By Alex P. Vidal
“Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”—Lewis Carroll
LOGIC and common sense will demolish the arguments of those who continue to cling to an absurd assertion that no violation of press freedom was involved in the harassment incurred by the ABS-CBN from the vindictive Duterte administration.
ABS-CBN is a media institution, not an ice cream or a rubber shoes manufacturing company.
A media institution is a vital cog of democracy; it’s a flesh and blood of the Fourth Estate every democratic government in the world holds dearly.
Logic and common sense will be the main obstacles in their ridiculous stand as they continue to agitate for the gigantic media network’s permanent closure after it was forced to sign off on May 5 by virtue of the “cease and desist” order of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
It’s actually a battle between facts and data combined and emotions and politics combined.
Interestingly, those who loudly and viciously demanded for ABS-CBN’s permanent closure were mostly characters who loathed any criticism leveled against their “emperor”, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte.
They were the “fanatics” who immediately would run berserk if Mr. Duterte was criticized.
For them, Mr. Duterte is a perfect leader who can’t commit a mistake. They will eat alive those who dare cross the president’s path.
-o0o-
They attacked the ABS-CBN not because ABS-CBN is wicked; not because they were convinced beyond reasonable doubt that ABS-CBN’s existence was inimical to the interest of the public, but because Mr. Duterte was at loggerheads with the leading network.
It would have been another story if they made the same stand and were already spewing venomous expletives against the ABS-CBN with the same intensity even before Mr. Duterte’s conflict with the network became known worldwide.
Such irrational enmity toward ABS-CBN can’t reconcile with common sense and sound judgement. Basta nalang nainis sa ABS-CBN only because the president was inis na ini sa ABS-CBN?
In other words, if Mr. Duterte had praised and made friends with the ABS-CBN, they would also sing hallelujah to the ABS-CBN and would never lambast the network?
That’s why I’m worried if some people have become fanatics which is synonymous to irrationality.
-o0o-
Below are some of the main claims and allegations of the viral video on the spread of virus that linked prominent personalities in the U.S. taken down by Youtube, Facebook and other social and mainstream media platforms for its inaccuracies and unproven allegations, along with the facts presented by Science.
Video Interview: Dr. Judy Mikovits has been called one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation.
Mikovits had authored 40 scientific papers and wasn’t widely known in the scientific community before she published the 2009 Science paper claiming a link between a new retrovirus and CFS. The paper was later proven erroneous and retracted.
Video: Her 1991 doctoral thesis revolutionized the treatment of HIV/AIDS.
Mikovits’s Ph.D. thesis, “Negative Regulation of HIV Expression in Monocytes,” had no discernible impact on the treatment of HIV/AIDS.
Video Interview : At the height of her career, Dr. Mikovits published a blockbuster article in the journal Science. The controversial article sent shock waves through the scientific community, as it revealed that the common use of animal and human fetal tissues was unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases.
The paper revealed nothing of the sort; it only claimed to show a link between one condition, CFS, and a mouse retrovirus.
Mikovits: I was held in jail, with no charges.
-o0o-
The district attorney in Washoe county, Nevada, filed a criminal complaint against Mikovits that charged her with illegally taking computer data and related property from WPI. The charges were dropped, in part because of legal troubles faced by her former employer.
Mikovits: Heads of our entire HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) colluded and destroyed my reputation and the Department of Justice and the (Federal Bureau of Investigation) sat on it, and kept that case under seal.
Mikovits has presented no direct evidence that HHS heads colluded against her.
Mikovits: (Fauci) directed the cover-up. And in fact, everybody else was paid off, and paid off big time, millions of dollars in funding from Tony Fauci and … the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. These investigators that committed the fraud, continue to this day to be paid big time by the NIAID.
It’s not clear which fraud and what cover-up Mikovits is talking about exactly. There is no evidence that Fauci was involved in a cover-up or that anyone was paid off with funding from him or his institute. No one has been charged with fraud in relation to Mikovits’s allegations.
Mikovits: It started really when I was 25 years old, and I was part of the team that isolated HIV from the saliva and blood of the patients from France where (virologist Luc) Montagnier had originally isolated the virus. … Fauci holds up the publication of the paper for several months while Robert Gallo writes his own paper and takes all the credit, and of course patents are involved. This delay of the confirmation, you know, literally led to spreading the virus around, you know, killing millions.
At the time of HIV’s discovery, Mikovits was a lab technician in Francis Ruscetti’s lab at NCI and had yet to receive her Ph.D. There is no evidence that she was part of the team that first isolated the virus. Her first published paper, co-authored with Ruscetti, was on HIV and published in May 1986, 2 years after Science published four landmark papers that linked HIV (then called HTLV-III by Gallo’s lab) to AIDS. Ruscetti’s first paper on HIV appeared in August 1985. There is no evidence that Fauci held up either paper or that this led to the death of millions.
-o0o-
Video Interview: If we activate mandatory vaccines globally, I imagine these people stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars that own the vaccines.
Mikovits: And they’ll kill millions, as they already have with their vaccines. There is no vaccine currently on the schedule for any RNA virus that works.
Vaccines have not killed millions; they have saved millions of lives. Many vaccines that work against RNA viruses are on the market, including for influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, rabies, yellow fever, and Ebola.
Video Interview: So, I have to ask you, are you antivaccine?
Mikovits: Oh, absolutely not. In fact vaccine is immune therapy, just like interferon alpha is immune therapy, so I’m not antivaccine. My job is to develop immune therapies. That’s what vaccines are.
In another recent video, Mikovits is wearing a hat that says VAXXED II, which is a sequel to a film that links the mumps, measles, and rubella vaccine to autism, a debunked theory. She also repeats several claims made by people who are leading the antivaccine movement. In the PowerPoint presentation she sent to Science, she calls for an “immediate moratorium” on all vaccines. (To be continued)
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)
