Category: language

Semantigans

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I do not watch television news, but I suspect the story of Senator Rand Paul’s questioning of Dr. Anthony Fauci, if covered at all, is generally of the form “Ignorant Senator smears Hero Doctor.” An alternative headline would be “Practicing MD challenges career bureaucrat.”

The exchange itself was rancorous and somewhat confusing. Dr. Fauci ended up replying (less charitably, you could say he seized the deflection opportunity) to an implication that NIH funding was directly related to the CCP virus pandemic. This would also require that some form of the lab leak hypothesis is true; or worse, it was deliberate. Three weeks ago we weren’t allowed to speak of a lab leak, but even the Biden Administration is changing its mind.

A lab leak is possible, and unproven. Paul did walk it back. But, by that time, Dr. Fauci was off on the tangent.

Senator Paul should have been more circumspect, his main point is beyond rational contention. To wit: Fauci’s repeated and absolute denial the NIH ever funded gain of function research at the Wuhan lab depends on semantigans worthy of Bill Clinton’s question about what the word “is” means.

In challenging Fauci, Paul referred to a 2017 Wuhan lab research paper linked next. It credits NIH with funding recombinant experimental work on coronavirus and infectivity testing against the human ACE2 target. One author, Shi Zhengli, is known as the “Bat Woman” at the Wuhan lab.
Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus – PLOS (Public Library of Science) Pathogens

This work was jointly funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (81290341, 31621061) to ZLS, [etc. etc.]… the National Institutes of Health (NIAID R01AI110964)…

Using the reverse genetics technique we previously developed for WIV1 [23], we constructed a group of infectious bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones with the backbone of WIV1 and variants of S genes from 8 different bat SARSr-CoVs…

The HeLa cell line was kindly provided by Australian Animal Health Laboratory, CSIRO (Geelong, Australia). HeLa cells expressing human ACE2 were constructed as described previously [17]. HeLa cells expressing human ACE2 and Vero E6 cells were cultured on coverslips in 24-well plates (Corning) incubated with the newly isolated or recombinant bat SARSr-CoVs at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) = 1.0 for 1h…

HeLa cells expressing human ACE2 were inoculated with WIV1, Rs4874, WIV1-Rs4231S, and WIV1-Rs7327S at an MOI of 1.0, and were incubated for 1h at 37°C…

There is no question NIH funded research in Wuhan. There is no question at least one so funded research project involved modification of bat coronavirus. There is no question those modified viruses were tested on human ACE2 receptors.

Dr. Paul is not alone in his opinion that this is GoF research:

Dr. Roger Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and biosafety expert… claims that the work being conducted at the WIV, using NIH funds originally granted to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, “epitomizes” gain-of-function research under the definition HHS provided in its guidance, and is the exact kind of research that led the Obama administration to conclude that gain-of-function was too dangerous to continue domestically.

The only remaining questions, then, are the definition of the phrase “gain of function,” and the meaning of the word “we.” Dr. Fauci insisted “that paper” Rand used as his proof had been carefully examined “up and down the line” and it was not gain of function research. According to the NIH.

Dr. Fauci also added that it was biologically impossible for those particular viruses to be implicated in the pandemic. That last, of course, is irrelevant.

Under the Obama Administration gain of function research was paused using this definition:

U.S. Government Gain-of-Function Deliberative Process and Research Funding Pause onSelected Gain-of-Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS, and SARS Viruses

Gain-of-function studies, or research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease,
help define the fundamental nature of human-pathogen interactions…

New USG funding will not be released for gain-of-function research projects that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route. The research funding pause would not apply to characterization or testing of naturally occurring influenza, MERS, and SARS viruses, unless the tests are reasonably anticipated to increase transmissibility and/or pathogenicity.

See also: The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan? –Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. This is interesting for what is described in the title, but it also speaks directly to the funding question.

The media’s big mistake on the covid-19 ‘lab leak’ theory –Washington Post Even the WaPo is willing to consider what they once dismissed as a crazy conspiracy theory.

Fauci’s only other possible defense is that “we” (the NIH) were not doing the funding. As we’ve seen, Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, awarded a at coronavirus study grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, which subcontracted the research to the Wuhan lab. Fauci insists that the money did not support gain of function research. But as Nicholas Wade points out, that is exactly what the Wuhan institute was doing. The grant proposals from Shi Zhengli — (aka “Bat Woman”) are a matter of public record. She said she planned to use the money for gain-of-function research.

Dr. Fauci claims that NIH “categorically did not fund” GoF research in Wuhan. But, he cannot know that. His boss is Dr. Francis Collins:

NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) that researchers at the Wuhan lab “were not approved by NIH for doing “gain of function research” before adding “we are, of course, not aware of other sources of funds or other activities they might have undertaken outside of what our approved grant allowed.”

So “we” never approved it. And “we” didn’t monitor it. And “we’ve” never heard the word “fungible.”

And, it’s not as if Fauci never funded such research on other viruses. Here is a statement from NIH on gain of function signed by Dr. Fauci in early 2013. Emphasis mine:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has worked in a transparent and collaborative fashion to develop a framework for reviewing funding decisions regarding research that might increase mammalian transmission of HPAI H5N1 viruses by respiratory droplets.

Does Dr. Fauci have a different definition for each virus?

Here is further discussion from NIH on gain of function
Gain-of-Function Research Involving Potential Pandemic Pathogens

A definition used by the Obama Administration and another used by NIH seem to contradict whatever definition Fauci is using. One is left with the idea that the NIH created such a definition, after the fact, which has not been shared, to avoid their own oversight mechanism during the pause in funding. If Dr. Fauci wants us to believe him, he should point out exactly when and why an apparently much more complicated definition was created, and what precisely excludes the older definition from his own agency from applying. I believe he would be embarrassed by it, and that’s why we have not seen it.

Bloody handed little weasel

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Nice short summary of Fauci Fraud.
Fauci In 2012: Gain-Of-Function Research ‘Worth Risk Of Lab Accident Sparking Pandemic’ | ZeroHedge

In which he is quoted in response to questions from Rand Paul:

“We have not funded gain of function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he added. No matter how many times you say it, it didn’t happen.”

This kind of word play is best left to Bill Clinton. He knew succinct misdirection ‘is’ better.

I mean, “this virus?” Makes you wonder which ones he did fund. It may have been unnecessary embellishment.

Fauci knew he had to phrase his response carefully, since he is on record saying gain of function research is more important than the risk of a pandemic, and he’s about to insist vehemently that Senator Paul is a liar. Let’s just unpack that one reply to Senator Paul:

“At one time my agency did fund gain of function research in the US. But, we had to stop because of unsciency moral objections from the Obama administration. They did not understand the precautionary principle only applies to fossil fuel.

To continue GoF research we were forced to fund a third party NGO. This gave us plausible deniability, since the funding destination was almost certain to be a lab in Wuhan, China.

Since US dollars are fungible, this may or may not have probably funded GoF research at a Chinese lab specializing in coronavirus, headed by a woman nicknamed “batlady,” who wrote a paper in 2015 about adding a spike protein to bat coronavirus enabling its attachment to human ACE2 receptors. She had long “openly participated in gain-of-function research in partnership with U.S. universities and institutions”.

Her lab was widely considered to have substandard safety protocols, in a country well known to care little for civilized norms and whose military is known to have speculated about coronavirus biological warfare. Which country obfuscated and obstructed the WHO investigation whitewash of the CCP virus origins, having earlier blamed the US Army for it, and after having delayed providing information to the world public health community at the beginning of the outbreak. In Wuhan. China.

Finally, the person who transferred US taxpayer dollars to the Chinese lab on behalf of my NIH was one of the WHO investigators. He anonymously authored a letter denying it was possible the virus was man made prior to the conclusion of WHO’s investigation. The letter, to which he adduced 27 actual signatures, concluded by stating: “We declare no competing interests.” That, of course, is not the same as not having any. I should know.”

In Fauci’s case the “it” that ‘didn’t happen’ is a matter more important than Bill’s torturing of the word “is.”

References & further reading:
The doctor who denied COVID-19 was leaked from a lab had this major bias

Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19

EXCLUSIVE: COVID-19 ‘has NO credible natural ancestor’ and WAS created by Chinese scientists who then tried to cover their tracks with ‘retro-engineering’ to make it seem like it naturally arose from bats, explosive new study claims

The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?

Agency: Haves and have nots

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Oxford University Scholarship Online defines human agency:

Our self‐understanding as human agents includes commitment to three crucial claims about human agency: That agents must be active, that actions are part of the natural order, and that intentional actions can be explained by the agent’s reasons for acting.

I’ve written about agency in a couple of recent posts, related to the Ma’Khia Bryant tragedy, because it seems to me her most ardent defenders want to strip her of it for political gain. Oh, they grant her agency when it suits them; with implausable claims that she called 911, but they insist that all her other, documented actions are to be excused because of her age and “the system.” Many went so far as to contend teenage knife ‘fights’ are a rite of passage so common that police should ignore them. Ma’Khia lacked agency. Teenagers in general lack agency.

I came across an essay on this conveniently ambiguous attitude at the Manhattan Institute. A short time later I came across a post at Askblog. I strongly urge you to read both, and I’ll try to give you a little incentive below. They shed some light on SJW motivations and reasoning in playing the agency card.

First, a slice from Askblog reader Roger Sweeny in: The mind and moral categories

I recently read Daniel M. Wegner’ and Kurt Gray’s The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters (Viking, 2016), a book that has nothing explicitly to do with politics or wokeness. They ask the question, “Who (and what) do people believe has a mind?” A fetus? A dog? A robot? Google? God? They crunch some numbers and find that people seem to have two groups of characteristics of mindness. One is the ability to experience sensations and emotions. The other is the ability to act, to decide and do.

They tell us that entities that can feel but can’t act turn on our moral senses. Outrage at a man beating a dog. Pity for those in the hospital dying. Moreover, something in us wants to believe that those who are suffering are blameless. But we also want to find moral causes. We want to find something to blame. Best if it is something with a large capacity to act and a small capacity to suffer. Almost always, they say, there is a moral dyad. In fact, whenever there is something with a large capacity to act and a small capacity to suffer, we want to find the other half of the dyad, something relatively powerless and suffering.

Many opponents of wokeness have argued that it “denies agency” to the designated victims, that it treats them as powerless children. So far at least, that charge has not weakened the support for wokeness…

The less there is overt racial discrimination, the more there is a need to believe in a malevolent system. That may seem counter-intuitive, but so is the reality that revolutions do not occur when things are getting worse but when things are (generally) getting better.

Now we’ll turn to a long article at The Manhattan Institute: The Social Construction of Racism in the United States

This paper uses survey data to make the case that racism in America lies, in significant measure, in the eyes of the beholder. This not only concerns people’s perceptions of the prevalence of racism in society but even of their personal experience.

The quality of racism is inversely proportional to the SJW declaimed quantity. Think Jussie Smollett, he was just trying to fulfill the demand.

Tocqueville identified the reasons early on:

The hatred that men bear to privilege increases in proportion as privileges become fewer and less considerable, so that
democratic passions would seem to burn most fiercely just when
they have least fuel. . . . When all conditions are unequal,
no inequality is so great as to offend the eye, whereas the
slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst of general
uniformity; the more complete this uniformity is, the more
insupportable the sight of such a difference becomes. Hence
it is natural that the love of equality should constantly
increase together with equality itself, and that it should
grow by what it feeds on.
– Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

In a similar vein, Coleman Hughes, in a pathbreaking 2018 essay,
remarks on Tocqueville’s paradox as it concerns racial liberalism
in America: “It seems as if every reduction in racist behavior is
met with a commensurate expansion in our definition of the concept.
Thus, racism has become a conserved quantity akin to mass or energy:
transformable but irreducible.”

This is part of an explanation for Critical Race Theory: Systemic racism is necessary, because it can be winnowed out of every object or human interaction, no matter how benign. Just move the goalposts.

There’s a reason that everything is now viewed through a racial lens. Every day in every way you are bombarded with “evidence” of racism in everything. Over time, this sways minds. Much to our detriment.

Reading a passage from critical race theory author Ta-Nehisi Coates results in a significant 15-point drop in black respondents’ belief that they have control over their lives…

Surveys showed that liberal whites are more supportive of punitive CRT postulates than blacks, who are more likely to aspire to agency and resilience. Moreover, CRT appeared to have a detrimental effect on African- Americans’ feeling of being in control of their lives. This makes CRT a poor choice for policymakers seeking to improve outcomes in the black community.

Finally, my survey results indicate that as much as half of reported racism may be ideologically or psychologically conditioned, and the rise in the proportion of Americans claiming racism to be an important problem is largely socially constructed.

Whites are more affected by social justice/social media conditioning. Blacks are more sensible. I’ll bet there is a correlation with who has read Ta-Nehisi Coates or attended a D’Angelo brainmash session.

Frontrunning Winston Smith

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In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, Winston Smith (AKA “6079 Smith W”) was an editor in the Ministry of Truth Records Department. This employment required him to rewrite historical documents as necessary to validate Big Brother’s propaganda.

I don’t know how many people had the same job as #6079 in the novel, but our reality has a pecksniff* of “journalists” beavering away at altering the past and implementing Newspeak…

[T]he Party has an ingenious plan to break the link with the real past by introducing a language barrier. When “all real knowledge of Oldspeak [disappears] . . . the whole literature of the past will have been destroyed” (56). After a few generations, when people are no longer capable of decoding information from the past, there will no longer even be a need to censor the history that has the potential for breeding unorthodox ideas — it will be completely out of the public’s reach.

That’s why we’re told there is no such thing as biological sex, for example. And why there has been an attempt to redefine “packing the court”.

In the universe our Maim Scream Media™ imagine, Hunter Biden is a paragon of virtue, and Joe Biden never bragged about coercing the Ukraine to fire a prosector investigating Burisma, Hunter’s employer. In that universe the New York Post does not exist, so a Tweet about a laptop once owned by Hunter Biden would not require a suspension. Twitter and Facebook would not have to suppress any reference to either story, sparing the Maim Scream Media™ the trouble.

As to revisionism, when the Leftist rag Salon published a story alleging Tom Cotton was not an Army Ranger last week, Newsweek scuttled into their archives:
Newsweek Edits 2015 Story on Army Rangers to Conform to New Attack on Tom Cotton

Prior to that, Winston Smith was sighted at the Washington Post, rewriting a 2019 story:
The Washington Post Tried To Memory-Hole Kamala Harris’ Bad Joke About Inmates Begging for Food and Water

Meanwhile, as noted yesterday, “journalists” are proclaiming themselves sacred guardians of the 1st Amendment as cover to justify censorship and deplatforming. Because, you know, only “real journalists” can be trusted to convey right think.

Winston Smith was at least uncomfortable about his job. In fact, he was tortured for his temerity.

The Columbia School of Journalism has not called for that. Yet. It’ll have to start with fines.

In this phantasmal universe, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the DNC never financed a report, written by a corrupt foreign agent, leading to a multi-million dollar investigation that turned up nothing. Nor were many of her ideological foes subjected to illegal surveillance and FISA warrants obtained by trusted Federal agencies via obvious lies to a court.

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton never had a private email server violating basic security protocols and ignoring Federal records requirements.

Democrats and their scribblers are not the first to inhabit such a universe. Ask Nikolai Yezhov… well you can’t, because he was disappeared.

Now you see him – now you don’t.
Yezhov oversaw Stalin’s purges as head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, when Stalin had him secretly arrested and tried, then executed. He’s the short guy (his nickname was “The Dwarf”) who is blocking a view of the water in the shot on the left.

*Pecksniff is my appropriation (from Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit character) for a group of journalists. Like a nest of vipers, a cackle of hyenas, or a wake of vultures.

An unctuous hypocrite, a person who affects benevolence or pretends to have high moral principles; (also) a person who interferes officiously in the business of others. Frequently attributive. Also (occasionally) as adjective.

Get thee to a Memery

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As memes go, this is the first time I’ve heard of this one. Still, there are T-shirts…

“When I was young my father said to me:
“Knowledge is Power….Francis Bacon”
I understood it as “Knowledge is power, France is Bacon.”

I empathize: When I was 9 I read Treasure Island, pronouncing “island” in my head as “Is Land” the entire time.

Kids those days. Go figure.

I think it was over a year before I understood my mistake. That is the closest I can come to epiphany regarding the point of postmodern literary critical theory: Not the bits claiming meaning resides solely with the reader, and changes with the reading – no matter the author’s intent – but that I made an egregious error from ignorance. And it damaged my understanding of reality. Which, of course, is the postmodernist’s point.

Phonic reading instruction has its drawbacks, though they are nothing compared to “whole language,” or whatever they’re calling it today. Probably “Intersectional Critical Textual Parsing.”