It has been known for a long time that Dr. Anthony Fauci has supported the gain-of-function research conducted by the EcoHealth Alliance about bat coronaviruses in China. While Fauci has been attempting to distance himself from having any knowledge of EcoHealth Alliance’s projects, including those of Dr. Peter Daszak, the president of the organization, newly released emails detail the praise Daszak heaped upon Fauci for his dismissing of the lab-leak theory. //

For Fauci and Daszak to be exchanging emails regarding the origins of SARS-CoV-2, just months after the initial outbreak goes to show the lack of serious credible look taken into the potential of this lab leak. As previously reported, it took Chinese researchers 14 years to determine with certainty, the source of the SARS-CoV virus from 2003. The same determination about SARS-CoV-2 was made by Chinese Officials and then later by the WHO (in which Daszak participated as a lead) in just a few short weeks.

If this research is for the defense against viral threats, why was it utterly worthless with the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2?

Update on May 26, 2021 at 3:30PM PT:

In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps. We’re continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge.

It’s extremely significant that Dr. Baric is saying that we need to investigate the potential of accidental release, considering how intimately he has been involved in the gain-of-function research that could have led to this pandemic. Certainly, one possibility is that scientists and our government officials (like Fauci) believed that an accidental lab leak occurred or perhaps even had evidence of such a leak, and Baric saw the writing on the wall and wanted to salvage what has been a stellar career to this point and not be thrown under the bus by Fauci. Remember, Fauci was aware that US diplomats had serious concerns about the security of the research happening in Wuhan and did nothing about it.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) challenged Anthony S. Fauci over whether the U.S. government funded dangerous research in China. Here’s what they were talking about.

During a Senate hearing on May 11, Sen. Paul grilled Fauci about NIH/NIAID funding of gain-of-function research (a/k/a “Dual-Use Research of Concern) in coronaviruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology, and Fauci gave provably false answers to the Senator’s questions. When asked whether “the COVID-19 virus could not have occurred by serial passage in a laboratory,” though, Fauci wasn’t quite so adamant. He said:

“I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I’m fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China.”

That raised a few eyebrows since Fauci has repeatedly said that all of the scientific evidence pointed to the virus “evolv[ing] in nature and then jumping species.”

A surprising chain of events was somehow set in motion that day, bringing us to a point where PolitiFact had to retract their own fact-checking of Tucker Carlson’s reporting on the origins of COVID-19 – based on Fauci’s comments at a PolitiFact event titled “United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking.”

writeofcenter
6 hours ago
What was stopped was a Trump initiative to get at the cause. This administration can't have any of that because COVID is Trumps fault. So HIS study can't be the one that shows there was actually a Wuhan Lab leak.. It must be a Biden initiated study that produces the smoking gun.

That's how it works in the Swamp.

“Can we agree that if you took President Xi Jinping and turned him upside and shook him,” Kennedy said, “The World Health Organization would fall out of his pocket?”

“I don’t think I can answer that, sir,” Fauci said laughing. Kennedy inquired, “Do you think that President Xi Jinping has undue influence over the World Health Organization?” Fauci responded, “I have no way of knowing the influence of the president of China over the WHO.”

The visual is just priceless, because it’s so accurate. Now, of course, Fauci knows it’s true. But in typical Fauci fashion, he refuses to commit on the question or put his opinion of the obvious on the record.

We know China has covered up aspects of the virus right down the line. But WHO has been right there, repeating Chinese propaganda on Jan. 14 last year claiming the virus wasn’t transmissible from person to person. As the virus then began to spread and President Donald Trump moved to cut off travel with China at the end of January, the WHO argued that wasn’t necessary because it might hurt trade and travel from China. There was also the report that Xi Jinping, told WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Jan. 21, to “hold back information about a human-to-human transmission and to delay a pandemic warning.” WHO has denied that report. Taiwan also said they warned the WHO about the virus but they were ignored. The WHO has shown over and over again there are issues.

This series of articles thus far could be summed up with two very simple questions:

• What research has Dr. Fauci Funded?
• Where was that research conducted?

It is indisputable that Dr. Fauci’s NIAID has funded gain-of-function research at the University of Wisconsin, The University of Tokyo, Erasmus University in the Netherlands, as well as other universities and labs across the country and around the world. As I have previously covered, there are two statements made by Dr. Fauci that either make him woefully misinformed about his own organization or a bald-faced liar.

• That the Dr. Ralph Baric did not conduct gain-of-function research.
• That if he did, that the research was within the bounds established by the HHS.

As covered in Part II, Baric and UNC were requested to cease gain-of-function research on the SARS virus as well as other Influenza and Ebola research, and the NIAID was ordered to cease funding gain-of-function research after the end of the “[then] current active budget period,” or, the annual period in which the funding was authorized. In the case of Dr. Baric’s research, that was May 31st, 2015, or just over seven months after the ordered gain-of-function research pause. When May 31st, 2015 rolled around, Baric’s research was reauthorized by the NIAID, the same in 2016. In 2017, the project was again reauthorized this time, including over $835,000 in funding. The HHS did not lift the NIAID ban on funding until December 2017. For Dr. Fauci to state that Baric didn’t perform gain-of-function research (he does) and that if he did it was within the bounds established by the HHS (it wasn’t), is flat-out untrue. The HHS would not have oversight of research conducted without their authorization or (presumably) their knowledge.

Fauci reversed course. Now we’ve gone from “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology” to “there’s no way of guaranteeing” that it happened, and what’s more, than we, the American people, paid for it.

Southern China Morning Post noted on May 23 that the CCP has been focusing on funding and building government buildings for African countries, which has aroused suspicion from the international community.

Currently, the $80 million new headquarters for the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is funded by China, is under construction in the south of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Despite the U.S. government’s warning in February 2020 that a China-funded and constructed CDC will be used by the regime to steal “African genetic data,” construction started in December 2020.

According to The Heritage Foundation, China was involved in the building of more than 186 government buildings across 40 of 54 African countries. Even the African Union (AU) headquarters, located in Ethiopia, was fully financed and built by China.

In 2018, French newspaper Le Monde first revealed that AU technicians discovered that between 2012 and 2017, the Chinese-built African Union headquarters had been transmitting AU’s confidential data to Shanghai daily through the building’s IT network using servers provided by Chinese company Huawei.

Ever since Kentucky Senator Rand Paul grilled NIH head, Dr. Anthony Fauci, on his department granting the CCP funds to perform gain-of-function research on coronaviruses (or, in other words, genetically engineer coronaviruses) at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the entire political world has begun focusing on what could be one of the biggest scandals the world has ever seen.

If it’s true, then then it proves two things. Firstly, that the virus was engineered by the Chinese in a lab and, either through neglect or intent, released the virus into the world – which is something that even Fauci now admits could have been the case. Secondly, it proves that U.S. bureaucrats helped them do it by providing research funding.

Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton also has Fauci in his figurative crosshairs, but he’s hinting that he’s not stopping at Fauci. Cotton seems to be suspicious of the entire network of public health bureaucrats. //

“So, the money that the NIH gave went to an American organization, which turned around and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to these Wuhan labs to investigate coronaviruses and, yes, to find ways to make them more contagious and more dangerous,” Cotton added. “And we asked Francis Collins, who’s Dr. Fauci’s boss, to come clean, to tell us exactly what was happening, why this research was being funded, as you point out, Maria, during a time in which the Obama administration had explicitly banned this kind of gain-of-function research, research into making some of the world’s deadliest pathogens even more dangerous.”

Imagine my surprise when I saw the open letter published late Thursday in Science Magazine online, is titled, “Investigate the Origins of COVID-19.” As I reported earlier, it’s penned by renowned virological expert physicians from MIT, Harvard, Cal Tech, Yale, Cambridge, Berkeley, and Stanford – including the US researcher who worked directly with the Wuhan Institute of Virology performing gain-of-function research in coronaviruses – states that the “accidental release possibility remains viable,” meaning they believe there’s a viable possibility that this pandemic is the result of an accidental release from WIV. //

Does anyone else find it funny that the organization that funded the very type of research that may have led to the release of COVID-19 is suddenly defending the Chinese government’s lack of transparency (or cover-up, depending upon your choice of words)? Why are they all circling the wagons when it comes to research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

Daily Mail US
@DailyMail
China plans to revamp disused US airfield in the Pacific
China aims to bring back strategic airfield in the Pacific
dailymail.co.uk
7:00 AM · May 9, 2021

Any significant build-up on Kanton, located 1,864 miles southwest of Hawaii and U.S. military bases there, would offer a foothold to China deep into territory that had been firmly aligned with the U.S. and its allies since World War II.

It’s possible the airport could support fighter deployments if it is modernized and improved, as well as increased in usable size. //

But just how much domestic air travel would you expect to and from Canton?

There are around two dozen residents on Kanton who rely on subsistence fishing and supply ships.

Yep — it’s just screaming out for scheduled airline service at a shiny new civilian airport to be built by the Chinese. //

The island would in fact become “ a fixed aircraft carrier,” according to one military analyst.

But there are other benefits to China strengthening its ties with Kiribati. The nation consists of 32 atolls dispersed across an area of the Pacific Ocean totaling 1.4 million square miles. As such it has one of the largest “economic exclusion zones” (EEZ) involving a marine environment anywhere in the world. Kiribati limits commercial fishing inside its EEZ, but as I covered in this earlier article, China maintains, by far, the world’s largest fleet of commercial fishing vessels — possibly as many as 13,000 — which travel around the oceans of the world with a voracious appetite for taking seafood.

The core stage of a Long March 5B rocket is expected to slam into Earth's atmosphere Saturday (May 8) or thereabouts, although nobody can pinpoint the date, time or location yet. Such predictions can generally only be made just hours before impact, because atmospheric drag changes significantly as solar activity shifts.

Odds are the 23-ton (21 metric tons) piece of space debris will break apart high in the atmosphere and largely burn up, experts say, with any remaining pieces hitting uninhabited areas, as 70% of Earth's surface is covered in ocean. But again: We don't know that for sure.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping personally directed the communist regime to focus its efforts to control the global internet, displacing the influential role of the United States, according to internal government documents recently obtained by The Epoch Times.

In a January 2017 speech, Xi said the “power to control the internet” had become the “new focal point of [China’s] national strategic contest,” and singled out the United States as a “rival force” standing in the way of the regime’s ambitions.

The ultimate goal was for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to control all content on the global internet, so the regime could wield what Xi described as “discourse power” over communications and discussions on the world stage.

Xi articulated a vision of “using technology to rule the internet” to achieve total control over every part of the online ecosystem—over applications, content, quality, capital, and manpower.

His remarks were made at the fourth leadership meeting of the regime’s top internet regulator, the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, in Beijing on Jan. 4, 2017, and detailed in internal documents issued by the Liaoning Provincial Government in China’s northeast. //

First, Beijing needs to be able to “set the rules” governing the international system. Second, it should install CCP surrogates in important positions in global internet organizations. Third, the regime should gain control over the infrastructure that underlies the internet, such as root servers, Xi said.

Domain Name System (DNS) root servers are key to internet communications around the world. It directs users to websites they intend to visit. There are more than 1,300 root servers in the world, about 20 of which are located in China while the United States has about 10 times that, according to the website root-servers.org.

If the Chinese regime were to gain control over more root servers, they could then redirect traffic to wherever they want, Gary Miliefsky, cybersecurity expert and publisher of Cyber Defense Magazine, told The Epoch Times. //

Xi, in his 2016 speech, described all online content as falling into three categories: “red zone, black zone, and gray zone.”

“Red zone” content refers to discourse aligned with the CCP’s propaganda requirements, while “black zone” material falls foul of these rules. “Gray zone” content lies in the middle.

“We must consolidate and expand the red zone and expand its influence in society,” Xi said in a leaked speech in August 2013. “We must bravely enter into the black zone [and fight hard] to gradually get it to change its color. We must launch large-scale actions targeting the gray zone to accelerate its conversion to the red zone and prevent it from turning into the black zone.”

Inside China, the CCP has a stranglehold on online content and discussion through the Great Firewall, a massive internet censorship apparatus that blockades foreign websites and censors content deemed unacceptable to the party. It also hires a massive online troll army, dubbed the “50-cent army,” to manipulate online discussion. A recent report found that the CCP engages 2 million paid internet commentators and draws on a network of 20 million part-time volunteers to carry out online trolling.

Communist persecution of religious practices is inversely proportional to how secure the ruling Communist party feels about their legitimacy and control of society. The more secure, the less persecution; the less secure, the more persecution. This is particularly true in mature Communist societies where the Communist Party has maintained control for decades (persecution is always used by communists early on to eliminate political enemies and gain total control and then relaxed as that control has been locked in).

That religious persecution in Communist China is increasing – especially of ethnic Uyghurs and Tibetans and the Falun Gong – might be an indication that the wheels are coming off for Xi Jinping. As the world finally begins to focus on the true origins of the ChiCom virus, as well as the extreme measures taken by the ChiComs to destroy and withhold medical data from other countries, the pressure for ChiCom accountability and restitution will continue to build.

“It is the one country in the world that has the military, economic, diplomatic capacity to undermine or challenge the rules-based order that we care so much about and are determined to defend. But I want to be very clear about something. And this is important. Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we’re going to stand up and— and defend it.” //

Can someone smarter than me explain how those two statements are not likely mutually exclusive? //

“I think what we— what we’ve witnessed over the last— several years is China acting more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad. That is a fact.” //

And then the question, as posed by O’Donnell: “What is China’s goal?” //

“I think that over time, China believes that it— it— it can be and should be and will be the dominant— country in the world.”

McDowell said he hoped China would have enhanced the core stage to perform a controlled deorbit after separating from Tianhe. “I think by current standards it’s unacceptable to let it reenter uncontrolled,” McDowell said.

“Since 1990 nothing over 10 tons has been deliberately left in orbit to reenter uncontrolled.” The Long March 5B core stage, without its four side boosters, is thought to have a “dry mass”, or when it is empty of propellent, of about 21 metric tons in mass.

Holger Krag, head of the Space Safety Programme Office for the European Space Agency, says from their experience, there is an average amount of mass of about 100 tons re-entering in an uncontrolled way per year. “This relates to about 50-60 individual events per year.”

“It is always difficult to assess the amount of surviving mass and number of fragments without knowing the design of the object, but a reasonable “rule-of-thumb” is about 20-40% of the original dry mass.”

Components made of heat resistant materials, such as tanks and thrusters made stainless steel or titanium, can reach the ground. Surviving objects will fall vertically after deceleration and travel at terminal velocity.

several Chinese companies use network numbering systems that resemble the U.S. military’s IP addresses in their internal systems, Madory said. By announcing the address space through Global Resource Systems, that could cause some of that information to be routed to systems controlled by the U.S. military.