China calls on WHO to inspect US Army biological facility
Answering the 'Wuhan Lab' lie with a conspiracy theory of its own, the Chinese regime undermines its earlier principled struggle against global pandemic hile revealing its own right-wing and reactionary tendency.
Peter Symonds' article states that:
'the Chinese regime has given legitimacy to the claim that COVID-19 originated in teh US Army Medical Research institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Maryland, and was brought to China when American military personnel took part in the Military World Games in the Wuhan region of October 2019.'
This is not the well-deserved, karmatic moment one might think. Nor is the problem that the Chinese regime have stooped to mimic the very basest of US political figures.
China's move locks two great powers in a volatile, mutually hostile narrative in which neither 'side' is connected to reality. This hands the political class the ability to invent whatever narrative is demanded to serve the interests of the 1% and the Next 9%. Correctness or incorrectness, fact or invention -- these are now irrelevant.
The 90%, which is the working class, are now reduced to the station of political hostages who can be driven blindly at ruling class whims.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In response to relentless and totally unfounded US accusations, first under Trump and now Biden, that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology was responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing has hit back with its own baseless conspiracy theory.
Over the past month, the Chinese regime has given legitimacy to the claim that COVID-19 originated in the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Maryland and was brought to China when American military personnel took part in the Military World Games in the Wuhan region in October 2019.
Last week, Chen Xu, China’s permanent representative to the UN Office at Geneva formally wrote to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), reasserting that it was “extremely unlikely” that COVID-19 originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as was also concluded by the WHO investigative team that went to Wuhan.
If “some parties” still viewed the “lab leak” hypothesis as open, the letter continued, then in the interests of “fairness and justice,” WHO should also investigate the US Army’s biological laboratory at Fort Detrick and the virology team led by Dr Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina.
In a manner similar to the Wuhan lab lie, which has been taken up by the Biden administration and the entire political and media establishment in Washington, Beijing has provided no evidence that COVID-19 originated in a US laboratory. Its conspiracy theory relies on referring to the lab’s involvement in bio-military research, including into SARS-related coronaviruses, its history of biological safety breaches and the outbreak of respiratory diseases in nearby communities.
The letter also noted that Baric’s team is a world leader in gain-of-function research that can potentially be used to develop biological weapons. It pointed out that the US has conducted the most bio-military activities of any country in the world and withdrew from the Biological Weapons Convention after international agreement was reached on verification protocols to ensure no weapons were being developed, manufactured or stockpiled.
Even if everything claimed about Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina were true, and much of it could be, that amounts to nothing more than circumstantial innuendo. To answer one conspiracy theory with another, one lie with another, only undermines China’s own claim to be basing itself on science, not politics.
Indeed, implying that COVID-19 was developed in the US gives credence to the Washington’s own conspiracy theories that the virus was manufactured in a Chinese lab. Eminent virologists around the world have concluded from a detailed examination of COVID-19’s DNA that there is no evidence of human manipulation to create the virus and that it originated in animals, most likely bats, in the wild and jumped to humans. Moreover, the WHO investigative team found no evidence that it had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The Biden administration, however, has continued to push its conspiracy theory to deflect attention from the criminal pandemic policies that have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the US. It has pressured the WHO for further investigations in China, resulting in the WHO’s call in late July for investigations into all Chinese biological facilities in and around Wuhan. Beijing bluntly refused, prompting unsubstantiated allegations in Washington that China had something to hide.
In fact, US intelligence agencies were tasked by Biden on May 25 with digging up “evidence” supporting the Wuhan lab lie. Nevertheless, their report released last week, after three months of investigation, including reportedly by hacking Chinese medical and scientific institutions, failed to produce a shred of evidence.
In a remarkable about-face, prominent US media outlets that have been promoting the Wuhan lab lie for months, turned on a dime and denounced China’s Fort Detrick conspiracy theory.
The Fort Detrick allegation was first publicly voiced in March last year as Trump was ramping up his attacks on China and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Zhao Lijian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, tweeted that “it might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.” He included an article referring to the history of Fort Detrick and demanded that the US “be transparent.”
While the claim continued to be circulated on the internet in China, it was only taken up officially after the WHO called for new investigations into Chinese laboratories in July. China Daily Global ran a lengthy article entitled, “Behind the deadly secrets at Fort Detrick,” citing everything from the US Army laboratory’s history of accidents to its purported connection to the notorious Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army, which conducted human experiments on prisoners of war and civilians in China during World War II.
Also in July, the hawkish state-owned Global Times circulated an online petition demanding an investigation of US laboratories, reportedly gaining 25 million signatures. Chen Xu’s letter to the WHO appended the petition, thereby giving it an official status. This campaign has encouraged divisive anti-Americanism and Chinese patriotism on the internet, where backward users do not hesitate to openly accuse the US of originating COVID-19—without any evidence.
Beijing’s resort to its own conspiracy theory to counter Washington’s Wuhan Lab Lie only undercuts its own record in combatting the virus. In contrast to the policy of the Trump and Biden administrations of letting COVID-19 rip through the American population, resulting in nearly 40 million cases and over 600,000 deaths, the Chinese government adopted a health strategy aimed at eliminating the virus. Not only was the outbreak that started in Wuhan rapidly brought under control through mass testing, contact tracing and isolation, but subsequent outbreaks to date also have been contained.
The fact that these later outbreaks resulted from visitors and returning citizens to China, despite the country’s rigorous quarantine system, demonstrates that the only means of halting the pandemic is through international collaboration to forge a scientifically-based plan to eliminate the virus throughout the world. From that standpoint, the Fort Detrick conspiracy theory is reactionary. It fosters divisions between the Chinese workers and American workers and cuts across the international working-class unity needed to combat the pandemic.
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Quote the paragraph or sentence to which you wish to reply. Then respond with supporting reasons when possible. Ex:
'Even if everything claimed about Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina were true, and much of it could be, that amounts to nothing more than circumstantial innuendo. To answer one conspiracy theory with another, one lie with another, only undermines China’s own claim to be basing itself on science, not politics.'
I agree/disagree because ...
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Let the WHO investigate the US base.
More power to them. It may elevate the WHO's reputation and no one entrenched on either side will change their minds.
China knows they had the deaths of 3 out of 6 miners in 2012
who were assigned to clean the bat guano from a popular tourist attraction which was an ancient gold mine.
That was the beginnings of the investigation and despite safety measures, many investigators reportedly
also became ill with SARs like illnesses. But this is conjecture depending on the source.
The US Government believed it required more investigations.
Regardless of the source of COVID, polio, smallpox, dyptheria, chicken pox or shingles,
they are here and me must learn to deal with them or die.
Neither living with nor dying from COVID-19 is inevitable. The means exist to eradicate it. A future variants may make that substantially more difficult, and some sections of the ruling class are seeking to bring those conditions into play as quickly as possible. It would much please the ruling class if the question of profit-denying lock-downs could be made moot.
Those who promote or implement policies that spread pandemic leading to the degradation of degrade public health and death are to be prosecuted for social murder.
Fight fire with fire - Fort Detrick is no less a possibility than the Wuhan lab.
Please tell me you don't believe that.
What I think differs me from some others around here is that I don't believe ANY conspiracy theories. As they say, the proof is in the pudding.
Claiming that it's just as much a possibility the virus arose in Maryland as in Wuhan is as ignorant a belief as any conspiracy out there. The CCP had to literally invent doctors to bolster that lie. [Deleted]
So if I said that belief that the Earth is flat is tantamount to believing that the moon is made of green cheese, you would then accuse my of believing both? It appears to me you would.
I said that belief that the Earth is flat is tantamount to believing that the moon is made of green cheese,
You and the CCP's invented doctors are the only people denying that Covid first appeared in Wuhan. Your argument is claiming an equivalence between a belief in a flat earth and a belief in evolution.
I said that I didn't know, and denied nothing. Stop putting words in my mouth and you might save yourself points and suspensions from NT. Instead of spending your time criticizing me just because I live in China and actually can see both sides of a story, why don't you post something of value?
'Fort Detrick is no less a possibility than the Wuhan lab.'
Yes. And yet both are reactionary positions detached from objectivity. My concern is that 1] neither the Ft. Detrick nor the Wuhan Lab conspiracy theories needs science, 2] China's position a) undermines its earlier principled stand and b) retires the saner voice from the US/China discussion, and 3] detaches a volatile issue from reality on BOTH sides, as well as 4] anticipating the discovery of further 'parallelisms' as both countries become more animated. This situation serves no good end.
I have been following the dialogue from the beginning, and for years China maintained a principled stand while America continued to point and blame and demonize, until, I assume, China realized that using a principled stand was useless, and so they changed course. I don't blame them, what was the use, when even a change of government made no change in the taunting.
Destroying evidence and lying to the WHO is a "principled stand" in your world? And billions of dollars worth of state supported intellectual property theft? Is that "principled" too? Their whole economy is premised off stealing American IP, copying it and having a controlled corp first supplant the American company in China and then use it's ability to undercut on price due to exploiting labor to try and drive the American company out of the global market.
It's the first time I've heard a murderous kleptocracy called principled.
I've seen no proof of those things. Post the proof, not the conjecture.
If I go to the USA I have to follow American laws and rules. If I didn't want to do that, nobody is forcing me to go to the USA. If American corporations want to open their businesses in China, then they have to follow the laws and rules in China, because the American Constitution and Amendments don't apply there, and if it is a Chinese rule that to do business in China, the technology of that business must be shared, and if the American companies don't want to follow the laws and rules in China they can stay home. Nobody is FORCING them to do business in China, just as nobody is FORCING me to go to the USA.
As for technology learned through spying, America is not exactly innocent of spying either, so lets not be hypocritical. (If required I can post proof that America has spied on China)
"Principled" is a matter of degree - most likely no nation is absolutely "principled".
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" (Robert Browning)
I don't believe a word I read about the origins of Covid. I don't believe the lab leak theory and I don't believe the "it jumped from another species" theory.
Or rather, I don't believe anyone telling me either theory because everyone seems to be FOS.
China has blocked a thorough investigation into what happened and the virus research scientific community is basically saying, "It wasn't us," so nobody cuts their funding.
So what are we to do?
Demand further inquiry.
'I don't believe a word I read...'
Do you cede that we are in the midst of a global pandemic, or is that yet another hoax?
Of course I believe we are in the midst of a pandemic. For the love of God, I live in NYC and hid in my apartment with toilet paper piled up to the ceiling for months on end.
I had to go to the emergency room during the height of the pandemic because I was having symptoms resembling a heart attack and it was like something out of a movie. I never saw so many people on stretchers in one single place before in my life.
I even got Covid and had a positive test result a week after my fist Pfizer shot, lost my sense of taste and smell. Heck, my cat even got Covid.
But when it comes to the people telling us whether Covid came from a lab leak vs. an animal in the Wuhan wet market - I think everyone who is talking about this to the public from either position is a liar obviously carrying water for someone.
I personally lean to the lab leak theory because the coincidence of proximity to the Wuhan virus lab is too great to ignore. But we really don't know yet and if China continues to conceal important data we may never know.
The world knows where Covid originated...and why.
Well ... your world knows. But some of us contest that this can actually be 'known.'
'Knowledge' is easier for solipsists and sophists. You say that something is so, and then -- lo and behold -- it is!
The Round Earth world knows. The Flat Earth world, though . . .