Coronavirus Conspiracy Corner
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CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
Haven't read the whole thread, but I hope Cory Morningstar has noted that Imperial College have taken over the BBC White City complex for a Synthetic Biology campus.Interesting article in today's Times about some of the more 'respectable' 'academic' elements of the Coronalooniverse.
British academics sharing coronavirus conspiracy theories online - Times (paywalled)
An archived version of the complete article is here. The meat of it is in the spoiler below
Dominic Kennedy, Investigations Editor
Saturday April 11 2020, 12.01am BST, The Times
Prominent British academics have been sharing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus online, The Times can disclose.
They included suggestions from other social media users that Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist, and the World Economic Forum (WEF) that meets in Davos may be involved in plots to exploit the illness and speculation that it was a biological weapon.
The academics include Tim Hayward, a professor of environmental political theory at the University of Edinburgh, and Piers Robinson, co-founder of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies (OPS), which uses the University of Bristol as an address.
(...)
The OPS tweeted a YouTube interview last week headlined “Is Coronavirus The New 9/11?”, where Dr Robinson said it was now obvious the official story of the World Trade Centre attacks was incorrect. “The question is who was involved in influencing, arranging, and which states, including from within the US political system. And if that’s the case with 9/11 it’s perfectly possible that there are actors at play in relation to this. Some people have talked about bioweapons.”
He described Covid-19 as “a low fatality virus . . . There’s no indication that it’s significantly different from what we see with major flu outbreaks every year”, but “propagandistic information” had created “so much hype around it, there is so much fear”.
The OPS has given Companies House the address of the School of Policy Studies at Bristol, where one of its directors, David Miller, is professor of political sociology. A university spokesman said it had not been aware its premises were listed.
Another director, Mark Crispin Miller, a professor at New York University, has written that the coronavirus “may be an artificially created bioweapon”. Professor Crispin Miller was approached for comment.
Professor David Miller issued a statement from the OPS saying it “includes a range of academic and expert contributors with independent views.
“Its function is to scrutinise propaganda and intelligence campaigns, specifically examining the role of British media organisations in amplifying those state propaganda campaigns.”
On Monday Professor Hayward retweeted to his 13,000 followers a Canadian environmentalist’s claim that the WEF, United Nations and Imperial College London might be part of a scheme to exploit the pandemic by promoting vaccines and creating gene-modified flu-resistant chickens.
Professor Hayward and Dr Robinson retweeted a YouTube interview with Ernst Wolff, a fringe author, who suggested the lockdown was a way to facilitate a fascistic financial coup. Professor Hayward tweeted: “Your attention may be drawn away from the bigger picture. According to Ernst Wolff, they’re banking on it. They? Well, who’s reporting, who’s funding, who’s profiting?”
Professor Hayward retweeted the film-maker Oliver Stone speculating on whether the virus could have been a biological attack on China.
Professor Hayward told The Times: “The implications of the virus’s effects and the policy response to it on economy, culture, society, order and every aspect of life in the UK require people to have greater access to information, not less. If I retweet interesting tweets by an influential public figure, I think it is up to other people what they make of it. If controversial ideas are not discussed, mistakes cannot be revealed.”
Dr Robinson, with 12,000 Twitter followers, retweeted the blogger Vanessa Beeley claiming Gates had links with Imperial College and asking: “Is UK government working for Bill Gates?”
Professor Hayward, Dr Robinson, Professor David Miller and Ms Beeley are members of an academic working group on Syria that was challenging western claims that President Assad used chemical weapons on his own people. Professor Crispin Miller has served on their advisory board.
Dr Robinson denied spreading conspiracies and said his interview “concerned the danger of events such as 9/11 and the coronavirus being exploited by political actors for political, military and economic purposes. It is essential in a democratic system that people are alert to these matters.”
Network sets out to fight ‘propaganda’
Academics have formed networks to combat what they see as western propaganda spread by the media on behalf of governments. None of the three groups has issued coronavirus studies but have looked at contentious issues on war and peace.
Piers Robinson, a former professor of politics, society and political journalism at the University of Sheffield, belongs to all of the organisations. The Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media produces papers that contradict what “western narratives” about atrocities attributed to President Assad.
It claimed that White Helmets rescuers committed mass murder to provide bodies for a faked chemical attack on civilians that led to the bombing of Assad’s military. It also cast doubt on Russia’s responsibility for the Salisbury poisonings.
Paul McKeigue, professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, a co-author of its research, has said that as an NHS public health consultant he was now working “flat out” on coronavirus.
The Working Group on Propaganda and the 9/11 Global “War on Terror” is sceptical that the Twin Towers attack was the sole work of al-Qaeda. The Organisation for Propaganda Studies says it aims to conduct research of propaganda.
The article refers to three academic 'working groups' with interlinked memberships, the 'Organisation for Propaganda Studies (OPS), 'The Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media' (SPM) (which includes Vanessa Beeley and is referred to on her thread here and also on this page), and the 'The Working Group on Propaganda and the 9/11 Global “War on Terror”'. This Times story is a follow up to previous articles about the Assadist aspect of this 'network'.
The video interview the article refers to with Dr. Piers Robinson, co-founder of the OPS, is here at the Geopolitics & Empire site: “Is Coronavirus The New 9/11?”
The article refers to Prof. Tim Hayward retweeting
That (very long) twitter thread by Cory Morningstar, author of 'The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg', is archived here. It's a pretty hardcore piece of Coronaloon dot joining.
And obviously a smart fellow like Prof. Hayward isn't someone you could easily take in, now is he.
Lord Reith must be turning in his grave.
platinumsage
HaveMyPassword123
This is the Europe Editor of The Economist:
editor
hiraethified
How the loonery came about
fullfact.org
Here’s where those 5G and coronavirus conspiracy theories came from - Full Fact
Conspiracy theorists have been peddling 5G myths for a while now, we’ve only just started to listen.
fullfact.org
editor
hiraethified
The tweet has gorn! What did it say?
platinumsage
HaveMyPassword123
Of Johnson's post-hospital video he said “This is not someone who was at death’s door a few days ago. Something incredibly fishy about the whole business.”
Not the most outlandish conspiracy theory in the world but obviously not becoming of someone in his position, as he's now posted this:
oops
editor
hiraethified
How a pair of anti-vaccine activists sparked a #FireFauci furor
After Trump gave the hashtag a retweet, the fringe, conspiracy-laden movement was ready with a replacement: “Dr. Shiva,” who pushes a variety of medically dubious claims.
www.politico.com
The anti-vax Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai keeps being quoted by soon-to-be-defriended buffoons on Facebook.
He claims to have invented email (he didn't), he claims that vitamins can prevent coronavirus (they don't) and he's not even a medical doctor, for fuck's sake.
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
I found Boris's bonhomie and thankfulness in his message - including giving his nurses a special mention by name quite understandable in his situation.Of Johnson's post-hospital video he said “This is not someone who was at death’s door a few days ago. Something incredibly fishy about the whole business.”
Not the most outlandish conspiracy theory in the world but obviously not becoming of someone in his position, as he's now posted this:
View attachment 206650
oops
I nearly died from falciparum malaria in 1997, and spent three weeks in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, including time in intensive care and on dialysis. My family were sent for - though I don't remember them visiting because I was unconscious for several days.
My own physical debilitation and near death experience changed my life quite a lot. I became quite religious for a couple of years - and manic depressive.
So actually I'm wondering whether Boris will be really changed by his narrow scrape. Will it be limited to an effusive and grateful TV broadcast, or will he stop his shit of kicking the Euros in the goolies? Only time will tell.
editor
hiraethified
Just putting this here in case anyone gets that video from 'mobile phones alarmist Devra Davis' turning up on their FB feed:
qz.com
Huge Australian study says cell phones haven’t increased brain cancer rates, after all
People in Australia have been using cell phones for almost 30 years, but researchers see no significant rise in brain cancer.
qz.com
editor
hiraethified
The full loon load here
nypost.com
Roger Stone: Bill Gates may have created coronavirus to microchip people
Roger Stone suggested Monday that Bill Gates may have had a hand in the creation of coronavirus so that he could plant microchips in people’s heads to know who has and has not been tested for COVID…
nypost.com
editor
hiraethified
Rock bottom has been reached
www.theguardian.com
This is a pretty good video
Arsonists attack phone mast serving NHS Nightingale hospital
Vodafone boss hits out at ‘deluded’ 5G conspiracy theorists after incident in Birmingham
This is a pretty good video
gosub
~#
And still does
Yossarian
⏭️
I find the "lab accident" theory a lot more plausible than the "bioweapon" one.
editor
hiraethified
"It's a plot by the government to kill off of people and, err, save on paying them pensions."
Of course! Killing off the majority of people who put you into power sounds like a real winning strategy!
yougov.co.uk
Of course! Killing off the majority of people who put you into power sounds like a real winning strategy!
How Britain voted in the 2019 general election | YouGov
YouGov conducts one of Britain's biggest ever post-election surveys to chart how the nation's political character is shifting
yougov.co.uk
8ball
Maximum Facepalm
Your logic is sound, but I wonder about how the last decade of NHS funding policy feeds into this.
fucthest8
Cool people die horrible, preventable deaths.
Let's go a bit tangential here ... anyone like to make something of the fact that the woman who started the Clap for our Carers campaign works for Objective Partners, a company who smell like Cambridge Analytica ... not mentioned in any of the press coverage that I can see, just endless references to her as "yoga loving mum" or "Yoga Teacher"
objectivepartners.com
And yes , it is the same woman, there's a link in that article to her LinkedIn profile
Objective Platform Opens a London Office! | Objective Platform
Objective Platform London: O/P opens their London office at 123 Buckingham Palace Road and welcomes a new colleague in the UK!
objectivepartners.com
And yes , it is the same woman, there's a link in that article to her LinkedIn profile
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
Surely this is a tone deaf response to the rather wonderful balcony singing we were treated to in Naples and Palermo?Let's go a bit tangential here ... anyone like to make something of the fact that the woman who started the Clap for our Carers campaign works for Objective Partners, a company who smell like Cambridge Analytica ... not mentioned in any of the press coverage that I can see, just endless references to her as "yoga loving mum" or "Yoga Teacher"
Objective Platform Opens a London Office! | Objective Platform
Objective Platform London: O/P opens their London office at 123 Buckingham Palace Road and welcomes a new colleague in the UK!
And yes , it is the same woman, there's a link in that article to her LinkedIn profile
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
Maybe it is. I'm just saying the Italians did their appreciation of medical staff with musical finesse.
Proper Tidy
Arsed
Of Johnson's post-hospital video he said “This is not someone who was at death’s door a few days ago. Something incredibly fishy about the whole business.”
Not the most outlandish conspiracy theory in the world but obviously not becoming of someone in his position, as he's now posted this:
View attachment 206650
oops
Wasn't the previous incumbent of that role the fella who launched a radical centrist party on twitter post referendum and then had to wind it up the next day after his bosses bollocked him
nyxx
*
The article about droplets and joggers has been critiqued in a way which made sense to me but it was on another social media site and I don’t know how to share it, I’d have to find it again first.
The basic points were;
The study wasn’t put through the usual channels and it was self published because it wouldn’t stand up to the scrutiny in the usual channels.
The experiment was done in a wind tunnel and the conditions did not represent anything close to what it’s like in the real world.
Ah it’s like an itchy back now I will have to track it down...
The basic points were;
The study wasn’t put through the usual channels and it was self published because it wouldn’t stand up to the scrutiny in the usual channels.
The experiment was done in a wind tunnel and the conditions did not represent anything close to what it’s like in the real world.
Ah it’s like an itchy back now I will have to track it down...
Indeliblelink
\......👁&👁......./
worth reading this one too
State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses
By Josh Rogin - April 14, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. GMT+1
Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.
In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.
What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)
The Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The cables argued that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further support, mainly because its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous.
As the cable noted, the U.S. visitors met with Shi Zhengli, the head of the research project, who had been publishing studies related to bat coronaviruses for many years. In November 2017, just before the U.S. officials’ visit, Shi’s team had published research showing that horseshoe bats they had collected from a cave in Yunnan province were very likely from the same bat population that spawned the SARS coronavirus in 2003.
“Most importantly,” the cable states, “the researchers also showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and prevention.”
The research was designed to prevent the next SARS-like pandemic by anticipating how it might emerge. But even in 2015, other scientists questioned whether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks. In October 2014, the U.S. government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments.
As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley.
“The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not being adequately conducted and protected,” he said.
There are similar concerns about the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab, which operates at biosecurity level 2, a level significantly less secure than the level-4 standard claimed by the Wuhan Insititute of Virology lab, Xiao said. That’s important because the Chinese government still refuses to answer basic questions about the origin of the novel coronavirus while suppressing any attempts to examine whether either lab was involved.
Sources familiar with the cables said they were meant to sound an alarm about the grave safety concerns at the WIV lab, especially regarding its work with bat coronaviruses. The embassy officials were calling for more U.S. attention to this lab and more support for it, to help it fix its problems.
“The cable was a warning shot,” one U.S. official said. “They were begging people to pay attention to what was going on.”
No extra assistance to the labs was provided by the U.S. government in response to these cables. The cables began to circulate again inside the administration over the past two months as officials debated whether the lab could be the origin of the pandemic and what the implications would be for the U.S. pandemic response and relations with China.
Inside the Trump administration, many national security officials have long suspected either the WIV or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab was the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak. According to the New York Times, the intelligence community has provided no evidence to confirm this. But one senior administration official told me that the cables provide one more piece of evidence to support the possibility that the pandemic is the result of a lab accident in Wuhan.
“The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on the other side,” the official said.
As my colleague David Ignatius noted, the Chinese government’s original story — that the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan — is shaky. Research by Chinese experts published in the Lancet in January showed the first known patient, identified on Dec. 1, had no connection to the market, nor did more than one-third of the cases in the first large cluster. Also, the market didn’t sell bats.
Shi and other WIV researchers have categorically denied this lab was the origin for the novel coronavirus. On Feb. 3, her team was the first to publicly report the virus known as 2019-nCoV was a bat-derived coronavirus.
The Chinese government, meanwhile, has put a total lockdown on information related to the virus origins. Beijing has yet to provide U.S. experts with samples of the novel coronavirus collected from the earliest cases. The Shanghai lab that published the novel coronavirus genome on Jan. 11 was quickly shut down by authorities for “rectification.” Several of the doctors and journalists who reported on the spread early on have disappeared.
On Feb. 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a new biosecurity law to be accelerated. On Wednesday, CNN reported the Chinese government has placed severe restrictions requiring approval before any research institution publishes anything on the origin of the novel coronavirus.
The origin story is not just about blame. It’s crucial to understanding how the novel coronavirus pandemic started because that informs how to prevent the next one. The Chinese government must be transparent and answer the questions about the Wuhan labs because they are vital to our scientific understanding of the virus, said Xiao.
We don’t know whether the novel coronavirus originated in the Wuhan lab, but the cable pointed to the danger there and increases the impetus to find out, he said.
“I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. I think it’s a legitimate question that needs to be investigated and answered,” he said. “To understand exactly how this originated is critical knowledge for preventing this from happening in the future.”
editor
hiraethified
Some EXPLOSIVE video about Bill Gates and COVID-19 by some alternative medicine loon called Dr. Rashid Buttar keeps festering up in my FB timeline. I thought I'd share this if anyone else needs to bat away the twat:
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk
A Toxic ‘Infodemic’: The Viral Spread Of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories
Despite promises from tech executives, potentially dangerous misinformation is flourishing on major online platforms.
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
I see what you mean by alternative icon.Some EXPLOSIVE video about Bill Gates and COVID-19 by some alternative medicine loon called Dr. Rashid Buttar keeps festering up in my FB timeline. I thought I'd share this if anyone else needs to bat away the twat:
A Toxic ‘Infodemic’: The Viral Spread Of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories
Despite promises from tech executives, potentially dangerous misinformation is flourishing on major online platforms.
Sounds as though had he not migrated to the US from London age nine he could have been an asset to Holland and Barrett.
Rashid Buttar - Wikipedia
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Hmm. Sinensis, as in "from China".
Sounds like a conspiracy to get people to drink more tea.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I think they're mixing up "5g" and "strontium 90".
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
The twat from pointless boyband Blue has detached from reality
https:// www dailymail. co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8175051/Lee-Ryan-confuses-fans-claims-devil-controls-government.html
Especially batshit as Bergsonism (it IS actually a thing!) was superseded more than 50 yrs ago, as a philosophical approach.
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