Gestalt # 201

Dr. Morens Speaks

The following are a selection of quotes from emails written by Dr. Morens, senior advisor to Dr. Fauci. In the emails below, “Tony” refers to Dr. Fauci. “Peter” refers to Dr. Daszak. Most of these emails are in reference to EcoHealth Alliance, led by Dr. Daszak, and the grant money it received from the NIH and funneled to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. FOIA stands for Freedom of Information Act. This is the act which allows any US citizen to obtain unclassified information held by the federal government.

In his own words, Dr. Morens:

You are right, i need to be more careful. However, as i mentioned once before, i learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe. Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.

The best way to avoid FOIA hassles is to delete all emails when you learn a subject is getting sensitive.

PS, i forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can send stuff to Tony on his private gamil,or hand it to him at work or at his home. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.

I suggested Arthur try to interview Tony directly and connected him to our “secret” back channel. He emailed Tony a few hours ago.

email from Morens to Daszak and Keusch—with the subject line “NIH awards $7.5 million grant to EcoHealth Alliance, months after uproar over political interference”

Ahem … do I get a kickback???? Too much f*g money! DO you deserve it all?

Peter from Tony’s numerous recent comments to me, and from what Francis [Collins] has been vocal about over the past 5 days, they are trying to protect you, which also protects their own reputations.

You may be amused at the following aside that was a big surprise to me. He [Dr. Fauci] was asking my opinion about what is wrong with CDC and in the process said, out of the blue, that it was HE who got Rochelle Wolensky her job as CDC director by lobbying for her to Ron Klain.
Well, she does wear a skirt… I poured a little cold water on her
but he was undeterred in thinking she is the cat’s pajamas…

Waste, Fraud and Abuse in the US Military

A former U.S. Navy vice chief of naval operations has been arrested on charges that he accepted bribes to steer work to a company while he was commander of naval forces in Europe and Africa, Justice Department officials said in a Friday statement.

Robert Burke, 62, of Coconut Creek, Florida, along with two business executives, Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger of New York, were each charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, according to an indictment unsealed on Friday.

“Burke is also charged with performing acts affecting a personal financial interest and concealing material facts from the United States. If convicted, Burke faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison, and Kim and Messenger each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison,” the statement said.

Former vice chief of naval operations arrested on bribery, conspiracy charges. Bradley Peniston, Defense One. May 31, 2024.

Meghan Messenger and Yongchul “Charlie” Kim are senior executives at a company called “Next Jump“. After reading content at their web page, I found it difficult to determine what they actually do. Their website is filled with psychobabble about “leadership” and “decision-making”. They apparently offer “training” to improve decision making. Seems like patent BS, to me. In addition to the US Navy, they also list the US Air Force as a customer. Given the recent arrests, I think one can fairly ask whether anyone in the US Air Force was also involved in improper behavior.

Setting aside the bribery charges, why does the US Air Force and the US Navy need leadership lessons from such a BS company? Shouldn’t the US Air Force and US Navy be giving leadership lessons in their own training and by example? Do they not know how to do this anymore?

There is serious rot in the US military. We have “powerpoint” generals who need lessons in leadership from BS, psychobabble companies instead of people who lead by example. There are members of the US military who have led their troops into battle and prevailed in difficult circumstances. Shouldn’t generals and admirals ask proven combat veterans how to lead? Vast sums of money are being wasted on companies like “Next Jump” while enlisted personnel struggle to feed their families. Just so sickening.

see also

Today’s Generals and Admirals, Children of a Lesser God. Real Clear Defense. Gary Anderson, May 28, 2024.

Nuclear war is now more likely that it was at the height of Cold War I.

This is my opinion. This is also the opinion of many who study these issues for a living. In Cold War I, the American people were made very aware of their peril and given constructive advice about how to increase their chances of survival. In Cold War II, they are being kept ignorant of their danger and being given no advice on how to protect themselves. War is getting closer to us. Please prepare.

Gestalt#81-SARS-2 Pandemic

Sustainable Parenting in a Pandemic

Both Republican and Democratic politicians, and their associated “thought-leaders”, seem to agree: Schools must be kept open no matter what. They cite public health “experts” who say children will suffer irreparable damage if they do not attend school. This is a curious assertion given that for most of human history (and prehistory) children did not attend school. What has changed in the human child’s brain in the last 100 years that now requires school for a child to thrive? Some experts says that kids should go to school because some are beaten by their parents if they stay home and/or are not given enough food to eat. Well. Maybe this is true for some families. But for those parents who don’t beat their children and who give them food to eat, does it make sense for these parents to expose their children to a virus that may cause permanent brain damage and injure their immune systems? I think not.

We are told that remote learning is inferior to in person schooling. In some cases, I think this is true. I have seen reports of kindergartners spending 6 hours a day staring a screen watching their teacher doing something. This is, of course, a very stupid way to teach kindergartners. A better solution would be for small children to do things in the real world with one or more of their parents (play with building toys, read a book together, etc.). In fact, all children could be taught by their parents (at least up to High School). It’s called homeschooling and it works very well – if the parents take the duty of educating their own children seriously. Home-schooled children do better on almost every metric than children who are educated in schools. This includes pretty much every socioeconomic group. More and more Black parents are homeschooling their kids and finding that their kids are thriving as never before.

So, given that homeschooling is a superior alternative to both sending kids to plague-ridden schools and poorly thought out remote learning options, why don’t politicians and pundits mention it? Two reasons – big business and teachers’ unions. Many businesses want both parents (assuming that a family has two parents) in the office. The parents will have trouble going to work if their kids aren’t in school. Parents also want to go back to work and need to the schools to act as, if nothing else, free babysitters. Teachers unions are hoping that the pandemic is temporary (it probably isn’t) and want to maintain parent commitment to teacher-led education through remote learning, no matter how badly it is executed.

More and more jobs are moving to remote work. Parents or people planning on becoming parents, should seriously consider getting a remote job or training for one. This will allow parents to spend more time with their children and switch to home-schooling. This will obviously be more easily accomplished in two parent families. Everything works better in a two parent family. But that is another discussion.

Disarray in the Biomedical Research Community in the United States

Francis Collins has resigned as Director of the NIH, but has been replaced by his personal toady, Lawrence Tabak (who was named Acting NIH Director). This ensures that nothing will change at NIH, an agency with serious scientific and trust issues created by Francis Collins. There are no reports that I have been able to find of a Search Committee for a permanent NIH Director. Dr. Fauci remains at the NIAID despite the fact that he has lost confidence of at least half of Congress, is an impediment to getting more people vaccinated and is doing long term damage to the Institution he is supposed to serve. The CDC is run by a privileged moron (Rochelle Walensky) who is widely regarded as having made mistake after mistake which has cost many Americans their lives. The FDA has had a series of mediocre “leaders” who have had no sense of urgency when urgency was urgently needed. We have a Cabinet level Presidential Science Advisor (Eric Lander) who is either not giving any advice to the President, giving bad advice, or who whose advice is being ignored. Dr. Lander is, to my great disappointment, showing no signs of leadership while biomedical Science is melting down in the US during the worst public health threat in 100 years. Is he just drawing up fantasy plans about how many sequencers he could buy with US taxpayer money? If he wants money for the future, then he needs to show leadership NOW. I know that he will have the unpleasant task of tangling with prima donnas like Drs. Collins, Fauci and Walensky and a President who is now clearly suffering from moderate dementia. Nonetheless, he took the job. He’s got to take charge and clean this mess up or future historians will tie him to this dumpster fire and ruin his reputation.

FBI Investigation of NIH, EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology

From the Intercept:

The FBI sought National Institutes of Health grant documents covering bat coronavirus research in Wuhan in spring 2020, according to emails obtained by The Intercept. The emails, released through ongoing litigation between The Intercept and the NIH, detail internal NIH conversations involving the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, which collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on research. The emails also contain previously unreported requests the agency made of EcoHealth Alliance as a condition for restoring a grant funding its research. While unable to provide some of the information requested by the agency, Peter Daszak, EcoHealth’s besieged president, fought fiercely to save the grant.

(snip)

“There doesn’t seem to be transparent and accessible record-keeping of incident reporting,” said Filippa Lentzos, co-director of the Centre for Science and Security Studies at King’s College London, after viewing some of the emails. “That is very worrying and underscores the need for an overhaul of biosafety oversight in the United States.”

(snip)

NIH officials, meanwhile, refuted the possibility of a lab origin, at least in public. It would later be revealed, however, that in February 2020 NIAID Director Anthony Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins had privately consulted with prominent scientists who had seriously considered the possibility of a lab origin for the pandemic, and that two months later some leading researchers still believed a lab accident was possible. “Wondering if there is something the NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy,” Collins wrote in an email to Fauci in late April, in reference to a Fox News segment mentioning the lab-origin hypothesis. While a handful of biosafety experts had openly called for scrutinizing the NIH’s funding of EcoHealth Alliance, their entreaties were largely drowned out by political wrangling.

(snip)

In a July 2020 letter previously published by Vanity Fair, Lauer [NIH deputy director for extramural research] informed Daszak that the grant could be reinstated, but only if EcoHealth Alliance could meet seven conditions. Those included providing a sample of “the actual SARS-CoV-2 virus that WIV used to determine the viral sequence” and explaining apparently unusual activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including roadblocks and diminished cellphone traffic, as well as the deletion of the online profile of a staffer at the lab named Huang Yanling.

Mara Hvistendahl, Sharon Lerner, The Intercept, January 20, 2022