Categories
First Amendment rights international affairs national politics & policies

Optimized for Attack

Whence came this pandemic? 

Now that we can investigate the lab leak theory without being smeared as conspiracy nuts or buried in an avalanche of disinformation from China, the World Health Organization, and the U.S. scientific community — all protected in their deceit by Big Tech and our mainstream media — we might make progress in our inquiries.

On June 29, in a little-covered hearing before Republican-only members of the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Select Coronavirus Crisis, several renowned scientists testified, most notably Dr. Richard Muller, emeritus professor of physics at Cal-Berkeley.

“I would like to emphasize five points,” Muller stated, “each of which is capable of separating or distinguishing between a natural origin — a zoonotic origin — and the lab origin” of SARS-CoV-2: 

  1. “The absence of pre-pandemic infections,” which he called “unprecedented”;
  2. “The absence of a host animal” (which was lied about early on); 
  3. “The unprecedented genetic purity. . . . Again, MIRS, SARS, previous viruses don’t have this, but it is exactly what you would expect if you’ve gone through gain-of-function”;   
  4. “The spike mutation . . . there is no known way for that spike mutation to get there except by gene mutation in a laboratory”; 
  5. “This virus was optimized to attack humans. Again, something that has never happened in natural releases — but it does happen if you run it through the gain-of-function.”

“All the scientific evidence argues in favor of the laboratory origin,” he concluded. “The evidence in favor of the natural, zoonotic origin? There isn’t any.”

But here comes the even bigger story, one that Dr. Muller called “horrifying” and “chilling.”

Muller had asked colleagues to assist in his lab-leak investigation. But they declined to help because that would anger China, which would then blacklist those labs. 

“The idea that China has managed to interfere, to break United States’ freedom of expression, freedom of investigation, freedom of thought, through this collaboration effort,” the doctor explained, “is really scary.” 

If you think the Chinazis are merely a threat to “their own people” and neighboring Taiwan and countries bordering the South China Sea . . . think again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Note: Here and here are links to additional testimony at that June 29th hearing. Coverage of Dr. Muller’s testimony first appeared in these pages as a “Thought.”

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Today

Thoreau

On July 12, 1817, American poet, abolitionist, businessman, and Transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau was born. He is perhaps best known, today, for his book of meditations on the simple life, Walden, and his influential essay on civil disobedience.

Categories
by Paul Jacob video

Watch: Allergic to Trouble

The state of the world is nothing to sneeze at:

Categories
Today

The Weekawken Duel

A few hundred years ago, not far from Deas’ Point near Weehawken, N. J., was a ledge eleven paces wide and 20 paces long, situated 20 feet above the Hudson on the Palisades. This ledge, long gone, was the site of 18 documented duels and probably many unrecorded ones in the years 1798–1845. The most famous is the duel between General Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, and Colonel Aaron Burr, third (and sitting) Vice President of the United States, which took place on July 11, 1804.

Categories
Thought

Ludwig von Mises

The gold standard alone makes the determination of money’s purchasing power independent of the ambitions and machinations of governments, of dictators, of political parties, and of pressure groups. The gold standard alone is what the nineteenth-century freedom-loving leaders (who championed representative government, civil liberties, and prosperity for all) called ‘sound money.’

Ludwig von Mises, “The Gold Problem,”  p. 185.
Categories
Today

“Cross of gold”

On July 9, 1896, William Jennings Bryan delivered his “Cross of Gold” speech advocating bi-metallist inflationism at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, a triumph of rhetoric over reason that solidified the takeover of the Democratic Party by reformers utterly ignorant of basic economics.

Categories
Thought

Frédéric Bastiat

Competition is merely the absence of oppression.

Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Harmonies (posthumous, 1850), par. 10.4.
Categories
Today

Luther Martin

Died on this date, American founding politician, Luther Martin [pictured], in 1826.

Martin is famed among founding fathers for refusing to sign the U.S. Constitution, seeing the new compact as unduly centralizing and nationalistic.


On July 8, 1839, American industrialist John D. Rockefeller was born. On this same date in 1907, businessman and politician George W. Romney was born.

Categories
Today

Solomon Islands Independence

July 7 is Independence Day in the Solomon Islands, commemorating the island nation’s political separation in 1978.

The “separation” may be over-stated, however: though self-government was achieved in 1976, and political independence for the islands obtained two years later, Solomon Islands remains a constitutional monarchy with the Queen of Solomon Islands, currently Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, as its head of state. Sir Frank Utu Ofagioro Kabui has been the Governor General since 2009, and Manasseh Damukana Sogavare has served as Prime Minister since late April.

Categories
Thought

Jan Hus

Melius est bene mori, quam male vivere . . . qui mortem metuit, amittit gaudia vitae; super omnia vincit veritas, vincit, qui occiditur, quia nulla ei nocet adversitas, si nulla ei dominatur iniquitas.

It is better to die well, than to live wrongly . . . who is afraid of death loses the joy of life; truth prevails all, prevails who is killed, because no adversity can harm him, who is not dominated by injustice.

Jan Hus, Letter to Christian of Prachatice, as quoted in John Huss: His Life, Teachings and Death, After Five Hundred Years (1915) by David Schley Schaff, p. 58. “Super omnia vincit veritas” (Truth Prevails All) was adopted as the motto by Hussite warriors, and centuries later this motto was inscribed on the banner of the Presidents of the Czechoslovakia and now (in Czech translation) is inscribed on the banner of the President of the Czech Republic.