Science journalists never question science establishment views

Says ex-science journalist Matt Ridley

In a recent article on spiked-online.com, Ridley writes:

By contrast, there is almost nobody who has a vested interest in the origin of Covid being a lab leak. Even the media, which ought to see this as the story of the century, have mostly steered clear of it. That’s because unlike every other kind of journalist, science and health journalists for some reason generally see it as their duty to fawn over and echo but never challenge the establishment view. Where political, business, even arts reporters challenge and critique their subjects, science reporters almost never do. I should know: I used to be one and when I occasionally did question the establishment view, I was treated like a pariah.

A glimpse of the attitude of science journalists can be found in a now-deleted tweet from Apoorva Mandavilli, the science and global health reporter of the New York Times. In 2021, she wrote: ‘Someday we will stop talking about the lab-leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots.’

Why exactly was it racist to consider a lab leak, but not racist to write long articles – as the New York Times did – about the ‘wet markets’ of China with their allegedly unsavoury habit of selling live, exotic animals in unhygienic conditions? We all remember those articles with their graphic speculations about bat soup and pangolin stew – even though there were no bats or pangolins on sale in Wuhan. One op-ed claimed that ‘China’s domestic demand and customs for exotic and live food are a direct threat to the health, safety and welfare of the world’. But it seems that ‘racism’ only applies to speculation about middle-class scientists, not about working-class market traders, who are not the sort of people New York Times reporters break bread with.

I tested the reluctance of the establishment to discuss the lab leak first hand. I asked the biological secretary of the UK’s Royal Society if she would organise a debate about the origin of the virus. No, she said, we only debate scientific matters. Eh? I asked the Academy of Medical Sciences, of which I am a fellow. Too controversial, they said. I asked a government minister. Better left to the World Health Organisation, he replied. I asked another government minister. Surely it’s time to move on, he said. I asked a very senior scientist. Better we never find out, he said, lest it annoy the Chinese. At least he was honest.

[. . .]

Millions are dead around the world and the most likely cause is an accident during a risky experiment in a laboratory. Should we not be learning lessons from that? Should we not share information globally on what virology experiments are being done, on which viruses, and at what biosafety levels? Should we not bring pressure to bear on those countries that refuse to share such information or that authorise such risky experiments? None of this is happening.

The World Health Organisation’s website is awash with calls for conferences and treaties on pandemic prevention. Yet the one issue that almost never gets mentioned is laboratory leaks. Search its website for the words ‘laboratory leak’ or ‘lab leak’ and just one single item comes up: the comical episode in 2021 when the WHO endorsed the ludicrous Chinese claim that Covid was more likely to have started with imported frozen food than with a lab leak.

Message for the Reawaken America Tour

From Bishop Carlo Maria Viganò

Text found here.

Video of the message is here.

Dear friends,

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Allow me to address you first of all to thank you for the witness you are giving to your fellow Americans. The awakening of consciences is the first step toward liberation from the subversive leadership that has usurped the highest places in both national and international institutions. Because opening one’s eyes and looking at reality is essential, if you are to understand what is really happening, denounce the globalist coup d’état, and regain the national sovereignty and fundamental freedoms that have been taken away from you.

You have all witnessed, in recent years, a radical change in society. A change planned by people without any electoral mandate and imposed by sold out rulers. The United States of America, like many other nations hostage to the Agenda 2030, is facing a very serious crisis: inflation, an out of control self-induced migration crisis, human trafficking and child trafficking, rampant crime and the weakening of law enforcement, the liberalization of crime and impunity, social degradation everywhere, new drugs that ruin the people who take them; the aberrations of woke ideology, the LGBTQ+ agenda imposed in schools, discrimination against whites. And there is still more: the war against President Donald Trump, the electoral fraud in the presidential election, the Great Reset plans that seem to be proceeding smoothly, and the bottomless pit of funding and military aid that seeks to prolong the conflict in Ukraine, thereby covering up the crimes of the Biden family and the Democrats. And finally, a very disturbing new scenario of war in the Middle East. This multi-pronged siege has all the hallmarks of an unconventional war that is far more devastating than an armed conflict.

This elite wants us to believe that the changes they are imposing on us without any democratic legitimacy, are for our good. This seemingly inexorable process has been planned for decades, and those who have desired it and are implementing it belong to openly anti-Christian and antichristic lobbies. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia, gender transition, pedophilia, moral corruption, cancel culture, immigration and manipulated crises, a way to eradicate every trace of Christian morality from our societies and to deliberately create the impoverishment of the population and favor civil war. Their purpose is to divide us, make us enemies of each other, and see us fighting against each other instead of uniting and fighting them. And ultimately all this chaos serves as a pretext to suppress protests with new restrictions.These subversives want at all costs to make us think that there is no alternative, that the crises they provoke – the pandemic farce, the climate emergency, the energy and water crisis, the proxy wars – are irreversible and inevitable.

Today we know that it is not so. We have the ability to escape from this hell on earth – and we must – but we can do it only if we understand two important and interconnected things.

First: the globalists are certainly very well organized and have enormous economic means, but they are very few, and the members of this tyrannical elite almost have a name and a face, starting with the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, with Bill Gates, George Soros and Klaus Schwab. All their wealth and profits derive from the exploitation of the peoples and the complicity of the rulers who have been corrupted and bought out. Here too the names are well known: many politicians and representatives of the leading institutions in various nations have participated in the “Young Global Leaders for Tomorrow-program,” the school of subversion, run by the World Economic Forum. How are the exponents of supranational organizations whose purpose is their own enrichment and our enslavement different from the mafia? What prevents us from rebelling against them in the same way that we would rebel against mafia leaders?

The second important thing to keep in mind is that in this spiritual battle the globalist elite, however powerful it may seem, obeys Satan, the Adversary, the one who is a murderer from the beginning, while We the People, with all our weaknesses, are aligned with the Almighty God. Do we believe that their master, Satan, is more powerful than the Lord God? Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, became incarnate and faced his Passion and Death on the Cross, precisely in order to break the chains of sin and death with which Satan holds us captive. By the Redemption we have been ransomed from the yoke of the devil, and through Grace we have supernatural assistance in fighting the holy battle against the Adversary of mankind. If we understand that victory has already been won and that God is truly Almighty, we also understand that if we side with the Lord and fight with Him against His and our enemies, we will share in the victory. The question is not “whether” God will win over Satan-His victory is certain because Satan has already been conquered on the Cross. The question is whether we want to win with God or inexorably lose with Satan.

It is God, Almighty God, who holds the destiny of the world in his hands. He is the Lord, the Giver of Life. We must obey Him and Him alone, because He is a good Father who wants our good, to the point of giving the life of His Only Begotten Son for us! We must believe only in God, because He is the Truth and He does not deceive us!

Come forth, in the name of God! Come forth from this horrendous infernal theater set up by subversive criminals who want us dead! Do not allow the deception of this house of horrors to become a dystopian reality. Do not let yourselves be killed in body and soul by those who hate all that is Good, True and Beautiful because it is an image of God and His greatness! React and get up!

Wake up, dear friends. Wake up from your slumber and rediscover the pride of serving the Good, knowing that God is at your side and that, however powerful His and our enemies may seem, He has already won, but He wants us all to participate in this spiritual battle in order to make us sharers in His victory and triumph.

And if in this battle you also want to help the priests and religious who courageously resist the tyranny of a corrupt and apostate Catholic hierarchy, you can do so with a donation to Exsurge Domine, the international association founded by me that helps pastors faithful to Christ and fights so that the Word of God is not silenced, so that the light of the Gospel shines in the darkness, so that there may always be priests who offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to the Divine Majesty. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady and Queen, and Saint Michael the Archangel, the Prince of the Heavenly Host, help us in this endeavor.

Do not be deceived, dear friends: Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat!

And may GOD bless you all.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
Former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America

The Traditional Enemies of the Caesars of This World

Orthodox Jews and orthodox Christians

Excerpt from Gary North’s book “The Judeo-Christian Tradition” (1990), which can be downloaded for free here.

From the conclusion (pp. 160-162):

For the Sake of the Peace

I have done my best to honor Orthodox Judaism. When Orthodox Jews tell me that they honor the Talmud, I accept this statement as true. I do not attempt to argue that they really don’t accept it as true, that they really and truly take it only metaphorically, that “no rational person could believe such things in today’s world.” In short, I do not treat them as theological liberals treat me and those like me. If a man says that he believes something, and if he is a member of a group that has repeatedly been persecuted for adhering to certain ideas, then I assume that he is telling me the truth. He really does believe what he says he believes.

What the Orthodox Jews says that he believes is the Talmud. He also says that he believes in the Torah, what I call the Old Testament. I think that the Talmud is unfaithful to the Old Testament. The Orthodox Jew – or any Jew, for that matter – thinks that the New Testament is unfaithful to the Old Testament. What we have here is not a failure to communicate. This is not a debate over semantics. This is a debate over biblical hermeneutics, as formidable a disagreement as men can have in life, for its consequences extend to eternity.

Orthodox Jews and orthodox Christians disagree about many things, especially the theological integrity of their respective systems. The Talmud has some graphic things to say about Jesus and His followers. The New Testament has some graphic things to say about the Jews of that day: whited sepulchers, blind guides, gnat strainers, hypocrites, thieves, and dogs. Paul wrote: “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision” (Philippians 3:2). The dog in those days was not a domesticated beast or “man’s best friend.” Dogs roamed in packs and devoured the weak.

What good does it do to cover this up? None. What good does it do to de-emphasize it? A great deal. Why? For the sake of the peace.

Both sides should be aware of the unbridgeable barrier between them. Both sides should also be aware of the equally unbridgeable barrier between them and the Caesars of this world. It has been the Caesars of this world, not the Christians, who have been the great enemy of the Jews. It is the Caesars who have been the great threat to the Christians, not the Jews.

Orthodox Jews and orthodox Christians are the traditional enemies of the Caesars of this world, because the Caesars are tied to time rather than eternity. Their efforts have meaning only in terms of time. But Jews and Christians are tied to eternity, and live or die in terms of this commitment. They are therefore the ultimate traitors to the time-bound systems of this world. This is why persecution always comes, especially after some crisis has called into question the survival of a particular world system. In this sense, both Jews and Christians are “a separate people among us” in the eyes of the humanists. What Rosenstock-Huessy wrote of this world’s leaders is equally true in every era: “The ruler who gives his name to an hour of history must be absorbed completely in that hour. He must dive into its waves and be lost in it more than any other man. For it is the ruler’s business to mark the epoch, to appear on the stamps or coins of his country. Rulership, because it personifies an epoch, always finds itself in a polarity to the workings of Eternity.” [Footnote: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man (Norwich, Connecticut: Argo, [1938] 1969), p. 222.] What he wrote of the Jews applies equally well to orthodox Christians in history:

The pagan leader is the servant of time. The Jew can never “believe” in time. Since every Jewish leader or prophet thinks of Eternity or of innumerable generations, the star of Judah always shines most brilliantly in times when there are no pagan heroes. When a nation is despoiled of its governing class, when a national failure has brought a darkness without comfort or illumination, the nation is struck by the fact that the Jews are not leaderless in the absence of a king or emperor. Anti-Semitism always becomes especially violent in times of a lost war. The Jews must be guilty: this is the word that is quickly passed round. For are they not as ready to shoulder hard times without a complaint as they were to profit in the good? The star of Judah shines bright, and pogroms break out, whenever the Gentiles have just buried their Nebuchadnezzar or their Tiberius with disintegration. [Footnote: Ibid., pp. 222-23.]

As this becomes increasingly clear to both orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews, I think the response of both groups will be to de-emphasize the words of mutual condemnation found in the Talmud and the New Testament. This is not to say that either group will deny the truth of its respective holy book, but it is to say that there is a time to emphasize differences and a time to emphasize similarities. To put it graphically, if you are in a foxhole with someone of a rival covenant, and the enemy’s shock troops are coming over the ridge, your immediate concern is not the precision of your partner’s theology; it is whether he can shoot straight and whether he can spare a few rounds of ammo.

I can see the enemy coming. Hand me that 30-round clip, Yitzhak, and we’ll discuss the fine points of our theology later.

Regarding that last remark, I think this is exactly what Jordan Peterson is doing while discussing and interpreting the whole book of Exodus with about 10 or so other scholars, some of which are Jews (e.g. Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro).

New Survey: Fewer Germans feel free to express their political opinions in 2023

. . . than in any year since the early days of the Federal Republic

Article by eugyppius.

Excerpt:

The impression of a closed and stifling discourse is present across the political spectrum. Only 39% of centre-right CDU voters feel free to express their views, but for Die Linke, or the Left Party (the successors of the East German SED), that number falls to 36%, and for AfD voters it is lowest of all, a mere 11%. A clear majority (75%) of Greens alone feel that they can speak their minds, and so here we learn who feels best represented by our present discourse.

“Do you have the feeling, that you can freely express your political opinion today in Germany, or is it better to be cautious?” Blue: “I can speak freely.” Orange: “It is better to be cautious.”

No surprises lurk in the breakdown by education: 51% of those with university degrees or an Abitur feel their political expression is unhampered, while clear majorities of everybody else say they cannot speak their minds.

The historical perspective is sobering. The Federal Republic was only five years old in 1953; the Allied occupation and denazification were recent events, and even then Germans enjoyed a substantially greater subjective sense of political expression than they do today. This sense peaked under Willy Brandt during the Cold War, but has been in a state of decay since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. This would be good evidence in favour of Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s thesis, that Western liberal states rapidly lose their enthusiasm for principles like free expression in the absence of competition from rival systems.

Yet it was not the end of the Cold War, but rather the chancellorship of Angela Merkel that saw the most dramatic decline in free political expression. Specifically, Merkel’s strategy of “asymmetric demobilisation,” via which she sought to disarm the leftist opposition by adopting central elements of their political programme, had a very perverse influence. German voters and hence the politicians who appeal to them have always had pronounced conservative tendencies, while the media here as everywhere else lean to the left. Before 2005, politicians provided an important counterweight to the line taken by our press, but Merkel’s triangulations created a new system of soft political enforcement sustained by establishment politicians and mainstream journalism alike.

The consequence is a system that has placed all of us in thrall to the whims of an eccentric minority. The opinions which govern German society, as I’ve written many times before, are not those of most people, but rather of an increasingly insular, university-educated urbanite class, who are relatively affluent, who vote overwhelmingly Green and who constitute no more than 15% of the population. I doubt the old socialist countries of the Warsaw Pact were any different in this respect. More and more, it feels like we defeated communism only to recreate an equivalent system, which threatens to be much worse, insofar as its informal nature and soft asymmetrical methods confuse everybody and thwart opposition.