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Notes -
Project Veritas published another video that has gone on to have millions of views, but no media is willing to touch it - even Daily Mail deleted its article about it within hours.
I thought there'd be some coverage here, but apparently... ? It's a very CW event I believe.
Gist of it is, some affirmative action double minority hire (both gay and black) MD working for Pfizer under the lofty sounding but probably not that important position of "Pfizer Director, Research & Development Strategic Operations for mRNA scientific planning"
got slightlyy drunk with his Grindr date and said a good bunch of plausible seeming stuff, ranging from gosh, the revolving door between regulators and Pfizer is kinda unethical, but good for us to saying Pfizer is considering doing its own gain-of-function research to come up with better vaccines via either serial passage or something else. Give it a watch if you're interested, I think he wasn't making it up.
Then PV met up with him again, and showed him a tablet with the captured video. He said he had made all of that up to impress his date. (doubtful).
The second video is probably more interested for people who like "public freakouts" as the guy first acts like a bad gay stereotype, and later as a black one, at one point trying to destroy PV's tablet.
Interesting is that people like Majid Nawaaz were seen coming up with 12d chess theories about how this is an op to discredit Veritas and that the guy was a plant.
People have saved his Linked in before it got deleted and videos of him from schools he had attended according to his linked in, so if it's an op, it's an improbably good one.
EDIT: youtube took down the videos, still up on twitter.
1st vid: https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1618420826986123265 (the date one)
2nd vid: https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1618748408982040576 (confrontation in someone's restaurant and the freakout)
EDIT:
pfizer responds: https://www.pfizer.com/news/announcements/pfizer-responds-research-claims
They say they aren't doing serial passage / gain of function but are merely putting new spikes on the original virus in vitro, in an effort to see whether the vaccine still does something against new variants. I feel normies won't like this one bit.
They also say that they're doing "in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory".
So, it does seem like the guy is an idiot who talked about stuff they admit they were doing, of which he doesn't know enough about and which seems mostly reasonable, and then completely fucked up by adding in his own speculation about what they could do.
I'd say the video is most notable for seeing how absolutely blasé insiders can be about corruption and conflicts of interest. I guess if you have med school debts to pay off, chortling about how 'covid and covid vaccines are going to be great for the company' comes naturally ?
Out of curiosity, why are you calling him an "affirmative action double diversity hire?"
EDIT: To clarify why I'm asking that question: I'm not psychic, I don't know your motives or desires. But it just seems like a mocking sneer to me, as though of course a black gay guy wouldn't get a job on his own merits. It's a claim without evidence and brings down the rest of your post, at least in my view.
IMO it meets the standard of least inflammatory way to communicate the idea. @No_one does not believe we should take this reveal from a seemingly impressive source as seriously as "Pfizer Director, Research & Development Strategic Operations for mRNA scientific planning" implies.
Any company that engages in DEI practices loses the benefit of doubt in this regard. By their own admission, they disavow meritocracy in hiring practices, so I'll take Pfizer at their word that hires are not by merit.
The way he talks makes me think he's not very smart, that in addition to his double-minority status suggests he wasn't hired strictly on merit.
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This is as good a time as any to think about what the following statement means in practice.
The reality of this is that there are many likely hundreds if not thousand's of staff or managers going up for a limited number of promotion spots who will likely get deferred in favor of the minority groups. I dont really feel bad for Phiser employees, however this exact type of 2025 mission seems to exist at most professional companies. Its likely going to directly affect tens of thousand or hundreds of thousands of people over the next few years.
That does however assume there are tens or hundreds of thousands of black/hispanic/latino candidates who even exist at these companies. I suspect anyone with a pulse is going to be promoted given the numbers here.
You're missing the weasel words. They're separately going to double urm representation and increase minority representation. The former group is tiny, blacks and Hispanics, the latter is Asians and gays and probably Jews and Armenians if they need them.
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Is there even formal affirmative action for LGBT+ people in firms like this?
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More I think about this. He’s obviously drunk and the question comes down to is he a drunk bullshitter or a drunk who becomes more honest. I’m more of a drunk who tells people the truth that I wouldn’t say sober.
Regardless I think the American people deserve basically a right to all internal Pfizer documents. Their basically the government now. If one of your directors says your mutating viruses then it’s your fault for hiring an idiot and we get to investigate you.
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Newsweek has picked it up to "fact check" it; they rate the claim that Pfizer is doing GOF research as "unverified", which is surprisingly reasonable for them.
So...their fact check is that they can't fact-check it?
(To be a little more charitable, there's definitely a difference between "I don't know because didn't look into this at all" and "I don't know because the information is not available".)
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This seems like a stretch.
This is like some lefty organization finding the secretary of Blackrocks's marketing division's cto and videotaping them saying "We plan to put all the non straight white men in concentration camps by 2024"; and all the outgroup saying "See! We knew it all along!"
That's far more ridiculous, because there's no money in it.
Doing risky stuff with viruses so you can sell better vaccines is much more of a plausible plan, especially for a pharma company.
Wanna bet?
Stakes are any amount of money you choose that this isn't happening, 1:1.
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The allegations pertain to activities which are within the domain of the person claiming to posses the internal information and within the domain of the company itself. It is also doesn't explicitly contradict any moral claim the company made in the past as Blackrock famously promotes ESG.
None of which apply to your Blackrock example.
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You have proof he’s a secretary or just preferred narrative? I’m leaving my view up to how high he is. Veritas gave him a nice title.
He is apparently a MD so not a secretary. How high and knowledgeable who knows.
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The video is up on YouTube, on Twitter, and Facebook. If this were 2020 it probably would have been censored from all platforms. This is an indication of something changing. I think social media companies are feeling pressured by the 2022 downturn and have learned that censorship does not work and is bad for shareholder value, even if the mainstream media complains or advertisers threaten to boycott. Advertisers , in the end, are dependent on the public, so if the public is increasingly anti-woke or skeptical at least of mainstream Covid narratives, advertisers are going to have to adapt accordingly.
As for the story itself, obviously it makes Pfizer look bad. It proves that these vaccines have been a cash cow. What it means to mutate Covid, could indicate many things. Such as mutating the virus to preemptively develop a vaccine for it.
It's no longer up on youtube. Dunno about FB. Still up on twitter.
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Not anymore.
Yes it is. We've all just clicked the link and seen it. Are you lying here?
Posing it as a question is not enough of a fig leaf to justify calling someone a liar. If someone can't find a video, there are many more likely and more charitable explanations than "they're lying."
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It's no lie, they deleted it a few hours ago.
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I just clicked the youtube link and it's not there for me...
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Nah, we are just far enough out from any election, especially one that might involve a man of orange color.
we're not that far. My biggest concern is algorithmic suppression, which unlike banning people or deleting content, is harder to detect
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You don't really need the video for that, the financials are pretty open. I've actually been a little surprised that I don't hear more people mentioning just how many doses have been purchased that no one even wants anymore.
German newspapers, or at least conservative to right-wing German newspapers like WELT and Junge Freiheit, do report on this quite regularly, lamenting the waste of taxpayer money, the incompetent zeal of the health ministry and the federal government, and pandemic policy in general.
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I haven’t seen evidence on guys education or proof he was high up versus a lower end guy bragging to a date trying to get laid.
4 year old video from the Med school he was in according to the linked in
https://twitter.com/TheSourceStars/status/1619022963084517379/photo/1
actual video:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1fOQRqstKOc&t=242
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A friend of mine was the guy's sophomore roommate at a hifalutin (and very gay) fancy university in the northeast. He thinks the guy was premed, but can't remember. Mostly remembers him getting drunk and trashing the bathroom and not cleaning up after himself.
Based on the way he's talking, the guy is at best +1SD in intelligence. Nothing unusual for an MD, on the low end sure but he'd have been fine as a GP somewhere.
Now he's going to be a massive headache for Pfizer, and probably feature in many corporate "what not to do" videos worldwide.
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His admission that Pfizer is in bed with its regulators is important. That’s not something that people make up to brag about on dates, it’s actually the opposite. No one brags about their company being corrupt to a gay liberal on a date, neither would they say that they think Covid leaked from the Wuhan lab. This makes me strongly believe he wasn’t lying about his first claim, either.
I don’t know what Pfizer’s defense will be. “You don’t understand, our director of global research was a token diversity hire” is not something that can be transmitted on CNN.
Even if we were to interpret his remarks as “the idea came up in a meeting for fun but was shut down”, his statement on Pfizer being corrupt is super important!
Everyone believes regulators are bought and paid for. Conservative or liberal. That isn’t much of a brag it’s more in the expected category.
Where were you during the Fauci worship hours? Normal Democrats put enormous trust in the CDC. This is where the “it’s safe and effective” shilling comes from. If the CDC is corrupt, then none of its judgments are authoritative.
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And everyone believes big pharma companies are the biggest customers.
Bigger than banks? Or defense? There’s a few competing for “biggest”
Defense companies usually aren't buying regulators. Banks would be, but not the same regulators.
They're known for offering board spots to people who were decision makers on contracts while in the military, though.
Isn't that a very similar thing ?
Yes, it's similar, but it's not regulators they are buying.
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Why not? The context would be "Yeah, I work for this big corporation in a lofty position, but I'm also aware of the problematic aspects of my job (like the revolving door etc.)". He's just trying to establish himself as something beyond just a company man.
The video doesn't really implicate this guy as doing something beyond repeating company gossip about things that have been talked about in the company (for instance, there's nothing to indicate that Pfizer is actually currently doing GoF; indeed, if they were doing it they wouldn't be discussing it in the potential sense of what they could be doing, though of course again if this is based on company gossip you could argue they might be doing it and all that has reached this guy are previous discussions on it). Furthermore, I'd guess the media would be suspicious of reporting on the basis of a video repeating all the hallmarks of Project Veritas video trickery, like cutting and pasting individual sentences in a way that's not too far off the classic Simpsons Homer-Simpson-sexual-harassment-babysitter episode, suddenly having O'Keefe explain the next sentence instead of playing that sentence etc.
But it’s not a progressive supposition that Pfizer is corrupt. So the admission does not score any points, compared to something like, “Pfizer needs to work on its diversity”. The more efficient way to establish his identity from his career would be to talk about things that are not his career.
It’s not gossip when you’re in the meeting. That’s now, I don’t know, eye witness testimony.
Any conservative documentary which uses editing to promote its message (to a populace with a short attention span) will be called trickery. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Binder full of women? The Covington martyrs? “Good people on both sides”? All the media does is trickery.
The "progressive love of Pfizer" is a frequently exaggerrated talking point among the Right. There have been columns criticizing Pfizer business practices in e.g. Jacobin, like this or this. They may not be the same criticisms as antivaxx right-wingers make, but they're there.
For instance, Pfizer lobbying to keep cheap offbrand vaccinations off the Third World markets is a frequent one I've heard (though not as frequent now since it's pretty evident the remaining third worlders aren't too eager to get vaccinated at all).
So what? People have listed other cases where Project Veritas videos have given a misleading impression of what has taken place in this thread.
Your linked articles do not criticize Pfizer for corruption with CDC/FDA, but for being capitalist and profit-motivated. I imagine Jacobin, wanting more government regulation, would not want to write a piece about the regulators being corrupt. My point is, again, that Progressives do not see these companies as being fundamentally corrupt — otherwise they would have to discount the CDC/FDA judgment on vaccine and entertain the “reasonable skepticism” of the opted out.
How so? While this specific article is about Pfizer, regulatory capture absolutely is nothing new to progressive discourse.
I'm not sure what "fundamentally corrupt" means here, but the Project Veritas video in question wouldn't seem to rely on any assumptions of "fundamental corruptness".
This is really weak sauce. It's a book review about a novel featuring cartoon capitalism that mostly misses the point of regulatory capture, and whose proposed solution is doubling-down on the exact stuff that enables regulatory capture.
Whether it's "weak sauce" was not the point. The point was whether progressives unanimously love Pfizer so much that the entire concept of the Project Veritas bust guy talking about corruption inside Pfizer to prove his neutrality to a potential date is self-evidently wrong.
Just today I saw this editorial by Bernie Sanders. Again, the criticism he makes might not be the one made by antivaxxers/right-wingers, but criticism it still is, and no-one could surely say that Bernie doesn't represent the general opinion of the modern American progressivism.
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"This is coming from a group of hucksters that have been proven to be lying multiple times," and then link to the various takedowns. Sure, it won't convince right-wing entertainers on Twitter or anti-vax folks, but Pfizer doesn't care about that.
That will in all likelihood be the response, but what specifically has Veritas lied about?
It depends on what you consider a "lie". Two potential examples come to mind with the first being an ACORN lawyer, Juan Carlos Vera, who took down information about the (fake) sex trafficking coming in through Tijuana and immediately reported it to law enforcement. Even after this information came out, O'Keefe still kept implying that Vera was indeed an enthusiastic participant in sex trafficking. The second example comes from the NPR sting, where Veritas used deceptive editing to imply that NPR executives were very eager to accept a $5 million donation from a Sharia group in exchange for coverage input.
Huh?
The edited Veritas video portrays the same thing as the unedited Veritas video: NPR exec clearly states that they won't let a donation influence their coverage, but also NPR exec is totally sympathetic with and yes-manning this guy. That's even visible in the takedown video you linked.
Maybe I overlooked something, but where does the edited Veritas video show the NPR exec stating they won't let a donation influence their coverage?
Around 9 minutes in: https://www.projectveritas.com/video/npr-muslim-brotherhood-investigation-part-i/
The point Veritas is conveying with this part of the video is not at all that NPR will shade their coverage - that's something your video is claiming via a deceptive edit. The actual point Veritas is trying to make is very clear since they print it at the top of the screen in big capital letters:
Begin my transcript of the Veritas video itself:
Sharia guy: "I'm not too upset about maybe a little bit less Jew influence of money into NPR. The Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere"
NPR guy: "I don't actually find it at NPR."
Sharia guy: "What, exactly?"
NPR guy: "The zionist or pro-Israel even among funders. No. I mean it's there in those who own newspapers obviously but no one owns NPR. I don't find it."
Paraphrased capital letters above caption, i.e. what Veritas wants you to notice: "JEWS OWN THE NEWSPAPERS OBVIOUSLY"
Sharia guy: "I just think what Israel does I don't think can be excused, frequently, so I'm glad to hear this."
NPR guy: "Even one of our biggest funders who you'll hear on air, the American Jewish World Service, may not agree with us. I visited with them recently. They may not agree with what we put on the air but they find us important to them. And sometimes it's not easy to hear what we have to say and what our reporters think, but they still think NPR is important to support. Right because I think they are really looking for a fair point of view and many Jewish organizations are not."
Paraphrased capital letters: "MANY JEWISH ORGS NOT LOOKING FOR A FAIR POINT OF VIEW"
Your anti-Veritas video edited that part out.
NPR guy: "Frankly, I'm sure there are Muslim organizations that are not looking for a fair point of view. They're looking for a very particular point of view and that's fine." (I wonder - is he about to draw a parallel to the thing he said a few seconds ago?)
Muslim guy interrupting: "We're not one of them."
NPR exec: "I'm gathering that you're not, actually."
The paraphrased capital letters clearly indicate what Veritas wants you to take away: NPR guy will say antisemitic things for the chance at a donation, but they won't bias their coverage for donations from Jews or <didn't get to finish that thought because this potential donation doesn't want biased coverage>.
And if you watch the full video you get the broader point being made: NPR guy hates the tea party and white Republicans, but he's totally cool with Muslim Brotherhood guy and admits Jews control the newspapers.
I really sincerely appreciate that you took the time to research this fairly. The transcripts you provide are accurate but I'm not sure how they're relevant to this point. The overarching insinuation is that NPR is biased towards Palestine/Muslims and against Israel/Jews, so it's neither notable nor surprising for the NPR execs to deny that Jewish funders affect the coverage. That's perfectly in line with the suspicion that NPR is heavily biased in favor of Palestine (which I don't think is at all unreasonable). The full context here would be to include all the times that NPR execs deny that any donor can influence coverage. The fact that Veritas excluded the six denials about all donors from the edited video but chose to include the laugh line about National Palestinian Radio appears to have been done deliberately in order to leave the viewer with the impression that their "donors don't affect coverage" line only applies in one direction.
This is another example of the deceptive editing. The full unedited Veritas video is 2 hours long and is still available here. At the 2:34 mark of the edited video, the NPR exec is portrayed as disclosing that he personally believes Republicans are intensely racist. The full video at the 33:30 mark shows him explicitly stating that he's relaying what someone else, a top Republican donor, believes. Maybe the NPR exec is lying and just using a fictitious sockpuppet to launder his own beliefs, but if that's the suspicion, why not let the audience decide instead of just editing the ambiguity out?
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This is next level -- selective editing on interviews to make the interviewer look bad?
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Thing is, is anyone surprised pharma companies and the regulators have a cosy relationship? We have to remember this is Covid, the push was on to get vaccines, and the usual slow process of having them approved was junked in the name of speed and getting herd immunity. "We made a ton of money out of this" - again, not surprising. Everyone made a ton of money during the worst of the pandemic, see all the tech layoffs now once the lockdown finished and people aren't doing everything online, so all the surplus hiring during the fat times is being trimmed away.
It's not a good look for Pfizer, but I think the most that will come out of it is this guy being handed his marching papers. Project Veritas is dodgy enough (it's on shaky ground even with people like me broadly sympathetic to what they're trying to do, because of fairly credible allegations of set-ups and editing video to take things out of context) and it's absolutely hated by liberals and the media because it goes after their sacred cows, so in the end this will be brushed aside as "just some far-right attempt at a smear of racial and sexual minorities" (based on the target being gay and black).
Between this and the twitter files, that the narrative has moved from "it's not happening" to "it happened, so what" is infuriating.
But moreover, what isn't happening right now that will later have happened and be a good thing actually? One has to wonder.
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People often complain that right-wing media doesn't do journalism themselves, they just glean from the mainstream media. Well, Project Veritas is right-wing investigative journalism. The only reason it has the reputation it does is that it successfully skewered a left-wing sacred cow (ACORN). They do set people up, but that's part of that kind of journalism. I think in recent years they've been releasing full unedited videos a short while after in order to dispute claims of deceptive editing.
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Pretend nothing happened, handle everything internally. Only if the stock price falls a lot would they feel compelled to address the public.
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