Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, before an international audience of diplomats, "prelates" and officials, spoke "admiringly" of China's efforts to become a world leader in technology and innovation, "leadership that we know is very contested by the United States." Secretary of State Pompeo was characterized as "saddened" by the development.
"If you're gonna go down this conspiracy theory road, which is what we're doing here," she said, "then you would see why there would be this desire to take a virus that seems to have originated in animals in China (or possibly from within chem0-bio labs the US has established in various countries bordering China, or even in China itself. She does not make that clear, though she named South Korea) and try to cripple Italy," so that they would turn from their effort to work with China on a global economic initiative.
Thus I, a mere geopolitical analyst with no temporal power, cannot trust EITHER side as far as I can throw 'em, except that in the technology-dominated 21st century I can be sure as shootin' that both the US and China have the experimental scientific resources and the technological capability to make something like a virulent weapon of war. The tools to do so have been around since at least the formal 27-year existence of the US bioweapons program.
Russia and Israel, the other two technologically advanced nations cited in this article, also undoubtedly have their own versions of war viruses, but appear to be unincriminated in this crisis.
It is possible that people will look at the map of encirclement Iversen presents, by nations which have tiny infection numbers, of the three major problems (or targets) for US economic-imperialist policy-- China, Iran and Italy-- and conclude that this is the work of top-secret US operators.
But whoever is actually responsible for the engineering of the COVID-19-causing virus, if the pandemic is not all just tragically accidental, they have lost control of the effects. And in losing that control (which it may be argued they never even conceivably had except in their own psychopathological minds) they have in fact become mass murderers across the globe.
However, the worst thing about knowing who it was that did the virus mutation engineering, if such engineering were a fact, and if the definitive answer of whodunnit were or could be disclosed, would be that unless the world can somehow, post-disclosure, remove that country or sub-national entity's power to do harm, other technologically advanced nations competing as world powers, or world-power wannabes, may decide that the outbreak of COVID-19 in some way legitimizes the use of biological weapons by nations, either in revenge or in some pre-emptive fashion.
BTW, though I shall never promulgate conspiracy theories, I have noted that the name Sheldon Adelson has been in the news again a bit. The multi-billionaire gambling mogul has long been an advisor to Israel, and once famously suggested to Likud members of the Israeli government that Israel should drop a nuclear weapon in an "unpopulated" region of Iran, and tell them that if they did not cease their nuclear weapons development, the next warhead would be on Tehran.
Besides being a mega-bankroller of the GOP, Adelson has also long been an unofficial advisor to Donald Trump, and given his strong connection with Israel prior to Trump's inauguration, Adelson is one voice Trump takes very seriously. If someone were to tell me Sheldon Adelson was strategically counseling Messrs. Trump and Pompeo in this matter, I would be able to connect more dots.
There is very little to do in a crisis like we Americans, and the rest of the world to one extent or another, are now living through but think and write. Or, if you are living as a family, explain it carefully and truly to your children, and love them even more.
Living the bachelor's life I live, I am sitting here in north Mississippi, self-quarantined as I write this. Might as well, the municipal government has asked me and my partner to close our restaurant/night club in Clarksdale for the time being.
We would need to consider all of us American citizens in the gravest danger if it was America which had weaponized viruses against its NATO ally, no matter whether Italy had made an economic decision that its erstwhile ally, the United States government, disagreed with, to initiate a new state of economic relations with China.
By William P. Homans
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