Author : Lloyd Billingsley
White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, who directed U.S. funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), often testifies to government committees. Congress has yet to hear from others who are familiar with the WIV, such as Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance.
The House Foreign Affairs committee has found “strong evidence that suggests Daszak is the public face of a CCP [Chinese Communist Party] disinformation campaign designed to suppress discussion about a possible lab leak.” According to a report from the committee’s Republican minority, Daszak “attempted to hide his close association with [China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology] while he referred to anyone in the scientific community who said a lab leak should be investigated as promoting a conspiracy theory.”
According to the report, Daszak also orchestrated a letter in the Lancet purporting to debunk the lab-leak as a conspiracy theory, and teamed with Chinese collaborators to intimidate scientists who remained skeptical. In an April 18, 2020 email, Daszak thanks Fauci for “publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” which conducted dangerous gain-of-function research to make viruses more lethal and transmissible. Fauci maintains the virus that causes COVID-19 developed naturally in the wild.
This evidence makes a case that Daszak should testify to Congress, under oath. So should Dr. Nancy Messonnier, former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Messonnier brokered the news about the pandemic.
In a series of telebriefings in early 2020, Messonnier repeatedly referred to a “novel coronavirus” and a “new virus” that would “gain a foothold in the U.S.” Messonnier, who started her CDC career with the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), did not indicate what was novel about this virus, where the virus came from, or how the virus could spread in the United States.
When asked about travelers from Wuhan to the United States, Messonnier told reporters that was “not something that I’m at liberty to talk about today” but did not reveal which U.S. official laid down the restriction, or why. When reporters asked if China was being truthful about the pandemic, Messonnier said, “We have a lot of information from China,” but did not explain the content.
Current CDC director Rochelle Walensky hailed Messonnier as a “true hero” but she was reassigned last May, then suddenly resigned with no explanation. Messonnier has now taken a position as executive director for Pandemic Prevention and Health Systems at the Skoll Foundation. There is no bar against calling Messonnier to testify before Congress, under oath. A Chinese researcher who should join her is Dr. Xiangguo Qiu.
From a leading post at Canada’s National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, Qiu shipped to the WIV a cargo of deadly pathogens, including Ebola Makona, Mayinga, Kikwit, Ivory Coast, Bundibugyo, Sudan Boniface, Sudan Gulu, MA-Ebov, GP-Ebov, GP-Sudan, Henra, Nipah Malaysia, and Nipah Bangladesh.
Qiu worked closely with four facilities believed to be involved in Chinese biological weapons development, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In 2017-2018 alone, Qiu made at least five trips to the Wuhan lab. And in August 2017, the National Health Commission of China approved research activities involving the Ebola, Nipah, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses at the Wuhan facility.
When her shipment of pathogens was discovered, Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng were “escorted” from the NML by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and eventually dismissed from the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Qiu stacks up as the most informative witness on the COVID-19 pandemic. But at the time of writing, reporters are unable to locate her.
Until the Chinese researcher can be located, Congress should call Peter Daszak and Nancy Messonnier and put them under oath. What are they helping China to hide? Embattled Americans have a right to know. Meanwhile, on the origin of the pandemic, read “The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak,” by Steven Quay and Richard Muller.
As the authors conclude, “The presence of the double CGG sequence is strong evidence of gene splicing, and the absence of diversity in the public outbreak suggests gain-of-function acceleration. The scientific evidence points to the conclusion that the virus was developed in a laboratory.”
Reporter : Cathy He, The Epoch Times PREMIUM
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is not President Joe Biden’s “old friend,” Biden said on June 16 as he raised concerns about Beijing’s willingness to help find the origins of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.
Asked if the president would call Xi and ask him “old friend to old friend” to re-admit World Health Organization investigators, Biden said: “Let’s get something straight: We know each other well, we’re not old friends. It’s just pure business.”
The remarks appeared to be a departure from previous comments from Biden where he sought to highlight his close relationship with Xi cultivated from when he was vice president.
Xi was China’s vice chair, and thus Biden’s counterpart at the time. The two had spent more than 24 hours in private meetings and 17,000 miles traveling together during that time, according to Biden. During a 2013 trip Biden made to Beijing, Xi addressed the then-vice president as “my old friend.”
Biden, speaking at a press conference after his meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, expressed skepticism about the Chinese regime’s cooperation with a virus origins investigation.
“China is trying very hard to project itself as a responsible and very, very forthcoming nation, and they are trying very hard to talk about how they’re helping the world in terms of COVID-19 and vaccines,” the president said.
“Look, certain things you don’t have to explain to the people of the world, they see the results. Is China really actually trying to get to the bottom of this?”
Biden in May ordered aides to find answers to the origin of the virus that causes COVID-19, which was first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and said U.S. intelligence agencies are looking at rival theories, potentially including the possibility of a laboratory accident in China.
Earlier this year, a team of foreign and Chinese scientists assembled by the WHO that spent two weeks on the ground in Wuhan in February found in its report that the virus “likely” transmitted from bats to humans via another animal, and the possibility it leaked from a lab was “extremely unlikely.”
But the report was widely criticized, with Washington and other governments saying the study was “insufficient and inconclusive.” In addition, Beijing refused to provide the team with raw data to early COVID-19 cases nor access to records of the Wuhan Institute of Virology—the lab at the center of the lab leak theory.
In recent weeks, the United States and allies have stepped up calls for a thorough investigation into the pandemic origins, while ratcheting pressure on Beijing to fully cooperate.
News (9)
Key evidence references of Zhoushan bat virus ZC45 and ZXC21 as the backbone of SARS-CoV-2
Ref: https://mega.nz/folder/r0oggTJK#_So7AOEb6Xt-Bh1GrJEzag (bit.ly/3wHgy31)
News (10)
Biden went hiding, his National Security Adviser blames Afghan troops for the capitulation to the Taliban
Reporter : Rob Crilly, Daily Mail
With the United Nations Security Council and European ministers due to hold crisis meetings to address the rapid return of the Taliban, Biden and his officials kept a low profile amid mounting questions about their bungling departure from Afghanistan.
Email enquiries sent to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki over the weekend received an automated out-of-office response saying she would return on Aug. 22.
While U.S. military planes flew in an out of Kabul airport to rescue American nationals, it was left to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to defend Biden's decision for a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He said staying longer would not have changed the overall outcome but was vague about when the nation might hear from its commander in chief.
'They can expect to hear from the president soon. He's right now actively engaged with his national security team,' he told Good Morning America.
He is working the situation hard.
'He is focused on ensuring the mission which is to secure that airport and continue these evacuations that that mission continues and brought to a positive conclusion. He's deeply engaged on it.
'At the right point he will address the American people.'
Former President Trump mocked Biden's absence.
'The outcome in Afghanistan would have been totally different if the Trump Administration had been in charge,' he said in an emailed statement.
'Who or what will Joe Biden surrender to next?
'Someone should ask him, if they can find him.'
The nature and speed of the Afghan government's collapse in the face of a Taliban advance poses the most serious test of Biden's presidency so far.
He trumpeted his foreign experience during last year's campaign and struck a defiant tone in defending the U.S. withdrawal by insisting a Taliban take over was not 'inevitable.'
But on Monday, Sullivan admitted that the administration was surprised at how quickly Kabul had fallen.
'It is certainly the case that the speed with which cities fell was much greater than anyone anticipated,' he told NBC's Today show.
Like other officials, he tried to distance the Biden administration from the collapse, blaming Afghanistan's government and armed forces.
'Part of the reason for that... is because at the end of the day, despite the fact that we spent 20 years and tens of billions of dollars to get the best equipment, the best training and the best capacity to the national Afghan security forces, we could not give them the will,' he said.
Republicans laid the blame squarely with Biden.
In a joint statement, three former security officials in the Trump administration said withdrawal was the right decision but had been badly botched.
'The difference between then and now is leadership,' said Lt. General (Ret.) Keith Kellogg, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and former Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf
'The Biden Administration alone owns this failure, adding Afghanistan to Biden’s long history of, as President Obama’s Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, being "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."'
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