Zionist Neocon Sugar Mama Of Anti-Muslim Hate Calls Upon Chinese Compradors...,

gatestoneinstitute  |  Can Americans of Chinese descent be loyal to both America and China?

No. China's Communist Party has made itself an existential threat to America and every other society. The Chinese regime, especially in recent years under General Secretary Xi, has been pushing the notion that it holds the Mandate of Heaven to rule tianxia, "All Under Heaven." The promotion of tianxia means, among other things, that the Party views the U.S. government as illegitimate and America as nothing more than a tributary society or colony.

To make matters worse, the Chinese state has been open about its hostility to the United States. Among other things, in May 2019 People's Daily, the Party's self-described "mouthpiece" and therefore most authoritative publication in China, declared a "people's war" on America.

Let me end on a personal note, as dragon blood proudly flows in my veins. My dad, who arrived in this country in early 1945, came from a small farming village in Jiangsu province, across the mighty Yangtze River from Shanghai. My mother's family traces its roots to Dundee, in Scotland, but I have not identified with that half of my heritage. I grew up in New Jersey, steeped in Dad's stories of the Yellow Emperor and of course tales of dragons.

Nonetheless, my story-telling dad never missed an opportunity to vote or tell his four children how wonderful his adopted country was. He always said "China is my birthplace but America is my home."

We "Chinese-Americans"—I abhor the term—need to remember where we now live. We cannot remain oblivious, as we so far have had the luxury of doing.

Although we technically do not have an obligation to prove our loyalty to America, we must, as a group, understand that a hostile power is trying to weaponize us. Xi Jinping has openly called on us to become a subversive force, to help him destroy the country we now call home.

It is time, therefore, for us to begin cleaning our own ranks. This means, among other things, not tolerating displays promoting Chinese communism in our country. Moreover, it means not shouting "racism" every time law enforcement arrests someone of Chinese descent. If we do not take the lead in these tasks, others will naturally do that for us.

We may think it unfair, but we now have to make a choice.

After all, our country—the United States of America—is in peril because a foreign state—the People's Republic of China—is attacking it and hoping to use us to take it down.

The Communist Party of China refers to us as "overseas patriotic forces." People in our communities will want to know to which country we feel patriotic.

The Douche-Nozzles Ruling You Are Either Mentally Retarded - Or - They Just Plan To FUCK YOU!

RT  |  The US will not be able to replace Russian uranium in the event of an import ban, Assistant Secretary of Energy Kathryn Huff has warned, saying Washington must develop enrichment capabilities domestically. 

"Worldwide, there's not enough capacity to replace that gap from trusted sources," Huff told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday, adding that it was the US’s responsibility to “encourage and incentivize that enrichment and conversion capability” on American soil.

Huff told the Examiner that US reliance on Russian-sourced uranium posed unique energy security and national security risks, and noted that Russia still provides about 20% of the low enriched uranium at existing US reactors.

“We have the largest nuclear fleet in the world, and we currently do not have the capability to provide fuel for all of our reactors,” she said, claiming that Russia is “no longer a trustworthy source of our fuel, and we need to find alternatives here and build up that supply chain.”

Russia reportedly accounted for 16.5% of the uranium imported into the US in 2020 and 23% of the enriched uranium needed to power the country’s commercial nuclear reactors. Currently there is nowhere else to turn to fill the gap if uranium imports are banned, Huff said. 

Legislation before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee would indeed ban Russian uranium imports, just as Congress previously banned imports of Russian fossil fuels following the launch of Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine in February. 

Huff, who has a PhD in nuclear engineering, said a "tiger team" at the energy department was currently strategizing how to expand the domestic supply chain.

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has also previously called Washington's reliance on imports from Moscow a "vulnerability" for economic and national security.

The US maintains the capacity to mine uranium, but relies heavily on Russia for enrichment. Kick-starting the domestic uranium industry is not a simple process, the department said previously, given that the country has only one commercial enrichment facility remaining — a plant run by British-German-Dutch consortium Urenco in New Mexico.

 

Col. McGregor Could Be A Wee Bit Out Of His Depth On This One

realclearpolitics |  Ret. Col. Douglas Macgregor in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Monday said "posers" are in charge of America's foreign policy and lamented the lack of statesmen that advance the interests of America. Macgregor argued that the U.S. is not prepared and the military does not have the "logistical infrastructure" for war with China.

"We are grossly overstretched," Macgregor said. "We don't have the logistical infrastructure and frankly it is an old adage that everyone should remember."

"A ship's a fool to fight a fort. You have to fight China from the sea. We can't win that. China can observe everything we throw at it and the Chinese are happy to sit there, let us travel thousands of miles to reach them and then sink us," Macgregor said.

MACGREGOR: We have to admit this is probably the most reckless and irresponsible administration in living memory. We don't have anyone that qualifies as a statesman. Statesmanship involves advancing American interests at the least cost of the American people.

None of that is in play here. We are dealing with a group of posers. People who are posturing, posturing is not statesmanship. The American people need to understand something that no one has bothered to tell them. That during World War II, Taiwan was the unsinkable aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese armed forces. All the major invasions of China were launched from Taiwan. Beijing will not allow Taiwan to become a garrison state for American armed forces or Japanese armed forces or any foreign power.

If they think that we are going to ally ourselves with Taiwan, if they think we are going to intervene to defend that island in the event of a dispute then we will be at war with China for the reasons that I just outlined. And we are not prepared for that.

We are grossly overstretched. We don't have the logistical infrastructure and frankly it is an old adage that everyone should remember.

A ship's a fool to fight a fort. You have to fight China from the sea. We can't win that. China can observe everything we throw at it and the Chinese are happy to sit there, let us travel thousands of miles to reach them and then sink us...

The Biden administration and its predecessors treated everything that the Russian government said for the last 15 years about Ukraine with complete contempt. They are repeating that process.

We see how well that's worked in Ukraine. The Russians were always serious. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost in this war in Ukraine that we should have acted quickly to stop and now we are provoking the Chinese over an issue that is at least strategically important to them.

The Entire Western Political Establishment Has A Hard-On For War With China

Ms. Nancy Project Manager knows for a fact that the US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2022 is a plan to integrate Taiwan with US Department of Defense [sic] in its operations. The plan is fully funded. Appropriations already committed and disbursed to Taiwan's private- and public-agents are not public knowledge.

sputnik |  The Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK House of Commons is planning to visit Taiwan later this year, probably in November or early December amid mounting tensions in UK-China bilateral relation and rising insecurity in the Taiwan Strait, The Guardian newspaper reported on Monday, citing sources.

According to the newspaper, the trip was initially scheduled for the beginning of the year, but it was postponed after one member of the delegation tested positive for COVID-19. The new delegation of the UK lawmakers, who may embark on the visit to Taipei in November-December, is likely to be headed by committee chairman Tom Tugendhat.

 

The visit of the UK parliamentary delegation is meant to signify London's support for Taiwan, which Beijing considers an inalienable part of its territory, The Guardian said, stressing that this would occur amid growing friction between the UK and China.

 

Last week, candidates for the Conservative Party leadership, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, outlined their tough stance on China. Meanwhile, Chinese ambassador to the UK Zheng Zeguang accused some UK politicians of "peddling the fallacy of the so-called China threat."

 

Tensions over Taiwan have been mounting in recent weeks following the reports about a possible trip to Taipei by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The reports have sparked a major backlash from Beijing, which condemns any official contacts between the US and Taiwan.

 

The Chinese side has repeatedly claimed that by pursuing the trip Washington would infringe on the one-China principle and jeopardize US-China bilateral relations. Moreover, Beijing stated that it stands ready to act decisively to defend its state sovereignty and territorial integrity, while warning that the US would bear full responsibility for all the consequences resulting from the visit.

Senator Bob Menendez SUBSTANTIVELY Poking The Dragon In Its Eye

responsiblestatecraft  |  America’s Taiwan policy hasn’t changed much in the past 40 years. For many experts, that’s a good thing. They argue that Washington’s careful balancing act between Beijing and Taipei, enshrined in part in the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, has kept tensions low and allowed Taiwan to transform from a notorious dictatorship into a full-fledged democracy.

But Sens. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) aren’t satisfied with the status quo. The pair recently introduced a bill, known as the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022, that they touted as “the most comprehensive restructuring of U.S. policy towards Taiwan” since 1979. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Menendez chairs, is set to take up the proposal on Wednesday.

Some of the bill’s most notable changes to U.S. policy include increasing military support for Taiwan, expanding Taipei’s role in international organizations, and laying out a harsh package of sanctions to be applied if Beijing engages in any “significant escalation in hostile action” toward the island.

Experts who spoke with Responsible Statecraft said these policies are likely to provoke a sharp response from China, further stoking tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

“These moves are provocative,” said Lyle Goldstein, the director of the Asia Engagement Program at Defense Priorities. “I think this is a very delicate period for Taiwan, and this kind of move would be very foolish.”

According to Michael Swaine of the Quincy Institute, the bill would undermine America’s traditional “One China policy,” under which Washington recognizes Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China and acknowledges that Chinese leaders consider Taiwan to be part of their territory.

“The document plays with words to seem as if no fundamentals have changed, but One China is in effect gutted,” Swaine said. “The One China policy has led to strong limits being placed on political, diplomatic, and military contacts with [Taiwan]. This bill, if passed and implemented by the administration, would add greatly to the existing erosion of such limits.”

Neither Menendez nor Graham responded to requests for comment about the bill and its potential consequences.

The proposed legislation comes amid a sharp increase in U.S.-China tensions, in part driven by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s planned visit to Taiwan (she left for Asia this weekend). Beijing said its military will not “sit idly by” if Pelosi follows through on the trip, which would be the first by a House speaker since 1997. And, in a call with President Joe Biden, Chinese leader Xi Jinping cautioned that “[t]hose who play with fire will perish by it,” according to Beijing’s readout of the meeting.

Biden and the Pentagon appear wary of the visit, but neither have gone so far as to say that Pelosi should cancel it. In an apparent reaction to China’s threats, the USS Ronald Reagan has begun sailing toward the Taiwan Strait, and Beijing has massed air power in the area, according to the South China Morning Post. While officials do not expect a direct confrontation, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told reporters that DoD “will do what is necessary to ensure a safe conduct of their visit. And I’ll just leave it at that.”

Deterrence and its discontents

Some of the concern about the bill centers around its military provisions. While experts approved of measures that would help fast-track arms sales, some expressed concern over the proposal to drop previous commitments to only provide Taiwan with defensive weapons, replacing them with a pledge to send “arms conducive to deterring acts of aggression by the People’s Liberation Army.”

When it comes to military strategy, “deterrence” is in the eye of the beholder. The bill focuses on equipping Taipei with a wide range of weapons — possibly including long-range missiles capable of striking mainland China — that could discourage Beijing from making a move on the island. But for Goldstein, true deterrence could only be achieved through painstaking, time-intensive investment in infrastructure that would help Taiwanese forces hold strong against a Chinese invasion.

“Building Taiwan into a fortress involves hardening — that is, pouring concrete, digging deep into the earth,” he said. “That’s the best way to defend Taiwan, but most people prefer to talk about fancy weapons systems.”

Eric Gomez of the Cato Institute was less critical of the weapons provisions, praising the bill’s general focus on “asymmetric defense.” But Gomez worries that the legislation risks pushing U.S. policy toward selling Taiwan “whatever it asked for.”

Call Xi Jinping And Tell Him That His Hot Breath Not The Same As "Playing With Fire"

RT  |  A group of Democrats and Republicans have introduced a bill that would authorize the Biden administration to create a new military aid program for Taiwan. Modeled after the 1940s Lend-Lease Act that allowed the US to arm the allied powers during World War II, the bill resembles legislation recently passed to boost weapons supplies to Ukraine.

Introduced by Representatives Michelle Steel (R-California) and Jimmy Panetta (D-California) in the House, and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) in the Senate, the ‘Taiwan Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act’ would authorize the president to lend or lease weapons and military equipment to Taiwan, which Taipei would pay for over a 12-year period.

The bill’s name and wording closely follow that of the ‘Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act’, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in May after passing Congress with almost no resistance.  

“Taiwan is our greatest partner in the Indo-Pacific region, and their continued sovereignty is essential to challenging the New Axis of Evil,” said Blackburn, referencing an often-maligned term used by former President George W. Bush to group America’s foreign enemies together. 

America’s official position on Taiwan, however, is ambiguous. Since the 1970s, Washington has recognized, but not endorsed, China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, a policy designed to discourage both a Chinese invasion and a formal declaration of independence by Taipei. 

The US does provide military aid to Taiwan, but the passing of this act would lift any limits, as the Ukrainian bill did for aid to Kiev. The original Lend-Lease Act, passed in 1941, allowed the US to provide arms to Britain, France, and the Soviet Union without formally entering the war. Although the Allies were supposed to pay for this aid, the US also accepted the lease of bases for its military instead.

Tensions between the US and China have soared in recent weeks, with Taiwan at the center. Biden stated in May that the US would take military action to prevent a potential Chinese takeover of Taiwan, a statement that broke with decades of strategic ambiguity over the island. While his aides swiftly backtracked, a potential visit to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – which Pelosi refused to confirm or deny even as she departed the US for Asia on Friday – has further inflamed the situation. 

With Chinese President Xi Jinping warning the US not to “play with fire,” both China and Taiwan held military drills this week. Should Pelosi go through with her visit, she would be the highest-ranking US lawmaker to visit the island since Newt Gingrich, who was also house speaker at the time, traveled to Taipei in 1997.

Looking And Smelling Like 3 Day Old Rotisserie Chicken Nancy Pelosi Slaps The Taste Out Of Beijing's Mouth

WaPo  | Some 43 years ago, the United States Congress overwhelmingly passed — and President Jimmy Carter signed into law — the Taiwan Relations Act, one of the most important pillars of U.S. foreign policy in the Asia Pacific.

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The Taiwan Relations Act set out America’s commitment to a democratic Taiwan, providing the framework for an economic and diplomatic relationship that would quickly flourish into a key partnership. It fostered a deep friendship rooted in shared interests and values: self-determination and self-government, democracy and freedom, human dignity and human rights.

And it made a solemn vow by the United States to support the defense of Taiwan: “to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means … a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.”

Pelosi lands in Taiwan, defying Chinese warnings of forceful response

Today, America must remember that vow. We must stand by Taiwan, which is an island of resilience. Taiwan is a leader in governance: currently, in addressing the covid-19 pandemic and championing environmental conservation and climate action. It is a leader in peace, security and economic dynamism: with an entrepreneurial spirit, culture of innovation and technological prowess that are envies of the world.

Yet, disturbingly, this vibrant, robust democracy — named one of the freest in the world by Freedom House and proudly led by a woman, President Tsai Ing-wen — is under threat.

In recent years, Beijing has dramatically intensified tensions with Taiwan. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has ramped up patrols of bombers, fighter jets and surveillance aircraft near and even over Taiwan’s air defense zone, leading the U.S. Defense Department to conclude that China’s army is “likely preparing for a contingency to unify Taiwan with the PRC by force.”

The PRC has also taken the fight into cyberspace, launching scores of attacks on Taiwan government agencies each day. At the same time, Beijing is squeezing Taiwan economically, pressuring global corporations to cut ties with the island, intimidating countries that cooperate with Taiwan, and clamping down on tourism from the PRC.

Nancy Pelosi: The arrest of a 90-year-old cardinal signals China’s crackdown — and its fear

In the face of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) accelerating aggression, our congressional delegation’s visit should be seen as an unequivocal statement that America stands with Taiwan, our democratic partner, as it defends itself and its freedom.

Our visit — one of several congressional delegations to the island — in no way contradicts the long-standing one-China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, the U.S.-China Joint Communiques and the Six Assurances. The United States continues to oppose unilateral efforts to change the status quo.

Our visit is part of our broader trip to the Pacific — including Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan — focused on mutual security, economic partnership and democratic governance. Our discussions with our Taiwanese partners will focus on reaffirming our support for the island and promoting our shared interests, including advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific region. America’s solidarity with Taiwan is more important today than ever — not only to the 23 million people of the island but also to millions of others oppressed and menaced by the PRC.

Thirty years ago, I traveled in a bipartisan congressional delegation to China, where, in Tiananmen Square, we unfurled a black-and-white banner that read, “To those who died for democracy in China.” Uniformed police pursued us as we left the square. Since then, Beijing’s abysmal human rights record and disregard for the rule of law continue, as President Xi Jinping tightens his grip on power.

China's Plan To Use The Moon

en.as  |  China seeks to build its own lunar base together with Russia with plans to finish it by 2035, enabling the two nations to carry out experiments on the lunar surface.

What does China want to do on the moon to protect the Earth from satellites?

China is planning an entire planetary defence system, with the moon being one part of that. It wants to place three satellites in orbit around the moon, with built-in weapons systems, which could be used to either destroy asteroids or nudge them out of an Earth-bound trajectory. In addition, two telescopes would be built at the poles of Earth’s satellite to survey the sky, working in tandem with a ground-based early warning network, to detect any threatening asteroids.

As of now, China wants to carry out a crewed mission” to the Moon in the next five years, a period in which it will continue to focus on the exploration of the poles of the satellite.

China feels ‘threatened’ by America’s reaction to its moon plans

The Chinese government reacted angrily to the statements from NASA’s director, saying that the accusations pose “a great threat” to the peaceful use of space. China argues that its exploration of space is always in pursuit of legitimate economic, social, scientific, technological and security objectives.

“The system will have the ability to intercept incoming asteroids from all directions and can form a defense circle approximately twice the distance between the Moon and Earth,” said Wu Weiren, chief designer of the Lunar Exploration Program of China in an article published in the journal Scientia Sinica Informationis.

 

 

 

China OTOH DOES Have An Economic Strategy For The Americas

reuters  |  BUENOS AIRES/LIMA/LOS ANGELES, June 8 (Reuters) - China has widened the gap on the United States in trade terms in large swathes of Latin America since U.S. President Joe Biden came into office early last year, data show, underscoring how Washington is being pushed onto the back foot in the region.

An exclusive Reuters analysis of U.N. trade data from 2015-2021 shows that outside of Mexico, the top U.S. trade partner, China has overtaken the United States in Latin America and widened the gap last year.

The trend, driven by countries in resource-rich South America, hammers home how the United States has lost ground in a region long seen as its backyard, even as Biden aims to reset ties at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week.

Mexico and the United States have had a free trade deal since the 1990s and the amount of commerce between the two next-door neighbors alone overshadows Washington's commerce with the rest of Latin America.

But the trade gap with the United States in the rest of the region, which first opened up under former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018, has grown since Biden took office in January last year, despite a pledge to restore Washington's role as a global leader and to refocus attention on Latin America after years of what he once called "neglect".

On the groundcurrent and former officials told Reuters that the United States had been slow to take concrete action and that China, a major buyer of grains and metals, simply offered more to the region in terms of trade and investment.

Juan Carlos Capunay, Peru's former ambassador to China, said that Mexico aside, "the most important commercial, economic and technological ties for Latin America are definitely with China, which is the top trade partner for the region, well above the United States."

He added though that politically the region still was more aligned with the United States.

When excluding Mexico, total trade flows - imports and exports - between Latin America and China hit nearly $247 billion last year, according to the latest available data, well above the $174 billion with the United States. The 2021 data lacks trade numbers from some regional countries but those balance each other out in terms of U.S.-China bias.

 

Monkeys? Really!?! - Y'all Jes Phoning Shit In Now....,

dailymail |   A woman who stopped to help after a truck carrying 100 lab monkeys crashed in Pennsylvania fears she's caught an illness after one of the macaques hissed in her face, leaving her with pink eye symptoms.

Michelle Fallon, from Danville near Scranton, was driving directly behind the vehicle when it crashed, throwing animal crates all over the highway and smashing some to pieces.  Three of the macaques escaped and went on the run, but all have since been captured and humanely euthanized. All of the other monkeys - who'd arrived in the US from Mauritius that morning, and were en route to a lab, have been accounted for.

Fallon has now had a rabies shot, and wrote about the symptoms she has since suffered on Facebook - and also told PA Homepage that she'd developed symptoms of pink eye - an inflammation or infection of the eye ball. 

She said: 'I was close to the monkeys, I touched the crates, I walked through their feces so I was very close. So I called (a helpline) to inquire, you know, was I safe?

'Because the monkey did hiss at me and there were feces around, and I did have an open cut, they just want to be precautious.' 

Fallon said she got out to help both the driver and the animals in their cages, initially believing them to be cats. When she approached and put her hand on the cage, she says the monkey hissed at her.

The day following the accident, Fallon suddenly developed a cough and pink eye, which became so bad that she had to visit the emergency room at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville.  Fist tap Dale.

Bojo Catching A Djoko For Not "Playing By The Rules"

businessinsider |  As Conservative MPs returned to their constituencies after another week of fresh allegations of lockdown-busting parties at Downing Street, they were left wondering what reaction they would find back home. 

Boris Johnson, the man once seen as electoral dynamite, is now increasingly seen as politically toxic. The question his backbenchers will have to answer this weekend is whether his toxicity is terminal. 

The prime minister's apology to the House of Commons – in which he acknowledged the public "rage" caused by ITV's revelation of a "bring your own booze" garden party held in May 2020 — did little to quell the anger on Tory benches. But it did initially appear to buy him some time.

Then came another set of revelations. This time, two leaving parties, for which a No. 10 staffer was dispatched to buy a suitcase's worth of wine, were held in Downing Street on April 16, 2021, the night before Prince Philip's funeral.

NYTimes |

• Australia’s immigration minister revokes Djokovic’s visa on ‘health and good order’ grounds.

• Djokovic could be detained again on Saturday while he challenges the decision.

• What would Djokovic’s departure mean for the Australian Open bracket?

• Andy Murray: ‘I’m not going to sit here and start kicking Novak whilst he’s down.’

• In Serbia, Djokovic’s friends and family have fumed and waited.

• Just catching up with the Djokovic story? Here’s what you need to know.

• The Australian government took a stand for the public good, our correspondent writes.

Scientists Believed In Wuhan Lab Leak But Got Shut Down By Lil'Fauci

yahoo  |  Leading British and US scientists thought it was likely that Covid accidentally leaked from a laboratory but were concerned that further debate would harm science in China, emails show.

An email from Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, on February 2 2020 said that “a likely explanation” was that Covid had rapidly evolved from a Sars-like virus inside human tissue in a low-security lab.

The email, to Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Francis Collins of the US National Institutes of Health, went on to say that such evolution may have “accidentally created a virus primed for rapid transmission between humans”.

But a leading scientist told Sir Jeremy that “further debate would do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular”. Dr Collins, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health, warned it could damage “international harmony”.

Viscount Ridley, co-author of Viral: the search for the origin of Covid, said: “These emails show a lamentable lack of openness and transparency among Western scientists who appear to have been more interested in shutting down a hypothesis they thought was very plausible, for political reasons.”

In the emails, Sir Jeremy said that other scientists also believed the virus could not have evolved naturally. One such scientist was Professor Mike Farzan, of Scripps Research, the expert who discovered how the original Sars virus binds to human cells.

Scientists were particularly concerned by a part of Covid-19 called the furin cleavage site, a section of the spike protein which helps it enter cells and makes it so infectious to humans.

Summarising Professor Farzan’s concerns in an email, Sir Jeremy said: “He is bothered by the furin site and has a hard time (to) explain that as an event outside the lab, though there are possible ways in nature but highly unlikely.

“I think this becomes a question of how do you put all this together, whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the lab in Wuhan, how much could be in nature - accidental release or natural event? I am 70:30 or 60:40.”

Leana Wen Is So Viscerally Repulsive She MUST BE A Patsy Anti-Asian Judas Goat ....,

WaPo  | Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first came out with its misguided policy to lift masking requirements in May, I have been calling on it to reverse course. On Tuesday, it did, but the new guidance remains just as confusing and the communication just as muddled.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky explained in a press briefing that in light of emerging data, the agency is recommending that vaccinated people wear masks indoors again in areas of high covid-19 transmission. Walensky cited unpublished research showing that vaccinated people who become infected with the delta variant carry a similar amount of virus to those who are unvaccinated and infected. This change in the science was the impetus for the new guidance, because it suggests that vaccinated people could be carriers and therefore capable of spreading the coronavirus to family members who are unvaccinated or immunocompromised.

That’s certainly important information for many Americans to know. As the mom of two children too young to be vaccinated, I have already been taking precautions to reduce my risk of being an asymptomatic carrier and unknowingly infecting my kids. I never stopped wearing a mask in grocery stores, hotel lobbies and other indoor, crowded spaces where I don’t know others’ vaccination status. My concern is that the unvaccinated could be a danger to me, and even though I’m well-protected from becoming severely ill myself, there’s still a chance I could contract the coronavirus and bring it back to my vulnerable family members.

On an individual level, the CDC guidance that people in my circumstance mask up is correct. But does it make sense for local governments and businesses to implement mask mandates because of the risk posed by or to the vaccinated? That’s what the new guidance implies, even though it’s contradicted by the CDC’s own data. During the same press briefing, Walensky said the vaccinated are 20 times more protected than the unvaccinated from becoming severely ill, and seven times more protected from having mild symptoms. She made clear that the vast majority of transmission appears to be from the unvaccinated and that “vaccinated individuals continue to represent a very small amount of transmission occurring around the country.”

That leaves many people wondering what’s actually going on here. If the vaccinated aren’t the problem, why are they being punished by having to put on masks again? If most transmission is happening because of the unvaccinated, then why is the CDC saying that the guidance is evolving because the science changed about transmission risk of the vaccinated?

 

Why Didn't Youtube Censor Jon Stewart's WuFlu Hypothesis?

tomluongo  |  Now Stewart comes out at this moment to pull his schtick on Colbert’s show to rally the libs to the whole WuFlu, “China Did It To Us” Narrative The Davos Crowd is pushing on us now?  

If you squint hard enough you can see where they missed editing out the puppet strings in the video feed.

They’ve pulled out the John Stewart card to convince the squishy Millennials that China is our enemy.  Google will now whitewash all references to Ft. Detrick, their October 2019 exercises and all the rest of it.  Remember, Millennials, in general, don’t know anything.  They just Google shit and think they’re informed.  

John Stewart is the foundation on which their basic lack of inquisition is built on while at the same time telling them they are cynical and informed.  That’s why the cognitive dissonance over this was so thorough.  They now have to side with the evil Republicans and Trumptards over the ‘China Virus’ because John Stewart told them so.  

It’s as predictable as it is pathetic.  

I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but it’s clear that Davos is burning bridges left and right, they are accelerating their plans and calling in all the markers.  They are burning their accumulated political capital very quickly because they now realize they have a little more than a year to do all the damage they are going to do.

There will be political surprises all across Europe this year and next.  By the time they are done the Democrats will look like Labour in the UK, a brittle shell of a party built on equal parts envy and smarm, and the Republicans, guided by Trump, will return to power with a vengeance we’ve never experienced in U.S. politics.  It will not be pretty.  

And if John Stewart had any effect the other day he will be one of the reasons why this plan will work. If it doesn’t work then James Cameron better stop working on those Avatar sequels and begin development of Titanic 2: Zombie Boogaflu.

Then again, by the time it comes out it’ll be more Ken Burns than Kurosawa anyway.

Because the goal of this little theatrical display is nothing less than the reunification of the broken American electorate. Both Left and Right, animated by the virus of American exceptionalism, will need someone to blame for the tragedies of today and the hardships of tomorrow.

That’s the script anyhow. It’s what passes for good writing these days in Commie-wood.

If Chinese Premier Xi Jinping is smart he will not take advantage of the paralysis and vacuum at the top of the U.S. political system as led by the Olden Girls and make a move on Taiwan.  He should just do nothing and let Davos’ plans to get the two countries to fight fall flat.  That would honestly be the best possible outcome at this point.  

The good news is Stewart’s curtain call was a bit too much needle scratch and not enough Honest Injun. The bad news is that most of the people he was targeting can’t tell the difference.

And even if they do see through his schtick that just leaves us even more angry and divided than before while Nancy Pelosi forces struggle sessions over Juneteenth in Congress, organizing election fraud in Georgia may get Stacey Abrams the Nobel Peace Prize and the government is trying to make the X-Files a documentary.

Ah, fuck it, who wants pie?!

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Believe The Science: SARS-CoV2 Was Lab Synthesized

WSJ  |  A genome is a blueprint for the factory of a cell to make proteins. The language is made up of three-letter “words,” 64 in total, that represent the 20 different amino acids. For example, there are six different words for the amino acid arginine, the one that is often used in supercharging viruses. Every cell has a different preference for which word it likes to use most.

In the case of the gain-of-function supercharge, other sequences could have been spliced into this same site. Instead of a CGG-CGG (known as “double CGG”) that tells the protein factory to make two arginine amino acids in a row, you’ll obtain equal lethality by splicing any one of 35 of the other two-word combinations for double arginine. If the insertion takes place naturally, say through recombination, then one of those 35 other sequences is far more likely to appear; CGG is rarely used in the class of coronaviruses that can recombine with CoV-2.

In fact, in the entire class of coronaviruses that includes CoV-2, the CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally. That means the common method of viruses picking up new skills, called recombination, cannot operate here. A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from another virus if that sequence isn’t present in any other virus.

Although the double CGG is suppressed naturally, the opposite is true in laboratory work. The insertion sequence of choice is the double CGG. That’s because it is readily available and convenient, and scientists have a great deal of experience inserting it. An additional advantage of the double CGG sequence compared with the other 35 possible choices: It creates a useful beacon that permits the scientists to track the insertion in the laboratory.

Now the damning fact. It was this exact sequence that appears in CoV-2. Proponents of zoonotic origin must explain why the novel coronavirus, when it mutated or recombined, happened to pick its least favorite combination, the double CGG. Why did it replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made?

Yes, it could have happened randomly, through mutations. But do you believe that? At the minimum, this fact—that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers—implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape.

When the lab’s Shi Zhengli and colleagues published a paper in February 2020 with the virus’s partial genome, they omitted any mention of the special sequence that supercharges the virus or the rare double CGG section. Yet the fingerprint is easily identified in the data that accompanied the paper. Was it omitted in the hope that nobody would notice this evidence of the gain-of-function origin?

So, If Covid WAS Manmade, What You Gonna Do About It?!?!

WaPo |  The mainstream media is engaged in some very warranted soul-searching when it comes to the possibility that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, rather than occurring naturally. Reporters often wrote about the theory dismissively, citing scientists who backed that up. There is still no real proof the theory is true, but scientists now regard it as increasingly plausible, as The Post’s Glenn Kessler detailed this week. And the Biden administration says it’s redoubling efforts to get to the truth.

But beyond media accountability, it’s valid to ask: What’s really at stake here? If the theory were somehow proved, what would it change, including for the U.S. government, its top officials, including the current and former presidents, and China?

A big part of the appeal of the theory right now — beyond the chance to apply egg to the face of the popular boogeyman (particularly on the right) that is the media — lies in how intriguing it is. A deadly worldwide pandemic originating from a lab accident — or worse — is basically a Hollywood script. That it would involve a nefarious and powerful foreign government that also happens to be communist is almost a bit too over the top.

As for what it would mean for China’s culpability? We already know the virus came from China and that the Chinese government has been anything but transparent. This began on its watch, and its lack of transparency cost the world valuable time in preparing for and combating the spread of the virus.

If the virus came from one of its labs, that would mean China was even more negligent (at best) than previously known and that its coverup was even worse. It’s possible that even the Chinese government might not truly know what happened. But regardless, it has balked at admitting outside scientists who might be able to shed light on this and many other subjects.

Some have wagered that if such a theory proves true, it might turn China into something of a pariah state, given how angry other countries would be. There would be calls for extensive sanctions, particularly from the United States. But much of the world, including this country, relies upon trade with China, making such efforts fraught.

It would also raise questions about just how it leaked from the lab. We know scientists engage in sometimes-controversial “gain of function” experiments on viruses, but the most severe theories go quite a bit further: They involve the idea that China was engaging in even more dangerous conduct and possibly experimenting with a deliberate bioweapon. Proving such a thing would be even more difficult than proving a lab leak, and there are many more reasons to doubt the bioweapon theory than the lab leak theory. But it would force some very tough conversations — and pressure — to determine just how it leaked from the lab and how negligent or potentially nefarious China’s actions were.

Cornpop Stalling, Posing, and Burraschidting About "Unexamined Covid SigInt" From China

NYTimes |  President Biden’s call for a 90-day sprint to understand the origins of the coronavirus pandemic came after intelligence officials told the White House they had a raft of still-unexamined evidence that required additional computer analysis that might shed light on the mystery, according to senior administration officials.

The officials declined to describe the new evidence. But the revelation that they are hoping to apply an extraordinary amount of computer power to the question of whether the virus accidentally leaked from a Chinese laboratory suggests that the government may not have exhausted its databases of Chinese communications, the movement of lab workers and the pattern of the outbreak of the disease around the city of Wuhan.

In addition to marshaling scientific resources, Mr. Biden’s push is intended to prod American allies and intelligence agencies to mine existing information — like intercepts, witnesses or biological evidence — as well as hunt for new intelligence to determine whether the Chinese government covered up an accidental leak.

Mr. Biden committed on Thursday to making the results of the review public, but added a caveat: “unless there’s something I’m unaware of.”

His call for the study has both domestic and international political ramifications. It prompted his critics to argue that the president had dismissed the possibility that the lab was the origin until the Chinese government this week rejected allowing further investigation by the World Health Organization. And, administration officials said, the White House hopes American allies will contribute more vigorously to a serious exploration of a theory that, until now, they considered at best unlikely, and at worst a conspiracy theory.

So far, the effort to glean evidence from intercepted communications within China, a notoriously hard target to penetrate, has yielded little. Current and former intelligence officials say they strongly doubt anyone will find an email or a text message or a document that shows evidence of a lab accident.

One allied nation passed on information that three workers in the Wuhan virological laboratory were hospitalized with serious flulike symptoms in the autumn of 2019. The information about the sickened workers is considered important, but officials cautioned that it did not constitute evidence that they caught the virus at the laboratory — they may have brought it there.

 

David Asher "To Say Covid Came Out Of A Zoonotic Situation, It's Ridiculous"

Foxnews |  A government probe last year into the origins of the coronavirus found practically no evidence COVID-19 originated from nature, former State Department official David Asher told Fox News on Thursday.

"We were finding that despite the claims of our scientific community, including the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Fauci's NIAID organization, there was almost no evidence that supported a natural, zoonotic evolution or source of COVID-19," he told "America Reports."

The probe was led out of the State Department’s arms control and verification (AVC) bureau and initially launched at the request of former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo before ending this year.

Asher, the lead contractor on the subject, said the team investigated the two chief hypotheses for the virus' origins, the other being the lab-leak theory that has gained credence after widespread media dismissal over the past year.

"The data disproportionately stacked up as we investigated that it was coming out of a lab or some supernatural source," he said.

Asher has a history of investigative work tracking money for the AQ Khan network, North Korea's nuclear program, and top Al Qaeda leaders, but has fallen under scrutiny from former State Department officials.

Asher was critical Thursday of former Assistant Secretary of State Chris Ford, who expressed reservations about the investigation's findings and cautioned against the lab theory. Ford told Fox News that the AVC probe had been kept secret from him and bypassed department and intelligence community biological experts, although adding the lab origin theory was "very possible."

The Wuhan Institute of Virology has become a central focus of investigators looking into the virus' origins, in part due to its known research on bat coronaviruses.

"That was the epicenter of synthetic biology in the People's Republic of China, and they were up to some very hairy stuff with synthetic biology and so-called gain-of-function techniques," Asher said, later saying the odds of natural origin were extremely long.

Covid Lab Origin Went From "Awful Racist Theory" To Highly Plausible In the Mainstream Media Overnight

🧵THREAD🧵

That the Covid pandemic could’ve leaked from a lab in Wuhan went from terrible, racist conspiracy theory to plausible overnight for the mainstream media, without a shred of accountability.

If you don’t believe me, look at these stories side-by-side, then vs. now⤵️

— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 25, 2021

China Big Mad Its Biden Investments Not Shielding It From Scrutiny...,

china-embassy | Lately, some people have played the old trick of political hype on the origin tracing of COVID-19 in the world. Smear campaign and blame shifting are making a comeback, and the conspiracy theory of "lab leak" is resurfacing.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 last year, some political forces have been fixated on political manipulation and blame game, while ignoring their people's urgent need to fight the pandemic and the international demand for cooperation on this front, which has caused a tragic loss of many lives. The lesson from last year is still fresh in our memory. While the pandemic is still causing great damage in today's world and the international community is expecting greater coordination among countries, some people are turning to their old playbook. We cannot but wonder, have they already put that bitter lesson behind them, so soon? Or do they want to see a replay of tragedies? With such irresponsible behaviors, how can they face up to their own people? How can they face up to the international community? And how can they face up to human conscience?

On the origin tracing of COVID-19, we have been calling for international cooperation on the basis of respecting facts and science, with a view to better coping with unexpected epidemics in the future. To politicize origin tracing, a matter of science, will not only make it hard to find the origin of the virus, but give free rein to the "political virus" and seriously hamper international cooperation on the pandemic. Out of a sense of responsibility towards the health of mankind, we support a comprehensive study of all early cases of COVID-19 found worldwide and a thorough investigation into some secretive bases and biological laboratories all over the world. Such study and investigation shall be full, transparent and evidence-based, and shall get to the bottom to make everything clear.