Washington [USA], Aug 1 (ANI): As several questions on the actual origin of the coronavirus remain unanswered, Jamie Metzl, a geopolitical expert and a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, has opined that the virus was not “a genetically altered virus.”
“I do not believe this was a genetically altered virus, just that it had likely been isolated and cultured in one of the Wuhan labs (WIV or WCDC),” said Metzl in his blog.
He said, “Whatever the origins of the outbreak, including the possibility of an accidental leak from the Chinese virology lab in Wuhan, China’s dangerous and ongoing information suppression activities are the foundations of this crisis.”
Citing a Lancet study, he said that there is strong evidence that the novel coronavirus outbreak did not originate in the seafood market. “This was clear early on but Chinese officials held to this story until late May 2020, when the evidence against this claim became wholly indefensible.”
He further said that the Huanan Seafood Market didn’t have bats for sale, and most bats species in Wuhan would be hibernating at the time of the outbreak. “It was reported that 34 per cent of cases had no contact with the market, and ‘no epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases,” Metzl said quoting Lancet.
Speaking further on the origination of the virus, Metzl said, “This market is less than 9 miles away from The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), Chinese Academy of Sciences, which: Developed chimeric SARS-like coronaviruses; Conducted ‘dangerous’ gain-of-function research on the SARS-CoV-1 virus, some of which had been funded by the US government (Asia Times); Established a 96.2 per cent match with SARS-CoV-2 and a virus they sampled from a cave over 1,000 miles away from Wuhan; Injected live piglets with bat coronaviruses as recently as July 2019; Published a paper on a close descendant of SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, in November 2019; and Was hiring researchers to work on bat coronaviruses as recently as November 2019.”
Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, China had a “very poor safety record at many of its biosecurity facilities,” Metzl said, adding that the market is less than three miles away from the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control, which was accused of being the “source of the outbreak from a now-withdrawn academic paper from a notable Chinese scholar at the South China University of China.”
Citing a Wall Street Journal report, Metzl said that Nikolai Petrovksy and colleagues at Flinders University in Australia have found that SARS-CoV-2 has a higher affinity for human receptors than for any other animal species they tested, including pangolins and horseshoe bats. “We can’t exclude the possibility that this came from a laboratory experiment,” Petrovksy was quoted as saying.
In one of his article in The Washington Post dated July 29, he wrote: “The closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 is a virus sampled by Chinese researchers from six miners infected while working in a bat-infested cave in southern China in 2012. These miners developed symptoms we now associate with Covid-19. Half of them died. These viral samples were then taken to the Wuhan Institute of Virology–the only facility in China that’s a biosafety Level 4 laboratory, the highest possible safety designation. The Level 4 designation is reserved for facilities dealing with the most dangerous pathogens. Wuhan is more than 1,000 miles north of Yunnan province, where the cave is located.”
“If the virus jumped to humans through a series of human-animal encounters in the wild or in wet markets, as Beijing has claimed, we would likely have seen evidence of people being infected elsewhere in China before the Wuhan outbreak. We have not. The alternative explanation, a lab escape, is far more plausible. We know the Wuhan Institute of Virology was using controversial ‘gain of function’ techniques to make viruses more virulent for research purposes.”
“A confidential 2018 State Department cable released this month highlighting the lab’s alarming safety record should heighten our concern. Suggesting that an outbreak of a deadly bat coronavirus coincidentally occurred near the only level 4 virology institute in all of China–which happened to be studying the closest known relative of that exact virus–strains credulity.”
“Not getting to the bottom of this crisis would be the height of absurdity. Too much is at stake. To ensure everyone’s safety, the WHO and outside investigators must be empowered to explore all relevant questions about the origins of the pandemic without limits. This comprehensive forensic investigation must include full access to all of the scientists, biological samples, laboratory records and other materials from the Wuhan virology institutes and other relevant Chinese organisations. Denying that access should be considered an admission of guilt by Beijing,” Metzl added. (ANI)

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Assertions that the focus was the Trump campaign are now known to be ludicrousLong-sought documents finally pried from U.S. intelligence agencies prove that the Obama administration used the occasion of providing a standard intelligence briefing for major-party candidates as an opportunity to investigate Donald Trump on suspicion of being a Russian asset.

I say investigate Donald Trump advisedly.
As I contended in Ball of Collusion, my book on the Trump-Russia investigation, the target of the probe spearheaded by the FBI but greenlighted by the Obama White House, and abetted by the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies was Donald Trump. Not the Trump campaign, not the Trump administration. Those were of interest only insofar as they were vehicles for Trump himself. The campaign, which the Bureau and its apologists risibly claim was the focus of the investigation, would have been of no interest to them were it not for Trump.
Or do you suppose they moved heaven and earth, surreptitiously plotted in the Oval Office, wrote CYA memos to cover their tracks, and laboriously sculpted FBI reports because they were hoping to nail . . . George Papadopoulos?
My book was published a year ago. It covered what was then known about the Obama-administration operation. In collusion with the Clinton campaign, and with the complicity of national-security officials who transitioned into the Trump administration, the Obama White House deployed the FBI to undermine the new president, dually using official investigative tactics (e.g. FISA surveillance, confidential informants, covert interrogations) and lawless classified leaks the latter publicized by dependable journalists who were (and remain) politically invested in unseating Trump.

Now the paper trail is finally catching up with what some of us analysts long ago surmised based on the limited information previously available.
You dont like Donald Trump? Fine. The investigation here was indeed about Donald Trump. But the scandal is about how abusive officials can exploit their awesome powers against any political opponent. And the people who authorized this political spying will be right back in business if, come November, Obamas vice-president is elected president notwithstanding that hes yet to be asked serious questions about it.
How to Conceal a Politicized Investigation
It seems mind-boggling that, for so long, the FBI and Justice Department were able to keep a lid on the documents now being released. President Trump could have directed their disclosure at any time over the last four years. But when you think about it, concealing the paper trail was the easy part. The real challenge was: How to continue the probe even after Trump had taken office and was, at least nominally, in a position to shut it down?
The Obama officials, including holdovers who transitioned into the Trump administration, pulled that off by intimidation: not-so-subtle suggestions that they could disclose damaging allegations at any time (e.g., the notorious pee tape), and that White House efforts to inquire into the scope of the investigation would be portrayed as criminal obstruction.
Prior to the 2016 election, the FBI intentionally concealed the existence of the Trump-Russia probe from the congressional Gang of Eight (the bipartisan leadership of both houses and their intelligence committees). Senior Republicans were thus kept in the dark regarding purported suspicions that the Republican presidential campaign was a Russian front, unable to pose tough questions about the probes gossamer predication.
Crucially, the Trump-Russia fabulists managed to sideline two Trump loyalists who would have been positioned to thwart the effort: national-security adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. That left in place Obama holdovers and Trump-appointed placeholders. They were indifferent to Trump himself and cowed by the prospect of being framed as complicit in a TrumpRussia conspiracy, or a cover-up.
The paper record is profoundly embarrassing, so it is only natural that the FBI and Justice Department resisted its disclosure. But documents about the investigation were demanded by congressional investigators starting years ago particularly by the investigation led in the House by thenIntelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.).
Congresss investigation was stonewalled. The more revelation we get, the more obvious it is that there was no bona fide national-security rationale for concealment. Documents were withheld to hide official and unofficial executive activity that was abusive, embarrassing, and, at least in some instances, illegal (e.g., tampering with a document that was critical to the FBIs presentation of facts to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court).
Democrats wanted this information suppressed all along. So of course, once Democrats took control of the House in 2019, there was no possibility of pressing the question of why the Justice Department and FBI failed to comply with House information demands back in 201718, when Republicans led the relevant committees.
One wonders, though, why the GOP-controlled Senate had so little interest in finding out why this paper trail stayed hidden despite repeated inquiries. Ditto the House Republican leadership in the first two years of Trumps term. It is hard to draw any conclusion other than that the GOP establishment bought the Russian interference in our democracy hysteria.
Moscow always meddles in U.S. elections. The 2016 interference was par for the course and, as always, utterly ineffective. This time, though, Democrats were perceived as the victims, rather than the beneficiaries. For once, they and their media megaphone demanded that the political class treat Russia as a serious threat. On cue, Washington Republicans genuflected, lest they be portrayed as covering up for Trump, or as soft on Putin. Meanwhile Democrats, the party of appeasement (very much including appeasement of Moscow through the Obama years), were transmogrified into Russia hawks. And Russia hawks theyll remain . . . right up until the moment Joe Biden takes the oath of office.
Exploiting Politics to Surveil the Opposition
Among the most significant of the newly declassified documents is a memorandum written by FBI agent Joe Pientka III, the case agent on Trump-Russia. It was Pientka who, at the FBIs New York City headquarters on August 17, 2016, purported to brief Trump and two top campaign surrogates the aforementioned General Flynn and thenNew Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was slated to run the transition if Trump won.
In reality, Pientka and the FBI regarded the occasion not as a briefing for the Republican presidential nominee but as an opportunity to interact with Donald Trump for investigative purposes. Clearly, the Bureau did that because Trump was the main subject of the investigation. The hope was that hed blurt things out that would help the FBI prove he was an agent of Russia.
The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they who were meddling in a presidential campaign using executive intelligence powers to monitor the presidents political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that hed had any role in Russian intelligences suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.
You didnt have to believe Trump was a savory man to know that. His top advisers were Flynn, a decorated combat veteran; Christie, a former U.S. attorney who vigorously investigated national-security cases; Rudy Giuliani, a legendary former U.S. attorney and New York City mayor whod rallied the country against anti-American terrorism; and Jeff Sessions, a longtime U.S. senator with a strong national-defense track record. To believe Trump was unfit for the presidency on temperamental or policy grounds was a perfectly reasonable position for Obama officials to take though an irrelevant one, since its up to the voters to decide who is suitable. But to claim to suspect that Trump was in a cyberespionage conspiracy with the Kremlin was inane . . . except as a subterfuge to conduct political spying, which Obama officials well knew was an abuse of power.
So they concealed it. They structured the investigation on the fiction that there was a principled distinction between Trump himself and the Trump campaign. In truth, the animating assumption of the probe was that Trump himself was acting on Russias behalf, either willfully or under the duress of blackmail. By purporting to focus on the campaign, investigators had the fig leaf of deniability they needed to monitor the candidate.
Just two weeks before Pientkas August 17 briefing of Trump, the FBI formally opened Crossfire Hurricane, the codename for the Trump-Russia investigation. The Bureau also opened four Trump-Russia subfiles, related to Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Flynn.
There was no case file called Donald Trump because Trump was Crossfire Hurricane. The theory of Crossfire Hurricane was that Russia had blackmail information on Trump, which it could use to extort Trump into doing Putins bidding if Trump were elected. It was further alleged that Russia had been cultivating Trump for years and was helping Trumps election bid in exchange for future considerations. Investigators surmised that Trump had recruited Paul Manafort (who had connections to Russian oligarchs and pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs) as his campaign manager, enabling Manafort to use such emissaries as Page to carry out furtive communications between Trump and the Kremlin. If elected, the theory went, Trump would steer American policy in Russias favor, just as the Bureau speculated that Trump was already corruptly steering the Republican party into a more pro-Moscow posture.
Get Them Talking
Besides obtaining FISA surveillance warrants against Page, the Bureaus favored tactic a common one in criminal investigations was to create or exploit situations in which the suspects would be at ease. Either the settings would not seem investigative or, in Trumps case, repeated assurances were provided that he was not under investigation. With no notice that the FBI was trying to catch them and even prompt them into making incriminating statements, Trump and his campaign advisers would be invited to talk about Russia. Agents parsed their statements and scrutinized their demeanor, searching for any indication of pro-Russia sentiment or uneasiness about the topic anything that could be portrayed as incriminating. If the Bureaus contacts with Trump officials were not covertly recorded (as they were, for example, when informants interacted with Papadopoulos), agents would generate written reports about them, the kind of reports the FBI routinely writes when building a criminal case.
This is exactly what Pientka did in connection with the August 17 briefing, under the supervision of Kevin Clinesmith, the rabidly anti-Trump FBI lawyer later found by the Justice Departments inspector general to have tampered with a key email, and Peter Strzok, the rabidly anti-Trump counterintelligence agent who was later fired.
Pientkas significantly redacted seven-page memo is worth reading. The point of it is not the national-security information provided to the candidate; that is just context for the Bureaus documenting of statements made by Trump in response. For example, when the topic is differences in methodology between Russian and Chinese espionage, Pientka carefully notes that Trump asked, Joe, are the Russians bad? Because they have more numbers [of FBI cases] are they worse than the Chinese? After all, maybe well find out he was reporting back to the Kremlin. When the topic turned to signals intelligence, Pientka notes that Trump interjected, Yes I understand its a dark time. Nothing is safe on computers anymore, and elaborated that his then-ten-year-old son had broken the code for access to a computer you know, just the kind of badinage youd expect from a co-conspirator in a Russian hacking scheme.
Pientka then recounts that when other intelligence-agency briefers took over to continue the briefing on other topics, Pientka did not leave; he stayed in the room actively listen[ing] for topics or questions regarding the Russian Federation. Here, in a classified report they figure no one will ever see, there is no pretense: FBI agents are monitoring Trump. Pientka notes that when one briefer said the U.S. was the worlds leader in counterterrorism, Trump interjected, Russia too? And when the discussion turned to cheating by Russia and China on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Trump asked, Whos worse? When the briefer replied, They are both bad, but Russia is worse, Pientka took pains to relate, Trump and Christie turned toward each other and Christie commented, Im shocked [sic].
Youre thinking, So what? Yeah, well, thats the point. They had nothing, but the agents were exploiting the U.S. political process to try to turn nothing into a federal case. And would any public official voluntarily attend a security briefing, ostensibly meant to help him perform his public-safety mission, if he thought the FBI might be spying on him and writing reports with an eye toward portraying him as a hostile powers mole?
Just as weve seen in the Flynn investigation, Pientkas official FBI report is marked in bold capital letters: DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL. Why deliberate over a draft when the purpose is to document a suspects statements? After all, he said whatever he said; there shouldnt be a need to edit it. Drafts and deliberations are necessary only if a report is being massaged to fit the perceived needs of the investigation. Observe that, although the briefing was August 17, the memo is dated August 30. Nearly two weeks later, and its still in the form of a deliberative draft, meaning theyre not done yet.
This is not materially different from the Obama administrations plan on January 6, 2017. That is when the FBIs then-director, James Comey, briefed Trump in New York City. This briefing came just a day after Comey met with his Obama-administration superiors the president, Vice President Biden, national-security adviser Susan Rice, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. They discussed withholding information about the Russia investigation from President-elect Trump and his incoming team.
Consistent with this White House strategy session, Comey did not actually brief Trump about the Russia investigation; he buzzed Trump with an allegation that the Putin regime might be in possession of blackmail material the pee tape that it could hold over Trumps head in order to get him to do the Kremlins bidding.
The point was not to give information. It was to get information: to provoke Trump into making incriminating or false statements, or statements evincing consciousness of guilt. Outside Trump Tower was an FBI car equipped with a laptop so Comey could immediately write an investigative report. The director and his team treated this as an investigative event, not a briefing. Comey memorialized Trumps statements, as well as his physical and emotional reaction to the suggestion that Moscow might have video of the soon-to-be president cavorting with prostitutes. If a case had ever been made on Trump, Comey could then have been a witness, with his investigative report available to refresh his recollection about Trumps comments and comportment.
That is one of the main reasons such reports are done.
The FBI did the same thing with Flynn: a sandbag interview, against Justice Department and White House protocols, conducted after extensive planning about how to put him at ease, how to make sure he doesnt think hes a suspect, how to refrain from advising him of his rights. Then, knock him back on his heels by portraying a legitimate conversation between the incoming national-security adviser and the Russian ambassador as if it were nefarious. Dont play him the recording or show him the transcript; just grill him and hope he says something incriminating or redolent of guilty knowledge. And then, instead of following the FBI rules for promptly completing interview reports, generate another deliberative draft that can be kneaded for a few weeks . . . with the help of a former prosecutor (Lisa Page) who serves as counsel to the second-highest-ranking FBI official (thendeputy director Andrew McCabe).
There is still plenty of paper trail to uncover. I havent even referred here to the Steele dossier, which investigators knew was bogus but relied on to seek and obtain court-authorized eavesdropping. I havent mentioned the unmasking of Trump officials indirectly targeted in foreign-intelligence collection. We havent considered the collaboration of American and foreign intelligence agencies in the scrutiny of Trump, or the collaboration of Obama officials and congressional Democrats, as well as the media, to promote the narrative that Trump was a Russian operative. There is much still to learn and to weigh.
But this much we know: In the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, President Obama authorized his administrations investigative agencies to monitor his partys opponent in the presidential election, on the pretext that Donald Trump was a clandestine agent of Russia. Realizing this was a gravely serious allegation for which there was laughably insufficient predication, administration officials kept Trumps name off the investigative files. That way, they could deny that they were doing what they did. Then they did it . . . and denied it.

Trash, trash and more trash has been accumulating across New York City after the budget of the sanitation department was cut by more than $100million.
Photos have captured bags filled with leftover food scraps, cans and bottles piled high on sidewalks or overflowing out of corner litter baskets.
Dead rats have been found among the waste and raccoons have been spotted climbing out of garbage cans.
It comes after City Hall slashed $106 million from the sanitation department’s budget, which reduced pickup for trash cans by 60 percent, reported CBS 2 New York.

According to Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, the city is facing a huge deficit and needed to make significant cuts to lower costs.
‘We have a lot less resources than we did in the prior fiscal year,’ she told CBS 2 New York.
Although there have been no changes to curbside trash and recycling pickups, Garcia says more rubbish has been left out than there was pre-pandemic.
‘Our trucks are filling up very quickly as we make it around the route in some neighborhoods because people are home,’ she said.
However, litter baskets on street corners will no longer be emptied on Sundays, and there will be fewer truck pickups on weekdays and holidays.

‘One of the things we did with our reduced number of basket trucks is really take a look at how we were distributing them,’ Garcia told the station.
‘We tried to go in and make sure we were distributing by the number of litter baskets any one has and match the service to the number of basket.’
The organics collection program will be suspended for a year and officials are planning to eliminate the curbside collection program of electronics.
Street cleanings, which have been suspended for the last three months, will return but will only be once a week instead of the typical twice a week.
The department is also reducing collection services in rat mitigation zones – areas meant to reduce the city’s rat population by 25 percent, from four days a week pick-up, to three days a week pick-up.

However, the return of outdoor dining combined with fewer trash pickups have led to an excessive rat problem.
City data shows that rat sightings increased from less than 1,000 in April 2020 to 1,658 in June 2020.
Giacomo Romano, owner of Ciccio, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan told NBC New York that rats from a nearby park have been appearing at his restaurant.
‘Last night, a customer had a baby rat running on his shoe and I let you just imagine his reaction,’ he said.
Rats, which like to eat garbage, carry bacteria and viruses that can cause serious illnesses such as fever, diarrhea and food poisoning.
Residents say that, although New York is being praised for bringing the coronavirus pandemic under control, it has another public health crisis on its hands.
‘The city right now, and especially in New York, we’re being hailed for doing so great with public health and all these things, but I don’t think you can say we’re doing that well with public health [be]cause when you have garbage everywhere, it’s also a public health issue,’ Adam Goldenberg, a resident of Harlem, told CBS 2 New York.