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The Moment Biden Casually Committed To WW3 Over Taiwan At Last Night’s Town Hall

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | October 22, 2021

Apparently the commander-in-chief thinks that the United States has some kind of treaty or “commitment” to defend Taiwan in the scenario of an attack from China.

There is absolutely no commitment to do such a thing, but the casualness with which Joe Biden at last night’s 90-minute CNN town hall pledged that he’s ready to send young American men and women to die over an island in the Western Pacific is staggering and hugely alarming.

A Loyola student asked what President Biden would do to “keep up with China militarily” after reports of testing a hypersonic missile, and “what can you do to protect Taiwan?”

“Yes and Yes,” the president answered.

“I don’t want a Cold War with China, I just wanna make China understand – that we are not gonna step back, we are not gonna change any of our views…” – and that’s when Anderson Cooper cut in:

Cooper: “Are you saying that the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense if China attacked?”

Biden: “Yes. Yes, we have a commitment to do that.”

Though after this surprise emphasis on having a “commitment” to go to war on behalf of the tiny self-ruled island which lies over 7,000 miles away from the US mainland, Cooper didn’t follow up and simply moved on.

As the South China Morning Post noted in follow-up to the exchange, Biden’s words sparked immediate confusion over longstanding US policy:

Though Washington does not have official diplomatic relations with Taipei, US law requires it support the island’s efforts to defend itself, including through the sales of weapons. But the Taiwan Relations Act does not include an explicit commitment to intervene militarily in the event of an invasion of or attack on Taiwan by the mainland.

… The US has long maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan, opting not to state whether it would take military action if the island came under attack. The strategy is designed to discourage Taiwan from taking any unilateral action to declare full independence, while also dissuading Beijing from unilaterally seeking to annex the island.

“RIP strategic ambiguity,” Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corporation, wrote in a tweet soon after Biden’s remarks.

It goes without saying that a direct military confrontation with China in the Western Pacific and South China Sea would make the 20-year Afghan fiasco and nightmare pale in comparison, not to mention the inevitable collapse of the economy and global trade while two military superpowers duke it out using advanced weapons on each other like hypersonics.

October 22, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 2 Comments

Tokyo must stop and listen to the world, says Beijing, as Japan’s PM claims Fukushima wastewater release into ocean can’t wait

RT | October 18, 2021

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has reiterated its opposition to Japan’s decision to release nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima power plant into the ocean, after Tokyo’s new leader said the discharge could wait no longer.

Speaking on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian took aim at Japan’s new prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who visited the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant on Sunday.

“The Japanese side must listen to the voice of the international community, revoke the wrong decision, and stop advancing preparations for the discharge of nuclear wastewater into the ocean,” the spokesman told the gathered press, arguing that Tokyo needed the authorization of other nations and international institutions.

Zhao claimed the issue of Fukushima nuclear wastewater disposal was not a private matter for Japan, but a major international issue concerning the public health of everyone living in Pacific Rim countries, as well as for the global marine environment.

He said China and other nations had requested assurances about the reliability of Japan’s nuclear wastewater purification equipment and raised concerns about the impact of releasing the supposedly treated waters into the ocean.

He added that Japan had yet to exhaust all measures for safely storing the nuclear wastewater, which was used to treat the Fukushima powerplant after it went into meltdown a decade ago.

Zhao’s comments came after Japanese leader Kishida visited the nuclear plant and its huge facility for storing wastewater on Sunday. “I felt strongly that the water issue was a crucial one that should not be pushed back,” Kishida told reporters having been shown around by the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power.

In August, the operator announced plans to build an undersea tunnel to facilitate the release of over a million tons of treated water after the government had already elected to discharge the liquid into the sea. The International Atomic Energy Agency has said it will send experts to Japan later this year to evaluate the plans for discharging into the ocean.

Last year, Greenpeace said the wastewater from the plant was more dangerous than the Japanese government had claimed. In a paper, the organization said the allegedly treated water still contained “dangerous levels of carbon-14” – a radioactive substance that has the “potential to damage human DNA.” The water is also known to contain radioactive tritium.

October 19, 2021 Posted by | Environmentalism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Lockdown: Where Did ‘The Science’ Come From?

By Noah Carl  • The Daily Sceptic • October 19, 2021

In a previous post, I looked at where ‘The Science’ of community masking came from. Here I’ll do the same thing for lockdowns.

As many lockdown sceptics (including myself) have noted, lockdowns represent a radical departure from conventional forms of pandemic management. There is no evidence that, before 2020, they were considered an effective way to deal with influenza pandemics.

In a 2006 paper, four leading scientists (including Donald Henderson, who led the effort to eradicate smallpox) examined measures for controlling pandemic influenza. Regarding “large-scale quarantine”, they wrote, “The negative consequences… are so extreme” that this measure “should be eliminated from serious consideration”.

Likewise, a WHO report published mere months before the COVID-19 pandemic classified “quarantine of exposed individuals” as “not recommended under any circumstances”. The report noted that “there is no obvious rationale for this measure”.

And we all know what the U.K.’s own ‘Pandemic Preparedness Strategy’ said, namely: “It will not be possible to halt the spread of a new pandemic influenza virus, and it would be a waste of public health resources and capacity to attempt to do so.”

As an additional exercise, I searched the pandemic preparedness plans of all the English-speaking Western countries (U.K., Ireland, U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand) for mentions of ‘lockdown’, ‘lock-down’ ‘lock down’ or ‘curfew’.

Only ‘curfew’ was mentioned, and only once – in Ireland’s plan. The relevant sentence was: “Mandatory quarantine and curfews are not considered necessary.” None of the lockdown strings were mentioned in any of the countries’ plans.

So where did ‘The Science’ of controlling Covid using lockdowns come from? As everyone knows, China implemented the first lockdown (of Hubei province) in January of 2020. Yet it wasn’t until March that lockdowns became part of ‘The Science’.

As this chart taken from the paper by David Rozado shows, major Western media outlets did not start mentioning ‘lockdown’ frequently until March:

And this chart confirms that worldwide Google search interest for ‘lockdown’ was essentially nil until 8th March 2020:

So what happened in early March? Well, Italy was the first Western country to lock down – on 9th March last year. And as Michael Senger argues, its decision appears to have been prompted by the WHO’s report of 24th February, which gave a glowing evaluation of China’s lockdown. (Senger’s piece is well worth reading.)

Other Western countries then followed suit. The next most important event, following Italy’s decision to lock down, was the publication of a report by Neil Ferguson’s team on 16th March.

This report has been described as the “catalyst for policy reversal”. Up until then, the U.K. had been more or less following its pandemic preparedness plan. As late as March 5th, Chris Whitty told the Health and Social Care Committee that “what we’re very keen to do is minimise social and economic disruption”.

Although other, similar reports had already been published, the analysis by Neil Ferguson’s team was seen as particularly authoritative. According to the New York Times, the report “also influenced the White House to strengthen its measures”.

On March 17th, Neil Ferguson and his colleagues held a press conference after returning from Downing Street. They confirmed that Britain would be adopting a new strategy. “The aim is not to slow the rate of growth of cases but actually pull the epidemic into reverse,” Ferguson said.

As to why the U.K. was changing tack, Ferguson noted, “We have had bad news from Italy and from early experience in UK hospitals”. However, subsequent revelations suggest that “bad news” was less important than the shifting of the Overton window.

In an interview with the Times published in December last year, Ferguson noted that “people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March”. Referring to China’s lockdown, he elaborated, “We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… And then Italy did it. And we realised we could”.

After China’s initial response in Hubei, it took two months for lockdowns to go from ‘unprecedented’ to ‘unavoidable’. They received two major doses of intellectual credibility: first from the WHO, and then from Neil Ferguson’s team. Italy set the all-important precedent for Western countries.

As to whether one should trust ‘The Science’ on lockdowns, a reasonable answer would be, ‘Do you mean the pre or the post-Covid science?’

October 19, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Yahoo! News Informs the Stupid Peasants Why the US Needs to Go to War to Protect Taiwan

By Andrew Anglin | The Daily Stormer | October 14, 2021

Yahoo! News had this headline at the top on Thursday morning.

When you click the article, you get this different headline:

The actual appropriate headline for this article would be “A Baby’s First Guide to Why the US Must Initiate a World War in Order to Prevent Chinese Reunification.”

The article gives a quick, slanted and false outline of the situation which does not attempt to either:

  • Explain the Chinese position on Taiwan, or
  • Explain why Taiwan is important to “American interests.”

It then gives a series of quotes from supposed experts on what Joe Biden should do.

A firm commitment to defend Taiwan is the best way to prevent an invasion

“The United States needs to remove the ambiguity about whether it would come to Taiwan’s defense. Uncertainty about U.S. intentions raises the risk of war. … President Biden should declare that, though we will not support a Taiwanese declaration of independence from China, we will defend the island if it is attacked.” — Max Boot, Washington Post

The U.S. must accept it has nothing to gain from defending Taiwan

“Bluntly put, America should refuse to be drawn into a no-win war with Beijing. It needs to be said up front: there would be no palatable choice for Washington if China finally makes good on its decades-long threat to take Taiwan by force.” — Daniel L. Davis, defense priorities senior fellow, Guardian

The U.S. should maintain its noncommittal position as long as it can

“As a superpower, the United States should preserve flexibility in its global security relationships. It also is not even obvious that Taiwan’s body politic would welcome an explicit security guarantee from the United States.” — Therese Shaheen, National Review

Taiwan is too important to U.S. interests to let it be taken by the Chinese

“Abandoning Taiwan in the face of a Chinese military assault would be a monumental disaster. … The U.S. cannot afford to see a country that occupies vital strategic space in the Western Pacific subdued by Beijing.” — Hal Brands, Bloomberg

War with China would pose an existential threat to the U.S.

“Stumbling into a shooting war over Taiwan is akin to opening a Pandora’s box, and it would make the last 20 years of conflict in the Middle East look like an uneventful peacekeeping mission. A fight between Washington and Beijing could also escalate to the nuclear level, particularly if the Chinese Communist Party determines that the use of such weapons is the only thing standing in the way of a humiliating defeat.” — Daniel R. DePetris, NBC News

America has a duty to protect the free world from authoritarianism

“The United States and its allies have built and defended a rules-based system over the past 75 years that has produced unprecedented peace, prosperity, and freedom globally. I don’t want to trade that in for a world in which Americans stand by as revisionist autocracies like China gobble up neighbors by military force.” — Matthew Kroenig, Foreign Policy

The U.S. also has diplomatic tools to deter China from invading

“To further demonstrate U.S. resolve, Biden should tell Beijing that any more threats of force against Taiwan’s participation in the democracy summit will trigger immediate diplomatic recognition of Taiwan and an official statement of Washington’s new ‘One China, One Taiwan’ policy. Beijing must understand that war would mean instant Taiwan independence.” — Joseph Bosco, The Hill

The best way to defend Taiwan is through investment, not military threats

“Hyping the threat that China poses to Taiwan does Beijing’s work for it. Taiwan’s people need reasons for confidence in their own future, not just reminders of their vulnerabilities. If American policy makers want to help Taiwan, they will need to go beyond focusing on the military threat. They need to modernize the U.S.-Taiwan economic relationship, help Taiwan diversify its trade ties and provide platforms for Taiwan to earn dignity and respect on the world stage.” — Richard Bush, Bonnie Glaser and Ryan Hass, NPR

Some of those are funnier than others. The idea that a country that is force-vaccinating its population is less authoritarian than a country that is not doing that is actually so ridiculous that it borders on the deranged or outright insane.

But this is actually more anti-war material than you usually see anywhere on a mainstream website, so I guess good job with that, Yahoo!

But while they do include people saying “we really should probably think about whether or not we want to start a nuclear war,” what is lacking is a sober perspective.

Why is Taiwan even an issue?

Why are we even talking about this at all?

Not one single person in this entire media landscape will either:

  • Outline, in real terms, how occupying Taiwan is in “the interests of America,” or
  • Point out that no one will give that outline

You end up in a situation where no one even has any idea what we’re actually talking about.

How is it possible that we’ve reached the point where we’re considering a nuclear war over vague “strategic interests” that no one is able to explain in concrete terms?

Furthermore – and I hate to be the one to have to point this out – but things are tough all over.

America and the rest of the West have a lot, lot, lot of problems. We have very real economic, political and social problems that no one is offering any solutions to. So the idea that we’re talking about going to war to protect some fake country on the other side of the globe is simply inexplicable.

If I was allowed to offer a 200-word sound bite for that Yahoo! News article, it would be this:

Taiwan is a part of China, and the reasons the US occupied it originally are no longer relevant. Instead of continuing to support the fantasy of a democratic China under the guise of the myth of Taiwanese nationhood, the United States should open talks about reunification. China will be open to giving wide-ranging concessions in exchange for the opportunity at peaceful reunification, and this will allow the West to clear up various unrelated conflicts with China, including on matters of international trade. — Andrew Anglin, Hoax Watch

I am happy that some in the media are finally saying that what we are talking about here is a nuclear war. That’s a long way from where we were a couple years ago, when the State Department first started its saber-rattling under Donald Trump. The humiliation in Afghanistan seems to have sobered a few people up.

But the fact that this discussion still remains so very far outside of the real, in the realm of the viciously and confusingly abstract, speaks to the moronic nature of the American mind. These people are literally asking you to believe that every single person in the entire Western world supports the idea of an “independent and democratic Taiwan” being “strategically important to the United States and its allies” even while not one person among this unified chorus is capable of explaining what either of those concepts means.

The basic fact, which anyone who knows the history knows but which no one in the American media is willing to say (and it wouldn’t be printed if they were willing), is that Taiwan was set up as an alternative government to the CCP government of China. The American goal was to foster a “democracy” government in Taiwan, which would eventually rule all of China. To this day, the government of Taiwan officially claims that it is the legitimate government of the entirety of China. This is not a secret, and yet somehow, it remains totally unsaid, and instead we are told that “Taiwan” is some kind of independent country that “China” is trying to invade and conquer.

The fact that Taiwan is not a country, but a piece of China occupied by the United States, does not necessarily mean that we should just give it back to China. But any serious discussion about whether we should or should not give it back to China should start from the point of accurately defining what Taiwan is. Obviously, if it is accurately defined, that would lead a lot of people to grasp the Chinese perspective on the issue, and make China look much less villainous, which is why there is some kind of soft ban on properly defining Taiwan in the media.

I think it would be morally good to simply give Taiwan back to China. But geopolitics are not based around moral goodness, so it makes sense that because America currently maintains control of Taiwan, America would instead negotiate concessions from China as part of the reunification process. But because we live in this fantasy world, we can’t have that discussion, and instead it’s simply “should we go to war to protect Taiwanese independence?” – a stupid and nonsensical question.

America is not a serious country, and its fixation with censorship has ensured that there can never be any form of seriousness injected into any discussion. Instead of talking about actual reality, the media and the political class argue about fantasies with only abstract connection to physical realities.

This is what a “dying empire” looks like.

October 16, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | 3 Comments

Chinese Uyghur responsible for suicide bombing; Taliban and Turkey accuse CIA of creating ISIS-K

By Eric Striker | National Justice | October 14, 2021

Afghanistan’s ISIS-K has identified the suicide bomber behind last weeks gruesome suicide attack on a Shiite mosque, “Muhammad al-Uyghuri,” a member of China’s Uyghur population that the United States has in recent years claimed is being oppressed by Beijing.

The bombing in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province killed up to 80 people and injured 143 others and represents a drastic escalation in ISIS-K’s war on the Taliban’s rule.

Both the Taliban and even NATO ally Turkey are publicly accusing the CIA and US government of creating ISIS-K to destabilize the region.

It is rare for ISIS to identify the ethnicity of its suicide bombers. Experts believe the decision was made to recruit Uyghurs in China and inspire them to commit similar attacks.

According to a statement made by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu last Saturday, his nation holds credible intelligence showing that the CIA and US military were covertly transporting members of ISIS out of Syria and unleashing them in Afghanistan. It is believed that thousands of Chinese Uyghur jihadists, who developed a close relationship with Washington under former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, fought with and beside ISIS in Syria.

ISIS-K has officially declared war on the Taliban, citing its diplomatic overtures towards China and Iran. Ahmad Yasir, a Taliban spokesman in Qatar, has also said that his government has evidence that ISIS-K is an American intelligence operation and will be releasing it in the future. The Taliban has held that the ISIS-K problem is manageable because the group has no local contacts or popular support in Afghanistan.

Numerous governments have blamed the US for the sudden resurrection of ISIS in Central Asia. Last May, Iran provided reports and testimony, including from former US allies in the Afghan government, revealing that CIA aircraft was transporting jihadists out of Syria and Iraq and into Afghanistan.

The cruel acts this latest iteration of the terrorist group has performed in the last two years has made it such a pariah that even Al Qaeda has vowed to fight against them. Last year, ISIS-K was identified as the group that committed a suicide bombing targeting a maternity ward in Kabul that slaughtered dozens of mothers in labor and newborn babies.

A piece published yesterday by analyst Julia Kassem theorizes that ISIS-K is part of an American geopolitical operation that seeks to drag China into a costly Afghan quagmire. The large number of jihadists belonging to China’s Uyghur population, who come from the Xinjiang province, that have spread throughout Central Asia and the Middle East create a risk of terrorism against Chinese economic ambitions in the region.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, has written and spoken extensively about discussions inside the Pentagon regarding the use of the CIA to penetrate Xinjiang to destabilize China.

The goal would not only be to create chaos in the Chinese mainland, but also to encourage and support terrorist groups that target the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in neighboring countries. The Taliban has shown significant interest in joining the BRI since taking power.

Neo-conservative writers in America have started calling for a military re-entry into Afghanistan to address the supposed threat of ISIS-K. The Taliban is adamantly opposed to the idea.

Little is known about ISIS-K other than many of its members were interned in the US’ Bagram Air Base and released during the withdrawal.

This follows a pattern in the history of ISIS, which was reportedly created at Camp Bucca in Iraq under the supervision of US forces. The Pentagon has claimed that ISIS was created by inmates who radicalized one another at the camp under the noses of US personnel because they did not speak Arabic and had no idea what the inmates were talking about.

October 14, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Uyghur Tribunal: US Lawfare at its Lowest

By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 07.10.2021

The so-called “Uyghur Tribunal” is promoted across the Western media as an “independent” tribunal. AP claims that it seeks to lay out evidence that will “compel international action to tackle growing concerns about alleged abuses in Xinjiang.”

The tribunal – having no legal basis or enforcement mechanism – will clearly be used to help bolster calls for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic games and may serve to help pressure nations around the globe to roll back ties with China and aid the US in imposing additional sanctions and boycotts.

An “Independent” Tribunal Funded by the US Government

Media platforms like the US State Department’s Radio Free Asia in articles have claimed the tribunal has “no state backing.” The abovementioned AP article only claims the tribunal “does not have UK government backing.”

Yet the Uyghur Tribunal’s official website, under a section titled, “About,” admits (emphasis added):

In June 2020 Dolkun Isa, President of the World Uyghur Congress formally requested that Sir Geoffrey Nice QC establish and chair an independent people’s tribunal to investigate ‘ongoing atrocities and possible Genocide’ against the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslim Populations.

It also claims on a second page about funding that:

A crowdfunder page has raised nearly £250 000, with an initial amount of around $115 000 dollars donated by the Uyghur diaspora through the World Uyghur Congress.

What isn’t mentioned is that the World Uyghur Congress, along with many of the supposed experts and witnesses providing statements during the supposed tribunal, are funded by the United States government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

This includes the president of WUC himself, Dolkun Isa, who provided a statement on June 4, 2021. Other members of US NED-funded organizations participating in the so-called tribunal included Muetter Illiqud of the NED-funded Uyghur Transitional Justice Database (UTJD), Rushan Abbas and Julie Millsap of the NED-funded Campaign for Uyghurs, Bahram Sintash and Elise Anderson of the NED-funded Uyghur Human Rights Project and Laura Harth of Safeguard Defenders, formerly known as the NED-funded China Action organization.

WUC is listed by name along with the UHRP, Campaign for Uyghurs, and the Uyghur Refugee Relief Fund on the official US NED website under “Xinjiang/East Turkestan 2020.” On another NED page titled, “Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act Builds on Work of NED Grantees,” the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database Project is also listed as receiving money from the US funding arm.

Also participating in the supposed tribunal was Adrian Zenz of the US government-funded Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), Shohret Hosur who works for the US State Department’s Radio Free Asia, Mihrigul Tursun who was awarded the NED-affiliated “Citizen Power Award in 2018, Sayragul Sauytbay who received the 2020 US State Department’s Women of Courage Award, and IPVM which is a video surveillance information service previously commissioned by the US government in regards to Chinese government surveillance programs in Xinjiang.

There was also Sean Robert who was a senior advisor to the USAID mission to Central Asia from 1998-2006  – the very region and time period Uyghur separatism was being organized from beyond China’s borders. Robert has been active in promoting US-funded propaganda regarding Xinjiang for years alongside other mainstays like Rushan Abbas and Louisa Greve.

Nearly every other “witness” brought before the so-called tribunal has a long-established history of participating in the US government-funded propaganda campaign aimed at China and its alleged abuses in Xinjiang. This includes Omir Bekali who was previously invited to testify in front of the US Congress in 2018, Asiye Abdulahed who claims to be the alleged source of the so-called “China Files,” Zumret Dawut whose allegations were used by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in attacks aimed at China, and Tursunay Ziyawudun who spoke in front of Congress in 2021.

There were also Westerners representing corporate-funded think tanks long engaged in a propaganda war with China including Nathan Ruser of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), Darren Byler and Jessica Batke of “ChileFile” – a subsidiary of Asia Society funded by the Australian and Japanese governments as well as Open Society, and Charles Parton of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) funded by the US State Department, the EU, Canada, Qatar, the UK, Japan, Australia, as well as arms manufacturers like BAE, Airbus, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics.

Only a handful of participants appeared to be relatively new faces, perhaps drawn from lesser corners of the global Uyghur diaspora being cultivated by the US as a political weapon.

Tedious, Holes-Filled Testimony

The testimony itself was tedious and lengthy with a total of nearly 80 hours recorded and uploaded to the Uyghur Tribunal’s YouTube channel. However, spot checking any of the testimony reveals massive discrepancies.

For example, on the first day of hearings, Muetter Illiqud of the abovementioned US government-funded UTJD provided conflicting total numbers of Uyghurs allegedly interned as well as conflicting accounts regarding Chinese government restrictions on the number of children permitted in cities and in rural villages. Illiqud failed to explain the discrepancies and was invited by Geoffrey Nice, chair of the tribunal, to return in September with the discrepancies fixed.

Another alleged witness, Gulzire Alwuqanqizi who spoke with an NED-affiliated “ChinaAid” banner behind her, claimed in her written statement that she was forced to work in a factory for a month and a half (approximately 45 days) where she claims she made a total of 2,000 gloves. Yet in her spoken statement she claims she was never able to meet the daily quota of 20 gloves and instead made only 10-12. If that is true, she would have only produced at most 540 gloves. She was never asked to clarify this discrepancy.

Also in her written statement, she claims she was caught sending photos of the factory to her husband. She claims:

One day, I took a picture of the factory and sent it to him. From there it became public. Following this, I was interrogated, they asked the same questions they had always asked, all night long, but eventually they let me go.

Yet in her spoken statement, she claimed:

At the factory where we were producing the gloves, I sent a photo and as punishment I was put in something like a ditch, a 20 meter deep well. They threw some electric currents at me, they poured water on me, and kept me there for 24 hours.

No comment was made by the panel interviewing her regarding this glaring inconsistency either.

Another witness, Tursunay Ziyawudun, claimed in her written statement to have been detained upon entering China after living in Kazakhstan from 2011 to 2016.

She inferred that she was being asked questions about the US NED-funded World Uyghur Congress during an interrogation, and claimed:

I didn’t even know what World Uyghur Congresses were at that time. We don’t have access to this information in China.

Yet clearly, while living in Kazakhstan for 5 years prior to returning to China, she did have access to this information. It is yet another inconsistency left unchallenged by the so-called tribunal.

Out of about 80 hours of proceedings, there are always bound to be inconsistencies, yet when the panel observed these, it took no action at all, skipping past them, excusing them, or allowing witnesses to alter their claims at a later date to iron out obvious inconsistencies. All of this further calls into question the professionalism, objectivity, and integrity of the entire “tribunal.”

Of course, no one in the public will likely watch any of the testimony first hand, let alone cross examine the spoken statements with their written statements. The general public will instead rely on the Western media’s interpretations of the so-called tribunal consisting of cherry-picked highlights designed to prey on the public’s emotions.

The “Uyghur Tribunal” – a Bad Sequel to the “China Tribunal”

The so-called “Uyghur Tribunal” unfolds as a sort of sequel to the 2019 “China Tribunal.” The China Tribunal and the Uyghur Tribunal following it were both chaired by Geoffrey Nice and included Hamid Sabi, Nicholas Vetch, and Aarif Abraham as participants. Both were initiated and funded by US government-funded organizations.

While the WUC organized the Uyghur Tribunal, the so-called International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) was the organization behind the “China Tribunal.” ETAC’s own webpage does not disclose its funding, but provides a list of names on its “international advisory committee.” They include Louisa Greve who was part of the NED’s senior leadership for 24 years before shifting over to the NED-funded Uyghur Human Rights Project. Ethan Gutmann is also listed. His book, “The Slaughter,” regarding alleged human organ harvesting in China, was launched at an NED event in Washington D.C. There is also Benedict Rogers, an advisor to the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress.

In other words, both tribunals were not tribunals at all, but instead an exhibition put on by a US government-funded troupe of activists deeply invested in maligning China and helping advance US foreign policy objectives versus Beijing.

It is merely a larger, more elaborate version of a literal exhibition funded by the US government and organized by the World Uyghur Congress in Geneva Switzerland also this year. A September 2021 Reuters article titled, “China accuses Washington of ‘low political tricks’ over Uyghur exhibit,” would note:

A US-backed Uyghur photo exhibit of dozens of people who are missing or alleged to be held in camps in Xinjiang, China, opened in Switzerland on Thursday, prompting Beijing to issue a furious statement accusing Washington of “low political tricks”.

The article also claimed:

The United States gave a financial grant for the exhibit, which will later travel to Brussels and Berlin, the World Uyghur Congress told Reuters. Earlier this week, the US mission in Geneva displayed it at a diplomatic reception, according to sources who attended.

“We are committed to placing human rights at the center of our China policy, and we will continue to highlight the grave human rights abuses we see the PRC committing across China, in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and elsewhere,” a US mission spokesperson said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

The US, guilty of the very worst crimes against humanity of the 21st century, only claims to put human rights at the center of its foreign policy when politically convenient. No mention is made of the US’ decades of supporting violent separatism in China including in Tibet and Xinjiang – creating the very real terrorism China’s security measures were put in place to combat.

No mention or note is made in articles about the “Uyghur Tribunal” regarding the constant use of the term “East Turkestan” instead of Xinjiang or the fact that most of the people speaking at the tribunal are separatists and at least partly responsible for the violence and instability that seized Xinjiang before Beijing intervened.

No mention is made about the constant presence of East Turkestan separatist flags in the backgrounds as witnesses provide testimony. At one point in the proceedings, pro-separatist Arslan Hidayat was seen interpreting for at least two witnesses. Hidayat has repeatedly called for Xinjiang to be ethnically cleansed of Han Chinese.

As China reacted to the violence the US fuelled – the US used accusations of human rights abuses to hamstring and undermine Chinese efforts to restore peace and stability. The US uses the sword of state-sponsored terrorism to strike at China, and the shield of feigned rights advocacy to defend US-sponsored separatists from justice.

The “Uyghur Tribunal” is merely the latest and perhaps grandest iteration of this strategy of striking and defending. The tribunal’s final “ruling” will be read in December 2021, just ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and a concerted US-led media campaign to call for the world’s boycott of the games. Beyond that, further sanctions could be leveled against China – all in the wake of a clearly US-engineered show tribunal dishonestly presented to the public as “justice” and “human rights advocacy.”

The harsh irony is that the US seeks to blunt China’s rise specifically so it can continue acting on the global stage with impunity, and continue carrying out the verified, very real campaign of death, destruction, and genocide it has led since the turn of the century.

October 8, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

China, Wall Street and the New Global Economy with James Corbett

UNLIMITED HANGOUT | OCTOBER 3, 2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Whitney is joined by James Corbett of the Corbett Report to discuss the overlap between the oligarchs of China and the United States and how the rise of China is intimately tied to Wall Street and Globalism. Published on 09/28/21.

This is the audio only version of the video interview available here.

Links from James Corbett

Episode 297 – China and the New World Order

American Financier Stephen A. Schwarzman Endows International Scholarship Program in China

The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men

Heirs of Mao’s Comrades Rise as New Capitalist Nobility

Mapping China’s Red Nobility

Bloomberg News Killed Investigation, Fired Reporter, Then Sought To Silence His Wife

How to Play 3D Chess

‘Decoupling’ the U.S. from China would backfire

China’s Suspiciously American Arsenal: A Closer Look

Guess who Israel’s second largest trading partner is — China

2013 Report: Israel Passes U.S. Military Technology to China

2004: US ‘anger’ at Israel weapons sale

ATimes : US up in arms over Sino-Israel ties

1996: U.S. Military Technology Sold by Israel To China Upsets Asian Power Balance

October 5, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

More News On The Progress Toward Eliminating Fossil Fuels

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | October 3, 2021

The bureaucrats of the world, particularly in the UN and developed countries, have the idea that they are going to eliminate all use of fossil fuels by somewhere around 2040-50. They have no conception of how to accomplish that, other than to order from on high that it shall occur and assume that somebody else will figure out the details. This gives the rest of us the opportunity to sit on the sidelines and observe how bureaucratic fantasy gradually runs into the brick wall of physical reality.

Back in June I covered the Report just out from Ren21 Renewables Now wherein we learned that in the ten years from 2009 to 2019, despite hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies for intermittent wind and solar power, the percent of world final energy consumption coming from fossil fuels had dropped all the way from 80.3% to 80.2%. Oh, but world final energy consumption was substantially up over that decade from about 320 to 385 exajoules, so despite all the strenuous efforts to reduce their use, in fact annual fossil fuel consumption had increased from about 260 to 310 exajoules.

And then just two weeks ago I covered the unfolding energy crisis in the UK. There, the mad rush to close coal plants and build wind turbines had left the country completely subject to just-in-time natural gas deliveries from others, particularly Russia. When a period of calm hit the North Sea wind farms, gas prices spiked by a multiple, and Britain was left closing factories and begging Russia for supply.

And there is plenty more news coming out on the same subject. Here are a couple of examples for today:

China. With the waning of the pandemic, all the rich countries of the West are back to wanting to consume lots of manufactured stuff. But of course the obsession with eliminating fossil fuels has gradually made the industrial energy supply of the rich countries more expensive and less reliable. (This is more true in Europe than in the U.S., but California and New York are doing their best to keep up.). Anyway, no problem, we’ll just get the stuff from China. So in recent months China has been in the mode of ramping up production. That will of course require much more energy. Do you think that it is going to come from wind and solar? Don’t be ridiculous. On September 27, Reuters reported that the ramp-up is causing massive energy shortages around China, and the solution is — coal. “China provincial governor urges more coal imports to resolve power shortages”:

China should work to import more coal from Russia, Indonesia and Mongolia in order to resolve supply shortages now crippling large sections of industry, said Han Jun, governor of the northeastern province of Jilin, one of the worst-hit regions. Speaking to local power firms on Monday, Han said “multiple channels” needed to be set up to guarantee coal supplies, according to the province’s official WeChat social media account. He said the province would also dispatch special teams to secure supply contracts in the neighbouring region of Inner Mongolia.

OPEC World Oil Outlook. On September 28 OPEC came out with its annual World Oil Outlook. This Report looks forward through the year 2045. It’s becoming increasingly impossible to get any straight information out of the American and European oil companies, as threats of lawsuits and regulatory actions cause them to mouth green groupthink and to pretend that they are planning to go out of business over the next couple of decades. But OPEC isn’t subject to the same pressures, so their Report is a much better indication of where knowledgeable people think things are going.

And where might that be? Here is OPEC’s chart of projected demand growth for petroleum from now to 2045:

In short, it’s continued growth in consumption all the way through 2045, albeit with the growth leveling off toward the end of the period. But basically, OPEC projects that any and all decreases in oil consumption achieved by the OECD nations (developed countries) will be offset and more by increases in the rest of the world.

OPEC also tries its hand at projections of demand for coal and natural gas over the same period. Here’s their chart of projected demand for natural gas:

It’s increases as far as the eye can see. Yes, they project that demand from the OECD countries will remain essentially flat at just under 30 mboe/d over the whole period; but meanwhile demand from the rest of the world is projected to go up dramatically from about 35 mboe/d to around 55 mboe/d.

In another chart relating to coal, they project a small decline in world demand from around 70 mboe/d today to around 60 mboe/d by 2045. Substantial declines in OECD nations will be offset by almost equivalent increases in places like India and Africa.

Do the people at OPEC know what they are talking about with these projections? I think that these figures are far more likely to be close to the mark than the fantasies coming out of the UN, where the talk is that the entire world economy will reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. For example, here is the UN’s IEA, November 17, 2019, discussing what they call a “1.5 °C scenario that does not rely on negative emissions technologies”:

This . . . [scenario] means a reduction in emissions of around 1.3 billion tonnes CO2 every year from 2018 onwards. That amount is roughly equivalent to the emissions from 15% of the world’s coal fleet or from 40% of today’s global passenger car fleet. The year by which different economies would need to hit net-zero in such a scenario would vary, but the implication for advanced economies is that they would need to reach this point in the 2040s. . . . [D]eveloping economies . . . would all need to be at net-zero by 2050.

Not happening. Do they have any idea how completely absurd this is?

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

SCO Officially Accepts Iran Permanent Membership

Al-Manar | September 17, 2021

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been accepted as a permanent member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the 21st SCO Summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on Friday.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has so far been named as an observer member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization since 2005.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addressed other heads of state and delegations present in the event, expressing hope that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization continues its progressive path, which has in a short time led to attaining distinguished regional and international position.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who takes part in the summit through video conference, congratulated Iran for the permanent membership in the organization.

The 21st summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) opened in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on Friday, with participation of heads of 12 member and observer states.

According to Tajikistan’s media, this year’s summit is going to review results of 20 years of the SCO’s activities, as well as the current situation and future outlook of multilateral cooperation of the member states of the organization.

The heads of states will also discuss regional and international collaborations and hold talks on joint acts in order to control the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the member states.

The SCO consists of eight permanent member states, including India, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, and Uzbekistan. Four states of Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia are still observer members and six countries of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey, and Sri Lanka are dialogue partners.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is an effective regional and intra-state organization, which was established by leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in 2001.

September 17, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 2 Comments

World Health Organization Enters Damage Control Mode

This article was previously published on April 9, 2021, and has been updated with new information.

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | September 10, 2021

While the mainstream media has, by and large, dismissed the theory that SARS-CoV-2 was created and leaked from a high-security biocontainment lab in Wuhan, China, a number of high-ranking U.S. officials are sticking to it, and there’s probably good reason for this.

On the whole, if the virus was actually a natural occurrence, a series of improbable coincidences would have had to transpire. Meanwhile, a series of highly probable “coincidences” point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) being the most likely source, and to dismiss them as a whole simply doesn’t make sense.

Media Struggle to Prop Up Unproven Zoonotic Theory

I first mentioned that the outbreak had the hallmarks of a laboratory escape in an article we posted February 4, 2020. On the upside, some members of the media are now finally starting to inch toward more honest reporting on this — probably because U.S. officials keep leaning that way.

That doesn’t mean some aren’t still trying to defend the official narrative. Take The New York Times, for example. The original headline of its March 26, 2021, article about Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, read: “Ex-CDC Director Favors Debunked Covid-19 Origin Theory.”1

Three days later, that headline was toned down to: “The CDC’s Ex-Director Offers No Evidence in Favoring Speculation That the Coronavirus Originated in a Lab,”2 with a correction notice noting that the earlier headline “referred incorrectly to a theory on the origins of the coronavirus. The theory is unproven, not debunked.”

Well, the truth is, all other theories are equally unproven — and are riddled with far more holes. The theory that the virus arose through natural mutation, for example, looks like Swiss cheese in comparison to the lab-leak theory.

In a February 16, 2021, article3 in Independent Science News, molecular biologist and virologist Jonathan Latham, Ph.D., and Allison Wilson, Ph.D., a molecular biologist, reviewed the evidence for a laboratory origin and the reasons why a zoonotic origin “will never be found.” I also summarized their review in March 2021 article, which explains that:

  • The chance of a person from Wuhan being patient zero is approximately 1 in 630, based on calculations that take into account the population size of Wuhan, the global population and the fact that coronavirus-carrying animals are found virtually all over the world
  • Taking into account that there are 28 Alpha- and Beta-coronavirus species with members that affect humans, the chance of Wuhan hosting a SARS-related coronavirus outbreak is 17,640 to 1
  • No credible theory for natural zoonotic spillover has been presented, to date
  • There are at least four distinct lab origin theories, including the serial passage theory (which proposes the virus was created by serial passaging through an animal host or cell culture). There’s also a variety of evidence for genetic manipulation
  • A third theory is that SARS-CoV-2 is the result of vaccine development, and the fourth is the Mojiang miners passage theory, which proposes a precursor to SARS-CoV-2 sickened the miners, and once inside these patients, it mutated into SARS-CoV-2

No matter which way you look at it, the half-baked idea brought forth by the World Health Organization’s investigative team, that the virus somehow naturally evolved in some unknown part of the world and then piggy-backed into Wuhan on top of frozen food, is held together by even fewer facts.

Among the more compelling “coincidences” that hint at lab-origin are the facts that the WIV has admitted storing and working with bat coronaviruses collected significant distances away from the lab, and that it’s the only biosafety lab in China that studies human coronaviruses. These viruses include RaTG13,4 the closest known ancestor to SARS-CoV-2, obtained from miners who fell ill with severe respiratory illness after working in a Mojiang mine in 2012.

WHO COVID Report ‘Totally Flawed’

In a March 30, 2021, opinion piece in The Washington Post,5 Josh Rogin accurately points out that the WHO’s report6 on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is so flawed, “a real investigation has yet to take place.” We simply cannot count that report as the result of a true investigative effort.

“Determining the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus should have nothing to do with politics,” he writes.7 “It is a forensic question, one that requires thorough investigation of all possible theories, and one that should encompass both the scenario that the virus jumped from animals to humans in nature as well as one related to human error in a Wuhan lab.

But a fatally flawed investigation by the World Health Organization and Chinese officials and experts only muddies the waters, and it places the WHO further at odds with the U.S. government and the Biden administration.”

As noted by Rogin and many others, the investigation was far from independent and transparent, as China was allowed to select its members, who then relied on their Chinese counterparts when it came to data collection. It’s no surprise then that this team decided the natural origin theory is the most credible, while the lab-accident theory is summarily dismissed as unworthy of further consideration and study.

In a March 25, 2021, CNN interview,8 Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated, “We’ve got real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it.” Rogin adds:9

“Specifically, declassified U.S. intelligence, confirmed by Blinken’s own State Department,10 alleges that the WIV was conducting undisclosed research on bat coronaviruses, had secret research projects with the Chinese military, and failed to disclose that several lab workers got sick with COVID-like symptoms in autumn 2019.”

Someone’s Not Telling the Truth

According to the WHO report, the labs “were well-managed, with a staff health monitoring program with no reporting of COVID-19 compatible respiratory illness during the weeks/months prior to December 2019.” “In other words, the WHO is saying the U.S. intelligence is wrong,” Rogin writes.11

Not a word is mentioned in the report about U.S. government claims that the WIV engaged in the very research required to create a novel coronavirus with the specific affinity to infect human cells.

Recently, Shi Zhengli, who heads bat coronavirus research at the WIV, spoke at a Rutgers University seminar, calling the WIV’s research “open” and “transparent.” Former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger disagrees. In an interview with Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes,” he said:12

“There was a direct order from Beijing to destroy all viral samples — and they didn’t volunteer to share the genetic sequences. There is a body of research that’s been taking place, conducted by the Chinese military in collaboration with the WIV, which has not been acknowledged by the Chinese government.

We’ve seen the data. I’ve personally seen the data. We don’t know [why the military were in that lab]. It is a major lead that needs to be pursued by the press, certainly by the WHO.”

As noted by Pottinger, Shi published studies showing how bat coronaviruses were manipulated to render them more infectious to humans, and the U.S. government has in the past received reports of safety concerns due to lax standards at the WIV.

“They were doing research specifically on coronaviruses that attach to the ACE2 receptors in human lungs just like the COVID-19 virus,” Pottinger told Stahl.13 “It’s circumstantial evidence. But it’s a pretty potent bullet point when you consider that the place where this pandemic emerged was a few kilometers away from the WIV.”

US State Department Suspects Lab Leak

In a March 21, 2021, interview with Sky News Australia,14 David Asher, former lead investigator for the U.S. State Department’s task force that looked into the origins of COVID-19, also stated that the data they collected “made us feel the Wuhan Institute was highly probably the source of the COVID pandemic.”

According to Asher, three workers at the WIV who worked with the RatG13 coronavirus — the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2 identified to date — appear to have actually been the first cluster of cases of COVID-19. They fell ill with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 as early as October 2019. At least one of the workers required hospitalization.

He also pointed out there is evidence in the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 suggesting it’s been synthetically altered. It has the backbone of a bat coronavirus, combined with a pangolin receptor and “some sort of humanized mice transceptor.” “These things don’t naturally make sense,” Asher said, adding that experts around the world agree that the odds of this configuration occurring naturally are “very low.”

Another troubling indicator that something was amiss at the WIV was the Chinese government’s taking down of a WIV database in September 2019. According to the Chinese, this was done because of “thousands of hacking attempts.”

However, Asher pointed out many other databases were taken offline around the same time as well.15 The Chinese even tried to remove data posted in a European database containing viral sequencing from patients exhibiting COVID-19-related symptoms. Interestingly, those sequences included adenovirus, which is a vaccine vector. This, Asher said, could indicate that SARS-CoV-2 is part of a vaccine developed in response to a biological weapon.

In an earlier article16 by The Sun, Asher is quoted saying the WIV “was operating a secret, classified program,” and that “In my view … it was a biological weapons program.” He stops short of accusing China of intentional release, however, which also would not make sense from a bioweapon point of view. Instead, he said he believes it was a weapon vector that, during development, “somehow leaked.”17

A March 27, 2020, assessment report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency also concluded SARS-CoV-2 was likely an accidental release from an infectious diseases laboratory, but stops short of calling it a biological weapon.18 Asher also told Sky News19 he’s never seen a more systematic cover-up, and The Sun 20 quotes him as saying that “Motive, cover-up, conspiracy, all the hallmarks of guilt are associated with this.”

Former FDA Commissioner Weighs in on Lab Origin

March 28, 2021, former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, now a board member of Pfizer (producer of one of the COVID vaccines), weighed in on the origin of the pandemic in a “Face the Nation” interview, saying:21

“It looks like the WHO report was an attempt to try to support the Chinese narrative … You know, the lab leak theory doesn’t seem like a plausible theory unless you aggregate the biggest collection of coronaviruses and put them in a lab, a minimum-security lab in the middle of a densely-populated center and experiment on animals, which is exactly what the Wuhan Institute of Virology did.

They were using these viruses in a BSL-2 lab and, we now know, infecting animals. So that creates the opportunity for a lab leak. It might not be the most likely scenario on how this virus got out, but it has to remain a scenario. And I think at the end of the day, we’re never going to fully discharge that possibility. What we’re going to have here is a battle of competing narratives.”

WHO Enters Damage Control Mode

In response to growing critiques, WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and 13 other world leaders have joined the U.S. government in expressing “frustration with the level of access China granted an international mission to Wuhan.” As reported by The Washington Post, March 30, 2021:22

“Ghebreyesus said in a briefing to member states … that he expected ‘future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing’ — the most pointed comments to date from an agency that has been solicitous toward China through most of the pandemic.

He said there is a particular need for a ‘full analysis’ of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the report did not conduct an ‘extensive enough’ assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident …

The United States, Britain, South Korea, Israel, Japan and others issued a joint statement23 … expressing concern. ‘Together, we support a transparent and independent analysis and evaluation, free from interference and undue influence,’ it reads …

Tedros said24 … that mission team members raised concerns to him about access to raw data needed for the report … ‘The team reports that the first detected case had symptom onset on the 8th of December 2019. But to understand the earliest cases, scientists would benefit from full access to data, including biological samples from at least September 2019,’ he said.”

WHO Investigation Team Accused of Spreading Disinformation

In a March 2020 interview with Independent Science News,25 molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology and member of the Institutional Biosafety Committee of Rutgers University and the Working Group on Pathogen Security of the state of New Jersey, called out the members of the WHO-instigated investigative team as “participants in disinformation.”

Ebright was one of 26 scientists who signed an open letter26 demanding a full and unrestricted forensic investigation into the origins of the pandemic, published in the Wall Street Journal and French Le Monde, March 4, 2021. When asked to describe the shortcomings of the WHO-China team’s investigation, he responded:

“A credible investigation would have had Terms of Reference that: 1) Acknowledged the possibility of laboratory origin, 2) Ensured access of investigators to records, samples, personnel, and facilities at the Wuhan laboratories that handle bat SARS-related coronaviruses,

3) Enabled collection of evidence, not mere meet-and-greet photo-ops, 4) Authorized an investigation of months, not mere days, and 5) A credible investigation also would have had conflict-of-interest-free investigators, not persons who were subjects of the research and/or closely associated with subjects of the investigation …

It is crucial that any team reviewing the issues include not only research scientists, but also biosafety, biosecurity, and science policy specialists.”

Ebright, who has repeatedly called the WHO mission “a charade,” stated that “its members were willing — and, in at least one case, enthusiastic — participants in disinformation.” Importantly, the terms of reference for the investigation were prenegotiated, and did not include even the possibility of a laboratory origin. He’s also highly critical of the inclusion of Peter Daszak, whose conflicts of interest alone are enough to invalidate the investigation.

“Daszak was the contractor who funded the laboratory at WIV that potentially was the source of the virus (with subcontracts from $200 million from the US Department of State and $7 million from the US National Institutes of Health), and he was a collaborator and co-author on research projects at the laboratory,” Ebright noted.

What Do We Know?

While another signer of the open letter, Dr. Steven Quay, claims to have calculated27 the lab-origin hypothesis as having a 99.8% probability of being correct, Ebright is unwilling to assign relative probabilities to either theory. Rather, he insists a truly thorough forensic investigation and analysis is what is required, as there is biological evidence going in both directions. He explains:

“The genome sequence of the outbreak virus indicates that its progenitor was either the horseshoe-bat coronavirus RaTG13, or a closely related bat coronavirus.

RaTG13 was collected by Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2013 from a horseshoe-bat colony in a mine in Yunnan province, where miners had died from a SARS-like pneumonia in 2012, was partly sequenced by WIV in 2013-2016, was fully sequenced by WIV in 2018-2019, and was published by WIV in 2020.

Bat coronaviruses are present in nature in multiple parts of China. Therefore, the first human infection could have occurred as a natural accident, with a virus passing from a bat to a human, possibly through another animal. There is clear precedent for this. The first entry of the SARS virus into the human population occurred as a natural accident in a rural part of Guangdong province in 2002.

But bat coronaviruses are also collected and studied by laboratories in multiple parts of China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Therefore, the first human infection also could have occurred as a laboratory accident, with a virus accidentally infecting a field collection staffer, a field survey staffer, or a laboratory staffer, followed by transmission from the staffer to the public.

There also is clear precedent for this. The second, third, fourth and fifth entries of the SARS virus into human populations occurred as a laboratory accident in Singapore in 2003, a laboratory accident in Taipei in 2003, and two separate laboratory accidents in Beijing in 2004.

At this point in time, there is no secure basis to assign relative probabilities to the natural-accident hypothesis and the laboratory-accident hypothesis. Nevertheless, there are three lines of circumstantial evidence that are worth noting.

1. First, the outbreak occurred in Wuhan, a city of 11 million persons that does not contain horseshoe-bat colonies; that is tens of kilometers from, and that is outside the flight range of, the nearest known horseshoe-bat colonies. Furthermore, the outbreak occurred at a time of year when horseshoe bats are in hibernation and do not leave colonies.

2. Second, the outbreak occurred in Wuhan, on the doorstep of the laboratory that conducts the world’s largest research project on horseshoe bat viruses, that has the world’s largest collection of horseshoe-bat viruses, and that possessed and worked with the world’s closest sequenced relative of the outbreak virus …

3. Third, the bat-SARS-related-coronavirus projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology used personal protective equipment (usually just gloves; sometimes not even gloves) and biosafety standards (usually just biosafety level 2) that would pose very high risk of infection of field-collection, field-survey, or laboratory staff upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of SARS-CoV-2.”

Who’s Qualified to Opine on Viral Origin?

When asked “What would you say to the scientists who declined to comment on the open letter because it does not come from virologists?” Ebright responded:28

“The claim is unsound. There were virologists among the signers of the Open Letter. There even were coronavirologists among the signers of the Open Letter. More important, COVID-19 affects every person on the planet. Not just virologists …

Microbiologists and molecular biologists are as qualified as virologists to assess the relevant science and science policies. Virology is a subset, not a superset, of microbiology and molecular biology. The sequencing, sequence analysis, cell culture, animal-infection studies and other laboratory procedures used by virologists are not materially different from the procedures used by other microbiologists and molecular biologists.”

Is Gain-of-Function Research Ever Justifiable?

Clearly, getting to the bottom of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is crucial if we are to prevent a similar pandemic from erupting in the future. If gain-of-function research was in fact involved, we need to know, so that steps can either be taken to prevent another leak (which is not likely possible) or to dismantle and ban such research altogether for the common good.

As long as we are creating the risk, the benefit will be secondary. Any scientific or medical gains made from this kind of research pales in comparison to the incredible risks involved if weaponized pathogens are released, and it doesn’t matter if it’s by accident or on purpose. This sentiment has been echoed by others in a variety of scientific publications.29,30,31,32

Considering the potential for a massively lethal pandemic, I believe it’s safe to say that BSL 3 and 4 laboratories pose a very real and serious existential threat to humanity.

Historical facts tell us accidental exposures and releases have already happened, and we only have our lucky stars to thank that none have turned into pandemics taking the lives of tens of millions, as was predicted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Seeing how scientists have already figured out a way to mutate SARS-CoV-2 such that it evades human antibodies, having a frank, open discussion about the scientific merits of this kind of work is more pertinent than ever before.

If SARS-CoV-2 really was the result of zoonotic spillover, the easiest and most effective way to quash “conspiracy theories” about a lab origin would be to present compelling evidence for a plausible theory. So far, that hasn’t happened, and as noted by Latham and Wilson, the most likely reason for that is because the virus does not have a natural zoonotic origin, and you cannot find that which does not exist.

Summary

Ideally, we need to reevaluate the usefulness of the WHO. Strong evidence indicates it is heavily influenced, if not outright controlled by Bill Gates. On the whole, it seems it would be far wiser to decentralize pandemic planning from the global and federal levels to the state and local levels. Both medicine and government work best when individualized and locally applied.

Sadly, even though this is clearly the best strategy for successfully addressing any truly serious infectious threat, the likelihood of this happening is very close to zero.

This is largely due to decades of careful planning by the technocrats that have carefully placed their surrogates in virtually every arena of global government, finances and media, which allows them to easily dictate their propaganda campaigns and censor or deplatform virtually anyone who disagrees and seeks to provide a balanced counter-narrative.

Sources and References

September 10, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 3 Comments

Beijing concerned about NATO’s ‘China nuclear threat theory’

Press TV – September 7, 2021

China has expressed concern about NATO’s assertions about an alleged nuclear threat from Beijing, stressing that the country is not involved in any arms race and its nuclear activities are for national security purposes.

“China is gravely concerned about and firmly opposes the ‘China nuclear threat theory’ NATO has been hyping up lately. China follows a self-defensive nuclear strategy, with nuclear forces always kept at the minimum level required to safeguard national security,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a news briefing in the capital, Beijing, on Tuesday.

“We are committed to no first use of nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstances and pledge unconditionally not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones. China has never taken part in any form of nuclear arms race, nor has it deployed nuclear weapons overseas,” Wang added.

The remarks came after NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged China at a NATO conference a day earlier to join international efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and said Beijing’s nuclear capability allegedly lacked transparency.

Stoltenberg also claimed that China was rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, including through large-scale building of new nuclear missile silos.

Wang said China posed no threat to any country unless it was targeted or threatened, saying, “No country will be threatened or should feel threatened by China’s national defense capability as long as it does not intend to threaten or harm China’s sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity.”

Wang hit out at NATO for its lack of nuclear transparency, saying the alliance should abandon the policy for the sake of arms control and avoiding nuclear conflicts.

“What the international community should be really concerned about is NATO’s nuclear sharing policy. NATO has the largest nuclear arsenal… and some NATO members are ramping up efforts to modernize nuclear power,” the Chinese spokesman said.

“Many countries share the view that NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements violate the stipulations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT and that its nuclear capability lacks transparency, which exacerbate risks of nuclear proliferation and conflicts,” he added.

Wang said, “It is typical double standard when NATO chooses to be evasive about its own issue while trying to mislead the public and hyping up the so-called ‘China nuclear threat.’ If NATO truly cares about nuclear arms control, it should abandon the Cold War mentality, abolish nuclear sharing arrangements, and pull out the large number of nuclear weapons deployed in Europe.”

The Chinese official also called on NATO to ask the US to earnestly fulfill its responsibilities in nuclear disarmament and substantively reduce its nuclear stockpile so as to create conditions for the realization of comprehensive and complete nuclear disarmament.

China insists that its nuclear arsenal is overshadowed by those of the US and Russia, and says it is prepared for dialog on the issue on the condition that Washington reduces its nuclear weapons stockpile to Beijing’s level.

The US Defense Department estimated in a 2020 report to Congress that China’s operational nuclear warhead stockpile was in “the low 200s.” This is while the United States, as stated in a fact sheet prepared by the State Department, maintained 1,357 deployed nuclear warheads as of March 1 of this year.

The US and Russia remain the world’s largest holders and developers of nuclear weapons, followed by Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and the Israeli regime.

US-China relations have grown increasingly tense in recent years, with the world’s two largest economies clashing over everything from trade and human rights to Chinese Taipei and military activities in the South China Sea.

September 7, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

Released docs describe ‘HIGHEST RISK’ involved in US-funded coronavirus research in Wuhan

Deadly bat caves & humanized mice tests

RT | September 7, 2021

Documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that the US government funded studies into coronavirus in bats in Wuhan long before the pandemic, with the proposal showing it was aware of the risk that researchers would be infected.

More than 900 pages of material related to this research were published on the non-profit media company’s website on Tuesday. The documents were acquired as part of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation by The Intercept against the National Institutes of Health.

The documents detail the work of EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based organization specializing in protection against infectious diseases, and its work with Chinese partners on coronaviruses, specifically those originating in bats.

The papers detail that EcoHealth Alliance was granted a total of $3.1 million by the federal government, with $599,000 of that going to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The funding received in Wuhan was used in part to identify and genetically alter bat coronaviruses that might infect humans.

EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak led one of the studies, titled ‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence’, which screened thousands of bats for novel coronaviruses. The research also involved the screening of people who work with live animals.

However, the released documents include a recognition of the potential risks posed by the project. “Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled,” the grant application reads.

“In this proposal, they actually point out that they know how risky this work is. They keep talking about people potentially getting bitten – and they kept records of everyone who got bitten,” Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, in the US, told The Intercept in response to the release.

Another revelation was that experimental work with humanized mice (that is, with functioning human genes, cells, tissues, and/or organs) was conducted at the Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment, a biosafety level-three lab, and not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, mainland China’s first biosafety level-four lab, as originally thought.

The program ran from 2014 to 2019, and was renewed in 2019, only for former US president Donald Trump to cancel it. Robert Kessler, communications manager at EcoHealth Alliance, maintained there wasn’t a lot to say on the matter. “We applied for grants to conduct research. The relevant agencies deemed that to be important research, and thus funded it,” he noted.

While the US has blasted China for not releasing all the relevant information on Covid-19, The Intercept said it had requested the recently released documents back in September 2020.

Although they don’t provide conclusive evidence to support the theory that Covid-19 was leaked from a Chinese lab, it does highlight the fact that risky research into bat coronaviruses was being undertaken in the years leading up the pandemic, and the US was not only well aware of that, but also funded it. Bats have been identified as a possible zoonotic source for the virus.

World Health Organization experts spent around a month in China from January this year. Their report suggested that cases identified in Wuhan in 2019 were believed to have been acquired from “a zoonotic source, as many [of those initially infected] reported visiting or working in the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market.”

Beijing has refused to take part in a second probe, rejecting the lab leak theory while, in turn, calling for an investigation into US-based laboratories.

September 7, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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