West still barking up the conspiracy tree

Many in the United States administration and the private sector, in cooperation with their mainstream media partners, are once again playing up the issue of the novel coronavirus' origin, suggesting that the virus might have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, Hubei province.

What is the US' intention behind continuing these accusations ignoring the evidence to the contrary? Why would the Joe Biden administration help revive the unfounded accusations, especially when no new evidence has emerged?

In the words of virologist Paul Bieniasz, winner of The Rockefeller University Distinguished Teaching Award in 2017: "For the lab leak theory to be true, a Chinese virologist of previously impeccable reputation (Dr Shi Zhengli) would have had to lie, lie again, screw up and then lie again."

Adam Rogers' article published in Wired magazine in May was titled, "The Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory Is a Tale of Weaponized Uncertainty".

Unfortunately, a central claim in his article is based on a false report published in The Wall Street Journal claiming an "undisclosed U.S. intelligence report" as the source: that three researchers at the Wuhan lab became severely ill and were hospitalized.

The response from the Wuhan lab, along with a reflection on the timeline of utmost cooperation since the first case was detected in Wuhan, shows this to be an utterly false claim. Yet Rogers alleges that the "Chinese government has been uncooperative in international efforts to investigate the origin of SARS-CoV-2". This is nothing more than a political declaration with zero evidence released by the US State Department on March 30.

Neither claim is borne out by facts. Andy Slavitt, senior coronavirus adviser to the White House, said at a news briefing, "We don't feel like we have that now" referring to cooperation from the World Health Organization.

The last time I checked, government officials were not supposed to make factual claims based on how they "feel" about something rather than being based on evidence. To put it in layman's terms, very high-level government officials, in cooperation with their mainstream media partners, are building a mountain of vicious political slander with layers of lies piled on top of more lies.

A few weeks earlier, I was researching the past seven decades of global history to identify the pattern of Western political narratives and events, from the Korean War (1950-53) followed by the Vietnam War (1955-75) to the Iraq War and countless other international conflicts based on fake narratives which have caused endless deaths and destruction across the world. These conflicts are what I call "strategic economic terrorism" by the US and its allies. I have reached this conclusion by minutely examining the records of such events and analyzing the real underlying motive behind them－which is to gain political and economic power including through infiltration of specific markets.

WHO virologist Peter Daszak has pointed out the continuing vacuous hypocrisy of the Western mainstream media. When the old, dead lab-leak theory suddenly made a comeback in mainstream media headlines, Daszak said: "What's missing from all this reexamination& soul-searching is a fundamental fact: There's no evidence－not a smidgen－for the claim that COVID-19 originated in a lab in China or anywhere else, or that the China lab ever had the virus in its inventory." Is Daszak too a liar?

Rather than giving new insights, the US' strategy and position confirms a 70-year-old story about US imperialism: creating an "enemy" serves a key purpose of US policy－the evil "enemy" necessitates the promotion of the "superior American" values of "freedom, justice and democracy".

Yet history shows the spread of American values only serves as an excuse to achieve two end-results－depriving millions across the world of their freedom and denying them justice; and distracting people from the real, serious problems in the US.

Let's consider another reason why the US has been continuously pushing the Wuhan lab leak narrative. Such propaganda does a beautiful job of distracting from a history of far worse leaks from US labs.

When I tried to search the subject on Google, I encountered another staggering truth: a deep conspiracy to suppress the facts while diverting global attention to the Wuhan lab-leak theory.

My search on Google of "US virus laboratory leaks" returned an endless list of articles referring to Wuhan, lab leaks and China and previous US president Donald Trump. Not one single link referred to any information on the long and dangerous history of US laboratory incidents, including the shadowy story of the shutting down of Fort Detrick in Maryland.

Fortunately, a look at the Wikipedia page for biosecurity lab leaks offers an extensive list of lab leaks and other incidents in many countries including no less than 11 lab breaches in the US. Mysteriously, however, the editors at Wikipedia have not yet included the Fort Detrick shutdown on their list.

The author is an American writer living in China and senior fellow at the Center for China& Globalization. The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.