The Prime Minister has spoken to Donald Trump about the economic impacts of coronavirus and performance of the World Health Organisation.

Scott Morrison and the US President on Wednesday discussed the need for transparency, in a clear reference to China, and the need to improve global institutions like the WHO in their response to pandemics.

Their discussion comes amid statements from WHO pointedly stating that all available evidence suggested coronavirus originated in animals in China late in 2019 and was not manipulated or produced in a laboratory.

Mr Morrison has been scathing of the United Nations agency for its handling of COVID-19 after it criticised Australia for closing its borders to Chinese tourists and took two weeks longer to declare a pandemic.

Mr Morrison has also challenged the WHO decision to support China reopening wet markets, the likely cause of the deadly disease.

Australian officials have been vocal in their criticisms of WHO and China’s openness on the origins of the coronavirus.

• Related: Crack down on wet markets, says Scott Morrison

Federal cabinet members Josh Frydenberg, Peter Dutton and Marise Payne have joined the Prime Minister in applying pressure.

China has responded to the criticism by accusing Mr Dutton of “receiving instructions from Washington” in line with the US ‘propaganda war’.

Mr Frydenberg hit back at China’s criticism as ‘unjustified’.

Mr Trump halted US funding to the WHO last week, and said his government was trying to determine whether the virus emanated from a lab in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

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Has China really told us everything?

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The Covid-19 outbreak has so far killed more than 200,000 people and frightened billions more into panic. A panic that deprives most of them of any critical sense and pushes them to make or approve stupid political decisions. A group of personalities, Red Dawn, whose correspondence was revealed by Kaiser Health News and the New York Times website, managed to impose an apocalyptic ideology: China would have declared war on us and we could only protect ourselves by confining all civilians.

Regardless of the anti-Chinese hysteria of the group that imposed Western health policy responses to the Covid-19 epidemic, it demonstrated Western dependence on Chinese manufactured products. This led the Trump administration to move from a desire to rebalance trade to a military confrontation, without however resorting to war. The sabotage of the Silk Roads has officially begun.

One of the consequences of the Coronavirus epidemic is that Westerners have realised their dependence on Chinese manufacturing capacity. Neither the Europeans nor the Americans were able to manufacture the millions of surgical masks they urgently wanted to distribute to their population. They had to buy them in China and often fought among themselves on the tarmacs to take them home at the expense of their allies.

In this context of general save-and-go, US leadership over the West no longer made sense. This is why Washington decided not to rebalance trade relations with China, but to oppose the construction of the silk roads and to help the Europeans relocate part of their industry. This could be a decisive turning point: a partial halt to the process of globalization that had begun, with the disappearance of the Soviet Union. Beware: this is not an economic decision to call into question the principles of free trade, but a geopolitical strategy to sabotage Chinese ambitions.

This change of strategy had been announced by the campaign not only economic, but also political and military against Huawei. The United States and NATO feared that if Huawei won the Western government contracts to install the G5, the Chinese army would be able to intercept its signals. More importantly, they knew that if the Chinese took these contracts, they would technically be the only ones who could take the next step [1].

This is not a rallying of the Trump administration to the Red Dawn fantasies [2], whose anti-Chinese obsession is based on primary anti-communism, but an awareness of Beijing’s gigantic military progress. Admittedly, the budget of the People’s Liberation Army is derisory compared to that of the US Armed Forces, but precisely its very thrifty strategy and its technical progress allow it today to challenge the US monster.

At the end of the First World War, the Chinese of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party together set out to reunify their country and avenge a long century of colonial humiliation. A Kuomintang personality, Chiang Kai-shek, tried to eliminate the Communist Party but was defeated by it and went into exile in Taiwan. Mao Zedong pursued this nationalist dream while guiding the Communist Party in the social transformation of the country. However, his aim was always nationalist, as the Sino-Russian war on Zhenbao Island in 1969 showed. In the 1980s, Admiral Liu Huaqing (the man who put down the coup attempt by Zhao Ziyang in Tiananmen Square) devised a strategy to push the US armies out of the Chinese cultural zone. This strategy has been patiently implemented for forty years. Without ever provoking a war, Beijing is extending its territorial sovereignty in the China Sea and harassing the US Navy. The time is not far off when the US Navy will have to withdraw, leaving China to take Taiwan by force.

After the dissolution of the USSR, President George Bush Sr. considered that the US had no rivals left and that it was time to make money. He demobilized a million soldiers and opened the way for financial globalization. US multinationals relocated their companies to China where their products were manufactured by countless untrained workers, paid twenty times less than US workers. Gradually, almost all the goods consumed in the US were imported from China. The U.S. middle class became poorer, while China trained its workers and became richer. From the principle of free trade, the movement spread throughout the West and then to the whole world. The Communist Party decided to re-establish a modern equivalent to the ancient Silk Road and, in 2013, elected Xi Jinping to carry out this project. When it is realized, if it is realized, China could have a virtual monopoly of manufacturing goods in the world.

By deciding to sabotage the Silk Roads, President Donald Trump is trying to push China out of its own cultural zone just as it is pushing the United States out of its own. To do so, he will be able to count on his "allies" whose companies are already devastated by excellent Chinese products at low prices. Some of them have experienced revolts because of this, such as the Yellow Vests revolt in France. In the past, the ancient Silk Road brought unknown products to Europe, while today’s roads carry the same products as those made in Europe, but much cheaper.

Contrary to popular belief, China could give up the Silk Roads for geostrategic reasons, regardless of the amount of its investment. It has done so in the past. It had thought of opening a maritime silk route in the 15th century, sent Admiral Zheng He, "the eunuch with the three jewels", at the head of a formidable armada, as far as Africa and the Middle East, before withdrawing and scuttling its gigantic fleet never to return.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Israel under lockdown. He tried to convince the two future prime ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu (Jewish colonialist) and his deputy, who were nevertheless opposed to General Benny Gantz (Israeli nationalist), to stop Chinese investments in their country [3] Chinese companies already control half of Israel’s agricultural sector and are expected to account for 90% of its trade in the coming months. Mike Pompeo should similarly try to convince the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. Indeed, the Suez Canal and the Israeli ports of Haifa and Ashdod were to be the terminals of the modern silk route in the Mediterranean.

After various attempts, China assessed the instability of Iraq, Syria and Turkey and gave up crossing them. A tacit agreement was reached between Washington and Moscow to leave a jihadist pocket anywhere on the Syrian-Turkish border to discourage Chinese investment in the area. Moscow intends to base its alliance with Beijing on silk routes crossing its own territory and not Western countries. This is the project of President Vladimir Putin’s ’Great Eurasian Partnership’ [4].

We come back tirelessly to the same dilemma ("Thucydides’ trap"): faced with the rise of a new power (China), the dominant power (the United States) must either wage war on it (like Sparta against Athens), or give space to the newcomer, that is, accept the division of the world.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 

Roger Lagassé

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https://www.voltairenet.org/article209925.html

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The ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu said, “For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” His descendants seek to do just that to the United States in the South China Sea today.

Chinese President Xi Jinping pursues a classical dimension of strategy—in which the enemy is subdued, surprisingly, through military ceremony. Such “strategy by ceremony” can achieve victories that outshine success in actual battle.

This works by substituting ritual and symbolic military acts and events in the place of decision through battle—where the enemy concedes its authority. The enemy, in other words, must agree to be “subdued” without going to war. How can this be done? These are parameters:

— The parties in conflict are peer competitors that have fought each other in the past. Neither is eager for another fight.

— The parties in conflict seek to avoid escalation to war.

— Thus, the parties can accept and adhere to informal governing protocols for military engagement at a level less than war. 

— The aggressor succeeds because it knows the other party is more motivated to avoid battle. Several factors combine to make for a willingness to submit.

— There are face-saving avenues available to disguise or ease the reality of submission—which the aggressor offers.

Such ceremonial campaigns can be as significant as any war. These three historical cases show how: 

Great Britain sustains the Confederacy and destroys the American merchant navy (1861-1872). When the U.S. split up, Britain kept the Confederate States of America going with gold and a million rifles. They built state-of-the art cruisers, manned by Jack Tars, that ripped apart Union commerce. This was guaranteed by sending Britain’s Olympian ironclads to Bermuda, sheltering blockade runners and pirates.

Prime Minister Lord Palmerston’s strategy was designed to delay the emergence of the United States as Britain’s peer competitor, with three aims. First, give the CSA the arms it needed to defeat Union armies and secure its independence. Second, failing this, keep the South fighting long enough, so that reunifying America would internally immobilize the nation for a generation. Third, destroy the American merchant fleet: Then the greatest threat to British maritime power. 

Success would deal the U.S. an existential blow, without a direct confrontation. In the event, the second and third aims were achieved. Why did it work? Lincoln could not afford a second existential war, or an independent Confederacy. Plus, Britain was willing to pay for the damages (yet any monetary fine was chump change compared to the riches of a British strategic victory).

Great Britain stops the Russians from taking Constantinople. In February 1878, Russian armies were advancing on the prize city of history (and the Ottoman capital). Nothing, it seemed, could stop the Czar’s design. Then, on Valentine’s Day, appearing out of a blinding snowstorm, six battleships anchored in the Sea of Marmara. Six passé ironclads with obsolete guns stopped History.

Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s strategy was to keep Russia from proclaiming a new Byzantium in the Balkans. Britons were enraged by Bashi-bazouk massacres—the “Bulgarian Horrors”—and would not brook war with Russia, Bulgaria’s savior. Yet the entire British “dark state” wanted Russia brought down, and the Ottomans saved. Hence, ironclads up the Hellespont. Why did it work? Disraeli knew the Romanovs would avoid another humiliating war with Britain rather than risk great triumph in Constantinople. He managed to give both his public and ruling establishment what it wanted. All through elegant demonstration: an ironclad fist in a velvet glove. Yet he also gave Russia a face-saving way out: A commiserating, great power conference in Berlin.

A Third Reich transforms prostrate Germany into master of Europe from October 1933 ro March 1939. During this time, Führer Adolph Hitler orchestrated 10 lightning, ceremonial campaigns that transfigured the European balance of power, mixing different forms of leveraged public coercion. Hortatory addresses, military displays, dramatic embassies, and urgent negotiations—always culminating, like a victorious war, in a military triumph: Without a round fired. 

Hitler’ strategy achieved more with ceremony than all Bismarck’s bloody wars. Success depended on his assessment of enemy reaction. Of the 11 ceremonial campaigns launched by the the Reich’s leader, 10 were successful (Mussolini blocked an attempted Austrian Anschluß in 1934). Hitler dismantled the European security order, restored German power, and set the Western allies up for ignominious defeat. Why did it work? Hitler knew the allies, in economic crisis, were unready to fight, but he also sensed their societies could not even begin to wrap their heads around the idea of another great war. It took the Allies six years to make the wrenching paradigm shift from “the war to end all war” to a Second World War. Hitler further delayed this shift by insisting that each concession was a step toward peace.

So, are the parameters in place for Xi Jinping to attain the acme of skill over the U.S. in the South China Sea? Let’s see:

— The U.S. and China are peers, and have fought two wars with each other since 1950. Moreover, the U.S. strategic position, like Palmerston’s Britain, is in decline. In 1861 the U.S. was rising like China, and had fought Britain twice.

— The U.S. and China have intertwined economies—like America and Britain in 1861—and both fear that disputes could escalate into a calamitous war.

— In the contest for the South China Sea, no party has damaged the “rules of the road” beyond repair—yet.

— From 2009-2017, the U.S. sought to appease China. Today, COVID-19 threatens to immobilize American society, much as Britain and France from 1933-1939.

— China can offer few face-saving options to the U.S., but has a range of options to suborn local states if U.S. tensions escalate.

Do Xi’s goals in the South China Sea fit the parameters of a ceremonial campaign? He certainly wants to turn the Sea into a Chinese lake, much as the U.S. did with the Caribbean in the 1890s. He wishes to suborn and intimidate local states into accepting Chinese maritime sovereignty and primacy of Chinese over relations in the “neighborhood,” and ultimately, undermine the U.S.-led coalition containing Chinese power over East Asian seas. Finally, he wants to overturn the Anglo-American global maritime order by undermining its international law and institutions.

China can likely achieve the first and second goals, and possibly, at great risk, the third. China can achieve the last goal only in the remote event of a U.S. world-withdrawal. Historical cases, again, offer important clues as to the state of play.

By not contesting aggressive Chinese island-building from the start, the United States under President Obama effectively conceded legitimacy to Xi’s enterprise. Likewise, the U.S. did not contest the militarization of these islands. China has now moved to phase two, in which its navy and coast guard seek to enforce sovereignty across the entire sea. Ceremonial displays and demonstrations of Chinese control could likely lead to violence and crisis.

China is positioned, however, to offer economic accommodations—essentially, pay-offs —in exchange for “pro forma” acceptance of Chinese sovereign authority. If the U.S. is unable to effectively defend Malaysian or Philippine or Vietnamese claims, without risking war, then the only course available to those countries will be to accept a Chinese pay-off. Of course American warships can go to the mat. Yet standoffs can only be pushed so far before risks spiral out of control. Can Americans stomach daily violence at sea?

The U.S.-led coalition is entering a period of great risk. If we cannot fully represent and defend our allies, they may choose to make their peace with China, on China’s terms. That means American destroyers can cruise up and down, declaiming Chinese aggression all they want. But the bitter reality will be that everyone else will be notifying the Chinese coast guard that ship X will be transiting, on this day, and along this track, and proffer whatever official applications such passage demands. How then can we reassure Japan, South Korea, and especially Taiwan, that we will, for sure, be there for them?

The truth is, our resistance to Xi is running out of options. Pursuing FONOPS (Freedom of Navigation Operations) and token military assistance to local states is the weaker ceremonial response; our Navy hand lacks Disraeli’s ironclad trump card. Effective occupation is the mortar of Chinese claims. Possession tout d’un coup will harden into sovereignty.

We can always withdraw and let our allies fend for themselves in the region. But if we want to maintain a strategic position there, we are not helpless. We have, however, squandered early opportunities to confront Xi and mobilize world institutions against the Chinese strategy, so are left with only winnowed opportunities, to be pursued at higher and higher risk:

— We can accept, and prepare for, a violent clash at sea that erupts in crisis, and work to prepare friends and allies to present a united front when it does.

— We can develop Philippine and Vietnamese naval power at a much higher level of energy and investment.

— We can work directly with Taiwan at the peak of our technology, to prevent the island from being slowly encircled by China and finally, intimidated.

— We can jointly invest in, and visibly build up, a network of island sovereignty defenses with Japan and South Korea.

From history, the U.S. position most resembles that of Britain and France in the later 1930s. We have lost the opening rounds, but the nation now is more prepared to deal with China as a strategic threat. Engaging in more aggressive ceremonial military responses tells Xi he pegged us wrong—not we, but he should be the party more motivated to avoid battle.

---------

Michael Vlahos is a writer and author of the book Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change. He has taught war and strategy at Johns Hopkins University and the Naval War College and is a weekly contributor to The John Batchelor Show. Follow him on Twitter @JHUWorldCrisis

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The Chinese Embassy [in France] has deleted a cartoon on Twitter, claiming to be the victim of "forgery". We saw Death dressed in the colors of the American flag and wearing a scythe imitating the flag of Israel, knocking on the door of Hong Kong. The Chinese embassy in France said on May 25 that its Twitter account had been "falsified", after the publication in its name of this cartoon implicating the United States and Israel, which sparked an outcry on social networks, before being removed.

Find out more about RT France: https://francais.rt.com/international/75378-dessin-polemique-ambassade-c...

The unflattering portrayal of the US Secretary of State comes from the CGTN, Beijing’s international broadcaster, which lampooned Pompeo’s involvement in Hong Kong protests in a cartoon on Monday.

It shows a line of zombie-like protesters, some armed with Molotov cocktails, standing in line to receive apple-shaped dollar grants from the hands of the top US diplomat. They then walk through an archway labeled as“heaven” but plunge lemming-style into hell.

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https://www.rt.com/news/489715-pompeo-devil-chinese-media/

An international expert team from the World Health Organization arrived in Wuhan, Hubei province, and started quarantine at a hotel in Wuhan on Thursday to work with its Chinese counterparts on origin-tracing and scientific research of the novel coronavirus.

The team landed at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport on Thursday morning, where they received throat swab and serum antibody tests for the coronavirus before going into a 14-day quarantine, according to China Global Television Network.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a regular news briefing in Beijing on Thursday that, during their quarantine, the WHO experts will have exchanges via video link with Chinese scientists and medical experts.

All of the team members had multiple tests for COVID-19 in their home countries before traveling.

The WHO confirmed the arrival of the international team of 13 scientists in Wuhan in a post on social media, which also said that another two scientists are still in Singapore to be retested after they tested positive for antibodies associated with COVID-19.

Before the visit, WHO expert teams on origin-tracing of the novel coronavirus had visited China twice, in February and July, at China's invitation. The two sides have kept exchanging information on the latest progress in origin-tracing and worked together to formulate a plan on cooperation with China under a broader plan for global cooperation on origin-tracing of the virus.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at an earlier media briefing that he was pleased that the team, with members from countries including the United States, Russia and Japan, would travel to China for joint scientific research on origin-tracing with its Chinese counterparts.

"Scientific evidence will drive hypotheses, which will then be the basis for further, longer-term studies," he said."This is important not just for COVID-19, but for the future of global health security and to manage emerging disease threats with pandemic potential."

It will be a very difficult task to find the origin of the novel coronavirus, and no significant progress has been made over the past year, some experts have said.

Although some of the earliest COVID-19 cases were reported at Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in December 2019, no evidence was found to link the market with the origin of the coronavirus, despite great efforts by Chinese researchers to find an answer, Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an earlier interview.

The latest research and discoveries about earliest cases of the virus in some other countries have pointed to the possibility that the virus may have existed in nature for a long time before the earliest COVID-19 cases were reported, he said.

Read more:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202101/15/WS6000cdcaa31024ad0baa2b5b.html

“We need to be very careful about the use of the phrase ‘patient zero’ which many people indicate as the first initial case. We may never find who the patient zero was,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19 told a press conference on Friday, referring to the organization’s fact-finding mission that arrived in Wuhan, widely regarded as an original hotspot of the pandemic, on Thursday. 

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Despite the World Health Organisation last year confirming the coronavirus to be of animal origin, conspiracy theories that COVID-19 is man-made continue to circulate.

The Supreme Court in the Ica region of Peru is investigating a resolution by a local court, claiming that COVID-19 was invented by the "criminal elites" of Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros, the Rockefeller family, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

The probe comes after the Chinch and Pisco court reportedly moved to justify a petition for an extension of pre-trial detention in one criminal case due to the unpredictable nature of the coronavirus pandemic created by the "criminal elites who dominate the world".

This comes amid ongoing conspiracy theories about the man-made origin of COVID-19, even though the World Health Organisation in May 2020 confirmed the virus was of animal origin.

The theories have been repeatedly fuelled by fake news claiming that Bill Gates or George Soros were promoters of a supposed plan to control the population via COVID-19 vaccines and 5G networks.

"[…] It's so easy to click on, particularly when a simple explanation for this pandemic—that there is somebody evil behind it — is somehow easier than the true biology, which is actually kind of complicated. So we have to make the truth more interesting. We've got to label things with the truth", Gates pointed out in an interview with Trevor Noah's "The Daily Show" in November 2020.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/latam/202101121081739595-peruvian-court-probing-judges-ruling-alleging-soros-bill-gates-are-creators-of-covid-19-pandemic/

The words by Bill Gates are a bit confusing... 

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See also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/38483

The obvious moral hazard was that the premiers could take the sledgehammer to their economies with no financial consequence. State leaders entered into a kind of grotesque competition to see who could take the strongest action against the virus. The winner was Dan Andrews, the hard-left premier of the state of Victoria (of which Melbourne is the capital), who seemed to relish the opportunity to terrorise private businesses and render the citizenry dependent on government.

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This rubbish was written by Gideon Rozner, a director of policy at the Institute of Public Affairs. The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is an ULTRA-RIGHT wing institute in Australia that has core policies resembling those of fascist Italy in the name of freedom. The institute does not "believe" in global warming, only "believes" in private enterprises, despises public health care, hates public broadcasting, value the freedom to vilify and insult, and many other "policies" that would even make Trump shudder. 

The fact is the "draconian" closed borders between states and reasonable checks of restricted international incoming passengers with quarantine has made sure that Australia has had much fewer deaths and cases due to Covid-19 that say America where the policies were flimsy and basically cost trump the elections. Good bye Donald. Good riddance. Go quietly...

But in the Aussie States, basically similar reactions were enacted as in Victoria, in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia, as they were left with carrying the baby. Dan Andrews had a bigger problem in Victoria, due to a large cluster of cases which, untold by the main stream media, affected some "ethnic" communities. Exclusively targeting these would have appeared "racist". New South Wales golden girl, Gladys, used similar tactics but for a lesser time in order eliminate the threat of the virus. When the Avalon cluster appeared, the whole north shore above the Narrabeen lake was shut down... So what was the difference?

Dan Andrews is a Labor premier (left) while Gladys is a "Liberal" (conservative right-wing). The IPA HATES Labor and LOVES the conservatives.

as Gideon Rozner says:

Dan Andrews’ approval rating remains alarmingly high, especially now that he’s drip-feeding back the basic freedoms that he took from us to begin with. Melburnians are carrying on almost as if the lockdown never happened, aside from the fact that most people are still working from home.

This would piss the IPA and Gideon off...

Meanwhile in New South Wales, Avalon is still under lockdown and a few other suburbs of Sydney are under restrictions... While crowds at the cricket are allowed, the tennis tournament in Melbourne is under clouds because of some tennis stars having Covid...

The point is that should the governments let the Covid spread around, some people will die (as with the flu) but they will be chastise by the health authorities, who are waiting eagerly for "vaccines"...