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FTR #1113 and FTR #1114 The Chinese Winter: Weaponized Media, Social Media and the Coronavirus Biowarfare Psy-Op Parts 1 and 2

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 FTR #1113 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [6].

FTR #1114 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.  [7]

Intro­duc­tion: The first pro­gram begins with review of the con­clu­sion of FTR #1112 [8], not­ing the repet­i­tive, drum­roll of arti­cles about the eco­nom­ic effects of the coro­n­avirus on the Chi­nese, U.S. and glob­al econ­o­my, this in the con­text of Steve Ban­non’s links to Guo Wen­gui, J. Kyle Bass and–through Bass–to Tom­my Hicks, Jr. (This was cov­ered at length and in detail in FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112 [8].)

Steve Bannon–one of the lumi­nar­ies of the “Alt-Right,” and a for­mer key Trump aide–is cen­tral­ly involved in the anti-Chi­na effort [9]. Note Ban­non’s role in the “Get Chi­na” move­ment and the man­ner in which Wash­ing­ton is being pos­sessed by this: ” . . . . Fear of Chi­na has spread across the gov­ern­ment, from the White House to Con­gress to fed­er­al agen­cies, where Beijing’s rise is unques­tion­ing­ly viewed as an eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty threat and the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry. ‘These are two sys­tems that are incom­pat­i­ble,’ Mr. Ban­non said of the Unit­ed States and Chi­na. ‘One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.’ . . . .”

Next, the pro­gram under­takes a review of cir­cum­stances that sug­gest the pos­si­bil­i­ty of investor activ­i­ty by peo­ple linked to Steve Ban­non, who is at the epi­cen­ter of the anti-Chi­na effort. Ban­non has been the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the enor­mous wealth of the bril­liant, eccen­tric investor Robert Mer­cer [10]. Mer­cer has used AI-direct­ed invest­ment pro­jec­tion to afford a 70% return for his hedge fund.

We won­der if he might have had fore­knowl­edge of the coro­n­avirus out­break? IF that was the case, this would have enabled him to have made a great deal of mon­ey on the tor­pe­do­ing of the Chi­nese econ­o­my as may well be the case for J. Kyle Bass. On the oth­er side of the coin is Mercer’s/Renaissance Tech­nolo­gies’ enor­mous invest­ment in Gilead Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals [11].

IF Gilead­’s remde­sivir does prove to be the “go-to” treat­ment for coro­n­avirus [12], that firm stands to make a great deal of mon­ey, as would Mercer/Renaissance Tech­nolo­gies. NB: The infor­ma­tion from Dr. Mer­co­la’s post should be fac­tored in to the infor­ma­tion about invest­ing and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of short-sell­ing and/or oth­er types of maneu­ver­ing to prof­it from this cri­sis. Equi­ty mar­kets are very respon­sive to sug­ges­tion, accu­rate or fala­cious. We note that the hys­te­ria allud­ed to in the post by Dr. Mer­co­la may well con­tribute to the steep decline in mar­kets.

Chi­na, of course, has shut down much of its infra­struc­ture to com­bat the virus. That is con­tribut­ing, obvi­ous­ly. To what extent they, too, are respond­ing to hys­te­ria is an open ques­tion. We also won­der if they know some­thing we don’t. Media have fea­tured pic­tures of Chi­nese per­son­nel in pro­tec­tive cloth­ing fumi­gat­ing pub­lic facil­i­ties. We won­der if they are pro­tect­ing against rodents or oth­er ani­mals spread­ing the virus. Note the ref­er­ence in the post by Dr. Mer­co­la.

Chi­na has begun test­ing [13] of Gilead­’s remde­sivir. IF, for the sake of argu­ment, Gilead­’s remde­sivir becomes the “go-to” treat­ment for the coro­n­avirus, Gilead–and Mercer–will make a great deal of mon­ey. Chi­na is a huge mar­ket and the drug will find mar­kets else­where, as well. Note that a Chi­nese gov­ern­ment research facil­i­ty has applied for a patent on the drug.

We find it curi­ous that Amer­i­can media out­lets have remained silent [14] on such a promis­ing ther­a­peu­tic reg­i­men. Reuters report­ed it, as did Agence France Presse. These are major wire ser­vices. Why not Amer­i­can media out­lets?

Indica­tive of the “Chick­en Lit­tle journalism”–weaponzed jour­nal­ism– that char­ac­ter­izes the U.S. news media is the lack of cov­er­age of the Amer­i­can flu epi­dem­ic of 2017–2018 [15]. Con­trast the sta­tis­tics about the 2017–2018 flu epi­dem­ic in this coun­try with the sta­tis­tics about coro­n­avirus. In this coun­try, 45 mil­lion caught the flu. Accord­ing to the CDC, 80,000 of them died. 

Next, we read in full an Op-Ed col­umn by Rosie Spinks [16]–a rare island of bal­ance and san­i­ty in The New York Times’ cov­er­age of this event. In addi­tion to not­ing the effects of the coro­n­avirus on the eco­nom­ics of the trav­el indus­try, Rosie Spinks notes the dra­con­ian reac­tion of the U.S. State Depart­ment. Ms. Spinks tales stock of the rel­a­tive­ly mild nature of the virus. ” . . . . Numer­ous experts have said that the major­i­ty of peo­ple who con­tract coro­n­avirus will expe­ri­ence it as a res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion they will ful­ly recov­er from. But the extreme reac­tions — the can­cel­ing of flights, clos­ing of bor­ders and lev­el-four trav­el warn­ings — seem more appro­pri­ate for some­thing much worse. . . .”

Because it screens points of entry for MERS coro­n­avirus infec­tion because of its cit­i­zens who make the Haj pil­grim­age to Mec­ca, Indone­sia has no record­ed cas­es [17]. In the col­umn cit­ed above, Ms. Spinks not­ed the effec­tive­ness of the kind of pro­phy­lac­tic screen­ing mea­sures tak­en by Indone­sia: ” . . . . Mea­sures like screen­ing at air­ports, quar­an­ti­ning cruise ships or flights with con­firmed cas­es and iso­lat­ing com­mu­ni­ties at the cen­ter of an out­break can be effec­tive, said Erin Sor­rell, an assis­tant research pro­fes­sor at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty who stud­ies emerg­ing infec­tious dis­eases. . . .”

The out­break has occurred in the con­text of what we have called a “Full Court Press” against Chi­na.

Head­ed by “ex” CIA offi­cer William Barr, the Jus­tice Depart­ment has charged Chi­nese per­son­nel [18] with hav­ing hacked the Equifax cred­it report­ing agen­cies. The Chi­nese have denied this. It will be inter­est­ing to see if the U.S. deploys cyber-weapon­ry on Chi­nese com­put­er and inter­net sys­tems, as it has in Rus­sia. In turn, it will be inter­est­ing to see if the “Full Court Press” strat­e­gy encom­pass­es the sab­o­tag­ing of Chi­nese nuclear pow­er plants, Project HAARP envi­ron­men­tal mod­i­fi­ca­tion war­fare or oth­er dra­con­ian mea­sures.

The CIA’s hack­ing tools are specif­i­cal­ly craft­ed [19] to mask CIA author­ship of the attacks. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, for our the pur­pos­es of the present dis­cus­sion, is the fact that the Agen­cy’s hack­ing tools are engi­neered in such a way as to per­mit the authors of the event to rep­re­sent them­selves as Chi­nese. ” . . . . These tools could make it more dif­fi­cult for anti-virus com­pa­nies and foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tors to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of pre­vi­ous hacks into ques­tion? It appears that yes, this might be used to dis­guise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russ­ian, Chi­nese, or from spe­cif­ic oth­er coun­tries. . . . This might allow a mal­ware cre­ator to not only look like they were speak­ing in Russ­ian or Chi­nese, rather than in Eng­lish, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speak­ing Eng­lish . . . .”

Piv­ot­ing to what Mr. Emory has termed the “weaponized media cov­er­age” of the coro­n­avirus out­break, we note The New York Times’ stun­ning­ly slant­ed cov­er­age of the 2016 cam­paign.

Before dis­cussing Allen Dulles and his rela­tion­ship to The New York Times, we set forth events illus­trat­ing the fun­da­men­tal place of Sul­li­van & Cromwell [20] in the devel­op­ment of Amer­i­can Big Mon­ey. Both Allen Dulles and John Fos­ter Dulles worked for Sul­li­van & Cromwell.

A now famous arti­cle [21] by Carl Bern­stein (of Water­gate fame) focus­es on CIA pres­ence in major U.S. media. We note, here, the deep his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal rela­tion­ship between Allen Dulles and The New York Times’s Arthur Hays Sulzberg­er. This, again, by way of back­ground to the weaponized cov­er­age of the coro­n­avirus out­break.

In in his 1985 vol­ume Amer­i­can Swasti­ka [22], the late author Charles High­am [23] pro­vides us with insight into the Chris­t­ian West con­cept, reveal­ing the extent to which these SS/OSS nego­ti­a­tions set the tem­plate for the post-World War II world, as well as the degree of res­o­nance that key Amer­i­cans, such as Allen Dulles, had with Nazi ide­ol­o­gy, anti-Semi­tism in par­tic­u­lar. Weigh­ing the long, pro­found rela­tion­ship between Dulles and The Times, this is pre­sent­ed as some­thing of a “nav­i­ga­tion­al aid” to analy­sis of the weaponized cov­er­age of the virus.

In the con­text of Allen Dulles’s ori­en­ta­tion and his rela­tion­ship with The New York Times, we present a look at The New York Times’ use of a Third Reich alum­nus named Paul Hof­mann [24] as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, serv­ing as chief of The Times’ Rome bureau, and cov­er­ing the Gray Lady’s cov­er­age of the CIA’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the over­throw of Patrice Lumum­ba.

The pro­gram con­cludes with an item pre­sent­ed in our land­mark series of inter­views [25] with the bril­liant Jim DiEu­ge­nio about Des­tiny Betrayed [26].

Noth­ing illus­trates this coun­try’s media and their will­ing­ness to dis­tort infor­ma­tion than the NBC tele­vi­sion broad­cast arranged by Wal­ter Sheri­dan. [27]  Sheri­dan is a career intel­li­gence offi­cer, with rela­tion­ship with the Office of Naval Intel­li­gence, the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.

Exem­pli­fy­ing Sheri­dan’s method­ol­o­gy was the treat­ment met­ed out to Fred Lee­mans [27], who was the cli­mac­tic per­son inter­viewed by Sheri­dan in his spe­cial. Note the open intim­i­da­tion of Lee­mans and his fam­i­ly, threat­en­ing them if they did not per­jure them­selves, betray Gar­ri­son, and coop­er­ate with both Sheri­dan and Clay Shaw’s coun­sel! 

1. The first pro­gram begins with review of the con­clu­sion of FTR #1112 [8], not­ing the repet­i­tive, drum­roll of arti­cles about the eco­nom­ic effects of the coro­n­avirus on the Chi­nese, U.S. and glob­al econ­o­my, this in the con­text of Steve Ban­non’s links to Guo Wen­gui, J. Kyle Bass and–through Bass–to Tom­my Hicks, Jr. (This was cov­ered at length and in detail in FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112 [8].)

“Who Says Vis­it­ing Chi­na Isn’t Safe?” by Rosie Spinks; The New York Times; 2/7/2020; p. A29 [West­ern Edi­tion.] [16]

. . . . The coro­n­avirus out­break seems defined by two oppos­ing forces: the aston­ish­ing effi­cien­cy  with which the trav­el indus­try con­nects the world and a polit­i­cal moment dom­i­nat­ed by xeno­pho­bic rhetoric and the build­ing of walls. . . .

. . . . The Unit­ed States State Depart­ment nev­er­the­less is deny­ing entry to for­eign­ers who have recent­ly been to Chi­na, and is screen­ing Amer­i­cans who arrive home from Chi­na as well as ask­ing them to self quar­an­tine for 14 days. It has told Amer­i­cans not to vis­it the coun­try at all. British Air­ways, Lufthansa and all three major Amer­i­can car­ri­ers have halt­ed all flights to Chi­na, while the cruise line Roy­al Caribbean is deny­ing board­ing to any per­son who has trav­eled to, from or through Chi­na or Hong Kong in the past 15 days. . . .

. . . . But what has moti­vat­ed the response from gov­ern­ments? It does­n’t appear to be evi­dence. . . .

. . . . Coro­n­avirus is dif­fer­ent from oth­er tourism dis­rup­tions in a sig­nif­i­cant way: The poten­tial loss of tourism rev­enue will hurt not only Chi­na but also oth­er coun­tries. In the decade and a half since the SARS cri­sis, the num­ber of Chi­nese trav­el­ers has soared, with Chi­na sur­pass­ing oth­er nations in its vol­ume of out­bound trav­el­ers start­ing in 2012. In 2017, the Chi­nese made more than 143 mil­lion trips abroad; my col­leagues at Skift Research pre­dict that in 2029, that fig­ure will be more than 286 mil­lion. Lux­u­ry retail­ers all over the world rely on Chi­nese trav­el­ers, and des­ti­na­tions devel­op sophis­ti­cat­ed mar­ket­ing strate­gies to cater to them. . . .

. . . . With the rhetoric sur­round­ing coro­n­avirus, how­ev­er, how­ev­er, it appears the aston­ish­ing growth of the Chi­nese trav­el mar­ket in the last 15 years did lit­tle to rid the indus­try of the impulse to treat Chi­nese trav­el­ers as “oth­ers” in the face of doubt and uncer­tain­ty. . . .

“Declar­ing Health Emer­gency, U.S. Restricts Trav­el from Chi­na” by Michael Cork­ery and Annie Karni; The New York Times; 2/1/2020; p. A1 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

. . . . The trav­el restric­tions and the air­line’s announce­ments showed how rapid­ly con­cerns about the virus have esca­lat­ed into a con­test of the glob­al econ­o­my, for which there is no prece­dent. Three weeks after the first virus-relat­ed death was report­ed, Chi­na has found itself cut off from its largest trad­ing part­ner, the Unit­ed States, and many oth­er nations. . . .

“Gov­ern­ments Expand Restric­tions on Trav­el to Chi­na as Cas­es Spike” by Paul Mozur; The New York Times; 1/29/2020; p. A6 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

. . . . With Chi­na’s Lunar New Year hol­i­day near­ing its end, com­pa­nies ordered work­ers to stay home and avoid trav­el. The eco­nom­ic impact of such mea­sures point­ed to a deep­er polit­i­cal cri­sis, with many peo­ple accus­ing the Chi­nese author­i­ties online of fail­ing to act quick­ly to con­tain the virus, even as the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to strug­gle to con­tain its spread. . . .

. . . . Busi­ness­es that oper­ate in Chi­na have issued warn­ings of their own. . . .

. . . . Investors in Asia were gripped on tues­day­with fear about the health of the glob­al econ­o­my for a sec­ond day, with a wide­spread sell-off con­tin­u­ing con­in­u­ing in the mar­kets. Investos dumped stocks in com­pa­nies thought to be most vul­ner­a­ble to the effects of the virus.

 “The coro­na virus is the No. 1 threat to finan­cial mar­kets cur­rent­ly as glob­al investors are becom­ing jit­tery on the uncer­tain­ty.” said Nigel Green, founder of an invest­ment com­pa­ny, the DeVere group . . .

“Trade Net­works Face New Men­ace in a Coro­n­avirus” Chi­na in Cross Hairs; by Peter S. Good­man; The New York Times; 2/3/2020; p. A1 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

 “Chi­na Reels From Virus, and Mar­kets Are on Edge” by Alexan­dra Steven­son; The New York Times; 1/24/2020; p. B1 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

“Out­break Rat­tles Mar­kets, Spurring Down­turn Fears” by Matt Phillips; The New York Times; 1/28/2020; p. B1 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

 On same page, rel­e­vant to psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare and online activ­i­ty: “On Chi­nese Social Media, Anger over Virus” by Ray­mond Zhong; The New York Times; 1/28/2020; p. B1 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

 “OPEC Scram­bles to React as Virus Imper­ils Demand” by Stan­ley Reed; The New York Times; 2/4/2020; p. B1 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

 “Virus Threat­ens an Oil Indus­try That’s Already Ail­ing” by Clif­ford Krauss With a Decline in Chi­na’s Demand send­ing Crude Prices Lowe, Cut­backs by Amer­i­can Com­pa­nies May Be Com­ing; For Now, Dri­vers are ben­e­fit­ing; The New York Times; 2/5/2020; p. B1 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

 “Africa, With Grow­ing Ties to Chi­na, Is Espe­cial­ly Vul­ner­a­ble” by Simon Marks and Latif Dahir; The New York Times; 2/7/2020; p. A10 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

 “U.S. Plans Trade Talks With Kenya to Counter Chi­na’s Influ­ence in Africa” by Ana Swan­son; The New York Times; 2/7/2020; p. B4 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

 “Chi­na’s Com­mand of 5G Is A ‘Dan­ger,’ Barr Says” by Katie Ben­ner; The New York Times; 2/7/2020; p. B7 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

 “Virus Fuels Anti-Chi­nese Sen­ti­ment Over­seas” by Motoko Rich; The New York Times; 1/31/2020; p. A1 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

. . . . In Japan, the hash­tag #Chi­nese­Don’t­Come­To­Japan has been trend­ing on twit­ter. In Sin­ga­pore, tens of thou­sands of res­i­dents have signed a peti­tion call­ing for the gov­ern­ment to ban Chi­nese from enter­ing the coun­try.

In Hong Kong, South Korea and Viet­nam, busi­ness­es have post­ed signs say­ing that main­land Chi­nese cus­tomers are not wel­come. In France, a front-page head­line in a region­al news­pa­per warned of a “Yel­low Alert.” And in a sub­urb of Toron­to, par­ents demand­ed that a school dis­trict keep chil­dren of a fam­i­ly that had recent­ly returned from Chi­na out of class­es for 17 days. . . .

 . . . . At a time when Chi­na’s rise as a glob­al eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary pow­er has unset­tled its neigh­bors in Asia as well as its rivals in the West, the coro­n­avirus is feed­ing into latent big­otry against the peo­ple of main­land Chi­na . . .

“Virus Puts a Frac­tured Hong Kong on Edge” by Austin Ramzy; The New York Times; 1/29/2020; p. A1 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

The two Hong Kong pro­test­ers were dressed head to toe in black, their faces coverd in masks. They smashed their Molo­tov cock­tails into the lob­by of a pub­lic hous­ing estate, and flames and smoke began  spew­ing out. . . .

“Virus Putting E.U. At Risk of Reces­sion” by Jack Ewing; The New York Times; 2/12/2020; p. B1 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

“Com­modi­ties Tum­ble as Epi­dem­ic Snarls Sup­ply Chains” by Matt Phillips; The New York Times; 2/12/2020; p. B3 [West­ern Edi­tion.]

2. Steve Bannon–one of the lumi­nar­ies of the “Alt-Right,” and a for­mer key Trump aide is cen­tral­ly involved in the anti-Chi­na effort. Note Ban­non’s role in the “Get Chi­na” move­ment and the man­ner in which Wash­ing­ton is being pos­sessed by this: ” . . . . Fear of Chi­na has spread across the gov­ern­ment, from the White House to Con­gress to fed­er­al agen­cies, where Beijing’s rise is unques­tion­ing­ly viewed as an eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty threat and the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry. ‘These are two sys­tems that are incom­pat­i­ble,’ Mr. Ban­non said of the Unit­ed States and Chi­na. ‘One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.’ . . . .”

“A New Red Scare Is Reshap­ing Wash­ing­ton” by Ana Swan­son; [9]The New York Times [9]; 7/20/2019. [9]

In a ball­room across from the Capi­tol build­ing, an unlike­ly group of mil­i­tary hawks, pop­ulist cru­saders, Chi­nese Mus­lim free­dom fight­ers [Uighurs–D.E.] and fol­low­ers of the Falun Gong has been meet­ing to warn any­one who will lis­ten that Chi­na pos­es an exis­ten­tial threat to the Unit­ed States that will not end until the Com­mu­nist Par­ty is over­thrown.

If the warn­ings sound straight out of the Cold War, they are. The Com­mit­tee on the Present Dan­ger, a long-defunct group that cam­paigned against the dan­gers of the Sovi­et Union in the 1970s and 1980s, has recent­ly been revived with the help of Stephen K. Ban­non, the president’s for­mer chief strate­gist, to warn against the dan­gers of Chi­na.

Once dis­missed as xeno­phobes and fringe ele­ments, the group’s mem­bers are find­ing their views increas­ing­ly embraced in Pres­i­dent Trump’s Wash­ing­ton, where skep­ti­cism and mis­trust of Chi­na have tak­en hold. Fear of Chi­na has spread across the gov­ern­ment, from the White House to Con­gress to fed­er­al agen­cies, where Beijing’s rise is unques­tion­ing­ly viewed as an eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty threat and the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

“These are two sys­tems that are incom­pat­i­ble,” Mr. Ban­non said of the Unit­ed States and Chi­na. “One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.” . . . .

3. Next, the pro­gram under­takes a review of cir­cum­stances that sug­gest the pos­si­bil­i­ty of investor activ­i­ty by peo­ple linked to Steve Ban­non, who is at the epi­cen­ter of the anti-Chi­na effort. Ban­non has been the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the enor­mous wealth of the bril­liant, eccen­tric investor Robert Mer­cer. Mer­cer has used AI-direct­ed invest­ment pro­jec­tion to afford a 70% return for his hedge fund.

We won­der if he might have had fore­knowl­edge of the coro­n­avirus out­break? IF that was the case, this would have enabled him to have made a great deal of mon­ey on the tor­pe­do­ing of the Chi­nese econ­o­my as may well be the case for J. Kyle Bass. On the oth­er side of the coin is Mercer’s/Renaissance Tech­nolo­gies’ enor­mous invest­ment in Gilead Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

IF Gilead­’s remde­sivir does prove to be the “go-to” treat­ment for coro­n­avirus, that firm stands to make a great deal of mon­ey, as would Mercer/Renaissance Tech­nolo­gies. NB: The infor­ma­tion from Dr. Mer­co­la’s post should be fac­tored in to the infor­ma­tion about invest­ing and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of short-sell­ing and/or oth­er types of maneu­ver­ing to prof­it from this cri­sis. Equi­ty mar­kets are very respon­sive to sug­ges­tion, accu­rate or fala­cious. We note that the hys­te­ria allud­ed to in the post by Dr. Mer­co­la may well con­tribute to the steep decline in mar­kets.

Chi­na, of course, has shut down much of its infra­struc­ture to com­bat the virus. That is con­tribut­ing, obvi­ous­ly. To what extent they, too, are respond­ing to hys­te­ria is an open ques­tion. We also won­der if they know some­thing we don’t. Media have fea­tured pic­tures of Chi­nese per­son­nel in pro­tec­tive cloth­ing fumi­gat­ing pub­lic facil­i­ties. We won­der if they are pro­tect­ing against rodents or oth­er ani­mals spread­ing the virus. Note the ref­er­ence in the post by Dr. Mer­co­la:

It Came From Some­thing Awful: How a Tox­ic Troll Army Acci­den­tal­ly Memed Don­ald Trump into Office by Dale Beran; All Points Books [HC]; Copy­right 2019 by Dale Beran; ISBN 978–1‑250–18974‑5; p. 173. [10]

 . . . . In the 1970s, Mer­cer pro­grammed machine-learn­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gences to process vast sets of data and so pre­dict what was sup­posed to be the cen­tral mys­tery of cap­i­tal­ism, the move­ment of mar­kets. And, well, they did–and still do. The hedge fund for which Mer­cer worked, Renais­sance Tech­nolo­gies, has earned an aver­age of 70 per­cent each year, mak­ing Mer­cer one of the rich­est men on the plan­et. . . .

4. Chi­na has begun test­ing of Gilead­’s remde­sivir. IF, for the sake of argu­ment, Gilead­’s remde­sivir becomes the “go-to” treat­ment for the coro­n­avirus, Gilead–and Mercer–will make a great deal of mon­ey. Chi­na is a huge mar­ket and the drug will find mar­kets else­where, as well.

“Chi­na Begins Test­ing an Antivi­ral Drug in Coro­n­avirus Patients” by Denise Grady; The New York Times; 2/6/2020. [13]

. . . . On Thurs­day, Chi­na began enrolling patients in a clin­i­cal tri­al of remde­sivir, an antivi­ral med­i­cine made by Gilead, the Amer­i­can phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant. The drug has to be giv­en intra­venous­ly, is exper­i­men­tal and not yet approved for any use, and has not been stud­ied in patients with any coro­n­avirus dis­ease. But stud­ies of infect­ed mice and mon­keys have sug­gest­ed that remde­sivir can fight coro­n­avirus­es. . . . . . . . Doc­tors in Wash­ing­ton State gave remde­sivir to the first coro­n­avirus patient [28] in the Unit­ed States last week after his con­di­tion wors­ened and pneu­mo­nia devel­oped when he’d been in the hos­pi­tal for a week. His symp­toms improved the next day. . . .

5. A Chi­nese gov­ern­ment research facil­i­ty has applied for a patent on the drug.

“Chi­na Lab Seeks Patent on Use of Gilead­’s Coro­n­avirus Treat­ment” [Reuters]; The New York Times; 2/5/2020. [12]

A state-run Chi­nese research insti­tute has applied for a patent on the use of Gilead Sci­ences’ exper­i­men­tal U.S. antivi­ral drug, which sci­en­tists think could pro­vide treat­ment for the coro­n­avirus that has killed hun­dreds and infect­ed thou­sands.
The Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy of the Chi­na Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, based in the city where the out­break is believed to have orig­i­nat­ed, said in a state­ment on Tues­day it applied to patent the use of Remde­sivir, an antivi­ral drug devel­oped by Gilead, to treat the virus. . . .
. . . . “Even if the Wuhan Insti­tute’s appli­ca­tion gets autho­rized, the role is very lim­it­ed because Gilead still owns the fun­da­men­tal patent of the drug,” said Zhao Youbin, a Shang­hai-based intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty coun­sel at Pur­plevine IP Ser­vice Co.

6a. Mer­cer’s Renais­sance  Tech­nol­o­gy has a huge posi­tion in Gilead stock.

“Mer­cer Fam­i­ly Front Groups Attack Uni­ver­sal Health­care Bill in New York State”  by Rob Gal­braith; Lit­tle­sis; 5/24/2017. [11]

. . . . Renais­sance Technology’s top 15 hold­ings also include 16.4 mil­lion shares of the med­ical device man­u­fac­tur­er Novo-Nordisk val­ued at $563 mil­lion, 7.7 mil­lion shares of Gilead Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals val­ued at $523 mil­lion, and 2.4 mil­lion shares of Amgen val­ued at $396 mil­lion. An eco­nom­ic analy­sis of the New York Health Act esti­mat­ed that the plan would result in $16 bil­lion in reduced spend­ing on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and med­ical devices in New York State by nego­ti­at­ing low­er prices. . . .

6b. We find it curi­ous that Amer­i­can media out­lets have remained silent on such a promis­ing ther­a­peu­tic reg­i­men. Reuters report­ed it, as did Agence France Presse. These are major wire ser­vices. Why not Amer­i­can media out­lets? ” . . . . A Chi­nese woman infect­ed with the new coro­n­avirus showed a dra­mat­ic improve­ment after she was treat­ed with a cock­tail of anti-virals used to treat flu and HIV, Thai­land’s health min­istry said Sun­day. The 71-year-old patient test­ed neg­a­tive for the virus 48 hours after Thai doc­tors admin­is­tered the com­bi­na­tion, doc­tor Kriengsak Atti­porn­wanich said dur­ing the min­istry’s dai­ly press brief­ing. ‘The lab result of pos­i­tive on the coro­n­avirus turned neg­a­tive in 48 hours,’ Kriengsak said. . . .

“The doc­tors com­bined the anti-flu drug oseltamivir with lopinavir and riton­avir, anti-virals used to treat HIV, Kriengsak said, adding the min­istry was await­ing research results to prove the find­ings. . . . Thai­land so far has detect­ed 19 con­firmed cas­es of the virus believed to have orig­i­nat­ed in the cen­tral Chi­nese city of Wuhan, which is under lock­down. . . .

”  . . . .That is the sec­ond-high­est num­ber of cas­es out­side of Chi­na, with Japan record­ing 20. So far, eight patients in Thai­land have recov­ered and returned home, while 11 remain in the hos­pi­tal. In a video released Sun­day, Thai health min­is­ter Anutin Charn­vi­rakul vis­it­ed a patient from Wuhan who had recov­ered from the coro­n­avirus, chat­ting with her ami­ca­bly in Man­darin as she thanked him and the med­ical staff. . . .”

“Thai­land ‘Cures’ Coro­n­avirus with anti-HIV Drug Cock­tail in 48 Hours;” Dai­ly Sab­bah [Agence France Presse]; 2/2/2020. [14]

A Chi­nese woman infect­ed with the new coro­n­avirus showed a dra­mat­ic improve­ment after she was treat­ed with a cock­tail of anti-virals used to treat flu and HIV, Thai­land’s health min­istry said Sun­day.

The 71-year-old patient test­ed neg­a­tive for the virus 48 hours after Thai doc­tors admin­is­tered the com­bi­na­tion, doc­tor Kriengsak Atti­porn­wanich said dur­ing the min­istry’s dai­ly press brief­ing.

“The lab result of pos­i­tive on the coro­n­avirus turned neg­a­tive in 48 hours,” Kriengsak said.

“From being exhaust­ed before, she could sit up in bed 12 hours lat­er.”

The doc­tors com­bined the anti-flu drug oseltamivir with lopinavir and riton­avir, anti-virals used to treat HIV, Kriengsak said, adding the min­istry was await­ing research results to prove the find­ings.

The news comes as the new virus claimed its first life out­side Chi­na – a 44-year-old Chi­nese man who died in the Philip­pines – while the death toll in Chi­na has soared above 300.

Thai­land so far has detect­ed 19 con­firmed cas­es of the virus believed to have orig­i­nat­ed in the cen­tral Chi­nese city of Wuhan, which is under lock­down.

That is the sec­ond-high­est num­ber of cas­es out­side of Chi­na, with Japan record­ing 20.

So far, eight patients in Thai­land have recov­ered and returned home, while 11 remain in the hos­pi­tal.

In a video released Sun­day, Thai health min­is­ter Anutin Charn­vi­rakul vis­it­ed a patient from Wuhan who had recov­ered from the coro­n­avirus, chat­ting with her ami­ca­bly in Man­darin as she thanked him and the med­ical staff.

Thai author­i­ties are try­ing to bal­ance the screen­ing of inbound Chi­nese vis­i­tors with the eco­nom­ic needs of its tourist sec­tor, which is heav­i­ly reliant on arrivals from the main­land.

Mes­sages of sup­port say­ing “Our hearts to Wuhan” in Eng­lish, Chi­nese and Thai were plas­tered on a Bangkok mall pop­u­lar with tourists.

The bulk of con­firmed cas­es have been Chi­nese vis­i­tors to Thai­land, but on Thurs­day the king­dom record­ed its first human-to-human trans­mis­sion when a Thai taxi dri­ver was diag­nosed with the dis­ease.

The taxi dri­ver had not trav­eled to Chi­na but may have had con­tact with tourists.

Thai­land’s gov­ern­ment is also bat­tling pub­lic crit­i­cism that it has been slow to evac­u­ate scores of its cit­i­zens from Hubei province, at the cen­ter of the out­break.

Anutin said the evac­u­a­tion would hap­pen Tues­day, and the returnees would be quar­an­tined for 14 days. 

7. Con­trast the sta­tis­tics about the 2017–2018 flu epi­dem­ic in this coun­try with the sta­tis­tics about coro­n­avirus. In this coun­try, 45 mil­lion caught the flu. Accord­ing to the CDC, 80,000 of them died. 

“CDC: 80,000 Peo­ple Died of Flue Last Win­ter, High­est Death Toll in 40 Years;” [AP]; STAT News; 9/26/2018. [15]

An esti­mat­ed 80,000 Amer­i­cans died of flu and its com­pli­ca­tions last win­ter [29] — the disease’s high­est death toll in at least four decades.

The direc­tor of the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, Dr. Robert Red­field, revealed the total in an inter­view Tues­day night with The Asso­ci­at­ed Press. . . .

8. In addi­tion to not­ing the effects of the coro­n­avirus on the eco­nom­ics of the trav­el indus­try, Rosie Spinks notes the dra­con­ian reac­tion of the U.S. State Depart­ment. Ms. Spinks tales stock of the rel­a­tive­ly mild nature of the virus. ” . . . . Numer­ous experts have said that the major­i­ty of peo­ple who con­tract coro­n­avirus will expe­ri­ence it as a res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion they will ful­ly recov­er from. But the extreme reac­tions — the can­cel­ing of flights, clos­ing of bor­ders and lev­el-four trav­el warn­ings — seem more appro­pri­ate for some­thing much worse. . . .”

“Who Says Vis­it­ing Chi­na Isn’t Safe?” by Rosie Spinks; The New York Times; 2/7/2020; p. A29 [West­ern Edi­tion.] [16]

The coro­n­avirus out­break seems defined by two oppos­ing forces: the aston­ish­ing effi­cien­cy with which the trav­el indus­try con­nects the world and a polit­i­cal moment dom­i­nat­ed by xeno­pho­bic rhetoric and the build­ing of walls.

Res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tions, how­ev­er, know no bor­ders. The virus has spread regard­less of extreme mea­sures tak­en by gov­ern­ments around the world, which include the can­cel­la­tion of flights, the shut­ting down of bor­ders and the issuance of trav­el advi­sories usu­al­ly reserved for con­flict zones.

Time and time again, des­ti­na­tions per­ceived as “West­ern” ben­e­fit from a kind of cul­tur­al famil­iar­i­ty and pre­sump­tion of safe­ty that so-called for­eign or exot­ic places do not. When we, as trav­el­ers, decide what places are too unsafe to trav­el, [30] those deci­sions are deter­mined not just by actu­al con­di­tions on the ground but also by per­cep­tions shaped by the media, the trav­el indus­try and the for­eign offices of gov­ern­ments. Whether trav­el­ers real­ize it or not, that is sub­tly informed by the same pow­er struc­tures that under­lie much unfair­ness in the world.

Valid argu­ments may exist for shut­ting down the world to trav­el­ers orig­i­nat­ing in Chi­na — and shut­ting down Chi­na to the world — as a rea­son­able pub­lic health response. But the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion explic­it­ly did not advise [31] that any restric­tion of trade or trav­el was nec­es­sary when it declared a Pub­lic Health Emer­gency of Inter­na­tion­al Con­cern last week, and it still doesn’t. Instead, it has called for exit screen­ing [32] in inter­na­tion­al air­ports and domes­tic hubs in Chi­na.

The Unit­ed States State Depart­ment is deny­ing entry [33] to for­eign nation­als who have recent­ly been to Chi­na, is screen­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zens who arrive home from Chi­na as well as ask­ing them to self-quar­an­tine for 14 days. It has told Amer­i­can cit­i­zens not to vis­it the coun­try at all. Major air­lines includ­ing British Air­ways, Lufthansa and all three major Amer­i­can car­ri­ers have halt­ed all flights to Chi­na, while the cruise line Roy­al Caribbean is deny­ing board­ing  [34]to any per­son who has trav­eled to, from or through Chi­na or Hong Kong in the past 15 days. Trav­el com­pa­nies such as those air­lines are moti­vat­ed both by [35] pres­sure from employ­ees and by the falling demand for flights. Fly­ing emp­ty planes to and from Chi­na is, after all, not prof­itable.

But what has moti­vat­ed the response from gov­ern­ments? It doesn’t appear to be evi­dence. Mea­sures like screen­ing at air­ports, quar­an­ti­ning cruise ships or flights with con­firmed cas­es and iso­lat­ing com­mu­ni­ties at the cen­ter of an out­break can be effec­tive, said Erin Sor­rell, an assis­tant research pro­fes­sor at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty who stud­ies emerg­ing infec­tious dis­eases. How­ev­er, she and oth­er experts [36] say the avail­able evi­dence sug­gests that total bor­der shut­downs are not an effec­tive means of con­tain­ment of res­pi­ra­to­ry virus­es. Resources are bet­ter used, she argued, treat­ing sick patients and devel­op­ing vac­cines and oth­er coun­ter­mea­sures.

Sad­ly, one doesn’t have to look far for evi­dence of these top-down deci­sions mor­ph­ing into out­right [37] racism [38] with­in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, a trend that has a long his­to­ry [39] in the nar­ra­tive of out­breaks such as this one.

Coro­n­avirus shares some­thing in com­mon with oth­er kinds of civ­il dis­rup­tion, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters or emer­gen­cies that affect local­ized trav­el indus­tries: Its destruc­tive pow­er lies not in the actu­al risk but in the per­cep­tion of that risk. Numer­ous experts have said that the major­i­ty of peo­ple who con­tract coro­n­avirus will expe­ri­ence it as a res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion they will ful­ly recov­er from. But the extreme reac­tions — the can­cel­ing of flights, clos­ing of bor­ders and lev­el-four trav­el warn­ings — seem more appro­pri­ate for some­thing much worse.

There­in lies a famil­iar unfair­ness. When it comes to trav­el, the per­cep­tion of risk is rarely met­ed out objec­tive­ly. Con­sid­er the lev­el-two trav­el warn­ing imposed by the State Depart­ment last month in the wake of the con­tin­u­ing Aus­tralian wild­fires. It advised trav­el­ers to con­sid­er post­pon­ing their trips because of extreme­ly poor air qual­i­ty and the threat of evac­u­a­tion in the month­s­long fires. Just a few days lat­er, it was reduced [40] to lev­el one, report­ed­ly in response [41] to the direct appeal of Prime Min­is­ter Scott Mor­ri­son to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly, in the 2017–18 flu sea­son, when the Unit­ed States had a par­tic­u­lar­ly bad out­break, the res­pi­ra­to­ry virus result­ed in an esti­mat­ed [42] 61,000 deaths and 45 mil­lion symp­to­matic cas­es — but no trav­el warn­ings.

Coro­n­avirus is dif­fer­ent from oth­er tourism dis­rup­tions in a sig­nif­i­cant way: The poten­tial loss of tourism rev­enue and gross domes­tic prod­uct will hurt not only Chi­na but also oth­er coun­tries. In the decade and a half since the SARS cri­sis, Chi­nese trav­el­ers have become the most pow­er­ful source mar­ket in the world, sur­pass­ing all oth­er nations in its vol­ume of out­bound trav­el­ers in 2012. [43] In 2017, Chi­nese cit­i­zens took more than 143 mil­lion trips abroad; in 2029, Skift Research pre­dicts [43] that fig­ure will be 286 mil­lion. Lux­u­ry retail­ers all over the world rely on Chi­nese trav­el­ers for their con­sis­tent trip spend­ing, and des­ti­na­tions devel­op and tar­get sophis­ti­cat­ed mar­ket­ing strate­gies to cater to them.

The world often thinks of trav­el and tourism as being a col­lec­tion of dif­fer­ent indus­tries, oper­at­ing sep­a­rate­ly yet along­side one anoth­er. But in real­i­ty, it’s a web of eco­nom­i­cal­ly inter­con­nect­ed parts. While it is sub­ject to the polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment it oper­ates in, it also has a chance to stand up to the polit­i­cal norms of the day, espe­cial­ly when pol­i­cy goes against best prac­tices rec­om­mend­ed by inter­na­tion­al agen­cies.

With the rhetoric sur­round­ing coro­n­avirus, how­ev­er, it appears the aston­ish­ing growth of the Chi­nese trav­el mar­ket in the past 15 years did lit­tle to rid the indus­try of the impulse to treat Chi­nese trav­el­ers as “oth­ers” in the face of doubt and uncer­tain­ty. Can­cel­ing flights, cruis­es and lock­ing down bor­ders when it’s not advised by inter­na­tion­al agen­cies will be not only an act of eco­nom­ic self-harm but also a wast­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn from the mis­takes of the past.

9. Because it screens points of entry for MERS coro­n­avirus infec­tion because of its cit­i­zens who make the Haj pil­grim­age to Mec­ca, Indone­sia has no record­ed cas­es. In the col­umn above, Ms. Spinks not­ed the effec­tive­ness of the kind of pro­phy­lac­tic screen­ing mea­sures tak­en by Indone­sia: ” . . . . Mea­sures like screen­ing at air­ports, quar­an­ti­ning cruise ships or flights with con­firmed cas­es and iso­lat­ing com­mu­ni­ties at the cen­ter of an out­break can be effec­tive, said Erin Sor­rell, an assis­tant research pro­fes­sor at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty who stud­ies emerg­ing infec­tious dis­eases. . . .”

“Indone­sia Has No Report­ed Coro­n­avirus Cas­es. Is That the Whole Pic­ture?” by Richard C. Pad­dock and Dera Men­ra Sija­bat; The New York Times; 2/11/2020. [17] 

. . . . Health experts have ques­tioned why Indone­sia has not yet report­ed a sin­gle case of nov­el coro­n­avirus [44], even though offi­cials were slow to halt non­stop flights from Chi­na. Indone­sia receives about 2 mil­lion Chi­nese tourists a year, most of them in Bali. . . .

. . . . “So far, Indone­sia is the only major coun­try in Asia that does not have a coro­na case,” Indonesia’s secu­ri­ty min­is­ter, Moham­mad Mah­fud MD, told reporters on Fri­day [45]. “The coro­n­avirus does not exist in Indone­sia.” . . . .

. . . . Indone­sia is expe­ri­enced at mon­i­tor­ing trav­el­ers for ill­ness, he said, because the coun­try has long been on the look­out for anoth­er dan­ger­ous coro­n­avirus, Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome or MERS. About 1.4 mil­lion Indone­sians go each year on pil­grim­ages to Sau­di Ara­bia, where they can be exposed to MERS, he said, and they are screened on their return.

“We have expe­ri­enced this many times,” he said. “Maybe oth­er coun­tries are not as dili­gent as Indone­sia in deal­ing with this sit­u­a­tion.” . . . .

10. Head­ed by “ex” CIA offi­cer William Barr, the Jus­tice Depart­ment has charged Chi­nese per­son­nel with hav­ing hacked the Equifax cred­it report­ing agen­cies. The Chi­nese have denied this. It will be inter­est­ing to see if the U.S. deploys cyber-weapon­ry on Chi­nese com­put­er and inter­net sys­tems, as it has in Rus­sia. In turn, it will be inter­est­ing to see if the “Full Court Press” strat­e­gy encom­pass­es the sab­o­tag­ing of Chi­nese nuclear pow­er plants, Project HAARP envi­ron­men­tal mod­i­fi­ca­tion war­fare or oth­er dra­con­ian mea­sures.

“Jus­tice Depart­ment Charges 4 Chi­nese in Equifax Hack” by Katie Ben­ner; The New York Times; 2/11/2020; p. A1 [West­ern Edi­tion [18].]

Four mem­bers of Chi­na’s mil­i­tary were charged on Mon­day with hack­ing into Equifax, one of the nation’s largest cred­it report­ing agen­cies, and steal­ing trade secrets and the per­son­al data of about 145 mil­lion Amer­i­cans in 2017.

The charges under­scored Chi­na’s quest to obtain Amer­i­cans’ data and its will­ing­ness to flout a 2015 agree­ment with the Unit­ed States to refrain from hack­ing and cyber­at­tacks, all in an effort to expand eco­nom­ic pow­er and influ­ence. . . .

11. The CIA’s hack­ing tools are specif­i­cal­ly craft­ed to mask CIA author­ship of the attacks. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, for our the pur­pos­es of the present dis­cus­sion, is the fact that the Agen­cy’s hack­ing tools are engi­neered in such a way as to per­mit the authors of the event to rep­re­sent them­selves as Chi­nese. ” . . . . These tools could make it more dif­fi­cult for anti-virus com­pa­nies and foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tors to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of pre­vi­ous hacks into ques­tion? It appears that yes, this might be used to dis­guise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russ­ian, Chi­nese, or from spe­cif­ic oth­er coun­tries. . . . This might allow a mal­ware cre­ator to not only look like they were speak­ing in Russ­ian or Chi­nese, rather than in Eng­lish, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speak­ing Eng­lish . . . .”

“Wik­iLeaks Vault 7 Part 3 Reveals CIA Tool Might Mask Hacks as Russ­ian, Chi­nese, Ara­bic” by Stephanie Dube Dwil­son; Heavy; 4/3/2017. [19]

This morn­ing, Wik­iLeaks released part 3 of its Vault 7 series, called Mar­ble. Mar­ble reveals CIA source code files along with decoy lan­guages that might dis­guise virus­es, tro­jans, and hack­ing attacks. These tools could make it more dif­fi­cult for anti-virus com­pa­nies and foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tors to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of pre­vi­ous hacks into ques­tion? It appears that yes, this might be used to dis­guise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russ­ian, Chi­nese, or from spe­cif­ic oth­er coun­tries. These tools were in use in 2016, Wik­iLeaks report­ed.

It’s not known exact­ly how this Mar­ble tool was actu­al­ly used. How­ev­er, accord­ing to Wik­iLeaks, the tool could make it more dif­fi­cult for inves­ti­ga­tors and anti-virus com­pa­nies to attribute virus­es and oth­er hack­ing tools to the CIA. Test exam­ples weren’t just in Eng­lish, but also Russ­ian, Chi­nese, Kore­an, Ara­bic, and Far­si. This might allow a mal­ware cre­ator to not only look like they were speak­ing in Russ­ian or Chi­nese, rather than in Eng­lish, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speak­ing Eng­lish, accord­ing to Wik­iLeaks. This might also hide fake error mes­sages or be used for oth­er pur­pos­es. . . .

12. Piv­ot­ing to what Mr. Emory has termed the “weaponized media cov­er­age” of the coro­n­avirus out­break, we note The New York Times’ stun­ning­ly slant­ed cov­er­age of the 2016 cam­paign.

“The Times Owes an Apol­o­gy [Let­ter to the Edi­tor];” The New York Times; 10/25/2019 [West­ern Edi­tion]; p. A26.

“But Her E‑mails . . .” (edi­to­r­i­al, Oct. 23) I am dis­ap­point­ed that The Times did not use the oppor­tu­ni­ty to apol­o­gize for its obses­sive cov­er­age of this Hillary Clin­ton non-scan­dal in 2016. Accord­ing to an arti­cle in the Colum­bia Jour­nal­ism Review, “in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cov­er sto­ries about Hillary Clin­ton’s e‑mails as they did about all pol­i­cy issues com­bined in the 69 days lead­ing up to the elec­tion.” Mrs. Clin­ton lost the elec­tion for myr­i­ad rea­sons, but it did not help that The Times’s cov­er­age of this issue rein­forced many vot­ers’ sus­pi­cions that she was untrust­wor­thy. Jef­frey Toobin, chief legal ana­lyst for CNN, apol­o­gized this week for hyp­ing the e‑mail sto­ry dur­ing that cru­cial moment. If The Times wants to regain the trust of its read­ers head­ing into 2020, it should do the same. JEREMY FASSLER, BROOKLYN

13. Before dis­cussing Allen Dulles and his rela­tion­ship to The New York Times, we set forth events illus­trat­ing the fun­da­men­tal place of Sul­li­van & Cromwell in the devel­op­ment of Amer­i­can Big Mon­ey. Both Allen Dulles and John Fos­ter Dulles worked for Sul­li­van & Cromwell.

The Broth­ers: John Fos­ter Dulls, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinz­er; St. Mar­tin Grif­fin [SC]; Copy­right 2013 by Stephen Kinz­er; ISBN 978–1‑250–05312‑1; pp. 18–19. [20]

 . . . . . . . . In 1882, it cre­at­ed Edi­son Gen­er­al Elec­tric. Sev­en years lat­er, with the financier J.P. Mor­gan as its client, it wove twen­ty-one steel­mak­ers into the Nation­al Tube Com­pa­ny and then, in 1891, merged Nation­al Tube with sev­en oth­er com­pa­nies to cre­ate U.S. Steel, cap­i­tal­ized at more than one bil­lion dol­lars, an astound­ing sum at that time. The rail­road mag­nate E.H. Har­ri­man, whom Pres­i­dent Theodore Roo­sevelt had denounced as a “male­fac­tor of great wealth” and “an ene­my of the Repub­lic,” hired the firm to wage two of his leg­endary proxy wars, one to take over the Illi­nois Cen­tral Rail­road and anoth­er to fend off angry share­hold­ers at Wells Far­go Bank. It won the first with tac­tics that a New York news­pa­per called “one of those ruth­less exer­cis­es of the pow­er of sheer mil­lions,” and the sec­ond with com­plex maneu­vers that, accord­ing to a book about the firm, amount­ed to “deceit, bribery and trick­ery [that] was all legal.”

Soon after­ward, work­ing on behalf of French investors who were fac­ing ruin after their effort to build a canal across Pana­ma col­lapsed, Sul­li­van & Cromwell achieved a unique tri­umph in glob­al pol­i­tics. Through a mas­ter­ful lob­by­ing cam­paign, its end­less­ly resource­ful man­ag­ing part­ner, William Nel­son Cromwell, per­suad­ed the Unit­ed States Con­gress to reverse its deci­sion to build a canal across Nicaragua and to pay his French clients $40 mil­lion for their land in Pana­ma instead. Then he helped engi­neer a rev­o­lu­tion that pulled the province of Pana­ma away from Colom­bia and estab­lished it as an inde­pen­dent coun­try, led by a clique will­ing to show its grat­i­tude by allow­ing con­struc­tion of a canal on terms favor­able to the Unit­ed States. One news­pa­per called him “the man whose mas­ter­ful mind, whet­ted on the grind­stone of cor­po­rate cun­ning, con­ceived and car­ried out the rape of the Isth­mus.” . . .

14. A now famous arti­cle by Carl Bern­stein (of Water­gate fame) focus­es on CIA pres­ence in major U.S. media. We note, here, the deep his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal rela­tion­ship between Allen Dulles and The New York Times’s Arthur Hays Sulzberg­er. This, again, by way of back­ground to the weaponized cov­er­age of the coro­n­avirus out­break.

“The CIA and the Media” by Carl Bern­stein; Rolling Stone; 10/20/1977. [21]

. . . . The New York Times. The Agency’s rela­tion­ship with the Times was by far its most valu­able among news­pa­pers, accord­ing to CIA offi­cials. From 1950 to 1966, about ten CIA employ­ees were pro­vid­ed Times cov­er under arrange­ments approved by the newspaper’s late pub­lish­er, Arthur Hays Sulzberg­er. The cov­er arrange­ments were part of a gen­er­al Times policy—set by Sulzberger—to pro­vide assis­tance to the CIA when­ev­er pos­si­ble. Sulzberg­er was espe­cial­ly close to Allen Dulles. “At that lev­el of con­tact it was the mighty talk­ing to the mighty,” said a high‑level CIA offi­cial who was present at some of the dis­cus­sions. “There was an agree­ment in prin­ci­ple that, yes indeed, we would help each oth­er. The ques­tion of cov­er came up on sev­er­al occa­sions.  It was agreed that the actu­al arrange­ments would be han­dled by sub­or­di­nates.... The mighty didn’t want to know the specifics; they want­ed plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty. . . .

15. In in his 1985 vol­ume Amer­i­can Swasti­ka [22], the late author Charles High­am [23] pro­vides us with insight into the Chris­t­ian West con­cept, reveal­ing the extent to which these SS/OSS nego­ti­a­tions set the tem­plate for the post-World War II world, as well as the degree of res­o­nance that key Amer­i­cans, such as Allen Dulles, had with Nazi ide­ol­o­gy, anti-Semi­tism in par­tic­u­lar. Weigh­ing the long, pro­found rela­tion­ship between Dulles and The Times, this is pre­sent­ed as some­thing of a “nav­i­ga­tion­al aid” to analy­sis of the weaponized cov­er­age of the virus.

The post­war polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic real­i­ties of the Dulles, Hohen­lo­he, Schel­len­berg meet­ings were fur­ther solid­i­fied when William (Wild Bill) Dono­van entered into his “M” Project. Impor­tant to note in this con­text, is the dom­i­nant role in world affairs played by car­tels [46], the fun­da­men­tal ele­ment in the indus­tri­al and finan­cial axis that was essen­tial to the cre­ation and per­pet­u­a­tion of fas­cism. Much of the Third Reich’s mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex, the pri­ma­cy of Ger­many in the post­war EU, as well as the cor­re­la­tion between post­war Europe as con­struct­ed in the Chris­t­ian West nego­ti­a­tions and long-stand­ing Ger­man plans [47] for Euro­pean dom­i­na­tion are deriv­a­tive of the pow­er of car­tels. The Chris­t­ian West and “M” Projects:

  1. Revealed that Allen Dulles’ views res­onat­ed with Third Reich anti-Semi­tism, and that his opin­ions were shared by oth­er, like-mind­ed Amer­i­can pow­er bro­kers: ” . . . . He said that it would be unbear­able for any decent Euro­pean to think that the Jews might return some­day, and that there must be no tol­er­a­tion of a return of the Jew­ish pow­er posi­tions. . . . He made the curi­ous asser­tion that the Amer­i­cans were only con­tin­u­ing the war to get rid of the Jews and that there were peo­ple in Amer­i­ca who were intend­ing to send the Jews to Africa. . . .”
  2. Set the tem­plate for the post­war Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many and the EU: ” . . . . He [Dulles] reit­er­at­ed his desire for a greater Euro­pean polit­i­cal federation–and fore­saw the fed­er­al Ger­many that in fact took place. . . . Ger­many would be set up as the dom­i­nat­ing force in indus­try and agri­cul­ture in con­ti­nen­tal Europe, at the heart of a con­ti­nen­tal state run by Ger­many, the U.S.A., and Great Britain as a focus of trade. . . .”
  3. Were the vehi­cle for Allen Dulles to betray much of the Allied mil­i­tary plans for South­ern Europe to the Third Reich: “. . . . Dulles now pro­ceed­ed to sup­ply Hohen­lo­he with dol­lops of secret intel­li­gence, announc­ing that the U.S. Army would not land in Spain but, after con­quer­ing Tunisia, would advance from Africa toward the Ploesti oil fields to cut off the Ger­man oil sup­plies. He said it was like­ly the Allies would land in Sici­ly to cut off Rom­mel and con­trol Italy from there, and thus secure the advance in the Balka­ns. Hav­ing giv­en vir­tu­al­ly the entire bat­tle plan for Europe, top secret at the time, to one of Ger­many’s agents, Allen Dulles pro­ceed­ed to the almost unnec­es­sary rid­er that he had very good rela­tions with the Vat­i­can. . . .”
  4. Direct­ly fore­shad­owed the con­fronta­tion between the U.S. and the Sovi­et Union which became the Cold War.  “. . . . In oth­er meet­ings, Dulles . . . . pre­dict­ed that ‘the next world war would be between the U.S.A. and the Sovi­et Union.’ . . . .”
  5. Were the occa­sion for Dulles to laud the “genius” of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels: “He . . . . described a recent speech by Dr. Goebbels as ‘a work of genius; I have rarely read a speech with such ratio­nal plea­sure.’ . . . .”

Amer­i­can Swasti­ka by Charles High­am; Dou­ble­day & Co. [HC]; Copy­right 1985 by Charles High­am; ISBN 0–385-17874–3; pp. 191–194. [22]

. . . . Dulles pressed ahead. He said that it would be unbear­able for any decent Euro­pean to think that the Jews might return some­day, and that there must be no tol­er­a­tion of a return of the Jew­ish pow­er posi­tions. He reit­er­at­ed his desire for a greater Euro­pean polit­i­cal federation–and fore­saw the fed­er­al Ger­many that in fact took place. . . . He made the curi­ous asser­tion that the Amer­i­cans were only con­tin­u­ing the war to get rid of the Jews and that there were peo­ple in Amer­i­ca who were intend­ing to send the Jews to Africa. This was Hitler’s dream of course: that the Jews would go to Mada­gas­car and stay there. . . .
. . . . Dulles now pro­ceed­ed to sup­ply Hohen­lo­he with dol­lops of secret intel­li­gence, announc­ing that the U.S. Army would not land in Spain but, after con­quer­ing Tunisia, would advance from Africa toward the Ploesti oil fields to cut off the Ger­man oil sup­plies. He said it was like­ly the Allies would land in Sici­ly to cut off Rom­mel and con­trol Italy from there, and thus secure the advance in the Balka­ns. Hav­ing giv­en vir­tu­al­ly the entire bat­tle plan for Europe, top secret at the time, to one of Ger­many’s agents, Allen Dulles pro­ceed­ed to the almost unnec­es­sary rid­er that he had very good rela­tions with the Vat­i­can. . . .
. . . . In oth­er meet­ings, Dulles . . . . pre­dict­ed that “the next world war would be between the U.S.A. and the Sovi­et Union.” . . . . Dulles obtained a great deal of infor­ma­tion relat­ing to Ger­many and plans for its recon­struc­tion after the war. He . . . . described a recent speech by Dr. Goebbels as “a work of genius; I have rarely read a speech with such ratio­nal plea­sure.” . . . .
. . . . In July, [OSS chief William] Dono­van and the OSS began to take mat­ters into their own hands. No doubt inspired by the invig­o­rat­ing meet­ing in Switzer­land, Dono­van embarked on the so-called “M” project. . . .
. . . . By now, the Ger­man [Franz Von Papen] had read the details of the peace pro­pos­al on micro­film and learned that it was more or less on the same lines as the Dulles pro­pos­als. Ger­many would be set up as the dom­i­nat­ing force in indus­try and agri­cul­ture in con­ti­nen­tal Europe, at the heart of a con­ti­nen­tal state run by Ger­many, the U.S.A., and Great Britain as a focus of trade. . . . 

16. In the con­text of Allen Dulles’s ori­en­ta­tion and his rela­tion­ship with The New York Times, we present a look at The New York Times’ use of a Third Reich alum­nus named Paul Hof­mann as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, serv­ing as chief of The Times’ Rome bureau, and cov­er­ing the Gray Lady’s cov­er­age of the CIA’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the over­throw of Patrice Lumum­ba.

The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot; Harp­er [HC]; 2015; Copy­right 2015 by The Tal­bot Play­ers LLC; ISBN 978–0‑06–227616‑2; pp. 383–384. [24]

 . . . . As the Con­go cri­sis reached its cli­max, a new cor­re­spon­dent for The New York Times showed up in Leopoldville with a dis­tinct­ly anti-Lumum­ba bias. Paul Hof­mann was a diminu­tive, sophis­ti­cat­ed Aus­tri­an with a col­or­ful past. Dur­ing the war, he served in Rome as a top aide to the noto­ri­ous Nazi gen­er­al Kurt Malz­er, who was lat­er con­vict­ed of the mass mur­der of Ital­ian par­ti­sans. At some point, Hof­mann became an informer for the Allies, and after the war he became close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Jim Angle­ton. The Angle­ton fam­i­ly helped place Hof­mann in the Rome bureau of The New York Times, where he con­tin­ued to be of use to his friends in U.S. intel­li­gence, trans­lat­ing reports from con­fi­den­tial sources inside the Vat­i­can and pass­ing them along to Angle­ton. Hof­mann became one of the Times’s lead­ing for­eign cor­re­spon­dents, even­tu­al­ly tak­ing over the news­pa­per’s Rome bureau and para­chut­ing from time to time into inter­na­tion­al hot spots like the Con­go. . . .

17. Noth­ing illus­trates this coun­try’s media and their will­ing­ness to dis­tort infor­ma­tion than the NBC tele­vi­sion broad­cast arranged by Wal­ter Sheri­dan. [27]  Sheri­dan is a career intel­li­gence offi­cer, with rela­tion­ship with the Office of Naval Intel­li­gence, the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.

Exem­pli­fy­ing Sheri­dan’s method­ol­o­gy was the treat­ment met­ed out to Fred Lee­mans, who was the cli­mac­tic per­son inter­viewed by Sheri­dan in his spe­cial. Note the open intim­i­da­tion of Lee­mans and his fam­i­ly, threat­en­ing them if they did not per­jure them­selves, betray Gar­ri­son, and coop­er­ate with both Sheri­dan and Clay Shaw’s coun­sel! 

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 240–241. [26]

. . . . One of the more star­tling dec­la­ra­tions that the ARRB uncov­ered was an affi­davit by a man named Fred Lee­mans. Lee­mans was  a Turk­ish bath own­er who orig­i­nal­ly told gar­ri­son that a man named Clay Bertrand had fre­quent­ed his estab­lish­ment. Lee­mans was  the cli­mac­tic inter­view for Sheri­dan’s spe­cial. He tes­ti­fied on the show that the DA’s office had actu­al­ly approached him first, that he nev­er  knew that Shaw used the alias Bertrand, that every­thing he had  pre­vi­ous­ly said to the DA’s office were things he was led  to say by them, and that they had offered to pay him 2,500 dol­lars for his affi­davit in which in which he would now say that Shaw was Bertrand and that Shaw came into his estab­lish­ment once with Oswald. In oth­er words, all the things Nov­el had been say­ing in his pub­lic dec­la­ra­tions about Gar­ri­son were accu­rate. At the end of  his inter­view, Lee­mans told Sheri­dan and the pub­lic that every­thing he had just revealed on cam­era was giv­en to NBC freely and vol­un­tar­i­ly. Lee­mans even said that he had actu­al­ly asked Sheri­dan for some mon­e­tary help but Sheri­dan had said he did not do things like that.

In Jan­u­ary of 1969, Lee­mans signed an affi­davit in which he declared the fol­low­ing as the true chain of events:

“I would like to state the rea­sons for which I appeared on the NBC show and lied about my con­tacts  with the Dis­trict Attor­ney’s office. First, I received numer­ous anony­mous threat­en­ing phone calls rel­a­tive to the infor­ma­tion I had giv­en to Mr. Gar­ri­son. The gist of these calls was to the effect that if I did not change my state­ment and state that I had been bribed by Jim Gar­rison’s office, I and my fam­i­ly would be in phys­i­cal dan­ger. In addi­tion to the anony­mous phone calls, I was vis­it­ed by a man who exhib­it­ed a badge and stat­ed that he was a gov­ern­ment agent. This man informed me that the gov­ern­ment was  present­ly check­ing the bar own­ers in the Slidell area for pos­si­ble income tax vio­la­tions. This man then inquired whether I was the Mr. Lee­mans involved in the Clay Shaw case. When I informed him that I was, he said that it was not smart to be involved because a lot of peo­ple that had been got hurt and that peo­ple in pow­er­ful places would see to it that I was tak­en care of. One of the anony­mous callers sug­gest­ed that I change my state­ment and state that I had been bribed by Gar­rison’s office to give him the infor­ma­tion about Clay Shaw. He sug­gest­ed that I con­tact Mr. Irvin Dymond, attor­ney for Clay L. Shaw and tell him that I gave Mr. Gar­ri­son the state­ment about Shaw only after Mr. Lee [Gar­rison’s assis­tant DA] offered me 2,500 dol­lars. After con­sult­ing with Mr. Dymond by tele­phone and in per­son, I was intro­duced to Wal­ter Sheri­dan, inves­tiga­tive reporter for NBC, who was then in the process of prepar­ing the NBC show. Mr. Dymond and Mr. Sheri­dan sug­gest­ed that I appear on the show and state what I had orig­i­nal­ly told Mr. Dymond about the bribe offer by the Dis­trict Attor­ney’s office. I was informed by Mr. Dymond that should the Dis­trict Attor­ney’s office charge me with giv­ing false infor­ma­tion as a result of the state­ment  I had orig­i­nal­ly giv­en them, he  would see to it that I had an attor­ney and that a bond would be post­ed for me. In this  con­nec­tion, Mr. Dymond gave me his home and office tele­phone num­bers and and advised me that I could con­tact him at any time of day or night should I be charged by Gar­rison’s office as a result of my appear­ing on the NBC show. My actu­al appear­ance on the show was taped in the  office of Aaron Kohn, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Crime Com­mis­sion, in the pres­ence of Wal­ter Sheri­dan and Irvin Dymond.”

This is one of the most reveal­ing doc­u­ments por­tray­ing the lengths to which Sheri­dan would go in tam­per­ing with wit­ness­es. It also demon­strates that Shaw’s lawyers—Bill and Ed Weg­mann, Irvin Dymond, and Sal Panzeca—knew almost no bound­ary in what kind of help they would accept to win their case. Third, it reveals that Shaw’s lawyers had access to a net­work of attor­neys that they could hire at any time for any wit­ness they could pry loose from Gar­ri­son. Because, as the declas­si­fied ARRB doc­u­ments reveal, there  was a CIA cleared attor­ney’s pan­el that was at work in New Orleans. Attor­neys that the Agency vet­ted in advance so they would be suit­able for their covert use and could be trust­ed in their aims. The fact that Shaw’s lawyers were privy to such CIA secret knowl­edge, and wee uti­liz­ing it, shows just how will­ing and eager they were  to indulge them­selves in covert help—and then lie about it. . . .