All in National Security

Debunking Covid origins: a pre-emptive strike

Ever since the novel coronavirus entered our head space, the collective nightmare has become even more surreal with the breathless pre-emptive debunkings of “dangerous theories” by the mainstream media. Things have gotten so bizarre that the pre-denials by those in charge were reminiscent of soccer players falling down in agony when someone breathes on them. Instead of useful information and solutions, we got a million media prat falls.

The novel coronavirus had barely reached the United States when the barrage began.

On January 29, 2020, Washington Post writer Adam Taylor debunked the “fringe” theory that the virus was linked to weapons research while confirming in the same article that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was specifically studying bat-derived coronaviruses. And it wasn’t even labeled opinion.

‘Debunked’ no more: How the Wuhan lab theory got ‘uncanceled’

For more than 15 months, the loudest voices on Earth worked very hard to distance Covid-19 from China’s only Level-4 Bio-Safety Lab in Wuhan. It turns out the actual distance between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the area’s “wet market” – where local authorities reported that the outbreak began -- is roughly 23 kilometers.

In fact, in spite of China christening the lab in 2017 to literally research the world’s most dangerous pathogens – including bat-derived coronaviruses like SARS-1 – the global media machine quickly tamped down any suggestion – from the few voices asking questions – that the lab might need to be investigated on the grounds of public health concern or that the virus had come from anywhere besides the wet market.

Democracy dies in daylight

By TATIANA PROPHET

Democracy dies in darkness. And wars begin in the light of day.

The first sentence is the new motto of the Washington Post. The second, a description of what happened in 2002 when the media relied on anonymous sources in or allied with the U.S. government.

"In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium," wrote Judith Miller and Michael Gordon on September 8, 2002. "American officials said several efforts to arrange the shipment of the aluminum tubes were blocked or intercepted but declined to say, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped.”