EXCLUSIVE: US ramps up pressure to coerce intl scientists, rope in allies, WHO members to smear China over virus origins to beat 90-day deadline: source

Global Times
8/18/2021

While the US administration is speeding up to process a report on their so-called 90-day investigation to trace origins of the coronavirus that targets China, the Global Times learned from a source that they are enticing or threatening international scientists to cooperate with them on suppressing China by hyping unfounded topics like "China refuses to join in the virus origins tracing work" and "China refuses to cooperate with the World Health Organization (WHO)."

This is despite the fact that most of these scientists are dissatisfied with and oppose the US in politicizing the issue. But the US has exhausted all means to lure and coerce some scientists to serve its agenda, the source close to the matter said.   

In May, US President Joe Biden ordered intelligence officials to "redouble" efforts to investigate the origins of COVID-19, including the theory that it came from a laboratory in China. He said the US intelligence community was split on whether it came from a lab accident or emerged from human contact with an infected animal, and he asked the groups to report back to him within 90 days.

The Global Times learned recently that the US intelligence agencies are incapable of producing any concrete "proof" or scientific support for the "lab leak" theory. The so-called evidence that has been fabricated so far is mostly circumstantial evidence that is completely unreliable and US allies also believe that the virus was almost certainly not created artificially.

The US administration knows clearly that the Chinese government insists on scientific principles in the virus origins tracing issue, and opposes the politicization or disregarding the conclusions reached in the joint report on the China-WHO research, a stance that is also supported by many other governments, according to the source.

China's refusal to participate in the US-led second stage of the WHO virus origins tracing work and the joint statement China made with some developing countries that was sent to the WHO, have seriously hurdled the US' plan to promote their "virus origins investigation" that targets China. In desperation, the US administration has to win support from the international community by perpetuating lies like "China refuses to join in the virus origins investigation" and "China refuses to cooperate with the WHO."

These lies, although groundless, are helpful to the US administration in smearing China and shifting responsibility of their own failure in fighting against the virus, the source said.

The latest move by the US administration is to arrange the director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy and presidential science adviser to collide with governmental science advisers from the EU, Australia and Japan to issue a statement on the second phase of investigation to urge the Chinese government to reflect on its decision on the rejection, expressing disappointment on China and requiring China to "shoulder responsibility" and "take action," according to the source.

The US administration will also try to win support from science advisers from more WHO member countries especially those in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The latter may release joint announcement with the US or make independent announcements, claiming that WHO's second phase origins tracing investigation is scientific, rather than politically driven. It may also condemn China's absence as "going against the stance of international science community," "preventing global fight against the virus" and "damaging global safety and health."

Many international scientists loathed US' politicization of the issue, they oppose US' stance and refuse to support the US administration. However, the US government is going all out to threaten and entice them, including doxing these scientists and their families, censoring their papers and forcing their employers to put pressure on them, according to the source.

It is not the first time that the US administration has played such dirty plots to threaten international scientists and force them to smear China over the virus origins investigation issue.

The Global Times learned previously that prominent US scientists focused on the tracing of COVID-19 origins have been facing tremendous political pressure, and some have been sidelined for not yielding to politicians-driven conspiracy theories on the matter and many have received anonymous threats.

Meanwhile, despite mounting political pressure, dozens of scientists recently published an open letter on international media journal The Lancet. In the letter they urged that science, not speculation, is essential to determine how the virus that triggered the COVID-19 pandemic reached humans, reiterating that the virus most likely originated in nature and not in a laboratory and they refuted the US-led "lab-leak" theory that put some prominent epidemiologists into a difficult situation.

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Unlike centi-billionaire Gates, China shares vaccines, technology with world

Sara Flounders - Workers World
8/10/2021

In a stunning announcement Aug. 5, China’s President Xi Jinping informed the First International Forum on COVID-19 Vaccine Cooperation of the country’s donation of 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to developing and poor countries within the next four months. This urgent step builds solidarity and makes vaccines accessible in the developing world.

Most significant was China’s message that, through cooperation and sharing of resources, skills and technology, many countries could develop overseas production of China-developed vaccines. Increasing local production capacity will save time, lives and costs of international transportation.

The decision to share technology and help countries produce their own vaccines puts China on a collision course with the World Health Organization. WHO is dominated and significantly funded by the one of the world’s wealthiest individuals through the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation. Gates is committed to protecting patents, even in lifesaving essential medicines. Developing global production capacity is deeply threatening to U.S. corporations.

Teaching to fish

CGTN, a Chinese media source, explained the significance of the Forum transferring technology to developing countries and helping these countries establish domestic production lines. It is the difference between giving a supply of fish and teaching countries to fish. This is the best protection now and in the future, as other possible pandemics develop.

Meeting the challenge is much more complicated than delivering palettes of vaccines on the tarmac. Complex logistical problems of storage, transport and need for skilled medical technicians and administrative personnel must be quickly solved. Raw materials and industrial technology are essential. Beginning concrete planning was the purpose of the Aug. 5 international forum, hosted by China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and attended via videoconference by 30 countries.

The U.S. corporate media, only capable of viewing the world from a capitalist perspective of competition, immediately took aim at China’s announcement of 2 billion vaccine doses and questioned its motives. They did not, however, question the capacity of China to accomplish these goals.

U.S. news reports claimed that China’s announcement on global cooperation at the international forum was upstaging President Biden’s announcement of U.S. donations. President Biden had announced Aug. 3 that the U.S. had delivered 110 million COVID-19 vaccine doses around the world.

That is a mere 5% of the 2 billion doses from China. Nevertheless, the Aug. 3 White House press release bragged that the donation “cements the United States as the global leader in COVID-19 vaccine donations,” and that this amount is “more than the donations of all other countries combined and reflects the generosity of the American spirit.”

Biden’s announcement was uncritically reported by U.S. corporate media, without bothering to fact-check this wildly exaggerated declaration on the significance of 110 million doses to 65 countries. China has already distributed 750 million doses to 104 countries and has publicized this widely. The 2 billion doses announced Aug. 5 is in addition to the huge amount already delivered. (Global Times, Aug. 5)

The White House statement, misleading and fraudulent, reflects the U.S. ruling class’ determined refusal to acknowledge China’s accomplishments in battling COVID within China and in helping the world deal with the pandemic.

It is seldom mentioned in the U.S. media that the U.S. still has the largest number of COVID deaths of any country — 631,000 at this writing. A comparison to China’s 4,638 deaths is not included. Now the same numbers game is being played around sharing vaccines with the world.

Protecting patents at all costs

 The corporate media distorts and hides facts and figures, because enormous pharmaceutical profits are at stake.

Washington is feeling the global pressure to share resources and vaccines and suspend “intellectual property” (IP) rights on COVID vaccine patents. But the pharmaceutical companies remain determined to protect private patents, a fabulous source of guaranteed profits far into the future. They are threatened by even a temporary interruption of IP protections.

A capitalist government exists to protect the “rights” of corporations to maximum profits. This is considered more sacred than the human right to live. Pfizer and Moderna raised the cost of their vaccines — Pfizer by more than 25%.

With the U.S. government buying tens of millions of doses, there are vast profits to be made. Pfizer spent $3 billion on vaccine research but stands to make $26 billion in vaccine sales in 2021. Pfizer’s research investment was more than covered by $12 billion in government subsidies. (Reuters, May 4)

Big Pharma has used its enormous power to block countries in the Global South from developing alternative vaccines. In October 2020, as the full impact of the global pandemic was being felt, India and South Africa put forth a radical proposal to the World Trade Organization: Everyone should be allowed to manufacture the vaccine without penalty.

The proposal for a patent waiver was rejected at the WTO by Bill Gates and all the wealthier capitalist countries including the United States, the European Union, Britain and Switzerland, countries that are home to major pharmaceutical companies. All these countries enjoyed early access to the vaccine.  

Vaccine apartheid

Pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and in other imperialist countries made billions in profits during the AIDS scourge, which took an especially heavy toll in Africa. The Gates and other foundations established by multibillionaires were used to defend monopoly medicine while masquerading as saviors.

Because Gates’ own fortune is built on IP, specifically copyrights and patents associated with Windows and Microsoft, Gates has used a portion of his vast corporate wealth to ensure protection of all patents. 

The Gates Foundation is the second largest donor, after the U.S., to the World Health Organization. Gates’ views have an outsized influence. Of course, the U.S., Britain, Germany and the other largest funders are all committed to keeping medical technology in private corporate hands.

They prioritize capitalist ownership first and health care in the formerly colonized world a distant second. Less than 2% of Africa’s 1.3 billion people are fully vaccinated.

This is the dual role of all corporate foundations. Foundations such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation keep prices high by purchasing medications and donating them, while protecting patents or IP, along with their reputation. With a great deal of publicity and hype, the Gates Foundation claims to combat polio, malaria and AIDS in Africa, but their handouts do not develop essential health infrastructure.

Increasingly health advocates are focusing on the role of Bill Gates and Big Pharma in entrenching deadly vaccine apartheid. “Gates pushed through a plan that would permit companies to hold exclusive rights to lifesaving medicines. . . . Given the enormous influence Gates has in the global public health world, his vision ultimately won out in the COVAX program — which enshrines monopoly patent rights and relies on the charitable whims of rich countries and pharmaceutical giants to provide vaccines to most of the world.” COVAX deceptively describes its goal as “working for global equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.” (Wired, May 19)

The early hopes of a cooperative collaboration and information sharing in a united effort against the virus crashed against the capitalist rocks of IP rights and proprietary science.

China’s determination to share vaccine technology is a fundamental challenge to corporate domination of technology.

The differences between two global choices are sharpening. Cooperation and sharing scientific information and technology are the only way forward.

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Don’t Fall into the Trap of the “Enemy of my Enemy Is my friend” Scam

Former U.S. intelligence official Christopher Ashley Ford's recent accusation against the administration of Trump and his sidekicks about the bogus COVID origin tracing against China are no more than a dog-eat-dog fight between far-right neocons vs. Democrat neocons on who owns the China-bashing movement.

Lee Siu Hin
8/22/2021

Recently, a former Trump administration intelligence official in charge of the COVID-19 origin investigation, Christopher Ashley Ford, the former assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, came forward to speak out against the U.S. government’s baseless COVID-19 origin tracing against China. He did it in order to prevent the U.S. government from “embarrassing and discrediting” itself with “Chinese bioweapon leak” claims that lacked strong scientific evidence, according to his BuzzFeed interview on June 12th.

DiNanno’s Neocon Hudson Institute-Michael Gordon Connections 
Ford became a “whistle blower” to set the record straight, in response to the June 3rd VanityFair report where Thomas DiNanno in an interview accused Ford and his team of obstructing his efforts to investigate the lab leak theory in a Trump administration State Department memo from January 9, 2021. He warn him not to investigate the origins of COVID-19 for fear of opening a “can of worms.” DiNanno, also was a former U.S. intelligence official now working for the Hudson Institute, a far-right neocon anti-China/anti-communist think tank and one of the main forces pushing the “Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) man-made military bio-weapons lab leak” conspiracy in Washington D.C.

DiNanno served as a professional staff member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and an Assistant Secretary of State of the Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Bureau from 2018-2021. He was also assistant administrator of the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency “where he oversaw nearly $5 billion in counter-terrorism programs and national preparedness initiatives that focused on resilient public safety communications systems, national continuity planning, and cyber-security initiatives,” according to his bio.

DiNanno represents a small group of elite former U.S. intelligence officials and now works for neocon think tanks pushing the bogus Chinaphobia “lab leak” agenda.

Just three days after the VanityFair report on June 6th, the Hudson Institute released a “report” co-authored by DiNanno, David Asher, Yu Maochun and others, entitled “A Just Response to Beijing’s COVID-19 Abuses.” Besides spreading the baseless “WIV lab leak” conspiracy theory, they offered the Biden administration "advice" about how to sanction China for "war crimes" for manufacturing biological and chemical weapons. They called for civil claims against China “if that government does not provide substantive cooperation, including direct access to physical evidence, within a specified time frame.”

The report’s other co-authors, according to their bios, have very close past and current connections to the U.S. Department of State, the Pentagon and the intelligence community. These are DC bureaucratic elite war monger neocons with long histories of interests against North Korea, Iran, Syria, and China.

Yu “Miles” Maochun is a well-known neocon anti-communist/anti-China scholar, born and educated in socialist China, but who has chosen to act against his motherland and moved to the U.S. He currently teaches East Asia and Military History at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. He has written books such as “The Dragon's War” viciously attacking China and suggesting the U.S. should launch a military campaign in the region. He was a principal China policy and planning adviser to former United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the Trump era.

David Asher is the Hudson Institute researcher focusing on U.S. foreign policy in Asia, economic and financial policy toward the U.S., and a former Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He has been working at the U.S. Department of State for the past 25 years where he “played a senior role in numerous economic and financial pressure campaigns involving defiant states, terrorist organizations, drug cartels, and weapons proliferation networks” including North Korea, Iran and ISIS, according to his bio at the CNAS website.

David Feith, Adjunct Senior Fellow of the Center for a New American Security, was also a former Trump State Department official, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Before that he was an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong.

Matthew Zweig, former Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), “produces accurate and timely analyses, identifies illicit activities, and provides policy options – all with the aim of strengthening U.S. national security and reducing or eliminating threats posed by adversaries and enemies of the United States and other free nations,” according to the FDD website. Zweig “served as the Senior Sanctions Advisor in the Office of the Special Representative for Syria Engagement” at the State Department, also worked with interagency partners, multinational counterparts, and others to help implement the “anti-Assad economic pressure elements of the administration’s Syria strategy.” From 2001 to 2018, Zweig served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, according to his FDD bio.

Yu Maochun, and David Asher were quoted by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter Michael R. Gordon in his May 24th “exclusive revelation,” the so-called “Report on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Covid-19 Debate.” The “evidence” was based on nothing – it came from a U.S. intelligence report citing unnamed “current and former officials” who claimed that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology “went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before a confirmed outbreak” of COVID-19.

A day later, on May 25, President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, speaking at the United Nations World Health Assembly, demanded a “transparent” investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

Then on May 26, Biden called on the “Intelligence Community” to investigate whether COVID-19 arose “from a laboratory accident” and “report back to me in 90 days” according to the WSWS.

Gordon, the same reporter who in 2002 claimed he had the so-called “evidence” of “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq a ywar later, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. His article was widely quoted by high-level U.S. government officials and became an important basis for the Bush administration to launch the Iraq war. He has recycled the same old trick again, this time against China, to raise the “lab-leak theory.”

They’re not just a circle of “friends” connected together out of neocon political convenience. DiNanno’s colleagues Asher and Yu's interview with WSJ war-propagandist Gordon and their “leaking” proof that the WIV had a “lab-leak,” and his interview with VanityFair toxically attacking Ford for stalling his conspiracy investigation at almost the same time is not by accident, but a carefully designed anti-China propaganda campaign to push for their cynical “lab-leak theory.”    

Case Closed?
So, can we conclude: Ford is a “good guy” who wants to stop government’s baseless “WIV lab-leak” investigation, and DiNanno, Asher and Yu are “bad guys” who want to push for the bogus conspiracy theory?

The answer: No.

As the neocon anti-China/anti-communist/Islamophobia DC strategists, they all agree China had “done” something wrong and want to push the World Health Organization (WHO) and China for another international investigation on origin tracing, based on U.S. and western rules, in order to rewrite the earlier WHO investigation that concluded that the theory of a China lab leak virus is “highly unlikely.”

The only difference is how they do it, liberal vs. far right, where: Joe Biden/Nancy Pelosi on the Democratic side, Donald Trump/Tom Cotton/Ted Cruz/Mike Gallagher on the Republican side, with their common goal to politically undermine China; it is only the rhetoric that is slightly different.

Unlike the failed Trump “lab-leak” propaganda campaign last year, the Biden administration's fake scientific campaign is a well-organized top-down effort by anti-China neocons. It is a push by far-right politicians such as Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), and others, and is being executed by Neocon anti-communist think tanks such as the Atlantic Council, the Hudson Institute, the Center for a New American Security, and others. They are coordinated by elite DC neocon warmonger think tankers like DiNanno, Yu, Feith, and so on, bring in small groups of biological and medical scientists from Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, among others. They also bring in non-medically trained “experts” like Nicholas Wade, the racist pseudoscientists, neocon Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Gordon, and others, to build an ad hoc working group to launch a fake grassroots “scientific” campaign.

Their intent is to silence the legitimate and majority voices of the scientific community who believe that the COVID-19 virus came from natural origins. They want to call for a U.S. investigation and push for second WHO mission that will support the baseless U.S. conspiracy theory. 

It’s a textbook-U.S. military intelligence style step-by-step “self-directed and self-acted” covert operation scam. Chinaphobia DC neocons fantasize that they can control the world by fabricating “evidence” during their own second investigation to prove China leaked the virus. Then they will call for international sanctions against China, demand massive financial compensation, and direct political pressure on the Chinese government and to undermine its influence around the world.

However, Ford shouldn’t be count as one of the innocent Chelsea Manning-type whistleblower/truth speakers who had been bullied by the neocons. Based on the BuzzFeed interview, he is also supporting a different type of “lab-leak” conspiracy closer to the Biden/liberal view.

Historically, most neocon think tanks are far-right Republican-based; on the other hand, the academia/research institute “scientists”  are more liberal/Democratic Party oriented, but both sides are accusing China of having “leaked the virus.”

The difference: Right-wing neocons are accusing China of making man-made bio weapons that they deliberately leaked to the world, while liberal academia/research institutes “suspect” WIV was working on a non-military project and accidently leaked the virus.

The bottom line: The political forces who can dictate the narratives of the “lab-leak” conspiracy will be able to take ownership of the Chinaphobic movement with “enormous” long-term political and financial rewards. 

Their difference ultimately leads to the open, stupid, dog fights between think tanks/ Republican politicians vs. academia/research institutes/Democratic politicians over who the real “experts” are. While Republicans accuse Democrats/Biden of being “too soft” on the “virus origin” probe, liberal media like Politico fight back with accusations like “Republicans dive into the politically fraught push for Covid's origin story” (6/4/2021). Even the name calling in the May 27th CNN interview, where Marc Lipsitch from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (a co-signer of the May 14th open letter supporting the “lab-leak” theory), insisted China “lied” and there is the possibility of a “lab leak.” But when asked by the CNN host to comment Dr. Robert Redfield, Trump’s former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after Redfield had offered his “man-made virus lab leak” conspiracy theory earlier on the same CNN program, Lipsitch accused Redfield of not “know what he is talking about,” arguing the virus must be “natural” and “accidentally” leaked by the WIV lab.

So, what’s the deal?
The U.S. man-made “virus leak” conspiracy is an example of typical toxic and racist cancel culture, completely irrational. It is a strategy that changes its tactics every day when Plan A, B, C, D, and so on don’t work. U.S. wants to “cancel” China, liberals and far-rightists are cancelling each other on who has the ultimate power to “cancel” China.

That’s where Christopher Ashley Ford comes into the picture: he is argue against DiNanno’s far-right conspiracy, but seemingly supports the Biden/liberal conspiracy.

It’s a safer bet for Biden to accuse China of hiding something in order to “conveniently” suggest there is the possibility of a “lab leak,” rather than going all-the-way by accusing China of a “man-made virus leak” (far-right conspiracy) with no way to prove it.

Why?  When former President Trump and his far-right anti-communist Republicans began spreading the “China virus” fringe conspiracy theories last summer, they had only a lot of loud propaganda to prove their claim and never offered any concrete evidence; their actions went nowhere and only became material for TV jokes by the liberal media.

Now Biden and the Democrats want to distract the public from Biden's own failures in handling the pandemic as well as vaccine racism at home and vaccine imperialism abroad. They are recycling last year’s far-right neocon racist anti-China conspiracy campaign. But they understand that political rhetoric won’t be enough; they will need a systematic political PR approach with a “scientific” touch to push WHO and other countries to submit to the U.S. direction.

According to the Global Times August 19th investigation, the U.S. is using vaccine aid, talent training and industrial investment as bait, even politically threatening other countries, “stepping up its efforts to coerce China's neighboring countries to participate in its campaign to smear China as the 'source of the coronavirus.'”

Meanwhile, U.S. senior officials were also ordered to keep the virus origin probe away from Europe and Latin America, “considering that Europe is a close ally of the US, and Latin America is geographically close to the U.S. and virus origins tracing work in the region may expose U.S. early COVID-19 cases and anti-epidemic loopholes,” according to the Global Times.

The U.S., EU, Australia, Japan, and other western countries have been pressuring the WHO to launch the "second-phase origins tracing" on China as soon as possible; instead of working with China for global anti-virus and vaccine solidarity. There is no doubt that it is a deadly “political virus” that they’re spreading at any cost.

As the wise old saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me! Ford’s revelation is a good reminder for peace activists of what’s going on in the toxic chaos of the U.S. intelligence community. Never believe a neocon official who has been spreading lies while making a handsome living – while he’s seemingly doing something for a good reason, he can be “born-again” and his actions could have a hidden agenda.