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Tanks and Think Tanks: How Taiwanese Cash is Funding the Push to War with China

By Alan Macleod | MintPress News | May 22, 2021

TAIPEI — At MintPress, we have been at the forefront of exposing how Middle Eastern dictatorships and weapons contractors have been funneling money into think tanks and political action committees, keeping up a steady drumbeat for more war and conflict around the world. Yet one little-discussed nation that punches well above its weight in spending cash in Washington is Taiwan.

By studying Taiwan’s financial reports, MintPress has ascertained that the semi-autonomous island of 23 million people has, in recent years, given out millions of dollars to many of the largest and most influential think tanks in the United States. This has coincided with a strong upsurge in anti-China rhetoric in Washington, with report after report warning of China’s economic rise and demanding that the U.S. intervene more in China-Taiwan disputes.

These think tanks are filled with prominent figures from both parties and have the ears of the most powerful politicians in Washington. It is in their offices that specialists draw up papers and incubate ideas that become tomorrow’s policies. They also churn out experts who appear in agenda-setting media, helping to shape and control the public debate on political and economic issues.

Twenty years ago, a group of neoconservative think tanks like the Project for a New American Century, funded by foreign governments and weapons manufacturers, used their power to push for disastrous wars in the Middle East. Now, a new set of think tanks, staffed with many of those same experts who provided the intellectual basis for those invasions, is working hard to convince Americans that there is a new existential threat: China.

A fistful of dollars

In 2019, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States (TECRO) — for all intents and purposes, the Taiwanese embassy — donated between $250,000 and $499,999 to the Brookings Institute, commonly identified as the world’s most influential think tank. Taiwanese tech companies have also given large sums to the organization. In turn, Brookings Institute staff like Richard C. Bush (a former member of the National Intelligence Council and a U.S. national intelligence officer for East Asia) vociferously champion the cause of Taiwanese nationalists and routinely condemn Beijing’s attempts to bring the island more closely under control.

TECRO featured prominently among myriad defense interests on the donor rolls for both the Atlantic Council, left, and Brookings Institute

Last week, Brookings held an event called “Taiwan’s quest for security and the good life,” which began with the statement that “Taiwan is rightly praised for its democracy. Elections are free, fair, and competitive; civil and political rights are protected.” It went on to warn that the “most consequential” challenge to the island’s liberty and prosperity is “China’s ambition to end Taiwan’s separate existence.”

According to another organization’s latest financial disclosure, TECRO also gave a six-figure sum to the Atlantic Council, a think tank closely associated with NATO. It is unclear what the Atlantic Council did with that money, but what is certain is that they gave a senior fellowship to Chang-Ching Tu, an academic employed by the Taiwanese military to teach at the country’s National Defense University. In turn, Tu authored Atlantic Council reports describing his country as a “champion [of] global democracy,” and stating that “democracy, freedom and human rights are Taiwan’s core values.” A menacing China, however, is increasing its military threats, so Taiwan must “accelerate its deterrence forces and strengthen its self-defense capabilities.” Thus he advises that the U.S. must work far more closely with Taiwan’s military, conducting joint exercises and moving towards a more formal military alliance. In 2020, the U.S. sold $5.9 billion worth of arms to the island, making it the fifth-largest recipient of American weaponry last year.

Other Taiwan-employed academics have chided the West on the pages of the Council’s website for its insufficient zeal in “deter[ring] Chinese aggression” against the island. “A decision by the United States to back down” — wrote Philip Anstrén, a Swedish recipient of a fellowship from the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs — “could damage the credibility of U.S. defense guarantees and signal that Washington’s will to defend its allies is weak.” Anstrén also insisted that “Europe’s future is on the line in the Taiwan Strait.” “Western democratic nations have moral obligations vis-à-vis Taiwan,” he added on his blog, “and Western democracies have a duty to ensure that [Taiwan] not only survives but also thrives.”

The reason this is important is that the Atlantic Council is an enormously influential think tank. Its board of directors is a who’s-who in foreign policy statecraft, featuring no fewer than seven former CIA directors. Also on the board are many of the architects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and James Baker. When organizations like this begin beating the war drums, everybody should take note.

Perhaps the most strongly anti-Beijing think tank in Washington is the conservative Hudson Institute, an organization frequented by many of the Republican Party’s most influential figures, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice-President Mike Pence and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. The words “China” or “Chinese” appear 137 times in Hudson’s latest annual report, so focused on the Asian nation are they. Indeed, reading their output, it often appears they care about little else but ramping up tensions with Beijing, condemning it for its treatment of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Uyghur Muslims, and warning of the economic and military threat of a rising China.

Over the years, Hudson’s efforts have been sustained by huge donations from TECRO. The Hudson Institute does not disclose the exact donations any sources give, but their annual reports show that TECRO has been on the highest tier of donors ($100,000+) every year since they began divulging their sponsors in 2015. In February, Hudson Senior Fellow Thomas J. Duesterberg wrote an op-ed for Forbes entitled “The Economic Case for Prioritizing a U.S.-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement,” in which he extolled Taiwan’s economy as modern and dynamic and portrayed securing closer economic ties with it as a no-brainer. Hudson employees have also traveled to Taiwan to meet and hold events with leading foreign ministry officials there.

The Hudson Institute also recently partnered with the more liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) to host an event with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who took the opportunity to make a great number of inflammatory statements about the “ever more challenging threats to free and democratic societies” China poses; applaud the U.S.’ actions on Hong Kong; and talk about how Taiwan honors and celebrates those who died at the Tiananmen Square massacre. TECRO gave the CAP between $50,000 and $100,000 last year.

It is the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), however, that appears to receive the most Taiwanese money. According to its donor list, Taiwan gives as much money to it as the United States does — at least $500,000 last year alone. Yet all of the Taiwanese government money is put into CSIS’s regional studies (i.e., Asia) program. Like Hudson employees, the CSIS calls for a free trade agreement with Taiwan and has lavished praise on the nation for its approach to tackling disinformation, describing it as a “thriving democracy and a cultural powerhouse.” Although acknowledging that the reports were paid for by TECRO, CSIS insists that “all opinions expressed herein should be understood to be solely those of the authors and are not influenced in any way by any donation.” In December, the CSIS also held a debate suggesting that “[w]ithin the next five years, China will use significant military force against a country on its periphery,” exploring what the U.S. response to such an action should be.

Like the Atlantic Council, the CSIS organization is stacked with senior officials from the national security state. Its president and CEO is former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre, while Henry Kissinger — former secretary of state and the architect of the Vietnam War — also serves on its council.

The CSIS accepts money from the Global Taiwan Institute and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) as well. The former is a rather shadowy pro-Taiwanese group that appears not to disclose its funding sources. The latter is a government-funded organization headed by former Taiwanese President You Si-kun. Every year, the TFD publishes a human rights report on China, the latest of which claims that “the Chinese Communist Party knows no bounds when it comes to committing serious human rights violations” — accusing it of “taking the initiative” in “promoting a new Cold War over the issue of human rights” and trying to “replace the universal standing of human rights values around the world.” Ultimately, the report concludes, China “constitutes a major challenge to democracy and freedom in the world.”

The TFD has also been a major funder of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a far-right pressure group that insists that Communism has killed over 100 million people worldwide. Last year, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation added all global COVID-19 fatalities to the list of Communist-caused deaths on the basis that the virus started in China. The Foundation also employs Adrian Zenz, a German evangelical theologian who is the unlikely source of many of the most controversial and contested claims about Chinese repression in Xinjiang province.

In the past 12 months, TECRO has also donated six-figure sums to many other prominent think tanks, including the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Center for a New American Security, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. MintPress reached out to a number of these think tanks for comment but has not received any response.

“It would be naive to believe that Taiwan’s funding of think tanks is not pushing them to take pro-Taiwan or anti-China positions,” Ben Freeman, the director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, told MintPress, adding:

After all, why would Taiwan keep funding think tanks that are critical of Taiwan? There’s a Darwinian element to foreign funding of think tanks that pushes foreign government funding to think tanks that write what that foreign government wants them to write. Taiwan is no exception to this rule.”

TECRO is not just sponsoring American think tanks, however. It has also given funds to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a hawkish and controversial group described as “the think tank behind Australia’s changing view of China.” The country’s former ambassador in Beijing described ASPI as “the architect of the China threat theory in Australia” while Senator Kim Carr of Victoria denounced them as working hand-in-hand with Washington to push “a new Cold War with China.” ASPI was behind Twitter’s decision last year to purge more than 170,000 accounts sympathetic to Beijing from its platform.

“We must be ready to fight our corner as Taiwan tensions rise,” ASPI wrote in January, having previously castigated the West for being “no longer willing to defend Taiwan.”

ASPI — like Brookings, the Atlantic Council and others — are directly funded by weapons manufacturers, all of whom also have a direct interest in promoting more wars around the world. Thus, if the public is not careful, certain special interests might be helping move the United States towards yet another international conflict.

While the situation outlined above is concerning enough, the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative’s research has shown that around one-third of think tanks still do not provide any information whatsoever about their funding, and very few are completely open about their finances. Freeman maintains that, while there is nothing inherently wrong with foreign governments funding Western think tanks, the lack of transparency is seriously problematic, explaining:

This raises a lot of questions about the work they’re doing. Are their secret funders saying what the think tank can do in a pay-for-play scheme? Are the funders buying the think tanks silence on sensitive issues? Without knowing the think tank’s funders, policymakers and the public have no idea if the think tank’s work is objective research or simply the talking points of a foreign government.”

Freeman’s study of the Taiwanese lobby found that seven organizations registered as Taiwan’s foreign agents in the U.S. Those organizations, in turn, contacted 476 Members of Congress (including almost 90% of the House), as well as five congressional committees. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was their most frequent contact, the Californian being contacted 34 times by Taiwanese agents. Pelosi has been a great supporter of Taiwanese nationalists, successfully promoting pro-Taiwan legislation and proudly announcing that the U.S. “stands with Taiwan.”

Foreign agents working on behalf of Taiwan also made 143 political contributions to U.S. politicians, with former Alabama Senator Doug Jones the lead recipient (Pelosi was third).

Losing China, regaining Taiwan?

The reports listed above understand the dispute as purely a matter of Chinese belligerence against Taiwan and certainly do not consider U.S. military actions in the South China Sea as aggressive in themselves. That is because the world of think tanks and war planners sees the United States as owning the planet and having a remit to act anywhere on the globe at any time.

To this day, U.S. planners bemoan the “loss of China” in 1949 (a phrase that presupposes the United States owned the country). After a long and bloody Second World War, Communist resistance forces under Mao Tse-tung managed to both expel the Japanese occupation and overcome the U.S.-backed Kuomintang (nationalist) force led by Chang Kai-shek. The United States actually invaded China in 1945, with 50,000 troops working with the Kuomintang and even Japanese forces in an attempt to suppress the Communists. However, by 1949, Mao’s army was victorious; the United States evacuated and Chang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan.

The Kuomintang ruled the island for 40 years as a one-party state and remains one of the two major political groups to this day. The war between the Communists and the Kuomintang never formally ended, and Taiwan has now lived through 70 years of estrangement from the mainland. Polls show a majority of Taiwanese now favor full independence, although a large majority still personally identify as Chinese.

While many Taiwanese welcome an increased U.S. presence in the region, Beijing certainly does not. In 2012, President Barack Obama announced the U.S.’ new “Pivot to Asia” strategy, moving forces from the Middle East towards China. Today, over 400 American military bases encircle it.

In recent months, the United States has also taken a number of provocative military actions on China’s doorstep. In July, it conducted naval exercises in the South China Sea, with warships and naval aircraft spotted just 41 nautical miles from the coastal megacity of Shanghai, intent on probing China’s coastal defenses. And in December, it flew nuclear bombers over Chinese vessels close to Hainan Island. Earlier this year, the head of Strategic Command made his intentions clear, stating that there was a “very real possibility” of war against China over a regional conflict like Taiwan. China, for its part, has also increased its forces in the region, carrying out military exercises and staking claims to a number of disputed islands.

A new Director of National Intelligence (DNI) report notes that China is the U.S.’ “unparalleled priority,” claiming that Beijing is making a “push for global power.” “We expect that friction will grow as Beijing steps up attempts to portray Taipei as internationally isolated and dependent on the mainland for economic prosperity, and as China continues to increase military activity around the island,” it concludes.

In an effort to stop this, Washington has recruited allies into the conflict. Australian media are reporting that their military is currently readying for war in an effort to force China to back down, while last week President Joe Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to shore up a united front against Beijing vis-a-vis Taiwan.

In February, the Atlantic Council penned an anonymous 26,000-word report advising Biden to draw a number of red lines around China, beyond which a response — presumably military — is necessary. These included any military action or even a cyber attack against Taiwan. Any backing down from this stance, the council states, would result in national “humiliation” for the United States.

Perhaps most notably, however, the report also envisages what a successful American China policy would look like by 2050:

[T]he United States and its major allies continue to dominate the regional and global balance of power across all the major indices of power;… [and head of state Xi Jinping] has been replaced by a more moderate party leadership; and … the Chinese people themselves have come to question and challenge the Communist Party’s century-long proposition that China’s ancient civilization is forever destined to an authoritarian future.”

In other words, that China has been broken and that some sort of regime change has occurred.

Throughout all this, the United States has been careful to stress that it still does not recognize Taiwan and that their relationship is entirely “unofficial,” despite claiming that its commitment to the island remains “rock solid.” Indeed, only 14 countries formally recognize Taiwan, the largest and most powerful of which is Paraguay.

Along with a military conflict brewing, Washington has also been prosecuting an information and trade war against China on the world stage. Attempts to block the rise of major Chinese companies like Huawei, TikTok and Xiaomi are examples of this. Others in Washington have advised the Pentagon to carry out an under-the-table culture war against Beijing. This would include commissioning “Taiwanese Tom Clancy” novels that would “weaponize” China’s one-child policy against it, bombarding citizens with stories about how their only children will die in a war over Taiwan.

Republicans and Democrats constantly accuse each other of being in President Xi’s pocket, attempting to outdo each other in their jingoistic fervor. Last year, Florida Senator Rick Scott went so far as to announce that every Chinese national in the U.S. was a Communist spy and should be treated with extreme suspicion. As a result, the American public’s view of China has crashed to an all-time low. Only three years ago, the majority of Americans held a positive opinion of China. But today, that number is only 20%. Asian-Americans of all backgrounds have reported a rise in hate crimes against them.

Cash rules everything around me

How much of the United States’ aggressive stance towards China can be attributed to Taiwanese money influencing politics? It is difficult to say. Certainly, the United States has its own policy goals in East Asia outside of Taiwan. But Freeman believes that the answer is not zero. The Taiwan lobby “absolutely has an impact on U.S. foreign policy,” he said, adding:

At one level, it creates an echo-chamber in D.C. that makes it taboo to question U.S. military ties with Taiwan. While I, personally, think there are good strategic reasons for the U.S. to support this democratic ally — and it’s clearly in Taiwan’s interest to keep the U.S. fully entangled in their security — it’s troubling that the D.C. policy community can’t have an honest conversation about what U.S. interests are. But, Taiwan’s lobby in D.C. and their funding of think tanks both work to stifle this conversation and, frankly, they’ve been highly effective.”

Other national lobbies affect U.S. policy. The Cuban lobby helps ensure that the American stance towards its southern neighbor remains as antagonistic as possible. Meanwhile, the Israel lobby helps ensure continuing U.S. support for Israeli actions in the Middle East. Yet more ominously with Taiwan, its representatives are helping push the U.S. closer towards a confrontation with a nuclear power.

While Taiwanese money appears to have convinced many in Washington, it is doubtful that ordinary Americans will be willing to risk a war over an island barely larger than Hawaii, only 80 miles off the coast of mainland China.

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

May 28, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

No going back to Open Skies, US tells Russia ahead of Biden-Putin summit

RT | May 27, 2021

The US State Department has communicated to Moscow that the Biden administration has no intention of rejoining the Open Skies treaty, which was one of the topics expected to come up at the Geneva summit in June.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman sent the message to her Russian counterpart Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Thursday, AP reported, citing US officials speaking on condition of anonymity. Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed receiving the message.

It was a rare case of President Joe Biden not reversing a decision made by his predecessor Donald Trump, who had taken the US out of the treaty in May 2020.

The US officially left the treaty in November, but when Biden came to power he ordered a review of the decision, holding out the possibility that Washington might rejoin. The subject was expected to come up at the June 16 meeting between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.

Earlier in the day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had told reporters that time to salvage the arms control agreement was running out fast.

“This topic can surely be touched upon somehow, but time is running out fast. We are already carrying out procedures for leaving the treaty, and the US has little time to change its previous decisions,” Peskov said.

Last month, Moscow announced it would begin the procedure of withdrawing from the treaty, concerned that the US has continued to receive intelligence through overflights conducted by other NATO members still party to it.

With the US definitely out, further presence of Russia in Open Skies no longer makes sense, Russian Senator Andrey Klimov – who sits on the foreign relations committee – told RIA Novosti following the announcement from Washington.

The Open Skies treaty was intended to build trust between Russia and the West following the Cold War. Signed in 1992 and going into effect in 2002, it allowed signatories to openly fly unarmed surveillance planes over the territory of other participants. More than 1,500 such flights have taken place since.

May 27, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russia Laments Washington’s Failure to Strictly Adhere to New START Treaty Provisions

By Henry Batyaev – Sputnik – 26.05.2021

Russia is calling on the United States to keep their end of the bargain with respect to the New START Treaty after Moscow found that the United States had converted some of its strategic offensive arms, making it impossible to verify whether they can be now used to carry nuclear weapons.

The representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said on Wednesday that Moscow will continue to demand that Washington comply with the terms of the treaty.

She added that Moscow is closely monitoring US efforts to modernise its strategic offensive arms, including through the increase of funding.

According to the New START Treaty, the sides must notify each other on the elimination of treaty‑accountable systems or conversion to non‑nuclear or non‑accountable status.

In February, Russia and the United States agreed to extend the New START treaty for five more years without renegotiating any of its terms. The treaty, now set to expire on February 5, 2026, is the only arms control agreement between two countries that is still in force.

May 27, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Pakistan rejects US request for military bases

By Javed Rana | Press TV | May 27, 2021

Islamabad – As the US is negotiating with countries in Central and South Asia to set up its military bases in the region to carry out possible airstrikes on Afghanistan after later this year withdrawal from the country, Pakistan says it won’t ink any similar agreement with the US once again.

The US is fast pulling out its troops from Afghanistan under a peace deal with Afghan Taliban. However, before completing its withdrawal by September 11 this year, Washington is desperately negotiating with regional countries in Central and South Asia to set up military bases to retain its political clout in this part of the world.

The US used Pakistan’s military bases for years to carry out over 57,000 sorties on Afghanistan which killed tens of thousands of Afghan civilians. Similarly as many as 4,000 Pakistani civilians were killed in the bordering region with Afghanistan in US drone attacks most of which were carried out from the secret southern locations of Pakistan.

Not long ago, under public pressure Pakistan shut down the US military bases. Now the US is once again struggling hard to be allowed to have military bases in this part of the world.

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government, which won the 2018 general elections partially exploiting anti-American sentiments, has vowed not to allow the US to have military bases again in Pakistan.

Earlier the Foreign Office denied the presence of any US military or air base in Pakistan, stating that any speculation is “baseless and irresponsible” and should be avoided.

If nothing works, the Pentagon says it can use its aircraft carriers already stationed in the West Asia and Persian Gulf to carry out any possible airstrike on Afghanistan in future.

Despite shutting down the US military bases in Pakistan, the Pentagon continues to use air corridors of Pakistan to support its shrinking military presence in Afghanistan. And Pakistan has yet to clarify on whether or not it would allow the US to retain its air space facility for any possible airstrike in Afghanistan after the US completely exits from Afghanistan later this year.

May 27, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Dr. Fauci’s Entire Career and Reputation Now Hinge On This One Video…

revolver | May 10, 2021

If you were online last year around this time, your social media timeline was likely flooded with an endless stream of stories and memes featuring bats.

The coronavirus was just gaining steam back in January of 2020 and rumors were swirling that the virus started because Chinese people ate “bat soup.”

While most of the bat-themed stories and memes were outlandish, the Worldwide Health Organization (WHO) did admit that Covid-19 and bats are most likely ancestrally linked. However, that’s where they say the connection ends. WHO still claims the origins of Covid-19 remain a mystery.

Until now…

A bombshell investigative report from Fox News host Steve Hilton has shed all-new light on the origins of Covid-19, and according to the report, it has nothing to do with bat soup and everything to do with Dr. Fauci and ferrets.

Yes, ferrets.

Ferrets are those adorable-looking furry little weasels that many Americans keep as pets… and Dr. Fauci is that annoying little weasel Americans can’t get rid of.

And when these two weasels finally came together inside a research lab in Wuhan, China, something unthinkable occurred — a deadly and destructive pandemic was created and unleashed upon the world.

That’s what Steve Hilton is claiming in his new investigation into the origin of the Coronavirus pandemic.

However, the story of Covid-19 doesn’t start in Wuhan, China. It actually began about ten years ago in a Netherlands research lab.

An innovative epidemiological study took place at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands. Researchers were looking to discover different ways respiratory viruses reacted in humans. Scientists used ferrets in their study because ferrets have similar pulmonary structures to humans, with well-developed respiratory bronchioles and submucosal glands.

Specifically, researchers wanted to know if a non-airborne virus could be mutated in order to become a contagious airborne disease.

So, in order to find this out, researchers injected the ferrets with a flu virus and after a series of tests, they discovered that yes, non-airborne viruses could be manipulated to become much stronger and spread via respiratory droplets.

The findings were groundbreaking and this study paved the way for an entirely new type of scientific genomics research called “gain-of-function.”

The point of gain-of-function research was to replicate in a lab what had been done with the ferrets in the Netherlands — to take a virus and manipulate and mutate it to make it “stronger” in order to see if it will “gain new function.”

On the surface, it sounds a bit ghoulish and almost “Frankenstein-like,” but imagine the advances medical research could make in the field of virus testing and vaccines simply by recreating these viruses in a lab.

Gain-of-function research was based on the philosophy, “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

However, when you keep your enemies that close, you run the risk of getting burned.

Creating these ungodly strong and highly contagious viruses for research purposes could lead to an accidental or nefarious catastrophe of epic proportions.

But even so, and despite the danger, many in the scientific community believed the potential for progress outweighed the tremendous risks involved.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was one of those people.

The gain-of-function research quickly spread to labs all over the world and the money was flowing in from all corners of the globe, including the United States.

According to a Newsweek piece written in 2019, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Fauci-led National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), committed $3.7 million dollars to research bats and coronaviruses in China over a six-year period.

It’s worth noting that in the Newsweek piece US intelligence backtracked from their earlier claims that the coronavirus outbreak occurred “naturally,” and conceded that the pandemic “might” have started from a leak in the Wuhan lab.

But this new research wasn’t just about bats. It went deeper and darker than that. As a matter of fact, Dr. Fauci was among the first to fund the controversial gain-of-function ferret research in Wuhan, China. Fauci was so committed to the controversial work that back in 2011 he wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post, entitled, “A Flu Virus Risk Worth Taking,” where he vigorously defended gain-of-function research.

But something very interesting took place right before Obama’s moratorium on gain-of-function took effect.

Dr. Fauci had commissioned a study to assess the risk of new coronaviruses emerging from wild animals. Fauci wanted to see what viruses could infect animals and humans. The directive behind the research and written in the project summary was gain-of-function manipulation.

But the Obama admin was getting cold feet about the program.

While many in the scientific community (like Fauci) were very excited by gain-of-function research, the more popular it became, the more scrutiny it received, and significant security issues were being raised. Eventually, the controversy got to be too much and in 2014 the United States pulled the plug.

NPR reported that the Obama administration was concerned about any research that could make the viruses more dangerous, so they wanted to stop and review studies to see if they could make these germs capable of causing more disease or spreading easily through the air.

This is the official US statement on defunding gain-of-function research.

Gain-of-function studies, or research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease, help define the fundamental nature of human-pathogen interactions, thereby enabling assessment of the pandemic potential of emerging infectious agents, informing public health and preparedness efforts, and furthering medical countermeasure development. Gain-of-function studies may entail biosafety and biosecurity risks; therefore, the risks and benefits of gain-of-function research must be evaluated, both in the context of recent U.S. biosafety incidents and to keep pace with new technological developments, in order to determine which types of studies should go forward and under what conditions.

In light of recent concerns regarding biosafety and biosecurity, effective immediately, the U.S. Government (USG) will pause new USG funding for gain-of-function research on influenza, MERS or SARS viruses, as defined below. This research funding pause will be effective until a robust and broad deliberative process is completed that results in the adoption of a new USG gain-of-function research policy 1 . Restrictions on new funding will apply as follows: New USG funding will not be released for gain-of-function research projects that may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route. The research funding pause would not apply to characterization or testing of naturally occurring influenza, MERS, and SARS viruses, unless the tests are reasonably anticipated to increase transmissibility and/or pathogenicity. [PHE.gov]

But Dr. Fauci didn’t stop funding gain-of-function.

That little weasel kept digging…

Fauci kept the research alive by cleverly subcontracting the work out to a New York group called Eco-Health Alliance, led by Zoologist Peter Daszak. Daszak’s claim to fame is discovering the link between bats and SARS.

Fauci paid the three-plus-million dollars to Eco-Health Alliance and the research continued.

But here’s the wildest part…

According to Steve Hilton’s bombshell report, Eco-Health then turned around and subcontracted the gain-of-function portion of Fauci’s research back to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Hilton says the paperwork from Wuhan has a “reference number” attached that leads directly back to the funds Fauci paid to Eco-Health Alliance.

All roads lead back to Wuhan, and Fauci is driving the car.

It’s no secret that Fauci funded the Wuhan lab, there’s been a lot of reporting on his “general funding.” However, Steve Hilton’s bombshell report uncovered gory details about the specific work that was being done which nobody has reported on thus far.

According to the Wuhan paperwork that Mr. Hilton downloaded, the lab collected bat feces from a cave in China and discovered many cases of novel Coronavirus in the samples. Researchers analyzed and sequenced their genetic information, then built new viruses off of those samples and infected human cells with them. That research revealed that their man-made viruses could actually behave exactly like a natural virus.

But it’s what researchers unlocked that is the most terrifying of all.

According to the report, the lab’s creation and research of the virus unlocked a very specific “gateway” into the human body. And even more curious and creepy is that the Covid-19 virus that we’re dealing with today has those exact same gateway characteristics.

Do you believe in coincidences? I don’t…

The Covid-19 virus sticks to cells 10-20 times stronger than the SARS virus did, and this is what makes Covid-19 so incredibly contagious.

Take a look at what happens when Covid enters the body:

Coronavirus enters the body through the nose, mouth, or eyes. Once inside the body, it goes inside healthy cells and uses the machinery in those cells to make more virus particles. When the cell is full of viruses, it breaks open. This causes the cell to die and the virus particles can go on to infect more cells.

The viruses created during the Wuhan research are not exactly the same as the Covid-19 virus we’re dealing with today. However, as Mr. Hilton points out, the research that was done confirmed that Covid-19 could be manufactured in a lab using the same techniques that were developed in Dr. Fauci’s project.

In addition, Fauci’s project continued for another three years.

Today’s Covid virus is different than any other “natural” virus we’ve seen in the past. Natural viruses become more contagious over time as they naturally mutate, but today’s virus already had that feature “built-in” right out of the gate.

The paperwork from Dr. Fauci’s project explains how researchers swapped viruses from bats and other animals in order to make more infectious viruses to study.

And even more curious was what Chinese Virologisst Shi Zhengli said — she explained that the “backbone” of this Covid-19 virus matches other man-made viruses from the Wuhan lab library.

According to Steve Hilton, experts say that Covid-19 looks like two different strains from bats, and another unidentified animal… possibly the ferret again?

The question is this — can something like Covid-19 happen naturally? And if so, why does it look and act so similarly to man-made viruses from just a few years before, many of which are from Dr. Fauci’s personal disease vault?

More coincidences? They’re really piling up now.

I don’t believe in coincidences, but I also don’t know how Covid came to be or how it was unleashed on the world. But I do think that Steve Hilton’s investigation is the most in-depth and compelling that we’ve seen thus far. It definitely puts Fauci in the thick of things in a very precarious way, and it opens the door to a lot more questions.

Personally, I find it very hard to believe that all of this groundbreaking research was going on without Obama’s knowledge. He’s a man that loves to “weaponize” things. That’s what his entire legacy consists of — weaponized IRS, Intel, and media.

Was Dr. Fauci hiding the research from Obama, or were Obama and Dr. Fauci hiding the research from everyone else? And after all of this information we just digested, is it so far-fetched to ask if Dr. Fauci’s project and research were used later for something horribly nefarious in order to regain power?

Or was everything just one big coincidence?

All good questions and the American people deserve answers.

This is the video that outed Dr. Fauci’s gain-of-function research, and right now, everything he’s worked for hinges on whether or not Americans see this video and demand answers. If that happens, Fauci is likely done for.

May 15, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Liz Cheney Lied About Her Role in Spreading the Discredited CIA “Russian Bounty” Story

By Glenn Greenwald | May 14, 2021

In an interview on Tuesday with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) denied that she spread the discredited CIA “Russian bounty” story. That CIA tale, claiming Russia was paying Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was cooked up by the CIA and then published by The New York Times on June 27 of last year, right as former President Trump announced his plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Times story, citing anonymous intelligence officials, was then continually invoked by pro-war Republicans and Democrats — led by Cheney — to justify their blocking of that troop withdrawal. The story was discredited when the U.S. intelligence community admitted last month that it had only “low to moderate confidence” that any of this even happened.

When Baier asked Cheney about her role in spreading this debunked CIA story, Cheney blatantly lied to him, claiming “if you go back and look at what I said — every single thing I said: I said if those stories are true, we need to know why the President and Vice President were not briefed on them.” After Baier pressed her on the fact that she vested this story with credibility, Cheney insisted a second time that she never endorsed the claim but merely spoke conditionally, always using the “if these reports are true” formulation. Watch Cheney deny her role in spreading that story.

Liz Cheney, as she so often does, blatantly lied. That she merely spoke of the Russian bounty story in the conditional — “every single thing I said: I said if those stories are true” — is completely and demonstrably false. Indeed, other than Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), there are few if any members of Congress who did more to spread this Russian bounty story as proven truth, all in order to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. In so doing, she borrowed from a pro-war playbook pioneered by her dad, to whom she owes her career: the former Vice President would leak CIA claims to The New York Times to justify war, then go on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, as he did on September 8, 2002, and cite those New York Times reports as though they were independent confirmation of his views coming from that paper rather than from him:

MR. RUSSERT: What, specifically, has [Saddam] obtained that you believe would enhance his nuclear development program? …..

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Now, in the case of a nuclear weapon, that means either plutonium or highly enriched uranium. And what we’ve seen recently that has raised our level of concern to the current state of unrest, if you will, if I can put it in those terms, is that he now is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium to make the bombs.

MR. RUSSERT: Aluminum tubes.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Specifically aluminum tubes. There’s a story in The New York Times this morning this is — I don’t — and I want to attribute The Times. I don’t want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources, but it’s now public that, in fact, [Saddam] has been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge. And the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium, which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb.

So having CIA stories leak to the press that fuel the pro-war case, then having pro-war politicians cite those to justify their pro-war position, is a Cheney Family speciality.

On July 1, the House Armed Services Committee, of which Rep. Cheney is a member, debated amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, the bill that authorized $740.5 billion in military spending. One of Cheney’s top priorities was to align with the Committee’s pro-war Democrats, funded by weapons manufacturers, to block Trump’s plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2020 and to withdraw roughly 1/3 of the 34,000 U.S. troops in Germany.

To justify her opposition, Cheney — contrary to what she repeatedly insisted to Baier — cited the CIA’s Russian bounty story without skepticism. In a joint statement with Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, that Cheney published on her website on June 27 — the same day that The New York Times published its first story about the CIA tale — Cheney pronounced herself “concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces.” There was nothing conditional about the statement: they were preparing to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and cited this story as proof that “Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan.”

After today’s briefing with senior White House officials, we remain concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces. It has been clear for some time that Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan. We believe it is important to vigorously pursue any information related to Russia or any other country targeting our forces. Congress has no more important obligation than providing for the security of our nation and ensuring our forces have the resources they need.

An even more definitive use of this Russia bounty story came when Cheney held a press conference to explain her opposition to Trump’s plans to withdraw troops. In this statement, she proclaimed that she “remains concerned about Russian activities in Afghanistan.” She then explicitly threatened Russia over the CIA’s “bounty” story, warning them that “any targeting of U.S. forces by Russians, by anyone else, will face a very swift and deadly response.” She then gloated about the U.S. bombing of Russia-linked troops in Syria in 2018 using what she called “overwhelming and lethal force,” and warned that this would happen again if they target U.S. forces in Afghanistan:

Does this sound even remotely like what Cheney claimed to Baier? She denied having played a key role in spreading the Russia bounty story because, as she put it, “every single thing I said, I said: if those stories are true.” She also told him that she never referred to that CIA claim except by saying: “if these reports are true.” That is false.

The issue is not merely that Cheney lied: that would hardly be news. It is that the entire media narrative about Cheney’s removal from her House leadership role is a fraud. Her attacks on Trump and her party leadership were not confined to criticisms of the role played by the former president in contesting the validity of the 2020 election outcome or inciting the January 6 Capitol riot — because Liz Cheney is such a stalwart defender of the need for truth and adherence to the rule of law in politics.

Cheney played the key role in forming an alliance with pro-war Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee to repeatedly defeat the bipartisan anti-war minority [led by Ro Khanna (D-CA), Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)] to prevent any meaningful changes promised by Trump during the 2016 campaign to put an end to the U.S. posture of Endless War. As I reported about the House Armed Services Committee hearing last July, the CIA tale was repeatedly cited by Cheney and her allies to justify ongoing U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan.

Cheney is motivated by power, not ethics. In 2016, Trump ran — and won — by explicitly inveighing against the Bush/Cheney foreign policy of endless war, militarism and imperialism that Liz Cheney, above all else, still vehemently supports. What she is attempting to do is reclaim the Republican Party and deliver it back to the neocons and warmongers who dominated it under her father’s reign. She is waging an ideological battle, not an ethical one, for control of the Republican Party.

That will be a debate for Republican voters to resolve. In the meantime, Liz Cheney cannot be allowed to distance herself from the CIA’s fairy tale about Russians in Afghanistan. Along with pro-war Democrats, she used this conveniently leaked CIA story repeatedly to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. And just as her father taught her to do — by example if not expressly — she is now lying to distance herself from a pro-war CIA script that she, in fact, explicitly promoted.

May 14, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Rand Paul Continues Fauci Feud; “He Could Be Culpable For The Entire Pandemic”

By Steve Watson | Summit News | May 13, 2021

Senator Rand Paul continued to slam White House medical advisor Thursday, saying that Anthony Fauci could be culpable for the entire coronavirus pandemic.

Paul was attacked by leftist media Wednesday for merely questioning Fauci’s extensive role in granting funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology at a Senate hearing.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper declared that Paul should “have more respect at least for medical science.”

Paul hit back, noting that Fauci is lying about the NIH’s involvement in funding of the Wuhan lab.

Now in a further appearance on Fox And Friends, Paul has gone even deeper, accusing Fauci of being personally to blame for the global pandemic.

“The person they hired to investigate the lab for the WHO perspective is the guy who gave the money,” Paul urged.

“So NIH gave the money to EcoHealth. The head of EcoHealth – they got him to investigate whether Wuhan was doing anything inappropriate in their lab. But if they were then wouldn’t he be culpable?” The Senator questioned.

“Doesn’t he have a self interest in smoothing things over,” Paul continued, adding “I’m not saying he did cover things up but you wouldn’t appoint someone who is in the line of the supply chain of giving the money to them.”

“Ultimately here’s the rub. I don’t know whether it came from the lab. But who could be culpable? Dr. Fauci could be culpable for the entire pandemic!” Paul emphasised.

https://rumble.com/vgz7g1-rand-paul-dr.-fauci-could-be-culpable-for-the-entire-pandemic

As Infowars reported in April 2020, the NIH awarded a $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct coronavirus gain of function research.

Additionally, the results of the US-backed gain of function research at Wuhan was published in 2017 under the heading, “Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus.”

Fauci has come under increased scrutiny as the NIH’s involvement with the Wuhan lab is being called into question.

May 14, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Butting Heads With China and Russia: American Diplomats Are Outclassed

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 13, 2021

With the exception of the impending departure of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan, if it occurs, the White House seems to prefer to use aggression to deter adversaries rather than finesse. The recent exchanges between Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a meeting in Alaska demonstrate how Beijing has a clear view of its interests which Washington seems to lack. Blinken initiated the acrimonious exchange when he cited “deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion toward our allies. Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability. That’s why they’re not merely internal matters, and why we feel an obligation to raise these issues here today.” He then threatened “I said that the United States relationship with China will be competitive where it should be, collaborative where it can be, adversarial where it must be” before adding “I’m hearing deep satisfaction that the United States is back, that we’re reengaged with our allies and partners. I’m also hearing deep concern about some of the actions your government is taking.”

The Chinese Foreign Minister responded sharply, rejecting U.S. suggestions that it has a right to interfere in another country’s domestic policies, “I think we thought too well of the United States, we thought that the U.S. side will follow the necessary diplomatic protocols. The United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength. We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image, and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world.” Yi had a point. Ironically, most of the world believes that the U.S. represents a greater threat to genuine democracy than does either China or Russia.

In another more recent interview Blinken has accused the Chinese of acting “more aggressively abroad” while President Biden has claimed that Beijing has a plan to replace America as the world’s leading economic and military power. U.S. United Nations envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield has also delivered the same message that Washington is preparing to take no prisoners, pledging to push back against what she called China’s “authoritarian agenda” through the various agencies that make up the UN bureaucracy. Indeed, the United States seems trapped in its own rhetoric, finding itself in the middle of a situation with China and Taiwan where warnings that Beijing is preparing to use force to recover its former province leave Washington with few options to support a de facto ally. Peter Beinart in a recent op-ed observes how the White House has been incrementally increasing its diplomatic ties with Taiwan even as it both declares itself “rock solid” on defending while also maintaining “strategic ambiguity.”

China understands its interests while the U.S. continues to be bewildered by Beijing’s successful building of trade alliances worldwide. Meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin, reputedly an excellent chess player, is able to think about genuine issues in three dimensions and is always at least four moves ahead of where Biden and his advisers are at any time. Biden public and video appearances frequently seem to be improvisations as he goes along guided by his teleprompter while Putin is able to explain issues clearly, apparently even in English.

A large part of Biden’s problem vis-à-vis both China and Russia is that he has inherited a U.S. Establishment view of foreign and national security policy options. It is based on three basic principles. First, that America is the only superpower and can either ignore or comfortably overcome the objections of other nations to what it is doing. Second, an all-powerful and fully resourced United States can apply “extreme pressure” to recalcitrant foreign governments and those regimes will eventually submit and comply with Washington’s wishes. And third, America has a widely accepted leadership role of the so-called “free world” which will mean that any decision made in Washington will immediately be endorsed by a large number of other nations, giving legitimacy to U.S. actions worldwide.

What Joe Biden actually thinks is, of course, unknown though he has a history of reflexively supporting an assertive and even belligerent foreign policy during his many years in Congress. Kamala Harris, who many believe will be succeeding Biden before too long, appears to have no definitive views at all beyond the usual Democratic Party cant of spreading “democracy” and being strong on Israel. That suggests that the real shaping of policy is coming from the apparatchik and donor levels in the party, to include the neocon-lite Zionist triumvirate at the State Department consisting of Tony Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Kagan as well as the upper-level bureaucracies at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, which all support an assertive and also interventionist foreign policy to keep Americans “safe” while also increasing their budgets annually. Such thinking leaves little room for genuine national interests to surface.

Biden’s Secretary of State Tony Blinken is, for example, the perfect conformist bureaucrat, shaping his own views around established thinking and creating caveats to provide the Democratic Party leadership with some, though limited, options. Witness for example the current White House attitude towards Iran, which is regarded, along with Russia, as a permanent enemy of the United States. President Biden has expressed his interest in renegotiating a non-nuclear proliferation treaty with the Iranians, now being discussed by diplomats without direct contact in Austria. But Blinken undercuts that intention by wrapping the talks in with other issues that are intended to satisfy the Israelis and their friends in Congress that will make progress unlikely if not impossible. They include eliminating Iran’s alleged role as a regional trouble maker and also ending the ballistic missile development programs currently engaged in by the regime. The downside to all of this is that having a multilateral agreement to limit Iranian enhancement of uranium up to a bomb-making level is very much in the U.S. interest, but it appears to be secondary to other politically motivated side discussions which will derail the process.

A foreign and national security policy based on political dogma rather than genuine interests can obviously generate some disconnects, unlike in Russia or China, where redlines and national interests are clearly understood and acted upon. To cite yet another dangerous example of playing with fire that one is witnessing in Eastern Europe, the simple understanding that for Russia Belarus and Ukraine are frontline states that could pose existential threats to Moscow if they were to move closer to the west and join NATO appears to be lacking. The U.S. prefers to stand the question on its head and claims that the real issue is “spreading democracy,” which it is not. Policy makers in Washington might consider what Washington would likely do if Mexico and Canada were to be threatened with foreign interference that might bring about their joining a military alliance hostile to the United States.

The American Establishment-driven foreign policy thinking clearly has trouble in accommodating the obvious understanding that the U.S. actually becomes more vulnerable every time it interferes in China’s trade practices or gives the green light for alliances like NATO to expand. Expansion of the national security policy components often brings in another client state that rarely has anything whatsoever to contribute and which, on the contrary, becomes a burden, relying for their own security on overstretched American military resources. In return, the expansion itself guarantees that a hostile and genuinely threatened Russia will take steps of its own to counter what it sees as a potential grave threat to its own security and national identity.

Quite simply, America’s national security should dictate that the United States treat China as a competitor rather than an enemy while also disengaging from support and encouragement of Ukraine’s irredentist ambitions as quickly as possible. A recent shipment of offensive weapons to Kiev should become the last such initiative and speeches by American politicians pledging “unwavering support” for Ukraine should be considered unacceptable. Washington should meanwhile reject any clandestine attempts to overthrow Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus and make clear to Vladimir Putin that it will not support any NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, which admittedly was a pledge already made when the Soviet Union collapsed that was subsequently ignored by President Bill Clinton. Thanks to Bill, America is now obligated to defend not only Western Europe but also Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia, the Baltic States and tiny little Montenegro.

In short, United States engagement in complicated overseas quarrels should be limited to areas where genuine vital interests are at stake. In fact, by that standard one should begin to emphasize the security impact of the crisis on America’s southern border, which has a completely different genesis and is being driven by politics. As British statesman Lord Palmerston said in 1848 “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” The United States government would be very wise to be guided by that advice.

May 13, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US biolab transparency urged after smearing China over weaponizing COVID-19

Global Times | May 10, 2021

It is the US that is conducting biological warfare and bioterrorism using genetic engineering technology, rather than China, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Monday in response to a media report accusing China of weaponizing COVID-19.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry urged the US to be transparent on their biolabs and their ongoing bioweapons studies.

Quoting a so-called leaked document obtained by the US State Department, which is actually a book that is openly on sale, The Australian claimed China had been looking into whether it could weaponize the coronavirus five years before the COVID-19 pandemic, and even presented the document as evidence of China’s interest in bioweapons.

There are always some in the US who smear China either by hyping up facts or quoting so-called internal documents or reports, but it is usually a case of “the guilty party filing the suit first”, deliberate misinterpretation, presumption of guilt or merely spreading lies, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Monday at the press briefing.

Media reports said the so-called leaked document obtained by US officials is a published academic book, and not an internal secret document from the Chinese military, Hua pointed out.

The quote from former US Air Force colonel Michael J. Ainscough in the book said next generation bioweapons will be part of the US Air Force projects and aim to help the country better cope with weapons of mass destruction, indicating that the US is carrying out biological warfare and bioterrorism using genetic engineering technology, Hua said.

China has abided by its obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention, and is not developing, studying or producing bioweapons, while the US has been secretly working on their biolabs, Hua pointed out, urging the US to be transparent on the issue.

The US has set up biolabs in 25 countries and regions across the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and former Soviet Union, with 16 in Ukraine alone. Some of the places where the labs are based have seen large-scale outbreaks of infectious diseases and other dangerous infectious diseases, the ministry said, citing media reports.

The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson demanded that the US address international concerns: Why is the US building so many biolabs around the globe? How much sensitive biological resources and information has the US obtained from other countries? What kind of activities has the US carried out in its Fort Detrick laboratory and other biolabs, and what’s the relationship between these biolabs and its “next generation bioweapons”?

Global Times

May 12, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

CNN’s Cooper Accuses Rand Paul Of ‘Disrespecting Medical Science’ For Questioning Fauci

By Steve Watson | Summit News | May 12, 2021

Following another confrontation between Senator Rand Paul and White House medical advisor Anthony Fauci Tuesday, during which Paul questioned Fauci about his extensive ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, CNN’s Anderson Cooper declared that Paul should “have more respect at least for medical science.”

Reporting on the exchange, the CNN host proclaimed that Paul is “an ophthalmologist. You would think that he would be — have more respect at least for medical science.”

It’s unclear how asking valid questions about Fauci and the NIH’s funding of the Wuhan lab where dangerous experiments on bat coronaviruses were being conducted represents a disrespect for science. […]

Commenting on his latest exchange with Fauci, Paul himself stressed that Fauci “was being dishonest.“

“In fact, one of the main papers published by Dr. Shi in the Wuhan Institute says in the byline, “Funded by the NIH,” and funded specifically by the NIAI which is AID, which is Fauci’s group,” Paul urged.

“So, no, he completely dissembled on that. He’s leading you on to believe something that’s not true,” The Senator added. … Read full article

May 12, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

The human fingerprints all over the virus

By Neville Hodgkinson | Conservative Woman | May 10, 2021

COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers (and their allies in mainstream science and government) have so far failed to acknowledge evidence from adverse event reporting schemes that their products are killing and injuring thousands. They say that apart from ‘extremely rare’ allergic reactions – to which they have reluctantly added ‘extremely rare’ blood clotting disorders – there are no known mechanisms whereby such damage could be occurring.

That position was never tenable. The famous spike protein, which most of the vaccines introduce into the body as a means of countering the virus, is in itself a dangerous toxin. The reason it is so dangerous is similar to the reason why the virus itself is a threat to human beings: it has characteristics that enable it to bind to, and distort the action of, a wide range of human cells.

These characteristics almost certainly stem from it being a chimeric virus, originally native to Chinese bats but manipulated in the laboratory to test its capacity to change into a threat to humans.

Scientists hope that the vaccine, through challenging our immune systems by getting our body cells to manufacture small quantities of the protein, will protect against much greater damage from the virus. But the nature of the protein is such as to make it inherently risky, a risk that may be dangerously multiplied when vaccination coincides with a wave of infection, as in India recently.

A paper widely held to be the ‘smoking gun’ for ultimately bequeathing us Covid-19 was published in Nature in 2015 by US and Chinese researchers, who deliberately altered the spike protein of a bat coronavirus so that it could infect human cells. The work, mainly at the laboratory in Wuhan, China, from which many believe the virus to have accidentally escaped, was claimed to ‘underscore the potential threat of cross-species transmission’ of the virus.

The researchers acknowledged that these so-called ‘gain of function’ experiments carried risks, writing: ‘The potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens.’

Also in 2015, a document written by Chinese scientists and public health officials discussed the weaponisation of such viruses, according to a report published on Saturday by Weekend Australian. It says the document is discussed in a book, What really happened in Wuhan, by The Australian investigations writer Sharri Markson, to be published by HarperCollins in September.

Entitled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, the paper is said to have predicted that World War Three would be fought with biological weapons. It describes SARS viruses as a ‘new era of genetic weapons’ which can be ‘artificially manipulated into an emerging human ­disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed in a way never seen before’.

Despite the enormous importance to the world of getting to the truth of how Covid-19 originated, the scientific establishment has seemed desperate to deny the possibility that it was man-made.

In March last year Nature added an ‘Editors’ note’ to the ‘smoking gun’ paper, stating: ‘We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing Covid-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.’

This is, to say the least, being economical with the truth, and may come to be seen as an extreme betrayal of science by a journal world-famous for its supposed reliability.

More than a year ago, an Anglo-Norwegian team of scientists pointed to the 2015 Nature report findings as the most likely precursor of research which culminated in SARS-COV-2, the virus causing Covid-19. They emphasised that vaccine makers who failed to acknowledge its chimeric nature might unwittingly put the public at risk.

British vaccines expert Angus Dalgliesh, a London University professor of oncology, co-authored with leading Norwegian researchers a paper that spells out in ruthless detail the sequence of laboratory events through which they claim the SARS-COV-2 spike protein arose. This understanding was reached through the team’s own work aimed at developing a safe candidate Covid vaccine.

The paper is headed: ‘The evidence which suggests that this is no naturally evolved virus – A reconstructed aetiology of the SARS-COV-2 spike.’

After analysing the biochemistry of the spike, the team concludes that it has six inserts, ‘unique fingerprints . . . indicative of purposive manipulation’. It describes four linked published research projects ‘which, we suggest, show by deduction how, where, when and by whom the SARS-COV-2 spike acquired its special characteristics’.

The authors write: ‘Since, regrettably, international access has not been allowed to the relevant laboratories or materials, since Chinese scientists who wished to share their knowledge have not been able to do so and indeed since it appears that preserved virus material and related information have been destroyed, we are compelled to apply deduction to the published scientific literature, informed by our own biochemical analyses.

‘We refute pre-emptively objection that this methodology does not result in absolute proof by observing that to make such a statement is to misunderstand scientific logic. The longer the chain of causation of individual findings that is shown, especially converging from different disciplines, the greater the confidence in the whole.’

The researchers say that the four key ‘gain of function’ studies are linked in two ways: scientifically, in that the third and fourth build on the results of the first and second; and in the continuity of the institution and personnel across all four.

‘The Wuhan Institute of Virology is a key collaborator in all these projects and Dr Zheng-Li Shi is one of the institute’s most experienced virologists and bat specialists. She is a common thread through all the key research projects.’

The unique ‘fingerprints’ of manipulation which make what was once a bat virus so dangerous include the following:

A large part of the spike protein has high human similarity, ‘a built-in stealth property’ that also ‘implies a high risk for the development of severe adverse events/toxicity and even antibody-dependent enhancement’ [a problem in which a previous infection or vaccination increases rather than reduces the risk from subsequent infection]. Specific precautions would be needed when using the spike protein in any vaccine candidate, ‘precautions that might not suggest themselves to designers employing conventional methodologies and innocent assumptions about the target virus’.

The spike protein has inserts on its surface which greatly increase its ability to hook into, infect and harm a wide range of human cells. ‘Such a result is typically the objective of gain of function experiments to create chimeric viruses of high potency.’

The paper tracks in detail how these and other unique features of the virus came about, from work on bat and human viruses first reported in 2008 by Dr Zheng-Li Shi and Wuhan Institute of Virology colleagues, through collaboration with American researchers working with human epithelial cells, which are widespread throughout the body, and culminating in a virus capable of infecting human lung, taste, intestinal and other tissues.

Despite the eminence of its authors the paper has remained largely hidden from view, being published only on a Norwegian website.

Its importance, however, is highlighted by a string of recent research findings which confirm that Covid-19 is much more than a simple respiratory infection, and that even without the virus, the spike protein can damage blood vessel linings (epithelial tissues), causing heart and circulatory disorders as well as respiratory disease and gut problems (see here and here and here and here and here).

Despite millions seemingly receiving the vaccine safely, scientists and regulators may be failing to recognise deaths and injuries linked to this wide-ranging toxic potential of the spike protein that forms the basis of most of the jabs. The research findings add urgency to calls on the government and regulators to investigate numerous reports of vaccine-related deaths, especially in the elderly and care homes, and especially in the hours or days immediately following vaccination.

May 12, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

NIH hit with lawsuit for blocking COVID Gain of Function research evidence

NIH Failed to Promptly Release Documents Concerning “Gain of Function/Gain of Threat” Research on Influenza, MERS, SARS, and COVID

Center for Food Safety | May 4, 2021

Last week, Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). CFS is suing the agency over its failure to release government documents related to the approval and issuance of NIH contracts and grants that fund research projects involving controversial gain of function/gain of threat studies with dangerous, so-called “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens.”

“The NIH’s refusal to make public the research it is funding to enhance the transmissibility, infectiousness, and lethality of potential pandemic viruses is grossly irresponsible,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of Center for Food Safety. “We are litigating to get that information because transparency and public knowledge about these highly hazardous experiments could be an important step in avoiding the next pandemic.”

An enhanced, “laboratory-generated” potential pandemic pathogen results from the enhancement of a potential pandemic pathogen’s transmissibility or virulence in humans. Gain of function/gain of threat studies, or research that improves the ability of a pathogen to cause disease, is a subset of life sciences research that most commonly involves the creation or use of enhanced potential pandemic pathogens.

CFS’s lawsuit focuses on the agency’s withholding of records concerning NIH’s funding of proposed research that could create, transfer, or use enhanced potential pandemic pathogens for which additional review under HHS’ Framework for Guiding Funding Decisions about Proposed Research Involving Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens (HHS P3CO Framework) is required.

“FOIA requires NIH to release records promptly. Unfortunately, the agency has failed to comply with FOIA’s statutory deadlines with respect to our request,” said Victoria Yundt, staff attorney at Center for Food Safety.”Consequently, NIH has unlawfully deprived the public of its statutory right to obtain records containing crucial information about government approval and funding of new and continued gain of function/gain of threat studies that consist of creating, transferring, or using enhanced potential pandemic pathogens in U.S. laboratories, which—if released from a laboratory accident—could result in catastrophic consequences to the human environment.”

Without the requested records, CFS cannot determine how many gain of function/gain of threat projects have been funded by the NIH, nor how many of these projects have undergone the proper review or comply with other federal laws and regulations.

NIH’s unlawful withholding of public records undermines FOIA’s basic purpose of government transparency. CFS has a history of suing the federal government to compel agencies to be compliant with FOIA. CFS’s FOIA program is committed to upholding the principles embodied in FOIA, such as maintaining an open and transparent government.

May 12, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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