The fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak puts Beijing and Washington on a collision course, writes Pepe Escobar.
By Pepe Escobar
The Asia Times
Among the myriad, earth-shattering geopolitical effects of coronavirus, one is already graphically evident. China has re-positioned itself. For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Beijing openly regards the U.S. as a threat, as stated a month ago by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference during the peak of the fight against coronavirus.
Beijing is carefully, incrementally shaping the narrative that, from the beginning of the coronavirus attack, the leadership knew it was under a hybrid war attack.
The terminology of President Xi Jinping is a major clue. He said, on the record, that this was war. And, as a counter-attack, a “people’s war” had to be launched.
Moreover, he described the virus as a demon or devil. Xi is a Confucianist. Unlike some other ancient Chinese thinkers, Confucius was loath to discuss supernatural forces and judgment in the afterlife. However, in a Chinese cultural context, devil means “white devils” or “foreign devils”: guailo in Mandarin, gweilo in Cantonese. This was Xi delivering a powerful statement in code.
China’s President Xi Jinping visits Wuhan community, meets residents and frontline workers, March 10, 2020. (YouTube)
When Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, voiced in an incandescent tweet the possibility that “it might be US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan” – the first blast to this effect to come from a top official – Beijing was sending up a trial balloon signaling that the gloves were finally off. Zhao Lijian made a direct connection with the Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019, which included a delegation of 300 U.S. military.
He directly quoted U.S. CDC Director Robert Redfield who, when asked last week whether some deaths by Coronavirus had been discovered posthumously in the U.S., replied that “some cases have actually been diagnosed this way in the U.S. today.”
Zhao’s explosive conclusion is that COVID-19 was already in effect in the U.S. before being identified in Wuhan – due to the by now fully documented inability of the U.S. to test and verify differences compared with the flu.
Adding all that to the fact that coronavirus genome variations in Iran and Italy were sequenced and it was revealed they do not belong to the variety that infected Wuhan, Chinese media are now openly asking questions and drawing a connection with the shutting down in August last year of the “unsafe” military bioweapon lab at Fort Detrick, the Military Games, and the Wuhan epidemic. Some of these questions had been asked– with no response – inside the U.S. itself.
Extra questions linger about the opaque Event 201 in New York on October 18, 2019: a rehearsal for a worldwide pandemic caused by a deadly virus – which happened to be coronavirus. This magnificent coincidence happened one month before the outbreak in Wuhan.
Event 201 was sponsored by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum (WEF), the CIA, Bloomberg, John Hopkins Foundation and the UN. The World Military Games opened in Wuhan on the exact same day.
Irrespective of its origin, which is still not conclusively established, as much as Trump tweets about the “Chinese virus,” COVID-19 already poses immensely serious questions about biopolitics (where’s Foucault when we need him?) and bio-terror.
The working hypothesis of coronavirus as a very powerful but not Armageddon-provoking bio-weapon unveils it as a perfect vehicle for widespread social control — on a global scale.
Staff monitoring passengers’ body temperature in Wuhan railway station during the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. (China News Service, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Cuba Rises as Biotech Power
Just as a fully masked Xi visiting the Wuhan frontline last week was a graphic demonstration to the whole planet that China, with immense sacrifice, is winning the “people‘s war” against COVID-19, Russia, in a Sun Tzu move on Riyadh whose end result was a much cheaper barrel of oil, helped for all practical purposes to kick-start the inevitable recovery of the Chinese economy. This is how a strategic partnership works.
The chessboard is changing at breakneck speed. Once Beijing identified coronavirus as a bio-weapon attack the “people’s war” was launched with the full force of the state. Methodically. On a “whatever it takes” basis. Now we are entering a new stage, which will be used by Beijing to substantially recalibrate the interaction with the West, and under very different frameworks when it comes to the U.S. and the EU.
Soft power is paramount. Beijing sent an Air China flight to Italy carrying 2,300 big boxes full of masks bearing the script, “We are waves from the same sea, leaves from the same tree, flowers from the same garden.” China also sent a hefty humanitarian package to Iran, significantly aboard eight flights from Mahan Air — an airline under illegal, unilateral Trump administration sanctions.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic could not have been more explicit: “The only country that can help us is China. By now, you all understood that European solidarity does not exist. That was a fairy tale on paper.”
Under harsh sanctions and demonized since forever, Cuba is still able to perform breakthroughs – even on biotechnology. The anti-viral Heberon – or Interferon Alpha 2b – a therapeutic, not a vaccine, has been used with great success in the treatment of coronavirus. A joint venture in China is producing an inhalable version, and at least 15 nations are already interested in importing the therapeutic.
Now compare all of the above with the Trump administration offering $1 billion to poach German scientists working at biotech firm Curevac, based in Thuringia, on an experimental vaccine against COVID-19, to have it as a vaccine “only for the United States.”
Social Engineering Psy-Op?
Sandro Mezzadra, co-author with Brett Neilson of the seminal “The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism,” is already trying to conceptualize where we stand now in terms of fighting COVID-19.
We are facing a choice between a Malthusian strand – inspired by social Darwinism – “led by the Johnson-Trump-Bolsonaro axis” and, on the other side, a strand pointing to the “requalification of public health as a fundamental tool,” exemplified by China, South Korea and Italy. There are key lessons to be learned from South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
The stark option, Mezzadra notes, is between a “natural population selection,” with thousands of dead, and “defending society” by employing “variable degrees of authoritarianism and social control.” It’s easy to imagine who stands to benefit from this social re-engineering, a 21st century remix of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.”
Amid so much doom and gloom, count on Italy to offer us Tiepolo-style shades of light. Italy chose the Wuhan option, with immensely serious consequences for its already fragile economy. Quarantined Italians remarkably reacted by singing on their balconies: a true act of metaphysical revolt.
St. Corona by the Master of the Palazzo Venezia Madonna in the National Gallery of Denmark.(Wikimedia Commons)
Not to mention the poetic justice of the actual St. Corona (“crown” in Latin) being buried in the city of Anzu since the 9th century. St. Corona was a Christian killed under Marcus Aurelius in 165 AD, and has been for centuries one of the patron saints of pandemics.
Not even trillions of dollars raining from the sky by an act of divine Fed mercy were able to cure Covid-19. G-7 “leaders” had to resort to a videoconference to realize how clueless they are – even as China’s fight against coronavirus gave the West a head start of several weeks.
Shanghai-based Dr. Zhang Wenhong, one of China’s top infectious disease experts, whose analyses have been spot on so far, now says China has emerged from the darkest days in the “people’s war” against Covid-19. But he does not think this will be over by summer. Now extrapolate what he’s saying to the Western world.
It’s not even spring yet, and we already know it takes a virus to mercilessly shatter the Goddess of the Market. Last Friday, Goldman Sachs told no fewer than 1,500 corporations that there was no systemic risk. That was false.
New York banking sources told me the truth: systemic risk became way more severe in 2020 than in 1979, 1987 or 2008 because of the hugely heightened danger that the $1.5 quadrillion derivative market would collapse.
As the sources put it, history had never before seen anything like the Fed’s intervention via its little understood elimination of commercial bank reserve requirements, unleashing a potential unlimited expansion of credit to prevent a derivative implosion stemming from a total commodity and stock market collapse of all stocks around the world.
Those bankers thought it would work, but as we know by now all the sound and fury signified nothing. The ghost of a derivative implosion – in this case not caused by the previous possibility, the shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz – remains.
We are still barely starting to understand the consequences of Covid-19 for the future of neoliberal turbo-capitalism. What’s certain is that the whole global economy has been hit by an insidious, literally invisible circuit breaker. This may be just a “coincidence.” Or this may be, as some are boldly arguing, part of a possible, massive psy-op creating the perfect geopolitlcal and social engineering environment for full-spectrum dominance.
Additionally, along the hard slog down the road, with immense, inbuilt human and economic sacrifice, with or without a reboot of the world-system, a more pressing question remains: will imperial elites still choose to keep waging full-spectrum-dominance hybrid war against China?
Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is “2030.” Follow him on Facebook.
This article is from The Asia Times.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Dear Pepe, I found your article very good, thanks. I would like to draw your attention to an academic paper initially published by some indian scientists, and then withdrawn, the authors saying that it was not their intention to fee into conspiracy theories. The initial abstract is still available on at least two web sites:
greatgameindia.com/uncanny-similarity-of-unique-inserts-in-the-2019-ncov-spike-protein-to-hiv-1-gp120-and-gag/
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1.abstract
Basically, what I understand from the abstract is that the genome of the virus has some very peculiar characteristics distinguishing it from existing coronaviruses, so that it is very unlikely that they are related. Also the characteristics seem to have been taken from HIV-1.
I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that on the Wikipedia a very extensive and detailed article on misinformation about the pandemic that has already appeared, with such level of detail and quality that makes one wonder at the effort put into it. The complaint by the Chinese government is mixed up with Russian information warfare and unlikely theories such as population control schemes.
Thanks for your information effort, I really appreciate and like me many others.
I will research facts, dates, etc. And if all is correct & confirmed, I can conclude, if it walks, talks, quacks & looks like a duck…no coincidence. Very disturbing…not surprising.
see: link.springer.com/protocol/10.1007%2F978-1-4939-2438-7_1
Here is an intriguing article about earlier bio-weapon work:
see:alethonews.com/2014/10/23/secret-project-created-weaponized-ebola-in-south-africa-in-the-1980s/
This is a superb article. Thank you, Pepe Escobar.
I look upon Escobar as a conduit to what’s behind all the rhetoric and propaganda spewing out from Washington, CNN, and Fox. This article says things, analyses things that you won’t find at many sites with an interest in these issues, much less the MSM—which has become totally useless, if not to say dangerous.
Pepe gets better and better with every piece he writes. He evolves, and his analyses get more nuanced, more instructive. When he retires—if he ever does—he may look back upon these last couple decades as the time in which he reacht the apex of his intellect.
Thank you, Pepe, for your work on the issues of this transition from Western (i.e., US) hegemony to (I hope!) a multipolar world where human self-government may just reach new heights.
Pepe Escobar is correct, Beijing and Washington are on a collision course. Scientists seem to know so little about the disease; yet governments are trying to enlist it for hegemonic motives. Added to pestilence we will get world war.
See: ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Yes. Preparation for full-scale dominance. The meek go meekly when led by the leash of fear.
I’m trying to get my head around this. Please correct me if I’m wrong but from Escobar’s and MSM articles I get:
August 2019 – the military bioweapon lab at Fort Detrick is deemed “unsafe” and closed.
18 October, 2019 – Event 201, a rehearsal for a worldwide pandemic caused by a deadly coronavirus, is held in the US.
18 October, 2019 – the same day as Event 201 begins, the Military Games start in Wuhan including a delegation of 300 US military personnel.
Early November 2019 – coronavirus breaks out in Wuhan. The timelines fit an either accidental or deliberate release by the US military.
Despite massive scientific efforts no originating source for the coronavirus has yet been discovered in China.
Trump has now repeatedly called Covid-19 “the China virus.” Coronavirus genome variations in Iran and Italy, the other two most affected nations, were sequenced and they do not belong to the variety that infected Wuhan.
China is _seriously_ suggesting Covid-19 is a US bioweapon unleashed in Wuhan and has called for a people’s war on “foreign devils”.
The world’s economy may implode due to derivatives.
This does not sound good.
masterful litotes, Moi
You conveniently left out the fact that China rounded up all the doctors reporting on this virus at its early infections- then completely destroyed all the samples taken from the infected patients (conveniently losing all the initial genome information)- refused to allow WHO or the CDC to investigate- and finally told WHO it was not contagious between people……
You have more head wrapping to do..
@Moi
The temporary closing of Ft. Detrick was not an issue in Covid19.
see: wjla.com/amp/news/local/cdc-shut-down-army-germ-lab-health-concerns
see: military.com/daily-news/2019/11/24/cdc-inspection-findings-reveal-more-about-fort-detrick-research-suspension.html/amp
I will research facts, dates, etc. And if all is correct & confirmed, I can conclude, if it walks, talks, quacks & looks like a duck…no coincidence. Very disturbing…not surprising.
Pepe Escobar, you are spot on. I believe that this entire Corona MSM hype is an escapade along the lines of a true psy-op. A staged, somewhat dubious global emergency intended to set into place, various missing architecture (s) required, for a yet to be identified, and borrowing a phrase oft quoted by that (devil) E. Howard Hunt, “big-event”. Perhaps the new emergency exercises and preparations will create infrastructure(s) intended for the management of mass casualties such as those following a nuclear conflict. Of late we’ve heard warnings, or were they a veiled threat by Dick Cheney? I’m paraphrasing him here, that 911 was just an introduction to even greater, more spectacular, terror attacks awaiting all of us…
It’s the most convincing article.
the sooner china and russia become closer and end american domination of the world,the better,and more important, the sooner global capitalism – the dominant economic system in all three – is ended and global democracy begins, the better yet, for humanity..the breakdown in financial markets and the incredible debt which now, including common people who only survive with plastic, is called in the quadri-trillions, a number unknown to most of us, and will soon be discussed by mainstream economists as in the gazillions, is unpayable and to a great extent does not exist in the material world and should be canceled by a democratic force from that world…
that said, the awful new virus supposedly invented by – depending on which capitalist country the charge comes from – china, the usa, or perhaps the elders of zion – has to be the dumbest weapon ever invented since it has spread from intended victims to their intended murderers…the mafia would not tolerate an idiotic hitman who not only shot his victim but his family as well…further, the citadels of capitalism have allegedly produced a weapon that is bringing the collapse of capitalism that much closer, so not only their hitmen are losing it but their high priests as well..some of us may lose our minds and our lives as well before this is over but we should remember that whether capitalism is run by fascists, social democrats or communists, its credo is: rich minorities buy cheap and sell dear to poor majorities…that’s true whether the capitalists speak english, chinese, russian or swahili and that is the major problem for humanity, not whether ruling mass murderers continue to commit mass murder in the marketplace while we seek out the origin of their weapons, as we shop for them..
I think what Pepe is suggesting (correctly in my view) is that this is primarily an INFORMATION WAR , and whether there has actually been any bio war is fairly irrelevant.
Thank you Pepe.
Basically the economy was humming along there for a couple decades irregardless of damage to the environment, now that’s becoming painfully apparent. Super industrialized powers that have been used to make a financial returns wanted to continue no matter what. All the major powers are vying for any source of income and mineral controls worldwide. And they’re all investing in each other‘s military you can’t tell me the China has been investing in US military stocks and vice versa and Russia and all of these countries. A lot of these Statements are posturing.
I’m going to sit back on this one until I know more. Surely if the US was playing with this coronavirus they would have also made a vaccine.
Fear is essential and a vaccine would dilute fear.
How do you know a vaccine doesn’t already exist ? (For the Global Elite only, naturally)
Maybe yes,maybe, maybe no. Considering the clown president and the jesters he chooses to have around him, it’s not too much of a stretch.
The existential threat of allowing the derivative market to continue unrestrained was blindingly obvious in 2009, but the gods of capitalism would not be denied. I was unsurprised at all the hot air leaking out of the market, along with the economic downturn from the virus lockdowns, but, similar to what is said here, I think derivatives could, and probably will, be a body blow to the entire edifice.
BTW, St. Corona is NOT the patron saint of pandemics, from what I duckducked.
Now we are at a war beetween Russia, China and USA. I think that both sides have use the COVID-19 as a weapon
Thank you for this remedy to our ignorance. It includes many essential elements – that we have been shielded from in the mass media – of the worldwide event that allow us to come to thoughtful, informed conclusions.
When was the US not planning and carrying on war; wars glory was once of heroic acts of men battling men while hidden from public view were those who sought and still seek the ultimate war tool (s), ability to kill with impunity.
US has tens of thousands of small arms rounds in storage, for every person on earth, and they produce and expend billions more yearly while purchasing billions more from their vassel states in Europe and around world.
And on the streets of US one can see signs and hear the words, “Buddy can you spare some change every penny helps” and in return, “Sorry I just spent it all on my mornings $4 latte’ “.
US military men and arms cost more than rest of worlds military forces combined, and it’s $ needs increase not yearly but semi yearly, and all publicly requested additions are granted.
How it is spent the public at large nor those they elected to Houses of Congress; and the millions employed and elected to State, County, City, and working in Fed bureaucracies do not know, so who knows or realy cares where it goes.
The lowest ranked active duty US military soldier has a higher standard of living than over 1/2 of the world’s population, with health and life Insurance benefits unobtainable to 1/2 of world and over 200 billion, larger amount than many nations yearly budget, a year is spent on non active ex military men and women.
Those funds for non active and active have a higher percent yearly raise than that given to those with Social Security checks, where the funds originate is even less well known than how they are spent.
Just recently as mentioned the “non military funded” bio-warfare research center was shutdown for unsafe practices, practices known even before the newest procedural excuses came about, but not one murmer about its illegal research, laws put in place by our elected agencies, who’s duties were supposed to be to oversee but we’re instead contracted out to private/ Corporate entities, many being the suppliers of goods to the center.
Just recently it was announced that the average of lands made permanently toxic by the military almost doubled over what it was 4 years ago, but not a peep out of military as it recieved billions more to manage them.
Almost 2 million acres of public parks, Natioal Forest and wilderness lands were given over to US military control, and limits to how high to fly droppeddown to so low a sonic boom can knock man or beast down
It is not Just a hybrid war upon China and it’s people it is also a hybrid war upon most of the people in US
US military and its political- financial partners has proven and continues proving on a daily basis that they do not give a damn how many non military they kill, embargoes alone yearly kills 200,000 and impoverish millions more, and who counts the dead we cause by military actions in some active combat areas, only those of our own dead but even those are kept away by media as a daily monthly or yearly public tally sheet.
Private Security firms pay mercenary force members higher than our Sovereign military, and employ over 1 million, to aid our military corporate needs, but their funds come through State Department not military budgets.
Why worry about China and Russia’s people their governments are not f’n stupid and will take care of their own, which is a hell of a lot different than our militarys attitude towards US populatiion.
We are merely the “Seed Corn” to be used to replenish all the goods, men and women it grinds up and will grind up in the future.
HY-Brid, bs, just the constant improvements demanded by those who make war, and profit by war, the US nation is war.
Escobar is right about the fact that the so-callled coronavirus is a psy-ops attack on a global scale.
Consider that the IMF was warning about an economic meltdown back in December.
“The International Monetary Fund has issued a warning that’s largely been brushed aside by mainstream media. Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the IMF, is warning that the global economy risks another “Great Depression.”
This is due to the usual financial instruments of doom in the form of repos, derivatives, hedges etc.
see: popularresistance.org/imf-warning-another-potential-great-depression
see: markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/us-corporate-debt-10-trillion-record-percentage-economy-expert-warnings-2019-12-1028731031#international-monetary-fund1
In an article about the economic health of the U.S., former VP of the World Bank, Joseph Stieglitz, states that,
“To get a good reading on a country’s economic health, start by looking at the health of its citizens. If they are happy and prosperous, they will be healthy and live longer. Among developed countries, America sits at the bottom in this regard. US life expectancy, already relatively low, fell in each of the first two years of Trump’s presidency, and in 2017, midlife mortality reached its highest rate since World War II. This is not a surprise, because no president has worked harder to make sure that more Americans lack health insurance. Millions have lost their coverage, and the uninsured rate has risen, in just two years, from 10.9% to 13.7%.”
see: informationclearinghouse.info/52871.htm
As Bill Hicks once said, the ride is about to get very bumpy.
Much appreciated information and perspective, as always, from Pepe Escobar.
Thanks to Consortium News for ensuring that Pepe’s knowledgeable, nuanced, yet crystal clear analysis is made available to those willing to look beyond the corporate media “narrative”.
Dr. Francis Boyle: see:
youtube.com/watch?v=H0fEZr2psMQ&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR3gq6c2t7W3CCLqwXRhiBDQMKP46pXxtDu07xvS7AaJboI6rgJ2CAfa6BI
U of North Caroline Bio Lab, level 3….death lab creating gain of function work to make virus more lethal…sold this to the Chinese researchers Wuhan Institute of Virology…
Dr Francis Boyle , expert on Bio Warfare , and professor at U of Illinois, and he created legislation to ban creation of Bio-Warfare virus, which is supposed to be enforced internationally… is this the same virus?
Always a pleasure and instructive reading Pepe’s articles and thank you CN for providing the web site for it.
I think the article’s author is less than convincing in his thesis.
Of course, the US has been fighting a certain kind of “hybrid war” against China for a while, one whose weapons include sanctions, tariffs, disinformation, regulations, pressure against a Chinese company like Huawei, pressure against other countries joining the Belt and Road Initiative, accusations of intellectual property theft, accusations about human rights, accusations of currency manipulation, and more.
But the issue here is whether that “cold” hybrid war, much of it going on for years, has now become a hot one where people are killed and injured.
The author weaves a little tapestry of hints and suggestions, a lot of them wordplay stuff that is unconvincing.
We have to wait for real evidence, scientific stuff, or witnesses because this is a serious and dangerous charge being made.
The case for the coronavirus being an engineered bio-weapon, a case made recently by a number of authors, is quite plausible, but it is not proved.
Even the fact that the virus is not as deadly as a great many diseases can be understood as supporting the notion of a weapon intended to hurt and inconvenience and cost rather than just kill.
But the idea of the US deliberately having used it against China seems considerably less plausible for several reasons.
First, the risk of its spreading back to the US and other places, as it has.
Second, the risk that China with its advanced science would conclusively find that it was a weapon.
Third, such a conclusive finding would cause a lot of outrage in the world, in places like Europe, where the US already has lost a great deal of favor and reputation.
Fourth, the risk of reprisal.
Note that I am not listing moral or ethical considerations by the US. The country that has used napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, fire-bombing, carpet-bombing, Agent Orange, and atomic weapons clearly doesn’t have any. The Pentagon has even embraced landmines despite an exhausting international effort for a convention, signed by over 160 nations, banning them.
But I note that the US has now some seriously unbalanced people in leading positions – Trump, Pompeo, and Co. – and possibly considerations against using bio-weapons could be pooh-poohed.
That’s a strong statement to make, but it is sadly the reality of America today.
Hi John .I always have much respect for your opinions and comments ,unless I have misunderstood your post, I must remind you about what has recently happened in Douma ,Syria ,with the fake chemical attack and the OPCW coverup that ensued .All this unproved ,of course , but if you have been watching the events unfold as many have , few are not convinced that the US /Western world was not implicated in the event as coverup agents .
That being said , yes, lets wait for the facts ,but as we have seen in other parts of the world , the facts always never seem to see the light of day . I think this quote is appropriate :
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
?Arthur Schopenhauer (German philosopher, 1788-1860)
Cheers John and stay well and healthy.
Absolutely excellent analysis, Mr. Chuckman. No, a definitive case has not been made that Covid-19 has been the product of an American bioweapon, but Washington certainly makes itself a noteworthy suspect for such a scenario based on all the evidence you have concisely marshaled in your essay. Considering all the heinous actions already taken by this rogue regime which you recounted so very well and which would be considered war crimes in a consensus of sane analysts, the regime seems very capable of taking such a step. It is a valid question to ask if they have truly done so and to go about collecting all available evidence to bear on the issue, just as the Douma poisonings, so quickly ascribed to Syria and Russia, were assiduously investigated even in the presence of massive resistance against the effort.
And you also have the long structural take. As Edward Teller was the mindset of the Cold War slaughter, he handed off to Zbig for the New World Order, and thence the horde of epigonoi neocons for the War on Terror/Global Hegemony. All of these did and are doing formerly inconceivable and multiple world historical crimes. Pompeo, Haspel, …& co. come by it honestly, if with depleted gene pool.
Nos mantenha informados pepe!! Maravilha
Pepe Escobar é uma fonte inestimável de informações.
The funny part is that La Cerveza Mas Fina virus is only slightly worse than the flu. For context, the CDC claims in 2018 there were 16 million cases of the flu and 20,000 deaths. Corona? A couple of hundred thousand cases and a few thousand deaths. This has not prevented everybody from treating COVID19 like it was ebola. That’s the reality. The response to La Cerveza Mas Fina virus is what has tanked the stock markets, closed borders, schools, and canceled any number of events not the virus itself. The good news is that all this attention to the Corona virus will probably reap great benefits when dealing with its cousins – the various flavors of flu.
Thanks for this essay. Very important.
Which state used atomic bombs on another state?
Which state saturation bombed Indochina throughout the 1960s?
Which state has fomented coups, embargoes, crushing sanctions, assassinations and destabilization campaigns across the globe for the past 130 years?
Ergo, which state would have the means and motives to unleash a bio-weapon?
The USA mercifilly ended Japanese insanity, while saving millions of lives in continuing combat. The USA intervened to stop communist aggression of North Vietnam, and was deterred from victory by the domestic, political will of liberal-Marxist-socialist-communist American youth, mostly ensconced in public universities and in communist front street gangs. It’s a dangerous, violent world because the juvenile proletariat worldwide coalesce as an organic communist herd intent upon murdreing their mom and pop bourgeois. There are only two political entities on earth, the natural born communists and their civilizing parents who transform from animal beings into human beings undere legitimate, family authority. Eternal warfare is assured, as an extension of family conflicts of family politics.
@ Well Noted,
You’ve got to be kidding? You must!
The problem with a dialogue with military fascists is that a ‘where to begin’ scenario comes into play.
The Washington empire has been the bloodiest thing the globe has ever witnessed. American youth and other committed activists were on the correct side of history. Shills for empire like yourself should promptly be shipped to the front lines of Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan.
Thank heavens for Marxists and socialists, it was folks of their ilk who got us Social Security and Medicare.
Given that Western elites have been slaughtering innocent people for their own pathological pleasure and power for over 500 years with not so much as a week of respite, it is hard to project s scenario in which this does not continue.
The question is – will the elites use the “low yield” nukes and risk civilization to achieve their goal – I have no reason to doubt they will.
There is one and only one war, it is the war of the Western empire against all the people of the world especially US citizens.
For them, as we see clearly today, there are no good guys or bad buys there are only winners and losers.
Adroitly put, Babyl-on.. That indeed IS the reality of the American Dream/Nightmare
I always get a great educational experience reading Pepe. Fascinating and insightful.
Mr. Escobar has impressively exposed the bankruptcy of the entire neo-liberal system, which responded to its 2008 collapse by preserving the casino economy and creating new bubbles, even larger than the last. Facing a financial crisis underlying the coronovirus threat, the US and Europe face these choices: either scrap the system and go with the new paradigm outlined by LaRouche’s “Four Laws,” starting with Glass-Steagall banking separation, creation of a national bank for infrastructure, and including for example, hundreds of thousands of new hospital beds, or suffer a breakdown and true existential crisis. As the author notes, cooperation with China and modeling its approach are crucial, as Italy, Spain and Serbia recognize, as is the time for the US to abandon the ravings of those such as Rubio and Cotton which stand in its the way.
Spot on article. It is great to see the author pointing out the many inconvenient facts on the ground that our Western MSM are simply disappearing with a wall of silence, the same way they disappeared Tulsi Gabbard’s anti-regime change campaign rhetoric.
I thought this might be the case…
Certainly not the first time that I have heard this virus originated in the USA. Great piece as always, Pepe.
As per usual, Mr. Escobar offers a perspective not to be found anywhere else. This is perhaps the most thought provoking piece I’ve read to date on the inter-workings of the outbreak.