Sorry to mix metaphors and cultural traditions. Yes, Kabuki is Japanese in origin but the Kabuki dance now playing out between Beijing and Washington is an apt description of the political posturing each side is performing. Apart from the complaints from both Chinese leaders and U.S. politicians in which each side blames the other for the outbreak and spread of Corona, there is a curious mix of posturing and actions that are sending mixed messages and clouding the simple, horrible truth–the global spread of Corona 19 was a deliberate, conscious act by the Chinese Communist government to weaken the West, especially the United States. But there is another part of the story that has received little attention from the media and most pundits–the US Government, with DOJ leading the charge, is going after some very intriguing Chinese intelligence operatives.
More about that later, let's focus first on the growing body of evidence that the launch of Corona from Wuhan was not the result of eating rotten bats or an accident at the level 4 bio lab in Wuhan. Instead of recruiting fanatics to wear suicide bomb belts, the Chinese Government appears to had chosen to infect its own citizens and send them out to major population centers in the West. It was a conscious plan to infect and weaken the West.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that China chafed under the Western world's support for student protesters in Hong Kong and Donald Trump's aggressive campaign to punish China for unfair trade practices. It is no mere coincidence that the emergence of the virus in Wuhan barely spread into other parts of China. Beijing and Shanghai dwarf New York City in terms of populating size and concentration, yet the Chinese urban behemoths escaped unscathed. Not so New York and other major western countries, such as Italy, the UK and Spain–all have experienced major disruptions and pain as a result of the virus bomb set off in those nations.
If you have not seen the following two videos they are worth your time and consideration:
There were some fascinating developments in December and January in Boston involving Chinese nationals and a U.S. citizen who got paid a lot of money to help China advance in the field of nano biology.
Let's start with Zaosong Zheng. Here is the DOJ press release:
Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China. On Jan. 21, 2020, Zheng was indicted on one count of smuggling goods from the United States and one count of making false, fictitious or fraudulent statements. He has been detained since Dec. 30, 2019.
Biological research? What kind? What would you say if I told you that at least one of the vials contained Corona 19? Would that change your mind? The complaint against Zaosong Zheng contains some tantalizing clues. Take a look at the FBI Agent who swore out the affidavit–Special Agent Karen D Spice. She has worked as a hazardous materials/Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) forensic evidence specialist for the FBI since 2006.
The FBI is not telling the full story. Here's the official party line–the U.S. Government just happened to discover the vials. Lucky coincidence, huh?
On Monday, December 9, 2019, CBP Agriculture Specialists assigned to Boston Logan International Airport identified ZHENG, a researcher who was scheduled to depart Boston bound for Beijing, China on Hainan Airlines (HU) flight 482, as a high risk for possibly exporting undeclared biological material.
As a result, CBP officers went to the Hainan bag room where they were able to locate two checked bags in ZHENG’s name. The checked bags were physically examined. The examination resulted in the discovery of twenty one (21) vials wrapped in a plastic bag and concealed in a sock. The vials were visually inspected and appeared to contain a brown liquid with both typed and handwritten descriptions and notes. Based upon my experience and training and discussions with agents working on this matter, these vials contained what appeared to be biological materials that were not properly declared or packaged for transportation in a commercial aircraft.
The decision to take a close look at Zheng was not just because a CBP officer had a hunch. It is highly likely that Zheng had been under surveillance, probably including electronic surveillance of his communications. This was not just an accidental discovery.
The same DOJ Press Release also focuses on Yanqinq Ye. According to the DOJ:
Ye is a Lieutenant of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the armed forces of the People’s Republic of China and member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On her J-1 visa application, Ye falsely identified herself as a “student” and lied about her ongoing military service at the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), a top military academy directed by the CCP.
In other words, a military spy for China. And Logan Airport once again is espionage central:
On April 20, 2019, federal officers interviewed Ye at Boston’s Logan International Airport. During the interview, it is alleged that Ye falsely claimed that she had minimal contact with two NUDT professors who were high-ranking PLA officers. However, a search of Ye’s electronic devices demonstrated that at the direction of one NUDT professor, who was a PLA Colonel, Ye had accessed U.S. military websites, researched U.S. military projects and compiled information for the PLA on two U.S. scientists with expertise in robotics and computer science. Furthermore, a review of a WeChat conversation revealed that Ye and the other PLA official from NUDT were collaborating on a research paper about a risk assessment model designed to decipher data for military applications. During the interview, Ye admitted that she held the rank of Lieutenant in the PLA and admitted she was a member of the CCP.
Ask yourself again, "Why did federal officers decide to interview Ye?" Just a spur of the moment hunch? Not likely. I believe this shows there is a pretty substantial counter intelligence operation by the FBI going after Chinese targets.
The star of the DOJ press release is an American citizen, Dr. Charles Lieber of Harvard University. Robert Willman has written a fine piece here at SST and I encourage you to read it if you missed it the first go round. What I find striking about the Lieber case is that his indictment focuses on activities between 2010 and 2015. Nothing recent. But the revelations of the vast amounts of money he was collecting from the Chinese ($600,000 a year) is jaw dropping.
Like it or not we are a war with China. China is not our friend. It is an adversary keen on destroying America's place as the world's economic leader. It is not just a Corona attack. The Chinese Government is invested heavily in helping the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels produce and distribute synthetic narcotics, such as fentanyl, in the United States. China remains the world leader in product counterfeiting, which covers products from the most mundane consumer items to our most sophisticated technologies. The Chinese also have been in the forefront of using straw buyers to purchase luxury automobiles, such as Mercedes and BMW, in the United States and then ship them covertly to China to be sold on lots owned by relatives of Senior Chinese Government officials.
China is engaged in a massive criminal and intelligence war on our country. I suppose the one silver lining of the Corona virus is that it has awakened many previously somnambulist Americans to this threat. Will we do anything or will we quietly march into the graveyard of history?
CCP PLA Lt. Yanqing-Ye
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/counterintelligence/yanqing-ye
Interesting, Larry. The story has been kept fairly well locked down. I never heard of it before.
The real virus in this story is the ideology of socialism. I note that socialist agitprop personalities are amazing up and salivating over the destruction of capitalism under the guise of covid concern trolling. Some of these personalities are in our own government (Obama holdovers, mostly). I suppose the Chinese are playing the long game here.
An image of Maddonna at 2019 Eurovison finals is shocking. Hell of a coincidence.
https://www.google.com/search?q=madonna+2109+eurovision+finals&sxsrf=ALeKk03I0M-R5a5geHxAWlKamsayDQPbqw:1586777073918&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjei9CepeXoAhU5KDQIHRwMBTMQ_AUoAnoECBMQBA&biw=1031&bih=544&dpr=1.25#imgrc=qkudb0VQIpRR4M
“During the Eurovision Finale in May of 2019, a corona-wearing Madonna is surrounded by gas masked, zombie like dancers as she sang, “Not everyone can come into the future / Not everyone that’s here is gonna last.” At the end, they all fall over backward, out of sight, so that only the 61-year-old sex symbol remains, with rapper Quavo.”
https://www.unz.com/ldinh/coronavirus-bondage/
All good points. As to how this has affected the U.S. military, the NYT has given a detailed look at what happened on the TR, CVN-71 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/politics/coronavirus-roosevelt-carrier-crozier.html
Note that prior to docking there were, supposedly, no cases of coronavirus in Danang. I can’t help but think of the following possibility.
No doubt there are numerous people in Vietnam who lost a parent to the naval aircraft, A-4s, etc., that flew off the aircraft carriers that were stationed at Yankee and Dixie stations. Would it not be natural for some of them to seek vengeance against the USN for its earlier acts? We certainly have well-documented acts of vengeance against those who supported the Czarist dynasty in Russia. Look at how the whole family of Czar Nicholas was brutally murdered. (I know of no parallels to that foul act in European history, however there is a parallel in Hebrew history, that of the family of Athalia.)
Oh if only more of the US population got its infotainment from really attractive but obviously serious brunette talking heads we all would be so much better infotained. But we don’t so we aren’t.
So it is war but a new type; slow, inefficient at killing fighting age people but very good at loading fear into older people. How do you recommend that the US respond to this war?
And just as an aside, if you overlay a map of the current corona attributed deaths on a map of US sanctuary cities, you get an amazingly tight fit.
Here’s a mirror image of your hypothesis:
Covid Type A, the parent phenotype of Types B and C, did not originate in China. It originated in the USA and is by far the predominant strain here. See “Coronavirus Has THREE Distinct Strains, According to Study; US Suffering From Original Variation.” https://www.techtimes.com/articles/248721/20200410/coronavirus-has-three-distinct-strains-according-to-study-us-suffering-from-original-variation.htm
The US has been using bioweapons on China since 1951 and on Cuba since the 70s. The effect has been to make both countries’ public health systems better than America’s, as their life expectancy advantage demonstrates.
Naturally, China would like to stop the attacks and, last year, an opportunity presented itself.
There are Chinese researchers in every biolab in the USA and last Fall some noticed a novel Coronavirus epidemic, caused by what we now know as Type A Covid-19, and reported it to the CCDC in Beijing. The CCDC asked for DNA profiles and tissue samples.
The DNA profiles were easy to send, but the FBI was on the case and caught at least two Chinese smuggling samples out, but two others escaped the FBI’s airport dragnet. I suspect that, since the plot would have taken at least a year to hatch, a patriotic Chinese in the chain of custody learned how the US planned to use it as a weapon.
The CCDC alerted its national network of 70,000 pathogen reporters and, when the fake US Army team brought the more-deadly Type B to Wuhan, Beijing sprung the trap. A reader, Valerie Van Kerckhove, an Industrial engineer in biochemistry, experienced in pharmacovigilance and molecular biology, alerted me:
“I actually find the response by the Chinese government to be extremely interesting. It seems like it’s overblowing the matter on purpose. Considering the low number of cases (compared to China’s population) and low death rates, it feels like the Chinese government is overblowing fears on purpose, with maps filled with dark areas and shutting down everything everywhere (and this is during China’s most important holiday season).I suspect it’s practicing for when a Really serious disease breaks out, the sort with people dying like flies. So I find all this fuss quite interesting. We’ve been warned about a potential superbug outbreak for years, and now we can see how the response will look like. No doubt the Chinese government is busy taking notes on what it could have done better.”
From the POV of excess deaths, Covid-19 is just a blip, but China really went to town on it and staged the greatest civil defense drill in human history and talked it up so much that it became a global topic of conversation and remains so.
So the civil defense drill worked, they have the lowest death rate in the world, they have identified the three Covid strains, their sequence and locations of appearance, and they’re starting to put the heat on the US to fess up to a coverup… or else China will do it for them.
I suspect we’re watching an American PR stunt go horribly wrong. Donald Trump, if he even knew about it, should have heeded his own words, “People say you don’t like China. No, I love them. But their leaders are much smarter than our leaders. And we can’t sustain ourselves with that. It’s like, take the New England Patriots and Tom Brady and have them play your high school football team.”
KH
Never heard of the “Dixie” station. Interesting.
Godfree Roberts
” The US has been using bioweapons on China since 1951 and on Cuba since the 70s.” Do you have any proof of that?
“Like it or not we are a war with China.”
I hope the word gets out to the states whose universities have decided that Chinese money gives prioritization to their students while ours are shunted off the SJW lala land or wait listed, plus coereced into financial bondage for prestige degress. Trump should revoke all chinese student visas. I believe he has emergency powers previously stated.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-declaring-national-emergency-concerning-novel-coronavirus-disease-covid-19-outbreak/
There are plenty of governors have been on the Chinese money grab list for some time. Pompeo spoke about it earier in the year. Sundance wrote about it a few days ago and linked to a video of Pompeo’s remarks. https://youtu.be/g1BbswU3i10
Eric,
Scott Adams and his puffery around “voluntary” health reporting aps and location tracking. I’m sure that’s going to be rolled out to 20 million “undocumented” aliens first, or are they immune from Covid panic? Check your LinkedIn news feed to see what the other “influencers” are doing.
Keith, two words with great symbolic meaning: Jane Fonda.
When you step back from the origins of the disease and just look at how CV-19 propagates it’s difficult to tell just how bad things are vs how they would have been without the panic. Then I wonder if there is actually a parallel control population somewhere. How about the homeless population? In the US it’s huge, has poor hygiene, nutrition, medical care, and lives outside the official economy. No lock-down there. In short it’s an invisible world of untouchables. If the virus is anything like as nasty as some tout it to be one would expect it to rip through that population like a buzz saw. So anyone know?
All
I may write a front page post on this when more info is available, but right now it seems likely (WAG) that CODIV-19 was at least partially developed in US university labs partially funded by Chinese government front groups with the on scene assistance of Chinese graduate students and the paid cooperation of US academics.
It seems that a non discriminating rapidly disseminating viral illness is a rather poor choice for a bio-weapon. The second video with the grave and somber tone of the announcer seems propagandistic with the coda of suggesting suing China.Accounts of the 1918 flu epidemic are filled with all kinds of similar finger pointing. I’m not a fan of conspiracy based thinking and I’m already reading all kinds of nutty stuff on FB and other social media platforms. Viruses are truly a bane and they’re so slippery they’re almost magical in the way they end up everywhere. It seems to me that it’s better to focus on preventive and curative measures, medical, social, and economic, rather than engage in futile “analysis” trying to find a human perpetrator. Nature engages in all manner of nasty perpetrations on humanity all by itself thanks to its endless bag of tricks with viruses, bacteria, protozoans, and even nasty bits of work like prions. As for the human (political) fumbling in China (and everywhere else), it’s standard fare when societies are caught with their pants down and leadership gets singled out in retrospect for blame. It’s hard to control events when events are in control.
Fred,
Adams is a blowhard. I know what techno-socialism-matrix- brave-new-world developments are happening in healthcare; or at least healthcare is the excuse – and the virus is making the excuse an easier sell. I’m working on a project right now that involves all of that. I’ll tell you about it sometime (perhaps on a mutual friends FB).
A. Pols
Not a “conspiracy.” No, a Chinese government operation. Do you believe such operations by various governments exist? From personal experience I KNOW they do. Do you have any connections to China?
They need to take a close look at the recently hired CIO for the massive CalPERS public employee pension fund. He was a Chinese military agent before becoming a naturalized US citizen and “Wall Street investor”.
He recently pushed for a dangerous investment move that insured the pension fund would no longer be covered should there be a sudden market downturn. And then, what do you know there was a sudden down turn and the pension fund lost one billion dollars do to his decision.
Already the pension fund is over-promised, only 70% funded and devouring local governmental budgets with hugely increasing payment demands. On its own this public pension fund is a disaster in the making right now. Now it just got a lot worse after this new Chinese CIO took over.
Coincidence is not causation, but something is starting to look like Peking Duck when the dots are connected. Worth further investigation.
Let’s take this one step further. Assuming that Larry is correct, what is a proper US response? This is not an instance where the US can retaliate in kind. US and China have an economic version of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) and any selective decoupling will require finding alternative supply chains that have no national security vulnerabilities or rebuilding our dismantled industrial base on new high tech foundations (I personally favor the second option). Do we let allied intelligence services know about the evidence? Does the Trump Administration go public and create domestic pandemonium? I don’t think either of these options are viable any more than direct retaliation. These are food for thought.
I wouldn’t use the uneven spread in China as evidence that they did a Kamikaze attack on us (another inappropriate cultural metaphor). The spread in the U.S. was also extremely uneven. The first cases appeared on the West Coast but Washington / CA have < 10% of our cases while NY/NJ still have over 50%. In a Kamikaze attack you only risk one pilot, China risked more than that including their global reputation. Doing so would mean that their entire strategy hinged on our incompetence as they gave us a good solid month to respond. As cynical as I am I wouldn't touch that bet. China notified WHO on 12/31 and by 1/24 human to human transmission, w/5,000 probable cases, WHO rated global outbreak HIGH and recommended temperature screening. By then China put Wuhan in full lockdown, if that is not showing your cards then what is? Had we reacted as aggressively as Japan/S.Korea w/a 14 day isolation and contact tracing screening for all arrivals from infected countries and temperature screening on everyone else in Feb. then we would be laughing at them. Trump's selective travel ban was a good start but insufficient. Instead we held Mardis Gras. I cannot think of a single good reason why we did not start aggressive containment measures after 1/24. Did I sound the alarm? No. I just read the WHO situation reports recently but I would hope that there is some arm of the U.S. govt that does so. The first three are sufficient. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports
I do not have any direct connections to China. I have a brother in law who does and he’s been there a lot recently, so he tells me things, but it doesn’t make me an expert. My comment was not intended as exculpatory for China or anyone, only as a note about human tendencies and failings in such situations and that rumors fly. And yes, I do agree with what you say about your personal experiences….
From “Institutional Investor” April 2020 re: former Chinese military officer and now CalPERS CIO Ben Meng to disinvest protection against market downturn for CalPERS funds – he too urges “going long”. Chinese do have a different concept of time – they measure in millennia; we measure in minutes.
“….The California Public Employees’ Retirement System ended its program to protect against stock-market crashes shortly before it likely would have paid off, the fund confirmed Thursday.
“We terminated explicit tail-risk hedging options strategies because of their high cost, lack of scalability, and the fact that there are better alternatives available to CalPERS,” Ben Meng, chief investment officer for the nation’s largest public pension fund, told Institutional Investor in a statement.
The timing may be painful, but Meng stands by the decision.
“At times like this, we need to strongly resist ‘resulting bias’ — looking at recent results and then using those results to judge the merits of a decision,” Meng cautioned. “We are a long-term investor. For the size and complexity of our portfolio, we need to think differently.”……”
A. Pols
IMO losing a few thousand people in the course of an op designed to ruin us would be acceptable to the CCP. Look at their history.
A more concise way to make my point. It’s an extremely risky way to get back at us. I kind of figured they would send us a few batches of bad pet food first but what do I know?
All
It is very sad to see how far SST has sunk in its adoption of this conspiracy theory. Lots of smoke and no fire. The US did not develop SARS-1 or SARS-2 or MERS neither did China. Nature did. Is there anyone here who can read sequence data? It seems not. Why did SST apply critical thinking and logic re Syrian chemical weapons attacks and the Skripals but have now completely lost the plot?
China has not escaped, any more than we have, this is going to be a problem for the next couple of years as it continues to wax and wain as we relax and reimpose containment measures.
I will be very interested to see what is in those vials, my money says they are DNA related to his cancer research and has nothing to do with SARS-2’s RNA or any other virus.
I don’t think you are giving nature and human stupidity enough credit.
Deap,
That looks like it was intentional sabatoge of CalPERS. Perhaps somebody in the MSM should as Governor Newsome about it.
Corporate America should start looking at their own Chinese influenced research. We had more than one Chinese national ‘graduate student’ working on 3D printing for manufacturing and associated econometric modeling here recently. Over the objections of some the company’s entire databank including all sales and price history for the past two decades to the individual part level was presented to MIT’s researchers. Plenty of foreign companies in competition with our firm would pay dearly for a piece of that data. I have little doubt the CCP has it.
Christian Chuba,
“I cannot think of a single good reason why we did not start aggressive containment measures after 1/24.”
Perhaps you were too busy to see the House usings its time on Impeachment in December or the Senate having to hold an impeachment trial in January. Then there was Pelosi’s “no ban act” that would have prevented Trump’s Chinese travel ban from being implemented. Followed by her public statements about it being okay to go down to Chinatown. Sentiments echoed by the Socialist De Blasio in NYC. China risks a US response only if their finanical and political influence within the MSM and the Democratic Party is challenged effectively within the US.
Harper,
“Do we let allied intelligence services know about the evidence?” Does that include the ones who pushed the Russia collusion crime on us? Yes, let them see it all but don’t trust them a damn bit to do anything about it. I believe the correct response would be a declaration of war. Sieze their assets, repudiate all debt held by them, expel all thier citizens here, cancel all visas and greencards. See if the CCP wants to start shooting with somthing other than viruses and fentynol, the later of which has already killed a hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Well, well, what a surprise. The Communist Party of China might have obfuscated, dissimulated, and unthinkably, lied about what they knew and when they knew it about CoVID-19? This included gagging a world level expert in emerging diseases. This also might include the nasty case of another Chinese doctor, alarmed at what he suspected was happening who tried to get out the word, then subsequently disappeared, and later was reported to be dead.
But, of course, the NIH (yes, that National Institute of Health) was funding research at the two Chinese facilities mentioned in this article, undoubtedly because China, despite all their current propaganda, is the point of origin of dangerous flus/respiratory diseases. But a Rutgers authority suspects that, instead of working at the maximally-secure level of 4, this bat research was being conducted at level 2, far less safe for preventing accidental releases. Given the widely-known Chinese tendency to cut corners, and perpetrate frauds, and then to lie about everything, one wonders where the oversight from the NIH went, no?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211291/U-S-government-gave-3-7million-grant-Wuhan-lab-experimented-coronavirus-source-bats.html
This link is from the Daily Mail, which unfortunately is visually cluttered, and infested with pop-up ads. Just x out the ads, and soldier on; their sourcing is often very good, and they don’t pull punches. Read it all the way through. If the Chinese indeed knew the genetic sequencing for the virus by early January, only to withhold this information vital to the development of screening tests, and potential vaccines from other nations and research/pharmaceutical organizations, well, things are going to get bad for them.
And just for shits & giggles, here is another link to something that might prove eye-opening. This concerns a section of an address to a meeting of this nation’s governors by SoS Pompeo. I don’t care much for Pompeo, but his having been previously head of the CIA, and thus having been in a position to learn of this information, makes it of substantially more interest.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/04/12/the-list-interesting-and-quietly-overlooked-remarks-by-secretary-pompeo/#more-188956
This post has been updated to include the referenced CCP list/grading of the governors. It covers only a bit more than 30 out of 50. Our own Gov. Murphy is not on the list. The speech does go into some of the possible approaches to the state governments, and I have to say these are classic espionage penetration/recruiting techniques. Hmm. It has become crystal clear that similar activities with US universities and technological entities have led to massive infiltratration by Chinese wolves in sheep’s clothing, and for analagous reasons; i.e., greed for full price tuition, and pecuniary gain for corporations having overridden prudence about security of high-level intellectual content and technological/engineering processes. Ya know, maybe if the FBI & the CIA were more interested in counterintelligence than in subverting the President and the national election that put him there, we might be better off. Just a crazy idea, I know.
I am sure that President Putin is taking all of this in as he considers how he should structure his dealings with the Chinese going forward. After all, Russia shares a long border, and increasing ties with these less than trustworthy “partners”. But here in the USA (and with our yapping poodles in Europe) it was Russia this, Russia that, slap some sanctions on them, and here we are today with positive relations again with Russia difficult to see. Stupid beyond comprehension, and this idiocy has driven Russia and China closer, something that may not have happened were it not for listening to NeoCons in the case of Russia, and NeoLiberals in the case of China.
The following is a post, originally at Saker, by “Old Microbiologist” who posted on SST a while back on the anthrax attacks (he was deep in the middle of that mess) and I think some other relevant topics. It is clear he has a very deep and relevant US background and his take is “I have zero proof other than my gut feeling that this is a bioweapon”, followed up by a description of his very deep, perhaps uniquely relevant background:
https://www.unz.com/article/was-coronavirus-a-biowarfare-attack-against-china/
This covers much possible “bio weapon” ground in depth and seems credible given his background.
I also recently read an apparently solid story (could not find it today) on the Wuhan lab suggesting that there a reasonable possibility that COVID could have been accidentally released there, given the lab’s apparently well documented history of problems. This article was at a credible news site and I will continue to look for it.
Lieber’s indictment does not state how much money he was paid by Chinese government. The numbers referred to were subject to being pro-rated based on how much time a recipient actually spent in China. Lieber is a very busy and accomplished scientist, prominent at Harvard, whose schedule over the past decade does not seem to reflect huge amounts of time in China. The government probably knows exactly what he earned through his Chinese contacts, but chose to publicize high speculative numbers instead.
He is simply charged with not specifically reporting that his Chinese affiliation was part of the latter’s “Thousand Talents Plan”. The requirement to specifically report such is a relatively new initiative, sparked by a Congressional investigation:
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2019-11-18%20PSI%20Staff%20Report%20-%20China's%20Talent%20Recruitment%20Plans.pdf
The Congressional Report flirts with, or edges towards, claiming basic scientific research as a national security priority, subject to restrictions. Lieber’s alleged criminal offence was considered, a year earlier, something minor and subject to administrative remedy, not being hauled shackled into a courtroom. Lieber is one of America’s most prominent scientists. His indictment is filled with innuendo and supposition, but very little substance. The same could be said about the Congressional Report. There is a danger of an overreaction fuelled by China-hawks and ambitious prosecutors.
Here is the Asia Times article on Wuhan Lab problems (found it!), suggesting accidental release from this lab may be plausible:
https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/inside-wuhans-secretive-national-biosafety-lab/
JJC
Good counter-propaganda.
A. Pols
“Not all deaths during the Great Leap were from starvation. Frank Dikötter estimates that at least 2.5 million people were beaten or tortured to death and one million to three million committed suicide.[106][2] He provides some illustrative examples. In Xinyang, where over a million died in 1960, 6–7% (around 67,000) of these were beaten to death by the militias. In Daoxian county, 10% of those who died had been “buried alive, clubbed to death or otherwise killed by party members and their militia.” In Shimen county, around 13,500 died in 1960, of these 12% were “beaten or driven to their deaths.”[107] In accounts documented by Yang Jisheng,[38][57] people were beaten or killed for rebelling against the government, reporting the real harvest numbers, for sounding alarm, for refusing to hand over what little food they had left, for trying to flee the famine area, for begging food or as little as stealing scraps or angering officials.” wiki on Great Leap Forward
JoeC100,
“seems credible given his background.” No, just no. So in addition to all his other illustrious achievements, like being a helicopter pilot, chemical warefare expert and resident of the Czech Republic where his retirement check goes so much farther than in the USA, “old microbiologits” wants to pin the China virus on the US by repeating the Chinese propaganda line about it steming from the World Miliary Games in Wuhan; per Oldmircobiologist: “I was a participant in several CISM competitions in Europe for skiing ” having much expertise therein. Helicopter pilot, chem warfare expert, DHS consultant, expat retiree living high on the hog in Europe, and now, world class military games skier! Oh, and it’s America’s fault. He’s catching up to 007 on skills. I should put him in touch with 00 bear and they can trade spy stories.
Smithfield, a company purchased by the Chinese a few years back, is shutting down their largest meat processing plant here.
Notwithstanding the President’s touting our agricultural sales to China, I think it’s time we cut all trade with them. Of course there’s going to be needs to fill, let Americans fill them going forward.
I agree with Fred excepting the expelling of all Chinese citizens, many of them are here legitimately and prefer our way of life. The rest can go for sure.
Larry, why would Zaosong Zheng employ such amature tradecraft to smuggle out biowarfare pathogens in a sock, in checked baggage? Why would communication be so blatantly insecure? If he was under direction from his senior military officers, wouldn’t there be more professionalism present in such an operation?
There is nothing remotely that provides plausible deniability here. Nothing but a smoking gun.
Bill,
Feel free to expound on your extreme vetting plan for non-US citizens.
Larry – here’s a vid by The Epoch Times on what may be the origins of the Wuhan Coronavirus. It’s well done and I’m certain you’ll know most of the folks who are interviewed.
Tracking Down the Origin of Wuhan Coronavirus – https://www.theepochtimes.com/coronavirusfilm/
Great post. I hope both you and the good Col continue to help shed light on this unfolding tragedy.
Upstater
So, your position is that the FBI has lied about finding the microbes so poorly hidden? It is true that some FBI people acted as part of a political conspiracy against Trump, but that does not mean that the field people of the FBI are less than competent. They are excellent investigators.
But, I have news for you. China’s spies have never shown much concern with issues of fine “tradecraft” Just as the Israelis are so inept as to telephone Iranian Jews acting for them by commercial telephone thereby causing their arrest, the Chinese have a multitude of government groups and semi-government groups conducting intelligence collection, covert action ops and similar activities with a minimum regard for “tradecraft.
As for Chinese casualties in Wuhan, IMO the level of losses in Wuhan would have been acceptable to the CCP for the purpose of ruining the US and other non-Communist states. You do remember that Beijing and Shanghai were not subjected to “mitigation?” Why do you think that was so?
Should we still trade with Chinese businesses? Yes. We need to sell them agro-business products and they need to buy them.
jjc
Benedict Arnold had a great reputation until he was found out.
Hi only my second post here but needs to be asked if LJ’s kabuki is proved.
So why has the US just increased its order for ppe from China? is any of the following disputed?
‘It’s not just EU companies. The vast majority of foreign companies in the country have also resumed operations in recent weeks as the domestic epidemic waned. As of April 7, nearly 72 percent of the 8,776 major foreign-funded enterprises had resumed more than 70 percent of their operations in China, up five percentage points from the previous week, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said on Thursday.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1185497.shtml
…
9:46 pm April 11
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son said Sat that SoftBank and China’s BYD reached an agreement to set up a mask production line for the production of 300m masks a month, including 100m N95 masks & 200m surgical masks, and start non-profit selling in Japan in May: report
3:18 pm April 11
US FDA issues emergency authorization for 8 mask manufacturers as of Wed, and within two days, the number was updated Fri to a total of 32, all are Chinese suppliers or manufacturers in China, showing the gap in demand for masks in the US has become larger.
7:00 pm April 10
From March 1 to April 4, China exported 10.2 billion yuan ($1.45 billion) worth of epidemic prevention supplies, including 3.86 billion masks, 37.52 million pieces of protective clothing, and 16,000 ventilators: Customs
6:46 pm April 10
In China, five vaccines are being developed simultaneously. The fast one is adenoviral vector vaccine, which has been delivered to human body test. The fully inactivate vaccines would also be soon delivered but it still needs 1-2 year It observation: top medical expert’
…
Is Global Times lying?
Regarding Zheng, The simplest hypothesis is that he was trying to make money, not bio weapons. He is a urogenital cancer researcher working on DNA and RNA approaches potentially leading, I think, to a monoclonal antibody(MaB) treatment based on certain DNA or RNA markers. Like JJackson, I believe that DNA/RNA was in those vials.
What readers may not know is that access to such materials is commercially highly sensitive because the discovery or development of a MaB would be potentially worth many millions of dollars to Zheng personally as it would be worth hundreds of millions to a pharma company.
Transfers of such research are governed by a Materials Transfer Agreement that would be negotiated between Harvard and the Chinese University which covers ownership of IP and revenue sharing between the universities in the event that a commercial product eventuates. Sometimes three or more universities are parties to such agreements because researchers move from lab to lab. In America the foundation of such dealings is provided by the Bayh – Dole Act. I have dealt with such matters myself.
Zheng was trying to get away without a transfer agreement – stealing IP. This is about money, not weapons.
Furthermore, research funds for Lieber would come from dozens of sources. Why even the Wuhan lab had American funds! It gets quite complicated to account for all of it. I would not be surprised if Lieber was simply confused.
I think like JJackson, that there is a simpler explanation for C19 than a Chinese conspiracy.
I also observed in my March 6 post on SST, that to researchers in the field, the Chinese appeared utterly sincere.
Well Fred, geez. If they are Green card holders and have been good residents so far, they’ve been vetted. If they are asylum seekers (religious/political) they are in a process of vetting now, Tourist visas – they expire and these folks usually leave. We can’t vet illegals cause, well they’re illegals and in hiding in some respect. Those here on student/work visas – just tell them to leave asap and accept the repercussions from the PRC. And, I’m ok with the repercussions. The sooner the CCP falls, the better.
Larry
Thank you for this note!
I hope the US leadership (both political and business) recognize soon enough that the totalitarian CCP is an enemy.
For decades for a variety of reasons but none more than personal wealth benefits our business and political elites have dismantled and shipped to China our industrial base. Will these people be held to account for creating such a disastrous national security situation? We now find out that 80% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in our pharmaceutical products are manufactured in China. What about critical parts in our military hardware? Such a gigantic vulnerability to locate our critical needs in an enemy state. Has this kinda stupidity ever occurred in history?
My question is are there folks in our government leadership who will finally take action for this bio-weapon attack on our soil by the CCP? What will our Reality TV POTUS do when it is clear that the CCP is at war with the United States?
turnopolierr: Yes, there was a Dixie Station during the Vietnam war – coming from one I know well who was stationed at Yankee Station. Dixie Station was off the coast of South Vietnam, where as Yankee Station was closer to Haiphong. Obviously named before today’s PC.
jack
He already knows that. Do you want a shooting war with China.
walrus
“to researchers in the field, the Chinese appeared utterly sincere.” A joke? Researchers believed them “sincere?” Not a conspiracy, a Chinese covert war against the West and particularly America. This was just one aspect of that war.
DG
Trade is necessary, even with one’s enemies.
Jack,
What will the Reality Democrats do, other than increase government power like they are doing in all states they holder governorship in? What’s the Pelosi – Schumer plan, other than another investigation of Trump?
Sir
What is the right response, if any?
I’m not for a shooting war. But it seems we are at war, if as it appears the CCP attacked us with a bio-weapon.
Larry,
I’m in 100% agreement with you that “China is engaged in a massive intelligence war on our country.” They have been doing this for 25 years that I have witnessed. I’ve seen then hack into our installations and defense contractors to steal our technology, including the complete files on the F-35. There was no finesse or fancy tradecraft. It was more like Viking raids on coastal monasteries. In one instance they took so much date so fast that they crashed the installation’s network. To aid their development of advanced artificial intelligence, they damn near cornered the world market in expertise in geometric algebra. In the last few years our DOJ has started issuing indictments over some of these hacks.
I’ve also witnessed Russia’s intelligence war on our country. For the longest time Russian hacking was characterized by finesse, good tradecraft and plausible deniability. Nevertheless, they stole a lot. I’ve also seen them attack our classified networks. In the last decade, they dropped the finesse and plausible deniability, boldly attacking our Pentagon and State Department. I’ve seen their information operations in Georgia and the Baltics. Extending those information operations to the US starting with the 2016 election cycle was just a natural progression. I know we disagree here, but the FBI and the IC have equally substantial CI operations against Russian targets as they do against Chinese targets.
I also disagree with your conviction that covid-19 is a deliberate attack on the US and the West by the Chinese government. Those indictments of Chinese intelligence officers deal with cancer research and IT research. Your assertion that one of those vials being smuggled out of that Boston medical center contained covid-19 would implicate that medical center as the developer of the virus. If that was the case, it is the US that’s the villain in all this. I don’t believe that either. Covid-19 is much more likely to be an example of viral evolution. Genetic research of the virus will eventually provide the answer of its origin just as it’s providing answers to our own origins.
The Timing … and Results…are all Coinidence…Too Bad We have gone from the Year of the RAT…To The Year of the BAT…I think that will bring The Land of the Dragon..very Bad Luck..
jack
Screw them on the covert action front while continuing to trade with them
TTG
“Your assertion that one of those vials being smuggled out of that Boston medical center contained covid-19 would implicate that medical center as the developer of the virus” Yes. What better cover for partial research for creation of the virus than research for benign purposes? Why are you defending these scoundrels?
pl,
Right now it is just Larry’s assertion that the smuggled vials had anything to do with covid-19. Nothing more. Only reports I’ve seen identified the vials as biological material for cancer research. Zheng is most certainly a recruited Chinese agent stealing US intellectual property. He’s also a cancer researcher, not a virologist. I’m not defending them. I listed several areas of Chinese operations against the US in my previous comment. I just see no evidence of a deliberate operation against the US in the emergence of covid-19, just breathless assertions.
The shutting down by China of their wholly owned U.S. subsidiary Smithfield pork, which is the world’s largest pork producer, is a direct retaliation against POTUS Trump’s stabilization of oil prices.
A question to the experts. Especially JJackson.
We (US) have all 5 strains of the COVID-19 virus, and other countries each has only a specific strain or 2 specific strains? what does that mean to virologists or infectuous disease experts? does that mean the COVID-19 virus came from the US?
@ EEngineer | 13 April 2020 at 11:08 AM
Here are three: Sweden, Iceland and Belarus. None of them are under lockdown. So far, they seem to be doing fine.
What is your take on this, almost a decade and a half old, Federation of American Scientist’s report on risk of contagious diseases and how to prepare for it: https://fas.org/irp/nic/2025.pdf
China suppressed them too?!
I keep saying it but no one listens.The unions on the docks must block the containers from china.
GO SLOW SAID MO.do not unload them.do not unload them.Only direct action will work.
There is a dangerous assumption involved in this thread that needs to be repudiated right now; that is the preposterous idea that the Chinese would need to steal virus IP from Harvard or elsewhere in the U.S. in order to create C19. That is the underlying assumption beneath the even more preposterous assumption that C19 is a Chinese manufactured bio weapon.
This idea is rooted in the usual and stupid, idea that the little yellow men are too stupid to develop such technology themselves, so we fall back on the comfortable idea that they must have stolen the technology from us. This is a much more satisfying position than admitting that the Chinese might be equal or (shudder) better than us in some scientific fields.
To put it another way, the logic of this thread is akin to the WWII crap that the japanese zero was a copy of american aircraft or that german pilots were flying their aircraft because the japanese were short sighted.
We need to understand that if the Chinese wanted to develop and release a bio weapon, they would have done a damn sight better than C19. They are smart, bright, intelligent and capable. The idea that they would need to steal something from Harvard in order to screw us over is the ultimate, stupid, useless, bit of intellectual conceit I have ever seen on SST. Larry, sorry to be blunt but give it a rest.
On a related note, President Trump and his task force give masterful press conferences every night. Watch them.
re: Fred, and the universities & governors’s “Chinese money grab.”
My spouse (EE) and I were at Carnegie Mellon U. when Iranians made up the largest population of foreign nationals in US universities; when our son was at CMU the majority of his classmates in Computer Engineering were extravagantly wealthy Arabs. Today, it’s Chinese. (One major difference between the 1960 – 1970s/era of the Iranians and today is that the CMU campus now has several major buildings named for Jewish-identified donors. I’m not aware of the same pattern of Iranian-identified (or Arab or Chinese) buildings and institutions on US campuses as exists today wrt to Jewish identified buildings on college campuses.)
—
re: Larry Johnson’s core argument: How do you account for the major attacks on Italy and Iran? Same strain of COVID or different? Some other entity, cough cough USA and Israel, taking advantage of China’s war on USA ??
Actually Calpers dropped 67 billion dollars in Q1 2020.
artemesia
collateral damage.
walrus
Be advised that your comment is an ad hominem attack on LJ and me. You know that I do not allow bullying here.
TonyL,
I think it just means that viruses mutate; nothing more.
The US is a large country geographically and in population. We have a lot of travel and immigration into the country (btw, immigrants, even from China, are still arriving here under a chain immigration loophole in the travel ban). It makes perfect sense that all strains of the virus would find their way here and that different strains would be predominant in different regions of the country, due to different travel and immigration patterns.
Another aside is that the CDC and virologists don’t know as much about this as they pretend to. The death toll, hospital admissions, etc are all estimates. The CDC is fairly clear about this if you take the time to read their methodology notes. In fact, the CDC has “covid like” symptoms for emergency room visits going back to Oct 1, 2019; and not a small volume (about 1/3 of what they are listing as covid like ER visits for last week). Was the virus here in Oct? I don’t think so. Rather, there have always been “flues” that resemble covid-19 and that kill people. All of the figures that are scaring people are estimates based on models and shoddy definitions. It’s not like every admission, death, ER visit is defined by an actual test for covid and of those that are tested and are positive, there is no mention of other viruses that were in the patients’ systems (e.g. known flues of the type that killed an estimated 60K Americans in the 2017’2018 flu season — where was the great fear then?).No. If the symptoms resemble CV then it is counted as caused by CV. Which brings us back to Oct. 1, 2019. There’s something else out there that causes CV like symptoms.
Which brings me to another point, the Chinese would not have been successful with this op without the complicity of the US new media. Whether that’s by accident or design or a little of both may never be known.
walrus
Why do the Chinese put so much money into American research facilities and universities? Altruism?
Walrus,
The Chinese people are smart, enterprising and hard-working like many people around the world. China is in the strong economic position precisely because our business and political leadership for financial reasons chose to dismantle our industrial base and transfer them along with our technology and capital to China. Of course the CCP also stole anything and everything that wasn’t nailed down. I used to be on the board of a company started by a first generation immigrant Chinese tech entrepreneur. His tales of the repression, mass surveillance and authoritarianism of the CCP can become our dystopian future if we continue to allow the infiltration of the CCP by unfortunately buying our elites. The Chinese who have the skills and capital are fleeing when given an opportunity. Many to your country and New Zealand.
The Wuhan virus whether it was man-made or natural, came to the rest of the world’s population centers from China. The CCP did not contain it nor permitted access to foreign medical researchers to determine what it was that infected large numbers of people. Why is it that SARS, Asian flu and now the Wuhan virus originated from China? What’s going on there? The rest of the world should recognize the danger of the CCP and take action to destroy the totalitarian regime that’s ruling China with an iron fist.
Eric,
The MSM daily deathcount doesn’t seem to be working its magic like it did on day one. Now we’re getting the virus count to see if that will stretch things out a few more days. An ever increasing portion of 330,000,000 million Americans are starting to wonder just what is going on that their lives are being financially and emotionally destroyed to save NYC, Detroit, N’rleans and a few other hot spots and, though Dr. Fausti is trying his best, lots of people are seeing “co-morbidity” looks like the biggest risk factor with age and dense urbanization coming in second and third. They are even starting to ask how many Americans die every year and from what. What does that work out to per day, 7,000-8,000? Some hospitals would have been over burdened due to this in a half dozen places looks like a reality; the response looks like a politically driven, unnecessary economy killer that will have negative repurcussions for years to come, with, as you point out, the complicity of the news media. It does allow some politicians here and abroad to take advantage of the circumstances.
Pitch,
Glad to see you back after a decade long hiatus. I’m looking forward to some thoughtful commentary!
pl
“to researchers in the field, the Chinese appeared utterly sincere.” Not a joke. While there may be great animosity between governments the virologist, epidemiologists and clinicians co-operate and talk all the time. There has been continuous dialogue between close friends who have worked together for years. Experts in their fields just discuss their work and findings all the time and have done so from the first spike in pneumonia cases of unknown origin in Wuhan and are doing so now regarding what is, or is not working, in terms of treatment.
TonyL
There is only one SARS-2 virus there are some genetic changes, which is normal in any RNA virus, but very little and no obvious host adaption to date. Corona viruses have an enormous 30k NT genome which makes them unstable so they have one level of error checking to compensate. This makes it far more stable than flu (also a single strand RNA virus but without any error checking).
The link will show you a view of the phylogenic tree and you will see I have set it up to show N American sequences in red. If you hover the mouse over any given dot it will show you exactly where they are from – US sequences are all over the tree. https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?branchLabel=aa&d=tree,entropy&p=full&r=country
Makes no difference who was working on what.The viruses came from bats.That means they have existed a long time.maybe millions of years.Look at it from the other side.Ask why do such deadly entities exist.Who created them.What are there purposes.Why does venom from a snake kill.Why do bats have a ready reservoir of viruses that they pass down from century to century.Why are they immune to these viruses.What are they protecting.
Col. Lang, I apologise for my comment to you and Larry my only excuse is that I am deeply concerned about the underlying assumption of this thread – that the Chinese are too dumb to bio engineer a virus themselves and have to resort to stealing IP from Harvard to do it. The Chinese are very smart and capable people and it is potentially lethal to the United States to keep underestimating them.
To answer your question about China’s investment in American research, it’s not about how smart we are, they are not here because we are the greatest scientists in the world, it’s because of our depth of high quality capabilities in virtually all scientific fields and the scientists we attract from the rest of the world. That and simple Chinese racism make us the preferred target for developing their own scientific capabilities.
To put that another way, they are not here because they think we are great scientists, that is a dangerous conceit. They are here because this is the most convenient location to vacuum up new technology. They do that, as the Japanese did in the 50’s and 60’s, to save time and effort in building their own industry base.
Bio-espionage by China is not only against U.S., our neighbor Canada has been one of China’s targets as well. Within the past year Canadian authorities have had to eject a Chinese Espionage couple and espionage research students.
Walrus
OUR point is that the CCP is waging a broad spectrum war against the US in which using our research abilities is and has been one of many fields of battle. You, actually are making our point. Neither of us think nor have thought that there is anything inferior about the Chinese. That is an accusation of racism that is intolerable. The Chinese state and the CCP are our enemy just as the Soviets once were, but, at least the Soviets were not racists in their efforts to screw us to the wall. In this struggle, the Europeans are desirable but incidental “collateral damage” from the Chinese POV. BTW LJ has a source that he cannot disclose in re the contents of the Chinese scholars bag.
JJackson To people like me and my Chinese equivalents, people like you are usable BECAUSE you are sincere. That is the joke.
anon
“The viruses came from bats.” How do you know that? Are you in the Beijing office of “anon?”
I think until now this idea of the Wuhan lab involvement has been suppressed by not only the msm but also blogs and such. Sites such as Naked Capitalism banned people who brought up the possible theory that this virus escaped from the Wuhan facility in an accident.
But maybe the msm and their fellow travellers can’t ignore the connections and Wuhan implications anymore.
Whether they did it intentionally or passively intentionally through their disgusting cultural/living habits, they need to pay. The jihadists killed 2000 sum odd investment bankers on 9/11 and got the core of their whole region wrecked for generations with millions of deaths in return, and these people that suffered weren’t even responsible. The Chinese are killing tens of thousands and causing irreparable harm to US/Western society and they are getting away with it under our noses. Americans should be baying for Chinese blood right now like they were for the Arabs after 9/11. But all I hear are virtue signalling entreaties to remember not to be racist against our yellow brothers. I guess an important ingredient is missing for us to see clearly: the Jewish ingredient
anon,
“The viruses came from…” Which is why the ‘wet markets’ are open again? We’d sure hate to see Chinese communist virology labs lose access to bats to extract viruses for genetic engineering now wouldn’t we?
Thanks JJackson and Eric New Hill for your comments.
The mutation explanation would strongly argue against the layman perception that “if US has all 5 strains, then the COVID-19 virus must have come from US”.
Serge
“The jihadists killed 2000 sum odd investment bankers on 9/11 and got the core of their whole region wrecked for generations with millions of deaths in return, and these people that suffered weren’t even responsible.” The key part of this sentence is “and these people that suffered weren’t even responsible.” Lets try and not repeat the mistake of attacking the wrong target again. There is NO evidence that any human was involved in this zoonotic event, either American, Afghani or Chinese.
I am unconvinced for the following reasons:
1: Chinese spy everywhere, all the time, whereever they can easily get in and easily get out. Western Universities are simply very easy and lucrative (in terms of knowledge gained) targets. Money legally bypasses a lot of security concerns (it would also do so in Russia, but not legally, a foreign power seeking to spy on Russia would need to utilize pre compromised beurocrats and personell to “insert their people”, and these are a finite resource. In the west, university staff which let probably agents pass by due to full tuition do so legally for the most part), and such money transfers dont even have to be hidden.
All that is neccessary is outfitting a reasonably bright patriotic Chinese agent with a different identity (very easy task for China). If this original Chinese agent never was abroad, no other government knows of him anyway.
Economic/scientific espionage is the normal between states (even between nominally allied states, as the massive US spying on European states shows), especially between sovereign states with competing interests such as the USA and China.
2: Due to trump, more focus is placed on Chinese rather then other spy adventures, due to this, more chinese spy adventures are discovered. I think this goes misdiagnosed as an increase in Chinese spy activity, but could simply be seing a greater part of the iceberg.
As far as the Russians are concerned, its proven western duplicity (Maidan essentially means war) and open outright hostility coupled with an unrelenting propaganda war from the west compared to long terms hostile designs not noticably elevated about what is normal in great power competition from China, I sincerly doubt that Putin will change much. Russia is by far Chinas strongest neighbour, the Chinese are pretty machiavellian, they will go after other targets first. When they do so, the climate in the west will either shift in Russias favor enabling a western-Russian entente on terms Russia can live with, or it wont in which case Russia will aim to create terms it can live with in tandem with China, by force if neccessary.
One of Napoleons greatest blunders was his regime change adventure in Spain (which in some ways resulted in creating the conditions for Russias defection from the continental system, thus resulting in his even more decisive invasion of Russia), he eventually recogniced this. I have my doubts that the current US elites will appreciate their own blunders (Maidan was probably the dumbest action, after outsourcing their manufactoring to China, they could have realistically done. The only really stupid thing left available they didnt do yet is to invade Iran.) while still in power.
AIS
Most of that reinforces my opinions and judgments.
Colonel,
When God-Free (hyphen is deliberate, communists, and none more so than the Chinese variety, love to flaunt their militant atheism, it’s communist virtue signaling) Roberts started appearing in your comments, I knew something was up.
God-Free is a notorious ChiCom shill over at unz.com where this person has posting privileges as a regular. Given your vigilance concerning commenters’ insidious agendas, I didn’t raise any concerns, as I knew that you would smell this out, considering how transparent his presence was.
Injection of propaganda into dissident conservative blogs of influence seems to be a concerted plan. I think of it as “hasbara” from the Middle Kingdom. If they can’t persuade, they hope to at least sow confusion and disinformation; this is forwarded through exploiting the admirable ethic of fair play and free speech so basic in most of the West. Wormtongues, indeed…
JJackson,
“There is NO evidence that any human was involved …”
Not yet, or at least not yet in public. However I have it on credible authority that Russia interfered in, oh wait, that’s a Non sequitur, rather than a valid arguement about public policy and the trustworthyness of governments and private actors with vested interests that are opposed to the lawfully elected government of the USA.
JerseyJeffersonian,
A similar injection of propaganda and social pressure is happening on Facebook. Lots of commentary about the ‘idiots’ (and worse adjectives) in Lansing, the value of life and if you don’t support the statewide shut down, etc. I find it interesting that I haven’t spoke to any of these individuals in months, if not years, and now thanks to creative algorithm math, wallah! looky here at the real ‘crisis’ as shown by real nurses on the front lines and OMB and so are his supporters so do what you are told. Rather predictable and reminiscent of what happened on social media in the run up to the 2016 election.
Of course all hospitals in Detroit and ‘overwhelmed’, except that’s not the case; and certainly not the case in the rest of the state. No more so than Florida, where I currently am. It is not just confusion and disinformation but dissention that is desired, and not just by China. My state senator (michingan) has a ‘virtual town hall’ on: “Michigan’s Truth in Sentencing Law.” Still no response to another constituent’s question on when he’s hosting a town hall on when we can unlock the state.