Some see a deadly virus – alone on this earth, silly John Pilger sees a war with China

Popular public health parable: Wall Street Journal, March 14:

Two friends are sitting by a river when they spot a child drowning in the water. Both friends immediately dive in and pull the child to safety. But as soon as they do, another struggling child drifts into view. Then another. Then another. After completing several rescues, one of them climbs out of the water.

“Where are you going?” the other friend asks.

“I’m going upstream to tackle the guy who’s throwing all these kids in the water.”

It was China throwing in the children. Guardian, February 11:

A prominent Chinese intellectual has become the first high-profile public figure to lay the blame for the coronavirus crisis at the feet of the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, saying the spread of the deadly virus has “revealed the rotten core of Chinese governance”.

Xi to the rescue. Wall Street Journal, March 8:

Officials and the government-controlled press have kicked into high gear to shower praise on Mr Xi, portraying him as a decisive leader who rescued his country from a public health catastrophe and bought time for the rest of the world to prepare defences against the highly contagious new pathogen.

There are seven billion people on Earth. Only one could believe that. John Pilger tweets February 3:

Under cover of coronavirus, the US and its ‘‘allies’’ are waging war against China. The racist travel bans and media hysteria are not approved by WHO. China’s response to the emergency has been a model …

Pilger always sticks to his script. The Diplomat, December 23, 2016:

… Pilger’s loathing of the United States has led him to produce a film (The Coming War on China) that acts as an apology for Chinese totalitarianism, distorts the truth about Asian politics, and presents China as a passive victim in a potential new superpower war … what I watched was an incendiary spectacle that manages to circle the triumvirate of narcissism, ignorance and propaganda.

Pity the Melbourne Comedy Festival has been cancelled. Pilger and this clown would have been stand-up gold. Financial Times, March 14:

It was nothing more than a far-fetched rumour circulating among conspiracy theorists until a Beijing diplomat tweeted that the US military had planted the coronavirus outbreak in China. “It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan,” Zhao Lijian … wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

Did you hear the one about …? BuzzFeed. News, December 2, 2019:

The most interesting diplomat in the world these days may well be Zhao Lijian, the combative, bombastic, frankly Trumpy voice of the People’s Republic of China on Twitter. Zhao was in fine form this Thanksgiving weekend, offering an eight-part tweetstorm on American racism, tweeting at one point that the US was merely suffering from “replacement anxiety” at China’s unstoppable rise …

Forget Pilger, Zhao Lijian could do a double act with China’s amusing man in Canberra, Embassy media statement, February 13:

We express our deep regret and dissatisfaction over the Australian government’s announcement on 13th Feb on the extension of travel restrictions over foreign nationals from the Chinese mainland. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, China has taken the most comprehensive and rigorous prevention and control measures …