| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Why do politicians keep breathing life into the false conspiracy theory that the coronavirus is a bioweapon? |
| 2020-03-16 |
| Because it's more than likely TRUE? [Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists] You’ve probably heard the rumor: The new coronavirus is a bioweapon. Some malicious country‐perhaps the United States, maybe China, depending on who’s talking or tweeting‐purposefully unleashed the virus that causes Covid-19 on the world. You might have also heard that the idea was widely dismissed by disease and defense experts. A good bioweapon, some note, wouldn’t spread as easily and indiscriminately as the new coronavirus does. But for political opportunists and conspiracy theorists, the rising number of Covid-19 infections, the growing ranks of the dead, and the mass disruptions to the daily rhythms of life have created fertile conspiratorial ground. The Covid-19 bioweapon conspiracy theory has not only failed to be debunked; it even seems to be getting a second wind, and prominent politicians from countries around the world are embracing it. "For a while, it seemed the pushback on the bioweapons narrative from the Washington Post and Foreign Policy was effective," biodefense researcher Filippa Lentzos said. "But in recent days, the narrative seems to be coming back with a vengeance." Current and former government officials, including former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lijian Zhao, and US Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas have given credence to some version of the theory in the last month. In the United States, Cotton isn’t fully letting up on his suggestion last month that the virus was a Chinese military creation. In a Fox News interview in February, he appeared to suggest just that, before walking back the idea, sort of. (In a series of tweets, he said the bioweapon theory was just one of several hypotheses.) Bioweapon or not, Cotton still believes someone is responsible for the pandemic, someone Chinese. In a statement Thursday announcing that he’d be temporarily closing his Senate office, he called the virus the "Wuhan coronavirus" five times, vowing, "We will hold accountable those who inflicted it on the world." In a later clarifying tweet, he said that, yes, he meant China. A March 12 article in Britain’s Express tabloid added fuel to fire, reporting that University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle, who helped draft the legislation that implemented the Biological Weapons Convention in the United States, had identified a "smoking gun" that showed the coronavirus was a bioweapon leaked from a Chinese research lab near Wuhan, the city where the outbreak originated. Boyle reportedly based his theory on a paper on ScienceDirect that noted a "gain-of-function" in the virus that makes it better than other coronaviruses at spreading among humans. But as the Express itself notes in a correction, the research paper Boyle cited does not speculate on what caused the gain-of-function in the virus. "It was therefore incorrect when our article claimed ’the paper suggested Covid-19 has been tampered with,’" the correction notes. That didn’t stop Manish Tewari, a prominent Indian parliamentarian and spokesperson for the Indian National Congress, the country’s leading opposition party, from re-tweeting the Express article to his more than 380,000 followers, adding his own highly charged twist: the disease outbreak is a terrorist act. "CoronaVirus is a bioweapon that went [rogue] or that was made to go [rogue]. It is an act of terror," Tewari tweeted on March 12. "International investigation conducted either under auspices of ICJ or ICC is necessary to unearth the truth & bring focus back on eradicating Biological Weapons." |
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| India-Pakistan |
| Sanjay Dutt's mercy plea finds support from govt |
| 2013-03-22 |
| NEW DELHI: An appeal from the Press Council of India (PCI) chief, Justice (retd) Markandey Katju to the Maharashtra governor K Sankarnarayan seeking mercy for actor Sanjay Dutt seems to have found favour from the government with several UPA ministers on Friday suggesting if the Bollywood star approaches the governor an "appropriate" decision may be taken. "Governor will use his discretionary power when there will be an appeal to him. He has the power to pardon," said law minister Ashwani Kumar. He, however, refrained from giving his own opinion on it. Information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari said the authorities will take cognizance of the matter at an appropriate level. "Justice Katju has been a very eminent judge of the Supreme Court. Whenever he articulates a position on an issue, people both inside and outside the government listen to it carefully," Tewari told reporters. Tourism minister and film star Chiranjeevi too favoured mercy, saying Dutt, "should get mercy ... if he gets mercy, I will be the most happiest person." Earlier, Justice Katju had appealed to the governor K Sankarnarayan seeking pardon for Dutt on humanitarian grounds under Article 162 of the Constitution after the apex court had upheld his five-year sentence in the 1993 blasts case. However, Raj Bhavan officials in Mumbai said they were yet to receive any official communication in this regard from Justice Katju. Maharashtra home minister R R Patil said that the state government too had not received any application in this regard. "The entire issue was being handled by the centre. I haven't yet read the entire SC judgment," he said. Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan chose not to comment on the issue. Plea for clemency for the film star has been made by some allies of the Congress too. NCP general secretary D P Tripathi made a strong pitch for mercy. "The governor has the right and he should give clemency to Dutt who has not been accused of any involvement in terrorist activities but illegal possession of arms," Tripathi said. Opposition BJP was more cautious. BJP spokesperson Prakash Javdekar said, "Review petition has been allowed to be filed by the SC. Now it is up to Sanjay Dutt whether he wants to file or not. Let's see what they have to decide." Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan said she will appeal to Maharashtra governor K Sankarnarayanan to pardon Dutt. "I agree with everyone that he has suffered a lot. I believe that he should not be given such a big punishment. He is a changed man now. I'm going to personally appeal governor and ask him to pardon him," she said. |
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| India-Pakistan |
| India wants Pakistan declared terror state |
| 2009-02-08 |
| India on Saturday said the international community should consider declaring Pakistan a terrorist state in light of the country's release of a scientist who sold nuclear secrets around the globe. If Pakistain's not a terrorist state there ain't no sech thing... "It is time for the international community to think whether to declare Pakistan a terrorist country," Manish Tewari, the ruling Congress party spokesman said in New Delhi, in reference to the end from house arrest of Pakistani nuclear Abdul Qadeer Khan. Omar Saeed Sheikh's not dead yet, either. My guess is he's gonna die of old age. And he's not very old now. Khan, the man at the centre of the world' most serious nuclear proliferation scandal, was released on Friday after five years of house arrest. Just about the time Bush left office, plus a few days for paperwork. Revered by many Pakistanis as the father of the country's atomic bomb, he confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya in 2004. He was immediately pardoned by the government, although his movements were restricted. It wasn't Dr. Strangelove selling the nuke secrets. It was the Pak government. Most of us know that, and most of us who don't have guessed it. India's Congress party, which faces election in April, where security is likely to be a major voting issue, said Khan's release was a serious security concern. "Defending him proves Pakistan as not only an exporter of terrorism, but has also given rise to doubts of certain countries, including (United States) America, that nuclear weapons could go into the hands of terrorists," Tiwari told reporters. We're not dumb enough -- or weren't, until Bush left office -- to assume that Dr. Strangelove was the only one with an interest in seeing San Diego or Baltimore or even Ann Arbor evaporated. Binny had his own resident nuke scientists, who were coincidentally Paks, when he decamped from Afghanistan. Earlier, the Indian army chief said militant camps in Pakistan were thriving and had increased in the past year, as India put pressure on Islamabad to bring militants behind last November's attacks in Mumbai to justice. "I would not talk about the numbers specifically right now...but infrastructure is existing and active," General Deepak Kapoor told the Press Trust of India (PTI). I regard those camps as distinctly unfriendly acts, regardless of who's in power in the Land of the Pure. India has said the militant attack on its financial capital Mumbai November last year, in which 179 people were killed, was planned from a camp in Pakistan. Relations between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have been strained since then, with India saying Pakistan was not doing enough to rein in militants. Actually, they were obfuscating and blustering just as hard as they could, and they have no intention of reining in their militants. Their militants are why they exist. Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said this week Pakistan's main spy agency was linked to planners of the Mumbai attacks. We knew that. They hardly even make an effort to hide the fact anymore. Pakistan has denied any involvement by state agencies ... at which point their collective lips fell off... and said it was investigating a dossier of information from India, to which it will reply next week. ... with still more bluster, obfuscation, and outright lies. |
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