Coronavirus Exposed, Part 1: Communist Coverup, or Pandemic Bioweapon of Mass Destruction?

Adrian Bond

Jan 27 · 57 min read

Coronavirus 2019-nCoV, able to enter and infect human cells’ ACE2 receptor via its spike protein.

The official story about Coronavirus 2019 nCoV is that it “appears to have originated in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, a Chinese city about 650 miles south of Beijing that has a population of more than 11 million people.” This tale has been officially reported as early as January 9th by CCP’s state-owned and operated news channel, Xinhuanet, New-type coronavirus causes pneumonia in Wuhan: expert, reported by local Chinese authorities to the US National Library of Medicine database, Outbreak of Pneumonia of Unknown Etiology in Wuhan China: the Mystery and the Miracle and to the International Journal of Infectious Diseases database, The continuing 2019-nCoV epidemic threat of novel coronaviruses to global health — The latest 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China.

Typically not included in most mainstream news stories, however, is the fact that the claimed epicenter of the outbreak is just 8.6 miles from Wuhan Institute of Virology, which houses China’s only P4-Level Biosafety Laboratory capable of storing, studying, or engineering Pathogen Level 4 microbes such as other coronaviruses, Ebola, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, SARS, H5N1 influenza virus, Japanese encephalitis, and dengue. Bill Gurtz of the Washington Times reports, “the deadly animal virus epidemic spreading globally may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, according to an Israeli biological warfare expert.” The journalist states that an unnamed U.S. official revealed that false rumors have been circulating for weeks on the Chinese Internet claiming the new coronavirus is “part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons” — possibly preparing propaganda outlets to counter future charges the new virus escaped from one of Wuhan’s civilian or defense research laboratories.

The article refers to statements provided by Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who holds a doctorate in medical microbiology, and served as a senior analyst with Israeli military intelligence for biological and chemical warfare in the Middle East and worldwide from 1970 to 1991.“Coronaviruses (particularly SARS) have been studied in the Institute and are probably held therein”, Shohan reveals, as has anthrax, adding that “certain laboratories in the Institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons]. Work on biological weapons is conducted as part of a dual civilian-military research and is “definitely covert.” Troublingly, even a State Department report issued last year raised suspicions that China has been engaged in covert biological warfare work. “Information indicates that the People’s Republic of China engaged during the reporting period in biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raises concerns regarding its compliance with the BWC,” the report said, adding that the United States suspects China failed to eliminate its biological warfare program as required by the treaty.

Thus, it seems rather astute to examine the details of government- and media-disseminated reports in contrast to the background of activity conducted at Wuhan Institute of Virology, as well as look into the specifics of the new coronavirus in comparison with viruses already isolated, identified, stored, studied, and/or engineered at the Institute’s Biosafety Laboratory, in an effort to glean the truth.

Claims of surprise by Chinese scientists and State officials are arguably inauthentic

Let’s begin by examining the glaring discrepancies in the official story to the underlying and background reality of coronaviruses, especially in the SARS-scarred land of China. The Sun reports that the current consensus centers on the belief that the origin of the coronavirus outbreak is linked to bat soup sold at the market. However, the article states that experts “had thought the new virus wasn’t capable of causing an epidemic as serious as [previous deadly outbreaks of SARS and Ebola] because its genes were different,” something that simply isn’t true. In 2006, one of China’s preeminent virologists, Professor Zhengli Shi, co-authored the study, Review of Bats and SARS, concluding that “a SARS epidemic may recur in the future and that SARS-like coronaviruses (SL-CoVs) that originate from different reservoir host populations may lead to epidemics at different times or in different regions…. The recent discovery of a group of diverse SL-CoVs in bats support the possibility of these events….”

Bowl of hot, delicious bat soup served at Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China.

A concurrent article published in the South China Morning Post on January 22, 2020, entitled Coronavirus weaker than SARS but may share link to bats, Chinese scientists say reports the latest findings on the coronavirus by scientists at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “The scientists’ findings, published on Tuesday, suggested that the danger posed by the pneumonia-like virus may have been underestimated by the research community.” However, Prof. Zhengli and her co-authors published a study early last year on March 2, 2019 entitled Bat Coronaviruses in China which explicitly warned,

“During the past two decades, three zoonotic coronaviruses have been identified as the cause of large-scale disease outbreaks⁻Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Swine Acute Diarrhea Syndrome (SADS). SARS and MERS emerged in 2003 and 2012, respectively, and caused a worldwide pandemic that claimed thousands of human lives, while SADS struck the swine industry in 2017. They have common characteristics, such as they are all highly pathogenic to humans or livestock, their agents originated from bats, and two of them originated in China. Thus, it is highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China. Therefore, the investigation of bat coronaviruses becomes an urgent issue for the detection of early warning signs, which in turn minimizes the impact of such future outbreaks in China” (emphasis added).

The South China Morning Post article continues with the beguiling assertion, “Previously, most scientists believed the new virus could not cause an epidemic as serious as that of SARS because its genes were quite different. But the new study found that, like SARS, the virus targeted a protein called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2).” Apparently, the virology scientific community not only failed to heed Prof. Zhengli’s explicit, recent dire warnings about the “high likelihood” that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks would originate from bats — they also ignored Zhengli’s incredibly pertinent report published ten years ago in July, 2010, Identification of key amino acid residues required for horseshoe bat angiotensin-I converting enzyme 2 to function as a receptor for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. The study’s abstract can’t be clearer on the immunological risks associated with protein ACE2, with its obvious liability for usurpation by viral agents with a little modified genome sequencing:

“Angiotensin-I converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is the receptor for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus (SARS-CoV). A previous study indicated that ACE2 from a horseshoe bat, the host of a highly related SARS-like coronavirus, could not function as a receptor for SARS-CoV. Here, we demonstrate that a 3 aa change from SHE (aa 40–42) to FYQ was sufficient to convert the bat ACE2 into a fully functional receptor for SARS-CoV. We further demonstrate that an ACE2 molecule from a fruit bat, which contains the FYQ motif, was able to support SARS-CoV infection, indicating a potentially much wider host range for SARS-CoV-related viruses among different bat populations.”

This old but remarkable study concludes that only a minor genome sequence change was required to convert a non-susceptible bat ACE2 protein into a functional receptor for SARS-CoV, something that could easily happen in nature. “Considering that there are more than 60 different horseshoe [bat] species around the world (Flanders et al., 2009; Rossiter et al., 2007), it is possible that one or some of them may serve as the natural reservoir of SARS-CoV and/or its progenitor virus(es).” Why is it that current State virologists are apparently ignorant of these essential discoveries of yesteryear?

The South China Morning Post article cited above summarizes two primary known facts about the new coronavirus: first, that a “virus found in fruit bats is [the] common ancestor of the two strains [Coronavirus 2019-nCoV and SARS],” and that this “new strain has [an] unusually high ability to bind to a human protein.” And the new study on Coronavirus 2019-nCoV by the joint research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the People’s Liberation Army, and Institut Pasteur of Shanghai indeed found that, like SARS, the virus targeted the ACE2 protein. It’s just as Prof. Zhengli predicated a decade ago: “…the fact that an ACE2 protein from a megabat, the fruit bat Rousettus leschenaultia, can function as a receptor for SARS-CoV would suggest that the host range for SARS-CoV or SL-CoVs may be much wider than originally thought.”

So what happened — did the virology and surrounding scientific community drop the ball on these well-established findings and warnings, or what? After all, at least as February, 2008, they knew three key facts about ACE2:

1. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is caused by the SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which uses ACE2 as its receptor for cell entry. SL-CoVs and SARS-CoVs share identical genome organizations and high sequence identities, with the main exception of the N terminus of the spike protein, known to be responsible for receptor binding in CoVs.
2. Whereas the SL-CoV spike protein was unable to use any of the three ACE2 molecules as its receptor, and the SARS-CoV spike protein failed to center cells expressing the bat ACE2, the chimeric spike protein the study created did gain its ability to center cells via human ACE, and
3. A minimal insert region (amino acids 310 to 518) was found to be sufficient to convert the SL-CoV S from non-ACE2 binding to human ACE2 binding, indicating that the SL-CoV S is largely compatible with SARS-CoV S protein both in structure and in function.

We know they knew these facts way back in 2008 because Prof. Zhengli published the findings of these facts in her report, Difference in Receptor Usage between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Coronavirus and SARS-Like Coronavirus of Bat Origin. Therein the scientists concluded, “Knowing the capability of different CoVs to recombine both in the laboratory and in nature, the possibility that SL-CoVs may gain the ability to infect human cells by acquiring spike protein sequences competent for binding to ACE2 or other surface proteins of human cells can be readily envisaged.” Thus, it seems strange and perhaps even disingenuous that the new joint CCP government-joint Coronavirus 2019-nCoV task force is seemingly ignorant about coronavirus targeting the ACE2 protein, apparently pretending it’s only just now discovered this. After all, Zhengli’s 2008 report was quite clear about the role that this ACE2 protein would play in future pandemics: the study “strengthened our belief that ACE2 from certain bat species could be able to support SARS-CoV infection because of the predicted genetic diversity of bat ACE2 variants in different bat species.”

What is the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s National Biosafety Laboratory, where is it, and why is it pertinent?

Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, the only P4 lab in China, headquartered at Wuhan Institute of Virology.

At any rate, the forgoing storyline is the official word on Coronavirus 2019-nCoV, manifesting itself somehow in a seafood market in Wuhan. But what else might be found in Wuhan? After all, Wuhan is the capital city of the Hubei Province, home to some 11 million Chinese citizens. Well, curiously underreported is the fact that China’s first high-level biosafety laboratory is located just 8.6 miles away. “Used to study class four pathogens (P4), which refer to the most virulent viruses that pose a high risk of aerosol-transmitted person-to-person infections,” Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is the darling, cutting-edge hi-tech baby of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and is the only such lab in China where dangerous, highly communicable viruses such as Ebola, SARS, MERS, H5N1 influenza virus, Japanese encephalitis, dengue, and assorted coronaviruses can be “safely” toyed with.

China’s National Biosafety Laboratory, located at Wuhan Institute of Virology, is only 8.6 miles away from the claimed epicenter of the Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak. Do you believe in coincidences?

What’s odd is that despite completing the decade-long construction and having the official inauguration of this P4 laboratory on January 31, 2015 — announced by the General Office of Hubei Provincial People’s Government, it wasn’t until 2 and 1/2 years later in January 2018, that the Chinese government announced that the lab was actually in operation. And ahead of the lab’s second opening in January 2018, biosafety experts and scientists from the United States expressly warned “that a SARS-like virus could escape,” much in the same way the SARS virus had escaped multiple times from a lab in Beijing.

UPDATE — JANUARY 29, 2020: What’s also odd, and outright suspicious, is that as of January 29, 2020, the location of Wuhan Institute of Virology (where the National Biosafety Laboratory is headquartered) on Google Maps has inexplicably moved since I first viewed it on January 24, 2020 and published this article on January 27, 2020. Its new location is now over twice the distance from the claimed epicenter of the novel coronavirus, Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Even its satellite imagery of the original site has been altered as well. Good thing I took screenshots.

A Google Map Image captured Jan. 24, 2020 of Huanan Seafood market 8.6 miles distant from Wuhan Institute of Virology, where China’s only Level P4 Biosafety Laboratory is headquartered.

Another Google Map Image captured Jan. 29, 2020 displaying Wuhan Institute of Virology now strangely moved approximately 15 miles southwest of its original location. What a difference five days make, eh?

Side-by-side comparison of original Google Maps location of Wuhan Institute of Virology, captured by screenshot on Jan. 24, 2020, and its altered location as of Jan. 29, 2020. What’s going on here?

A Google Maps Satellite Image captured January 24, 2020, clearly showing the urban Wuhan Institute of Virology situated across the street from the humongous China Earthquake Administration building.

Another Google Maps Satellite Image captured January 29, 2020, now showing the Wuhan Institute of Virology completely camouflaged in a patch of forest in a rural area 15 miles southwest. What gives, Google?

Whether Wuhan Institute of Virology actually remains at its original location displayed a few days ago — or has suddenly packed up and is now holed up in the nearby woods like a crouching tiger or hidden dragon — former Israeli military intelligence officer and microbiologist, Dany Shoham, exposes the institute as “one of four Chinese laboratories engaged in some aspects of the biological weapons development.” He adds that although the institute is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it has certain laboratories within it that are linked to the Chinese defense establishment. Indeed, the annual State Department report on arms treaty compliance stated last year that China engaged in activities that could support biological warfare. In fact, in 1993, China declared a second facility, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products — located 21.6 miles away from Wuhan Institute of Virology, and only 9 miles away from Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market — as one of eight biological warfare research facilities covered by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) which the communist country joined in 1985. “This means the SARS virus is held and propagated there, but it is not a new coronavirus, unless the wild type has been modified, which is not known and cannot be speculated at the moment,” Shoham explains.

Wuhan Institute of Biological Products — a known biological warfare research facility — is located just 9 miles from Wuhan Seafood Wholesale Market, the claimed epicenter of the Coronavirus 2019-nCoV outbreak

Wuhan Institute of Virology is also connected with the recent, major scandal in Canada where two Chinese virologists working at Canada’s only Pathogen Level 4 virology laboratory, the National Microbiology Lab (NML) in Winnipeg were caught stealing and smuggling some of the most deadly viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus, back to China. The suspects — a Chinese couple, virologist Dr. Xiangguo Qui and biologist Dr. Keding Cheng — are now believed to be connected to China’s biological warfare program. Her husband, Dr. Qiu, was head of the Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies Section in the Special Pathogens Program at the NML. Dr. Keding Cheng, also affiliated with the NML, specifically the “Science and Technology Core,” is primarily a bacteriologist who shifted to virology. According to ZeroHedge, “the couple is responsible for infiltrating Canada’s NML with many Chinese agents as students from a range of Chinese scientific facilities directly tied to China’s Biological Warfare Program, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Chengdu Military Region.

And guess what one of the stolen viruses was? Yup, coronavirus. On May 4, 2013, NML’s Scientific Director Frank Plummer received a shipment of coronavirus from a Dutch virologist, who in turn had received it from an Egyptian virologist treating a Saudi Arabian who contracted it. The Canadian lab grew stocks of the virus, and then experimented upon animals to see what they could infect with it. It is from this stash of reserves that the coronavirus was stolen and smuggled by Dr. Qui, Dr. Cheng, and by alledged Chinese Biological Warfare Program agents recruited from the Wuhan Institute of Virology who were disguised as virology students at the University of Manitoba.

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3 x Pixies

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Our World is Not Our Property

Norman Pagett

We — -humankind that is — -decided millenia ago that the world which temporarily tolerates our existence should become “property” and as such, divided up and bought and sold.

A few thoughtful individuals stop and realise that this is an ultimate nonsense, but the vast majority are convinced that it is the only means by which we can exist now, and run their lives accordingly. So we parcel up swathes of land and sell it, or tear it apart to dig out what’s below the surface, believing the myth of infinity.

Far from giving us universal freedom, this has locked humankind into a commercial prison that incarcerates all of us with work and wages. The Bushmen of the Kalahari or some as yet uncontacted tribe in Amazonia might be an exception to this, but no one else is. (they are the true ecosocialists and conservators of the planet).

this has become the reality of the everyday existence that governs the lives of all of us.

We should examine what those changes would mean, long term:

The (real) ecosocialists I have mentioned above take only what they need from the earth, and ultimately return to the earth what they take. (including themselves)
Are we prepared for that?

They practice true earth stewardship, while the rest of us remain convinced that prosperity is something that can be voted for, and despite our oil supplies fading to nothing, we can continue with BAU with no more than a few minor inconveniences.

We might agree that another world should be possible beyond the comforts we take for granted, provided I’m not called upon to surrender MY comforts. Which includes my heating system that protects me against a northern winter, and a car that means I dont have to walk or run to catch my food.

Those two seemingly simple “commodities” are a critical part of the work and wages system in which we find ourselves.
Dream of removing them if you wish, but be under no illusions as to the consequences of our situation when they are gone.

I do not dream of BAU forever, but neither do I harbour delusions about some benign form of government that will reorganise our lives for the common good, (check history for that one).

We are too many, demanding too much from too little, having invented gods to prove our immortality.

Fighting over what’s available is inevitable. Wars we see now are wars over resources, not ideologies. These wars will intensify as stuff we need for survival gets shared our in lessening amounts, divided up between the 80 million new mouths arriving each year, demanding food, water and shelter.

These conflicts will rebalance our existence, and reduce our numbers to a level the world can support, rather than the numbers that we say it must.

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America Escalates its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East

Michael Hudson

The mainstream media are carefully sidestepping the method behind America’s seeming madness in assassinating Islamic Revolutionary Guard general Qassim Suleimani to start the New Year. The logic behind the assassination this was a long-standing application of U.S. global policy, not just a personality quirk of Donald Trump’s impulsive action. His assassination of Iranian military leader Suleimani was indeed a unilateral act of war in violation of international law, but it was a logical step in a long-standing U.S. strategy. It was explicitly authorized by the Senate in the funding bill for the Pentagon that it passed last year.

The assassination was intended to escalate America’s presence in Iraq to keep control the region’s oil reserves, and to back Saudi Arabia’s Wahabi troops (Isis, Al Quaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are actually America’s foreign legion) to support U.S. control o Near Eastern oil as a buttress o the U.S. dollar. That remains the key to understanding this policy, and why it is in the process of escalating, not dying down.

I sat in on discussions of this policy as it was formulated nearly fifty years ago when I worked at the Hudson Institute and attended meetings at the White House, met with generals at various armed forces think tanks and with diplomats at the United Nations. My role was as a balance-of-payments economist having specialized for a decade at Chase Manhattan, Arthur Andersen and oil companies in the oil industry and military spending. These were two of the three main dynamic of American foreign policy and diplomacy. (The third concern was how to wage war in a democracy where voters rejected the draft in the wake of the Vietnam War.)

The media and public discussion have diverted attention from this strategy by floundering speculation that President Trump did it, except to counter the (non-)threat of impeachment with a wag-the-dog attack, or to back Israeli lebensraum drives, or simply to surrender the White House to neocon hate-Iran syndrome. The actual context for the neocon’s action was the balance of payments, and the role of oil and energy as a long-term lever of American diplomacy.

The balance of payments dimension

The major deficit in the U.S. balance of payments has long been military spending abroad. The entire payments deficit, beginning with the Korean War in 1950-51 and extending through the Vietnam War of the 1960s, was responsible for forcing the dollar off gold in 1971. The problem facing America’s military strategists was how to continue supporting the 800 U.S. military bases around the world and allied troop support without losing America’s financial leverage.

The solution turned out to be to replace gold with U.S. Treasury securities (IOUs) as the basis of foreign central bank reserves. After 1971, foreign central banks had little option for what to do with their continuing dollar inflows except to recycle them to the U.S. economy by buying U.S. Treasury securities. The effect of U.S. foreign military spending thus did not undercut the dollar’s exchange rate, and did not even force the Treasury and Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to attract foreign exchange to offset the dollar outflows on military account. In fact, U.S. foreign military spending helped finance the domestic U.S. federal budget deficit.

Saudi Arabia and other Near Eastern OPEC countries quickly became a buttress of the dollar. After these countries quadrupled the price of oil (in retaliation for the United States quadrupling the price of its grain exports, a mainstay of the U.S. trade balance), U.S. banks were swamped with an inflow of much foreign deposits – which were lent out to Third World countries in an explosion of bad loans that blew up in 1972 with Mexico’s insolvency, and destroyed Third World government credit for a decade, forcing it into dependence on the United States via the IMF and World Bank).

To top matters, of course, what Saudi Arabia does not save in dollarized assets with its oil-export earnings is spent on buying hundreds of billion of dollars of U.S. arms exports. This locks them into dependence on U.S. supply o replacement parts and repairs, and enables the United States to turn off Saudi military hardware at any point of time, in the event that the Saudis may try to act independently of U.S. foreign policy.

So maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency became a mainstay of U.S. military spending. Foreign countries to not have to pay the Pentagon directly for this spending. They simply finance the U.S. Treasury and U.S. banking system.

Fear of this development was a major reason why the United States moved against Libya, whose foreign reserves were held in gold, not dollars, an which was urging other African countries to follow suit in order to free themselves from “Dollar Diplomacy.” Hillary and Obama invaded, grabbed their gold supplies (we still have no idea who ended up with these billions of dollars worth of gold) and destroyed Libya’s government, its public education system, its public infrastructure and other non-neoliberal policies.

The great threat to this is dedollarization as China, Russia and other countries seek to avoid recycling dollars. Without the dollar’s function as the vehicle for world saving – in effect, without the Pentagon’s role in creating the Treasury debt that is the vehicle for world central bank reserves – the U.S. would find itself constrained militarily and hence diplomatically constrained, as it was under the gold exchange standard.

That is the same strategy that the U.S. has followed in Syria and Iraq. Iran was threatening this dollarization strategy and its buttress in U.S. oil diplomacy.

The oil industry as buttress of the U.S. balance of payments and foreign diplomacy

The trade balance is buttressed by oil and farm surpluses. Oil is the key, because it is imported by U.S. companies at almost no balance-of-payments cost (the payments end up in the oil industry’s head offices here as profits and payments to management), while profits on U.S. oil company sales to other countries are remitted to the United States (via offshore tax-avoidance centers, mainly Liberia and Panama for many years). And as noted above, OPEC countries have been told to keep their official reserves in the form of U.S. securities (stocks and bonds as well as Treasury IOUs, but not direct purchase of U.S. companies being deemed economically important). Financially, OPEC countries are client slates of the Dollar Area.

America’s attempt to maintain this buttress explains U.S. opposition to any foreign government steps to reverse global warming and the extreme weather caused by the world’s U.S.-sponsored dependence on oil. Any such moves by Europe and other countries would reduce dependence on U.S. oil sales, and hence on U.S. ability to control the global oil spigot as a means of control and coercion, are viewed as hostile acts.

Oil also explains U.S. opposition to Russian oil exports via Nordstream. U.S. strategists want to treat energy as a U.S. national monopoly. Other countries can benefit in the way that Saudi Arabia has done – by sending their surpluses to the U.S. economy – but not to support their own economic growth and diplomacy. Control of oil thus implies support for continued global warming as an inherent part of U.S. strategy.

How a “democratic” nation can wage international war and terrorism

The Vietnam War showed that modern democracies cannot field armies for any major military conflict, because this would require a draft of its citizens. That would lead any government attempting such a draft to be voted out of power. And without troops, it is not possible to invade a country to take it over.

The corollary of this perception is that democracies have only two choices when it comes to military strategy: They can only wage airpower, bombing opponents; or they can create a foreign legion, that is, hire mercenaries or back foreign governments that provide this military service.

Here once again Saudi Arabia plays a critical role, through its control of Wahabi Sunnis turned into terrorist jihadis willing to sabotage, bomb, assassinate, blow up and otherwise fight any target designated as an enemy of “Islam,” the euphemism for Saudi Arabia acting as U.S. client state. (Religion really is not the key; I know of no ISIS or similar Wahabi attack on Israeli targets.) The United States needs the Saudis to supply or finance Wahabi crazies. So in addition to playing a key role in the U.S. balance of payments by recycling its oil-export earnings are into U.S. stocks, bonds and other investments, Saudi Arabia provides manpower by supporting the Wahabi members of America’s foreign legion, ISIS and Al-Nusra/Al-Qaeda. Terrorism has become the “democratic” mode of today U.S. military policy.

What makes America’s oil war in the Near East “democratic” is that this is the only kind of war a democracy can fight – an air war, followed by a vicious terrorist army that makes up for the fact that no democracy can field its own army in today’s world. The corollary is that, terrorism has become the “democratic” mode of warfare.

From the U.S. vantage point, what is a “democracy”? In today’s Orwellian vocabulary, it means any country supporting U.S. foreign policy. Bolivia and Honduras have become “democracies” since their coups, along with Brazil. Chile under Pinochet was a Chicago-style free market democracy. So was Iran under the Shah, and Russia under Yeltsin – but not since it elected Vladimir Putin president, any more than is China under President Xi.

The antonym to “democracy” is “terrorist.” That simply means a nation willing to fight to become independent from U.S. neoliberal democracy. It does not include America’s proxy armies.

Iran’s role as U.S. nemesis

What stands in the way of U.S. dollarization, oil and military strategy? Obviously, Russia and China have been targeted as long-term strategic enemies for seeking their own independent economic policies and diplomacy. But next to them, Iran has been in America’s gun sights for nearly seventy years.

America’s hatred of Iran is starts with its attempt to control its own oil production, exports and earnings. It goes back to 1953, when Mossadegh was overthrown because he wanted domestic sovereignty over Anglo-Persian oil. The CIA-MI6 coup replaced him with the pliant Shah, who imposed a police state to prevent Iranian independence from U.S. policy. The only physical places free from the police were the mosques. That made the Islamic Republic the path of least resistance to overthrowing the Shah and re-asserting Iranian sovereignty.

The United States came to terms with OPEC oil independence by 1974, but the antagonism toward Iran extends to demographic and religious considerations. Iranian support its Shi’ite population an those of Iraq and other countries – emphasizing support for the poor and for quasi-socialist policies instead of neoliberalism – has made it the main religious rival to Saudi Arabia’s Sunni sectarianism and its role as America’s Wahabi foreign legion.

America opposed General Suleimani above all because he was fighting against ISIS and other U.S.-backed terrorists in their attempt to break up Syria and replace Assad’s regime with a set of U.S.-compliant local leaders – the old British “divide and conquer” ploy. On occasion, Suleimani had cooperated with U.S. troops in fighting ISIS groups that got “out of line” meaning the U.S. party line. But every indication is that he was in Iraq to work with that government seeking to regain control of the oil fields that President Trump has bragged so loudly about grabbing.

Already in early 2018, President Trump asked Iraq to reimburse America for the cost of “saving its democracy” by bombing the remainder of Saddam’s economy. The reimbursement was to take the form of Iraqi Oil. More recently, in 2019, President Trump asked, why not simply grab Iraqi oil. The giant oil field has become the prize of the Bush-Cheney post 9-11 Oil War. “‘It was a very run-of-the-mill, low-key, meeting in general,” a source who was in the room told Axios.’ And then right at the end, Trump says something to the effect of, he gets a little smirk on his face and he says, ‘So what are we going to do about the oil?’”^[1]

Trump’s idea that America should “get something” out of its military expenditure in destroying the Iraqi and Syrian economies simply reflects U.S. policy.

In late October, 2019, The New York Times reported that: “In recent days, Mr. Trump has settled on Syria’s oil reserves as a new rationale for appearing to reverse course and deploy hundreds of additional troops to the war-ravaged country. He has declared that the United States has “secured” oil fields in the country’s chaotic northeast and suggested that the seizure of the country’s main natural resource justifies America further extending its military presence there. ‘We have taken it and secured it,’ Mr. Trump said of Syria’s oil during remarks at the White House on Sunday, after announcing the killing of the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” ^[2] A CIA official reminded the journalist that taking Iraq’s oil was a Trump campaign pledge.

That explains the invasion of Iraq for oil in 2003, and again this year, as President Trump has said: “Why don’t we simply take their oil?” It also explains the Obama-Hillary attack on Libya – not only for its oil, but for its investing its foreign reserves in gold instead of recycling its oil surplus revenue to the U.S. Treasury – and of course, for promoting a secular socialist state.

It explains why U.S. neocons feared Suleimani’s plan to help Iraq assert control of its oil and withstand the terrorist attacks supported by U.S. and Saudi’s on Iraq. That is what made his assassination an immediate drive.

American politicians have discredited themselves by starting off their condemnation of Trump by saying, as Elizabeth Warren did, how “bad” a person Suleimani was, how he had killed U.S. troops by masterminding the Iraqi defense of roadside bombing and other policies trying to repel the U.S. invasion to grab its oil. She was simply parroting the U.S. media’s depiction of Suleimani as a monster, diverting attention from the policy issue that explains why he was assassinated now.

The counter-strategy to U.S. oil, and dollar and global-warming diplomacy

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What Upstanding Citizens Believe Vs. What Crazy Conspiracy Theorists Believe

Caitlin Johnstone

 

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe a mature worldview requires skepticism toward power.

Smart upstanding citizens believe the government is your friend, and the media are its helpers.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe that powerful people sometimes make immoral plans in secret. Smart upstanding citizens believe the TV always tells the truth and the CIA exists for no reason.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe that extreme government secrecy makes it necessary to discuss possible theories about what might be going on behind that veil of opacity.

Smart upstanding citizens believe that just because a world-dominating government with the most powerful military in the history of civilization has no transparency and zero accountability to the public, that doesn’t mean you’ve got to get all paranoid about it.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe it’s okay to ask questions about important events that happen in the world, even if their government tells them they shouldn’t.

Smart upstanding citizens believe everything they need to know about reality comes out of Mike Pompeo’s angelic mouth.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe the very rich sometimes engage in nefarious behavior to expand their wealth and power.

Smart upstanding citizens believe billionaires always conduct themselves with the same values that got them their billions in the first place: honesty, morality, and generosity.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe it’s important to remember the lies that led up to the invasion of Iraq, and the disastrous consequences of blind faith in government claims.

Smart upstanding citizens believe “Iraq” is a fictional land similar to Narnia or Middle Earth, from the writings of a fantasy author named George Galloway.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe Syria is fighting to avoid becoming another Libya in a war of defense against extremist proxy armies of the US-centralized empire, who were given billions of dollars in military support with the goal of toppling Damascus.

Smart upstanding citizens believe Bashar al-Assad is a real-life version of a cartoon supervillain who just started murdering civilians willy nilly in 2011 because he loves murdering civilians, then in 2015 his friend Vladimir Putin joined in because he loves murdering civilians also.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe the extensive history of US government lies means you should always demand mountains of independently verifiable evidence when they make claims about unabsorbed nations.

Smart upstanding citizens believe Russia literally committed an act of war on the United States in 2016, China is orchestrating a second Holocaust, Maduro is deliberately starving the Venezuelan people because he hates them, Assad is using chemical weapons but only when it makes no strategic sense, Cuban spy crickets are trying to assassinate US diplomats, there’s novichok everywhere, and every noncompliant party in the Middle East is secretly working for Iran.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe that it can be difficult to figure out what’s going on in a mass media landscape that is saturated with the propaganda of the US-centralized empire.

Smart upstanding citizens believe that all you need to do to ensure you’re getting all the facts is watch television and run screaming from the room if you accidentally flip past RT.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe the Gulf of Tonkin incident was faked, the “taking babies out of incubators” narrative was a lie, Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi’s rape armies never existed and the Libya intervention was never really about humanitarian concerns.

Smart, upstanding citizens believe it’s better not to think about such things.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe the latest WikiLeaks publications of internal OPCW documents provide ample evidence that we were lied to about the 2018 Douma incident.

Smart upstanding citizens believe those documents aren’t real because The New York Times never reported on them.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe that increasing levels of government secrecy are making it easier for government agencies to do unethical things in secret.

Smart upstanding citizens believe that questioning your government makes you a Russian anti-Semite.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe that the billionaire class which owns the mass media has a natural incentive to prop up the status quo upon which it is built, and so construct an environment where reporters are incentivized to always support the establishment line.

Smart upstanding citizens believe that if that kind of conspiracy were really happening, it would have been in the news.

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