view is in contrast to the conventional wisdom. From James K Galbraith: Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam

Did John F. Kennedy give the order to withdraw from Vietnam?  Certainly, most Vietnam historians have said “no”—or would have if they considered the question worth posing. They have asserted continuity between Kennedy’s policy and Lyndon Johnson’s, while usually claiming that neither president liked the war and also that Kennedy especially had expressed to friends his desire to get out sometime after the 1964 election...

A more thorough treatment appeared in 1992, with the publication of John M. Newman’s JFK and Vietnam.1 Until his retirement in 1994 Newman was a major in the U.S. Army, an intelligence officer last stationed at Fort Meade, headquarters of the National Security Agency. As an historian, his specialty is deciphering declassified records...  Here is the chronology, according to Newman:

On October 2, 1963, Kennedy received the report of a mission to Saigon by McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The main recommendations, which appear in Section I(B) of the McNamara-Taylor report, were that a phased withdrawal be completed by the end of 1965...  At Kennedy’s instruction, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger made a public announcement that evening of McNamara’s recommended timetable for withdrawal...

On October 5, Kennedy made his formal decision...

On October 11, the White House issued NSAM 263... 

On November 1 there came the coup in Saigon and the assassination of Diem and Nhu. At a press conference on November 12, Kennedy publicly restated his Vietnam goals. They were “to intensify the struggle” and “to bring Americans out of there.” Victory, which had figured prominently in a similar statement on September 12, was no longer on the list...

The Honolulu Conference of senior cabinet and military officials on November 20–21 was called to review plans in the wake of the Saigon coup...

In Honolulu, McGeorge Bundy prepared a draft of what would eventually be NSAM 273. The plan was to present it to Kennedy after the meeting ended. Dated November 21, this draft reflected the change in military reporting.

 At Honolulu, a preliminary plan, known as CINCPAC OPLAN 34-63 and later implemented as OPLAN 34A, was prepared for presentation. This plan called for intensified sabotage raids against the North, employing Vietnamese commandos under U.S. control—a significant escalation.5 While JCS chief Taylor had approved preparation of this plan, it had not been shown to McNamara. Tab E of the meeting’s briefing book, also approved by Taylor and also not sent in advance to McNamara, showed that the withdrawal ordered by Kennedy in October was already being gutted, by the device of substituting for the withdrawal of full units that of individual soldiers who were being rotated out of Vietnam in any event.

The final version of NSAM 273, signed by Johnson on November 26, differs from the draft in several respects...   the thrust is unmistakable, and the restrictive reference to “Government of Vietnam resources” is now missing. Newman concludes that this change effectively provided new authority for U.S.–directed combat actions against North Vietnam. Planning for these actions began therewith, and we now know that an OPLAN 34A raid in August 1964 provoked the North Vietnamese retaliation against the destroyer Maddox, which became the first Gulf of Tonkin incident. And this in turn led to the confused incident a few nights later aboard the Turner Joy, to reports that it too had been attacked, and to Johnson’s overnight decision to seek congressional support for “retaliation” against North Vietnam. From this, of course, the larger war then flowed.

Go to the referenced link for this Galbraith article to see the arguments on the other side, including arguments made by Noam Chomsky.  Galbraith explains in detail how and why Chomsky is wrong and McNamara and Newman are correct: 

McNamara confirms one of Newman’s central claims: NSAM 273 changed policy.

Johnson's Vietnam War policy shifted suddenly and dramatically following Kennedy's assassination, in favor of plans drawn up by the military-intelligence command.

Correspondence with Khrushchev and Castro

In addition to differing with military-intelligence command regarding military intervention in Cuba and Vietnam, Kennedy had secretly begun conversations with both Castro and Khrushchev in an attempt to defuse the Cold War. 

A President for Peace: The deadly consequences of J.F.K.’s attempts at reconciliation, by James W. Douglass, 11/6/2013:

In the missile crisis, Kennedy turned toward peace. At the height of the terrifying conflict his own anti-Castro policies helped precipitate, he sought a way out. Kennedy chose a route his generals thought unforgiveable. He not only rejected their pressures to attack Cuba and the Soviet Union. Even worse, the president reached out to the enemy for help. That could be considered treason. Khrushchev saw it as a sign of hope.

The genesis of the Kennedy-Khrushchev turnaround during the missile crisis was their secret correspondence, which began over a year earlier. After their failed meeting in Vienna in June 1961, Khrushchev wrote a groundbreaking letter to the president, dated Sept. 29, 1961...   through their secret correspondence, the two men struggled to achieve a better understanding of each other and their differences. The Cuban missile crisis a year later was proof they had not resolved their conflicts. Yet it was thanks especially to the secret letters that each knew the other as a human being he could respect...

Once Kennedy and Khrushchev turned together in the missile crisis, they began conspiring for peace. The breakthrough was Kennedy’s address in June 1963 at American University. By introducing his vision of peace as a response to the Russians’ suffering in World War II, Kennedy bridged the gap with the enemy. Khrushchev later told the American diplomat W. Averell Harriman that it was “the greatest speech by any American president since Roosevelt.” ...

Kennedy’s announcement at the university of his unilateral cessation of atmospheric nuclear tests and his expressed hope for treaty negotiations in Moscow opened the door. Within six weeks, he and Khrushchev signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It was a confirming sign of their joint decision to end the cold war.

Another sign was Nikita Khrushchev’s counsel to Fidel Castro that he should begin to work with John F. Kennedy. Castro had been furious with Khrushchev for withdrawing his missiles at the 11th hour of the crisis without consulting his Cuban ally, in return for only a promise from a capitalist. Khrushchev, however, wrote a peaceful, reconciling letter to Castro on Jan. 31, 1963, that corresponded to his Noah’s Ark letter to Kennedy. Castro accepted his invitation to come to the Soviet Union.

Castro made that visit to Khrushchev from May to June 1963. The two leaders traveled together around the Soviet Union. Castro said later that Khrushchev gave him a tutorial on their joint need to trust Kennedy. Day after day, Khrushchev read aloud to Castro his correspondence with Kennedy, emphasizing the hope for peace they now had by working with the U.S. president. 

Two Tracks on Cuba:

President Kennedy, perhaps shaken by the events of October 1962, looked for ways to defuse the situation and reach accommodation with Castro. On March 30, 1963, the State Dept. and Justice Dept. jointly announced their intent to ensure that Cuban exile groups conducting sabotage raids would no longer do so from U.S. soil. Faced with raids on training camps and loss of support, some of these groups relocated to other countries such as Nicaragua.

In September, following an interview of Castro by journalist Lisa Howard, Kennedy approved secret contacts between U.N. delegate William Attwood and Cuban Ambassador to the U.N. Carlos Lechuga. A preliminary meeting took place, and plans for more substantive talks in a neutral setting such as Mexico were proposed...

In the midst of these events, the CIA reactivated contacts with Rolando Cubela, code-named AMLASH, an apparently disgruntled Cuban government official interesting in overthrowing Castro. High-level CIA officer Desmond Fitzgerald, at this time head of the Special Affairs Staff, took the extraordinary step of meeting with Cubela directly, and representing himself as an emissary of Robert Kennedy (there is no indication RFK was informed of this). 

Conclusion

It's not easy writing about this subject.  The establishment has long since closed ranks on the idea that certain inconvenient truths should not be discussed.  After all, what does this say about the establishment and our so-called democracy if the CIA did indeed kill the president, because they disagreed with his military strategy as head of the empire, yet the mainstream news media and politicians have refused to acknowledge this?  Rather, using a bit of common sense and reviewing publicly available facts is considered to be irrational, conspiracy theorist behavior.  

I myself have been unsure of what to believe since the assassination took place when I was 11 years old.  It never made sense, but surely our government wouldn't do this and couldn't get away with it.  There were just too many stories and authoritative proclamations.  But in the age of the Internet, and after 58 years of reflection and review of various sources and eventually released government documents, a clear picture is discernible if one puts in extensive effort.

The straw that broke the camel's back, and triggered my research, was the obvious nonsense being reported by the mainstream media, and accepted uncritically by the public and politicians, regarding the alleged Trump-Russia collusion.  I retired 3 years ago and thus have had time to follow some of the details over the Internet, to a degree which would have been difficult to impossible 10 or 20 years ago.  The Steele Dossier was bogus, but came from former intelligence agents.  Joseph Mifsud was clearly a UK intelligence asset, but has been universally reported as an agent of the Kremlin.  Carter Page was working with the CIA, but this was turned around as not working with the CIA in the FISA application which authorized spying on him.  And on and on it goes -- wherever one looks in news reported from the intelligence agencies via mainstream media outlets. See also: Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Xinjiang, Venezuela.

Recognizing the way in which the intelligence agencies work with the mainstream media provided insight into other major international events of my lifetime such as the following:

• Vietnam War
• Johnson presidency
• RFK assassination
• Nixon presidency
• Watergate
• Iranian revolution and transition to Reagan presidency
• Iran - contra affair
• Iraq 2003 War
• Trump-Russia collusion allegations
• Trump's failed attempts to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan, and to reduce tensions with N. Korea and Russia

People have given their lives to speak the truth and make the world a better place.  Talking about these events is important, as I'm sure JFK, RFK, MLK, Nelson Mandela, and others would agree.  

Wuhan Lab Leak

I've spent half a day reviewing the evidence regarding the origin of the covid-19 virus.  I'd seen this evidence before, but was challenged on the findings, so I had to go through it again.  My two major sources are an article from June 2020 with dozens of scientific citations and compelling logic, and the work of Bret Weinstein as explained via YouTube videos.  

The basic issue seems to be the politicization of the analysis and its presentation in the mainstream media.  The Weinstein case was laid on January 30 in this video in 2 segments:

• consensus science: roughly 19:16 - 25:06
• covid lab leak: roughly 25 minute - 38 minute mark

First, Weinstein notes that an inappropriate scientific consensus was reached way too early in the process of coming to terms with the origin of covid-19.  A firm conclusion of natural origin was promulgated and the lab leak hypothesis was disparaged as fake news.  

I became aware of this in June, before I encountered Weinstein, with an article entitled The Case is Building That COVID-19 Had Lab Origin.  It is an excellent article written by two PhDs and I recommend the whole thing.  Here are some lengthy excerpts:

Practically the lone undisputed assertion made so far (6/2/2020) is that all the nearest known genetic relatives of its cause, the Sars-CoV-2 virus, are found in horseshoe bats (Zhou et al., 2020). Therefore, the likely viral reservoir was a bat.  However, most of these ancestor-like bat coronaviruses cannot infect humans (Ge et al., 2013). In consequence, from its beginning, a key question hanging over the pandemic has been: How did a bat RNA virus evolve into a human pathogen that is both virulent and deadly?

The answer almost universally seized upon is that there was an intermediate species. Some animal, perhaps a snake, perhaps a palm civet, perhaps a pangolin, served as a temporary host...  Since the two previous coronavirus near-pandemics of SARS (2002-3) and MERS (2012) both probably came from bats and both are thought (but not proven) to have transitioned to humans via intermediate animals (civets and dromedaries respectively), a natural zoonotic pathway is a reasonable first assumption (Andersen et al., 2020)...

But one other troubling possibility must be dispensed with. It follows from the fact that the epicentre city, Wuhan (pop. 11 million), happens to be the global epicentre of bat coronavirus research (e.g. Hu et al., 2017).  Prompted by this proximity, various researchers and news media, prominently the Washington Post, and with much more data Newsweek, have drawn up a prima facie case that a laboratory origin is a strong possibility (Zhan et al., 2020; Piplani et al., 2020). That is, one of the two labs in Wuhan that has worked on coronaviruses accidentally let a natural virus escape; or, the lab was genetically engineering (or otherwise manipulating) a Sars-CoV-2-like virus which then escaped.

Unfortunately, in the US at least, the question of the pandemic’s origin has become a political football; either an opportunity for Sinophobia or a partisan “blame game“...

Historical lab releases, a brief history

An accidental lab release is not merely a theoretical possibility. In 1977 a laboratory in Russia (or possibly China), most likely while developing a flu vaccine, accidentally released the extinct H1N1 influenza virus (Nakajima et al., 1978). H1N1 went on to become a global pandemic virus. A large proportion of the global population became infected. In this case, deaths were few because the population aged over 20 yrs old had historic immunity to the virus. This episode is not widely known because only recently has this conclusion been formally acknowledged in the scientific literature and the virology community has been reluctant to discuss such incidents (Zimmer and Burke, 2009; Wertheim, 2010). Still, laboratory pathogen escapes leading to human and animal deaths (e.g. smallpox in Britain; equine encephalitis in South America) are common enough that they ought to be much better known (summarised in Furmanski, 2014)...

Many scientists have warned that experiments with PPPs, like the smallpox and Ebola and influenza viruses, are inherently dangerous and should be subject to strict limits and oversight (Lipsitch and Galvani, 2014; Klotz and Sylvester, 2014). Even in the limited case of SARS-like coronaviruses, since the quelling of the original SARS outbreak in 2003, there have been six documented SARS disease outbreaks originating from research laboratories, including four in China. These outbreaks caused 13 individual infections and one death (Furmanski, 2014). In response to such concerns the US banned certain classes of experiments, called gain of function (GOF) experiments, with PPPs in 2014, but the ban (actually a funding moratorium) was lifted in 2017.

For these reasons, and also to ensure the effectiveness of future pandemic preparedness efforts­, it is a matter of vital international importance to establish whether the laboratory escape hypothesis has credible evidence to support it. This must be done regardless of the problem–in the US–of toxic partisan politics and nationalism.

 The COVID-19 Wuhan lab escape thesis

The essence of the lab escape theory is that Wuhan is the site of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), China’s first and only Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facility. (BSL-4 is the highest pathogen security level). The WIV, which added a BSL-4 lab only in 2018, has been collecting large numbers of coronaviruses from bat samples ever since the original SARS outbreak of 2002-2003; including collecting more in 2016 (Hu, et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2018).

Led by researcher Zheng-Li Shi, WIV scientists have also published experiments in which live bat coronaviruses were introduced into human cells (Hu et al., 2017). Moreover, according to an April 14 article in the Washington Post, US Embassy staff visited the WIV in 2018 and “had grave safety concerns” about biosecurity there. The WIV is just eight miles from the Huanan live animal market that was initially thought to be the site of origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wuhan is also home to a lab called the Wuhan Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (WCDPC). It is a BSL-2 lab that is just 250 metres away from the Huanan market. Bat coronaviruses have in the past been kept at the Wuhan WCDPC lab.

Thus the lab escape theory is that researchers from one or both of these labs may have picked up a Sars-CoV-2-like bat coronavirus on one of their many collecting (aka ‘”virus surveillance”) trips. Or, alternatively, a virus they were studying, passaging, engineering, or otherwise manipulating, escaped... 

Scientific assessments of the lab escape theory

On April 17 the Australian Science Media Centre asked four Australian virologists: “Did COVID-19 come from a lab in Wuhan?“

Three (Edward Holmes, Nigel McMillan and Hassan Vally) dismissed the lab escape suggestion and Vally simply labeled it, without elaboration, a “conspiracy”.

The fourth virologist interviewed was Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University. Petrovsky first addressed the question of whether the natural zoonosis pathway was viable. He told the Media Centre:

“no natural virus matching to COVID-19 has been found in nature despite an intensive search to find its origins.”

That is to say, the idea of an animal intermediate is speculation. Indeed, no credible viral or animal host intermediaries, either in the form of a confirmed animal host or a plausible virus intermediate, has to-date emerged to explain the natural zoonotic transfer of Sars-CoV-2 to humans (e.g. Zhan et al., 2020).

In addition to Petrovsky’s point, there are two further difficulties with the natural zoonotic transfer thesis (apart from the weak epidemiological association between early cases and the Huanan “wet” market).

The first is that researchers from the Wuhan lab travelled to caves in Yunnan (1,500 Km away) to find horseshoe bats containing SARS-like coronaviruses. To-date, the closest living relative of Sars-CoV-2 yet found comes from Yunnan (Ge et al., 2016). Why would an outbreak of a bat virus therefore occur in Wuhan? ...

Was Sars-CoV-2 created in a lab?

In his statement, Petrovsky goes on to describe the kind of experiment that, in principle, if done in a lab, would obtain the same result as the hypothesised natural zoonotic transfer–rapid adaptation of a bat coronavirus to a human host.

“Take a bat coronavirus that is not infectious to humans, and force its selection by culturing it with cells that express human ACE2 receptor, such cells having been created many years ago to culture SARS coronaviruses and you can force the bat virus to adapt to infect human cells via mutations in its spike protein, which would have the effect of increasing the strength of its binding to human ACE2, and inevitably reducing the strength of its binding to bat ACE2.

Viruses in prolonged culture will also develop other random mutations that do not affect its function. The result of these experiments is a virus that is highly virulent in humans but is sufficiently different that it no longer resembles the original bat virus. Because the mutations are acquired randomly by selection there is no signature of a human gene jockey, but this is clearly a virus still created by human intervention.”

In other words, Petrovsky believes that current experimental methods could have led to an altered virus that escaped.

Passaging, GOF research, and lab escapes

The experiment mentioned by Petrovsky represents a class of experiments called passaging. Passaging is the placing of a live virus into an animal or cell culture to which it is not adapted and then, before the virus dies out, transferring it to another animal or cell of the same type. Passaging is often done iteratively. The theory is that the virus will rapidly evolve (since viruses have high mutation rates) and become adapted to the new animal or cell type. Passaging a virus, by allowing it to become adapted to its new situation, creates a new pathogen.

The most famous such experiment was conducted in the lab of Dutch researcher Ron Fouchier. Fouchier took an avian influenza virus (H5N1) that did not infect ferrets (or other mammals) and serially passaged it in ferrets. The intention of the experiment was specifically to evolve a PPP. After ten passages the researchers found that the virus had indeed evolved, to not only infect ferrets but to transmit to others in neighbouring cages (Herfst et al., 2012). They had created an airborne ferret virus, a Potential Pandemic Pathogen, and a storm in the international scientific community...

Was the WIV doing experiments that might release PPPs?

Since 2004, shortly after the original SARS outbreak, researchers from the WIV have been collecting bat coronaviruses in an intensive search for SARS-like pathogens (Li et al., 2005). Since the original collecting trip, many more have been conducted (Ge et al., 2013; Ge et al., 2016; Hu et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2018).

Petrovsky does not mention it but Zheng-Li Shi’s group at the WIV has already performed experiments very similar to those he describes, using those collected viruses. In 2013 the Shi lab reported isolating an infectious clone of a bat coronavirus that they called WIV-1 (Ge et al., 2013). WIV-1 was obtained by introducing a bat coronavirus into monkey cells, passaging it, and then testing its infectivity in human (HeLa) cell lines engineered to express the human ACE2 receptor (Ge et al., 2013)... 

In 2017, again with the intent of identifying bat viruses with ACE2 binding capabilities, the Shi lab at WIV reported successfully infecting human (HeLa) cell lines engineered to express the human ACE2 receptor with four different bat coronaviruses. Two of these were lab-made recombinant (chimaeric) bat viruses... 

Together, what these papers show is that: 1) The Shi lab collected numerous bat samples with an emphasis on collecting SARS-like coronavirus strains, 2) they cultured live viruses and conducted passaging experiments on them, 3) members of Zheng-Li Shi’s laboratory participated in GOF experiments carried out in North Carolina on bat coronaviruses, 4) the Shi laboratory produced recombinant bat coronaviruses and placed these in human cells and monkey cells. All these experiments were conducted in cells containing human or monkey ACE2 receptors. 

The overarching purpose of such work was to see whether an enhanced pathogen could emerge from the wild by creating one in the lab. (For a very informative technical summary of WIV research into bat coronaviruses and that of their collaborators we recommend this post, written by biotech entrepreneur Yuri Deigin)... 

It is hard to overemphasize that the central logic of this grant was to test the pandemic potential of SARS-related bat coronaviruses by making ones with pandemic potential, either through genetic engineering or passaging, or both... 

Given the research and collection history of the Shi lab at WIV it is therefore entirely plausible that a bat SARS-like coronavirus ancestor of Sars-CoV-2 was trained up on the human ACE2 receptor by passaging it in cells expressing that receptor.

[On June 4 an excellent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists went further. Pointing out what we had overlooked, that the Shi lab also amplified spike proteins of collected coronaviruses, which would make them available for GOF experimentation (Ge et al., 2016).] 

How do viruses escape from high security laboratories?

Pathogen lab escapes take various forms. According to the US Government Accountability Office, a US defense Department laboratory once “inadvertently sent live Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax, to almost 200 laboratories worldwide over the course of 12 years. The laboratory believed that the samples had been inactivated.” In 2007, Britain experienced a foot and mouth disease outbreak. Its’ origin was a malfunctioning waste disposal system of a BSL-4 laboratory leaking into a stream from which neighbouring cows drank. The disposal system had not been properly maintained (Furmanski, 2014). In 2004 an outbreak of SARS originating from the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Beijing, China, began, again, with the inadequate inactivation of a viral sample that was then distributed to non-secure parts of the building (Weiss et al., 2015).

Writing for the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists in February 2019, Lynn Klotz concluded that human error was behind most laboratory incidents causing exposures to pathogens in US high security laboratories. While equipment failure was also a factor, of the 749 incidents reported to the US Federal Select Agent Programme between 2009-2015, Klotz concluded that 79% resulted from human error.

But arguably the biggest worry is incidents that go entirely unreported because escape of the pathogen goes undetected. It is truly alarming that a significant number of pathogen escape events were uncovered only because investigators were in the process of examining a completely different incident (Furmanski, 2014). Such discoveries represent strong evidence that pathogen escapes are under-reported and that important lessons still need to be learned (Weiss et al., 2015)... 

Nevertheless, on April 16th Peter Daszak, who is the President of the EcoHealth Alliance, told Democracy Now! in a lengthy interview that the lab escape thesis was “Pure baloney”. He told listeners:

“There was no viral isolate in the lab. There was no cultured virus that’s anything related to SARS coronavirus 2. So it’s just not possible.”

Daszak made very similar claims on CNN’s Sixty Minutes: “There is zero evidence that this virus came out of a lab in China.” Instead, Daszak encouraged viewers to blame “hunting and eating wildlife”.

An investigation is needed, but who will do it?

If the Shi lab has anything to hide, it is not only the Chinese Government that will be reluctant to see an impartial investigation proceed. Much of the work was funded by the US taxpayer, channeled there by Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance. Virtually every credible international organisation that might in principle carry out such an investigation, the WHO, the US CDC, the FAO, the US NIH, including the Gates Foundation, is either an advisor to, or a partner of, the EcoHealth Alliance. If the Sars-CoV-2 outbreak originated from the bat coronavirus work at the WIV then just about every major institution in the global public health community is implicated...

Complete transparency would potentially dispel the gales of blame coming its way; especially on the question of whether Sars-CoV-2 has an engineered or passaged origin. If Zheng-Li Shi and Peter Daszak are correct that nothing similar to Sars-CoV-2 was being studied there, then those notebooks should definitively exonerate the lab from having knowingly made an Actual Pandemic Pathogen.

Given the simplicity and utility of this step this lack of transparency suggests that there is something to hide. If so, it must be important. But then the question is: What?

A thorough investigation of the WIV and its bat coronavirus research is an important first step. But the true questions are not the specific mishaps and dissemblings of Drs Shi or Daszak, nor of the WIV, nor even of the Chinese government.

Rather, the bigger question concerns the current philosophy of pandemic prediction and prevention. Deep enquiries should be made about the overarching wisdom of plucking and counting viruses from the wild and then performing dangerous ‘what if’ recombinant research in high tech but fallible biosafety labs. This is a reductionist approach, we also note, that has so far failed to predict or protect us from pandemics and may never do so. 

It's hard for me to imagine a more convincing case in support of the lab escape hypothesis.  And sure enough, by January 2021 the lab leak hypothesis was gaining traction even in the mainstream media.  

'Growing body of evidence' that COVID-19 leak from Chinese lab a 'credible possibility,' Trump official claims (1/4/2021):

Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger made the claim in a recent virtual conference call with British lawmakers regarding China. During the call, Pottinger asserted that officials within China have rejected the theory that the virus originated from a wet market in Wuhan.

WHO advisor: COVID-19 pandemic likely started via lab leak (1/23/2021): 

“There’s no irrefutable evidence,” said Metzl, who was appointed to the WHO’s expert advisory committee on human genome editing in 2019 and is also the author of Hacking Darwin.  “There’s just more evidence and as more evidence arrives, the case for accidental lab leak, in my view, increases.”

Perhaps in response, a team from the World Health Organization went to Wuhan and issued a statement on February 9.  From Nature: 

members of the WHO team reported conclusions from their month-long investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, which was first reported as cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan in December 2019. The researchers largely discounted the controversial theory that the virus accidentally leaked from a laboratory

Dwyer says that the team didn’t see anything during its visits to suggest a lab accident. “Now, whether we were shown everything? You can never know. The group wasn’t designed to go and do a forensic examination of lab practice.” (emphasis added)

The Weinsteins (Bret and his wife Heather) emphasize that a forensic examination, of the kind not conducted by the WHO team, is needed (although there is documentation of evidence already being destroyed).   Most importantly, they note the WHO team concluded that there is a possibility of two other origins for the virus:

• that the origin of the virus might have been outside of China.
• that the virus could have spread on frozen wildlife and other cold packaged goods.

See this video (minutes 25-38) in which they dissect the press video of WHO representative Peter Daszak describing these alternative origin theories.  They note that Daszak has a largely unreported conflict of interest, since he is a principal sponsor of the research that was being done at the Wuhan lab.  He thus  has a strong incentive to favor any hypothesis other than the lab leak hypothesis.  But Daszak doesn't present any evidence in favor of the outside China and frozen food hypotheses.  And Weinstein effectively refutes the frozen food hypothesis by noting that the frozen food must have come from somewhere the virus evolved, and there is no evidence of COVID in ferret badgers anywhere, and no effort to find such a place.  The sum total of the evidence of this theory is that frozen badger steaks were present in the market and apparently tested negative for the covid-19 virus (which doesn't make sense).

So we come full circle to the nature of scientific consensus and the process of scientifically assessing the probability of various hypotheses regarding the origin of the virus.  Back in May, Weinstein assessed the various probabilities as shown in the following diagram:

The only serious theories (reported by Weinstein in May) are lab leak (89%) and transmission via an animal intermediate (pangolin, mink, ferret badger, etc.) to a human (8%).  Since then, the Wuhan wet market hypothesis (animal to human) has been substantially discredited, and no other theory has emerged and been found realistic.

Rather, a team of people who sponsored the research have summarily rejected the hypothesis that their research could be responsible for unleashing the covid-19 pandemic and the mainstream press has reported that people who believe otherwise are conspiracy theorists.  Those with power in the scientific community have failed us, while many individual scientists have insisted on doing a more rigorous examination of the alternative hypotheses and the probability that any given hypothesis is correct. 

Awesome Moments in Sports

 https://youtu.be/9jgfVPDTfsI?t=313

The Empire Giveth

I've been down on the American Empire lately -- for assassinating presidents and civil rights leaders, electing Joe Biden, scapegoating Russia and China, making millions of people miserable in Syria, Venezuela, Iran, etc.  But it should be noted that there is a flip side to empire, which is superbly illustrated in this Monty Python piece: What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?

Matt Taibbi provides a more detailed look at the need to keep things in perspective: 
Marcuse-Anon: Cult of the Pseudo-Intellectual

Uighur Genocide, Another Russiagate

All signs point to the hysteria surrounding supposed Uighur genocide being another round of fake news promoted by western intelligence agencies and spread uncritically by the mainstream media.  See:

• NY Times' pseudo-expert accusing China of genocide worked for far-right cult Falun Gong's publicity arm | The Grayzone
• MoA - Why Do These Uighur Witnesses' Stories Constantly Change?

It seems that Cold War forces rule us as depicted in 1984.

Writing in the Internet Era

I've recently written an article about witnessing -- speaking publicly -- about what one has observed and concluded:  The Arc of the Moral Universe

And then I ran across an article encouraging people to write -- share their opinions -- and not to read and regurgitate the corporate/government propaganda found in the New York Times.

Also, one of my favorite writers, an independent blogging psychiatrist, recently had a dustup with the New York Times.  He quit writing publicly for 6 months because the NY Times threatened to reveal his true identity (he had been writing using a pseudonym) which he felt would be dangerous for him personally in terms of his career and relationships.  He resumed public blogging this month while no longer trying to hide his true identity: Still Alive - Astral Codex Ten.  Again, the New York Times does not come off well.

Reflecting on my personal life and relationships with family and friends, I note that I get many stories passed my way from the New York Times.  It occurs to me that people in my circles feel that the New York Times is a safe source of news and world view.  With the advent of Internet cancel culture, it is indeed dangerous to express opinions publicly on the Internet.  I am somewhat immune from this being retired and therefore do not have to consider possible adverse reactions from employers or potential employers down the line.

How did we get to this place, and where do we go from here?

The answer, I believe, is that we are an aging empire.  Power tends to concentrate over time such that a military / intelligence vanguard tends to call the shots with an enormous budget and behind the scenes power over the nominal rulers.  Thus, the New York Times defers to the CIA and FBI and in discussing matters at the core of our democracy such as the assassination of presidents (JFK), potential presidents (RFK), and movement leaders (MLK).  When an insurgent such as Bernie Sanders threatened the corrupt power structures, the power structure pulls together to denounce him asl a socialist (enemy of the empire).  When an insurgent such as Donald Trump threatened the status quo, the CIA and FBI worked together to falsely paint him as a treasonous agent of archenemy Putin.  When Trump threatened to remove U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan, or to make peace with N. Korea, he was overridden by empire central.  The power structure made race a major issue in an all out effort to destroy Trump, cancelling anyone who dared to oppose them.

In my view, these were not savvy moves by our elite.  Was it really necessary to spread intelligence agency lies to get rid of a buffoon such as Trump?  Was it in elite interest to whip up a frenzy of identity politics?  Were the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK successful?  How about the 2003 war in Iraq?  The war in Afghanistan?  At best, these actions have maintained the status quo over the last 60 years.  At worst, they have eroded national unity and enthusiasm for the empire.  

Some more observations:

1. Over the past 10 years, the mainstream media (MSM) has gone from being too centrist, in my view, to being too openly partisan Democratic.  Whereas the MSM has always deferred to the power elite including, especially, the intelligence agencies, they've now going to cheerleading for the Democrats as they have fought back in kind against the crazed Republicans.  Thus, I can no longer support the sane center.
2. The cancer of identity politics and outrage culture bloomed since 2016.  Thus, people are afraid and unable to discuss political topics calmly and rationally.  The supposedly scientific debate surrounding COVID 19 has been horribly partisan and unscientific.
3. Personally, I've realized that my disillusionment with our national government following the Vietnam War and the Nixon resignation was entirely justified.  Though I managed to have a career and raise a family thanks largely to my relatively privileged upbringing, the empire has continued to rot and spread war and economic injustice.  I call my present state of mind a reawokening.

So where do we go from here, with an aging empire unmoored from rational thought and behavior?  I find it hard to believe that the mainstream media will be successful in putting the cat back in the bag -- the phony national ethos (democracy) has been exposed and the trust will not be regained after the nonsense of the last 4 years including Russiagate and woke cancel culture.  Democratic believers will soon see that the wizards of wokeness and national outrage against Putin were and are sham grifters.  When all the Trump outrage is gone there will nothing constructive in its place.  The populists will resume their assaults on the impotent cultural center.

Our job is to free ourselves sooner rather than later from the tyranny of the thought police at the New York Times and Democratic party headquarters.  A wave of new movements and leaders will arise, and it is up to us to shape popular opinion through the democratic processes which are central to our value systems and which include most prominently freedom of speech.  We must talk to one another, and promote our values and those politicians who genuinely promote our values.  We need to innoculate ourselves against military intelligence leaders who lead us to rely on their secretive and undemocratic ways.  

The Internet gives us the power to see how phony the status quo is, and how bad some of the alternatives are.  Think, people, and be constructive.  Support democrats, and oppose outrage culture and identity politicians who try to pit us against one another on the basis of race, religion, gender orientation, etc.  Majority rule, minority rights!  Peaceful resolution of conflicts to the extent possible!  Turn off the rotten mainstream media and engage more constructively with your family, friends, community, and fellow travellers around the globe.

Taking Stock During the Trump Transition

 

Core Values

Belief in Democratic Process

●       Non-Violent Resolution of Issues
Majority Rule
Minority Rights

●       The Trump supporters' positions strike me as anti-democratic in the following regards:

○       Excessive support for gun "rights" => violence

○       Do not support international agreements and cooperation

○       Excessively tribal => poor protection of minority rights

●       Republicans under Trump are not a threat because they are opposed by military intelligence corporate (MIC) leaders.

●       There are serious problems with the democratic process in the U.S.

○       CIA and other intelligence agencies

■       military coups and intervention around the world

■       involvement in domestic politics

●       feeding untrue stories to media

●       assassinating Kennedy

●       harassing liberals

●       working with government and large corporations to funnel money to support the empire and the status quo domestically

●       Voting machines are subject to tampering.  Best practice seems to be paper ballots counted in public.  Unnecessarily complex systems are used.

●       Green Party espouses policies consistent with my democratic values.

 

SUMMARY: The status quo is tolerable for most people due to enormous prosperity of our society.  However, democratic institutions have become corrupt and resistant to constructive change.  Pressures are building for a political earthquake.  Trump is a tremor in this regard.

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning

●       I do not trust mainstream media to report the truth.  Has become too partisan and reliant upon CIA and similar "intelligence" agents.

●       Family, friends, and acquaintainces consider tribal affiliation more important than truth.

 

SUMMARY:  As partisan cold warfare has heated up, the Democrats smell victory and will try to consolidate their gains.  The leadership is somewhat unified under the false propaganda of empire.  Miscalculation, more losing war efforts, and domestic disarray are probably as a result.

 

The Events of January 6 at the Capitol

Was this attempted coup?  My friend comments:

 

Trump truly is trying to overthrow the workings of our government so as to remain in power. To me that’s a coup. The minions he loosed on the Capitol while the election approval process was underway were either a distraction or an effort to stay approval of the election results.

 

1.     Whatever his motives, Trump is clearly failing.

2.     There are grounds for concern about the democratic process which denied the Trump presidency for 4 years on false claims of Russian collusion.

3.     Glenn Greenwald provides needed context:

There is a huge difference between, on the one hand, thousands of people shooting their way into the Capitol after a long-planned, coordinated plot with the goal of seizing permanent power, and, on the other, an impulsive and grievance-driven crowd more or less waltzing into the Capitol as the result of strength in numbers and then leaving a few hours later. That the only person shot was a protester killed by an armed agent of the state by itself makes clear how irresponsible these terms are. There are more adjectives besides “fascist treason” and “harmless protest,” enormous space between those two poles. One need not be forced to choose between the two.

 

The capitol protest was a skirmish in a war that Trump is losing.  Anti-Trump forces (Democrats) correctly see this as a victory for their side and are thus making a big deal about it.

Democrats Control the Executive and Legislative Branches

Of greater significance, the Democrats remarkably won the 2 Senate seats in Georgia and now have an effective majority in the Senate because VP Harris will have the tiebreaking vote.

●       This may be a manifestation of improved voting procedures in Georgia which has a long history of suppressing the black vote.  Republicans around the country have won elections by dubious means, with the result that their actual support has been smaller than their representation in Congress.

●       Dems had a similar situation in 2008 when Obama one the presidency and Dems had a large majority in the Senate as well as the House.  That did not go well as the Tea Party emerged and was not effectively countered by the Dems.  The Dems are now energized and ready for whatever the Trump supporters throw at them. 

●       It's likely that the Dems will be content to marginalize the Trumpers, and will not make any great progress otherwise in governing the nation.  They are overwhelming in favor of the status quo and have no significant platform other than defeating the Trumpers.

●       I'm glad that the Trumpers have been soundly defeated.  However, they may come back with more effective leadership.  As I write this, Republican strategists are plotting ways to reclaim power.  These will most likely involve ploys to sabotage the Biden presidency by manufacturing outrage.  Will the media bite?

 

SUMMARY:  The partisan dynamic and domination of the mainstream media by the Democrats should fade, but this tendency will be fought by the Democrats who will seek to keep the outrage going.  Republican outrage leaders will be contained to the fringes for the short term.  There is a leadership vacuum in both parties that will attract imperial wannabees such as Buttigieg and Rubio.  Eventually, the earthquake will arrive in the form of some disaster such as nuclear war or economic depression.  Then will there be room for constructive change.  The arc of the moral universe bends towards justice because politics based upon injustice eventually collapse and the truth wins out. 

Fear of COVID and Masks Outdoors

 Letter written to friends 1/5/2021:

Democracy and the Trump Legacy

 Sharing this letter I wrote to friends:

Being Woke to the Praetorian Guard - Version 2

This post is an update to a previous version: Being Woke to the Praetorian Guard, Version 1

A version with a further update is available here.

Being Woke to the Praetorian Guard, Version 1

This post has since been superseded by Version 2, and a Version 3.

I've just written an epistle or two which I want to save for possible future reference.  Here they are:

This I Believe

Introduction

In recent years, and more frequently since I retired in spring 2018, I've pondered and written down some of the things I believe to be true that are not common knowledge. This is somewhat similar to, but more controversial than, the essays you will find from the National Public Radio show This I Believe.

My core belief system is based on the idea that biological and cultural evolution are shaped and directed by win-win interactions, as expressed in the book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright.  This leads to my valuing Getting to Yes, a guide to interacting with others.   

This essay goes beyond these core beliefs and values to look at specific theories and facts -- 

1. What do I know? (believe to be true, though I could be wrong)
2. What don't I know?

I expect the list to change over time.

An overriding lesson I have learned is to look at controversial issues using my own common sense.  In case after case, the conventional wisdom defies common sense.  Once common sense is applied, then the pieces fit together reasonably.  Common sense consists of considering both sides of an issue, along with the motives involved.  With respect to the cases below, one side of the issue has won the day with regard to the mainstream media and the conventional wisdom.  Thus, I am questioning "the facts" and recent history as widely accepted across the U.S. global empire.

Common sense leads me to consider the reason why only one side of some issues is considered legitimate.  Most people do not have the time to dwell extensively on such matters.  It is convenient to accept a well established narrative and move on.  I have done that most of my life, but in retirement and with access to the Internet have had time and capability of looking at both sides of confusing episodes.  I learned that it is valuable to weigh circumstantial evidence in forming an accurate mental model of the world.  While there may be no proof for the things "I know" which are listed below, consideration of the likelihood (Bayesian probability) of certain matters based upon circumstantial evidence leads to a more robust mental model.

Government and Empire

The bottom line is that the U.S. empire is overextended, yet it is politically difficult to cut back.  For example, political support for Israel makes it difficult to cut back in the Middle East.  Support for the U.S. led empire by many Ukrainians, Afghans, east Asians, and Latin Americans makes it difficult to cut back in these areas.  Political control of the empire, though centered in Washington DC, is subject to immense pressure from many places around the world.  Intelligence agencies, which are above the law to a large degree and insulated from political pressures, have the job of protecting the empire.  Buttressing the empire around the world is proving difficult, especially when political direction is uncertain.  Thus, the task of buttressing the empire has evolved into solidifying the political direction.  Whether or not this is a good thing for people such as myself is secondary, in this essay, to ascertaining the truth of selected items of conventional wisdom.  Once we have a better handle on the facts, then we can better use the democratic process to find a constructive way forward.

Russiagate

The widely reported Russia-Trump conspiracy is perhaps the most significant event of my adult life in shaping my current worldview, as expressed in this essay.  My view is that this was a conspiracy theory unsupported by facts, yet widely believed by Democrats and widely reported as fact in the mainstream media.  Over the last 4 years, I've written extensively about why I feel this way and discussed this with Democratic friends, family, and strangers on the Internet.  I believe very strongly that the Democratic / intelligence community / mainstream narrative of Trump - Russia collusion has been disproven yet not acknowledged by Democrats.  Moreover, the narrative of Russian interference in the 2016 election seems similarly unfounded, yet to question said interference is considered grounds for censorship and almost treasonous.  

My certainty on this matter is such that I've lost faith in the government and mainstream media to accurately report the truth in many other matters. A lifetime of belief in American institutions has been thoroughly eroded. Matters that I previously saw as unknowable, such as the John Kennedy assassination, now seem to clearly fit a pattern that has lasted throughout my lifetime.

UPDATE 1/21/2022: Matt Taibbi reporting clarifies origin of FBI Trump-Russia investigation -- It was  Steele after all (not Mifsud / Papadopolous).

January 6

Added 1/3/2022:  It's now clear to me what happened with regard to the riot on January 6.  I am indebted to Darren Beattie of Revolver News for providing a coherent explanation with a ton of supporting evidence including video from the capitol area on January 6 and in the days leading up to the riot.  Informants and operatives connected to the FBI removed the barriers around the capitol and herded people leaving a Trump rally into the capitol building.  This was captured on video and the leaders have been disappeared from public view, including one who was on the FBI most-wanted list until his identity was revealed by Beattie.  The people were unarmed and had no intention of overthrowing the government, despite widespread news reports to the contrary.  There may have been other legal, political, and military intrigues about, but the riot was designed to discredit these, not implement them.  

Ukrainegate / Impeachment

I know that the "whistleblower" was a CIA insider and firmly in the Biden camp.  This has not been reported by the mainstream media but is common knowledge elsewhere.  I know that Biden did an explicit quid pro quo as VP and lead Obama Administration official on Ukraine policy.  The video of this has been widely seen and discussed outside of the mainstream media, which has not denied its validity.  The mainstream media has made blanket assertions that Biden did nothing wrong, which may be true in the sense that his actions are in line with the preferences of "the empire" -- i.e. the intelligence agencies and careerists in the State Department.  

Similar to Russiagate, the impeachment on the basis of opposition to Trump by professionals in the intelligence community was set in motion right at the beginning of the Trump Administration. 

Syrian Chemical Weapons

I know that the U.S. and Britain have subverted international institutions such as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.  They lied about Assad using chemical weapons in Syria, then covered up the whistleblowers who leaked the truth.

UPDATE 12/16/2021:  A lot more evidence has come in supporting this.  

Skripal / Navalny

I know that the so called novichok poisoning of Sergei Skripal is a fabrication of the U.S. and British intelligence services.  This is obvious nonsense, yet is accepted uncritically by the mainstream media.  The Navalny incident is in the same vein.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

In reading about this on Wikipedia, there seems to be overwhelming evidence that pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region accidentally shot down this passenger airplane. Apparently, Netherlands and Australia have concluded that Russian rebels are responsible. However, given the amount of Cold War lying I've witnesses in this time period, I don't trust Wikipedia or the mainstream press or U.S. allied governments in matters of this nature.  So I'll have to put this one in "don't know".  

Here is a documentary short film presenting the pro-Russian side: SUNDAY SCREENING: ‘MH17: Call for Justice’ (2019).  See also The Official and Implausible MH-17 Scenario.

Assassinations in USA

Here I am referring to the assassinations of JFK (1963), MLK (1968), and RFK (1968).  

JFK Assassination

I am now prepared to say that I know that U.S. intelligence agencies were involved in the JFK assassination.  This comes 57 years after the event, including my entire adult lifetime.  Previously I have considered the truth behind this assassination to be unknowable.  I am now prepared to declare US intelligence agency involvement as something that is knowable, even if the precise details are hidden.

It has always strained my credulity to believe that Oswald acted alone.  Yet, there have been numerous investigations and seemingly no concrete evidence to prove that he was part of a conspiracy.  I've had a Eureka moment, not through any one astounding revelation, but rather in the form of a straw that breaks the camel's back.  I recently read an account of the JFK assassination which claims that Oswald was a U.S. intelligence agent.  "Of course he was", I thought to myself.  I was only able to make sense of this after I had learned not to trust the mainstream media.

• He was a U.S. marine.  How many communist Marines have you ever encountered or even heard of?  What are the chances that the Marine Corps would permit an openly avowed communist to serve in its ranks? While Oswald was serving in the Marine Corps, he became fluent in the Russian language. How is that possible?
• We know the CIA and other U.S. intelligence services recruit agents, and that it is a difficult job with high risk.  Oswald seems like an obvious candidate:  
  "he was placed in juvenile detention at the age of seven for truancy, during which time he was assessed by a psychiatrist as "emotionally disturbed", due to a lack of a normal family life. After attending 22 schools in his youth, he quit repeatedly, and finally when he was 17, to join the Marines. Oswald was honorably released from active duty in the Marine Corps into the reserve and defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959. He lived in Minsk until June 1962... After leaving the Marine Corps, Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union, walked into the U.S. embassy, renounced his citizenship, and stated that he intended to give any secrets he learned while serving in the military to the Soviet Union. Later, when he stated his desire to return to the United States, with a wife with family connections to Soviet intelligence, Oswald was given the red-carpet treatment on his return... Later, when Oswald ended up in Dallas, his friends were right-wingers, not left-wingers. He even got job at a photographic facility that developed top-secret photographs for the U.S. government. How is that possible? Later, when he ended up in New Orleans, he got hired by a private company that was owned by a fierce anti-communist right-winger"
• Oswald was murdered after he shot Kennedy by a sketchy figure with ties to organized crime.
• The CIA was working with organized crime around that time in attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro.
• The CIA at that era was engaging in political assassinations in countries around the world:
  "Following World War II, the United States became secretly engaged in a practice of international political assassinations and attempts on foreign leaders. For a considerable period of time, the U.S. Government officials vehemently denied any knowledge of this program since it would be against the United Nations Charter... In 1975, the U.S. Senate convened the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Res (D-Idaho). The Church Committee uncovered that CIA and other governmental agencies employed a so-called tactic of "plausible deniability" during decision-making related to assassinations. CIA subordinates were deliberately shielding the higher-ranking officials from any responsibility by withholding the full amount of information about planned assassinations."
• "From the start, the Warren Commission proceedings were shrouded in “national-security” state secrecy, including a top-secret meeting of the commissioners to discuss information they had received that Oswald was an intelligence agent. When Warren was asked if the American people would be able to see all the evidence, Warren responded yes, but not in your lifetime.  Does that make any sense? If the assassination was, in fact, committed by some lone nut, then what would “national security” and state secrecy have to do with it? ... In April 2018, President Trump issued an order to the National Archives to continue keeping thousands of CIA records relating to the John Kennedy assassination secret from the American people."
• "Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, and the JCS had the perfect excuse to shut down the investigation and pin the crime only on Oswald: If they instead retaliated, it would be all-out nuclear war... when Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade alleged from the start that Oswald was part of a communist conspiracy, Johnson told him to shut it down for fear that Wade might inadvertently start World War III."  
• The conventional wisdom, which is obviously contradictory, is thus:
  • Oswald acted entirely alone (the finding of the Warren Commission)
  • Details must be kept secret because they would reveal Russian involvement, and thus risk nuclear war.

I don't know why people in the U.S. national-security business assassinated Kennedy.  I've just picked up an Audible book on this topic, which is very favorably and convincingly reviewed.  It appears that there was a consensus that he was soft on national security from a cold war perspective.

UPDATE 12/16/2021:  My belief that JFK was assassinated by Deep State has been reinforced since this was initially written.

RFK and MLK Assassinations

I don't know if there were conspiracies regarding the assassinations in 1968 of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.  It seems possible given the probable culprits in the JFK assassination and the opposition of both RFK and MLK to the Vietnam War.  I would have to do the hard work of researching outside of the mainstream media, and revisiting widely accepted "facts" to come to a definitive conclusion.

UPDATE 7/9/2021: I've recently "read" (Audible) books about these 2 assassinations and it seems likely that both were CIA/FBI directed conspiracies.  

January 6, 2021 ("insurrection")

UPDATE 10/25/2021:  The capitol riot was an FBI-led operation.  The documentation / explanation here is convincing: Meet Ray Epps: The Fed-Protected Provocateur Who Appears To Have Led The Very First 1/6 Attack On The U.S. Capitol

The Future

Obviously, I don't know what will happen in the future, but I'm hoping it will be helpful to give some thought to the future in light of what I've learned.  

As with perhaps most governments in the history of the world, the U.S. government is ruled by force more than by democratically elected leaders.  At the national level, at least, the politicians are subservient to the "security" professionals.  The national mythology concerning civilian control may be losing sway, yielding chaos such as we have seen with the Trump presidency. 

The most likely way forward, in my opinion, is for more blatant rule by force.  The Democrats have already dropped the veil which previously disguised there reliance upon the security establishment for power.  The next logical step would be for a leader to step forward who recognizes this and declares it necessary for national stability.  As much as we dislike the Chinese and Russian models, we secretly realize that they are more successful.  

The next U.S. political strongman could come from either the Democratic or Republican parties.  Republican leaders have long given only weak lip service in support of democracy.  Democrats effectively went the same way in 2016, and the incoming Biden Administration has the support of the military-industrial-intelligence-media complex.  Such a solid front could enable a faction to take control of the country, and lead to the breakup of the Republicans.  The main destabilizing factor would then be internal to the Democratic party with competing vested interests such as between the military and business.

Culture

Media

As documented above in what I know about government and empire in the contemporary United States, the mainstream media is extremely unreliable when it comes to reporting facts in any way related to "national security", which includes politics on the national level.  The Internet, however, has made it much easier to uncover the truth.  Thus, there is already considerable pressure to censor the many independent outlets which report facts and opinions contrary to establishment narrative.

Other powerful nations such as China and Russia censor the press, including the Internet, and it is not clear if the U.S. can continue to be exceptional in this regard.  

In sum, I distrust the mainstream media and trust various alternative media journalists such as Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, and Robert Wright.

Economics

In the decade since I first learned about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), it's become more widely accepted as an accurate description of how national monetary systems work.  Conventional economics has been exposed as superstitious dogma similar to Medieval Age Christianity.  I know that MMT accurately describes the monetary economy.

I don't know what the best economic system is.  I lean toward socialism, as it has worked well, in combination with capitalism, in Nordic and other European countries.  These mixed economies tend to have the best track record.  But the pressures of human technological development on the environment seem unsustainable and lead me to believe that capitalism must be reined in more than is done today by the U.S. and its allies around the world.  A Chinese model, with greater governmental control over the capitalist process, may be necessary for sustainability.

Labels such as capitalist and socialist seem counterproductive.  Specific issues and specific industries need to be handled differently.  For example, I know health care works best with a more socialist approach.  And it's clear that capitalism has worked best in industries such as autos and cell phones.  On the other hand, the auto industry has created a lot of negative side effects and cell phones may not be far behind in this regard.

Science and Technology

Fossil Fuels, Global Warming, Green Energy

• Global warming is a fact, which is what one would expect based upon the carbon cycle and the enormous amount of human activity and burning of hydrocarbons in the past 100-200 years.
• We don't know if all oil and gas comes from fossil fuels.  There is a possibility being investigated by the Deep Carbon Observatory, that some of the oil and gas we use is abiotic -- i.e. not a by-product of photosynthesis in ages past.
• Green energy is hugely important, but it is unrealistic to expect that we will be able to maintain our use of energy at current levels while phasing out fossil fuels.

Human Mind 

"the interaction between facts and theories is bidirectional. Your facts may eventually determine what theory you have. But your theory also determines what facts you see and notice. Nor do contradictory facts immediately change a theory. The process of theory change is complicated, fiercely resisted by hard-to-describe factors, and based on some sort of idea of global tension that can’t be directly reduced to any specific contradiction."

Covid Severity

• Covid is more serious in old and medically at-risk people than is the common flu.
• Covid is much less dangerous than portrayed by Democrats and the mainstream media.
• Covid vaccines are promising.  However, for those of us in the low risk population, the risks from the initial, poorly tested, vaccines may be higher than the risk from the Covid virus itself.
• Covid severity and treatment have been highly politicized by both Republicans and Democrats, with the media joining the Democrats and much of the scientific community in distorting the science.

COVID, Lyme Disease Origins

• COVID escaped from the Wuhan Lab.
• Lyme disease escaped from the secret biological weapons program on Plum Island, an island in Long Island Sound near Lyme, Connecticut.

COVID Transmission and Treatment (added 7/9/2021)

The Medical/Pharmaceutical/Scientific establishment is corrupt, ineffective, and socially toxic:

• COVID leaked from a lab in Wuhan.  Those who pointed out this possibility were condemned as conspiracy theorists by insiders with vested interests.
• The WHO and CDC were wrong on how SARS-Cov2 is transmitted.  They gave out bad advice and condemned those who turned out to be right.
• The WHO and CDC have been downplaying effective treatments such as ivermection and early treatment with anti-clotting and anti-inflammatory drugs.  Millions of lives have been lost as a result.  Those who have promoted safe, effective, and affordable treatment have been vilified and censored.  

For further discussion see: My Comments on Taibbi Post about Ivermectin

UPDATE 12/16/2021:  In addition to hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and Vitamin D, there are other effective early treatments (and prophylactics) that have been advocated by the FLCCC and like minded doctors, but have been downplayed, ignored, or actively discourage by the CDC/WHO/Pharma complex.  These include cochicine and fluvoxamine (here, here, here, here, and here).  

Rationale for not encouraging use of cheap, safe, and effective drugs:

The Rev Kev

December 16, 2021 at 7:24 am

“Ancient Greek drug could cut COVID-19 deaths – Israeli scientist”

Considering the fact that this stuff has been in use for at lest 3,500 years, perhaps the FDA do not consider that it has had time to pass its initial trials for safety. Went looking for info on why it had become so expensive and came across an article that said ‘As part of its Unapproved Drugs Initiative designed to remove unapproved drugs from the market by means of a “risk-based enforcement program” that concentrates on products that “pose the highest threat to public health and without imposing undue burdens on consumers, or unnecessarily disrupting the market,” the FDA in September 2010 ordered a halt to the manufacture, distribution, and marketing of unapproved single-ingredient oral colchicine.’ This sounds like something that Fauci did during the AIDS epidemic when in 1987, the FDA changes its regulations, making any unapproved drug illegal. You read that article and find that it was all about giving a Pharma corporation an exclusive over this stuff. Why am I not surprised-

https://www.hcplive.com/view/why-is-colchicine-so-expensive-now

Also, this pre-covid (2016) article demonstrates that the dysfunctional covid response is a matter of chickens coming home to roost following years/decades of public health politicization:   U.S. Public Health Professionals Routinely Mislead the Public about Infectious Diseases: True or False? Dishonest or Self-Deceptive? Harmful or Benign? (Peter Sandman article)

And this: 

In a move that will come as a shock to absolutely no one, YouTube is censoring clips of Joe Rogan’s interview with cardiologist Peter McCullough wherein the doctor laid out how early treatment of COVID is being actively suppressed by governments and big-pharma in favour of a blind pursuit to vaccinate everyone.

Black Holes, Higgs Boson, etc.

• I don't know if black holes exist.  
• The field of quantum physics is filled with incomprehensible and untestable mumbo jumbo.  I don't know which concepts may eventually be tested and prove useful.  

Quantum Computing

I don't know if quantum computing will ever prove to be possible or practical.  The Case Against Quantum Computing, The proposed strategy relies on manipulating with high precision an unimaginably huge number of variables

Update 1/26/2024: A Skeptical Perspective on Quantum Computing, or how to game the funding system

X-Ray Crystallography

I know that the science of physics has yielded remarkably practical technologies such as computers.  Similar in nature to quantum physics, molecular and atomic physics is often obtuse.  However, various concepts have proven testable and controllable.  One example is x-ray crystallography, used in detecting and describing DNA, as well as in mineralogy and metallurgy. 

Self-Driving Cars

I know that autonomous vehicles have been vastly overhyped and are unlikely to prove economically viable or socially efficient in the foreseeable future.  They are possible, like supersonic jets and maglev trains, but not cost effective.  Hyperloops fall into the same category.

The Future

Is science slowing down?  We seem to have plucked a lot of the low hanging technological fruit, and are chasing improbable dreams. Limitless, green energy, autonomous vehicles, and quantum computing are examples.  Moreover, we may need to intentionally slow technology down if we are to attain an acceptable level of civilizational stability and sustainability.

Summary

Things I Know

1. Russiagate is a conspiracy theory unsupported by facts.
2. The attempted impeachment of Trump over events in the Ukraine was a creation of the U.S. national security state to fight back against investigation of their own misdeeds in Russiagate.
3. The U.S. led global empire supports biased international institutions such as the Organization for Prohibiting Chemical Weapons which has lied on behalf of U.S. interests, and against Russian interests, in Syria and in the U.K. with regard to the Skripal affair.
4. JFK was assassinated by elements of the U.S. security apparatus.
5. The mainstream media is not to be trusted on issues related to national "security", including national politics.
6. Alternative media are more reliable sources of the truth, and are threatened by the security state.
7. MMT provides an accurate model for contemporary monetary systems.
8. Labels such as socialist and capitalist are used as epithets to distract from constructive thinking about economic issues.
9. Global warming is real.
10. Green energy is hugely important, but it is unrealistic to expect that we will be able to maintain our use of energy at current levels while phasing out fossil fuels.
11. The human mind works by the formation of mental models.  These models are checked when sensory data is received.  When the data does not match the model, the issue may be escalated to a higher level for model revisions.  The conscious mind is the highest level.  Mental models do not change easily.
12. Covid is a serious disease, but its severity has been exaggerated by the mainstream to stigmatize Trump Republicans.
13. The covid virus escaped from the Wuhan Lab. 
14. Lyme disease escaped from the secret biological weapons program on Plum Island, an island in Long Island Sound near Lyme, Connecticut. 
15. Atomic physics has made possible enormous technological achievements such as computers and x-ray crystallography.
16. Autonomous vehicles have been vastly overhyped and are unlikely to prove economically viable or socially efficient in the foreseeable future.  

Things I Don't Know

1. Who shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine?
2. Were there conspiracies related to the assassinations of RFK and MLK?
3. Will the first covid vaccines be more likely to save or cost lives?
4. Do black holes, with event horizons that nothing can escape, exist?
5. The usefulness of quantum physics?  
6. The possibility and practicality of a quantum computer?
   UPDATE 1/26/2024: I putting this into the "Things I Know" category.  Quantum computing will not prove practical anytime soon.