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February
03
2020

Coronavirus Update
Paul Craig Roberts

Using more recent data from China of the coronavirus’ infection and death rates than the Indian scientists had, “Moon of Alabama” concludes that the “pandemic” has reached its peak and will be over with in a month.  

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/02/coronaupdate.html

If so, then Jon Rappoport was correct in the beginning that coronavirus was just another big scare hype.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/01/28/coronavirus-a-real-threat-or-another-scare/ 

Let’s hope that this is the case and that the coronavirus is a far less threat than ordinary flu. Nevertheless, such a happy outcome still leaves us with a lot of puzzling questions.  Here are a few of them:

1. Why such an enormous effort by the Chinese government using draconian quarantine measures affecting millions of people and multi-country halts of travel to and from China over a threat far less serious than ordinary flu? 
   
   
2. Why is there a rush to develop a vaccine?
   
   
3. Why the expert predictions of a worldwide pandemic?
   
   
4. Why did the virus originate in a Chinese city known to have labs for the study of dangerous viruses?
   
   
5. Why do the scare viruses originate in China—SARS, swine flu, bird flue, coronavirus?
   
   
6. Why did the team of scientists in India find elements of HIV in the coronavirus genome that is believed to raise the infectious potential, a finding, if correct, implies the engineering of a bioterror weapon?

The scientists might be wrong, but they are not presenting a conspiracy theory.  They published their paper provisionally in order to get input from other scientists.  I have no idea whether their findings will be validated, and whatever we are told, we might never know.  If the virus proves to be bioengineered, the Chinese government will know whether something they did escaped.  If they are not responsible for the virus, they will perceive an attack on them by the US.  This type of information would confirm Chinese suspicions:

“Research conducted by the Pentagon, and DARPA specifically, has continually raised concerns, not just in the field of bioweapons and biotechnology, but also in the fields of nanotechnology, robotics and several others. DARPA, for instance, has been developing a series of unsettling research projects that ranges from microchips that can create and delete memories from the human brain to voting machine software that is rife with problems.

“Now, as fear regarding the current coronavirus outbreak begins to peak, companies with direct ties to DARPA have been tasked with developing its vaccine, the long-term human and environmental impacts of which are unknown and will remain unknown by the time the vaccine is expected to go to market in a few weeks time.

“Furthermore, DARPA and the Pentagon’s past history with bioweapons and their more recent experiments on genetic alteration and extinction technologies as well as bats and coronaviruses in proximity to China have been largely left out of the narrative, despite the information being publicly available. Also left out of the media narrative have been the direct ties of both the USAMRIID and DARPA-partnered Duke University to the city of Wuhan, including its Institute of Medical Virology.

“Though much about the origins of the coronavirus outbreak remains unknown, the U.S. military’s ties to the aforementioned research studies and research institutions are worth detailing as such research — while justified in the name of “national security” — has the frightening potential to result in unintended, yet world-altering consequences. The lack of transparency about this research, such as DARPA’s decision to classify its controversial genetic extinction research and the technology’s use as a weapon of war, compounds these concerns. While it is important to avoid reckless speculation as much as possible, it is the opinion of this author that the information in this report is in the public interest and that readers should use this information to reach their own conclusions about the topics discussed herein.”

https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/76139/bats-gene-editing-and-bioweapons-recent-darpa-experiments-raise-concerns-amid-coronavirus.html 

If the Indian scientists’ findings are correct, we should expect them to be shouted down by government supported scientists.  To save their careers, they would have to acknowledge a mistake in their research.  If the virus were a US manufactured one, China would have the same incentive to coverup the fact as Washington, because otherwise the consequence would be war, for which China is not ready.  

There are other concerns.  For example, concurrent with the announcement of the new virus there were accusations that the Chinese virus lab was responsible for the pandemic threat and might even have released it purposely on its own population. Moon of Alabama is correct to call this a conspiracy theory.  It is a conspiracy theory to discredit the Chinese government with the Chinese population and the rest of the world.  The Chinese government has no interest in harming the Chinese economy and discrediting itself with a population that it is trying to rule without a harsh hand, but Washington has an interest in ruining the Chinese.

I think it is a good thing that the question whether coronavirus is an engineered virus came up. There are a number of secret high security labs around the world doing scary things.  As Whitney Webb writes, “The lack of transparency about this research, such as DARPA’s decision to classify its controversial genetic extinction research and the technology’s use as a weapon of war, compounds these concerns.”  There is a treaty—or was as Washington might have pulled out of it like it has the arms control agreements with the Russians—that supposedly prevents countries from making bioweapons.  However, whether they are making the weapons or not, they are doing research that could quickly be weaponized.  

Perhaps it would be a good thing if there were a worldwide public discussion whether the benefit of the research is greater than the risk of a deadly pandemic.  The lack of transparency makes mischief possible.  Remember the anthrax letters in the wake of 9/11 that turned out to contain a version of anthrax available only in a US government lab.  To cover this up, the letters were blamed on a dead man who had no motive to send the letters and no access to the anthrax.  Something as dangerous as bioengineered pathogens require plenty of transparency. 

There is no reason scientists should be permitted to investigate whatever they want.  Think for a minute, what is the good of nuclear weapons?  Perhaps if Earth were invaded by hightech Aliens, thermonuclear weapons could be a defense.  Perhaps if an astroid is on collision course with Earth, nuclear missiles could shatter it into small pieces that would burn up in the atmosphere or into smaller pieces that would do less damage.  What else are nuclear weapons good for but to bring us Armageddon?

A lot of thought is needed also about robotics and artificial intelligence.  Robots such as those that can withstand deep underwater pressures and radiation are useful.  But robots that displace people can leave humans unemployed and without purpose.  And do we really want machines as smart or smarter than humans or weaponized?

The challenges of these technologies can be very interesting to scientists, but the unintended and ignored consequences can be horrific.

An obvious question is:  If people with white skin cannot use certain words or long-established expressions, cannot read, study, or teach certain subjects that some believe are offensive, and cannot organize or segregate themselves as others are permitted to do, why can scientists and governments study and manufacture things that could terminate life itself?  This makes no sense.  If we do not begin to make better sense soon, conspiracy theories are going to become very real.

We cannot rely on the ethics and morality of governments.  They have neither.  Consider the US and its European vassals.  For 20 years they have bombed, invaded, murdered, and ravaged seven countries, destroying them in whole or part, all on the basis of transparent lies.  And nothing is done about it. Indeed, the murderous process continues.

Based on these transparent lies, President George W. Bush violated the US Constitution and held indefinitely American citizens on suspicion alone, and President Obama violated due process by executing US citizens on suspicion alone.

Neither were impeached.  Congress, the judiciary, and the public accepted this shredding of the US Constitution and stepped into a police state.  When there is no honest media to protect the people, government transparency becomes even more critical.

Since 2009, the US government has overthrown governments in Honduras, Ukraine, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, reversed the reform process in Ecuador, temporarily overthrew Chevez in Venezuela and continues to try to overthrow his successor Maduro. Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Russia, and China remain on Washington’s list of countries to be overthrown.

This extraordinary arrogance is easily capable of using a false flag engineered pathogen to produce termoil within a country that collapses a government.  For this reason, the transparency of research is of the upmost importance.

Hon. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.

He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Dr. Roberts' latest books are The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with IPE Fellow Lawrence Stratton, and published by Prima Publishing in May 2000, and Chile: Two Visions - The Allende-Pinochet Era, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen Araujo, and published in Spanish by Universidad Nacional Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile, in November 2000. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen LaFollette Araujo, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. A Spanish language edition was published by Oxford in 1999. The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in 1995. A paperback edition was published in 1997. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. Harvard University Press published his book, The Supply-Side Revolution, in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." Dr. Roberts is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990. He is the author of Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983. A Spanish language edition was published in 1974.

Dr. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments. He has contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista de Political Economica, and Zeitschrift fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has entries in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Economics and the New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, The National Interest, Harper's, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, London Times, The Financial Times, TLS, The Spectator, Il Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

Dr. Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.), the University of Virginia (Ph.D.), the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, The Dictionary of International Biography, Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century, and 1000 Leaders of World Influence. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]

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