2020-04-23

First devastating societal blow in Late-Modernity (3)

Part 1.  Western propaganda distorts reality 


Late-Modernity, humanity’s present historical era, is being swept by two waves of worldwide changes that impact one another and announce a new historical era in the forming:
  • the Late-Modern governance-world is undergoing a shift of its center of gravity from the West to the East (1)
  • the side-effects of Modernity are increasingly becoming a threat to life on earth





The side-effects of Modernity are forcing all nations on earth to come together in order to shape the appropriate responses to guarantee a livable habitat for the future generations. There is a scientific consensus that short of that the convergence of the multitude of them is going to end life on earth. Faced with such a grim reality the shift of the governance-world will be forced to align with the necessity to answer the side-effects of Modernity. Whatever the resistance of the boomer and Xer generations the younger generations will eventually succeed to impose action to address these concerns.

Unfortunately our axioms of civilization and the worldview that we inherited are hampering this necessary coming together presently of the societies that compose the human species. The Corona-Virus outbreak is an appropriate illustration of this kind of inter-societal divisions that are creating difficulties to act in order to safeguard the future of our children and of our species.

But the fact is that there is no other alternative to answer our Late-Modern predicament than to come together as a species. Unfortunately our answers in tackling the Corona-Virus go counter to our coming together. The decision-makers of our nation-states remain indeed captive of yesteryear ideological prejudice and as such they manifest for all to see their utter narrow-mindedness and incompetence to address the urgent problems of the day. But the fact is that their incompetence is literally threatening the future of our younger generations.

No wonder the younger generations are starting to rebel against the policies of baby-boomers and Xers that are responsible for a possible extinction of our species.

Taking a little altitude and observing the landscape of the governance-world we observe that the present predicament of humanity originates in the will of the West to affirm its exceptionalism while denigrating the other, more particularly the rise of “the other” constituted by the rise of East-Asia and the Chinese nation at its core. Stoking fear today through an opportunist corona-virus propaganda is fanning the flames of nationalism which could easily backfire and push emotional decision making to supersede rationality.

History is replete with such historical moments when rationality and facts are brushed aside by emotions. These moments most often ended in violence and war… The US propaganda campaign “Yes, Blame China for the Virus“ is paving such a historical avenue. I review here after how this propaganda campaign is poisoning the well of our societal divisions and also how it weaves 6 wave-patterns that will affect the long term prospects of humanity’s geo-political realities.








1. White House orchestrated propaganda campaign


Under the title “Yes, Blame China for the Virus“ the magazine Foreign Affairs affirms the following :

“ While U.S. policymakers bungled their response and exacerbated the crisis as a result—particularly through Trump’s repeated false statements and lack of urgency— the Chinese government is most directly responsible for the governance failures that have now unleashed untold suffering and economic collapse on the world. Its mendacity and incompetence should cause politicians, policymakers, and business leaders across the world to reconsider their willingness to engage and do business with China until it proves itself a responsible actor on the world stage. “ (2)

This statement is quite remarkable for a magazine, that is often presented as laying out the foreign policy of the United states, in that it explains away the utter incompetence of western governments by assigning the blame on the actions of the Chinese government.

But the facts remain the facts and those of us who have been paying attention come to a unanimous conclusion that is best summarized in the four major conclusions, from the work in China, of the ‘The Joint Mission’ of 25 national and international experts of the WHO on Corona-virus Disease 2019.

Their 4 conclusions are reproduced here under :
“1. In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history. The strategy that underpinned this containment effort was initially a national approach that promoted universal temperature monitoring, masking, and hand washing. However, as the outbreak evolved, and knowledge was gained, a science and risk-based approach was taken to tailor implementation. Specific containment measures were adjusted to the provincial, county and even community context, the capacity of the setting, and the nature of novel coronavirus transmission there.

2. Achieving China’s exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat. At a community level this is reflected in the remarkable solidarity of provinces and cities in support of the most vulnerable populations and communities. Despite ongoing outbreaks in their own areas, Governors and Mayors have continued to send thousands of health care workers and tons of vital PPE supplies into Hubei province and Wuhan city.

3. China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic. A particularly compelling statistic is that on the first day of the advance team’s work there were 2478 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in China. Two weeks later, on the final day of this Mission, China reported 409 newly confirmed cases. This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real.

4. China is already, and rightfully, working to bolster its economy, reopen its schools and return to a more normal semblance of its society, even as it works to contain the remaining chains of COVID-19 transmission. Appropriately, a science-based, risk-informed and phased approach is being taken, with a clear recognition and readiness of the need to immediately react to any new COVID-19 cases or clusters as key elements of the containment strategy are lifted.” (3)

With its article “Yes, Blame China for the Virus“ Foreign Affairs aligns itself against the opinion of 25 highly respected health professional experts from different national origins. And after rejecting the scientific consensus the magazine aligns with the propaganda campaign launched by the White-House. That campaign started with a cable, sent to State Department officials, highlighting the narrative to be peddled to the media by “the whole of government”.

The narrative of this propaganda campaign has 2 main aspects :
  1. deflecting criticism for the ineptitude demonstrated by the US government’s own actions all along the break-out of the pandemic on its territory
  2. it then accuses China for its direct responsibility in :
  • allowing the spread of the virus outside its own borders
  • spreading the epidemic to the whole world. The rationale being that Chinese and international experts missed a critical window to contain the outbreak within China.
  • orchestrating a “cover-up” to hide the severity of the epidemic and not be transparent in sharing information with the rest of the world
  • pushing the idea that China is responsible for the financial losses of the world at large and is thus liable to pay reparations

The US imperial propaganda machine is a powerful machine. No doubt about that. No other country comes close to its ability to manipulate minds. For proof the meme “Yes, Blame China for the Virus” garnered about 10,500,000 Google results in less than one month time.

But such a blatant manipulation of the opinion of the Western public is fraught with extreme danger. Western countries make up less than 10% of the world population. But they own the world’s largest military arsenal and they have given the whole world to see that they do no refrain from using it against countries that do not obey their diktat. Their groundless accusation against China, in the matter of the Corona-Virus, is now creating a dangerous climate of distrust that risk to slip out of hand at any moment.

The Daily Beast broke the news to the public. Here is how it describes the action of the White House :
“ As the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow at a rapid pace in the U.S., the White House is launching a communications plan across multiple federal agencies that focuses on accusing Beijing of orchestrating a “cover-up” and creating a global pandemic, according to two U.S. officials and a government cable obtained by The Daily Beast.

The cable, sent to State Department officials Friday, lays out in detail the circumstances on the ground in China, including data on coronavirus cases and deaths, the local business environment and transportation restrictions. But it also issues guidelines for how U.S. officials should answer questions on, or speak about, the coronavirus and the White House’s response in relation to China.

The talking points appear to have originated in the National Security Council. One section of the cable reads “NSC Top Lines: [People’s Republic of China] Propaganda and Disinformation on the Wuhan Virus Pandemic.”

“Chinese Communist Party officials in Wuhan and Beijing had a special responsibility to inform the Chinese people and the world of the threat, since they were the first to learn of it,” the cable reads. “Instead, the... government hid news of the virus from its own people for weeks, while suppressing information and punishing doctors and journalists who raised the alarm. The Party cared more about its reputation than its own people’s suffering.” (4)
As we’ll see here-after the facts on the ground don’t align in any way with this description. But this does not distract the US from pointing fingers at the WHO accusing it of siding with the Peoples’ Republic of China.

These accusations go counter to the unanimous conclusion of 25 highly respected national and international experts who summarized their views in their Joint Mission report with the following words: “China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history”.

In light of these words the US accusation against China and the WHO has no merit at all and should be denounced for being the blatant lie that it really is. As if acknowledging these facts the US now doubles down and shift its propaganda to directly accusing China of being responsible for the viral outbreak :
“ The basic narrative reads like a dystopian movie plot, and goes something like this: somehow, the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the disease first appeared in late 2019. Researchers there were studying dangerous bat coronaviruses, and safety procedures at the facility were not as rigorous as they should have been.

The Chinese government then covered up the incident, blaming a seafood market near the lab for launching the pandemic and refusing to allow any independent investigation. … Scientists are largely skeptical of the idea, as are top defense officials, but it has given the president’s supporters an alluring new talking point as they seek to deflect blame for the pandemic’s brutal toll on the United States.” (5)
But an ongoing Cambridge study titled “Neither ‘lab’ nor ‘wet market’ ” now indicates that the outbreak of the virus started somewhere else than in Wuhan months earlier than December 2019 :

“ Though the virus is thought to have transmitted from bats to another host animal – pangolins are a popular candidate – and finally to humans, the new findings could overturn prevailing ideas as to precisely how, when and where it made the interspecies leap. Initial theories posited the jump to humans took place at a wet market in Wuhan, but the new study has called that into question, suggesting Covid-19 might have originated south of the central-Chinese city “.

What next is not known. But the fact, that scientific studies point to an origin somewhere else than Wuhan, indicates that the White-House spun propaganda is contradicted by the facts.



 


2. “The Chinese are liars : they hide the true impact of Covid19”


Here are a few titles that illustrate the Western media’s role in acting as a conveyor belt for spreading the lies of the powers that be :

One recent non-signed article, published by Zero-Edge on 2020-03-26, paints China as opening its economy while the Covid19 sickness is still ravaging the land :

“ …since China has been rushing to reopen its economy to avoid an all out economic depression and did away with "social distancing" long ago, one can be certain that China's real numbers are exponentially higher than the political propaganda that Beijing is reporting to the outside world “. (6)

One might ask why is painting China in such dire colors so important for the US ?

Well If China’s economy is really operating in a controlled health environment, while the West is still months away from ensuring such a feat, this will procure the immeasurable advantage to China of being the sole large supplier of the consumer goods necessary to satisfy the inevitable strong demand of Western consumers when they come out of quarantine. The following graph illustrates the point I’m making and it will inevitably measure up soon in high export figures that will boost China’s GDP growth somewhere near to pre-Covid19 levels.


In the eyes of the Western establishment the possibility of such a China win has to be erased at all costs from the minds of the citizens.

The West can’t digest the very real possibility that, while it is mired in an economic depression fostered by its own bungled response to the Corona-virus, China would appear to be engaging in an economic recovery. Imagine the impact of the following scenario : China growing while the West is stuck in a depression.
What would Western populations start to think ?

This could be the last straw that could tilt in Western minds the perception of a preferability for China’s economic model. Coming just after the demonstration in real time of the Western political ineptitude in handling the crisis the shift of Western preferences, for an economic model that eliminates the capture, of the decision making process by big capital holders and their servants, is simply unacceptable.

The following article, “What Comes After COVID-19, Freedom Or Despotism? “ by “The American Institute for Economic Education”, Richard Ebeling is giving the theoretical reasons why the outcome just suggested here above is unacceptable :
“ Fundamental to everything that governments have been doing is the presumption that the crisis can only be handled and solved through a comprehensive system of political command and control. The chorus of voices making this case, along with their own proposals as to what should be the ingredients of “the plan,” has been deafening.

(…) What is the underlying premise behind all of these arguments, whether focused on the immediate CoronaVirus crisis or looking beyond to the world after the crisis is behind us?

It is that freedom does not work or does not work as effectively as the critic thinks it should if this health crisis is to be successfully grappled with. It is once again considered to represent a “failure of the market” that can only be compensated and corrected for by turning command and control over to the government and to the guiding judgments and decisions of those holding high political office and the presumed “experts” manning the bureaus, agencies and departments that make up the government. “

Freedom, in the mind of Richard Ebeling, is no more than the freedom of big capital holders and their servants, in a context of sheer inequality, to manipulate entire populations in order to maintain their monopoly over the various levers of power that enforce, or manufacture, popular consent. Furthermore the reference of Western public governance as the alternative to a market approach is manipulative in the sense that what the world population is observing right now is not a market answer versus a Western public governance answer.

The spectacle that the world population assist at today is a competition between the Western market approach and the Chinese public governance approach. And what they see is that the Western market cares above all about maximizing corporate profits while the Chinese public governance approach is to care first and foremost for peoples’ lives even at the cost of its national economy.

This power of big capital holders and their servants to enforce consent for the societal maximization of corporate profits is the opposite of what the Chinese model stands for. People who have been watching this spectacle have not missed these opposite priorities and even if they don’t often express it publicly the fact of the matter is that deep in their minds and hearts a preference for a Chinese style approach has taken root.

How do these models of society compare in real life ? I wrote about this in the following chapters of “A growing disconnect between East & West” :
  • “Big capital holders own Western democracies” : the political decision making process is in the hands of the lobbyist, working for big capital holders, who write the laws and regulations that the legislative branches then approve. Elections are being financed by big capital holders and their lobbyist so after the election the winners have to pay-back their investment … In this model the decision making invariably privileges the private interests of big capital.
  • “The CCP owns China” : the political decision making process relies on consultation of all segments of society and the CCP and State organs of power deliberate and enact the decisions while interest groups are being kept at a distance. In this model the decision making invariably privileges the national interest which is in the interest of the people.

My conclusion is that these models of society are irreconcilable. And I’m firmly convinced that over time the mechanisms of the Chinese model will eventually impose themselves for no other reason than :
  1. their efficiency at satisfying the citizens is unmatched.
  2. their efficiency at surfing on the waves of chaos maximizes their capacity to counter crises.

Because of the irreconcilability between these rival models of governance Western big capital holders and their servants want to avoid at all costs the risk of a shift in popular perception that would favor China’s governance and economic approach. That’s why they feel a new urgency to counter and manipulate the minds of their citizens into submission by manufacturing such a repulsive narrative about China’s governance system that their citizens would have no other avenue than to consent a system that is engineered in the sole interest of big capital holders.





3. China muzzles its people : The case of Dr. Li Wenliang.



“ Dr. Li had this to say (7) :

What was everybody talking about? How did they evaluate the situation at that point? It was that SARS might come back. We needed to be ready for it mentally. Take protective measures.

Question: How did you feel when the police accused you of spreading rumors?

The police believed this virus was not confirmed to be SARS. They believed I was spreading rumors. They asked me to acknowledge that I was at fault. I felt I was being wronged, but I had to accept it. Obviously I had been acting out of good will. I felt very sad seeing so many people losing their loved ones. “
There is no doubt in my mind that Dr. Li was acting out of good-will and in the interest of the Chinese nation. But the fact is that the police was not wrong believing that “this virus was not confirmed to be SARS” which implies that there was some ground for the police to argue with Dr. Li. But this does not excuse their over zealousness in asking Dr. Li to sign a written confession acknowledging having been wrong. Let’s just observe that after inquiry the authorities dismissed the agents who had interviewed Dr. Li.

In matter of fact it is very easy to get a wrong perception, from the comfort of home or office, about the description of events that happen thousands of kilometers away. The case of Dr. Li was unmistakably used not to serve his own interests but to serve Western ideological interests in their eagerness to paint China as a dictatorship that does not tolerate free expression of ideas and opinions by their citizens. But note that the Chinese people freely express their ideas and opinions on social media platforms.

It is obviously wrong, intellectually I mean, to paint China in such stark dualistic terms as Western ideologues are constantly doing. Now some will by now shout at me that China censures messages on social media. Fair enough but the same can be said about Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube who routinely close accounts that derange the powers that be in Western countries. What is the difference ?

When one looks carefully at the timeline, of events leading to Dr. Li’s screenshots of Dr. Ai Fen’s posts on her private WeChat account about the new virus as mentioned in 2.1 timeline, point 6.2, (next post) one is struck by what must have been a terribly hectic last week of 2019 for the medical community in Wuhan.

Let me summarize the timeline of this last week :
  1. 2020-12-21: Wuhan doctors begin to notice the first cases of what will become in the next few days a “cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause” and they start to inquire
  2. 2020-12-27: Zhang Jixian, a doctor from Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, informed Hubei and Wuhan health authorities that a pneumonia with an unknown cause was spreading
  3. 2020-12-29: a hospital in Wuhan admitted four individuals with pneumonia and recognized that all four had worked in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.
  4. 2019-12-30:     -- Wuhan health commission notifies hospitals of a “pneumonia of unclear cause” and orders them to report any related information        --  Dr. Ai Fen, a top director at Wuhan Central Hospital, posts info on her private WeChat account about the new virus. Li Wenliang receives the message and re-sends it to his own private Wechat group informing his colleagues about an outbreak of SARS.
  5. 2019-12-31: China’s CDC reports, that a pneumonia of unknown cause had been detected in Wuhan, to the WHO.

What can we deduce from this timeline ?

First let’s observe that 10 days pass, between the detection of a first patient of what will become a “cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause”, before the Chinese health authorities inform the WHO. In matter of fact a first patient precedes a clustering by a few days. But more fundamentally the fact is that the central health authorities of a country will never inform the WHO of a spreading new sickness before verifying – that the case does not relate to an existing sickness, – what are the symptoms of the new sickness, – what is the origin of the outbreak, – what is the reaction of the patient to the various treatments that he was administered and so on.

Answering these questions, transmitting the local information to the central authority, and then reaching the decision to inform the population and the world is something that takes a minimum of time in whatever country on earth. And if you add the days between first patient and cluster to the time needed to answer questions you can only conclude that 10 days was a record short time.

I can understand that some individuals might feel the urge to accelerate the tempo and short-circuit the chain of command. But I can also understand that those in the chain of command do not tolerate the interruption of the decision making process out of fear that a short-circuit of the decision making process might lead to popular panic and chaos.

Anyway the screenshots, that Dr. Li published on WeChat, did not warrant the police action. It just incentivized decision makers to run faster. But while the action of the police agents was overzealous lets also have the honesty to recognize that it was not extreme. Dr. Li and his colleagues were indeed not punished nor were they imprisoned as most Western media falsely allege.

In light of the reality of what occurred in Wuhan in the last week of December 2019 I have to say that the noise that filled Western media at the time was disingenuous. Nothing warranted the lies that have been peddle, and that are still being peddled daily, about Dr. Li and his colleagues’ punishment and imprisonment. This whole story was nothing else than a stinking propaganda coup to smear the Chinese governance system.






4. China was slow to respond and is not transparent in sharing information with the world


Mike Pompeo said on Thursday April 16th that he blames China for a lack of information that led to the spread of the virus worldwide :
“It’s very clear now that the Chinese Communist Party and the World Health Organization didn’t put that information out into the international space as they’re required to do in a timely fashion, and the result of that is that we now have this global pandemic. … The Chinese Communist Party needs to come clean about what took place there, so the whole world can see.”
Pompeo has the gall to criticize alleged Chinese tardiness in notifying the US about the disease while the Chinese CDC informed the US CDC on January the 3rd about the outbreak of a pneumonia of unknown cause that had been observed in a first patient on December 21th.

China furthermore open sourced a full genome sequence of the virus on January 12th that allowed Germany to create a test kit that was available the next day while the WHO made its own kit available on January the 17th (8).

Does Pompeo realize that yes “Houston we have a problem” with all the lies that are peddled to accuse China of “not putting the information out in a timely fashion” ?

The fact of the matter is that Pompeo does not care about the facts. He cares only about the propaganda war that he is fighting. But the media can’t play the propaganda game exclusively. There is indeed a necessity to reconcile the propaganda with the facts that have been witnessed by the citizens. And so the media tried to reconcile the propaganda about China’s slow sharing of information with the fact that :
  • China’s rapid sharing of information with the world had allowed Germany and the WHO to make test kits available as early as mid-January
  • the world population had watched in real time what was an incontrovertible Chinese success in fighting the virus.

The New York Times in a contorted twisting of reality shouted that China’s slow response, that “costs the world dearly”, was attenuated by the ferocity of its autocracy in shaping the picture of a highly efficient response :

“ China’s leaders, stung by the SARS epidemic in 2003 and several bird flu scares since then, were slow to respond to the outbreak that began in the city of Wuhan, as local officials suppressed news of the outbreak. But China’s autocratic government acted with ferocious intensity after the belated start, eventually shutting down swaths of the country. Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan quickly began preparing for the worst. “ (9)
The argument goes as follows : the response was slow because an autocracy suppresses the news but it was efficient because an autocracy acts ferociously. How could the New York Times fall so low and accept the validity of such a vulgar distortion of reality ?


The fact is that, because of its radical character, China’s decision to lock-down 40 million people appeared mind boggling. What people often forget is that the radicality of this decision was necessarily the result of long consultations with health professionals and necessitated further long debates among the political decision-makers. Such a process, when it is rapid, takes days if not weeks to conclude with a decision and an execution plan. This is exactly what happened. Once it had been informed on January 12th that the cause of the pneumonia was a virus the Chinese leadership decided what to do and drafted a plan to handle the response and all that within a record time-frame of 10 days. It takes a really thick skin to play such a scenario as being a slow response.

The time-line of events relating to the corona-virus is well known and not contested. Wuhan doctors noticed the first patient, of what would form as a “cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause”, on the 21st of December. On December 27th Dr. Zhang Jixian informs the health authorities of the seriousness of the situation and on December 31st the Chinese authorities inform the WHO. On January the 2nd laboratory tests confirm that 41 patients have contracted the same kind of pneumonia of unknown cause and the next day the Chinese CDC informs the US CDC of the situation.

BY the 23rd of January China had locked-down 40 million of its citizens. This is the slow process that on March 26th the New York Times wants its readers to believe was the cause of a coming world pandemic. And the same preconception (10) is peddled further down the throats of the citizens of the world by all Western mainstream media, even if they are owned by Chinese communist party members, as the SCMP for example. It is difficult to imagine that all that negativity towards China was not planned right from the start.

The least we can say at this stage is that a little honesty would have urged the New York Times to compare the speed of the Chinese decision making with the speed of Western decision making. But that must be too much to ask. Or is it ? The fact of the matter is that such a comparison annihilates the New York Times ideologically driven preconceptions. This begs then the question of how we can come to terms with such blatant preconceived opinions. What can we learn from all this ?

What happens here is an object lesson in how the mind comes to formulate ideas. The fact of the matter is that the conscious mind is driven by propositions that have been imprinted in the subconscious over the long haul. What I mean to say by this is that life over the long history shapes our minds in such a way that it automatically integrates some axiomatic propositions as the foundation of our conscious thinking. In other words such axiomatic civilizational propositions form the starting logical point from which we derive the narratives of our worldviews (religions, philosophies,…) or quasi-worldviews (Modernity, science, ...) (11).

Civilizational axioms automatically shift the conscious perception of “the other”. This is how Westerners are automatically driven to believe in “me = good ‒ the other = evil”. The reader who might be interested to dig deeper in what “Civilizational axioms” are all about can check “History shapes the present. 4.3. The axioms of East and West”.

In other words what I’m saying here is that an axiom of civilization is acting at the subconscious level by imposing itself as the originator of our thinking. Yes free thinking is indeed as much a myth as free will. As a result for most Westerners the proposition of the New York Times can appear being sensical while for any non-Westerner this proposition appears to be twisting reality into an absurd proposition. The only way I know of that helps escape the trap, of the origination of ideas from the axioms of civilization or from the worldviews that are later built over it, is to relentlessly growing one’s knowledge base.

The fact of the matter is that our understanding of the concepts “culture, civilization and worldview” is confused to say the least. We use these concepts interchangeably while they cover vastly different realities. Here is a sketch of how these concepts differentiate :
  1. Civilizations form the conceptual and axiomatic framework (12) that empires adopted in order to reproduce their power over the long haul, by gluing the minds of their citizens around a common narrative, at the end of the transition from tribal societies to power societies. These axioms form the starting point in the logic from which the individuals derive the narratives of their worldviews (religions, philosophies,…) or quasi-worldviews (Modernity, science, ...).
  2. Worldviews are narratives that are derived from the axioms of civilizations. They form the societal glue that is necessary to ensure the necessary societal cohesion in order for societies to possibly reproduce over the long haul. 
  3. In its broad meaning culture is the sum total of human behaviors, beliefs and actions, – in a given society, – at a given time.  And the axioms of civilizations and the worldviews force the broad shape of daily culture while free-will decorates its forms.





5. China has to compensate the world for its losses


Some actors in the worldwide CoronaVirus spectacle accuse China of having suppressed the sharing of knowledge about the scale of events and this they say delayed the world’s response to the virus. Among these actors the Henry Jackson Society appears to have played a central role. It recommended that the world seeks legal action against the PRC for, what it claimed were, its breaches of international law and their consequences. And it advised addressing complaints to the International Court of Justice; the Permanent Court of Arbitration; the Hong Kong Courts; actions at the WTO and dispute resolutions through Bilateral Investment Treaties.


We are still in the early stages of this campaign. Here follow some links referring to the first articles relating to such court actions :
“ The UK is the latest to have joined a growing number of countries to initiate Coronavirus Compensation Lawsuits against China for wreaking their economies by unleashing the deadly virus upon the world “.
“This report apportions no blame to the people of China for what has happened. They are innocent victims, like the rest of us. This is the fault of the CCP"
“An investigation into the crisis has claimed the horrific impacts of corona-virus could have been mitigated if China had just been more honest about the outbreak “.
Finally here comes the most outrageous:

Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Dan Crenshaw have introduced a bill to amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act to create an exception for people to recover “damages caused by China’s dangerous handling of the Covid-19 outbreak”. RT states the obvious :

“ Although Cotton and Crenshaw say lawsuits from American citizens would allow them to ‘recover damages for death, injury, and economic harm caused by the Wuhan Virus,’ the goal of the bill is to get more leverage.

The lawmakers said the potential ‘private suits’ could be dismissed if the country agrees to pay the US ‘damage it has caused.’

‘If the United States and China come to an agreement to settle the claims, then the private suits could be dismissed.

In other words, China can take responsibility and agree to pay for the damage it has caused, or it can face potentially millions of claims in federal court,’ the lawmakers said in a joint announcement. “

There are no better words to describe such a political ploy than the words blackmail and extortion. And such words call for a strong response. Until now when slapped on the right side of the face the Chinese have offered the left side. But blackmail and extortion are of another nature. No response would signal that you resign yourself to be beaten. The only way to counter such ruffian manners is by giving a forceful response that will beat the ruffian in retreat.

How would US citizens react if China’s forceful response was a complete cessation of trade and other relations with their country in order to affirm its red lines ? Imagine giving one month to the American citizens to debate among themselves and impose their views on the establishment. And if at the end of this period the situation does not calm down China would be acting and cutting all relations. I do not pretend that this will be China’s response but I think that such a response would be justified and it would question Western certainties.

Cutting all trade relations would immediately hurt the American consumer very badly at its most vulnerable spot in her/his indulgence of dirt cheap consumer goods. If the consumers deem that this would constraint too heavily their way of life then they could let it be known that they categorically reject their political decision makers’ bravado which is the reason, in the first place, for China’s counteraction.

A change of heart of the US establishment could then form the necessary level playing field where both countries could eventually agree to meet in order to flesh out a new beginning in their relations.






6. The enormity of the facts nullifies the propaganda.


Remember the Spanish Flu ? The first patient was infected in a military camp of Kansas or Arkansas and the disease rapidly spread to one third of the world population. Twenty to one hundred million people died as a result between 1918 and 1920. The US never expressed any remorse… and the pandemic remains known to this day as the Spanish Flu. Very convenient ! Don’t you think ?

This time around the virus did not break out in the US but its handling by the Western political machinery was an utter failure and no propaganda will ever succeed to erase this image of failure in the minds of the US citizens and in the minds of the citizens of the earth who are observing through their TV windows that:
“...the imperial propaganda machine is simply unable to conceal the magnitude of the disaster, even in countries like the USA or the UK.

...The truth is that most of the entire planet already realized that this is a huge crisis and that countries like Russia or China responded almost infinitely better than the USA.

...In the age of the Internet this is a reality which even the US propaganda machine is unable to conceal from the US public forever. ...it is becoming clear that the capitalist ideology of free markets, globalism, consumerism, extreme individualism and, above all, greed, is totally unable to cope with the crisis. Even more offensively to those who still believed in an ideology based on the assumption that the sum of our greeds will create an optimal society, countries with stronger collectivist traditions of solidarity (whether “enhanced” by Marxist or Socialist ideas or not) did much better. “ (13)
The CoronaVirus broke out in Wuhan but until now the scientific community did not find its patient zero. The Chinese highest authority in matters of pandemics is Mr. Zhong Nanshan. In late-January he emitted the hypothesis that the virus could have originated outside of China but he also insisted that the final conclusion was a matter for scientists to elucidate.

Since then multiple strange coincidences have questioned the narrative of a Wuhan origin and opened a window on a possible other origin. Though these coincidences don’t constitute an iron-clad proof they are questioning the validity of the initial narrative. But this does not bother the US and its close allies to accuse China of being the origin of the virus. The exhibit of such a haste is troubling to say the least because it somehow implies that the West is free to accuse China without the need for a scientific proof. Is it too much to ask why not wait for the scientific proof about the origin of the virus before engaging in accusations and threats ? The haste in accusing China without any hard proof suggests that the target of the West has more to do with imprinting a lie in the minds of the world population which would definitely annihilate the impact of any future truth uncovered by the scientific community about the origin of the virus.

Why would the White House otherwise feel the need to engage, in ‘a whole government’, in a ‘whole Western world’ propaganda campaign to vilify China before disposing of any proof. The strategy is all too transparent. The idea is to frustrate the scientific inquiry by setting the stage for legal procedures to claim financial damages (14). This scenario seems eerily similar to the story of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) when the West proved that imprinting a lie in the minds eliminates the possibility for the truth to ever emerge in the collective consciousness.

But it seems to me that the worldwide impact of the corona-virus, in its enormity, will motivate the scientific community to discover the truth. The interesting question then becomes “what happens when the scientific community eventually finds out that the CoronaVirus originated outside of China ? ”.

This very real possibility raises 2 questions:
  1. Will the legal procedures, to claim financial damages, against China automatically be re-addressed to the country found to be the ultimate origin of the virus ?
  2. Will China be recognized the right to compensation for its image damaging by Western demonization ?

The suggested answer to these questions point to the fact that something is really rotten at the core of Western thinking and by extension of Western power.

What are the facts ?

The reality on the ground is that “the Chinese people’s war” beat Covid-19 so fast and so successfully that it caught Washington and the other Western capitals by surprise. China came indeed, out of the worst of Covid-19, way earlier than any Western strategist had envisioned. This by the way also explains why the West did nothing to ensure its own preparedness. It was waiting for China to collapse and for the virus to be contained within its borders. But time passing the world was forced to watch the spectacle of a Chinese recovery while the West looks stuck in the doldrums. In Chinese traditional culture such a move is called wu-wei or non-action. No doubt that there is more to this word than the image of doing nothing.

The West’s non-stop propaganda that started around mid-January demonized China so thoroughly in the eyes of the World public that :
  1. for one China’s relentless demonization resulted in the imposition, in the eyes of all citizens on earth, of its ultimate success. No propaganda is ever going to erase that from their mind
  2. once the pandemic reached western shores, even after having been provided a head start of two months by China’s containment efforts, the West failed miserably. No propaganda is ever going to erase that from the minds of the citizens of this earth.

Ironically it is the virulence of Western propaganda that forced the citizens of the earth to assist at the spectacle of a radical qualitative difference between their own governance answers and China’s answers to the Covid-19 pandemic. But what is even more spectacular is that the citizens of the earth are also witnessing in real time the actions being pushed forward by the decision makers on both sides of this struggle or, to mitigate the consequences of such a qualitative difference, or to boost about :
  • the Chinese decision makers are actively pursuing their strategic path forward which includes putting their economy back on track while simultaneously accumulating the knowledge necessary to counter the Western demonization : 
“ Steady intel rumbles on the Chinese net point to Beijing having already studied all plausible leads towards the origin of the Sars-Cov-2 virus – vital information that will be certainly weaponized Sun Tzu style, at the right time. “ See footnote (8).
  • to counter the consequences of its governance deficit the Western establishment is operating a “coup de force” on its own societies

“ As the EU has provided the whole planet with a graphic demonstration of its cluelessness and helplessness, everyday the Russia-China strategic partnership gets stronger – increasingly investing in soft power and advancing a pan-Eurasia dialogue which includes, crucially, medical help.

… That takes us to really explosive territory.

A critique of the Planet Lockdown strategy inevitably raises serious questions pointing to a controlled demolition of the global economy. What is already in stark effect are myriad declinations of martial law, severe social media policing in Ministry of Truth mode, and the return of strict border controls.

These are unequivocal markings of a massive social re-engineering project, complete with inbuilt full monitoring, population control and social distancing promoted as the new normal.

That would be taking to the limit Secretary of State Mike “we lie, we cheat, we steal” Pompeo’s assertion, on the record, that Covid-19 is a live military exercise: “This matter is going forward — we are in a live exercise here to get this right.
 … what vast swathes of global public opinion observe is – a dangerous – virus being used as cover for the advent of a new, digital financial system, complete with a forced vaccine cum nanochip creating a full, individual, digital identity.“ (15)
 This is the situation as per mid-April. We now have to wait for its denouement which will gradually take place over the next months. But what appears already as a certainty, at this very early stage, is that the enormity of the facts, I laid out here above, is slowly nullifying the impact of the Western propaganda. And it is now starting to boomerang in the face of its propagators who appear, for all to see, to be acting and speaking as if they were literally in panic mode.



Facts are facts

But some play loose with the facts

And the confusion sets in

Resulting in societal madness
_______________


Notes


1. The “governance-world” :
This is a concept that I coined as an analogy of Fernand Braudel’s concept of “economy-world” (a world system dominated by one among multiple interdependent economic nations). The concept of governance-world views societies as being governed – mentally by axioms of civilizations and worldviews, – and on the material plane by political systems (economy, law, culture and force). During Modernity economic domination transited from one national center of gravity to another for 7 times. In the last 2 of these 7 eras of hegemony the country at the center of gravity of Modernity imposed its power over the economy-world (Britain, US). The present transition shifts the economy-world outside of the domain of Western civilization into the domain of a Tao-Confucian civilization. This shift to a new civilizational area brings about an expansion of the ‘character’ of the center of gravity of the economy-world from a one variable, the economy, to the multi-variables configuration of the governance-world. The governance-world encompasses : 1. the axioms of civilization and the worldviews that shape the mental configurations of the individual minds and 2. political systems that shape the national forms taken by economic, legal, cultural and state systems of force.

It is my contention that in this new era of governance-world the notion of hegemony will disappear to be replaced by a new form of relations between the strongest and the others that will be more akin to the relations between a grand-mother and her grand-kids. The West can’t conceived another horizon than its own past hegemonic practice. But it will soon be forced to recognize that the ways of “the other” are different indeed...

2. "Yes, Blame China for the Virus“ in Foreign Affairs by Paul D. Miller. 2020-03-25.

3. “Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019”. 2020-02-16/24.
“The Joint Mission consisted of 25 national and international experts from China, Germany, Japan, Korea, Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, the United States of America and the World Health Organization(WHO). The Joint Mission was headed by Dr Bruce Aylward of WHOand Dr Wannian Liang of the People’s Republic of China.“

4.  " White House Pushes U.S. Officials to Criticize China For Coronavirus ‘Cover-Up’ in the Daily Beast by Erin Banco. Mar. 21, 2020

5. “ ‘Biological Chernobyl’: how China’s secrecy fuelled coronavirus suspicions” in the SCMP republished by Politico. 2010-04-18.

6. “ This Is Where The World Is On The ‘Corona Curve’ At This Moment “ non signed article at ZeroEdge on the 5th of April 2020.

7. “He Warned of Coronavirus. Here’s What He Told Us Before He Died” in the NYT by Elsie Chen, Chris Buckley, and Steven Lee Myers. 2020-02-07

8. “The New Anti-China Campaign Is Built On Lies“ in Moon of Alabama by Bernhard. 2020-04-18.

9. “ The U.S. now leads the world in confirmed coronavirus cases “ The New York Times March 26, 2020 by Donald G. McNeil Jr.

10. See for example “ ‘Biological Chernobyl’: how China’s secrecy fueled corona-virus suspicions” in the South China Morning Post republished from Politico. 2020-04-18.

11. About worldviews and quasi-worldviews see “What is going on ? 2. The cultural context forces human thinking and actions”.

12. See “Difference Between Axiom and Theorem” :
" An axiom is often a statement assumed to be true for the sake of expressing a logical sequence. They are the principal building blocks of proving statements. Axioms serve as the starting point of other mathematical statements. These statements, which are derived from axioms, are called theorems. "
13. “ NWO, globalism and US ‘leadership’ – RIP “ The Vineyard of the Saker by Saker. 2020-04-07.

14. “US lawsuits seek to pin coronavirus blame on China” Nikkei Asian review by Hiroyuko AkIYAMA. 2020-04-01.

“ Republicans try for political leverage over China with bill allowing Americans to sue for ‘damage they caused’ with coronavirus” RT. 2020-04-17.

“Let the blame games begin: Missouri sues China, including WUHAN LAB, over coronavirus outbreak” RT by Helen Buyniski. 2020-04-21.

15. “ Ground-Control To Planet Lockdown - ‘The Existing World-System Has To Go’ “ in Strategic Culture Foundation by Pepe Escobar. April 2, 2020




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