The author of this piece, attorney Michael Senger gets rather crabby when writing about the Chinese and covid. But his headline reminded me of the Chinese - Italian guy in Florence who had the signboard that said “I’m not a virus. I’m a human. Eradicate the prejudice.”. I just checked and he appears to be alive and kicking.
Anyhoo, from Mr. Senger's The New Normal substack, May 4, 2022:
In Snake Oil, I detail the evidence that the Chinese Communist Party used multiple modes of influence including online propaganda, mainstream media, and fraudulent “science” to popularize lockdown policies that were unprecedented in the western world. But for many, one big question remains: Yes, this may all be true, but what about Italy? In the words of Neil Ferguson, architect of the wildly-inaccurate Covid models that sent the world into a tailspin:
It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… And then Italy did it. And we realised we could…
This is, of course, true. Italy’s adoption of China’s containment policy was one of the most important events instigating lockdowns across the free world—and, I would argue, one of the most darkly clever aspects of the lockdown operation. Limited information as to how Italy’s lockdowns transpired has been a hindrance. Thus, our case takes us to Europe’s ancient capital.
As historical background, the last time Italy had a strong, competent national government was roughly 179 AD, after which Marcus Aurelius passed away and emperorship passed to his son Commodus, the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. For 1300 years after the fall of Rome, Italy was largely governed as a smattering of city-states owned by rivaling, illustriously-wealthy families. When Italy became a republic in the 19th century, the private security forces of these wealthy families evolved into the loosely-knit clandestine network referred to as the mafia, serving as liaisons between the Italian elite, the government, and purveyors of various illicit activities. As a result, Italy has long been unique as one of the world’s most prosperous and talented countries, but with a level of corruption more characteristic of a developing nation—a match made in heaven for an organization like the CCP.
In 2013, a new political party formed by comedian Beppe Grillo called the Five Star Movement (M5S) began to rise. Like most of Italy’s political parties, M5S marketed themselves as populist and anti-establishment, but Grillo and M5S had long sought and formed close relations with China. As M5S gained political power, they sold relations with China to the Italian people as a way to foster Italy’s economic independence.
After M5S member Giuseppe Conte became Prime Minister in 2018, the party’s overtures to China reached an apex when Conte gave Xi Jinping a royal welcome and signed onto his Belt and Road initiative, becoming the first major European country to do so.
On March 23, 2019, the same day Conte signed Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, Italy’s Health Minister, M5S member Giulia Grillo, signed a Plan of Action on Health Cooperation between Italy and China, binding Italy to cooperation with China in certain fields including “prevention of infectious diseases.” This plan was a continuation of health cooperation plans between Italy and China first launched in 2000 under former Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema. D’Alema had been a longtime member of the Italian Communist Party and was the first known Communist to ever become prime minister of a NATO country. D’Alema now served as honorary president of the Silk Road Cities Alliance, a Chinese state organization, and was a leader of the newly-formed political party Article One (A1).
Giulia Grillo left her post and another A1 member, Roberto Speranza, became Italy’s new Minister of Health in September 2019. Shortly after, in October 2019, Prime Minister Conte paid a visit to the headquarters of Technogenetics, a Chinese-owned company in Italy that developed the initial Covid PCR test swabs which were sent to Wuhan in January 2020.
On November 8, 2019, Health Minister Speranza signed an Implementation Programme of the Plan of Action on Health Cooperation between Italy and China, binding Italy to specific actions in the area of infectious disease control. As is now widely-acknowledged by intelligence sources, the CCP was aware that Covid was spreading by November 8, 2019, but had not yet shared that information with the rest of the world. Among Italy’s commitments to China in the Implementation Programme were the following:
a. Develop and support prevention strategies, policies and actions to counter the following situation: exposure to etiological agents; individual and general population behaviors and attitudes related to the transmission of infections; the low compliance of health professionals with respect to the surveillance of communicable diseases and measures of prevention … and the non-standard behaviors and unserious attitudes of health professionals in care practices regarding risk and infection control.
b. Develop and support epidemiological surveillance, organization for infectious emergencies, communication for the population, training of health workers, the coordination between different institutional levels and various territorial competences during the implementation of prevention interventions, collection of information, systematic monitoring of the quality and the impact of the actions implemented…
f. Carry out cooperation activities like academic exchange, training and manoeuvres on emergency medical rescue and response of major public health emergency, i.e., natural disaster, accident-related disaster, nuclear biochemical emergency, infectious diseases pandemic like influenza.
On November 23, 2019, M5S founder Beppe Grillo—who had no official government position—met with China’s ambassador to Italy and attended a long meeting at the Chinese embassy, the details of which remain unknown.
Prime Minister Conte announced Italy’s first two confirmed Covid cases after a couple of tourists from China tested positive on January 30, 2020; months later, this couple donated $40,000 to the hospital in Rome that treated them. After announcing the two cases, Conte declared a state of emergency, “allowing the government to cut through red tape quickly if needed.”
Hours after Conte confirmed Italy’s first two Covid cases on January 30, 2020, an anonymous stock tipster posted that he or she had “friends and family in the medical industry and field, including at CDC and one close friend at WHO,” and felt guilty not disclosing what they knew:....
....MUCH MORE
And the latest at The New Normal: "Michael Callahan: DARPA’s Ventilator Guy in Wuhan"
