90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Teach Your Children Well...

As Chinese Lies on Coronavirus Get Exposed, Another Government Critic Vanishes

Even as the COVID-19 outbreak, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, ravages the globe, the Chinese government is trying to shift blame and avoid being held accountable.

According to Reuters, friends of a Chinese real estate mogul who had criticized Chinese President Xi Jinping’s handling of the outbreak say he has now vanished.

Ren Zhiqiang had called Xi, who also serves as general secretary of the Communist Party of China, a “clown” in an essay written after the Chinese leader delivered a speech on Feb. 23.

In the essay, Ren said the current crisis was exacerbated by the lack of a free news media and free speech in China.

“Ren Zhiqiang is a public figure and his disappearance is widely know. The institutions responsible for this need to give a reasonable and legal explanation for this as soon as possible,” Ren’s friend, businesswoman Wang Ying, told Reuters.

Renmin University history professor Zhang Ming, an acquaintance of Ren’s who has also been unable to get in touch with him, expressed similar sentiments.

China has disappeared Ren Zhiqiang

“A citizen can’t just disappear, we need to know if he’s been taken by any department and where. His family and friends should know,” Zhang told the South China Morning Post.

According to Radio Free Asia, this wasn’t Ren’s first run-in with the Chinese government, which is not known for treating its critics particularly well.

He was previously punished over his criticism of Xi’s demands that media outlets serve the interests of China’s ruling communist party.

Despite Ren’s disappearance, the Chinese government is finding it hard to keep reports about its mishandling of the initial outbreak of COVID-19 secret.

The New York Times reported last month that the Chinese government had admitted Xi knew about the emerging pandemic for two weeks before he...

Joe Biden and the Democrat Party’s Incestuous Relationship with China

Desperation has set in among the Politburo in China as their deliberate mishandling and obfuscation of the Chinese Coronavirus outbreak has threatened, and in all likelihood derailed, their grandiose plans for global hegemony. In what can only be described as one of the most ham-handed propaganda efforts in recent memory, China is now trying to deflect blame onto the United States for the Coronavirus outbreak that has been recently categorized as a global pandemic. Further, they are unabashedly claiming that any criticism of their “valiant” efforts to stem the spread of the virus or using the nomenclature of Wuhan Virus or Chinese Coronavirus is racist and xenophobic.

While their attempt to implicate the United States may appear on the surface to be absurd, the reality is that much of it will fall on fertile ground previously tilled and seeded over the past 25 years with vast amounts of money and investments.

An end-product of China’s infiltration of the American media and education establishment is the almost immediate regurgitation of China’s racist and xenophobic argument by the American mainstream media and the predominantly left-wing professional class. Hollywood and the entertainment cabal, already awash in Chinese capital and desperate for access to the Chinese market, has refused to criticize China’s handling of the Coronavirus focusing instead on President Trump. It is almost a certainty that when the pandemic recedes there will be nothing produced that is even remotely critical of China.

The European Union is now China’s largest trading partner and investor. They are beginning to exert increasing influence in nations such as Italy and throughout the continent. Which is why the European Union refused to initiate a travel ban from China during the entirety of the Coronavirus outbreak, leading to Europe now being the global epicenter of the pandemic as well as the source of the bulk of the infections in the United States.

With this overall backdrop the Chinese leadership is confident that their near clownish propaganda efforts will succeed. Their only obstacle is the re-election of President Trump, who is the only world leader in the past 25 years to understand what animates the Chinese and to stand up to their...

Reuters Reports Monstrous Lie Claiming Trump Sought ‘Monopoly’ on COVID-19 Vaccine

A REPORT FROM A GERMAN NEWSPAPER CLAIMING THAT PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP WANTED TO SECURE EXCLUSIVE AMERICAN ACCESS TO A CORONAVIRUS VACCINE HAS PROVEN TO BE FALSE, BUT ONLY AFTER THE STORY WAS REPEATED AND SPREAD BY MAINSTREAM MEDIA OUTLETS INCLUDING REUTERS, THE GUARDIAN, AND BUSINESS INSIDER.

Reuters later stealth-edited its story to incorporate official statements denying the original newspaper report. But a New York Times journalist had already shared the Reuters article before it was altered. An MSNBC producer also shared the story.

The German newspaper Welt am Sonntag published a story Sunday claiming that White House officials had offered about $1 billion to the German biopharmaceutical firm CureVac to move to the U.S. and to make a coronavirus vaccine for the U.S. only. The company has indicated that it hopes to have a vaccine by June or July.

The newspaper cited an anonymous source in the German government claiming to “confirm” that President Trump wanted the vaccine “only for the United States,” then covered reactions from German politicians, who declared “no country should have a monopoly on any future vaccine,” according to the summary from reporters Paul Carrel and Andreas Rinke.

But the story quickly fell apart. CureVac issued a statement on Twitter denying that...

Hope You Enjoyed Your Cinco De Mayo Last Year...

Activist Judges Blocked Trump’s Iran Travel Ban, Now NYC’s Outbreak is Due to Travel from Iran

Daniel Horowitz of Conservative Review made an interesting observation on March 16, 2020.

He tweeted, “Nearly the entire outbreak in NY came from a traveler from Iran, a place that was supposed to have a travel ban, but thanks to lower courts continuing to militate against Scotus decision, it was rendered moot. “

On March 1, 2020 New York did confirm its first case of the Wuhan virus.

“The patient, a woman in her late 30s, contracted the virus while traveling abroad in Iran, and is currently isolated in her home,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared in a statement.

The woman resides in Manhattan, and Cuomo reported that a lab in Albany confirmed her test.

“The patient has respiratory symptoms, but is not in serious condition and has been in a controlled situation since arriving to New York,” Cuomo stated.

He added that the case should not cause a massive stir.

“There is no cause for surprise — this was expected. As I said from the beginning, it was a matter of when, not if there would be a positive case of novel coronavirus in New York,” Cuomo said.

“There is no reason for undue anxiety — the general risk remains low in New York. We are diligently managing this situation and will continue to provide information as it becomes available,” he continued.

Lower courts have tried messing with Trump’s sensible travel ban from several Islamic countries.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court has stepped in to uphold these bans.

Nevertheless, the U.S. still has work to do on immigration and travel restrictions in such sensitive times.

When countries like Iran are already plagued with so many cases of the Wuhan virus, it makes zero sense for...

The official who once ran the White House pandemic program dismissed a false Democratic talking point that Trump eliminated the pandemic-response team and criticized reporters for parroting the claim in news stories.

"No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office. I was there," wrote former National Security Council adviser Tim Morrison for the Washington Post on Monday.

"It has been alleged by multiple officials of the Obama administration, including in The Post, that the president and his then-national security adviser, John Bolton, ‘dissolved the office' at the White House in charge of pandemic preparedness," Morrison wrote. "Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious."

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said in a March 1 interview that Trump "eliminated that office." Journalists soon began taking up the former vice president's talking point as fact. The Boston Globe picked up the narrative, running a piece titled, "Trump attacks CDC over coronavirus preparedness, though he eliminated an office dedicated to pandemic prevention." The accusation was a particular favorite of the Washington Post, which furthered the narrative by running an op-ed from former Obama NSC staffer Beth Cameron headlined, "I ran the White House pandemic office. Trump closed it." Not including Cameron and Morrison's op-eds, the Post mentioned the accusation in five other op-eds or pieces.

As part of an effort to slim down the historically bloated National Security Council, the directorate of global health and biodefense was merged with two other positions—not eliminated—according to Morrison.

"If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because...