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It actually does show that, albeit he says they're considering/planning on doing it, not doing it right now. The clips where he talks about it are long and with

It actually does show that, albeit he says they're considering/planning on doing it, not doing it right now. The clips where he talks about it are long and with plenty of context, the man in question does indeed have the title Veritas claimed for him (although they are now trying to scrub his internet presence), and when he was confronted with the recordings he freaked out and attacked the reporters. On every thread about Veritas recordings, there's always people like hnbad who try to stop people watching the videos by labelling it as "far right" i.e. if you're progressive, you're not allowed to look. It's just more lies. There's nothing "far right" about what they do. The people in the videos literally speak for themselves, and often admit to the worst case scenarios that had previously been considered absurd conspiracy theories. Pfizer planning to create COVID variants so they can later sell vaccines for them - tinfoil crazy uncle stuff, except it comes direct from the mouth of a Pfizer employee who has been briefed on the initiative.

hotpotamus 4y ago
You insult the intelligence of anyone to suggest that Project Veritas does not have a right-wing political agenda. Whether it is "far" to the right, I don't know. I'd certainly be curious to see the videos if they were to turn their spycraft/journalism (I'll admit there may be some overlap in those) on powerful right-wing figures, but we both know that will not be happening. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a vaccine maker is doing research on the virus and what all that entails. What would strike me as "tinfoil crazy uncle" stuff would be if he had said they had plans to release new viruses in order to sell vaccines. But who knows - the profit incentive can drive all sorts of innovation - especially in medicine where the stakes are life and death.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Well, if you watch the original video, he said that he speculated that’s what happened in Wuhan, and that there had better not be more outbreaks. Just the fact that a Pfizer employee would make a serious comment like that is terrifying and should spark investigations into that lab immediately. Also, there should be investigations to our pandemic leadership for so heavily insisting that it almost certainly was not a leak - especially after the employee’s comments on regulatory capture.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    I’d say as a rule, I think much more federal regulation of industry in the US (presuming you don’t mean the Wuhan lab) would be nice to have, but it seems pretty unpopular. If you do mean the Wuhan lab, then I gotta say that Xi seems like an even tougher sell on the idea. As far as the whole leak thing goes, I always assumed it was just like every plague since antiquity; not a lab leak or creation (I think one of the problems that that crowd had was differentiating themselves from the whole “tinfoil crazy uncle” thing).
    - fidgewidge 4y ago
      It's unpopular for the reasons that the Pfizer executive helpfully spells out - regulators are useless because governments don't pay them enough, so make all their decisions with one eye towards a much better paying job in sector they're regulating. You get the appearance of regulation without it actually having teeth. It's an open secret that this is a problem everywhere, not just medical regulation. The revolving door was once an issue that the left campaigned on, in fact, but you don't hear much about it any more. Probably because there's no obvious fix beyond ensuring that pay for regulators keeps up with whatever comp the private sector is willing to offer, which is the sort of solution that's not politically popular on that side of the aisle. Also it's hard. The value of less aggressive regulation to companies like Pfizer is very high. Governments meanwhile are ideologically optimized to hire more people at lower wages, not fewer people at higher wages. The whole culture of pay more to hire the best that you find in places like the tech industry just doesn't happen there, and in the USA there's even a rule limiting pay to be lower than the President (which mysteriously doesn't apply to Fauci, wonder how that one works). You could also try hacks like laws forbidding regulators from (re)joining the industry they regulate, but that'd just make the job even less attractive and ensure that whoever the government does end up hiring are the industry rejects, who will either have an axe to grind or simply not be able to keep up with the technical issues, making them easy to bamboozle. There's not really a great solution here, beyond maybe just being realistic about what government regulation is capable of. Private sector regulators is also a possibility. Uber is a taxi regulator of sorts, but a much more effective and innovative one, and one whose staff can't be bought off with the carrot of luxury jobs in the taxi sector.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  No insult to anyone's intelligence intended, because it feels actually the other way around. This supposed far right agenda is asserted but never proven. It's just claimed that it must exist. Here is their agenda in their own words: "Project Veritas journalists working undercover on their own or by, with and through idealistic insiders bring to the American people the corrupt private truths hidden behind the walls of their institutions." That's classical investigative journalism. But given this mission statement it's pretty obvious why the left thinks they're being targeted: they managed to take over practically all powerful institutions, including media institutions that would once have held up Veritas style reporting proudly and given it awards. How many important American institutions are run by "powerful right wing figures", exactly? Maybe a handful at most? Now how many institutions explicitly and loudly align themselves with the agenda of the left (idpol, Follow The Sciencism etc)? It's uncountably more. Just given the sheer quantities of captured institutions in question, any Veritas style initiative will inevitably uncover more corruption on the left simply because that's where the power actually is. He didn't say they plan to release new viruses, obviously none of the idiot scientists in this whole sorry saga actually intend to release the viruses they make. What we do know is they seem to delight in using vaccine development as the justification for fiddling with dangerous viruses, even though there's no clear link between the work Wuhan was doing and later vaccine development, that they much prefer doing dangerous work in very low safety conditions because the higher BSL levels are tedious and get in the way, and we also know that they'd rather engage in coverups than admit the possibility that a virus escaped from their own labs. That's why the executive in the video states clearly that it's a secret, the journalist shouldn't tell anyone, and that the public would hate it if they found out. Edit: reading a bit more, they say that their biggest scoop ever was an ABC News anchor saying she had the Epstein story and killed it due to pressure from the British Royal Family. So their top hit is actually one that attacks what is arguably the most conservative institution in Britain! It doesn't really get more "powerful right wing figure" than the Queen, yet Veritas didn't hesitate to reveal their machinations. So this far right claim is clearly just a smear.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Would you then classify Epstein as on the right? Certainly he had some power, but I’d classify him more as a toady of people like my ultimate boss for a time, Leon Black, the president of Apollo Private Equity. My own experience with these people would call them extremely right wing - I suspect that if they could abolish all government and install themselves as permanent monarchs, they would see it as a reasonable start. I wonder how you would classify such people and what you imagine the agenda of the right wing to be. Are Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell on the right? I would think their success in re-shaping our federal judiciary where laws are actually made. I have not heard of these institutions like follow the sciencism or anything like that, although I will trust your characterization of them as being of the left, I haven’t noticed any influence on my local laws, but as a resident of Southern Texas, I have certainly noticed the right wing influence on local laws, most notably the medical procedures that the women around me are legally allowed to undergo. I suspect that your example would more be seen as an investigation into ABC (and likely used as an avatar for the “mainstream media”) by the people carrying it out. Nymag actually had an interesting article on Project Veritas recently that you may want to peruse. Apparently they were after Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary but it caused them some issues. That said, it sounded like they already had some problems brewing before then.
bitwize 4y ago
It's not just that Project Veritas has a far-right agenda. It's that they lie, and publish heavily edited footage taking people's statements way out of context, in order to push that agenda. They single-handedly destroyed the reputation of ACORN in the USA with their deceptive techniques. Furthermore, they conduct surreptitious recording of their interviewees, which is illegal in some places they operate (a felony in California). They need to be shut down as a criminal organization.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    Legitimate journalists issue corrections. Not Project Veritas. The reason your comment history shows you to believe in nefarious vaccine conspiracy theories is that you get your news from sources who do not issue corrections and instead continue to lie after they know they are wrong. https://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/03/12019/james-o%E2%80%99keefe-pays-100k-settlement-after-deceiving-public-about-acorn-alec%E2%80%99s-help https://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/03/12019/james-o%E2%80%99k... https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/project-veritas-loses-defamation-lawsuit-against-cnn-for-depicting-twitter-ban-as-part-of-misinformation-crackdown/ https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/project-veritas-loses-defama... https://www.techdirt.com/2022/08/08/project-veritas-not-only-loses-its-vexatious-slapp-suit-against-stanford-it-has-to-pay-the-universitys-legal-fees/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/08/08/project-veritas-not-only... https://reason.com/volokh/2022/08/09/project-veritas-ex-coo-loses-libel-suit-against-massachusetts-teachers-union/ https://reason.com/volokh/2022/08/09/project-veritas-ex-coo-...
    - gjsman-1000 4y ago
      > Legitimate journalists issue corrections. Not Project Veritas. Really? They literally have a page on their websites devoted to their mistakes, which shows your comment is ignorant at best. It’s probably nowhere near a complete list, but send me the link to MSNBC’s or CNN’s list. https://www.projectveritas.com/mistakes-that-project-veritas-has-made/ https://www.projectveritas.com/mistakes-that-project-veritas... It appears almost everything you believe about Project Veritas are statements which journalists have been forced themselves to correct. Over 300 journalists have pulled back erroneous statements about PV. https://www.projectveritas.com/wall-of-shame-retracto/ https://www.projectveritas.com/wall-of-shame-retracto/ > nefarious vaccine conspiracy theories Excuse me, but Pfizer has been fined more than any other pharmaceutical company for violations, and also paid the biggest fine in history ($2.3 billion). I can believe that the vaccine is generally effective while saying Pfizer has a history of being scumbags. Pfizer convincing everyone that questioning them makes you anti-vax, despite their long criminal history being a record in quantity of penalties and size of penalties, was a nasty trick. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-largest-health-care-fraud-settlement-its-history https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-... Even The Intercept reported last year that Pfizer is a top lobbyist for making life as difficult as possible for whistleblowers. https://theintercept.com/2021/11/29/pfizer-whistleblower-reform-corporate-fraud/ https://theintercept.com/2021/11/29/pfizer-whistleblower-ref...
Erem 4y ago
Readers in the thread should reference a few relevant resources before accepting the "honest, hard-nosed journalism" description of project Veritas proposed by fidgewidge. Consider that they are also a political spying organization, as successfully argued in front of the DC Circuit Court (link at bottom) Taking into account the court's findings and other easily available material like Wikipedia it beggars belief to include this group in the echelons of great investigative journalism and should cast skepticism on any "reporting" they release. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_17-cv-01047/pdf/USCOURTS-dcd-1_17-cv-01047-4.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_17-cv-010...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
def_true_false 4y ago
You claim that the other side is biased and trying to stop people from seeing the footage, and yet it's your post that contains bullshit like "Pfizer planning to create COVID variants so they can later sell vaccines for them" -- a sentence intentionally crafted to imply Pfizer planning not just to create the variants, but also to spread them. What does "creating a variant" even mean? If you "create a variant" and then the same or similar variant ends up being dominant in the outside world, without the variant you created ever leaving the lab, that sounds like what you actually want the vaccine companies doing? If they can predict which variant vaccines will be needed and make them in advance, I don't really care how they did it, assuming reasonable risk management (no leaks and so on). But no, you crafted your shitty statement so that the only reasonable reading is the technically incorrect one -- i.e. that Pfizer is planning to create AND SPREAD variants so they can later sell vaccines for them. Not exactly a shining beacon of integrity, are you?

hotpotamus 4y ago

You insult the intelligence of anyone to suggest that Project Veritas does not have a right-wing political agenda. Whether it is "far" to the right, I don't know. I'd certainly be curious to see the videos if they were to turn their spycraft/journalism (I'll admit there may be some overlap in those) on powerful right-wing figures, but we both know that will not be happening. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a vaccine maker is doing research on the virus and what all that entails. What would strike me as "tinfoil crazy uncle" stuff would be if he had said they had plans to release new viruses in order to sell vaccines. But who knows - the profit incentive can drive all sorts of innovation - especially in medicine where the stakes are life and death.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
Well, if you watch the original video, he said that he speculated that’s what happened in Wuhan, and that there had better not be more outbreaks. Just the fact that a Pfizer employee would make a serious comment like that is terrifying and should spark investigations into that lab immediately. Also, there should be investigations to our pandemic leadership for so heavily insisting that it almost certainly was not a leak - especially after the employee’s comments on regulatory capture.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I’d say as a rule, I think much more federal regulation of industry in the US (presuming you don’t mean the Wuhan lab) would be nice to have, but it seems pretty unpopular. If you do mean the Wuhan lab, then I gotta say that Xi seems like an even tougher sell on the idea. As far as the whole leak thing goes, I always assumed it was just like every plague since antiquity; not a lab leak or creation (I think one of the problems that that crowd had was differentiating themselves from the whole “tinfoil crazy uncle” thing).
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
    It's unpopular for the reasons that the Pfizer executive helpfully spells out - regulators are useless because governments don't pay them enough, so make all their decisions with one eye towards a much better paying job in sector they're regulating. You get the appearance of regulation without it actually having teeth. It's an open secret that this is a problem everywhere, not just medical regulation. The revolving door was once an issue that the left campaigned on, in fact, but you don't hear much about it any more. Probably because there's no obvious fix beyond ensuring that pay for regulators keeps up with whatever comp the private sector is willing to offer, which is the sort of solution that's not politically popular on that side of the aisle. Also it's hard. The value of less aggressive regulation to companies like Pfizer is very high. Governments meanwhile are ideologically optimized to hire more people at lower wages, not fewer people at higher wages. The whole culture of pay more to hire the best that you find in places like the tech industry just doesn't happen there, and in the USA there's even a rule limiting pay to be lower than the President (which mysteriously doesn't apply to Fauci, wonder how that one works). You could also try hacks like laws forbidding regulators from (re)joining the industry they regulate, but that'd just make the job even less attractive and ensure that whoever the government does end up hiring are the industry rejects, who will either have an axe to grind or simply not be able to keep up with the technical issues, making them easy to bamboozle. There's not really a great solution here, beyond maybe just being realistic about what government regulation is capable of. Private sector regulators is also a possibility. Uber is a taxi regulator of sorts, but a much more effective and innovative one, and one whose staff can't be bought off with the carrot of luxury jobs in the taxi sector.
fidgewidge 4y ago
No insult to anyone's intelligence intended, because it feels actually the other way around. This supposed far right agenda is asserted but never proven. It's just claimed that it must exist. Here is their agenda in their own words: "Project Veritas journalists working undercover on their own or by, with and through idealistic insiders bring to the American people the corrupt private truths hidden behind the walls of their institutions." That's classical investigative journalism. But given this mission statement it's pretty obvious why the left thinks they're being targeted: they managed to take over practically all powerful institutions, including media institutions that would once have held up Veritas style reporting proudly and given it awards. How many important American institutions are run by "powerful right wing figures", exactly? Maybe a handful at most? Now how many institutions explicitly and loudly align themselves with the agenda of the left (idpol, Follow The Sciencism etc)? It's uncountably more. Just given the sheer quantities of captured institutions in question, any Veritas style initiative will inevitably uncover more corruption on the left simply because that's where the power actually is. He didn't say they plan to release new viruses, obviously none of the idiot scientists in this whole sorry saga actually intend to release the viruses they make. What we do know is they seem to delight in using vaccine development as the justification for fiddling with dangerous viruses, even though there's no clear link between the work Wuhan was doing and later vaccine development, that they much prefer doing dangerous work in very low safety conditions because the higher BSL levels are tedious and get in the way, and we also know that they'd rather engage in coverups than admit the possibility that a virus escaped from their own labs. That's why the executive in the video states clearly that it's a secret, the journalist shouldn't tell anyone, and that the public would hate it if they found out. Edit: reading a bit more, they say that their biggest scoop ever was an ABC News anchor saying she had the Epstein story and killed it due to pressure from the British Royal Family. So their top hit is actually one that attacks what is arguably the most conservative institution in Britain! It doesn't really get more "powerful right wing figure" than the Queen, yet Veritas didn't hesitate to reveal their machinations. So this far right claim is clearly just a smear.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Would you then classify Epstein as on the right? Certainly he had some power, but I’d classify him more as a toady of people like my ultimate boss for a time, Leon Black, the president of Apollo Private Equity. My own experience with these people would call them extremely right wing - I suspect that if they could abolish all government and install themselves as permanent monarchs, they would see it as a reasonable start. I wonder how you would classify such people and what you imagine the agenda of the right wing to be. Are Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell on the right? I would think their success in re-shaping our federal judiciary where laws are actually made. I have not heard of these institutions like follow the sciencism or anything like that, although I will trust your characterization of them as being of the left, I haven’t noticed any influence on my local laws, but as a resident of Southern Texas, I have certainly noticed the right wing influence on local laws, most notably the medical procedures that the women around me are legally allowed to undergo. I suspect that your example would more be seen as an investigation into ABC (and likely used as an avatar for the “mainstream media”) by the people carrying it out. Nymag actually had an interesting article on Project Veritas recently that you may want to peruse. Apparently they were after Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary but it caused them some issues. That said, it sounded like they already had some problems brewing before then.

bitwize 4y ago

It's not just that Project Veritas has a far-right agenda. It's that they lie, and publish heavily edited footage taking people's statements way out of context, in order to push that agenda. They single-handedly destroyed the reputation of ACORN in the USA with their deceptive techniques. Furthermore, they conduct surreptitious recording of their interviewees, which is illegal in some places they operate (a felony in California). They need to be shut down as a criminal organization.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
[flagged]
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  Legitimate journalists issue corrections. Not Project Veritas. The reason your comment history shows you to believe in nefarious vaccine conspiracy theories is that you get your news from sources who do not issue corrections and instead continue to lie after they know they are wrong. https://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/03/12019/james-o%E2%80%99keefe-pays-100k-settlement-after-deceiving-public-about-acorn-alec%E2%80%99s-help https://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/03/12019/james-o%E2%80%99k... https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/project-veritas-loses-defamation-lawsuit-against-cnn-for-depicting-twitter-ban-as-part-of-misinformation-crackdown/ https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/project-veritas-loses-defama... https://www.techdirt.com/2022/08/08/project-veritas-not-only-loses-its-vexatious-slapp-suit-against-stanford-it-has-to-pay-the-universitys-legal-fees/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/08/08/project-veritas-not-only... https://reason.com/volokh/2022/08/09/project-veritas-ex-coo-loses-libel-suit-against-massachusetts-teachers-union/ https://reason.com/volokh/2022/08/09/project-veritas-ex-coo-...
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    > Legitimate journalists issue corrections. Not Project Veritas. Really? They literally have a page on their websites devoted to their mistakes, which shows your comment is ignorant at best. It’s probably nowhere near a complete list, but send me the link to MSNBC’s or CNN’s list. https://www.projectveritas.com/mistakes-that-project-veritas-has-made/ https://www.projectveritas.com/mistakes-that-project-veritas... It appears almost everything you believe about Project Veritas are statements which journalists have been forced themselves to correct. Over 300 journalists have pulled back erroneous statements about PV. https://www.projectveritas.com/wall-of-shame-retracto/ https://www.projectveritas.com/wall-of-shame-retracto/ > nefarious vaccine conspiracy theories Excuse me, but Pfizer has been fined more than any other pharmaceutical company for violations, and also paid the biggest fine in history ($2.3 billion). I can believe that the vaccine is generally effective while saying Pfizer has a history of being scumbags. Pfizer convincing everyone that questioning them makes you anti-vax, despite their long criminal history being a record in quantity of penalties and size of penalties, was a nasty trick. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-largest-health-care-fraud-settlement-its-history https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-... Even The Intercept reported last year that Pfizer is a top lobbyist for making life as difficult as possible for whistleblowers. https://theintercept.com/2021/11/29/pfizer-whistleblower-reform-corporate-fraud/ https://theintercept.com/2021/11/29/pfizer-whistleblower-ref...

Erem 4y ago

Readers in the thread should reference a few relevant resources before accepting the "honest, hard-nosed journalism" description of project Veritas proposed by fidgewidge. Consider that they are also a political spying organization, as successfully argued in front of the DC Circuit Court (link at bottom) Taking into account the court's findings and other easily available material like Wikipedia it beggars belief to include this group in the echelons of great investigative journalism and should cast skepticism on any "reporting" they release. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_17-cv-01047/pdf/USCOURTS-dcd-1_17-cv-01047-4.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_17-cv-010...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

def_true_false 4y ago

You claim that the other side is biased and trying to stop people from seeing the footage, and yet it's your post that contains bullshit like "Pfizer planning to create COVID variants so they can later sell vaccines for them" -- a sentence intentionally crafted to imply Pfizer planning not just to create the variants, but also to spread them. What does "creating a variant" even mean? If you "create a variant" and then the same or similar variant ends up being dominant in the outside world, without the variant you created ever leaving the lab, that sounds like what you actually want the vaccine companies doing? If they can predict which variant vaccines will be needed and make them in advance, I don't really care how they did it, assuming reasonable risk management (no leaks and so on). But no, you crafted your shitty statement so that the only reasonable reading is the technically incorrect one -- i.e. that Pfizer is planning to create AND SPREAD variants so they can later sell vaccines for them. Not exactly a shining beacon of integrity, are you?