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How The Trump Administration Inserts ‘Blame China’ Propaganda Into Main Stream Media
Throughout the last month there have been a number of reports with headlines like:
All the above and many more hark back to a Washington Post opinion piece by Josh Rogin published on April 14 and headlined:
State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses.
Josh Rogin is a neo-conservative hack who carries water for the Trump administration. That administration has launched a 'blame China' campaign to distract from its failure to contain the epidemic outbreak in the United States. To that purpose they handed Rogin an old diplomatic cable and told him how to 'interpret' it. Rogin dutifully does as he is told.
He begins:
Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.
That sets the frame for describing the one cable that was given to Rogin. But when one extracts the facts from his reporting while eliminating the propaganda this picture arises:
- The Wuhan Institute of Virology has a level 4 bio-security laboratory.
- The institute is known for research on coronaviruses that occur in bats from south China.
- Some of the research was done in collaboration with two U.S. universities and financed by the U.S. government.
- The laboratory had asked to receive additional U.S. support for further studies.
- The January 2018 the U.S. embassy in China sends two diplomats to visit the laboratory. Neither of them is an expert for laboratory safety or virology.
- The diplomats are told that research on bat derived coronaviruses is important as such viruses, like SARS, can threaten humans.
- They are told by the Chinese researchers that more work could be done if the laboratory had more trained technicians.
- The diplomats travel back to their embassy. They write a cable using the researchers' arguments to recommend that additional U.S. support should be granted to the laboratory.
- No additional funds are granted.
When described as above the story is one that occurs in publicly financed research institutions day in and out. Everyone research institution is always looking for new grants. It communicates with possible grant givers and emphasizes the necessity of its research and the need for further support.
But Rogin constructs a rather wild picture from those facts:
What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists.
A real warning about safety issues at the lab would certainly be classified. What Rogin describes as "warning about safety" is a warning of a new SARS like pandemic. The "management weakness" is the desire to get the U.S. to finance more personnel at the laboratory. Rogin admits as much in his next paragraph:
The Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The cables argued that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further support, mainly because its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous.
Rogin then introduces an additional scare factor by lamenting about 'gain of function' research on viruses. Such research attempts to manipulate viruses to give them additional features. He is trying to associate the Wuhan lab with such type of research:
As the cable noted, the U.S. visitors met with Shi Zhengli, the head of the research project, who had been publishing studies related to bat coronaviruses for many years. In November 2017, just before the U.S. officials’ visit, Shi’s team had published research showing that horseshoe bats they had collected from a cave in Yunnan province were very likely from the same bat population that spawned the SARS coronavirus in 2003.
…
The research was designed to prevent the next SARS-like pandemic by anticipating how it might emerge. But even in 2015, other scientists questioned whether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks. In October 2014, the U.S. government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments.
The link Rogin provides goes to a Nature piece on a debate about a certain 'gain of function' research. The research in question was experiments at University of North Carolina, not in Wuhan. The paper describing that research, A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence, was written by Professor Ralph S. Baric who had also designed the experiment. The paper lists a total of fifteen collaborators. One of the listed authors is indeed Zhengli-Li Shi who leads the laboratory in Wuhan.
But neither Zhengli-Li Shi, nor her laboratory, were actually involved in any of the experiments. At the and of the research paper the contributions of each co-author are listed. About Zhengli-Li Shi it says:
Z.-L.S. provided SHC014 spike sequences and plasmids.
The Wuhan laboratory only provided specific gene sequences from its pool of bat viruses, the laboratory's and Zhengi-Li Shi's specialty, that the researchers in North Carolina wanted to use in their experiment.
To construe that furnisher function as involvement in 'gain of function' experiments is a unjustified exaggeration. I have found no evidence that the Wuhan lab itself ever engaged in such research.
Rogin concludes his scare piece by handing the microphone to the demagogue in the White House that is his source:
Inside the Trump administration, many national security officials have long suspected either the WIV or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab was the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak. According to the New York Times, the intelligence community has provided no evidence to confirm this. But one senior administration official told me that the cables provide one more piece of evidence to support the possibility that the pandemic is the result of a lab accident in Wuhan.
“The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on the other side,” the official said.
Manipulated interpretations of diplomatic cables and evidence-free claims about allegedly existing evidence were also used in warmongering campaigns about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and chemical attacks in Syria. The neo-conservatives are now using the same old tricks against China.
The media echo shows that they have some success with this.
BM @100–
I rarely write this–Obama was the culmination of the CIA’s plans for complete control of all phases on the Executive, even more so than when DCI GHW Bush was in charge for 12 years, followed by another of their moles Clinton, then absolute puppet, GW Bush and minder Cheney. Trump’s threat to drain the swamp resonated with many; and that along with other economic reasons allowed him to win despite all the rigging. But where does he visit first after his inauguration–CIA HQ–the enemy’s den. Much remains hidden. But would Trump have a Do Nothing Policy if he thought COVID-19 would threaten his reelection? And he continues to make big mistakes. I don’t believe anyone forced Trump to say the pandemic was a “hoax”; I see him sabotaging himself. Or was he told the virus posed no threat by someone he trusted more than anyone and thus his policy and behavior? (The policy was clearly in place at the beginning of 2020 based on Rick Bright’s whistleblowing testimony.) Recall my initial hypothesis saying China’s crying Wolf put a spanner into the works; now look at the offensive aimed at China with Russia being added for good measure since the two have said they’ll now deal with the Outlaw US Empire as a team. There’re many threads to untangle and recent history to reexamine as we try to get at the Truth. I know many hold that the virus is natural; but what if some bright microbiologist developed a procedure that masked any such meddling, and thus the virus is manufactured for use as a bioweapon? IMO, that possibility can’t be ruled out given all the other facts and behaviors known and observed. If we now had Clinton instead of Trump, would we have COVID-19?
Posted by: karlof1 | May 14 2020 17:45 utc | 102
I totally agree Obama was the peak of CIA’s plans for complete control of all phases on the Executive, nothing could be more clear (though the order of the hierarchy “woke” oligarchs – Obama/CIA – executive could be argued both ways. But in terms of looking beyond Obama the structure was without question a Mafia-CIA-based structure rather than a president-based structure, with the intention that the CIA and their oligarch/mafia leaders select future presidents on a permanent basis. No wonder the cabal were so desperate to block Trump, both because so much was at stake but especially out of fear of hanging for treason. Every single one of the cabal from top to bottom had very serious crimes to protect themselves from.
Obviously if Trump thought his ignoring Covid-19 policy was an election loser from the start he would have done otherwise. He misjudged, and pays the price. Most probably yes, he trusted someone’s bad opinion too much, yes, that could very well be Jared, and yes, that was very probably influenced by CIA biological warfare activities, although I am slightly more inclined to assume he was not privy until later. Rick Bright’s whistleblowing does show a definite policy, but that was fairly clear anyway at the time. The testing policy was also fairly clear at that time – delay all test availability as long as possible, make sure Covid carriers enter the USA without testing, without tracing, and without quarantining, and make sure that a good strong infection is thoroughly started. That much, I think, is clear. The reasons are not, and may also vary according to agent. Two possibilities seem to present themselves: (a) because they thought the infection was trivial, just like a flu (my preferred view in Trump’s case – simply because I don’t think it is likely he was privy to what was really going on); (b) because – like 911 – they salivated at using the opportunity of a severe lockdown to completely (and permanently) finish off what they started with 911, to achieve full and irrevocable Big Brother control. For this, it would be necessary that the infection first widely spread and take thorough hold, thus it agrees well with the observed behaviour. (Actually, I think the first main stage was not 911 but its precursor, the Omagh massacre in the UK in 1998, which used similar psychology to achieve similar but more limited legal results. These two events together were clearly planned as initiating the final takedown of the (sham) “Democracy” show. 911 was, I suspect, intended to take place as a turn of the Millenium event, but one of the prime “bombers” was accidentally arrested by overzealous and unknowing Canadians while trying to cross the border. I was expecting such a Millenium “event” at the time. The Omagh massacre had many features in common with 911, including the active participation of MI5 through infiltrators, advance preparation of the “emergency” security laws, and a common psychological basis etc.)
I also agree with you about China crying wolf putting a spanner in the works. Here there are two possibilities:
(a) the virus was meant to be much more serious, but, as I commented once, was like a missile that fizzelled out on impact instead of exploding – the Chinese stated that there were two initial strains in Wuhan T and S, T was initially far more common and far more serious, but within a week type S quickly took over and T became very rare. The virus had mutated to become less fatal, although it was still highly transmissible and still had the crucial two stages of infection. According to this scenario, the implanted T-strain (i.e. without the unplanned mutation to the S-strain) was expected to overwhelm China’s ability to control it, breaking their economy and permanently cutting off their rise to preeminence. The two-stage infection plus large degree of asymptomacy was to ensure* that the infection could widely spread despite the high mortality amongst the sick and elderly. *It could be it was nevertheless not as infectious as intended and was slower to take off than expected – hence the anxious US forecasts of rapidly spreading infections in November; perhaps there may also have been other simultaneous infections that completely failed to spread – I read there was one isolated case somewhere else in China that seemed to be a different strain. Also what appear to be early infections in the US suspected to have leaked from Fort Detrick did not seem to spread so quickly or effectively.
(b) The second scenario is that it was never expected by the US to be a particularly serious disease, much like a bad flu, but enough to cause an expensive and damaging disruption to China. By appearing to be much like a bad flu, and being related to bat viruses, the US hoped for plausible deniability. So some extent scenarios (a) and (b) converge, in that the US elite are happy to laugh off a disease that primarily kills off the elderly, the sick and the poor.
So why did the Chinese react so strongly? Were they crying Wolf? Both yes and no, I think. Firstly they did not know the characteristics of Covid initially, so they had to assume the worst. Secondly the elderly, sick and poor are very important to China, unlike the US. Thirdly I believe they knew or suspected from an early stage that this was a biological attack; psychologically that is intrinsically different to a natural attack and infinitely more threatening, even in a hypothetical case of a very mild attack – it is unnatural, man-made, evil, immoral … and it is outright warfare. Fourthly as a novel and unstable man-made virus (or also otherwise!) it can and will mutate at any time, and such mutation may be either more or less potent. Fifthly, in view of the two stages of infection observed in this previously unknown disease, what if the diseases hides other nasty surprises such as a later third stage? For example, what if the initially mild cases initially recover, then later suddenly recur and become fatal. Such questions cannot be known by the Chinese until the virus has been studied thoroughly over an extended period of time.
Thus, without question, China had highly compelling reasons to react strongly. The fact that the virus is (in my view at least) man-made is good reason to try their very best to try to eliminate it totally from the planet. Such a Frankenstein should not be allowed to exist.
But in addition to such compelling reasons for reacting in the strong way they did, it was also an excellent and absolutely vital way to test their epidemic preparedness as a practice for when the US – almost inevitably – release a far more deadly biological attack on China. WOW! What a perfect opportunity to test their meticulously planned protocols with a real live virus, but one which is not so deadly as SARS-1 or Ebola, for example. One day the US may release a virus more deadly than Ebola and more infectious than Covid-19. The “practice live drill” China has carried out nationwide has almost certainly saved many thousands of lives – perhaps many millions of lives – that would otherwise have been lost in a subsequent US attack without the important lessons from Covid-19.
China has experienced so many epidemics in the last decade affecting both citizens and livestock and even crops, and whilst nothing can be proven, the coincidences are certainly suggestive. Combined with the proven history of US use of biological and chemical warfare, their known takeover of Japanese Unit 731 – both of which have previously used biological warfare against China, their known takeover of Nazi biological weapons experts, their known extensive research into offensive biological weapons, and their known extensive strings of offensive biological weapons laboratories circling Russia and China, the threat to China is of utmost importance and priority. The response in China must of necessity be a response of full military-level defence against biological warfare – i.e. at life-or-death level – even if the virus (in its current form) might be relatively less dangerous to the extent that Trump and Boris Johnson consider it a laughing matter, even in their own countries.
In this latter sense China might be viewed as crying “Wolf” relative to the expectations of the US and the UK. But at the same time I am sure they were well aware that by almost totally eradicating the virus from China after the US and UK tried to ridicule their efforts, they seriously put a strategic spanner in the works for the US and the UK, creating a serious dilemma for them. The plan was that the virus would somewhat ravage China without being effectively contained, but remain largely within Asia. If it then also spread to the US and UK, well they place no value on the elderly, infirm or poor, so politically they think they can just ignore it, “take it on the chin”. The problem (for US/UK) comes when China takes it so seriously and goes to such extreme lengths to eradicate it, that sends a firm message to citizens of the West that completely pulls the rug from under them and invalidates their entire strategy. Finally they are forced to switch to the opposite extreme – completely unprepared – and force savage and illogical lockdowns that are really more suicide pacts because the damage to the health of those so brutally locked down is far worse than that due to the virus itself (well, there is disagreement on this at MoA but the overall argument remains).
End result – China pulls out quickly and its economy recovers quickly, it is able to restore production quickly, hence it can quickly and profitably produce what is urgently needed in the paralysed West, and it gains in long-term prestige, stability and wealth. Win-win is the hands-down winner, zero-sum loses all.
As for “what if some bright microbiologist developed a procedure that masked any such meddling“, well, that has surely been done already! Namely, selecting specifically for mutations in the desired changes, and running successive generations of virus repeatedly through successive crops of animal hosts until the desired phenotypes are manifested. It is a sort of human-guided selection. It is far faster than natural selection in the wild, and much harder to prove as “man-made” than direct genetic engineering. If I remember correctly, the detailed comments by Oldmicrobiologist at Saker/Unz describe such an approach and hints that it may have been adopted here (from memory though, it may have been somewhere else).
(Sorry this was rather long!)
Posted by: BM | May 15 2020 12:37 utc | 123
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