China has buried the truth about the coronavirus !

COVID-19 lies to keep Chinese economy going

Over the past 70 years, the Chinese Communist party has subjected its country to a succession of manmade catastrophes, from the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacre, to the forceful suppression of rights in Hong Kong and Tibet, and the mass internment of Uighurs in Xinjiang. Official coverups and corruption have multiplied the death toll of natural calamities, from the Sars virus to the Sichuan earthquake.

Data on March 10th 2020 – Johns Hopkins University

Xi Jinping’s mishandling of the CoronaVirus Pandemic must now be added to the party’s shameful list of crimes. With serious outbreaks occurring in Japan, South Korea, Iran and Italy, it is clear that the virus of Xi’s totalitarian rule threatens the health and freedoms not only of the Chinese people, but of all of us everywhere.

PROPBABLY OVER 3 MILLION INFECTED CHINESE PEOPLE !

Xi’s vacuous, self-aggrandising ideological vision lies at the heart of this global crisis. When he was appointed party leader in 2012, he announced his “China dream” of national rejuvenation, promising that the country would be moderately prosperous by the party’s 2021 centenary, and fully advanced into global economic hegemony by the republic’s centenary in 2049. Xi vowed that, by then, the world would concede that his one-party dictatorship is superior to the mess of liberal democracy.

Appointing himself “president for life”, Xi now has more power than any party leader since Mao Zedong, and has crushed all dissent by attempting to build a hi-tech totalitarian state. The Communist party is an insidious pathogen that has infected the Chinese people since 1949. But under Xi’s rule, it has mutated into its most sinister form, allowing capitalism to grow rapaciously while reaffirming Leninist control. The promise of wealth and national glory has blinded many Chinese people to the chains around their feet, and to the barbed wire around the faraway internment camps.

OFFICIAL CORONA / COVID-19 FIGURES – 50% DEATHS ?!?

In a speech on 31 December 2019, Xi heralded triumphantly a new year of “milestone significance in realising the first centenary goal!” Naturally, he didn’t mention the mysterious pneumonia reported that day by health authorities in Wuhan, Hubei province. Although the World Health Organization had been notified, the Chinese people were largely kept in the dark. How could an invisible bug be allowed to dampen the glory of Xi’s China dream?

In times of crisis, the party always places its own survival above the welfare of the people. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan central hospital, has become the tragic symbol of this disaster. On 30 December, he notified his former medical classmates on WeChat that seven people with an unspecified coronavirus, which reminded him of Sars (the virus that killed almost 800 people in 2003), were in quarantine at his hospital, and advised them to protect themselves. In any normal society, this wouldn’t be considered subversive – but in China, even a small act of kindness, a cautious and private alert to colleagues, can land a person in political danger. On 3 January, Li was reprimanded by police – he then went back to work, and within days contracted the virus.

Over the next two weeks – the critical window of containment – authorities claimed the problem was under control. But coronavirus is indifferent to the vain desires of despots. Left unchecked, it spread. By the time Xi deigned to publicly acknowledge the outbreak, on 20 January, ordering it to be “resolutely contained”, it was too late.

On 23 January, Wuhan was placed in lockdown. Yet on that same day, at a reception in Beijing, Xi merely stressed the need to “race against time and keep abreast with history to realise the first centenary goal of the China dream of national rejuvenation”. Videos on WeChat and Weibo revealed the hollowness of Xi’s ambitions. There was footage of deserted boulevards in affected cities. Corpses lying unattended on pavements. A woman on the balcony of a luxury tower block striking a gong and wailing into the sky: “My mother is dying, rescue me!”

As Li lay on his deathbed on 30 January, he revealed the truth about his experience of the epidemic. Despite being a party member, he spoke to the New York Times about official failures to disclose essential information about the virus to the public, and told the Beijing-based journal Caixin: “A healthy society cannot have just one voice.” In that one sentence, he identified the root cause of China’s sickness. Xi suppresses truth and information to create his utopian “harmonious” society. But harmony can only emerge from a plurality of differing voices, not from the one-note monologue of a tyrant.

After the eruption of public grief and anger that followed Li’s death on 6 February, the government backtracked, and hailed the doctor they had muzzled “a hero”. But behind the scenes, the silencing continued: several people who documented and spoke out about state handling of the outbreak were detained.

In the thick of calamity, people finally understand that if your leaders have no regard for human life or liberty, no amount of money can save you. Entire families have been wiped out by the virus as more than 70 million people have been confined to their homes. Chinese officials have today reported 78,064 infections and 2,715 deaths, mostly in Hubei. But no one trusts the party’s figures. The only certainty about the numbers it releases is that they are the numbers it wants you to believe. In an effort to change the narrative after Li’s death, the party has called for a people’s war against the virus, and has urged journalists to replace “negative content” on social media with “touching stories from the frontline of combating the disease”. Having buried the truth about the calamity of the Cultural Revolution and other earlier crimes, the party is now dragging the nation back to its Maoist past.

Official language is being contaminated once more with military jargon; society is being divided once more into antagonist groups – not the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, but the infected against the yet-to-be-infected. Rural police post videos of their attacks on citizens who dare venture outside without a face mask.

The state media have posted photographs of pregnant nurses in hazmat suits serving on the frontline; there are masked patients in another field hospital being awarded party membership on their deathbeds, joyfully raising their fists in the air as they pledge undying loyalty to Xi. To anyone with a conscience, these sad individuals look like victims of an inhumane cult. That it is believed these snapshots could promote “positive energy” reveals the moral abyss into which totalitarianism has sunk the nation.

Meanwhile, with the epidemic still raging, Xi has ordered the country back to work, all to ensure that the economic targets of his 21st-century goals are met. Of course, he is keeping the political elite safe, though, by postponing the National People’s Congress in March. Further proof, if it was at all needed, that Xi’s China dream is a sham.

Ma Jian is an author from Qingdao, China. He left Beijing for Hong Kong in 1987 as a dissident, and after the handover moved to London. All his books are banned in China. Check Updates Yourself @ CSSE

Source : TheGuardian

World war 3 is coming !

WORLD WAR III IS COMING !

Although there has been no major combat between the great powers since the Second World War, there are three key fronts emerging that make the prospect of a third global conflict alarmingly conceivable.

The prospect of a global conflict – World War III if you like – appears somewhat unthinkable. Since the Second World War, there has been no major war between the great powers. The original post-war European project was based around peace, social justice and harmony. The unravelling of this project, accompanied by rising nationalism, is likely to exacerbate the dangers of war on a continent with a fraught history of bloody conflict.

COLD WAR II ALAMONGORDO - http://www.alamongordo.com/

In the 20th century, both world wars were unanticipated. Christopher Clark’s much acclaimed The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 – published in timely fashion for the centenary of First World War – charted Europe’s unexpected descent into war. First World War had been preceded by a prelude of serenity – the long 19th century of relative peace and stability. The great powers of Edwardian Europe had been engaged in diplomacy and trade prior to the onslaught of carnage.

During the 1930s, the major powers were keen to avert another war hence the policy of appeasement, the initial reluctance of the US to become involved and the Nazi-Soviet pact. Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated announcement of “peace for our time” should be viewed in this context. Throughout the Cold War, the concept of a third world war was inextricably associated with nuclear war and the MAD doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.

Yet it is possible that future conflict between the great powers may take the form of another cold war or even a conventional (as opposed to thermonuclear) hot war. In the 21st century, there are three key fronts emerging as the loci for future wars. The first is the Europe-Russia front with a new cold war triggered by the Ukrainian conflict. The second is the Middle East cauldron centred around Isis and the Syrian war. The third is the Asia-Pacific front with a face-off between the United States and China.

Cold War II

Time magazine – the original Cold War mouthpiece of the American establishment – trumpeted the start of Cold War II in 2014. Western powers have characterised Vladimir Putin’s incursions into Georgia in 2008 and lately Ukraine as aggressive expansionism. Evidently the irony of the US casting aspersions around violation of national sovereignty, in light of the folly of the Iraq war, seems to have been lost. The realist perspective – as articulated by John Mearsheimer in the pages of US foreign policy bible Foreign Affairs – is that the Ukrainian crisis was preceded by two decades of NATO expansionism up to the borders of Russia. This was in contravention of promises made to respect these boundaries at the end of the Cold War.

In this view, events in Ukraine have merely been the endgame of this process. It is worth recalling that the United States did not respond amicably to Soviet interference in Cuba in the 1960s. Such arguments have been rendered somewhat academic as they are overtaken by events. Increasing deployments of troops by both Nato and Russia, dangerous confrontations and massive war games are being played out.
The European Leadership Network (ELN) think-tank produced a 2015 report entitled Preparing for the Worst: Are Russian and Nato Military Exercises Making War in Europe more Likely? The report analysed recent war games including a Russian exercise involving 80,000 military personnel and a set of Nato war games comprising 15,000 personnel.

It went on to say that, “Both exercises show that each side is training with the other side’s capabilities and most likely war plans in mind… Whilst spokespeople may maintain that these operations are targeted against hypothetical opponents, the nature and scale of them indicate otherwise. Russia is preparing for a conflict with Nato, and Nato is preparing for a possible confrontation with Russia.”

Recently, the US has stationed troops in Poland in the largest deployment of American troops in Europe since the end of the Cold War. As reported, these US troops will also, “fan out across other eastern European states, including Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania”. Russia alarmed the Baltic states by, “moving nuclear-capable Iskander-M missiles to its naval base at Kaliningrad in the autumn”.

According to the New York Times, an American missile shield is, “to be built in Poland mirroring one already in place in Romania”. Whether Trump’s attempted rapprochement with Russia defuses the situation remains to be seen. If the cold warriors in the Atlanticist defence establishment and hard-liners on the Russian side have their way, then tensions are only likely to be ratcheted up.

Middle East Geopolitics

The intrepid German author Jürgen Todenhöfer took the concept of embedded journalism to a whole new level by holing up with Isis. He points out that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there were only a few hundred Islamist fighters in the Hindu Kush mountains. Fast forward through 16 years of the war on terror costing some $4,000bn (£3,300bn) and leaving 1.3 million dead, according to Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the number of terrorists is currently about 100,000. Even on its own terms, the war on terror has been an abysmal failure. How on earth did this happen? Retired US General Wesley Clark revealed that, in the wake of 9/11, the Pentagon drew up plans to attack 7 countries.

These plans have been adhered to with remarkable fidelity with Western involvement in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The pretext may have been terrorism but the intention was to guarantee economic and military supremacy in the region. Many critics argued that the Iraq war was fundamentally about the opening up of state assets to global capital. Naomi Klein reported that the reconstruction of Iraq was estimated to have been worth about $100bn to the US economy. In the process, Iraq was transformed from a secular dictatorship into a Jihadist safe haven. Donald Rumsfeld’s decision to disband Saddam Hussein’s Baathist army led to chaos and now makes up a significant component of Isis.

The deliberate stoking of tensions through a US sponsored sectarian Shia-led Iraqi government was notable. This ultimately led to the Sunni backlash and the spawning of al-Qaeda in Iraq. This is a hallmark of colonial-era tactics of divide and rule. In fact, British and American intelligence predicted that the Iraq war would lead to the amplification of Islamist terrorism.

Back in 2007, the veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh posited in an extended New Yorker essay, The Redirection, that US Middle East geopolitical strategy was directed against the regional superpower of Iran and its Shia sphere of influence extending through Syria and to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hersh has since elaborated, in a series of controversial London Review of Books essays, that the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad would have severed this Shia sphere. Following the destruction of Iraq, this sphere remained the only obstacle to US full-spectrum dominance of the world’s largest oil fields.

The Syrian war has seen allies – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – arming and funding radical Jihadist groups, such as the al-Nusra front. Former Vice President Joe Biden – renowned for bloopers – frankly admitted as much to a Harvard audience. The Wikileaks disclosures of Hillary Clinton’s emails revealed that she too was aware of Saudi and Qatari governments arming Isis. In realpolitik, the ends apparently justify the means.

WORLDWARIII 2018 WORLD WAR 3 2019 - http://www.alamongordo.com

Hersh elaborates on how British and American intelligence have been enmeshed with the use of CIA front companies in an arms pipeline from Libya to Syria dubbed the “rat line”. It was under these conditions that the mutation into the Frankenstein monster that is Isis took place. In fact, a 2012 Defence Intelligence Agency memo had anticipated the rise of Isis and its establishment in Syria in order to “isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion”.

The terrorist attacks in Europe have demonstrated the difficulty in containing the spill-over from these policies. The Syrian war has seen the return of great-power politics with the involvement of Russia. This contamination has the potential for a wider conflict in which western countries could be drawn in. One possible trajectory is that a Sunni-Shia war along the Saudi-Iran axis looks increasingly likely. Yet this destabilisation of Iraq and Syria may well have been engineered deliberately.

According to Nafeez Ahmed, documents from the Rand Corporation and US private intelligence firm Stratfor confirm this picture. An incendiary report, authored by no less than former Bush Vice President Dick Cheney and former deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, envisioned ethno-sectarian partitioning of Iraq. All in all, this could represent a new Sykes-Picot (the post Ottoman empire settlement) or redrawing of the Middle East carving it up into smaller, weaker territories, which are more pliable.

Back in the 1990s, the political scientist Samuel Huntington made some dire predictions of a clash of civilisations. Even in the wake of 9/11, such apocalyptic theories appeared quaint; now they no longer seem absurd. Isis directives aim to create more violence and chaos with the obliteration of the “grey zone” of multicultural societies, in which non-Muslims and Muslims live side by side, forcing Muslims to join the “caliphate”. Ironically, US policy is doing Isis’s work for them and, in another bizarre twist, it seems that Isis is aiding US geopolitical strategy.

Asia Pacific

Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War is an intelligent thriller written by PW Singer and August Cole, both of whom have national security expertise. Ghost Fleet imagines what a 21st century world war might look like pitting the US, China and Russia against each other complete with cyber-warfare, robotics and drones. But could this nightmarish fiction turn into dystopian reality?

During the Obama administration, the Pentagon pursued the pivot to Asia aiming to transfer 60 per cent of naval bases to Asia. The US also strengthened alliances with Japan and other Far East partners to “contain” China. Economically, the US pursued the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – a massive trade agreement, which would have deliberately excluded China. Admittedly, a Trump executive order indicates imminent withdrawal from TPP. In recent years, tensions have been mounting between China and Japan.

Both sides are now equipped with vertical take-off aircraft. There have also been a series of stand-offs between the US and China in the South China Sea. The US is currently installing a missile defence system in South Korea prompting China to warn of a new atomic arms race in the region. A recent US taskforce report unsurprisingly concluded that America and China are on a dangerous collision course.

The Trump transition is likely to exacerbate US-China tensions. Trump has threatened a trade war with China. While his chief strategist Steve Bannon stated in March of last year that, “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years…. There’s no doubt about that.” If there is a coherent philosophy of Trumpism then it is represented by the ideology of Bannon. Bannon subscribes to the Huntingtonian idea of a coming clash of civilisations between west and east with the Orient bracketing both China and Islam.

Bannon views China and Islam as expansionist threats. He has also stated that the Judaeo-Christian west is, “at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism” and that, “We’re clearly going into, I think, a major shooting war in the Middle East again.” China will eventually overtake the US in economic terms but US supreme military dominance is unchallenged. This is a dangerous discrepancy as it means that the US will use this military power to guarantee its economic prerogative – particularly as a massive national security apparatus now seems to dictate US foreign policy. As Obama has put it, the US is exceptional because it acts.

This would be in keeping with the default operational mode of capitalism. One might even argue that capitalism often resolves systemic economic crises through war. After all, a war economy with militarisation, mobilisation, full employment and jingoism can be viewed as the ultimate solution to economic woes and social unrest.

The transition of Western democracy to oligarchy and the descent into soft fascism is under way. Citizens will need to participate actively, rather than as passive consumers, to demand an end to this cycle of violence from governments and to defend the assault on democratic processes. We can only hope that British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey’s refrain on the commencement of First World War – “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time” – will not be repeated in ours. But the omens are not good. As the late Eric Hobsbawm put it, the old century has not ended well.

Source : Independent

War between US and North Korea could start at Any Moment !

A war between the US and N.Korea is on the brink of breaking out, China has said in a desperate warning to the world.

It comes as speculation mounted US President Donald Trump would launch a preemptive strike on the regime before this weekend. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, today said something drastic would have to be done to stop the world going down an “irreversible route”.

North Korea US World War III WW3 Carl Vinson Strike Force US Navy - http://www.alamongordo.com/

Speaking at a joint briefing with visiting French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, he warned that whichever side started the war “must assume the historic responsibility and pay the corresponding price.”

Kim Jong-un is expected to oversee North Korea’s biggest nuclear missile test ever this weekend – something the US is reportedly planning on stopping. Intelligence officials have revealed the US placed two devices capable of firing Tomahawk missiles into the peninsula.

American bombers have also been positioned in Guam ready to strike if necessary. And the US Carl Vinson has led a fleet of warships to the peninsula, along with Japanese allies.

China itself has reportedly sent just under 200,000 troops to the North Korea border to prepare for the expected onslaught. Officials are said to be worried that a strike by the US on NK could spark waves of refugees flooding over the border.

Yesterday, the US dropped the “mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province in a bid to wipe out ISIS militants. There are suspicions the bomb – reportedly twice the size of the nuke dropped on Hiroshima – was used to send a message to Kim Jong-un that the US is serious about taking out its enemies with firepower.

Source : DailyStar

China Deploys 150,000 Troops to North Korean Border !

China Deploys 150,000 Troops to North Korea to Prepare for US Strike !

The Chinese government has deployed 150.000 troops to the North Korean border to prepare for a strike from the United States following the missile airstrikes against Syria last week. The strikes against Syria have been widely interpreted as a warning to Kim Jong-Un from President Trump for continuing to conduct nuclear missile testing despite warnings from the international community.

China deploys 150000 troops to North-korean border and are ready for World War III Alamongordo - http://www.alamongordo.com/

China has now dispatched troops from the People’s Liberation Army forces to the Yalu River in anticipation of pre-emptive attacks as the US Navy moves the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group from Singapore to North Korea.According to reports from Korea’s Chosun.com, The troops have been dispatched to handle North Korean refugees and “unforeseen circumstances”, such as the prospect of preemptive attacks on North Korea, the news agency said.

The Daily Mail reports: China’s top nuclear envoy arrived in Seoul Monday for talks on the North Korean threat, as the United States sent the naval strike group to the region and signaled it may act to shut down Pyongyang’s weapons program.

Speculation of an imminent nuclear test is brewing as the North marks major anniversaries including the 105th birthday of its founding leader on Saturday – sometimes celebrated with a demonstration of military might. Wu Dawei, China’s Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Affairs, met with his South Korean counterpart on Monday to discuss the nuclear issue.

The talks come shortly after Trump hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping for a summit at which he pressed Pyongyang’s key ally to do more to curb the North’s nuclear ambitions. ‘(We) are prepared to chart our own course if this is something China is just unable to coordinate with us,’ US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said after the summit. He added however that Beijing had indicated a willingness to act on the issue.

‘We need to allow them time to take actions,’ Tillerson said, adding that Washington had no intention of attempting to remove the regime of Kim Jong-Un. The meeting between Xi and Trump came on the heels of yet another missile test by the North, which fired a medium-range ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan on Wednesday. The US Navy strike group Carl Vinson canceled a planned trip to Australia this weekend, heading toward the Korean peninsula instead, in a move that will raise tensions in the region.

World War III - US ready to strike North-Korea with Nuclear Missiles - Alamongordo - http://www.alamongordo.com

Seoul and Washington are also conducting joint military drills, an annual exercise which is seen by the North as a practice for war. Pyongyang is on a quest to develop a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland with a nuclear warhead and has so far staged five nuclear tests, two of them last year. Satellite imagery analysis suggests it could be preparing for a sixth, with US intelligence officials warning that Pyongyang could be less than two years away from its goal of striking the continental United States.

China, the US, South Korea and Japan all have dedicated envoys who meet at regular intervals to discuss the North Korean issue: a legacy of the long-stalled six-party process that also involved Pyongyang and Moscow. The North quit the negotiations in 2009. The isolated North is barred under UN resolutions from any use of ballistic missile technology, but repeated rounds of sanctions have failed to arrest its nuclear ambitions. Trump has previously threatened unilateral action against the reclusive state, a threat that appeared more palpable after Thursday’s strike on a Syrian airfield following an apparent chemical attack.

US National Security Adviser HR McMaster on Sunday criticized North Korea as a rogue nation engaged in provocative behavior and said denuclearisation of the peninsula ‘must happen’. ‘The president has asked them to be prepared to give us a full range of options to remove that threat,’ he said on Fox News, apparently referring to Trump’s advisers.

Read The Full Article @ NeonNettle !!!