Modus Operandi of Covid-19–Does It Reflect Genetic Engineering?

An inter­est­ing piece in “The Atlantic” describes how the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus that caus­es COVID-19 dif­fers from oth­er coro­n­avirus­es known to infect humans. We present this as sup­ple­men­tal to dis­cus­sion of DARPA research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es. A) The SARS-CoV­‑2 (Covid-19) virus is unusu­al in that it infects both the upper and low­er res­pi­ra­to­ry tracts. The ‘spike’ part of the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus is unusu­al­ly good at latch­ing into a pro­tein called ACE2 which is found on the exte­ri­or of the cells in human air­ways. This abil­i­ty appears to be fun­da­men­tal to the virus’s abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract. The virus appears to infect the upper air­ways first and then, as cells in them die and are sloughed off, it makes its way down to the low­er res­pi­ra­to­ry tract and lungs where the dead­ly infec­tions occur. This sequen­tial pat­tern of infect­ing the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract pri­or to mak­ing its way down to the lungs enables it to silent­ly spread asymp­to­mati­cal­ly before turn­ing more lethal in the low­er res­pi­ra­to­ry tract. B) We note that the ACE2 pro­tein appears to man­i­fest more heav­i­ly in the lung tis­sue of  East-Asians. As indi­cat­ed in the Whit­ney Webb arti­cle, genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tion has been envi­sioned as applic­a­ble to bio­log­i­cal war­fare to cre­ate “eth­no-spe­cif­ic” bio­log­i­cal weapons. C) Anoth­er key fea­ture of the virus’s abil­i­ty to infect humans con­cerns a pro­tein bridge con­nect­ing two halves of the virus’s spike. Acti­va­tion of this spike caus­es the virus injects its nucle­ic acid into the cell. Acti­vat­ing the spike requires the cleav­age of a pro­tein bridge con­nect­ing the two halves of the spike. That cleav­age is pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the enzyme furin which is ubiq­ui­tous in human cells. In con­trast, the coro­n­avirus which caused SARS had a pro­tein bridge that was less like­ly to be cleaved. SARS-CoV­‑2 first latch­es onto to human upper air­way cells and, once there, has the pro­tein bridge link­ing the halves of the spike sev­ered by the furin enzyme. D) Per­haps the most notable obser­va­tion made about this virus thus far: it doesn’t appear to be mutat­ing in evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly sig­nif­i­cant ways. Of the 100-plus muta­tions observed in the virus so far, none has emerged as evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly dominant–unusual for a virus that only recent­ly jumped to humans. and has spread pro­lif­i­cal­ly. It’s as though the virus is already evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly opti­mized for spread­ing among humans and there are no ‘gain-of-fuc­tion’ muta­tions left for it acquire. As Lisa Gralin­s­ki, a coro­n­avirus expert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na Chapel Hill, described it, “The virus has been remark­ably sta­ble giv­en how much trans­mis­sion we’ve seen . . . . there’s no evo­lu­tion­ary pres­sure on the virus to trans­mit bet­ter. It’s doing a great job of spread­ing around the world right now.” E) Gralin­sky works close­ly with Ralph Baric’s lab. Recall that Bar­ic is the researcher who con­struct­ed a chimeric virus out of a SARS virus and horse­shoe bat coro­n­avirus in 2015. When Gralin­s­ki observes that the virus wouldn’t feel any evo­lu­tion­ary pres­sure to spread because it’s already doing such a good job that is VERY sig­nif­i­cant. Evo­lu­tion doesn’t stop just because the sta­tus quo of an organ­ism is already effec­tive. A muta­tion allow­ing the virus to spread even more read­i­ly would be expect­ed. And nor­mal­ly such an event does hap­pen. But it hasn’t hap­pened so for SARS-CoV­‑2 because it is already at some­thing of a “coro­n­avirus evo­lu­tion­ary peak”. In addi­tion, an arti­cle in “Sci­ence Direct” char­ac­ter­izes the advent of the furin-like cleav­age site as a “gain-of-func­tion” phe­nom­e­non. “Gain of Func­tion” is a mech­a­nism of action of an “Enhanced Poten­tial Pan­dem­ic Pathogen.” “. . . . Strik­ing­ly, the 2019-nCoV S‑protein sequence con­tains 12 addi­tion­al nucleotides upstream of the sin­gle Arg↓ cleav­age site 1 (Fig. 1, Fig. 2) lead­ing to a pre­dic­tive­ly sol­vent-exposed PRRAR↓SV sequence, which cor­re­sponds to a canon­i­cal furin-like cleav­age site (Braun and Sauter, 2019; Iza­guirre, 2019; Sei­dah and Prat, 2012). This furin-like cleav­age site, is sup­posed to be cleaved dur­ing virus egress (Mille and Whit­tak­er, 2014) for S‑protein “prim­ing” and may pro­vide a gain-of-func­tion to the 2019-nCoV for effi­cient spread­ing in the human pop­u­la­tion com­pared to oth­er lin­eage b beta­coro­n­avirus­es. This pos­si­bly illus­trates a con­ver­gent evo­lu­tion path­way between unre­lat­ed CoVs. Inter­est­ing­ly, if this site is not processed, the S‑protein is expect­ed to be cleaved at site 2 dur­ing virus endo­cy­to­sis, as observed for the SARS-CoV. . . .”

FTR #1122 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now: Fireside Rant about the Covid-19 Outbreak

This broad­cast updates, in a admit­ted­ly stri­dent mode, the Covid-19 out­break. We begin with dis­cus­sion of Mod­er­na, Inc.

Mod­er­na Inc. is one of the DARPA-fund­ed com­pa­nies that has been autho­rized to begin test­ing of vac­cines. As dis­cussed by Whit­ney Webb, Mod­er­na Inc. is get­ting a green light to devel­op its mRNA vac­cine (mRNA 1273) for pre­vent­ing Covid-19 infec­tion. The West­ern Edi­tion of The New York Times con­tains infor­ma­tion NOT con­tained in the online man­i­fes­ta­tion of the arti­cle. 

Although vac­cines that inject nucle­ic acid–either DNA or mes­sen­ger RNA–into cells have been seen as promis­ing, they have NEVER been admin­is­tered to humans. The tri­als for the Mod­er­na vac­cine appear to be “fast-tracked.” 

We have done numer­ous pro­grams about the polio vac­cine and how that “fast-tracked” (and con­se­quent­ly insuf­fi­cient­ly vet­ted) vac­cine was con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with the SV40 can­cer-caus­ing mon­key virus.

In the con­text of the desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na (cov­ered in many pro­grams and a key ele­ment of analy­sis in assess­ing the Covid-19 out­break), we note that the col­laps­ing of economies abroad, includ­ing the U.S., will sig­nif­i­cant­ly and adverse­ly affect Chi­na’s export-ori­ent­ed econ­o­my.

It may lead to the col­lapse of the Chi­nese econ­o­my eagerly–and financially–anticipated by J. Kyle Bass, Tom­my Hicks Jr. and Steve Ban­non.

An op-ed col­umn fur­ther devel­ops the poten­tial dan­ger to Chi­na’s econ­o­my posed by the Covid-19 out­break. ” . . . . While Chi­na is no longer cen­ter stage, as the virus spreads world­wide there are renewed fears that the cri­sis could cir­cle back to its shores by hurt­ing demand for exports. Over the last decade China’s cor­po­rate debt swelled four­fold to over $20 tril­lion — the biggest binge in the world. The Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund esti­mates that one-tenth of this debt is in zom­bie firms, which rely on gov­ern­ment-direct­ed lend­ing to stay alive. . . .”

Next, we tack­le the sub­ject of an esca­lat­ing media war between Chi­na and the U.S.

Trump’s label­ing of Covid-19 as “the Chi­nese virus” is appar­ent­ly in response to sug­ges­tions in Chi­nese social media and some pub­lished mate­r­i­al point­ing to the U.S. and/or nation­al secu­ri­ty ele­ments with­in and/or asso­ci­at­ed with it as the source of the virus.

In FTR #1109, we exam­ined Don­ald Trump’s deal­ings with Deutsche Bank, key “sui­cides” in con­nec­tion with the bank’s records on Trump and Jared Kush­n­er, Trump’s claims of exec­u­tive priv­i­lege in attempts to keep the records secret, the appar­ent destruc­tion of those records by Deutsche Bank and the track­ing of the case to a deci­sion by the Supreme Court.

Now, the Covid-19 out­break may delay that deci­sion indef­i­nite­ly.

As high­light­ed above, Don­ald Trump has been label­ing Covid-19 the “Chi­nese virus” in response to Chi­nese inti­ma­tions (cor­rect in their main con­tention in our opin­ion) that the U.S. is the point of ori­gin of the virus.

An arti­cle in The Asia Times pro­vides more depth on the grow­ing media war between the U.S. and Chi­na.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis:

1.–China now open­ly views the U.S. as a threat: ” . . . . For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Bei­jing open­ly regards the U.S. as a threat, as stat­ed a month ago by For­eign Min­is­ter Wang Yi at the Munich Secu­ri­ty Con­fer­ence dur­ing the peak of the fight against coro­n­avirus. . . .”
2.–President Xi Jin­ping has dropped ver­bal clues as to the Chi­nese view of the ori­gin of the Covid-19: ” . . . . Bei­jing is care­ful­ly, incre­men­tal­ly shap­ing the nar­ra­tive that, from the begin­ning of the coro­n­avirus attack, the lead­er­ship knew it was under a hybrid war attack. The ter­mi­nol­o­gy of Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping is a major clue. He said, on the record, that this was war. And, as a counter-attack, a ‘people’s war’ had to be launched. More­over, he described the virus as a demon or dev­il. Xi is a Con­fu­cian­ist. Unlike some oth­er ancient Chi­nese thinkers, Con­fu­cius was loath to dis­cuss super­nat­ur­al forces and judg­ment in the after­life. How­ev­er, in a Chi­nese cul­tur­al con­text, dev­il means ‘white dev­ils’ or ‘for­eign dev­ils’: guai­lo in Man­darin, gwei­lo in Can­tonese. This was Xi deliv­er­ing a pow­er­ful state­ment in code. . . .”
3.–A Chi­nese For­eign Min­istry offi­cial cit­ed the Mil­i­tary World Games in Wuhan as a pos­si­ble vec­tor­ing point. (We believe this is pos­si­ble, although we sus­pect the Shin­cheon­ji cult and a USAMRIID asso­ci­a­tion with a Wuhan viro­log­i­cal insti­tute as oth­er pos­si­ble vec­tors.) IF, for the sake of argu­ment, fas­cist ele­ments (CIA, Under­ground Reich or what­ev­er) chose the US mil­i­tary ath­letes as a vec­tor, it would have been alto­geth­er pos­si­ble to do so with­out attract­ing atten­tion. Mil­i­tary ath­letes are in superb con­di­tion and, if infect­ed with one of the milder strains of Covid-19, their robust immune sys­tems might well leave them asymp­to­matic, yet still con­ta­gious, or mild­ly ill at worst. They could then com­mu­ni­cate the virus to oth­er mil­i­tary ath­letes, who would then serve as a vec­tor for oth­er coun­tries. ” . . . . Zhao’s explo­sive con­clu­sion is that COVID-19 was already in effect in the U.S. before being iden­ti­fied in Wuhan – due to the by now ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed inabil­i­ty of the U.S. to test and ver­i­fy dif­fer­ences com­pared with the flu. . . .”
4.–Author Pepe Esco­bar reit­er­ates the con­tention that the vari­ants of the virus in Italy and Iran are dif­fer­ent from the vari­ants that infect­ed Wuhan, an inter­pre­ta­tion whose sig­nif­i­cance is debat­ed by sci­en­tists.
5.–The arti­cle high­lights the shut­ter­ing of Ft. Det­rick, which has now been par­tial­ly re-opened. ” . . . . Adding all that to the fact that coro­n­avirus genome vari­a­tions in Iran and Italy were sequenced and it was revealed they do not belong to the vari­ety that infect­ed Wuhan, Chi­nese media are now open­ly  ask­ing ques­tions and draw­ing a con­nec­tion with the shut­ting down in August last year of the “unsafe” mil­i­tary bioweapon lab at Fort Det­rick, the Mil­i­tary Games, and the Wuhan epi­dem­ic. Some of these ques­tions had been asked– with no response – inside the U.S. itself. . . .”
6.–Escobar also notes Event 201, which we high­light­ed in FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112: ” . . . . Extra ques­tions linger about the opaque Event 201 in New York on Octo­ber 18, 2019: a rehearsal for a world­wide pan­dem­ic caused by a dead­ly virus – which hap­pened to be coro­n­avirus. This mag­nif­i­cent coin­ci­dence hap­pened one month before the out­break in Wuhan. Event 201 was spon­sored by Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, the World Eco­nom­ic Forum (WEF), the CIA, Bloomberg, John Hop­kins Foun­da­tion and the UN.  The World Mil­i­tary Games opened in Wuhan on the exact same day. . . .”
7.–We note that, although we have not been able to con­clu­sive­ly prove that CIA was one of the spon­sors of the event, a for­mer Deputy Direc­tor of the Agency was a key par­tic­i­pant. Hav­ing reached such a lev­el of promi­nence with­in the agency, one nev­er “leaves” alto­geth­er. It is prob­a­ble that there was Agency par­tic­i­pa­tion.
8.–Further dis­cus­sion notes the pos­si­ble use of a coro­n­avirus as part of a psy-op: ” . . . . The work­ing hypoth­e­sis of coro­n­avirus as a very pow­er­ful but not Armaged­don-pro­vok­ing bio-weapon unveils it as a per­fect vehi­cle for wide­spread social con­trol — on a glob­al scale. . . .”
9.–Escobar alleges that Cuba has devel­oped an anti-viral that is promis­ing against the virus: ” . . . . The anti-viral Heberon – or Inter­fer­on Alpha 2b – a ther­a­peu­tic, not a vac­cine, has been used with great suc­cess in the treat­ment of coro­n­avirus. A joint ven­ture in Chi­na is pro­duc­ing an inhal­able ver­sion, and at least 15 nations are already inter­est­ed in import­ing the ther­a­peu­tic. . . .” 
10.–Quoting Ital­ian ana­lyst San­dro Mez­zadra, Esco­bar notes the Covid-19 out­break as a social Dar­win­ian psy-op: ” . . . .We are fac­ing a choice between a Malthu­sian strand – inspired by social Dar­win­ism – ‘led by the John­son-Trump-Bol­sonaro axis’ and, on the oth­er side, a strand point­ing to the “requal­i­fi­ca­tion of pub­lic health as a fun­da­men­tal tool,’ exem­pli­fied by Chi­na, South Korea and Italy. There are key lessons to be learned from South Korea, Tai­wan and Sin­ga­pore. The stark option, Mez­zadra notes, is between a ‘nat­ur­al pop­u­la­tion selec­tion,’ with thou­sands of dead, and ‘defend­ing soci­ety’ by employ­ing ‘vari­able degrees of author­i­tar­i­an­ism and social con­trol.’ . . .”
11.–Like many ana­lysts, Escobar–correctly in our opinion–notes that the Covid-19 out­break threat­ens the glob­al econ­o­my and may col­lapse the deriv­a­tive mar­ket. That this may be intend­ed to mask an over­val­ued equi­ties mar­ket seems prob­a­ble to us.

Is the Economic Meltdown as Good as Gold? Maybe for the Far Right Powers that Be

Now that West­’s regime change cam­paign against Chi­na is now play­ing out in the mid­dle of a glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic that threat­ens to stran­gle vir­tu­al­ly all major economies at the same time far right gov­ern­ments are in pow­er across the globe, per­haps it’s time to ask an unset­tling ques­tion: Is col­laps­ing the glob­al econ­o­my and bank­rupt­ing major world pow­ers for the pur­pose of push­ing the world to the gold stan­dard on the agen­da on top of col­laps­ing Chi­na? That’s what we’re going to explore in this post. It’s a high­ly spec­u­la­tive and we bet­ter hope it’s very wrong. But if it’s cor­rect you bet­ter hope you have to gold. And guns. And what­ev­er else is required to sur­vive a social col­lapse because social col­lapse is what the far right has been hop­ing to see for decades and with far right gov­ern­ments in con­trol around the globe in the mid­dle of a glob­al pan­dem­ic that is stran­gling the every econ­o­my we are now clos­er than ever to ‘achiev­ing’ that night­mar­ish far right dream.

FTR #1121 More than One “Flu” Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Part 2

Oya­Gen, Inc. has used a drug devel­oped, test­ed and FDA-approved that suc­cess­ful­ly treats and–apparently–cures Covid-19. Inter­est­ing­ly and, per­haps, sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the tri­als were con­duct­ed at Fort Det­rick. As seen in FTR #‘s 1119 and 1120, the mil­i­tary has been heav­i­ly involved in research­ing virus­es of this type.

There con­tin­ues to be enor­mous empha­sis on Gilead Sci­ences by hedge funds includ­ing Renais­sance Tech­nolo­gies. Robert Mer­cer stepped down as CEO of the firm at the end of 2017, as pub­lic­i­ty around Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca and the fall­out from the Char­lottesville march made him some­thing of a PR lia­bil­i­ty. Usu­al­ly in such sit­u­a­tions, peo­ple like Mer­cer remain as key investors.

In FTR #1118, we not­ed that the Board of Direc­tors of the firm is “inter­est­ing.” The “dis­ap­point­ing” per­for­mance of Gilead Sci­ences changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly with the Covid-19 out­break. ” . . . . Until Mon­day, when it fell in a bru­tal mar­ket rout, Gilead’s stock price had defied the over­all mar­ket decline of recent weeks, ris­ing almost 20 per­cent from Feb. 21 to March 6, on hopes that the drug could pro­vide the first treat­ment for covid-19. The lack of treat­ment helps explain why. The stock price increased 5 per­cent on Feb. 24 alone when a top offi­cial of the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion pinned much of the world’s hopes for a treat­ment on the drug. . . .”

Again, in FTR #‘s 1119 and 1120 we looked at the pro­found involve­ment of the Pen­ta­gon in research­ing coro­n­avirus­es like Covid-19, as well as DARPA’s deep involve­ment with com­pa­nies approved to begin work­ing on vac­cines. Now, Med­ica­go, anoth­er DARPA-fund­ed com­pa­ny, claims to have a vac­cine ready for tri­al. “. . . . Using plants and genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered agrobac­te­ria works faster than eggs also makes the vac­cine much eas­i­er to pro­duce at scale, which, in part, is why the U.S. mil­i­tary has invest­ed in the com­pa­ny. In 2010, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, put togeth­er a $100 mil­lion pro­gram dubbed Blue Angel to look into new forms of vac­cine dis­cov­ery and pro­duc­tion. A big chunk of that mon­ey went to Med­ica­go to build a facil­i­ty in North Car­oli­na, where they showed that they could find a vac­cine in just 20 days, then rapid­ly scale up pro­duc­tion. . . .”

Next, we turn to an arti­cle not­ing that the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the COVID-19 dis­ease has remark­able over­lap with a hypo­thet­i­cal dis­ease, dubbed “Dis­ease X.” In 2018, the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion empha­sized an alarm­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of “hypo­thet­i­cal” “Dis­ease X” that appears to be shared with SARS-CoV­‑2: the abil­i­ty to rapid­ly morph from a mild to dead­ly dis­ease. The sud­den turn towards a dead­ly dis­ease appears to be due, in part, to an over­ly aggres­sive immune response that ends up rav­aging the lungs. As one expert points out, this is the same pat­tern seen in the 1918 “Span­ish flu” pan­dem­ic.

In FTR #1117, we reviewed the fact that mil­i­tary researchers had suc­cess­ful­ly recov­ered DNA from that infa­mous 1918 flu virus. as will be seen below, that virus was re-cre­at­ed in a lab­o­ra­to­ry in 2005.

So the WHO warned a cou­ple years ago about a hypo­thet­i­cal “Dis­ease X” dis­ease that was high­ly con­ta­gious with the abil­i­ty to spread with asymp­to­mati­cal­ly, is mild in most cas­es but with the abil­i­ty to sud­den­ly turn dead­ly. And here we are two years lat­er with a dis­ease that fits that pro­file. It was a pret­ty pre­scient pre­dic­tion.

Note, also, that Mar­i­on Koopmans–head of viro­science at Eras­mus Med­ical Cen­ter in Rot­ter­dam and one of the WHO per­son­nel who opined that Covid-19 was “Dis­ease X” worked at the same insti­tu­tion as the researchers who per­formed gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments on the HN51 Avian Bird Flu virus, adapt­ing to fer­rets and mak­ing it com­mu­ni­ca­ble through casu­al res­pi­ra­to­ry activ­i­ty. Those GOF experiements were also dis­cussed in FTR #1117.

” . . . . From recent reports about the stealthy ways the so-called Covid-19 virus spreads and maims, a pic­ture is emerg­ing of an enig­mat­ic pathogen whose effects are main­ly mild, but which occa­sion­al­ly — and unpre­dictably — turns dead­ly in the sec­ond week. . . . The doc­tor [Li Wen­liang], who was in good health pri­or to his infec­tion, appeared to have a rel­a­tive­ly mild case until his lungs became inflamed, lead­ing to the man’s death two days lat­er, said Lin­fa Wang, who heads the emerg­ing infec­tious dis­ease pro­gram at Duke-Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Sin­ga­pore Med­ical School. A sim­i­lar pat­tern of inflam­ma­tion not­ed among Covid-19 patients was observed in those who suc­cumbed to the 1918 ‘Span­ish flu’ pan­dem­ic . . .”

We won­der if vari­ants of the Covid-19 may have been mod­i­fied to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract and/or mod­i­fied with DNA from the res­ur­rect­ed 1918 “Span­ish Flu”?

Peter Daszak of the WHO once again, voiced the (self-ful­fill­ing?) opinion/prophecy that Covid-19 is indeed “Dis­ease X.”

A key fac­tor spurring our sus­pi­cion con­cern­ing genet­ic-engi­neer­ing of one or more vari­ant of the Covid-19 virus con­cerns a 2015 Gain-of-Func­tion exper­i­ment: “Ralph Bar­ic, an infec­tious-dis­ease researcher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill, last week (Novem­ber 9) pub­lished a study on his team’s efforts to engi­neer a virus with the sur­face pro­tein of the SHC014 coro­n­avirus, found in horse­shoe bats in Chi­na, and the back­bone of one that caus­es human-like severe acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human air­way cells and caused dis­ease in mice. . . . The results demon­strate the abil­i­ty of the SHC014 sur­face pro­tein to bind and infect human cells, val­i­dat­ing con­cerns that this virus—or oth­er coro­n­avirus­es found in bat species—may be capa­ble of mak­ing the leap to peo­ple with­out first evolv­ing in an inter­me­di­ate host, Nature report­ed. They also reignite a debate about whether that infor­ma­tion jus­ti­fies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-func­tion research. ‘If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could pre­dict the tra­jec­to­ry,’ Simon Wain-Hob­son, a virol­o­gist at the Pas­teur Insti­tute in Paris, told Nature. . . .”

The above-men­tioned Ralph Baric–who did the gain-of-func­tion mod­i­fi­ca­tion on the Horse­shoe Bat coro­n­avirus, has been select­ed to engi­neer the Covid-19.

Note what might be termed a “viro­log­ic Juras­sic Park” man­i­fes­ta­tion: ” . . . . . . . . The tech­nol­o­gy imme­di­ate­ly cre­at­ed bio-weapon wor­ries. . . . Researchers at the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they res­ur­rect­ed the influen­za virus that killed tens of mil­lions in 1918–1919. . . .”

FTR #1119 and FTR #1120 DARPA and the Covid-19 Outbreak, Part 1 and DARPA and the Covid-19 Outbreak, Part 2

A thought-pro­vok­ing and dis­turb­ing arti­cle about DARPA research into bat-borne dis­eases, includ­ing some caused by coronaviruses–is set forth here.

Whit­ney Webb has pro­vid­ed us with trou­bling insight into Pen­ta­gon research–some of which remains clas­si­fied:

1.– Into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es. ” . . . . the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), began spend­ing mil­lions on such research in 2018 and some of those Pen­ta­gon-fund­ed stud­ies were con­duct­ed at known U.S. mil­i­tary bioweapons labs bor­der­ing Chi­na and result­ed in the dis­cov­ery of dozens of new coro­n­avirus strains as recent­ly as last April. Fur­ther­more, the ties of the Pentagon’s main biode­fense lab to a virol­o­gy insti­tute in Wuhan, Chi­na — where the cur­rent out­break is believed to have begun — have been unre­port­ed in Eng­lish lan­guage media thus far. . . . For instance, DARPA spent $10 mil­lion on one project in 2018 ‘to unrav­el the com­plex caus­es of bat-borne virus­es that have recent­ly made the jump to humans, caus­ing con­cern among glob­al health offi­cials.” Anoth­er research project backed by both DARPA and NIH saw researchers at Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty exam­ine the coro­n­avirus that caus­es Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS) in bats and camels ‘to under­stand the role of these hosts in trans­mit­ting dis­ease to humans.’  . . . For instance, one study con­duct­ed in South­ern Chi­na in 2018 result­ed in the dis­cov­ery of 89 new “nov­el bat coro­n­avirus” strains that use the same recep­tor as the coro­n­avirus known as Mid­dle East Res­pi­ra­to­ry Syn­drome (MERS). That study was joint­ly fund­ed by the Chi­nese government’s Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, USAID — an orga­ni­za­tion long alleged to be a front for U.S. intel­li­gence, and the U.S. Nation­al Insti­tute of Health — which has col­lab­o­rat­ed with both the CIA and the Pen­ta­gon on infec­tious dis­ease and bioweapons research.. . . .”
2.–At bio­log­i­cal research facil­i­ties ring­ing both Chi­na and Rus­sia. ” . . . .  One of those stud­ies focused on ‘Bat-Borne Zoonot­ic Dis­ease Emer­gence in West­ern Asia’ and involved the Lugar Cen­ter in Geor­gia, iden­ti­fied by for­mer Geor­gian gov­ern­ment offi­cials, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment and inde­pen­dent, inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Dilyana Gay­tandzhie­va as a covert U.S. bioweapons lab. . . . Anoth­er U.S. gov­ern­ment-fund­ed study that dis­cov­ered still more new strains of ‘nov­el bat coro­n­avirus’ was pub­lished just last year. Titled ‘Dis­cov­ery and Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Nov­el Bat Coro­n­avirus Lin­eages from Kaza­khstan,’ focused on ‘the bat fau­na of cen­tral Asia, which link Chi­na to east­ern Europe’ and the nov­el bat coro­n­avirus lin­eages dis­cov­ered dur­ing the study were found to be ‘close­ly relat­ed to bat coro­n­avirus­es from Chi­na, France, Spain, and South Africa, sug­gest­ing that co-cir­cu­la­tion of coro­n­avirus­es is com­mon in mul­ti­ple bat species with over­lap­ping geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tions.’ In oth­er words, the coro­n­avirus­es dis­cov­ered in this study were iden­ti­fied in bat pop­u­la­tions that migrate between Chi­na and Kaza­khstan, among oth­er coun­tries, and is close­ly relat­ed to bat coro­n­avirus­es in sev­er­al coun­tries, includ­ing Chi­na. . . .”
3.–Networked with Chi­nese research facil­i­ties in Wuhan. ” . . . . The USAMRIID’s prob­lem­at­ic record of safe­ty at such facil­i­ties is of par­tic­u­lar con­cern in light of the recent coro­n­avirus out­break in Chi­na. As this report will soon reveal, this is because USAMRIID has a decades-old and close part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wuhan’s Insti­tute of Med­ical Virol­o­gy, which is locat­ed in the epi­cen­ter of the cur­rent out­break. . . . Duke Uni­ver­si­ty is also joint­ly part­nered with China’s Wuhan Uni­ver­si­ty, which is based in the city where the cur­rent coro­n­avirus out­break began, which result­ed in the open­ing of the Chi­na-based Duke Kun­shan Uni­ver­si­ty (DKU) in 2018. Notably, China’s Wuhan Uni­ver­si­ty — in addi­tion to its part­ner­ship with Duke — also includes a mul­ti-lab Insti­tute of Med­ical Virol­o­gy that has worked close­ly with the US Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute for Infec­tious Dis­eases since the 1980s, accord­ing to its web­site. . . . ”
Into the DNA of both Russ­ian and Chi­nese pop­u­la­tions. ” . . . . Since the Pen­ta­gon began ‘redesign­ing’ its poli­cies and research towards a ‘long war’ with Rus­sia and Chi­na, the Russ­ian mil­i­tary has accused the U.S. mil­i­tary of har­vest­ing DNA from Rus­sians as part of a covert bioweapon pro­gram, a charge that the Pen­ta­gon has adamant­ly denied. Major Gen­er­al Igor Kir­illov, the head of the Russ­ian military’s radi­a­tion, chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal pro­tec­tion unit who made these claims, also assert­ed that the U.S. was devel­op­ing such weapons in close prox­im­i­ty to Russ­ian and Chi­nese bor­ders. Chi­na has also accused the U.S. mil­i­tary of har­vest­ing DNA from Chi­nese cit­i­zens with ill inten­tions, such as when 200,000 Chi­nese farm­ers were used in 12 genet­ic exper­i­ments with­out informed con­sent. Those exper­i­ments had been con­duct­ed by Har­vard researchers as part of a U.S. gov­ern­ment-fund­ed project. . . .”
4.–Into “gene-driving”–a biotech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment that can per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ic make­up of entire pop­u­la­tion groups and lead to the extinc­tion of oth­er groups. ” . . . . Con­cerns about Pen­ta­gon exper­i­ments with bio­log­i­cal weapons have gar­nered renewed media atten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly after it was revealed in 2017 that DARPA was the top fun­der of the con­tro­ver­sial ‘gene dri­ve’ tech­nol­o­gy, which has the pow­er to per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ics of entire pop­u­la­tions while tar­get­ing oth­ers for extinc­tion. At least two of DARPA’s stud­ies using this con­tro­ver­sial tech­nol­o­gy were clas­si­fied and ‘focused on the poten­tial mil­i­tary appli­ca­tion of gene dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy and use of gene dri­ves in agri­cul­ture,’ accord­ing to media reports. The rev­e­la­tion came after an orga­ni­za­tion called the ETC Group obtained over 1,000 emails on the military’s inter­est in the tech­nol­o­gy as part of a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act (FOIA) request. Co-direc­tor of the ETC Group Jim Thomas said that this tech­nol­o­gy may be used as a bio­log­i­cal weapon: ‘Gene dri­ves are a pow­er­ful and dan­ger­ous new tech­nol­o­gy and poten­tial bio­log­i­cal weapons could have dis­as­trous impacts on peace, food secu­ri­ty and the envi­ron­ment, espe­cial­ly if mis­used, The fact that gene dri­ve devel­op­ment is now being pri­mar­i­ly fund­ed and struc­tured by the US mil­i­tary rais­es alarm­ing ques­tions about this entire field.’ . . . .”
Into over­lap­ping tech­nolo­gies man­i­fest­ing philoso­phies of eugen­ics and eth­nic cleans­ing. ” . . . . In addi­tion, one pre­lim­i­nary study on the coro­n­avirus respon­si­ble for the cur­rent out­break found that the recep­tor, Angiotensin-con­vert­ing enzyme 2 (ACE2), is not only the same as that used by the SARS coro­n­avirus, but that East Asians present a much high­er ratio of lung cells that express that recep­tor than the oth­er eth­nic­i­ties (Cau­casian and African-Amer­i­can) includ­ed in the study. . . . the U.S. Air Force pub­lished a doc­u­ment enti­tled ‘Biotech­nol­o­gy: Genet­i­cal­ly Engi­neered Pathogens,’ which con­tains the fol­low­ing pas­sage: ‘The JASON group, com­posed of aca­d­e­m­ic sci­en­tists, served as tech­ni­cal advis­ers to the U. S. gov­ern­ment. Their study gen­er­at­ed six broad class­es of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered pathogens that could pose seri­ous threats to soci­ety. These include but are not lim­it­ed to bina­ry bio­log­i­cal weapons, design­er genes, gene ther­a­py as a weapon, stealth virus­es, host-swap­ping dis­eases, and design­er dis­eases (empha­sis added).’ . . .”
5.–Into the use of “Insect Allies” to sup­pos­ed­ly pro­vide crops with pro­tec­tion against pests and disease–a tech­no­log­i­cal pro­gram crit­ics have charged masks an offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare man­i­fes­ta­tion. ” . . . . The most recent exam­ple of this involved DARPA’s “Insect Allies” pro­gram, which offi­cial­ly “aims to pro­tect the U.S. agri­cul­tur­al food sup­ply by deliv­er­ing pro­tec­tive genes to plants via insects, which are respon­si­ble for the trans­mis­sion of most plant virus­es” and to ensure “food secu­ri­ty in the event of a major threat,” accord­ing to both DARPA and media reports. How­ev­er, a group of well-respect­ed, inde­pen­dent sci­en­tists revealed in a scathing analy­sis of the pro­gram that, far from a ‘defen­sive’ research project, the Insect Allies pro­gram was aimed at cre­at­ing and deliv­er­ing ‘new class of bio­log­i­cal weapon.’ The sci­en­tists, writ­ing in the jour­nal Sci­ence and led by Richard Guy Reeves, from the Max Planck Insti­tute for Evo­lu­tion­ary Biol­o­gy in Ger­many, warned that DARPA’s pro­gram — which uses insects as the vehi­cle for as hor­i­zon­tal envi­ron­men­tal genet­ic alter­ation agents (HEGAAS) — revealed ‘an inten­tion to devel­op a means of deliv­ery of HEGAAs for offen­sive pur­pos­es (empha­sis added).’ . . .”
6.–Ostensibly aimed at pre­vent­ing pan­demics but–very possibly–masking prepa­ra­tions for offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare projects. ” . . . . Many of these recent research projects are relat­ed to DARPA’s Pre­vent­ing Emerg­ing Path­o­gen­ic Threats, or PREEMPT pro­gram, which was offi­cial­ly announced in April 2018. PREEMPT focus­es specif­i­cal­ly on ani­mal reser­voirs of dis­ease, specif­i­cal­ly bats, and DARPA even not­ed in its press release in the pro­gram that it ‘is aware of biosafe­ty and biose­cu­ri­ty sen­si­tiv­i­ties that could arise’ due to the nature of the research. . . . In addi­tion, while both DARPA’s PREEMPT pro­gram and the Pentagon’s open inter­est in bats as bioweapons were announced in 2018, the U.S. mil­i­tary — specif­i­cal­ly the Depart­ment of Defense’s Coop­er­a­tive Threat Reduc­tion Pro­gram — began fund­ing research involv­ing bats and dead­ly pathogens, includ­ing the coro­n­avirus­es MERS and SARS, a year pri­or in 2017. . . .”
7.–That is heav­i­ly net­worked with the U.S. health and med­ical infra­struc­tures. ” . . . . The sec­ond phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny that was select­ed by CEPI to devel­op a vac­cine for the new coro­n­avirus is Mod­er­na Inc., which will devel­op a vac­cine for the nov­el coro­n­avirus of con­cern in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the U.S. NIH and which will be fund­ed entire­ly by CEPI. The vac­cine in ques­tion, as opposed to Inovio’s DNA vac­cine, will be a mes­sen­ger RNA (mRNA) vac­cine. Though dif­fer­ent than a DNA vac­cine, mRNA vac­cines still use genet­ic mate­r­i­al ‘to direct the body’s cells to pro­duce intra­cel­lu­lar, mem­brane or secret­ed pro­teins.’ Moderna’s mRNA treat­ments, includ­ing its mRNA vac­cines, were large­ly devel­oped using a $25 mil­lion grant from DARPA and it often touts is strate­gic alliance with DARPA in press releas­es. . . .”
8.–That is heav­i­ly net­worked with firms cho­sen to devel­op vac­cines for the Covid-19. ” . . . . the very com­pa­nies recent­ly cho­sen to devel­op a vac­cine to com­bat the coro­n­avirus out­break are them­selves strate­gic allies of DARPA. . . . For instance, the top fun­ders of Inovio Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals include both DARPA and the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency (DTRA) and the com­pa­ny has received mil­lions in dol­lars in grants from DARPA, includ­ing a $45 mil­lion grant to devel­op a vac­cine for Ebo­la. Inovio spe­cial­izes in the cre­ation of DNA immunother­a­pies and DNA vac­cines, which con­tain genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered DNA that caus­es the cells of the recip­i­ent to pro­duce an anti­gen and can per­ma­nent­ly alter a person’s DNA. Inovio pre­vi­ous­ly devel­oped a DNA vac­cine for the Zika virus, but — to date — no DNA vac­cine has been approved for use in humans in the Unit­ed States. Inovio was also recent­ly award­ed over $8 mil­lion from the U.S. mil­i­tary to devel­op a small, portable intra­der­mal device for deliv­er­ing DNA vac­cines joint­ly devel­oped by Inovio and USAMRIID.”
9.–Into vac­cines that have not been used on human beings and that use gene-alter­ing manip­u­la­tion that alarms crit­ics. ” . . . . Not only that, but these DARPA-backed com­pa­nies are devel­op­ing con­tro­ver­sial DNA and mRNA vac­cines for this par­tic­u­lar coro­n­avirus strain, a cat­e­go­ry of vac­cine that has nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly been approved for human use in the Unit­ed States. . . . Inovio’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the U.S. mil­i­tary in regards to DNA vac­cines is noth­ing new, as their past efforts to devel­op a DNA vac­cine for both Ebo­la and Mar­burg virus were also part of what Inovio’s CEO Dr. Joseph Kim called its ‘active biode­fense pro­gram’ that has ‘gar­nered mul­ti­ple grants from the Depart­ment of Defense, Defense Threat Reduc­tion Agency (DTRA), Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases (NIAID), and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies.’ . . . . ”
10.–Involving the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases, locat­ed at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land, a facil­i­ty that was closed down in August of 2019 by the CDC for mul­ti­ple safe­ty vio­la­tions. ” . . . . The U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases (USAMRIID) facil­i­ty at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land — the U.S. military’s lead lab­o­ra­to­ry for ‘bio­log­i­cal defense’ research since the late 1960s — was forced to halt all research it was con­duct­ing with a series of dead­ly pathogens after the CDC found that it lacked ‘suf­fi­cient sys­tems in place to decon­t­a­m­i­nate waste­water’ from its high­est-secu­ri­ty labs and fail­ure of staff to fol­low safe­ty pro­ce­dures, among oth­er laps­es. The facil­i­ty con­tains both lev­el 3 and lev­el 4 biosafe­ty labs. While it is unknown if exper­i­ments involv­ing coro­n­avirus­es were ongo­ing at the time, USAMRIID has recent­ly been involved in research borne out of the Pentagon’s recent con­cern about the use of bats as bioweapons. . . .”
11.–Into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing in order to cre­ate eth­no-spe­cif­ic bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons, as dis­cussed by the Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry. ” . . . . In what is arguably the think tank’s most con­tro­ver­sial doc­u­ment, titled ‘Rebuild­ing America’s Defens­es,’ there are a few pas­sages that open­ly dis­cuss the util­i­ty of bioweapons, includ­ing the fol­low­ing sen­tences: ‘…com­bat like­ly will take place in new dimen­sions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and per­haps the world of microbes…advanced forms of bio­log­i­cal war­fare that can ‘tar­get’ spe­cif­ic geno­types may trans­form bio­log­i­cal war­fare from the realm of ter­ror to a polit­i­cal­ly use­ful tool.’ . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with a sum­ma­ry of six pan­demics that struck Chi­na with­in a peri­od of a lit­tle less than two years. Are these con­nect­ed to the many-faceted desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na dis­cussed in past pro­grams and/or the research pro­grams high­light­ed in the Whit­ney Webb arti­cle?: 

. . . . In the past two years (dur­ing the trade war) Chi­na has suf­fered sev­er­al pan­demics:

1.–February 15, 2018: H7N4 bird flu. Sick­ened at least 1,600 peo­ple in Chi­na and killed more than 600. Many chick­ens killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts.
2.–June, 2018: H7N9 bird flu. Many chick­ens killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts.
3.–August, 2018: out­break of African swine flu. Same strain as Rus­sia, from Geor­gia. Mil­lions of pigs killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US pork prod­ucts.
4.–May 24, 2019: mas­sive infes­ta­tion of army­worms in 14 province-lev­el regions in Chi­na, which destroy most food crops. Quick­ly spread to more than 8,500 hectares of China’s grain pro­duc­tion. They pro­duce aston­ish­ing num­bers of eggs. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts – corn, soy­beans.
5.–December, 2019: Coro­n­avirus appear­ance puts China’s econ­o­my on hold.
6.–January, 2020:China is hit by a “high­ly path­o­gen­ic” strain of bird flu in Hunan province. Many chick­ens died, many oth­ers killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts.

FTR #1118 Update on the Coronavirus Outbreak

As the title indi­cates, the broad­cast updates a num­ber of points of inquiry and analy­sis con­cern­ing the Covid-19 out­break. Of par­tic­u­lar note in this con­text, is the fact that the CDC shut down the Army’s research facil­i­ty at Ft. Det­rick. In ear­ly August of 2019, short­ly before the record­ed start of the out­break in Wuhan, Chi­na, the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases at that facil­i­ty was closed down by the CDC due to mul­ti­ple safe­ty vio­la­tions. “All research at a Fort Det­rick lab­o­ra­to­ry that han­dles high-lev­el dis­ease-caus­ing mate­r­i­al, such as Ebo­la, is on hold indef­i­nite­ly after the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion found the orga­ni­za­tion failed to meet biosafe­ty stan­dards. . . . The CDC sent a cease and desist order in July. After USAMRIID received the order from the CDC, its reg­is­tra­tion with the Fed­er­al Select Agent Pro­gram, which over­sees dis­ease-caus­ing mate­r­i­al use and pos­ses­sion, was sus­pend­ed. That sus­pen­sion effec­tive­ly halt­ed all bio­log­i­cal select agents and tox­in research at USAMRIID . . . .”

Much of the pro­gram cen­ters on an arti­cle from Glob­al Research. It is Mr. Emory’s opin­ion that J. Kyle Bass’s com­ments (see above) and the State Depart­ment crack­down on Chi­nese media are relat­ed to some of the ele­ments of dis­cus­sion in this arti­cle. He had heard alle­ga­tions for weeks that there was dis­cus­sion in Chi­nese media about the virus hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed in the Unit­ed States. Up until this arti­cle came to his atten­tion, he had seen noth­ing to that effect.

NB: Although West­ern media and offi­cial treat­ment of Chi­nese media pro­nounce­ments on the coro­n­avirus’s ori­gin being in the U.S. will be dis­missed as “fake news,” “pro­pa­gan­da,” etc., the spec­u­la­tion in a major Japan­ese TV broad­cast and the analy­sis pre­sent­ed in a Tai­wanese sci­en­tif­ic video pre­sen­ta­tion are not eas­i­ly dis­missed as “Com­mu­nist Chi­nese dis­in­for­ma­tion.” It is alto­geth­er dubi­ous that major Japan­ese media or Tai­wanese sci­en­tif­ic pre­sen­ta­tion would car­ry water for the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.

The arti­cle rais­es a num­ber of points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis, includ­ing:

1.–” . . . . A new study by Chi­nese researchers indi­cates the nov­el coro­n­avirus may have begun human-to-human trans­mis­sion in late Novem­ber from a place oth­er than the Hua­nan seafood mar­ket in Wuhan. The study pub­lished on Chi­naX­iv, a Chi­nese open repos­i­to­ry for sci­en­tif­ic researchers, reveals the new coro­n­avirus was intro­duced to the seafood mar­ket from anoth­er location(s), and then spread rapid­ly from the mar­ket due to the large num­ber of close con­tacts. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Chi­nese med­ical author­i­ties – and “intel­li­gence agen­cies” – then con­duct­ed a rapid and wide-rang­ing search for the ori­gin of the virus, col­lect­ing near­ly 100 sam­ples of the genome from 12 dif­fer­ent coun­tries on 4 con­ti­nents, iden­ti­fy­ing all the vari­eties and muta­tions. Dur­ing this research, they deter­mined the virus out­break had begun much ear­li­er, prob­a­bly in Novem­ber, short­ly after the Wuhan Mil­i­tary Games. . . . ”
3.–” . . . . They then came to the same inde­pen­dent con­clu­sions as the Japan­ese researchers – that the virus did not begin in Chi­na but was intro­duced there from the out­side. China’s top res­pi­ra­to­ry spe­cial­ist Zhong Nan­shan  said on Jan­u­ary 27. ‘Though the COVID-19 was first dis­cov­ered in Chi­na, it does not mean that it orig­i­nat­ed from Chi­na.’ . . . .This of course rais­es ques­tions as to the actu­al loca­tion of ori­gin. If the author­i­ties pur­sued their analy­sis through 100 genome sam­ples from 12 coun­tries, they must have had a com­pelling rea­son to be search­ing for the orig­i­nal source out­side Chi­na. This would explain why there was such dif­fi­cul­ty in locat­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing a ‘patient zero’. . . .”
4.–” . . . . In Feb­ru­ary of 2020, the Japan­ese Asahi news report (print and TV) claimed the coro­n­avirus orig­i­nat­ed in the US, not in Chi­na, and that some (or many) of the 14,000 Amer­i­can deaths attrib­uted to influen­za may have in fact have result­ed from the coro­n­avirus. (5) . . .”
5.–” . . . . The TV Asahi net­work pre­sent­ed sci­en­tif­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion for their claims, rais­ing the issue that no one would know the cause of death because the US either neglect­ed to test or failed to release the results. Japan avoid­ed the ques­tions of nat­ur­al vs. man-made and acci­den­tal vs. delib­er­ate, sim­ply stat­ing that the virus out­break may first have occurred in the US. The West­ern Inter­net appears to have been scrubbed of this infor­ma­tion, but the Chi­nese media still ref­er­ence it. . . .”
6.–” . . . . Then, Tai­wan ran a TV news pro­gram on February,27,(click here to access video (Chi­nese), that pre­sent­ed dia­grams and flow charts sug­gest­ing the coro­n­avirus orig­i­nat­ed in the US. (6) . . . .”
7.–” . . . . The man in the video is a top virol­o­gist and phar­ma­col­o­gist who per­formed a long and detailed search for the source of the virus. He spends the first part of the video explain­ing the var­i­ous hap­lo­types (vari­eties, if you will), and explains how they are relat­ed to each oth­er, how one must have come before anoth­er, and how one type derived from anoth­er. He explains this is mere­ly ele­men­tary sci­ence and noth­ing to do with geopo­lit­i­cal issues, describ­ing how, just as with num­bers in order, 3 must always fol­low 2. . . .”
8.–” . . . . The basic log­ic is that the geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion with the great­est diver­si­ty of virus strains must be the orig­i­nal source because a sin­gle strain can­not emerge from noth­ing. He demon­strat­ed that only the US has all the five known strains of the virus (while Wuhan and most of Chi­na have only one, as do Tai­wan and South Korea, Thai­land and Viet­nam, Sin­ga­pore, and Eng­land, Bel­gium and Ger­many), con­sti­tut­ing a the­sis that the hap­lo­types in oth­er nations may have orig­i­nat­ed in the US. . . .”
9.–” . . . . With about 50 nations scat­tered through­out the world hav­ing iden­ti­fied at least one case at the time of writ­ing, it would be very inter­est­ing to exam­ine virus sam­ples from each of those nations to deter­mine their loca­tion of ori­gin and the world­wide sources and pat­terns of spread. . . .”
10.–” . . . .The Tai­wanese doc­tor then stat­ed the virus out­break began ear­li­er than assumed, say­ing, ‘We must look to Sep­tem­ber of 2019’. He stat­ed the case in Sep­tem­ber of 2019 where some Japan­ese trav­eled to Hawaii and returned home infect­ed, peo­ple who had nev­er been to Chi­na. This was two months pri­or to the infec­tions in Chi­na and just after the CDC sud­den­ly and total­ly shut down the Fort Det­rick bio-weapons lab claim­ing the facil­i­ties were insuf­fi­cient to pre­vent loss of pathogens. (10) (11) He said he per­son­al­ly inves­ti­gat­ed those cas­es very care­ful­ly (as did the Japan­ese virol­o­gists who came to the same con­clu­sion).. This might indi­cate the coro­n­avirus had already spread in the US but where the symp­toms were being offi­cial­ly attrib­uted to oth­er dis­eases, and thus pos­si­bly masked. . . .”
11.–” . . . . On Feb­ru­ary 26, ABC News affil­i­ate KJCT8 News Net­work report­ed that a woman recent­ly told the media that her sis­ter died on from coro­n­avirus infec­tion. Mon­trose, Col­orado res­i­dent Almeta Stone said, ‘They (the med­ical staff) kept us informed that it was the flu, and when I got the death cer­tifi­cate, there was a coro­n­avirus in the cause of death.’ . . .”
12.–” . . . . In the past two years (dur­ing the trade war) Chi­na has suf­fered sev­er­al pan­demics: A) Feb­ru­ary 15, 2018: H7N4 bird flu. Sick­ened at least 1,600 peo­ple in Chi­na and killed more than 600. Many chick­ens killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts. B)June, 2018: H7N9 bird flu. Many chick­ens killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts. C) August, 2018: out­break of African swine flu. Same strain as Rus­sia, from Geor­gia. Mil­lions of pigs killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US pork prod­ucts. D)May 24, 2019: mas­sive infes­ta­tion of army­worms in 14 province-lev­el regions in Chi­na, which destroy most food crops. Quick­ly spread to more than 8,500 hectares of China’s grain pro­duc­tion. They pro­duce aston­ish­ing num­bers of eggs. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts – corn, soy­beans. E) Decem­ber, 2019: Coro­n­avirus appear­ance puts China’s econ­o­my on hold. F) Jan­u­ary, 2020: Chi­na is hit by a ‘high­ly path­o­gen­ic’ strain of bird flu in Hunan province. Many chick­ens died, many oth­ers killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Fur­ther dis­cus­sion of the State Depart­men­t’s crack­down on Chi­nese media out­lets; Fur­ther dis­cus­sion of Shincheonji–a South Kore­an cult that was appar­ent­ly the vehi­cle for intro­duc­ing the virus into that coun­try and which has a branch in Wuhan Chi­na; the struc­tur­al, oper­a­tional and doc­tri­nal over­lap between Shin­cheon­ji and the Uni­fi­catin Church; Don­ald Rums­feld’s posi­tion as chair­man of the board of direc­tors of Gilead Sciences–at the fore­front of Big Phar­ma’s race to devel­op coun­ter­mea­sures to the Covid-19 and a major invest­ment tar­get for hedge funds; The pres­ence on Gilead­’s board of C. Ben­no Schmidt, Sr., who helped launch Richard Nixon’s War on Cancer–a cov­er for the NCI’s Spe­cial Viral Can­cer Research Pro­gram.

Disturbing Article about DARPA and Bat-Borne Coronaviruses

A thought-pro­vok­ing and dis­turb­ing arti­cle about DARPA research into bat-borne dis­eases, includ­ing some caused by coronaviruses–is set forth here, as sup­ple­men­tal to broad­casts on the sub­ject. Whit­ney Webb has pro­vid­ed us with trou­bling insight into Pen­ta­gon research–some of which remains clas­si­fied: A) Into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es. B) At bio­log­i­cal research facil­i­ties ring­ing both Chi­na and Rus­sia. C) Net­worked with Chi­nese research facil­i­ties in Wuhan. D) Into the DNA of both Russ­ian and Chi­nese pop­u­la­tions. E) Into “gene-driving”–a biotech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment that can per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ic make­up of entire pop­u­la­tion groups and lead to the extinc­tion of oth­er groups. F) Into the use of “Insect Allies” to sup­pos­ed­ly pro­vide crops with pro­tec­tion against pests and disease–a tech­no­log­i­cal pro­gram crit­ics have charged masks an offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare man­i­fes­ta­tion. G) Osten­si­bly aimed at pre­vent­ing pan­demics but–very possibly–masking prepa­ra­tions for offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare projects. H) That is heav­i­ly net­worked with the U.S. health and med­ical infra­struc­tures. I) That is heav­i­ly net­worked with firms cho­sen to devel­op vac­cines for the Covid-19. J) Into vac­cines that have not been used on human beings and that use gene-alter­ing manip­u­la­tion that alarms crit­ics. K) Into over­lap­ping tech­nolo­gies man­i­fest­ing philoso­phies of eugen­ics and eth­nic cleans­ing. L) Involv­ing the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases, locat­ed at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land, a facil­i­ty that was closed down by the CDC at the begin­ning of August, 2019, for mul­ti­ple safe­ty vio­la­tions. M) Into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing in order to cre­ate eth­no-spe­cif­ic bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons.

FTR #1117 More Than One “Flu” Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Researchers found that lev­els of the Covid-19 virus increased soon after symp­toms first appeared, with high­er amounts in the nose than in the throats, which is also more con­sis­tent with influen­za than SARS. Of the 18 patients they exam­ined, one had mod­er­ate lev­els in their nose and throat but no symptoms–people who are asymp­to­matic can still poten­tial­ly spread the virus. It’s this com­bi­na­tion of air­borne trans­mis­sions and asymp­to­matic patients who shed the virus that makes this a par­tic­u­lar­ly infec­tious dis­ease.

This anom­alous new abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, of course, brings up the chill­ing exper­i­ments where researchers mod­i­fied the H5N1 bird flu virus until it was capa­ble of air­borne trans­mis­sions between fer­rets. That’s the same research that was banned by the NIH fol­low­ing the uproar but has sub­se­quent­ly been real­lowed in ear­ly 2019. That orig­i­nal 2012 study specif­i­cal­ly found that it was muta­tions that gave the virus the abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tracts of the fer­rets that made it an air­borne virus. We have yet to year if the SAR-CoV­‑2 virus had the same or sim­i­lar muta­tions to those that were induced in the H5N1 bird flu virus exper­i­ment but it seems like­ly.

The infec­tious­ness of the SARS-CoV­‑2 coro­n­avirus is unprece­dent­ed based on this new study. As one immu­nol­o­gist put it, “This virus is clear­ly much more capa­ble of spread­ing between humans than any oth­er nov­el coro­n­avirus we’ve ever seen. This is more akin to the spread of flu”.

In the con­text of the Covid-19’s flu-like abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, we explore exper­i­ments adapt­ing the lethal H5N1 avian flu to fer­rets. These exper­i­ments were halt­ed in 2014 but sub­se­quent­ly resumed in 2017.

Might some of this exper­i­ment have been adapt­ed to the Covid-19?

We explore addi­tion­al exper­i­ments adapt­ing the lethal H5N1 avian flu to fer­rets. These exper­i­ments were halt­ed in 2014 but sub­se­quent­ly resumed in 2017.

Might some of this exper­i­ment have been adapt­ed to the Covid-19?

These exper­i­ments were resumed, short­ly before the out­break of Covid-19. Again, might some of the results of the adap­ta­tion of the H5N1 avian flu to fer­rets have fig­ured in the Covid-19 phe­nom­e­non?

Note that many experts were crit­i­cal of the process.

A report on the adap­ta­tion of the A/H5N1 to fer­rets notes that Oseltamivir–marketed under the brand-name Tamiflu–was suc­cess­ful in treat­ing the fer­rets. That is one of the anti-virals in a drug cock­tail used by Thai doc­tors to suc­cess­ful­ly treat a Covid-19 suf­fer­er.

In FTR#55, we not­ed in 1997 that U.S. Army researchers had suc­cess­ful­ly recov­ered genet­ic mate­r­i­al from the 1918 influen­za epi­dem­ic.

As will be seen in future pro­grams, one of the vari­ants of the Covid-19 does indeed behave like the 1918 flu virus. As we will also see in future pro­grams, that virus was res­ur­rect­ed by researchers in 2005.

In the past, we have heard it alleged by cred­i­ble sources that Ger­many was behind the 1918 flu epi­dem­ic that killed scores of mil­lions world­wide.

From Ger­many Watch comes anoth­er post rein­forc­ing this line of inquiry. 

After main­tain­ing that Ger­man agents were sab­o­tag­ing live­stock with anthrax, the post dis­cuss­es British intel­li­gence dis­til­late indi­cat­ing that, after dis­cov­er­ing the par­tic­u­lar strain of vir­u­lent flu, Ger­man agents began delib­er­ate­ly spread­ing it in the U.S.

NB: We don’t feel that the infor­ma­tion from the book Three Wars with Ger­many con­firms the hypoth­e­sis that the flu pan­dem­ic was a Ger­man bio-war­fare weapon gone awry beyond the point of debate. It DOES, how­ev­er, high­light that pos­si­bil­i­ty.

We then tack­le the sub­ject of a cult/church that is at the epi­cen­ter of a Covid-19 out­break in South Korea. The over­lap between this orga­ni­za­tion and the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is dis­cussed in a Food For Thought post. Might this cult have been a vec­tor for intro­duc­ing the virus into Wuhan?

The fascis­tic nature of the cult and some of the rit­u­als and beliefs of the orga­ni­za­tion would ren­der the group and/or some of its mem­bers as viable “use­ful idiots” for manip­u­la­tion in con­nec­tion with this out­break.

The next two points of dis­cus­sion con­cern the fact that the cur­rent U.S. Ambas­sador to South Korea was the for­mer head of the Unit­ed States Pacif­ic Com­mand. We won­der if he might be ONI and/or CIA, and if he might have any con­nec­tion to the anti-Chi­na blitzkrieg and the Covid-19 out­break?

As the for­mer Com­man­der of the Guan­tanamo base in Cuba, Admi­ral Har­ris cer­tain­ly did have oper­a­tional links with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

FTR #1116 Update on The Chinese Winter and the Coronavirus “Bio-Psy-Op”

In our ongo­ing series about the Covid-19 break­out and the Chi­nese win­ter, we have dis­cussed the dam­age the break­out has done to the Chi­nese econ­o­my, our belief that the out­break is part of a desta­bi­liza­tion effort against Chi­na, and the invest­ments of Steve Ban­non asso­ciate J. Kyle Bass and, in turn, Bass’s polit­i­cal asso­ci­a­tion and prob­a­ble co-invest­ment posi­tion with Trump asso­ciate Tom­my Hicks, Jr.

Posi­tioned to prof­it as a result of a Chi­nese eco­nom­ic down­turn, Bass and Hicks may  well be prof­it­ing from Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic prob­lems, which are grow­ing more severe as a result of the out­break.

Now, many Chi­nese firms say they can­not pay their work­ers their full salaries–a devel­op­ment that will fur­ther strain the Chi­nese econ­o­my.

NB: With the eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of the out­break spread­ing glob­al­ly, Bass, Hicks et al would not nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be invest­ed in Chi­nese equi­ties to prof­it enor­mous­ly from this event.

New bank loans in Chi­na hit a record high in Jan­u­ary, reflect­ing the grow­ing need for cash to keep the busi­ness­es oper­at­ing and employ­ees  paid. The PBOC, China’s cen­tral bank, also cut its bench­mark lend­ing rate today as part of a push to ease the financ­ing costs for busi­ness. As the arti­cle notes, small and rur­al banks are most at risk–a stress test last year by the PBOC found that 13 per­cent of banks were con­sid­ered “high risk”.

As not­ed below, Tom­my Hicks brought in J. Kyle Bass to lec­ture to inter­a­gency gov­ern­ment net­works about Chi­na’s bank­ing sys­tem.

We review the fact that Bass is close to, and may well be a co-investor with, Tom­my Hicks Jr., a key mem­ber of Team Trump. Hicks, Com­merce Sec­re­tary Wilbur Ross and nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials are, in turn, work­ing to deny Chi­nese elec­tron­ics firm Huawei access to devel­op­ing 5G net­works, fur­ther ham­string­ing the Chi­nese econ­o­my.

Paul Krug­man, among oth­ers, has not­ed that Wilbur Ross was open­ly cel­e­brat­ing the coro­n­avirus as a boon to the Unit­ed States.

We high­light key aspects of this dis­cus­sion:
1.–Hicks is not a gov­ern­ment offi­cial but has access to high-lev­el gov­ern­men­tal process, includ­ing (appar­ent­ly) CIA activ­i­ties. ” . . . . Tom­my Hicks Jr., 41, isn’t a gov­ern­ment offi­cial; he’s a wealthy pri­vate investor. And he has been a part of dis­cus­sions relat­ed to Chi­na and tech­nol­o­gy with top offi­cials from the Trea­sury Depart­ment, Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, Com­merce Depart­ment and oth­ers, accord­ing to emails and doc­u­ments obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca. In one email, Hicks refers to a meet­ing at ‘Lan­g­ley,’ an appar­ent ref­er­ence to the CIA’s head­quar­ters. . . .”
2.–Hicks has used his posi­tion to arrange for J. Kyle Bass to net­work with gov­ern­ment agen­cies and offi­cials. Bear in mind that Bass is posi­tioned to ben­e­fit from a down­turn in Chi­na’s econ­o­my. ” . . . . Hicks used his con­nec­tions to arrange for a hedge fund man­ag­er friend, Kyle Bass — who has $143 mil­lion in invest­ments that will pay off if China’s econ­o­my tanks — to present his views on the Chi­nese econ­o­my to high-lev­el gov­ern­ment offi­cials at an inter­a­gency meet­ing at the Trea­sury Depart­ment, accord­ing to the doc­u­ments. . . .”
3.–Hicks and Bass have invest­ed togeth­er since 2011. ” . . . . Bass pre­sent­ed his views on China’s bank­ing sys­tem in the office of Heath Tar­bert, an assis­tant sec­re­tary at Trea­sury in charge of inter­na­tion­al mar­kets and invest­ment pol­i­cy and a pow­er­ful inter­gov­ern­men­tal com­mit­tee that reviews for­eign invest­ments in the U.S. for nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns. Among the offi­cials at the meet­ing with Tar­bert were Bill Hin­man, the direc­tor of the divi­sion of cor­po­ra­tion finance at the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion, and Ray Wash­burne, a wealthy Dal­las restau­rant own­er and fam­i­ly friend of Hicks’ who was nom­i­nat­ed by Trump to head the Over­seas Pri­vate Invest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. Hicks and Bass, both Dal­las res­i­dents and long­time denizens of the finan­cial com­mu­ni­ty there, have invest­ed togeth­er since at least 2011, accord­ing to secu­ri­ties fil­ings and court records. . . .”
4.–Hicks did not deny that he par­tic­i­pat­ed in Bass’s funds, but was eva­sive.” . . . . But it’s not clear if Hicks or his fam­i­ly have an invest­ment in Bass’ Chi­na-relat­ed funds. Reached twice on his cell­phone, Hicks declined to be inter­viewed by ProP­ub­li­ca. In the sec­ond call, in June, Hicks didn’t dis­pute that he and his fam­i­ly have invest­ed in Bass’ funds. But when asked to detail their busi­ness rela­tion­ship, he cut the con­ver­sa­tion short. . . . ”
5.–Bass has a his­to­ry of bet­ting against trends that will turn down­ward, hav­ing made his for­tune on the 2008 crash. ” . . . . Bass, who made his name and for­tune by bet­ting against sub­prime mort­gages before the crash and is known for large bets that economies or cer­tain macro trends will turn down­ward, declined to com­ment. . . .”
6.–Official review did not exam­ine pos­si­ble busi­ness rela­tion­ships between Hicks and Bass. ” . . . . An admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial briefed on the Bass meet­ing at the Trea­sury down­played it as ‘strict­ly a lis­ten­ing ses­sion.’ . . . . He acknowl­edged that the review didn’t include an exam­i­na­tion of any finan­cial rela­tion­ship between Hicks and Bass. . . .”
7.–Bass is posi­tioned to main­tain “mas­sive asym­me­try” to down turns in Hong Kong and Chi­na, in oth­er words, he will ben­e­fit if they go down. ” . . . . Bass has become a vocal advo­cate for an aggres­sive U.S. pol­i­cy toward Chi­na. On Twit­ter and on cable busi­ness chan­nels he’s denounced every­thing from the country’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty gov­ern­ment to its busi­ness prac­tices. Secu­ri­ties fil­ings show Bass raised $143 mil­lion from about 81 investors in two funds — invest­ments that would ben­e­fit if China’s cur­ren­cy were deval­ued or the coun­try faced cred­it or bank­ing crises. In April, in a let­ter to his investors, Bass wrote that his com­pa­ny, Hay­man Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, was posi­tioned for com­ing prob­lems in Hong Kong and was set up to ‘main­tain a mas­sive asym­me­try to a neg­a­tive out­come in Hong Kong and/or Chi­na.’ . . . ”
Next, we turn to dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble manip­u­la­tion of the virus to make it com­mu­ni­ca­ble through air­borne trans­mis­sion, sim­i­lar to the trans­mis­sion of influen­za.

Researchers found that lev­els of the virus increased soon after symp­toms first appeared, with high­er amounts in the nose than in the throats–more con­sis­tent with influen­za than SARS. Of the 18 patients they exam­ined, one had mod­er­ate lev­els in their nose and throat but no symp­toms. Peo­ple who are asymp­to­matic can still spread the virus. It’s this com­bi­na­tion of air­borne trans­mis­sion and asymp­to­matic patients who are still shed­ding the virus that makes this a par­tic­u­lar­ly infec­tious dis­ease.

This sud­den anom­alous (for SARS-like coro­n­avirus­es) new abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, of course, brings up chill­ing exper­i­ments in which researchers mod­i­fied the H5N1 bird flu virus to become capa­ble of air­borne trans­mis­sions between fer­rets. That research was banned by the NIH fol­low­ing pub­lic out­cry but resumed in ear­ly 2019. The orig­i­nal 2012 study specif­i­cal­ly found that it was the genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered muta­tions that gave the virus the abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tracts of the fer­rets. We have yet to hear if the SAR-CoV­‑2 virus had the same or sim­i­lar muta­tions to those that were induced in the H5N1 bird flu virus exper­i­ment but it seems like­ly.

Thus, the infec­tious­ness of the SARS-CoV­‑2 coro­n­avirus is unprece­dent­ed based on this new study. As one immu­nol­o­gist put it, “This virus is clear­ly much more capa­ble of spread­ing between humans than any oth­er nov­el coro­n­avirus we’ve ever seen. This is more akin to the spread of flu”.

The virus can also be spread through human fecal mate­r­i­al from an infect­ed per­son.

Yet anoth­er spec­u­la­tive ele­ment of dis­cus­sion con­cerns a cult/church in South Korea which is the epi­cen­ter of a burst of cas­es in that coun­try. A reput­ed pres­ence of a branch of the orga­ni­za­tion is in Wuhan, which has direct­ed dis­cus­sion in the direc­tion of the virus hav­ing migrat­ed from Hubei province to South Korea.

Against the back­ground of Uni­fi­ca­tion Church activ­i­ty dur­ing the Cold War, in con­nec­tion with CIA, in con­nec­tion with the fas­cist pow­er elite in Japan that is con­tin­u­ous with that coun­try’s activ­i­ties dur­ing World War II, we won­der about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the use of this cult as a vec­tor­ing agent.

Might it be pos­si­ble that it was used to intro­duce the virus into Chi­na in the first place?

As will be high­light­ed in future pro­grams, there appear to be operational/networking links between the Shin­cheon­ji and the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, as well as doc­tri­nal sim­i­lar­i­ties.

Networking and Doctrinal Overlap Between Unification Church and Shincheonji

A spec­u­la­tive ele­ment of dis­cus­sion con­cerns a cult/church in South Korea which is the epi­cen­ter of a burst of coro­n­avirus cas­es in that coun­try. A reput­ed pres­ence of a branch of the orga­ni­za­tion is in Wuhan, which has direct­ed dis­cus­sion in the direc­tion of the virus hav­ing migrat­ed from Hubei province to South Korea. Might it be pos­si­ble that it was used to intro­duce the virus into Chi­na in the first place? “. . . . Jung Eun-kyeong, direc­tor of the Korea Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, said the author­i­ties were inves­ti­gat­ing reports that Shin­cheon­ji had oper­a­tions in Hubei, the Chi­nese province that includes Wuhan, where the virus emerged. The South Kore­an news agency New­sis report­ed on Fri­day that Shin­cheon­ji had opened a church in Wuhan last year, and that ref­er­ences to it had been removed from the church’s web­site. Church offi­cials could not imme­di­ate­ly be reached for com­ment. . . .” The Shin­cheon­ji orga­ni­za­tion appears to over­lap the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. In addi­tion to net­work­ing between ele­ments of both orga­ni­za­tions, the Shin­cheon­ji Church has many doc­tri­nal sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Most impor­tant of these points of over­lap between the orga­ni­za­tions is the posi­tion and influ­ence of Kim Kun-Nam in Shin­cheon­ji: ” . . . . Kim Kun-nam, one of the two authors of Shin­tan, which can be called the first doc­trine of Shin­cheon­ji, is from the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. Kim also served as a lec­tur­er in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. It is no exag­ger­a­tion to say that Shin­cheon­ji doc­trine devel­oped on the basis of what Kim made. . . .”