First it was
Facebook, then all of
New Zealand; now Twitter has decided to suspend Zero Hedge.
Just as in the prior bans, which were eventually overturned, so in this case it is unclear what prompted Twitter's abrupt censorship: the only notification we received from twitter was the following:
It is news to us that this website has
"engaged in the targeted harassment of someone." What appears to have happened is that twitter received a complaint from the website best known for making cat slideshows, Buzzfeed, in which someone called Ryan Broderick
writes that Zero Hedge "has released the personal information of a scientist from Wuhan, China, falsely accusing them of creating the coronavirus as a bioweapon, in a plot it said is the real-life version of the video game Resident Evil."
A few points: the article referenced by Buzz Feed, "
Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?", is as the title implies,
a question, and one which considering the huge import and massive significance of the Coronavirus pandemic has to be answered, especially since even the
establishment's Foreign Policy magazine writes bat soup, which is widely being cited and circulated by the mainstream press as the cause of the coronavirus breakout, is not the cause of the Wuhan virus. The widely read website
Health.com also chimes in: "
No, Coronavirus Was Not Caused by 'Bat Soup'". Meanwhile, Business Insider writes "
Experts think the Wuhan coronavirus jumped from bats to snakes to people. Bats have been the source of at least 4 pandemics."
So considering that Peng Zhou, who currently works at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,
is the Leader of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group at the Institute, the question certainly is a reasonable one and, in a normal world, would demand an answer from the established media (assuming it wasn't afraid of risking lucrative Chinese funding ) instead of leaving it to "fringe" websites.
The impetus to ask the question if the disease originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is especially poignant in light of social media reports
such as this one which claims to "
have evidence here that the outbreak originated from Wuhan P4 Research Institute. You need to find a truly patriotic journalist to publish it to the public. You can personally trust me to provide a complete chain of evidence. Thank you."
我这边有证据表明这次疫情来源于武汉p4研究所，需要找真正热血爱国的记者将其公布给民众，可以私信我提供完整证据链，谢谢
— 中华一番 (@BD6Fs6zVVAK4z6F)
January 30, 2020
So did we have a right to ask the question if there is an alternative version for the emergence of the Coronavirus pandemic, especially with hundreds if not thousands of lives at stake?
Absolutely.
Meanwhile, those who wonder if Dr. Zhou has any link to the possible emergence of the Coronavirus following years of experimenting with bats, we urge you to read
our full article instead of relying on the hearsay of ideologically biased journalists.
Second, and contrary to the claims presented by Buzzfeed, we did not release any "
personal information": Peng Zhou (周鹏) is a public figure, and all the contact information that we presented was pulled from his
publicly posted bio found on a website at the Wuhan Institute of Virology which anyone with access to the internet can pull from the following URL:
http://sourcedb.whiov.cas.cn/zw/rck/201705/t20170505_4783973.html, which is also the information we used.
More at:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/zerohedge-suspended-twitter
