In 2016, Harvard hosted a secretive meeting to organize a controversial project: synthesizing an entire human genome in the lab. A month later, the project was publicly announced, and who was doing the key research? Lab-origin superstar Alina Chan. statnews.com/2016/06/02/syn…
This project received widespread criticism, both for the secrecy of the meeting and the lack of attention to ethics. It was criticized in WaPo and the NY Times. Biologist Drew Endy refused to participate. Genetic Literacy Project has a good roundup 👇 geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/05/16/har…
The meeting was organized by Harvard biologist George Church, who helped developed genome sequencing and co-created the gene editing technique CRISPR. For years, he also enjoyed numerous meetings and phone calls with eugenics aficionado Jeffrey Epstein. statnews.com/2019/08/05/cit…
Epstein, of course, is notorious for his interests in transhumanism, AI, and "improving the human population through...genetic engineering." He wanted to make heritable changes to human embryos and to seed the human race with his own DNA. web.archive.org/web/2019073119…
Church is himself an arch-transhumanist with a whole list of genes he wants to edit. Below, a writer for the Epstein-backed Humanity+ describes a talk by Church at a DARPA meeting in which he lauds eugenics (improving intelligence via genetic selection). hplusmagazine.com/2015/02/15/bio…
Not sure if I said this explicitly above, but it's worth underlining that Alina Chan presented at the Church-organized Harvard meeting on synthetic human genomes, presenting her work on building artificial human chromosomes. statnews.com/2016/06/02/syn…
One company that also made a presentation at the Harvard meeting was Twist Bioscience. Twist, interestingly, is one of the few cos. that provides made-to-order DNA which is essential for viral cloning, like that done by Ralph Baric's lab. technologyreview.com/2020/02/15/844…
I say "interestingly" because one of the (IMO) disturbing features of Chan's Covid-origin research has been her willingness to cozy up to Ralph Baric, even going so far as to co-author a letter with him this month. science.sciencemag.org/content/372/65…
Baric, as anyone who's been following the origin saga should understand, is one of the prime suspects in any lab-origin hypothesis. He's also a major practitioner of dangerous gain-of-function work. I've seen nothing but praise & defense of Baric from Chan twitter.com/search?q=from%…
By Chan's own account, she was interested in human artificial chromosomes for "genome writing" and "mammalian cell engineering" and wanted to create synthetic DNA and "deliver them into human cells."
Alina Chan developed a method for fusing yeast to human cells to create "Frankenstein cells." With this technique, she successfully inserted ebola into human cells in order to make human cells produce the infectious virus(!).
Here's a semi-transcript of Chan's talk. Her research was conducted for GP-write, George Church's synthetic genome project (originally called "Human Genome Project-write" until they apparently realized the name was too creepy). diyhpl.us/wiki/transcrip…
Direct connection between Twist Bioscience, which participated in the Church-organized synthetic genome project meeting, to Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein. h/t @SpaceDaaddyy
Chan's employer, the Broad Institute, has received $32 million from DARPA to ramp up its synthetic biology and DNA engineering efforts. broadinstitute.org/news/darpa-awa…
The Broad Institute was co-founded by Eric Lander, who met with Epstein at least once. Lander denies taking $ from Epstein, yet Epstein's site bragged about funding Lander's work. Lander was just confirmed as Biden's cabinet-level science adviser. unlimitedhangout.com/2021/02/report…
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The pagers Israel exploded were made by Taiwanese company Gold Apollo. The pagers were reportedly imported 5 months ago (mid-April 2024), which lines up closely with a Knesset delegation visit to Taiwan during which Tsai pledged to "deepen" partnership between the 2 countries.
Gold Apollo denies involvement in the attacks, claiming sales & manufacturing of AR-924 pagers are handled by a Hungarian company, BAC Consulting. Gold Apollo president Hsu Ching-kuang further notes "strange" remittances that came through the Middle East. reuters.com/world/middle-e…
Hungary now denying that the pagers were ever in the country. The Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs says BAC is only a middleman and has no manufacturing site in Hungary.
🧵Interesting moment from the Covid Select Subcommittee's interrogation of Peter Daszak I'd like to unpack.
Daszak claims DARPA didn't reject DEFUSE due to safety concerns but rather over its cost. (He's previously made this claim to The Intercept, but now does so under oath.)
Daszak says "the only information we received from DARPA about the reasons for turning us down" came during an exit interview. Daszak previously described this interview as an apparently voluntary process for those who didn't receive funding. theintercept.com/2022/03/11/cov…
This begs the question (previously raised by @Rossana38510044) as to whether the unsigned, undated DARPA rejection letter released by DRASTIC is completely authentic. And, if authentic, was it ever sent to EcoHealth or was it only a draft?
The talking point from lab-leak proponents is that DARPA rejected EcoHealth's DEFUSE proposal because it was too risky. (If you read the letter closely, it's not clear this is true.) However, in a March 2, 2018 meeting, DARPA reviewer Jim Gimlett did not raise any risk concerns.
Gimlett did, however, note that DARPA was not able to fund all proposals and may partially fund proposals or fund later stages of proposals. This gibes with the letter written (though not signed) by Gimlett which noted "several components" of DEFUSE were "potentially fundable."
Gimlett also noted in his 3/2/18 meeting with Daszak that one of the primary issues with DEFUSE was validation. Lack of validation was one of the reasons cited for rejecting DEFUSE.
Last month, @emilyakopp of @USRightToKnow published an article about the infamous DEFUSE proposal based on documents obtained from USGS, a DEFUSE partner. However, USRTK uploaded only a portion of those records.
@emilyakopp @USRightToKnow Scientist and natural-origin proponent @flodebarre also appears to have obtained the same cache of documents. She too has refused to publish the full batch, instead plucking out small excerpts in support of this thread:
I do not in any way agree with GoFundMe taking down the Grayzone's fundraiser, but, since I've yet to see anyone else mention it, I do think it's worth putting on the record that Max Blumenthal has reportedly agitated for such takedowns in the past. observer.com/2016/01/its-on…
The Observer article reports that Max "pressured" GoFundMe to remove a fundraiser by (virulently pro-Israel pseudo-rabbi) Shmuley Boteach to buy a NYT ad tying then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to Max via his dad, long-time Clinton consigliere Sidney Blumenthal.
However, the Observer's only apparent source is Boteach himself who merely said he "believes" Max contacted GoFundMe directly, just as he had written to Huffington Post editor Ryan Grim to decry an op-ed attacking him written by Boteach.
Two months after dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US military began drafting a secret plan to nuke 20 Soviet Cities in a "prevenative" surprise attack without provocation or warning. https://t.co/0glssyr2Jparchive.org/details/isbn_0…
This plan, known as JIC 329 (or "Strategic Vulnerability of the USSR to a Limited Air Attack") acknowledged that the Soviets posed no immediate threat to the US. Decimated by WWII and lacking a navy, the USSR was in a dire position relative to the largely unscathed US military.
Knowing this, JIC 329 recommended a surprise barrage of nuclear strikes if it appeared that the Soviets "would eventually gain the capability of either attacking the US or rebuffing a US attack." (Kaku/Axelrod)