Dakota Beacon

The deadly coronavirus, combined with the behavior of the Chinese government which created it and allowed it to escape, intentionally or not, has committed, and with every lie and cover up continues to commit, acts of war.  Now they are making out like bandits on top of it, selling products which the gullible purchasers believe to be useful in combating the horrible effect and the utter devastation of the virus.

But like the villain in the famous movie, The Third Man, “Harry Lime” (Orson Welles), who was hunted down like a dog because the watered-down penicillin he was marketing in post-war Vienna was leading to the deaths of children, the Chinese merchants are selling defective masks to their trading partners, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and others.  They sold defective test kits to Spain, Czechoslovakia, the Philippines and Malaysia.  These test kits were wrong 70% of the time. Now there is concern among workers in America that despite our own industry tooling up and preparing to produce needed ventilators, that they or at least parts for them, will be bought from China.  If this behavior on the part of China is not war profiteering, it is impossible to say anything is. At least in the case of “Harry Lime”, he didn’t make the diseases that his defective antibiotics failed to cure and he didn’t actively spread them throughout the world or lie about their source or nature - he was merely an unprincipled opportunist.  The behavior of the Chinese government reaches a new low.

We should be extremely leery of anything coming out of Red China henceforth.  We know of their standards - “standards” which have perpetuated filthy and disgusting wet markets where wild animals and house pets are kept in cages, sold and skinned for food.  Anything goes - bats, civets, baby rats, puppies, pangolins (again, look them up) and insects. They do not maintain high manufacturing standards either, and they employ slave labor, which accounts for the eagerness of companies from the west (including Americans) to abandon the American workforce and take their manufacturing there.  We should perhaps revisit some of the conditions on management which has made Chinese labor this attractive, but in truth, we should pay what things are worth and support our own industry at home rather than either use Chinese labor or lower our own standards to theirs. Our manufacturers should not have the government looking over their shoulders and dictating who they hire or fire.  Safe working conditions are another matter, however. We need to change how we oversee labor - some things are properly a matter of law and some are not. Some should remain a matter of the marketplace. We are going to have to take a long, hard look at all the reasons we have lost our manufacturing sector and remedy them as far as possible. Then we must stop trading with China.  

A few years ago, I said to a friend that Nixon’s worst crime was going to China and initiating trade with one of the world’s most oppressive dictatorships and thus helping to prolong its life.  My friend pointed out that a lot of farmers were happy - they’d managed to sell a lot of wheat to China. But consider - there were times when the Third Reich was getting very hungry and had no crops.  They’d have bought our wheat. It would have been unthinkable for American farmers to sell it to them though. We were at war. Well, we have always been at war with Red China. They have been and acted as our enemy from their takeover of the mainland.  That is why, for many years, we maintained a strong relationship with Taiwan and did not recognize the criminal regime of Mao Tse Tung. It would seem that there is no value to America in maintaining a relationship with China at all.  

The enemy Chinese government will gain access to vast amounts of private information through Huawei, which is being brought into many western countries - why would we allow it here?  We should not even allow their products to be marketed here.  

Meanwhile, back with the virus, take a look at the standards for manufacturing face masks - the ones China plans to sell to countries struggling to combat the virus they unleashed on them.  They are deliberately contaminating them before packaging them for export.  To them it’s a joke. They think we’re very stupid people.  They’re right if we are buying anything from them. And the thermometers they plan to make a killing on (pun intended) in America - will they be accurate?  Perhaps not. The manufacturers of those are yukking it up over how the stupid Americans will buy their deliberately mis-calibrated thermometers, they won’t know people are sick and this will spread the virus far and wide throughout the United States, killing people, “just like little soldiers”.  They think it’s a laugh-and-a-half and get giddy at the thought that they can do so much damage without a single bullet. They’ve invaded already, might as well take over as the Americans drop dead.  

Maybe this just sounds too dastardly to you - maybe you can’t believe our friends in China are guilty or would wish us harm.  This is for you. In late 2018, about a year before the outbreak of the current pandemic, U.S. Customs caught a Chinese agent attempting to smuggle live SARS and MERS viruses into the United States.  I don’t think it was for anyone’s high school science project. Maybe they were pets?  This incident should be enough to clue even the dumbest of us in that the Chinese are doing all of this to harm us.  There is no way some independent “biologist” would have been transporting deadly viruses around in his suitcases for innocent purposes.  Legitimate drugs, however, they have been making for American pharmaceutical companies they are now threatening to withhold from us.

We have been foolish and naive for many decades - it’s been fifty years since Nixon went over there on that ill-conceived mission.  We have been suckers for long enough. Now it is our fault if it continues. Sen.Lindsey Graham has been stomping his foot and demanding that China close their wet markets (“where the diseases come from”) or “else”.  Or else, he says, we might just up and reconsider our trade relationship with them. My, my!  

Don’t you think it is time to stop all trade?  We are getting inferior, if not defective goods from them, they are undercutting our own manufacturing.  They created this virus which has devastated nearly every other nation on earth. And now they want to sell us medicine, supplies and equipment to counter it.  They are far worse than war profiteers. They are criminals. We should check the labels on anything we consider buying. If it says “made in China” we should put it down and go wash our hands.  The last thing we need in America this year is shoddy, deliberately contaminated or mis-calibrated supplies, gear or equipment. Our people are dying, our health care providers especially. If we buy these Chinese-manufactured goods we deserve it.  It amounts to aid and comfort to our worst enemy. President Trump should make this decision during this crisis and ask other nations to reject these products also - for their own good. China has been running around, pretending to be a great benefactor with this “help” to other peaceful nations, some ill-advised trading partners like Italy, after literally sowing the seeds of destruction in their people.  This is perhaps one of the sickest and lowest chapters in human history. It is no one’s fault but China’s so far. From here on out it will be China’s and whoever does business with them. The government of the People’s Republic of China should be condemned and it should be subject to sanctions and isolation. It would not be unreasonable to launch a world-wide class-action suit against such a government for these actions.  They have committed layers upon layers of crime in this episode. No nation owes them a penny after this and they should be shunned. With all due respect to Senator Graham, simply “reviewing” or “restructuring” or “reconsidering” our trade with them is wholly inadequate to the purpose.