[fidgewidge]

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]

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.

[fidgewidge]

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]

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.

[fidgewidge]

Don't know much if anything about Epstein so couldn't try to classify his politics.

"I suspect that if they could abolish all government and install themselves as permanent monarchs, they would see it as a reasonable start"

We are likely talking at cross purposes then because that's the exact opposite of what I consider right wing. Abolishing democracy and becoming dictator for life is something associated with hard left revolutionaries. Stalin, Mao, North Korea that sort of thing. To me right wing means pro market, pro capitalist, pro democracy, small government, it's all about decentralization of power. Libertarian stuff. If they'd really want to abolish government and take over they'd be the pastiche of WEF-attending elitist globalists, surely.

"Are Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell on the right?"

Maybe? I don't think Trump had politics clearly aligned with any party. He used to be a Democrat and sort of took over the GOP from the outside didn't he. Plenty of never trumpers who were also Republicans. Don't know anything about McConnell, not from the USA, that's too detailed for my knowledge.

Flicking through their results pages, there's one investigation they did into poor conditions in border detention centers. Isn't that normally a topic for the left in the US? I thought the US right normally just want more border enforcement and don't care much about how illegal immigrants are treated.

[Jon_Lowtek]

>> Abolishing democracy and becoming dictator for life is something associated with hard left revolutionaries. Stalin, Mao, North Korea that sort of thing.

Left + Right in modern discussion are non-descriptive words and as such tend to vary widely in definition. The classic definition comes from european parliaments. In previous centuries, when monarchy was far stronger and the established power, in those lands where a parliament or senate existed, those who wanted to abolish monarchy and establish democracy sat left. The monarchists who wanted to keep or strengthen the established power of the king sat right. Keep slavery on the right, establish universal suffrage left. Liberalism demanding basic human rights was a far left concept for a very long time, and authoritarianism a far right concept. But it is not all about progressives and conservatives.

To understand "Left+Right" ask the question: if we seat these people next to each other on thanksgiving (or in parliament) how likely is physical violence.

In the early 20th century in Germany, in the Weimar Republic to be precise, monarchy has been abolished and democacy established. The monarchists were still sitting at the right in parliament, and they wanted to abolish democracy and establish a kingdom. At the far right sat the fascists. The monarchists and fascists both were nationalistic, authoritarian and somewhat accepting of capitalism.

At the far left sat the communists, who were about international communist revolution and abolishing capitalism. The communists themselves were split in liberal communists and authoritarian communists. The later took power in Russia and later Stalin became their dictator, and the european communists faced a dumb choice between "international communism" and "liberal-democratic communism". The Stalinists sat far left and the those favoring liberal democratic communism sat between them and those favoring democratic capitalism with social benefits within the current nation. Then the far right abolished democracy in Germany and established a dictatorship.

In early 20th century "liberalism and democracy" became a center opinion, because both the far left and the far right were pushing for an authoritarian dictatorship, with the "moderate left" and "moderate right" typically agreeing with their extremists on other things while being more liberal-democratic.

But those times are long gone in europa and have never the USA has a bit of a problem with this eurocentric view anyway, because they haven't had a party sitting anywhere in parliament being in favor of abolishing their facade of a liberal democratic republic hiding corporate rule in centuries. At the moment many far right groups are trying to claim liberalism as their concept, as a "conservative" thing pointing out that progressive political streams like environmentalism have authoritzarian tendencies as they strongly regulate the economy. But in truth the parliamentarian right wing is not about conserving your right to destroy the environment, they care far more about conserving the established power of large corporations.

[Erem]

> Here is their agenda in their own words

Despite the group's self description, Veritas are not (only?) journalists, they are also a political spying operation.

But don't trust me on that -- instead review the submitted evidence that convinced the DC Circuit Court to permit describing the group in those exact terms. Start at page 14 of Democracy Partners v. Veritas (PDF):

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_17-cv-010...

[fidgewidge]

Yeah that's interesting but seems like an incredibly technical reading of the term "political spying operation". They argue that it's an operation because it was planned. It was spying because the undercover journalist was recording everything secretly. And it was political because:

> Defendants make clear that they researched plaintiffs and developed the plan for this operation in response to plaintiffs’ activities related to supposed voter fraud and campaign events, supporting the “political” nature of their conduct

That's pretty nuts, saying that investigating voting fraud is "political". Any police force that enforces ballot laws would then be considered political too? They seem to be using it to mean "something related to politics" instead of the more obvious meaning of politically biased.

They also make a big deal out of some passages from a book O'Keefe wrote where he compares an undercover journalist living out a character to the same strategy as used by Soviet spies. Any undercover investigation could be described as spying in this way.

Doesn't seem very convincing overall? I can think of lots of investigations by big media orgs that could be described exactly the same way. The UK had one called cash for questions some years ago where politicians were recorded accepting bribes. Guess that was also a political spying operation lol.

[Erem]

I disagree with your reading of the evidence and agree with the reading of the presiding judge. But I included the root document so that the rest of the thread can form an opinion.

In all, starting from the court's high bar of impartiality then continuing to the many, less impartial resources on the Internet which nonetheless largely support the point it feels like a situation of: "Who will you trust -- Veritas or your lying eyes"

[fidgewidge]

There isn't any evidence to disagree over. It's just a dispute over whether "political spying operation" is a reasonable description of what they do or exaggerated. I don't think it's reasonable unless all undercover journalism about politicians gets described that way, which it isn't, and you do think it's reasonable. Don't think there's much that can be debated there.

[gjsman-1000]

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]

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]

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.

[hotpotamus]

Then you do not believe the US government is capable of regulating the scientific research of its own citizens? I often see this thought applied to 3D printing of small arms, and I tend to agree that it’s quite problematic. I see no reason to limit this thinking to small arms though - as technology advances, what’s to stop individuals from doing their own viral research and development? If the government is incapable of stopping them, it’s probably worth thinking about your own contingency plans; it’s something I do.

[fidgewidge]

I don't know any more if any government can do that. A few years ago I thought it was possible and normal. Now? We saw things like vaccine approvals based on 8 mice all of whom got COVID anyway, that doesn't sound much like what I thought regulators would do. But it makes sense given the Pfizer guys comments about revolving doors. You can suspect it but hearing it from the horses mouth is something else.

You're so right about viral engineering being done by individuals. I don't know what can be done about that. I guess it depends a lot on how many dual uses some of the ingredients have, how much the tech can be controlled. Sort of like how you can stop people doing stuff with uranium on their own, but not mixing up fertilizer bombs. But presumably it's easier to stop large companies and government labs doing this stuff, so why not start there? Today we fail even at that.

[Erem]

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-010...

[def_true_false]

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?

[bitwize]

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.