Finian Cunningham – Strategic Review April 25, 2020
China’s communist leaders have blood on their hands, so say U.S. hawks. Chinaphobes in Congress and a battalion of media pundits are demanding compensation from Beijing for the spiraling death toll and economic destruction incurred by the United States.
Already U.S. states have begun litigation to sue China. Rightwing think-tanks like the Hudson Institute are projecting that China is liable to pay out trillions of dollars for American losses over the Covid-19 pandemic.
The chorus of “Yellow Peril” fever goes beyond financial retribution right up to creating a casus belli against China. It is no coincidence that U.S. warships have stepped up provocative maneuvers in the South China Sea this week.
President Donald Trump and his top envoy Mike Pompeo have weighed in to point the finger at China for pandemic mayhem hitting the U.S. China is being set up as the scapegoat to “explain” why the supposedly most powerful nation in the world has been left so ravaged by a virus.
The “blame China” narrative turns on two sub-plots. It is claimed in U.S. media that the Chinese authorities knew a lot more than they let on they did about the potential harm from the epidemic when it first emerged in the city of Wuhan in December. The insinuation is that China (and the World Health Organization) engaged in a cover-up about the scale of the disease, thereby putting other nations in danger through misinformation.
The second sub-plot in the “blame China” agenda is that a Chinese virology laboratory leaked out the deadly virus, either by accident or as part of biowarfare program. That again implies a China cover-up. Both sub-plots fit the slogan taken up by Trump supporters and anti-China hawks more generally: “China Lied, People Died”.
In both cases, however, it is more than plausible that the media agitation is information warfare to scapegoat China. What is happening here this: a disastrous current situation in America is being retrospectively “explained” with false U.S. intelligence claims that seek to shift blame on to China, and, crucially, distract from questions about inherent systematic failure in Washington.
On the “China knew more but didn’t let on” claim, the primer for this theme came from an ABC report published on April 9. It quotes anonymous U.S. sources as saying that the Pentagon’s disease experts were briefing the White House and senior national security officials about a new contagion sweeping through China’s Wuhan region as far back as November.
As ABC reported with convenient sinister implication: “Those analyses said China’s leadership knew the epidemic was out of control even as it kept such crucial information from foreign governments and public health agencies.”
The basic problem is “those analyses” referred to by ABC’s anonymous sources are only alleged to have happened. Where’s the evidence, transcripts, memos and so on? An open mind should ask the question: was such an intel assessment even formulated?
ABC’s report took off in the pundit-sphere even though it updated its report with a disclaimer from the Pentagon denying that any such assessment existed. Fair enough, maybe the Pentagon is mischievously disowning. There again, more likely, ABC is being played by its anonymous sources to concoct an anti-China narrative?
A few other contradictions are the following: Mark Esper, the Pentagon chief, subsequently told ABC in an interview that he didn’t know anything about any such alleged contagion warning which he had supposedly received back in November or December. Esper’s cack-handed tone suggests he simply did not receive any such briefing, rather than any sort of smart sophistry on his part.
Furthermore, if the alleged Pentagon intelligence warning of a new contagion was presumably circulated in Presidential Daily Briefs, why was Trump voicing complacency about the potential pandemic during January and February? Indeed, why was Trump on record for praising China’s efforts at controlling the outbreak during this crucial period if he had been warned, allegedly, about the pandemic and the implied cover-up by Beijing?
Here’s another amusing cause for doubt. The Pentagon’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) – the agency which purportedly warned of a contagion in China back in November – is officially tasked with detecting diseases which “pose serious risk to U.S. forces” in Asia and internationally. Strangely enough, the NCMI didn’t seem to know about outbreaks of COVID-19 onboard U.S. aircraft carriers deployed in Asia-Pacific which only came to light when navy crews publicly complained – yet we are led to believe the same agency knew what was going down in the obscure environs of Wuhan, even before Chinese authorities knew about the virus.
The second sub-plot is the alleged escape of the virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The WIV is an internationally respected disease research center, which has partnered with French and other governments’ researchers. It operates at the highest international safety standards, yet somehow the WIV supposedly let a deadly virus escape. There is an added insinuation that the virus was man-made as part of a scientific program. President Trump said last week that Washington “was looking into it” and hinted that the release may even have been deliberate.
This is a shoddy conspiracy theory based on zero evidence, as documented by investigative journalist Max Blumenthal. The claim of “lab release” has been doing the rounds in dodgy rightwing U.S. media like the Washington Times for months. It has recently been elevated by equally dodgy reporting in the Washington Post that has all the hallmarks of an intel psy-ops.
The World Health Organization, as well as a vast body of scientific opinion, concludes that the Covid-19 virus (also known as SARS-CoV-2) is of natural origin emanating from wildlife, and that it is neither man-made nor manipulated in a lab. Indeed, many eminent scientists in the field of virology have condemned “conspiracy theories” claiming the virus came out of a lab as “pure baloney”.
What this all boils down to is an attempt by American anti-China hawks and elements of U.S. intelligence to retrospectively construct a narrative which lays the blame for the Covid-19 global crisis on Beijing. Given the abysmal failure of the U.S. to mitigate this crisis – exposing the deep flaws of its capitalistic society – the temptation is all the stronger for Washington to jump on the bandwagon scapegoating China.
Considering Trump’s re-election hopes are at stake, it is not surprising he is clambering into the driving seat of this bandwagon.
But concocting intel to fit a conclusion is a precarious pursuit. It has disturbing resonance with the Iraqi WMD intel manufacturing and media indulgence which led to disastrous war.
Is U.S. power so shameless that it would prefer war rather than face public accountability for its own criminal complacency and neglect? You better believe it.
A war with China would be the biggest mistake the U.S. will ever make.
Why a war? It’d be sufficent, if the US does not pay it’s debts to China – they’d only need a plausible reason.
Russia and India would support China.
Some context: The Washington consensus has been openly beating the war drums for 30yrs. I’ve been lucky enough to talk casually with a CFR member who was a former US diplomat. You will never extract key information from these people, but you can make inferences on the points they skirt around and points that they don’t even avoid, they simply didn’t hear you say it. Very clear to me that the US and UK have been trying to destabilise China. The latest being the Hong Kong riots. Even the 2008 financial collapse failed to unseat China. Now we have Porton Down Covid. The UK are masters when it comes to dragging the US into big wars. The object is to use one rock to take down as many birds as possible. In light of Brexit, these birds are Trump, the US, the EU, Iran, China, and Russia.
All US military bases within 2000km are toast. No US carrier can attain a fully battle-ready position and remain safe. The Chinese have enough missiles to destroy all US military assets in the Eastern Pacific, barr submarines. Island hoping won’t work.
John Pilger said many years ago the next big war is the US v China. What followed the Great Depression?
My comment hasn’t appeared yet.
Hans: All China needs to do is dump their US paper holdings on the open markets and the US is toast. China knows the US will not pay on its paper, but China owns huge swaths of US property, how much this property is worth is anyone’s guess. Nothing will come of any US claims for Covid compensation.
The real concern is that China will react to US provocations as Japan did during WW2. I appear to be the only person in the world blaming MI6 and Porton Down for Covid.
israel and U.S. really know who spread it and it wasn’t china.
@ Hans
You truly believe that America owes China any debt?? You have no understanding how the money system works and who prints the money?? And you are on this truthseeker site???
Who is getting the money?
What is the national debt, sorry, let’s use the euphemism deficit here. Anyway, what is it standing at just now? Go to National Debt Clock .Co.Uk and you will see something staggering. The British national debt rises £5,170 a second, yes, A SECOND, absolutely incredible. It is now well past one trillion pounds, I cannot type fast enough to give the exact figure.
Now the question I want to ask you is. Who is collecting this money? Who is making £5,750 a second? And this is only Britain, what about the rest of the western world’s debt.
The answer is. Private bankers. Most people think the Bank of England, the American Federal Reserve or the Banque de France are national entities. This is wrong, very wrong. These entities are wholly privately owned. Who are these people making astronomical amounts of money from you and I? They are Rothschilds, Oppenheimer, Kuhn, Goldman etc. do you see a common factor here? I will leave that to your discretion.
How does the money system work? Very simple. These people have “gained” the charters to print money. When the governments need money for infrastructure, services etc. They approach these banksters for the money and receive bonds for it. Now, this money has to be paid back, with interest, but where is the money to pay back this interest? It does not exist, therefore the government has to get more loans to pay back the interest and so on and so on.
The virus has never been scientifically proven to exist. Fragments of RNA doesn’t cut it. This scamdemic is simply a power grab. A real pandemic would have isolated the sick and those at high risk. Not the healthy. A real pandemic would not have shut down commerce as commerce is needed to fight it. As like the Flu this virus (if exists) has about the same 85% of population will have no problems with it. So far, using the Masturbated numbers from the USA, 53,000, it has yet to kill as many as died in last years Flu season, 81000. How this keeps going is a mystery. Apparently they have enough of the human population dumbed down enough not to see the scam.
So what exaxctly are you suggesting?? That it is the US responsible?? Or the REAL instiugators of this HOAX the JEWS ie the ones that started BOTH world wars and then played the victim get take contol of the West!!…..Chiuna is being fitted up by the sewer scum like the patsy that allegedly assinated Kennedy
Looks like the old good cop, bad cop routine to me. The world population are the criminals in this upside down and backwards world.
And the people are that shameless to admit they voted in the corruption they’ll follow to war as well. You better believe it.
I believe you’re wrong about the virus being a product of nature. An Indian study clearly showed that the Corona Virus had HIV insertions. The chances of this happening in nature are on the magnitude of point Zero+ (add your long string of zeroes). Thus, it was a bio-weapon same as the Swine flu and Bird Flu viruses that have afflicted China these past 4 – 6 years. The U.S. is trying to destabilize China with viruses and wreck their Economy.
At the outbreak of WW2, Japanese-Canadians were interned and – less publicized – had their real estate and property confiscated without compensation. I think the same thing is being planned again, against the Chinese, with Australia leading the charge.
I notice on CBC that the Canadian Govt. is considering criminalizing any online postings of Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. Looks like they are owned by Big Pharma. Check this out: womensystems.com/2020/04/devastating-renowned-french-dr-didier.html