Post by dustoff262 on Apr 18, 2020 18:26:35 GMT -5
Zero Hedge-Did Xi Jinping Deliberately Sicken The World?
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by Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/18/2020 - 00:00
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Authored by Ben Lowsen via TheDiplomat.com,
PRC moral turpitude forces us to consider the unthinkable...
We often ascribe a basic level of humanity to even the cruelest leaders, but People’s Republic of China leader Xi Jinping’s actions have forced us to rethink this assumption. Although the emergence of the novel coronavirus now known as SARS-CoV-2 was probably not due to China’s actions, the emphasis that its authoritarian system places on hiding bad news likely gave the disease a sizable head start infecting the world. But most ominously, China’s obsession with image and Machtpolitik raises serious questions about its lack of moral limits.
Wuhan expat discusses city's life after lockdown
At some point the Chinese Communist Party learned of the epidemic and made a decision to hide its existence, hoping it went away. Exposés in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post and the Chinese mainland’s Caixin show that the information that did flow out of China early in the crisis did so only because of the courage of individual Chinese people in the face of government repression. People in the Wuhan epicenter, however, began to get wise — and scared (here and here) — by the end of December 2019, forcing their government to say something. The authorities gave the impression of a nontransmissible disease already under containment. We know now this was entirely false, likely designed more to ease civil unrest than protect the people.
The mayor of Wuhan even suggested that the central government prevented him from revealing details about the epidemic until January 20.
Considering the first public announcements came out of Wuhan on January 1, we can assume that Xi had a sense of the danger prior to that.
Clearly, downplaying the disease wasn’t working and it was time for the Party to get serious. But how serious? Would it provide full cooperation to the international community? Would being seen as the source of this virus hurt its international image? Beyond these, there was a darker dimension: the more Beijing cooperated, the less the disease stood to affect other countries. This includes countries China sees as a threat to its existence, like the United States. Why should China suffer the effects of a pandemic while others stayed safe — and increased their strength relative to China — based on China’s own costly experience?
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Such a question is of course inimical to human decency. And yet we must consider that Xi Jinping has produced the greatest program of ethnic cleansing in the world today. He has curtailed freedoms in China severely and is the father of the panopticon state. His incessant military buildup threatens neighbors while using economic and other subversive means to erode the sovereignty of countries around the world. We should not assume it was beyond his imagining to withhold a degree of support from the international community to ensure that China would not suffer alone.
Strong evidence supports this idea. Hearing the World Health Organization (WHO) repeat and praise the Party line while giving short shrift to health advice until quite recently has alarmed many. Seeing Beijing sell defective wares and claim it as humanitarian aid has angered many more. Spreading disinformation during the crisis and hinting at using life-saving goods for leverage (original here) — while denying even the faintest hint of wrongdoing - I suspect have ruined China’s reputation for some time to come. In short, China’s good offices have been reserved almost entirely for burnishing its image at the world’s expense, while calling it “the greatest kindness and good deeds.”
None of this can prove whether or when Xi made a deliberate decision to withhold information in order to imperil others. However, as a long-time student and admirer of China, it is with great sadness I must concede that such a state — and its increasingly paranoid leader — might very well provide less than full cooperation to stem the pandemic of the century in the crass pursuit of its own interests. This may constitute biological warfare. But even if it doesn’t Xi should be brought to account for his other crimes against humanity.
So why would anyone trust what comes out of China. Why would anyone defend their actions or at a minimum excuse it away as some sort of "accident". With China, just as with democrats here inside our political bubble, they would never squander an opportunity, if even by accident, to gain leverage over its adversaries.
The most horrific of their actions was to say the transmission was not human to human, while at the same time buying up the worlds stock pile of PPE. What makes anyone do something like this? Their lies cost the world thousands of lives, possibly millions of their own as well. That is what makes this difficult to comprehend, until you understand you cant solve a crime thinking like a victim, but to think like a perp. And when you evaluate everything discussed on this board about what China actions were, it becomes increasingly clearer that the facts support a deliberate attempt to spread the pain, an intentional release. They locked down travel inside their country while leaving outbound travel from the epicenter fully functional, without screening their travelers for a full 3 weeks before the United States shut down its borders.
Remember that Trump touts how fast he shut down travel on Jan. 31st. No other country did that. And Peter Navarro just days before was sending a memo around regarding a pandemic, even arguing with Dr. Fauci about it. Our country knew of China's deliberate actions then, and it triggered Trump to shut the borders down. There was hope it would have been contained in Europe but when that became impossible, he shut European travel down, then a few days later, Great Britain too. And let us not forget the enormous effort to repatriate any american caught behind the lockdown too.
And we are to believe this was just like the flu? And now people are talking about it was all an overreaction on our part? Really? There is much more to this that isnt being discussed. The president appears to be more and more irritated with China, but he is holding his cards very close to the vest. We may be surprised in a few years to the extent what China did to the world, but for now, Trump wants to fight back with the economy once it gets back up and running. A direct conflict would throw the entire world into an economic depression, where many would die from the collateral fall out of a food, medicine, energy shortage and stocks being wiped out of existence, pensions evaporate, savings disappear and property value crash. This is why our government will never admit to China's true intentional, deliberate acts. It ratchets up the prospect for all out war with a nuclear power who does not value any other life on this planet. Trump (and oddly enough, our intel services) does not want to be painted into that corner.