Sunday, May 24, 2020

BRINK OF WAR WITH RED CHINA? WELL, WE KNOW WITCH SIDE THE BRIBES SUCKERS WILL BE ON. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT FEINSTEIN, KAMALA HARRIS, FOLLOWING THE MONEY CLINTON , GLOBALIST FOR THE BILLIONAIRES NANCY PELOSI AND JOE 'BRIBES' BIDEN!



China Says Virus Pushing U.S. Ties to Brink of ‘Cold War’

US President Donald Trump (L) and China's President Xi Jinping leave a business leaders event at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 9, 2017.
NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images

Beijing (AFP) – China said Sunday that relations with the United States were “on the brink of a new Cold War”, fuelled in part by tensions over the coronavirus pandemic, as Muslims around the world celebrated a muted end to the holy month of Ramadan.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Washington had been infected by a “political virus” compelling figures there to continually attack China, but offered an olive branch by saying the country would be open to an international effort to find the coronavirus source.
“It has come to our attention that some political forces in the US are taking China-US relations hostage and pushing our two countries to the brink of a new Cold War,” he told reporters during a press conference at China’s week-long annual parliament session.
He spoke as more nations eased lockdown restrictions in a bid to salvage economies and lifestyles that have been savaged by the pandemic.
Hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world were celebrating a muted Eid al-Fitr, with Islam’s two most important mosques closed to worshippers in Mecca and Medina.
Still, churches were reopening in France, Spain’s football league announced it would kick off again on June 8, and thousands flocked to beaches in the US, where lockdowns and social distancing have become rights issues that have split communities.

Highly politicised

Globally about 342,000 people have been killed, and more than 5.3 million people infected by the virus, which most scientists believe jumped from animals to humans — possibly at a market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
The issue has become highly politicised, with US President Donald Trump accusing Beijing of a lack of transparency, and pushing the theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese maximum-security laboratory.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday blasted what he called efforts by US politicians to “fabricate rumours” about the virus origin and “stigmatise China”.
“China is open to working with the international scientific community to look into the source of the virus,” he said.
“At the same time, we believe that this should be professional, fair and constructive.”
With infection numbers stabilising in the West, many governments are trying to move towards lighter social distancing measures that they hope will revive moribund business and tourism sectors.
French churches were preparing to hold their first Sunday masses in more than two months after the government bowed to a ruling that they should be reopened — provided proper precautions were taken.
“My cell phone is crackling with messages!” Father Pierre Amar, a priest in Versailles, told AFP.
– ‘Robbed of joy’
France’s mosques, however, called on Muslims to stay at home for the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. They said they would gradually resume services from June 3.
In Pakistan, thousands gathered in mosques, but celebrations were muted by the crash Friday of a passenger plane into a residential neighbourhood in Karachi, killing 97 on board.
The country’s leading English daily, Dawn, said the crash and coronavirus epidemic — that has killed over 1,000 people in Pakistan — had robbed the “country of whatever little joy had been left at the prospect of Eid”.
In Saudi Arabia, Eid prayers will be held at the two holy mosques in the cities of Mecca and Medina “without worshippers”, authorities said as the kingdom began a five-day curfew after infections quadrupled since the start of Ramadan.
For Christians in Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre will reopen on Sunday — but with tight restrictions.
In Spain, which has enforced one of the world’s strictest lockdowns since mid-March, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez sought to reassure potential visitors, saying that from July 1, “entry for foreign tourists into Spain will resume in secure conditions”.
Italy is also due to reopen its borders to foreign tourists from June 3.

US beaches reopening

But the disease continued its surge in large parts of South America, with the death toll in Brazil passing 22,000 and infections topping 347,000, the world’s second-highest caseload.
Neighbouring Peru is also struggling. The country of 32 million has registered more than 3,100 deaths.
In the US, where the death toll is nearing 100,000, Trump has aggressively pushed to reopen the economy, defying the advice of health experts.
He sent a signal of his intentions by playing golf Saturday — his first round since March 8.
The US economy has shed almost 40 million jobs this year and many companies, most recently car rental giant Hertz, have gone to the wall. But most states have begun easing their lockdowns and many on Saturday reopened public beaches.
“We just get tired of being stuck in the house. There’s not much else to do. So I came to the beach,” stay-at-home mother Kayla Lambert said, as her two children played in the surf in Galveston, Texas.
In Britain, a scandal erupted over a disclosure that a top government adviser had even flouted the rules.
Dominic Cummings was seen visiting his parents 250 miles (400 kilometres) away from his London home during the country’s lockdown, despite suffering from virus symptoms.
He denies any wrongdoing but faces calls to quit.


In his April 19 press conference, the 

president called the upper reaches of the 

DOJ and FBI “human scum,” and their 

inattention to Feinstein, Hillary Clinton and

other high-profile Democrats confirms 

that the rot continues.



Pinkerton: Josh Hawley Explains How to Take on China and Save America

9:33
On May 20, speaking from the Senate floor, Josh Hawley, the youngest member of the chamber, laid out his plan for fixing international trade, taking on the People’s Republic of China, and thereby, too, saving America.   
In so doing, Hawley, populist firebrand that he is, showed that he was willing to overturn the stale orthodoxies that have mildewed our economy and undermined our security.
In his speech, Hawley laid out the core problem: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has taken advantage of the flaws built into the current international economic system, embodied in the World Trade Organization (WTO), that agglomeration of unelected globalcrats.  As Hawley put it, “We must recognize that the economic system designed by Western policy makers at the end of the Cold War does not serve our purposes in this new era.”  He added, “And we should admit that multiple of its founding premises were in error.”
Those founding premises, Hawley continued, trace back to the save-the-world utopianism of our 28th president, Woodrow Wilson.  Having entered World War One in 1917, Wilson had some strange ideas; for one thing, it would be “a war to end all war,” and, he added, we must strive for “peace without victory.” Yes, such concepts might seem a bit, well, unrealistic; you know, like the musings of an ivory-tower professor.  In fact, Wilson had been a professor and subsequently, in fact, he held presidency of Princeton University before winning the White House.  So maybe now we can see the origins of his vaulting but vacuous phrasemaking. 
Indeed, without a doubt, Wilson was a great talker; he wove webs of words and theories that have bewitched many politicians since, inspiring them to be wannabe Wilsonians. 
For instance, there was George W. Bush, who said he heard “a calling from beyond the stars,” summoning America to wars of choice, aimed at “ending tyranny in our world.”   Well, we know how that worked out.  
As Hawley said, “During the past two decades, as we fought war after war in the Middle East, the Chinese government systematically built its military on the backs of our middle class.” Exactly. While we were liberating Fallujah for the third or fourth time, the Chinese were hollowing out our economy. 
Of course, Bush wasn’t our only warlike president in the past two decades; we also had Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom launched foreign interventions as well, even as they were welcoming Chinese products and influence into the U.S.  Indeed, as an aside, one wonders what Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, thinks of all this: Has he learned the lesson of Iraq and other quagmires?  Has he rethought trade with China? Those are certainly good questions to be answered during the remainder of the 2020 campaign season.  
Okay, back to Hawley. Having raised serious questions about the status quo, he offered three specific answers:
First, we should withdraw from the World Trade Organization.  As Hawley put it, the WTO was built on a false promise: the idea that the nations of the world would converge around a fair and non-manipulated trading system; as the Missourian put it, “they wanted a single liberal market to support a single, liberal international order that would bring peace in our time.” Yet in the decades of the WTO’s existence, the countries of the world haven’t come together on much of anything—except, perhaps, to snooker Uncle Sucker.
And we might pause to note Hawley’s slyly ironic use of the words, “peace in our time.”  That’s an allusion to the catastrophically mistaken statement of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain; back in 1938, Chamberlain made a wrongheaded deal with Adolf Hitler, which he said would bring “peace in our time.”  Wrong!  
Yes, Hawley is saying, the stakes today are potentially that high; we can’t stay in an organization that has “not been kind to America.”  He added, “The WTO’s dispute resolution process has systemically disfavored the United States”—and favored China.  
Second, Hawley says that having left the WTO, the U.S. should negotiate new trade deals on a more reciprocal and bilateral basis; that is, the U.S. should make a trade deal with, say, the United Kingdom—and then on to another deal with the next potential trading partner.  As Hawley explained, “We must replace an empire of lawyers with a confederation of truly mutual trade.” 
Indeed, Hawley argues that a new focus on win-win trade deals—as freely determined by the two countries actually involved in the deal, as opposed supranational WTO-crats—deals that would offer a new opportunity for the U.S. to put together better alliances, based on mutually beneficial economic and strategic relationships: 
We benefit if countries that share our opposition to Chinese imperialism—countries like India and Japan, Vietnam, Australia and Taiwan—are economically independent of China, and standing shoulder to shoulder with us.  So we should actively pursue new networks of mutual trade with key Asian and European partners, like the economic prosperity network recently mentioned by Secretary Pompeo. 
We might pause over one of the countries Hawley mentioned above, Taiwan.  Its  formal name is the Republic of China (ROC), an island nation whose capital is Taipei. In other words, the ROC is separate and very much distinct from the People’s Republic of China, whose capital, of course, is Beijing. The two nations split in 1949, when Mao Zedong’s Soviet-backed communists took over the mainland.  In the decades since, the ROC, population 23 million, has become a prosperous and free country, while the PRC is merely … prosperous.  (And, of course, menacing.)  
So it’s notable that Hawley has become a strong champion of Taiwan, which stands not only as a bulwark against the PRC, but also as proof that the Chinese people, if given a choice, will choose freedom.  
Third, Hawley wants to crack down on the ability of international capital, including Wall Street, to hopscotch the world—and step all over the people of the world. As Hawley explains about the current WTO dominion,   
There is a reason why Wall Street loves the status quo. There is a reason why they will object to leaving the WTO and resist major reforms to our global economic system.  That’s because they are on a gravy train of foreign capital flows that keep their checkbooks fat.
Indeed, underneath all the complexity of international finance, there’s a simple enough bottom line; Wall Street, and global capital as a whole, profit from international arbitrage.  This international “arb” is the system of playing off one country’s tax-, regulatory- and wage-systems against another country’s—and seeking to profit from both sides of the equation.  
Indeed, here in the U.S., in the last few decades, it’s been easy for financial companies to play this arbitrage game.  In effect, they have issued the following ultimatum to American industrial companies: “You must outsource or relocate to China, because the taxes/regulations/wages are lower there.  If you do so, we’ll reward you by bidding up your stock price here in the U.S.  But if you don’t, maybe we’ll buy you, replace the management, and then move to China.  Or maybe we’ll buy your competitor, move it overseas, where it can take advantage of the lower costs, undercut you—and put you out of business.”
This ultimatum, repeated thousands of times, reminds one of Marlon Brando’s famous line from The Godfather: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
Many millions of lost American jobs later, we’ve learned how few companies have been able to refuse this sort of “offer.” 
Hawley makes it clear: As a nation, we’ve dug ourselves into a deep hole.  And in the meantime, the PRC is on the move: On May 21, the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper under the sway of the Beijing government, reported on the PRC’s plan to allocate an additional $1.4 trillion for technological mobilization.  So yes, we face a clear and present danger. 
Fortunately, a clear-eyed understanding of a threat is not the same as a downcast bowing down to it.  What we need to do is build on our understanding—and turn that understanding into action.   
Hawley is just one senator, and in terms of seniority, a very junior one at that.  And yet he thinks with a wise historical sweep that could—and should—change the policy course of America.  As he said:
We can build a future that looks beyond pandemic to prosperity—a prosperity shared by all Americans, from our rural towns to the urban core.  We can build a future that looks past a failed consensus to meet our national security needs in this new century.
Yes, if we can build that future for ourselves—reuniting the nation around a renewed appreciation of the common good, as well as a newfound apprehension of the common threat—then we have a fighting chance.  And if America can pull together an alliance of other like-minded nations, all fearful of the Red Dragon, then we all have a strong prospect of success.  
Because darn few people anywhere wish to live in tyranny. And the Chinese Communist Party is tyrannical.  





Feinstein
  • Website
  • SF Office
    (415) 393-0707
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    (202) 224-3841
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    (310) 914-7300

FEINSTEIN HAS SPENT HER ENTIRE POLITICAL LIFE STALKING THE HALLS OF CONGRESS SNIFFING OUT DEALS THAT PUT MULTIPLE FORTUNES IN HER HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM’S POCKETS EVEN AS SHE SOLD OUT AMERICA

The deal would impose no review of human rights and impose no conditions for democratic reforms, supervised multi-party elections and such. All that, and more, is already a done deal with China, like the USSR a one-party Communist dictatorship that never produced a single product the United States needs. This has come about, in large part, due to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco Democrat.
                                                                                      LLOYD BILLINGSLEY


After Feinstein was elected to the Senate in 1992, Blum continued profiting off their ties to China. A the same time, the freshman lawmaker was pitching herself as a “China hand” to colleagues, even once claiming “that in my last life maybe I was Chinese.” HARIS ALIC

FEINSTEIN HAS SPENT HER POLITICAL LIFE STALKING THE HALLS OF CONGRESS SNIFFING OUT DEALS THAT PUT HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN HER POCKETS.

SHE HAS AVOIDED PROSECUTION BY VOTING AGAINST ANY ETHICS BILLS AND HER HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM'S HANDING OUT "CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION" BRIBES TO EVERY DEMOCRAT OUT THERE!




IN THE November 2006 election, the voters demanded congressional ethics reform. And so, the newly appointed chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is now duly in charge of regulating the ethical behavior of her colleagues. But for many years, Feinstein has been beset by her own ethical conflict of interest, say congressional ethics experts.


“All in all, it was an incredible victory for the Chinese government. Feinstein has done more for Red China than other any serving U.S. politician. “ Trevor Loudon


“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan  AMERICAN THINKER.com


Senator Who Employed Chinese Spy Endorses Joe Biden for President

 

  

A high-profile U.S. senator with professional and personal ties to China — including once employing one of its spies — is backing former Vice President Joe Biden amid mounting questions over his son’s business dealings with the communist regime.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a former chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced her endorsement of the former vice president on Tuesday, claiming to have witnessed Biden’s “fortitude” and leadership during their overlapping tenures in Congress.
Feinstein said in a statement:
I’ve worked closely with Vice President Biden and I’ve seen firsthand his legislative ability, his statesmanship, and most importantly his moral fortitude (NO, IT’S NOT A JOKE, BUT THEN FEINSTEIN IS THE MOST SELF-SERVING CORRUPT POL IN U.S. HISTORY). During his time in Congress and in the White House, Joe Biden has been a tireless fighter for hard working (ILLEGALS) MEXICAN families.
BLOG: FEINSTEIN LOVES  BIDEN BECAUSE SHE WALLOWS IN CORRUPTION. BIDEN HAD SPENT HIS ENTIRE POLITICAL LIFE SUCKING OFF BRIBES.
“He’s a totally corrupt swamp thing, and here’s the worst part of his manifest corruption – he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s corrupt, if not personally than in terms of allowing his bum kid to leverage his position. He thinks it’s A-OK for his boy Hoover to cash in all over the globe. After all, that’s what you do, right? That’s part of the benefits package for being in the liberal elite. And all these people fussing and fighting about the paternity test-failing dirtbag getting rich are totally out of line. How dare they? HOW DARE THEY!”
He wants to raise taxes, open the borders, let you pay for illegal aliens’ sex changes, and spark a civil war by taking guns from the people who don’t commit crimes.
THE OLD WHORE FEINSTEIN IS NOT ONLY ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT AND SELF-SERVING, SHE HAS BEEN A MAJOR INSTRUMENT IN THE FALL OF AMERICA AS SHE TUCKS THEIR BRIBES DEEP INTO THE BOTTOMLESS POCKETS OF HER PIMP HUSBAND RICHARD BLUM!
America’s China Dependency Syndrome
Lessons from the USSR.
April 28, 2020 
Lloyd Billingsley

“Made in China” has been a familiar label on products for years but it wasn’t until March of 2020 that Americans learned of the perils that might entail. China threatened to impose export controls on pharmaceuticals that would plunge America into “the mighty sea of coronavirus.
Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters the United States was “dangerously reliant” on China for critical goods, including parts for technologies needed to fight COVID-19. Since 2004, Chinese pharmaceutical companies have been supplying 80-90 percent of U.S. antibiotics. Americans might wonder how they landed in such a dependent position, and that invites a comparison with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The world’s first socialist state, established in the world’s largest nation, never produced a single product the West wanted or needed. For all its vast natural resources, the USSR was an economic basket case, and by the mid-1980s in serious trouble.
Suppose that some U.S. senator had then offered a trade deal that ignored the regime’s human rights violations and allowed state-owned Soviet companies to manufacture goods for the American market, all marked “Made In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” These would include vital pharmaceuticals and the deal would allow the use of Soviet steel, and Soviet labor, in major infrastructure projects in the United States.
The deal would impose no review of human rights and impose no conditions for democratic reforms, supervised multi-party elections and such. All that, and more, is already a done deal with China, like the USSR a one-party Communist dictatorship that never produced a single product the United States needs. This has come about, in large part, due to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco Democrat.
On a visit to Shanghai in 2006 Feinstein told James Areddy of the Wall Street Journal, “I’ve been coming to China for 31 years, so I’m not a newcomer.” That would put her first visit in 1975, one year before the death of the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong his own self. Feinstein was then a San Francisco supervisor, and as mayor struck up a sister-city relationship with Shanghai. On the 2006 trip Feinstein spent time with former Shanghai mayor Zhu Rongji, “a good friend.”
Areddy asked about the Tiananmen Square massacre then turning 21. Feinstein said it was a “a great setback for China in the view of the world,” a public-relations problem for China, not a human rights issue. “It was just the PLA (People’s Liberation Army)” and China “learned lessons from it.” Still, Feinstein admitted, “we did not discuss it.”
As Ben Weingarten noted in the Federalist in 2018, Sen. Feinstein’s ties to China are “way deeper” than any Chinese spy in her office. Feinstein maintained a “strictly apologist line” on China’s human rights atrocities, and Feinstein’s husband has “profited handsomely” during her career in the Senate. Sen. Feinstein “served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.” For two decades and three election cycles, Feinstein harbored a Chinese spy who fed “political intelligence” to Beijing’s Communist regime. Since that article, the dossier has grown longer.
As Rosemarie Ho noted in The Nation, Dianne Feinstein failed to support the democracy protesters in Hong Kong. When the coronavirus hit these shores, Feinstein was uncritical of China and one of the first to cry “racism” against those who pointed out the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, China.
Ben Weingarten wondered how a motivated and empowered prosecutor would operate if tasked to explore “any links and/or coordination” between the Chinese government, Feinstein and individuals associated with her office. Such an investigation never took place with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the most servile apologist of Communist China since Anna Louise Strong, and certainly the most influential. On the other hand, Donald Trump was thoroughly investigated for “collusion” with Russia, which turned out to be a hoax.
It was the president’s tweet that brought Feinstein’s Chinese spy to public attention. President Trump has access to all U.S. intelligence, a major reason domestic and foreign foes alike are desperately trying to remove him from office. In his April 19 press conference, the president called the upper reaches of the DOJ and FBI “human scum,” and their inattention to Feinstein, Hillary Clinton and other high-profile Democrats confirms that the rot continues.
President Trump is now throwing down with the invisible enemy of coronavirus and making progress despite opposition from Democrats and their media allies. As they parrot Chinese propaganda, the president has already started the decoupling process.
“We cannot outsource our independence,” the president said last Monday. “We cannot be reliant on foreign nations. I’ve been saying this for a long time. If we’ve learned one thing it’s let's do it here, let’s build it here, let’s make it here.”
As with the USSR, we don’t need China for anything. And as Chuck Berry said, anything you want they got right here in the USA.


Hawley: ‘Beijing Needs to Understand That the Free Ride Is Over — The United States Is Back’



1:36

Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) dismissed complaints from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) about President Donald Trump’s focus on China for its part in the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hawley scoffed at Pelosi’s characterization of Trump’s rhetoric on the communist Chinese as a “diversion.”
“I would say if you think China is a diversion from the challenges that the United States faces, then you’re not living in reality,” Hawley said. “You need to come back to planet Earth. China is the single-greatest national security threat to this country. More than that, Martha — they’re the single-greatest economic threat. We’ve been losing jobs to China for years. We’ve been losing manufacturing to China for years. Now they’re building up their military, even as they unleash this pandemic on the world. We’ve got to change our relationship with China and the time to do it is right now.”
The Missouri Republican signaled things would be different regarding the United States’ relationship with China from this point forward.
“We’re just getting started in terms of standing up to them as a nation,” he added. “I can tell you — Beijing needs to understand that the free ride is over. The United States is back. We are going to protect ourselves and rebuild a better world for the 21st century.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor






Pinkerton – Josh Hawley Is Right: The World Must Know the Truth About the Origins of the Coronavirus 




STR/AFP via Getty Images
26 Apr 20207
19:56
The Need for a Deep Investigation
On April 14, the Washington Post headlined a scoop, “State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses.” As the article explained, two State Department officials had visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in early 2018 and cabled back on January 19 of that year:
During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, [the State Department officials] noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.
In other words, here was clear evidence that the Chinese lab could have been the vector of the virus—perhaps accidentally, perhaps purposefully, we don’t yet have any way of knowing—that has killed more than 150,000 people worldwide. (The true number might never be known, since not every country provides an accurate or honest accounting of fatalities.) 
A few hours after the Post story appeared, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) retweeted it, declaring, “This is why we need an international commission to get all the facts, publish them to the world, and hold #China Communist Party accountable for its lies & suppression that have cost so many lives.” 
We might note that many other senators, including Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Marco Rubio (R-FL), have also called for investigations of one kind or another. Similarly, two senatorial candidates this year, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, have also been notably outspoken in their determination to chase down the facts about the virus. 
Indeed, it’s likely that when all is said and done, there will be many official investigations going on in the U.S., covering every aspect of this crisis, foreign and domestic. Some will be fair-minded, while others will be witch hunts; the American people will have to judge which is which.  
And yet perhaps the most important of these investigations will be the one that digs into the origins of the virus. Because while we can study the response to the virus—what was done badly, what was done well, what could have been done better—all we want, surely the most important goal is to keep it from happening again.
The Value of a Timeline
In the course of any thorough investigation, it’s necessary to build a timeline. That way, all the investigators, as well as outside observers, can proceed on the basis of a shared body of sequential data points—this happened, then that happened, and so on.
Already, many journalistic outlets have published timelines, but here’s the thing: Most of them are focused on the response to the virus, not the origins of the virus. 
For instance, the New York Times starts its coronavirus timeline on December 31, 2019. Fox News starts its on January 4, 2020. And NPR starts its on January 5. 
These timelines can be useful in terms of assessing the national and international response to the virus. But if we want to learn more about the origins of the virus, we need to push our timeline further back—much further back. 
The Virus Timeline
Here’s a timeline for the virus itself:
— October 2007: A peer-reviewed medical publication, Emerging Infectious Diseases, released an article titled, “Evolutionary Relationships between Bat Coronaviruses and Their Hosts.” The piece, coauthored by 15 scientists, argued that bats are a “natural reservoir of a range of coronaviruses” and included this ominous sentence: “This finding has implications for the emergence of SARS and for the potential future emergence of SARS-CoVs or related viruses.”
SARS, of course, stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged from Yunnan province in southern China in 2002—not far from Wuhan, China. 
— December 1, 2017: A news story appeared in the magazine Nature headlined, “Bat cave solves mystery of deadly SARS virus—and suggests new outbreak could occur: Chinese scientists find all the genetic building blocks of SARS in a single population of horseshoe bats.”
Author David Cyranoski begins the piece, “After a detective hunt across China, researchers chasing the origin of the deadly SARS virus have finally found their smoking gun.” We should note that at the time, Cyranoski was not imputing any malign intent; he was simply noting that many nasty viruses seemed to be emerging from this part of China.  
The Nature article detailed the efforts of two Chinese scientists, Cui Jie and Shi Zheng-Li, as they studied the nexus between the horseshoe bat and the coronavirus.  The piece include this ominous paragraph: 
Cui and Shi are searching for other bat populations that could have produced strains capable of infecting humans. The researchers have now isolated some 300 bat coronavirus sequences, most not yet published, with which they will continue to monitor the virus’s evolution.
We might pause over some of the words above: The researchers have now isolated some 300 bat coronavirus sequences. We can quickly see: With that many kinds of coronavirus on hand, a simple application of Murphy’s Law—that which can go wrong, will go wrong—could have devastating consequences. 
So with that fearful prospect in mind, we might take note of the Nature article’s closing lines; speaking of researchers Cui and Shi, the author wrote, “They warn that a deadly outbreak could emerge again. … The risk of spillover into people and emergence of a disease similar to SARS is possible.”  
— January 19, 2018: As we have seen, on that date, a State Department cable went from China to Washington, DC, stating that the WIV suffered from a “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.”
— January 2019: Four Chinese scientists—including Shi Zhengli, who has come to be known as “Bat Lady”—published an article in Virusesconcluding, “It is highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China.”
— February 2020: Two Chinese scientists, Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, published a paper suggesting that another facility, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, could have been the source of the epidemic.  As they wrote,“The killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”
Interestingly, this laboratory, which held some 605 bats, as well as other risky animals and materials, is just 300 yards from a Wuhan “wet market.”  
— February 26: Just days after its publication, the Botao/Lei paper, pinning responsibility on the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, was withdrawn. Why? The reason has yet to be fully explained. 
— April 7: Joshua Philipp, an investigative journalist associated with the Epoch Times, a publication hostile to the People’s Republic of China, released a video on YouTube, “Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus.” In less than two weeks, the video, which puts the blame on these Chinese government labs, has garnered more than 1.5 million views.  
— April 13: International relations scholar Walter Russell Mead published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal headlined, “China Still Misleads the World on the Coronavirus: A truthful account of the virus’s progress there would help us know what to expect.”  
Signaling his doubt about China, Mead pointed to a study by the American Enterprise Institute that suggested that the People’s Republic has been covering up its population’s exposure to Covid-19. That is, instead of the 82,000 cases that it has reported, the real number was likely 2.9 million. (As Breitbart News has since reported, China has since revised its Covid numbers upward, although not to 2.9 million.)  
— April 14: Asked about the possibility that the coronavirus could have been weaponized by China, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters: 
It should be no surprise that we’ve taken a keen interest in that, and we’ve had a lot of intelligence [agencies] take a hard look at that. And I would just say at this point it’s inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural. But we don’t know for certain.
We can observe that Milley is a military man, and yet he speaks with the ambiguity—perhaps the precise ambiguity—of a diplomat.  
— April 16: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News: 
We know that this virus originated in Wuhan, China. We know that there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was. There’s still lots to learn. … We really need the Chinese government to open up. The Chinese government needs to come clean. … They say they want to cooperate. One of the best ways they could find to cooperate would be to let the world in, to let the world’s scientists know exactly how this came to be, exactly how this virus began to spread.
— April 16: Fox News headlined an ominous new scoop: “Sources believe coronavirus outbreak originated in Wuhan lab as part of China’s efforts to compete with US.” The article continued:
There is increasing confidence that the COVID-19 outbreak likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, though not as a bioweapon but as part of China’s attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China’s government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.  
In other words, the Fox piece was saying, the People’s Republic of China was not seeking to use the coronavirus as an actual weapon; instead, it simply wanted to show off what it could do with viruses. To some, that’s a distinction without a difference. 
— April 16: Asked at a White House press conference about the possibility that the virus somehow emerged from a Chinese lab, President Trump answered, “More and more we’re hearing the story … we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation.” 
— April 17: Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, pushed back on Trump and other inquisitive Americans, saying that suggestions of Chinese responsibility were intended “simply to confuse the public, divert attention and shirk responsibility.”  Zhao added: “We have said many times that tracing of the virus’s origin is a serious scientific issue and requires scientific and professional assessment.” (We might note that back on March 12, Zhao tweeted, outrageously, that the U.S. Army might be the source of the coronavirus.) 
— April 17: At the White House, Trump was asked again about the horseshoe bat-coronavirus connection, and answered, “It seems to make sense, they talk about a certain kind of bat, but that bat wasn’t in that area.” Trump’s implication was clear: The bat, or its virus, was brought to Wuhan. By whom? And why? To do what? Inquiring minds should want to know. 
— April 19: At the White House, Trump was asked again about China’s possible responsibility, and answered, “Well, if they were knowingly responsible, certainly. If they did—if it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake. But if it were knowingly responsible, yeah, then there should be consequences.”
— April 20: Sen. Tom Cotton tells Fox News, “The most plausible explanation for the origins of these viruses is one of those two labs in Wuhan.”
— April 21: White House trade and production adviser Peter Navarro tells Fox News’s Sean Hannity that China “spawned the virus, probably in that P4 lab right there in China, and then they hid the virus behind the shield of the World Health Organization. And Sean, what that did over a six-week period is allow hundreds of thousands of Wuhanians, basically, to get on aircraft and seed the world.” 
— April 22: Headline in Breitbart News: “China Lashes Out at Australia for Proposing International Probe into Coronavirus Origins.” One is reminded of the old saying from World War Two: The flak is always heaviest when you’re getting near the target. 
— April 23: Pompeo said at a press conference that China had “destroyed” samples of the coronavirus and “covered up” the bad news about the virus, thereby hindering the chance for the U.S., and the rest of the world, to prepare for its onslaught.
— April 24: Per the BBC, China rejects the call of Australian prime minister Scott Morrison (among others), for an international investigation, claiming such an effort would be “politically motivated.”
— April 25: Navarro tells Fox News’s Neil Cavuto, “This is a war. It’s a war that China started by spawning the virus, by hiding the virus.”
International Investigation? National Investigation? The Katyn Precedent 
We might return to Sen. Hawley’s suggestion of an international investigation of China. We certainly should hope that that all the countries of the world should wish to get to the bottom of the question of the coronavirus’s origins. After all, the vast majority of  coronavirus-caused illnesses and deaths have occurred outside the U.S. This is, for sure, a planetary crisis. 
Some might be concerned, of course, that an international investigation would be inevitably tangled up in the United Nations, which has so often shown an anti-American bias. Indeed, some U.N. agencies, such as the World Health Organization, have proven themselves, as Breitbart News has documented, to be in the pocket of China.
Still, history tells us that there’s value to an international inquiry—at least as a starting point.
For instance, way back in April 1943, the Nazi Germans discovered that the Soviet Union had massacred some 22,000 Polish military officers and intellectuals three years earlier, at a place in Russia called Katyn. (It’s not well remembered that in 1939, Joseph Stalin’s Reds had joined with Hitler’s Nazis in attacking Poland; both aggressors seized hundreds of thousands of Polish captives—many of whom met a bad end.)
The Germans had overrun Katyn back in 1941, but it was only two years later that they discovered the Polish corpses mouldering in mass graves. The Nazis were plenty guilty, of course, of their own heinous crimes against humanity, and yet they hadn’t committed this crime. So Hitler’s propagandists jumped on the opportunity to highlight this mass murder and cast the blame on their enemy, the Soviet Union.
Katyn massacre (Public Domain)
Members of the foreign press and the Katyn Commission watching officials exhume the bodies of the Polish soldiers killed at the Katyn massacre during World War Two, Russia, 1943. (Gabriel Hackett/Archive Photos/Getty Images)
The Third Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti (right) holds the Report of the International Katyn Commission, May 4, 1943, in front of Dr. Ferenc Orsós from the University of Budapest. (German Federal Archives)
Germany managed to bring in independent observers from 12 countries, including the International Red Cross, to inspect the Katyn site; the bodies were easily identifiable through their uniforms and other personal effects. So the outside observers concluded that yes, this was a Soviet crime.  
For their part, the Soviets denied any involvement, blaming the Germans, and yet the proof was obvious to anyone but a communist. Later in 1943, the Red Army recaptured Katyn from the Wehrmacht, and the Russians quickly destroyed the remaining evidence. Indeed, the Russians set up their own big-lie propaganda commission, which dutifully pinned culpability for Katyn on the Germans.
Yet Nazi crimes notwithstanding, the reality that the Soviets had committed this particular crime echoed around the world. In particular, Poles, and Polish-Americans, as well as friends of Poland everywhere, shuddered at the thought that the Soviets were coming to Poland not as liberators, but as conquerors—even mass-murderers. 
Interestingly, the very next year, 1944, the Red Cross, having participated in the Katyn fact-finding, among many other activities during those terrible war years, was honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize 
In fact, all through the 1940s, various international groups pursued the Katyn issue, interviewing witnesses and gathering data where they could. The result of all these international efforts was the building of convincing, and enduring, proof that it was, for sure, the Soviets who were guilty of the Katyn Massacre. 
In the meantime, back in the U.S., outrage was growing over Soviet domination of Poland; if the Soviets could lie so brazenly about Katyn, then they could lie about everything else. Indeed, particularly among ethnic communities that could trace their ancestry back to Central and Eastern Europe, the realization that the old countries–now dubbed captive nations—were being held in bondage by the Red Army and their Communist Party overlords contributed greatly to anti-Soviet pro-Cold War sentiment.  
So we can see: Those early investigations of Katyn paid big dividends in terms of making the truth known. Yes, the truth was grim, but better to know it than not know it. 
Then, in 1951, the U.S. House of Representatives formed a fact-finding body of its own, the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre—better known as the Madden Committee, after its chairman, Ray Madden (D-IN). The following year, 1952, the committee concluded, “No one could entertain any doubt of Russian guilt for the Katyn massacre.” 
Needless to say, the Soviets continued to deny everything. Still, the diligent work of international and national fact-finders proved that the Polish blood was on Russian hands.  
Finally, in 2010, long after the U.S.S.R. had collapsed, the Russian government belatedly conceded that the Soviets were guilty. (In 2011, Poland made a dramatic and compelling movie about Katyn.)
So we can see: There is great value in building an international consensus on the basic facts of a case. There’s never a guarantee that an international inquiry will succeed, but if it does, it’s a success worth having.  
So now, back to China and the coronavirus. We don’t know what happened with the virus. We can have our suspicions—even our strong suspicions—but until we fully investigate, we won’t know for sure. 
So Sen. Hawley is right to call for an international investigation. If an honest international commission—perhaps including the Red Cross—could be formed and allowed to do its work, the findings would be enormously valuable, not only for the sake of finding out the truth, but also for the sake of making sure that this sort of debacle is never repeated.  
Of course, it’s always possible that the Chinese might find a way to block an international commission from finding the truth about the coronavirus, using the same big-lie tactics that the Russians used about the Katyn Massacre.  
If so, then America will have to rely on itself to find the truth about the origins of the virus. We can do that, of course, if we choose to—whether or not the rest of the world wants to be a part of it.  
Because the truth about the coronavirus, whatever it proves to be, is too important not to be known.  
We can’t let this happen again.

Senate Dems Push WHO Chinese Propaganda Resolution Condemning "Wuhan Virus" as Racist

 
Daniel Greenfield

First the Dems insisted that "Chinese Virus" was racist. That argument was wrong, but at least comprehensible. Now they're going on to insist that the term, "Wuhan Virus" is racist. And leading the charge is Senator Kamala Harris.
 Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) introduced a bill last week that would malign people as racists for using the term "Chinese Virus," connecting it to hate crimes.
Senate Resolution 580 condemns "all forms of Anti-Asian sentiment as related to COVID-19," citing "Chinese Virus," "Wuhan Virus," and "Kung Flu" as inaccurate rhetoric perpetuating anti-Asian stigma. The bill calls on public officials to denounce such rhetoric in any form.
The resolution specifically claims that, "the use of anti-Asian terminology and rhetoric related to COVID–19, such as the ‘‘Chinese Virus’’,‘‘Wuhan Virus’’, and ‘‘Kung-flu’’, have perpetuated anti-Asian stigma;"
Then it notes that, "in 2015, the WHO issued guidance calling on media outlets, scientists, and national authorities to avoid naming infectious diseases for locations to avoid stigmatizing groups of people;"
I wonder why an organization that is essentially China's hand puppet would have issued such guidance.
Harris, Warren, and the rest of the Dem gang are essentially pushing a resolution that is a set of Communist Chinese talking points meant to censor discussion about the origins of the pandemic.






Senate Committee Authorizes Subpoena in Hunter Biden-Burisma Investigation

biden
AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu
3:41

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to authorize a subpoena related to the GOP investigation into Hunter Biden and Burisma Holdings on Wednesday.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson opened a vote to subpoena Blue Star Strategies, which is accused of trying to influence State Department policies. The consulting firm worked with Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings while Hunter Biden was still on the board.
The vote, originally intended to take place last week, was postponed for one week “out of an abundance of caution, and to allow time for [committee members] to receive additional briefings.” Despite initial resistance to the idea, Utah Senator Mitt Romney joined fellow committee members in a unanimous vote in favor of the subpoena.
Blue Star Strategies CEO Karen Tramontano sent a letter to Johnson ahead of the vote, asserting their history of cooperation and questioning the need for a subpoena after the firm has already volunteered for an interview. Tramontano also reminded Johnson that the firm has already provided documents related to “meetings with the U.S. government regarding Burisma.”
“At every opportunity we have indicated to the committee that it is our intention to cooperate. At no time have we ever stated or indicated in any way that we would not cooperate,” Tramontano wrote. “Therefore, we are puzzled, despite our willingness to cooperate, why the committee is proceeding to vote on a subpoena.”
Democrats have pushed back against the investigation, suggesting that its motives are purely political. Johnson, however, disagrees. “This subpoena furthers the committee’s work to address the many unanswered questions about this effort and potential conflicts of interest,” Johnson spokesman Austin Altenburg said. “It is unclear why anyone would want to help Blue Star Strategies continue to hide what happened here.”
On Tuesday, California Senator Kamala Harris called out Republican lawmakers for neglecting pandemic business in favor of pursuing the investigation:
Rather than prioritize providing important oversight that will protect Americans from the unprecedented threat posed by this pandemic, you have continued to pursue partisan political matters – such as the markup scheduled for this Wednesday on the issuance of a subpoena – that do nothing to help the millions of constituents that we serve. This is a clear abdication of responsibility.
Hunter Biden and his father, former vice president and de facto Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, stand accused of shady dealings with Burisma Holdings and deliberate manipulation of foreign policy for profit. As previously reported:
In 2014, Burisma appointed Hunter Biden, the youngest son of former Vice President Joe Biden, to its board of directors. The board appointment coincided with the elder Biden serving as the Obama administration’s point person for Ukraine, and as Burisma’s chief executive officer stood accused of money laundering. Hunter was paid $83,000 per month to serve on the board, despite his lack of expertise in the oil and gas industry.
President Donald Trump has vowed not to let the issue go. “That will be a major issue in the campaign. I will bring that up all the time because I don’t see any way out. I don’t see any way for them — I don’t see how they can answer those questions. And maybe they can. I hope they can,” the president told host Sean Hannity. “I’d actually prefer it that they can. But I don’t believe they’ll be able to answer those questions. That was purely corrupt.”


Senate Dems Push WHO Chinese Propaganda Resolution Condemning "Wuhan Virus" as Racist

 
Daniel Greenfield


First the Dems insisted that "Chinese Virus" was racist. That argument was wrong, but at least comprehensible. Now they're going on to insist that the term, "Wuhan Virus" is racist. And leading the charge is Senator Kamala Harris.
 Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) introduced a bill last week that would malign people as racists for using the term "Chinese Virus," connecting it to hate crimes.
Senate Resolution 580 condemns "all forms of Anti-Asian sentiment as related to COVID-19," citing "Chinese Virus," "Wuhan Virus," and "Kung Flu" as inaccurate rhetoric perpetuating anti-Asian stigma. The bill calls on public officials to denounce such rhetoric in any form.
The resolution specifically claims that, "the use of anti-Asian terminology and rhetoric related to COVID–19, such as the ‘‘Chinese Virus’’,‘‘Wuhan Virus’’, and ‘‘Kung-flu’’, have perpetuated anti-Asian stigma;"
Then it notes that, "in 2015, the WHO issued guidance calling on media outlets, scientists, and national authorities to avoid naming infectious diseases for locations to avoid stigmatizing groups of people;"
I wonder why an organization that is essentially China's hand puppet would have issued such guidance.
Harris, Warren, and the rest of the Dem gang are essentially pushing a resolution that is a set of Communist Chinese talking points meant to censor discussion about the origins of the pandemic.

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